Zhou Regime, Ukraine Roundup

The Ugly American Redux

Of course, in what follows we’re not presenting Zhou as some great geo-strategic thinker. In fact, we’re not presenting him as a thinker at all. However, he is—whether he knows it or not—the frontman for the US establishment regime, whose foreign policy has been run by Neocons stretching back into the Clinton era at least. Below I’ve assembled links to useful and informative commentary that’s out today. Let’s start.

Back when the Russia - Ukraine conflict was brewing many of us were listening to old interviews with UChicago political scientist John Mearshimer—a lucid analyst of foreign policy in a “realist” mode. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has an excellent article today that presents Mearshimer’s latest ruminations:

Mearsheimer: Russia Sees ‘Existential Threat,’ Must Win

University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer, widely respected "dean" of the realism school (aka, "offensive realism") of international relations, has put the conflict in Ukraine in a context that everyone can understand – and needs to understand before it is too late.

Speaking at an April 7 webinar, Mearsheimer was, true to form, "offensively realistic". He explained: (1) the root cause lies in the April 2008 NATO summit Declaration that Ukraine (and Georgia) "will become members of NATO"; and (2) that Russia sees this as an "existential threat" and therefore "must win" this one.

For President Joe Biden and the Democrats, even though Ukraine poses zero strategic threat to the U.S., a Russian "win" would be, politically, a "devastating defeat", says Mearsheimer. In that sense, the conflict is a "must-win" for the US as well. Underscoring the obvious, he noted it is impossible for both sides to "win" – at least not in current circumstances.

Compromise? … has become equally impossible with the years-long demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin. … [But] there are always unintended consequences from what historian Barbara Tuchman called the March of Folly toward war.

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NATO is still doubling down, sending weaponry into Ukraine, ... However "offensive" you may find Mearsheimer’s realism, it is, well, real. His enviable historical record is clear; he is not given to overstatement. And so he must be taken seriously when he points out that the Ukraine conflict is more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis of 60 years ago and that, like the situation in 1962, escalation to the use of nuclear weapons is a growing possibility.

Here’s a nice sample of Mearshimer’s current thinking—note that Mearshimer states what nobody in the West will say out loud: The American Left is siding with Ukrainian Nazis to sabotage the peace that all sane nations want. Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France, etc. It’s a disgrace. The US is pushing a pointless war and is doing all in its power to prevent a peaceful resolution:

Aaron Maté @aaronjmate

This week, John Mearsheimer, speaking to @KatrinaNation, noted the continued alliance between DC and Ukraine's far-right: "The Americans will side with the Ukrainian right... Both do not want Zelensky cutting a deal with the Russians that makes it look like the Russians won."

That reference to nukes, above, leads us to China, actually. China has supported Russia throughout, in the face of repeated US threats. And now we learn that China [is] Rapidly Stockpiling on Nuclear Weapons. Why would China be doing that? Would it have anything to do with the fact that the Zhou regime has, in recent days, openly discussed nuclear first strikes? Maybe. And that suggests that the Zhou regime’s brain trust—long time establishment insiders like Nuland and Blinken—are rather crazed. Something to think about as you go about your daily business.

Now, here we are a good month and a half into this proxy war, and the US is still scrambling to assemble some sort of coalition composed of not so willing nations. The US is using what passes for diplomacy nowadays in the US establishment—a mixture of threats and insults directed directed at nuclear powers like China and India, regime change where we can get away with it, as in Pakistan, slightly more subtle pressure where iron fisted tactics aren’t advisable. In the face of US pressure Germany is still conducting a foot dragging rear guard action of obstruction—just because they want to preserve their economy. The US is reduced to using Poland as its designated pitbull in Europe and is sending Zelensky on a world tour, speaking to parliaments. But that’s not going so well either. CTH has an excellent discussion of the dynamics involved in the attempted bullying of India through regime change in Pakistan—US Neocons are obviously unconcerned about making friends anywhere. The “rules based order” about raw power:

Biden Schedules Meeting With India Prime Minister to “Discuss” Russian Trade and Sanction Compliance

Here, let’s insert a bit of an excursus regarding the US Left siding with Nazis and sabotaging police. I’m selecting from some tweets by Stephen McIntyre that focus on a close adviser to Zelensky, Oleksiy Arestovych—”a Ukrainian presidential adviser, blogger, actor, political and military columnist.”

Stephen McIntyre @ClimateAudit

uatv.ua/en/view-from-b… Arestovych appears to have led Ukraine visit to Biden admin in Sep 2021 in which Kyiv regime's refusal to implement Minsk agreements was reinforced by Biden neocons.

These tweets are from a longer thread that goes into the Bucha thing:

Oleksiy Arestovych, the important Zelensky adviser, who was jointly responsible for original fraudulent story of Iskander missile at Kramatorsk, admired ISIS cruelty techniques and tactics in interview a couple of years ago.

Arestovych admired ISIS commanders as "wise and successful commanders" who thought through "detail, even the degree of cruelty" and that "cruelty for show" was "a wise strategy, taking their particular interests into account".

Arestovych said that governance according to the precepts of ISIS - "terrorism, middle age cruelty, the burning of people, shooting and cutting off heads" was "absolutely a network of the future".

Arestovych played a leading role in attribution of Kramatorsk to Russia, beginning with the fraudulent information about "Iskander" missiles. Would Arestovych have any scruples about sacrificing some Russian-speaking residents of Donets oblast? I doubt it.

Who can be surprised at the types of Ukrainians the US is siding with, after the US supported al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and Yemen? Americans may not know this stuff, but the rest of the world is very much aware of our involvement with such groups—it’s not a good look at all.

Again, I mentioned Germany’s perplexing interest in avoiding an economic implosion. Karl Denninger discusses that topic today—and especially toward the end of the long post it plays into the economic post I did yesterday:

The Fascinating Self-Immolation Of Europe

Europe hitched itself to "green energy" but -- not really.  The laws of thermodynamics are not suggestions and there simply aren't enough actual renewable and accessible energy sources to go around.  ...

So to fill the gap between what was real and what was promised Europe put together pipelines and bought Russian gas and oil -- specifically gas.  ...

But natural gas is not just burned for fuel; it is an essential feedstock for fertilizer, since nitrogen must be "fixed" in order to be usable.  If this was not true you wouldn't need nitrogen in fertilizer at all since about 79% of the atmosphere, which obviously is in contact with the ground, is nitrogen.

Modern agriculture relies on fertilization for the high yields it currently enjoys.  Without them significant portions of the world population will undergo famine -- and some will die.  ...

Since Europe doesn't have much natural gas resource they're willing to tap where does Europe get all of this?  Why, from Russia, which has it in abundance.

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How the EU manages to navigate their farcical claims of "green energy" while attempting to get off Russian gas supplies and at the same time manages to both keep their crop production levels up and their social deficit spending patterns is going to be fun to watch.  I don't think it can be done and at the same time our deficit spending patterns cannot be continued either.

Nobody, as of yet, is recognizing the magnitude of this shift.  Not in housing, commodities or any other goods and services provision and most-definitely not when it comes to finance and leverage even though we have already seen about $6 trillion in bond market value disappear on a global basis.

This is going to get messy but the bottom line is this: The era of being able to spend in deficit without immediate consequence has ended, and the ability to spend in deficit into the consumer economy without it doing immediate harm to the people allegedly helped has ended as well both here in the United States and in Europe.

The implications of this for policy are profound and it won't be long before its recognized and reflects back through both the economy and fiscal policy generally.

Add to KD this fascinating article at American Thinker:

Why BRICS and MINT Might Save Russia and Sink the US

There’s a LOT here, but consider these brief excerpts. Note how, while the US was chasing one regime project after another in the name of its rules based order, Russia was shaping the world political playing field the old fashioned way. Also note the disconnect between the American self image and the world’s image of America:

In order to understand what the next world order might entail, we Americans have to understand the larger networks to which Russia has belonged.  In the United States, many of us have not had the chance to study Russia's relationships other than its tense interactions with ourselves.  ...

Russia knew that the split with the West was coming, and was ready for it.

Russia has been readying itself to be severed from the West since before the twenty-first century began.  While the West paid minimal attention, Russia invested time and money to build a global support system in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, especially a development bank, founded in 2015, from which only 18% of approved loans went to Russia but 82% went to Africa, Africa, and South America.  The loans were earmarked for essential services: transport (29%), water/sanitation (22%), urban and social needs (15%), energy (26%), and sustainability (8%).  With investments in key regional hubs — Brazil, South Africa, China, and India — Russians deliberately placed the hinges of three large continents in the hands of leaders who had obligations to Moscow and reasons to view Putin favorably.  This helps to explain why so many countries rejected the sanctions the United States called for.

It also explains why the US response to such rejections—threats and insults—is playing so badly around the world.

As Giovanni Barbieri noted, as early as 2015, Russia was already working with China and India, as well as other nations, on "the internationalization of [China's] domestic currency."  The plan to carve out a global economy free from the dominance of the dollar was in the works long before the most recent sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine (242).

While the United States has dealt with the developing world with the assumption that the developing world is a likable but utterly different universe, Russia seems to have succeeded in dealing with the developing world as a peer. This is why, perhaps, the English-speaking world's perception of Russia as a bully does not always persuade people around the globe. All the institutions from which Russia just got banished are the ones that [in the eyes of the developing world] constitute "an architecture" that "is still an extension of colonialism" (111).

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There's ample evidence that Russia isn't paying as much attention to us as we think it is.

Many Americans may be mistaken about who constitutes Russia's main audience.  During the overheated English-language coverage of Ukraine, stern moral pronouncements by President Biden and other Western leaders imply that the West thinks Russia is listening to us and values the hope of staying in our good graces.  From what I can see, Russian diplomacy has been exceedingly busy building up its global networks with non-Western powers and probably prioritizes those Asian, African, and Latin American audiences, since these are the people who populate the future home of Russia's international relations.  ...

The West has overplayed economic power and underestimated social affinity.

The United States seems to have overestimated her ability to dominate the world through non-military (mostly economic) means.  ...

Meanwhile, the United States has assumed that its status as a liberal democracy would win over the rest of the world.  It is as if we in the USA forget that all the controversies we read about in America are common knowledge around the world.  They know that many people in the United States believe that the election of 2020 was stolen.  They know about cancel culture, Big Tech colluding with one political party, the impeachment kangaroo courts, Black Lives Matter, domestic spying, and censorship in schools and colleges.  They see many things to envy in the United States, but our designer label of "liberal democracy" does not close the deal necessarily.  We attract immigrants from every country in the world, but most nationals of those countries still live there, so the admiration immigrants feel for us is not a universal feeling held by their peers in the home country.

I’ll end with one I couldn’t resist:

Max Abrahms @MaxAbrahms

Is this a parody account? Author of the made-up Steele dossier undergirding Russiagate is a supporter of rule of law?