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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.
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Anyone with a rudimentary acquaintance with military strategy knows that longer supply lines translates into less effective operations. Let’s go back to the American Revolution, shall we? Great Britain had the world’s largest navy and one of its largest armies, both of which had been honed to near perfection after a century of wars against France and Spain. Regardless, it had to send those forces halfway around the globe to put down an insurrection instigated by a few thousand ill-equipped, inexperienced militias. GB eventually lost. The American Civil War was won by the Union because it had massive superiority in… Read more »
https://news.gallup.com/poll/406739/government-remains-americans-top-problem-2022.aspx
The American people are 19 times more likely to see Washington, not Moscow as the problem.
Shocking it was polled at all. Would like to see a confidence/no confidence referendum.
The problem is the decaying empire this time has nuclear weapons. Will they get used? I don’t know. I actually trust the Russians to behave rationally. But I wonder about our own political class. I’ve been following the Youtube videos on Judge Napolitano’s channel of both Douglas Macgreger and Scott Ritter. I find both men to be far more believable than our MSM. Russia will clearly win this conflict. My only concern is if our political class can stand the humiliation. Or if they will act irrationally like spoiled children and use nukes.
Probably do what they always do – declare victory, go ho.e, and point to the next squirrel.
Home. Although ho.e is a possibility
Abelard Lindsey: “My only concern is if our political class can stand the humiliation.”
“Our” political class.
LOL’ed.
I will play Devil’s Advocate. Everything is working out fine for the Regime. The drastic fall in living standards? Part of the Klaus Schwabian plan for “you will own nothing, have no privacy, and eat the bugs bigot!” Bill Gates, George Soros, and Jeff Bezos all approve. Any move to oppose this is easily crushed as a “coup” and “threat to our democracy!” — like more open-ness on Twitter. As Yuval Hariri noted, “there are billions of useless people” who need to be eliminated. Call it the ultimate corporate reduction in force. [Elon Musk needs motivated engineers and skilled trades… Read more »
W: “There are plans galore to “decolonize” Russia by breaking it into sections after Putin is removed.”
Okay, W, now give us the inside dope on Bibi’s relationship with Barnea.
“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.” “Stupid” is a cope and misdirection. It’s murder, deliberately planned. The tell is the demand for “unconditional surrender” and the corresponding designation of the foe as an entirely “evil” entity, Satan, Hitler, Putler. Both a characteristics of the mindset… Read more »
Funny how “cope” has become an abracadabra word for the anti-Semites.
That’s our 20th Century revision of cyclical theory. It’s a chicken-and-egg question; do ambitious outgroups cause, or do they merely exploit, dynasty collapse? The unique history of the West is pinned on one Book. My version of that history says “We wrote it, They stole it,” and that the entire Book is a chronicle of the back-and-forth between a whitish majority and their would-be rulers, contesting the direction. A unique irritant, as in the pearl of an oyster. Will no one rid us of these meddlesome priests? Is there a driver over the cliff, or is Enlightenment democracy correct and… Read more »
Much later:
Ahh sh*t I fell for it
Z just doesn’t want his audience to go completely anal
Essay question:
Contrast the Black Nobility with B’nai Brith
“Perhaps this is true of democratic empires and America is now in the murder itself phase.”
It can’t happen fast enough.
No , we are being done in by the puppets of the WEF type group that has sized absolute control of the west and sees the people of the west as ants at their picnic. I don’t know if the CCP is their servant of master, but seem to have a big part in it because everything from the one part system to the social credit score and media manipulation they use to control their people is clearly coming to the west. The CCP will own all this useful land once we are gone. Covid was the takeover, and they… Read more »
The American electorate is the CCP. Humanity isn’t majority winners. It’s majority losers. Losers are envious. Losers with ballots use them to box check thieves to steal from the winners. It’s that simple. We are the enemy of ourselves.
was going to say that normie is quite happy with things as they are.
“I wonder whether the extreme egalitarianism of the elite universities is a kind of defense mechanism to avoid dealing with the ways in which they are betraying their students. If you tell your students, ‘check your privilege, you shouldn’t expect to do more than the average person …’ that is a way for the elite University to absolve itself of its responsibility to see that its graduates become leading members of our society.” – Peter Thiel discussing the stagnation of the society and inability of Universities. In the same talk he acknowledges that you cannot go back to classical liberalism… Read more »
False assumptions on both sides produced this war. The initial Russian blunders ensured the war was going to be a mess. But the greenzone junta’s response ensured the conflict was going to be both global and intractable. Over the summer, I began thinking that a possible center-of-gravity in this now-global war was the German middle class, its political power. Once the burghers freaked over the war’s price tag, I imagined, they would say Enough. But this was before the US and the UK re-conquered Germany. And now it seems that the German secret police have staged their own Jan6 farce… Read more »
The Germany coup story is a farce. They breathlessly reported that 25-50 individuals were going to take over the German government? In a country of 83 million? This appears to be a way to smear the AFD political party so to have cause to ban their participation in the parliament.
Seems they are taking cues from the J6 fiasco. They really pushed the unbelievable idea that precious “Democracy” nearly fell that day. If selfie-talking Ohio grandmas and a guy LARPing as a Viking had any chance to take over, then we didn’t have a country worth defending.
Hat tip to Zman on the AFD angle. I meant to attribute that theory to him in my earlier post.
The way to save the US dollar in the face of petrodollar erosion looks pretty straightforward to me: blow up the Euro and force the Europeans into using the USD. Considering the fecklessness and incompetence of European leadership this shouldn’t be all that hard to do. I’m sure somebody up there in the globohomo hierarchy has already thought of it if I have. This probably buys the USD another half century or so, kind of like the last two resets did. It also moves the world closer to one world currency/one world govt, which I read somewhere is important to… Read more »
Why do the ink-stained wretches of the MSM insist on using the “democracy” tag instead of the “republic” to describe the US of A? Most certainly we have devolved into a cluttered mess of Mob rule that properly describes a democracy….corruption,immorality,perversion, habitual lying. But occasionally I would like an absentminded know-it -all wretch to use the REPUBLIC term just for old times sake.
It’s hard to say why or when that practice began, but it has become a cloud/dirt signifier.
they just enjoy seeing us pitifuly waving your powerless fist at them mumbling ” It’s a REPUBLIC. dagnabbit!”
I spent around 50 commenting years correcting “democracy” to “republic”, only to concede, now, that the republic is dead and has been dead for a while. All our present ills are the result of democracy, which is the proper name for the regime we live under. Further, once you accept that the republic is dead, you can move on to understanding that it was the permissiveness and reckless libertarianism to which the republic gave birth and then to which it gave shelter which facilitated its overthrow. In the event that the nation is saved, the government which does the saving… Read more »
Forget armaments, Putin is turning this into a “balance sheet” war. The West has huge amounts of government and, to a lessor degree, corporate debt. It simply can’t handle high interest rates via inflation on that debt, especially if that inflation is caused by higher energy costs. Higher energy costs that you pay to someone else for energy means that it costs you more to produce the same amount of goods and services. Inflation up, interest rates up but “real” GDP steady or lower. Doesn’t work with high debt. You’re screwed in that situation if debt-to-GDP is higher than 100%.… Read more »
NATO attacked Russia with artillery, then Putin counterattacked with natgas supplies. He has been ahead of the GAE’s leadership every step of this process. Russia is playing chess, Biden is saying “king me.”
Preaching to the choir here. The biggest issue of our lives is the one issue that nobody (including investment advisors!) is talking about… The massive million kiloton hydrogen bomb that is the U.S. debt market. (And of course the Europeans and Japanese). The U.S. government became insolvent around early to mid-Obama. Under the current debt structure it cannot continue as a going concern without inflation as far as the eye can see.
“you can always just crush demand via a recession to bring down inflation”
Incoming! Covid or climate or domestic turririsms lockdowns, then. For the duration of the emergency.
Ordinarily that would be correct. But you would need a regime of austerity, not one that will create infinite PPP loans and various other vehicles as sedatives during the massive recession. Covid was a dry run for this. I’m sure they said “holy shit, why didn’t we think of this PPP stuff sooner?”
Sovereign debt doesn’t matter and people on the right are idiots to obsess about it.
It’s almost the exact inverse of the Cold War. Russia doesn’t have to ‘win’ anything. They (and China) only have to keep existing. The GAE will implode economically trying to keep all of the plates spinning.
[…] The Murder Itself Phase […]
“Can the petrodollar survive if the largest energy producers are comfortable dealing in alternative currencies?” –Zman Quick trip down memory lane – remember how the establishment lost its friggin’ wig the last time something like this came even close to happening? OPEC – the very name sent shivvers down our spine for decades. The lines at gas stations were real, but the oversized reaction and narrative the establishment concocted to explain the oil embargo were not. It became a scarring, life changing event in the national psyche. DC presented it to the public as a comic book narrative of the… Read more »
Your last paragraph is powerful, well said.
Artillery Duels
Bingo. All true and accurate.
The last two threats to the petro dollar were Saddam Hussein in 2002 and Gaddafi in 2008. The GAE neutralized both with ease. Don’t kid yourself. Its military might that ultimately underlies the petrodollar system. And even today the US is the most powerful military on earth. Losing Ukraine would be a blow to,US prestige – which is why the regime was idiotic to go all in on it. But even with such a blow the GAE’s military would remain the worlds strongest and the petrodollar system intact, if less predominant than it is now. The bottom line is that… Read more »
One thing I distinctly remember during the start of the war was the blowback from D.C. towards India for not signing onto the sanctions. One day, as I recall, we threatened to sanction India for not sanctioning Russia. Someone in D.C. surely miscalculated. I couldn’t imagine them thinking that India would do this. It’s a poor country where people still starve to death. They’re not all dying of diabetes from stuffing their faces like Americans. Also, it showed the cold indifference of the U.S. towards a country with a billion people, clear on the other side of the world, that… Read more »
The Arrogance of America is so overwhelming that the assumption is that other Nations will succumb and like it. The Stupidity of Biden upbraiding the Saudi’s for insufficiently celebrating sodomy and charging their Crown Prince with murder is stunning. The clowns are then upset when Joe goes to Riyadh to beg for oil and is greeted by an uber at the airport and a fist bump when he gets to town, before being to to go fuck himself. Contrast that with the reception of Xi. The king, not MBS but the King, an old and infirm man who walks with… Read more »
Thanks for those illustrative examples.
Absolutely! All stick no carrot.
“One day, as I recall, we threatened to sanction India for not sanctioning Russia. Someone in D.C. surely miscalculated. I couldn’t imagine them thinking that India would do this. It’s a poor country where people still starve to death. They’re not all dying of diabetes from stuffing their faces like Americans. Also, it showed the cold indifference of the U.S. towards a country with a billion people, clear on the other side of the world, that just wanted to improve its standard of living.” Agree with everything you’ve written. The general problem is the US government has nothing to offer… Read more »
Now the neocons are attempting to start conflict in Serbia again to put more pressure on Russia. Putin should just call Benjamin Netanyahu and tell him that the tribe had better call off its’ vassals. Tell him if Serbia is attacked that will well and truly start WWIII.
Also let him know that if the nukes start flying, not to worry, Russia has saved a few for them.
Yes…and the WW1 analogy is not quite correct..After the Somme, won by Germany, there was a major German effort to agree on a peace treaty..but the rulers of the West refused to even talk about it…
I cannot recommend enough the three part conversation that Dr. Michael Vlahos and Col. Douglas Magcregor had several days ago covering the reality of the Ukraine War, what does it mean for grand strategy and what can be done to fix it.
https://youtu.be/GhA1yofpkMg
The overlap between the discussions on DR boards like this one and a few others (hi Sev) is remarkable. Well worth the time.
Agree. I think they get it about right.
Alex, thanks for the link. This discussion is a stark contrast between a couple of guys who base their opinions on reality and the magical thinking of the Global American Empire.
The regime seems to be making itself as grotesque as possible, to both foreign and domestic partners as well as enemies. The worship of Africans is the first thing. Fielding a team of all Africans does not endear the West to the rest of the world. Sticking LGBT in the Gulf’s face is another mistake. It’s now a rallying point for the entire world. Nobody, from Russia, to Qatar, to China, to India, to Afganistan, to Black-as-Coal Africans, wants the perverted Western sexual morality. Xi Jinging doesn’t want to have sex with men in dresses anymore than the Taliban do.… Read more »
When Xi traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet the King and Mohammed bin Salman that might be marked as the beginning of the end for the West. Xi stated that he intends to pay for oil in Chinese currency and the Saudis were receptive.
It will take a little time to make that happen administratively but the writing is on the wall. They went to war in Iraq and Libya to maintain the petro dollar. Maybe they will attack Saudi Arabia. Wouldn’t it be funny if the idiots managed to force Saudi Arabia and Iran into an alliance.
george1,
Good analysis on SA & China. Lots of moving parts behind the geopolitical curtains these days wrt the world shifting to a multipolar stance.
A good book to read for details and insight into Middle Eastern cultures and traditions is, “The Arab Mind” by Raphael Patai. As with all scholarly works, there are some blind spots, hits and misses, but it is still a decent overview of the sociocultural factors that affect the region.
Thanks.
I will check it out.
> Wouldn’t it be funny if the idiots managed to force Saudi Arabia and Iran into an alliance.
That’s not any crazier than forcing Russia, China, and India into one, yet here we are.
What gets really funny is when you start talking about NATO members such as Hungary and Turkey.
We are in this mess because the only thing we thought about was our material standard of living. We needed to maintain it at any cost – increase the debt and import future taxpayers to keep the Soc. Sec ponzi afloat to avoid lowering benefit payouts. The best thing to happen to us is sooner than later having serious issues with our standard of living. The bigger issue is our homelands have been invaded, internal tribes with a blood libel against us are emboldened and empowered. The very survival of our posterity is at stake. A lower standard of living… Read more »
PeriheliusLux: While it may not affect a majority of commenters here, from what I’m reading a large number of Americans already have a lower standard of living. And White heterosexual men have been last in line for jobs for some time now – it’s just that the GoodWhites and POX are explicit and triumphalist about it today. Older White men are dying or taking early retirement. Young White men are opting out of the entire system of faux jobs and blue-haired landwhales. A people who will not defend their own children from sexual predators has no future. A people who… Read more »
There are, more than ever, “two Americas.” My friend across the street, an old Japanese guy obsessed with ’50s American culture (as they were), recently died. In his last few years, mostly because of the failure of his pension to match inflation, he’d had to sell the antique cars and guitars he’d bought new and planned to will to friends and relatives who’d value them. Again and again he’d cut back, but it was never enough to pay the obligatory bills while still having anything like a normal life. He had to give up. Then of course he died almost… Read more »
If possible, keep us posted about the new owner. You’re most likely right and I’m curious about just who overpaid like that.
“increase the debt and import future taxpayers to keep the Soc. Sec ponzi afloat to avoid lowering benefit payouts.” Can you point me to these ‘future taxpayers’? Because the 85 IQ 5 foot tall genetic slurry mud goblins steaming across the border are NOT and likely will never be taxpayers. Is there a secret stream of Europeans pouring into the States I’m unaware of? No, they are not bright enough to consider anything past the next election cycle or two and the lefty Boomers in charge are happy to have their final moment in the sun. They will leave the… Read more »
Apex Predator – the next generation of taxpayers is their line and it is also what denialist cons tell themselves about the immigrants. I know people who say, “as long as they pay taxes!” Some of them do work and pay taxes and some of them work and do not pay taxes and some of them lay about and collect taxes. Any of them who work and send home remittances are paying taxes directly to the Wall St. banks and to the currency converters on both sides of the border. In any case, I think some of the managers were… Read more »
So true. In the multi-culti population dump that America is being fashioned into, about the only thing anyone has in common is the concern over one’s own standard of living. Unfortunately, in this growing population dump (as opposed to middle/working class society that creates wealth), one man’s SOL comes at the expense of another’s, once the books are balanced. (Or alternatively, it is “financed” by borrowing from the creative society’s future. Just put it on the tab!) Meaning it is a zero sum game when the majority of population enters the useless eater category, to borrow Mustachioed One’s phrase. An… Read more »
We forgot that our sole and only job is to plant trees in whose shade we shall never sit.
Neocons have a lot of time and money, but no brains. The answer to all these fiascos is very simple, and that is we have a lot of dumb people running the show. Neocons like Nuland will snap bones patting each other on the back while praising each other for having astronomically high IQ’s, but they have the common sense and judgement of an eggplant. Of course, my IQ score would be astronomically high if I took the test several times or found out what questions were on it. Unfortunately, were stuck with them. They’re like a virus that infects… Read more »
Great stuff. Yes the fools, the fake elites running the West simply got several hundred thousand people killed in East Europe and destroyed our credibility as honest brokers.
Will Europe have enough self-preservation instincts to start aligning more with Russia? We’ll see. Obviously Russia has been shocked and how rotten our leadership class is.
Americans and Russians should realize they have a lot in common. I’m talking old stock Americans. We need to find every way to connect with them. Like someone said, cowboys and cossacks have a lot in common.
The number and magnitude of the West’s errors is truly astonishing. I recall early on in the conflict, Western “experts” were predicting that the sanctions would destroy the Russian economy, and the Russian people would overthrow Putin as a result. Instead, Putin is apparently more popular than ever; and the sanctions have not only *not* had the desired effect, they have— as Z-man points out— encouraged the formation of a Russia-China-India alliance, thereby strengthening the Russians, and threatening to end the hegemony of the petrodollar; while weakening the West. Without sufficient electricity, the deindustrialization of Germany is apparently very likely.… Read more »
If this a world war, maybe clown world deserves credit for making war as larpy as possible. Otoh, the larpiness is what I can’t take. Sympathy to the soldiers and civilians actually getting blown up, but I want out of the asylum. Keep coming back to it: why not holy war for Zion? Isn’t that what’s at the heart of the new religion? Honestly, isn’t God now subject to the teachers? Isn’t nature just fodder for the debate club? People are so trapped in their own heads, so unable to resist the head-fuckery, that the metaphor might as well be… Read more »
The people in charge have way too much time on their hands. If Ms. Nuland had to chop firewood, pump water, wash cloth diapers and cook from scratch she’d be much better off. If Chuck Schumer had to pitch hay, shovel manure, and hitch up a horse to a wagon and drive 10 miles (taking 2 hours one way) to converse with another man, he’d be better off. If AOC had to wash clothes in a tub of cold water and spend time weeding and watering a vegetable patch, and spend hours in a hot summer kitchen canning same, she’d… Read more »
Whether or not Chuck, AOC, et al would be better off doing those chores – I’m sure they would not think so. As for the rest of us, there can be no debate whatsoever that we would be better off if they spent their time in manual labor.
If things change Nuland, Schumer, and AOC won’t be chopping any wood. They’ll have the military point guns at you and order you to chop their wood for them.
The public, with their unwavering belief in the regime’s credibility appears boundless. People you thought were rational creatures it seemed, almost overnight, plastered Ukrainian flags in their profiles. I have personally seen a few Ukie flags in the front yard of homes in my area. Now, one can surmise that some of those at private residences may have personal ties to the country, but rest assured that a few are there for the extra virtue points. It was naïve to think that after decades of proven deception told to the US public in the arena of foreign military operations and… Read more »
If anyone needs a refresher course about Africa, view the film “Empire of Dust.” In the general case, third world leaders host competing nations or corporations, extract as much loot as they can, and resume being local warlords. They might allow a little token resource plundering and such just to keep up appearances. If they’re really stupid, they will allow a foreign nation to build a military base in their country. Even in the very best case, call it a successful occupation and/or colonization, the costs to maintain an outpost of one’s empire are high. In part this explains why… Read more »
One of your best blog posts Zman, IMO, and have been following you for 7 years. As an aside, you recently commented in one of your podcasts that during this holiday season, if we had some charities or worthy causes we would like to suggest to you in order for you to promote them if you feel so inclined, we might do so. I’ve got one to respectfully submit to your attention. The Mcmichael family. You yourself spoke about them already. They were the Georgia family that the regime crushed in the context of the Ahmaud Arbery case (the jogger,… Read more »
Travis’s son* not daughter
I was promised a “winter offensive” that would roll the Ukies back behind the Dneiper (Unz Review told me so!).
It’s now a week before Christmas. What gives, fellas?
Winter begins December 21 and ends March 21.
really curious why someone downvoted the calendar?
The organized and reliable Gregorian Calendar is clearly a product and tool of White Supremist…erm…White people. It is therefore invalid!
So there!
It’s an artificial construct man.
Last report wrt weather was that winter had been somewhat mild and the the ground was not yet frozen solid enough. Current predictions are for late December for ground freeze. Until then, the Russians are enjoying a 10-1 kill ratio on the fronts. This may be an exaggeration, but there seems agreement that Russian strength grows daily as Ukrainian strength declines steadily. An attack postponed does not seem to be in Ukrainian favor. One unknown is if USA will supply even more advanced weaponry.
Anatoly Karlin (who is pro-Z, btw) says exactly the opposite. I’m old enough to remember when we were promised Russian victory last Spring because the “Cauldron” would crush the Ukies.
I can’t tell you how many predictions from the likes of Saker and McGregor I’ve seen proven wrong over the last nine months. It’s getting to a Kari Lake levels of cope.
Kind of like the prediction that Russia would run out of missiles? Or maybe that the Russian people would run Putin out on a rail? You know the… lies you war pigs told to sell this fiasco to an admittedly stupid American public?
Rest assured, when the time comes you will be hung from a lamp post and your entire family liquidated.. you know… just to be sure.
Hey ZMan, that sure sounds like a direct and specific threat of violence to me…you sure that’s what you want on your board?
@Return of MWV.
Nope pussy. Just a prediction. That’s what inevitably happens to all scum such as yourself. You get out in front of your skis and well the rest is…. as they say…. history.
Now go home and cry to momma.
Some of the better analysts are now saying that the Winter offensive may not happen for reasons that the Z man has pointed out. The Ukrainians keep sending massive amounts of troops and equipment that the Russians keep destroying. This is especially true in Bakhmut.
Seeing this the Russians may be quite content to just let them keep coming.
I think the Russians have struggled mightily to grasp what the West and by extension the Ukrainians are doing and why they are doing it, but they seem to be slowly adjusting. This Bakhmut trap is one example. The Russians pulled out of Kherson in order to create a similar trap, but reportedly the foreign legions in the south refused to go along so the Ukrainians did not send a big force into the abandoned areas.
Its funny that the Russians don’t recognize their own playbook. They need to go to the archives and study how the Republican war effort in Spain went (which the russkie’s predecessors planned and carried out). The same globalists are fighting for ukraine as were fighting there for democracy, w the same events: massive victories announced in the press while the front line retreats ever rearward
When the “President” of the United States stands before the world and celebrates drag queens I don’t give a flying **** what happens to this miserable country. War or no war.
In truth, you do care, and care deeply. It’s just that you don’t foresee any way to make a difference when the Deep State runs everything; including MSM, institutions, Big Tech, and all the woke corporations. But that is just defeatism, which is the Deep State’s best defense. Create enough despair and the dirt people will stay on the couch. Don’t give them that easy victory. You have two jobs now. First is to simply survive the Crazy and the coming Chaos. Second is to fight back on circumstances and ground that is favorable to you. Exploit being the nobody… Read more »
Define Deep State, coward
Who are “them”?
Diaspora from deserts made America as tribal war zones
And you are so scared that can’t even point out who is the enemy
You are the one who most defeatist men on the planet
The ruling regime is not the country.
The EU had natgas stored up before this winter. Next year, it will have nothing left in storage before winter.
Nuts & bolts. Both Russia and Ukraine have enormous natural resources (energy, mineral, and agricultural) that, if stolen and exploited by the West, could produce a revenue stream sufficient to forestall the sovereign debt crises of many profligate Western economies. In other words, if the Russians win in Ukraine, DC and the EU will not be able to avoid bankruptcy when it comes time to refinance short term sovereign debt. This explains why the RINOs are committed to the war too. So what happens when Russia wins and the dominoes start falling? Europe will crater first (largely because the US… Read more »
“So what happens when Russia wins and the dominoes start falling?”
The whole post is admirably clear and succinct. Thanks!
Were it only high energy prices, but a healthy nation on solid economic footing and a population committed to itself.
Throw on top of it mass immigration, of people the Word Cup is exposing as hostile to the nation that feeds and shelters them, a dire balance sheet situation and you have a set of nations that could be moving from a cold multi-ethnic civil war to a full throttle multi-ethnic civil war as mass material deprivation sets in and sovereign bankruptcy hits at the same time.
The West isn’t committing suicide, it likely already has.
Expect epic riots following today’s France-Morocco WC match, regardless of the outcome.
It’s worth mentioning that rioting at (or outside the pubs during) a football match (that’s “soccer” for us Americans) is far from unusual in Europe and Latin America. Not sure about the rest of the globe.
It is very true, what you say here. I live in Great Britain. Giver (for better of worse) of the Industrial Revolution. Provider-to-the-world of minds like John Harrison, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell and Robert Hooke; of leaders like Alfred of Wessex and Major-General Charles Gordon; of scholars like The Venerable Bede… Doesn’t matter that much now, though. Not amongst the spiritually demotivated English, nor amongst the many darker-skinned invaders. Very sad indeed. It is amazing what can be done with a devoutness and belief in one’s people, one’s country. Indeed, if only the problems were simply material. So what?… Read more »
We also fought two wars against your tyranny loving shithole island. We still have the remnants in that tyrannical shithole to the north. If oy we were strong enough to eliminate that crap hat back in the 1800s. Why we wasted blood and treasure fighting with your dumbasses in the 20th century escapes me. The Europeans who stayed in the continent are good for nothing but eternal wars and destruction. We should cut you off entirely except our bullshit leaders in dc and nyc still have a hard on for your london bankers. The sooner you vassals are cut off… Read more »
America as was was a creation of Britain.
If the Russians conclude no negotiated peace is possible, the gloves would have to come off – whatever that entails. The only hope would be for the EU to tell the gay american empire to go pound sand and work out a deal. Unfortunately, they seem as determined to commit hara kiri as this government.
I guess it’s just going to come down to how much more the various populations in the west are going to put up with. Based on what’s going on around here, it looks like a lot more, sadly.
“I guess it’s just going to come down to how much more the various populations in the west are going to put up with.”
Western populations will put up with anything and everything until the electricity goes out and grocery store shelves are empty. If Big Bro can manage those two things, then he can stay in power and carry on the drag show.
But he can’t manage those two things.
Still, FedGov is good for another ten years, max.
I would think at some point there would be a disconnect of sorts between the red states/areas and the empire proper. Local GOPers had an incentive to keep the scheme going since that kept open the possibility of higher office (however remote), but with Federal positions either sealed off or being glorified appointments the state GOP offices gain nothing from being part of the national. Nothing so brave as secession, but still, might be interesting.
I followed the link in the article discussing the trick. I followed a related story at the bottom to a China ambassador to the WTO saying the US a destroyer of the global trading system. The story referenced the US WTO Ambassador, Maria Pagan. So, as always, I like to see who is working for the US. I looked her up and on her Ambassador’s page is a list of her recent statements. One was a statement on the second anniversary of the, “murder”, of George Floyd. It prattled on about how blacks in America are victims of racism and… Read more »
PeriheliusLux: I would suggest you’re overthinking this. To claim Pagan et al work for China seems to me equivalent to people labeling those of us who want the GAE to lose as lovers of Putin or ‘commies.’ Not that China wouldn’t seek to suborn such, but why on earth would they need to? Pagan and her ilk hate and envy White men and White, western civilization. Yes, their motivation really is that simple. While I’m certain they’d have no scruples accepting foreign money, why would any other nation want to waste the funds trying to buy people who have no… Read more »
Why buy the cow when she gives her milk for free?
3g4me –
Notice the question mark at the end of the sentence. 🙂
I’ve been listening to the Duran guys almost daily. They break down the stupidity of western leadership, their underestimation of Russian military and manufacturing capabilities, and how the rest of the world is turning their backs on them because they lie constantly.
Now our neo-cons want another war with Serbia just for the hell of it. Everyone is sick of this crap.
Back in the spring I wrote a post about a report from the Royal something or other study in the relative military industrial capacity of the West versus the East. The guy pretty much nailed the situation perfectly. Contrary to Western assertions, Russia has a massive military industrial capacity. Much of it was a hangover from the Cold War, but it is clear that those old systems have plenty of use in this age. Artillery, for example, is critical to land warfare and the Russians have enormous capacity for producing artillery and artillery shells.
Here is the report: https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare
I read David Hackworth’s book long ago. At the end he was adamant the western weapons systems were way too complicated, expensive, and unreliable. At the time (1991?) I didn’t really agree, in part because we still had a huge stockpile of unsophisticated Vietnam and Cold War era stuff. Now – he’s absolutely right and we have no ability to produce big stuff such as tanks and artillery quickly and in quantity.
The Germans did the same thing. They were cutting edge in tank design, for example, but one really good tank is not better than fifty good enough tanks. The excuse the usual suspects make is that the Germans could not match the West in terms of volume, but that claim was only true later in the war. I think one reason the West has gone all in for super weapons is the shift from the draft to a volunteer army. By turning the military into a profession, they could select for the sorts of people they needed for the system… Read more »
“The Desert Fox” Erwin Rommel, the German tank commander proved that tactics and strategy can be more decisive than technology during the WWII North African campaign against the Allied forces. Logistics and supply breakdown, not strategy, was the downfall for his Panzer division. Reading how his troops would scour a battlefield for parts after a battle was an interesting tidbit to learn. Also finding out that many of his tactics were taught at US tank command training.
Fifty good tanks will almost always defeat one or two excellent tanks because the excellent tanks only have two guns that can point in two directions while the fifty good tanks can approach from fifty different angles, many of which where the armor is quite thin.
Same argument applies to an F-22 versus a few dozen unmanned drones.
Yes – And…
The quality and quantity of our military volunteers are dropping fast. And thanks to our deindustrialization, we can’t ramp up production of simple or complicated equipment quickly.
The veterans recounting WWII on YT told of Sherman tanks in the European theater against German Panzers of the time. Something like 6 Shermans were lost for each Panzer killed. However, USA had made something like 50k Sherman’s by the time of the invasion.
Had a HS teacher who was in the European theater, his job was to wash out the insides of the Sherman’s recovered and patch holes. His story to a kid of 14 was a real eye opener.
Russia’s reduced conscription to 12 months. about 60% of the Russian Army are now professionals. Given the current ethnic mix enlisting in the US, I’d say the Russians have a more professional one.
https://www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/best-or-worst-both-worlds
There are reasons why our weapons systems are so complicated. One is we have a professional military with well-trained people who can operate and maintain cutting edge gear. Another is that we aim to supersede not only the existing generation of a weapon, but the next one as well. For example, the F-22/F-35 fighter aircraft were not only intended to beat 4th Generation aircraft like the Russian Su-30 and the Chinese J-10 (which looks suspiciously like an old Israeli Lavi that we helped develop), but they’re designed to beat the next generation as well, as evidenced by the Chinese J-20… Read more »
Interesting alliteration of littoral combat ship known as Little Crappy Ship. I gathered these things had not been well received.
(kudos on the Moby Dick / Cap’n Ahab ‘from hells heart… reference in an earlier comment).
The US has always been first and foremost a sea power, augmented by air/space power when it became available. There is no conceivable way the US could go toe to toe on its own in Europe or China with massive land armies. It was never meant to. Logistically impossible. Now that NATO has hollowed itself out and member countries stopped meaningful contributions, this conflict is making it obvious that the US is not a mobile million man army. US is good at “The Assassin’s Mace”; when that fails, and mass troops are needed, the US comes up very short. (Thank… Read more »
I preface this by saying I’m not a gun guy- In high school, Sgt Major Stewart, the tough old bird who ran the rifle range; combat vet of WW II, Korea and Vietnam; once said to me shaking his head, “Ganderson, you couldn’t hit a cow in the rump with a handful of rice!”, so anyone out there, feel free to correct me; but I recall Hackworth talking about the M 16 vs the AK47; he thought the M16 was a fine weapon, but the it was so engineered as to require it be kept spotless. He then related about… Read more »
The proof of that is all the equipment going to the front lines from Russia. A few months ago we were told that Russia was out of tanks and that they could not quickly build more. Well a lot of brand new T90 tanks are being shown on railcars in several locations as well as the fron.
It looks like Russia can build them in short order.
Also proof that most of what we’re are told is a complete fabrication.
Regarding the F-35, do a simple google search on its global supply chain and try not to see how many issues could be caused by a disruption in logistical support.
I expressed some concern over a possible Russian-Chinese hydra about a year ago, but now I’m not so sure. Jinping and Putin are both megalomaniacs.
Sadly they seem far better than our “leaders”.
I’d take Putin over Biden every day.
It’s clear these two leaders are strong. The value power and their peoples. Biden and the rest of our betters value only power (money). It would be a mistake to think Putin or anyone else will save us. We can admire their presumed (I have no firsthand knowledge, so I presume) conviction to their people, but they have no such conviction for us. US citizens will be a side note if the US or dollar are ruined. As much as I hate to say it, maintaining our standard of living depends on continuing the depravity and the success of GH.… Read more »
Putin displays a concern for his people beyond their transactional value, but I don’t think the same can be said of Xi. Those are two widely different societies.
> As much as I hate to say it, maintaining our standard of living depends on continuing the depravity and the success of GH. This is the lie that they push in order to obtain your complicity with their satanic ambitions. The value of any currency is proportional to the value of the economy of the country issuing that currency. If more money is printed, the nominal value of each unit of that currency will go down, yes, but the value of the currency as a whole will remain unchanged. Now sending our currency overseas as part of an increasingly-vulgar… Read more »
> Jinping and Putin are both megalomaniacs.
I don’t know, they seem more like moderates keeping the ascendant hardliners in check. They have been very restrained with regards to western chicanery.
“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.” The answer is obvious: Nyet. The GAE is configured as a set of concentric circles: the USA at the… Read more »
> The British Empire folded not only because of economic and military losses (though they think they won the war) but because of loss of credibility and the slow evaporation of the sterling area after WW2 (the predecessor to dollar hegemony).
As much as I dislike FDR, it was truly a masterstroke how he facilitated the financial destruction of the British Empire along with destroying Germany as global competitors in one fell swoop. Quite the ally the ole’ USA is.
Quite. The US was instrumental in dismantling the British Empire. But an enduring myth in Britain is how it won the war against the Germans. Forget the inconvenient fact that food rationing stayed in place until 1954. Britain ended the war skint, its domestic population none too well fed, its colonies in open revolt, and the eclipse of pound sterling by the dollar. Its humiliating subservience to the US is described by the euphemism, “the special relationship.”
As is the US’ humiliating subservience to Israel described by the same euphemism.
It amuses me that Churchill hated the Germans so much that he inadvertently destroyed the British Empire. I used to admire Churchill in my youth but the more I’ve learned the less respect I have for him. Now it’s pretty much disrespect in fact. The whole UK managerial class in the first half of the 20th century is almost as contempible as ours is now. The best of them died in WW I. Actually after I saw this on my screen, the best of them died in the endless colonial wars in the Victorian era. Empires seem to sow the… Read more »
Chet Rollins: FDR was devious but no great strategic genius. Those who “facilitated the financial destruction of the British Empire along with destroying Germany as global competitors” were the international bankers and financiers, many of whose relatives first tasted power as part of FDR’s massive expansion and control of the federal government.
WW I all but destroyed the old European world order. This included the “classical” gold standard. Great Britain was, for all practical purposes, no longer a going concern by 1918. No matter, they made a half-assed attempt to restore it in the 1920s but come the Depression, abandoned it for good. It’s an overlooked aspect of history that the prior war’s massive inflation ( = loss of purchasing power) directly led to other unhappy outcomes, like a disastrous German inflation, the ruin of an economy barely done with a major war, and the election as Chancellor of a certain mustachioed… Read more »
here’s what i don’t get about the EU. they are actively antagonising Russia, while counting on the US to protect them from reprisal. once the US gives up on ukraine – and it will – the EU will be on its own. and Russia will be looking for some heavy payback. my point is, Russia is right there on the border of Eastern Europe, not half a world away like Afghanistan. why pick a fight with such a formidable country that is so close? you have to know the blowback is going to be very bad for the EU, and… Read more »
We’re about a year on from the Russians crossing the border into Ukraine and they still haven’t been able to advance beyond east Ukraine. Still unable to take even Kharkov. Thus Europe has little to fear from a conventional Russian military invasion. Of course European leaders are incompetent, how could they be otherwise after decades of vassalship with the globohomo empire backstopping everything they do and shielding them from all consequences, like kids at college while Uncle Sugar across the atlantic pays the freight. But that’s a separate question from the military reality. Russia is obviously not capable of staging… Read more »
Get back with the group in January 2023.
> there is no upside for the EU in any conceivable scenario.
The “upside” is you get to flood Europe with more Sub-Saharan Doctors, Aviators, and Engineers to “help rebuild the European economy.”
It’s a Janissary thing. GAE selects ‘promising youths’ in client nations, raises them in its Totalist college culture, then returns them to their home country and installs them as rulers using EU, NATO and NGOs as Trojan horses. Thus, the leaders of countries such as Sweden consider the destruction of their own countries to be acceptable losses. Their true loyalty is to the Empire. GAE’s been doing the same thing to USA via the Ivy League colleges, to the point that Harvard and Georgetown are government service academies in all but name. Those kids aren’t learning to be proud of… Read more »
The West thought they would provoke Russia in to a war that would drain Russian will and resources. What the West got was a prolonged war that is draining Western will and resources. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of globalist pricks. My question is whether or not it will destroy the “Global American Empire”. I question is whether or not there ever was a “Global American Empire”? A Global Empire? Sure, I can by that, but an empire controlled by America and Americans? From where I’m sitting it sure does seem like the modern globalist villains are almost… Read more »
We’ve been the footsoldiers of empire and it’s been our blood and treasure so we can claim it as our own.
“It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of globalist pricks.”
The globalist pricks will pay no price for their arrogance/mistakes. Our children/kin will.
These “wars” are really just Long Cons and the taxpayers are the marks. All of them were presented as existential threats to the US homeland blah blah – “we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight ’em here” etc. – I should have a dollar for each time my civnat friends said this to me. After a long spell of futility, we will just give up and go home. We leave some agents in a Green Zone (Iraq), a base camp to make trouble (Syria) or just go home entirely (Kabul/Afg.). Kiev will be the… Read more »
My guess is that this conflict is as much about forcing Russians to praise homos and trannies as it is about the huge amounts of money that are surely being grifted. Just like our wars in the ME were as much about harassing the enemies of Israel as they were about enriching the military industrial complex.
The Yoel Roth saga suggests our elite have a pervert addiction. There is no other way to explain that guy’s rise to the top of Twitter other than a fetish for having degenerates in the ranks.
There is substantial evidence that our ‘elites’ are far worse than being only pedophiles. New wars or other ‘crises’ spring forth to distract from those stories when they come out. Merely a cohencidence, to be sure.
Zman: Per this Daily Mail story, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey claims Twitter’s government connections/subversion was largely due to Elliot Management, run by Jesse Cohn, buying a controlling interest and clearly steering the company’s direction. Fwiw, Jesse Cohn’s photo strongly pings my gaydar.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11535997/Jack-Dorsey-admits-Twitters-failures-fault-blames-activist-investor.html
I think Mr. Singer is still in charge of Elliott. He is not exactly a raging leftist. I think their main interest in Twitter was making money.
“After a long spell of futility, we will just give up and go home.”
Don’t be so hard on the US. After all, I forget where it was, but didn’t one of your overseas jaunts end up with a statue of St. George Floyd being built in some occupied foreign country or other?
That’s progress. That’s spreading Our Democracy.
Your Adam’s quote reminds me of how little the founders had faith in democracy but saw their version of it as the best option for our nation. We had our day and all their fears are now coming to fruition. Seeing these decadent and stupid clowns high fiving themselves in the oval office when they rescue a freak from a foreign prison or when they pass another homo piece of legislation is a sign we are going to lose bigly. Hey, I hear the government is now sending patriot missles to Ukraine, that will right the ship. Put in a… Read more »
A democratic republic can work in a high trust relatively homogenous society, which America ain’t anymore. So the USA is now a confederacy of tribal grifters looking to fleece a dwindling band of suckers.
I for one welcome the decision to send Patriot missile batteries to the Ukraine. There’s virtually no downside, none whatsoever. Real forward thinking, long term strategery there.
“Hey, I hear the government is now sending patriot missles to Ukraine, that will right the ship. Put in a few more billion dollar xmas gift cards in with it being the holidays and all. Russia seems real scared don’t they.” It’s unaccountable (to me, anyway) why the Russians haven’t yet activated some of their assets here. It would be a simple matter (for them or for anybody else) to shut down the entire power grid in one night: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/could-terrorists-really-black-out-the-power-grid/241192/ And if I know that, then so does Putin. And he also knows that anybody–including him–can literally walk into “our”… Read more »
Does anybody read Niccolo Soldo (AKA Fisted by Foucault)? He has the opposite view: that America is in fact at its height of power. He writes that despite our own legion of problems, we are still much more powerful, wealthier, and more competent than our rivals China and Russia, and certainly moreso than India or Arabia. And that western dissidents now are akin to the ancient Romans who were grumbling about the growing number of slaves and barbarians living in their midst, circa 2nd century AD. We notice things, and can predict where this is all going, but we are… Read more »
Yeah we have all the wizbang super cool weapons and maxed out pozzed military. The height of American Power I tell you.
Of course we lost a chunk in Afghanistan after our long but successful military victory there.
I think he’s right. But the rate of change isn’t in our favor and the second derivative is strongly negative.
Rome gave up messing with Germanic tribes early on and wisely left the Persians alone after a long period of hassles and the capture of an Emperor. They staggered on for a long time after. We seem to recognize no limits at all.
Aside from their war-like proclivity and huge replacement numbers, there was simply no wealth in Germany of the time of the Romans. Like Britain, it was a waste of their time and treasure to occupy and secure Germany. The Roman Republic became great and then declined after they had taken most of the wealth of their occupied lands. Reads something like the GAE if you think of it.
I would argue that it’s less “strength” than the fact that no one wants to even bother challenging GAE, the brass ring of global dominance is there for the taking, but no one else is interested. Lack of testosterone is a global issue apparently.
Evil Sandmich: Global dominance is not all it’s cracked up to be. I always laugh when various boomers pontificate about Putin wanting to reoccupy eastern Europe and/or conquer western Europe – he’s far too smart to want the hassle. Who needs political dominance when you can have economic dominance a la China?
I realize it’s ancient dead-White history, but I seem to remember something about avoiding foreign entanglements. Most of us would have been happy and proud to have a safe, prosperous, homogeneous, and stable home country.
> Romans who were grumbling about the growing number of slaves and barbarians living in their midst, circa 2nd century AD. If one is in a reading mood: “The Final Pagan Generation” is startling in some similarities. We’re probably closest to the Roman Pagans in the fourth century who were looking in confusion as the ascendant Christians could topple pagan statues with impunity and the imperial government encouraged the destruction. Meanwhile, the Roman government was so infested with sycophants disguised as philosophers there was essentially no understanding of what was happening at the ground level in the empire, leading alternative… Read more »
Thanks for the recommendation Chet. I’m interested in that period. Does the author present the early Christians as something closer to our revolutionary generation or closer to antifa? Is there an estimate about the size of the early Christian population relative to the entire population? Is there a demographic profile of the average Christian at that time?
There is definitely some destruction of idols by the Christians that would resonate with the destruction of confederate monuments today, but there was also a strong undercurrent of elites who eschewed the usual Roman bureaucracy in favor of the new religion, many becoming extreme monks or Bishops and forming what was essentially an alternative government.
Big picture items like demographics are missing, mostly because he writes by tracking the story of four historical figures, so it’s more of a catalogue of day-to-day observances of these figures through the years of changes than a grand narrative.
Line / Chet:
‘Christianizing the Roman Empire’ by Ramsay MacMullen speaks to much of what you state.
That seems somewhat plausible although the collapse is well underway. Economic dominance was near-total a few years back and the failed sanctions have exposed how this has changed. Also, while the military is the most technologically advanced in history, it is utterly corrupt and led by incompetents. The repeated military humiliations have been as much the responsibility of the Pentagon as the political leadership despite claims to the contrary (Southern civil war buffs recognize this phenomenon of misdirected blame). There is a better historical analogy, although those always far short. More than ancient Rome, the GAE resembles the British Empire… Read more »
Assuming Russians are not taking ad hoc actions, this appears to be the strategy.
Here is the seminal article:
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/turbo-america?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=email
Thanks for the link. The penultimate paragraph is key: “Openly telling everyone that they will lie to us to make Russia bleed to death, and openly threatening to sanction both China and India at the same time for not breaking with Russia is a big, glowing red sign indicating hubris. For some, this will suggest desperation on the part of the USA to maintain its global standing. To me, it suggests that the USA is confident in its own power, having put Russia onto the Europeans to allow itself to effect its Pivot to East Asia once and for all.”… Read more »
Yeah, but Rome’s slaves were mostly genetically close to the Romans – by and large. They were still slaves at least producing things of value. Rome and its leaders glorified Rome. I think Manc’s description: “So the USA is now a confederacy of tribal grifters looking to fleece a dwindling band of suckers.” It is hard to look at the GAE’s domestic situation in terms of demographics. When the people rising up the ranks hate the nation they represent and have arrived to fleece it for their own material advantage it doesn’t look like a place that can stand up… Read more »
” … but we are living during an imperial high point, and have a long time before collapse happens.”
We have ten years, max.
Soldo is righter than most, but too optimistic. I believe our rulers when they say their goal is to kill almost all of us and confine the rest in Habitrails (virtual ones within literal ones), and I think they’ve nearly accomplished it. If that’s taken as their medium-term aim, the “meta” in which they operate, their near-term irrationalities and failures at war/economy/etc. are great victories—against us. Do they know it? Largely not. But they are all, at some level of consciousness, murderous sadists*, and the machine has been so refined that there are no levers left on it that do… Read more »
Hemid: Does anyone still venerate the Pauls – et pater filium – other than lolbertarians and some paleos? I was never a great admirer of either.
B over at, “Moon of Alabama,” does a nice job laying out how the Russians will rapidly detect and liquidate any Patriot missile batteries that show up in theater:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/12/us-to-send-more-wunderwaffen-to-ukraine.html
The comments bring up a good point too: the Patriot system never worked all that great, especially for its…billion dollar per-battery price tag (?!). And $3 million a missile? That price disparity is too great for something going up a piece of ordinance that costs maybe $10K.
Except they won’t really be in Ukraine.
They’ll be in Poland.
The press releases will tout their effectiveness and the heroic actions of Ukraine, but they’re going to be operated from Poland using NATO or US troops.
Then dare the Russians to take them out and risk an Article 5 conflict.
I don’t get it.
If there are massive fortifications, you break through at one point with mobile forces and roll them up from behind. It’s literally Hitler again…
So why is this not happening? What am I missing?
The only thing I can think is that the Russians are keenly aware they have a serious demographic problem (low fertility, lack of new births, etc.) going into a war that could last years, possibly decades. Based on this realization, they are trying to keep their casualties to an absolute minimum by repeatedly bouncing the rubble with massed artillery strikes. I’m certain Russia has chemical agents they could drop into the Uke fortifications that would move things along, but Putin is too shrewd a legal mind to toss the GAE a golden opportunity to try him for crimes against humanity… Read more »
Putin is adding new regions to Russia: Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhie, Kherson and hopefully Odessa and Kharkov. These are mostly ethnic Russian and Russian speaking regions which were given to Ukraine 100 years ago by Lenin.
This is a way to overcome a dwindling number of Russians in Russian Federation, dwindling because of a low birthrate in the last 60-70 years.
The success of this undertaking will forever place Putin in the Russian history books.
The terrain must first be frozen to allow tanks to maneuver in the open landscape. Another few weeks and hell will be unleashed.
Risk of casualties in non-zero risk blitzkrieg through fortifications: pretty high.
Risk of casualties protecting artillery while it decimates the enemy from afar: pretty low.
If time is on Russia’s side, and it is, why would they engage in even a minor unnecessary risk to speed things up?
well a 1,000 uke casualties a day is something the Russians will want to continue; a goal in its own right.
Russians do not really want that. Only Western leaders, Western ignoramuses waving Ukraine flags and certain special people want that.
The Russians have a peculiar way of war that starts with the premise that the point of war is to destroy the opposing army, not occupy its territory. They shaped the fight in Bakhmut, for example, so that the Ukrainians can bring in reinforcements to hold their positions, but take horrible punishment in the process. The longer it goes on, the weaker the Ukrainian army becomes as it funnels resources into this meat grinder. If the Russians were to make a frontal assault they would be the ones taking the huge casualties. Sure, they could over run the position eventually,… Read more »
I get the impression that Russians could shift into manuever warfare and encircle the Ukes any time they feel like it. They just want to keep draining the west for a while before ending this thing.
I keep wondering if the long plan is not to so drain the West that the Chinese feel they can make a play for Taiwan. There is no getting around the fact that the West has run out of weapons to send to Ukraine. it is also clear that the capacity to make new stuff will not be on line for at least a year, maybe two. Imagine North Korea gets the green light to attack across the DMZ. At the same time, China blockades Taiwan. Meanwhile, the Russian army is on the border of Poland, after the Ukrainian army… Read more »
Given current trends in rapidly depleting Western arsenals, Xi and Kim would be epically dumb NOT to have teams planning out significant military operations for the next 12 to 18 months.
If the North Koreans were foolish enough to head south over the DMZ, the South Korean military is more than game enough to handle them. Besides the Israelis and the Taiwanese, there’s no military more prepared for battle than the South Koreans. They have better tanks than our old, but still effective Abrams and they’re well-trained and capably led. They’re building a fighter aircraft (not too many countries can accomplish that feat) that will be a stealthier F-16 at first and later will have 80% of the F-35’s capability at 50% of the cost. Even though the North Koreans have… Read more »
This seems like an Asian variant on the Ukraine blunder. Land wars are won with artillery and infantry. This is the hard lesson in Ukraine right now. That and the North Koreans have modern air defense systems. The reason Washington has freaked out over the sale of S400 systems is they can knock down our best aircraft.
Frankly, the lesson of Ukraine is the era of manned fighter aircraft is coming to an end.
Pretty sure the Norks have enough artillery tubes pointed at Seoul to basically flattten the place in two or three salvos, making anything following basically moot.
It is always hard to judge these things, but I suspect this is true. Maybe their military is a paper tiger and most of their stuff does not work very well. They do struggle to feed themselves, so how well are they doing with their military? On the other hand, their missile program suggests that maybe the famine claims may be over done. Even assuming a reasonable degree of ignorance, the best estimates are that the US would need to deploy a minimum of 250,000 troops to the peninsula and at least 1,000 combat aircraft. That is a huge undertaking… Read more »
Given the low TFR rates of S Korea, the NORKS will be able to just walk into a depopulated S Korea in a generation or two.
The S400 is good, but like any good SAM system, it can be spoofed or jammed or downright destroyed. We’ve given the Ukies some old HARMs (High Speed Antiradiation Missile) that date from the 1970s, but are pretty good with the frequent threat updates they receive. They’re not our best gear there. Our new HARM is a lot better than even its updated predecessor and could be considered a quantum leap better weapon. And it needs to be because the latest generation of Russian and Chinese SAMs are damned lethal from long range. What makes them tough is they’re getting… Read more »
The S400 *could* be jammed, but no evidence of it happening. That and the Russians are already rolling out the S500. You can be sure the Chinese are working this problem as well.
Where the Russians are making great leaps ahead of the West is in responding to the advances in SAM systems with cheap drones, which is the future. One F35 can be replaced with how many flying Doritos?
The armed forces of the Republic of China (ROC, i.e. Taiwan) are shot through at all levels with PRC agents. And the gun-decking is unbelievable. Taiwan is hardly ready to kick Chicom ass.
The West was stupid to allow Russia an opportunity to go toe to toe against NATO equipment and operations and win. Once Russia achieves overwhelming victory in Ukraine, the value of Western armaments is bound to go down in the marketplace. And our ability to intimidate other nations will fall precipitously. On top of that, Russia has been learning in real time how our intelligence and operations work. This strengthens them immensely. We had a nice bluff in on Russia. We should have kept it. But now we’ve shown our hand and they see they can kick our ass. It’s… Read more »
If the strategy is to hold towns and bog down the Russians with a defense, that may not be a sound tactic for them. Nothing prevents the Russians from encirclement and bypassing the towns. A large army from could encircle, leave a smaller group to maintain the blockade and move on.
Drones have been used against SAMs since the Israelis did in Lebanon in the early 1980s against the Syrians. One reason why the Ukies aren’t jamming S400s is we’re not giving them our best ECM gear and even if we did it likely isn’t compatible with their old Soviet-era jets. And we don’t want to expose our best methods to the Russians as well. Even the Patriot SAM is old and not as infallible as the Raytheon people had us believing during the Gulf War. The reason why UAVs haven’t taken over warfare is there is no substitute for a… Read more »
“And we don’t want to expose our best methods to the Russians as well.” That’s rich!!! Chances are they (and the Chinese, and the Israelis) had most or all of it before the first production units rolled off the lines. If we have any advantage, it’s that we are (were?) far better at actually manufacturing the hardware. But keep it secret? Doubtful.
Breaking through massive, in-depth fortifications may be easier said than done. And a breathrough that cannot be rapidly reinforced and be widened, can be pinched off and destroyed by a counter attack. Better to wait until considerable forces have been assembled or “the big push” will end up looking like the Somme in 1916 or the Chemin des Dames in 1917.
It’s because our side is coping and making excuses for Team Z just as hard as the other side is coping and making excuses for the Ukies.
Read Anatoly Karlin @powerfultakes for a realistic pro-Russian view.
Merkel already murdered Germany when she let in all those illegal immigrants. A kraut Hillary.
Wir schaffen das!
Ah yes, the “former” communist, Merkel. Nudging along the latter day Morgenthau Plan. She had to destroy Germany to save it. Well, when Germany is still an occupied country, maybe it was thought that that was the best outcome attainable.
I’ve been using Havamal for a while now. Fine stuff. A Mennonite lady, a friend, says their Castile soap is the best she has ever used, and she had the sunfeather soap lady once as a neighbor. Plus Havamal has some excellent gift samplers, and I have never known a lady who did not appreciate a gift of lovely soaps.
Note: their Aloe Vera is my go to. Lovely stuff.
Agree. We’ve been using their stuff for a while now.
The daily ‘parallel economy’ highlight is a real plus; I’m glad and grateful to see it.
Alzaebo: “The daily ‘parallel economy’ highlight is a real plus; I’m glad and grateful to see it.” On yesterday’s essay, “Custodial Musings”, I was trying to make the contrast between “too much fake money coming out of the Fed” versus “too many useless people”. And I had said [on that thread] that B!tch McConnell consistently voting for all of Tater Joe’s new spending bills is strong evidence in favor of the Elites & the Oligarchs being terrified of the combination which is “too many useless people” and “not enough fake money”. Then today, we get the following headline… GOP SENATORS:… Read more »