Scott Ritter's Radical Reassessment: Ukraine and Taiwan
Hard on the heels of the US appeal for a ceasefire, or possibly just before it, we have Scott Ritter providing what he himself terms a “radical reassessment” of the shape of things in Ukraine. As a bonus, he also gets into a fairly detailed assessment of the strategic situation with China and Taiwan.
The full video of the interview is about 1:15 long:
The full interview is stimulating—including the first part that deals largely with nuclear disarmament and possible first strike issues—but I’m linking below the section that involves Ritter’s radical reassessment. It runs from 43:00 - 1: 11. I found it riveting, and I hope you will, too.
Now, before we get into it, the timing could be important. The interview was live streamed on Saturday morning. You can tell from the fact that no mention is made of Lloyd Austin’s phone call to Sergei Shoigu, with the US call for a ceasefire, that none of the three participants were aware of that develop as they spoke. Would that have changed Ritter’s radical reassessment? I’m not sure. As matters stand, here’s what Ritter discusses:
Russia has made a mistake in that they have allowed new weapons to reach the Ukrainian front lines. He specifically mentions US 155mm howitzers. He specifies that the full 90 complement hasn’t gone operational, but he states that this is what is behind the Russian pullback around Kharkiv—to deal with the greater range of the US howitzers Russia, he says, would need to redeploy from Donbass. Rather than do that, they’ve given the US howitzers more space.
This situation won’t change the outcome in the Donbass, says Ritter—for the time being, this difference is marginal. But it spells trouble for the future. Russia can’t allow this to continue, and that could mean an escalation—even full mobilization. Ritter goes into quite a bit of detail, but it seems to me that there could be room for questioning his radical reassessment in some respects—both from the military standpoint as well as from the economic standpoint. As for the China/Taiwan situation, Ritter is convinced of two things: 1) China fully backs Russia, and 2) China is in a good position with regard to Taiwan. Lots of interesting discussion, including the Solomon Islands situation.
OK, before we get to the Ritter “radical reassessment segment, some quick Twitter updates that may play into Austin’s phone call but, regardless, are relevant to Ritter’s remarks:
This could be important:
To understand this next tweet, you have to realize that this former Polish official—er, former official, he’s still Polish—is calling for the “demilitarization” of part of Russia! Do you think that caught Moscow’s attention? The only way to demilitarize a part of Russia is to defeat Russia militarily. Do you want Poland calling the shots on that one? Do you want Zhou or his inner circle calling the shots? BTW, Kaliningrad is named after Mikhail Kalinin. Bear this in mind when Ritter comments on Poland and the Baltics:
And so, finally, we come to Ritter’s “radical reassessment—which I’ve tried to cue to 43:00:
The video linked here, of the Finnish prez, is quite interesting:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/05/15/sunday-talks-finland-president-sauli-niinisto-indicates-a-global-cleaving-behind-decision-to-join-nato/
The prez is pretty obviously not a happy camper. He pointedly says that he hadn't felt threatened by Russia before and still doesn't, BUT ...
He says it's hard to be "non-aligned" nowadays in Europe. I take that to mean that Finland was heavily pressured into making this decision, and he's unhappy about that.
It may be the weather around here, 106F today, anyway I am really burning with rage lately. The insaneocracy that controls the "west" have completely lost touch with reality. The Swedes and Finns are nuts to think that becoming NATOstans makes any short or long term sense.
Ritter may not see that V. Putin is conducting a type of siege against the "west". . . Putin's strategy is to put the "west" through a humiliating economic collapse similar to that which Russia suffered after the Soviet union collapsed. I don't think that the 155's will be operational for long, Russia has counter battery capacities, not to mention the ability to interdict supply lines. The ability to continue to supply Ukraine with expensive war material is not unlimited, time is on Russia's side.
I fear that much of the US strategic doctrine is at best outdated, while aircraft carriers are still useful in some cases, it appears that our adversaries can easily neutralize them. Force projection is best done using weapons that the US does not possess yet, if we do not get to work soon we may be unable to produce badly needed hypersonic missiles. The most desperately needed weapons are long range and intercontinental range air launched and submarine launched hypersonic missiles. Such weapons must be developed that can be launched from cargo aircraft as well as bombers, the F-35 program must be cut if not terminated.