Tag: war

The Age of Paradox

Simplicius observes the way technology has created a paradox that currently provides a significant advantage for the side with the ability to “be in the most places at once” rather than the traditional principle of “getting there first with the most”.

It is the age of paradox in warfare: where de rigueur total dispersion of forces appears to make high casualty densities obsolete, yet the entire length of the battlefield is overwatched by the most unprecedentedly powerful and accurate systems in history, like Iskanders, Kinzhals, Zircons, HIMARs, etc., which allow the carrying out of near-instantaneous kill-chains—from detection to transmit/distribution, to fire order within moments.

This is why the only way to fight and advance has come down to dispersing your strategic operations over the widest possible scale, so that the end goal becomes the totality of victory rather than specific operational objectives like: “Capture this area of cities.” Such a task requires the concentration of forces, from divisions, brigades, battalions, whose every staging action is monitored with almost total transparency by the enemy.

This ‘war of the future’ will be won by the most flexible, resilient, and adaptable force—the force which can pull punches, use feints, and reorientations all along the entire combat line in the most expedient manner. Russia is showing this today by utilizing a confounding rotation of active fronts to not only unbalance the AFU, but to stress their mobility and logistics to the extreme. When you have the advantage in logistical infrastructure and facility, you can ‘daze’ your opponent by conducting small operations across a scattered range of fronts, causing them great stress in trying to keep up.

In the Avdeevka battle, we saw Ukraine being forced to pull significant amounts of elite units from several fronts like Zaporozhye and Bakhmut to reinforce the crumbling Avdeevka lines. When that finished, Russia launched a Zaporozhye attack, overrunning depleted AFU positions there as a result, with AFU unable to reinstate reserves fast enough. The same goes for the Kupyansk and Kremennaya regions: reports spoke of AFU’s desperate troop pulls from Kupyansk to bolster defenses in northwest Bakhmut, where Russia has likewise started a series of attacks.

It’s like pricking a spinning drunk with a needle from every side—he hardly knows where he’s being hit, nor has time to orient himself correctly. Lacking logistical mobility—in the form of physical haulers like HETs, transports, etc.—Ukraine gets the worst of it in being forced to constantly run around plugging leaks in the flooding deck.

Taking into account everything I said above and in the rest of the paid article regarding Ukraine’s NATO ISR overmatch plus the prevalence of drones in general and how they’ve vastly limited maneuver warfare, we know that the only way to truly win is to stretch your enemy on every front and defeat him in detail while bringing to bear your greater logistical and economic resources…

The concluding point is that it’s not about capturing particular towns or regions, the real work being done is internally—the AFU is being gutted and hollowed out. This is why it’s so difficult for blinkered pro-UA observers to understand the true underlying dynamic of the conflict. They judge the war algorithmically: Russia has only captured a few kilometers so that means Russia is not succeeding. But they fail to take into account the intangibles, that the very moral and mechanical fiber of the AFU is coming apart at the seams.

It’s intriguing to note that the principle described by Simplicius appears to be a fractal one, as the BRICSIA alliance is observably stretching Clown World on every front, and, for the most part, defeating it in detail while bringing to bear its greater logistical and economic resources and exploiting Clown World’s logistical weaknesses in order to destroy the neo-liberal world order and win World War III without going nuclear.

We know Clown World is crumbling in every sense, militarily, economically, philosophically, spiritually, morally, and most of all, in morale terms. It is increasingly – and observably – desperate and insane. And it is more dangerous than ever because it, and all its servants, are correctly afraid, and so they are tightening their grip and lashing out on every side, in every polity Clown World controls. If its global ambitions weren’t so ambitious and its rule weren’t so illegitimate and unpopular, it would be cutting its losses and retreating to a defensible core, but it can’t because no such core exists.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Axis of Asymmetry

Pepe Escobar observes that Clown World is losing on every front to the unrestricted warfare being waged by the BRICSIA+ alliance:

The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and non-state actors employing asymmetrical moves on the global chessboard to sideline the US-led western rules-based order. And its vanguard is the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah.

Ansarallah is absolutely relentless. They have downed a $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone with just a $10k indigenous missile.

They are the first in the Global South ever to use anti-ship ballistic missiles against Israel-bound and/or -protecting commercial and US Navy ships.

For all practical purposes, Ansarallah is at war with no less than the US Navy.

Ansarallah has captured one of the US Navy’s ultra-sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), the $1.3 million Remus 600, a torpedo-shaped underwater drone able to carry a massive payload of sensors.

Next stop: reverse engineering in Iran? The Global South eagerly awaits, ready to pay in currencies bypassing the US dollar.

All of the above – a maritime 21st-century remix of the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War – spells out that the Hegemon may not even qualify as a paper tiger, but rather as a paper leech.

None of this should have come as a surprise to the strategists of Clown World, except they were so accustomed to lying that they no longer have the ability to ascertain the truth and their arrogance caused them to actually believe in their nonsensical rhetoric about being Special or Exceptional.

As events proceed, it is becoming abundantly clear that it is China that is winning WWIII, because the events closely follow the strategy laid out in Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui in 1999. You cannot possibly understand anything about what is happening, or how systematic the undermining of every foundation of Clown World has been, without reading that book.

The Chinese strategy goes well beyond conventional military issues; that is the literal meaning of “unrestricted” in the title. And it is fundamentally asymmetric; Escobar doesn’t mention Qiao and Wang’s book in his article, but his use of the word strongly suggests that he is familiar with it. The two Chinese colonels defined the concept thusly:

ASYMMETRY—SEEK NODES OF ACTION IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM THE CONTOURS OF THE BALANCE OF SYMMETRY

’Asymmetry’ “fei junheng” as a principle is an important fulcrum for tipping the normal rules in beyond-limits ideology. Its essential point is to follow the train of thought opposite to the balance of symmetry “junheng duicheng” and develop combat action on that line. From force disposition and employment, selection of the main combat axis and the center of gravity for the attack, all the way to the allocation of weapons, in all these things give two-way consideration to the effect of asymmetrical factors, and use asymmetry as a measure to accomplish the objective.

No matter whether it serves as a line of thought or as a principle guiding combat operations, asymmetry manifests itself to some extent in every aspect of warfare. Understanding and employing the principle of asymmetry correctly allows us always to find and exploit an enemy’s soft spots… This use of asymmetrical measures which create power for oneself and make the situation develop as you want it to, is often hugely effective. It often makes an adversary which uses conventional forces and conventional measures as its main combat strength look like a big elephant charging into a china shop. It is at a loss as to what to do, and unable to make use of the power it has.

So, it’s now clear that China is using its allies in Russia, Yemen, and elsewhere in much the same way that Russia was using the Donbass militias, Wagner, and the Chechens in Ukraine. Even Gaza may be a front, although whether it was created, anticipated, or was simply a fortuitous coincidence is impossible to know at this juncture. And this means we not only have not seen the main axis of the conflict, it almost certainly means we haven’t even begun to understand the full extent of the asymmetrical probings for more of Clown World’s soft spots or the consequences of the exploitation of those that are revealed.

Speaking of those soft spots and the exploitation thereof, Escobar makes a prediction that I have not previously seen.

The endgame: only a West Asian Special Military Operation, to the bitter end, will settle the Palestinian tragedy. A translation of what happens across the Slavic Axis of Resistance: “Those who refuse to negotiate with Lavrov, deal with Shoigu.”

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The Revival of Swiss Neutrality

Switzerland’s futile attempt to host Ukrainian peace talks this summer is already dead prior to arrival thanks to the government’s foolish decision to try to take sides in the Russian-NATO war without being willing to admit that it is no longer a neutral party to the conflict.

Russia is unlikely to take part at the outset of a high-level Ukraine peace conference which neutral Switzerland plans to host in the coming months, Swiss President Viola Amherd was quoted as saying by a newspaper on Saturday. Amherd’s interview with the Neue Zuercher Zeitung daily was published a few hours after Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told the United Nations that Bern aimed to hold the conference “by this summer” after the idea was floated in January.

When asked whether Switzerland had since received any more positive signals from Russia, Amherd told the newspaper: “Right now, it looks as though Russia will not take part in a first round of the conference.
“We’re in the process of starting off with a very broad alliance consisting of the BRICS countries, countries from the Arab world, as well as from the global south.”

China has already made it clear that it will not be participating either. And, if Switzerland is foolish enough to give into Clown World pressure and go along with the latest EU, UK, and US sanctions on China, it will soon find itself being regarded as a hostile nation by the two most important military powers on Earth, which would be an incredible achievement of total diplomatic incompetence given 500 years of successful neutrality that survived everything except living next door to Napoleon.

Fortunately, 91 percent of the Swiss citizenry favors a return to true and comprehensive neutrality, and signatures are being gathered for a constitutional referendum that would prevent the satanic globalists and corrupt would-be eurocrats in the government from further involving the nation in Clown World’s self-destructive schemes.

The current world situation dramatically demonstrates the need for a country like Switzerland to mediate between war and conflict parties and to provide a platform for negotiations. Nevertheless, certain domestic circles and also foreign diplomats are trying to put pressure on Switzerland to fully participate in sanctions against Russia and to allow arms deliveries, if not directly then at least indirectly. The narrative of these neutrality diluters is always the same: Switzerland’s neutrality is an outdated model and must be reconsidered or adapted or even ditched. In light of the emerging amalgamation of security policy and foreign policy of the EU and the European arm of NATO, the calls for a “relativization of neutrality“ in favor of a misconceived solidarity are getting louder and louder. These gravediggers of neutrality must be countered with the following:

  1. The perpetual, integral and armed neutrality is absolute and geared towards emergencies. It cannot be modified easily and at will on the basis of a current event. Thus, there is no such thing as “Putin neutrality” or the like. The perpetual, integral and armed neutrality guaranteed to us at the Congress of Vienna, also with Russia’s explicit approval, sends an unmistakable signal to other countries and our partners that we will reliably and fully adhere to our neutrality in the long – term and will – if necessary – defend it with our armed forces.
  2. The concept of neutrality is fundamentally directed towards wars. In a war, there are always attackers and defenders. It is therefore intellectually dishonest to relativize neutrality in relation to the Russia-Ukraine conflict or even to ditch it in order to position ourselves unilaterally against an aggressor. For a neutral state, the “good-evil” scheme is suspended, which enables it to offer its good offices. The fact that Putin claims Art. 51 of the UN Charter for himself in order to rush to help an ally is possibly covered by international law but certainly problematic, but nevertheless not unusual: China and the USA have also frequently drawn on this problematic article, the latter without there ever having been an outcry. In this context, especially in a neutral state like Switzerland, there should be careful consideration in order to avoid double standards.
  3. Our elites know well that neutrality is deeply rooted in the Swiss people. Therefore, they believe they have to operate in a hypocritical manner, propagating neutrality internally while acting in a partisan manner externally. For example, the Federal Council has recklessly offered hand to sanctions against Russia, such as the blocking of Russian bank accounts in Switzerland. This has done massive damage to both, our credibility and our business location: a large number of foreigners have withdrawn their capital from Switzerland and transferred it to other countries. It is certainly legitimate to discuss the value of neutrality. However, this should be done with the involvement of the sovereign, the Swiss people, namely at the ballot box.
  4. Our armed neutrality has effectively protected us from external aggressors, especially during World War II. It is not an outdated model, as some try to make us believe, but on the contrary an inspiring model for the future: based on credibility, continuity, predictability and reliability, we secure our prosperity and security, especially for our young generation. The Swiss People does not expect the Federal Council and our politicians to engage in power politics, but rather to protect our people and safeguard our prosperity. This is the very duty of the Federal Council: to integrate our neutrality policy into our foreign policy and to explain our neutrality in a comprehensible way in the foreign policy arena. In the area of good offices, in receiving a large number of refugees – as is currently the case from Ukraine – as well as comprehensive offers for negotiations, Switzerland is and will be able to make major contributions to global peacebuilding and peacekeeping. We must not easily give up this trump card!
Homage to Swiss Neutrality, PRO-SCHWEIZ

Pro-Schweiz has until May 8, 2024 to obtain the 100,000 signatures required to put the initiative on the ballot. (Note to the Bears: if you’re not a Swiss citizen, you can’t sign the petition, so don’t even think about it. Note to everyone else: yes, it is absolutely necessary to spell that out.) And although the media has been ludicrously describing the concept of constitutional neutrality as a “right-wing” objective, it has substantial support among the Left and Green parties as well.

The Federal Constitution is amended as follows:

Article 54a Swiss Neutrality

1. Switzerland is neutral. Its neutrality is perpetual and armed.

2. Switzerland does not join any military or defense alliance. An exception is made for cooperation with such alliances in the event of a direct military attack on Switzerland or in the case of actions preparing for such an attack.

3. Switzerland does not participate in military conflicts between third states and does not take non-military coercive measures against belligerent states. Exceptions are Switzerland’s obligations to the United Nations (UN) and measures to prevent the circumvention of non-military coercive measures by other states.

4. Switzerland uses its perpetual neutrality for the prevention and resolution of conflicts and is available as a mediator.

Call from Left and Green Supporters: Yes to the Neutrality Initiative!, SWISS STANDPOINT, 24 January 2024

Anyhow, people all around the world should hope that the failure of the 2024 peace summit will serve to remind the Swiss people of the way in which their historic commitment to neutrality will much better serve the world than their becoming a small and voiceless cog in the Clown World machine.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Bold Move

Since crossing the previous red lines have gone so well for NATO, the USA, and Europe over the last two years, Clown World has now decided to further antagonize both Russia and China. It’s certainly a bold move, anyhow. It’s not a smart one and it smacks of desperation. We’ll see how it works out for them…

ATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Ukraine has a right to use its Western-supplied weapons to defend itself against Russia, even if that includes striking targets within Russia’s borders.

“This is Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine, which is a blatant violation of international law,” Stoltenberg told Radio Liberty during an interview on Tuesday. “And according to international law, Ukraine has the right to self-defense. And it also includes strikes against legitimate military targets, Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. That’s international law, and of course, Ukraine has the right to do that to defend itself.”

A NATO official confirmed with Financial Times on Thursday that Stoltenberg meant that Kyiv’s right to self-defense included striking Russian military targets outside of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned against Ukraine using its Western-supplied equipment to launch attacks on Russian territory, saying that doing so could risk escalating the conflict. The warnings had originally made allies like the United States hold off on supplying Kyiv with long-range weapons capable of reaching Russia, but NATO allies have since given Ukraine such arms.

First, there is no “international law” and there never has been. It’s just a rhetorical phrase that is always applied to the enemies of Clown World and always ignored whenever it’s applied to the servants of Clown World.

Second, reality is reciprocal. Ukraine does have the right to defend itself. Ukraine does have the right to strike Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. But Russia has the right to defend itself too, and to defend itself by striking NATO military targets outside of Russia and Ukraine.

As we’ve repeatedly been shown since 2014, Russia is very, very patient and circumspect. It has no reason to strike back at NATO right away, because time, migration patterns, and economic pressure are on its side. This F-16 insanity is just a desperate attempt to bait Russia into giving the neoclowns in Washington an excuse to escalate from a losing proxy war to an all-out direct war that will permit it to declare martial law, mobilize the economy, and reinstitute the draft before China makes its move on Taiwan.

I doubt Putin and his generals will take the bait. Instead, they’ll just shoot down the F-16s and increase the pressure on Clown World in two or more fronts, beginning with Odessa.

Putin is reportedly on the brink of a new land grab to defy the West by possibly announcing soon that Russia is taking control of a breakaway Moldovan region. There is speculation that unofficial state Transnistria is poised to make an appeal to Putin to join Russia. The landlocked strip along the Dniester River is wedged between Moldova and Ukraine. Putin already has a ‘peacekeeping’ force of up to 2,000 troops in the territory which Russia says overwhelmingly wishes to be incorporated by Moscow. There are also likely thousands of Russian paramilitaries on the ground. A fear is Putin will use a speech at the Russian Federal Assembly on February 29 to green light annexation.

Hey, the USA is always supportive of democratic self-determination, right. But don’t be surprised if a new front is opened somewhere in Asia as well.

The European Union has placed tighter trade restrictions on Chinese companies that it claims are supporting Russia, the European Council said in a press release on Friday. The restrictions are part of a 13th round of sanctions imposed on Friday, a day before the second anniversary of Russia’s military operation against Ukraine.

But no worries. We are assured that in the event of war with China, Ukraine stands with the USA, and “Ukraine ready for war with China if US asks.” So the neoclowns have got that going for them, anyway, which is nice.

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They Broke and Ran

As a number of observers here correctly surmised from the very high number of casualties, the Armed Forces of Ukraine didn’t actually conduct a fighting withdrawal from its fortress in Avdeevka. It wasn’t even a retreat, it was a rout, and the order for the retreat to conceal what had already happened wasn’t given until a day after the Ukrainian forces there had already broken and run.

Ukraine’s top general, Aleksandr Syrsky, did not give the order for troops to leave Avdeevka until one day after the beginning of their uncontrolled, chaotic rout from the Donbass stronghold, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

Syrsky, Ukraine’s recently appointed commander-in-chief, announced the retreat early Saturday, justifying the decision with the need to “stabilize the situation and maintain positions.” Reports that Ukrainian forces were pulling back began circulating earlier this week, while others indicated that Russian forces severed the biggest supply lines into the city.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the capture of the fortress city later on Saturday, stating that only scattered formations of Ukrainian militants managed to escape the city, fleeing in disarray under Russian fire and leaving their armaments behind.

“The order of the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Syrsky, to abandon the city was only issued after a day of uncontrolled flight of the Ukrainian troops from Avdeevka,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a press statement. The Ukrainian army reportedly lost more than 1,500 troops in Avdeevka in the past 24 hours alone.

Ukrainian army fled Avdeevka in disarray – Russian MOD, RUSSIA TODAY, 18 February 2024

The Ukrainian soldiers merit a great deal of respect for their ability to withstand a tremendous amount of pressure before breaking. They’re obviously courageous and their morale is formidable; it’s truly a pity that such brave warriors are being sacrificed to such an evil cause by their satanic regime. But as the Wehrmacht learned from 1941 to 1945, there is no amount of courage or morale that suffices to withstand the relentless military pressure and ruthless operational excellence that the Russian military has been able to bring to bear since Peter the Great defeated King Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava in 1709.

It should not be a surprise if this collapse on the operational level is swiftly succeeded by a similar collapse on the strategic level. Even in an attrition war, collapse on one front tends to snowball into multiple collapses on multiple fronts. If Ukraine can’t hold the positions to which its forces have routed, or if other fronts begin to collapse, it will be clear that the end of the Kiev regime is rapidly approaching.

Remember, Russia is defeating NATO and the entire collective economic might of the West without even needing to call upon its allies in China, North Korea, and Iran. It’s not just the Kiev regime, but Clown World itself, that is already in the position of Hitler in his bunker, and a few of the more intelligent elite clowns almost certainly suspect this, even if they can’t admit it yet, not even to themselves.

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Avdeevka Finally Falls

As Simplicius has been predicting, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been driven from Avdeevka after a prolonged siege. The abandonment of the fortifications there should enable the Russian forces to quickly push back the front line far enough to finally end the shelling of Donetsk, the region’s capital city.

Ukrainian troops have been ordered to leave the city of Avdeevka, Kiev’s newly-appointed commander-in-chief has said, claiming the decision was intended to preserve the “lives and health” of soldiers following months of desperate attempts to hold on to the frontline town near Russia’s Donetsk.

General Aleksandr Syrsky announced the pull-out in a statement shared on social media in the early hours of Saturday morning, arguing that the withdrawal was part of “measures to stabilize the situation and maintain our positions.”

“Based on the operational situation around Avdiivka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to defense on more favorable lines,” he said.

The order follows reports that Ukrainian troops in the area were almost fully surrounded and faced near-constant attacks in recent days, with one local commander saying fighting in the area was “several times more hellish than the hottest battles of this phase of the war.” He was referring to the earlier struggle over the city of Artyomovsk (also known as Bakhmut in Ukraine), which fell to Russian troops last year following a lengthy siege.

It’s informative to observe that only days after a battalion from the Azov Brigade went in as reinforcements, and General Zaluzhny – who had long advocated a retreat from Advdeevka – was replaced, that the order for the withdrawal was given. It appears that the Ukrainians have finally begun to consider the idea that preserving one’s soldiers for future battles rather than sacrificing them en masse for the glory of Ukraine is a militarily sound one.

However, it also appears that Zelensky has successfully stage-managed the difficult transition from “inevitable heroic victory” to “retreat to maintain our positions” without being ejected, couped, or otherwise removed from office. Which presumably explains the attempts of the media clowns to try to generate some enthusiasm for fighting Russia in the memory of some Russian whose name no one knows and about whom no one cares.

UPDATE: Doesn’t sound like it was an orderly retreat or a fighting withdrawal.

Russian forces have “completely captured” the city of Avdeevka, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Saturday. Some 1,500 Ukrainian troops were killed as they retreated, leaving their weapons and equipment behind, the ministry said. The seizure moves the front line further away from the city of Donetsk, thereby shielding its civilian population from bombardment by Ukrainian forces. Situated around 20km away, Avdeevka had been fortified and used as a staging ground for such attacks since 2014.

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British Asset Dies in Russia

It’s a bit much for the people who are holding Julian Assange and the J6 political prisoners in prison for doing absolutely nothing that can be reasonably regarded as criminal to shed crocodile tears over the death of a British intelligence asset who tried to overthrow the Russian government in a Russian prison.

Now that you’ve heard the fake outrage from the West, let’s look at the information they withheld from you. Navalny is a terrorist. He was caught planning a color revolution to overtake Russian with MI6. He’s not “political opposition”. He’s a foreign intelligence asset. A spy.

Below, you can see Navalny discussing planning “mass protests, civil initiatives, propaganda, establishing contacts with elites” with British MI6 agent, James William Thomas Ford, via the funding from unnamed rich billionaires.

Navalny was the West’s frontman to takeover Russia from within. The same exact playbook they used to take over Ukraine. Navalny was a Deep State asset, and he was treated as such. As a hostile foreign actor looking to overthrow a sovereign nation, on behalf of the West. Treason and sedition. So spare me with the West’s fake outrage and pearl-clutching, as if Putin is unfairly jailing and murdering political opponents, while the Trump witch hunt is going into its 8th year… and while Julian Assange is still being tortured in prison…

Biden and the MSM are already trying to leverage this situation to coerce Americans to send more money to Ukraine. The entire thing is a hoax, just like everything else they do.

Navalny was literally caught on video plotting a color revolution in Russia. He was a traitor to his nation and a corrupt actor in service to Clown World. He was a very evil man. Pay attention to anyone pretending that he was some sort of political martyr, because that is a reliable confirmation of loyalty to Clown World.

UPDATE: The British are desperately trying to turn this into a thing. It isn’t working. At all.

World mourns Alexei Navalny. World leaders lash out with Biden blaming Russian despot’s brutal regime for Kremlin critic’s death inside Arctic penal colony – as protests erupt across the world

Yes, clearly the Chinese and the Zambians are outraged, simply outraged. Sadly, the Palestinians are too busy being Gazacausted to take to the streets, while the Europeans are already occupied with protesting their own governments’ attempts to commit economic suicide.

Besides, as we all know, Russian prisons are safe and effective. And indeed, it has been reported that Mr. Navalny died of “suddenly”, which we have been repeatedly assured is entirely normal these days.

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Bad Choices Abound

Big Serge invokes a chess analogy to explain the very difficult choices being faced by Israel vis-a-vis the Arabs in Palestine and by the USA in the Middle East and in Ukraine.

The basic geostrategic problem facing the United States (and its ectopic paramour, Israel) is that the ability to conduct asymmetrically inexpensive countermeasures has become exhausted. The US can no longer prop up Ukraine with surplus shells and MRAPs, nor can it deter the Iranian axis with reprimands and air strikes. Israel can no longer maintain the image of its impenetrable preclusive defenses, upon which its peculiar identity depends.

That leaves the difficult choice between strategic retreat and strategic commitment. Half measures no longer suffice, but is there will for a full measure? For Israel, which has no strategic depth and a unique world-historic self conception, it was inevitable that commitment would be chosen over strategic withdrawal (which in their case is much more metaphysical than purely strategic, and amounts to the deconstruction of the Israeli self conception). Thus, the immensely violent Israeli operation in Gaza – an operation that could never have gone any other way, given the density of the population and its eschatological meaning.

America, however, has a great degree of strategic depth – the same strategic depth which allowed it to withdraw from Vietnam or Afghanistan with few meaningful ill effects on the American homeland. The possibility most certainly remains for a prosperous and secure America long after withdrawing from Syria and Ukraine. Indeed, the famously chaotic scenes of frantic evacuation from Saigon and Kabul represent remarkably clearsighted moments in American foreign policy, where realism prevailed and losing chess pieces were left to their fates. This is cynical, of course, but that is the way of the world.

This is a standard motif of world history. The most critical moments in geopolitics are generally those where a country faces the choice between strategic retreat or full commitment. In 1940, Britain faced the choice between accepting Germany hegemony on the continent or committing to a long war which would cost them their empire and lead to their final eclipse by the United States. Neither is a good choice, but they chose the latter. In 1914, Russia had to choose between abandoning its Serbian ally or fighting a war with the Germanic powers. Neither seemed good, and they chose the latter. Strategic retreat is hard, but strategic defeat is worse. Sometimes, there are no good choices.

The Age of Zugzwang, Big Serge Thought, 14 February 2024

It’s an excellent historical analysis and the whole piece merits careful reading. However, the one element that is being left out of the equation is The Empire That Never Ended. Which is to say, in modern parlance, Clown World. It’s simply not possible to analyze the decisions of the US government to employ military force in the American national interest when the individuals making those decisions clearly do not prioritize the interests of Americans or even the US citizenry.

The obvious and growing divergence between the Kiev regime and the surviving Ukrainian people being the relevant case in point here.

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Angels vs Demons

There shouldn’t be any question which side is on the side of the angels and which is most definitely not in what purports to be a war between Russia and Ukraine. One side is openly Christian and is fighting on their own land. The other side is led by an avowedly anti-Christian regime that is funded by Clown World and is literally persecuting priests and closing down churches.

It’s a cold, rainy, damp morning in the deep Donbass countryside, at a secret location close to the Urozhaynoye direction; a nondescript country house, crucially under the fog, which prevents the work of enemy drones.

Father Igor, a military priest, is blessing a group of local contract-signed volunteers to the Archangel Gabriel battalion, ready to go to the front lines of the US vs. Russia proxy war. The man in charge of the battalion is one of the top-ranking officers of Orthodox Christian units in the DPR. A small shrine is set up in the corner of a small, cramped room, decorated with icons. Candles are lit, and three soldiers hold the red flag with the icon of Jesus in the center. After prayers and a small homily, Father Igor blesses each soldier.

This is yet another stop in a sort of itinerant icon road show, started in Kherson, then Zaporozhye and all the way to the myriad DPR front lines, led by my gracious host Andrey Afanasiev, military correspondent for the Spas channel, and later joined in Donetsk by a decorated fighter for the Archangel Michael battalion, an extremely bright and engaging young man codename Pilot.

There are between 28 and 30 Orthodox Christian battalions fighting in Donbass. That’s the power of Orthodox Christianity. To see them at work is to understand the essentials: how the Russian soul is capable of any sacrifice to protect the core values of its civilization.

A fact that has been assiduously avoided by the pro-NATO media is that a significant number of the “Russian” forces, and a disproportionate number of the Russian casualties, are not soldiers of the Russian Army. They are members of the local militias who are residents of the Donbass, the two republics that voted for their independence in 2014 and were formally annexed by Russia in 2022, and many of those soldiers have been fighting the Ukrainian military forces for a decade.

It’s as if Texas declared independence, was invaded and occupied by the US military, which was later driven out by the Texans with the assistance of Mexico. The analogy is imperfect, because Russia has taken, and will continue to take, Ukrainian land outside of the Donbas, but the special military operation is, and has always been, more a war of liberation than a foreign military invasion.

Russia has relied upon the local militias, as well as the Chechens and private military companies, in order to preserve most of its regular troops to fight the US Army. And, of course, the morale of the local militias is incredibly high because they are literally fighting for their land and their own homes.

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Zelensky Pulls the Trigger

The Kiev regime has replaced Valerii Zaluzhny as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with Oleksandr Syrsky, an ethnic Russian general who barely speaks Ukrainian and has a track record of uniform and very bloody failure. Simplicius explains the reason behind this already-unpopular decision:

Why would Zelensky appoint a commander that the entire armed forces allegedly hates?

In fact, this is a ‘design feature’ not a bug.

Recall that the reason Zaluzhny was given the boot was he had become too powerful: he was too loved by the troops, and by the people. Why? One of the reasons is likely because he fought for the troops multiple times. In early 2023, documents were leaked showing that he nearly begged Zelensky to pull troops back from Bakhmut, but the narco-Fuhrer refused, wanting it as a symbolic city defense—perhaps taken with romantic delusions of Stalingrad.

During the grand summer ‘counteroffensive’, Zaluzhny pulled the brigades of the 10th Army Corps back and began to use them sparingly—much to the chagrin and disapproval of US sponsors—after the initial first few wipes devastated columns of Leopards and Bradleys along the infamous road of death near Rabotino and Mala Tokmachka.

Recently it was claimed Zaluzhny likewise attempted to get Avdeevka totally withdrawn. It does not seem that he likes to waste men for what he knows to be fruitless efforts. Syrsky on the other hand appears glad to grind them down.

So, has it become obvious yet? Zelensky needs a commander-in-chief he can control, someone not universally loved by the troops; someone who cannot use those troops at a time of opportunity to ‘march on Kiev’ and oust Zelensky from his citadel. Syrsky appears to fit the perfect prototypical role: undefiant, unpopular, uncharismatic, and most importantly, untempted by political ambitions—the ideal subserviant factotum to Zelensky’s regime.

We do appear to be rapidly approaching the final stage of the Ukraine chapter of WWIII. Which should not be confused with the final stage of WWIII. We’re still in the beginning phase, albeit possibly getting closer to the end of the beginning.

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