Trump Appointments, Russian Missiles

I thought I saw some slight reason for optimism yesterday with regard to Trump’s appointments/nominees. Not so much anymore. Where to begin?

Michael Tracey @mtracey

Scott Bessent would be the first openly gay Treasury Secretary and also the first openly hedge fund manager. Congratulations to him on these historic firsts

…

Scott Bessent didn't always agree with the work done by George Soros's nonprofit, but didn't see a conflict working for him -- until one day, when some people wanted to restrict the fund from making investments in Israel. That was a red-line for Bessent: he threatened to resign

4:35 PM · Nov 23, 2024

2nd Gen Cybertruck @ChadicusSmith

Bessent’s nomination makes official the unofficial MAGA acceptance of gay marriage & gay adoption

Two positions that were antithetical even to Democrats not that long ago

Interesting how the issue was settled with no debate or discussion

Inevitably a third position forms

5:05 PM · Nov 23, 2024

Michael Tracey @mtracey

Trump named Sebastian Gorka as a Senior Director for national security policy. Here's a discussion we had on X Spaces, with a special appearance from @aaronjmate

- Gorka calls Putin a "KGB killer" with whom no negotiated settlement can be reached to resolve the war Ukraine. "There isn't an off-ramp!" he shouts

- He says Ukraine will fight not just to the last man, but to the last 12 year old -- "They will fight to the last child"

- He says the Ukraine war "has nothing to do with NATO aggression"

- He salivates about how Trump killed hundreds of Russians in Syria and "little Vladdy Poo" didn't do anything, because he "shat his pants'

Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE

Seriously, @realDonaldTrump appoints nut job Sebastian Gorka as head of national security policy. He could have been cast in a Dos Equis advert, clearly loves the sound of his own voice, and not shy posting these nonsensical rants - laughably, Gorka claims here that sanctions will force ‘regime change’ in Iran, even though Trump 1.0 already tried max sanctions and failed on every level. To top it all off, Gorka denies war crimes ruling on Netanyahu & Israel, taking a genocide apologist position. Trump should not reward charlatan media clowns like this with cabinet positions…

5:47 AM · Nov 24, 2024

Alex (Sasha) Krainer @NakedHedgie

Gorka is hands down DJT's most disappointing appointment. He's a British agent.

10:10 AM · Nov 24, 2024

Can it get worse? Well, it turns out that Alex Wong, from yesterday, wants Americans to get used to war like we haven’t seen since WW2. Not kidding—I’m not, and I don’t think he is, either:

Michael Tracey @mtracey

Alex Wong, newly named Deputy National Security Advisor to Trump, career trajectory:

2007-2009: Bush State Department "advisor" for Iraq

2012: Foreign policy director for the Romney-Ryan campaign

2015-2017: Foreign policy advisor for Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)

2017-2021: Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Trump/Pompeo State Department

2021-2024: Hudson Institute [Home base for Neocons]

More evidence that an ideological revolution in the Republican Party is truly upon us

According to Alex Wong, Trump's incoming Deputy National Security Advisor, the American public must prepare itself for military conflict not seen since WWII, because his favored China-hostile policies could likely provoke military conflict, which he deems entirely justifiable

10:04 PM · Nov 23, 2024

OK, what’s going on with these and other appointments that touch on foreign policy in one way or another? Obviously—over the top obviously—we see pandering to Anglo-Zionist money interests. Is that it? Is Michael Tracey right in claiming all this as “evidence that an ideological revolution in the Republican Party is truly upon us”? Libertarian Reason agrees with Tracey’s worst forebodings (h/t Dissonant1):

The Classic Neocons Are Out, but They Might Still Get What They Want

Even without Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, the Trump administration still could be heading for regime change in the Middle East.

I still believe it’s more complicated than that. For starters, there’s more to Classic Neoconism than just regime change in the Middle East. There’s also revenge against Russia and perpetuation subjugation of China for enrichment. Of course, Trump 1.0 was largely a Neocon operation—sanctions out the wazoo all over the world, aborted arms control treaties, big stick threats at China. True, Trump was initially a bit of a heretic, in the sense that his variation was to play nice with Russia to have a free hand with China, rather than going for the whole ball of wax right out of the gate. But that didn’t last. Anyway, two out of three ain’t bad, and there was always the possibility of pivoting back on Russia once BRICS had been split. It’s kinda looking like we’re starting to see the formation of Trump 1.0 Redux. It’s the old Trumpian game of Speaking Loudly While Carrying What You Think Is A Big Stick. But a lot has changed in the last four years.

How do the appointments fit into this? Clearly, if you want to have Speak Loudly as part of your strategy it helps to have a lot of Loud Mouths in important positions. Check. This feeds into the Good Cop/Bad Cop part of the routine. Trump or his envoys will seem like reasonable people after a period of Loud Mouthing from this crowd. Thus Trump will be able to swoop in and make the greatest deal in the world, MAGA. Of that looks like the plan. But is it any more likely to work this time around after flopping the last time?

There are all sorts of problems with this strategy, starting with the now evident fact that the big stick the Anglo-Zionists thought they had—the US military—is looking more like a weak reed these days. We still have our Trident submarines, but nuking the world that you want to dominate is self defeating. Worse the US military’s conventional capabilities are being rapidly degraded—and even being shown to be obsolete. There’s a reason why our Carrier Battle Groups are now giving the Middle East a pretty wide berth. The three main Neocon regime change candidates—Russia, China, Iran—are also now much more tightly integrated, both economically and militarily. Sanctions and/or kinetic military force look like not working at all against Russia, China, and Iran. And that’s especially the case in the wake of Putin’s “successful test” of Russia’s new intermediate range missile.

This could leave Trump scrambling for a new foreign policy while stuck with a bunch of goofballs in important positions. Consider the implications of what Russia just did. Scott Ritter has a very good update on what we’re starting to learn about Russia’s new Oreshnik missile. Ritter goes through the developmental history of this new missile and how that ties in with earlier intermediate range missiles and the Trump-aborted INF treaty.

On the Brink

I highly recommend the entire article, but for our purposes here I want to focus on the Oreshnik’s capabilities and how that affects the balance of terror:

The INF Treaty had been in force since July 1988 and had successfully mandated the elimination of an entire category of nuclear-armed weapons deemed to be among the most destabilizing in the world.

In 2017, the Russian government decided to halt the further development of the RS-26 given the complexities brought on by the competing arms control restrictions.

In 2019, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the INF Treaty. The US immediately began testing intermediate-range cruise missiles and announced its intention to develop a new family of hypersonic intermediate range missiles known as Dark Eagle.

Think about that and ask: Why should Putin trust Trump, especially given 1) the appointments of goofball Neocon Russophobes, and 2) Trump’s own campaign rhetoric about coercing peace in Ukraine?

Despite this provocation, the Russian government announced a unilateral moratorium of producing and deploying IRBMs, declaring that this moratorium would remain in place until the US or NATO deployed an IRBM on European soil.

In September 2023, the US deployed a new containerized missile launch system capable of firing the Tomahawk cruise missile to Denmark as part of a NATO training exercise. The US withdrew the launcher from Denmark upon conclusion of the training.

In late June 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would resume production of intermediate-range missiles, citing the US deployment of intermediate-range missiles to Denmark. “We need to start production of these strike systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where — if necessary to ensure our safety — to place them,” Putin said.

...

… Moreover, the weapons delivery system [of the Oreshnik] appears to be taken from the newly developed Yars-M, which uses independent post-boost vehicles, or IPBVs, …, instead of traditional multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles, or MIRVs.

In the classic weapons configuration for a modern Russian missile, the final stage of the missile, also known as the post-boost vehicle (PBV or bus), contains all the MIRVs. Once the missile exits the earth’s atmosphere, the PBV detaches from the missile body, and then independently maneuvers, releasing each warhead at the required point for it to reach its intended target. ...

A missile using an IPBV configuration, however, can release each reentry vehicle at the same time, allowing each warhead to follow an independent trajectory to its target. This allows for greater flexibility and accuracy.

The Oreshnik was designed to carry between four and six IPBVs. The one used against Dnipropetrovsk was a six IPBV-capable system. Each war head in turn contained six separate submunitions, consisting of metal slugs forged from exotic alloys that enabled them to maintain their form during the extreme heat generated by hypersonic re-entry speeds. These slugs are not explosive; rather they use the combined effects of the kinetic impact at high speed and the extreme heat absorbed by the exotic alloy to destroy their intended target on impact.

The military industrial target struck by the Oreshnik was hit by six independent warheads, each containing six submunitions. In all, the Dnipropetrovsk facility was struck be 36 separate munitions, inflicting devastating damage, including to underground production facilities used by Ukraine and its NATO allies to produce short- and intermediate-range missiles.

The short story is that, not only is there no defense against these Mach 10 missiles, but their design is extremely flexible and allows for the destruction of most hardened targets without going nuclear. Thus:

But the Oreshnik can also strike other targets, including logistic facilities, command and control facilities, air defense facilities (indeed, the Russians just put the new Mk. 41 Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile defense facility that was activated on Polish soil on the Oreshnik’s target list).

In short, the Oreshnik is a game-changer in every way. In his November 21 remarks, Putin chided the United States, noting that the decision by President Trump in 2019 to withdraw from the INF Treaty was foolish, made even more so by the looming deployment of the Oreshnik missile, which would have been banned under the treaty.

On November 22, Putin announced that the Oreshnik was to enter serial production. He also noted that the Russians already had a significant stockpile of Oreshnik missiles that would enable Russia to respond to any new provocations by Ukraine and its western allies, thereby dismissing the assessments of western intelligence which held that, as an experimental system, the Russians did not have the ability to repeat attacks such as the one that took place on November 21.

As a conventionally armed weapon, the Oreshnik provides Russia with the means to strike strategic targets without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. This means that if Russia were to decide to strike NATO targets because of any future Ukrainian provocation (or a direct provocation by NATO), it can do so without resorting to nuclear weapons.

This gives Russia flexibility, the ability to tailor their reponse to US provocations. If the US continues with ATACMS strikes into Russia, Russia is not bound to an all or nothing response: Nukes or just threatening rhetoric. Russia has now demonstrated its ability to inflict devasting damage using conventional weaponry for which there is no defense. The US, by contrast, in the current state of affairs is largely locked into exactly that type of all or nothing straitjacket. Russia has escalatory dominance and the US has little or nothing with which to respond—short of mutually assured destruction.

In fact, that’s exactly the bluster that Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan of our Strategic Command resorted to on November 20—the day before Putin delivered the Oreshnik message:

“I think everybody would agree if we have to have a[ nuclear] exchange, then we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States. So it’s terms that are most acceptable to the United States that puts us in a position to continue to lead the world, right? So we're largely viewed as the world leader. And do we lead the world in an area where we’ve considered loss? The answer is no, right? And so it would be to a point where we would maintain sufficient – we’d have to have sufficient capability. We’d have to have reserve capacity. You wouldn’t expend all of your resources to gain winning, right? Because then you have nothing to deter from at that point.”

Two things emerge from this statement. First is the notion that the United States believes it can fight and win a nuclear “exchange” with Russia.

Second is the idea that the United States can win a nuclear war with Russia while retaining enough strategic nuclear capacity to deter the rest of the world from engaging in a nuclear war after the nuclear war with Russia is done.

To “win” a nuclear war with Russia implies the United States has a war-winning plan.

Admiral Buchanan is the person in charge of preparing these plans. He has stated that these plans “are sufficient in terms of the actions they seek to hold the adversary to,” but this clearly is not the case—the United States has failed to deter Russia from issuing a new nuclear war doctrine and from employing in combat for the first time in history a strategic nuclear capable ballistic missile.

Buchanan is clearly talking about a preemptive nuclear strike against Russia—a strike that would destroy most, but not all, of Russia’s nuclear strike capability. The US would have to absorb the remainder of Russia’s nukes, but we’d still have enough of our own nukes left to “lead” the world.

And that scenario involves a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Russia’s strategic nuclear forces designed to eliminate most of Russia’s nuclear weapons.

Such an attack can only be carried out by the Trident missiles carried aboard the Ohio-class submarines of the United States Navy.

…

And there are reports that the United States Navy has just announced that it is increasing the operational readiness status of its deployed Ohio-class submarines.

It is high time for everyone, from every walk of life, to understand the path we are currently on. Left unchecked, events are propelling us down a highway to hell that leads to only one destination—a nuclear Armageddon that everyone agrees can’t be won, and yet the United States is, at this very moment, preparing to “win.”

A nuclear “exchange” with Russia, even if the United States were able to execute a surprise preemptive nuclear strike, would result in the destruction of dozens of American cities and the deaths of more than a hundred million Americans.

And this is if we “win.”

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The United States just held an election where the winning candidate, President-elect Donald Trump, campaigned on a platform which sought to end the war in Ukraine and avoid a nuclear war with Russia.

And yet the administration of President Joe Biden has embarked on a policy direction which seeks to expand the conflict in Ukraine and is bringing the United States to the very brink of a nuclear war with Russia.

This is a direct affront to the notion of American democracy.

That’s insane, but it reveals to all the world what the basis for US “leadership” boils down to: naked nuclear threats. But my guess is that the Russians aren’t going to budge for this kind of bluster. In fact, I doubt they’ll settle for anything less than peace of their terms. I don’t see how these Trump appointees or Trump’s strategy of bluffing will get far with Putin. Putin knows Trump. Just as he knows Zhou, and Barry, and Dubya. He’s already totally familiar with the US act. I’d really like to see a sign from Trump that he gets this.