Professor Kevin MacDonald discusses Professor John Mearsheimer’s take on the Ukraine situation, in the most insightful post I have yet seen. In summary, Russia has acted to counter the threat of the Ukraine joining NATO, much like the Cuban missile crisis situation. But the deeper issue is a division among the globalist over how the New World Order should be constructed. The West wants globalism to be woke and liberal, if not tyrannical regarding other traditional freedoms such as firearms ownership. Russia and China also want a New World Order, but an illiberal one, where things like the transgender agenda do not occur. Head of the British secret service has said as much, covered in a separate post. Putin is thus hated by the neo conmen for his desire to return Russia to the former USSR glory days, which he experienced as a high-level KGB operative. So, there are no good guys here, as all of them will ride over our traditional freedoms; they are all centralists. In short, a plague on all houses!
“I recently posted a lecture by Prof. John Mearsheimer which, as I tweeted, is “obviously compelling” and where he provides a solution—a neutral Ukraine—that would have avoided war. Note that Philip Giraldi pointed out that the Yanukovych government was effectively neutral. This was unacceptable to the neocons, and hence the 2014 Maidan uprising that replaced Yanukovych—a revolution that Nuland and other elements of the U.S. foreign policy establishment were deeply involved.
But of course, this solution never happened. And we have to ask why the U.S. is so committed to hostility toward Russia—determined to surround Russia’s Western border with a military alliance that the U.S. would never tolerate in North America (as it piously recites the Monroe Doctrine; remember the Cuban missile crisis?). As Mearsheimer suggests, the U.S. is the instigator here, pressuring Ukraine or at least encouraging it to insist on joining NATO.
Here is Mearsheimer on the current crisis. In the first 25 minutes he lays out the historical background in great detail. Key points amply illustrating the aggressiveness of the West.
- 2008: NATO declared Ukraine will be in NATO; Russians are angry but that’s as far as it goes.
- 2014: Western (U.S. State Department, neocon, CIA) coup installed a pro-Western government which results in civil war in Ukraine and Russia seizing Crimea;
- Trump [with anti-tank weapons but not air defense weapons]and now Biden (but not Obama) arm Ukraine, making it a “de facto” NATO member;
- a number of provocative NATO military incursions into Russian territorial waters [although these claims are deniedby the U.S. and Britain].
- This is a very cynical game. Mearsheimer predicted in 2015 that Russia would destroy Ukraine rather than allow it to be part of NATO, and it is in the process of being destroyed now, with immense suffering and unknown loss of life.
- So fundamentally, we have to ask why our elites hate Russia. As noted in my 2014 article, a major reason — and indeed by far the most important reason at this point — is Russia’s foreign policy in the Middle East in support of Iran and Syria (where Russia’s support turned the tide in favor of the Assad government against the U.S.- and Israel-backed rebels). A Russian defeat in Ukraine would dramatically change the balance of power in the Middle East in favor of Israel …
- So why should that matter to Russia? Certainly, there’s no evidence that Putin is anti-Jewish or hostile to Israel. I suspect that Putin sees the Middle East in the same way he sees Europe—as having the potential for further encirclement of Russia by Western-dominated governments. Recall: neocons also want regime change in Iran and were enthusiastic supporters of the anti-Assad forces in Syria. Interestingly, Trump resisted pressuresto attempt regime change in Iran advocated by his neocon advisers John Bolton … and Mike Pompeo.
- President Trump appeared to dash the hopes of his neoconservative foreign policy advisors when he explicitly rejected a strategy of regime change for Iran on Monday. … “We’re not looking for regime change. I want to make that clear… No one wants to see terrible things happen.”
- The President specified that his driving principle was to prevent Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, as opposed to a utopian ideal of imposing a western-style ‘liberal democracy’ upon the Islamist state.
- But with the senile, incompetent Biden (describedby Pepe Escobar as “the senile President of the United States [who is controlled] by earpiece/teleprompter [and] was never accused of being the brightest bulb in the room – any room”) reading lines written by the likes of Nuland and with Obama (who rejected arming Iran) and Trump out of office, it’s a new ballgame.
- Russia obviously saw the attempted revolution as an existential threat and sees Ukraine, already close to being a de facto NATO member, in a similar manner. Russia would be effectively surrounded. From Russia’s perspective, an invasion of Ukraine was the only possible response to all this.
- The big picture is that in the end it’s all about Western hegemony and “Western values” being imposed on the rest of the world, and this has been explicitly expressedby the U.S. State Department just last Thursday:
- State Department spokesman Ned Price made a stunning admission regarding what this war is really all about.
- According to Price, Russia and China “also want a world order”, but he warned that if they win their world order “would be profoundly illiberal”…
- China has given “tacit approval” for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine, in the judgment of U.S. officials, as part of a joint effort to undermine the institutions that American and allied leaders established to minimize conflict in the decades following World War II.
- “Russia and the PRC also want a world order,”State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday. “But this is an order that is and would be profoundly illiberal. … It is an order that is, in many ways, destructive rather than additive.” (emphasis in original)
- In other words, “making the world safe for democracy”—and replacement-level immigration and LGBTQ+ gender ideology, and the cauldrons of ethnic conflict that Western societies have become. Neither China nor Russia want that; nor do many people in the West, and certainly including several Eastern European governments and a large portion of their people.
- And note the inclusion of China, another non-democratic government not at all committed to “Western values.” After the fall of the Soviet Union, the neocons led the chorus of those celebrating a unipolar world dominated by the U.S. as hegemon, the result being repeated attempts at regime change throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. What’s going on now is essentially some serious pushback against that—an attempt to establish a multipolar world. China’s supportfor the Russian invasion is part and parcel of this and is sure to have been on the mind of the State Department in issuing their statement. But what this means is that the status of the U.S. and its Western partners as world hegemon is in serious jeopardy. It’s an Armageddon-like moment: neither side sees losing as an option.”
https://counter-currents.com/2022/02/a-jeremiad-to-the-empire-of-nothing/
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russian-tv-host-threatens-nuclear-destruction-america
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/putin-nuclear-forces-alert/2022/02/27/id/1058701/
There are further complications arising from Putin’s own hubris, no doubt manipulated by the West:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/26/how-ukrainian-defiance-has-derailed-putins-plans
“So how did we get here? One explanation is the increasingly erratic behaviour of Putin himself. Speaking before the invasion, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official said Russia’s president lived in a strange parallel reality. He had succumbed – like dictators before him – to believing his own version of the world.
“Putin thinks that Ukraine’s government is corrupt, western and irredeemably Russophobic,” the official said. “He understood the Ukrainian people, by contrast, would welcome Russia and intervention. He considers us to be rural Russians.” Putin’s spy agencies had told him what he wanted to hear, he added.
The official continued: “We have always understood Russians better than they understand us.” Other commentators noted that Putin, an amateur historian, had forgotten one of the great lessons of the second world war – that the best Soviet soldiers were Ukrainian.
It is impossible to know if there is growing unhappiness within Putin’s national security council over the decision to go to war. On the eve of the invasion last week all of its members signed off on Putin’s plan to recognise the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent, an act that pushed the button on military action.
Western defence attaches have claimed that Valery Gerasimov, Putin’s most senior commander and the chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, had warned the president that invading Ukraine might not be straightforward. And so it has proved. For now, though, Russia’s military and political leadership are firmly behind the operation.
As losses mount, difficult questions pile up for the Kremlin. In the face of Ukrainian intransigence and resistance, how does it intend to govern the country? Any Donetsk-style puppet government would lack legitimacy. Even if Moscow succeeds in seizing Kyiv, months and years of problems lie ahead. Nobody expects Ukrainians to capitulate. More likely is partisan war.
The driver who came across the broken-down military carrier best summarised Putin’s predicament. “I asked the whole column,” he said of the Russian soldiers. “No one knows where they are and where they are going.”
“The head of Britain's MI6 Secret Intelligence Service has said he believes Russia's war in Ukraine will prove 'unwinnable' because President Vladimir Putin will never attain political victory over the country's people.
Richard Moore, the chief of MI6, wrote how a report suggesting Putin's forces will ultimately fail in Ukraine because it underestimated its neighbour's military strength and fierce determination 'makes sense to me'.
The article Moore, 58, was reacting to was penned by Lawrence Freedman, the Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London.
In the article titled 'A Reckless Gamble', Professor Freedman said Putin had 'become obsessed with Ukraine, and prone to outrageous theories which appear as pretexts for war but may also reflect his views.'
He wrote that victory for Moscow does not come in the form of a successful invasion that overthrows Ukraine's government, but with winning over the people of Ukraine.
This, the professor writes, is something Russia does not have the strength for.
'Even if the government loses control of the capital and is forced to flee, and the command systems for Ukrainian forces start to break down, that does not mean that Russia has won the war,' he wrote.
In an unusual move for the chief of MI6, Moore shared the article with his over 130,000 Twitter followers, writing: 'Fascinating. Makes sense to me.'
In a rebuke of Putin's human rights record, Moore also wrote around the same time in a separate tweet: 'With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard-won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights.'
Moore's endorsement of the article came as other intelligence sources claimed Putin's war with Ukraine is not going to plan due to Kremlin 'overconfidence', poor tactical planning, and 'shock' at the fierce resistance put up by brave Ukrainians fighting for their nation's survival.”
“One of the main reasons why wars can turn out badly, even when they have been launched with confidence, is underestimation of the enemy. The sort of optimism bias that leads to predictions of early victory depends on assumptions of a decadent and witless opponent, ready to capitulate at the first whiff of danger. Putin’s unhinged rant of a speech on Monday and his subsequent statements along with those from his courtiers have helped us understand not only his preferred rationale for war but also why he thinks he can win. If it is the case, as Putin has consistently claimed, that Ukraine is a non-state, an artificial creation, with a government that is illegitimate and controlled by Nazis, then it would not be surprising if he also supposed that ordinary Ukrainians would not fight hard for such an entity. They might even, as the Russian Ambassador to the UN suggested, greet the incoming Russian forces as liberators.
Coupled with an underestimation of enemy forces can come an overestimation of one’s own. Putin has by and large done well from his wars. He gained the Presidency in 2000 using the Second Chechen War to demonstrate his leadership qualities. He bloodied Georgia in 2008 to warn it off joining NATO and eliminating the separatist enclaves Russia had already established there. He extracted Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and more recently successfully supported Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war. Yet his most recent military enterprises have not involved substantial ground forces being deployed. In Ukraine the operations, including the annexation of Crimea, were largely run by special forces, along with the militias recruited by the separatists in the Donbas. Only briefly, when the separatists looked like they might be defeated in the summer of 2014 did Putin send in regular forces, who routed the unprepared and still amateurish Ukrainian units. In Syria the Russians provided the airpower but not the infantry.
Their experience of large-scale ground operations is therefore limited. When this is coupled with arrogance about the limitations of the potential enemy, then this may have contributed to the less than sure-footed start to this campaign. The most important example of this from yesterday was the battle for Hostomel, an airport close to Kyiv, which the Russian tried to take with heliborne troops. If this airport had been taken quickly then the Russians could fly in troops who could then move quickly into Kyiv. But this was a gamble because without backup they were in an exposed position. The Ukrainians shot down several of the helicopters and then in a fierce battle overwhelmed the Russian forces. It is telling that after months of planning for this whole operation, in which every step has been carefully scripted, that the planners decided to attempt something so high risk on the first day.
This might be no more than a temporary respite for Kyiv. Reports this morning of missile strikes and even skirmishes inside the city emphasise that it is the most important Russian target. So it would be unwise to conclude from yesterday’s engagements that Russian forces will struggle in the future. They will learn to treat their opponents with more respect and be more methodical in their moves. Nonetheless first impressions are important. We have been reminded that the morale and determination of those defending their country tends to be higher than that of those mounting an invasion, especially if they are unsure why they are doing so. We now know that the Ukrainians are serious about defending their country and are resilient. They have not been rolled over. A quick fait accompli would have helped Putin a lot. For example, the design and implementation of Western sanctions would have felt very different if it was against the backdrop of Russia apparently walking over Ukraine. It would have provided the opponents of anything too punitive with an argument that while what happened to Ukraine was a tragedy it was a situation about which little could be done, and so expensive gestures were pointless.
Evident Ukrainian resistance, and of the costs of war for both sides, also raise the stakes for Putin at home. As a number of analysts have noted as Russia runs out of stocks of precision-guided missiles and gets drawn into urban warfare, the fighting could get brutal. The Chechen capital Grozny and the Syrian city of Aleppo were battered in Russian led campaigns, with direct targeting of civilians. Yet the level of vocal opposition in Russia (and the lack of enthusiastic support) is striking. It was odd for Putin to insist that Ukraine should really be part of Russia and then expect people to tolerate fellow Slavs - often their relations - being bombed. Putin, like most autocrats, has a residual fear of his own people, and may start to be concerned about how they might react to even more casualties of their own, brutality in Ukraine, and international condemnation.
For those of us who have long wondered why Putin would embark on an aggressive war the core puzzle has been what he could hope to achieve politically. A limited campaign in Eastern Ukraine made some sense as it would carve out an area that could be sustained and defended over time. The current scale of operations makes less sense because it essentially requires regime change in Kyiv. In Iraq and Afghanistan the US and the UK learned through bitter experience how difficult this can be. Put simply even relatively authentic leaders with strong local roots (and it is not obvious that Russia has any of those available) that have been put in place by foreigners have limited legitimacy and will soon be relying on the occupying force to sustain them in power.
Before this, Russian forces needs to find and deal with President Zelensky. He has so far performed with dignity and bravery as an unexpected war leader. Putin will want him out of the way. Zelensky is insisting for the moment that he must stay in Kyiv and direct the war effort, even while reporting that Russian saboteurs are in the city. At some point a hard decision might have to be taken about either relocating to Western Ukraine or even establishing a government in exile. So long as he can continue to operate in Ukraine his leadership serves as a rebuke to Putin.
Even if the government loses control of the capital and is forced to flee, and the command systems for Ukrainian forces start to break down, that does not mean that Russia has won the war. It is only a mind-set that fails to understand the wellsprings of Ukraine’s national identity that could believe that a compliant figure could be installed as Ukrainian president and expect to last for very long without the backing of an occupation force. Russia simply does not have the numbers and capacity to sustain such a force for any length of time. One would have thought that with the memories of the Orange Revolution of 2004-5 and the Euromaidan of 2013-14 that Putin would have some appreciation of the role that ‘people power’ can play in this country, unless again he believes his own propaganda that these movements were manipulated into existence by the Americans and their allies. Ukraine shares a land border with NATO and equipment can pass through to Ukrainian regular forces so long as they are fighting - and then to an anti-Russian insurgency should this conflict move to that stage. This is why it is important not to focus solely on whether Russia achieves it military objectives. It is how it holds what it can seize against civilian resistance and insurgency.
The point about wars (and I have studied many) is that they rarely go according to plan. Chance events or poorly executed operations can require sudden shifts in strategy. The unintended consequences can be as important as the intended. These are the pitfalls surrounding all wars and why they should only be embarked upon with good reason (of which the most compelling is an act of self-defence).
The decision to embark on this war rests on the shoulders of one man. As we saw earlier this week Putin has become obsessed with Ukraine, and prone to outrageous theories which appear as pretexts for war but which may also reflect his views. So many lives have already been lost because of the peculiar circumstances and character of this solitary individual, fearful of Covid and a Ukraine of his imagination. At times in democracies we lament the flabbiness, incoherence, short-sightedness and inertia of our decision-making, compared with autocrats who can outsmart us by thinking long-term and then taking bold steps without any need to convince a sceptical public, listen to critics, or be held back by such awkward constraints as the rule of law. Putin reminds us that that autocracy can lead to great errors, and while democracy by no means precludes us making our own mistakes, it at least allows us opportunities to move swiftly to new leaders and new policies when that happens. Would that this now happens to Russia.”
“Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said she would support British nationals who chose to fight alongside Ukrainian forces against the Russian invasion as the embattled nation called on foreign fighters to join the war effort.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has promised to arm foreign volunteers to travel to his country to join the battle against Vladimir Putin's forces.
Asked on the BBC's Sunday Morning programme if she would support UK citizens who chose to answer the call, Ms Truss said: ‘I do. I do support that and of course that is something that people can make their own decisions about.
‘They are fighting, the people of Ukraine are fighting for freedom and democracy, not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe because that is what President Putin is challenging.
‘And absolutely, if people want to support that struggle, I would support them in doing that.’
Her comments come after Ukraine's defence ministry today appealed for foreigners to come forward to join its armed forces and fight back against Putin's army, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba urging people to contact his department.
https://off-guardian.org/2022/02/27/7-fake-news-stories-coming-out-of-ukraine/