Tag: war

A Dying Outpost

Things are not looking good for Israel, which is reaping the bitter harvest of completely ignoring the sage advice of one of its greatest sons. Though respected by militaries throughout the world, especially the U.S. Marines, the great Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld has been utterly ignored by the generals of the IDF and the Likud politicians as they wage precisely the sort of Goliath vs David war that he has observed tends to enervate a military.

Meanwhile, Simplicius contrasts the difference between Russia’s war on NATO and Israel’s war on Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Yemen, and concludes that very different results are likely.

Analysis continues to be churned out heralding the end of the Israeli economy:

The economic indicators speak of nothing less than an economic catastrophe. Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel’s credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost “junk bonds” levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by 60% in the first quarter of 2023 (as a result of the policies of Israel’s far-right government before October 7) show no prospects of recovery. The majority of the money invested in Israeli investment funds was diverted to investments abroad because Israelis do not want their own pension funds and insurance funds or their own savings to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel. This has caused a surprising stability in the Israeli stock market because funds invested in foreign stocks and bonds generated profit in foreign currency, which was multiplied by the rise in the exchange rate between foreign currencies and the Israeli Shekel. But then Intel scuttled a $25 billion investment plan in Israel, the biggest BDS victory ever.

It’s difficult to guess the future without going overboard with recency bias, but as the article above states, many figures have now proclaimed that the age of Zionism itself has come to an end, and a slow outflow from Israel, a kind of anti-Aliyah, will continue to take place until Israel itself falls apart and dissolves.

I’ve professed before that I can see Israel’s end resembling that of former Rhodesia. I’ve stated before that Netanyahu and Zelensky are two birds of a feather with the same desperate goals: they need to drag the US into a wider global war to save their regimes and their country. But what they don’t know is: they are doomed whether that happens or not. That’s because the US does not have the power to win a wider war against either adversary, and both Ukraine and Israel would be doomed to their fates, with US merely sacrificing itself in the process as well.

There’s good chance that by 2050-2075 Israel goes the way of Rhodesia, or at least won’t exist in its current form.

I wouldn’t give it that long, since Israel is a Clown World outpost that cannot survive support from the USA and its European puppet states, and the USA is unlikely to survive in its current form more than another decade or so. 2033 is rapidly approaching, but the USD will likely be dethroned before that, with the inevitable debt chickens coming home to roost hard.

What the war in Ukraine has revealed is that the entire basis for the Israeli military superiority necessary for its survival in a hostile environment was built on a false foundation of quality over quantity. That concept works in the small-scale series of battles in which Israel engaged during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 through 1983, and it works in the foreign adventurism in which the US has engaged for most of its military history, but it doesn’t work in real war.

Real war is existential and attritional. Doctrine doesn’t matter, elan doesn’t matter, technological advantage doesn’t matter. Four things are relevant: industrial capacity, numbers, societal morale, and leadership. And in both the Middle East conflict and the European one, Israel and the USA are severely deficient in all four aspects.

Which is why any serious observer is bound to conclude that both conflicts – which of course are different fronts of the same war – are going to end in defeat for the Clown World side. And that is why Ukraine, Israel, and the USA should all be attempting to negotiate surrenders to their respective adversaries on the best terms they can still obtain. But who surrenders when they are constantly assuring everyone that they are winning and victory is imminent in just two more weeks?

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The Battle of Kursk, Round 1

As the second Battle of Kursk winds down, it seems appropriate to note the anniversary of the end of the first, much larger one.

The Battle of Kursk, which involved the largest tank battle of the Second World War, was fought on the steppe of Kursk oblast between July 5 and August 23, 1943. It was initiated by the Germans who, in retreat after their spectacular defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, concentrated 50 divisions, two tank brigades, three tank battalions, and eight artillery assault divisions comprising 2,700 Tiger and Panther tanks, some two thousand aircraft, and 900,000 men in all. The Soviet forces, consisting of General K. K. Rokossovskii’s Army of the Center, General N. F. Vatutin’s Voronezh Army, and the reserve army of the Steppe Front under General I. S. Konev, numbered 1.3 million troops, 3,600 tanks, and 2,800 aircraft.

The German offensive, code named “Citadel,” involved two simultaneous thrusts against the Soviet-held northern and southern salients. Both were successfully repulsed, and by July 12, the Soviet forces had gone over to the offensive. On August 4, the city of Orel was liberated and by the 18th the German army took up defensive positions east of Bryansk. It had lost 30 of its 50 divisions and up to 500,000 men killed, wounded or missing in action. From its victory in the Battle of Kursk, the Soviet Red Army went on to liberate most of Ukraine in the autumn of 1943, marching into Kiev on November 6. Although Western historiography traditionally marks the beginning of the German downfall to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the crushing defeat of Kursk makes a more likely turning point for the war.

For anyone who knows anything all about military history, or just WWII, the idea that a single, solitary Ukrainian division was going to accomplish anything of note on Russian territory was always absurd on its face. And remember, the Russian population today is 34 percent larger than it was in 1943.

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At Least They’ll Warn Us

Simplicius analyzes the recent release of secret Russian nuclear doctrine dating back to 2014:

The first truly eye-opening detail is the claim that these secret internal Russian documents include plans for a potential nuclear “demonstration” strike, if things really begin escalating:

The presentation also references the option of a so-called demonstration strike — detonating a nuclear weapon in a remote area “in a period of immediate threat of aggression” before an actual conflict to scare western countries. Russia has never acknowledged such strikes are in its doctrine.

Such a strike, the files say, would show “the availability and readiness for use of precision non-strategic nuclear weapons” and the “intention to use nuclear weapons”.

To clarify: we’ve often talked about Russia doing a demonstrative nuclear test in order to get NATO’s attention in the Ukrainian conflict. That is something entirely different. A nuclear test would be something run by scientists for measuring purposes, conducted in a safe and controlled way, with a nuclear device usually detonated in a stationary mode somewhere on or near the ground.

That is why this is particularly eye-opening because it is something far more aggressive and threatening. It would entail Russia not setting up a test, but actually live-firing a real tactical nuke from one of their many systems into a remote area. The simple acknowledgment that Russia even has such contingencies drawn up is fairly startling and clearly draws a heavy shadow over the now-escalating Ukrainian conflict, where NATO’s involvement continues to grow more out of control each day.

I don’t view this as a bad thing at all. The threat of tactical nuke strikes to eliminate Europe’s already limited war-making capacity has existed all along, whether we think about it or not. So to know that the official doctrine incorporates a demonstration strike and a warning period is actually rather comforting, as it provides time for people to get away from any obvious military targets.

The risk of tactical strikes is much higher than strategic strikes, because the USA is not going to put itself on the line for Europe, not even if its own military bases are hit there. That’s the whole point of “foreign adventures”; keep them foreign and keep the bloodshed well away from the homeland. Even the foreign elite that runs the US empire is unlikely to react to tactical strikes on Europe for the same reason; they don’t want their homeland turned into a glass desert either.

It’s informative to observe how the USA, Germany, and the UK are all disavowing any knowledge of, much less involvement with, the Ukrainian Kursk offensive now that it has proven to be a tactical defeat and a strategic disaster.

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The Proxy War is Over

Russia makes it explicit: WWIII is now a direct war between Russia and Clown World:

Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine is actually an armed conflict with the US-led collective West, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov said at the opening ceremony of the Army 2024 forum.

“I welcome you all at the opening ceremony of the Army 2024 International Military-Technical Forum. As you know, the event is taking place amid the special military operation. In fact, it is an armed conflict between Russia and the collective West,” he pointed out.

According to Belousov, the armed confrontation “is driven by the desire of the US and its allies to maintain their dominance and prevent the construction of a new multipolar and equitable world order.”

“In this regard, the confrontation affects the interests of every country,” the Russian defense chief stressed.

This isn’t exactly news, but rather, confirmation of what we all assumed from the start. Everything that Russia has done, from relying heavily upon the separatist and various irregular forces to standing down its air forces to building up the anti-Clown alliance around the world, has been in preparation for direct conflict with the regular militaries of the US-led collective West, which includes Australia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea.

While the Second Front appears to be in the Middle East, don’t count out hostilities opening in Asia in the near future. Taiwan is not the only hot spot, as it could be the Philippines, it could be the Korean Peninsula, it could be an attempted color revolution in Indonesia or Vietnam, or it could be Japan shocking everyone by breaking with the USA and allying with China.

Regardless, it’s clear that Russia has given up on its attempts to keep the conflict localized. This change will likely have far-reaching implications, some of which may well prove surprising. As to why they’ve finally articulated the true scope of the war now, I presume it is to make it clear to those seeking a negotiated end to the Ukraine aspect of the conflict that not even peace in Ukraine will be sufficient to end the global conflict.

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Kiev Regime Running Out of Time

Zelensky is lurching from one senseless act of desperation to another in a futile attempt to improve Ukraine’s negotiating position vis-a-vis Russia. These acts are futile, because Russia is not going to negotiate with him, and turning him and his cronies over for trial are almost certainly going to be one of the Russian conditions when it negotiates the surrender of Ukraine with its NATO masters.

The 2024 Kursk Offensive was a small and feeble echo of the Unternehmen Wacht am Rein, the final, failed offensive of the Wehrmacht in 1944. Its failure means that missile strikes on nuclear plants are about all the Ukrainians have left to offer in the way of threats.

There was still some hesitation on my part on whether the Kursk madness was truly a sign of an AFU reaching its critical end point or not, though mostly I leaned on the affirmative. However, the latest desperate move seems to fully avow this interpretation of events. But, I believe there are a few multi-varied nuances to properly interpreting Zelensky’s threatening signal.

First: it can be said that this act of desperation was a strong signal to Zelensky’s own “partners” in the U.S. and the West. I predicted long ago—last year—that once things finally grind down to the gristle for Ukraine, Zelensky would have no choice but to begin threatening his partners through escalation to save his own hide. He would threaten not only pushing Russia’s red lines in unnerving ways which would pose the threat of nuclear annihilation to the U.S., but as a last ditch effort he would also float the threat of unveiling many secrets and ‘skeletons in the closet’ of his Western partners as blackmail.

But what’s happening now is in effect a double nuclear blackmail. Not only was Zelensky trying to reach the Kursk nuclear plant for this very purpose, but has now acted out his furious frustration at the ZNPP, as well. It’s difficult to know for certain, but captured AFU POWs have in fact now attested to the Kursk plant as being the objective, or Kurchatov, the town where the plant sits. This was supposed to have been reached in the first day or two, which now appears to have been a miserable failure being covered up by more antics.

But getting back to the second point. I believe the ZNPP strike was also a double threat toward Russia. ZNPP may be currently inactive, but Kursk is in operation, and Zelensky likely meant to send a symbolic message that the Kursk nuclear plant may be “next”. In essence, it is saying: “Be wary, the Kursk plant is in my sights. This is just the first demonstration of my seriousness.”

But why would Zelensky threaten his partners as well? The obvious answer is to shock them into providing more aid and committing totally to Ukraine’s victory. “Give us everything or we’ll take the entire world down with us in a ball of nuclear flame.” Funny how much similarity there is between Zelensky and Israel, what with their Samson Option and all.

The only answer to a Samson Option is to call the bluff. It may not be entirely a bluff, but it’s almost certainly a partial one. And for the citizens of most countries across the West, the threat to eliminate their capital cities is not necessarily seen as a negative anymore. To paraphrase Ivan Drago, if we die, we die. Otherwise, you live in a permanent state of submission to the whims of a weak psychopath, which is obviously worse than death. These acts of increasing desperation by the Kiev regime are indicative of both its weakness as well as its awareness that it is rapidly running out of options.

Apparently, the enemy, relying on the help of its Western masters… is striving to improve its negotiating positions in the future. But how can we talk about negotiations with those who conduct indiscriminate strikes on civilians, civilian infrastructure, or try to threaten nuclear energy facilities?
– President of Russia, Vladimir Putin

To say nothing of those who have absolutely no electoral mandate to govern, represent, or speak for the people of Ukraine.

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Technology Changes War

And when it changes, those who struggle to adapt will suffer. Col Macgregor reports that an attempt to infiltrate Yemen resulted in a complete disaster courtesy of Russian satellite technology.

Andrew Napolitano: Colonel was there recently some military activity by the Houthies which resulted in about 70 deaths of IDF and some American contractors about which you can tell us?

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Well, I can tell you only what I found through open source material. I haven’t seen anything classified but I am reliably told that roughly 70 Israeli Special Forces along with some number of Americans, the total number was 70. How many were American mercenaries that joined in this operation, I don’t know what the exact breakdown was, but it was obviously mostly Israeli. They infiltrated successfully into Yemen, but they were tracked from the moment they infiltrated by overhead satellites, presumably Russian, and the Russians provided this information to the Iranians who immediately telegraphed it to the Houthis. Whatever you say about the Houthis, they’re tough hombres on the battlefield. They set up an ambush and they killed all of them, and there is footage of the dead. I haven’t had a chance to examine it carefully, clearly most of it’s Israeli, but there are some indisputably some American mercenaries, there may be some Brits mixed into it who are also employees of the same contract firm now. This is something very important for everybody listening to understand: persistent surveillance today changes everything in warfare. It not only enables precision strike on a scale that has never been the case in the past, it makes it impossible for forces to infiltrate into regions without being discovered.

We can’t know yet if this report is true or not. But there are four reasons it is credible:

  1. Yemen successfully denied the Red Sea to the US Navy earlier this year.
  2. The US Navy wants to put its four aircraft carriers in the Middle East in position to support Israeli efforts in the region, but is endangered by Yemeni land-to-sea strike abilities.
  3. Taking out the coastal missile batteries using air strikes has failed.
  4. An infantry infiltration was the only remaining option for eliminating Yemeni land-to-sea capabilities.

So, the fact that the IDF and some US special forces are reported to have attempted the obvious solution to the problem makes sense. However, I fail to see how this puts Israel on the ropes in any way; the denial of the Red Sea was already an accomplished fact and despite decades of claims to the contrary, Iran is observably not in any particular hurry to start a full-scale war with Israel.

Speaking of technology and war, I highly recommend Martin van Creveld’s work on the matter. It’s an excellent and informative book.

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Ukraine’s Battle of the Bulge

That’s what this desperate counteroffensive looks like to me, albeit in miniature:

Zelensky decided to launch what some Russian commentators are calling the single largest land assault into Russian territory of the entire SMO thus far. What stood it apart from the previous mid-level raids on Belgorod region and such, is that this time it wasn’t the ‘Russian Legion’ paramilitary group—made up of disgruntled traitor Russians—but rather the full force of the AFU itself, by way of the 22nd Mechanized Bridge, from what I’ve seen so far. Details are still coming in, but it’s said to have been around 3 battalions or 1 brigade in size, though some report several hundred troops for now.

The attack was decently well-coordinated and utilized the full breadth of combined arms warfare, with Ukrainian forces leading with a mass FPV drone attack, and pulling up mobile air defenses to cover the advancement.

This isn’t going to change anything on a strategic level. The historical Ardennes Offensive utilized nearly 400,000 German troops divided into 16 infantry divisions, 8 armored divisions, and 2 armored brigades and it accomplished virtually nothing except to delay the Allies a month or two.

One single mechanized brigade will not even do that. This is a PR attack conceived to give Clown World an excuse to keep laundering money in Ukraine. See, Ukraine isn’t defeated yet! Why, they’re taking the war to Russia! If we just send them another few hundred billion, they’ll take Moscow and capture Vladimir Putin!

What a stupid waste. The problem is that Russia can’t defeat Clown World by killing Ukrainian soldiers, because Clown World doesn’t actually care about Ukrainians.

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Iran Has Allies Too

“We will always stand by Iran and will resolutely respond to any threat to our ally Iran…We warn the mercenaries of global imperialism, namely Israel, not to make mistakes”.
– Kim Jong Un, North Korea

One of the strangest things about WWIII to date is the apparent inability of Clown World to grasp that it cannot simply segregate its wars. And the fact that it tries to warn Russia’s allies not to help Russia, and Iran’s allies not to help Iran, even as its slave-states help Ukraine, is even stranger.

What is the threat? Are they going to sanction North Korea, which doesn’t trade with Clown World anyhow? The Clown Worlders just don’t seem to realize that Russia called their bluff and now the whole world knows that their economic power is a mirage.

China is now just openly mocking the UK by offering to send troops to maintain the peace there. The world is changing fast, but not all of the players seem to be aware of that.

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Clown World is Getting Desperate

But not so desperate that they’re willing to die right here, right now. Andrei Martynov comments on the recent revelation that the USA ordered Ukraine to stand down on what would almost certainly have been a failed attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin:

The Ukrainian special services were preparing an assassination attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the country’s Ministry of Defense Andrei Belousov at the parade on Navy Day in St. Petersburg. According to Deputy Head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov, whose words were aired on the Rossiya TV channel, several days before the parade, Belousov contacted US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin by phone and urged him to persuade Kyiv to abandon its plans.

I was wrong thinking that it would be either Bortnikov or Patrushev conveying this type of message to Burns, but, evidently, it took Russian Defense Minister to explain what would happen to Kiev and Washington, if D.C.’s own criminals would have even tried to do so. Kiev would cease to exist (no need to use conventional weapons) and, after some time so would D.C. with most of the US if the US would have decided to play it tough. Boys in D.C. they cannot fight real fight, neither can inbred losers in London. So, they resort to terrorism. The fact that Ryabkov specifically singled out “some other countries” is telling.

Clown World’s grand strategy has always been based in delusion. The clowns simply don’t seem to understand that neither China nor Russia are susceptible to regime change tactics of the sort that have been used dozens of times in small countries over the last 70 years. Major powers are not one-man shows; Putin’s successors will almost certainly be considerably more aggressive and less circumspect than the man himself has been.

However, it is good to know that there are still a few rational actors in command of Clown World. One hopes that they will have the perspicacity, and the courage, to admit to their inevitable defeat and surrender while it is still possible to do so.

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The Markets Sink

I stay very, very far away from the stock markets, since they are a rigged game. But they are useful indicators of social mood, and so it’s informative that Tokyo just saw the worst day on the Nikkei since the end of the Heisei Boom in 1988.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 stock index plunged 12.4% on Monday, resuming sell-offs that are shaking world markets as investors fret over the state of the U.S. economy. The Nikkei closed down 4,451.28 points at 31,458.42. The market’s broader TOPIX index fell 12.8% as selling picked up in the afternoon.

Darkening the outlook for trading on Wall Street, early Monday the future for the S&P 500 was 2.4% lower and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.6%.

The Nikkei 225 dropped 5.8% on Friday, making this its worst two-day decline ever. Its worst single-day rout was a plunge of 3,836 points, or 14.9%, on Oct. 20, 1987, a day that was dubbed “Black Monday.” This Monday was gloomy enough: at one point, the benchmark sank as much as 13.4%.

In any event, it’s clear that the central banks have kicked the can, locked things down, and pulled every rabbit out of their hat that they can imagine. This leaves war as the only available panacea, so I suppose it’s useful in this regard that WWIII already began two years ago; it would be an interesting historical echo if the USA gets directly involved again precisely two years after the global conflict began.

1914-1917, 1939-1941, 2022-2024?

The other thing that strikes me is that by sending four carriers to the Middle East, we may – MAY – be witnessing the anticipated Sicilian Expedition Moment in the making. Nothing would more profoundly exemplify the end of Pax Americana and the imperial USA than the simultaneous sinking of all four carriers.

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