Briefly Noted: World War Three?

Since the very beginning of the Zhou Baiden regime the US military has adopted provocative measures with regard to Russia. As early as the first week of February the deployment of B-1 bombers to Norway's Arctic regions (close to sensitive Russian naval bases) was announced. A ramped up presence in Syria, near Russian forces supporting the Syrian government, has also been underway. Finally, US Navy activity in Russia's strategic backyard of the Black Sea has continued, along with the supply of hundreds of tons of military equipment to Ukraine. All this has been accompanied by a pretty much no holds barred war of words against Russia in general and Vladimir Putin in particular--including US assurances of support to Ukraine against Russia.

Ukraine, of course, is ground zero for George Soros' globalist ambitions. In addition to the military activity, US intelligence agencies, such as the FBI office in Ukraine, have coordinated with Soros operatives. The impression one gets is that Soros is having an enormous influence on US foreign policy once again, now that the restraining influence of President Trump has been removed by the Deep State and replaced by amateurish Clinton/Obama warhawks.

Ukraine has been making belligerent sounds as well, since the Zhou regime took over. Russia has responded by beefing up its own military presence in the Crimea and near the border with Ukraine in the Don basin. Zerohedge explains, via Michael Snyder--As Russian Tanks Move Toward Ukraine, The Globe Braces For World War 3:

... it turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky essentially signed a declaration of war against Russia on March 24th.  The document that he signed is known as Decree No. 117/2021, and you won’t read anything about it in the corporate media.

I really had to dig to find Decree No. 117/2021, but eventually I found it.  I took several of the paragraphs at the beginning of the document and I ran them through Google translate…

In accordance with Article 107 of the Constitution of Ukraine, I decree:

1. To put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of March 11, 2021 “On the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol” (attached).

2. To approve the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (attached).

3. Control over the implementation of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, enacted by this Decree, shall be vested in the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

4. This Decree shall enter into force on the day of its publication.

President of Ukraine V. ZELENSKY

March 24, 2021

Basically, this decree makes it the official policy of the government of Ukraine to retake Crimea from Russia.

Of course the Russians will never hand over Crimea willingly because they consider it to be Russian territory, and so Ukraine would have to take it by force.

This is essentially a declaration of war against Russia, and Zelensky would have never signed such a document without the approval of the Biden administration.

Following the signing of Decree No. 117/2021, we started to see Russian forces pour into Crimea and into separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine at a staggering rate.

My view is twofold: 

1) It's strategic foolishness--to put it mildly--for the US to be interfering in a dispute that has roots in Russia history that go back centuries. For many reasons Snyder is right--Crimea is a line in the sand for Russia. The same held true of the many other provocations the Dem administrations have engaged in with regard to Russia since the Cold War: overthrowing the elected government of Ukraine, challenging Russia influence in the Caucasus via Georgia, etc. It's nuts, in my opinion.

2) It's also deeply disturbing to see this happening at a time when the US has no President who can speak directly to Putin. Zhou is simply mentally incapable of handling this situation, and the Deep State--or whoever is handling Zhou--made sure to directly antagonize Putin without provocation by childishly calling Putin names. Has the US made it clear to the Russians--something that has not been shared with the American public--exactly who is calling the shots for the US?

3) Points one and two lead to the apprehension that matters between the US and Russia could spiral out of control.

All of this is in stark contrast with the American first, measured policy that President Trump attempted to carry out with regard to Russia--which led to the coup against him. Conrad Black explains the Trump strategic view of Russia in words that even a child--but seemingly not Globalists (not to mention Zhou)--should be able to understand: 

Will the West Be Lost?

No one could have imagined that we would so quickly squander the West’s mighty strategic victory in the Cold War. 

Here's the relevant portion, but the rest is also worth reading:

The Danger of a Sino-Russian Alliance

What appears to have provided the final great impetus to escalate Sino-American rivalry to open antagonism was the Democratic Party’s mindless baiting of Russia, culminating in Biden’s description of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “murderer” followed by Putin’s recall of the Russian ambassador from Washington.

Russia, though one of the world’s great cultures and an immense country, has not begun to recover from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than half of its population. It has a declining population, has never in its history enjoyed one day of what a citizen of any Western democracy would accept to be good government (even under successful tyrants such as Peter the Great and Stalin), and now has a GDP smaller than Canada’s. The only danger, apart from cyber-meddling and irresponsible arms sales, that Russia could present to the United States is one that the Biden Administration has unfailingly fomented: driving it into the arms of China. 

The principal American advantage over China, apart from reasonably well functioning democratic institutions and a preponderant free-market economy, is that it is a rich country, while China has few natural resources, and is still 40 percent a command economy and has no institutions that command any respect, apart from the military. Moreover, the country is still hobbled by its one-child policy. China is not predestined to win this contest, unless the United States continues to misplay its hand.

If the United States cannot lure Russia back from its cooperation with China, eventually surplus Chinese manpower will be successfully exploiting the vast unpopulated treasure house of Siberia under some royalty arrangement, and the United States will find itself for the first time in its history in a severe competition with a deadly rival of approximately equivalent geopolitical strength to itself.

Instead, the Deep State has installed a regime that lacks a functioning constitutional head and has re-embarked on a stupid policy of coercion and provocation against a defeated but still proud nation. I'm not grasping the strategic thinking behind this, and I deeply suspect that there basically is none--not from a US centric standpoint.

Finally, I read today that the US has foolishly responded to Russia's courtship of Turkey in ways that could throw the Middle East and Central Asia up for grabs.

NATO Appoints Turkey To Lead Drive Into the Middle East and Asia

On the first of the year the North Atlantic Treaty Organization transferred command of the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) to Turkey.

On March 30 NATO turned over its current mission in Afghanistan to Turkish Brigadier General Selçuk Yurtsizoglu.

In a phone conversation on April 1 U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar discussed Turkey’s role in leading the NATO Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan among other matters.

Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken while both were attending the NATO meeting of foreign ministers and secretaries on March 23-24. (Blinken on the occasion: “Turkey is a long-standing and valued ally.”)

The reality is that Turkey has its own strategic ambitions and is an ally only of any nation that it can manipulate to help it advance those interests. Blinken is an idiot.

 

This is notwithstanding Turkey having supported and supervised if not directed last year’s 45-day war by Azerbaijan – the countries identify themselves (or itself) as “one nation, two states” – against minuscule Nagorno-Karabakh, its invasion of Northern Iraq thirteen years ago, its ongoing proxy war in Libya, its both direct and proxy war in Syria, its regular buzzing of fellow NATO member Greece’s aircraft in the Aegean Sea and its – now at 43 years – longest counterinsurgency war in the world against ethnic Kurds in its own country (which has spilled over into Iraq and Syria.) None of that in any manner disturbs NATO, the self-styled alliance of democracies.

The thinking behind this, no doubt, is that Turkey will be of use in countering its traditional enemies and our current enemies: Russia and Iran and even China, all of which have significant Turkic populations in strategically sensitive areas. To the armchair strategist, Turkey might seem to be a natural ally for the US against those three nations, given Turkey's known ambitions:

Exploiting a seemingly incongruous but to date highly effective strategy of combining neo-Ottoman pan-Turkism, Sunni pan-Islamism and the role of NATO’s eastern and southern vanguard, Ankara has now positioned itself as a major player in North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus and increasingly in Central Asia, which is to say in the last two examples former parts of the Soviet Union and historical Russia.

 

However, the potential for seriously antagonizing other nations--from the Balkans through the Arab Middle East to non--Turkish Central Asia ()--that have no love for "neo-Ottoman pan-Turkism" is very high. The willingness of both the US and Turkey to ally with Sunni jihadists will also give pause to many nations. None of this is a recipe for stability over a vast stretch of Eurasia. The notion that the US will be able to control the various dynamics that it's now willy nilly putting into motion seems to me to be the height of hubris.