Two long form commentaries. Douglas Macgregor is interviewed by Trish Wood HERE. It’s always great to listen to Macgregor for more than sound byte length discussion. Macgregor is talking about the Nordstream sabotage and about the politics behind the entire misbegotten war on Russia.
Tom Luongo has a 27 part Twitter thread discussing the Kerch bridge sabotage operation and the Zhou nuclear hype. Lots of things to think about here. The thread is HERE. A few samples:
Why is John Bolton all of a sudden the talk of the town? Who brings him out at this moment in time to push for all-out war and Putin's assassination right on schedule?
/13
Has everyone's NEED to cover their domestic problems at home -- US, EU, UK etc. -- with Putin's War trumped their sanity?
Were they ever sane in the first place?
Short answer, no.
/14
But, Putin has also played the game right, uniting Russians behind this 'existential threat' by allowing the Boltons to stop hiding behind 'plausible deniability' and demonstrate the West's sheer hatred of Russians.
/17
The lunatics truly are running the asylum, I’m running out of adjectives to describe the people in charge! Idiotic-check. Inept-check. Devoid of any sense or knowledge of history-check. No concept of diplomacy-check. Way in over their heads-check. No idea of what strategic thinking is-check.
Unaware that there won’t be any winners in a nuclear confrontation-check.
Random thoughts:
1) Who in the world talked Trump into Pompeo and Bolton? Let's somehow make sure that person is nowhere near Trump in the future and that Trump is properly advised to hire only those who agree with his foreign policy.
2) I believe Luongo is most correct in his point "Schoolyard bullies like Bolton, Truss and Nuland believe every provocation vs. Russia removes options from Putin's game board. Leave him w/ only military options to then claim the moral high ground when he strikes back, hiding behind Ukraine's justifiable anger." Not much of any other explanation makes sense at this point (but then again, what makes sense anymore?). They are attacking what they see as the Putin problem in a scattershot manner hoping a silver bullet will hit.
3) I think the "radical Ukrainian" powers that be are now only motivated by money and their own survival. They know Ukraine will fall to Russia (de facto if not de jure) and they are planning to be out of the country by then, courtesy of their patrons.
4) Make sure to listen to MacGregor's interview. It is solid gold for two reasons: 1. It is an extensive overview of Ukraine and associated issues in simple prose intended for and completely understandable by a general audience - it should be shared widely; 2. The anecdotes he shares about his grandfather's views on WWI and his family's discussion about Vietnam. These say a lot about his views of war and his integrity. They can be found toward but before the 1:00 mark.