Iranian War Drums

Posted on October 30, 2023 by thezman

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Way back in the Bush II years, there was an open debate about whether to invade Iran after conquering Iraq. This was right around when the war against Iraq started, and some people noted that the neocons had ambitions beyond Iraq. For their part, the neocons were quite open about going from Baghdad to Tehran. After all, Iran was part of the “axis of evil” that included Iraq and North Korea. The Bush team made no bones about wanting to regime change all of them.

Of course, the plan to take out Iran was predicated on the plan to take down Saddam and “liberate” Iraq. Dick Cheney famously said that the Iraqi people would greet the American military as liberators. Bill Kristol in the run up to the war said, “This is going to be a two-month war, not an eight-year war.” In other words, the war plan with Iraq assumed the people would revolt against Saddam and the then the Iraqi army would either collapse, surrender or join the revolt against Saddam.

This was a critical part of the Iran concept. Once Iraq was defeated then secured as an America possession, it would be the launching pad for the Iran phase. That half million man American army in Iraq would secure bases for American air power and begin the process of rebuilding the Iraqi army. The new Iraqi army using modern Western weapons supplied by their new benefactors would then be part of the new coalition of the willing which would launch a war on Iran.

Obviously, the Iraq war was not what the neocons imagined. The people certainly had their complaints about Saddam, but they were not sitting around waiting for Uncle Sam to liberate them either. A significant portion dreamed of an Islamic state after the fall of Saddam, not a liberal democracy. The war became a guerilla war that dragged on until Team Obama finally put an end to it in his first term. The dreamed of war against Iran had to be tabled by the neocons.

The reason to care about any of this is there is a lot of loose talk about starting a war with Iran over the war between Hamas and Israel. Without any evidence at all, the neocons have laid the blame at the feet of Iran. In this new narrative, Iran controls Hamas, so Iran must have known about the attack in advance. The plan is to bait Israel into attacking Gaza, so Hezbollah can then attack from Lebanon. This could then lead to Hitler returning to lead the Arabs against Israel.

In response to these fantastical claims, the Biden administration has sent two carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean. There are reports of two other carrier groups headed to the Persian Gulf. These reports are based on rumors as the empire does not announce this stuff in advance. Word gets out among the crew of the ships and eventually makes its way to the internet. The only thing for certain is one carrier group is in the eastern Mediterranean right now as a show of force.

The deployment of two carrier groups would be an overreaction to the situation in Gaza, but four would be a clear signal of something. The reason this could be important is that part of those old war plans for Iran was the deployment of four carrier groups to the region, two in the Mediterranean and two in the Persian Gulf. They would be used in the first phase of a planned attack on Iran. Maybe it is a coincidence, but the regime likes to work in symbols, so probably not a coincidence.

There is a belief among some people that the neocons in the regime are looking at this Gaza situation as a chance to dust off the Iran war scheme. Rather than a warning to Iran, this is an effort to bait Iran into greenlighting Hezbollah, which would be the excuse to unleash an air assault on Iranian facilities. This would then warrant a full-on war with Iran with the demand for regime change. The one thing we know about neocons is they never abandon a project, so this makes some sense.

There are a few problems straight away. One is the old war plan back in the Bush II years said that it would require 1.6 million ground troops. Iran is a big place with lots of challenging geography and it has a big army. Despite decades of sanctions, it has highly sophisticated air defenses and a range of missiles. It is hard to know how its army would perform in a real war, but analysts think it would perform better than the Iraqi army due to better discipline and morale.

That was twenty years ago. Since then, Iran has become expert at the use of cheap but effective drone technology. They gave the Russians this technology last year, which has altered the battlespace in Ukraine. Hundreds of “flying Doritos” overwhelmed Ukrainian air defenses, exhausting their supply of surface-to-air missiles. There is a very good chance that Russia returned the favor by supplying Iran with improved air defense systems and maybe even advanced missile technology.

Then there is the fact that Iraq would not be an ally in this war. In fact, Iraq could side with Iran and attack American assets in northern Iraq and Syria. At the minimum, Iraq would stay out of the fight. There is no reason to think the Turks would agree to host American ground forces. There would be pressure on the Saudis and Kuwaitis to be the launching pad, but the Saudis hate the Biden people. In other words, a war with Iran would be a bloody complicated mess – at best.

Surely the Pentagon understands this, and they have communicated this to the neocons running regime policy. The only thing the military could do in a wider war in the region is attack Iranian facilities from air and sea. They cannot launch a ground invasion and they could not hope to topple the Iranian regime. There is a good chance that the Navy would lose some expensive assets. Iran has only grown stronger since this wargame resulted in a lost aircraft carrier.

This raises the question as to what the regime is doing in the Middle East. They lack the resources for the long dreamed off war with Iran. There has been no effort by the regime to build international support for a war. The usual suspects are on American television screaming for blood, but they do that every day. Lindsay Graham exists solely to go on television and call for war somewhere. In other words, it looks like this is a big show that is not intended to lead anywhere.

If the plan was to put on a big drama and draw all of the mass media attention to it, then it has been a great success. The Gaza story has not only blotted out other news, but it has also triggered convenient domestic stories, like the pro-Palestinian protests. The usual suspects are wasting everyone’s time with claims that those marches are the prelude to the return of everyone’s favorite villain. All of a sudden, there is no room for stories about Ukraine or the economy or anything else.

Alternatively, this could be another example of a regime that is both out of gas and low on intellectual capital being dragged along by events. Their Ukraine plan is a great example of how poorly they understand the world. They were sure Russia was just a gas station pretending to be a country. All it would take is some sanctions and some American weapons and regime change was guaranteed. They could be making the same errors with Iran as they made with Russia.

Alternatively, they could be thinking that the threat of war is just what is needed to get invited back into the game. The empire has been losing ground in the region for decades and is now down to a few barely allies. The Saudis are clearly thinking beyond the American empire. Israel is the last ally in the region and the one thing everyone else agrees upon in the region is that Israel is a bad neighbor. Maybe the threat of war is a reason to invite the Americans back into the discussion.

In the end, this will probably be looked upon as another event in the closing chapters of the Global American Empire. The Middle East is ready to move on from America and America is running out of resources to remain in the region. If this crisis ends in war, it will be another serious blow to the American war machine. If it results in peace it will come through the work of regional players with the help of Russia and China, thus further sidelining America in the region.

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The Not So Great Game

Posted on October 25, 2023 by thezman

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When the driver of the car carrying Archduke Franz Ferdinand got confused about the route and had to stop and turn around, no one thought this would be the moment that changed history. No one who knew Gavrilo Princip to that point would have imagined that he would be the man who changed the world. He was the son of poor rural peasants and should have grown up to be a poor rural peasant, but instead fate led him to that cafe just as the car of the Archduke arrived.

Of course, Gavrilo Princip was not a victim of circumstances. He willingly joined Young Bosnia, a radical separatist group. He was part of the planned conspiracy to kill the Archduke, who was on tour from Austria. For its part, Austria-Hungary decided to issue a démarche to Serbia known as the July Ultimatum, which led up to the outbreak of World War I. They made the assassination look like it was planned and executed by the Serbs, rather than pan-Slavic separatists.

The Great War and the events leading to it are a useful example of how the participants in a game will not deviate from their strategy on the assumption that they know the strategy of other players and therefore think their initial strategy will result in the optimum outcome, despite the initial results. The fact that the players did not fully understand the thinking of the other players and their desired outcome was not part of the set of possible outcomes led to disaster.

This is something to keep in mind when trying to understand what is going on in the present-day great game. We now have two hot wars involving proxies of the Global America Empire, Ukraine, and Israel. There is a third war in the planning phase using Taiwan against China. American planners are sure they know the strategy of Russia and China, so it is full speed ahead with the grand plan to defeat these two adversaries and bring about the long-promised end of history.

We got a glimpse of this last summer when the imperial planners mapped out the great Ukrainian offensive that was supposed to break Russian defenses. They were sure they understood how the Russian army would react in the field. They were sure they knew how this would impact Russian domestic politics and global politics. When it was clear from the start that things were not unfolding according to plan, they stuck with the strategy, assuming it would result in the desired outcome.

We are getting another glimpse of this in the Levant. Like the group that plotted the assassination of the Archduke, this Hamas cell that plotted the attack on Israel was acting outside the game. They relied on old analog techniques to coordinate their efforts, thus avoiding detection by Israel and other players in the region. This attack is a new element to the game, but the players are all acting on the old strategy, under the assumption that they know what everyone else is doing.

For example, the United States has sent at least two carrier groups to the region as a threat to Iran, which is assumed to be backing Hamas. There is no evidence to suggest Iran had any role in this event, but the American side is undeterred in their belief that Iran is the primary instigator in the region. In fact, the entire American strategy in the region depends on this assumption. The United States has issued an ultimatum to Iran assuming they must respond in a specific way.

It is an interesting example of asymmetric thinking. Like the great powers of Europe before the Great War, you get the sense that American planners want a war with Iran, so they are acting in a way that will bait the Iranians into acting. Israel gets to indiscriminately bomb Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, but if anyone in the region reacts to this, then the United States will consider it an act of war. Like the Serbian government in 1914, Iran is slowly being boxed in by events.

Of course, all of this is operating within the context of the greatest of great games, the challenge to the unipolar order ruled by America. Russia and China are sure they know the strategy of America, as American leaders are public about it. They seek to regime change both countries and turn them into provinces of the empire. The same holds for the lesser powers like Iran and maybe even India. For its part, the imperial schemers are sure they know the plans of their intended targets.

That is the lesson from the Great War. When all sides are sure they fully understand the strategy of the other players and they remain convinced their strategy will get the optimal result but all of them are wrong on both counts, disaster follows. The world seems to be inching toward this exact scenario. Everyone is increasingly sure of how the game must play out, so they are locking in their strategies. They are doing so despite events routinely showing them to be wrong.

There is another piece though, one that may prevent the players of this great game from blowing up the world. Great cataclysms like the Great War seem to require a bit of chance to keep the game going. Gavrilo Princip was not the cause of the Great War, but it is hard to imagine events playing out as they did that summer if he had not been in that cafe at that very moment. Throughout the war, bits of randomness worked to keep both sides locked into destruction.

Those random events worked to continue the game because all sides were locked into a myopic view of the game. In this version, the only player suffering from this is the Global American Empire. The rest of the players seem to understand that the West is acting on an internalized script. The way to avoid catastrophe is to avoid playing the designated role in that script. Russia has managed this in the Ukraine war and Iran seems to be doing this so far in the Gaza war.

That said, one should never be too optimistic about these things. The Thirty Years War happened. The Napoleonic Wars happened. The Great War happened. The Second World War happened. The theme in all of them was the players became convinced they had the optimal strategy, because they thought they knew the strategy of the other players in the game. History says that creating such conditions is easier than it should be, so this great game could end poorly.

The Agony Of The Script Writers

Posted on October 18, 2023 by thezman

The great philosopher Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until I punch them in the face.” He was, of course, paraphrasing the great Prussian field marshal, Helmuth von Moltke, who said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” That is an abbreviated version of the original. Some version of this expression no doubt exists in most languages, as it is an essential part of human existence. All plans suffer from the faults of the people making the plans.

We may be seeing this unfold in the Levant, where the Israeli plan to exterminate Hamas and anyone near them is running into trouble. The narrative unleashed on the public was that the attack on the drug rave near Gaza, in which an undetermined number of people were killed, was the red line. The Israelis were now justified in taking any and all necessary steps to eradicate this threat. All media nodes were activated to whip up support for maximum vengeance against Gaza,

Curiously, it was not just Israel whipping support. The Washington regime swung into action with more than just words of support. Every administration official was sent out to cry in public while demanding blood. Word was leaked to regime media that Washington told Tel Aviv they had a green light for anything. They sent two carrier groups the eastern Mediterranean in support of the project. Top diplomats were sent to Israel to express their unwavering loyalty to Israel.

As an aside, the dispatching of two carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean only makes sense if Washington expects to be in an air war. Given that Hamas lacks an air force, it must mean they are thinking about a neighboring country. There has also been talk about moving another attack group to the northern part of the Indian Ocean, within reach of Iran. You do not need these assets to launch a rescue mission into Gaza and they are not needed to supply Israel with weapons.

You do not have to be a suspicious person to think that maybe there was something else going on here rather than just a response to a terrorist attack. Israel and the Palestinians have been at this for half a century. This Hamas attack was an unusually successful action on their part, but it was not that unusual. They stage these raids all the time, which is why Israel spends enormous amounts of American tax dollars on the world’s most advanced border security.

One possibility is that this Hamas attack was catalyst for a larger narrative developed in Washington for when the time was right. Israel would be seen as pushed into a corner with no choice but to preemptively strike at its enemies. These enemies would be aligned with Iran, which would then come to the aid of them. This would trigger a wider war with Iran, which would be when the United States joined in to attack the nuclear, missile and drone facilities in Iran.

That skeleton of a narrative was quickly filled in with the Hamas attack. Note that regime media was filled with claims about Hamas being an Iranian proxy and that this attack had to be planned by Iran. In reality, Hamas gets its support from Qatar and was a creation of Washington and Tel Aviv. Iran has provided support over the years, but they have little control over Hamas. Few people know this, so these details could be bulldozed by the wave of claims to the contrary.

Israel immediately went to work dropping bombs on Gaza, while saying quite plainly that the intent was to drive the people out of Gaza. According to the pro-Israel media complex, the Palestinians have forfeited their right to exist by their ongoing support of Hamas, so Israel had the right to use any means necessary on them. The rhetoric and immediate actions were over the top, but most likely intended to elicit a response from Iran in support of the Palestinians.

Looking at the rhetoric, Washington must have been thinking that Iran would greenlight Hezbollah to launch cross border attacks from Lebanon. They spent a couple of days warning against such an act. Israel launched some attacks into Lebanon, probably on the same assumption. They also launched an air raid on the Damascus airport, probably for the same reason. The script said Hezbollah would attack so Israel just assumed it would happen and acted accordingly.

Outpacing the script is something we have seen with Ukraine. Washington created a narrative for the Ukrainian offensive last spring, which said that they would burst through Russian defenses and reach the Sea of Azov in a few weeks. This would set off a crisis in Moscow, maybe even topple Putin. They were so sure this would happen they even planned a peace conference in Saudi Arabia, without inviting Russia, in order to determine the terms that would be imposed on Russia.

The great Ukrainian offensive was a disaster, complete with images of burning Western tanks and video of Ukrainian soldiers trapped in mine fields. Instead of marching to the Sea of Azov, the Ukrainians marched into thick minefields without air cover and were destroyed by Russian air power and artillery. It took months for this reality to sink into Washington, so they continued on as if the script was reality. Only recently have they abandoned the script they created last winter.

That is something to keep in mind with this new script. Iran did not take the bait and has instead called for negotiations. Hezbollah has stayed quiet, despite the Israel attacks on their facilities in Lebanon. Instead of offering an excuse for the regime to launch attacks on Iran, the Iranians are backing the play of Russia and China to find a diplomatic solution to the Gaza problem. Washington remains committed to their bit, but it is clear that the Middle East is not playing its part.

Where things go from here is hard to say. The Arab world is slowly figuring out that they are being gas lit by Washington. Biden’s trip to the region was scaled back to just a goodwill visit to Israel. This is happening as the world debates who dropped a missile on a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians. Israel says Hamas bombed themselves, while everyone else says it was Israel. Odds are it was Israel, and it was simply a mistake, which happens in war.

Then you have the fact that the IDF does not want to enter Gaza. A ground campaign would be a bloody and expensive project. There is no guarantee of success, given the history of such efforts. There are up to half a million fighting age men in Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated places on earth. Imagine a guerilla war in Manhattan and you have a good idea. It took the Russians six month to take Mariupol and that is a city a quarter of the size of Gaza.

Instead of an excuse to bomb Iran and maybe Syria, the narrative writers are slowly getting boxed in by the diplomatic efforts of Russia and China. Putin has had one-on-one talks with all of the players, including Israel. China is coming in with promises of financial support for the peacemakers. Meanwhile, Washington is saber rattling and carrying on as if their script for this project is reality. It is not a good look and probably why Arab leaders refused to meet with Biden today.

Washington now finds itself on the wrong side of a war that no one really wants, especially the Israelis. As is the case with all of the narratives dreamed up by Washington, this one does not come with an exit ramp. A week of fiery rhetoric in favor of righteous retribution and threats to anyone saying otherwise has left the administration with few options. As with the Ukraine offensive, they may be forced to pretend everything is going according to the script.

The Virtue Of Survivalism

Posted on October 16, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about Double Indemnity, a Bill Wilder classic from the film noir genre, a post about a forgotten post-war classic, The Best Years of Our Lives and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

In his book The Virtue of Nationalism, Yoram Hazony argues that the ideal world order is one based on the nation state. All the peoples of the world would have a place to call their home and be governed by their own kind. He defines the nation as a closely related people with a common language and history. Since shared history requires close proximity, he assumes this history happened in a place. He avoids the phrase “blood and soil” but that is his intent.

Of course, the ideal world can only exist in the abstract. He points out that there are thousands of identifiable groups of people without a county of their own. He points to India as having over one thousand languages. Since language is tangled up in blood and history, it is a good proxy for identity. All over the world there are pockets of people living as minority groups. It is unreasonable to think that all of these people should be granted a nation of their own.

He also points out that his definition of a people is arbitrary. Two groups of people could share a language and history, but also find a way to see themselves as distinct from one another. There has to be some limit to this as the logical end point is to reduce all human societies to tiny tribes. Without some lower bound on what constitutes a people, nationalism would “pulverize” exiting states. For a people to be a nation they must exceed some threshold of sustainability.

If on the one hand the ideal is for every people to have their own nation, but on the other hand it is impossible to create sustainable nations for every group of people, how can national claims be properly judged? Hazony’s answer is self-referencing in that he sets the threshold at sustainability. In Chapter XVII of his book, he argues that a people are entitled to a nation if they can sustain it and prudence suggests it is practical or moral to support their claim to national independence.

His first example is the United States. The thirteen colonies had a legitimate claim to independence, despite sharing language and history with England, because it was impractical for England to resist their demands. The great ocean between England and the New World was too large. On the other hand, the Confederacy did not have a rightful claim to independence, because the Union could and did force those states back into the Union. The South could not sustain its independence.

Another example he gives in Israel, which gained independence in 1948, thanks to changing moral perspectives in Britain and America. Hazony claims that the English-speaking world opposed the creation of a Jewish state on the grounds that it would upset the Muslim world. The events of World War II involving the Jews, however, changed this calculation. “The holocaust demonstrated with maximum moral clarity the moral case for Jewish national self-determination.”

Putting aside the veracity of his claims here, the Hazony model for determining the edge cases for national independence comes down to either winning the support of the international community through moral persuasion or gaining your independence and maintaining it against all challenges. The two can be combined to enlist the support of powerful neighbors to take your side, as the American colonists did when they got the support of France in the American war for independence.

When you boil it all down, the Hazony formula for determining who has and who does not have a moral claim to self-determination is quite simple. Your claim is valid if you can make it stick. If circumstances or the actions of larger nations around you prevent you from gaining independence, then your claim was invalid. In his view, the virtue of nationalism lies in its effectiveness. Nationalism is a virtue if it wins your people their independence, but it is not a virtue in and of itself.

If this sounds a little bit like trial by combat, that is because it relies on the same view of man and society as ancient people. From Hazony’s point of view, you are morally indistinguishable from your people. You are a virtuous person if your life is lived in service to your people. Your people deserve respect and support if they are able to gain and keep their independence, by any means necessary. Nationalism is, in effect, trial by combat but between peoples.

This is a way of viewing virtue that is alien to the modern Western mind, as we think of virtue as an end, not a means to an end. You are a virtuous person, for example, if you practice certain habits like charity and conscientiousness, not if you make a lot of money or attain great power. For Hazony, virtue is about your purpose in helping your people attain their freedom as a people. This means anything that you do in pursuit of that collective goal is by definition virtuous.

This may not seem all that interesting, but in the context of the war between Israel and the Arab population in Gaza, it sheds light on what we are seeing from the Zionist supporters of Israel. The reason they do not see the contradiction between their claims about the Palestinians and their behavior toward the Palestinians, is the difference in how they see virtue. It is not simply tribalism that lets them maintain these contradictory views, but an alien moral framework.

From the point of view of the Zionists, Israel has a right to exist because it has gained independence and convinced enough big countries to support them in their fight to maintain their independence. The Palestinians, in contrast, have not been able to secure their independence and even if they were granted it in Gaza and the West Bank, they lack the means to sustain it. Therefore, their moral case for independence is invalid and their war against Israel is immoral.

Despite it being alien to modern people, this view of the world has its appeal, which you can see in the bloodlust voiced by Americans in support of Israel. The calls for vengeance and retribution titillate some ancient part of our brains that was of great value to our ancestors but is now buried under the conditioning in favor of individualism and moral objectivism. The suburban peasant may not be allowed to root for his own side, but he can root for Israel, so he does that instead.

In the end, Hazony may be correct in that the only thing that matters is the survival of your people, so all moral abstractions must be sublimated to it. The West has simply taken a holiday from reality by asserting that there is an objective moral standard for how people should act and how nations should act. In reality, the only thing that matters is winning the battle for survival and the winner can then declare how he won as the only acceptable way for how nations out to live.

Manna From Heaven

Posted on October 12, 2023 by thezman

One of the many problems with most conspiracy theories is they contain a central contradiction on which the theory depends. Usually, it is of the type where the villain is both omnisciently genius and incredibly stupid. The “deep state”, for example, is able to know every thought and action of every person, but they have been outwitted by the collection of aluminum foil hat guys. The central villains of most conspiracy theories are the same people who built the Death Star in Star Wars.

Another big problem with conspiracy theories is they confuse opportunism with skillful planning, as we see with the fighting in the Levant. The internet is full of theories about how Mossad or the IDF or Netanyahu deliberately let Hamas stage that raid so they could use the ensuing crisis to advance their agenda. The real goal was to clear out Gaza or maybe instigate a wider war in the region. Like 9/11, this attack was a five-cushion bank shot by the deep state.

In reality, the most likely answer for how this started is stupidity. Israel politics have been a mess for a long time now due to demographics. The Mizrahi Jews, sometimes called Oriental Jews, are those who never left the region. They are growing in number and pollical power. As a group grows in power, it tends to come at the expense of another group, or it is perceived as such. In Israel, the group threatened by the Mizrahi are the Ashkenazi, who dominate the ruling elite.

One result of this growing internal conflict is the Jewish state is not working as well as people have come to expect. The reputation of the Jewish security apparatus was made in the wars with the Arabs but also in support of the neocon wars against the Arabs during the Bush years. As is always the case, success brings complacency and that is how they got the Hamas raid. The Israelis were caught letting their guard down and the result was the Hamas raid.

That does not mean they are letting a crisis go to waste. The Dresden-like assault being waged on Gaza is one example. It is unnecessary and gratuitous, but it does sure up support in Washington, where the neocons are desperate for a win. The site of blown-up buildings and dead Palestinians not only gives people like Ben Shapiro some cheap thrills, but it also gives him a reason to whip his white audience into a frenzy of support for the war machine and its neocon operators.

It is also good for the Washington establishment. It feels like old times in the imperial capital and that is just what the doctor ordered. The rebels in the House GOP caucus have been silenced because we are at war now and no one has time for their complaints about corruption and Republican perfidy. The result is the compliant Kevin McCarthy will be replaced by the equally compliant Steve Scalise as Speaker, rather than the more independent Jim Jordan.

It is also giving Washington an excuse to cut Ukraine loose. All of a sudden no one is taking those calls from Zelensky. In between sobbing fits, White House spokesbot John Kirby made clear that Israel is now the priority. He said that “we are coming to the end of the rope on Ukraine funding” which is very bad news for Ukraine. That was a signal to regime media to wrap up their “coverage” of the war and put the whole thing on ignore and instead focus on this new war in the Levant.

This is also a golden opportunity for the Pentagon. The imperial war machine was not built to fight a land war against a peer. This has been rather embarrassing for them over the last year in the Ukraine war. From a public relations perspective, Ukraine has been terrible for the Pentagon. Now, they can switch back to their preferred role of bombing lightly armed militias. This has the added benefit of getting the flag waving yahoos excited for the war machine again.

The biggest winner in this could be the neocons who have been searching for a way to get invited back into the Republican Party. As everyone knows, a neocon cannot enter your house uninvited, so they have been searching for a way to get the Republicans to throw out the welcome mat for them. This is proving to be just the ticket, as every presidential candidate is now in a race to the sea in an effort to be the most bellicose with regards to killing Muslims.

This has the added benefit of letting them use their version of no enemies to the right, which they successfully used in the Bush years. You see, this new threat to America in the Levant is too important to risk dissent. That means Donald Trump and his criticisms of the party have to go so the more serious people like Nikki Haley can lead the party against Joe Biden and his Iranian deal makers. The fact that team Biden is run by the Kagan cult, just like Nikki Haley, will be ignored.

Of course, what will follow is new limits on speech online. The usual suspects are demanding that the social media platforms ban anyone questioning the official narrative on the war. Anyone doubting the crazy stories, for example, will be smeared as an apologist for Hamas. Maybe even an antisemite. In an ideological society, the bogeyman is always a reason to crush dissent and the regime now has a fresh new and familiar bogeyman, so the results are predictable.

That is the thing about ideological societies. The ruling elite can always take advantage of a crisis because it exists to manage crisis. Whether it is in containing counter-revolutionary forces or the inevitable crisis that arises from the irrationality of the ideology, the first task of a ruling class in an ideological society is to use every crisis as a means to advance the interest of the regime. Once Hamas parachuted into Israel, the regime had a crisis and they never let a crisis go to waste.

Trouble In The Levant

Posted on October 9, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about the classic historical drama, Doctor Zhivago, a post about demographic reality and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

A good rule when trying to understand anything in the Middle East is to first assume that nothing is as it appears on the surface. This is the land of endless intrigue and a land nearly devoid of candor. Another good rule is to assume all interested parties are lying, even those outside the region. This is especially true of anything concerning Israel, which is usually at the center of intrigue. Naturally, that is the place to start when analyzing the recent fighting in the Levant.

For those living off-grid until this morning, the Arab militia group Hamas launched a series of daring raids into Israel from the Gaza strip. They overran Israeli border posts, blinded radar systems, and attacked IDF garrisons. Once inside Israeli, they attacked some sort of outdoor rave that was going on at the time, killing hundreds of people and taking many of them as prisoners. Israel is now promising to genocide the Arab population in the Gaza strip in retaliation.

The first question to ask is how was it possible for such a large, complex operation to happen in a walled ethno-state like Israel? The IDF is a fully modern, high-tech military that is supposed to be the best in the word at defending against insurgents, yet they were caught unawares by Hamas. Further, Mossad exists to monitor these populations for exactly these sorts of threats. Somehow, poorly armed militants were able to organize this without being detected.

Adding to the intrigue is this story in the Wall Street Journal claiming inside information on how this was planned. Since we know regime media does no independent reporting, it means the story was recited to them by the regime. Is it plausible that Washington knew about this while Israel knew nothing? How likely is it that Washington knew about this and did not relay warnings to Israel? Maybe the story is a fake planted by the neocons to paint Iran as the villain.

Regardless, this attack could not come at a better time for the Israeli government, which has been in crisis for a year. Not so long ago there were large protests over constitutional reforms pushed by the Netanyahu government. Some thought civil war was possible, due to the scale of unrest. Those protests reflect a larger demographic problem within Israel. The old liberal ruling class stopped having children, while the ultra-orthodox continue to breed like rabbits.

A full-scale mobilization and war on the Palestinians is just the thing to suppress dissent and whip up support for the state. After all, this is the reason that Washington has been on a war footing since 1945. All of the parties in Israel will now have no choice but to fall in behind the Netanyahu government, at least until the emergency is over and the hostages are returned or killed by the IDF. The early results suggest the plan is to annihilate Gaza and drive off the remaining population.

There is another benefit. For decades Israel has been trying to get the United States to attack Iran and topple the Iranian regime. This was the neocon plan in the Bush years, but the debacle in Iraq forced them to table the idea. Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, so a slaughter in Gaza could provoke Iran, which in turn would give Washington an excuse to attack them. The bodies were not cold and Lindsey Graham was out reading this exact script to the media.

Israel and the neocons are not the only people dancing on rooftops over what they are calling Israel’s 9/11. The Saudis are probably taking a sigh of relief. Washington has been pressuring the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel, something they would like to avoid as it would complicate their relationship with Iran. Both countries are now in BRICS and slowly working through their longstanding issues. Of course, China and Russia are promising both sides support in this effort.

The Saudis have not made it this long by luck. They understand that the world is changing, and they know their role in this new world will change with it, but they are not going to get ahead of things either. They probably want to see how things develop with Russia and China before alienating Washington. If they can remain on good terms with all sides for now, they have more cards to play. This new flare up in Arab-Israeli tensions give them an excuse to slow-play Washington.

Then we have Iran, which is going to get the blame from Israel and the neocons for instigating this attack. Whether Iran did or did not greenlight the attack is debatable, but they have real power in this game. They have also cultivated strong relations with Russia and China, who would love to play a bigger role in the region. This new war gives Iran a reason to invite both counties into the process of finding a solution to the conflict, thus strengthening Iran.

That is another angle to this that does not get mentioned. Washington has been slowly pushed out of regional politics, outside of Israel and the garrisons in Syria. With the massive drain on the American war machine in Ukraine, is Washington capable of launching a war against Iran? Can Israel sustain their war without new supplies from Washington, which may be low on weapons too? In 2006 Israel actually ran out of certain munitions fighting Hezbollah.

In other words, Iran may be calculating that this is now the time to reset the game board in order to setup new negotiations. Imagine a scenario in which both China and Russia are pushing for a regional peace conference, but Washington and Israel are pushing for war with Iran, but neither has the means to do it. Just as every other Western empire has exhausted itself in the Middle East, Iran may be thinking the Global American Empire has exhausted itself and is ready to leave.

This brings up another angle. The Russians are the big winner in this for the simple reason that the West now has to choose between Israel and Ukraine. Washington had to requisition 80% of Israel’s reserve munitions for Ukraine. They scoured the empire for weapons and ammunition. Facing a second front, they will have to choose and everyone on planet earth knows who will win that one. A hot war in the Levant is going to make for a very cold winter in Ukraine.

This may not be the worst thing for Washington. Ukraine is a loser that will only end poorly, so putting that war on the ignore list and focusing attention on this new front in the Middle East could be a blessing in disguise. Right now, the volunteer army of Ukraine experts are rebranding as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran experts, so the Ukraine war can be quickly forgotten. The power of regime media is the power to ignore, so if they ignore Ukraine, everyone ignores Ukraine.

One interesting sidenote to all of this is the conservative zombies chanting about how weakness in Ukraine has led to aggression against Israel. They have no idea why they are saying this, but they are not entirely wrong. The failure in the proxy war with Russia has exposed the rot in the American system. Decades of looting and grifting have left the empire unable to follow through on its threats. As a result, the world is becoming less afraid of Washington’s bluster and bullying.

That is the subtext to all of this. The fossils from the Reagan-Bush Museum are not wrong when they say Israel is the only Western outpost in the Middle East. It is just that the West is in decline and that means these outposts will be abandoned or overrun as part of the process of decline. If Israel is to survive it means becoming something other than an outpost of the West. If the West is to survive, it means abandoning these outposts and setting about the task of renewal.

Ukraine Budget Drama

Posted on October 3, 2023 by thezman

Last week the House passed a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government running for another forty-five days as they haggle over a budget. As is always the case now, it was all insider baseball and pointless theater. The people on the stage doing “Shutdown Fever” seem to think there is an audience for this stuff, despite the fact the audience for this material is just the Washington media. The peanut gallery has been empty for so long they do not bother to open it anymore.

Aside from the usual finkery and shenanigans that come from these things, there was one thing that could prove to be interesting. Speaker of the House McCarthy agreed to drop Ukraine funding from the bill in order to get the votes to pass it. He promised the Democrats a separate bill, but his promises are even less reliable than some of the famously unreliable promises. The fact that the Democrats were willing to go along with it suggests they were not terribly upset by this finkery.

Despite what some back-benchers have to say, none of this has to do with the money being spent on the Ukraine project. Washington prints the money it spends, so no one in Washington worries about spending. It is not even clear that they care about the Ukraine project, but this is a good issue for them to show that McCarthy is nothing more than a gormless sock puppet for the people who really run Washington. McCarthy made sure to prove they were correct on that score.

The fact that the Democrats went along with this without too much of a fight and the White House has been moderate in tone is the curious thing. So far no one has bleated anything about Russian interference, which is has been the pattern for two years now whenever anyone questions the official Ukraine narrative. It could be that they know the fix is in so they can ignore this tempest in a teapot. Let the outer party have their poo-flinging contest, as long as the money keeps flowing.

It is also possible that the Evil Party knows the Stupid Party will come to their rescue as this Ukraine project slips into a debacle. If the Republicans are willing to take the lead on defunding this project, then they get the blame for what happens in 2024. Given the way things are going on the battlefields, it is reasonable to think that with or without Washington money, things could be very grim by next summer. Perhaps that is why the Democrats are letting the Republicans win this one.

The thing is though, the neocons never give up on a project, so it is hard to imagine them going along with this. Ukraine is not Iraq or Afghanistan. If the money runs out, the ultras will kill Zelensky and Ukraine collapses into civil war. The Russians then take control of the country and Ukraine ceases to exist. Ukraine has lost half of its population since independence and that will accelerate with a civil war. The result will be a lightly populated border state between Russia and the West.

This suggests that maybe there is some uncertainty in the White House about where to go next with the Ukraine project. Money is not the real issue. It is the dwindling supply of weapons and ammunition in the West. The Pentagon keeps warning about this issue, which no one seems to understand. It will take years to resupply the war machine with new weapons to replace those sent to Ukraine. The American military industrial base cannot keep pace with the demands of Ukraine.

If NATO cannot keep sending weapons to Ukraine, then what are the options to reduce the burn rate or stall the war until supplies can be replenished? That is where things get tricky as all of the options rely on the Russians going along with the scheme. If the plan is to slow the burn, it means the end of offensive operations by the Ukraine army, but the Russians will continue to pound them. If the plan is a cease fire, then it means getting the Russians to go along with it.

A third option, related to the first two, is the trial balloon let slip by the British Minister of Defense over the weekend. The idea is to put NATO forces into Western Ukraine as trainers and advisors. They would be housed on bases, which would be turned into supply depots and repair facilities. The belief is the Russians would not blow up these facilities due to the presence of NATO forces. NATO would have safe zones in Ukraine to build up supplies and train a new army.

Given that the Russians have blown up a number of command centers with Western advisors in them, this sounds nutty. On the other hand, those facilities did not have the NATO flag over them. They were Ukrainian military facilities disguised as things like hotels and business parks. In Syria, Washington has had a garrison there protecting the remains of ISIS from the Russians and Syrians. Perhaps Washington thinks the same thing will work in Ukraine.

Taken together, this latest bit of budget drama suggests that Washington is unsure where to go with the Ukraine project. This deal buys them a month or so to come up with a new plan. This coincides with the onset of the autumn rains which will force the Ukrainians back into their bunkers and trenches. That will also slow the burn rate of weapons and ammunition. The old narrative has finally collapsed, and they now need a new narrative or someone on whom to pin the blame.

War With Russia

Posted on September 19, 2023 by thezman

Until recent, few people outside of the Kagan cult and the Pentagon thought about fighting a war with Russia. The former has thought of nothing but such a war since the Roman legions crossed the Alps, while the latter is tasked with wargaming every imaginable scenario, no matter how unlikely. Otherwise, war with Russia stopped being a concern with the end of the Cold War. The only wars anyone needed to think about were the wars against pipsqueak countries in the Middle East.

Of course, the West now finds itself in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine which could easily tip into a direct war. Former Vice President and current 2024 candidate Mike Pence is promoting the idea of sending American troops to Ukraine. Other than Trump and Ramaswamy, all of the candidates for 2024 want a hot war. The Kagan cult, which runs Biden’s Ukraine policy, is doing all it can to provoke the Russians into something they can use to trigger Article 5.

Assuming war happens, could the West actually win such a war? Until this year, no one thought about this question, outside of the Pentagon. The United States had the world’s best military by far. It has been assumed that a war with Russia would mean certain defeat for the Russian army. The real question was whether the United States could beat both Russia and China at the same time. After eighteen months of war, the answer to the question of war with Russia is not so simple.

For starters you have to deal with the nuclear issue. Russia has 6,257 nuclear warheads and the United States has 5,550. Both sides have more than enough to obliterate the other side. Given the performance of the Russian missile fleet in Ukraine, we can assume that their ICBM’s are in good working order. This means that any conflict that reached the nuclear level would end in both sides being reduced to a premodern state at best.

Both sides know this and both sides know the other side’s process for readying a nuclear launch. Both sides have short-range nukes, but the real county killers are the ICBM’s, so as long as both sides maintain current protocols, neither side would have a reason to pull the trigger on total nuclear war. That leaves some room for using tactical nukes on the battlefield without triggering the end of the world. In fact, both sides would assume all aircraft are nuclear capable.

This is the issue with putting F-16’s into Ukraine. The Russians would have to assume they are flown by NATO crews because they would have to be flown from NATO bases and use NATO communications networks. Further, the F-16 is capable of carrying nuclear weapons, so their appearance over Ukraine will be assumed by the Russians to be NATO seeking to deliver nuclear weapons to the battlefield. The Russians would then be allowed to do the same thing.

If we assume both sides understand the risks of nuclear weapons, a big assumption given the behavior of the Kagan cult, it is possible for NATO to send troops into Ukraine to directly confront the Russian army. Both sides managed many proxy wars and some direct wars with the other side’s proxies during the Cold War, so it is not unthinkable that they could have a direct war without it going nuclear. Both sides could see an advantage in agreeing to such terms.

If we put the nuclear issue to one side for now, we are back to that original question about beating the Russian army. What the last eighteen months has proven is that the Russian army is not the Iraqi army. Washington spent close to ten years training and equipping the Ukrainian army for this war. They have poured untold billions into Ukraine over the course of the war. The West has levied massive sanctions on Russia and yet it is becoming clear that the Russians are winning the war.

One reason for this is the way in which the American military wants to fight is not how this war is being fought. This is a land war between peer armies. NATO would run into the same problems that Ukraine has experienced. They would be sucked into a war of attrition that is conducted from entrenched positions. This is the lesson the US Army War College has drawn from the war. In this paper released last week, they explain some of the realities of a war with Russia in the Ukraine.

The first thing the authors note is the human cost to the American army would be nothing like it has ever experienced. According to their analysis, the United States would suffer more losses in two weeks than it has suffered in twenty years of war in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They estimate at least three thousand dead and wounded per day. Note they are using Ukraine as an example, which gives a hint as to the real losses Ukraine has suffered in this war.

They also note that NATO would quickly have to tap into its reserves, but this is a bit of a problem as those reserves do not exist. They estimate that NATO would need a reserve force of about 450-thousand men to start the war. The current number is less than 100-thousand men. Attrition war need lots of men, but modern armies need lots of trained men, so the West would need time to build their reserves. Of course, Russia has been doing this for over a year now.

Then you get into material factors. The West has run out of weapons to send to the Ukrainians after eighteen months of war. Granted, the United States still has lots of tanks and fighting vehicles in its inventory for use in a war with Russia, but the lesson so far is those stocks are not enough. Ukraine has burned through thousands of tanks and fighting vehicles. They have used millions of artillery rounds and lost hundreds of Western supplied artillery pieces.

This article in the New York Times gets to the heart of the issue. The economic sanctions have done nothing to limit Russia’s ability to wage this war. More important is the fact that Russian has a greater military industrial capacity than the West. She also has unused capacity that can be quickly converted to making weapons. Russia can make more of the stuff she needs to fight than the West can make, which means the West will have to ramp up production.

Therein lies the problem. There are no factories that can be quickly converted to military use like the Second World War. That means building new, but that also means massive new costs to the West. In that Times article it notes that it costs the West $5,000 to $6,000 to make a 155-millimeter artillery round, but it costs Russia about $600 to produce a comparable 152-millimeter artillery shell. Now apply this math to tanks, and fighting vehicles and you see the problem.

Obviously, war with Russia would mean the West would have to reorganize to fight a war of this scale, but is it possible? Would the populations tolerate the necessary changes to the economy and society? Reorganizing America for total war when most of the country hates the rest of the country is a tall order. Is such a scheme even possible in Europe? Even if we brush aside the internal problems, could the West manage to pull it off in time to avoid defeat?

Thirty years ago, Pat Buchanan ran for president, campaigning, in part, against the de-industrialization of America. One of his points was that nations win wars on their industrial capacity, not their service industry. The same people demanding war with Russia today were gleefully auctioning off the industrial base thirty years ago, telling the working men that they needed to flip burgers. Now that the warmongers need those working men, they are in China, not Pittsburgh.

This is the reality dawning on the world as the Global American Empire flounders in its war against Russia. The Global American Empire is now in decline and the rest of the world is seeing what the Army War College is trying to tell the ruling class. The empire no longer has the capacity to maintain the empire. This is why the endless bluffs from Washington now fall on deaf ears. The question now is not what happens in a war with Russia, but what happens after this war with Russia.

The Coming Crackup

Posted on September 4, 2023 by thezman

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about the most taboo film in history, a post about the terribly racist film King Kong, and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

We tend to think of wars as isolated stand-alone events, but in reality, most wars are a part of a long process. A new power is on the rise and seeks to exploit its new status at the expense of other nations around it. The eventual war formalizes its new relationship among those nations. Wars can also reveal an underlying change in relations among nations that is not easy to see until there is war. That is what we are seeing with the war in Ukraine, which is well into its second year.

With the war in Ukraine, Americans fall into three buckets. The vast majority of people are not particularly interested. If they think of it at all it is in the context of another political boondoggle. Then you have the regime toadies who reflexively support giving the store away to Ukraine. These are hyper-partisan people who think what the party tells them to think. The final group are the realists who see the war as another neocon project that promises to end in disaster.

In Europe it is a far different matter. The pro-EU camp is the majority and totally onboard with the Ukraine project. They see this as an extension of the EU project to bring all of Europe into the post-nationalist world. Then you have the conservatives who are small in number and sound like American dissidents. They are skeptical of the Ukraine project and see it as another power grab by the EU elite. These are the voices calling for dialogue and negotiations.

There is a third group, the nationalists, that are unique to Europe. These are people who are opposed to the European project on strictly nationalist grounds. In the small countries, these people are fanatically behind Ukraine, mostly because they are spasmodically anti-Russia. It is not so much that they support Ukraine in the war but that they hate Russia. They see Azov as an example for themselves. For them, nationalism has become opposition to Russia.

There is a big caveat here. The nationalists from the traditional major powers, countries like Britain, France, Italy and even Germany, are more like American dissidents in that they see the war in nationalist versus internationalist terms. For them, Ukraine is just another project of the Global American Empire. The EU is tagging along because it is what they always do when they see a chance to grow their power. They also have a sympathetic view of Russia in this conflict.

The gap between these two camps within the European nationalist space reflects a much larger divide that cannot be closed. This post by Scandinavian nationalist Frodi Midjord gives a sense of it. The tone and content are what an American expects from the neocon critics of dissidents. The content operates in a reality that it is outside the reality of even pro-Ukrainian supporters in America. Frodi’s starting place is an entirely different conception of the reality of the war.

That starting place is the moral framing. Small nation nationalists, like Frodi, see Russia as the only villain. For no reason at all, this multi-racial empire invaded Ukraine in order to crush their nationalist dreams. Large nation nationalists, like American dissidents, see the war as another globalist project. They point to the many regime change operations over the last decades and see Ukraine, which also got the regime change treatment in 2014, as a continuation of that trend.

This explains the nasty, hyperbolic tone of that post. From his point of view, Tucker represents that other side, the nationalists and American dissidents who view Russia as just another country dealing with the empire. For him, it is not about facts and reason, but about the moral framing. If you see Russia as anything but the locus of evil, then you are on the wrong side of the issue. You see the same tone from Greg Johnson, who is close to the small nation nationalists.

Again, this difference in moral framing with regards to the war in Ukraine is reflective of much larger differences in general. The most obvious is between American dissidents and European nationalists. The nature of America means that European style nationalism is an alien concept. American nationalism is impossible for obvious reasons, but even white nationalism is unworkable. There is simply too much diversity within white America to make it work.

Here is a reality that is hard for Americans to accept. America, as in North America or even the New World, is not Europe. North America, to limit things a bit, is a different civilization than Europe. It was built by Europeans, but by and for a different sort of European than exists on the continent. While there is a lot of shared culture and history, it is not enough to overcome the differences. Europeans cannot understand North American civilization because they are not us.

In Europe itself, we see a similar gap between the small nation nationalists and the big nation nationalists. The former group’s identity as nationalists is always in the shadow of the latter nations, which have a history of invading them. Survival for small nations is always about navigating around the large nations. For the large nations, survival is never really the question. Instead, their nationalist impulses are directed to their relative status among the great powers of the world.

It is why micronations like Estonia and Finland are boiling with passion about beating Russia in the Ukraine war. They have thrown their lot in with the EU, which means the Global American Empire. They see the world as a choice between masters, so their nationalism is about picking the best master. French nationalists, in contrast, see the choice as between a master and no master. They have no fear of Russia, but they do see the Global American Empire as a real threat.

As the Global American Empire continues to decline, the gap between American sensibilities and European ones will become too big to ignore. This will become apparent in the next year as the war weighs on Europe. At some point, European elites will have to make a choice. They can continue to follow the Americans into the abyss or make a break and look out for their own interests. The concept of the West existing on both sides of the Atlantic will come into question.

In Europe, the logic of the EU will come under pressure. How reasonable is it for France, Italy, and Germany to take advice from Estonia? Why is Poland enjoying the benefits of the EU when it is Germany and France that make it possible? Why is Hungary in the EU and Britain outside of it? Why is Germany bankrupting itself over Ukraine just to pacify Latvia? The war is exposing the vast difference in world view between small Europe and big Europe.

In the end, the coming crackup of the West is really just a return to the natural order of things that should have happened in the 20th century. The Continent has always been defined by France, Germany, and Italy. As the American empire recedes, those three nations can reclaim their place atop Europe. The smaller nations will return to doing what they must, and the periphery will return to the periphery. The great crackup will return the West back to its natural order.

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Phase Change

Posted on August 28, 2023 by thezman

Note #1: I was invited on to chat with Peter Quinones about the Republican debate, the courage of Trump, the Tucker interview and many other things. For those missing the sound of me droning on each Friday, you can get your fix here.

Note #2: Behind the green door is a post about how everything is gay, a post about the terribleness of Tennessee Williams, and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

The war in the Ukraine is about to go through a phase change as the Ukrainian initiative comes to an end this autumn. For most of the year, the war has been characterized by Western initiates, along with Ukrainian military action. Planning and publicizing the Ukrainian spring offensive dominated the first half of the year, while the last three months have been dominated by the offensive itself. By all accounts this will run out of steam in the next few weeks.

According to Western media, the point of the counter-offensive was to use NATO trained brigades using Western equipment and tactics to break through Russian defenses in the south and create a corridor to the Sea of Azov. This would split Russian forces and isolate the Crimea. The assumption was that the Russian army would abandon their positions rather than fight. This in turn would create a political crisis in Russia, perhaps forcing a withdraw from Ukraine.

What happened instead was the newly trained Ukrainian units charged headlong into massive minefields while being slammed with Russian artillery. The internet was full of videos showing burning NATO equipment and desperate Ukrainian soldiers trying to escape the minefields. Western sources indicate Ukraine lost a third of this force in the first weeks of the offensive. This map of the southern defensive lines shows how little progress the Ukrainians have made in three months.

In addition to the big push in the south, the Ukrainians tried to retake Bakhmut, which they had lost in the spring. By all accounts this was a total failure and they ceased trying to retake the city. Those forces have been diverted to the south for one last shot at making some progress. Right now, the Ukrainians are putting their last Western units into a final push to capture a tiny village called Robotino. This appears to be the final battle of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.

On the public relations front, Ukraine has been launching small drone attacks against buildings in the Moscow suburbs. They have also launched attacks against Crimea using their remaining Storm Shadow missiles they got from Britain, as well as the small, improvised drones they have been using on civilian targets. These efforts have no military value, but they are seen as moral boosters. The images are quickly spread around by Western media.

The long and short of this is the West appears to be in a panic over the results, especially in the south. The narrative said that Russia is a paper tiger, and the army would break at the first sign of Western equipment. At this point, the Ukrainians were supposed to be bathing in the Sea of Azov. Instead, billions in NATO gear lies in ruins in a place now called Bradley Park. It is called that by the Ukrainians because it contains so many bombed out Bradley fighting vehicles.

There is now a growing concern that the Ukrainian army is running out of men and material to continue fighting. That speaks to the horrific losses they have taken in this ill-fated counter-offensive, but also the long toll of the war. As a result, Ukraine is stepping up mobilization efforts. There are rumors that that Zelensky will call for a full mobilization of Ukraine, which means that every available male will be called to service and maybe even the females of military age.

The one area where Ukraine has had some success is in the Black Sea, where they have been using sea drones to harass Russian shipping. There is speculation that they are using Romania to launch and control these British made drones and maybe there are British contractors helping them. American Reaper drones are also active in the Black Sea, suggesting they help locate targets. Regardless, the Black Sea has become a problem for the Russian navy and Russian shipping.

The question is what comes next. There are rumors that the Russians have been plotting an offensive of their own. This may simply be echoes from the Battle of Kursk, which took place eighty years ago in the same location. In that battle, the Soviet army stood their ground against a massive German offensive, then counter attacked, leading to one of the biggest tank battles in history. The Russians are obsessed with their history, so this may be the source of those rumors.

On the other hand, the Russians have been advancing along the northern part of the line of contact, to the point where Ukraine has evacuated the strategic city of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region. This has led to speculation that Russia may be planning to capture Kharkiv city, which is the second largest city in Ukraine. They could also swing south and cut off supply lines to the Ukrainian army in the Donbas. The Russians supposedly have over 100,000 men in this area.

The other possibility is that the Ukrainians had to strip this area of men and equipment in order to supply their offensive in the south. As a result, the Russians are taking advantage of the situation to capture these important transport hubs. In other words, they are simply filling a void left by the Ukrainians, and it has nothing to do with their plans for the fall and winter. Either way, the collapse of this part of the Ukrainian lines supports the lack of manpower claims.

This leads to the topic of what comes next. As this phase of the war reaches its end over the next few weeks, the ball will now be in the court of the Russians, who have spent a year building up forces in Ukraine. They could go on the offensive or simply continue to grind away at the Ukrainian army. They could also begin to work on the Ukrainian infrastructure as a way to weaken their resolve. Of course, a major winter offensive is also a possibility.

There is also the question as to what the West does now that their great Ukrainian counter-offensive narrative is in tatters. For now, they seem to be contenting themselves with a blame game focused on the Ukrainians. The neocons are blaming the Ukrainian general for not following their orders, while the Pentagon is pointing the finger at Zelensky for meddling in the military planning. Out of this will come a new narrative, but its details remain a mystery at this point.

Then there is the election calendar. The Poles have elections is October, which will be an interesting look at European public opinion. There is no anti-war party in Poland to speak of, so it is going to be a more subtle read on how the ruling party has managed the war to this point. In June, the Germans have an election. The AfD is an anti-war party and they have jumped in the polls. So much so that the German government is threatening to ban the party entirely.

Of course, the American presidential election cycle has started. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the anti-war option on the Democrat side. The regime has banned any serious polling on him, but they must be worried as they have pulled Bernie Sanders out of mothballs to campaign in New Hampshire. Then you have Trump who is the enemy of the neocons and the military industrial complex. His swarthy mini-me, Vivek Ramaswamy, has also taken a strong anti-war position.

The bottom line is there is no path to victory for Ukraine. This phase of the war which has gone on for close to a year makes that abundantly clear. While the Ukraine army has fought heroically, they are outmanned and outgunned. Now that the West is out of weapons to send to them and Western domestic politics is about to take center stage, Ukraine will be faced with some grim choices. The big question is how a Western defeat plays out over the next year.

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