Tag: war

Iran’s Drone Strike

Serious attack or more Middle East theater?

UPDATE: It was theater.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a plan to launch immediate retaliatory strikes against Iran after speaking to US President Joe Biden by phone on Saturday night, Israeli officials have told the New York Times. According to two anonymous officials, Netanyahu’s war cabinet presented him with a list of responses to a massive drone and missile attack by Iran on Saturday evening. While some members of the cabinet reportedly pushed for an immediate military response, Netanyahu ultimately chose not to follow their advice at Biden’s request, the sources said.

UPDATE: Upon further review and the release of much more complete information, the attacks were considerably more than just theater. The much-reported drone attacks were just cover for ballistic missiles strikes on the Israeli air bases that were utilized in the bombing of the Iranian consulate. And the failure of the US military coalition to stop the attacks is almost certainly why Biden told Netanhayu not to retaliate.

The U.S. scrambled a large coalition to shoot the threats down, which included the U.S. itself, UK flying from Cyprus, France, and, controversially, Jordan which allowed them all to also use its airspace and even partook in the shoot downs.

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Why Japan Matters

Clown World has stepped up and tightened its control of Japan, as evidenced by the newly announced change in immigration laws that will import nearly one million Africans to what is still one of the most homogeneous nations on the planet. The reason the clowns are so desperate to keep Japan in line is because without access to the ship-making capacities of both Japan and South Korea, the US Navy has zero chance of challenging China in the South Pacific.

Amid concerns about American shipbuilding, the US Navy’s top civilian official said this week that he was “floored” by a Pacific ally’s capabilities in this space.

The Navy secretary’s comments came on the heels of an internal review that discovered that most of the Navy’s top programs, including high-priority submarines, a first-in-class guided-missile frigate, and the third Ford-class aircraft carrier, were severely delayed by years, fueling worries from US officials about the ability to maintain the country’s pace against great power rivals…

Del Toro paid a visit to South Korea’s yards in February, during which he encouraged companies to invest in commercial and naval shipbuilding facilities in the US. He said there were “numerous former shipyard sites around the country which are largely intact and dormant” that were “ripe for redevelopment.”

The Navy said at the time that South Korean shipbuilding was “an asset” to the US, especially “as China continues to aggressively pursue worldwide shipbuilding dominance.”

That month, Maj. Jeffrey L. Seavy, a retired US Marine Corps officer, wrote for the US Naval Institute that China had roughly 47% of the global market on shipbuilding, the most of any country, with South Korea coming in second at about 29% and Japan in third at about 17%. He said the US had “a relative insignificant capacity at 0.13%,” referencing numbers from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

During his recent Sea Air Space speech, Del Toro further praised South Korea and commended Japan, saying both Pacific allies could build high-quality ships on time, on budget, and often at a fraction of the cost.

While everyone’s attention on the Asian front, including mine, has been focused on Taiwan, it is actually Japan that is the key to expelling Clown World from Asia. And despite Japan’s historical fear of Chinese power and eventual retribution for Japanese war crimes committed against the Chinese people in WWII, it would not be even remotely surprising if Japan ultimately chooses to take sides with BRICS against Clown World due to things like the ongoing military occupation of Okinawa and the mass immigration being imposed upon them.

Despite being smaller, Japan’s shipbuilding capacity is much more important than South Korea’s, because Korea’s shipbuilding activities can be easily obstructed, if not shut down entirely, by the massive North Korean artillery forces.

If the Chinese diplomats play their cards well and successfully allay Japanese fears, sometime before 2030 we will see a sudden and “unexpected” Japanese break with the USA, which will probably be tied in some way to Japan leaving the G7 and joining BRICS.

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What Leverage is That?

Clown World’s strategists appear to be increasingly deluded concerning the arts of the possible with regards to the NATO-Russian war:

The war is not trending toward a stable stalemate, but toward Ukraine’s eventual collapse.  Russia has corrected many of the problems that plagued its forces during the first year of fighting and adopted an attrition strategy that is gradually exhausting Ukraine’s forces, draining American military stocks, and sapping the West’s political resolve. Sanctions have not crippled Russia’s war effort, and the West cannot fix Ukraine’s acute manpower problems absent direct intervention in the war.  Ukraine’s best hope lies in a negotiated settlement that protects its security, minimizes the risks of renewed attacks or escalation, and promotes broader stability in Europe and the world.   

Skeptics counter that Russia has no incentive to make meaningful concessions in a war it is increasingly winning.  But this belief underestimates the gap between what Russia can accomplish through its own military efforts and what it needs to ensure its broader security and economic prosperity over the longer term.  Russia can probably achieve some of its war aims by force, including blocking Ukraine’s membership in NATO and capturing much of the territory it regards as historically and culturally Russian.  But Russia cannot conquer, let alone govern, the majority of Ukraine, nor can Russia secure itself against the ongoing threats of Ukrainian sabotage or potential NATO strikes absent a costly permanent military buildup that would undermine its civilian economy. Reducing the deep dependence on China created by the invasion will also sooner or later require Russia to seek some form of détente with the West.  

As a result, the United States has significant leverage for bringing Russia to the table and forging verifiable agreements to end the fighting.  

As Andrei Martyanov points out, this particular analyst is talking out of both sides of his mouth. If, as he correctly says, Ukraine is on an inevitable path toward collapse, then Russia obviously can conquer, and if it chooses, occupy the entirety of the terrain over which the Kremlin ruled for eight decades. It’s obvious that Putin has no desire to do so, but it’s equally obvious that he will do so if Clown World continues to use the poor Ukrainians as an increasingly battered sword against a resurgent Russia.

And while the Chinese alliance is important to Russia, it is not why Russia has survived the economic attack on it nor have the Chinese provided any substantial material military support to Russia. Russia is serving as China’s proxy on the military front, except that unlike NATO’s Ukrainian proxy, Russia doesn’t need any assistance because when it comes to military technology and expertise, it is the Russians who are the senior partner.

In fact, it is the alliance of Russian military technology and expertise with Chinese economic power and industrial capacity that indicates the high probability of Clown World’s eventual defeat. Throw in the massive quantities of natural resources in Russia and the other BRICS nations, and one would be tempted to declare the conflict as over before it even starts, were it not for the vagaries of history that render any such preliminary verdict foolish.

After all, who foresaw the withdrawal of the Turks from the gates of Vienna, or the sudden retreat of the Mongol hordes from Europe and Russia upon the unexpected death of the Khan? We don’t know if either Putin or Xi have competent successors selected and prepared to step up and complete their national missions, just as we don’t know how much longer the USA and the European nations can withstand the centrifugal demographics that have been inserted into their rapidly degenerating societies.

But it is clear that the current phase is quickly approaching its endgame. Whether that will be via a reasonable surrender and settlement or by a classic Zhukovian Manchurian mega-offensive cannot be known, except that to say that the longer the former is delayed, the more likely the latter becomes. Either way, the war will not end in Ukraine.

We are not approaching the end, only the end of the beginning.

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Air Supremacy in Ukraine

After two years of patiently attriting Ukro-NATO air defenses and keeping its resources in reserve, the Russian Air Force appears to have now achieved air supremacy in Ukraine.

Ukraine now lacking air defense, Russian jets freely fly over the front line as they never have, free to accurately hit Ukrainian positions with guided aerial bombs.

There’s nothing Ukraine can do now but lose positions.

The West needs to understand what this soon means.

What this means is that the Russian forces can now engage in the sort of one-sided risk-free turkey-shoots that convinced the US military and the IDF that their capabilities were considerably greater than they actually are. So the casualty differential, already heavily in Russia’s favor, is about to tilt even more against the beleagured NATO forces.

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Time is Running Out on NATO

Tom Luongo explains why it’s time for the USA to extricate itself from NATO and let it collapse:

NATO cannot and should not survive these stresses if its intended victims, Russia/China/Iran, fight even remotely competently. And they are. They all understand that this is a race against a political and economic clock in the West that is quickly counting down to zero. All Russia has to do is keep grinding out territorial gains in Ukraine, Iran to not over-react to Israel’s provocations, and China to ignore the yapping over tariffs and Taiwan.

And all the Americans who are tired of this have to do is keep the money spigot to NATO and Ukraine closed off as much as is politically possible. The cost/benefit analysis for the US, especially in an election year, just doesn’t add up. And there is zero real leverage Europe can apply to the US other than through their bought and paid-for politicos in D.C. for more money.

The heart simply isn’t willing anymore. Why? For all the reasons I’ve been talking about for six years here, the memories of WWII are fading. The generations of Americans imprinted with the post-WWII Pax Americana lie are dying off (Boomers) or no longer care, if they ever did (Gen X).

The Millennials and ‘Zoomers’ aren’t invested in this mythology. They know their heads are on the chopping block. They can see that none of this is in their best interests.

As we’ve seen in the growing number and intensity of provocations, Clown World is desperate to escalate to direct conflict because it is being systematically defeated by the unrestricted warfare that its opponents are patiently waging against it. Just as Russia is not responding to the terrorist attacks on its civilian population and Iran is not responding to the Israeli attacks on its consulate, China is not going to take the bait on Taiwan.

They have no need to take the risk of engaging in military operations even though they have sound reason to assume that they could comprehensively defeat NATO and the remnants of SEATO; all war involves some degree of risk and there simply isn’t any need to accept any risk when time is quite clearly working in their favor.

Once Ukraine collapses, Clown World will be forced to stop its provocations and focus on retaining as many of its former satrapies and captive allies as it can. And it’s at that point that I expect the diplomatic efforts on the part of the BRICSIA nations to begin in earnest, and we’ll start seeing nations like Hungary, Serbia, Vietnam, and perhaps even Japan and Mexico turning against their current masters.

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Signs of Impending Demise

Neither the Chinese nor other Asians appear to be much impressed with NATO’s attempt to transform itself into the Global Atlantic-Pacific Treaty Organization in this interview of John Pang, a former Malaysian government official and a senior research fellow at Perak Academy, Malaysia, by Global Times.

GT: Western politicians like to say that NATO is “stronger than ever.” How would you describe the 75-year-old NATO?

Pang: I think NATO sounds more threatening and incoherent than ever. If that’s what they mean by “strong,” I guess they’re right in that respect. But it is also showing real signs of impending demise.

It is well past its shelf date. It was formed in the 1940s in response to the Soviet bloc, before the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was created as a defense treaty against NATO. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO should have disbanded too. Instead it took on a new, expansionary role in securing US global supremacy. It is an aggressive, overextended organization adrift from its founding aims and attached now to the fantastical aim of “making the world safe for democracy,” that is to say, to attacking whoever the US deems the enemy of the day.

Devoid of its charter purpose, it’s been an organization in search of enemies and increased defense procurement. It’s made Russia, once again, the enemy. It has overextended itself on this venture in a way that has blighted Europe’s future and threatens its own survival. It now frames China, on the other side of the planet, as the security challenge. That’s where it is after 75 years.

GT: Reports say that the US government is making arrangements for trilateral talks with the leaders of Japan and South Korea in July at the NATO summit in Washington. What do you think that means? 

Pang: This will complete the consolidation of the worldwide set of US vassals, outposts and 800 military bases under NATO, Quad, AUKUS and this trilateral pact into a streamlined global threat posture also known as the West. There have even been moves to make Israel part of a Quad Plus, along with New Zealand. 

Meanwhile, we have Europe as an example of what “Natofied’ Japan and South Korea can look forward to: further loss vassalization not just in foreign policy but also in trade and industrial policy, technology, media and, crucially, culture, since post 1991 NATO is motivated by an expansionary liberalism that thrives on the destruction of cultural boundaries as much as national borders.

GT: What do you think of the prospect of “NATO’s Asia-Pacificization” or the establishment of an “Asian NATO”?

Pang: This is another one of those announcements that will go down in history like President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better World, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, and other grand ideas for bifurcating the world that lead nowhere.

The biggest of them is, of course, the Rules-Based Order, whose moral, legal and political legitimacy is now absolutely collapsed. It will go down in history identified with its signature achievement, the genocidal destruction of Gaza.

Its purpose is to threaten, but it’s also empty. What is NATO anymore, as an aggressive pact, far from Europe? What is the military capability of this set of countries beyond the US? What is brought to the existing issues in East Asia, around the South China Sea, for example, by having this set of 32 nations participate, who are collectively outclassed by Russian military industrial capability in Ukraine? Having set Europe on fire with its aggressive enlargement, they propose to bring their formula to Asia, against a far more powerful opponent. It’s an imbecile proposition.

Wherever possible, Asian NATO should be ignored or bypassed by the countries in the region. Their presence in the region would be so incoherent that it’s not clear what there is to engage with. NATO is a treaty organization for the North Atlantic, a noticeable distance away. They are militarily irrelevant here. We get the spectacle of the German and Dutch navies sailing into the region to sabre-rattle, and have symbolic exercises with the Japanese, for example, and perhaps next with the Philippines.

This entertains the Western elite for a couple days with an appearance of a grand alliance of the “democracies” against China, at a time when, as their citizens will tell you, actual democracy has been hollowed out by oligarchic rule at home. They aim to encircle and divide but have nothing to encircle or divide with. They will add nothing but a layer of live action Euro role playing on top of the existing, and material, US threat posture.

Instead, NATO in Asia is really about what the US and its military industrial complex will do to its own members. In its expanded form, it will tighten the US’ extractive grip on Europe and Japan and South Korea more than it threatens China. It will mandate purchases of US military equipment and more money from member states, especially that standby piggy bank, Japan. It will de-industrialize Japan as it has Germany, in favor of the US. It will demand more political and cultural conformity, further militarize Japan and South Korea, and alienate them from the economic and cultural vitality of their home region.

Europe, Japan and South Korea can say goodbye to any notion of strategic, political, economic or cultural autonomy. Remember that this is happening while actual freedom is breaking out among sovereign nations in the multipolar world of an expanding BRICS.

It’s hard to believe that either the Europeans, the Japanese, or the Koreans genuinely want to be a part of a rapidly declining and increasingly impoverished Clown World, but it’s not as if they’re being offered a genuine choice by what has been transformed into the military arm of the imperial USA.

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The Inevitability of Catastrophic Defeat

Edward Luttwalk doesn’t seem to grasp that NATO will be defeated even faster, and more catastrophically, than its Ukrainian proxies were. Because it won’t be a restrained special military operation limited to the front, but rather full-blown war.

NATO nations can only forestall an inevitable loss to Russian forces in Ukraine by deploying their troops to the former Soviet republic, a former adviser to the US military has claimed.

“The arithmetic of this is inescapable: NATO countries will soon have to send soldiers to Ukraine, or else accept catastrophic defeat,” military strategist Edward Luttwak wrote in an oped published on Thursday by the British online media outlet UnHerd. “The British and French, along with the Nordic countries, are already quietly preparing to send troops – both small elite units and logistics and support personnel – who can remain far from the front.”

The conflict can’t be won without direct troop deployments because regardless of the quantity and quality of weapons sent to Kiev, Ukrainian forces are too outnumbered by the Russians, Luttwak argued.

These older military strategists simply don’t understand the ways in which technology has changed the operational and logistical elements. Any NATO troops entering Ukraine will be very nearly as vulnerable “far from the front” as they are on the front itself, especially since Russia will be free to fully utilize its air superiority, the first consequences of which have only recently begun to make themselves felt.

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Doubling Down Again

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that Ukraine will eventually join NATO as support for the country remains “rock solid” among member states. “Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership,” Blinken told reporters in Brussels.

If Ukraine will become a member of NATO, Russia has no reason to stop the war until Ukraine no longer exists as a sovereign state. Perhaps that’s the goal. Or perhaps this is simply what hubris looks like before nemesis appears.

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Looking for a Way Out

Both the USA and Ukraine are desperately trying to find a way to surrender to Russia in a manner that will be permitted by its Clown World puppeteers. One trial balloon was floated last month in The American Spectator:

How does the Ukraine-Russia war end? In an October surprise. Ukraine, which became independent on 24 August 1991, will be dissolved and a New Ukraine will come into being by virtue of a unilateral declaration by the present Government of Ukraine, with the support of the military high command. The de jure boundaries of New Ukraine will reflect and be co-terminus with the territory currently under the de facto administrative control of the present Government of Ukraine. New Ukraine will be compact; cohesive and well-integrated politically, economically, and socially (i.e., ethnically, linguistically, and culturally); and will have demonstrably defensible borders. Accordingly, New Ukraine will have the strategic autonomy to decouple from Russia’s sphere of influence without joining economic and military blocs such as the EU and NATO.

Simply put, from a realpolitik perspective, Russia has achieved its necessary and sufficient vital national security objectives with respect to its southwestern flank by virtue of the earlier takeover and annexation of Crimea and the strategically vital naval base of Sevastopol in March 2014, and the subsequent annexation (September 2022) and conquest (over the February 2022 – May 2023 period) of portions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk provinces to form a robust cordon sanitaire to protect Crimea. (READ MORE from Samir Tata: Coca-Cola Faces a Challenge in Its China Market)

Moreover, per the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Russian economy grew by 3 percent in 2023 and is expected to grow by 2.6 and 1.1 percent in 2024 and 2025 respectively, which is comparable to U.S. growth rates over the same period and far better than the economic performance of Germany. The challenge for Russia is to safeguard its hard-won national security gains and have the strategic patience to allow the Government of Ukraine to recognize that pursuing the military path is a dead end.

Clearly, what matters from Russia’s perspective is “which Ukraine” would fall outside the penumbra of the sphere of influence of the Russian Federation. As suggested by Vladimir Putin in his seminal speech in 2008 at NATO’s Summit in Bucharest, Ukraine as it was then constituted would break apart if there was a serious attempt to accept the invitation to join the military alliance. As Putin pointed out in the same speech, the core territories of western Ukraine were carved out of Poland and incorporated into an expanded Ukraine in 1939. Eastern Ukraine (Crimea and the strategically vital portions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk provinces) is now under de facto Russian control. A unilateral declaration of a downsized New Ukraine is unlikely to encounter a Russian objection.

An ‘October Surprise’ From ‘New’ Ukraine Is Possible, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, 3 March 2024

This is, of course, absurd. It’s literally the USA’s point of view, which is based on the US military’s need to concentrate on a single front; note that the USA is also attempting to negotiate a surrender to the Yemenese forces that have defeated the US Navy’s attempt to take control of the Red Sea.

The suggestion that the Russians will stop and accept nothing more than what they have already taken by force is obviously only an opening offer; Odessa and its port will obviously be a non-negotiable demand and NATO membership of a militarized “downsized New Ukraine” is an obvious non-starter.

As always, the fundamental flaw can be seen in the false assumptions revealed in the description of the situation. The current war is not just between Russia and Ukraine, or even Russia and NATO, it is between Russia and the masters of Clown World. And those satanic masters apparently believe that if Ukraine falls, they will fall with it. So, they are going to try to fight to the very last European and the very last American in order to save themselves, but neither the Europeans nor the Americans have shown any willingness to fight for Ukraine let alone them.

Furthermore, as Simplicius notes in his April 3rd Sitrep, Ukraine probably doesn’t have until October to make a serious offer of surrender before the Russians are in possession of more than the US trial balloon purports to give them.

Things continue to feel like a calm before the approaching storm. There is not too much overt activity in the battle space, but various rumblings of a large looming escalation continue to trickle through the grape vine. In a recent article I had mentioned how the Western press and elite commentariat for the first time began using the taboo ‘C’ word, i.e. “Collapse”, for Ukraine. Now this has opened up the floodgates, causing more and more worried publications to begin turning off their previous holding-the-line narrative filter and actually start describing the Ukrainian situation with truthful urgency. The U.S. has already emptied almost its entire store of usable surplus mainline weaponry for Ukraine, i.e. tanks, artillery, light armor—not counting things like ammo… even if the $60B were to pass, U.S. has little of actual value to send to Ukraine beyond small arms munitions and things of that nature. There are no more surplus Bradleys left, and none can be built as the factory closed down decades ago.

This highlights the essential danger for a nation accepting foreign rule. Once in control, a foreign elite will unhesitatingly destroy the entire nation over which it rules in order to save itself from the negative consequences of its own actions.

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A Warning to Taipei

It appears geoweaponry has been unleashed on Taiwan amidst rumors that the island province is working steadily toward a reunification agreement with the mainland.

A major earthquake struck Taiwan during the morning rush hour on Wednesday, collapsing buildings and triggering tsunami warnings in Japan and the Philippines. At least seven people were reported dead, officials said. More than 700 were missing, The Associated Press reported.

The quake hit near the eastern city of Hualien at 7:58am local time (2358 GMT) and had a magnitude of 7.4, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, making it the strongest quake to hit since 1999. The depth was about 35 kilometers (22 miles), which is considered shallow. Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency gave the magnitude as 7.2.

Strong shaking was felt in Taipei, the capital, some 100 miles away, with aftershocks continued for roughly two hours. And there were reports in China that people as far away as Shanghai, about 500 miles to the north, could feel the earthquake.

According to Taiwan media, the last earthquake of a magnitude 7 or greater to hit the island was the Sept. 21, 1999, “Jiji” earthquake that measured 7.3, which destroyed thousands of buildings and killed more than 2,400 people.

Sure, it could be a coincidence that this happened as US troops are being stationed on Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam are being pressed to join some new form of SEATO, and the US has largely prioritized its conflict with China over the current war in Ukraine.

But there are no coincidences and we know that geothermal weapons exist. This is no more an act of nature than the recent Maui and Texas fires were, or than a tidal wave that just happened to hit Manhattan would be one.

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