The Singularity Of War

Posted on August 25, 2023 by thezman

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One of the fascinating parts of the Great War is how the sides adjusted to the changes in military technology. At first, they did not adjust at all. They continued to use tactics that they used before the invention of machine guns and high explosives. This was despite seeing the power of these new weapons in the various Balkan wars in the years preceding the Great War and the Italo-Turkish War in 1912.

That changed quickly once both sides figured out that the new weapons had made the old tactics suicidal, but they did not have a good answer. After the German advance stopped, both sides had the same idea, which was to outflank the other side to the north, which became the famous race to the sea. Once both sides reached the sea, what came next was years of trench and attritional warfare.

The curious thing about the stalemate is that it took both sides so long to figure out how to solve the trench problem. The first use of tanks was two years into the war, and they were a long way from being determinative. It took another year for the Allies to figure out how to use them properly. Neither side ever developed tactics for breaching entrenched positions without suffering heavy casualties.

The armored vehicle and the airplane solved the trench problem. Airpower could suppress opposing artillery, allowing armored vehicles to enter the defensive zone, which allowed infantry to follow behind the armor. Mobility suddenly made fixed defenses a liability. The German sweep into France in the Second World War was proof that mobility trumps even the best fixed defenses.

The war in the Ukraine has now brought us full circle. The Russians crossed into the Ukraine and ran into a series of heavily fortified defensive lines. Those lines included artillery and surface-to-air missiles. In front of those defensive lines, they found obstacles and mine fields organized like a maze. The Ukrainians also had a fairly good air force, including a good supply of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 attack drones.

There was no way for the Russians to use their superior tanks and armored vehicles to break through the Ukrainian lines. By the time they got to the minefields the Ukrainians were attacking them with artillery. The minefields and obstacles slowed the assault, giving the Ukrainians time to bring up reinforcements to meet the attack. The choice was heavy losses or retreat, and the Russians chose retreat.

The Russians made an assault against a town in the south called Vuhledar, also known as Ugledar. They thought they could roll up on the Ukrainian positions by first taking the surrounding dachas and turning them into a staging area to assault the town. Instead, they found themselves in a maze of minefields. Then the Ukrainians unleashed their artillery on those stranded units.

Of course, this works both ways. After the Russians settled into the war, they started building their defenses. They brought in their artillery and surface-to-air missiles to solve the problem of the Ukrainian air force. They quickly figured out how to knock out the Bayraktar drones using electronic warfare. Their one innovation was the use of modern mines to create vast and complex minefields.

This is why the NATO-planned offensive has been a disaster. They still think mobile warfare beats even the best defenses. They sent armored columns at the Russian lines, only to be attacked with drones that destroyed the mine clearing tanks and forced the rest of the armor into the minefields. These highly mobile units were quickly made into immobile targets the Russians could easily destroy.

It is clear that the West has no answer for this problem. They could give Ukraine F-16’s with contract pilots, but they are not much use against Russian air defenses. The West could bring in their own air defenses to neutralize the Russian air advantage, but that still leaves the trench problem. There is no answer to crossing minefields and attacking fortified defenses without air superiority.

The Russians have the same problem. Once this Ukrainian offensive burns itself out, they will have to figure out how to break the Ukrainian defenses. They will have air superiority and a huge edge in artillery. They also have a growing selection of drones they can use to knock out Ukrainian artillery, but they still have to cross those minefields while Ukrainian defenses fire on them.

It is not an unsolvable problem. Like the Great War, the winning side will be the one able to maintain the fight. Biden said the quiet part aloud the other day when he said NATO is running out of weapons. The Russians figured this out last year which is why they have been waging a war of attrition. They know if they wait long enough, the other side will collapse just like the Germans did in the Great War.

That still leaves us with the same problem. Assuming the West could ramp up its industrial production and match the Russians, it simply means that we are back to the old trench warfare problem. As drones get better and militaries get better at using them, this problem will only get worse. The Russians are now experimenting with drone technology in old tanks to use them as decoys.

This problem could also apply to naval warfare. The Russians were able to use a hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile to take out a Patriot battery. That same weapon can be used to take out a ship. Those cheap drones that take off from Russia and hit targets all over Ukraine can do the same thing to surface ships. It is not hard to see how new technology could turn the ocean into a version of the trench.

War has always been about innovation. A new weapon or tactic results in a new counter measure, which forces the development of new weapons and tactics. You have to wonder if there is a limit and maybe we have reached it. Short of nuclear weapons, the West cannot hope to beat the Russians on the battlefield and the Russians cannot hope to beat the West. We may have reached the singularity of war.

This applies to China as well. There is no doubt that Russia is helping China build out its missile and drone technology to defend against the American navy. If the US navy cannot get carriers within striking distance of the mainland without suffering catastrophic losses and the Chinese cannot blockade Taiwan for the same reason, then the long planned war with China over Taiwan become mutual suicide.

What is the answer to a hypersonic missile striking a carrier? They can put air defenses on the carrier, but they are not able to defend against these missiles at this time and the missiles will keep getting better. Like the tank, the aircraft carrier is losing its value due to changes in technology. If opposing navies are afraid to get in range of one another, then we have a standoff on the seas.

Of course, we always have nukes. Maybe the answer that the empire lands on is the use of nuclear weapons to solve the problem. The regime talks about them incessantly with regards to Ukraine. Maybe the plan for China will be sub-launched nukes to disable her coastal defenses. That is the history of war. Every new defense is met with a new offense crafted by a bloodthirsty lunatic.

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The Crisis At The Window

Posted on August 10, 2023 by thezman

For about six months, starting last winter, Western media talked about a Ukrainian counter-offensive that was supposed to change the direction of the war. These stories coincided with stories about the delivery of various types of equipment, along with expert opinions from retired generals. Late in the spring Washington sent reliable toadies over to Kiev to see the plans and then talk to the media about how the Ukrainians were preparing to deal a death blow to Moscow.

As we get into the heart of August and the third month of the offensive, it is clear to most everyone that it has been a disaster. First came the images of Western armored vehicles trapped in minefields. Images of burning tanks were then followed by video of Ukrainian soldiers struggling to escape the same minefields after their armored vehicles were disabled by mines. Then came weeks of reports in the West about revised tactics that achieved nothing along the front.

As things stand, the most enthusiastic Ukraine supporters say that the counter-offensive has managed to capture about ten square miles. In reality, the Ukrainians failed to make it through the security zone of Russian defenses. This is the area in front of the first defensive lines that are used to slow an attack. In the south, Ukraine managed to capture a few abandoned villages, but relentless Russian attacks from artillery and airpower turned those into Ukrainian cemeteries.

At the start of the offensive, independent observers and Russian sources said the Ukrainians had enough resources to continue their offensive into August. At that point they will have exhausted men and material. At that point, they would have no choice but to stop offensive operations and fall back into defensive positions. Otherwise, they would be forced to cannibalize their lines and leave themselves open to Russian attacks in other areas along the line of contact.

That may have been a generous assessment. Over the last couple of weeks Russian forces in the north have steadily pushed the Ukrainians back. Ukraine has just moved their northern headquarters west to get clear of the Russian advance. They have also ordered the evacuation of Kupyansk, an important town located on the bank of the Oskil River in the Kharkiv Oblast. Reports suggest the Ukrainians simply lack the manpower and equipment to defend the area.

Washington is in a panic because they promised everyone that the Ukrainians would easily smash through Russian lines in the south. The plan was to rush through to the Sea of Azov, thus severing the land bridge between Russia and Crimea. Once that happened, attacks would begin on Crimea. The Russian army would either revolt after the humiliation or simply collapse, causing political chao in Moscow. It is hard to believe, but this was the official narrative.

Interestingly, the narrative was not just another pack of lies from the Kagan cult, but an official assessment from the Pentagon. It has been Western military doctrine that the way to defeat the Russians in a land war is with a rapid, concentrated attack on their defensive lines using armor and infantry. Here is a paper on the topic from 2017 and here is a recent video discussing it in connection with this war. This strategy actually goes back to the Cold War days.

The short version is that Russia organized its army around groups of 800 to 1000 men that operate independently within the defensive formation. These units have, tanks armored personnel carriers and artillery. The NATO strategy was to send overwhelming force at these units, forcing them to retreat in order to preserve their equipment. Russia is known for trading land for resources. They did this in the Kharkiv region last year and in the Kherson region last spring.

What Washington did not notice is that the Russians have moved away from the Battalion Tactical Group to more flexible arrangements based on the situation, terrain, and their own resources. In the south when Ukraine launched its main attack, they did not face battalions, but divisions. Further, the Russians had prepared complex defensive positions designed to trap advancing armored columns. In other words, the Russians read that paper and were ready for it.

Another thing Washington did not notice is that the Russian army has changed in other ways since the Cold War. They have a wide range of electronic warfare systems that work well against modern weapons. They also have incorporated drones in massive numbers that are highly effective against Western armor. The internet is full of videos where a Lancet drone takes out a Ukrainian armored vehicle. The Russians have quickly become the masters of drone warfare.

The main reason the Ukrainian offensive is a catastrophe is the side with the trillion-dollar annual budget has not updated their understanding of the Russian army since the last century. They have not bothered to notice what has been happening on the battlefields over the last eighteen months. Instead, the world’s most expensive military has gone along with the crackpot plans of the Kagan cult, either not understanding what is happening or indifferent to the inevitable results.

The Ukraine war is becoming a microcosm of the crisis of competence. It is not just the scarcity of talented people in the ranks. They still exist in sufficient numbers to keep the system operating reasonably well. The issue is the selection pressure at the top is for true believers and sycophants. The only way to get in the room to discuss the Ukraine war is to be fully on board with the dream of destroying Russia or be willing to humiliate yourself by telling these people what they want to hear.

Imagine the tag team of Victoria Nuland and General Milley replicated throughout the managerial system. Nuland is the maniacal imbecile in charge for no other reason than zealotry, while Milley is the oleaginous flunky with the credentials to provide legitimacy to the rantings of Nuland. The competent are driven from the room, leaving this combination to chart public policy. The general decline in competence that is driving demographics, is driven by this combination at the top.

In the movie Braveheart, Longshanks returns from France to confront his son who was charged with putting down the Scottish revolt. His son has his “advisor” with him, who makes the mistake of speaking out of turn. This is what has happened in the West, except Longshanks died of a heart attack and his son is in charge. The advisor now busies himself telling the son what he wants to hear. Meanwhile, outside the castle walls, the kingdom rattles toward collapse.

Nature Finds A Way

Posted on July 25, 2023 by thezman

Despite being our greatest ally and an obsession for Republican party leaders, few have noticed that Israel has been in disarray for years. Politically there is a battle between two main factions that see no room for compromise. This has now spilled into the streets in mass protests over a new law curbing court power. Internationally, Israel has never been less significant. Its main patron, the American Empire, is busy trying to start a nuclear war with Russia and China.

At the moment, tens of thousands of Israelis are rioting over plans to overhaul the legal system, limiting the power of the courts. This plan is championed by the conservatives, led by Bibi Netanyahu. The point is to give the parliament more power by limiting the courts’ ability to annul laws passed by the parliament. Israel is a single chamber parliament where the prime minister is the leader of the ruling coalition, so it means two thirds of government are run by the prime minister.

There is a bit of the familiar lunacy in these protests. The people setting fires and destroying things claim the other side is committing acts of violence. This is the old “your speech is violence; our violence is speech” business we have come to expect from the regime toadies throughout the empire. They also claim that limiting democracy through the courts is the only way to defend democracy. Democracy means rule by the permanent ruling elite, contrary to the public will.

What is really happening here is demographics. For generations, liberal Ashkenazi Jews has ruled Israel. Liberal in this case means pro-Western. They aligned Israel with the West, primarily the United States, turning it into a beachhead for the empire in the region and a staging ground for Jewish activism in the West. The reason Republican presidential candidates swear allegiance to Israel is because of the massive amount of influence Israel has in Washington.

This is changing as the number of ultra-orthodox and non-Western Jews grows relative to the population as a whole. The simple fact is the pro-Western population has not been having babies, while the very conservative population has been producing around six births per female. The guys with the fur cylinders on their heads have been winning the most important political battle, the fertility battle. Netanyahu now represents this very conservative demographic in Israeli politics.

These ultra-conservative voters are not particularly interested in courting Western opinion or in buying influence in Washington. They are focused on making Israel a Zionist paradise free of non-Jews, especially the Palestinians. They are also not interested in the endless political intrigue that defines the Middle East. Imagine if the Amish were hyper-violent and they seized control of Pennsylvania. That is what is about to happen to Israel as the ultra-orthodox take over politics.

Of course, the political turmoil and civil unrest should be making Israel more vulnerable to Arab attacks, but no one is worried about it. The reason is the surrounding Arab countries do not care that much about Israel, other than as a source of Western shenanigans in the region. Officially, the Arab world remains opposed to Israel, but unofficially they have other concerns. The Arab-Israeli wars were a long time ago and much has changed since then.

This reality is reflected in the population. The typical Arab in that part of the world is indifferent to Israel and Jews, but there remains a minority that obsess over the topic, so everyone just ignores it. The truth is Jews and Arabs are fine doing business with one another and living in peace. The exception is in the Palestinian territories, but the truth is no one likes the Palestinians. They are the least sympathetic party in the region and their only supporters are on the American college campus.

The subtext to the unrest in Israel is the declining influence of the Global American Empire on Israel and the region. Twenty years ago, Washington would have stopped this legislative agenda in Israel with one phone call. Today the Netanyahu regime has no fear of the Biden people. They see what is happening in the world and are thinking about the world that comes after the American empire. Israel in the post-America world will not have the luxury of indulging in liberal niceties.

The post-American Middle East may be more stable for the simple reason that Washington will not be pitting one group against the other. China and Russia are ready to fill the void left by America and they care only about business. The Russians are poised to become the dominant energy power in the world, while China is the manufacturing base of the world. Neither country sees unrest in their interests, so they could be a calming influence on regional politics.

Putting that aside, the critics of the Israeli plan to limit the courts are right to say it is an erosion of democracy, as long as you use the managerial definition of democracy, which means rule by the managerial class. What these changes represent is a frontal assault on one of the main sources of power by their managerial class. The other power center for them is the secret police. American-style liberal democracy is on the retreat in Israel because it is on the retreat everywhere now.

What is happening in Israel is an example of the great chain of causality. Politics are downstream from biology and culture. Israel is a land full of people who like wearing strange headgear as they furiously argue with one another over what John Derbyshire once described as “elaborate, plausible, and intellectually very challenging systems that do not, in fact, have any truth content.” Israeli politics will not resemble Western politics because Israeli is full of non-Western people.

In the larger sense, the happenings in Israel are another chapter in what will be a haphazard and often chaotic retreat of the Global American Empire. The war in Ukraine is one of those chapters. There is a good chance that a war with China over Taiwan will be another chapter. Like weeds growing through a sidewalk, however, the nature of the world is slowly pushing through the cultural and political norms imposed on the world by the Global American Empire and returning to its natural state.

The Russian Anaconda

Posted on July 5, 2023 by thezman

Wars are often described in the context of the diplomacy between the combatants and the battles that make up the war. Today is the anniversary of the launch of Operation Citadel by the Germans in the Second World War. This battle was part of the larger Battle of Kursk, which featured the largest tank battle in history. This battle, like the war itself, is described by its various operations. It was decided, however, by decisions made by both sides long before the battle took place.

It is those decisions made in advance of war that play the biggest role. The planning of both sides, their assumptions about the other side, as well as assumptions about the course of the war, are the major factors in a war. Once the fighting begins, both sides are often swept up in the action, which is the product of their plans and assumptions interacting with the plans and assumptions of the other side. Fighting becomes a machine with a mind of its own.

We see this with the Ukraine war. Before the actual fighting, both sides were busy preparing for what they assumed would come next. The Russians amassed about 150,000 men on the border of the Donbas. The Ukrainians had been preparing a summer attack on the Donbas but switched to preparing for a defense. Both sides were preparing based on the assumptions they were making about the other. In the case of Ukraine, their assumptions were NATO assumptions.

The Russians were the first to move their pieces on the board. They assumed that the Ukrainians would not want a war. They assumed Europe would jump in to broker some sort of peace deal based on the Minsk agreements in 2014. They crossed the border in Ukraine assuming they would not have to do much fighting. The sight of Russian tanks outside Kiev would conjure images of war, which would cause the Europeans to rush to the table offer a peace deal.

This plan was a total failure for the Russians because they were operating from assumptions about the West that were all wrong. Ukraine was not interested in a deal and the Europeans would not try to persuade them because Washington was not interested in a deal. Washington wanted regime change in Russia, which meant they wanted war with Russia in the Ukraine. Not only that but the Minsk agreements were a deliberate ruse to sucker the Russians.

In the spring of 2022, the Russians had to rethink everything. This meant new assumptions and new plans based on those assumptions. This is when they reorganized their command structure, called up hundreds of thousands of reserves and embarked on an entirely new strategy for dealing with the West. The Russians pulled out a blank piece of paper, wrote down what they knew, what they thought they knew and then built a war plan from what they had on the paper.

On the other side, the West had been preparing for this war since Washington overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014. Their base assumption was that Russia was too weak to either stop NATO from expanding into Ukraine or two weak to sustain the effort required to halt NATO expansion. They would either put nuclear missiles on Russian’s border or they would get war that would quickly exhaust the Russians, thus ushering in the planned breakup of Russia.

At the start of the war, the Ukrainians were faced with the same choices that faced the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War. When facing a more powerful opponent, you can either make a daring attack on their forces hoping to force a truce, fall back into defense hoping to sap their will to fight or you can look for some way to reduce their ability to conduct the war. This may mean using unconventional tactics to destroy their war production and logistics networks.

In the case of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis preferred the defensive strategy, assuming the North would quickly tire of the war. General Lee preferred to go on attack, largely based on the same assumption. The superior field commanders of the South would quickly drive up the cost of war for the North. Stonewall Jackson, on the other hand, saw the problem in both strategies. He preferred to attack the North’s industrial capacity and logistics. Lee won the argument and lost the war.

Like the Confederates, the West made the same assumptions about the other side’s willingness and ability to sustain the war. They chose two of the three options, by waging a sanctions war on Russia to reduce her capacity to fight and had the Ukrainian army dig in for a long siege. Even to this day, Western media is predicting that the Russians will collapse any minute. The long-promised summer offensive was predicated on this key assumption about the Russians.

In what may go down as one of history’s greatest ironies, the West has made the same mistake that was made by the Confederacy. It turns out that the Russians can wage war for as long as it takes to achieve their goals. Not only that, but Russia also has large untapped resources to supplement what she had on-hand. As some Western analysist have noted, the Russians are stronger now than at the start of the war. The key assumption of the West about Russia has proven to be wrong.

Once the Russians realized their blunder, they found themselves with the same choices as the North in the Civil War. They could sue for peace and accept whatever would come from it. They could ramp up for a massive offensive against the Ukrainians and accept sizable losses or they could prepare for a war of attrition aimed at sapping the ability of Ukraine to maintain her army in the field. The Russians settled on what amounts to a Slavic version of the Anaconda plan.

The Russians appear to have made three key assumptions. One is they assumed the West lacked the military industrial capacity to fight a war of attrition based on artillery and mine warfare. The second assumption was the West could not replace the Ukrainian air defense system once it was depleted. This would give Russia control of the skies over the battlefield. Finally, the Russians assumed that eventually the West would force the Ukrainians to go on offense using NATO tactics.

The first assumption has proven to be true. The West is running out of stocks to send Ukraine and has limited ability to produce more. The American military system is not built for this sort of war. Ukraine uses in a month what the West produces in a year in terms of artillery shells. This is a fraction of Russian production. Added to this is the fact that the Russians are simply better than the West at artillery war. They have better guns, better training, and better tactics.

The second assumption has also proven correct. At the start of the war, the Ukrainians had the second-best air defense systems in Europe. The reason is they were using the same systems as the country with the best systems, Russia. Again, this is not something in the Western toolkit. American strategy is to use air power to control the skies, not ground based missile systems. That missile barrage against power plants was meant to deplete Ukrainian stocks and it has succeeded.

Finally, the long-awaited offensive by Ukraine is looking like what the Russians prepared for over the last six months. Like the German army in the Battle of Kursk, the Ukrainians are running into complex defenses based on slowing them down so Russian artillery and air power can destroy them. That plus the extensive use of mines to entangle Ukrainian forces as they approach has led to scenes like this one during the early days of the long anticipated offensive.

NATO is set to meet this month to discuss where they go next with this war, so the Ukrainians are desperate to find a victory somewhere to show them. They are currently back to hurling infantry at Russian defenses around Bakhmut. Given the Russian understanding of the dynamics of this war, it is possible that Ukraine wins a battle for a village or two at some point along the front. The point is to keep driving up the cost to the Ukrainians in terms of men and material.

To bring us back to where we started, the long promised Ukrainian counter-offensive is looking a lot like the Battle of Kursk. The Russians were prepared and understood what they were facing. Like the Germans, the Ukrainians have misread things and continue to operate from false assumptions about their opponent. The result is the Russian anaconda plan is about turn this offensive into Gettysburg. It is a defeat from which Ukraine can never recover.

What Is Happening Inside Russia

Posted on June 28, 2023 by thezman

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth” is a famous quote from Sherlock Holmes. While it can easily lead to the logical fallacy called the false dilemma, it is useful in arriving at a set of possible solutions to a problem. You first remove the answers that are impossible then think about the range of solutions that remain. It may not yield the exact right answer, but at least you avoid the wrong answer.

Such is the case with the Russian coup. Last weekend the head of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced he was going to march on Moscow with his troops and forcibly remove the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu. He quickly amended that claim to saying he was staging “a march for justice” to demand the removal of Shoigu and his top deputy Valery Gerasimov. Then a few thousand of his men drove up the highway toward Moscow, stopping at a nearby city.

Some sort of negotiation was initiated by the Kremlin, which led to a deal brokered by the head of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The “coup leaders”, including Prigozhin, would not be arrested. Instead, they would head off to Belarus with a contingent of the Wagner fighters. Presumably, these are the fighters who went with Prigozhin. The rest of the Wagner groups would be offered a deal to sign contracts with the Russian military or go back to civilian life.

In the history of military coups, this is the weirdest. An ironclad rule of putting down coup attempts is you punish the leaders of the coup in such a way that terrifies anyone thinking about staging a coup. The ghoulish punishments of the past came about in response to attempts to topple the king. The English used hanged, drawn and quartered, for example, as a special punishment for treason. Cutting open the traitor and pulling out his internals while still alive made a big impression.

Prigozhin going into semi-retirement in Belarus does not make much sense if he was staging a genuine coup. Whatever he was up to, the Kremlin has decided that his goal was not regime change at the top. Further, they decided that no one else thought it was a genuine coup either, so they were free to be lenient. In fact, it appears that the Kremlin has decided that extreme leniency serves their interests. Whatever happened here, we can reasonably assume it was not a coup attempt.

Another possibility is that this is some sort of four-dimensional chess maneuver to get the Wagner group into Belarus. From there they can attack Kiev. We can eliminate this option as the number of Wagner forces headed to Belarus is small, just a few thousand, so they are not attacking anything by themselves. To attack Kiev, you would need several hundred thousand troops. Kiev is a huge city with lots of defenses and tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces in and around it.

We can probably eliminate the other 4-D chess theories as well. The Russians are not fond of these sorts of public relations stunts. If for example, the Kremlin wanted to get rid of Prigozhin, they would not put on a show like this. Similarly, if Putin were looking for a way to sure up his position with regards to the hardliners, he would not risk letting them stage a coup. The right answer lies within the domain of people acting in what they thought was their own interests.

Starting from the least likely, the first possibility is that Prigozhin was operating as some sort of double agent. He was talking with Washington about staging a coup or maybe he was talking to the Ukrainians. In reality he was working with Moscow to help flush out some conspirators in the Ministry of Defense. Prigozhin’s march to Moscow was his final favor to Putin before he heads off to retirement. The drama worked as cover for the Kremlin as they rounded up the real conspirators.

This is possible, but very much in the four-dimensional chess zone, so it is probably the least likely answer. Putin’s position is secure, so he would not have to do this sort of Game of Thrones stuff to deal with troublemakers. He has made plenty of personnel changes during the last year, so he could arrest a couple of traitors. That and there has been no word on anyone being arrested. Russia is a modern country. If someone important disappears, everyone soon knows about it.

There is the possibility Prigozhin went mad. Like Colonel Kurtz, he lost touch with reality and this half-baked coup was the result. The fact that most of his troops refused to participate is an important data point. According to reliable sources, only a few thousand Wagner fighters went on the march. Given the increasingly erratic behavior of Prigozhin and his prior insane statements, this is a strong possibility. He went mad and the Kremlin simply found a peaceful way to manage it.

A similar and slightly more plausible option is that Prigozhin allowed his dispute with Shoigu to get the better of him. His genuine complaints about the conduct of the war were spoiled by his public airing of those complaints. His support within the military collapsed and he found himself with two bad options. One was wait to be fired and the other was to force his way into a better deal. In the end he gets to retire in a form of house arrest in neighboring Belarus.

Another version of this is that Prigozhin misjudged his support within the Kremlin, and he overestimated his public support. He made his move thinking he had a strong hand but once he reached Rostov, reality became clear to him. The reason the Kremlin quickly offered him a golden bridge out of his predicament, is they were confident they had the situation in hand. It also suggests they anticipated this was a possibility and were ready to end it without bloodshed.

Further support of this option is the way the Kremlin quickly moved to offer Prigozhin a way out of his dilemma. Russian forces had already circled Wagner at Rostov, with the Chechens on their way as a sign of unity. It was if they anticipated this possibility and not only prepared a response but had time to consider how it would look to their friends and allies. Independent polling also suggests this went over very well with the Russian people. Putin’s popularity is at a record high.

While the evidence suggests Prigozhin either acted from madness or hubris, there is one wrinkle that is worth mentioning. The usual suspects rushed out to post their fantasy version of what was happening as the events were unfolding. Many stated that they knew about this plot all along. Senior Kagan cult member Anne Applebaum had a narrative out on the first day. Note that her husband, a Polish diplomat, posted on Twitter about the Nord Stream bombing as it happened.

The Russians have used this to claim that Prigozhin may have been working with outside forces, strongly suggesting Washington was involved. The Biden people have been rushing around to deny these claims. The reason is they see that it will give the Kremlin an excuse to escalate in response. Yesterday the Russians bombed a hotel in Kramatorsk, which housed foreign mercenaries. The subsequent video revealed a lot of Americans digging through the rubble.

It has been clear for a while that the hardliners are not happy with the pace of the war, but Putin has been reluctant to go harder on Ukraine. He has also been the least bellicose of the Russian leaders with regards to Washington. Putin has always been in the dovish camp regarding the West. This Prigozhin incident may have opened a road for Putin to take toward the hawks. This Kramatorsk attack could be the start of a new period of escalation by Moscow.

In the end, we do not know the real story behind these events. All we can do is eliminate the impossible. Once you do that, we are left with a picture of the Russian leadership that is trying to avoid World War Three, but also balancing internal politics in order execute a war of attrition with the West. The end result of this Prigozhin incident will not be the end times as imagined by the Kagan cult, but it could lead to a more aggressive stance by Moscow toward the West.

The Terrifying Narrative

Posted on June 13, 2023 by thezman

Note: American Renaissance is having its annual conference in August at the usual location in Tennessee. It is a great event and anyone who is interested in the sort of politics discussed here should make it there at least once. You can sign up for the event at the American Renaissance website.

Depending upon who is doing the reporting, the great Ukrainian counter-offensive is now entering its second week, or the pre-counter-offensive probing maneuver is winding down in preparation for the long-awaited counter-offensive. However, it is described, the Ukrainians are conducting largescale offensive operations at several places using the Western armor. We know this because of the images of German Leopard tanks on fire that we are seeing online.

It is far too early to draw any conclusions about the success or lack of success of this new operation, but it is clear that we are seeing another example of how Western leaders came to believe the narratives they created in the information war. This is an increasing phenomenon where the information production centers of the managerial class create narratives so compelling that the managerial elite confuses these manufactured realities with genuine reality.

In this case, the manufactured reality said that the Russian defensive lines were undermanned and under supplied. Despite the daily display of firepower, the Russians are running out of everything. On top of that, morale in the Russian ranks is low due to the fact the Russian army is composed of conscripted peasants. The narrative that evolved over the last six months of hyping the offensive is that as soon as Western tanks appeared, the Russians would scatter.

This explains why the Ukrainians used the most advanced armor in their assault on Russians lines in the south. The images of destroyed Leopard 2 tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Finnish mine clearly tanks that have been all over the internet the last week tell the story. This frontal assault with the best Western equipment was supposed to be a promotional vehicle for the benefits of arming Ukraine with the weapons it needs to drive the Russians all the way back to Moscow.

What happened instead was a disaster for Ukraine. In the south, they launched attacks on three areas, all of which got bogged down in minefields. As the Ukrainians tried to maneuver out of the minefields, the Russians attacked them with Lancet drones, KA-52 attack helicopters and artillery. Depending upon who is telling the story, Ukraine has already lost between fifteen and thirty percent of its Western armor and has yet to reach the first line of Russian defenses.

If we accept the Western number as fifteen percent, it is clear that these offensive operations will have a short duration. Keep in mind that the action so far has happened in the security zone of Russian defenses. This is the extreme outer layer used to detect how the enemy is approaching. Ukraine has yet to penetrate this area, which is lightly defended relative to the proper defensive lines. In order to reach the defensive lines, it means suffering massive losses in men and material.

What is remarkable about this is that the United States has spy satellites positioned over Ukraine. They have been providing Ukraine with intelligence from satellites for over a year. NATO has been providing targeting information along with the guided munitions they supply Ukraine. The United States operates the Global Hawk surveillance drone over the Black Sea. In other words, the West has been watching the Russians build their lines in real-time for months.

Despite what they clearly see happening, the narrative prevails. You see it in this detailed report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It goes into great detail about Russian defensive preparations. Woven throughout the report, however, is the familiar talking points about the inferiority of Russian equipment and the condition of the Russian military. When asked who they believe? The official narrative or their lying eyes, the writers chose the former.

That is the important part about understanding the power of narrative within the Western managerial elite. Disconfirmation is always met with an organized effort to force the contrary information onto the narrative. Maybe the narrative is tweaked to account for the new data, but the final chapter never changes. The good guys always win in the end and the West is always the good guys. After all, the lesson of history is that the good guys always win.

What we see happening is the narrative makers are converting the results on the battlefield into a new chapter of the story. In this chapter, the West supplies Ukraine with nuclear weapons. Note that this is cast as a defensive action. The superpower cries out in pain as it supplies Russia’s opponent with nukes. Note also that this policy paper is not produced by a random crank. AEI is one of the most influential and well-funded think tanks in Washington.

If that is not terrifying enough for you, there is now talk of letting NATO members “voluntarily” send troops into Ukraine. The Poles have already sent thousands of volunteers, but now there is talk of bring the Baltic states into the mix. The idea is to provide F-16 fighter jets with Western trained pilots from the eastern members of NATO in order to provide air cover for Ukrainian offensives. After all, the Russian army is ready to collapse so they just need one final push.

One of the enduring mysteries of the Great War is how the rulers on both sides kept at it despite the obvious futility of the war. Both sides remained convinced that the other was running on fumes. All they needed to do was keep up the pressure and the other side would eventually crack. They were right, in that the Germans did eventually crack, but not until the continent was reduced to rubble. Imagine if both sides even had crude nuclear weapons. That is where we are now.

That is the terrifying part of this war. Western leaders have become immune to reality, so they embrace narratives produced by people with their own interests. The neocons want to blow up the world. The military industrial complex wants to keep selling expensive weapons. The Ukrainian dictator needs the war to keep going in order to avoid assassination. Everyone involved has a reason to believe the narrative over their lying eyes, so reality remains on the sidelines.

The hope is that events on the ground will reach a point where the remaining sane people in power feel they must step in and stop the madness, but this Ukrainian offensive suggest reality is no match for a good story. Western managerial elites have evolved to the point where they now live in a world of their own creation. It is not hard to imagine them standing in front of a window with VR goggles strapped to their faces as a mushroom cloud forms on the horizon.

Next Phase Of The Ukraine War

Posted on May 31, 2023 by thezman

It has been a year since the Russians began the process of shifting from a limited military operation to a full-scale war. After the Ukrainians withdrew from settlement talks in Turkey, the Russians realized the West was in it is for the long haul, so they had to adjust to this new reality. The first thing they did was appoint General Sergey Surovikin to take control of military operations in Ukraine. Then came a mobilization of 300,000 additional forces to support the war in the Ukraine.

What followed was a campaign of missile attacks on Ukrainian power plants, rail hubs and strategic infacilities. Then came the mass use of UAVs to overwhelm Ukrainian air defense systems. This was all part of the general shift from a quick conflict aimed at a negotiated settlement to a long grinding war of attrition. The purpose of this new Russian strategy was to slowly destroy Ukraine’s ability to conduct offensive operations with an eye on eventually destroying their military.

A year into this new war, the results are close to what many predicted when the Russians shifted to this model. The West lacks to military industrial capacity for this sort of warfare, so the supply of weapons to Ukraine has declined. Meanwhile, the Russians degraded Ukrainian air defenses to the point where they can now stage constant air raids on Ukrainian supply lines. The long talked about Ukrainian offensive has been indefinitely delayed as a result of these attacks.

It is hard to know what is happening inside Ukraine due to the tsunami of propaganda from the media and the volunteer army of regime toadies online. Trivial events are rolled up into glorious narratives that have no bearing on reality. When the Wagner forces captured the remaining high-rises in the city of Bakhmut, Western sources reported that Ukraine was staging a counter attack to encircle them. In reality the Ukrainians were simply staging a fighting retreat from their positions.

That said, it is becoming clear that the Ukrainians are in trouble militarily and the end may be closer than many realize. For starters, Zelensky now spends most of his time outside the country. Some have speculated that he thinks the end could come at any minute and would prefer to be elsewhere when it happens. For over a year he was doing zoom sessions from his bunker to entertain Western media. Over the last month he has found any reason to be outside the country.

General Zaluzhnyi, the man in charge of the Ukrainian army, has been mysteriously absent for over a month. One short video of him was released, after the Ukrainians put out a series of fake stories about his whereabouts. The man in charge of the defense of Bakhmut has also been keeping an unusually low profile. As with Zaluzhnyi, General Oleksandr Syrskyi was fond of entertaining Western media. Over the last month he has not made any media appearances.

Then there is the new tactic by the Ukrainians of launching drone attacks against civilian targets inside Russia. The first attack was a month ago that targeted the Kremlin before the big Russian holiday. Then there was the very weird attack on a border village with Ukrainians pretending to be anti-Putin Russian militants, using American equipment to stage an uprising. Last weekend, there was a wave of primitive drones sent at Moscow, with a few striking apartment buildings.

Of course, the weirdest thing to happen recently is the long running hype about a Ukrainian counter-offensive that was due a few months ago. It was supposedly set for March, but then was delayed due to weather. Then it was delayed until early May due to logistics and then delayed again for unknown reasons. Meanwhile the Russians have intensified their attacks on Ukrainian supply lines. Maybe one has to do with the other, but no one seems to be interested in the answer.

Maybe this is all 4-D chess, but the parsimonious answer is that things are starting to unravel in Ukraine. A year of increasing Russian attacks on Ukraine’s military industrial system has degraded their ability to fight. Two months ago General Milley said Ukrainian air defenses were near collapse. A couple of weeks ago a New Yorker pieced confirmed speculation that Ukraine was short of ammunition. The spike in Russian air activity over Ukraine suggests they now control the skies.

The weird behavior of Ukrainian leadership and the decline in activity by the Ukrainian military suggests their capacity to fight is critically low. The sudden use of insurgent-style tactics, championed by Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukrainian intelligence, may signal a shift in Ukraine in response to reality on the ground. What Zelensky and his generals may be preparing for is something like what happened in Iraq. The military collapses, but in a way gives rise to an organized insurgency.

This may be the final play by Washington. The neocons have been circulating a Korean-style end to the war. The Russians keep and hold their positions and the Ukrainians, with Western support, hold their positions. There is no logical reason for the Russians to accept something they have for something they do not want. If they keep fighting, they will soon break the spirit of the Ukrainian army and prevent the West from resupplying them with new weapons.

On the other hand, if Washington turns the west of Ukraine into a launching pad for Ukrainian terrorist attacks on Russia, maybe the Kremlin is willing to consider a deal similar to the Korean solution. There is history for this. In the Second World War Ukrainian nationalist worked with the Nazis to attack Russia. Today’s Ukrainian nationalist consider Stepan Bandera, the leader of the nationalists during the war, as a hero and example to follow.

This shift would have several benefits. One it would give Washington an excuse for not dealing with the issue. Useful idiots like Lyndsey Graham could be counted on to call the terrorists “freedom fighters” as he did with ISIS. It would reduce the cost to Washington, as terrorism can be funded at a fraction of a land war. Primarily, it would require Russia to keep fighting after the Ukrainian army was defeated. You can see the appeal of this to the neocons.

It is unlikely that the Russians would accept a Korean-style partitioning of Ukraine, if it means NATO operating in the rest of Ukraine. The neocons probably assume this, so they will move ahead with their insurgency plan. Since this will no doubt spill into EU countries like Poland and Germany, which have millions of Ukrainian refugees now, this has the added benefit of keeping Europe dependent on Washington. Terrorist chaos on the border of Europe is good for the neocon cause.

Narrative Collapse

Posted on May 17, 2023 by thezman

The overused cliché about the truth being the first casualty of war is an overused cliché because it is so obviously true. Wars are the result of rulers on both sides seeing advantage in the suffering of their people. That means producing a story to explain to the people why they must sacrifice for the ruler. The war in the Ukraine is no exception, but it may be the first war to be turbocharged by the narrative industrial complex through the internet.

For several months, the usual suspects have been promoting a narrative framework with regards to a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Tens of billions of Western arms have been shipped to Ukraine, along with plane loads of cash. This has been done to great political fanfare in every Western capital. Slowly, the story evolved into the great spring offensive in which a newly formed Ukrainian army using Western super-weapons would smash through the Russian lines and send them fleeing.

The explanation for how this would work or why it should be attempted was never provided, but a good story is worth skipping over the details. Russia has about half a million men in Ukraine at the moment. They have air superiority, and they have a growing advantage in firepower. How a seventy-thousand-man attack force could smash through their lines was left to the imagination. That is where people like Edward Luttwak filled the void with serious sounding plans for the attack.

In the age of narrative, facts about firepower and troop strength are no match for a really good story. The story was so good, in fact, that last week the internet was full of rumors that the Ukrainians had launched a counterattack in Bakhmut, sending the Russians fleeing. The prophesies were true! It turned out that it was nothing more than a faint to try and evacuate Azov fighters trapped by Wagner forces, who continue to grind down the remaining forces in the city.

Eventually reality does prevail, and we may be entering a phase of the war in which reality slowly overcomes the current narratives. We are a month from summer and there is no sign of a counter-offensive. Zelensky has been on a tour of European capitals, demanding more weapons and money. He says they lack the weapons to conduct an offensive and his advisors are echoing his claims. Even Washington is starting to back off the spring counter-offensive narrative.

The reason for this is those facts on the ground. For close to a year the Russians have been launching drone and missile attacks on the Ukrainian energy grid. It was assumed that they were trying to turn off the lights, but in reality, they were exhausting the Ukrainian air defense system. They determined that Ukraine had a finite number of surface-to-air-missiles. The West had no replacements, so once that stock was exhausted, the air defense system would collapse.

This is where things are now. The Russians are now using their air force to attack high value targets in Ukraine. The Russian hit a large warehouse facility where Ukraine was stockpiling weapons. The resulting mushroom cloud revealed that it was a massive facility, perhaps holding depleted uranium shells supplied by Britain. The increase in gamma radiation seems to confirm it. Some reports claim half a billion dollars in weapons were destroyed in that one strike.

A few days ago, there was another missile strike on Kiev aimed at a high value target, this time a Patriot missile system. The West has supplied two of these to defend Zelensky from a decapitation strike. A Russian missile struck in or around the system, after it expended all of its missiles to defend itself. Even CNN had to concede that the video of the strike was real. Reliable reports say one launcher was destroyed, one launcher was severely damaged, and one launcher survived.

What we are seeing over the last month is both an increase in the use of the Russian air force over Ukraine and their greater success. The Russian are now hitting high value targets with increasing regularity. One theory for why there has been no Ukrainian offensive is the Russians keep blowing up their equipment. Some of the shiny new Western equipment has been turning up in Bakhmut, suggesting Ukraine has had no choice but to repurpose this material.

There is something else lurking over all of this. The West is out of ammo. All of the old Soviet era stockpiles have been depleted. The stockpiles of Western weapons have been run down as well. The thirty Patriot missiles Ukraine fired off the other night cost five million a copy. The waiting list for new ones is over a year. Just as Russia is getting better at destroying Ukrainian weapons, the supply is running low. It is not hard to see what will happen in the not-so-distant future.

Since the war started, there was a gap between what the narrative industrial complex was emitting and what was happening in reality. That gap was concealed by media perfidy and the glacial pace of the war of attrition. Those slow changes in the battlefield were easily obscured by the tsunami of storytelling in the media. We are now entering a phase where that gap cannot be concealed. We can see what is happening on the ground does not match the current narratives.

The expression “narrative collapse” is most often used with regards to a political scandal or a scandal with famous people. The story offered to explain things is slowly undermined by reality. At some point, even the creators of the narrative have to admit it is not reality. The release of the Durham report is a case in point. The Trump haters like Jonah Goldberg have had to finally admit they were lying. Their Russia collusion narrative had finally collapsed.

We are about to see something similar with the Ukraine war. We are now entering the narrative collapse phase. The sharps are already heading for the exits, while stupid people like David French wait for the signal. It will not happen overnight, but the process has begun and by the end of the year, the brooms will be out in the media, assigned to sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Like prior failed narratives, this one will be deposited in the memory hole.

The Odious Carbuncle Problem

Posted on May 1, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about American feudalism, a post about the NFL draft show and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Imagine someone trying to convince you to do something by arguing that this thing is in your financial interests. They give you a stock tip, for example. You check it out and decide to buy some of the stock. In the following weeks, the stock price collapses, and you lose money. Obviously, you will not be happy, but you are not going to assume the guy who gave you the stock tip wanted to harm you. Unless you bought the stock from him, you will assume he made the same error as you.

Now think about a different scenario in which someone convinces you to do something because it is the right thing to do. In other words, he is not appealing to your desire to make money, but your desire to be viewed as a good person. The deed in this case is donating to some cause. You check it out and donate, but soon learn that it is a fraud and the people involved are swindlers. The person who tricked you into giving money was also in on the scheme.

If we assume the money lost is equal in both cases, you are going to have much stronger feelings toward the second person than the first person. One reason is the assumed intent of the two people. The first guy was trying to help you but was wrong about his stock tip. The second person wanted to rob you. Even if the first guy was reckless in his behavior, he was not trying to harm you, but there is no doubt about the intent of the second guy.

More important, the first person appealed to your greed, while the second person appealed to your morality in order to trick you. We can accept some blame when we let our vices get the better of us, as in the stock tip scenario. You let the idea of free money cloud your judgement. When someone turns your virtue into a vice, by playing on your good intentions in order to harm you, it challenges the idea of right and wrong, which is far worse than simple theft.

This is what comes to mind reading this post in First Things. George Weigel is a well-known neocon and warmonger. The timing of the post is a bit odd, given that we are in the end phase of the war. The time for making the “moral case” for yet another war on the world was a year ago. It suggests the Kagan cult is planning to keep the war on Russia going long after the Ukraine portion is settled. Weigel has been dispatched to turn virtue into vice for the suckers of Conservative Inc.

Twenty years ago, almost to the day, Weigel made the same “moral case” for launching a preemptive war on Iraq. It you read both posts together, it is as if he is working from a template. That is because he does work from a template. When you strip away the moral pretentions, Weigel is not much of a thinker. His act is to play on your Christian duty or maybe your patriotic morality. He is not trying to appeal to your reason with a well thought out argument.

Last year, Eric Sammons at Crisis Magazine dissected the Weigel style. “The Weigel Script includes: (1) a comparison to Nazi Germany; (2) turning foreign leaders into cartoon villains; (3) accepting at face value any and all U.S. intelligence that puts the proposed adversary in the worst light; (4) making non-falsifiable assertions about a dire future if the U.S. doesn’t intervene; and (5) ignoring any potential negative consequences of U.S. intervention.”

You see it in the First Things post. He even adds in the now famous meme associated with the neocons. “For no reason at all” Russia invaded Ukraine. In this case, he surely knows that what he is saying is a lie. Twenty years ago, when he was selling the death of Iraqi children as a cost worth paying to stoke his moral vanity, he could claim ignorance about the lies underneath the claims about Iraq. Lots of people assumed George Bush was sincere about the WMD business.

In the case of the Ukraine war, Weigel knows he is lying, and he probably knows that the readers know he is lying, but he lies anyway. You are not supposed to think about the facts, because it is your moral duty to oppose evil! As long as you accept his claims about Putin being yet another Hitler, the lies do not matter. Like the guy from the second example at the start of this post, Weigel is trying to turn your virtue into a vice, and he is doing it with knowledge of forethought.

The thing is, Weigel is not an exception. Conservative Inc. has always produced odious carbuncles who prey on the decency of normal people. Weigel is getting long in the tooth, so his act has been moved from the main stage. Guys like David French have taken up the mantle of moralizer for the cause. He now claims to be the keeper of the true conservative flame, while he writes about himself at the New York Times, the supposed enemy of conservatism.

All of this brings us to a question. Who is the real enemy? Is it the self-described leftist who maintains an alien moral code? Is it the alleged friend and ally who uses your moral code against you? The former thinks he is right and thinks you would be wise to agree with him. The latter knows you are right but uses that to trick you into going along with what is wrong. The former may support evil things like gender identity, but the latter seeks to make you evil.

What all of this gets to is that before conservatism and its neoconservative core are pushed into the dustbin of history, we need to think about how a new moral order resists this form of trickery. The trouble with conservatism is it never thought much about inoculating itself against these sorts of people and instead just accepted them as a feature, rather than a bug. Whatever replaces conservatism must prevent people like George Weigel from gaining a purchase.

The Never Ending Fantasy

Posted on April 20, 2023 by thezman

For months now, the collective West has been talking about the great Ukrainian counter-offensive that is due any day now. This started when they realized they were not going to talk the Russians into launching a big winter offensive. Instead, the Russians kept grinding down the Ukrainians at places like Bakhmut. When that became too obvious to ignore, the West shifted to this new narrative. Western media now tells us the great Ukrainian counter-offensive is nigh!

Woven into this new narrative are bits of an old narrative. For example, there was talk of starting the counter-offensive early in order to send a relieving force to Bakhmut, like the Allies did to relieve Bastogne from the Germans. Instead, Ukraine just kept funneling troops and equipment into a death trap. According to the leaked documents, assuming they are real, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have died in Bakhmut, while the Russians have suffered about a tenth of the losses.

It looks like we are now getting a new narrative structure in time for the great Ukrainian counter-offensive and it is also from the Second World War. This new narrative structure builds on the D-Day landings. According to a post in Foreign Policy, Ukraine will try to break through Russian defenses in the South in order to develop a beachhead, from which they will then launch attacks into the Russian rear. Those naked Russians armed only with shovels will panic and run back to Moscow.

For those unfamiliar, the phrase “the longest day” comes from the 1962 war film about the landings on Omaha beach. Megastars of the day like Henry Fonda and John Wayne starred in the film. The movie was based on a book that claimed to be a non-fiction account of the landings. The reason for the title was that the landings were a near-run thing that could have gone either way. If they failed, it would have seriously harmed the allied war effort.

This is not the first time that Western narrative makers have plucked material from American war films. The chatter about relief of the Bakhmut defenders is the most recent example. Even though it did not happen as the script demanded, it was a good story, so the narrative makers are back at it with a new narrative plucked from the glory days of the American empire. Never mind that the Nazis are not exactly the bad guys in this telling of those old stories.

If this long discussed attack by Ukraine happens, it will go down as the most bizarre military operation in history. The lesson lost from those old military operations that are the basis of these new narratives is that secrecy is key. The Allies did not spend months talking about the invasion of France. They did not announce that they ordered Patton’s 3rd Army to relieve the defenders of Bastogne. The world learned of these events after they happened, not while they were planned.

This raises the possibility that this counter-offensive is just another clever story for the so-called leaders of the collective. One reason the West is running out of material for this war is they forced the Ukrainians to mount a counterattack in the south last fall, in order to provide material for their narrative. At that time, the story was the Russians were in full retreat, so the narrative makers wanted some content to use in support of their stories about the imminent collapse of Russia.

Theatrically, it worked, but the Ukrainians lost tens of thousands of men and much of their best equipment while attacking Russians defenses. For their part, the Russians were willing to give up ground, as it allowed them to pound the Ukrainians from a safe distance using their superior artillery. From a military perspective, it was a disaster for Ukraine, but it gave the narrative writers material. In this war of attrition, the West continues to fight a meme war to win the internet.

This has been the case since the start of the war. Policy makers in the collective West have spent as much time creating soothing stories for the political class as they have planning and executing the actual war. One of the things that comes through in this document leak story is that policy makers do not have a handle on what is actually happening on the ground. Again, the documents may not be real, but they fit a pattern of ignorance that has been the subtext of this war.

This is a pattern that goes back much further. The war in Iraq followed a similar arc as this proxy war with Russia. Back then, the narrative makers told the politicians that the Iraqis would “welcome us a liberators.” Many of the same people involved in that debacle are involved in this one. They also got everything wrong about the Afghanistan mission, as well as its ending. Of course, they deliberately lied about the origins of ISIS, painting them as freedom fighters.

As with those prior debacles, the planners are so sure of their preferred narrative that they never bother to think about updating it. In Iraq, they were sure democracy would spontaneously break out any day. In Syria, they were sure the Assad regime would collapse any day. They are still sure of it. In Iran, they have been sure the mullahs are done for going on half a century. Now they are sure Russia in on the verge of collapse and nothing will change their mind.

The thing is reality never shakes their faith in their fantasy. The failures in the Muslim world changed no minds in the collective West. None of the planners were dragged into court and made to answer for their lies and omissions. In each case, the dogs barked, and the caravan moved on to the next manufactured crisis. We see the pattern repeating with this proxy war on Russia. Being outlandishly wrong about events on the ground brings no penalty to the people committing the blunders.

In the fullness of time, if there are people around interested and able to write about this age, they may refer to this as the age of fantasy in the West. Rather than tend to that which was bequeathed to them by their ancestors, the West indulged in a series of fantasies that were increasingly at odds with reality. In the end, they managed only to burn through their inheritance, leaving the West in poverty. That may be the good ending to this never-ending fantasy.

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