If the US were serious about confronting China, it would never have adopted the idiotic position of using Ukraine for a proxy war against Russia by demanding its entrance into Nato. The Chinese may be facing a dilemma, but theirs is nothing like ours--we have pushed Russia much closer to China when we should have been keeping it in the middle at a minimum if not enlisting it as an ally.
The US empire has reached its limit with the impossibility of maintaining the unipolar moment. It has already attacked its own ally, Germany, by blowing up the pipeline. Nato may not survive this exercise in futility, trying the wreck Russia irremediably. The Russians are winning in Ukraine, by any objective metric--however costly this may be, though it is not as costly as western propaganda makes out. Putin is overwhelmingly popular and the war is overwhelmingly supported, and for obvious reasons, because US policy is made by psychopathic liars who have declared their intention to threaten Russia existentially. Further, most of the rest of the world doesn't like the United States, which not only bullies but bullies it into its own stupid and toxic culture of nihilism. Europeans may go along with this but the rest of the world will not.
Yes. I don't quite follow why Ukrainians (or anyone for that matter) are all so keen on Pussy Riot, gay marriage, Drag Queen Story Hour, mass third-world migration with attendant boiling cauldron of resentments, racial and sexual quotas, Kneeling Nancys, or many other reparations increasingly and fanatically ordained. Seriously, why would any normal or sane country want this? I guess just out of sheer boredom.
Thank you for this. Why I pay for Substack subscriptions.
“Notably, this means the more the West’s strategy of arming Ukraine succeeds, the more likely Chinese intervention becomes.”
Excuse me if I am wrong but it appears that the US Uniparty corporatist power blob is pursuing a strategy leading to another global war by arming Ukraine to defeat Russia instead of attempting to broker peace. Or our policy-makers in the Biden administration are pursuing only what they see as a political media strategy to exploit manufactured hate of Putin and thus excite their voting base in solidarity supporting the “defeat” of Putin. This latter idea seems to match the other examples of destructive recklessness of the Biden Democrats to make everything a political advantage they can play in the media. Or maybe both?
Maybe that could be a negotiated outcome, but we can’t know without negotiations. Maybe Russia says at the outset they want to keep occupied territory but actually they’ll accept a withdrawal along with teeth for the Minsk Accords and lifting of all sanctions.
I don’t think these family analogies are all that useful, but to expand on it, if a hostage negotiator entered the scene I’d prefer the negotiation to violence unless I had a perfect, foolproof angle to take out all the attackers myself.
There are parts of Ukraine that are majority Russians and sympathetic to Russia. Crimea had the same issue. Now, maybe that has changed as there seems to be more solidarity in Ukraine to fight Russia. However, I think there is a part of the decision criteria missing here in your analogy... how much death of your family and destruction of your house are you willing to accept to stand on moral principles to keep all your space?
That would be up to the Canadian people. We are talking about US involvement in this conflict that isn't a US interest. I don't agree at all that if Russia wins territory the world order will be unrecognizable. Have you spent any time reading history of wars and territory changes? If Russia starts to lose and China steps in to assist, THEN the world order changes. But to what? Frankly, the western world order is already a mess of Chinese money corruption. This war is likely more about our American Uniparty needing a media distraction while they move forward with their CCP-backed WEF Great Reset project. Now if you want to talk about what is going to change the western world order... THAT is what you should be focused on.
The only fake part of "RussiaGate" is the claim that Russia did not intervene in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf. At Helsinki Putin said explicitly that he wanted Trump to win. Does anyone really think he did not act on behalf of that purpose? In late campaign season 2016 Trump openly said "Russia, if you're listening, those emails would be interesting to see." (Or words closely to that effect.) Within 24 hours, the emails were released through Wikileaks. Mueller indicted Russian cyber hackers in St Petersburg for this and other such activities. Mueller said he could not confidently lodge a charge of "conspiracy" (which is the crime), due partly by obstruction from Trump and allies like Flynn and Manafort, but Mueller's report speaks of abundant evidence of collusion. (Which is not a crime.) The bitterly contested FISA warrants were fully warranted, given what FBI knew about Page and Manafort, who were both on Trump's campaign team; for FBI not to conduct surveillance on those two would be dereliction of duty, given their past ties to Russian spies. The notorious Durham investigation yielded two not-guilty verdicts on much heralded indictments that he finally scrounged up after his lead prosecutorial team resigned rather than be involved in such politicized nonsense. "Russiagate" is another piece of fakery from Faux Noise.
Some people clutch their mythology so hard that they squeeze out their critical thinking gray matter.
Amazing how someone can take a great nothing burger and weave it into a fiction tale that they will defend to the grave as being something real.
Putin wants the US unstable. He does not care who is elected... and Trump policies were certainly not good for Putin. People like you are what he wants... to keep up the mythology that helps create the instability.
To call Russiagate fake and Trump-Russia collusion as real at this point based on everything we now know... why let's just say only ignorant ideologues would adopt that "thinking".
"The Russian aggression in Ukraine is essential to defeat to protect the Western world order."
"My gripe is only, they could have treated China more strategically in the last half a decade, it is stupid to push the geopolitical opponents to unite."
You contradicted yourself here. Russia is nothing except they are nuclear. Iran will be nuclear and they are nothing. Pakistan is nuclear and they are nothing.
China is nuclear and they should be getting ALL of our attention. They are the ONLY country that is a risk to the Western world order. They are funding the Marxists in our midst. It is their money corrupting or media and politics. The Ukraine war is a distraction for the corporatist cabal in the US that is supporting China and the WEF Great Reset. Hey! Look at Putin and ignore Xi.
50 years ago, Russia was one of the great powers engaged in conflict with the United States in which Korea and China were the proxies. Today China is the great power engaged in a conflict with the United States in which Russia and Ukraine are proxies.
Quite a fall for Russia. No wonder Putin has an inferiority complex.
On this subject, I think you’re off by a country mile. I doubt China will need to supply the Russians with much of anything in this war. You seem not to understand how good (and large) an army and fortifications the Western NATO powers built for Ukraine over the past several years. The Russians have degraded that army and largely done the same to the fortifications the West thought impenetrable. And that is why the West has been desperate to find additional munitions for its degraded proxy army. It is why Ukraine has been desperate to field another army of soldiers to man those munitions after recklessly sacrificing hundreds of thousands of its boys to win the PR effort for the West. And it is why the Biden administration needed to blow up the NS pipeline to keep those Germans under the hood of NATO more tightly.
No. Imploding is too strong a word. There's little doubt NATO assistance has and will continue to damage Russia. The Russians understood from the beginning there would be a mighty price to pay. But that price weighed against NATO expansion to grab Crimea was an easy call. The longer the war goes on—the more Ukrainians are displaced and killed, and the more its infrastructure is destroyed—the closer the Russians are to achieving their objective: neutralizing Ukraine and protecting its Black Sea naval power. Russia will destroy Ukraine's army within a couple of years, or less. Much of that mission has happened already, and the Russians did it will an economy of force. But now, the game has advanced to another level. The Russians have mobilized for a more comprehensive campaign. They are getting their act together while they make significant changes to their military doctrine and systems. The Russians held out for peace for years, but the West thought differently. Sadly, the Ukrainians elected Zelinski, who they hoped would be a peacemaker; instead, they got neo-conned by Joe Biden, who apparently learned nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq.
If China acts in its own self-interest, it will arm Russia. The opposing coalition is now all in on destroying and looting Russia in the interests of the globalists. Russia, whatever its weaknesses and they are substantial as you note, remains a serious obstacle to the Western War on Energy and War on Agriculture, just because they have so much of both. If Russia goes down, China is next. In another universe, China could perhaps been part of the globalist coalition but there is no way that the West is going to share power, no matter what China does, especially if they are drunk with victory after crushing Russia.
Correct. If Russia is defeated and comes under globalist control, China is cut off from much of their resource base. As manufacturing dependent as China is, it is resource poor.
If the west really has the vast manufacturing capability you mentioned then why are they unable to supply even the 100 tanks they promised. Why are the Russians expending eight times as many artillery shells every day? Ukraine started the war with a 650,000 man NATO equipped army. Now they are drafting 16 year olds. The US started this war when they took over Ukraine in 2014 and now President Nuland is in a panic. The Russians would love Chinese drones but the war is gradually going their way.
It also depends on what we are manufacturing. Big dollar F35s and Abrams tanks are not worth much if can't keep them maintained and stocked with munitions. Right now artillery shells are the most needed commodity in Ukraine for both sides. NATO strategy downplayed the use of artillery, as artillery is not considered "sexy", instead relying on airpower and missles.
"...it should be obvious that Russia alone has little chance of competing with the combined military-industrial base of the United States and Europe if they are fully committed to arming its opponent over the long term."
What 'military-industrial base'? The 'long term' in this case only begins at least two years from now, and that's assuming proficiently led, all-hands-on-deck style wartime economizing on the part of US/Europe (lol). And that's just for artillery shells. The Once Arsenal of Democracy is lame concerning more modern weapon systems as well:
"The expenditure of cruise missiles and theatre ballistic missiles is just as massive. The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat [as of June], Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production...
"The initial stockpile in February 2022 is unknown, but considering expenditures and the requirement to hold substantial stockpiles back in case of war with NATO, it is unlikely that the Russians are worried. In fact, they seem to have enough to expend operational-level cruise missiles on tactical targets."
As for China intervening "if Russia begins losing ground again," I assume you're referencing the much-hailed Kherson counteroffensive last year, which concluded with the AFU sending the defeated Russkies packing back across the Dnieper river. In reality, this was a strategic retreat on Russia's part, during which they inflicted exorbitant casualties on their Ukrainian attackers. Indeed, their defensive lines were still intact when they pulled back across the Dnieper, and the only substantial piece of equipment they lost was one broken down T90.
So no, China should not send arms to Russia, for one very good reason: they don't need to.
I’m curious if this manufacturing metric is the right proxy for strength in this conflict. Is this like most modern wars where most of the kill shots rain down from the sky? Or are small arms more dominant?
Russian ammo used to be cheap and widely available, they made enough to supply Americans for target practice. Since the sanctions there’s no Russian ammo for sale anymore. They may have plenty of manufacturing capacity for small arms ammo.
Of course, another possibility, unlikely though it seems now, is that China suddenly remembers that Russia was one of the powers that imposed unequal treaties, that during the Qing Dynasty China (to say nothing of earlier eras when China was even larger) included a good piece of what is now Russian Siberia, and decides that Chinese hegemony is better served with China having the resources of Siberia for itself, rather than propping up a Russian regime that foolishly launches improvident wars. Yes, Russia has its nuclear deterrent, but a Russo-Chinese nuclear exchange in which each took out the other's five largest cities would leave China still standing and Russia non-existent.
Nice write up on the “real politick”. I understand all this but still believe our interest (Americans) is peace. We are stumbling into WWI NOT preventing WWII.
Not sure which will be our collective demise between Freedoms RESCINDED more than willingly from Woke/Corporate folks on one side VS the NATION STATE/Corporate Weapons Dealers-- surely there has to be other options-- perhaps sooner would be better
"the whole basis of Chinese national power is derived from the continued growth of its economic strength [this is quite ignorant of the PLA]; and China’s economy is currently a mess, badly weakened by years of draconian zero-Covid stupidity, an ongoing real estate crisis, huge levels of debt, and communist political mismanagement. "
It isn't difficult to argue that the whole basis of American national power is continued economic growth, on one hand fuelled by the FIRE sector, on the other, the technology sector; and the American economy has been reliant on the growth of the tech sector, fundamentally built on overseas manufacturing, assembly and long supply chains spanning a large number of states. These supply chains are now being obliterated by short-sighted sanctions on China, creating a mess, but the American position is further weakened by years of misguided Trump-era foreign policy, continued by the current administration, an ongoing real estate bubble, huge levels of continued QE and political-economic mismanagement.
If the US were serious about confronting China, it would never have adopted the idiotic position of using Ukraine for a proxy war against Russia by demanding its entrance into Nato. The Chinese may be facing a dilemma, but theirs is nothing like ours--we have pushed Russia much closer to China when we should have been keeping it in the middle at a minimum if not enlisting it as an ally.
The US empire has reached its limit with the impossibility of maintaining the unipolar moment. It has already attacked its own ally, Germany, by blowing up the pipeline. Nato may not survive this exercise in futility, trying the wreck Russia irremediably. The Russians are winning in Ukraine, by any objective metric--however costly this may be, though it is not as costly as western propaganda makes out. Putin is overwhelmingly popular and the war is overwhelmingly supported, and for obvious reasons, because US policy is made by psychopathic liars who have declared their intention to threaten Russia existentially. Further, most of the rest of the world doesn't like the United States, which not only bullies but bullies it into its own stupid and toxic culture of nihilism. Europeans may go along with this but the rest of the world will not.
Yes. I don't quite follow why Ukrainians (or anyone for that matter) are all so keen on Pussy Riot, gay marriage, Drag Queen Story Hour, mass third-world migration with attendant boiling cauldron of resentments, racial and sexual quotas, Kneeling Nancys, or many other reparations increasingly and fanatically ordained. Seriously, why would any normal or sane country want this? I guess just out of sheer boredom.
Thank you for this. Why I pay for Substack subscriptions.
“Notably, this means the more the West’s strategy of arming Ukraine succeeds, the more likely Chinese intervention becomes.”
Excuse me if I am wrong but it appears that the US Uniparty corporatist power blob is pursuing a strategy leading to another global war by arming Ukraine to defeat Russia instead of attempting to broker peace. Or our policy-makers in the Biden administration are pursuing only what they see as a political media strategy to exploit manufactured hate of Putin and thus excite their voting base in solidarity supporting the “defeat” of Putin. This latter idea seems to match the other examples of destructive recklessness of the Biden Democrats to make everything a political advantage they can play in the media. Or maybe both?
That the United States wants this war to continue is undeniable, right? We’ve seen many reports that peace overtures were derailed by the US.
Maybe that could be a negotiated outcome, but we can’t know without negotiations. Maybe Russia says at the outset they want to keep occupied territory but actually they’ll accept a withdrawal along with teeth for the Minsk Accords and lifting of all sanctions.
I don’t think these family analogies are all that useful, but to expand on it, if a hostage negotiator entered the scene I’d prefer the negotiation to violence unless I had a perfect, foolproof angle to take out all the attackers myself.
Legally binding contract? Like the legally binding contract called the Minsk agreement that Ukraine and NATO signed then ignored?
There are parts of Ukraine that are majority Russians and sympathetic to Russia. Crimea had the same issue. Now, maybe that has changed as there seems to be more solidarity in Ukraine to fight Russia. However, I think there is a part of the decision criteria missing here in your analogy... how much death of your family and destruction of your house are you willing to accept to stand on moral principles to keep all your space?
That would be up to the Canadian people. We are talking about US involvement in this conflict that isn't a US interest. I don't agree at all that if Russia wins territory the world order will be unrecognizable. Have you spent any time reading history of wars and territory changes? If Russia starts to lose and China steps in to assist, THEN the world order changes. But to what? Frankly, the western world order is already a mess of Chinese money corruption. This war is likely more about our American Uniparty needing a media distraction while they move forward with their CCP-backed WEF Great Reset project. Now if you want to talk about what is going to change the western world order... THAT is what you should be focused on.
The only fake part of "RussiaGate" is the claim that Russia did not intervene in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf. At Helsinki Putin said explicitly that he wanted Trump to win. Does anyone really think he did not act on behalf of that purpose? In late campaign season 2016 Trump openly said "Russia, if you're listening, those emails would be interesting to see." (Or words closely to that effect.) Within 24 hours, the emails were released through Wikileaks. Mueller indicted Russian cyber hackers in St Petersburg for this and other such activities. Mueller said he could not confidently lodge a charge of "conspiracy" (which is the crime), due partly by obstruction from Trump and allies like Flynn and Manafort, but Mueller's report speaks of abundant evidence of collusion. (Which is not a crime.) The bitterly contested FISA warrants were fully warranted, given what FBI knew about Page and Manafort, who were both on Trump's campaign team; for FBI not to conduct surveillance on those two would be dereliction of duty, given their past ties to Russian spies. The notorious Durham investigation yielded two not-guilty verdicts on much heralded indictments that he finally scrounged up after his lead prosecutorial team resigned rather than be involved in such politicized nonsense. "Russiagate" is another piece of fakery from Faux Noise.
Some people clutch their mythology so hard that they squeeze out their critical thinking gray matter.
Amazing how someone can take a great nothing burger and weave it into a fiction tale that they will defend to the grave as being something real.
Putin wants the US unstable. He does not care who is elected... and Trump policies were certainly not good for Putin. People like you are what he wants... to keep up the mythology that helps create the instability.
To call Russiagate fake and Trump-Russia collusion as real at this point based on everything we now know... why let's just say only ignorant ideologues would adopt that "thinking".
"The Russian aggression in Ukraine is essential to defeat to protect the Western world order."
"My gripe is only, they could have treated China more strategically in the last half a decade, it is stupid to push the geopolitical opponents to unite."
You contradicted yourself here. Russia is nothing except they are nuclear. Iran will be nuclear and they are nothing. Pakistan is nuclear and they are nothing.
China is nuclear and they should be getting ALL of our attention. They are the ONLY country that is a risk to the Western world order. They are funding the Marxists in our midst. It is their money corrupting or media and politics. The Ukraine war is a distraction for the corporatist cabal in the US that is supporting China and the WEF Great Reset. Hey! Look at Putin and ignore Xi.
We are idiots.
50 years ago, Russia was one of the great powers engaged in conflict with the United States in which Korea and China were the proxies. Today China is the great power engaged in a conflict with the United States in which Russia and Ukraine are proxies.
Quite a fall for Russia. No wonder Putin has an inferiority complex.
On this subject, I think you’re off by a country mile. I doubt China will need to supply the Russians with much of anything in this war. You seem not to understand how good (and large) an army and fortifications the Western NATO powers built for Ukraine over the past several years. The Russians have degraded that army and largely done the same to the fortifications the West thought impenetrable. And that is why the West has been desperate to find additional munitions for its degraded proxy army. It is why Ukraine has been desperate to field another army of soldiers to man those munitions after recklessly sacrificing hundreds of thousands of its boys to win the PR effort for the West. And it is why the Biden administration needed to blow up the NS pipeline to keep those Germans under the hood of NATO more tightly.
Chris, are you saying Ukraine (and by corollary NATO) is much closer to imploding than it looks like?
No. Imploding is too strong a word. There's little doubt NATO assistance has and will continue to damage Russia. The Russians understood from the beginning there would be a mighty price to pay. But that price weighed against NATO expansion to grab Crimea was an easy call. The longer the war goes on—the more Ukrainians are displaced and killed, and the more its infrastructure is destroyed—the closer the Russians are to achieving their objective: neutralizing Ukraine and protecting its Black Sea naval power. Russia will destroy Ukraine's army within a couple of years, or less. Much of that mission has happened already, and the Russians did it will an economy of force. But now, the game has advanced to another level. The Russians have mobilized for a more comprehensive campaign. They are getting their act together while they make significant changes to their military doctrine and systems. The Russians held out for peace for years, but the West thought differently. Sadly, the Ukrainians elected Zelinski, who they hoped would be a peacemaker; instead, they got neo-conned by Joe Biden, who apparently learned nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq.
By the way, I checked out your substack. I encourage you to keep writing!
Thank you very much for that. I really appreciate it.
If China acts in its own self-interest, it will arm Russia. The opposing coalition is now all in on destroying and looting Russia in the interests of the globalists. Russia, whatever its weaknesses and they are substantial as you note, remains a serious obstacle to the Western War on Energy and War on Agriculture, just because they have so much of both. If Russia goes down, China is next. In another universe, China could perhaps been part of the globalist coalition but there is no way that the West is going to share power, no matter what China does, especially if they are drunk with victory after crushing Russia.
Correct. If Russia is defeated and comes under globalist control, China is cut off from much of their resource base. As manufacturing dependent as China is, it is resource poor.
If the west really has the vast manufacturing capability you mentioned then why are they unable to supply even the 100 tanks they promised. Why are the Russians expending eight times as many artillery shells every day? Ukraine started the war with a 650,000 man NATO equipped army. Now they are drafting 16 year olds. The US started this war when they took over Ukraine in 2014 and now President Nuland is in a panic. The Russians would love Chinese drones but the war is gradually going their way.
Manufacturing it is one thing, getting it all the way to Ukraine and then the front line is another.
It also depends on what we are manufacturing. Big dollar F35s and Abrams tanks are not worth much if can't keep them maintained and stocked with munitions. Right now artillery shells are the most needed commodity in Ukraine for both sides. NATO strategy downplayed the use of artillery, as artillery is not considered "sexy", instead relying on airpower and missles.
"...it should be obvious that Russia alone has little chance of competing with the combined military-industrial base of the United States and Europe if they are fully committed to arming its opponent over the long term."
What 'military-industrial base'? The 'long term' in this case only begins at least two years from now, and that's assuming proficiently led, all-hands-on-deck style wartime economizing on the part of US/Europe (lol). And that's just for artillery shells. The Once Arsenal of Democracy is lame concerning more modern weapon systems as well:
"The expenditure of cruise missiles and theatre ballistic missiles is just as massive. The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat [as of June], Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production...
"The initial stockpile in February 2022 is unknown, but considering expenditures and the requirement to hold substantial stockpiles back in case of war with NATO, it is unlikely that the Russians are worried. In fact, they seem to have enough to expend operational-level cruise missiles on tactical targets."
https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare
As for China intervening "if Russia begins losing ground again," I assume you're referencing the much-hailed Kherson counteroffensive last year, which concluded with the AFU sending the defeated Russkies packing back across the Dnieper river. In reality, this was a strategic retreat on Russia's part, during which they inflicted exorbitant casualties on their Ukrainian attackers. Indeed, their defensive lines were still intact when they pulled back across the Dnieper, and the only substantial piece of equipment they lost was one broken down T90.
So no, China should not send arms to Russia, for one very good reason: they don't need to.
I’m curious if this manufacturing metric is the right proxy for strength in this conflict. Is this like most modern wars where most of the kill shots rain down from the sky? Or are small arms more dominant?
Russian ammo used to be cheap and widely available, they made enough to supply Americans for target practice. Since the sanctions there’s no Russian ammo for sale anymore. They may have plenty of manufacturing capacity for small arms ammo.
Of course, another possibility, unlikely though it seems now, is that China suddenly remembers that Russia was one of the powers that imposed unequal treaties, that during the Qing Dynasty China (to say nothing of earlier eras when China was even larger) included a good piece of what is now Russian Siberia, and decides that Chinese hegemony is better served with China having the resources of Siberia for itself, rather than propping up a Russian regime that foolishly launches improvident wars. Yes, Russia has its nuclear deterrent, but a Russo-Chinese nuclear exchange in which each took out the other's five largest cities would leave China still standing and Russia non-existent.
Nice write up on the “real politick”. I understand all this but still believe our interest (Americans) is peace. We are stumbling into WWI NOT preventing WWII.
Not sure which will be our collective demise between Freedoms RESCINDED more than willingly from Woke/Corporate folks on one side VS the NATION STATE/Corporate Weapons Dealers-- surely there has to be other options-- perhaps sooner would be better
The Biden administration failed to foresee this possibility. Inexcusable.
This was sobering!!!
"the whole basis of Chinese national power is derived from the continued growth of its economic strength [this is quite ignorant of the PLA]; and China’s economy is currently a mess, badly weakened by years of draconian zero-Covid stupidity, an ongoing real estate crisis, huge levels of debt, and communist political mismanagement. "
It isn't difficult to argue that the whole basis of American national power is continued economic growth, on one hand fuelled by the FIRE sector, on the other, the technology sector; and the American economy has been reliant on the growth of the tech sector, fundamentally built on overseas manufacturing, assembly and long supply chains spanning a large number of states. These supply chains are now being obliterated by short-sighted sanctions on China, creating a mess, but the American position is further weakened by years of misguided Trump-era foreign policy, continued by the current administration, an ongoing real estate bubble, huge levels of continued QE and political-economic mismanagement.
Yes certainly. Both can play the economic mismanagement game at the same time.
You might as well say WWIII is inevitable.
Thank you for your insights, clarifications. I find it amazing that this sort of discussion is not available through msm.