China Hawks, Russia Hawks--It's Hawks All The Way Down

Last Monday Alastair Crooke published an article that I’m just getting around to, but it touches on the bigger implications of the “balloon hysteria” incident within US foreign policy. Even though Crooke’s article came out before Josh Hawley gave his opportunistic speech (Next War China?), it may as well have followed it—it was that prescient:

Endgame for Ukraine: America vs America

There’s no good news in what Crooke is saying. Basically, he’s saying that there is a civil war going on within the ruling class in America, pitting the China Hawks against the Russia Hawks. The Balloon Hysteria gave the China Hawks a talking point to push their view that China is the real Great Satan—as we saw from Hawley’s speech. Hawley took the opportunity to call out the Neocons:

They want us to believe we can fight an endless proxy war in Ukraine. And somehow, this won’t impact our ability to deter China from invading Taiwan. 

Curiously enough, this story of American omnicompetence isn’t really partisan. It’s told both by neoconservatives on the right, and liberal globalists on the left. Together they make up the “Uniparty”—the D.C. establishment that transcends all changing administrations. 

It’s hard to challenge the Uniparty. They’ve gotten very good at telling their favorite story. That’s why anyone who questions them gets called “anti-American” or “Vladimir Putin’s puppet” from a hundred different quarters. 

But today, I want to tell you something else. I want to tell the truth. 

Hawley’s “truth”, of course, is that China is America’s mortal Enemy #1 and we need to prepare for war with China. Russia, he says, is a sideshow. Well, this really amounts to an argument over priorities, because if Hawley has his way and the US subjugates China, you can bet he’ll be on board with going after Russia—again. Just as the Neocons think the order should be reversed: Russia first, then China.

So here are some excerpts from Crooke’s article. After the US “popped” the Chinese balloon—as well as some $10 American hobbyist balloons, using $400K missiles—writes Crooke:

The powerful ‘China hawk’ faction in the U.S. was ecstatic. The China balloon ‘kill’ inadvertently, and in an instant, elevated China to ‘Main Threat’. It was the chance for these hawks to ‘pivot’ foreign policy back from Ukraine and Russia – to fully focus on China.

They make the case that Ukraine was ‘eating’ too much of America’s arms inventory. It was leaving America vulnerable; already, it would take years for the U.S. to make up for this equipment loss by reinstating weapons supply-lines. And there is ‘no time to spare’. The military ‘deterrence fence’ around China has to be in place – ASAP.

Naturally, the tight neo-con circle around Biden – some of whom have invested in the ‘Destroy Russia’ project for decades – is not ready to ‘let go’ the Ukraine project, for China.

Yet, the Ukraine narrative ‘bubble’ has been punctured, and has been leaking helium for some time.

Yes, the Ukraine balloon has been leaking for some time, and the Hersh revelations about the US terror attack on Nordstream has worsened that situation—especially in Germany. Beyond that, it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to realize that the collective West knows that the Neocons screwed up big time, and that Ukraine is going down. Not that the Neocons are giving up on their Ahabesque obsession with Russia:

Victoria Nuland – who has been ‘capo’ in Kiev for a decade – is overseeing a purge: Unreliables are ‘out’, and pro-American radical Ukrainian hawks are ‘in’. It is a make-over of the Kiev mafia, which leaves Zelensky without friends – and wholly dependent on Washington. It looks to be preparation for the U.S. to attempt a double-down in Ukraine.

...

BUT, doubling down now, in Ukraine, won’t work for Biden. …

And then Crooke gets to the really big picture.

However, the reality is that the Ukraine ‘Balloon’ is popped. Military and civilian circles in Washington know it. The ‘elephant in the room’ of inevitable Russian success is acknowledged ... They know too that the NATO … ‘balloon’ has popped. They know that the balloon of western industrial capacity to manufacture weapons – in sufficient quantity and over a long duration – has popped also.

The consequences are the risk of severe U.S. reputational damage, the longer the war persists. These circles do not want that.

This is what’s behind the pretty obvious campaign to take Zhou out—to neuter the Neocon administration. Any bigger screw up resulting from the Ukraine debacle could have serious consequences for the next war—the one on China. Is the entire GOP on board with war on China as their platform for 2024?

They may sense too, that the 2024 campaign lines already are coalescing for the Republican Party, which has its own reading of the Ukraine débacle – ‘Let’s exit from Ukraine to confront China’ (with full bi-partisan support). This means firstly, that the thread of U.S. financial support for Ukraine – as Bill Burns (CIA chief) reportedly told Zelensky on his last visit – likely will taper this summer. And secondly, it hints that any bi-partisan support for further arming Kiev may be over by the time the primary season will be in full swing.

Bill Burns travelled (in secret) in mid-January to meet Zelensky. Was it to prepare Zelensky for a shift in the American stance? Burns, the long-standing U.S. quiet negotiator, is not party to the Nuland programme. [Burns] said at Georgetown University in early February that “China remains the biggest geopolitical challenge the U.S. faces in the decades ahead, and the biggest priority for CIA”. His framing, ‘was not a bug, but the substance’ in his address.

Nuland may be planting U.S.-aligned hawks around Zelensky in order to continue the war, but there are other, wider interests within Washington. Financial circles are worried about a market collapse that could lead to the dollar haemorrhaging value. There are worries too, that the Ukraine war is contributing to a serious weakening of America’s standing in the world. And there are concerns that a reckless Team Biden could lose control and take the U.S. into a wider war with Russia.

So this is what Crooke means by America vs. America. But it’s still hawks all the way down. My caution is this. The world economic and financial order based on King Dollar may be unraveling so quickly that the two-years-from-now war with China that US generals are promising may be a bridge too far out. Far from “attriting” Russia, the US war on Russia has seriously attrited America. Further, to repeat from yesterday, the idea that a Russia that appears to be going from strength to strength—both militarily and economically—will allow the US war monger party a free hand with China is a dangerous delusion. Both Putin and Xi know that they need to stand together. Still, knowledgeable observers are once again promising us big events in the coming week—Putin is scheduled to make a major address to the Russian nation, at the same time that Zhou will be in Poland (our “major ally”, which should tell you something) to discuss “collaboration”. Read up on all that here:

Major War Confirmed Imminent

Calm before the storm.

Also, if you have an hour to spare, there’s quite an interesting discussion between Tom Luongo and Alex Mercouris here:

BLOWING UP ALLIES + KILLING EMPIRE

They cover a lot of ground—including much of what we reflected on above. Their discussion of the effects of Hersh’s article on German opinion and politics—and therefore on NATO—is also quite interesting, as are Mercouris’ comments on the Munich Security Conference and Macron’s signal of disunity between the Neocons and Europe.