Anglo-Zionists Still Engaged In Magic Thinking

Before I get to the main topic, a brief update on the Gaza ceasefire or, actually, the reaction to Trump’s key role. First, Ben Gvir’s reaction—threatening resignation if a hostage deal is agreed to and bragging that he has scuttled “many, many” previous attempts at a deal—is a clear confirmation that the war on Palestinians was always about the genocide and ethnic cleansing, never about the hostages:

Ryan Grim @ryangrim

The fact that Ben Gvir can admit to having blocked hostage deals many, many times and this isn’t the end of his politics career says a lot about the current politics of Israel.

The switch happened in the blink of an eye. Secret Service better be ready:

Megatron @Megatron_ron

The hard-kord Zionists in Israel started attacking and insulting Donald Trump blaming him for the ceasefire, which gave the Palestinians full control over Gaza.

Last edited3:13 PM · Jan 14, 2025

Now, lately we’ve been talking a lot about what to expect from Trump’s efforts to do a deal with Russia—What cards, if any, Trump has to play, how the Russians will regard any negotiations, etc. This will not be easy:

Russia Sticking To Maximalist Demands

Gaza Ceasefire Revealing New Trump?

Has Trump just pulled the first rabbit out of his hat—the hat we’ve never seen him wear before?

It Sounds Like The Russians Will Be Very Hardnosed

It will be even harder if the Anglo-Zionist West clings to its delusional magic thinking, especially the key delusion—that they are in the driver’s seat. Philip Pilkington links to a piece by Ian Proud, a former UK diplomat who has appeared on a variety of internet shows of the usual suspects (people I listen to). I’ll admit, I’ve never been able to listen for long.

Philip Pilkington @philippilk

Lifting sanctions is key if the @realDonaldTrump / @JDVance admin want to achieve peace. @proud_diplomat has thought through how to do this - because he created many of them! 

Quote

Ian Proud @proud_diplomat

'The complete lifting of sanctions against Russia after any.. peace agreement is as unrealistic as arguing that no sanctions should be removed.

Detailed thinking is needed on how.. sanctions relief.. might be phased in.' My latest:

Russia sanctions are stone cold leverage. Let's use it.

Note two things. The first is the key role that the UK wing of the Anglo-Zionists played in the war on Russia. That’s a fact that the Russians have long been aware of—perhaps for generations. Thus, yesterday, Lavrov rejected any role for “London” in negotiations. Proud doesn’t appear to get that, because, second, he sees sanctions as a means for coercing Russia. I’ll paste in the concluding paragraph’s of Proud’s article. Faced with the undeniable fact that the front of both NATO and the EU are disintegrating, Proud nevertheless advocates pissing off the Russians with an attempt at a carrot and stick approach—sanctions “relief” in stages, depending on Russian “good behavior”, beginning with removing sanctions that are meaningless, and which the Russians know are meaningless. The Russians are expected to play along with this charade:

Rather than seeing sanctions relief as an event, we should look upon it as a process of peeling the onion. The European Union has taken almost 130 separate decisions since 2014 to impose new sanctions or to extend existing sanctions against Russia.

Most sanctions have zero impact. No less than 92% of individual UK sanctions are against persons who have never traveled to Britain or held assets here. The picture is the same for 77% of sanctioned Russian companies and is mirrored across the EU, U.S. and elsewhere.

Upon the agreement of a peace deal for Ukraine, 16,000 zero-impact Russian sanctions could be struck down in a grand gesture brokered by the U.S., EU and UK. This would offer no economic relief to Russia but give Putin something concrete to sell to his public.

Letting Russia compete once more in international sporting and cultural events such as the Olympics would offer a hugely symbolic gesture that the West was seeking to normalize relations, with no economic relief attached.

To avoid a repeat of Minsk II, the hardest-hitting “economic” sanctions would need to be included in a roadmap for the peace process with realistic milestones that it was in Russia’s power to achieve.

As part of this, Putin will want clarity on the “what and when” of unfreezing Russia’s international reserves plus a normalization over time of trading relationships, in particular with the EU.

Clearly, getting Putin and Zelensky to stand down their forces will be the biggest obstacle facing Trump after he assumes office. If we want to ensure that any short-term absence of war in Ukraine has a chance to emerge as a longer-term peace, we should consider now where sanctions relief fits within the plan.

The long and the short is that the Anglo-Zionists still want to treat Russia as a non-equal, as a recalcitrant and naughty boy who must admit his bad behavior and promise to do better in future. That will be a non-starter for Russians. It also fails to recognize the changed military realities on a global scale. In this regard I’ll present a longish and very smart piece by Lee Slusher. Not Slusher’s consistent theme, one which we have stressed in the past—the persistent refusal in the West to address reality and the preference for dealing with a fantasy world. This is a fundamental cultural problem that will be hard to cure:

Lee Slusher @LeeBTConsulting

The State of Western Warcraft

This piece belongs to the thematic series, “Flipping the Board.”

In early 2023, the head of the US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Christopher Cavoli, remarked, "precision can beat mass." (1) This is true; precision can beat mass. But some countries now have the capability to render Western precision much less precise, both by “hard kill” (kinetic) and by “soft kill” (electronic). More to the point, these countries now possess both precision and mass, whereas the West is left to rely on a degraded version of the former and has long since abandoned the latter.

Power Projection versus National Defense

The “unipolar moment” of the post-Cold War period has led to thoroughly misguided notions about the nature of military power. Here it is important to understand the difference between power projection and national defense. Most militaries exist to provide the latter, i.e., the means by which to protect their nations from threats in their respective regions. Very few ever hold the ability to project power far from home.

But the US military primacy of recent decades, specifically the ability to wage and sustain war in far-flung locations, has become to many the hallmark of military power writ large. In this view, any nation unable to project power globally—essentially everyone except the US—is therefore inferior on the whole. This view is incorrect. What matters ultimately in war is the force that can be brought to bear, both the attacker’s and the defender’s, at the specific time and place it is needed.

Consider the conclusion many drew about Russia in the wake of the Assad regime’s collapse. “Russia is a paper tiger with nukes!” According to such thinking, Russia’s inability to continue propping up Assad, or its decision not to do so, somehow translated into weakness elsewhere, most notably in Ukraine. This, too, is incorrect.

When Russia intervened in Syria in 2015, it was entirely uncontroversial to conclude that this operation was likely the limit of Russia’s power projection capabilities. Yes, the country has formidable strategic air, naval, and rocket forces, but these serve mainly as a deterrent. The primary focus of all other Russian forces is to defend Russia, especially on its Western and Southern borders opposite NATO. Here Russia remains incredibly strong. Similar logic applies to China. For instance, those who mock the country’s lack of a true “blue water” naval capability overlook the potency of that force in the waters that line China’s shores.

Operation Desert Storm was the watershed moment for the brief period of US military primacy. It occurred shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is an ongoing debate in military circles over the significance of Desert Storm. Both critics and supporters continue to misunderstand several key takeaways.

Critics point out that the US-led coalition had many months to amass a force in Saudi Arabia, did so uncontested (save the Scud missile attacks), and then smashed an inferior enemy. These things are all true. What critics fail to realize is that the ability to do all of this—diplomatically, economically, logistically, militarily, etc.—was itself an expression of extraordinary power. Moreover, they downplay the fact that this coalition really did possess operational technologies that others, including Russia and China, did not have at the time, as well as the innovations these asymmetries would prompt in weapons development in the years to follow. This was especially the case in Moscow and Beijing.

The primary failure of the war’s admirers, including many current rank and file in the US defense establishment, is to think such an operation is replicable today. They brush aside the fact that most members of the coalition still maintained their enormous Cold War-era forces, but have long since abandoned them. They exaggerate the current reach Western diplomatic influence and industrial capacity. Lastly, they cling unflinchingly to the notion of superior Western military technology. Such people are frozen in the amber of 1991.

The Fluid Nature of Capability Gaps

For decades, the US effectively had monopolies on many decisive capabilities, particularly in terms of deploying them at scale and with broad geographic reach. These included precision-guided munitions, night-vision, global strike, and others. The absence of high-intensity conflict between the US and other nations underscored this reality.

But the list of nations with advanced capabilities continues to grow, and capability gaps continue to narrow. In some cases, these gaps have closed, particularly in missile technology (including hypersonics), air defense, electronic warfare, and, more recently, unmanned systems. More importantly, and to the persistent disbelief of naysayers, some countries now have an edge over the US and its allies in some areas.

…

Consider the Oreshnik, ... This is a key point. Russia is trying to achieve strategic overmatch while removing the need for nuclear weapons. Perhaps it already has. This would be checkmate, at least in terms of a conventional war.

…

Here NATO’s defenders play their perceived trump card, airpower. However, many of these aircraft are outdated while many of Russia’s have grown more advanced. Furthermore, along its periphery with NATO, Russia has the most advanced air defense network and electronic warfare complex in existence. The latter has already proven effective against many of the very technologies on which NATO’s entire way of war depends, particularly GPS-guided bombs.

... Could the F-35 defeat all these many threats? No one knows and that is the most honest answer anyone could provide. Neither the US nor anyone else has flown against such formidable threats—ever. Doing so would be an extraordinary gamble ...

Anyone who thinks China lacks similar capabilities, perhaps with the exception of an Oreshnik analogue, is a fool. Consider the possibility of a US-led defense, or even a resupply, of Taiwan in the event of a war with China, a wildly popular fantasy within the US foreign policy establishment. China has built a robust sensor-to-shooter capability that links spaced-based and terrestrial surveillance with many thousands of missiles capable of striking targets well into the adjacent skies and seas. Even if the US had sufficient armaments to support such a war (it does not), the country lacks the sealift and the ability to penetrate Chinese defenses. The entire notion of such an operation is militarily and logistically illiterate. It belongs mostly to the polished history obsessives with no real-world operational experience who populate the thinktank ecosystem.

Contrary to Western talking points, Iran possesses at least some of these capabilities. Yes, much of Iran’s war machine is rickety, but these lackluster elements coexist alongside advanced capabilities. ... Regarding Israel, one should also consider the Houthi’s ability to send missiles to Tel Aviv even in the presence of the US’s premier air defense systems, known as THAAD.

Forces and Sustainment

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Individually, most Western militaries possess combat power similar to or only marginally greater than that of gendarmeries (militarized police forces capable of dealing with extensive, internal civil disturbances). As such, their suitability for foreign deployment is limited to peacekeeping operations and the provision of humanitarian aid—and, even then, only under conditions in which the warring parties are sufficiently weak or disinclined to engage them in combat. ...

... NATO has since opted for small, infrequent exercises, often involving only command elements or limited operational forces. Even then, the exercises revealed further deficiencies. Yes, these countries have since gained many years of experience in peacekeeping in the Balkans and in low-intensity combat in Afghanistan, but such experiences occurred under ideal conditions, most notably air superiority and uncontested supply lines.

A far more pressing problem is the current state of defense industrial production throughout the West. Though some of us have made this point for years, reality has finally begun to make its way into the mainstream discourse beyond the confines of the defense and foreign policy commentariat. In December 2024, The Atlantic published an article titled, “The Crumbling Foundation of America’s Military.” (2) The piece noted, correctly, that the US is incapable of supplying Ukraine with sufficient weapons and ammunition to sustain high-intensity combat against Russia. This would be true even if Ukraine had the necessary manpower (it does not). It went on to question, again correctly, whether the US could manufacture enough materiel to fight a high-intensity war of its own. The US could not do this at present or at any point in the immediate years to come, and its allies are in an even more perilous position.

Like with the charts that show aggregate strengths in Western manpower, vehicles, etc., many derive the wrong conclusions from total Western economic might. Think of this as “collective delusion over collective GDP.” The years of fighting in Ukraine have revealed shortfalls in both production and stockpiles throughout the West. Yet, many persist in the belief that the sum of Western economic power means victory against Russia—whether in the proxy war in Ukraine or a potential direct war with NATO—is assured. “Russia is an economic dwarf!,” they shout.

GDP is but one measure of economic mass, and often a misleading one. For instance, except in extreme comparisons between the richest and poorest nations, GDP says little about the economic wellbeing and day-to-day quality of life of a regular person. It says even less about a country’s capacity to make war. Again, what matters in combat is the force that can be brought to bear and at the specific time and place it is needed. A similar logic applies to the production and distribution of armaments. In Western nations, GDP consists largely of things like professional services, real estate, and non-military government spending. In other words, collective GDP cannot be loaded into a howitzer and fired at the enemy.

The relationship between GDP and military power exists only to the extent a nation can turn wealth into weapons. The height of America’s ability to do this was during World War II, a conflict from which incorrectly-derived lessons continue to plague us. The US turned Detroit into a massive armaments factory, and did much the same throughout the rest of the country. Not only did the US have the factories at the time to do this, it also had the know-how. With the loss of domestic manufacturing came the disappearance of many of its necessary skill-sets. Then there are the supply-chain realities, ...

Reckoning with Reality

A common criticism of arguments such as mine is the supposed implication that the West’s adversaries are somehow omnipotent or invincible. This is a misunderstanding at best and a strawman at worst. Again, one must consider the intended purpose of a military and its associated design. The US’s post-World War II military was sufficient to contest Soviet influence. Its post-Cold War predecessor enabled the growth of the “rules-based international order,” particularly as former foes struggled through the stages of domestic strife and economic reorientation. But the game has changed.

In more recent years, the US’s most powerful competitors built formidable national defenses capable of contesting Western power projection. These nations correctly identified and adapted to the asymmetries between their own forces and those of the hegemon. They did not dismantle and outsource the industrial machinery necessary to sustain the defense of their respective homelands. Thus, their rise occurred in tandem with imperial decline. But throughout the West, so strong was the perception of perpetual US military primacy that America’s allies willingly accepted their own decades-long slide into military impotence.

The current balance of military power between the US and its adversaries reveals a symbiosis. The US is incapable of projecting power sufficient to subjugate its adversaries, but these adversaries are even less capable of projecting power against the US homeland—at least for now. (1) https://businessinsider.com/ukraine-war-scale-out-of-proportion-with-nato-planning-cavoli-2023-2… (2) https://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/weapons-production-munitions-shortfall-ukraine-democracy/680867/…

5:22 PM · Jan 12, 2025

What Slusher is suggesting is that increased power projection capabilities may only be a matter of time. In fact, I would add, they may already exist in our chosen adversaries’ near abroad—regions bordering Russia. As long ago as 2008 Russia demonstrated that fact in Georgia. Russia’s capabilities now dwarf what they were then. Playing stupid games in negotiations is cruising for big trouble.