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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The Ukraine Limited Hangout

Posted on April 11, 2023 by thezman

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Last week, the New York Times broke a story about allegedly leaked documents from Western sources circulating on the internet. Since late January, images of what looks like briefing documents have been turning up on various sites. In March, a trove of them turned up on Discord and then another batch soon after. These documents focus primarily on the Ukraine war, but cover other issues as well, like spying on various governments and plans for war with China.

This comes at a critical time, as the war in the Ukraine seems to be reaching an inflexion point militarily and politically. The Russians are about to crack the Zelensky line by taking Bakhmut. This will force the Ukrainians to move further west into the last defensive lines in the Donbas. Politically, patience is beginning to run out in Europe as the war drags far past the promised end date. Washington promised regime change in Moscow and instead it is happening in European capitals.

There is also the endless chatter from Washington about a spring offensive by Ukraine that promises to retake the Donbas. Every day someone from the administration or one of their proxies tells the media about the spring offensive. These documents seem to confirm that NATO has been planning an offensive for months. They list troop numbers for new battalions, as well as equipment deliveries. The most publicized military operation in history is now getting more publicity.

That is the first red flag with the document leak. These documents confirm many of the public statements made by various officials. It is as if they felt that no one believed them, so they leaked this stuff on-line. The fact that “sources” have rushed to their favorite regime-aligned media to confirm the authenticity also suggests this is a bit too convenient of a leak. Normally, there is no comment about these sorts of leaks, to avoid revealing additional information.

Of course, that brings up the second red flag. The four people “reporting” the story for the New York Times are well known conduits for regime propaganda. Gibbons-Neff is most likely an intelligence agent, given his resume. Schmitt has ties to the Kagan cult and has a long association with the State Department. Over the last year, every story from these four reads like a press release from the administration. Their job is to push regime narratives and disinformation campaigns.

Another red flag is the comingling of disparate information. Compartmentalization is the foundation of state security. This means segregating information into discrete domains, which is the basis for a need-to-know information flow. Some people need to know about battlefield data, for example, while other people need to know about the political situation, but not necessarily the battlefield information. Only senior people will need to know both data sets.

Now, it is possible that these documents are from a range of briefing books, but that would mean they are from a senior official. Think about the sort of people who need data on Ukraine, the looming war in Asia, the current war in the Middle East and the current state of spying on friendly governments. Unless the leaker is General Milley, the breadth of subjects in these documents suggests they may be part of a disinformation campaign of some sort.

That brings up another red flag. If you want to trick someone into believing your story, you seed the story with facts that they can confirm. When presented with confirmed information and unconfirmed information in support of a narrative, humans are likely to accept the narrative. If the confirmed information is not generally available, then the bias in favor of the narrative is stronger. In other words, you put your poison fruit in a basket of wholesome and pleasing fruit.

You see that in this document leak. Mixed in with plans for taking the Crimea is data about casualties and supplies that you do not see in the media. This is the sort of stuff the Russians could confirm, as they surely know the condition of the Ukrainian army and their casualty numbers. The intel on Ukrainian air defenses is another bit of truth that makes the leak story look plausible. This data gives away nothing but adds authenticity to the other data in the documents.

Now, Hanlon’s razor applies here. It is not as if the people running Ukraine policy for the regime are the best and the brightest. All these red flags could be explained away as incompetence by the regime. In fact, the leaker could simply be trying to get this reality out into the open. There are plenty of skeptics on the military side of the regime who could be leaking this to embarrass the neocons. It is impossible to know, but skepticism is always the prudent course.

The question behind this is why would the regime do a limited hangout like this on the eve of the big spring offensive? Surely, they know the Russians have their own intelligence operations. That means they know what Ukraine is planning. The Russians have satellites too, so they can see where Ukraine is mustering forces. In other words, this sort of operation is not going to trick the Russians. If this operation is not aimed at the Russians, then who is the target?

The logical answer is European politicians. The bits of tasty fruit in these documents stroke the European ego. It makes their American masters look crude and amateurish, not like the suave and sophisticated Europeans. By playing to their vanity this way, they are more likely to buy the narrative of a great Ukrainian offensive. These documents tell them that they need to wait just a little while longer and they will be rewarded with a smashing success on the battlefield.

Alternatively, this may be prep work for the political fallout that will surely come when the Ukraine war turns ugly later this year. Sending Marco Rubio out to trash French President Emmanuel Macron could be the start of a campaign to shift blame for the failures of Ukraine to the Europeans. Conservatives can then focus their ire on the French, rather than the neocons. You see? Those duplicitous French have undermined our Ukraine policies. Freedom fries are back!

Since the key to regime power is control of information, we are left to guess as to why these allegedly secret documents are on the internet. Stupidity is always a good option, but that cuts in many ways. Stupid people do not lack agency. They do things for a reason, but their reasons are stupid. That may be the case here. It could also be part of some larger narrative developing for later this year. After all, these people are also evil and evil people think this way.

The Great Reckoning

Posted on March 14, 2023 by thezman

For generations, going back to the middle of the last century, people have been warning about systemic problems in American society. Some of the warnings have been tricks to continue the cultural revolution. Some have been part of the financial legerdemain that defines so much of our economy and politics. There have been, however, many sincere warnings about long term structural problems. Out of necessity and expediency they were ignored, but that may be about to change.

The most obvious is the most immediate. Going back to the Clinton years people who understood money were warning about loose money policy. People forget that Clinton winning was a surprise. After all, Bush came into the election with a huge war victory and a solid economy. The Reagan expansion was viewed not only as a miracle of Republican policy, but a rebuke of left-wing economics. Then the economy soured before the elections and Clinton was president.

Much of official Washington blamed the tight money policies of Alan Greenspan for tanking the economy under Bush. Team Clinton made sure this could never happen again, especially with a Democrat in office. Loose money became official policy and only got worse with each administration. By the Obama years, we were in a world of Zero Interest Rate Policy. Now those ZIRP chickens are coming home to roost in the form of a systemic banking failure.

No one should be deceived by what is happening. Last weekend, the Federal Reserve decided that the banks are all broke due to holding assets that have a declining market value, so the Federal Reserve effectively nationalized the banks. The only way they can regain control of money policy is to eliminate the market for long dated bonds by promising to buy them at face value. The Federal Reserve has nationalized the banks by nationalizing the bond market.

This is required to avoid a bank collapse but also allow for the long overdue reorganization of the financial sector. A generation of free money has turned Wall Street into a drug addict. It is entirely organized around getting the narcotic of free money from the government, rather than the normal practice of banking. All of its schemes are designed not to create value in the economy but to generate the need for more free money, a portion of which ends up in executive pay.

This did not happen in isolation. The great auctioning off of the manufacturing base that began in the 1980’s has finally caught up to America. The subtext to the Ukraine war is the fact that America no longer has the ability to make the weapons it requires to wage war on the world. Russia, with a third of the population, can now make more weapons for war than America. Her production of ammunition dwarfs what America can muster, which is why Russia is slowly grinding down the Ukrainians.

Of course, one main reason for the auctioning off of the manufacturing base is it raised quick money to invest in the rigged casino that is Wall Street. This fact was masked to a great degree by cheap consumer goods. In fact, the culture of cheap consumer goods has justified all of the nation wrecking policies. Everything from open borders to wholesale political corruption have been justified by cheap lawn care and cheap products sold in big box stores.

The price tag for decades of cheap goods underwritten by the sale of the manufacturing base is now coming due. The only thing America makes now is sexual deviance and lectures in favor of sexual deviance. It turns out that there is no global market for rainbow colored marital devices and films promoting the culture around them, which means America does not have a real economy. The ongoing economic crisis is about to get much worse as that reality becomes clear.

In fairness, some of the proceeds from auctioning off of the manufacturing base went into the technology sector. In the fullness of time, the robot historians may remember America for having singlehandedly created the technological revolution. This has changed the world. The trouble is, the technological revolution ended decades ago, but Silicon Valley continues to consume trillions in money. With the collapse of SVB, that great money drain is now ending.

The war with Russia and the looming war with China has also brought other chickens home to roost. For a long time people have been warning about the military industrial complex and its addiction to expensive, high tech weapons. Those whiz-bang systems look great, but they are not what wins wars. What wins a war are the tools the average soldier uses to kill the enemy. We no longer bother making them and instead focus on rocket ships and space lasers.

What the war in Ukraine has revealed is that NATO would have to use nuclear weapons in a war against Russia, because NATO lacks the men and machines to fight a ground war against the Russians. Most NATO countries would run out of ammunition in a few weeks and have to surrender. Against China, the American military would deliver some serious early blows, but then run out of supplies. Chinese manufacturing capacity is now greater than America and Europe combined.

Overlaying all of this is the crisis of competence. The SVB fiasco is a great example of a problem that permeates American society. Instead of rewarding skill and accomplishment, our system is rigged to reward nonwhites at the explicit expense of whites, especially white males. The only market that is booming in America is the racial revenge market and the result is colorful people in positions of authority who lack the basic skills to do the jobs they have been given.

Thirty years ago, people warned about this. What started as tolerance in the 1980’s, became sensitivity in the 1990’s, then diversity in the new century. It has now turned into a full blown cult of anti-whiteness. While towns in Ohio suffer from an ecological disaster, the people in charge fret of racist sidewalks. Corporate America is more concerned with its ESG and DEI scores than its financial stability. We have combined demographic reality with anti-white fanaticism into a ruling ethic.

No society can run this way. Good luck fighting China with a rainbow coalition of drag diverse drag queens trying to operate space guns. Good luck weathering a reorganization of the financial system when the banks are run by people who were just recently coaxed from caves by European explorers. Imagine surviving an end of empire crisis with the productive portion of society seething with rage at the fanatics who brought about this disaster.

One could go on a long time listing the things that should never have been allowed to happen that are now turning up in the nation’s crisis list. All of these are the result of bad polices hatched in the late 20th century and used to loot the country by the new generations of rulers ushered in by the Clintons. The bill for the great bust-out is now coming due and there is no avoiding it. Like drunks at closing time, we await the bill for generations of reckless behavior.

The Coming Crisis

Posted on March 1, 2023 by thezman

Every war is a part of a larger story of relations between the nations that fought in the war and the war in Ukraine is not an exception. This war started a year ago, but it is part of the story that started in 2014. of course, that chapter was preceded by the aftermath of the Cold War. In the case of the neocons driving American policy, their portion of this story begins during the Trial of the 193. Like all stories, the war will end and what will follow are more chapters to close out this story arc.

Within the war itself there are chapters. In the case of Ukraine, the first chapters could be called the pre-awakening. Both the Russians and Ukrainians, assumed this would be a short affair ending in rounds of talks. The Europeans, in contrast, thought it would be a short affair as well, but instead ending in a Russian collapse. They had been assured by their American handlers that Russia was a hollow country. Once the sanctions hit them, the peasants would revolt.

Interestingly, all parties kept on believing their version of the plot even after it should have been clear they were wrong. The Russians kept pressing for negotiations, even after Ukraine told them Washington would not allow it. The Europeans kept pushing new sanctions packages, even after it was clear the Russian economy was not going to collapse and there would be no peasant revolt. For a few months last spring and summer, everyone stuck with the old script.

It appears that it was the Russians who were the first to realize that the script was wrong and that they needed to rethink things. The mobilization of reserves along with a reorganization of their military structure in Ukraine followed. The Russians figured out that this is a long war of attrition between Moscow and its allies versus the American Empire and its allies. What we have seen for the last six months is a slow, deliberate grind of the Ukrainians by the Russians.

We are about to see the final closing of one chapter of this war and the opening of a new chapter due to developments on the battlefield. The first and most important bit of news is the encirclement of a town called Bakhmut. If you look at this pro-Ukrainian deployment map, you see the line of contact in Ukraine. In this case, pro-Ukrainian does not mean pure propaganda. It simply relies primarily on Ukrainian sources to assemble the map and unit positions.

If you zoom into the area dead center of the line of contact, you will find the town called Bakhmut and see a large grouping of Ukrainian forces. They have been throwing everything they can into this town in order to hold it. The Russians now have the town surrounded, with tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops inside it. It appears that Zelensky has instructed the forces inside this cauldron to fight to the last man, much as he did last year with the Mariupol garrison.

There are two primary reason Zelensky and the general staff are sacrificing tens of thousands of men for this town. One reason is strategic. It is the keystone to this defense line in the Donbas. If it falls, the Ukrainians will have to fall back to their last line of defense east of the Dnieper River. That last defensive line is not as built up as the current defensive positions. The Ukrainians are buying as much time as they can in order to build up that new defense line.

The other reason for this massive sacrifice of men and machines is the general psychology of the war on the Ukrainian side. They have been told since the start that they just needed to hang on until the Russians crumbled. Then they were told to hang on until the West could provide wonder weapons. Now they are hanging on because they have no other option. For Zelensky, this war is about buying time while hoping for some change that will save him from his fate.

Another reason for the great turning of the page that is coming in this war relates to that waiting strategy of the Ukrainians. They are running out of supplies. Reports keep coming in from Ukrainian sources that they are out of ammunition. The reason they are out of ammunition is the West cannot get ammunition to them fast enough. The reason for that is the West is running out of ammunition as well. After a year of ground war, the Western warehouses are now empty.

The issue has become so critical that the people running foreign policy had Biden sign “a presidential waiver of some statutory requirements (Waiver) authorizing the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to allow the Department of Defense (DoD) to more aggressively build the resiliency of America’s defense industrial base and secure its supply chains.” This is the first step in transitioning the economy to wartime, which means prioritizing defense over civilian items.

Something similar is afoot in Europe. What the West has come to realize is they were all wrong about the Russian economy. It has performed better over the last year than the European economies. They were also wrong about Russia’s standing in the world, particularly with other major powers like China and India. They have not been willing to go along with Washington’s war on Moscow. Eighty percent of the world’s population now supports the Russian side in this conflict.

Another piece of this is a bit of reality Western leaders have ignored for so long they stopped thinking about it. That is, the industrial base of the West no longer exists as a practical matter. Generations of offshoring and global supply chain management have left Western countries with a tiny manufacturing base. China now has more manufacturing capacity than the U.S. and Europe combined. Throw in Russia, Brazil and India and you see the problem.

The shape of the next chapter in this new global war is still unclear, but one storyline will be the looming political crisis in the West. The sanctions regime is simply unsustainable for Europe so it must come to an end. It cannot come to end until the war in the Ukraine has come to an end. The trouble is European political leaders have ruled out any end other than Ukrainian tanks rolling through Moscow. Europe has created an unsolvable problem for itself.

Another part of the story could be a change in China. For a long time the Chinese have viewed their relationship with Washington as purely economic. If they did good business with Washington, everything else solved itself. Beijing now sees that things have changed and so they are changing. All of the war talk over Taiwan has finally convinced the Chinese to adjust their position. Sino-American relations will no longer be about business, but about great power conflict.

Of course, all of this will be happening against the backdrop of a political class in Washington that looks like the shuffleboard courts in Boca. Everyone who wants to be Pericles in this war is too old to say the name clearly. Of course, Washington is full of potential Cleons among the younger generations of politicians, but none of them are bright enough to understand it. As this war enters the crisis chapters, the West is desperately short of men who are good in a crisis.

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Politics And War

Posted on February 25, 2023 by thezman

Note: This was posted behind the green door last week. Every week I do a Sunday podcast behind the green door. I also do a couple of posts like this one. For just five bucks a month you get more content than you get from anyone else. Maybe you take this time to get right with the Lord and sign up for a green door account.

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Because we live in an age of over-specialization, we do no get a lot of discussion about the interplay of politics and war making. We get people focused on the political dimension of the Ukraine war and we have people discussing the facts on the ground, but very little about how the two sides interact. It is a lot like how the economy is discussed in isolation from politics.

Usually, the road to understanding what is happening in something like the Ukraine war passes through both domains. There is a political aspect that impacts the war making side, but the war shapes the politics. The Great War is a perfect example of how these two forces interacted to create a disaster. A century on and we are seeing something similar unfold in this war between Moscow and Washington.

For example, one reason we are in this long war of attrition is the Russians misread their own domestic politics and the international politics. If a few years ago they looked at the developing crisis on their border and if they understood the people behind it a bit better and had a better read on their internal politics, they probably would have prepared for a massive, overwhelming response.

Instead, the Russians were concerned about doing anything that would cause the West to retaliate and escalate. This is something Putin discussed last year when Washington launched the massive economic assault. To his credit, he admitted that they misread things and were not as prepared as they should have been for what Washington would do in response to Moscow’s concerns about Ukraine.

Fast forward a year and we see how politics are shaping the battlefield in a way that harms the Ukrainians. Zelensky, with the help of the Kagan cult, has created a narrative of the Ukrainians holding out against the Russian onslaught. They are the defenders of the wall between democracy and barbarism. Western political leaders have no choice but to support Ukraine on moral grounds.

This has created a dynamic in which the Ukrainians are constrained in what they can do on the battlefield in order to maintain this political narrative. For example, they cannot do as the Russians do and abandon land in order to preserve resources. it would not be much of a wall if they were always in retreat. Instead, they have to keep throwing precious resources into places like Bakhmut.

What we keep seeing is terrible military decisions preceding or coinciding with big political events in the West. The refusal to abandon Soledar preceded Zelensky coming to Washington for his big speech. It took weeks for Ukraine to acknowledge the reality on the ground. Ukraine had to maintain appearances until the political events were finished, despite the loss of men and material.

We are seeing a similar process take place in Bakhmut. The Kagan cult wants the West to commit modern battle tanks. This will necessitate other assets, maybe even airpower, so Ukraine is being forced to hold Bakhmut. Meanwhile, the Russians pound away at the defenders who have little chance to fight back. Credible reports suggest Ukraine in losing a thousand men a day in the futile defense of Bakhmut.

Of course, the bigger political problem is the narrative the Kagan cult has created around Ukraine prevents talking to the Russians. Zelensky is not allowed to speak with the Russians or even mention the idea. Victoria Nuland is going around telling Western audiences that the plan is to drive out the Russians, force regime change in Moscow and then break up Russia.

Now, the Kagan cult hates Slavic people so they are happy to see millions of Ukrainians die in their war on the Russian people. You can see, however, that by letting this bloodthirsty death cult shape the politics, it is limiting what the military planners can do on the ground in Ukraine. They have no choice but to keep feeding men and machine into the Russian meatgrinder setup along the front.

The Russians seem to have sorted this, which is why we are not seeing the big offensive everyone was predicting. They see how the political dynamic is limiting what the Ukrainians can do on the ground. At some point, the politics will force the Ukrainians to launch a counter-attack to maintain the narrative. The Russians are probably preparing to take advantage of that to destroy more of the Ukrainian army.

There we see another area where politics is shaping the war. Russia is now operating as if this is a global conflict with the West. A big bloody offensive that could unleash unknown forces is bad for that global political process. No one can say how the West will react to a sudden collapse of the Ukrainian army. The prudent approach is to grind it down slowly and carefully to avoid new problems.

Even so, what is emerging is a gap between the political narrative and reality on the ground, which will become impossible to ignore this summer. Like the Athenians learning about the Sicilian catastrophe, many in Western capitals will start to understand what is really happening in Ukraine. This will require a new political narrative to explain what went wrong.

Interestingly, this is similar to what happened after the Great War. The people on both sides felt betrayed by their leaders. What was the point of the war? What was the point of the massive sacrifices endured by both sides? The winners could at least claim it was to preserve democracy, thank you Woodrow Wilson. The losers, however, were left to figure it out on their own and a new narrative eventually emerged.

Elite Escapism

Posted on February 21, 2023 by thezman

In every society there is a gap between the truth the ruling class asserts and the truth the people experience. This used to be a feature of Western criticism of the Soviet economic system during the Cold War. Communist rulers would make claims about their system and critics would compare that to reality. Today, the obvious gap is in the West where the ruling class exists in another world. Over the last year this has been on display when they speak about the war in Ukraine.

Yesterday, the regime sent Joe Biden to visit Kiev, thinking this was going to be a public relations coup on the anniversary of the war. This is the New York Times lead story in which they make him sound like Lenin crossing into Russia. The Washington Post has a very similar story. They even use the same photo. Obviously, much of the content was supplied by narrative men in the regime. The point of these stories is to maintain the sense that victory is at hand!

In reality, Washington coordinated the trip with Moscow so that nothing bad could happen during Biden’s trip. Serious people in the Pentagon, who still have contacts in Russia, made sure the Russians knew Biden was making the trip long before Biden got on the plane to Poland. Those serious people know Russia does not want a direct war with the West. Two days before Biden made the trip, social media was buzzing about it, as word was leaked by both sides.

This public relations stunt was conducted against the backdrop of a policy that has failed at every turn and now promises to end in disaster. No one in the ruling class bubble wants to think about that, so they tell each other stories like this one from one of the Kagan cult members. Another cult member chimed in with this post in the same publication, now operated by the cult. This post in a conspiracy site gave the kooks out in the fever swamps something to discuss.

There is a theme coming from the cult members, which is aimed at maintaining the fiction that animates Ukraine policy. That theme is inevitability. The subtext to these stories is like the quote from the Terminator movie. The neocons are out there. They cannot be reasoned with. They do not feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until Russia has been destroyed. You hear that Europe? Washington will never stop until victory is achieved!

Of course, the reason for this is reality is starting to creep in at the edges, especially among the Europeans. The stockpiles of old Soviet weapons are all gone, blown up on the battlefields of Ukraine. The extra Western weapons have also been used up to the point where many NATO countries no longer have a functioning army. The German army is back to using slingers and berserkers. America is no longer able to provide Ukraine with enough ammunition for the war.

What is going on here is that the people inside the bubble created a glorious story for themselves regarding Russia. The story said that if they could bait the Russians into war, they just had to sit back and wait for Russia to collapse. This version of reality created by the cult was a reboot of the Bolshevik Revolution. This time, war would crack the Russian regime and the heroes would ride into Moscow to finally exact their revenge on their ancient enemy.

That has not happened. In fact, it is the American Empire that is now cracking under the strain of this war of attrition. Western economies are struggling. There is growing unrest in the public about the political class. Meanwhile, the Russians have organized themselves for the long haul. The story Western elites told each other about this war are falling a part, but rather than face reality they fill their minds with more versions of the big lie from the biggest of big liars.

This form of elite escapism is not unique to Ukraine policy. This is the defining feature of our ruling class. When asked about how all of these magical electric cars will be charged, people like Pete Buttigieg just reply with some hand waving or maybe say they will supply more sockets. He has no idea and he has no reason to care, because his world is the world of fantasy. The people running energy policy are just as divorced from reality as the people running foreign policy.

It is not confined to the elites. This is how the managerial class maintains its sense of identity and cohesion. The answer to the primary question of life, who are we?, is supplied by the many narratives that define the managerial class. Whether it is pronouns, support for deviant sexual practices, saying “keev” all of a sudden or any number of affectations, the point is to signal membership in the club. For these people, the answer to the big question is one of the approved narratives.

This is why the neocons have managed to dominate foreign policy. They are expert at creating complex narrative structures that provide simple moral choices for the audience, moral choices that favor their preferred outcomes. In a society that lives by words, rather than deeds, being good with words counts for a lot. Robert Kagan tells one side stories about monsters and heroes, while his wife tells the other side similar stories, always with the same monsters and heroes.

In the fullness of time, Francis Fukuyama’s seminal essay, The End of History, will be seen as the point at which Western elites became untethered from reality. For them, history was always a nightmare from which they could not awake. All of a sudden, the nightmare was over because history was over. What was ahead was whatever their imaginations could conjure. They could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as they had a mind.

Much of what constitutes democratic politics in the West is the people debating with one another about the precise time their rulers wake from their dream. Surely they will see the folly of making war with Russia. Maybe this event will do it. Surely they will see the lunacy of banning fossil fuels. Maybe now they will see it. So far, nothing has worked, suggesting nothing will work. Elite escapism is now too much a part of what defines the elite, so their can be no awakening from their dream.

An Imperial Disaster

Posted on February 16, 2023 by thezman

One of the most studied and debated events in human history is the decision by the Athenian empire to send an expeditionary force to Sicily. This happened in 415 B.C. during the middle of the Peloponnesian War between the Delian League led by Athens and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Athens decided to send military support to allies on Sicily who were opposed to the dominant city state of Syracuse, which also happened to be an ally of Corinth.

The Sicilian Expedition is one of those events that offers something for everyone interested in the ancient world. The politics involved in the decision to send the expeditionary force are fascinating. Then you have the military side of things, which is one of the first examples of politics undermining military effectiveness. Of course, the political psychology around the war to that point is also important. Much of Athenian politics had been shaped by war.

The decision to send the navy to Sicily would turn out to be the turning point in the war with the Spartans. The expedition was a spectacular failure. In fact, it is on the list of great military disasters in human history. The defeat not only permanently weakened the Athenians militarily, but it also crippled their political culture. The politics of the region quickly moved against Athens, leading to the overthrow of the democratic system and the eventual defeat to the Spartans.

Like all great events in history, if you ask ten people with an interest in the topic, you will get eleven theories as to what happened and what it means today. Academic careers have been made studying the war and the events surrounding it. There is also the fact that Athens, despite losing the most important war in human history, continues to cast a shadow over the West. Sparta, on the other hand, is largely remembered for being a cartoonish version of a warrior state.

It matters to us today because the Global American Empire models itself after the Athenian empire. The Athenians had a moral certainty about themselves and what they did based on their form of government. Their system was superior, therefore whatever they did to spread their system must be righteous. Of course, spreading their system often meant overthrowing the rulers of neighboring city-states and installing their system, led by people friendly with Athens.

We see the same thing with the American empire. In fact, it has become a defining feature of the system. For the last thirty years, Washington has been trying to overthrow governments around the world in defense of democracy. There is even an organization called The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which works with various tentacles of the American empire to overthrow governments around the world. The business of America is not business. It is regime change.

Like the Athenian empire, the American empire has found a way to embroil itself in a war with a land power. This proxy war with Russia over Ukraine has little to do with the facts on the ground in Ukraine and everything to do with the politics that drive the expansive polices of the American empire. Like the Peloponnesian War, this is just the latest phase of a war that goes back to the defeat of fascism, which is the analogue for the defeat of the Persians by Athens and Sparta.

Like all historical analogies, this one is far from perfect, but it does provide a lens through which to view current events. Looking at this fight with Russia as a continuation of the Cold War helps explain the actions of the people involved. For the people driving American foreign policy, the main enemy was always Russia. In fact, they were at war with Russian long before they set foot in the new Athens. World War II was just another chapter in that long fight.

This might seem like a stretch but look at the people running foreign policy for the American empire. The people named in Seymour Hersh’s piece on the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines is a who’s who of neoconservatives. All of them are members of the same club, which is led by Robert Kagan. The wife of Robert Kagan is Victoria Nuland, who runs Ukraine policy for the empire. She is also the person who engineered regime change in Ukraine in 2014.

Proof that the universe has a sense of humor is the fact that Robert Kagan is the ideological leader of the war party. He was born in Athens Greece. His father was Donald Kagan, “the Sterling Professor of Classics and History Emeritus at Yale University and a specialist in the history of the Peloponnesian War.” His book on the Peloponnesian War is excellent. His book on the Sicilian Expedition is also quite good, but more aimed at an academic audience.

Robert appears to have read none of his father’s books, as his cult has led the American empire into its own version of the Sicilian Expedition. The decision to bet on Ukraine is turning into a catastrophe. Instead of sending triremes to aid a supposed ally in order to undermine an opponent, as Athens did when she sent that expedition to Sicily, Washington has sent its prestige and military production capacity to Ukraine in a futile attempt to undermine Russia.

Much like the Sicilian Expedition, the Ukraine war has become a dynamic all its own, sweeping up everyone in the empire. The Europeans, which should know better, have gone along with Washington. In the process, they have revealed themselves to be nothing more than a collection of flunkies serving Washington. The rules-based world order that Washington has claimed to defend has also been exposed as a rigged game to serve the interests of the empire.

Probably the biggest parallel between these two events is how the political class in both cases failed to consider failure as an option. When news of the disaster reached Athens, no one believed it. No one had prepared the Athenians for the possibility of defeat, much less a catastrophe. Once reality sunk in, panic gripped the people as they processed what the disaster meant for the war. Everything about the Sicilian Expedition assumed victory was inevitable.

Something similar is brewing for Washington. For a year the war party has been feeding the political class stories about the Russians running out of weapons and Russian troops being forced to fight naked in the snow. Political leaders are given scripts with big talk about total victory and the dissolution of Russia. The public has been told nothing about the reality of the war. Once news of this disaster makes itself fully known, we may see panic and disbelief in Washington.

Again, historical analogies are never perfect. At best they help contextualize current events by providing an objective viewpoint. Washington is not Athens. Robert Kagan is not Alcibiades and there is no one playing the role of Nicias. Instead, the empire is led by spoiled children of the managerial elite that rose along with the American empire in the aftermath of Word War II. The disaster for this empire, however, will be just as real as it was for the Athenian empire.

The End Is Nigh

Posted on February 8, 2023 by thezman

A popular narrative among libertarians, gold bugs, doomsday types and other pessimists involves the end of the dollar. Because of the structural flaws in fiat money, the abuse of the dollar’s reserve status, excessive money printing, the prettiness of gold or other factors, the world will one day decide that it no longer wants to use dollars and the dollar will collapse. Peter Schiff has built a media career using a combination of these causes to predict the end of the dollar.

There is an old joke about the market pessimists having predicted ten of the last three market crashes that applies here. The people predicting the end of the dollar, or the petrodollar as many prefer, have been making this prediction since Nixon closed the gold window fifty years ago. All of the predications have turned out to be wrong, but that has had no impact on the dollar pessimists. It turns out that there is good money to be made in being wrong about the dollar.

There are a number of reasons why the dollar remains the global currency, despite the abuse of it by the Global American Empire. This post on Revolver by an anonymous former U.S. Treasury official covers some of the major ones. The simple elevator speech on why the dollar remains the reserve currency is that the major powers of the global economy prefer it for now. China, Russia, India and the OPEC cartel continue to use the dollar as they work on the coming alternative.

That last bit is an important part of understanding what will come in the next decade with regards to global currency. The unipolar world controlled by Washington is slowly slipping away, being replaced by a multipolar world. For ideological and practical reasons, Washington is fighting this with all of its might. It is a losing fight as a unipolar world was an accident of 20th century history. It turns out that Samuel Huntington was right and Francis Fukuyama was wrong.

The great challenge of this age, it turns out, is that the emerging civilization centers of the world are emerging into the unipolar world. On the one hand, they need to remake the world order to reflect this new reality. On the other hand, they still depend in significant ways on the old structures from the unipolar order. They cannot overthrow the old order without incurring significant costs. Of course, there is the Global America Empire, which stands athwart history yelling “stop!”

In this regard, the dollar is a symbol of the current crisis, because it is the symbol, the primary tool, of the old unipolar order. Just as removing the dollar as the reserve currency would bring about significant economic costs, removing America as the center of the global order brings serious risks. Not the least of those risks is an increasingly unstable political class armed with nuclear weapons. Joe Biden prattling on about nuclear war does not inspire confidence.

The result is the emerging new power centers are becoming extremely cautious as they proceed down the path toward a multipolar world. China could take Taiwan by force if it chose, but that brings risks it is unwilling to assume. It is not just the cost of war, which would be significant, but also the cost of victory. The sight of an American carrier, on fire, sinking into the Pacific could collapse the American empire. That would take the dollar with it and everything that counts on it.

Similarly, the Russians could have hit back at the West over the economic sanctions, but instead it has simply chosen to avoid them. The reality is, every European country is looking for ways around the sanctions. These workarounds are costly and they are hollowing out their economies, but they are the better than alternative. For Russia, the sanction regime is mostly a nuisance, but it buys time as they and the other emerging global power centers build their infrastructure.

In a way, we are seeing a real world example of what Joseph Tainter described in his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies. Collapse is only possible if there is no supporting structures surrounding the society. The Western Roman Empire collapsed because there was nothing around it. It was a complex society in isolation, as what surrounded it was a collection of tribal societies. America, in contrast, is deeply connected to the other complex societies.

Instead of collapse, what we are seeing is a controlled demolition. The Russians, for example, would welcome the return of rational governance in Europe, they would prefer to avoid radical change. An economic crisis could easily trigger a political crisis and unleash sudden political change. The last two times this happened have not been good for Russia. The first time brought Napoleon to Moscow. Of course, the last time it brought Hitler to Stalingrad.

China, India, the OPEC countries and even Brazil have similar concerns with what lies between the present order and the multipolar order that is coming. The Global American Empire, including its control of the global reserve currency, is an obstacle that lies between now and then, but it is a problem that must be carefully managed. The efforts by Washington provoke a crises in Asia and Europe are viewed as an effort to derail the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar world.

This brings us back to the dollar. If the world avoids catastrophe, then it will avoid the sudden uncontrolled collapse of the dollar. Instead it will be a slow transition to a world of multiple trusted currencies that rely on separate financial systems. Those currencies will be linked to the only true global commodity, which is energy. The relative strength of each currency will reflect the trust and accuracy of the corresponding financial systems that make transacting in the currency possible.

What this means is the petrodollar will slowly become the petro. All the large global currencies, including the dollar, will be pegged to the supply of energy, plus or minus the relative trust of the political systems of the issuing society. Again, this assumes the world avoids catastrophe. If a controlled demolition of the Global American Empire proves impossible, then all of those off-grid living videos you watched will suddenly and explosively come in handy.

The Farce Of Europe

Posted on January 18, 2023 by thezman

Big events reveal things that may have been in plain sight for a while, but they remained hidden for cultural or political reasons. The mortgage crisis of 2008 is a good example of something that was hidden in plain sight. The sub-prime corruption should have been obvious, but few people saw it. When the system started to lock up, everyone suddenly noticed the massive corruption. The signs were there for a long time, but it was the fear of collapse that forced everyone to face it.

We are seeing an example of this with the war in Ukraine. Europe has been a land run by ridiculous people for a long time, but it was concealed by tradition and the Global American Empire pretending that European “leaders” are serious people. The war has revealed that Europe is a farce. It is not a collection of countries operating in concert for the common good. It is a collection of territories of the Global American Empire run by provincial clodhoppers with no real power.

Baiting the Russians into war served no European interests. It is obviously bad for the people of Europe. There is nothing to be gained for them by this war. It is wrecking the economy and reducing the standard of living. It is not good for European business, which now finds itself uncompetitive due to the costs of war. Germany is now on a short path to de-industrialization. Given that the German economy is the heart of the European economy, this will harm all of Europe.

The war is proving disastrous for the political class as well. Unlike the United States, there is no big sprawling military industrial complex in these countries. They have some boutique industries, but nothing like the American arms industry. That means there are not great profits to be had, which can be used to bribe the political class. Instead, the stockpiles of Europe are being stripped by NATO to supply Ukraine, while EU politicians pretend to be leading the effort.

If the European political class existed as anything more than a carnival act, they would have told Washington to pound sand and made a deal with the Russians long before this war in Ukraine could get started. In fairness, Angel Merkel pretended to be doing that in 2014, but that was just a con run by Washington. She has since admitted that she was lying to the Russians to buy time for Washington to arm and train the Ukrainian military for a war with the Russians.

Merkel was the most important “leader’ in Europe and she was nothing more than a toady for the Global American Empire. That right there speaks to the impotence of the European political class. This is why the Kremlin does not bother to take the calls of European “leaders” anymore. What is the point? A state governor in America has more sovereign authority that a European leader. If Ron DeSantis called Putin, Putin would take the call because DeSantis has real power.

The fact is “Europe” is just an economic zone heading for the abyss because the plans of Washington require it. American politicians are happy to get those checks from the oil and gas industry, which is getting fat selling LNG to Europe. The American war machine is happy to use Ukraine as a testing ground. If the Europeans have to reduce their lifestyle, well, that is tough luck for them. The people in charge have bigger issues than the welfare of the territory called Europe.

The fact is, Europe is dead and it has been dead for a long time. None of the EU states is a sovereign country. The national governments do not control their currency, which is a prerequisite for sovereignty. Their budgets must be approved by Brussels, which sets most regulatory policy for the bloc. These “countries” no longer control their borders in any meaningful way. The EU controls the flow of people by the farcical rules set up to deal with refugees from the global south.

A country that does not control its money, its laws or its borders is not a country, so it has no need for serious national leaders. This is why the political class of Europe has become increasingly comical over the last decades. It is the same reason that American mayors, especially in small cities, tend to be eccentric. A mayor has limited powers and mostly performs symbolic acts. That is the definition of a European leader. They have no real power, but they need to perform for the public.

It is not just the continent. Britain has become a floating carny act as well. Does anyone know the name of the current Prime Minister? Would anyone be shocked if the White House did not know his name? Why would they? That role has been reduced to an administrative post. The proof of that is Washington is planning to send Boris Johnson to Ukraine to deliver the latest instructions. Maybe they think Boris is still in charge or, most likely, they know who is really in charge.

The sad fact is the Global American Empire spent the last half century turning Europe into a giant outdoor theme park. It draws in tourists to gaze at its long lost glory and it soaks up American cultural items. Walk through a mall in Europe and you hear hip-hop music and see NBA jersey on display. The European culture that tourists want to see is locked up in museums, while the real European culture is as vulgar and degenerate as the rest of the Global American Empire.

In this excellent post by Gilbert Doctorow, he explains how this proxy war with the West is redefining Russia as a nation. Wars often define countries. The two industrial wars of the 20th century changed America from a republic to a global empire. Wars can also destroy countries. This is what happened with Europe. Those two wars plus the Cold War drained the vitality from Europe, reducing it to an economic zone, a dependency of the Global American Empire. That is obvious now.

The hope for Europe is that this reality is made so clear by Washington’s war on Russia that the farce can no longer be maintained. Perhaps some elements of the European political class grow tired of the humiliations they must endure and seek to regain their nations from the clutches of Washington. Perhaps the cost of war loosens the grip of Washington on the empire. Otherwise, that grip will squeeze what little life remains in Europe and the lights go out forever.

War Lessons

Posted on January 11, 2023 by thezman

Most likely, the first war in human history was one group of guys rushing at another group of guys, swinging fists and anything they could use as a club. It did not take long before a man decided that it was a good idea to use his hunting weapons to ward off these attacks or compliment these attacks. After all, if a gang of men with spears could take down a large animal, the same tactics would work on humans. From there the arms race was on among the human species.

The club was probably the first weapon of war. The spear would be the first tool converted for use in war. The shield was the first tool of war created specifically for use in combat against other men. Unlike the club, the shield was not just lying around waiting for a man to use it in a fight. Unlike the spear, the shield was not something used for hunting. The shield was a practical response to men using their spears to poke at you in a fight. It was the dawn of the arms industry.

We have no way of knowing if any of that is true. The first men were not big on writing stuff down so we are left to speculate. Maybe the crazies are right and people are naturally peaceful until a weapon is introduced. Some guy brought his spear to the clan meeting and this caused the clans to break out into warfare. Perhaps humans were vegetarians, eating what they could find until one guy picked up a stick and then immediately decided to start beating people with it.

Putting that aside, the history of war has been one side finding new ways to get around opposing defenses, while the other side finds new ways to block or reduce the weapons the other side is using. We are seeing this in Ukraine as the Russians work through the puzzle that is the Ukrainian defense network. For close to a decade the United States worked with Ukraine on their tactics, defenses and training. The Ukrainians were as ready as they could be for this war.

One of the first problems the Russians faced was the well designed Ukrainian air defense system. This was a carry over from the Soviet days. During the Cold War, the Russians planned to defend themselves against superior American airplanes, so they designed advanced air defense systems. These things are always hotly debated, but the consensus is that the Russians are the best in the world at building surface-to-air missile systems for defending against planes and missiles.

Of course, this was the same problem presented to NATO. The Russians have even better air defense systems than the Ukrainians. They can take out the best aircraft from great distances. This is why the Pentagon was adamantly against imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine. Losing billion dollar aircraft on a daily basis is a good way to lose popular support for a proxy war. It is also why there was never any thought about training Ukrainian pilots on the F-35.

That is the first lesson of this war. Outside of asymmetric wars, like America attacking a weak country, manned combat aircraft is becoming obsolete. Surface-to-air missile systems are reaching the stage where they can defeat the best manned aircraft at pennies on the dollar. If you can take out a billion dollar plane with a million dollar missile, it is not going to take long before the other side stops using their billion dollar planes to attack you.

That is another lesson of the war. Wars between peers are about economics, not flashy displays of technological prowess. Each side must try to reduce the per unit cost of destroying the opponents assets and defending its own assets. Assuming equal number of assets at the start, the game becomes a contest of efficiency. The side that can run the war most cost effectively wins. We are seeing that in Ukraine as the frugal Russians grind down the extravagantly financed Ukrainians.

That brings up another lesson of this war. The vaunted American military industrial complex is being revealed to be a bigger fraud than suspected. Last summer, Alex Vershinin pointed out the problems in the Western military industrial capacity versus that of the Russians. He concluded that the West simply lacked the industrial capacity to wage this war. In December Brian Berletic did a similar post on this topic, which had been covered in the Washington Post and Financial Times.

The United States has spent roughly a trillion dollars per year on weapons but there is not enough stock to last a year in a real war. Even if there is a shift toward ramping up production, it will take years to match the Russians and Chinese. In some cases, the ability to make the stuff has been lost. Once the contract with the military was fulfilled, the men and facilities to make the stuff was repurposed. For those cases it means starting production from scratch.

It actually is worse than anyone is letting on. The Pentagon refuses to consider supplying Ukraine with Abrams tanks. One reason is it takes a year to train a crew to competently operate the thing. The main reason, however, is these tanks are extremely fragile outside of optimum environments. Their size and complexity require a massive supply chain to keep the things running. That is great for the contractors, but it is an enormous liability for an army at war.

Probably the biggest lesson thus far is that drones are changing the battlefield in ways no one anticipated. Faced with massive defense works, the Russians were reduced to using their artillery advantage to pound the Ukrainians. Cheap drone technology has allowed them to efficiently target enemy positions and selectively hunt for opposing machines using inexpensive weapons. The cheap drone is not only a new weapon on the battlefield it is a force multiplier.

Of course, the biggest lesson is that fighting in your backyard is much easier than fighting across the sea. The Russians have short tight supply lines because Ukraine is right on her border. The Ukrainians, reliant on American money and material, have supply lines stretched thin. Those donated tanks and artillery pieces have to be shipped to Poland to be repaired. Another lesson of this war is that supply chain is as important as the weapons and ammunition it supplies.

Whether anyone in the West is learning anything from this is hard to know, but most likely the corruption is so thick that none of this is making sense to them. Making billion dollar jet fighters is much more fun and profitable than producing cheap drone technology or building better field artillery. If these lessons will be learned at all it will be in a colossal failure in the Pacific. That seems to be where the military industrial complex is determined to meet its fate.

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