Turning off the war

Posted by Pointman on May 27, 2022 · 3 Comments 

Of late you might have noticed the volume control knob of the anti-Russian hate propaganda machine in the media has been slowly turned down. An easy explanation for that is hate fatigue. A two minute hate anyone can handle but when it drags into three months of a non-stop barrage and you’re supposed to be constantly furious and outraged against Russia, it starts to get tiring. The more realistic reason is that the whole proxy war campaign against Russia has failed spectacularly.

The sanctions that were supposed to bring the Rodina to its knees have ended up hurling western Europe into the worst recession it’s experienced in fifty years and accelerated America into a recession it was already heading into anyway. As for the military front, it’s becoming obvious the Russians are slowly grinding the Ukrainian military down to nothing. The big encirclement that the Donbass became has now been reduced to a lot of smaller pockets of desperate men just fighting for their very lives. For those poor bastards there’s only one exit strategy and everyone with a finger on the pulse of military reality knows what that is.

If you need a sign that policy is changing consider that last week General Mark “thoroughly modern” Milley telephoned his Russian counterpart. That’s the first public contact Washington has had with Moscow since the end of February and it’s America that called them. What they talked about is all ultra hush hush but to me it’s obvious the Pentagon knows all about the impending Donbass disaster. They’re busy moving over to picking a war with China over Taiwan, thereby pushing China and Russia closer. If anybody can see any sense in that move, I’m all ears.

The one curious thing to come out of yet another catastrophic foreign adventure by this administration is the role reversal between the Pentagon and the State Department. In days of old, it was usually State restraining a frothing at the mouth Pentagon from starting WWIII but this time around it’s the Pentagon restraining the raving neo-con liberals of State whose all consuming hatred of Russia has made them take leave of their senses. Truly, we live in strange days.

As always in these situations, you have to make a genuine attempt to get inside the head of the opposition. Why is America putting out peace feelers now? Patently, it’s because they know full well their proxy war with Russia using the Ukraine is failing and they’re hoping to turn it off before it becomes yet another Afghanistan withdrawal sized embarrassment.

A simple question with an obvious answer but how to respond to such an offer of an olive branch is much more complex for the Russians. The prime military objective was to utterly destroy any Ukrainian military forces and that is so close to being achieved in the various Donbass encirclements that they can already nearly taste it. The West is still sending semi-obsolete armaments to the Ukrainians and Kiev is now starting to talk about re-arming and retraining a new army to renew the war in some grandiose August offensive that’ll turn the whole disaster around. At the same time, the Americans appear to be waving an olive branch in our direction. Talk about mixed signals.

So, what they want is for us to stop an ongoing successful military operation that’s nearing fruition, allow the Ukrainians time to refit, refurbish and attack us in three months time while offering us jack shit in return. What a cunning plan. The real question is after the Donbass envelopment is snipped off do I stop or just proceed westwards to prevent any problems in the future.

Certainly, if they’re already suing for peace in whatever covert manner, it gives you room to demand more in any settlement. The problem with peace negotiations is you have to think your opposite number is actually being serious. After the Ankara fiasco where the Ukrainians seemed to be making some concessions but 24 hours later totally reversed their position based on nothing more than a rumoured phone call from America means there’s no good faith involved with any talks with them.

This time around it’s the Americans who actually installed Zelensky who’re getting in touch but the administration there is unpredictable, unstable and therefore dangerous. We’re finally dealing with the organ grinder rather than his monkey. However, at any one moment, you can’t actually be sure which puppeteer behind a senile president you’re actually dealing with. But in managing such an unstable opponent, you’re the one who can act based on some certainties only you yourself can create.

The first is they’ve got no influence over you – you’re the only one who can decide when you turn the war off. In this case, it comes down to how far westwards to push the offensive. All the military objectives have essentially been achieved or will be but the problem remains of whether you want to leave a festering sore on your border. A little bit of controlled mission creep such as taking Odessa and thereby making the Ukraine a land locked country that neighbours like Poland and Hungry will nibble bits off under the guise of “helping” against the Russians is already shaping up.

Another option is if the West persists in talking nice to you while all the time sending armaments into the Ukraine to kill your soldiers, is to just let it drag on, pound the hell out of western Ukraine and any military supplies coming into it. You may have noticed the Russians seem to know exactly where the latest batch of obsolete old weapons the West is generously donating will be stored just ready for destruction by them. The Russian foreign intelligence service is as acute as ever.

They have a lot of options, each of which has many subtle variations attached. Which one they choose is highly debatable. What’s for sure is they’re not going to turn off the war until their primary objectives are banked. They’ve paid a blood deposit for them and won’t be giving them back under any circumstances.

The West has already moved off to a different craze. It’s either monkeypox or picking a fight with China over Taiwan which’ll only drive it further into Russia’s arms. The Chinese are already pulling all central bank assets out of the western financial systems and called together all their own super rich wise guys and told them to bale out of the West while the going is good.

I’ve given up trying to detect any sense in American foreign policy these days.

©Pointman

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Remind me again, which country’s economy was sanctions going to devastate?

The Ukraine war – the military realities.

All articles about the Ukraine situation

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Filed under Article · Tagged with China, Donbass, Russia, Ukraine