Tag: war

Zelensky on the Way Out

Simplicius notes that the mainstream Narrative is now preparing the ground for the removal of Zelensky as the puppet-in-chief of the Kiev regime.

Just a day after we wrote about the ‘rumored’ new plan for the US to hold Ukrainian elections next year to give intransigent Zelensky the boot, The Economist made it semi-official by acknowledging that, ‘suddenly’, Zelensky is facing a ‘power struggle’ at home. It’s in line with how Biden’s advanced dementia was just “abruptly” discovered by figures and organs of the establishment, only after becoming convenient and politically expedient enough for them to make it public. Similarly here, as soon as the memo-from-above’s arrival, The Economist sprang into pre-conditioning the ground to sell the narrative that Zelensky’s regime is now on uncertain footing; they would have never been allowed to even suggest that Zelensky faced danger at home until it became necessary to do so…

A ‘dignified bow out’ just like the same establishment forces asked of Zelensky’s fateful partner-in-crime Joe Biden. Remember, it’s either the “easy way” or the “hard way”, as Pelosi said; the same stands for Zelensky. Take your free trip to Tel Aviv or we can begin raising the level of ‘encouragement’. After all, recall Zaluzhny was directed to step down from his role as general for a long time, and it was only after his direct subordinates began to be assassinated did he heed the warning and do as he was told.

Sooner or later, every ticket-taker ceases to be useful and is thrown from the high horse.

One of the best reasons to follow the alternative media, in either blog or video form, is that you will reliably have some idea what is going on long before the mainstream media is allowed to cover it. Biden’s dementia was recognized and discussed in the alternative media long before the mainstream journalists dared to observe the obvious, and in like manner, the inevitable outcome of the war in Ukraine was pointed out more than two years before the media stopped blathering about Russia running out of men and ammunition in two weeks, or a popular groundswell driving President Putin from power.

Isn’t it informative how a single defeat or embarrassment is supposedly sufficient to force someone the media hates out of office, but 32 straight months of one defeat after another have proved insufficient to destabilize media favorite Zelensky’s position despite his cancellation of elections and present illegitimate status?

Anyhow, now that Clown World’s favor has officially been withdrawn from their puppet in Kiev, it’s only a matter of time before he is removed from the scene one way or another. This will be the sign that negotiations with Russia to end the special military operation are being pursued; whether Russia is feeling magnanimous in victory or not is another matter entirely.

And it’s no wonder that the Europeans are all panicking about Trump’s election. Russia is making it clear that its demands will include the withdrawal of NATO to the German border, and Trump will know that’s a good deal that’s worth taking.

The Kremlin is again saying that Russia is only interested in those negotiations that will ensure the fulfillment of all tasks in the context of Ukraine and Ryabkov’s 2021 ultimatum about NATO’s withdrawal to the border of Germany. Everything else is of no concern, as is the change of faces in the White House. There will be no deal.

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The New SecDef

The good news is that Pete Hegseth, the incoming Secretary of Defense is an “extremist” with a Deus Vult tattoo whom the Pentagon hates. He knows the US military, its capabilities, and its limitations. The bad news is that he neither knows nor understands the Middle Kingdom, and would appear to buy into the retarded neocon myth that China seeks “global domination”.

The Pentagon, the past X number of years, 10, 12, 15, the Pentagon has a perfect record in all of its wargames against China. We lose every time inside the Pentagon wargames. We know what our real capabilities are. We didn’t even get into this part of The War on Warriors. The way we train for conflicts, the way we procure weapons systems, the way our system works, the way our bureaucratic system works, the way the speed of weapons procurement works, we’re always a decade behind and fighting the last war.

Whereas China – what did Rumsfeld say, you go to war with the army you have – China is building an army specifically dedicated to defeating the United States of America. That is their strategic outset. Take hypersonic missiles. Our whole power-projection plaform is our aircraft carriers and our ability to project power that way, strategically around the globe. And yeah, we have a nuclear triad and all that, but that’s a big part of it.

And if 15 hypersonic missiles can take out our ten aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like? If they’ve already got us by the balls economically, which you pointed out very well, with our grid. Culturally, there’s plenty of elite capture going on around the globe. Microchips and everything, why do they want Taiwan? They want to corner the market completely on the technological future. We can’t even drive our cars without the stuff we need out of China these days. They have a full-spectrum, long-term view of not just regional, but global domination.

And we have our heads up our asses.

I’m not going to lie. I like this man. He has clearly read Turchin, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, as well as a number of relevant sources that provide him with a far more realistic perspective on global military realities than the warmongering diasporans who just want to sow bloodshed and chaos everywhere around the world as long as they can use the US military to do so. And I suspect, unlike the neocons and their servants, that Hegseth is capable of learning from people who actually know China, and understand that all of China’s efforts are not focused on global imperialism, but rather, conclusively putting an end to their “century of humiliation” and making sure that no power on Earth is capable of subjecting the Chinese people ever again.

As Jeffrey Sachs pointed out, in more than 2,500 years of history, China has engaged in all of two foreign military actions, and both times were in response to Vietnamese aggression in the region. It is the Vietnamese, and not the Chinese, who were, and are still, feared throughout the region. Whereas the USA has been the second-most aggressive military power the world has ever seen; neither the Roman Empire nor the Ummayad Caliphate engaged in foreign military actions as often as the USA has. Only the Mongol empire was more aggressive as a percentage of their extant years.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
– Sun Tzu

But one can only regards the dismay of the Deep State as a good sign.

“There is reason for concern that this is not a person who is a serious enough policymaker, serious enough policy implementer, to do a successful job,” said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

If he’s not what Washington considers “serious” then he’s not a ticket-taker. So Pete Hegseth appears to be an excellent appointment of the sort that Donald Trump completely failed to make the previous time around. We can still remain optimistic, that as the song says, this time he’ll do it right and appoint Ron Paul to be Secretary of the Treasury. I’ll definitely have to read his book. In the meantime, enjoy the Lightning Rave mix introduced on the Darkstream last night.

UPDATE: While Hedgseth is clearly a Zionist, he doesn’t appear to support the neocons’ plans for war with Iran. In his role, his personal ideological preferences are far less important than his grasp of what the US military can and cannot do.

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Unimpressed

Andrei Martyanov is not at all impressed by the credentials of the incoming National Security Advisor:

“Mike is the first Green Beret to have been elected to Congress, and previously served in the White House and Pentagon,” Trump said in a statement announcing his latest cabinet pick. “Mike served in the Army Special Forces for 27 years where he was deployed multiple times in combat for which he was awarded four Bronze Stars, including two with Valor.” “Mike retired as a Colonel, and is a nationally recognized leader in National Security, a bestselling author, and an expert on the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, and global terrorism,” the statement added. “He serves as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Mike is a distinguished graduate with honors of the Virginia Military Institute. Mike has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!”

Is not an expert “on the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and global terrorism” and especially on Russia, because there are about zero people for the least 20+ years in both House Armed Services and House Foreign Affairs Committees who have any clue about the world outside and the modern warfare. He cannot be an expert, considering his alleged support for a delusional and utterly obsolete concept of “Peace Through Strength” for the United States. Waltz worked for Donald Rumsfeld–the guy who failed miserably in his understanding of the warfare and applied geopolitics. TOE of the US Armed Forces is a testament to the views of these people, not that anyone else would have fared better by screwing US doctrinal development so profoundly. Somebody has to tell the guy that “Strength” based on TOE from 1990s is not strength.

I had a very tenuous hope for Trump calling on Colonel Douglas Macgregor for the position of National Security Adviser, well … we all knew what was coming, didn’t we. Waltz is a “specialist” in high intensity police operations in Afghanistan, wow … Degree in “International Relations” from VMI kinda gets you some ideas. So, the “special forces” guy with zero understanding of technological and economic drivers of the modern war will be a classic US gung ho “advising” Trump. Well, looks like we exchanged one set of neocons for another.

I’m not impressed either, but then, I didn’t expect to be. There is absolutely no one in the US military establishment who is genuinely qualified to prepare for either the industrial element of a hypothetical air-sea war with China or the scale of the air-land war with Russia. Even the concept of an air-sea-land war with Iran in the Middle East might or might not be within the limits of the US military’s strategic capabilities.

Technology, demographics, industrial capabilities, and international economics have all changed dramatically since 1990 and that is not a coincidence. But as with the aphoristic generals always fighting the last war, US strategists have not even begun to correctly understand, much less anticipate, the current challenges; we know they have not because they would not be assuming that “strength” is their advantage anymore. Just as the British military still vastly overrates its own significance and abilities, the US military is not cognizant that it is now a regional power, not a global superpower.

And no one who has served in the military can claim to know anything useful about “national security”, not in a nation that has been invaded by tens of millions of foreigners without the military or the so-called security establishment doing anything about it.

This announcement is a bit more promising, although the two appointees are both clowns, they are from the sober faction that is trying to preserve the current system rather than destroy the world.

President-elect Donald Trump has officially named Elon Musk to head the newly created ‘Department of Government Efficiency.’

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Nukes are Not the Problem

The strategery at NATO is beyond merely stupid.

NATO forces would already be on the ground in Ukraine fighting Russian troops if it weren’t for Moscow’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, the outgoing chief of the US-led bloc’s Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, has said.

Speaking on Sunday during a defense summit in the Czech Republic, Bauer recalled NATO’s past experience of taking part in conflicts in Afghanistan and in Iraq. He noted that fighting Russia in Ukraine would, however, be “not the same” as fighting in Afghanistan because the Taliban militants did not possess nuclear weapons.

“I am absolutely sure if the Russians did not have nuclear weapons, we would have been in Ukraine, kicking them out,” the admiral suggested.

The admiral appears to have forgotten that NATO lost the war in Afghanistan and fled “the graveyard of empires” with alacrity. With or without nukes, NATO is going to lose any war or proxy war with Russia. At this point, US admirals would be wiser to forget both Russia and China focus their attention on how to avoid losing the naval war with the Yemenis as well as the coming conflict with the Mexican cartels.

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The Plan is the Prediction

Time to lay off the hopium and address the utter retardery of what may, or may not, be the incoming Trump administration’s plan for ending the war in Ukraine.

Trump’s team has begun discussing a new plan to end the conflict in Ukraine, — WSJ

▪️The agreement includes several points: they want to oblige Kyiv to refuse to join NATO for decades, and freeze the front line and create a demilitarized zone.

▪️It is not known who will ensure its security, but one source ruled out the involvement of US and UN troops: “We will not send Americans to maintain peace in Ukraine. And we will not pay for it. Ask the Poles, Germans, English and French to do it.”

▪️Ukraine will also continue to receive weapons and military training assistance from the US

This would appear to be absurd on its face. There is no reason for Russia to agree to any front-line freezing action when the Ukrainian defenses are collapsing. The situation is not what it was back when Trump first declared that he could end the war in a single day; US threats to escalate are empty in the face of Russia’s preparations for any further escalation, including a direct war between Russia and the USA.

Going hot means the USA not only loses Ukraine, but likely Israel, Taiwan, Japan, and possibly South Korea as well. China is content to bide its time as long as things stay more or less calm, but it will almost certainly make its move to achieve its regional goals as soon as the US military is fully committed to a front outside of Asia. Remember, the USA no longer possesses the ability to fight two simultaneous wars against regional powers.

The only certain plan for peace is an unconditional Ukrainian surrender. This will require a regime change in Kiev, which almost certainly necessitates a complete withdrawal of support for the insane and illegitimate regime. Fortunately, there is a very good chance this will take place early in the new year, despite what Trump and Musk said to Zelensky in their telephone call. Certainly, the European Union is expecting US support to be withdrawn in the near future.

European Union leaders are discussing whether they can afford to keep financing the Ukrainian military if US President-elect Donald Trump decides to pull Washington’s support for Kiev, Bloomberg reported on Friday. At a meeting in Budapest on Thursday, EU officials “held discussions on whether the bloc will be ready to foot the bill for the war,” the American news outlet reported, paraphrasing anonymous sources. According to one of these sources, the “big concern is that Trump will seek to shift the financial burden on Europe.” Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail to end the conflict within “24 hours,” but offered few specifics as to how he would achieve this. However, he said on numerous occasions that Washington’s European allies would have to “pay up” if they want to keep fighting, and reportedly plans on leaving the Europeans to pay for and enforce any post-conflict security arrangement.

For those people who still ride the high from the election win for MAGA, I’ll pour some cold water on their expectations. Trump cannot stop anything in 404 no matter how he tries, or whatever hollow outward PR effects he may employ, what he wants is to freeze SMO and then put the burden of supporting 404 on Europe’s shoulders. That’s the plan. It is stupid, almost childish plan, but half of it may still work–that is making EU pay for 404. And here we have to understand one very important fact–it was EU which played a crucial role in unleashing the mayhem on Maidan in 2013 and then lied to Russian face during Minsk Accords. EU doesn’t have capability and capacity to really aid 404–NATO has been largely demilitarized.

The European leaders are arguably more deranged than Kiev’s. They have no real armies, very little war material, and no significant industrial capacity. Their militaries are little more than police forces meant to intimidate their own citizens and keep them in line. There is absolutely nothing they can do to deter Russia in any way; their feeble attempt to exert their economic power backfired brutally and now their economies are collapsing along with their governments. It’s not 1950 anymore, it’s not even 1990, and the balance of global power has shifted from West to East.

No doubt Clown World will attempt to coopt the Germans into volunteering for playing the role of Ukraine 2; the new German Finance Minister is a Blackrock creature. But no matter how cowed, shamed, denationalized, and vaxxed the Germans are, they’re not going to sign up for a third war with Russia in just over a century. Not only do the Germans already know from bitter experience how it would inevitably end, but they’ve seen how badly the people of Ukraine have suffered in seeing their men needlessly sacrificed to the Russian war machine in service to Clown World’s wicked goals.

The good thing is that the Trump plan for Ukraine, whatever it actually turns out to be, will give us a very clear indicator of whether we’re going to see the ascendance of the God-Emperor and total war on Clown World or just the return of Zion Don and four more years of watching him be played like a fiddle by the neocons again as the West continues its descent into political collapse and post-civilized barbarism.

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The Math of Attrition

Regardless of whom the Script dictates “wins” the US presidential “election” on Tuesday, or whenever the results are announced after the media has finished massaging the numbers we are supposed to take seriously, the financing for the Ukrainian war effort must be stopped immediately on humanitarian grounds. It was always inevitable and obvious that Ukraine was going to lose the war, the only question was whether it was going to give up a) Crimea, b) Crimea and the Donbas republics, c) Crimea, the Donbas republics, Odessa and everything east of the Dnieper, or d) all of Ukraine.

We’re already at (c) insofar as Russia has the ability to take it and/or demand it in the terms it requires for Ukraine’s surrender. The only question is if it is necessary for Ukraine to lose another 100,000+ lives and risk (d) before accepting the inevitable. For, as Simplicius calculates the attritional math, even if Zelensky is permitted to throw the young men and women of Ukraine into the Russian abattoir, it is not going to recover one single square meter of former Ukrainian land.

Using using all the above figures, if we know that total monthly mobilization is somewhere around 15,000 to 20,000 as per several independent reports. The wording he uses is a little odd: “one and a half times less”. But if we are to assume this is the same as “one and a half times greater” than the mobilization number, then 15k and 20k multiplied by 1.5 gets us between 22.5k and 30k monthly losses. This would be 750 to 1,000 losses per day… Recently, Ukrainian journalists again reported that over 100,000 have already deserted the AFU with the number now 380 desertions per day:

In general, it’s hard to imagine the AFU surviving such attrition rates for longer than 6 months. If they are recruiting 20k but losing 30k, that means the entire armed forces is essentially losing a net 10k men per month. In only 6 months that would be 10k x 6 = 60k, which would represent roughly one major city-front area, like a Bakhmut or Avdeevka. At 12 months it would be 120k, representing an entire front-region, like Zaporozhye, or the entire Donetsk front, etc. Perhaps this is why the Pentagon has now said Ukraine only has 6-12 months of troops left?

Remember, the same sources say Russia not only breaks even, but is gaining a net positive manpower per month, building new strength and brigades. If there’s any truth to both sides of those numbers, then it would not be physically possible for the AFU to survive past 6 months or so. Please note, all the above numbers and reports I presented on the AFU are from original Ukrainian sources like the Aidar commander—no speculation whatsoever.

However, recall that Zelensky still has a final trump card, which is lowering the mobilization age to 18-20. This could immediately buy him more time, but it could also bring some kind of revolt or social uprising in the country. It’s a risky move but it would obviously give Ukraine hundreds of thousands of more men, that could buy another year or so at the most.

War = math + manufacturing + morale. And Russia clearly has the comprehensive advantage of all three. There is no scenario, no plan of intervention, no rhetorical flurry, that is capable of significantly changing that without being countered and neutralized. Therefore, any continuation of this reprehensibly stupid attempt to prevent Vladimir Putin from achieving his objectives and ending the Special Military Operation is inhumane, immoral, and objectively wicked.

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Pseudo-Escalation

From the Jerusalem Post:

  • The attack occurred in three major waves, with the second and third waves targeting Iranian drone and missile production sites, hitting over 20 targets.
  • Over 100 planes were involved in the 2000 k.m. attack, including the cutting-edge F-35, according to Walla.
  • The IDF confirmed the operation was over and that all mission goals had been achieved, with all planes returning safely home.
  • Iranian officials and media have been denying that Israeli airstrikes took place, saying explosions were a result of Iranian air defense; an Israeli official strenuously denied this to Ynet, saying, “This is a lie. Total failure – zero interceptions.”

No one tells the truth in wartime. But sending 100 planes more than 2,000 kilometers is an impressive technical feat, even though it tends to imply US involvement in refueling the planes; there are rumors that 10 US tanker aircraft were involved in supporting the strike.

What we can conclude from what little we have been told is that either a) Iran’s air defenses are less effective than Ukraine’s or b) Iran was not contesting the strikes. Given that there is a non-zero chance that at least one of the planes might have crashed without any enemy action at all, the fact that there were zero interceptions reported, zero planes shot down reported, and minimal casualties on both sides tends to suggest that this was more war kabuki meant to let Israel keep its word without actually escalating the situation.

For one reason or another, neither Israel nor Iran appear inclined to genuinely put the other’s genuine military capabilities to the test. It’s really remarkable that when no aircraft on either side dares show itself within 100 miles of the battlefield in Ukraine, that 100 Israeli warplanes should be able to fly 2,000 kilometers into Iranian airspace unmolested.

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Israel-Iran Round 3

The IDF is now bombing Iran:

Explosions have been heard across Tehran as IDF forces announce they have launched retaliatory strikes in the region. The Israeli military has said it is conducting ‘precise strikes’ on military targets in Iran in response to what it called ‘the continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against Israel’. There have been reports of at least five explosions that have rocked the city of Tehran, as well as loud blasts heard in the Damascus countryside and central region.

Do Iran’s air defense systems not work very well or are they holding them in reserve? That’s just one of many questions that spring to mind.

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An Irrelevant Ex-Empire

The UK military is totally incapable of war:

The UK military is unprepared to fight in a major conflict and would not be able to deter the enemy if a war breaks out now, British Defense Secretary John Healey has acknowledged. The British army, navy and air force have been “hollowed out” and “underfunded” during the 14 years of the Conservative Party’s rule, Healey said in his appearance on Politico’s Power Play podcast on Thursday. When the UK Labour Party came to power in July, “we expected things to be in a poor state – but the state of the finances, the state of the forces, was far worse than we thought,” he added.

The UK military failed to stop the invasion by millions of foreigners. It has no air defenses worth speaking of. It isn’t capable of stopping a violent insurrection by its resident invaders, much less anything that Russia should elect to do in response to the UK government’s fanning the flames of war in Ukraine.

Those who believed nuclear weapons meant an end to war never considered the inevitable development of anti-missile technology; the small size of the UK’s “nuclear deterrent force” means that if the Russians can’t already shoot it down with lasers and hypersonic missile defense systems – both of which are already in development – they will be able to do so soon.

The UK never had much in the war of ground forces, which were always intended to provide the balance of power on the continent. But now, with both the French and the German militaries but a shadow of their former selves, there is literally nothing to prevent Russia from accomplishing whatever it decides is in its national interest. Fortunately, and contra the neocon warmongering, none of the BRICS powers are showing any interest in following the self-destructive leads of the UK and the USA into empire.

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