Sunday War And Geopolitics Roundup

Doug Macgregor has started up a Twitter account. Should prove to be a very handy resource.

Perspective:

Douglas Macgregor

@DougAMacgregor

President Putin, in contrast to us, is not impulsive. He's not emotional. He's moved very deliberately and very cautiously. He has resisted the temptation to smash everything in sight. He wants to negotiate, that's abundantly clear...

9:42 PM · May 24, 2023

Michael McFaul

@McFaul

This week we learned that when faced with the choice of escalating with force against or negotiating with a foe, Putin chose the latter. That's an important lesson for NATO regarding new military assistance. Stop fretting about escalation. Send ATACMs now.

12:46 PM · Jun 30, 2023

Big Serge translates McCaul:

@witte_sergei

Jun 30

“Putin is a reasonable man open to negotiation, therefore our policy should be escalation.”

What could possibly go wrong with that policy?

John Helmer reporting from Moscow. I’m never sure how to take Helmer. For the record, Putin publicly stated several weeks before the Prigozhin farce that he was leaving the conduct of the war in the hands of the General Staff:

POLITICAL POWER OUT OF THE GUN BARREL, BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TOO – GORILLA RADIO INVESTIGATES THE END OF ALL THREE FOR YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN, MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY TOO

When Yevgeny Prigozhin arrived at Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov, announcing to Lieutenant-General Vladimir Alexeyev that he was on his way Moscow to remove Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, Alexeyev told him “Go get them.”

Prigozhin didn’t take the road to Moscow. The thin column of Wagner men began to disperse enroute, while those who pressed on were stopped at the Oka River. While Prigozhin was announcing, and western media megaphoning, that he had taken control of Rostov, Prigozhin didn’t know that Shoigu was in Rostov; controlled the city; and with the General Staff decided on the tactics which quickly scattered the Wagner forces, halted Prigozhin’s public relations campaign,and cut off his money supply.

For the General Staff, this was a tactic of giving Prigozhin enough rope to hang himself. He did. The General Staff defeated him handily; the military engagement was concluded almost bloodlessly. Politically, the General Staff won much more.

…

To save himself under house arrest in Belarus, Prigozhin has appealed to Putin for release: “we did not aim to overthrow the existing regime and the legitimately elected government.” Prigozhin also wants cash back “so that PMC [private military company] Wagner would continue to work in a legal framework.”

Putin’s answer has been to delegate the political power to the barrel of the gun; that’s the General Staff. The investigation of Prigozhin’s fraud, tax evasion, criminal conspiracy and other offences go now to the security services, the Interior Ministry, and state prosecutors.“

The General Staff doesn’t control the security services, the Interior Ministry, or the prosecutors. OTOH, I don’t doubt there will be communication among all entities.

Predictions:

Kim Dotcom

@KimDotcom

“I don’t think we’ll ever get to the 2024 election. Things will implode in Washington before that.”

— Colonel Douglas Macgregor

I don't think we'll ever get to the 2024 election. I think things are going to implode in Washington before then. I think our economic financial condition is fragile--it's gonna come home to roost in ugly ways. I will tell you, I don't know exactly how it will happen. I think we're gonna end up in a situation where we find out the banks are closed for two or three weeks and nobody can get into them. I also think that the levels of violence and criminality in our cities is so high that it's going to spill over into other places in society. People that normally think they can live remote from the problem are now beginning to be touched by the problem.

Then I look at this thing in Ukraine. I think Ukraine is going to lose catastrophically. It's gonna be a complete collapse, and that too is gonna have an effect here at home because people are gonna say, Wait a minute, everybody told us Ukraine is winning, everybody told us X, Y, and Z--it's sort of the Russia Hoax on steroids. All of those things are gonna come together or converge in some way that's gonna prevent us from reaching, y'know, the status quo: Oh, another election, Oh, another set of campaigns, and so forth.

12:57 AM · Jul 2, 2023

A couple things.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything that Macgregor says on politics and economics. On the other hand, a good argument can be made that America is reaching some sort of inflection point, and it would be foolish to pooh-pooh such arguments. We’ve seen too much in the last ten years or so. Regarding the financial system, Tom Luongo’s view—which is one that I do generally trust—is that, while the US is in a bad situation, everyone else is worse off and will be looking to shelter assets in the US, which will cushion the coming blow to the US. At the same time, Luongo does also see the possibility for widespread regional bank failures as the result of the crisis in commercial R/E that he sees hitting in the Fall.

One area that I think Macgregor may be mistaken on—or maybe mistaken as to the degree—has to do with Ukraine. I believe that people may be catching on to the grift. Two signs of that could be the degree to which RFK has caught on, as well as the very rough reception that Lindsey! received the other day in SC. My impression was that antiwar sentiment is at the bottom of both, and that Trump is beginning to pick up on the raw anger behind it—that bombast about how he would have dealt with it isn’t sufficient. Macgregor sees this as perhaps an opportunity for Trump and RFK to come together in a third party. I don’t believe that coalition would work. As for a third party ticket generally … I dunno.

Military perspective:

Scott Ritter

@RealScottRitter

1) For all those armchair generals who snipe at Russian military performance, reflect on what the US and NATO have and haven’t been doing for the past 20 years. Neither [US nor NATO] could survive long in the kind of war Ukraine and Russia are fighting today—it is beyond their imagination.

10:30 AM · Jul 2, 2023

2) The use of massed fires is something NATO is incapable of doing—they lack the equipment and doctrine. The use of precision guided munitions is no substitute—the delivery systems will be rapidly attrited by Russian counter fires. Russian artillery supremacy is a game changer.

3) The perceived NATO air power advantage will melt away in the face of Russia’s integrated air defense network. Neither the US nor NATO has trained or operated against such a threat. And if Russia is able to nullify or neutralize US/NATO air power—checkmate.

4) The US and NATO have prepared for a war premised on total spectrum dominance and high speed data capable communications. While this worked in Afghanistan and Iraq, None of this will function against Russia. Russian EW is highly advanced. So, too, is it’s ASAT capability.

5) Russia has already experienced the mistakes all militaries make in the opening phases of a major conflict. It has adapted accordingly. The U.S. and NATO have yet to adapt to the mistakes they will make when it is their turn. The gap of competence between the two will be wide.