Cruising Towards WW3?

I want to recommend an article by Russia observer Gilbert Doctorow, which was linked by Moon of Alabama. The article ranges widely, but I’ll focus for the most part on the issue raised in the title:

U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Before addressing Doctorow’s concerns, however, a brief introduction is called for which will serve as background for Doctorow’s article.

In the last few days we have officially learned—from no less than Fiona Hill!—what has long been known. Russia and Ukraine, in April, were on the verge of a peace agreement. That was back in April, when the two sides were meeting and talking in Istanbul. As matters developed, the US sent its poodle Bojo to Kiev to order its lackey Elensky to fight to the last Ukrainian. No peace.

Russia and Ukraine were close to peace deal – ex-Trump aide

A top US foreign policy expert has acknowledged that Russia and Ukraine could have reached a peace agreement in April.

The admission came this week from Fiona Hill, a veteran US diplomat who served as the US National Security Council’s senior director for Europe and Russia in the Donald Trump administration. An article that she co-wrote with Georgetown University Professor Angela Stent for Foreign Affairs magazine said Russian-Ukrainian peace talks in April were apparently conducted by the Russian side in good faith.

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A peace-for-neutrality agreement was proposed by Ukraine in a draft document that it delivered to Russia during the March 29 talks in Istanbul, Turkey. The Russian military announced its withdrawal from some parts of Ukraine as a gesture of good will, right after the offer was made.

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In May, some Ukrainian media linked the collapse of the negotiations with pressure imposed on Kiev by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The UK leader publicly opposed a negotiated solution to the crisis in Ukraine and urged Kiev to fight on to obtain a stronger position in future talks.

Johnson visited Kiev on April 9, reportedly almost without warning and with a message for Zelensky that he could not get the deal he wanted from Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. According to the Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper, he branded Putin a war criminal who could not be trusted and said that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the West] are not.” Security guarantees for a neutral Ukraine from major world powers were the cornerstone of the proposed peace deal.

The result, as we know, was that Russia moved the bulk of its forces to the east and began its Donbass and Mariupol offensives. The bottom line is that the US insisted on war with Russia—nothing Bojo could have said would have made any difference, had not the US demanded war. There was no vote then, and presumably will never be a vote. The Deep State decides, without even keeping the public informed of what’s actually going on. Importantly, we know from the words and actions of Lindsey! and Turtle McConnell that war with Russia is a bipartisan decision.

Russia has no doubt about US warlike intentions, but just to make it clear:

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil @ivan_8848

Washington’s aim should be the dismemberment of Russia, says retired general and former EUCOM commander Ben Hodges.

Read about this knucklehead here.

And there’s this sampler of official US opinion:

In an interview with CBS, former US Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges declared, “You know, we’re not just observers cheering for Ukraine here.” The United States, Hodges said, should declare, “We want to win.”

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On Friday, the New York Times used the phrase “bring Russia to its knees” in an editorial, declaring, “Sanctions alone—at least any sanctions that European countries would be willing to now consider—will not bring Russia to its knees any time soon.”

The deliberate use of these phrases—“bring Russia to its knees” and “breaking the back” of Russia—exposes as fraudulent the official narrative of the war presented for public consumption in the media: Namely that it is an unprovoked onslaught by powerful Russia against poor and helpless Ukraine.

The clear implication of these statements is the expansion of the war to Russian territory, potentially including the deployment of US forces either in Ukraine, in Russian territory, or both.

In a recent statement on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senate Democrat Chris Coons, referred to by Politico as Biden’s “shadow secretary of state,” effectively doubled down on his demand for a discussion about sending US troops to Ukraine.

Coons was asked, “In some public remarks this week, you said the country needs to talk about when it might be willing to send troops to Ukraine.” To this, Coons replied, “Putin will only stop when we stop him.”

On to Doctorow, who starts off by noting the upping of the US ante. I’ll excerpt extensively from the first part of his article, but it’s all worth pondering. I will be citing Doctorow not for his views on military events but for his political analysis. He begins by emphasizing what received next to no play in the US media—the highly provocative anti-Russia meeting at the US’s Ramstein air base:

The UK and Commonwealth may be mourning the passing of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday. I am in mourning as well, but for a very different reason: the gathering in the Ramstein air base in Germany yesterday reshuffled the deck on Western military and financial assistance to Ukraine, raising contributions to the ongoing holy crusade against Russia from still more nations and adding new, still more advanced precision strike weapons to the mix of deliveries to Kiev. It was an open summons to the Kremlin to escalate in turn, as were the test firing the same day of a new intercontinental rocket, the Minuteman III, from Vandenberg air base in California and the unannounced visit to Kiev yesterday of not only Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was featured in Western media accounts, but also other top officials of the Biden administration. The most notorious member of this delegation was surely Blinken’s deputy, Victoria Nuland, who had stage managed the February 2014 coup that put in power in Kiev the Russia-hating regime that Zelensky now heads.

The Russians may be compelled to take the bait due to the course of military action on the ground. As now becomes clear, they have just suffered some losses in very heavy ground and artillery fighting these past few days around Kharkov. The Ukrainian gains were facilitated by the advanced weaponry recently arrived from NATO countries, by the targeting data they are receiving from the U.S. and from off-stage tactical direction from NATO officers. By ‘take the bait,’ I mean the Russians may escalate to all out war on Ukraine. This question figured prominently in yesterday’s major news and political talk show programs of Russian state television. I will go into these matters in some detail below.

Doctorow then offers his take on military events but eventually shifts to the views of the Russian commentariat:

A couple of days ago I picked up the following amidst the chatter of panelists on Evening with Vladimir Solovyov: “yes, we made some mistakes, but it is inevitable in a war that mistakes are made.” …

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In last night’s talk show program, host Vladimir Solovyov said that this latest push in the Ukrainian counter-offensive was timed to coincide with the gathering at the Ramstein air base, Germany of top officials from NATO and other allies under the direction of the visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.  If the Ukrainian efforts were failing in the field, then the cry would go up:  we must provide them with more weapons and training.  And if the Ukrainian efforts in the counter-offensive were succeeding, those in attendance at Ramstein would hear exactly the same appeal to aid Kiev.

Try to imagine the reaction of ordinary Russians to the spectacle of the US gathering the usual suspects in Germany—yes, that Germany—to plot the humbling and dismemberment of Russia.

Though Evening with Solovyov, on air from about 23.00 Moscow time, offered viewers some few minutes of video recordings from the opening of the Ramstein gathering, far more complete coverage was provided to Russian audiences a few hours earlier by the afternoon news show Sixty Minutes.  Here, nearly half an hour on air was given over to lengthy excerpts from CNN and other U.S. and European mainstream television reporting about Ramstein. Host Yevgeni Popov read the Russian translation of the various Western news bulletins. His presentation clearly sought to dramatize the threat and to set off alarm bells.

For his part, Vladimir Solovyov went beyond presentation of the threat posed by the United States and its allies to analysis of Russia’s possible response.  He spoke at length, and we may assume that what he was saying had the direct approval of the Kremlin, because his guests, who are further removed from Power than he is, were, for the most part, allowed only to talk blather, ...

So, what did Solovyov have to say? First, that Ramstein marked a new stage in the war, because of the  more threatening nature of the weapons systems announced for delivery, such as missiles with accuracy of 1 to 2 meters when fired from distances of 20 or 30 kilometers thanks to their GPS-guided flight, in contrast to the laser-guided missiles delivered to Ukraine up till now. In the same category, there are weapons designed to destroy the Russians’ radar systems used for directing artillery fire.  Second, that Ramstein marked the further expansion of the coalition or holy crusade waging war on Russia.  Third, that in effect this is no longer a proxy war but a real direct war with NATO and should be prosecuted with appropriate mustering of all resources at home and abroad.

Said Solovyov, Russia should throw off constraints and destroy the Ukrainian dual use infrastructure which makes it possible to move Western weapons across the country to the front.  The railway system, the bridges, the electricity generating stations all should become fair targets.  Moreover, Kiev should no longer be spared missile strikes and destruction of the ministries and presidential apparatus responsible for prosecution of the war.  ...

Solovyov also argued that Russia should now use in Ukraine its own most advanced weapons that have similar characteristics to what NATO is delivering to the other side. As a sub-point, Russia should consider neutralizing in one way or another the GPS guidance for U.S. weapons.  Of course, if this means destroying or blinding the respective U.S. satellites, that would mean crossing a well-known U.S. red line or casus belli.

There’s quite a bit more analysis. Doctorow argues that the stage is now set for a drastic expansion of the conflict, possibly on a global scale. Read it all.

On the other hand …

Doctorow notes that just before the Ramstein war mongering fest, the Financial Times—heretofore 10 Downing’s reliable mouthpiece to the world—unexpectedly featured a flurry of articles casting doubt on the wisdom of Western strategery. Doctorow cites three articles, …

But the most surprising article in this collection from the 7th was in the “Opinion Lex” section of the paper which was nominally about how Russian banks have weathered the storm that broke out when the EU sanctions on their industry first were laid down shortly after the start of Russia’s ‘special military operation.’ Indeed, VTB and other major Russian banks have returned to profitability despite it all. The author finds that ‘sanctions are biting less than western politicians hoped.’ Not only did the expected banking crisis not materialize, but the ruble is at five-year peaks and inflation is falling. Moreover the official Russian financial data behind these generalizations is said to be sound by independent and trustworthy market observers. The key conclusions are saved for last: “Russia has shown it can bear the pain of western sanctions. Western Europe must endure reprisals as robustly, or concede a historic defeat.’ The ‘reprisals’ in question are the complete shutdown of Russian gas deliveries through Nord Stream I until Europe lifts its sanctions.

Meanwhile, the same day in FT:

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg published on the 7th in FT carries the following grim warning: “We face a difficult six months, with the threat of energy cuts, disruptions and perhaps even civil unrest.’

Those sentiments have been echoed by the Belgian PM:

'No Choice But Intervention': Belgium PM Fears "Severe Risk Of Social Unrest"

"A few weeks like this and the European economy will just go into a full stop..."

That is the ominous warning of yet another EU leader who recognizes the needs of his people over the needs to signal virtue towards Ukraine (and against Putin "for the sake of democracy.")

Are the natives getting restless? The internet is full of articles like this one:

Armstrong: Is The US Sacrificing Europe To Maintain Global Dominance?

Now, Armstrong is channeling a recent Putin speech, but that doesn’t mean EU leaders aren’t asking themselves the same question. And they’re all pondering these issues:

Europe Is Facing Energy Disaster And It's Going To Bleed Over Into The US

This Winter, Europe Plunges Into "The New Dark Ages"

I also saw an article saying that US natural gas prices are due to skyrocket, as the US exports more. Civil unrest, anyone? I’m for it.

And it’s only going to get worse over in EU land:

The US Is Creating A Shortage Of Dollars Just As Russia Is Creating A Shortage Of Oil, Gas And Grain

Ouch! Wait, what was that that Putin said about the US sacrificing Europe? Shoulda listened maybe.

Things are about to start breaking.