Category Archives: Military

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Military, War

Tagged Poland, Ukraine-Russia War

When Federal Interest Payments Come To Exceed the Military Budget: Time To Stop Defending the Rest of the World, by Doug Bandow

Posted on January 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Empires don’t generally live within their means, which eventually means the end of the empire. The U.S. is no exception. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

Originally appeared at the American Institute for Economic Research.

A new year dawns bright, with the US hurtling over the fiscal cliff. The lame duck Congress voted for a pork-packed $1.7 trillion budget bill. As the saying goes, it’s only money!

At a time of enormous domestic need, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell pushed an extra $45 billion for Ukraine, declaring that Washington’s “number one priority” was supporting that nation. Kentuckians might wonder if their Senator had moved to Odesa, Kharkiv, or Lviv over the holidays.

Alas, this appropriation was small change compared to the overall “defense” (in fact, mostly for offensive operations) budget. Congress hiked military outlays to record levels, topping off the already-bloated Biden spending program at $858 billion. American taxpayers remain stuck subsidizing prosperous, populous Europeans, superfluous Middle Eastern monarchs, and cheap-riding Asian defense dependents.

Unwilling to raise taxes as it also shovels ever-more cash into social programs old and new, Congress simply borrows additional money as if loans need not be repaid. The publicly held national debt hit 100 percent of GDP and is heading toward the record of 106 percent set in 1946, at the conclusion of the worst war in human history. Within a decade the US faces trillion-dollar deficits for as far as government analysts can budget. By mid-century the Congressional Budget Office expects the debt/GDP ratio to run around 185 percent. And that assumes policymakers don’t do anything stupid, like approve massive new spending programs without paying for them. Which, unfortunately, is as certain as the rising of the sun.

Posted in Debt, Economics, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Military, War

Tagged Defense Budget, National Debt

US Alarmed As Erdogan Hints At Assad Meeting Amid Moscow Reconciliation Talks, From The Cradle

Posted on January 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Syria hasn’t been able to kick the U.S. military out of the country, but if it teams up with Turkey and Russia, it probably can. That thought terrifies U.S. policymakers. From The Cradle via zerohedge.com:

During a speech in Ankara last Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted that a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad may soon take place, “as part of efforts for peace.” He added that a tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia and Syria is scheduled to be held in the near future for the first time since 2011.

Erdogan said, “As Russia-Turkey-Syria, we have launched a process through the meeting of our intelligence chiefs and defense ministers in Moscow. Then, God willing, we will bring our foreign ministers together trilaterally. Then, depending on the developments, we will come together as leaders.”

The upcoming meeting aims to enhance communication after Russian-sponsored talks between the Turkish and Syrian defense ministers were held in Moscow on 28 December. The meeting was the highest-level of official meetings between Ankara and Damascus since the start of the Syrian war.

In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 5 January, Erdogan called on the Syrian government to ‘take the steps to achieve a tangible solution concerning the case of Syria.”

The US sis seeking to establish a middle ground between Ankara and the SDF in order to prevent Turkish-Syrian reconciliation.

The Syrian-Turkish rapprochement via declared Russian mediation was paralleled by Emirati-Syrian rapprochement – the latest of which was a “brotherly” meeting aimed at strengthening cooperation and restoring historical relations between Assad and Foreign Minister of the UAE Abdallah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, according to SANA.

Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that the UAE seeks “to join Russia in sponsoring Syrian-Turkish relations at a high level,” noting that the Emirati foreign minister’s visit to Damascus sought to arrange Turkiye’s participation in the tripartite meeting of Syrian-Turkish-Russian foreign ministers, making it a quadripartite meeting.

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Military, Politics

Tagged Russia, Syria, Turkey

China Cements its Position in the Middle East, by Judith Bergman

Posted on January 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

It’s real simple. Most nations prefer mutually beneficial exchange (offered by China) over bullets, bombs, bribery, and bombast (offered by the U.S.). From Judith Bergman at gatestoneinstitute.org:

Saudi Arabia is now not only one of China’s most important suppliers of energy, but the kingdom is also an important link in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — a gigantic global development project to enhance China’s global influence from East Asia to Europe by making countries worldwide increasingly dependent on China. Under the BRI, China has signed cooperation agreements with 20 Arab countries.
China is also Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner — an arrangement that extends to military cooperation….
Biden took a longstanding ally, Saudi Arabia, and, by repeating that he would make the kingdom a “pariah nation,” created an adversary. “For an American president to be silent on the issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am,” Biden said. The same concern for human rights has not seemed to bother him, however, when it comes to China or Iran, whose record on human rights is at least as bad as Saudi Arabia’s, if not worse.
China jumped in to fill the vacuum.
Xi Jinping has made no secret of his wishes to “replace America as the global superpower” economically, militarily, diplomatically and technologically by 2049. The United States might be “well poised to lead,” but is it leading?

Posted in Business, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, War

Tagged Belt and Road Initiative, Middle East

The attack on Western Europe: you cannot win a war if you don’t understand that you are fighting one. By Ugo Bardi

Posted on January 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

The Europeans are beginning to understand that the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine is against Europe. From Ugo Bardi at senecaeffect.com:

Image: Earth against UFOs (1956)

A typical science fiction trope is that when the aliens invade Earth, they do so in secret, capturing the minds of single earthlings rather than coming in with bombing raids. The task of the hero, then, is to convince the authorities that Earth is under attack before it is too late. Something similar may be happening with the war in Ukraine. Europeans, just like most Western citizens, still don’t seem to understand what’s going on, but the idea that it is a war directed against Western Europe is slowly gaining traction in the memesphere. It has not yet reached the mainstream discourse, and it probably never will. But some ideas don’t need to be shared by 51% of the people to start having an effect on politics. The message that Europe is being crushed by its supposed allies and its own government may eventually reach the “critical mass” needed to be heard and acted upon. I have already discussed this subject in some of my recent posts, “What is the next thing that will hit us” and others. Here is Noah Carl’s recent take on his blog, published with his kind permission. His conclusion is that:

“geopolitical developments since the start of Russia’s invasion certainly look convenient from the perspective of US hawks: Russia’s military has been severely weakened; Nord Stream 2 has been sanctioned and sabotaged; US LNG exports to Europe have surged; European companies have started relocating to America; and the NATO alliance is stronger than ever.

US hawks 1; everyone else 0.“

Image: US Navy, FA-18 launch during Inherent Resolve, 2014

When it comes to explaining how we ended up with Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Europe proceeding to cut itself off from its main energy supplier, there are two main camps.

One camp says that Putin is an imperialist bent on recreating the Soviet Union, who invaded Ukraine (a country he doesn’t consider real) in order to expand Russia’s territory and population. According to this camp, there’s nothing the West could have done to prevent Putin’s invasion short of allowing Ukraine to become a hollowed-out vassal state, or arming Ukraine to the teeth in the faint hope of deterring Russian bellicosity.

The other camp says that Putin saw US/NATO involvement in Ukraine as a threat to Russian interests (including both the security of Russia itself and the interests of ethnic Russians in the Donbas), and he invaded the country as a way to neutralise that threat. According to this camp, the West could have prevented Putin’s invasion by enforcing an agreement along the lines of Minsk II, i.e., one that enshrined Ukrainian neutrality.

The key element here is US/NATO involvement, since without such involvement Kiev would never have risked provoking its larger and more powerful neighbour. Despite this, few in the second camp try to explain why the US/NATO got involved in Ukraine. Or if they do, they chalk up to “misguided policy” or “policy mistakes”; US officials were just too wedded to the principle that every state can choose its own alliances.

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Imperialism, Military, Politics, War

Tagged Europe, Ukraine-Russia War

Ok, Doomer, by William Schryver

Posted on January 7, 2023 | 1 comment

Russia’s inferiority complex may come to an end after its war with Ukraine. From William Schryver at metatronink.substack.com:

Legendary Russian fatalism may be alive and well, but it will be ashamed of its doubts in the end.

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

– Seneca

I have struggled in vain for almost a year now to comprehend the frequently expressed fears of potential defeat from a great many Russian observers of this war – as though they are constantly haunted by a sense that inevitable humiliation is lurking in the shadows just ahead, and they’d best prepare themselves accordingly.

The abundantly manifest facts of the ongoing NATO proxy war against Russia, as I have been able to ascertain them, are that Ukraine has now suffered approximately five hundred thousand irretrievable casualties and virtually the entirety of their original inventories of military hardware – the equivalent of ALL the personnel and equipment (both active and reserves) with which they commenced this conflict.

Their military strength was partially reconstituted over the summer of 2022, infused with the best equipment NATO could spare, but which, in both quantity and quality, is simply no longer capable of being replenished.

In addition to this substantial infusion of NATO armaments, several thousand “sheep-dipped” NATO soldiers appeared on the battlefield, mostly in the form of shock troops and technical specialists to operate and maintain the more complex systems such as M-777 howitzers and HIMARS rocket artillery.

1 Comment

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Military, War

Tagged Russia, Ukraine-Russia War

Ukraine – The Big Push To End The War, by Moon of Alabama

Posted on January 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

If the ground freezes solid so that Russia can move its tanks and artillery, the war could be over by the end of 2023. From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:

Over Christmas I had a short talk with a relative about the war in Ukraine. He asked me who would win and was astonished when I said: “Ukraine has zero chance to win.” That person reads some German mainstream news sites and watches the public TV networks. With those sources of ‘information’ he was made to believe that Ukraine was winning the war.

One may excuse that with him never having been in a military and not being politically engaged. But still there are some basic numbers that let one conclude from the beginning that Russia, the much bigger, richer and more industrialized country, had clearly all advantages. My relative obviously never had had that thought.

The ‘western’ propaganda is still quite strong. However, as I pointed out in March last year propaganda does not change a war and lies do not win it. Its believability is shrinking.

Former Lt.Col. Alex Vershinin, who in June pointed out that industrial warfare is back and the ‘West’ was not ready to wage it, has a new recommendable piece out which analyses the tactics on both sides, looks ahead and concludes that Russia will almost certainly win the war:

Wars of attrition are won through careful husbandry of one’s own resources while destroying the enemy’s. Russia entered the war with vast materiel superiority and a greater industrial base to sustain and replace losses. They have carefully preserved their resources, withdrawing every time the tactical situation turned against them. Ukraine started the war with a smaller resource pool and relied on the Western coalition to sustain its war effort. This dependency pressured Ukraine into a series of tactically successful offensives, which consumed strategic resources that Ukraine will struggle to replace in full, in my view. The real question isn’t whether Ukraine can regain all its territory, but whether it can inflict sufficient losses on Russian mobilized reservists to undermine Russia’s domestic unity, forcing it to the negotiation table on Ukrainian terms, or will Russian’ attrition strategy work to annex an even larger portion of Ukraine.

Russian domestic unity has only grown over the war. As Gilbert Doctorow points out wars make nations. The war does not only unite certain nationalistic parts of Ukraine who still dream of retaking Crimea. It also unites all of Russia. Unlike Ukraine Russia will be strengthened by it.

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Military, Politics, War

Time to Get Real About Ukraine, by James Rickards

Posted on January 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

If there was ever a time to red pill, this is it. Ukraine is losing, not winning, its war with Russia. Failure to grasp that fact by our so-called leaders could lead to nuclear war. From James Rickards at dailyreckoning.com:

The war in Ukraine remains the most important story in the world today.

Don’t believe the incessant U.S. government and media propaganda about Ukraine. Ukraine is not winning the war; they are losing badly.

But wait, hasn’t the news been talking up Ukrainian gains in recent months, while Russia is retreating and being badly beaten? That’s the mainstream, pro-Ukrainian narrative. Here’s the reality:

Most of the Ukrainian gains were against lightly defended positions that the Russians quickly abandoned because they were not worth fighting to defend.

Those Russian troops (really Donbas militias) were ordered to retreat to fortified Russian lines while Ukrainian forces rushing to fill the void were slaughtered by Russian artillery bombardments.

Most people think of war in terms of territory. If you lose territory, it must mean you’re losing the war. But it’s not always that simple.

The Russian Strategy

The Russians will willingly cede territory in order to fight again at a later time under more favorable circumstances. They’ll simply retake it when the terms favor them. They’re not primarily concerned about the territory per se. The primary Russian objective is to grind down and destroy the Ukrainian armed forces.

And if the Ukrainians want to keep hurling themselves against Russian positions in order to recapture land and score a propaganda coup, that’s fine with the Russians. They’ll just grind the attacking forces down with heavy artillery fire (artillery kills far more people in war than bullets or bombs).

And despite Ukrainian government claims, the best intelligence says Russia is presently enjoying an 8–10:1 casualty rate. In other words, Russia is inflicting eight–10 casualties on Ukraine for every casualty it’s suffering.

That kind of ratio isn’t sustainable for Ukraine.

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Uncategorized, War

Ukraine, 2023, by Karen Kwiatkowski

Posted on January 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

Ukraine is losing, but the U.S.’s European vassals may end up as the biggest losers. From Karen Kwiatkowski at lewrockwell.com:

Eleven months after the Russians acted to provide a military protection force for Russians living in western Ukraine, or alternatively, 11 and a half months after Kiev and Zelensky stepped up attacks on their “own people” in the Donbass, presumably for their own good, what have we learned?

People of the world have gained new perspectives on things like gross US and NATO hypocrisy, the ability of politicians and diplomats to lie to your face, and in writing, and the ability of any number of countries exist and persist despite their ostensibly and possibly corruptly elected leadership being infirm, decrepit, insane, criminal and/or widely known for playing pianos with their dicks.

Life goes on – money gets made – people vote with their feet – and politicians hold their index fingers in the air to determine what next.

The WEF elite meets in Davos this month. Many of the topics revolve around how to rebuild Ukraine, and all the “right” investors will reserve their tickets on that 2023 gravy train. If 2022 was a profitable US/NATO/EU/UK military and logistics laundry and boondoggle in Ukraine, 2023 is looking to be an even bigger operation. Quadrillions will be spent – as time runs out on the dollar and dollar-pegged currencies.

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Military, Politics, War

US climbs escalation ladder in Ukraine, by M. K. Bhadrakumar

Posted on January 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

Escalation by one side leads to escalation by another with no end in sight. From M. K. Bhadrakumar at indianpunchline.com:

Building hit by 6 US-made HIMARS missiles on New Year Day killing at least 89 Russian conscripts, Makeyevka, Ukraine

In all probability, the message conveyed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov from his American counterpart Antony Blinken via Israel’s new foreign minister Eli Cohen concerned the Ukrainian missile attack on Makeyevka (Donetsk) on New Year Day at 12.02 am killing 89 Russian conscripts.

Kiev claimed that upto 400 Russian soldiers might have been killed. Russian MOD has made a rare acknowledgment of scores of deaths — latest figure is 83. Moscow rarely releases figures for casualties in the war.

The Russian statements stressed that US-made Himars missiles were used in the attack. The site was a “a temporary deployment facility” (a vocational school temporarily used as barracks for scores of recently mobilised troops sent by Moscow.

The incident sparked renewed public criticism over the state of Russia’s military and the decision to use civilian infrastructure to house soldiers. The First Deputy Head of the Main Military-Political Department of the Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Sergey Sevryukov told reporters:

“It has already become obvious at present that the main cause of the occurrence was activation and large-scale use, contrary to the ban, of personal phones by personnel within the reach of enemy’s destruction means. This factor enabled the enemy to take the bearing and determine coordinates of servicemen location to deliver a missile strike. Required measures are being taken at present to exclude such tragic incidents in the future.”

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Military, War