Tag: war

Ukraine is the New Hannibal

And apparently the media would like us to believe that the recent Ukrainian offensive is the greatest military maneuver since the double-envelopment at Cannae and Vladimir Putin is now out of options. Checkmate, Putin!

Ukraine has pulled off ‘one of the greatest counter attacks in modern history’: Military expert JUSTIN BRONK says Vladimir Putin has NO good options and Russia’s entire invasion force could COLLAPSE in worst defeat since WW2.

The long awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive to retake the southern city of Kherson finally began late last month.

However, many were dismayed by the relatively cautious pace at which Ukrainian forces were advancing, and pointed out that by making it so obvious that a counter-offensive was being prepared in Kherson, Kyiv had given the Russian Army more than a month to move some of its most elite remaining units and large numbers of supporting reserve units to block it.

The brilliance of this strategy his been revealed as of Wednesday last week, as a second Ukrainian force launched a smaller scale but much more mobile counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region to the north.

After initially breaking through the Russian frontlines at the town of Balakliya, Ukrainian armoured and mechanised brigades did not stop to consolidate their gains, but instead drove rapidly throughout the next two days and nights, deep into Russian-occupied territory.

As the Ukrainian commanders urgently rushed reinforcements in to consolidate and widen the narrow corridor of liberated towns, the spearhead units isolated and then bypassed the limited Russian reserve forces that tried to halt them at the small village of Sevchenkove and reached the southern edge of the crucial junction city of Kup’yansk on Friday morning.

In less than a week, more than 3,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory had been liberated, massive stockpiles of ammunition, weapons and armoured vehicles captured for use by Ukrainian forces, and the entire Russian position in North-Eastern Ukraine completely destabilised.

Russian forces have not suffered such a serious and rapid military defeat on the battlefield since the Second World War.

Worse still for Putin is that fact that he has no good options for how to react now.

The majority of his potentially mobile and elite units in Ukraine are still concentrated in Kherson to the south, and are facing a serious and ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive operation that cannot be ignored.

Furthermore, by signalling for so long that Kherson was target for liberation, Ukraine has baited Russia into accepting an attritional battle in a very militarily disadvantageous position.

If his forces stay put in the south, then the majority of Russia’s usable combat power will be trapped with their backs to the river and steadily ground down by a Ukrainian force that has much better supply lines, more troops and so can sustain an attritional artillery duel for longer.

However, if the Kherson front were to collapse, it would be such a political and military disaster coming soon after the stunning defeat in Kharkiv that Russian military morale might totally disintegrate, or Putin might even find himself threatened by discontented factions within the Russian power structure at home.

The media is reaching a level of detachment from reality that one seldom sees outside the economic news. Remember, most of the manpower being utilized in Ukraine are no more part of the Russian military than the Ukrainian forces are part of the US military. The Russians haven’t even bother to mobilize yet, which should tell you how little they are worried about the operations in Ukraine.

Except for the specialist arms supporting the militias, the Russian military is being reserved for the direct confrontation with NATO forces that is coming. Now, it may be that NATO forces are directly involved in the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives, which they actively boast about planning, or it may be that the Russians have been withdrawing to lure the Ukrainians out of their fortified positions in order to eliminate them more easily. We simply don’t know.

While estimates vary wildly, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had recaptured roughly 6,000 square kilometers – equivalent to the combined area of the West Bank and Gaza – of Ukraine’s overall land mass, around 600,000 square km. Russia had taken control of around a fifth of Ukraine since February 24.

Imagine if the media had covered the Ardennes Offensive this way.

What we know is that Russia still isn’t making use of its energy stranglehold over Europe, nor is it striking at the power plants of Germany, Poland, the UK, and other countries with which it is at war, even though doing so could probably force a complete surrender by the EU and Ukraine alike. Furthermore, Putin’s party, United Russia just won between 65 percent and 86 percent of the vote in the recent regional elections; Russian sentiment is very pro-Putin and to the extent that he is being criticized, it is because he has not prosecuted the war against NATO more aggressively.

So, what we can safely conclude is that this is just more “Ghost of Kiev” war fiction meant to justify the constant flow of money and arms to Ukraine, albeit on a grander scale.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Second Front

Although not the one we were anticipating.

ITEM: Azerbaijan officially confirms it is systematically striking targets on the sovereign territory of Armenia.

ITEM: Armenia is triggering CSTO article to request assistance from Russia amid Azerbaijani attack on the Republic of Armenia.

Azerbaijan won the 2020 Nargorno-Karabakh war and is supported by NATO, so it’s pretty obvious that this is an attempt to increase the pressure on Russia in the aftermath of the recent Ukrainian offensive. However, I doubt more war by proxy is going to impress the Russians, especially when they are already directly targeting Germany with their rhetoric.

DISCUSS ON SG

The EU Lost

The complete uselessness – actually, worse than uselessness – of the European Union can be seen in the way that it managed to lose a war in which it wasn’t even involved.

The EU has suffered severe political and economic damage from its handling of the situation in Ukraine, and can already be declared the loser in the conflict, the speaker of Hungary’s National Assembly claimed on Sunday.

Laszlo Kover, who is a member of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party, accused Brussels of failing to prevent the conflict through political means, with the result that it’s “unable to restore peace diplomatically.”

“Under external pressure, the EU is acting against its most basic economic interests and should already be considered a loser, regardless of which of the parties directly involved in fighting will declare itself the winner,” he said. Powers outside Europe are trying to condemn the bloc’s members to “military vulnerability, political subjugation, economic and energy incapacity, financial indebtedness and social disintegration,” with Brussels helping them to achieve this goal, the parliament speaker claimed.

The EU is grappling with soaring natural gas prices, the prospect of energy shortages in winter and spiking inflation in the wake of sanctions it imposed on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine.

The EU will surrender to Russia this winter, the USA permitting. And if the USA does not permit, several more member-states will follow Britain out the exit.

UPDATE: There is now a reasonable chance that Russia will declare war on Germany. And justifiably so. Fortunately, the Germans are already in such an energy-deprived state that a few targeted missile strikes against key power plants of the sort that were launched against Ukraine yesterday would probably suffice to bring Berlin to its knees.

Germany has crossed a red line with Russia by sending arms to Ukraine, Moscow’s ambassador in Berlin said on Monday. The decision undermined decades of reconciliation since the end of World War II and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the diplomat added.

“The very fact that the Ukrainian regime is being supplied with German-made lethal weapons, which are used not only against Russian military service members, but also the civilian population of Donbass, crosses the red line,” Ambassador Sergey Nechaev said in an interview with Izvestia newspaper.

He added that Berlin should have known better, “considering the moral and historic responsibility that Germany has before our people for the Nazi crimes.”

DISCUSS ON SG

Remember, Hope is a Virtue

While there is an alliance to save the world from the global satanists of the Were-West, I am, personally, more than a little dubious about this particular description of it. But there are most certainly anomalies extant that tend to weaken the mainstream perspective.

“When Donald Trump publicly left office for the optics, that was the signal for the real global take-down operations to begin. None of what has occurred since 2021 January could have occurred with Trump in office. We would have certainly been plunged into a civil war by this point. I think Roe vs Wade would have been all that would have been needed.

“The reason that we had to have a ‘Deep State’ plant in office is because we needed the optics, because we are going to have to right this boat, eventually. Donald Trump is the president of the United States of America today and he has been since January 20th, 2017. Donald Trump began his second term sometime between November the 7th and November the 14th, 2020.

“Donald Trump has never left but he had to leave publicly to allow this operation to occur. He’s going to have to come back publicly to salvage things after we’ve awakened people and accomplished all of the goals we needed to accomplish before we take the conflict overt.

“Joe Biden, by the way is not – I said earlier he’s a Deep State plant. Joe Biden’s job is to Judas-Goat all of the Deep State plants in the US Government and bureaucratic agencies. Joe Biden’s job is to help them think that they’ve won, basically.

“Joe Biden died March 31st 2019. The actor currently playing Joe Biden was installed by the White Hat Q Clearance Alliance in 2020, in such a way that the optics carried forth of the Presidency being stolen from the People of the United States, which is what had to happen. Joe Biden’s job, along with many other plants is to reveal the actors around them and help uproot them. I would say that he’s done a good job so far…

“Folks, I know that a lot of people have said that the war is won – and the war is won, in a sense. But right now, we are going through the mop-up phase and the mop-up phase is a dreadfully tough one, because that’s when they pull out all their dirty tricks. When you’ve cornered an animal, it fights the hardest. When you’ve cornered an animal that has nothing to lose, that’s where they’re at. They’re a cornered animal.

“The heads of the snakes were cut off early on; the Phoenician Families; some of them made deals, stayed alive a little bit longer than the others; some were executed immediately. The command structure has been neutered but the structure, itself has remained intact and we’re allowing that structure to crumble, so we can expose it and that is what we’re going through right now. That’s what we’re living through right now.

We know something is going on beneath the surface, but we really don’t know who and we also don’t know why. As an intellectual exercise, shake off your disappointment at Trump failing to cross the Rubicon and permitting the fraudulent 2020 election to stand, and consider what we know to be facts:

  • The high weirdness in Washington DC with the National Guard after the election.
  • The speed of the collapse of the neo-liberal world order.
  • The relative quiet in the Middle East.
  • The unexpected Supreme Court victories.
  • The strangeness surrounding the details of the Biden inauguration.
  • The Biden body doubles and general weirdness of the Biden hires.
  • The fake quasi-Nazi backdrop of Biden’s recent speech.
  • The disappearance from the public eye of many major figures in banking and in tech.
  • The recent deaths of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. (Yes, I know they’re old.)
  • The Russian invasion of Ukraine.
  • The excessive reaction of the neocons and the Western governments to what essentially amounts to a minor border dispute in Ukraine.
  • The growing intensity surrounding the Taiwan situation.
  • Trump’s endorsement of, and enthusiasm for, the vaxx.

Put together, none of these things prove anything, but they do tend to weaken the conventional narrative. The one thing that sticks out more than anything to me and puzzles me is the vaxx. So, here is a very random and most likely controversial thought – what if the vaxx was utilized to permit the hot shots to target the people of the machine embedded in the population?

That might explain why there were more hot shot lots distributed in Republican states than in Democratic states.

In any event, we’ll know this particular hopium is nonsense if Donald Trump is not arrested and China does not invade Taiwan before the end of March 2023.

DISCUSS ON SG

Play Stupid Energy Games

Win the prize of a cold, dark winter and an angry citizenry:

Russia is deliberately sabotaging the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline to spite the EU, European officials have claimed, questioning Moscow’s explanation for an indefinite delay in restoring service.

State-owned energy giant Gazprom informed its European customers on Saturday that it could not safely resume operations until it had fixed “oil leaks” discovered in a major turbine during a maintenance operation.

Nord Stream was set to come back online just after midnight Saturday morning after three days of maintenance. The leaks, reportedly affecting “cables connected to speed meters of a rotor,” were discovered during a technical inspection with the turbine’s German manufacturer Siemens. Moscow had earlier warned that the pipeline’s operation was threatened by sanctions, which had created a shortage of spare parts.

However, Siemens argued the company had alternate turbines at the compressor station where the leak had been discovered and could use one of those in case of a real emergency. “Such leaks do not normally affect the operation of a turbine and can be sealed on site,” they claimed.

European Commission spokesman Charles Michel condemned what he called Russia’s “use of gas as a weapon,” declaring it would not “change the resolve of the EU” as the bloc works toward “energy independence.”

Commission press service chief Eric Mamer slammed the “fallacious pretenses” he claimed Gazprom had used to shut down the pipeline, holding it up as proof of both their “cynicism” and their “unreliability as a supplier” and suggesting Moscow “prefer[red] to flare gas instead of honoring contracts.”

German parliamentary foreign affairs committee chair Michael Roth denounced the shutdown as “part of Russia’s psychological war against us” and accused President Vladimir Putin of “violat[ing] contracts without scruples….even at the expense of his own economic interests.”

Let’s get this straight. Europe has a perfectly operational natural gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, that it refuses to use. Russia has, quite reasonably, decided that it’s not interested in continuing to provide natural gas to the same countries that are a) sanctioning its people and b) arming and funding the Ukrainian war against Russia on the terms of those enemies.

Can you even imagine how many contracts have been violated by the European sanctions against Russia? This anti-Russian rhetoric is as ineffective as it is retarded. Frankly, I’m astonished that the Russians didn’t shut down the pipeline months ago.

Then again, it is rather amusing to see the Russians slowly dialing up the pain while simultaneously pretending that there is nothing they can do about it. As an award-winning cruelty artist, I have to say that I tend to approve of the sadistic diplomacy they have applied to this situation.

Germany’s initial Energy Saving Ordinance, in effect for the next six months:

  • Retail stores may no longer keep their doors open throughout the day to reduce electricity consumption for air conditioning when it is hot outside — and for heating on cold winter days.
  • Public buildings and monuments have to go dark at 10 p.m.
  • Illuminated advertising must be switched off after 10p.m., with only a few exceptions. If advertisements serve traffic safety, they remain switched on, for example, at railroad underpasses. Street lamps also remain on, and store windows may continue to be illuminated.
  • Monuments and other buildings may no longer be illuminated at night. At least not for purely aesthetic reasons. However, emergency lighting will not be switched off, and illumination is permitted for cultural events and public festivals.
  • In public buildings, halls and corridors will generally no longer be heated, and the temperature in offices will be limited to a maximum of 19 degrees. In places where heavy physical work is performed, temperatures will be even lower in the future. However, the restrictions do not apply to social facilities such as hospitals, daycare centers, and schools, where higher air temperatures are essential for the “health of the people who spend time there,” according to the Economy Ministry.
  • Cutting back on warm water. Likewise, in public buildings, instantaneous water heaters or hot water tanks should be switched off if they are mainly used for washing hands. Exceptions are made for medical facilities, schools, and daycare centers. Some cities go even further. There, the showers in swimming pools and sports halls will remain unheated.
  • Private pools may no longer be heated with gas and electricity, except for rehab centers, recreational facilities, and hotels. The new regulations will initially apply until the end of February.

DISCUSS ON SG

TikTok On the Clock

We’re going to owe an apology to the dead generals of WWI, whose famously idiotic refusal to reconsider their preferred strategies and tactics led to massive quantities of unnecessary bloodshed suddenly looks like military genius compared to the European generals of Clown World.

TikTokers and YouTubers could help the EU drive a wedge between the Russian government and the people, Germany and France have reportedly told other members of the bloc.

Ideas on how its members could influence Russian citizens were formulated in a document circulated ahead of this week’s high-level EU meeting in Prague, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The plan is meant for discussion behind closed doors, but the news agency said it had studied the document.

Berlin and Paris suggested enrolling popular video bloggers on platforms including YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and VK to help disseminate EU-funded teaching courses on “media literacy,” according to Bloomberg. The courses will supposedly explain to Russians why they should dismiss “Russian propaganda” and trust “independent information” that counters what the Russian government says.

This is a vivid demonstration of how those who possess the ability to influence others confuse it with the possession of actual power over others. It also underlines the complete helplessness of the European elite in the face of Russian economic and military power, to say nothing of their failure to grasp the comprehensive collapse of their neo-liberal ideology.

At this point, who can possibly take these lunatics seriously? How is every single government in the European Union not getting voted out of office in the next election?

“We’ve sent in the Redditors! We’ve provided our proxy troops with more money, weapons, and supplies than the US Marines ever had in the South Pacific! Nothing is working! What else can we do?”

“What about the Americans?”

“What about them? They want us to send in our troops before they’ll commit any of their own forces.”

“The sum total of our combined militaries couldn’t stand up to the Chechens, forget the Russian regulars!”

“Well, who else is there?”

“Guys, guys, you’re going about this all wrong! See, this is an INFORMATION war. We don’t need soldiers and artillery and ammunition. What we need is EDUCATION! Education and choreographed dance routines!”

“O. M. G. You are SO right!”

“That’s BRILLIANT!”

“You don’t… you don’t mean – “

“I do indeed. Send in the TikTokers!”

“Checkmate, Putin!”

DISCUSS ON SG

The Last of the Summer Offensive

The long-awaited Ukrainian summer offensive appears to have petered out even faster than the historical Ardennes Offensive that preceded the ultimate German collapse in WWII.

Ukraine’s much-heralded “counter-offensive” in Kherson has “failed miserably,” the Russian Defense Ministry insisted on Monday, listing estimated losses suffered by Kiev during the operation. Ukrainian forces had attempted to attack in three directions on orders of President Vladimir Zelensky but made no gains, Moscow explained.

Russian troops caused “great losses” to the Ukrainian attackers during the day’s battles, a statement read. Kiev saw 26 tanks, 23 armored fighting vehicles, nine more armored vehicles, and two SU-25 ground-attack jets destroyed, while more than 560 troops were lost, according to the summary.

Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian outlet Suspilne quoted Southern Command spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk as saying that “offensive actions in various directions” had begun, “including in the Kherson region.” She offered no details, however, saying only that “any military operation needs silence.”

By Monday evening, however, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine mentioned only a Russian attack near the village of Potemkino.

Kiev has been talking about a “Kherson counteroffensive” all summer, while soliciting more weapons and ammunition from its Western backers. In a video address to the people on Sunday, Zelensky vowed that “Ukraine will return” to Donbass – as well as Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Kherson and “definitely to Crimea.”

If WWII history is a reasonable guide, a new Russian offensive should be gearing up right about now. It’s not even autumn yet and already the European nations are observably beginning to panic.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Death of Davos Man

The postmodernist econo-cultural vision of Europe has failed abysmally, as the ambitions of its architects were always based on false foundations and vastly exceeded their capabilities. More than four-fifths of the world has rejected their evil vision; the active resistance to it has barely even begun to take form. But it is already clear that there will be no Great Reset, and the global imperialists who believed they were destined to rule the world and own everything in it will be lucky to survive the series of regime changes over the next decade that are among the probable consequences of the Euro-Russian War.

The leadership in Moscow is making it very clear, to internal and international audiences, the new deal consists in slow cooking the Kiev racket inside a massive cauldron while polishing its status of financial black hole for the collective West. Until we reach boiling point – which will be a revolution or a putsch.

In parallel, The Lords of (Proxy) War will continue with their own strategy, which is to pillage an enfeebled, fearful, Europe, then dressing it up as a perfumed colony to be ruthlessly exploited ad nauseam by the imperial oligarchy.

Europe is now a runaway TGV – minus the requisite Hollywood production values. Assuming it does not veer off track – a dicey proposition – it may eventually arrive at a railway station called Agenda 2030, The Great Narrative, or some other NATO/Davos denomination du jour.

As it stands, what’s remarkable is how the “marginal” Russian economy hardly broke a sweat to “end the abundance” of the wealthiest region on the planet.

Moscow does not even entertain the notion of negotiating with Brussels because there’s nothing to negotiate – considering puny Eurocrats will only be hurled away from their zombified state when the dire socio-economic consequences of “the end of abundance” will finally translate into peasants with pitchforks roaming the continent.

It may be eons away, but inevitably the average Italian, German or Frenchman will connect the dots and realize it is their own “leaders” – national nullities and mostly unelected Eurocrats – who are paving their road to poverty.

You will be poor. And you will like it. Because we are all supporting freedom for Ukrainian neo-nazis. That brings the concept of “multicultural Europe” to a whole new level.

It’s clear that the Russians have already concluded that they will have to separate the eastern half of Ukraine from the NATO-WEF regime in order to keep the Russian-speakers living there safe from the terrorist attacks of the desperate, and defeated, government in Kiev. The question is whether they will do so quickly, or if they will continue to proceed with the highly effective attrition warfare that is depleting US military resources while simultaneously putting economic pressure on the European governments.

My bet is on the latter. I suspect the Russians are less interested in regime change in Kiev than they are in Berlin, Paris, Rome, Warsaw, and Bern. They know perfectly well that the people of Europe are no more enthusiastic about “standing with Ukraine” than they are about “welcoming refugees”; the media narratives were always fake and wholly manufactured.

  • The EU will encounter “major challenges” due to the sanctions it imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has said.
  • Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus has rejected the notion that the Ukrainian conflict has been the sole reason for the economic problems now experienced around the globe. “This is self-inflicted, this is self-inflicted by the West. The Russian invasion just added to that.”
  • Budapest refuses to negotiate any further EU restrictions targeting Russian energy because there is no current alternative to supplies from Moscow, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Saturday.
  • With food prices up 15 percent, COVID-19 job losses and surging energy costs, more and more people are seeking support from different social services. Germany’s 962 food banks are supporting more than two million customers.
  • Beyond firewood and natural gas, energy prices in Croatia have skyrocketed in the past few months. It’s not just consumers feeling the squeeze – across the country, it essentially forces many small fuel stations out of business. The entire nation is preparing for the incoming winter with unease.
  • A group of Left-SPD lawmakers have had enough of the unprecedented Ukraine arms shipments following on the heels of Berlin boosting its military budget by €100 billion. They’ve sent a letter to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz with the title, “The weapons must be silent!” Instead of pumping weapons into a hot conflict with a nuclear-armed superpower, the group within Scholz’s own party are demanding the pursuit of a diplomatic negotiations, pushing the Ukrainians to the peace talks table.

Davos Man is dead. And winter is coming.

DISCUSS ON SG

Proxy War 2.0

Ukraine is a proxy war between the USA and Russia and everyone knows it, including, most importantly, the Chinese. They also know that Taiwan is anticipated to be the next proxy war, which is why I expect Chairman Xi, who according to Lee Kwan Yew is the most intelligent senior actor on the international scene, to work out a peaceful alternative to shedding large quantities of Chinese blood on behalf of US neocons.

GLOBAL TIMES: Some argue that the US wants to use Taiwan as a “porcupine” and is ready to fight to the last drop of Taiwan people’s blood to weaken China just as what it did with Ukrainians. How do you view such an opinion? Does the US have such intent?

Berletic: This is actually the most likely scenario – using Taiwan as a proxy against the rest of China to exhaust it politically, economically, and militarily. The US is indeed conducting a similar proxy conflict against Russia through Ukraine. Many aspects of US interference in regards to Taiwan including political and military support, mirror what preceded the conflict now raging in Ukraine. The US deliberately picked a red line to Russia in regards to Ukraine and is now doing the same to China in regards to Taiwan. The US demonstrably doesn’t care about Taiwan’s future in any sense and has already begun preparing itself in terms of semiconductor production for a disruption in Taiwan Washington itself is attempting to create. The US will do everything in its power to realize this provocation by crossing red lines for China it knows cannot be ignored.

GLOBAL TIMES: Is there a trend that Washington is shifting from strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan to strategic clarity? Is this an adventurous move?

Berletic: The shift in Washington is one born out of desperation rather than adventurism. The US is out of time. China’s economic and military rise means that as each year goes by the US is less and less able to hold any sort of advantage over China should it provoke a conflict either directly or by proxy.

Empires are increasingly prone to fighting proxy wars in their final stages, because they simply do not possess the military might that was required to establish the empire in the first place. And they avoid direct confrontation for fear that they will be defeated; it’s much easier to spin and create separation from a proxy defeat than from a direct one. This foreign policy on the part of the empire’s foreign rulers is absolutely pro forma; history suggests that one should expect a domestic crackdown on regime critics to accompany the proxy wars that will almost certainly end in defeat.

DISCUSS ON SG

WW3 Mobilization Math

The Tree of Woe contemplates WW3 from a historical and statistical perspective, and reaches precisely the same conclusions I have.

Today, Russia spends 4.1% of its GDP on its military; America spends 3.5%; and China spends 2.1%. (Saudi Arabia, at 10.4%, and Israel at 5.2% are the two biggest spenders by ratio.) They are essentially on pre-war footing, demobilized.

To what extent could today’s superpowers match the mobilization of the WWII-era US and USSR?

According to the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), about one-third of military spending is on personnel. The remainder is on equipment and operations, both of which are highly demanding on the economy’s manufacturing and energy sectors. At the outbreak of World War II, manufacturing and energy accounted for approximately 30% of the American GDP. From that basis, America spent 40% of its GDP on war. As a first approximation, therefore, the maximum extent to which an economy can be mobilized for defense spending might be 133% of its manufacturing and energy GDP.

At present, manufacturing and energy make up 41% of China’s GDP, 30% of Russia’s GDP, and 20% of America’s GDP. Therefore, the maximum mobilization we would expect their economy to achieve would be 54% for China, 40% for Russia, and 27% for America.

Wait, you ask — Why can’t we just “build more factories?” Because it’s very difficult to rapidly grow manufacturing. The fastest large-scale improvement I have found in looking at data is a 3% increase in the share of manufacturing per year for a major economy. Achieving this during wartime, when manpower is diverted into uniform and infrastructure is under attack seems unlikely. A nation can rapidly convert its peacetime manufacturing to wartime manufacturing, but it cannot rapidly build manufacturing capability where none existed. I assume that maximum mobilization might increase by at most 1% per year from their present level.

Even when taking advantage of pre-existing industrial infrastructure, mobilization is never instantaneous. In its best year, the US was able to mobilize from 10% to 35% (1941 to 1942), and the USSR was able to mobilize from 20% to 55% (1942 to 1943). That suggests the absolute best possible mobilization is a 3.5 increase annually. It’s not clear to me that any of today’s great powers could match those, due to the vastly increased complexity and fragility of our supply chains. Therefore I assume that actual mobilization can at most double yearly, until the maximum mobilization is reached. Therefore I estimate the following:

In one year, America could achieve 7% mobilization; in two years, 15% mobilization; in three years, 30% mobilization; in four years 31%; in five years 32%.

In one year, China could achieve 5% mobilization; in two years, 10%; in three years 20%; in four years 40%; in five years 60%.

In one year, Russia could achieve 8% mobilization; in two years, 16%; in three years, 33%; in four years 44%; in five years 45%.

Now, in considering what mobilization as a percentage of GDP means, we need to be sure we are comparing apples to apples. A comparison of nominal GDP won’t do. At a minimum we need to use Purchasing Parity Power (PPP) adjusted GDP. But even that might understate the relative capabilities.

In a July 2017 white paper by the Heritage Foundation called “Putting Defense Spending in Context: Simple Comparisons are Inadequate,” the authors found:

For the equivalent investment in terms of U.S. dollars, China and Russia respectively have 1.7 times and 2.5 times the purchasing power within their domestic markets… Due to differences in purchasing power across economies, then, two countries could hypothetically field the same size and quality force at dramatically different spending levels.

For example, the Chinese Yuzhao-class landing platform dock (LPD) costs approximately $300 million to build and is most similar in terms of displacement and capability to the U.S. San Antonio-class LPD. However, the purchase price of the San Antonio-class LP exceeds $1.6 billion per unit…

In the March 2015 article “China’s Military and Growing Political Power,” the CEPR notes:

Using exchange rates comparisons significantly understates the Chinese military spending. A much more realistic assessment is obtained using PPP terms… China’s military budget was 18% of that of the US using market exchange rate comparisons, but 33% of the one of the US using PPP exchange rates…

The correct exchange rate with which to compare military spending would be a price or unit cost ratio of military services in each country… We use market exchange rates as a measure of relative military equipment costs facing each country… For relative operations costs, however, we use PPP exchange rates as a reasonable proxy… Finally, relative personnel costs are obtained using manufacturing wages, either gross or net of on-costs, since this represents the social opportunity cost of military employment.

This low relative military costs exchange rate implies a real value of China’s military spending of 40% of the US in real terms – larger than the level implied by using PPP rates of 33%, and much larger than the market exchange rate based figure of 18%.

Thus the best estimates are that in relative terms, we have to scale up China’s GDP by (40%/18%) = 220% in order to get an accurate picture of its potential mobilization. Unfortunately CEPR did not provide a similar ratio for Russia, but we can approximate it by multiplying Russia’s PPP multiplier (250% of nominal GDP) by (40%/33%) = 120%, for a total multiplier of 300%.

This is not a pretty picture if you like the Star-Spangled Banner. China’s military-effective GDP is already almost 200% the size of America’s military-effective GDP, and its effective military spending is 130% of our own! Meanwhile, Russia — currently mocked in the mainstream press as an economic weakling — is maintaining an effective military budget of 30% of America’s. Given that the US tries to maintain military power across the entire globe, while Russia only needs regional dominance, this should make us very uneasy about our relative capabilities.

It gets worse when we consider mobilization over time. Much, much worse. US deindustrialization has virtually crippled our large-scale mobilization, while China has become an Arsenal of Authoritarianism. Below I have tabulated each nation’s expected Mobilization Ratio and used that to calculate its Effective Military Spending (EMS) per year of World War Next.

The longer the war goes on, the worse it looks for America. In year one, America is able to spend 64% of China and Russia’s defense budget. By year five, America can only spend 26% of its rivals’ defense budgets.

The Tree of Woe’s detailed research backs up the previously observed historical analogy, which is to say that the USA and its European allies today are in much the same position that Germany and its allies were during WW2. Neither the superior quality of German and Japanese manufacturing nor the superior quality of German troops were sufficient to even begin to make up for the massive advantage in manpower and manufacturing enjoyed by the USA-USSR-UK alliance.

The Sino-Russian alliance alone dwarfs the manpower and manufacturing capacities of the NATO alliance, even if NATO’s prospective allies in South Korea, Japan, and Israel are included. And if the rest of the BRICSIA nations – who are already aligned with Russia in this global conflict – are included in the equation, the conclusion is even more heavily stacked against the Were-West.

The key is this: manufacturing capacity can be repurposed during wartime, but it cannot be constructed from scratch.

This mobilization math explains why the neocons and their pets presently presiding over the European nations have been so desperate to “win the war in Ukraine”. The Empire That Never Ended’s chances in the proxy war between Kiev and the Donbass republics were considerably better than its odds in either a regional war or a global war, although as we’ve seen, the proxy war has already been won by the two former Ukrainian republics.

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