Tag: war

The Third Front

To be honest, I thought that Iran or Syria would be the Second Front of World War III, prior to China opening Taiwan, Korea, or even the Philippines as the Third Front. But it appears Niger may have already claimed that honor. Still, the Middle East is already drawing more US troops and ships away from the Ukrainian Front.

The US military has deployed thousands of troops and additional naval assets to the Middle East to “deter” Iranian forces. The move comes after Washington accused Tehran of harassing commercial vessels and other “destabilizing” actions.

The US Navy’s 5th Fleet announced the decision on Monday, noting that more than 3,000 marines and sailors had arrived in the Red Sea aboard an amphibious assault ship and a dock landing vessel the day before.

“These units add significant operational flexibility and capability as we work alongside international partners to deter destabilizing activity and deescalate regional tensions caused by Iran’s harassment and seizures of merchant vessels earlier this year,” 5th Fleet spokesman Commander Tim Hawkins told The Hill in a statement.

The amphibious assault ship sent in the latest deployment, the USS Bataan, also carried additional air assets, the Navy added. Though it did not specify the systems on board, the military said that the ship can carry more than two dozen rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft, including the Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and AV-8B Harrier attack jets, in addition to a number of landing craft. The smaller USS Carter Hall, a docking ship, will act as a support vessel for operations involving landings or amphibious attacks.

The usual hypocrisy is on display here. The USN’s justification for this deployment is “to defend the freedom of navigation”. While just yesterday, US Senators and neoclowns were decrying the Russian and Chinese ships that were exercising the very right that the US Navy is claiming to defend in the Red Sea.

In a statement on Saturday, two Republican Senators representing the state of Alaska – Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan – said a total of 11 ships had been detected “transiting US waters in the Aleutians,” citing a classified briefing, and labeling the activities “an incursion.”

Sullivan said it marks “yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow,” adding that he was pleased to see a robust US response involving four American destroyers.

Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has called the patrol “a historical first” and “highly provocative” considering tensions over Taiwan and the Ukraine conflict, the WSJ reported.

Of course, all of these actions are little more than gunboat diplomacy. A single destroyer and a single Marine Expeditionary Unit are not a serious threat to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps nor are they meant to be. What really has the neoclowns alarmed is that Russia and China have sent a very clear signal to Iran, Niger, and every other country that isn’t controlled by Washington DC that they are no longer afraid of the US Navy, and that any country that challenges the globalist hegemony doesn’t need to fear US-backed regime change anymore.

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Past His Sell-By Date

It’s clear that NATO is preparing to jettison Zelensky and blame the Russians for his “assassination”; the neoclown media is openly discussing how Zelensky will be replaced as the head of the Kiev puppet regime in an article that reads as if it was written by Henry II.

“Will no one rid of us this troublesome beggar?”

Given the stakes, and the risk, it is little wonder Ukrainian officials tend to brush off requests to discuss what would happen were Russia to succeed — or they decline to go on the record, worrying the topic appears far too macabre.

And yet, despite the reluctance to publicly engage with the question, there is a plan in place, according to interviews with Ukrainian officials and lawmakers as well as analysts. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as much: “The Ukrainians have plans in place — that I’m not going to talk about or get into any details on — to make sure that there is what we would call ‘continuity of government’ one way or another,” he told CBS news last year.

Ukraine’s Parliament chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk | STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
Formally, under the constitution, the line of succession is clear. “When the president is unable to fulfill his duties, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [the Ukrainian parliament] takes over his responsibilities,” said Mykola Knyazhytsky, an opposition lawmaker from the western city of Lviv. “Therefore, there would be no power vacuum.”

The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada — Ruslan Stefanchuk, a member of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party — doesn’t have an especially high trust rating in opinion polls. It is around 40 percent, less than half of Zelenskyy’s. And he’s not popular with opposition lawmakers.

“But I don’t think it matters,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “There’s a strong leadership team and I think we would see collective government,” he added.

The governing council would most likely consist of Stefanchuk as the figurehead, along with Andrii Yermak, the former movie producer and lawyer who’s the head of the office of the president, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. Valery Zaluzhny would remain as the country’s top general.

Karatnycky said he would hope to see a role for TV personality Serhiy Prytula, who now runs major charitable initiatives and has a sky-high public trust rating.

Ukraine’s plan if Russia assassinates Zelenskyy, POLITICO, 1 August 2023

Zelensky has nothing to fear from Russia. He’s one of the Russian military’s greatest assets, as he successfully convinced NATO to throw away their donated forces in a manner that has done about as little damage to Russia as possible; Faramir’s cavalry charge against the fortified position of Mordor’s archers in the Jackson film was equally well-conceived and did just about as much harm to the defenders.

Simplicius has worked out that Ukraine may be already down to as little as only 100 tanks remaining to its entire armed forces.

The offensive is now about 2 months old and was of a highly elevated intensity. That means it’s not out of the realm of possibility that their losses were double the rate at 150-200 per month, which would put us at 400 after 2 months. Finally, given that we had come to the ~500 number earlier, subtracting the new ~400 losses would mean that the AFU would be at an absolutely dire state of only 100 remaining tanks. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and say perhaps it’s a bit higher at 200-300 left, this is much less than it sounds given that it represents as little as two weeks’ worth of losses in current high intensity combat levels. If my numbers are even remotely close then that is disastrous. It would mean the AFU is on the verge of collapse.

Which, of course, is why the more hawkish neoclowns have already made the decision to give up on the Russian front. So if they get their way and succeed in forcing NATO to pivot to war with China, Zelensky will be a major liability and embarrassment to the governments of the West. This very public warning shot across Zelensky’s bow may, in fact, be the first sign that the pivot to China is underway and will soon be followed by an announcement about NATO-Russian negotiations.

UPDATE: CNBC confirms the new narrative on Zelensky.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s conduct is a source of annoyance in Washington, CNBC reported on Wednesday. Zelensky angers his American backers by ignoring their orders and issuing ever-greater demands, anonymous officials told the network.

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Niger Tests Clown World

One of the inevitable consequences of the sanctions war on Russia was the realization by third parties that economic globalization is a trap that provides more external control than internal opportunity. This is why the Sino-Russian turn to Africa, Asia, and South America is significant, as it threatens to exclude the self-styled “global majority” from the greater part of the world’s population. That’s why the USA put so much pressure on African leaders to not attend the second St. Petersburg summit.

Last week’s Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg was a landmark event in Moscow’s foreign policy concept and practice. Not so much because it brought scores of African leaders and senior officials to the country. The first summit, four years ago in Sochi, featured even more African heads of state. Also, it is not solely because its agenda expanded beyond economics and included a humanitarian dimension: this is important, but this isn’t all.

Essentially, the meeting, with the bureaucratic preparation and the wide public coverage it has received within Russia, testifies to a sea change in Moscow’s worldview and international positioning toward the world’s rising non-Western majority, as laid down in the recently adopted Foreign Policy Concept.

St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in the early 18th century as a ‘window to Europe,’ and last week, it served the same purpose for Africa.

Eurocentrism, of course, is still deeply embedded in the Russian elite’s thinking and aspirations. Nevertheless, the failure of Russia’s long travails of Western integration in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union has now exploded into the proxy war against the United States and NATO in Ukraine. This has produced a historic shift in Moscow’s policies, comparable to the time of Peter the Great in its significance, though in a wholly different direction. For the foreseeable future, the universe of Russia’s foreign policy will remain divided in two large parts: the house of foes including Europe, North America, and the rest of the Anglosphere, and the house of friends elsewhere. The dividing line between the two is a country’s position in relation to the sanctions regime against Russia.

Africa, in this regard, is largely on the right side of that divide. 49 nations out of the continent’s 54 were represented in St. Petersburg. True, only 17 of them participated at the top level. No longer a curious and skeptical observer, as during the Sochi summit four years ago, the West this time made a determined effort, advising, cajoling or threatening African leaders against going to Russia and dealing directly with President Putin.

Russia has proven that it is possible for a nation to stand up to the US military, which from Afghanistan to Iraq and Libya, had hitherto crushed every rebellion against the Clown World order. Which, one suspects, is why Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have banded together to protect the new Nigerois regime from Clown World’s regional proxies.

In a move considered a tactical way to protect the recent regime change in Niger, Mali’s military Junta said Monday that they stand to support the coup leaders in Niamey. Mali said that they stand together with Burkina Faso to defend Niger and further warned that any foreign military intervention in Niamey will be considered a declaration of war on both nations with Niger.

“I warn that any military intervention against Niger will be considered as a declaration of war against Burkina Faso and Mali,” announce Col. Abdoulaye Maiga, State Minister for Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, Mali junta.

The announcement was in response to the outcome of a summit by regional bloc ECOWAS that gave a 7-day deadline to Niger’s coup leaders to free detained president Mohamed Barzoum and restore civilian rule or face consequences, with military force an option being considered.

The irony of the appeals to democracy by the USA and the UK, both of which are led by equally unelected heads of state, is unlikely to escape the Russians, the Chinese, and everyone else observing the matter. If the new Nigerois government finds enough support to maintain power, this will be the second significant step toward the complete collapse of the Clown World order.

And since Wagner doesn’t appear to be occupied at the moment, I expect they’ll be willing to accept gold and uranium in lieu of cash.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Final Phase

Col Douglas Macgregor believes the Ukrainian Army is breaking down and that the war, at least in its current form, is in its final phase.

I think the Ukrainians have lost probably somewhere between 300,000 and 350,000 dead on the battlefield. How many wounded is anybody’s guess, at this stage all we know is that the hospitals are full, there’s no room left. The Ukrainian Army is having great difficulty evacuating wounded in many cases.

I think the Ukrainian Army itself is breaking down. Many units have simply melted away. Some have gone over to the Russians, not because they wanted to join the Russians, but they said, look, you know, we’ve got very little ammunition left, we’ve got lots of wounded. We’ve contacted our superiors, they say
they can’t evacuate us so we’re going to surrender. Yeah, I think we’ve almost reached the end game,
we’re certainly in the final phase of this war.

Assuming that Macgregor is reasonably correct, the question is whether the neoclowns double down and send in the Polish Army as well as whatever US forces it can muster, or whether they’ll take the best deal they can get from Putin before pivoting to take on China. The latter is looking more and more likely; the bat signal has observably gone out and the media has already begun the unwieldy process of making a 180-degree narrative shift:

When Edward Luttwak speaks, world leaders listen — and now they must consider heeding his advice on Ukraine. Luttwak has been advising world leaders, including U.S. presidents, since the 1980s…

Luttwak believes that despite all the talk in Washington and in other Western capitals about “unwavering support” for Ukraine, Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, seek a negotiated settlement with Russia. The much-anticipated Ukrainian offensive has stalled. Russia’s government survived a scare by the Wagner Group, and its troops are fighting better now than in the first year of the war. Historically, “when Russia goes to war they always mess up” at first, Luttwak says, but “as the war goes on Russians fight better,” and that is what is happening now. Top U.S. officials, like CIA Director William J. Burns, recognize this fact and have advised Biden accordingly, which is why Biden poured cold water on the Ukraine-in-NATO suggestion. Putin, Luttwak noted, has also publicly pulled back from the “nuclear threat” in a signal to Ukraine and the U.S. that a negotiated solution is possible.

Luttwak also contends that Ukraine’s leaders also know that a negotiated peace is the most realistic scenario for ending the war. U.S. leaders, according to Luttwak, want a Russia–Ukraine settlement precisely because of the more significant geopolitical threat of China in the western Pacific. This is in line with what former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby has suggested.

Edward Luttwak: The U.S. Must End the Russia–Ukraine War, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, 28 July 2023

More about this anon. I’ve been reading a collection of pre-2001 essays edited by Robert Kagan, and ironically enough, it appears that thanks in large part to his wife, the neoclowns have inadvertently managed to bring about the very thing they most feared, a strong geostrategic alliance between Russia and China.

DISCUSS ON SG

Japan’s Surrender – The Trohan Article

Since some Americans still in denial over the USA’s historical war crimes are “skeptical” about the verifiable and undeniable facts of history, the article written by Walter Trohan in February 1945, and published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on August 19, 1945, is provided here in its entirety.

Chicago Tribune, August 19,1945

JAPS ASKED PEACE IN JAN. ENVOYS ON WAY — TOKYO
Roosevelt Ignored M’Arthur Report On Nip Proposals

Release of all censorship restrictions in the United States makes it possible to report that the first Japanese peace bid was relayed to the White House seven months ago. Two days before the late President Roosevelt left the last week in January for the Yalta conference with Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin he received a Japanese offer identical with the terms subsequently concluded by his successor, Harry S. Truman.

MacArthur Relayed Message to F.D.

The Jap offer, based on five separate overtures, was relayed to the White House by Gen. MacArthur in a 40-page communication. The American commander, who had just returned triumphantly to Bataan, urged negotiations on the basis of the Jap overtures.

The offer, as relayed by MacArthur, contemplated abject surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. The suggestion was advanced from the Japanese quarters making the offer that the Emperor become a puppet in the hands of American forces.

Two of the five Jap overtures were made through American channels and three through British channels. All came from responsible Japanese, acting for Emperor Hirohito.

General’s Communication Dismissed

President Roosevelt dismissed the general’s communication, which was studded with solemn references to the deity, after a casual reading with the remark, “MacArthur is our greatest general and our poorest politician.”

The MacArthur report was not even taken to Yalta. However, it was carefully preserved in the files of the high command and subsequently became the basis of the Truman-Attlee Potsdam declaration calling for surrender of Japan.

This Jap peace bid was known to the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald shortly after the MacArthur communication reached here. It was not published under the paper’s established policy of complete co-operation with the voluntary censorship code.

Must Explain Delay

Now that peace has been concluded on the basis of the terms MacArthur reported, high administration officials prepared to meet expected congressional demands for explanation of the delay. It was considered certain that from various quarters of Congress charges would be hurled that the delay cost thousands of American lives and casualties, particularly in such costly offensives as Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

It was explained in high official circles that the bid relayed by MacArthur did not constitute an official offer in the same sense as the final offer which was presented through Japanese diplomatic channels at Bern and Stockholm last week for relay to the four major Allied powers.

No negotiations were begun on the basis of the bid, it was said, because it was feared that if any were undertaken the Jap war lords, who were presumed to be ignorant of the feelers, would visit swift punishment on those making the offer. It was held possible that the war lords might even assassinate the Emperor and announce the son of heaven had fled the earth in a fury of indignation over the peace bid.

Defeat Seen Inevitable

Officials said it was felt by Mr. Roosevelt that the Japs were not ripe for peace, except for a small group, who were powerless to cope with the war lords, and that peace could not come until the Japs had suffered more.

The Jap overtures were made on acknowledgment that defeat was inevitable and Japan had to choose the best way out of an unhappy dilemma — domination of Asia by Russia or by the United States. The unofficial Jap peace brokers said the latter would be preferable by far.

Jap proposals to Gen. MacArthur contemplated:

  • Full surrender of all Jap forces on sea, in the air, at home, on island possessions and in occupied countries.
  • Surrender of all arms and munitions.
  • Occupation of the Jap homeland and island possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
  • Jap relinquishment from Manchuria, Korea and Formosa as well as all territory seized during the war.
  • Regulation of Jap industry to halt present and future production of implements of war.
  • Turning over of any Japanese the United States might designate as war criminals.
  • Immediate release of all prisoners of war and internees in Japan proper and areas under Japanese control.

After the fall of Germany, the policy of unconditional surrender drew critical fire. In the Senate Senator White (R.) of Maine Capehart (R.) of Indiana took the lead in demanding that precise terms be given Japan and in asking whether peace feelers had not been received from the Nipponese.

Terms Drafted in July

In July the Tribune reported that a set of terms were being drafted for President Truman to take to Potsdam. Capehart hailed the reported terms on the floor of the Senate as a great contribution to universal peace.

These terms, which were embodied in the Potsdam declaration, did not mention the disposition of the Emperor. Otherwise they were almost identical with the proposals contained in the MacArthur memorandum.

Just before the Japanese surrender the Russian foreign commissar disclosed that the Japs had made peace overtures through Moscow asking that the Soviets mediate the war. These overtures were made in the middle of June through the Russian foreign office and also through a personal letter from Hirohito to Stalin. Both overtures were reported to the United States and Britain.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Atomic Bomb was Never Necessary

Although apologists for the atomic bombing of Japan have long claimed that it “saved American lives”, their arguments have always been false and historically ignorant. But while the relevant information belying the justification for the bombings has long been available to historians and military history enthusiasts, it’s now becoming too widely known around the world to ignore.

I suspect the Oppenheimer movie marks the last hurrah of the historical A-bomb mythology.

The whole moral driving force of the project was a fantasy.

In the summer of 1945, British intelligence assembled a group of captured German scientists at a picturesque old house in Godmanchester, near Huntingdon. The house was bugged from basement to attic. The Germans were astonished at news of the bomb and plainly had never got within miles of making one. This has been public knowledge since 1992.

Even more devastating is modern historical research about Japan.

It is clear that Japan’s surrender was not forced by the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Japan’s fanatical leadership cared little about civilian deaths (they had not blinked when a firebomb raid in March 1945 killed 100,000 in Tokyo itself). By the time the bomb was ready, there were few Japanese cities of any size left standing.

The scholar Tsuyoshi Hasegawa concluded from Japanese and Soviet records that Japan’s surrender was mainly caused by Stalin’s decision to enter the war. The military leadership feared he would invade Japan from the north and seize large parts of the country.

It has long suited Japan and the US to pretend that the two A-bombs ended the war. Japan can pose as a victim nation. The US, which is embarrassed about being the only country to use the bomb in war, can soothe consciences by saying the action saved tens of thousands of Allied troops from death. But the worrying truth is known to academics and diplomats. So the second great justification for the use of the bomb in 1945 melts away.

What Peter Hitchens happens to omit here is that Japan had been trying to surrender for eight months prior to the bombings, and had offered terms to Gen. Douglas MacArthur that were virtually identical to the terms ultimately accepted after the bombings. Also, it’s clear that Stalin and the Soviet military leadership knew all about the atomic bomb long before the first one was dropped, as evidenced by General Giorgy Zhukov’s memoirs.

After the end of one of the Conference meetings, Truman informed Stalin that the United States now possessed a bomb of exceptional power, without, however, naming it the atomic bomb.

As was later reported abroad, at that moment Churchill pinned his eyes on Stalin’s face, eager to observe his reaction. However, Stalin did not betray his feelings and pretended he saw nothing special in what Truman had said. Both Churchill and many other British and American commentators subsequently surmized that Stalin had probably failed to fathom the significance of the information received.

In actual fact, on returning to his quarters after this meeting Stalin in my presence told Molotov about his conversation with Truman. Molotov reacted immediately: “They are trying to bid up.”

Stalin laughed: “Let them. I’ll have to talk it over with Kurchatov today and get him to speed things up.”

I understood they were talking about the development of the atomic bomb.

It was clear already then that the US Government was going to use the atomic bomb for reaching its imperialist goals from a position of strength. This was corroborated on August 6 and 9. Without any military need whatsoever, the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on the peaceful and densely-populated Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

– Marshal of Victory: The Autobiography of General Giorgy Zhukov, 1966

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The Last Stage of the Current Phase

Russian President Vladimir Putin provides an update on the coming end to the Special Military Operation:

Moscow ready for ‘any scenario’ with NATO

Aside from the conflict with Ukraine, this month saw several non-fatal incidents in Syrian skies involving Russian aircraft and US drones, with both sides blaming each other for reckless behavior. Russia would like to avoid a direct armed confrontation with the West, but keeps the worst possible scenarios in mind, Putin said. “If someone wants it – and that’s not us – then we’re ready,” he stressed.

Putin does not directly command operation in Ukraine

According to the Russian leader, as commander-in-chief, he has been receiving regular reports about the situation of the front line and speaks with his top generals several times a day. Putin added that he can reach out to “special units” when needed. However, it would be “wrong” for the president to interfere with the military and start directly commanding the troops, he said.

Kiev running out of conscripts

The Ukrainian army is not only suffering heavy losses on the battlefield, but is struggling with manpower, Putin argued. He said that, while taking prisoners, Russian authorities discovered that Ukraine had “formed military units” made up of aircraft technicians. “What does it tell us? That their mobilization resources are depleting,” the Russian leader said. He previously noted that Kiev’s forces had lost dozens of pieces of Western armor, including German-made Leopard 2 tanks and US-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

Putin is clarifying what we’ve already been observing from multiple sources: the Kiev regime is done without direct intervention from NATO. No amount of additional equipment, armor, aircraft, ammunition, or mercenaries is going to change anything for the regime’s operational or strategic position; a meaningless shift of a few kilometers here or there on the tactical front is the most that can potentially be accomplished. Russia has won the war of attrition.

So, NATO now faces a choice. Direct and open war with a Russian military that has completed its initial stage of mobilization and is prepared to engage its forces, the greater part of which are not even present on the European continent right now, or back down, admit that it has lost its proxy war, and attempt to negotiate a surrender to the Russians. Despite his bold words about ending Clown World, Putin has sent clear signals that he will accept the latter. So, the Special Military Operation will soon come to an end, but whether that end will be war or peace is yet to be learned.

Interestingly enough, the most rabid hawks among the neoclowns are pushing for negotiation and peace with Russia. See: Edward Luttwalk. This is because they are anticipating direct war with China, and they do not want to find themselves committed to a two-front war that cannot be won. While this is superficially the correct position, it’s an excessively optimistic one because Russia and China are not going to be divided by factional funding and clever word games; both Xi and Putin are well aware of how the neoclowns have successfully divided and conquered one enemy after another since the end of World War II.

The dumber sort of neoclowns, the sort who believe their own wordspells, are pushing for Poland to enter the war, because they know that Americans won’t support direct war with Russia but they aren’t prepared to give up when Russia is so close to running out of ammunition and Putin is about to be overthrown by a) rebel mercenaries, b) Russian democrats, or c) neurologically-enhanced cyberotters. The disastrous history of Polish democracy suggests this is possible, but given the way Putin has already stated that he’s open to giving Western Ukraine to Poland, I think it’s unlikely unless something gets sparked by Wagner in Belarus on the Polish border. There is a negotiated scenario where Poland, Belarus, and Russia all win, at the expensive of Kiev, and since the only NATO opinion that matters is that of the US neoclowns, I see the “divide-up-Western-Ukraine” as being a more likely outcome than a second NATO war by proxy with Poland playing the role of Ukraine.

However, war, unlike the tango, doesn’t take two. No matter what the immediate outcome of the Special Military Operation turns out to be, any negotiated settlement is even less likely to hold for the intermediate term than the Treaty of Versailles. Once the US-China war begins, Russia is almost certainly going to set itself to completing the task of de-NATOing Europe and excising the neoclown influence from the continent.

So, ironically, it might be better for Americans – though much worse for Europeans – if the neoclowns were to choose war with Russia and be comprehensively defeated even before the anticipated war with China, than opting for a short-term peace that will guarantee war on two fronts with two better-prepared and strategically-superior opponents.

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of a Naval Era

After 80 years, the United States Navy is no longer the dominant naval power on Earth.

Moscow and Beijing conducted large-scale naval drills in the Sea of Japan this week, Russia’s Pacific Fleet announced in a statement to journalists on Sunday. The three-day exercise involved a wide range of activities, including joint firing drills, a simulated naval battle, and air defense training.

The ‘North/Cooperation-2023’ exercise was held over July 20-23, the fleet’s press service said. It involved two Russian anti-submarine war frigates and two Chinese destroyers, as well as a pair of both Russian corvettes and Chinese guard ships alongside a number of support vessels, the statement said.

A total of 30 aircraft from both nations also took part in the drills, the fleet said, adding that this included anti-submarine planes and helicopters, interceptors and other maritime aircraft, the fleet said. The two nations’ naval groups took part in some 20 combat exercises during the drills, it added.

The drills were aimed at “strengthening the naval cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China as well as maintaining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific Region,” the statement said.

This is significant because it is a signal that the Russians and Chinese are now confident that their combined naval power rivals that of the USA. I expect it will not be too long now before China announces that the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits are off-limits, dares the USN to challenge the ban, and the USN subsequently backs down after mumbling some meaningless phrases about “the freedom of the seas”.

How can we be so certain that China is now a greater sea power than the USA? After all, while the USN has fewer ships than the PLN, it has the advantage of more experience, better quality ships, and more of the aircraft carriers that have been the heart of all naval power since 1941. The reason is twofold. First, as we’ve seen in Ukraine, air power is now vulnerable to air defense systems to a much greater extent than before. Any air strike from a carrier against a first-tier military target is likely to lose more than half the planes it launches.

Second, and more important, China can rapidly replace its naval losses in the event of a war. The USA cannot. In fact, China’s shipbuilding advantage over the USA now exceeds the historical advantage that the USA enjoyed over Japan in WWII by a considerable margin.

A U.S. Navy briefing slide is calling new attention to the worrisome disparity between Chinese and U.S. capacity to build new naval vessels and total naval force sizes. The data compiled by the Office of Naval Intelligence says that a growing gap in fleet sizes is being helped by China’s shipbuilders being more than 200 times more capable of producing surface warships and submarines. This underscores longstanding concerns about the U.S. Navy’s ability to challenge Chinese fleets, as well as sustain its forces afloat, in any future high-end conflict.

The most eye-catching component of the slide is a depiction of the relative Chinese and U.S. shipbuilding capacity expressed in terms of gross tonnage. The graphic shows that China’s shipyards have a capacity of around 23,250,000 million tons versus less than 100,000 tons in the United States. That is at least an astonishing 232 times greater than the United States.

Consider the implications of this massive capacity delta in light of the historic difference between US and Japanese manufacturing between 1942 and 1945.

Shipping Tonnage Produced, 1942 to 1945

—————-1942———-1943————1944———-1945

USA—–6,252,300—15,153,000—14,580,000—8,804,900

Japan——511,100—-1,023,000——1,929,200—–626,300

delta——-1223%——–1481%————757%——-1406%

Speaking of aircraft carriers, Japan was only able to build 9 carriers over the course of the war, some of which were never launched, while the US launched 120, many of which were surplus to requirements.

Aircraft produced, 1942 to 1945

———–1942——-1943——-1944——-1945

USA—-47,800—–85,900—–96,300—–46,000

Japan—8,900—–16,700—–28,200—–11,100

delta—–537%——-514%——-342%——-414%

And while it is theoretically possible for the US to signficantly expand its industrial capacity in order to reduce its disadvantage, the political, ideological, and demographic realities render that improbable to the point of total impossibility. The US corpocracy’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equality is actively reducing its current capabilities, which means there is no way it can reasonably be expected to expand them successfully.

I’d always thought that the end of US naval dominance would be the consequence of a Sicilian Expedition that resulted in the unexpected sinking of one or more aircraft carriers. But thanks to Ukraine and the offshoring of US industrial capacity, we appear to have passed that historical point in relative peace and without any fireworks.

DISCUSS ON SG

It’s Not About the Economics

In which we see, once more, that those who believe material elements, such as greed or individual ambition, are the primary driver of all human action, have no capacity for understanding or anticipating future events.

Economic logic provides that the U.S. (and European) economy would be better off by avoiding a conflict with Russia and China. But, as Micheal Hudson explains, this now gets overwritten by national security preferences which have remarkable conseqences:

Instead of isolating Russia and China and making them dependent on U.S. economic control, U.S. unipolar diplomacy has isolated itself and its NATO satellites from the rest of the world – the Global Majority that is growing while NATO economies are rushing ahead along their Road to Deindustrialization. The remarkable thing is that while NATO warns of the “risk” of trade with Russia and China, it does not see its loss of industrial viability and economic sovereignty to the United States as a risk.

This is not what the “economic interpretation of history” would have forecast. Governments are expected to support their economy’s leading business interests. So we are brought back to the question of whether economic factors will determine the shape of world trade, investment and diplomacy. Is it really possible to create a set of post-economic NATO economies whose members will come to look much like the rapidly depopulating and de-industrializing Baltic states and post-Soviet Ukraine?

This would be a strange kind of “national security” indeed. In economic terms it seems that the U.S. and European strategy of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive and far-reaching an error that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.

The question is really why the U.S. is doing this harm to itself instead of following Brzezinski’s and Kissinger’s advice. As Yves Smith says in her preface to Hudson’s piece, it is a quite bizarre spectacle:

One of the subthemes of the latest offering from Michael Hudson on the bizarre spectacle of the US escalating against China is puzzlement that the West is not operating in its best interest. Lambert has been chewing over this conundrum too. Perhaps it’s that they really do believe their propaganda, and still don’t recognize that the military and economic clout of the US/EU bloc on a relative basis isn’t anywhere near substantial enough for them to push the rest of the world around. But you think their self-delusion would have started to crack with the failure in their efforts to pressure many countries, such as India and South Africa, to side with the US and condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and now with the supposedly superior US/NATO war machine not performing too well.

Another possibility is the so-called Iron Law of Institutions, that individuals and interests are operating to maximize their own position, with little/no concern to the impact on the system.

I have come to the conclusion that the main actors in this game, the Bindens, Blinkens, Sullivans and their bipartisan supporters, are driven by a blind ideology that has dismissed or replaced global realities with wishful thinking.

The failure of their sanctions against Russia should have demonstrated to them that the real word is by far not the one in which they believe to be living. They however are now repeating their errors by waging a similar war against China.

The U.S. Wars Against Russia And China Have No Economic Logic Attached To Them, 22 July 2023

It’s fascinating how the material mind reaches out in every direction but the correct one. But Sherlock Holmes had it backwards. Once you have eliminated all of the probabilities, the appropriate action is to conclude that what you hitherto believed to be impossible may be the truth.

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Putin Warns Poland and NATO

When the NATO leaders are calling the President of Russia “mad” and “crazy”, they are clearly engaged in emotional projection. Compare the difference between the mastery of the historical aspects of the current situation by Putin with the media histrionics and the disjointed ramblings of the unelected US figurehead, Biden. It’s also clear that Putin knows who Russia’s real enemies are.

Both the Europeans and European elites see that support for Ukraine is, in fact, a dead end, an empty, endless waste of money and effort, and in fact, serving someone else’s interests, which are far from European: the interests of the overseas global hegemon, which benefits from the weakening of Europe. The endless prolongation of the Ukrainian conflict is also beneficial to it.

Judging by the actual state of affairs, this is exactly what today’s US ruling elites are doing. Anyways, this is the logic they follow. It is largely questionable whether such a policy is in line with the American people’s true, vital interests; this is a rhetorical question, and it is up to them to decide.

However, massive efforts are being taken to stoke the fire of war – including by exploiting the ambitions of certain East European leaders, who have long turned their hatred for Russia and Russophobia into their key export commodity and a tool of their domestic policy. And now they want to capitalise on the Ukrainian tragedy.

In this regard, I cannot refrain from commenting on what has just been said and on media reports that have come out about plans to establish some sort of the so-called Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian unit. This is not about a group of mercenaries – there are plenty of them there and they are being destroyed – but about a well-organised, equipped regular military unit to be used for operations in Ukraine, including to allegedly ensure the security of today’s Western Ukraine – actually, to call things by their true name, for the subsequent occupation of these territories. The outlook is clear: in the event Polish forces enter, say, Lvov or other Ukrainian territories, they will stay there, and they will stay there for good.

And we will actually see nothing new. Just to remind you, following WWI, after the defeat of Germany and its allies, Polish units occupied Lvov and adjacent territories that had been part of Austria-Hungary.

With its actions incited by the West, Poland took advantage of the tragedy of the Civil War in Russia and annexed certain historical Russian provinces. In dire straits, our country had to sign the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and recognise the annexation of its territories.

Even earlier, back in 1920, Poland captured part of Lithuania – the Vilnius region, a territory surrounding the present-day Vilnius. So they claimed that they fought together with the Lithuanians against so-called Russian imperialism, but then immediately snatched a piece of land from their neighbour as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

As is well known, Poland also took part in the partition of Czechoslovakia following the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938, by fully occupying Cieszyn Silesia.

In the 1920-1930s, Poland’s Eastern Borderlands (Kresy) – a territory that comprises present-day Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and part of Lithuania – witnessed a tough policy of Polonisation and assimilation of local residents, with efforts to suppress local culture and Orthodoxy.

I would also like to remind you what Poland’s aggressive policy led to. It led to the national tragedy of 1939, when Poland’s Western allies threw it to the German wolf, the German miliary machine. Poland actually lost its independence and statehood, which were only restored thanks in a large measure to the Soviet Union. It was also thanks to the Soviet Union and thanks to Stalin’s position that Poland acquired substantial territory in the west, German territory. It is a fact that Poland’s western lands are a gift from Stalin.

Have our Warsaw friends forgotten this? We will remind them.

Today we see that the regime in Kiev is ready to go to any length to save its treacherous hide and to prolong its existence. They do not care for the people of Ukraine or Ukrainian sovereignty or national interests.

They are ready to sell anything, including people and land, just like their ideological forefathers led by Petlyura, who signed the so-called secret conventions with Poland in 1920 under which they ceded Galicia and Western Volhynia to Poland in return for military support. Traitors like them are ready now to open the gate to their foreign handlers and to sell Ukraine again.

As for the Polish leaders, they probably hope to form a coalition under the NATO umbrella in order to directly intervene in the conflict in Ukraine and to bite off as much as possible, to “regain,” as they see it, their historical territories, that is, modern-day Western Ukraine.

Meeting with permanent members of the Security Council, 21 July 2023

This is one of Putin’s most important speeches since he called out “the Empire of Lies” and when he announced the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. It’s both a warning to the ambitious Polish leadership and an explanation of why the Russian military is increasing its activity; it will not be a surprise to any student of Russian military history if the Russians begin twin offensives once the Ukrainian counteroffensive is definitively over. It’s also a definitive marker of the NATO-Russian war entering a new and more dangerous phase.

Putin has openly called his shots since 2014. He’s given this enemies the opportunity to back down and avoid conflict. He’s also carried through with his threats. And he’s clearly promising the Poles that if they intervene to prop up the Kiev regime – even if their primary interest is to take former Polish land in Western Ukraine – Russia will take Stalin’s gift of the former German territories away from them.

While the Poles hate and fear Russia, one hopes that they will still have enough sense and self-interest to take this warning seriously. What profit it a Pole to gain Lvov for only to lose both it and Danzig?

DISCUSS ON SG