Sunday Roundup 5/19/24

Let’s start with the Signs of Life early debate. Really—a presidential campaign debate in June? I think it was Vivek who first brought this up but, if so, others have quickly caught on. What this actually looks like is that the bleeding coming from polling of the Dem base—Blacks, the young, and suburban women—is freaking Dems out to the extent that they decided they needed to figure out once and for all whether Zhou is remotely viable as a candidate. And they decided they needed to make that determination well in advance of their convention in Chicago, which—assuming it’s live and not virtual—could feature demonstrations not seen since ‘68. The obvious reasoning here is that, if Zhou can’t turn things around within a few weeks the Dems will pull the plug on him. No more life support if there are no signs of life.

The polling shows the Dem base defecting to Trump on the two top issues: Inflation and “Immigration”, i.e., Open Borders. Crime fits into that second issue, as well. For readers who still haven’t crossed the US border this should tell you a lot about US politics. The potential for major wars is somewhere down list when it comes to ranking issues. Americans just don’t think about that stuff because those things only happen in far away countries.

The interesting question—aside from American lack of interest in the wars we’re involved in—is: Even if the Dems pull the plug on Zhou, can they win back the base? After all, what’s their strategy as a party? Run against the policies the party supported for the last four years, when they controlled the White House, and pushed these policies via executive action over a supine “opposition” GOP? And exactly who as a candidate could pull that off? Typically you’d look for a governor, but the leading Dem governors are mostly radioactive when it comes to a national audience, based on their in-state policies.

We shift to BREAKING News and related matters. Iranian President Raisi’s helicopter has gone down—he had been visiting a remote area where a hydroelectric project was being initiated. If I were a betting guy, I’d bet on a new president.

But in related matters, over the last few days I came across an interesting article on the Iranian nuclear program. It’s by a Robert E. Hunter, a senior adviser for Rand, so this is a guy who’s spent a career deep inside the Deep State:

The Iran Case: Addressing Why Countries Want Nuclear Weapons

It offers an interesting perspective. The author, without putting matters in this way, is getting at the problem of when geopolitical actors start believing their own propaganda. How do you step back? For years psychopaths in Israel and the US have claimed that Iran was on the verge of going nuclear, even though there have been high level dissenting voices in the NatSec agencies of both countries who argued persuasively that going nuclear is not what Iran wants. Iran, they argued, would only go nuclear if pushed into a corner. So, predictably, we’ve been pushing Iran toward a corner.

Addressing the Demand

Addressing the demand side of proliferation is not a trivial or secondary approach. Indeed, it should be at the heart of nonproliferation analysis and strategy. Unfortunately, it is often downplayed, especially in the United States, where for many years the emphasis has been either on technical means of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons or, in cases where that appears likely to fail, considering military means to destroy a weapons capability or bringing about a change in regime. Yet, this technical/military approach, which has largely ignored the political and security context within which weapons decisions are taken, has often blinded both analysts and policymakers to other possibilities. ...

...

Iran’s Security Motivations

Iran, of course, is in a different neighborhood. To be sure, the United States and its allies have reasons to be bothered about Iran’s behavior, such as its support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. But Iran also has reason to be concerned about its security. Its principal antagonist, the United States, for many years not only practiced its dual containment policy against Iran (and Iraq) but also supported expatriate groups bent on overthrowing the regime in Tehran, including through violent means. Regime change in Tehran has been a recurrent theme in U.S. policy as it has been consistently in the policy of Israel, which also strongly supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Iran was accorded a place in the U.S. “axis of evil” and is now even more vulnerable than only a few years ago to nearby U.S. military power. However legitimate these U.S. policies and actions may be, along with the animosity toward Iran of some key regional countries, they do provide an objective basis for Iranian security concerns.

In other words, if you give a country an objective basis for believing they need nukes and continue to hammer that message at them for two or three decades, guess what? And now Iran is saying it’s willing to share its nuclear technology with other countries that are chafing at being under the jackboot of Israeli-US hegemony. Countries like Saudi Arabia. Follow stupid policy, win stupid prizes. Of course, all this also raises the recurrent chicken - egg conundrum that constantly arise when discussing US foreign policy.

Speaking of stupid policy, Ray McGovern has a pretty good article on the Zhou regime’s goofy Russia policy—if you can even dignify the way they treated Putin with the title of “policy”.

RAY McGOVERN: Russia & China — Two Against One

May 17, 2024

Xi Jinping’s reception of Putin yesterday in Beijing sealed the increasingly formidable strategic relationship, fundamentally misunderstood in Washington.

Right from the beginning Zhou thought he could play his ludicrous gangsta shtick with Putin, like he had done in Ukraine. The wiseguy dealing from a position of overwhelming strength. He did, with predictable results:

When Biden took office in 2021, his advisers assured him that he could play on Russia’s fear (sic) of China and drive a wedge between them. This became embarrassingly clear when Biden indicated what he had told Putin during their Geneva summit on June 16, 2021.

That meeting gave Putin confirmation that Biden and his advisers were stuck in a woefully outdated appraisal of Russia-China relations.

Here is the bizarre way Biden described his approach to Putin on China:

“Without quoting him [Putin] — which I don’t think is appropriate — let me ask a rhetorical question: You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world.”

The ‘Squeeze’

At the airport after the summit, Biden’s aides did their best to whisk him onto the plane, but failed to stop him from sharing more wisdom on China:

“Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China.”

Putin must have been stunned by Zhou’s stupidity. Or maybe not. On the other hand, this episode surely gave Putin and Xi pause for concern at how clueless the US Deep State appears to be, if foreign policy advisers were giving Zhou this kind of advice. As with Iran, we’re seeing the results. And yet top US officials continue their attempts to bully and threaten China—war by 2025, etc.

Continuing with Russia. We were warned a long time ago, except that this is far from a “guerilla war”:

Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi 

THIS WEEK IS the 10th anniversary of one of the most astonishingly successful predictions of modern journalism.

On May 13, 2014, legendary investigative journalist John Pilger wrote an article in the UK Guardian titled: “In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia”.

The US had taken control of Ukraine and would use it to provoke Russia into getting involved, Pilger prophesied. The result would be a NATO war in Europe.

“NATO's military encirclement [of Russia] has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine,” Pilger wrote. “If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained ‘pariah’ role will justify a NATO-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.”

The resulting CIA-manufactured war would be portrayed by the media as a Russian attack. Vladimir Putin would be “subjected to a western media campaign of vilification”, he wrote.

…

I highly recommend following the link. Have we learned anything since 2014? Just kidding. Here’s what our proxy poodles—or maybe chihuahuas—are up to, and you know they wouldn’t be doing this without our go ahead. First Kaja Kallas in Estonia:

Kathleen Tyson @Kathleen_Tyson_

NATO’s plan was to make Russia another Africa: smaller statelets, easily divided, easily corrupted, stripped of all wealth and sovereignty, permanently underdeveloped.

Putin sees the Ukraine-NATO conflict as existential.

He’s correct.

See before and after of Libya for the NATO intervention prototype.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil @ivan_8848

‘Russia’s defeat is not so bad. Then change could really happen. There are many nations that are part of Russia. If there were more small states, this would not be so bad. It’s not so bad if a big power becomes much smaller’ – Kaya Kallas talks about the division of Russia with a smile on her face

And in strategically crucial Georgia, where foreign ministers from the Baltics—the very idea is almost laughable—are demonstrating with the Soros paid crowd’s in the streets of Tbilisi:

Alex Rubinstein @RealAlexRubi May 18

The president of Georgia, who barely speaks Georgian & never visited it until she was in her mid-thirties, vetoed the bill that would've forced NGOs to disclose their funding.

90% of funding for  NGOs comes from outside Georgia. She is serving her masters in the EU & US, NOT Georgians.

Quote

Salome Zourabichvili @Zourabichvili_S May 18

Today, I vetoed the Russian law. This law, in its essence and spirit, is fundamentally Russian, contradicting our constitution and all European standards. It thus represents an obstacle to our European path.

She’s talking about a law that was passed 3x by the Georgian parliament, calling it “Russian … in its essence and spirit.” It’s Russian to expose the source of money flowing into the politics of a nation? Could we have some of that Russia “essence and spirit”, too?

We’ll close by pivoting back to the recent and hugely important Russia - China summit, and how the appointment of Belousov as the new Russian Minister of Defense plays into that. Among other things, this confirms that the change at the MoD was not a rebuke of Shoigu. Rather, it probably signals an upgrading of Putin’s own understanding of where Russia stands for the future and what needs to be done. Shoigu remains a key adviser, but Belousov is they guy who can restructure the Russian economy from his seat at MoD. I got this from a much longer quote at Simplicius, who was in turn quoting a French economist:

The DragonBear-Hug Signals Unprecedented Expansion of Ties

The French economist, Jacques Sapir, has known and respected Belousov for decades:

His appointment to the Ministry of Defense is of considerable importance. It marks the transformation of this ministry into a production, design, research and innovation agency for the armed forces.

The impact on military-industrial companies will be considerable. They will see their activities streamlined, and above all they will have to be attentive to the link between the short term and the long term through innovation processes.

This also means that a number of companies from techno-parks and start-ups will be integrated into this process to drive innovation. It is likely that Russia will set up an equivalent of DARPA to ensure civil/military contact.

The purely "military" functions of the Ministry could be placed under the authority of an enlarged General Staff, including those responsible for economic affairs, transport, intelligence, etc., on the model of the STAVKA of the Second World War.

This new STAVKA would then logically be attached to the Presidential Administration. We'll have to keep an eye on the news of this possible reorganization over the coming months.

Andrei Belousov is convinced that the development of military production MUST NOT be at the expense of civilian production. It's safe to assume that he will maintain the 40/60 ratio for military/civilian production.

However, his appointment indicates that the Russian government is looking far beyond the current hostilities, and expects a period of 10 to 20 years of "cold" confrontation with NATO countries.

He knows that in this logic, Russia's ability to resist, or even win, depends not only on military production alone, but also on the vitality of its economy and the innovation processes developing within it.

All of this fits in with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent remark that it would be “a generation” before Russia would be able to regard Europe as a partner. The appointment of Belousov thus appears to reflect the view at the top of the Kremlin that it’s time to plan far into the future, for a world of conflict and turmoil.