From SMO To War

Today I’ve been listening to a two hour discussion that you can find at Larry Johnson’s blog:

GREAT ROUNDTABLE WITH GONZALO LIRA, BRIAN BERLETIC AND ALEX CHRISTOFOROU

This roundtable happens to dovetail in important respects with a new article by Gilbert Doctorow, which I’ll get to shortly. Obviously a two hour discussion is going to be very wide ranging. However, Brian Berletic made a variety of points that deserve attention from those who are stuck in a Cold War time warp. I bring this up because several commenters have mentioned conversations with acquaintances who insist on the usual Neocon/Globalist narrative, which has been coopted from Evil Empire days: Putin is a “thug”, Putin is a “killer” (elbow Zhou aside and look in Vlad’s eyes—you can tell!), Putin is a dictator, Russian elections are just for show—unlike our own (which are ranked on a level with Mexico by international election watchers), Russia launched an “unprovoked” invasion (as Hillary likes to say), and so on.

I’ll mention two points that Berletic makes.

First, in recent years and on at least 5 occasions Western officials have publicly called for the use of nuclear weapons against Russia. He references one instance in which a French and a Polish official made that call. Think about that. How many times in the last twenty years has Putin suggested that the US needs to be nuked? Never. He only speaks of the use of nukes if the Russian homeland is attacked and faces an existential threat. In support of what Berletic is say, Tucker Carlson last night played a clip of Zelensky stating that the West should nuke Russia if Putin “even thinks” about using nuclear weapons. As Tucker notes, that’s a call for a first nuclear strike right now—since it’s not possible to know what Putin may be thinking.

Second, Berletic stresses that the Special Military Operation (SMO) has been a real thing—it’s not a war and it has a rational geopolitical basis quite distinct from all out war. When Putin says, We haven’t really begun, he means it. As he said in his recent speech, It’s not a bluff.

What Berletic explains in this regard is this. In every undertaking Putin, as we covered yesterday in Russia - Ukraine: Opinion Roundup, proceeds methodically and following legal norms. The SMO framework placed very real constraints on the Russian military’s conduct of its operations. Putin chose this approach, says Berletic, in order to demonstrate to his international partners that Russia was giving Ukraine every possible out. Thus, in April, Russia entered into good faith negotiations—which the US, through its poodle Bojo, scotched. Now, having destroyed the Ukrainian military as it was, Russia finds itself engaged in a war with NATO—as Putin and MoD Shoigu made very clear a few days ago. With the referenda in the four former Ukrainian oblasts now proceeding, Russia will be in a legal position to designate the continuing attacks on these regions as attacks on the Russian homeland itself. All this is in accord with Putin’s principle of never backing anyone into a corner with no way out. It has been Ukraine that has backed out of negotiations. If NATO continues directing attacks on Russia, that will be NATO assuming responsibility for Russia’s response. No one will be able to say that Putin failed to make the consequences abundantly clear.

That brings us to Gilbert Doctorow’s most recent article:

From ‘Special Military Operation’ to Open War

Doctorow presents an overview not only of the consequences of the referenda—which signal the shift from SMO to potentially full scale war—but also places it in a context that those in the Cold War time warp would do well to come to terms with:

It is a foregone conclusion that the Donbas republics and other territories of Ukraine now under Russian occupation will vote to join the Russian Federation. In the case of Donetsk and Lugansk, it was only under pressure from Moscow that their 2014 referendums were about declaring sovereignty and not about becoming part of Russia. Such annexation or merger was not welcomed by the Kremlin back then because Russia was not ready to face the expected massive economic, political and military attack from the West which would have followed. Today, Moscow is more than ready: indeed it has survived very well all the economic sanctions imposed by the West from even before 24 February as well as the ever growing supply to Ukraine of military materiel and ‘advisers’ from the NATO countries.

The vote over joining Russia will likely hit 90% or more in favor. What will immediately follow on the Russian side is also perfectly clear: within hours of the declaration of referendum results, the Russian State Duma will pass a bill on ‘reunification’ of these territories with Russia and within a day or so, it will be approved by the upper chamber of parliament and immediately thereafter the bill will be signed into law by President Putin.

Looking past his service as a KGB intelligence operative, which is all that Western “Russia specialists” go on about endlessly in their articles and books, let us also remember Vladimir Putin’s law degree. As President, he has systematically stayed within domestic and international law. He will do so now. Unlike his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin has not ruled by presidential decree; he has ruled by laws promulgated by a bicameral parliament constituted from several parties. He has ruled in keeping with international law promulgated by the United Nations. UN law speaks for the sanctity of territorial integrity of Member States; but UN law also speaks of the sanctity of self-determination of peoples.

What follows from the formal merger of these territories with Russia? That is also perfectly clear. As integral parts of Russia, any attack on them, and there certainly will be such attacks coming from the Ukrainian armed forces, is a casus belli. But even before that, the referendums have been preceded by the announcement of mobilization, which points directly to what Russia will do further if developments on the field of battle so requires. Progressive phases of mobilization will be justified to the Russian public as necessary to defend the borders of the Russian Federation from attack by NATO.

The merger of the Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories with the Russian Federation will mark the end of the ‘special military operation.’ An SMO is not something you conduct on your own territory, as panelists on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show remarked a couple of days ago. It marks the beginning of open war on Ukraine with the objective of the enemy’s unconditional capitulation. This will likely entail the removal of the civil and military leadership and, very likely, the dismemberment of Ukraine. After all, the Kremlin warned more than a year ago that the US-dictated course of NATO membership for Ukraine will result in its loss of statehood. ...

Putin has been open about all of this. There are no surprises here. As Tucker makes clear in his monologue from last night, the collective West has also been clear about its objectives for many years: The dismembering of Russia. It has been openly stated, over and over. Putin is now responding because he’s in a position to do so. We know who started this.

BTW, if you have two hours to spare, I highly recommend the roundtable, linked above.