Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

The Coming Crisis

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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.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Politics And War

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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.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Elite Escapism

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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.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

An Imperial Disaster

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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.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The End Is Nigh

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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.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Farce Of Europe

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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.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

War Lessons

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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.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

An Orgy Of Self-Satisfaction

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A common theme on this side of the great divide is the growing perception gap between the people in the regime that rules over the Global American Empire and the people who are trapped inside that empire. The relationship between the ruled and their rulers is becoming two black boxes. The people see their rulers perform, but why they are doing what they are doing makes little sense. The rulers look over the walls and see nothing but monsters lying in wait for them.

This growing disconnect was on display in the Imperial Capital, when the dictator of Ukraine arrived to a hero’s welcome. Dictator is not a word the regime members use, even though it is the correct title. Zelensky rules with an iron fist, throwing critics into dungeons and terrorizing the people into submission. The excuse is the war, but democratic countries still hold elections in times of crisis. Tyrants suspend the rule of law when it suits their interests.

For most Americans, Ukraine is a weird place far away that has no bearing on their lives, because it should have no bearing on their lives. Most Americans feel for the common people whose lives are ruined by the war. Most American would prefer it if their government did something to end the conflict. In fact, it is safe to say that Americans wish their government were the global peacemaker. That would be something that could genuinely unite a very divided country.

Otherwise, the typical American has no interest in this war. If provided the facts, they would be appalled at the actions of their government. The Ukrainians took delivery of High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) from American and immediately used them to target residential areas of the Donbas. War is always an ugly business and brother wars are the worst in this regard. Even so, the typical American would want nothing to do with the deliberate targeting of civilians.

The fact is, the typical American, regardless of political affiliation, would wholeheartedly agree with John Quincy Adams when he said “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Anyone living in the world of normal Americans knows this. Despite this, the regime put on a prime time show in which the dictator of Ukraine, dressed like an extra from bad war movie, gave a weird speech to Congress. In that speech he demanded more money from the average American and gave the strong impression that he thinks the average American is not pulling his weight in terms of sacrificing for a country he cannot locate on a map.

What made the spectacle grotesque was the fawning over this belligerent midget by the regime leaders. It was a vulgar display of the disconnect that now exists between the regime and the people. Mitch McConnell came out and said that his number one priority, to the exclusion of all else, is shoveling untold billions into the rat hole that is the war in Ukraine. Imagine being a guy struggling to pay his rent in Kentucky having to listen to that lecture.

What makes the whole thing revolting to the average person is that everyone knows much of the money is being stolen. Even though the FBI has been working long hours to suppress the facts of the Hunter Biden laptop, the typical American knows the Biden family is as crooked as a ram’s horn. They know all of these people are corrupt, yet they have to watch these people celebrate their alleged moral purity over shoveling more cash into the Ukraine money laundering machine.

In other words, the growing gap between the regime and the people is not simply a gap in understanding or a gap in priorities. It is a moral gap. Every day the people inside the regime imagine themselves on higher moral ground than the day before, while the people looking on see their leaders sinking into a swamp of moral depravity. It is not just that there is a gap, but that the gap is rapidly widening. Each new outrage by the freaks of the regime lowers their standing with the people.

Few commentators have noticed the parallel between Washington’s support for Ukraine and the support for Vietnam sixty years ago. It is a good comparison because the cause is the same. The people running Vietnam policy were every bit as deluded about their intelligence as the people running Ukraine policy. In fact, Victoria Nuland and the rest of the Kagan cult are setting new standards for Dunning-Kruger. Mx. Nuland is an unfathomably stupid woman.

The important parallel is deeper than just shared stupidity. Vietnam undermined the trust people had in their rulers to the point where serious people became concerned that the country was headed for a breakup. That was in a relatively homogenous and prosperous country. Today’s America is an irreconcilable collection of fractious and deracinated people with no reason to hang together other than convenience and fear of an increasingly hostile ruling class.

If the economic chickens come home to roost in 2023 as the economic experts tell us, this erosion of trust and respect for the regime will quickly become a crisis. People may look back at this shameful orgy of self-satisfaction, at the expense of the people, as a tipping point in the relationship between the regime and the people. Watching that show, it would take a heart of stone not to hate these people. It was the point when even the most faithful civic nationalist began to hate.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Murder Itself Phase

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A year ago, when the Russians began to assemble forces along the Russia – Ukraine border, Western planners were sure that whatever the Russians were planning could only last a few months. They simply lacked the resources to put an army in the field, especially against a heavily defended opponent, for a long time. The Western response to the Russian advance into Ukraine was predicated on this. By now, the war should have been over due to a Russian withdrawal.

This short time frame thinking is clear in the economic sanctions that were levied against Russia when the war started. It did not require an advanced degree in economics to see that these sanctions would hurt the West. Cutting off a critical vendor has to have a negative impact. Western countries basically went to war with their most important supplier of energy. They were willing to do this because the war would be short and Russia would surrender to the West.

On its face this always looked like a crazy decision, but it was based on two assumptions that have turned out to be even nuttier. The first assumption was that Russia was nothing but a giant gas station run by drunken peasants. Western economic sanctions would send the country into economic turmoil and those drunken peasants would quickly revolt against their stupid rulers. Back in the spring, predictions like this were placed all over Western media.

The second assumption was that China and India would eagerly jump aboard the sanctions train. This has turned out to be the biggest error. China and India have not only refused to join the sanctions regime, but they have also moved closer to Russia and are now integral partners in the anti-Western bloc. More critically, OPEC+ has also moved closer to both Russia and China. Saudi Arabia recently signed critical deals with China, despite Western pressure to the contrary.

These horrible blunders by Western planners have resulted in a long brutal war on the doorstep of Europe. The Russians have slowly reconfigured their systems for a long war, both economic and military. On the battlefield, they are relentlessly pounding Ukrainian positions while minimizing their casualties. The battle for Bakhmut, for example, is being called a meat grinder. The Ukrainians are losing a thousand men a day defending this one place in the Donbas.

No one in the West cares at all about the lives of Ukrainians, but they have to care about the growing economic cost to the West. In parts of Europe, energy costs are five times higher now than before the war. An economic system based on cheap energy is not going to hold for long when the energy costs start to rise. Europe is just at the beginning of this energy crisis, with 2023 promising even bigger price hikes. How much longer before this spills into the political arena?

People who have seen the battle space in this war have described it as something like the trench warfare of the Great War. The Ukrainian army is dug into massive fortifications, surrounded by trench systems. In places like Bakhmut, two thousand artillery shells a day will fall on the defenders. The defenders fire back, but their artillery lacks the range of Russian systems. Even so, much of the fighting is the sort of artillery duels that were common in the Great War.

There is another parallel between the two wars. There is no path forward for a negotiated end to the fighting. In the Great War, both sides were locked into a mode of thought that prevented the necessary compromises. For both sides, the war became an end in itself. Something similar seems to have gripped the West, which has categorically ruled out a negotiated settlement. Repeatedly, Western leaders have declared there can only be one result – total victory.

As if to make sure the Russians also forgo all hope of a negotiated settlement, the West sent former German chancellor Angela Merkel out to tell the world that her prior dealings with Russia were a trick to buy the Ukrainians time. Until that interview, Merkel was one of a few Western leaders Russia thought she could trust. Now they must assume that they can trust nothing from the West. Therefore, Russia can never expect to get a deal from the West at the bargaining table.

All of this leads to another important comparison between this global conflict and the Great War a century ago. A century ago, the British Empire was effectively destroyed by the totally unnecessary war in Europe. Something similar may be waiting for the Global American Empire in this war. Instead of surrounding Russia with enemies, the war will end with the West being surrounded by a league of regional powers committed to defending themselves from color revolutions.

The question that must follow is can the economic and political model of the Global American Empire survive when it is confined to a minority of the world? The West is a little more than a tenth of the global population. How will the GAE function if the EU is in economic ruins? Can the petrodollar survive if the largest energy producers are comfortable dealing in alternative currencies? These are questions that get to the core logic of the American empire.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the same thing that happened to the British Empire at the start of the last century. The Global American Empire is not dying because it has run its course, but because it is run by stupid people who keep making critical errors in vitally important areas of imperial business. Adams famously said of democracy that it “wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” Perhaps this is true of democratic empires and America is now in the murder itself phase.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Diem Option

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Note: This being the time of year when people feel generous, you may be thinking about sending a few bucks to a worthy cause. If you are an HBD fan or a supporter of academic integrity, you should consider kicking in a few bucks to the Bryan Pesta fundraiser that you can learn more about here.

In the autumn of 1963, the Kennedy administration was made aware of a plot against the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. There had been growing unhappiness within the elite of South Vietnam over his handling of the Buddhist crisis and the Viet Cong insurgency. Earlier in the year a plot had been hatched by junior officers, but it had been suppressed. This new plot had the support of the generals.

Unhappy with Diem’s leadership, the Kennedy administration, upon learning of the pending coup, sent a cable to the American ambassador in Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, instructing him to inform Diem of their unhappiness with him and to let the generals know that they would not intervene in a coup attempt. This, in effect, gave Washington’s stamp of approval to the plot.

On November 1, 1963, the coup was launched, led by General Duong Van Minh, the senior general in the army and the main coup plotter. Diem’s loyalists were quickly scooped up by the army and then Diem and his brother were arrested. Instead of just deposing him, which was the plan communicated to the American government, both were executed in the back of an America armored personnel carrier.

The reason that this long forgotten bit of 20th century trivial still matters is it led directly to what Americans refer to as the Vietnam War. Instead of realizing that they had no idea what they were doing in that part of the world, the Kennedy administration plunged the country into a guerilla war in Asia. The result was a calamity for both the military and the political class of the United States.

In one of life’s great ironies, the people who cut their political teeth in the domestic revolts over the Vietnam War now find themselves in the same situation. This time they are the people in charge and the client state is Ukraine. Similar to 60 years ago, the American government has to deal with an erratic and reckless leader who may not be long for this world. That leader is Volodymyr Zelensky.

Contrary to all of the happy talk in Western media, the proxy war against Russia is not going well for the West. On the battlefield, the Russians are slowly grinding down the Ukrainian army, which has become a blackhole for Western arms. Everyone is waiting for the winter offensive that the Russians have been planning for months. This promises to put the Ukrainian army in an even more difficult position.

The Russians are also systematically dismantling the infrastructure of Ukraine with waves of missile and drone strikes. The Ukrainians have no way to defend against these attacks and contrary to the predictions of Western planners, the Russians are no where near running out of missiles. If anything, it appears they have ramped up their production of missiles and drones.

This promises to unleash a humanitarian disaster on the rest of Europe as Ukrainians flee the collapse of their country. Current estimates say that as many as eight million Ukrainians could make their way to Europe this winter. Europe is teetering on the abyss economically because of soaring energy and food costs, so waves of migrants from Ukraine could not come at a worse time.

This is where the Zelensky – Diem comparison comes into play. Like Diem, Zelensky is becoming a serious problem for Washington. They built him into a folk hero who must be supported at all costs. The trouble is Zelensky is a loose cannon who seems to be hell bent on escalating the war. The most recent example is the Ukrainian missile that landed in Poland. Zelensky still insists it was the Russians.

To make matters worse, Zelensky has surrounded himself with ultranationalist and Bandera fanatics. Even if Washington could find a way to have him agree to negotiations, the fanatics would probably kill him. Zelensky understands this perfectly well, which is why he continues with the overheated rhetoric. There is only one way out for him and that is getting NATO directly involved in the war.

This is an impossibility for Washington. The military sees that the foreign policy establishment badly miscalculated. There is zero appetite for getting involved in a war for which NATO is clearly not prepared. Compounding it is a growing Ukraine fatigue around the West, as the cost of this debacle begins to bite. Not only is there no appetite for escalation, but everyone is also growing tired of Zelensky and Ukraine.

This is where the Diem solution could become an attractive option. If something unfortunate were to happen to Zelensky, then that would solve a lot of problems for Washington and the collective West. They would be free of this folk hero they created and maybe have a villain on whom they could blame the defeat. Those nationalists around Zelensky would be easy to characterize as the bad guys.

It may seem a bit farfetched given the way in which the collective West has behaved over the last year, but they have no better options. Russian public opinion has shifted steadily against negotiations. The pressure on Putin to unleash the full fury of the Russian war machine on Ukraine grows daily. The destruction of the Ukraine energy grid is just the beginning of what lies ahead this winter.

This means the West has two options at this point. One is to find a way to keep Ukraine going as a civil society, which will cost hundreds of billions. This may not even be possible, given the complexity of the problem. The other is to accept the inevitable collapse of Ukraine, millions of refugees flooding into Europe and a total defeat of the Ukrainian army. In other words, the West can bleed to death or commit suicide.

That is why Zelensky will have to go and go soon. It offers a third way out of this problem that allows everyone to save face. Washington can blame the fanatics for his demise and the collapse of Ukraine. The Europeans will be free to abandon the ruinous sanctions regime. Worst case scenario Russia installs a new government. Best case scenario Russia is stuck with a failed state and thousands of armed lunatics.

Whether or not there is anyone in Washington smart enough to understand what is happening is hard to know. It may be left to the Europeans to save Washington from itself or maybe the Ukrainians make the same error as the Vietnamese. At some point someone with the power to make it happen is going to figure out that the way out of this quagmire is to get rid of Zelensky.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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