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Friday, April 2, 2021

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.


27 comments:

  1. What better way to distract from domestic disasters, radical kleptocrat power grabs, and supression of dissent than a nice little war?
    Zippo

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    Replies
    1. Exactly. The illegitimate administration needs to use every tool to distract and stay in power. Also the lame capitol attack today.

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  2. Again...it's beyond depressing, but i am more than willing that Chairman Zhou will bumble us into a humiliating defeat if only that can spell the end of this regime and the deep state.
    Jughead

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  3. The Turkey move is insane.

    Good news sounds like once again cheap Turkish vacations will be available to us citizens.

    I wonder if Turkey is going to get nukes soon.

    National Review had an article saying Iran already has them.

    And what of the Saudis, Iraqis, and Israelis regarding the Turks?

    Russia is going to deeply embarrass the us soon, I wonder what they will do? Another Georgia?

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    Replies
    1. Is that like putting the mouse in charge of guarding the cheese?

      Delete
    2. Great comment! So true. Made me laugh.

      AmericanCardiganApril 2, 2021 at 9:55 PM
      >Is that like putting the mouse in charge of guarding
      >the cheese?

      Delete
  4. Military-Industrial Complex with no checks or balances...will make the other Several Trillion Dollar Bailouts look like chump change!!!

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  5. Not sure I want to bring this up because I often feel like the least informed when it comes to this subject but what about this scenario - are we wagging the dog here to distract from our current administration's close ties to China? Are deliberately helping to provoke a fight against Russia so some folks can say 'See, Russia is still our biggest threat and we need China's help to keep them in line'? I wouldn't even be proposing this if I thought we had anyone in the current administration that didn't have their lips attached to China's butt.....but what if....? Hey maybe Joe will threaten to withhold some more aid if Ukraine doesn't back down....nah, who am I kidding?

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    Replies
    1. Wagging the dog ... a movie made under the Clinton administration about him ... get ready ... wagging the dog.

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    2. But, really, the book that the movie was based off of was about George HW Bush and the Gulf War.

      HW did have mistresses, though. Clinton pretty much follows the movie, just it was an missile strike on Iraq on the same day Monica was to testify how Clinton tried to get her to perjure herself, suborning perjury.

      HW’s wag the dog was supposedly more calculating, granted he was CIA.

      Betcha Clinton kicked himself for not using the Executive to not testify.

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  6. Ukraine pays, and they are bipartisan about it.

    Manaforts sin was working for Trump.

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    Replies
    1. The US-Ukraine relationship is utterly cynical. They'll pay any US person with influence who can help them obtain their objectives. And it's certainly not as if the US has the best interests of the Ukrainian people at heart.

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    2. @Mark
      "And it's certainly not as if the US has the best interests of the Ukrainian people at heart."

      Which Ukrainian people?

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  7. Good to see you address this. Biden, Victoria Nuland, and McCain had key roles in the 2014 Maidan putsch that toppled Ukraine's democratically-elected president, empowered neo Nazi forces, started a U.S. proxy war with Russia on Russia's border.

    Some worthwhile articles discuss this. No surprise Biden chose Victoria Nuland as Under SoS. Biden, Blinken, Nuland are just three of the worst NeoCons in U.S. history.

    https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/americas-collusion-with-neo-nazis/


    https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2019/11/12/the-ukrainian-influence-peddling-rings-a-microcosm-of-how-imperial-washington-rolls/

    "But when the Ukrainian people elected a pro-Russian president in 2010 and all efforts to bribe and bully him westward failed, Washington instigated, funded and instantaneously recognized an illegal putsch on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.

    That blatant, unprovoked assault on a sovereign nation, in turn, set in motion a destructive civil war internally; a dangerous and utterly unnecessary politico-military confrontation with Russia on its own doorstep; and, now, a hysterical campaign by the House Dems and their Deep State allies to impeach a duly-elected American president for the sin of wading into the very cesspool of corruption that the Washington establishment itself foisted upon this hapless, $150 billion sliver of a failed state and crippled economy...."

    https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2019/11/12/the-ukrainian-influence-peddling-rings-a-microcosm-of-how-imperial-washington-rolls/

    https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/

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    Replies
    1. And those are some of the people who had to have Trump gone and canceled. Surely ranks up there among the most shameful episodes in US history. I have no patience with nonsense about American Exceptionalism.

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    2. Neo nazi?

      Umm, say what?

      I know that’s a standard Russian disinformation term used. The rest of the comment is more valid. Nazi was National Socialist German Workers' Party. Ukrainian are not german... and I question socialist, seems more oligarchy with Soros funding.

      My understanding on the Ukraine is both sides are corrupt and looted the country. Russia’s invasion helped make the country more functional, but it still has a lot of issues including massive corruption.

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  8. Glad I stocked up on popcorn....and toilet paper.

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    Replies
    1. My wife just got in a big supply of TP.

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    2. Don’t forget cherry coke.

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  9. so next time "Major" poops in the diplomacy room, Zhou bends over to clean it up... becomes "light headed", takes a nap and half of Ukraine is now controlled by Russia. Got it.

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  10. What needs to happen here is trump needs to fly over and pull a John Kerry... Forget diplomacy, I just wanna hear the gasping and crying that takes place. ;)

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  11. It might be appropriate to quote former Sec. of Defense Robert Gates assessment of Zhou, "I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." But, obviously, he is not calling the shots. The man or woman or both, behind the curtain is/are.

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  12. This is the distraction everyone needs to excuse their "surprise" when China invades Taiwan, and our complete unpreparedness to counter the invasion. WRT the name-calling, that fits perfectly with today's lefties, who tend to behave like a bunch of undisciplined school children.

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  13. I have been thinking for the last week or so, what if Putin and Xi decide to coordinate their land grabs (Taiwan and more of Ukraine) and proceed with that on the the same day? and Iran stirring the pot in the Middle East with some provocative act lobbing missiles at Saudi oil refineries or something with Israel? Biden would be totally overwhelmed and probably do nothing.

    And then there is your post and at Whatfinger this headline:

    "Russia Massing Troops on Border, Ukraine Warns - VOA - AFP Wire (Betting in our office that Russia moves on Ukraine and China moves on Taiwan at the same time sometime within a few months, knowing Biden is weak and his family paid off by China - Sgt Pat) 😲"


    Scary times indeed!

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    1. Taiwan I don’t see a China invasion happening for a while, say next 24 months. Chinas military does not have the ability yet. And there is a seasonal issue, where an invasion can only happen certain times of the year due to sea roughness.

      Taiwan’s military has major issues, focused to much on showy stuff. And basically ending the draft has decreased their readiness. Their current President is having built diesel submarines, which will help a lot on deterrence. Taiwan has an old us WW2 submarine, I think they have a total of 4 subs.

      What they really need to do is get nukes. They are building long range missiles. In 1988 they were 1-2 years away from producing nukes, when supposedly the program was shut down.

      If China invaded Taiwan, Japan will get nukes. And then South Korea.

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    2. I've heard from people who study these things that Japan can have nukes any time it wants. For them it's figuratively, a matter of tightening a few screws and they're ready to go. Of course it's probably not as simple as that, but that gives you the idea--they can do it pretty much any time they decide.

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