Is A Day Of Reckoning Approaching--At Home And Abroad?

I have all sorts of things to get done today, so I’ll quickly point toward two thought provoking articles that dovetail with each other. They seem especially relevant at this juncture.

First I turn to Alastair Crooke’s latest, which is timed for the NATO summit in Vilnius:

Indecision Haunts the West: Events on the Ukraine Front Sends It Reeling

As I read Crooke, what he’s basically saying is the moment of indecision amounts to this:

• There’s no going back—the collective West followed the Neocon/Globalist cabal over the cliff like a herd of lemmings, and there’s no clawing their way back up.

• There will be no soft landing.

Now, Crooke places this, initially, in the context of the Prigozhin farce. I’m not sure what to make of that—I won’t pretend to understand what’s going on in Russia, except that I see continuity of purpose.

Putin met with Prigozhin, Wagner commanding officers in Kremlin on June 29 — spokesman

Dmitry Peskov mentioned that the commanders shared their version of what happened on June 24, emphasizing their support of the head of state and the supreme commander-in-chief

What we know from this and other public reports is that Wagner has been folded into the Russian military. That’s the bottom line.

I offer this quote from Crooke mostly for its evocation of the disarray of the collective West:

We are — for the moment — in the hanging void between events. The chaos that Western MSM was expecting (“with libidinous excitement”) to unfold in Russia did arrive, except that it exploded in France, where it was not expected — and with Macron on the ropes, rather than Putin, in Moscow. Indeed, there is much to be distilled from this interesting inversion of expectations and of events.

If the failure of Russia to descend into French-style chaos as a result of the Prigozhin ‘mutiny’ represents the initial ‘bookend’ to the present directionless void, the other bookend is, (or is supposed to be), the NATO summit beginning on 11 July in Vilnius, at which a new western ‘direction’ for Ukraine’s future is to be officially promulgated (though any consensus on the future looks very shaky, at this point).

Reports suggest that western Intelligence was thrown into confusion as the Prigozhin march on Moscow faded within hours, only to emerge as a negotiated settlement, and (puzzlingly for the analysts) to quiet across Russia. They couldn’t figure it out: What was going on? Was Prigozhin for real, or was it all some complicated chess game that was unfolding before their eyes?

Crooke then disposes of the “default option”—the “frozen conflict” option. The fundamental problem, as I’ve emphasized all along, is that there’s nothing in it for the Russians and therefore no reason to suppose that they would fall for it. Here’s how Crooke puts it:

The western Intelligence community was already reeling from the videos of Ukraine’s NATO-supplied, burnt-out ‘armoured fists’ – …

The problem with the ‘default option’ (frozen conflict) as ‘what to do next’ is that it just won’t work. Not least because Russia won’t accept a frozen conflict. FM Lavrov has said so, explicitly.

The more fundamental reason why it won’t work is its unstated western addendum that whilst supposedly ‘frozen’, the West says it would arm ‘rump Ukraine’ with the latest weapons and missiles; would ramp up a forth iteration army and give it an Air Force to boot. All this, so that Ukraine might — like some woke University freshman — ‘feel safe’ in its space.

It is bunkum. This formula would simply allow NATO to repeat the events of 2014 when, in the wake of the Maidan coup, NATO built a formidable army for the coupists — capable of suppressing dissent from the largely culturally-Russian regions on the East, (who contested the coupist legitimacy) an army intended too to be able to land a fracturing blow on Russia’s military.

I quoted Dmitry Medvedev yesterday, and Medvedev enunciates the Russian view of where matters stand with brutal directness:

“Indeed, we are ready to look for reasonable compromises, as the President of Russia has repeatedly said. They are possible, but with the understanding of several fundamental points. Firstly, our interests should be taken into account to the maximum extent: there should be no more anti-Russia in principle, otherwise everything will end very badly sooner or later. The Kiev Nazi regime must be annihilated… What will replace it, we do not know, as well as what will remain of the former Independent (Ukraine.) But the West will have to accept this.

“Secondly, all the hard-won results of the total confrontation should be consolidated in a new document such as the Helsinki Act (1975) … Thirdly, it is likely that a careful reassembly of the UN and other international organisations will be required. It is possible only with full respect for the rights of permanent members of the Security Council…”

My translation bears repeating:

“Reasonable compromises are possible”. I haven’t seen the Russian original, but I think a better translation would read something like: “We win, you lose, we dictate terms, you get a few inconsequential bones if you behave.” But that’s what the draft treaties of December, 2021 were basically about, too. Nothing has changed, and certainly Russia sees no reason to back down from its maximalist position.

Crooke has more to say, but that’s the bottom line. And that’s what has the the collective West groping for a way out of the darkened room they find themselves in.

James Kunstler starts with Crooke’s piece, but moves on to the home front:

Summer 2023 Is The "Fulcrum For A Great Public Attitude Adjustment"

He’s suggesting that the war on Russia is about to bring about a reckoning that will come home—the price to be paid to the piper will not be confined to foreign policy. The American public will also demand its pound of flesh from its corrupt ruling class—May it be!

Kunstler, as I said, begins with Crooke:

“…the Permanent State lacks the courage to take hard decisions – to say to Moscow, ‘Let us put this unfortunate episode (Ukraine) behind us. Dig out those draft treaties you wrote in December 2021, and let’s see how we can work together, to restore some functionality again to Europe’.”

- Alasdair Crooke

That’s reality. It’s the only option that could restore some semblance of stability to Europe, and offer the US a way to regroup on a renewed basis—a return to constitutional order, a path from Empire back to Republic. But, as Crooke says, so far the collective West’s ruling class lacks the courage to take this hard decision.

So first Kunstler lays out the military dilemma—there is no way out:

When you deny what is self-evident, you are at war with reality, and that never ends well.

This is the ultimate disposition of our country’s years-long misadventure in maximum dishonesty. … including especially its crimes against its own people.

Get this: there is no way that Ukraine can avoid defeat in its US-provoked struggle with Russia. Russia has every advantage. ...

What are NATO’s alternatives now?

It can try to return to negotiation. Russia has no reason to trust that process, ...

The US and NATO could send their own troops into Ukraine, but that would be suicide, ...

The US could go a little further and provoke a nuclear exchange (suicide by other means) — ...

Then he pivots to the domestic front. Given that the “frozen conflict” option is simply “bunkum” that Russian won’t fall for, and given the West’s inability to cope with reality, the result may devolve into the West simply watching Russia win. But that will also have consequences far beyond the purely military—in fact, with the rise of BRICS we’re already seeing the shape of the multi-polar world emerging. That will have immediate short term consequences which I’m not competent to describe. These are Kunstler’s predictions and are, at the least, food for thought:

One likely, reality-based alternative is to stand by and let Russia complete its Special Military Operation to pacify and neutralize Ukraine. The prevailing theory is that this would be the end of America’s world dominance militarily, and effectively the end of NATO, but also the end financially for the US, as the non-West abandons the dollar. In that scenario, the BRICs dump their trillions in US bond holdings, sending all that putative “money” back to America, stoking a king-hell inflation, effectively bankrupting us. It would be the final fruit of the disastrous “Joe Biden” regime imposed on us via election fraud by the Blob: the US reduced in a few short years to a broke, socially disordered, marginalized power susceptible to its own political breakup — not a tantalizing outcome, but perhaps better than turning the planet Earth into a smoldering ashtray.

That outcome would force our country to turn inward and face its own stupendous failures of honor, decency, and integrity. It would be the end of the Blob’s hegemony inside the USA. The question is whether the Blob sets America’s house on fire in the attempt to save itself and escape a legal accounting for its crimes. One kindling stack already burning is the pile-up of jive prosecutions aimed at Mr. Trump. You know that the attempt to kick him off the game-board using Special Counsel Jack Smith may easily lead to severe civil disorder, and possibly a counter-coup, a US first!

Kunstler also raises an interesting issue. Is it possible that the federal judiciary will finally step up to the plate, for the sake of the stability of public order in America, and demand and accounting from the political class. I’m not holding my breath, but perhaps history has seen stranger events. Here’s how Kunstler puts it:

The current Mar-a-Lago “Doc Box” case is as much a complete fabrication as were RussiaGate and Impeachment Number One — Mr. Trump’s telephone inquiry to Ukraine about the Biden family grifting operations there, now firmly documented to be true. An upright judge would summarily dismiss the Mar-a-Lago case and slam sanctions on the US attorneys involved, including disbarment and criminal investigation for mounting a maliciously fraudulent prosecution. AG Merrick Garland and his deputy, Lisa Monaco, obviously would have some ‘splainin’ to do, possibly before juries.

And then he adds:

A long list of public figures populating the Blob await a reckoning: …

It’s a long list, but one which I agree wholeheartedly with.