Someone is All Talk

The question is, is it Iran or is it Israel?

Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: “Iran is preparing for a large-scale preemptive strike against Israel. We have no choice but to strike Iran again.”

Iran: “Iran has officially stated that if Israel carries out an attack or any terrorist action this time, it will be considered an official declaration of war. This time Iran will not accept any truce and will show no mercy — the strike will be delivered in such a way that nothing but ruins will remain of Israel.

Given that both sides are given to nonsensical rhetoric, it’s hard to take either side very seriously. But on the balance of things, and given the obvious imbalance of size and military power, one tends to suspect that it’s Israel. Iran has no need to prepare for a large scale preemptive strike since it was already exhausting Israel’s air defenses before the ceasefire, therefore it is likely that Gallant’s claim is false and intended to justify another preemptive strike by Israel.

Although given the complete failure of the first one, one wonders what they think they’re going to accomplish this time around.

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Japan Opts Out

In which /pol/ summarizes a paywalled Financial Times article on the Japanese government making it clear to Japanese companies that it has no intention of antagonizing China over Taiwan island.

Japanese government officials are telling companies they would be “on their own” if they needed to evacuate staff from Taiwan in case of a Chinese attack, according to people familiar with the matter, a message that has hit one of Taiwan’s largest sources of foreign direct investment. Tokyo’s warning highlights the practical and political difficulties for governments and companies in the region of preparing for a potential cross-Strait war. Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory, and has threatened to take it by force if Taipei refuses indefinitely to submit to its control.

The US military has been discussing operational plans for such a scenario with its allies, but obtaining political commitments has proven more challenging. The Financial Times reported last week that the Pentagon had pressed Japan and Australia to clarify what role they would play in a US-China war over Taiwan, frustrating Tokyo and Canberra.

Two Japanese officials told the FT that, under the country’s pacifist constitution, its military could only be deployed abroad with approval from a host government. Given that Japan does not recognise Taiwan diplomatically — as with all but 12 countries in the world — there “is no government in Taiwan from our viewpoint”, one of the officials said. They added that China was unlikely to grant the Japanese military approval to conduct evacuations.

Although the Japanese government has never confirmed this line as its official position, companies have been receiving the warnings for about three years, diplomats and corporate executives said. Japanese diplomats told company risk officers that “you are on your own if you put significant assets in Taiwan”, said one person present at one of the conversations.

While the new LDP leader has made noises about modifying Japan’s constitution to permit more aggressive foreign policy and military actions, the longtime ruling party isn’t in a very strong position as a new nationalist party founded in 2020, Sanseito, is rapidly rising thanks to the LDP bowing to Clown World’s demands that it relax Japan’s once-formidable barriers to immigration.

In a recent Kyodo News poll conducted from July 5–6, the party ranked second in proportional representation support, behind only the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). For a group that was initially dismissed as fringe, the rise is both dramatic and deeply concerning to many observers. With rhetoric that echoes Trumpism and European ultranationalism, it has become the most talked-about — and most unsettling — dark horse in Japanese politics.

From Berlin to Washington, from Moscow to Tokyo, the True Right is inevitable.

For decades, Japan’s stagnant wages, aging population and growing inequality have bred quiet despair. Conventional parties like the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) are widely viewed as corrupt, stale and incapable of offering real change. Into this void stepped Sanseito.

The LDP and the CDP are not merely “widely viewed” as “corrupt, stale and incapable of offering real change”, like their counterparts in every Western nation, they are corrupt, stale, and incapable offering real change. Which is why their eventual replacement, one way or another, is inevitable.

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On Self-Determination and Failed Rhetoric

We are told that Taiwan is an international flash point and the USA is honor-bound to defend Tawian against reunification with the mainland because, and I quote: “Taiwan’s 23 million people deserve self-determination”.

Why didn’t the 9,103,332 people of the Confederate States of America deserve self-determination?

Why don’t the 4,543,126 people of Palestine deserve self-determination?

Why didn’t the 10.3 million people of the separatist oblasts of Ukraine deserve self-determination?

Why don’t the 8,012,231 people of Catalunya deserve self-determination?

Self-determination is just another Enlightenment inversion. It means that Clown World will claim it is a casus belli whenever it wants a war, and use military force to deny whenever it fears losing control. Unless the USA is going to go to war with Israel, Ukraine, and Spain, and permit the former-Confederate states to depart the Union in peace, it has absolutely no business claiming any right or responsibility to “defend” one part of China from the rest of it.

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Iran and the 5D Chess

Larry Johnson contemplates Iran’s new stance on nuclear negotiations:

A senior Iranian political figure has told Iranian Press TV that Iran is rethinking its approach to nuclear negotiations and will not enter new talks using the same framework or agenda.

Referring to the U-S request to resume negotiations, the source emphasized that any talks must align with the real security dynamics of the region. He expressed skepticism about the US intentions for peace, stating that the goal of Washington is to disarm Iran to compensate for Israel’s weakness in the next potential war. The political figure added any new negotiations must include serious and practical guarantees including scrutiny of Israel’s nuclear and WMD programs, credible punishment of the regime (i.e., Israel) and compensation to Iran. He stressed in the absence of these conditions, negotiations will merely serve as a prelude to war. He added Tehran is willing to “offer another opportunity” but requires evidence that U.S. negotiator Witkoff is pursuing peace rather than escalation.

There you have it. Iran is willing to talk but only if the conditions outlined above are met by Washington. This means there will be no further negotiations and that Iran will busy itself preparing for the next US/Israeli attack. Iran’s requirement that Israel be subjected to the same type of scrutiny of its nuclear program as Iran is a new, but not surprising, demand. While Iran’s demands are reasonable, I cannot imagine any scenario where Trump would agree.

This is where the rubber meets the road. The Short Trump certainly appears to be in Netanyahu’s pocket. But if – and only if – the USA agrees to Iran’s conditions and forces Israel to be subject to the same inspections of its nuclear capabilities by neutral international parties for the first time, we have to at least be open to the possibility that there is some sort of more complicated scenario in play.

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They Hate Their People

Between Angela Merkel blessing the third world invasion of her country and her current successor in the Chancellorship, Friedrich Merz, promising German-assisted long-range missile strikes on Russia, it’s eminently clear that the German politicians hate the German people.

If Germany provides weapons (Taurus) and material assistance to Ukraine to target inside Russia (The Kiev Dictatorship can’t operate these missiles without German direct input). There is a real possibility that Russia will strike weapons production and transit sites in Germany.

Fortunately, Vladimir Putin is a patient man and he is unlikely to target civilian centers in Germany. Unfortunately, he has shown real restraint in not taking out the enemy political elites that are so willing to sacrifice the masses.

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The Wrong Lesson

The grand strategery of Clown World is quite possibly going to get an enormous number of soldiers killed because their abject retardery knows no bounds. This is what purports to be a military history piece encouraging direct US and European intervention published a year ago by the director of something called “Lazard Geopolitical Advisory” which makes an excellent case for never taking the advice of Lazard Geopolitical Advisory:

Northern Russia must have felt bitterly cold to U.S. soldiers, even though nearly all were from Michigan. On Sept. 4, 1918, 4,800 U.S. troops landed in Arkhangelsk, Russia, only 140 miles from the Arctic Circle. Three weeks later, they were plunged into battle against the Red Army among towering pine forests and subarctic swamps, alongside the British and French. Ultimately, 244 U.S. soldiers died from the fighting over two years. Diaries of U.S. troops paint a harrowing picture of first contact:

We run into a nest of machine-guns, we retire. [Bolsheviks] still shelling heavily. Perry and Adamson of my squad wounded, bullet clips my shoulder on both sides. … Am terribly tired, hungry and all in, so are the rest of the boys. Casualties in this attack 4 killed and 10 wounded.

These unlucky souls represented just one prong of the sprawling and ill-fated Allied intervention in the Russian civil war. From 1918 to 1920, the United States, Britain, France, and Japan sent thousands of troops from the Baltics to northern Russia to Siberia to Crimea—and millions of dollars in aid and military supplies to the anti-communist White Russians—in an abortive attempt to strangle Bolshevism in its crib. It’s one of the most complicated and oft-forgot foreign-policy failures of the 20th century…

Despite the current pall of pessimism pervading Western capitals, today’s war in Ukraine presents some of the more propitious circumstances a policymaker could hope for—unlike those faced by the Allies during the Russian civil war. Ukraine is a worthy and competent ally, fighting to defend its territory with a highly motivated population behind it. The Ukrainian cause is a righteous one, with a Manichean quality to it easily explained to Western publics. While Putin’s personal will to win is strong, it’s clear by his actions and hesitancy to fully mobilize Russian society that he senses a ceiling on what he can ask from his population. Though Russia’s manpower and materiel are larger than Ukraine’s, the amount needed to keep Ukraine armed and in the fight is completely manageable. A $60 billion aid supplement from the United States—currently held up by far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives—is a pittance compared with the returns: holding the line on international norms; standing up for the Ukrainians and, in doing so, Western values; bogging down Russia in a strategic sinkhole and reducing its capacity to threaten the rest of NATO’s eastern flank; and fortifying the trans-Atlantic alliance. Today, Western capitals are much more united than they were in 1918, and defense coordination among them is strong. Though they can sharpen the shared sense of an endgame in Ukraine, everybody knows that the conflict will end in some sort of negotiated settlement—the questions will be on whose terms.

If the United States and its allies can avoid the pitfalls of the Western intervention in the Russian civil war—developing a clear long-term strategy, continuing to coordinate closely, and reinforcing domestic support by making the case to their own populations—then they have a real shot of prevailing over Putin. 

Despite the current pall of pessimism pervading Western capitals, today’s war in Ukraine presents some of the more propitious circumstances a policymaker could hope for—unlike those faced by the Allies during the Russian civil war. Ukraine is a worthy and competent ally, fighting to defend its territory with a highly motivated population behind it. The Ukrainian cause is a righteous one, with a Manichean quality to it easily explained to Western publics. While Putin’s personal will to win is strong, it’s clear by his actions and hesitancy to fully mobilize Russian society that he senses a ceiling on what he can ask from his population. Though Russia’s manpower and materiel are larger than Ukraine’s, the amount needed to keep Ukraine armed and in the fight is completely manageable. A $60 billion aid supplement from the United States—currently held up by far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives—is a pittance compared with the returns: holding the line on international norms; standing up for the Ukrainians and, in doing so, Western values; bogging down Russia in a strategic sinkhole and reducing its capacity to threaten the rest of NATO’s eastern flank; and fortifying the trans-Atlantic alliance. Today, Western capitals are much more united than they were in 1918, and defense coordination among them is strong. Though they can sharpen the shared sense of an endgame in Ukraine, everybody knows that the conflict will end in some sort of negotiated settlement—the questions will be on whose terms.

If the United States and its allies can avoid the pitfalls of the Western intervention in the Russian civil war—developing a clear long-term strategy, continuing to coordinate closely, and reinforcing domestic support by making the case to their own populations—then they have a real shot of prevailing over Putin. 

This is totally insane advice. In addition to the obvious fact that a) there is zero domestic support for war with Russia in any country outside of the Baltics and Finland, b) the Russian industrial advantage with regards to weaponry, vehicles, missiles, and ammunition is insurmountable, and c) Russia’s global allies outproduce, outnumber, and outgun the entire forces of the West, the historical invaders had one massive advantage that Russia’s current enemies lack.

The Western forces of 1918 had the ability to transport and stage their troops without fear of being attacked. In 2025, any trans-oceanic transports carrying men and materials to invade Russia will be sunk with hypersonic missiles long before they come anywhere close to the Russian coast. Not only that, but the entire logistics line leading all the way back to factories in Dusseldorf and Columbus, Ohio is similarly vulnerable to complete destruction.

The inability of Clown World’s elite to understand that it is no longer 1950, much less 1918, is truly remarkable. Andrei Martyanov is absolutely right to denigrate and disregard the military doctrine of the Western militaries, because their grasp on the history of warfare and how it applies to the present appears to be nonexistent.

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Russia Acknowledges WWIII

In my opinion, WWIII began in the spring of 2014 with the US-backed coup given the highly Orwellian name “the Revolution of Dignity” and the Russian occupation of Crimea. This is similar how WWII actually began eight years before most people realized with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. But regardless, it’s clear that the Russian intellectual elite are fully aware of the situation.

Many now speak of humanity’s drift towards World War III, imagining events similar to those of the 20th century. But war evolves. It will not begin with a June 1941 Barbarossa-style invasion or a Cuban Missile Crisis-style nuclear standoff. In fact, the new world war is already underway – it’s just that not everyone has recognized it yet.

For Russia, the pre-war period ended in 2014. For China, it was 2017. For Iran, 2023. Since then, war – in its modern, diffuse form – has intensified. This is not a new Cold War. Since 2022, the West’s campaign against Russia has grown more decisive. The risk of direct nuclear confrontation with NATO over the Ukraine conflict is rising. Donald Trump’s return to the White House created a temporary window in which such a clash could be avoided, but by mid-2025, hawks in the US and Western Europe had pushed us dangerously close again.

This war involves the world’s leading powers: the United States and its allies on one side, China and Russia on the other. It is global, not because of its scale, but because of the stakes: the future balance of power. The West sees the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia as existential threats. Its counteroffensive, economic and ideological, is meant to put a halt to that shift.

It is a war of survival for the West, not just geopolitically but ideologically. Western globalism – whether economic, political, or cultural – cannot tolerate alternative civilizational models. Post-national elites in the US and Western Europe are committed to preserving their dominance. A diversity of worldviews, civilizational autonomy, and national sovereignty are seen not as options, but as threats.

This explains the severity of the West’s response. When Joe Biden told Brazil’s President Lula that he wanted to “destroy” Russia, he revealed the truth behind euphemisms like “strategic defeat.” Western-backed Israel has shown how total this doctrine is – first in Gaza, then Lebanon, and finally Iran. In early June, a similar strategy was used in attacks on Russian airfields. Reports suggest US and British involvement in both cases. To Western planners, Russia, Iran, China and North Korea are part of a single axis. That belief shapes military planning.

Compromise is no longer part of the game. What we’re seeing are not temporary crises but rolling conflicts. Eastern Europe and the Middle East are the two current flashpoints. A third has long been identified: East Asia, particularly Taiwan. Russia is directly engaged in Ukraine, holds stakes in the Middle East, and may become involved in the Pacific.

The war is no longer about occupation, but destabilization. The new strategy focuses on sowing internal disorder: economic sabotage, social unrest, and psychological attrition. The West’s plan for Russia is not defeat on the battlefield, but gradual internal collapse.

The irony, of course, is that it is not Russia that is being destabilized, but all of the Western governments from France to the USA. Influence and subversion are no substitute for material power once the latter is aware of the situation.

But regardless, the author is correct. “The time for illusions is over.”

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50 Days to Ceasefire

President Trump inadvertently encourages the Russian Army to launch its summer offensives:

Axios now reports that Putin allegedly told Trump he plans to ‘intensify’ the Russian summer offensive in the next 60 days, with the goal—according to some sources—purportedly being to capture the remainder of nominal Russian territory, i.e. Donetsk, Lugansk, and Zaporozhye oblasts.

If there’s any hint of truth to such reports, then Trump’s “50-day notice” would seem to line up with Putin’s timeline, given that the conversation happened days ago, and thus Putin’s “60-day plan” would fall almost precisely on Trump’s deadline.

The basic interpretation of that could be that Trump is giving Russia two months to capture whatever territory it claims belongs to it, then “the hammer” will come down.

In conclusion: the entire charade appears to be a sneaky but brilliant act of jugglery by Trump, wherein he once again gives the appearance of major ‘action’ against Russia to silence critics and placate neocons, while in actuality doing little to further Ukraine’s war efforts, apart from plugging the previous status quo back onto life support. The act is meant to play both sides, relieving pressure on himself, while not overly risking his relationship with Putin in the hopes he can still clinch his big Nobel-earning armistice.

Color me dubious. Putin isn’t just going for capturing the rest of the four oblasts that were annexed to Russia, they’ve already got troops in at least two additional oblasts and I don’t see any chance that the Russians agree to a ceasefire until they control Odessa.

I think it’s more likely that this will a) extract more money from Europe and b) allow Trump to kick the can down the road again when the 50-day period is up. It also gives saner parties in Ukraine time to get rid of the current Kiev regime in order to be in a position to reach a lasting agreement in two months.

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It’s Not a Concentration Camp

It’s a humanitarian concentration city for Palestinians.

Israel is preparing to establish a so-called “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian enclave’s entire population is to be moved, the country’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has announced. Critics of the initiative promptly branded the “city” an internment camp and warned of potentially widespread human rights abuse.

The “humanitarian city” is expected to initially accommodate some 600,000 Palestinians – primarily displaced persons living in the coastal Mawasi area to the northwest of Rafah, Katz told reporters on Monday. Eventually, all of the estimated 2.2 million Gazans will be placed into the “city,” which is to be secured by the Israeli military from a distance and run by unspecified international organizations, the minister stated.

The Palestinians will undergo screening before being placed into the “city” to ensure no Hamas operatives slip in, Katz noted. The scheme is ultimately designed to displace the entire Gaza population and encourage it to “voluntarily emigrate” from the enclave elsewhere, the minister admitted. Those who end up in the zone will not be allowed to return to other parts of Gaza, he added.

The defense ministry has already begun planning for the zone, according to Katz.

To claim special victim status on the basis of historical events from five generations ago and use it to engage in the kind of vicious ethnic cleansing we’re witnessing in real-time now is simply unreal. And unacceptable.

This might be enough to wake up the average Boomer, though probably not the average Boomer Christian Zionist.

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How the US Navy Lost the High Seas

In fairness, the US Navy hasn’t actually lost its dominance over the bluewater oceans yet. But it will as soon as it is put to the test, as previous naval powers have before:

No matter what they say, armed forces prepare for the war they want to fight. Before Pearl Harbor, the United States and Imperial Japanese navies built mirrored fleets centered around lines of battleships that would someday meet in mortal combat, which in the space of a single event — a Pacific Clash of Titans — would decide the destiny of nations.

Yet when war came, the efforts of both fleets, try as they might, could not make this happen. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s prophecy of “Seapower” mesmerized the U.S. and Japanese navies with the mutual conviction that a Pacific War could be decided by a single event: Another Tsushima or Trafalgar. Yet even if there were no way to achieve such a choreographed final fantasy, the idée fixe of decisive battle had become a way of life for both USN and IJN. This obsession with almighty battleships locked in a last battle led to the destruction of America’s prewar fleet in the first year of war, and then eventually, Japan’s.

Today, the Navy still pines for a Pacific fleet showdown, this time with China. It is still obsessing over its capital ship idée fixe (with carriers in place of battleships) — when, like 1941, its fleet is simply too small, too old, and too out of shape.

In World War II, the U.S. Navy was saved only by America’s titanic industrial power, which in 1941 was building two backup fleets: A “two ocean” armada, to be followed by and an even bigger one. That second force, 5000+ ships, was built de novo — as though out of nothing — in just four years. The Navy was saved, not by its adaptable resilience, but by American Captains of Industry.

In tragic contrast, the Imperial Japanese Navy — the most powerful fleet in the world in 1941 — had no backup. When faced with a U.S. shipbuilding monster, it was literally ground down by those 5,000 brand spanking new American hulls. In this sense, the Nihon Kaigun is very much like the U.S. Navy today. War came, and it simply could not replace ships lost.

Frankly, the Japanese actually built quite a few new ships during the war — just not enough. Likewise, there are no Captains of Industry to save the U.S. Navy today. China has 200 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States, and fabulous repair and maintenance that serves the entire maritime world. If America cannot build, repair, and maintain even its current, “incredibly shrinking” Navy, then it is no “maritime nation.”

What happens to the Navy that reaches the acme of power and success, and comes to believe that it will command the seas forever? That would be Great Britain from 1815-1914. For the Royal Navy, it meant atrophy, that invisible sclerosis hardening into an ossified way of life.

As it celebrates its always-triumphant orthodoxies, it also forgets how to think, it takes itself way too seriously, and it believes without a flicker of doubt that, to stay on top, the Fleet simply must keep doing what it has always done, in sufficient quantity and quality, of course. The Royal Navy may have survived on the basis of quantity and quality of ships.

Yet what about quality and originality of thought? A Navy Ethos that punishes new thinking, that throttles innovation, that cashiers criticism — all by the time proclaiming how it celebrates these things — is an ethos chained to its own “Rules of the Game.”

In this sort of culture, only the right people, who say the right things, and put on the right, bright face to the public can expect to move up. This is the sclerosis of success, and it is, for any society of war, the most dangerous disorder: For it cannot be cured from within. Thus, the strategic reckoning of the Royal Navy in World War I will be as nothing to what awaits its American Cousin, very soon.

There isn’t any material reason why a naval power with prodigious resources can’t completely reinvent itself in the new mode that is replacing the old one. And yet, it doesn’t happen, for much the same reason that very, very few business innovations come out of the leading corporations in the industries they dominate.

Too many people and too many organizational processes are too heavily invested in the current way of doing things to make the shift to the newer way before someone else proves its utility and thereby obtains a leading advantage that usually turns out to be conclusive. Unfortunately, unlike leading corporations, leading militaries can’t simply buy out the innovators and incorporate them into their own operations.

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