Tag: war

And So It Begins

The Deep State and its pet judiciary are striking back at the God-Emperor:

A federal judge in Seattle has issued a two-week suspension of President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship. The move was “blatantly unconstitutional,” Judge John Coughenour said.

The order, signed by Trump immediately after taking office on January 20, sought to deny citizenship to children born in the United States if neither parent is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.

The decree has been met with a widespread backlash from Democrats and human rights campaigners. More than 20 Democratic-led states, along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, filed lawsuits in Boston and Seattle, arguing that Trump had violated the US Constitution. Immigrant and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have filed a lawsuit in New Hampshire.

The restraining order sought by Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington was the first such lawsuit to get a hearing before a judge. The ruling applies nationwide, however.

One can learn a lot about one’s enemy from the points which they choose to defend and what their priorities are. It’s interesting to see that protecting so-called “birthright citizenship” is clearly more important to the enemies of America than fighting the deportations. I suspect that one reason is that they feel birthright citizenship is more defensible; another might be that they know dual-citizenship is almost certainly a future target and it will be easier to outlaw once the ban on birthright citizenship is upheld.

Of course, this is going to be a battle. I suspect the ban will be upheld in a limited capacity, so that those designated “enemy combatants” will be barred from conveying citizenship on their children born in the United States. Then, of course, it’s a simple matter to clarify that the term “enemy combatant” includes everyone who has physically invaded the country.

However, it would be much more effective if President Trump simply ordered that none of his executive orders are subject to judicial branch review, which is of course his legal right under the Constitutional principle of the separation of powers. His other recourse would be to declare martial law and suspend the Constitution under the very valid principle of the ongoing foreign invasion of the United States.

But, of course, there are many different fronts to the war with Clown World.

US President Donald Trump is considering reducing his country’s military contingent in Europe by 20% as he reviews Washington’s commitment to the continent, Italian news agency ANSA has reported, citing EU diplomatic sources. If the pullout occurs, the number of US service personnel in Europe will decrease from around 100,000 to 80,000, the agency reported on Wednesday.

He would be wise to pull all the troops out of Europe and Japan. They can’t serve any purpose except as a six-month speed bump on either front, and there is a very good chance he’s going to need them at home. Remember, the Russians spent 27 million lives in defeating both the Germans and the Japanese during WWII. And the Russian federation has 75 percent of the population of the Soviet Union in 1940. Which means the only thing preventing Russia from invading and occupying the entirety of Europe is not the 100,000 US troops stationed there, but Russia’s lack of national interest in expanding its empire.

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The Decisive Front of WWIII

Nick Giambruno explains why he believes neither Ukraine nor Taiwan, but Iran, will be the decisive front in the world war that began in 2022.

I believe proxy warfare will likely determine who wins World War 3 and gets to shape the new world order. Proxy wars are a method by which major powers fight their battles indirectly, using smaller nations or groups as stand-ins rather than confronting each other directly. Major powers support, equip, and finance smaller groups or nations in a proxy war to fight against a common adversary. This support can include military training, weapons, funding, and other resources. The critical point is that the major powers do not engage directly in combat.

There are numerous ongoing proxy wars in World War 3.

However, the ones I believe will prove decisive will be in Taiwan, Ukraine, and the Middle East. The other proxy wars are peripheral in comparison. Unlike in Europe (Russia) or East Asia (China), there is no sophisticated nuclear power to deter NATO & Friends from more aggressive military action in the Middle East. Iran is, therefore, the weak link in the BRICS+ alliance to push for a multipolar world order. That’s why I expect NATO & Friends will make their last stand to scuttle the emergence of a multipolar world order and preserve the US-led world order in the Middle East…

Turkey and, by extension, NATO & Friends were popping champagne over Assad’s ouster. But the celebration may end soon as they realize they have bit off more than they can chew.

Turkey, the US, and Israel will be responsible for the chaos that comes out of Syria, which is likely to balkanize with unpredictable results.

In any case, I have little doubt that NATO & Friends will try to use growing Turkish influence as a way to reshape the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East in their favor as the arbitrary lines (imposed by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of a century ago) that define most modern Middle East nation states collapse.

In other words, NATO & Friends want an incipient Neo-Ottoman Empire to be the dominant power in the Middle East. BRICS+ wants Iran to be the dominant regional power. Nobody knows who will prevail in the Middle East and, by extension, WW3. The situation is fluid, volatile, and uncertain.

There is an excellent chance that NATO & Friends will lose in Ukraine and Taiwan. I think that means they will not be able to stop the emergence of a multipolar world order unless they subdue the Middle East. And they can’t do that unless they overthrow the government in Iran.

The fall of Assad is indeed a setback for BRICS+, but not a decisive defeat. If NATO & Friends want a decisive victory in the Middle East, they will need to take out the government in Iran. That’s why I think Iran will be the decisive battlefield of WW3.

It’s not an unreasonable analysis, but I’m not as confident that the Turks, with their desire for a neo-Ottoman empire, as as firmly allied with NATO & Friends as the anti-Syrian alliance made it appear. Turkey has, after all, applied to join BRICS+ and not necessarily as a trojan horse. I suspect that they will align with whichever side appears to be winning, and if both Ukraine and Taiwan are resolved before the Middle East – which one would assume will be the case – then there is a very good chance that Erdogan, or his successor, will take the opportunity to join the winning side and help put the final nail in the rules-based neoliberal world order.

I also think Japan and Korea will prove to be significant players, as I expect the Japanese to ultimately side with the Chinese in an attempt to escape their ongoing occupation by the US military. But the truth is that no one knows, no matter how persuasively they support their predictions.

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Germany Gives Up

Germany has stopped funding Ukraine. Which means every other European state will follow suit, especially when Trump takes office and the US gravy train stops.

Germany has officially stopped funding Ukraine.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has REFUSED to approve a further €3 billion in military aid for Ukraine.

It’s over.

The smartest thing European leaders can do now is drop all sanctions on Russia, return all the frozen funds to Russia, apologize to Vladimir Putin, and beg him to start the gas flowing to Western Europe again. It’s not smart to deny that you’ve lost an argument, a fight, or a war, because it’s an objectively obvious fact that everyone can observe.

The Allies demanded unconditional surrender from Germany. The Russians would be in their rights to do the same, but simply granting them their original demands will probably suffice. The sooner Clown World accepts that and does so, the better it will be for everyone.

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Ceasefire in Gaza

Whether the Gaza war was a genocide, a pyrrhic victory for Hamas, or the most humane invasion and occupation in military history, there aren’t a lot of people who are confident it will last. Simplicius contemplates why Netanyahu suddenly agreed to it after a series of rejections:

We can’t have particularly high confidence of it succeeding, particularly given that top Israeli officials like Ben-Gvir have already expressed their hopes that the deal will fail, and will undoubtedly give their most earnest try in undermining it in any way possible.

It also has little bearing on Israel’s continued strikes on various other surrounding countries, from Lebanon and Syria to Yemen. Israel even stepped up strikes on Gaza today, killing a reported dozen or so—one supposes they needed to sate their fill of bloodlust as consolation for the coming cessation of hostilities.

In fact, a report just earlier claimed that Israel even unleashed its first direct strike on Jolani’s troops: The Israeli Air Force has carried out its first strike on the forces of the terrorist group HTS, which has seized power in Syria.

The attack targeted a convoy of militants in the province of Quneitra to prevent them from getting closer to IDF forces on the ground. This was right around the time that Erdogan issued a loud rebuke toward Netanyahu, calling on him to stop striking Syria as tensions continue rising between Turkey and its Syrian proxies and Israel.

Erdogan: “The aggressive actions of the forces attacking Syrian territory, Israel, in particular, must come to an end as soon as possible. Otherwise, it will cause unfavorable outcomes for everyone.”

We’re left to speculate whether this rising new threat is chief amongst reasons for Netanyahu finally acquiescing to a ceasefire he rejected many times before. With the IDF’s continued dismal performance—in particular its major failure in incurring into Lebanese territory—Netanyahu may have chosen to reduce the burden of the multi-fronted war in order to free up resources to concentrate on the potential new threat from the Turkish-Syria axis.

The immediate situation looks much better for Israel than it has in years, if not decades. While the war in Lebanon against Hezbollah has been a failure, the unexpected success in Syria more than makes up for that. However, trading Syria for Turkey as an enemy would not appear to be strategically advantageous. Especially if – and it’s a big if – Erdogan leads Turkey out of NATO, strikes up an alliance with Iran and Russia, and joins BRICS.

At least at this point, the biggest winner in the Israeli-Palestinian-Syrian war looks like Turkey.

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The Japanese Know

Japanese corporations are preparing for the Chinese takeover of Taiwan:

Over half of major Japanese firms said they are prepared or are making preparations for a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan amid Beijing’s growing military assertiveness, a Kyodo News survey showed Saturday. Of the 114 companies surveyed between late November and mid-December last year, 53 percent said they had concrete measures in place for a potential Taiwan contingency, including drafting manuals, planning evacuations, and stockpiling inventory. Another 12 percent said they did not have plans but saw the need for consideration, according to the survey, which covered a range of industries and included companies such as Toyota Motor Corp and ANA Holdings Inc.

There are also reports of China building large Mulberry docks of the sort that the US utilized in the invasion of Normandy. Which means I’d better provide my promised analysis of the latest US military simulations before the actual results are in.

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Denmark Turns to Russia

The fake Trump’s bizarre rantings about acquiring Greenland has sufficiently scared the Danes to the point that some of their politicians want to seek Russian assistance in defending their territory.

The Danish parliament is discussing the possibility of asking Russia for help in the event of aggressive actions by the United States towards Greenland. MP from the Socialist People’s Party Karsten Henge expressed confidence in the need for such measures. “In a situation of extreme escalation and tension, we need to take extreme measures and ask Russia for help to solve this problem. I am sure that our request will be heard, because Russia will not allow Greenland to become part of the United States. It is as disadvantageous for Russia as it is for us,” MK.RU reports him as saying. However, Henge did not specify how Russia could protect Greenland from American influence.

All of this talk of North American Union with Canada and Mexico, and acquiring Greenland by finance or by force, is nothing more than Clown World theater. First, I don’t think the short Trump at Mar-al-Lago is the real Donald Trump, he’s the body double being used by Clown World to try to negotiate a deal with the forces behind the real Trump. Second, all of the talk about merging with Canada and Mexico is part of the same NAU-NAFTA madness that was pushed hard by the Bush-Clinton regime before the neocons took control and shifted the US focus toward establishing Greater Israel. It’s a longstanding Clown World project, so either a) Donald Trump has completely betrayed both America and his base or b) the Trump who is advocating it is not the real Donald Trump.

The fact that the media keeps quoting the fake Trump’s absurdities and does so in mostly favorable terms is the best indication, other than the obvious height issue, that he isn’t the real Donald Trump. The whole point of noticing anomalies is that there should not be any anomalies. Nor is the fake Trump alone; in addition to the six Bidens, the “Hillary Clinton” who received a medal from one of the Bidens quite obviously wasn’t the real Hillary; she was too young, too healthy, and insufficiently overweight to be the real individual.

I understand that it’s very hard to accept that everything that is presented to you by the mainstream Narrative is false, but you have to learn to trust the evidence of your eyes. Don’t take my word for it, just take a close look for yourself and pay attention to the details. If every single detail is not correct, then you can be certain that things are not what they are publicly reported to be.

As for what’s actually going on with regards to Greenland, Occam’s Razor suggests that Clown World is trying to establish a bargaining chip that it can trade Putin in order to convince him to accept a deal where Russia establishes a new border that leaves Odessa with Ukraine. It’s not going to work, but it is an original and creative effort to substitute for the fact that Clown World has nothing else to trade because the Kursk invasion failed and Russia has already taken most of what it wanted in the first place.

And if Andrei Martynov is any guide, the Russians will not lift a finger to defend the Danes or anyone else in Europe.

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Big Serge’s 2024 Ukraine Summary

Big Serge is one of the Internet’s best military historians. Here, in one of his characteristically long and detailed analyses, he provides his 2024 summary of the Ukraine conflict and explains how Ukraine is effectively debellized.

2024 actually saw several very important developments which make the coming shape of the war relatively clear. To briefly recapitulate:

  • Russian forces caved in Ukrainian defenses at depth across an entire critical axis of front. After remaining static for years, Ukraine’s position in Southern Donetsk has been obliterated, with Russian forces advancing through an entire belt of fortified positions, pushing the front into Pokrovsk and Kostayantinivka.
  • The main Ukrainian gambit on the ground (the incursion into Kursk) failed spectacularly, with the salient being progressively caved in. An entire grouping of critical mechanized formations wasted much of the year fighting on this unproductive and secondary front, leaving Ukrainian positions in the Donbas increasingly threadbare and bereft of reserves.
  • An attempt by the Ukrainian government to reinvigorate its mobilization program failed, with enlistments quickly trailing off. Decisions to expand the force structure exacerbated the shortage of manpower, and as a result the decay of Ukraine’s frontline brigades has accelerated.
  • Long awaited western upgrades to Ukraine’s strike capabilities failed to defeat Russian momentum, and stocks of ATACMs and Storm Shadows are nearly exhausted. There are now few options remaining to prop up Ukrainian strike capacity, and no prospect of Ukraine gaining dominance in this dimension of the war.

In short, Ukraine is on the path to debellation – defeat through the total exhaustion of its capacity to resist. They are not exactly out of men and vehicles and missiles, but these lines are all pointing downward. A strategic Ukrainian defeat – once unthinkable to the western foreign policy apparatus and commentariat – is now on the table. Quite interestingly, now that Donald Trump is about to return to the White House, it is suddenly acceptable to speak of Ukrainian defeat. Robert Kagan – a stalwart champion of Ukraine if there ever was one – now says the quiet part out loud:

Ukraine will likely lose the war within the next 12 to 18 months. Ukraine will not lose in a nice, negotiated way, with vital territories sacrificed but an independent Ukraine kept alive, sovereign, and protected by Western security guarantees. It faces instead a complete defeat, a loss of sovereignty, and full Russian control.

Indeed.

None of this should be particularly surprising. If anything, it is shocking that my position – that Russia is essentially a very powerful country that was very unlikely to lose a war (which it perceives as existential) right in its own belly – somehow became controversial or fringe. But here we are.

I couldn’t agree more. The position of Clown World, led by the architects of its strategery like Robert Kagan, was always insane, incoherent, and ill-informed. It’s worth noting that the very champions of the ill-advised proxy war, including Kagan, are now offering their advice to Trump on how to best handle what they call “negotiations with Putin” but are actually a very thin veil for the inevitable surrender.

Russia has not only defeated the Ukrainian forces, it has comprehensively defeated the EU and the USA in military, diplomatic, strategic, and economic terms. This isn’t the “pro-Russian” position, it is the objective position, and with the exception of the economic context, it was always and completely obvious from the start. The problem is that even now, the would-be negotiators completely fail to understand Russia, its leadership, it’s people, and its objectives.

They would do well to stop posturing and pontificating, and instead, read War and Peace.

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The Limited Lessons of the Ukraine War

A lot of important lessons are being learned, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say “relearned” from the current war in Ukraine. But, as Anarchonomicon observes, a number of the various elements of this war are unique and unlikely to be repeated:

You have the resources of dozens of nations representing over half the world’s economy being poured into a country that can neither win nor negotiate, to fight its similar neighbor that also has to fight it out despite the cost due to the international strategic implications, both of whom are Slavic-white countries who both had strong reserves of nationalism and patriotism and avoided the kind of multi-culti mass-immigration that has zapped the willingness to fight for their country right out of every white man in the west, and because of a series of geostrategic accidents they spontaneously agreed to limit the fighting to stretch of land as narrow as that between the Swiss Border and the English Channel.

That’s a whole lot of conditions that will probably never hold again. Or at least certainly not for the next hundred years given the demographic crises everywhere and the pending death of the nation state.

  • If the smaller state doesn’t have allies who can fund it to the tune 50+% its annual GDP it can’t happen.
  • If either country has endured mass immigration/multiculturalism and doesn’t have an eastern european level paradoxical ultra-nationalism for their decaying shithole country…it can’t happen.
  • If either country isn’t being bribed/backed into a corner to refuse all negotiation, it can’t happen.
  • And if either country would rather just expand the war geographically and not fight an attritional trench war, it can’t happen.

The most important thing to note is that Ukraine is Clown World’s proxy. The entire Empire That Never Ended is fighting Russia, and is in the process of losing the war militarily, economically, and diplomatically. And once Clown World either contracts or collapses entirely, there isn’t a similar force on Earth capable of recreating it.

Which means any lessons about late-stage imperial proxy wars will probably not be relevant for another 200 years.

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“A Legitimate Act”

The Times view on assassination of a general: The targeted killing is a legitimate act of defence by a threatened nation.

How very peculiar! I don’t recall the British newspapers endorsing the IRA assassination of Lord Mountbatten as a legitimate act of defense. But if we’re to take Clown World media seriously, any nation that is threatened is now justified in engaging in state-sponsored targeted killings.

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Regional Power != Global Invincibility

A surprising number of would-be war analysts are putting far too much stock in Russia’s inability to prop up the Syrian regime against the combined assault of US, Israeli, Turkish, and jihadist forces. But Russia and China are both REGIONAL powers; their inability to dictate events in the Middle East, or in Africa, is no different than the inability of the USA to dictate events in Eastern Europe or the Red Sea. The further away from their industrial core where force is generated, the harder it is to deliver a sufficient amount.

But the logistical difficulties in a remote location should never be confused with an inability to generate the force in the first place, as Andrei Martynov illustrates:

Russia is outpacing the arms production of the entire EU after significantly ramping up its defense industry and despite Western sanctions, the bloc’s commissioner for defense and space, Andrius Kubilius, has said. Kubilius, a noted Russia hawk and two-time prime minister of Lithuania, was approved by the European Parliament last month as the EU’s first ever defense commissioner. In an interview on Friday with the RND media group, he called on the EU to significantly expand the production of conventional weapons such as artillery and infantry vehicles, as well as long-range and precision weapons amid what he called a Russian attack threat. “The Russians have expanded their arms industry to an unimaginable extent despite our sanctions,” Kubilius stated. Russia now produces “more weapons in three months than the entire European arms industry can produce, and in six months more weapons than the entire German army has,” he added. Kubilius also cited experts who, according to him, say that Russia now produces more tanks than it uses on the front lines in the Ukraine conflict.

I want to stress, that in the last few years, a very good man, who I will not name, because I respect him, no, he is not my acquaintance–was repeating ad nauseam that Russia “with the economy the size of Spain”. Sadly, there is no such profession as a “good man”, but for most people in the US “intel” community it is worth learning that Russia’s economy is the 4th economy in the world and, possibly, the third. I want to stress that GDP numbers circulating in the “intel” circles are crap invented in the combined West to hide its deindustrialization and financialization of own economies. US industrial base was in steady decline for decades now and realistically, with the exception of automotive industry (granted with huge pure assembly from import parts sector) and aerospace with naval construction… well, that’s about the most important US machine building sectors.

What changed the equation in Syria was the involvement of the Turks and their willingness to help Clown World depose the Assad regime. The Russians quite rightly assessed the situation as hopeless and extricated their forces as well as the Assad family without taking any losses; contrast that with the expense incurred by the futile Us and European attempts to preserve Ukraine and its Clown World regime. But Erdogan has long been open about his dream of rebuilding the Ottoman empire, and Syria is part of that former Ottoman territory.

A deluge of new evidence shows Turkey slowly fortifying its position as future hegemon of the region. As soon as Damascus fell, the director of the MIT—Turkey’s CIA equivalent—Ibrahim Kalin was spotted visiting Jolani, touring Damascus, as well as paying homage to the ancient Umayyad mosque. Several videos showed Jolani acting as personal chauffeur to Kalin, driving him around Damascus with an armed escort. Think about that: Jolani as personal driver to the head of Turkey’s top intelligence agency—that’s not to mention that Kalin was senior personal advisor to Erdogan and is member of his AK Party. So, Erdogan’s personal henchman is already shadowing Jolani, whispering in his ear—what can that mean? And what does that say about rumors that HTS had long ago cut ties with Turkey, with the same going for SNA/FSA/TFSA?

This is why Israel has already invaded southern Syria. In my estimation, Turkey poses a much more significant long-term military threat than Iran ever has, although I wouldn’t assume that Turkey won’t eventually ally with Iran against Israel when the Israeli-Turkish war eventually begins.

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