Proxy War: Danger Ahead
Will Schryver this morning briefly describes the status in Ukraine: The Ukraine proxy army (AFU 1.0) has been destroyed and now the Ukraine-NATO proxy army (AFU 2.0) is well on the way to destruction:
And a reply makes the excellent point that we’ve harped on continuously:
But what’s this Ukraine-NATO we referred to above? Austrian colonel Markus Reisner—a popular internet analyst regarding the war—lays it out for even the meanest intelligence to understand:
It’s not a stretch to say that the Polish army—bolstered by other NATO “contract warriors”—is the second proxy army we’ve sent to fight Russia, which the Russians are in the process of destroying. Did you ever wonder why NATO has been urging Ukraine to pull back from the Bakhmut meat grinder? It’s because a lot of NATO meat is getting ground there. Poland’s decision to serve as a NATO proxy is one that Poland will regret, but in the meantime we’re promising Poland the sky. There’s a snare and a delusion in this arrangement for both Poland and the US, but this is what happens when you haphazardly escalate a proxy war. A US general, Christopher Cavoli, has acknowledged some of this—you can read a fuller account of Cavoli’s comments here, where he repeats the usual NATO narrative of what a beating Russia is taking and how great NATO weapons are:
There are other consequences to crazy escalations. Seymour Hersh claims to have the explanation for the Nordstream 2 sabotage: The US planted the explosive charges under cover of a military exercise months before, then the Norwegians detonated those charges:
The famous American journalist Seymour Hersh (winner of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize) claims that the explosives under the "Northern Streams" were laid by US divers in June 2022.
Norway assisted USA.
"Last summer, Navy divers, acting under the cover of NATO exercises known as Baltops 22, laid remotely activated explosive devices, which three months later destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines," Hersh writes, citing sources.
According to him, on September 26, a sonar buoy was dropped from a Norwegian Navy aircraft, which triggered the bombs.
According to Hirsch, Biden discussed the sabotage with his team for more than 9 months. The main question was how not to leave evidence.
It appears that the WH has confirmed Hersh’s account:
Nevertheless, MoA has some quibbles—but not with Hersh’s conclusion. After all, it’s been the biggest open secret going. Moon’s own conclusion raises the issue of the kinds of things that happen in proxy wars:
Most Germans, if not their pliant government, have drawn their conclusions from that.
There are signs that NATO is losing the German public, partly as a result of the pipeline sabotage, and that even the Germans’ “pliant goverment” is having second thoughts about being so “pliant.” This policy of playing energy hardball with German risks losing Germany, and losing Germany risks the whole rationale for NATO: Keeping Germany down—which would keep Russia out. Ultimately, that also risks the other leg of this three legged stool: Keeping America in. I’m not a Germanophile, but this seems bad strategery on the part of NATO.
With many aspects of all this in mind, Tom Luongo tweets about the point at which we’ve arrived:
Scott Ritter also weighs in today on the big lie involved in providing tanks to Ukraine—even if operated by Poles and leaving aside the optics of tanks bearing the German Iron Cross rolling into battle against Russia (again, even if operated by Poles):
Readers will have gotten the point by now—proxy wars lead to bad decision making. That’s exactly what Michael Vlahos rights about in his fascinating piece, which originally appeared in October, 2022:
America’s Perilous Choice in Ukraine: How Proxy War Accelerates Great Power Decline
Vlahos discusses in some detail American involvement in two previous Great Power conflicts—conflicts in which America itself, or a portion of America, was the proxy. Yes, he’s talking about the American Revolution/War of Independence in the first instance. In that war America was a proxy in the war of Bourbon France and Spain against Britain. America came out of that war an independent nation, but the Bourbons—although winners in the near term—fared poorly as a result in the longer term. Later, in our Civil War, Britain used the CSA as a proxy against the US, because it feared Russia and the US combining against the British Empire. Really—it’s a fascinating read. In the end, Britain came to its senses, backed out of this proxy war, and mended fences with the US.
Will the US come to its senses, or drift into a larger war that it can’t win? For our purposes, Vlahos summarizes the inherent dangers in proxy wars, which you can relate to all the above:
Proxy wars represent a most dangerous game in great power competition. Danger here has two dimensions. First, easy and early success can trigger strategic euphoria in the proxy-master. The empire can be swept up by the tantalizing prospect of a great strategic victory, paying a small price in treasure and nothing of its own blood. This leads directly to occluded judgment. Victory, so desired, is suddenly believed to be almost at hand, so why not pile on, and bring a hated rival quickly to defeat? This dynamic leads to“opportunistic escalation”.
Neocon stratergerists have been quite explicit about this. They openly state that we’re bleeding Russia at little price. Even if that key part of their original plan—the Sanctions War—has proven to be a disaster.
The second strategic danger emerges when early success turns into a proxy enterprise at risk of failure, when reality breaks through and victory can no longer necessarily be achieved by proxy efforts alone. Easy and early victory is replaced by the prospect of possible failure, unless the great power “goes all in.” The prospect of losing the proxy war becomes as loathsome as seeing one’s own battalions beaten in battle. Here, the collective ecstasy of victory through proxy makes proxy abandonment and defeat unacceptable, leading to ever-intensifying, “double down escalation” that could invite direct war.
Is this where we are now?
In light of Washington’s ongoing proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, these two dangers now threaten the American nation. Once Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, NATO enthusiastically embraced proxy war against Russia.
...
The American nation, in fact, survived as an imperial target in two great-power proxy wars: one, from 1776-78, in which a fledgling republic served as the proxy of a Franco-Spanish Bourbon proxy-master; and the other, from 1861-63, in which the British Empire targeted a beleaguered Union, using the Confederate States of America as its eager proxy.
Together, these two experiences form an historical counterpoint. ...
…
Proxy (no) Panacea
Using a willing third party to fight for you against a detested rival power may seem like a dream come true. The proxy-master embroils its hated enemy in a destructive war, but the enemy can do more than punish the proxy in return.
Yet, great power proxy war is a snare and a delusion. The prospect of a low-risk, high-reward engagement is the dangling bait—a war-that-is-not-a-war—which promises all the upsides and none of the downsides of actual battle. The truth, however, is that losing a great power proxy war is just as much a defeat as if one’s own battalions had been vanquished in battle—not to mention that the great power loses here without even the honor of commitment and sacrifice.
But there are even more strange trappings in wars of this kind: When it comes to proxy war, short-term success is more dangerous than failure. Early victories in a great power proxy war promotes soaring, even ecstatic emotions, leading people and leaders alike to embrace maximalist war aims. The rush of emotion and the impression of victory, however, often occludes the strategic eye. The target of the proxy war may not, in fact, be yet defeated. Contrary to self-serving appearances, a wounded great power may not actually be broken. It may move from accepting you as a proxy enemy to tackling you directly as the main enemy.
The problem with the US's proxy wars is not just that they don't know their enemy, but that they don't know their supposed friends either. In every war they've fought in the last 70 years, proxy or not, they continually underestimated their enemy and overestimated their friends. They thought Diem and the South Vietnamese generals were a genuine alternative to communism that the people there would support; they thought that their guys in Iraq and Afghanistan were budding democratic stalwarts just waiting to install free and fair elections and open local McDonalds. Now they are doing it with Z, thinking he is some kind of little "Mr Smith goes to Washington" guy trying to save "democracy" against the Russian steamroller. They get it wrong time after time because they refuse to do put their blinkers aside and do the real research.
While it's still unclear whether the US, UK, and NATO have definitively committed to these sorts of escalations, it certainly can't help any attempts at back-channel negotiations to have Zelenskyy running around on camera thanking the UK Parliament "in advance for these powerful English planes." If the US State Department were serious about a negotiated peace, one would think they'd clip his wings a bit.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uk-pledges-fighter-pilot-training-ukraine-zelensky-surprise-visit
Descending from a grandfather who came to the US as a result of, well, releasing himself on his own recognizance from His Majesty's custody in the wake of the Easter Rising of 1916, I'm no fanboy of the British Crown, but, FFS, Z, show some respect!!! We in the West have to abandon our traditions and protocol just so Z-Man can run around playing G.I. Joe. SMH.