A two parter really: in the first half an in-depth look at potential developments in US military policies prompted by the Ukraine war.
Nothing particularly shocking here for those who have been paying attention and as the analysis says it is unlikely that the US can turn its military decline around. (Ignore the insert by the conservative author about identity politics and quotas in the US military, none of that has no relevance or bearing on anything being discussed here; the rest of the article is solid.)
The more interesting part comes in the second half with the discussion of a recent RAND think tank paper that reveals how the Atlanticists are desperate to try and find ways to push Russia’s buttons to get them to escalate, as things are not going well for the West in Ukraine and they desperately need a PR win and a casus belli for more direct intervention.
Just as with previous papers from this neocon think tank, such as the one about “extending Russia” which provided a roadmap to provoking conflict in Ukraine which was followed almost to the letter, we can expect most of their proposals for various escalations and provocations to be implemented sooner or later.
I wonder/worry whether NATO could plan a similar anti-Russia stunt in Estonia, tbh. The next provocation might not be in Ukraine and if it isn’t, it kinda supports a lot of the propaganda narrative about Russian plans. I doubt Putin would go for it, though, as he seems/ed more concerned with NATO nukes so close to Moscow rather than attacks on ethnic Russians.
This is just my own hypothesis as of now, based on the events and behaviours displayed:
Project Ukraine got started in the Obama years (likely as a response to Russian intervention in Syria), and the plan probably was to have Hillary carry it onwards. However, Hillary failed to get elected and the whole thing got frozen. This is probably one of the reasons why Democrats were so quick to shout that Trump was a Russian puppet. Because he wouldn’t go along with their plans for Ukraine. They even tried to impeach him when he tried to roll back their progress at rearming Ukraine for the upcoming war. These 2 actions show how the Democratic establishment viewed the world through the lens of fighting Russia. As such, they used Trump’s presidency to stir up the US public in an anti-Russian hysteria, so they could better present the Ukraine war when it came.
Once Biden got elected, the Project was going to get back on track, but first they had to deal with Covid as quickly as possible, because nobody would accept fighting/financing a war during a pandemic. As soon as the pandemic started retreating, then Ukraine intensified their Donbass shelling, and in February the war began.
As things stand currently, this multi-year, multi-term project has utterly failed. If Democrats lose their elections, then the whole thing will collapse. But even if Democrats win, then there’s not going to be much willingness to back the people who orchestrated this (like Victoria Nuland or Anthony Blinken) or repeat the whole thing again on a now-vigilant Russia. On the contrary, there’s momentum for focusing on China, so that shift will probably occur as soon as this mess is over. We see the same hallmarks before the elections:
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anti-Chinese propaganda focused on how China is spying on the West (balloons, spy stories), how China is an expansionist force (poor Taiwan, artificial islands), and how China is interfering in American politics and the economy (hysteria over Chinese investments in third-world countries, microchips, Chinese companies bribing European politicians etc).
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constant tears over poor defenseless Taiwan
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the US is furious at the recent African coups and will likely soon start blaming China (and Russia) for them.
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All that is missing is a “China puppet”.
So, I don’t think that NATO will try steering shit near Russia in the near future again IF the Ukraine war is over. They still might try steering up shit with Russia right now in Ukraine. This would allow the next Democratic candidate to continue the Ukraine war, or force the next Republican candidate to continue it as well. It might also safe them face for the upcoming elections.
Recently:
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US and Turkish ships have provoked Russian Black Sea Fleet ships on patrol, using unmanned boats and dangerous maneuvers on near-collision course.
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Ukrainian irregular units have tried crossing the northern borders and stir shit up in Russian villages near Kursk.
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For the first time, a Ukrainian regular unit tried to invade the Kursk area in Russia proper
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Intensification of drone strikes and artillery attacks, which are increasingly brazen and increasingly more obvious that they are performed under NATO satellite intelligence.
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UK (and I think Germany?) announcing that they will be sending instructors in Ukraine to train new Ukrainian units, essentially turning British (and German?) military personell into legitimate targets in a warring country.
Good points. It’s strange but your comment made me realise that Nuland and Blinken are operating under the Dems. Shocking how anyone can think the Dems are progressive when these two are on the roster.
The problem with this framing is that Trump was the first president ever to authorize weapons transfers to Ukraine. Obama wouldn’t give Ukraine weapons because it was considered too provocative.
It’s more likely that Trump’s behavior with extorting Ukraine was either a rogue move that served the interest of the cabal around Epstein (he trafficked many young children from Eastern Europe), or it was part of the planned operation to get Zelensky to heel.
Very good and correct point!
I agree with almost everything you said here, just bear in mind the point that @freagle made: the arming of Ukraine still happened regardless who was president.
Indeed, but I’m saying that currently a good chunk of Republicans are advocating for a shift towards China. So if they win the elections, we can expect that to be where the next provocation will occur. If they lose, then they can be expected to hinder the efforts in Ukraine or near the Russian border until they get their way. Previously, they were more willing to engage in the Ukraine adventure, even if Trump was president.
That’s true, circumstances have changed, the war on China is a much more pressing issue today and the Ukraine misadventure is increasingly viewed as a distraction.
You better get royalties for this episode of Blowback 😂
lol :D
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In my opinion, if there are people who think that way they are very much miscalculating. Instead of rallying renewed western support behind the war on Russia, what provoking Russia to intervene in the Baltics would do is expose NATO’s alleged commitment to defense of its members as a bluff. With the exception of a few delusional fanatics like the UK, the other Baltics and maybe Poland, the rest of NATO would likely chicken out. Or can you see Germany and France choosing to fight a war with Russia over some Baltic backwater? Especially when Russia will have clearly and severely been provoked…
And the US doesn’t want to commit its own military to a massive war in Europe because they need everything they have and more for the much more important war they want to have with China. It would be an unmitigated disaster for whoever tried to send their own troops to fight Russia and the backlash at home over such horrific casualties would be enormous. NATO would likely disintegrate as a result. And with the exception of a few diehard anti-Russia freaks i suspect most of NATO knows this so they will always stop just short of actually forcing Russia to go to war with a NATO country.
Just my opinion. Can’t say i’m eager to have it put to the test though, the risks for an uncontrollable escalation are still considerable.
Great points. I really hope you’re right that they don’t test the relationship. I think you are right about what would happen to the organisation. But it wouldn’t be without it’s casualties.
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You make a lot of good points here, but remember that the reason why the US needs to use proxies like ISIS is because it itself can no longer afford to get directly involved in conflicts in the way they did in say, Korea or Vietnam. Even something like Iraq would be very difficult for them to repeat today. And proxies can be beaten or at least held in check with relatively little effort from a major power like Russia, as we have seen in the case of their intervention in Syria.
These proxy tactics work best against weak and relatively isolated nations that do not have a friend like Russia who can offer them military help. Even just the supply of advanced weapons by Russia to global south countries, or the assignment of special forces like Wagner to places like the Sahel can have a noticeably stabilizing and beneficial effect.
The places where western funded terrorist insurgents have been able to run most rampant have been either bombed by the US like Libya, or were foolish enough to trust that they could deal with the problem by inviting Western forces from the US or France in, not realizing that the West are on the same side as the terrorists and are not there to actually stop them.
The US empire may not be disappearing any time soon, but unipolar US hegemony is most definitely on its way out if not already over. I would argue it ended on February 24 2022.
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The proletarian workers in oppressed nations don’t choose to “invite western forces”.
I never said that the workers invited them. Obviously this was done by governments which are either national bourgeois or comprador, thus not representative of the workers and their class interest. But i feel like this is splitting hairs. The point i was making was that, in my opinion, though US imperialism can still cause significant harm, it is not as all-powerful as you made it out to be. If my comment is not up to your standards i’m sorry, i’ll try to incorporate your constructive criticism and do better in the future, but i am not claiming to be making some clever dialectical argument, nor am i attempting to debate, i’m just expressing my opinion. No need for hostility comrade, i appreciate your comment and i agree with most of what you are saying. And the thread you linked was very informative, thank you.
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I understand your frustration comrade, i share it too. And i agree with what Sayyid Nasrallah said, it is absolutely correct, we have to continue to be extremely vigilant, as an empire is at its most dangerous when it is in its dying throes. They are continuing and will continue for a while longer to inflict much harm and suffering.
But i think it is important that we never lose our revolutionary optimism, and for the first time in many decades, we have much more tangible and objective reasons for optimism today. The world anti-imperialist forces are now stronger than they have been since at least the 1980s and the US empire’s grip on the world weaker than at any time since the end of WW2.
Even the Soviet Union never posed as great a challenge to their hegemony as China does today. China may not be confronting the US as directly as the Soviets did, but the fact that they have already surpassed the US economically and are only growing stronger is a massive victory.
The expansion of BRICS was a huge victory. The inability of the US to stop the BRI or to rally most of the world, including some countries it counted as its ostensible allies such as India, Turkey and most surprisingly of all Saudi Arabia, behind its anti-Russia crusade is a monumental sign of the empire’s decline.
For the first time since European colonialism ruined India and China (who before that point had been the world’s largest economies for hundreds if not thousands of years) in the 19th century, the entire imperialist West once again makes up only a minority proportion of the world economy, and their proportion is shrinking. They are also losing their technological edge.
The US is of course doing everything possible to try and slow down, halt and even reverse the rise of the global south, but by and large it is not succeeding. Yes there will be local setbacks and defeats, that is inevitable in war, but the trend i believe is going in the right direction.
And as for the various terrorist attacks that the US still commits and gets away with, we are not anarchists we are Marxists, and as such we understand that this is not a productive strategy. Not for us and not for an empire that is supposed to be globally hegemonic. This is not a sign of strength but of weakness and impotence. Terrorist attacks do not alter the course of wars, they do not achieve meaningful change in the balance of powers. If anything they just make the resolve of the target stronger.
So i for one am more optimistic and confident than ever in affirming what Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung taught us: proletarians of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains, and we have a world to win!
Stop being a dick.
In one recent exercise, Taylor’s OPFOR troops used AI-language model ChatGPT to create enemy speakers on the artificial social media site the training ground uses. The AI enemy defense minister got into a tweet-war with the Army unit.
This is so stupid I can’t even
That was one of the more WTF things I’ve read recently. I guess if you can’t win real wars, you try to win Twitter wars, and if you can win real Twitter wars you try to win AI Twitter wars.
Those who can’t do, tweet.
Those who can’t tweet, tweet anyway.
