Showing posts with label &Ukraine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label &Ukraine. Show all posts

Friday, 6 May 2022

STOP NOW - PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY

6 May 2022 THE DAILY RANT

  It is a cost to Russia maybe, but the really big costs are being born by America & UK. Europe is being bullied into following.

That senile fool in the White House is bragging about sinking the Moskva and shooting down a Russian transporyer carrying hundreds of young men.

Biden's advisors are openly calling for a war - this is war between two nuclear armed powers. (India and Pakistan? No, America and Russia.)

What you say is true: what we see doesnt fit with what we read

The people who know, military men, say that Russia will win in Ukraine.

Although right up to 23 Feb, most of us couldn't believe that America and Russia would be so stupid as to go to war with each other in Ukraine. But they did.

Now, Russia is doing what it always does, which is to totally trash the country. And Russia is now on top of the arms supply routes that were making a difference. They tell us the West is winning but actually the data points otherways. Truth is, there are no winners and the biggest losers are Ukraine and perhaps we haven't seen even a quarter of what is to come.

1.7 billion people in food insecurity and poverty because wheat, corn and fertiliser is not available in 2019 quantities and at prices .

Gas and oil we know about. Begging bowl out to pariahs Iran and Venezuela. Again, America is safe - far away, safe, independent.

Sanctions against Russia are being reciprocated. America is fine.

All of Africa, most of S E Asia and Latin America are reticent, dont agree, but dont want to offend. This includes India.

It is only America up for war, and Europe ex UK are bullied into supporting.              


This is the biggest by far of all the monumental American Foreign Policy disasters - Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen ... - it is unfolding before your eyes.

So yes, I cannot make any sense of this, the solution is what was available in 2015 but with the subsequent loss of a country's people and infrastructure, and yes what we see is not what we hear on MSM - we are being fed a pack of lies.
FOR PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY
STOP NOW

Friday, 15 April 2022

THE HEARTLANDS (Sir Halford John Mackinder)

15 April 2022

John J Mearsheimer has been spot on for years.

https://youtu.be/XgiZXgYzI84

He has a theoretical framework understanding that he can lay over any IR security problem and explain it and offer solutions. But those that be (the people who1 govern us), they don't listen, not to him, and not to the people in this "democracy" of ours  We are there to vote them in and give our support to their madness and a sense of legitimacy.

You could argue they flannel us with distractions like covid or wokism. So there is geopolitics, propaganda, and democracy. Mearsheimer is right, but rejected by government and the people. We are dissenters, heretics, free-thinkers, driven by facts and reason, not short-term hubris.

There are many determinants of foreign policy. Geography is very deterministic.

The Rus were dealt a really poor hand. They are like The Hordes, a people of the plains, the Eurasian landmass is their land. The plain continues to the West onto the plain of central Europe, with - as I see it so maybe I've misunderstood - defensive natural barriers for Russia, but these are just beyond Russia's grasp.  Russia has 2,000 kilometers of long and vulnerable borderland that it must defend to stop any invasion from a well-funded and technologically sophisticated Western European sea-power - originally the British until Chrchill ceded to the American maritime power in 1945.

What are these natural defences? The Carpathian mountains - but alas, they're in Romania! Access to the Black Sea - it's in Ukraine! (or was). The Suwalki Gap which also gives access to the Baltic Sea - it's the other side of the Balkans (but Russia has Kaliningrad at the other end of the Gap - see a map)!

And so on - there are nine such gateways that enemies use to routinely invade Russia (identified in a Zeihan Youtube pres.), and Russia must have them all under lock and key, to feel secure. They've been invaded 50 times and more.

They'd need to plug the Transnistrie gap, a Russian separatist enclave in tiny Moldovia. Russia's also been invaded by the Swedes through the three Baltic countries so there are three NATO countries Putin would also need to invade (was he really planning this? Surely not.)  The French through Belarus. Twice by the Germans through the Polish gap. The Bessarabian gap in Romania favoured by the Turks. Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia complete the nontep.

Now, it has NATO at its door, bristling with weapons. The Soviet Union had all nine of these gaps in its land mass, but Russia today has only Crimea and Kaliningrad. It needs to move West and take the seven remaining, five in NATO lands.

So this is about geography, as it affects security, ie Geopolitics. It's about security and insecurity, existence and (ominously) whatever it takes to survive. And this is the starting point of Mearsheimer's position. He is an "offensive structural realist". (Russian demographics - second worse in the world after China - is another factor, for another time.)

Geography means Russia needs to expand westwards into central Europe and capture the nine gateways. So it's not about personal ambition or nationalism or imperialism or historic revenge, it is a purely rational strategy to ensure national survival, it is about Russia's understandable insecurity.

And how does America respond to this? America is insecure too, being at the top of the greasy pole - it wants to rub out any regional competitors ... but what to put in their place? America responds with a deaf ear and aggression, as usual. Surely America has learnt by now that confrontation is followed by failure. And as a consequence of confrontation, America is throwing Russia into the arms of China, the new rising world hegemon, or so they tell us. China, with maybe Pakistan and Iran and even Turkey too, why not in its axis. But America needs Russia, as does Europe, for different reasons.

Contrast Russia's geography and insecurity with America's. The Americans feel supremely secure and confident, with oceans West and East, and Canada and Mexico North and South, so they are unassailable. Russians, on the other hand, are tremendously insecure: their citadel has no walls and Ukraine - where NATO could site Weapons of Mass Destruction - is just 500 kms away ... a lobster without a shell, ready for the pot, an egg without a shell.

Surely, this is understood and something cleverer than war, a response based in cooperation, as prefered by France and Germany, can be the tool to peace? I feel like there should be a parable in the bible to help understanding of this, next to Noah's Ark...maybe that sounds daft, but this whole conflict does go all the way back to a story about The People of the Trees v. The People of the Seas  (though I can't find an internet reference).

In its orginal form, trees and seas, and the separating rimlands in between, is a neat geopolitical theory known as The Heartland Theory. One side or the other must take or defend the rimlands that separate them to win the heartland, giving that side victory and World Hegemon accolade. It is almost a board game. (Except the winner, America, is in the Americas, not the heartland of Asia, Africa, Eurasia.)

Sir Halford John Mackinder was a British geographer who wrote a paper in 1904 called "The Geographical Pivot of History." Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland.

Many many strategists have been drawn to this theory:
a) it gets to the crux of the ambitions and weaknesses of world super-powers and explains the hatred for Russia
b) the Theory was passed onto George Kennan and thence Truman, and goes deep into the second world war, WW1 and WW2 ; and American understanding of how to deal with Germany, Russia and China (heartland powers) ; and Japan and UK (rimland)
c) Mackinder was a Scottish MP.

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the World."

Russia is the great Eurasian land-power. It is, by its geopolitical nature, eternally opposed to America, the liberal Atlantic sea-power. The worry is that Russia use its wealth of natural resources and manpower (intermi al decline now) to conquer the rimlands - which offer up 2,000 kilometers of central European near-abroad for Russia to plug and defend - to defeat the seapowers of Western Europe. America can only rest once Russia is contained and kept out of central Europe. Hence Truman's policy of containment.

By an identical logic, China - or the Eastern side of the heartland this time - is to be contained within its first island ring, of great strategic importance, consisting of Japan, S Korea, Taiwan and the Phillipines; and down as far as Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. So it is vitally important in the containment strategy for China to keep these countries "on program". And any American war alliance would extend to Australia, India, Russia (sic) and Turkey, not to mention Western Europe and UK.

Here is some reading on The Heartlands Theory.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2019/01/halford-mackinder-father-geopolitics

https://youtu.be/MkrLUFAcjH0
(view from place 4'27")

The right-wing ideologue Aleksandr Dugin
https://youtu.be/TrafXfDL2CA

Peter Zeihan
https://youtu.be/rkuhWA9GdCo

Thursday, 24 March 2022

DEALING WITH WESTERN PROPAGANDA

24 March 2022

https://youtu.be/11q9dir2Nts

"There is a faction that has a geopolitical strategy that is happy to drain Russia of power and if it comes at the expense of Ukraine, they're OK doing that". 
The "faction" is the blob, which returned, having got rid of Trump. Hilary Clinton is  making the same case as them, that's all. I notice that it is purely tactical / operational, the how-to of bleeding Russia dry - you never get into the why, except that Putin invaded a so-so sovereign country, true but that's the tail end of a story going back to the early 90s ... but it's enough to start with Maidan in 2014 (the second attempt, Orange Rev was 2004) and Donbas shelling and Crimea after the coup and even Syria in 2015.

It is all straight geo-political stuff on Putin's part. You just need a map and a bit of history to understand where a search for security takes Russia.

The late Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter, in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard,” explained why Ukraine is essential to Russia:

“Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire…. However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people [☆] and major resources as well as its access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”

Anyway, this video makes a good analysis except for not explaining Crimea as Sebastopol home to Russia's fleet, in the Azov Sea....being realistic, Russia would launch its nukes before giving that up and everyone knows this.

99% of public comment is uninformed. It is just like the spectators on the terraces, a heartbeat, literally, away from what's happening on the pitch. All gobbing the propaganda and cheering on the action. This is how a govt would get even The Woke to the front line in any future conflict  And it is fine if our existence is threatened. But as always in neocon wargames, you get the liberal justification (democracy and human rights) on the surface, while underneath it is grab the land and assets of your neighbours and balance-of-power politics.

But with a map, a bit of history, some demographics; and assuming states will always seek first security and dont know what their neighbours have in mind for them; with that you can get enough perspective for a reasonable rational analysis, avoid the emotions, avoid being someone who cheers at each batch of gov.t propaganda.

[☆Note: Since the 1990s, Ukraine's and Russia's populations have been declining due to high emigration rates, low birth rates, and high death rate from HIV, alcoholism, violence. What we are looking at is almost a case of native Indians that America is trying to finish off before taking over their lands.] 

Saturday, 19 February 2022

STRATEGY FOR UKRAINE


19 February 2022

Russian goals are
Survival and a say, a veto, in European security matters (NATO and US)

This means renegotiating the cold war settlement that it was forced to sign and have the States respect its word to Gorbachev

Russia's demands are
Ukraine and Georgia must not join NATO
No ballistic or offensive weapons on its doorstep
NATO pull back to pre-1997 borders

Russia's strategy
Force America to the negotiating table by massing for an invasion and continually upping the anti
Modern war is not about boots on the ground, it is cyber and covert ops that turn off a country, its power comm.s and transport and renders its population centres uninhabitable
No side can risk casualties because of public opinion
It is irrelevant talking g about pivoting to Asia, keeping the oil flowing or promising to support Europe, allies and open societies, talk is cheap, diplomatic process will work.

What can the West do?
The West does not have any initiative and it doesn't have a diplomatic process outside Minsk and would-be emperor Macron. It needs a process and begin by showing understanding for the Russian position.
Prepare the public.

Outcomes
A negotiated settlement where NATO withdraws and Russia recognises the independence of Ukraine
Or the country is trashed, eg split into three
With the risk of nuclear war.