Tag: war

Slowly, Then Suddenly

I concur with the Armchair Warlord’s take on how the Russian strategy is likely to switch to a much more aggressive mode of offense when the time is deemed right.

The Stavka has placed a heavy emphasis on efficiency in this war. Many Russian decisions at the operational-strategic level can be explained simply by their seeking the most efficient means to inflict mass casualties on the AFU with the lowest risk to themselves. Thus, any decision to transition to high-speed, mobile warfare from low-speed, positional war can be expected to follow that rubric. In other words, the Russians will launch an offensive to rout the AFU after its back is broken in positional war, rather than attack seeking to “change the game” and defeat the Ukrainians in mobile war. The “game” heavily favors the Russians and they’re not in a rush to change it!

The difference between these scenarios can be seen quite easily by comparing two very successful offensives: Operation Bagration in 1944 and the 1975 Ho Chi Minh Offensive. Bagration routed the once-mighty Army Group Center – at the cost of 180,000 killed in action, three times the total Russian death toll of this war. I’m sure the Russians would much prefer the 8,000-strong butcher’s bill of North Vietnam’s war-ending 1975 operation – and they have the strategic insight to see that modern Ukraine, as a corrupt and deeply dysfunctional garrison state propped up by endless foreign aid, is far more akin to South Vietnam than Nazi Germany.

So what does this look like in practice? The Russians are going to keep poking and prodding in their usual methodical way until part of the line collapses “in depth,” and then all hell is going to break loose.

It seems most observers have forgotten that the Russians have already shown great flexibility in their approach to the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. The initial gambit was a high-risk, low-cost decapitation strike at Kiev combined with support for very rapid advancement into the Donbass by the separatist militias backed by Russian air and artillery support. Only when the limits of that approach were reached did they switch to using Chechen and mercenary light infantry to storm fortified locations like Bahkmut, after which they switched again to the brutal, but low-risk attrition warfare we’ve been seeing over the last year.

Therefore, it is correct to anticipate another change in grand tactics, (the more proper term in this context as the strategic objectives remain unchanged) which will primarily depend upon whether a) the Ukrainian Armed Forces break under the relentless attritional pressure or b) if NATO ground forces are sent in to prevent the UFA from breaking. Remember, the Russian strategists will comprehensively plan for all possible situations, not merely the particular scenarios that the enemy media deems most likely.

DISCUSS ON SG

Why Putin Waits

Simplicius explains why the Russians are in no hurry to finish off the Ukrainian resistance:

Everyone understands the dry points of Putin’s demands, which he has articulated over the course of months, about deNazification, keeping to current battlefield gains and ‘realities’, etc. But the single most important point which has flown completely under the radar, and which I believe is actually the very heart of Putin’s proposal, is hinted at in the earlier video where he says that mere ‘ceasefires’ are inadequate, and that he is seeking a permanent solution of some kind.

He didn’t specify there, but he has before—multiple times. What Putin alludes to is that in order to end the Ukrainian war for good, Russia will take no less than a re-working of the entire European security framework. This is why he harps on Zelensky’s illegitimacy, it’s because Putin wants to build up to the fact that there must be a far larger, overriding framework of guarantors which is immutable and inviolable, rather than flimsy and ephemeral like Zelensky.

What Putin is seeking is revolutionary: he wants to re-establish a whole new, modern Westphalian Peace. He wants the Ukrainian war to be the linchpin of a new global security system that plays into all the recent BRICS declarations of ‘reworking the UN’ and every other major global institution. Putin wants to reshape how the entire international system functions vis-a-vis their security relationships; in essence, it would be the first new concrete paradigm of the post-Cold War and ‘Iron Curtain’ era.

So for all those people who are asking: what is the ultimate price Putin is willing to pay to give up Russia’s maximalist aims in Ukraine—would he do it for the basic terms of demilitarization, no joining NATO, and all that? Not likely: because there is no way to guarantee Ukraine’s adherence to any such agreements. The only way to end the war would be a reworking of the entire system in such a way as to give Russia credible confidence in the new system holding indefinitely. It would take, as I said, a new Westphalian framework that institutionalizes new, much broader realities of what countries can and cannot do in overreaching via provocative actions against one another. If you really listen to Putin’s speeches and statements on this issue, this is the secret he’s intimating—though not very loudly or aggressively, for now. The reason for that is likely because he knows it’s too ambitious of an opening ‘ask’, and he would prefer to first lure the parties in via basic conditions before escalating it to the logical conclusion when it comes to the issue of: how do we realistically guarantee such conditions between parties?

This is why Putin is likely in no great rush to end the war: in order to effect such an ambitious world-reshaping plan, he knows the current political class has to first be waited out.

As I’ve been pointing out from the beginning, Putin knows he’s not at war with Ukraine. He’s not even at war with the USA or the West. He’s at war with Clown World, and there are safer, easier ways to defeat his enemies than to wade through literal continents of armies to do so. He understands, as does Xi, that time is on his side.

DISCUSS ON SG

Believing Their Own Word-Magic

Morgoth observes that the insane retardery of Clown World has now gone from redefining invaders as refugees and Pakistani rapists as English grooming gangs to a very dangerous redefinition of war as not-war:

It is stated quite clearly by a left-leaning, neoliberal outlet that there should be no brakes whatsoever on action taken against Russia because they’re all talk and no punch. Yet, the entire reason we’re in this mess is precisely because Russia invaded Ukraine in the teeth of Western opposition and condemnation. The reality of what is being proposed here is bombing campaigns inside Russia, including Russian cities, using weapons and aircraft supplied directly by Western powers, including personnel.

However, if we just play fast and loose with the definitions and framing, it will lose its bite; we can spin it a bit so the Western public can consume it more handily. It is hardly novel to highlight the degree to which Western journalists and politicians exist within their own bubble; now, they’re convincing themselves, entombing themselves within a narrative, that they can treat Russia however they like.

Niland certainly isn’t a lone voice. Establishment figures such as Boris Johnson have angrily demanded the West give Ukraine everything it needs to stay in the fight; the block was always that Russia is a nuclear power and allied with China. The evolving narrative is that Putin just talks a lot, and he won’t retaliate whatever we do. It is the logic of the drunk driver convincing himself he’s good for another four pints because he had a hearty dinner — it’s convenient bullshit rather than a reflection of reality.

I’m by no means a Putin fanboy; the camp I’m sitting in is the “anti-dying slowly in a cloud of nuclear fallout camp”. Putin is no stranger to weaving bullshit narratives himself. After all, he never even “invaded” Ukraine; he conducted a “special military operation”. The more we in the West convince ourselves, or are told by our betters, that Russia can be attacked with impunity, the more it will be. The more Russia is attacked, the greater the chance of retaliation because the Russian people will demand it.

Yet, astonishingly, Western establishment politicians and journalists are unable to see and understand basic logic in the same way they managed to convince themselves or compartmentalise foreign rape gangs or that a piece of paper doesn’t make a Somalian Irish.

Once you start believing lies in the face of the observable truth, you have no control over when to stop because you no longer have the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, or reality from your own wishful thinking.

DISCUSS ON SG

Time is on Xi’s Side

It’s clear that Xi is fully informed with regards to the US strategy to fight China while it still has some advantages left to it:

Xi Jinping has said that the US tried to provoke the Chinese military into attacking Taiwan but that Beijing did not take the bait, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing sources. According to people familiar with the matter cited by the paper, Xi made the remarks during a private meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in April 2023. The Chinese president also reportedly relayed concerns about Washington’s alleged attempts to trick Beijing into invading the self-governed island to his officials.

Beijing considers Taiwan to be sovereign Chinese territory under its One-China policy. The island has been self-governing since 1949 when nationalists fled the mainland with US help after losing the Chinese Civil War to the communists.

Financial Times described Xi’s reported remarks to von der Leyen as the first known time he told a foreign leader that the US was trying to goad Beijing into invading Taiwan. The Chinese president also reportedly explained that a conflict with the US would be detrimental to China and derail its plans for a “great rejuvenation” by 2049.

As I have repeatedly written, China wants a peaceful reunification with Taiwan island on the basis of the Hong Kong model. While there is no formal time limit to Taiwan’s US-backed pseudo-independence, everyone on all sides of the equation knows there is a practical limit, even if no one knows what it is. As the Chinese economy and military power continues to grow, and as the US economy and military power continues to decline, eventually a tipping point will be reached at which the Taiwanese faith in the USA and the USA’s willingness to go to war simultaneously vanish.

That is when China will peacefully take full political control of the island. Once the inevitable becomes the undeniable, any possibility of war over Taiwan will disappear. Unlike Russia, which was unable to resist the bait of a Ukrainian invasion of the Donbass republics and the potential loss of the Crimea and was forced to intervene militarily, Clown World possesses no similarly effective bait for China. It’s worth noting that despite being lured into launching the Special Military Operation, Putin has steadfastly resisted the invitation to attack the USA, the UK, Poland, or any of the European countries despite the relentless provocations by those effective belligerents.

Both Xi and Putin clearly understand that the USA is controlled by satanic foreign forces who value American lives no more highly than its Kiev regime values Ukrainian lives. They also understand that the satanic forces can only degrade and destroy, they can neither build nor maintain a society capable of exerting power on a global or even regional scale. Putin has even said as much about the United States in his June 14th speech at the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs:

As for the United States itself, the ongoing attempts by the liberal-globalist elites ruling there today to spread their ideology worldwide by any means, to maintain their imperial status, their dominance, only further exhaust the country, lead it to degradation, and directly contradict the true interests of the American people. If it weren’t for this dead-end path, aggressive messianism, mixed with a belief in their own chosenness and exceptionalism, international relations would have long been stabilized.

World War III is proving to be more sophisticated, and even more interesting, than either of its predecessors, because two of the central figures on the nationalist side have a not-inconsiderable understanding of the true nature, and the material limitations, of their enemy.

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of Carrier Diplomacy

It is widely believed that the Yemenis damaged the USS Eisenhower sufficiently to force it to retreat from the Red Sea before it was sunk:

According to satellite images published by navigation trackers, the Eisenhower was seen sailing north off the coast of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, heading to the far north of the Red Sea, more than 1,100 kilometers from Yemen. The Eisenhower had noticeably repositioned over the past two days, moving from off the coast of Qunfudhah in southern Saudi Arabia to off the coast of Jeddah before moving further north.

This retreat coincided with two ballistic and cruise missile attacks and drone strikes launched by Yemeni Armed Forces on the aircraft carrier since Friday, in response to recent American and British assaults that resulted in the deaths and injuries of 58 civilians. This escalation prompted Sana’a to vow a “firm and deterrent” response, according to the Supreme Political Council.

The blatant retreat of Eisenhower has put the United States in an extremely embarrassing position after attempting to cover up the Yemeni attacks on the carrier through silence. Many activists have sparked a wide debate regarding Eisenhower’s status following the attacks, leading Captain Chaudhary Hill to release a video to calm public opinion. However, the video showing a fighter jet taking off from the carrier turned out to be an old clip from March, reinforcing suspicions that Eisenhower might have sustained significant damage from the Yemeni attacks.

I, and many other observers, have long predicted that it would be the sinking of a US aircraft carrier that would definitively mark the end of US global military supremacy. However, I’d always assumed it would probably be a Chinese hypersonic missile, or possibly a Russian hypersonic missile, that would provide the historical coup de grace.

But the fact that it might be a lowly desert people taking down the mighty symbol of one of the most powerful empires to ever dominate the planet would be both fitting and ironic. There is too much disinformation and misinformation to confirm the rumors yet, but the longer the USS Eisenhower stays dark, the more it looks as if the USA has passed its Syracuse Moment.

DISCUSS ON SG

Regime Change in France and Germany

Macron has already waved the white flag and called for parliamentary elections. Now Germany’s government is almost certain to collapse in the aftermath of the European elections:

Germany’s ruling coalition has been roundly beaten by opposition parties in Sunday’s vote for the EU Parliament, coming in behind the conservatives and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, according to exit polls. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD) received around 14% of the vote, down from 15.8% in 2019, marking their worst results in decades, according to early forecasts from ZDF and ARD based on partial counting.

The conservative center-right main opposition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), is predicted to take first place with around 30%.

The AfD rose to second place with around 16%. The ultra-conservative Eurosceptic party has lobbied for cutting off deliveries of weapons to Ukraine and ending the sanctions on Russia, calling for peace talks instead. Despite several scandals in the run-up to the election, their support has grown by almost 5% in the last five years.

Literally no one in Europe outside of Poland and the Baltics wants to fight Russia, and the only reason they do is because they think the USA and the larger European countries will do the fighting for them. The idea that failure on the battlefield was going to cause Putin to lose popularity and power was never anything more than pure projection and neocon wet dreams, as we’re now seeing the inevitable result of NATO losing its proxy war against the Russian-supported Donbass militias.

The sooner the Europeans break with Clown World’s totalitarian convergence and restore economic relations with Russia and the rest of BRICSIA, the better it will be for the planet.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Old Guard Sees NATO’s Defeat

When the Special Military Operation began, both Messrs. Lind and van Creveld were inclined to viewing it as a Russian mistake. However, unlike NATO’s military strategists, both of the old lions are still capable of changing their minds on the basis of the facts on the ground, as William S. Lind’s recent commentary on the situation demonstrates:

Kiev’s defeat need not shatter world peace. But NATO’s response to defeat in Ukraine may do so. Panic is already showing its head in Paris, where French President Macron is suggesting NATO might send in troops to fight Russia directly. Berlin says no, but the traffic-light coalition government is weak and can be pushed around. London is in a belligerent mood and Warsaw is always eager to launch a cavalry charge against Russian tanks. The decisive voice will be Washington’s. That is not good news, because the Dead Inca has no idea what he’s doing and his advisors will be terrified of the charge of “losing Ukraine” in an election year. Can NATO just swallow hard and say, “We lost?” If not, the alternative is escalation in a war against nuclear power.

In Gaza, Israel has destroyed itself at the moral level of war, which is what states usually do against non-state opponents. Martin van Creveld’s “power of weakness” is triumphing again. Hamas will emerge from the war physically diminished but not destroyed, while most of the world sees it as “the good guys” because the massacres on October 7 have been overshadowed by Israel’s destruction of Gaza. Hamas will rebuild quickly, and not only in Gaza. Recruits and money will flow to it in a veritable Niagara.

The threat of a wider war lies to Israel’s north, not its south. While Hezbollah’s operations have been restrained, they have nonetheless driven 80,000 Israelis from their homes, along with tens of thousands of Lebanese who have fled Israeli airstrikes. The latter don’t matter strategically, but the former do because Netanyahu needs their votes. As always, he will put himself above his country’s interests. That suggests he is likely to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon, which Hezbollah apparently is anticipating and ready for. Hezbollah is much stronger than Hamas, and recent events suggest Iran will also be forced to get involved directly.

On a philosophical, but not-unrelated note, Martin van Creveld provides some important advice:

– Prepare to change your mind when new evidence arrives. As has been said, too often it is not old opinions that die; it is those who hold them, still clinging to their antiquated views, who do. This is not a fate you want for yourself and for your work.

It’s remarkable that both of these great military historians can still accomplish, in their eighties, what so few of their successors have been able to do.

DISCUSS ON SG

D-Day, 80 Years Later

It just lands a lot differently than it did even 20 years ago. What, exactly, are we supposed to be celebrating these days? Clown World didn’t even preserve democracy or the rule of law.

But at least our grandfathers paid the price to bring them freedom…

German police search 70 homes of people who posted hateful comments online.

Never mind.

DISCUSS ON SG

The War in the North

Despite having failed to finish off Hamas, Israel is seriously contemplating launching a war with Hezbollah, which Simplicius expects will have serious ramifications for Ukraine:

A biblical red glow torments the skies of northern Israel, which now burns with a Zionist’s zeal for Palestinian land, after a series of Hezbollah strikes. The gods of war are smiling favorably on the coming summer, as flashpoints all across the globe heat up. And the mother of all of them threatens to engulf the region in even more flame with the announcement that Israel could launch the long-awaited war against Hezbollah by mid-June, with rumor claiming the Knesset may vote to take action as early as tonight.

This happens to convolve with a host of other ponderous developments, which include Russia’s slow buildup for a large-scale escalation in the north. If Israel truly kicks off another massive war to its own north, it could be the final nail in Ukraine’s coffin.

Recall that in a short 4 months, we will have reached the 1 year anniversary of Israel’s invasion of Gaza and its meandering war against Hamas. If in almost a full year of fighting, Israel can make no real headway against the comparatively tiny Hamas, how long would it take for them to tame Hezbollah in what can only be expected to be a far more ‘high intensity’ conflict?

You can be sure that every available Western munition—particularly of the artillery variety—will be routed to Israel and Ukraine will be historically screwed at the key moment of Russia’s largest scale maneuvers. It would be the ultimate irony should Ukraine fall as consequence of Israel’s actions—but alas, Zelensky and Netanyahu appear locked into parallel fates: both require the continuation of war to survive their political crises.

And the big question remains: when will China – or in its delusions of military supremacy, the USA – elect to open the Asian front.

DISCUSS ON SG

Magical Thinking and the Impotence of Mammon

The self-appointed gods of Clown World are having trouble understanding the difference between power and influence, and that no amount of influence – which is what money always and ultimately amounts to – is an effective substitute for actual material power:

We come back to the question of why anybody believed $60 billion could move the needle for Kiev’s cause in the first place. But this question is, alas, difficult to answer because policymaking in Washington is enshrouded under a thick fog that consists of two dominant components: magical thinking and political imperatives. For those who earnestly believed that $60 billion would turn the tide of the war, it is more of the former; for those aligning themselves with the political winds and pretending to support Ukraine much as a mime pretends to be trapped in a phone booth, it is the latter. In many cases it is both, and it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends.

Magical thinking is a recognizable symptom of that particular moment in time when an erstwhile great power is in decline but events have not quite yet forced it to come to grips with that decline. It is also a time of diminished scope for action. In times past, perhaps Washington would have solved a crisis such as Ukraine through crafty diplomacy or orchestrated a formidable proxy war with its industrial might and military expertise. But the US now seems incapable of sophisticated diplomacy and its industrial base has badly atrophied through decades of offshoring and financialization. After mostly fighting insurgencies in recent times, it now has no idea how to fight a peer war. About all that it can muster is aid bills with large dollar figures. If all you have is a hammer, the old saying goes, every problem looks like a nail. If all you have left is a printing press for dollars, then every problem must be solvable by an infusion of money – even if it’s not entirely clear what that money can buy.

But here we have stumbled onto something interesting: a belief in the omnipotence of money. Perhaps not a sincere belief; are there any sincere beliefs in Washington? Let’s think of it more as an ingrained pattern of thought for confronting a wide range of problems. In that sense, it is a framework suspiciously reminiscent of the approach used to combat financial crises. It doesn’t seem like so much of a stretch to imagine the entire Ukraine aid discussion framed as something that has become very familiar in recent years: a financial bailout.

A too-big-to-fail financial institution called Ukraine is teetering on the edge of failure and a bailout is needed. Although the bank is far away from the heart of Wall Street, there are fears of contagion – if this one fails, others will follow and soon no bank anywhere will be safe. The bank’s owners may be crooks, but that is not what is preoccupying policymakers. They are nervous about a spread that has suddenly moved against the bank: it is supposed to trade at 1:1 but has blown out to 1:10 (the ratio of artillery fire by Ukrainian and Russian forces). Shoving a $60-billion bailout into the bank should at least put out the fires and calm markets.

Zoltan Poszar, the legendary former Credit Suisse chief strategist who needs no introduction in finance circles, made a fascinating observation on the topic of the reflexive response of throwing money at a problem. Poszar was speaking narrowly about how a certain group of people approach a certain problem and was not talking about policymaking, much less Ukraine, but his conclusion traces the contours of something deeper.

When the specter of inflation reemerged in 2021, Poszar made the rounds of portfolio managers and, after talking with them, reached an interesting conclusion: nobody knew how to think about inflation. Nearly everyone on Wall Street is too young to remember the last serious bout of inflation, which occurred way back in the 1980s. So, according to Poszar, they all thought of the spike in the inflation charts as just another spread that blew out on their Bloomberg screens that could be solved by throwing balance sheet at it – a “crisis of basis” as he calls it. The formative experiences for today’s denizens of Wall Street, Poszar explains, are the Asian financial crisis of 1998, the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, some spread blowouts since 2015, and the pandemic. In all of these cases, money was pumped in and eventually the dislocations disappeared.

To put this in plain English, Poszar’s clients hadn’t encountered a problem that couldn’t be solved – or at least swept under the rug – by simply adding money, in whatever form, whether via an emergency loan or quantitative easing. This is of course a bit of an oversimplification, but it captures something of the essence of the prevailing pattern of thought.

The seeds of failure are sown by the blooming flowers of success. The current generation of clowns have literally never encountered a problem that could not be solved by throwing money at it. All of their theoretical and practical knowledge points to the same solution: more money.

This is why the rise of the BRICSIA alternative to the USD, the CRIPS alternative to SWIFT, and the Belt and Road alternative to the IMF loansharks are potential death blows to Clown World. They have, in three fell swoops, essentially disarmed Clown World by taking its only weapon out of the equation.

I strongly suspect the fine hand of Wang Hunin in this long-term strategic approach.

DISCUSS ON SG