Tag: war

Clown World Declares a Winner

Foreign Affairs declares Türkiye and Erdogan to be the winners of the sudden Syrian collapse:

In most capitals across the Middle East, the news of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall sparked immense anxiety. Ankara is not one of them. Rather than worrying about Syria’s prospects after more than a decade of conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees opportunity in a post-Assad future. His optimism is well founded: out of all the region’s major players, Ankara has the strongest channels of communication and history of working with the Islamist group now in charge in Damascus, positioning it to reap the benefits of the Assad regime’s demise.

Chief among the rebel forces that ended Assad’s rule on Sunday is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Muslim group that was previously affiliated with al Qaeda and is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the United Nations. Despite those designations, Turkey has provided indirect assistance to HTS. The Turkish military presence in the northwestern Syrian town of Idlib largely shielded the group from attacks by Syrian government forces, allowing it to run the province undisturbed for years. Turkey managed the flow of international aid into HTS-run areas, which increased the group’s legitimacy among locals. Trade across the Turkish border has provided HTS economic support, too.

All this has given Turkey influence over HTS. In October, Erdogan quashed plans for a rebel offensive in Aleppo; when rebel forces launched their campaign late last month, they likely did so with Erdogan’s approval. For years, Assad had been dragging his feet as Erdogan sought to mend ties with Damascus and repatriate the millions of Syrian refugees whose presence in Turkey undermined support for his ruling party. With Assad’s regional allies weakened by the Israeli campaign in Gaza and Lebanon, and Russia distracted in Ukraine, Erdogan saw an opportunity to force the Syrian leader to the table.

The rebels’ whirlwind success came as a surprise. Now, Assad is out of the picture altogether, and Erdogan is getting ready to cash in on his years-long investment in the Syrian opposition. Iran and Russia—Turkey’s main rivals in Syria—are chastened; a friendly government could soon be set up in Damascus, ready to welcome back refugees; and Assad’s departure could even open a window for remaining U.S. troops to leave, fulfilling a long-sought goal of Ankara’s. If it can avoid the potential dangers ahead, Turkey could end up a clear winner in Syria’s civil war.

Obviously Israel is one of the immediate winners; the Lebensraum advocates are already grabbing Syrian territory in the name of “self-defense”. But I’m not certain that convincing the rest of the world that any accommodation with the USA is impossible is likely to benefit the Netanhayu regime in the intermediate term.

Also, at some point, the Turkish desire for an Ottoman revival and Israeli dreams of a Greater Israeli Empire are bound to collide. And the numbers would appear to favor the Turks.

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Five Lessons for Russia

Simplicius contemplates the lessons to be learned from the collapse of Syria and cites five lessons that the Russians should take from it.

FIVE LESSONS FOR RUSSIA

Doom and gloom are somewhat appropriate, but it is more important to think about the future now. What does the fall of Syria tell us?

  1. False Peace is Death. A bad faith ceasefire is a recipe for disaster and after Minsk and Astana should never be repeated. False peace is worse than war, because false peace means you still have to fight the war later, but at a disadvantage. No green busses or green corridors for the enemy, no deescalation zones, no freezing of any lines. The enemy has to be defeated completely: victory is a prerequisite for mercy. Until that is achieved, no ceasefires, only death under FABs.
  2. Collapse is always sudden. The Assad regime resisted NATO-Israeli aggression for 13 years. And then it fell in a week. Mistakes, systemic errors and structural attrition accumulate until a critical mass is reached, and at that point the smallest impact will bring down the entire house of cards. Likewise, our current enemy in the main theater will resist stubbornly, until he will not be able to anymore, and then we will see Big Arrows. All our efforts should be focused on damaging the enemy’s war-waging capabilities to reach that critical point.
  3. Infantry is King. A single full-sized, dependable Russian infantry brigade (or a Ukrainian one, for that matter) would have been able to defeat the Jihadi advance for good. They were completely overstretched and to a large degree their offensive was a bluff that only worked because the SAA didn’t even try to resist, they just ran. We had our own experience with a lack of infantry in the SMO — it led to the Kharkov oblast debacle in fall ’22. No matter what anyone says, no matter what technological advances there are, the infantry unit was and remains the central actor of history, upon which all else depends.
  4. Empire is secondary to the Nation. There was a loud public debate among patriotic circles in Russia when the intervention in Syria began in 2015. Personally, I was opposed to the intervention because it seemed absurd to me to send Russian men to die in a foreign desert while Russian people are suffering under the yoke of Banderite occupation just across the border. We were told by Kremlin propagandists that “Palmyra is a symbol for all mankind” and the Donbass is just, eh, the Donbass. Whatever. Now, Jihadi dogs will get to loot and destroy all that archaeological treasure of all mankind, and we have to fight for the Donbass, anyway. Was it worth it? I have always been staunchly pro-Assad, but a single square mile of Russian land in Novorossiya means more to me than the entire Middle East. A nation should have its priorities in order.
  5. You can’t change nature. Some peoples and countries are just unreliable. They will never have stable polities unless compelled by overwhelming force or foreign occupation. They will never build working institutions on their own. You can’t just offer them a comprehensive reform package and then shrug when they refuse to implement it. They will always be shitty client states if you work with them within a civilized framework. We know how to work around local particularities in other parts of the world, so we should let Middle East policy also be guided by this knowledge. They are not Warsaw Era-pact allies you can let do things on their own.

The most important lesson, of course, is to stop trusting to agreements with the agreement-incapable. The second-most important lesson is to recognize that every state and entity controlled by Clown World is agreement-incapable.

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Why Russia Quit on Syria

Andrei Martyanov’s citation of a Russian journalist helps explain why the Russians finally stopped protecting the Assad regime in Syria:

I do not feel sorry for the Syrian authorities. I remember too well how, back in 2012, we, Russian journalists, were “squeezed” at border control, with all our luggage turned inside out, and our cameras and photo cameras confiscated. Then they hounded us around the offices of various ministries, putting us through an unsolvable puzzle of obtaining various papers and permits. And Western reporters were practically carried around in their arms, trying to demonstrate their liberal views against the backdrop of the uprising in Daraa. These are not my personal grievances. This, among other things, was an expression of their attitude towards my country. Condescending, with rolled eyes and a disdainfully raised upper lip. Then we saved Syria in 2013, if anyone doesn’t remember. Obama was going to cover it with carpet bombing after the chemical provocation in Eastern Ghouta. And thanks to the efforts of Russian diplomacy, the catastrophe was averted. Postponed, as it turns out now. In 2015, we came to Assad’s aid again when the terrorists were five kilometers from the center of Damascus. And as best we could, we patched up this patchwork quilt, consisting of various religious, social, forbidden and not so forbidden pieces, between which contradictions grew.

Now Israel and Turkey will divide up whatever parts of the country ISIS-HTS are not allowed to keep. It appears the US military is already bombing their jihadist proxy army; one wonders how it is going to respond to the Turkish invasion of Kurdistan.

I would also keep an eye out for similarly sudden events in Ukraine; Martyanov and others believe Russia dropping its support for the Assad regime was traded for US dropping its support for the Kiev regime and that this was not necessarily the win for Clown World that it appears to be.

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Clown World Takes Syria

In an effective demonstration of its global influence, Clown World’s jihadist proxies managed to take Syria in less than two weeks.

Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) jihadists and other anti-government militias entered Damascus on Saturday, taking control over the Syrian capital. Flight data websites show that President Bashar Assad’s plane has left the city. Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad al-Jalali has already offered cooperation “with any leadership chosen by the people,” also claiming that he remains in his home.

HTS, a group led by a former Al-Qaeda commander and previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra, launched a surprise offensive from the opposition-held province of Idlib in northern Syria just last week. Jihadists have already driven the Syrian Army from the cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Al-Qusayr at the border with Lebanon.

Other opposition and militant groups operating in Syria also seized several parts of the country. The US-sponsored Free Syrian Army (FSA) has taken control of the ancient site of Palmyra, while the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) also backed by the US have seized Deir ez-Zor.

This is a reminder of Moshe Dayan’s explanation of Israel’s military success: they fight Arabs. Russia didn’t offer much assistance; as Andrei Martyanov pointed out, there is no point in assisting those who will not fight for themselves, a lesson that Americans and Europeans should keep in mind as they meekly submit to the invasion of their various countries.

This is obviously an attempt to secure a bargaining chip in the aftermath of the failure of the Kursk invasion, and Russia’s inaction makes sense in light of its attempt to avoid the full-blown hot war with the West that Clown World is seeking to ignite prior to January 20th. Even so, it is a moderately astonishing shuffle of the deck that no one was expecting.

It also shows the unpredictability of the Turks, who were seemingly cozying up to BRICS and moving away from NATO, but apparently whatever price they were demanding for their cooperation was finally deemed worth paying. Presumably they will be rewarded with the Syrian territory they have been craving in order to completely control Kurdistan, as part of what is described as “a devil’s bargain”.

A truly seismic change in the Middle East appears to be happening very fast. At its heart is a devil’s bargain – Turkey and the Gulf States accept the annihilation of the Palestinian nation and creation of a Greater Israel, in return for the annihilation of the Shia minorities of Syria and Lebanon and the imposition of Salafism across the Eastern Arab world.

This sort of thing is why it is totally pointless to attempt to predict geopolitics. There are always additional factors and variables that one does not know to enter into the equation.

UPDATE: The Russians have confirmed a) Assad has been deposed and b) Russia is maintaining its military bases in Syria.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has confirmed that Bashar Assad has stepped down as Syrian president and left the country following negotiations with armed opposition groups after the fall of Damascus to Islamist forces. In a statement issued on Telegram on Sunday afternoon, officials clarified that Moscow was not involved in the talks but acknowledged Assad’s decision to transfer power “peacefully.” “Russian military bases in Syria are on high alert. At present, there is no serious threat to their security,” the statement read.

In the unlikely event that you haven’t understood that WWIII began in February 2022, the conquest of Syria should make it clear that this is, indeed, the case.

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The Beginning of a Failure Cascade

This may be one of the worst technological developments for humanity since gunpowder:

This is the type of AI that all leading experts have warned us about. German defense firm Helsing has announced it will provide Ukraine with 4,000 HX-2 “Karma” kamikaze drones this month. Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he had been “very pleased that the delivery of these drones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) technology is already underway.”

With a top speed of 137 mph, these drones are capable of traveling up to 62 miles and can be loaded with various warheads for maximum destruction against armored vehicles, buildings, or platoons. The company states that these drones do not need a human operator, rather, they will be programmed to “search for, re-identify, and engage targets, even without a signal or a continuous data connection.” A human operator may “stay in the loop,” per the company’s messaging, but these weapons are designed to act autonomously.

“With HX-2, we have created a new smart effector that combines mass, autonomy and precision. Individual HX-2s can reliably engage armored targets in highly contested environments. When deployed along borders at scale, HX-2 can serve as a powerful counter invasion shield against enemy land forces,” Helsing’s co-founder Niklas Köhler stated. The other co-founder, Gundbert Scherf, said that NATO in particular has been eager for this technology. On one hand, the company says that these drones will retain human oversight, but on the other hand, the entire purpose of their design is to be autonomous.

Forget all the Skynet possibilities. Begun the Hacker Wars have. The easiest and most effective way to combat AI-controlled drone swarms is by putting a backdoor in the manufacturing process and giving yourself the ability to take control of them. And the utility of these autonomous killer drones in repressing civilian populations is obvious; combined with facial recognition technology it could be used to deny any movement to persons deemed undeniable.

It is informative that while knives are being banned by governments, this sort of lethal weaponry continues to be legally developed. Of course, civilians are going to acquire it too, which should make for a very interesting arms race.

But if they’re actually being used on Russian troops, I definitely wouldn’t want to be working in a Helsing factory. Or at their corporate HQ. I can’t imagine they would not be a priority on the Russian target list.

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The Dragon Stirs

If the events in the Middle East cause China to begin intervening with its military on behalf of its friends and allies, that is seriously going to alter the geopolitical math in that region.

China is “deeply concerned” about developments in Syria, where jihadist militants launched a surprise offensive last week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Monday. As Damascus’ “friend,” Beijing is prepared to take steps to prevent a further deterioration of the situation, he said.  

The Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and allied militias launched a large-scale attack on government-controlled territory in northern Syria last Wednesday. The militants took over a number of towns and villages in the Aleppo, Idlib and Hama provinces.   

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian fighter jets, launched a counteroffensive on Thursday and successfully liberated several settlements over the weekend, reportedly eliminating hundreds of militants and thwarting their advance into central Syria. However, dozens of Syrian army service members were lost amid the heavy fighting, the Syrian General Command said in an earlier statement.  

“China is deeply concerned over the situation in northwestern Syria, and supports its effort to uphold national security and stability,” Lin told a press briefing on Monday. “As Syria’s friend, China is willing to make an active effort to avoid further deterioration of the situation in Syria,” the official said.   

China has the manpower to swamp every other military; the Red Army is an order of magnitude larger than anything currently in seen in the Ukrainian front, which is itself two orders of magnitude larger than the conflict in the Middle East.

We appear to be rapidly approaching hitherto-unimaginable levels of Fuck Around and Find Out.

UPDATE: Speaking of FAFO, China is also ready for the trade war too.

China announced Tuesday it is banning exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications, as a general principle, lashing back at U.S. limits on semiconductor-related exports… China is the biggest global source of gallium and germanium, which are produced in small amounts but are needed to make computer chips for mobile phones, cars and other products, as well as solar panels and military technology.

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Color Revolution in Georgia

The neoclowns are up to their usual shenanigans in another country that borders on Russia, led by a French diplomat who somehow managed to get elected President and, like Zelensky in Ukraine, is now refusing to step down when her term comes to an end.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili will not step down from her position despite the end of her mandate in December, she said in a video address on Saturday, explaining that she does not recognize the legitimacy of the newly-formed parliament and intends to stay in office until new elections.

“I remain your President! There is no legitimate parliament that will elect a new president,” she said in a video published on her Facebook page. “My mandate continues until there is a legitimately elected parliament that will legitimately elect a President who will replace me!”

Under the 2017 Georgian Constitution, the head of state is elected by an electoral college consisting of 300 members. Half of them are MPs, and another half are representatives of various Georgian regions. The next presidential vote is scheduled for December 14. Whoever wins is reportedly expected to be inaugurated before the end of the year.

In October, the South Caucasus nation also held parliamentary elections. The Georgian Dream party, which seeks to establish pragmatic relations with all the country’s neighbors, including Russia, emerged victorious with nearly 54% of the vote. The pro-Western opposition parties have refused to recognize the results, sparking a wave of street protests.

The French-born Zourabichvili – a career diplomat for Paris who acquired Georgian citizenship in her 50s – condemned the October election as a “Russian-style” operation, claiming that Georgian Dream is steering the nation towards Moscow and away from that of the EU. She also called for mass protests. A new wave of demonstrations was sparked this week by the Georgian government’s decision to suspend EU accession talks until 2028.

It’s all so tiresome. Once more, we see how genuine what passes for Western “democracy” is; it is now abundantly clear that it is nothing more than rhetoric meant to hide the fact that global satanists are controlling the government under a very thin veil of the supposed “will of the people” which just happens to be directly opposed to the genuine will of the people as expressed by the populist parties.

However, the world has changed since 2005 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine that brought that tragic country into neoclown control. Even if the Georgian people are sufficiently hoodwinked to abandon their nationalists, there is no way that Russia is going to permit another NATO catspaw on its borders.

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The Takeaway

Simplicius summarizes the current stage of US-Russian pre-negotiations for NATO’s surrender in Ukraine.

The long-awaited plans we’ve theorized and brainstormed on since last year are finally resolving into view, where the West believes they can freeze the war Korean-DMZ style then insert their occupation KFOR troops to make sure Russia can never take Odessa, etc. As we said last time, they are even considering outlandishly absurd contortions to satisfy Putin’s demands, such as ‘stationing the bulk of the Ukrainian army somewhere in Europe’ in order to fulfill the “demilitarization” goals as per Putin’s Istanbul negotiations, which stated what Ukraine was allowed to have “on its territory”, technically speaking.

The problem is, Russia is in the driver’s seat and will not indulge such petty attempts to cozen and wheedle out a minor victory for Ukraine. As such, the only danger we can now expect is for the West to escalate in some brazen way should they finally realize Russia is not taking the bait. But we know neutered Europe has no political authority or consensus to act unilaterally, and at this point can only function like a pack of hyenas, if other major European states back each other’s ‘daring’ initiative…

The fact is though, the longer the Ukrainian conflict goes on, the closer the European Union comes to the verge of collapse. The conflict is outright killing Europe by exposing its bought-off treasonous leaders as the populace-hating cretins they are, causing mass discontent and political breakdown, spurring revolutionary new impulses which will soon bulge out the foundation’s cracks.

I suspect that Russia will have to destroy an American base in Europe or two with non-nuclear Oreshniks before President Trump utilizes the financial corruption and the misuse of US aid funds to provide him with political cover to cut off Ukraine and Europe alike. NATO will die of its own accord as soon as the US stops funding it, and the EU will be more focused on its own survival as a smaller supranational organization when Hungary and other member-nations start leaving it.

There isn’t going to be any US nuclear response to Russia no matter what Russia does in Europe, because no American has any interest in dying for the Europeans who can’t even bother to defend themselves. America has its own issues with its tens of millions of invaders, and is far more concerned about the global challenge posed by China than the return of historic norms in Europe. Which means that despite all the neocon bluster, Russia is ultimately free to act in its own interests; there is no economic incentive that the West can offer that Russia will be short-sighted enough to believe is either real or meaningful in the aftermath of the 13 rounds of economic sanctions and financial theft.

President Trump is under considerable pressure to figure out a way to rescue the Ukrainian rump state, but he’s more interested in the Middle East. So all of the various factors point to the USA abandoning Ukraine, the EU governments collapsing as they eventually follow suit, and Russia finally imposing its solution on whatever government succeeds the corrupt Zelensky regime in Ukraine.

Which, tragically, is the outcome that was inevitable nearly three years and one million Ukrainian lives ago.

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Winning is Not on the Table

All of the more informed military strategists concur: the US military is in no shape to win any sort of war with Russia:

Most Americans continue to believe that the United States will prevail in a conventional war with Russia. But that is simply not the case. For starters, Russia’s state-of-the-art missile technology and missile defense systems are vastly superior to those produced by western weapons manufacturers. Secondly, Russia can field an army of more than 1 million battle-hardened combat troops who have experienced high-intensity warfare and are prepared to engage whatever enemy they may face in the future. Third, the United States no longer has the industrial capacity to match Russia’s impressive output of lethal weaponry, artillery shells, ammunition, and cutting-edge ballistic missiles. In short, Russian military capability far exceeds that of the US in the areas that really count: High-tech weaponry, military industrial capacity, and experienced manpower. In order to drive this overall point home, I’ve taken excerpts from the work of three military analysts who explain these matters in greater detail underscoring the dramatic shortcomings of the modern US military and the problems it is likely to encounter when faced with a more technologically advanced and formidable adversary…

We see the same criticisms reiterated over and over again : Insufficient industrial capacity, dwindling stockpiles, “insuperable production limitations”, and diminished technological superiority. When we add these to the myriad logistical problems of conducting a war in eastern Europe with an ad hoc army of inexperienced volunteers who have never seen combat, we can only conclude that the United States cannot and will not prevail in a prolonged conflict with Russia. Even so, Washington continues to fire ATACMS missiles into Russia (13 more were launched over the past two days) apparently believing that there will be no response to the provocation. Even so, NATO Command continues to entertain illusions of victory by pressing for preemptive “precision strikes” on Russian territory welcoming the prospect of a direct conflagration between NATO and Russia. And even though, both France and the UK threaten to deploy combat troops to Ukraine thinking the inexorable trajectory of the war can somehow be reversed. It’s madness.

Five centuries of primacy have produced a cadre of western elites so drunk with hubris that they are incapable of seeing what is painfully obvious to everyone else, that the imperial model of western exploitation (the ‘rules-based order’) is collapsing and that new centers of power are rapidly emerging. It appears now that these same elites are prepared to drag the world into a catastrophic Third World War to preserve their grip on power and to prevent other nations from achieving the independence and prosperity they’ve earned. Fortunately, Washington will fail in this effort just as it has failed in all its other interventions dating back to 1945. Because the United States no longer has the technology, manpower or industrial capacity needed to win a war with Russia.

I’m no professional military analyst. But I reached the same conclusion before the Special Military Operation began in 2022, and nothing that has happened since suggests otherwise. All of the US and NATO sabre-rattling is counterproductive, because it’s like bluffing in poker with nothing in your hand but Uno cards.

One hopes President Trump is getting better advice from his experts than Clown World is getting from its various professionals, analysts, and strategists, all of whom have invested too heavily in their word spells to be capable of admitting even the most obvious truths. This is how imperial overstretch happens.

And forget China, let alone the Sino-Russo-Persian alliance.

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Occupied Britain

This level of “immigration” goes well beyond invasion and amounts to conquest and occupation:

The UK’s net immigration record has been smashed again with 906,000 now thought to have been added to the population in a single year. Huge revisions to official data show the extraordinary mark was hit in the year to June 2023 – and the figures remain at historically unprecedented levels.

Official data covering the 12 months to June this year show long-term immigration was 728,000 higher than those leaving the country. That is almost as high as the previous record. But the bar has been shifted upwards by the Office for National Statistics, with net migration for the year to June 2023 skyrocketing upwards by 166,000 from the initial estimate of 740,000.

A similar revision has been made for net migration in the year to December 2023, which was initially believed to be 685,000 and is now put at 866,000, an increase of 181,000.

The British population in 1939, on the eve of WWII, was 47,760,000. Great Britain has now been invaded as many foreigners in the last four years as the combined forces of Nazi Germany, Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovakia used to invade the Soviet Union in 1941.

The UK is now in a similar state to the USA. Either mass repatriations will begin within the next ten years or the state will collapse into secessions and civil war. Russia has absolutely nothing to fear from either the USA or the UK, because it has no need to defeat either of them in war, it has only to damage sufficient economic infrastructure to begin the inevitable process of societal collapse that will prevent their militaries from engaging in foreign actions.

And between them, Russia, China, and Iran collectively possess enough economic power to inflict the necessary level of damage to Western infrastructure without ever directly attacking the USA or the UK. I don’t bother mentioning Western Europe, because, barring a complete economic surrender to Russia, the German economy is already doomed.

Lest you fail to draw the obvious conclusion, immigration is not “good for the economy”. To the contrary, over time it is considerably worse for the economy than losing a war is.

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