The Point Viktor Orban Has Been Trying To Make

There’s lots of yackety yack going on at the NATO Self Congratulation. Having failed in Ukraine they claim to want extend “peace” to the rest of the world—the Middle East, Africa. It reminds you of Tacitus’ famous quote from the speech Calgacus—leader of the Caledonian Confederacy—made to his troops about the Roman Empire:

One of Tacitus’ most famous lines is “They make a desert and call it peace.”  What I didn’t realize until I read The Agricola is that Tacitus is quoting (or paraphrasing) Calgacus, an enemy of Rome.  The full speech (chaps 30-32) is awesome.  Highlight:

These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by
their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their
enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West:
the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

I can just imagine the Romans explaining that the slaughter was a small short-run cost dwarfed by massive long-run benefits.  I’m skeptical, but don’t know enough about pre- and post-Roman Britain to speak with confidence.

Certainly that—plunder and oppression of rich and poor alike, in the name of peace and freedom—has been the record of the Anglo-Zionist Empire. Certainly, benefits have come to other nations, just as was the case with the Roman Empire—whose legacy endures still. Still, in the end …

Augustine of Hippo wrote The City of God in light of the Visigoth sack of Rome in 410 AD. As he lay dying in Hippo, North Africa, the city was under siege by the Vandals. He reviewed the the benefits Rome had brought to the world against the violence and devastation, the slavery, the economic plunder, and found Rome wanting. Christopher Dawson, looking back on Augustine, places empire in a perspective that predates our present crisis but is prescient regarding the New World Order and the Rules Based Order:

Dawson saw the present age as one similar to that of Augustine or Ignatius, and in need of saints who have the vision to lead the faithful into the next era. The Western world. he thought, was facing another of its cultural discontinuities that displace the old order and usher in a new social realm. The question that remained, for Dawson as for Eliot, was whether this new era was to be Christian or a new civilization which recognizes neither moral laws nor human rights.

Just as Rome was faced with a climactic crisis and judgment on its use of power, so too we see in the NATO summit the attempt to justify (gaslight) the Anglo-Zionist hegemony. As Augustine saw in the case of Rome, in the final analysis and with all due allowances, it rings rather hollow.

Much more could be—has been—said and written. The comparison between the ancient and modern empires, allowing for differences of culture and technology, remains compelling. Bu here we turn to military matters. The Anglo-Zionists claim to be defending “civilization” itself from the barbarian Putin and his Slavic hordes. It’s a thin disguise for the amorality inherent in the Rules Based Order, the New Order that Dawson saw coming. The ideological frenzy of the Anglo-Zionists, divorced from and rejecting the cultural roots of Christendom, blinds them to their increasing impotence, even as they plot largely symbolic measures to preserve their hegemony.

Andrei Martyanov, today, cites Douglas Macgregor (whom he frequently criticizes regarding WW2 history). I’ll insert Martyanov’s entire blog, but I’ll also insert Macgregor’s entire X post—followed by the RFK tweet that Macgregor was commenting on. The theme is the unreality behind all the NATO scheming and bombast:

An Interesting Quip...

... from Douglas Macgregor.  Same ol' issue of SLOCs and sustainability of any US force in Europe. 

RFK JR is spot on regarding Washington’s poorly disguised attempt to drag us into war with Russia, but the situation in Ukraine is very different and we have no ground troops to send. The European peoples don’t want a war and neither do Americans. In 1965 the mood in America was very supportive of intervention in SE Asia to fight communism. I know. I was there. It would take four years for American support to collapse.

In addition, for reasons of geography, Ukraine cannot become another Vietnam. In 1965 no one could or would interdict us on the way to Vietnam. Today, Russian subs would immediately shut down the Atlantic and all of our staging areas in Eastern Europe would [be] utterly demolished in a hail of missiles. Worse, US-NATO air and missile defenses are only capable of defending 5% of NATO’s European territory. In the space of 5-7 daisy [days] our missile supply would be exhausted. I could go on, but you get the point. It’s a dead end. Any attempt to mimic the approach to Vietnam will end abruptly and badly for the US and Europe. That was the point that Orban tried to make.

Well. Technological and operational reality is a bitch, you cannot escape it, no matter how you try and any shipping through Atlantic Ocean will be ground to a halt in a matter of days. Naval warfare changed dramatically and you can not defend SLOCs from technology which is several generations ahead of whatever Houthis have, plus add here massive quantities of it. We all know what Houthis did and how they paralyzed marine traffic in the Red Sea. Combined NATO navies couldn't a thing about it other than barely defending themselves. Now imagine when a couple of Yasens (pr. 885) and several Akulas (pr. 971M) go out to hunt--good luck trying finding them without risking own aircraft carries. Just classic escort by something like Arleigh Burke class DDGs is a death trap, because no US asset has the ability to deal with salvos of newest anti-shipping missiles. So, no good options. Those escorts will be sunk and "convoy" or dispersed group of strategic lift vessels will be found out and sunk too. It is 2024, Ladies and Gentleman, not 1943.

But in the end, let's imagine that the US somehow manages to put some force into Europe--it will not be sustainable in the serious war no matter what. Have you seen the US "force protection" capabilities? Patriot PAC3, NASAMS et al--seriously? That's you answer. I'll remind you--estimates for US casualties in such a war will average for the US Army on 3,600 KIAs and WIAs daily. US Army is incapable to fight such a war even if to imagine that SLOCs somehow will be relatively safe. Neither is American society.

Note RFK’s use of the word “imperium”. Although Macgregor was at pains to argue that Ukraine as a new—but better—Vietnam War is a nothing but a Neocon fantasy, divorced from reality, I thought it worthwhile to present RFK’s full tweet:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr @RobertKennedyJr

This week the world beholds the sorry spectacle of a western imperium careening towards catastrophe as NATO descends on Washington. The DC press corps is rightfully concerned about the direction of travel: “Storm clouds gather as NATO leaders converge on Washington…” And well they should be, because NATO’s top priority right now is waging war, not maintaining peace. NATO has agreed with Zelensky to set up a command, under a three star general, with 700 soldiers in Germany and Eastern Europe. The headlines of press releases reveal a consistent pattern of dangerous escalation, as top NATO enforcers pressure individual countries to pay up and fight, exulting that: “for the first time, we have a NATO document agreed at the heads-of-state government level.”

The pattern is exactly the same as in Vietnam, which started with the CIA running paramilitary operations in the conflict area. As the NY Times revealed months ago, the CIA has been operating twelve bases in Ukraine for ten years. According to Ukrainian General Serhii Dvoretskiy, they are financed “One hundred and ten percent,” by the CIA.

Next in Vietnam came the “military advisers”. In Ukraine, these have taken the form of mercenaries and “retired” US military personnel. They are there on the ground, supervising the training of Ukrainian draftees.

While the presence of official US and NATO military personnel in Ukraine is limited, the next step looms before us: 500,000 troops have been placed on “high readiness.”

Here’s what NATO leaders have already agreed to:

“First, NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine…Second, a financial pledge [of at least $40B/year]... Allies are [also] set to endorse a pledge that will strengthen transatlantic defense industrial cooperation, to boost production.”

A NATO Summit in Washington will be an utterly different affair when I am President. Stop the carnage. End the warfare state. No more dollars for death. #Kennedy24

The same considerations that Macgregor and Martyanov present regarding Europe apply to the Far East, as Will Schryver argues:

Will Schryver @imetatronink

The US Military Could Not Project Decisive Power Against China In Its Adjacent Seas

Professor James Holmes from the US Naval War College delivered this presentation last week. I believe he measured his words carefully to avoid the charge of defeatism.

But a discerning interpretation of his arguments essentially boils down to: the US military lacks the firepower and the logistical wherewithal to project decisive power against China in its adjacent seas.

Of course, those who have followed me for any length of time know that I have been making this argument for several years now.

I want to particularly commend Dr. Holmes for adding his highly credentialed voice to my longstanding ridicule of John Mearsheimer's misinformed argument that Chinese military power is markedly inferior to that of the United States.

11:55 AM · Feb 1, 2024

Here’s a link to Holmes’ hour long video:

NWC Issues in National Security, Lecture 5 "China and Zombies”

From Professor Holmes:

Every election year undead myths about how to calculate the power of the U.S. Navy go shambling around. Politicians point to budgets, or tonnage, or numbers of hulls and airframes as though a single measure of U.S. naval power reveals how much sea power is enough. It does not. The lecture takes aim at these zombies of U.S. maritime strategy before turning to the map of the Pacific to show why it is so hard for the U.S. sea services to overpower a rival great power in its own backyard.

Finally, a reminder about the Western media—no surprise:

Hassan Mafi ‏@thatdayin1992 

The fake Hamas beheaded 40 babies story got more coverage in Western mainstream media than the Lancet study that estimated the death toll in Gaza could exceed 186,000.

1:04 AM · Jul 11, 2024