Neocon Project: Damage Control Time (2)

Earlier today we updated our assessment of the situation in the Middle East—where are the Neocons headed? That post was itself a follow on from yesterday’s

Is A Major Escalation Of The Neocon War On The World In The Works?

Here we’ll briefly update that post from the standpoint of Simplicius’ latest SitRep:

Biden Launches Attacks as Russia Again Breaches Major Avdeevka Lines

In spite of the very narrow sounding focus of the title, Simplicius’ SitRep is actually quite wide ranging. Let’s start with the sum of what we wrote yesterday—which was written with the then upcoming retaliatory strikes in the Middle East in mind:

The big prize in the Middle East, from a Neocon geostrategic perspective, is probably to collapse growing Russian influence and to detach Saudi Arabia from BRICS. The big picture reverts to the pipe dream of an Israel - Sunni alliance against Iran with pressure on Turkey to allow NATO entry to the Black Sea.

That being the case, how will the Neocons freeze Russia into focusing on Europe to the extent that Russia will refrain from an active role in the Middle East? Readers will undoubtedly be aware that the past months have seen three developments in the Ukraine situation. First, the US and NATO are once again upping the ante by providing advanced weaponry to Ukraine—yesterday saw the agreement to provide Ukraine, almost immediately, with longish range guided bombs (90 km.) that haven’t even been issued to US forces yet. There was also Nuland in Kiev this week announcing battlefield “surprises” for Russia and generally beating the war drums. With the devastation of Ukrainian manpower, this appears to be the only way to keep Ukraine fighting. Secondly, there have been more instances of Ukrainian terror and industrial sabotage attacks inside Russia. Thirdly, the US is rushing to set up bases in northern Finland and Sweden, within striking range of Russia’s key ice free Arctic port of Murmansk—a threat Russia will find difficult to ignore.

Simplicius spends a lot of time discussing what to me are largely speculative scenarios. Much of what he writes also revolves around the power struggle between Zelensky and Zaluzhny. As for the power struggle, I’m agnostic—I have no sources. However, I find it plausible that it’s actually Zelensky who is going to go. Simplicius provides plausible arguments in that regard, including these two: 1) Zaluzhny appears to have more support within the right wing (Neo-Nazi) faction in Ukraine, which dominates the NatSec sector, and 2) Zaluzhny’s recent writings on military matters (not authorized by Zelensky) suggest to me that he may be more in tune with NATO concepts than Zelensky. Zelensky has been a proponent of defending “fortress cities” to the last man—thus generating enormous and unreplaceable losses of manpower. Zaluzhny appears to be more open to withdrawing in order to shorten defensive lines (such withdrawals could be very significant in terms of square mileage), with the aim of fighting a more fluid defensive war to bleed the Russian forces.

For the rest, Simplicius varies a bit. On the one hand, he makes the important point that we do appear to be hearing a lot more about foreign fighters—most likely NATO professionals in Ukrainian uniforms—showing up in Ukraine:

On that note, there is again increased talk of mercenaries everywhere. As Ukraine runs out of men, NATO hawks hatch their plans for a desperate last-bell save, as well as pump their disrobed soldiers into the country to stem the losses. Not only have recent Russian reports mentioned a lot of ‘German chatter’ in intercepted comms in Kupyansk, but more and more foreigners have been eliminated in recent strikes.

That observation comes in the context of quite a bit of discussion about what appear to me to be largely unrelealistic speculation:

• German, Dutch, Polish discussions on an agreement to allow for rapid troop movements across their borders—i.e., German and Dutch troops (does the Netherlands actually have troops that don’t go home on weekends?) moving into Poland, not Polish troops moving west.

• UK crazy talk of deploying a NATO “expeditionary force” to the west bank of the Dnieper.

• Polish talk of a 50 km. “no-fly zone” along the Ukraine border.

• Simplicius’ own talk of a Polish move into Western Ukraine.

• Simplicius’ speculation of an American blocking move to keep Russia from taking Odessa

My long-time readers will recall that I always said at the moment when Ukraine was near to total collapse, there will come a point that NATO will strongly consider creating some kind of ‘event’ or justification for them to save western Ukraine from falling into Russia’s hands. I talked about the American 82nd and 101st going from Romania to ‘block’ Odessa in the same way Russian forces once did in the Pristina airport incident. As well as other forces potentially in western Ukraine, particularly those that can create a shield for a Ukrainian government-in-exile once Kiev falls.

I find all of these notions irrelevant to wildly improbable. Which is to say, if NATO were crazy enough to attempt such schemes that impinged on territory within the borders of the former Soviet Union, Russia would put its foot down—hard. The 82nd and 101st wouldn’t stand a chance at blocking Russia from the Russian city of Odessa. Far less could any NATO “expeditionary force” stop Russia from achieving its full war goals.

No, all of these ideas appear to me to have a more limited objective. First of all, to keep Ukraine in existence past the November US elections. There will be no “desperate last-bell save.”

Beyond that limited objective, it’s possible that the developments that I noted yesterday, and repeated above,

• First, the US and NATO are once again upping the ante by providing advanced weaponry to Ukraine—yesterday saw the agreement to provide Ukraine, almost immediately, with longish range guided bombs (90 km.) that haven’t even been issued to US forces yet. There was also Nuland in Kiev this week announcing battlefield “surprises” for Russia and generally beating the war drums. With the devastation of Ukrainian manpower, this appears to be the only way to keep Ukraine fighting.

• Secondly, there have been more instances of Ukrainian terror and industrial sabotage attacks inside Russia.

• Thirdly, the US is rushing to set up bases in northern Finland and Sweden, within striking range of Russia’s key ice free Arctic port of Murmansk—a threat Russia will find difficult to ignore.

smack of the forlorn hope that these moves will somehow place Ukraine in the position of being able to force Russian into a negotiated end of the war on terms that NATO will find relatively favorable—NATO would retain a toehold in Ukraine. Note, that this works well with the idea of Zaluzhny replacing Zelensky. I call that a “forlorn” hope because you could knock me down with a feather if the Russians fell for it. After something like 50k Russian soldiers KIA defending the Motherland, there is simply no way that Putin could agree to anything of the sort. This is not like America’s wars of choice around the world. The Russians regularly repeat their original war aims—a demilitarized, denazified, NATO free Ukraine. Their stated goals have only expanded over time and I take them at their word.

The only real question is whether Russia is able to play a strong hand in the Middle East at the same time that it continues its Special Military Operation.