The Vietnamization Of Ukraine?

Right, so there’s a big purge going on in Kiev today—and ongoing purge that will ripple through the Ukro-Nazi regime for a few days. It began under the heading of an anti-corruption drive. An anti-corruption drive in Ukraine is something like a classified documents security crackdown in the US (h/t GT640Z)—a traditional way of removing officials who are viewed, for one reason or another, as a nuisance:

The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee

Batch Of Classified Documents Found On Walmart Clearance Shelf

babylonbee.comBatch Of Classified Documents Found On Walmart Clearance ShelfSMYRNA, DE — Biden is once again embroiled in scandal after yet another box of his classified documents was found on the clearance shelf of a local Walmart.

The purge began within days of CIA Director Burns’ crash visit to Kiev, supposedly to brief Zelensky on Russia’s planned moves. The reality is that many of the purged officials constitute Zelensky’s inner circle of advisers. Presumably Burns went to Kiev to inform Zelensky that the US was taking over direct direction, and to brief Zelensky on what his new role would be. Interestingly, the last I heard of Zelensky’s whereabouts he was in Boca Raton. Maybe he’s back in Kiev today, but he was out of country for a while.

What it actually looks like is the US’s traditional reaction to foreign wars going badly—take control of the proxy government via some sort of coup. In retrospect, we probably could have seen see this one coming. The US recently ordered Zelensky to withdraw Ukrainian forces from Bakhmut—a “death pit” created by Russia for the Ukrainian forces. That order was supported by the Ukrainian military chief, General Zaluzhny, and Zelensky’s refusal to follow orders followed a pattern of such behavior. My speculation is that Zelensky was following the advice of his inner circle of advisers in defying US orders and the US Deep State got fed up.

At this stage, going full Diem on Zelensky isn’t really an option. Instead, as the two Alexes—Mercouris and Christoforou—suggest, the US is moving to isolate Zelensky from his former advisers and to ring him round with officials who will follow orders and will make sure Zelensky does, too. The new in-crowd will probably include Zaluzhny. Here’s their hour long discussion:

-- GEROMAN -- time will tell - 👀 -- @GeromanAT

Isolating Zelensky. Collective West builds intervention force for west Ukraine youtu.be/4XtrMST9iDQ via @YouTube

youtu.beIsolating Zelensky. Collective West builds intervention force for west UkraineIsolating Zelensky. Collective West builds intervention force for west UkraineThe Duran: Episode 1494*****LOCALS COMMUNITY***** https://theduran.locals.com1 ...

Here’s the core of what they’re saying:

Mercouris: [5:20] Whatever explanation there is for all these moves, ... one way or another it does suggest growing instability in Kiev. ... in the early 60s in Saigon, as the Americans got more and more involved we saw some signs of instability there, eventually leading to a coup against the president of the country, President Diem. There's beginning to be a feel something like that about this in Ukraine now. Purge--massive purge, I think purge is not the wrong word--of the entire military, political, security structure of Ukraine going on in the middle of a war. When the news from the battlefields is turning bad, and when the Americans are incredibly heavily involved, something is going on, something BIG is clearly going on, and it suggests growing instability in Kiev.

Christoforou: Yeah, the excuse they gave for Burns visit was that they wanted to brief Zelensky on Russia's next military moves, which is absolutely ridiculous. ...

Mercouris: Absolutely. It's nonsense. ...

Christoforou: So the question is, what's going on? When stuff like this happens, does this mean that they're trying to consolidate control around Zelensky, or are they looking to remove control from around Zelensky and perhaps fill it with some sort of new government? ...

Mercouris: I don't think this is a good look for Zelensky. [The people who were sacked] were people who were very close to him. ... It looks to me like somebody is trying to tighten control of the Ukrainian government because they feel that things are going badly wrong ... [Goes on to speculate that Zelensky will ultimately be purged, like Diem.]

There’s lots more interesting discussion, including Boris Johnson’s recent visit and the somewhat mysterious recent helicopter crash which removed the top security leadership. Mercouris states that there are theories that the UK is supportive of Zelensky, not so much of Zaluzhny—so, a difference between the US and the UK.

Obviously we’ll need to see how this plays out. It doesn’t bode well for Ukraine. Purges in the middle of a war? Rarely a good idea, no matter what, and especially when the purge is directed by a foreign power.

But here’s what interests me more particularly. This is all going on at a time when Zhou is under sustained fire—from sources unknown. Liz Peek was speculating on who’s behind Garage Gate—the great new parlor game in DC—but it seems that nobody has any really good theory. My view remains that, the way this is going, suggests coordination among several influential players. We started with improper storage of classified docs. That was followed by more discoveries over a period of days. We’re now moving into the discovery of possible connections between those docs and the activities of the Biden Family Criminal Enterprise. Influential senators are cutting loose from Zhou, and the drip, drip, drip continues.

Readers will recall that my original theory was that the Deep State, understanding that the Ukraine proxy war against Russia is an existential crisis for the US, with ramifications around the world—especially for the hegemony of King Dollar, on which the American Empire’s dominance rests. That war on Russia was supposed to be over in weeks, leaving Russia—and Putin, most particularly—utterly crushed. A waste of space POTUS like Zhou might have been serviceable in that scenario, but we all know that that’s not what has transpired. Russia is going from strength to strength—militarily, politically, and above all economically. Saudi Arabia chose the Davos Forum as the venue to, basically, announce the end of the petro-dollar. My view was that the Deep State decided that they couldn’t address this metastasizing crisis with Zhou in the Oval Office. At some point, in a world war, from a constitutional standpoint, you cannot do without an effective CinC.

I still believe that something like this is driving the move to remove Zhou. If so, that’s not necessarily good news—depending on who’s behind it. If the civilian national security structure—the Neocons—are driving the move against Zhou, that could presage a doubling down of US involvement in Ukraine against Russia. That’s what unfolding events in Kiev suggest. How will the uniformed US military react? We don’t really know.

Later in the Duran video, Mercouris points out that all the tanks being talked up won’t be ready for deployment until summer—but Ukraine faces an operational crisis in the war RIGHT NOW. This is undoubtedly true, and lends credence to my theory—whoever is the moving force behind it all. Now, today MoA discusses some of this:

Ukraine SitRep - No Southern Push Yet, Kiev Government Trouble, Tanks And Escalation

There’s plenty of matter of interest in the article but, most importantly for a strategic overview, at the end he links to Alistair Crooke’s latest:

The Most Egregious Mistake

The U.S. government is hostage to its financial hegemony in a way that is rarely fully understood.

As is usual, the article is fairly lengthy, but I want to quote several especially telling passages. What Crooke is talking about is America’s existential crisis—which is also, please note, a crisis of identity. If I’m correct, then what’s driving events both in DC and Kiev, is the realization on the part of the Neocons that they’ve screwed up—egregiously. But they’re fighting against that realization.

Washington dares not – indeed cannot – yield on dollar primacy, the ultimate signifier for ‘American decline’. And so the U.S. government is hostage to its financial hegemony in a way that is rarely fully understood.

The Biden Team cannot withdraw its fantastical narrative of Russia’s imminent humiliation; they have bet the House on it. Yet it has become an existential issue for the U.S. precisely because of this egregious initial miscalculation that has been subsequently levered-up into a preposterous narrative of a floundering, at any moment ‘collapsing’ Russia.

Yes, that’s the worldview of the smarty pants Neocons. Simplistic. Betraying the triumph of ideology over insight into reality—the hallmark of the modern West. The triumph of Will over Reason: we want it to be true, so it must be true.

So why does this ‘failed expectation’ constitute such a world-shaking moment for our era? It is because the West fears that its miscalculation might well lead to the collapse of its dollar hegemony. But the fear extends well beyond that too – (bad as ‘that’ would be from the U.S. perspective).

Note that Crooke states the “the West fears … collapse of ITS dollar hegemony.” This dollar crisis is an existential crisis for the entire West, and NOT just the US, because King Dollar—until very recently—included a US beholden to the “offshore dollar” that is central to Tom Luongo’s Theory of Everything. That’s all changing, too, if Luongo is right—but the existential crisis in Ukraine is happening RIGHT NOW.

[Arch Neocon] Robert Kagan has outlined how external forward motion and the U.S.’ ‘global mission’ is the lifeblood of American internal polity – more than any equivocating nationalism, Professor Paul suggests. From the founding of the country, the U.S. has been an expansionary republican empire; without this forward motion, civic bonds of domestic unity come into question. If Americans are not united for expansionary republican greatness, by what purpose Professor Paul asks, are all these fissiparous races, creeds, and cultures in America, bound together? (Woke culture has proved no solution, being divisive rather than any pole around which unity can be built).

The point here is that Russian Resilience, at a single stroke, shattered the plate-glass floor to western convictions about its ability to ‘manage the world’. After the several western debacles centred on regime-change by military shock-and-awe, even hardened neo-cons – by 2006 – had conceded that a weaponised financial system was the only means to ‘secure the Empire’.

King Dollar weaponized—The key to Global Empire. There you have it. But please reread what Crooke is writing about the fragile unity of American society.

‘War – is the ultimate test – and Great Revealer’ (per Todd).

…

Here, we return to the ‘Egregious Miscalculation’. This evolving New Order existentially threatens dollar hegemony – the U.S. created its hegemony through demanding that oil (and other commodities) be priced in dollars, and by facilitating a frenetic financialisation of asset markets in the U.S. It is this demand for dollars which alone has allowed the U.S. to fund its government deficit (and its defence budget) for nothing.

In this respect, this highly financialised dollar paradigm possesses qualities reminiscent of a sophisticated Ponzi scheme: It pulls in ‘new investors’, attracted by zero-cost credit leverage and the promise of ‘assured’ returns (assets pumped ever upwards by Fed liquidity). But the lure of ‘assured returns’ is tacitly underwritten by the inflation of one asset ‘bubble’ after another, in a regular sequence of bubbles – inflated at zero cost – before being finally ‘dumped’. The process then, is ‘rinsed and repeated’ ad seriatim.

Here is the point: Like a true Ponzi, this system relies on constant, and ever more, ‘new’ money coming into the scheme, to offset ‘payments out’ (financing U.S. government expenditure). Which is to say, U.S. hegemony now depends on constant overseas dollar expansion.

And, as with any pure Ponzi, once ‘money in’ falters, or redemptions spike, the scheme collapses.

…

Washington [the Neocons] clearly made a stratospherically bad error in thinking that sanctions – and the assumed collapse of Russia – would be a ‘slam dunk’ outcome; one so self-evident that it required no rigorous ‘thinking through’.

Team Biden thus has painted the U.S. into a tight Ukraine ‘corner’. But at this stage – realistically – what can the White House do? It cannot withdraw the narrative of Russia’s ‘coming humiliation’ and defeat. They cannot let the narrative go because it has become an existential component to save what it can of the ‘Ponzi’.

There’s lots more at the link. However, note that, according to Luongo’s Theory of Everything, the Fed and the NY Guys are consciously aiding this process of unwinding the Ponzi. Remember, Powell has openly stated that he is open to multiple reserve currencies. What they understand is that the US does, in fact, possess the resources to come through a drastic economic restructuring and find itself on a firmer foundation. We can hope. Hope is based on reason. There are reasons to believe that this is possible, but the human factor is the real problem.