The reaction to the sledgehammer by West block Europe.

Posted by Pointman on July 1, 2022 · 14 Comments 

First of all, let’s define terms. West block Europe is NATO and the EU combined since the latter is now totally perceived by the East block as nothing more than the hostile political arm of NATO being used to wage the economic sanctions war on Russia. The UK is a member of NATO but has withdrawn from the EU but next behind America, it’s the most aggressive party in the proxy war against Russia. Boris Johnson has just lost two by-elections, one of which was expected but the other one wasn’t. What was a Conservative Party majority of about 25K in it was turned into a 20K win by the third marginal party in the UK, so he’s going to get dumped at the first practicable opportunity by his own party.

The UK is starting to look like a rerun of the terrible economic and industrial strife of the 1970s – soaring cost of living, inflation running into two figures and strikes for wage increases are breaking out all over the place. The MKII of the “winter of discontent” has arrived early and all Boris seems to be fixated on is some country most Britons couldn’t give a flying fuck about. The situation is not being helped by him rambling on about the EU becoming a new and bigger sprawling Roman empire and how the war could only have started because of Putin’s toxic masculinity. First off, Britons voted by the largest turn out ever to get out of the EU and second, some bloody foreigner’s toxic masculinity is well down their list of immediate concerns.

Whoever replaces Boris must make it an immediate priority to get rid of the current foreign secretary Liz Truss who is totally incompetent and well up for a direct war with Russia. Or seemingly anybody, even China as well. She’s now saying Britain should send weapons to help Taiwan amid fears of an invasion by China. She’s obviously never heard Lincoln’s advice about one war at a time please. Nobody trusts her judgement over anything.

Western Europe has been demilitarised. They’ve given the vast majority of their weapon stockpiles to the Ukraine which have been promptly destroyed or captured by Russian forces. There’s no weapons left. The only ones not in Russian hands are now for sale on the dark net. If you fancy a Stinger missile for your birthday, it’ll only cost you about $30,000 and that’s after it’s been fully reconditioned so it actually works again. Taking a commercial flight is about to become a very dangerous idea. A javelin will cost you a bit less, simply because knocking a big commercial jet out of the air with a stinger and killing a few hundred people has a much bigger propaganda impact than killing one tank or APC. In evidence to the UK’s defense committee, some expert in tweeds said It’ll take the West block years to get their stockpiles up to pre-war levels, and we all know what department gets the first and biggest budget cuts in a recession.

Not everybody has taken it on board yet, but it isn’t Red Army troops taking apart the Ukraine on the ground but militia forces of the two Donbass republics with the Red Army just supplying the massive artillery scourging, air superiority and total logistic support. The way things stand at the moment in terms of ammunition and equipment stockpiles, western Europe is defenseless. If, God forbid, WWIII breaks out, the Red Army could slice through it like a hot knife through butter.

Macron, a delusion Napoleon knockoff who’s actually out of power, smugly assures everyone in the EU that it’s winning on all fronts against the Russians – economic sanctions, military aid to Ukraine, undermining Russia’s financial system. The reverse is actually true but it’s all part of the denial that seems to have gripped the West block by the throat. It’s Russia which is actually winning on all fronts and is actually thriving as the West block heads into penury.

It’s becoming laughable from the Russian side. Russian defense secretary said they were having a wonderful time destroying US M5777 howitzers before they’d managed to fire a single shot. Given the accuracy of Russian intelligence in the Ukraine, I’m inclined to believe him. After all, upwards of 50 Ukrainian generals, senior officers and general staff got together in a super secret location to plan the grand August offensive that would turn around the great military disaster (a fantasy BTW) and the Russians visited the exact location of the ultra secret meeting with a flotilla of cruise missiles that killed everything for miles around

Like so much of the EU leadership, Macron’s living in delusion world. The madness continues with giving candidate entry status to Moldiva and the Ukraine. The optics are a bloody disaster. Georgia, Albania and north Macedonia, much more deserving, were denied candidate status because they wouldn’t join in the hate Russia campaign, and for no other reason. Russian Foreign minister Sergi Lavrov compared the EU’s expansion to the Nazis establishing coalitions of countries to attack Russia. He’s perfectly right of course.

Hungry, under the consistently sensible leadership of Viktor Orban and who’s stayed well out of the whole sanctions disaster, has actually made the revolutionary suggestion that instead of going for yet another sanctions package (what’s left to sanction you might ask), it might be a good idea to sit down with the Russians and hold talks. It’s been roundly condemned by the war crazed EU leadership in Brussels but everyone knows he’s speaking for a lot of smaller countries that dare not oppose West block.

If it is actually pushed to a shooting war with Russia by America, there’s a big question about how many of them will immediately declare themselves out of NATO and neutral. Somehow, getting their country destroyed and their people slaughtered for Joe Biden has no appeal to a lot of Europeans. You see, they signed up to NATO years ago in the Cold War as a defensive coalition, not to be used as offensive cannon fodder for an American manufactured war against Russia.

Mass regime change is happening or on the way across Europe. Boris loses 2 seats and soon the party leadership, the ruling socialist vote in Spain has just collapsed, Italian main party looks to be heading for the rocky reef next year after its disastrous showing in the local elections, Little Napoleon Macron can’t find any other party who want to get involved with him in forming a party of “national unity”. Marine lePen has the most seats in the parliament so it looks likely she’ll put together a coalition with several of the tiddler parties. Robert Habek already introducing rationing in Germany and we’re still only in June! Ireland warns of fuel rationing to begin in the Autumn. Inflation officially hits %9.1 (wink) as of last week, a 40 year high. According to Boris, it’s a price worth paying. Is it? I doubt if Brits freezing their way through this coming winter in the darkness of a blackout will agree.

The Russians have simple stopped listening to them and their sanctions. They no longer take them seriously and as they’ve found new customers all over the world for the commodities they used to supply Europe with, the question is now being discussed if Russia won’t start indulging in a bit of economic warfare itself. Why not just ban exports of natural gas, oil, fertiliser and everything else they used to supply? There’s no downside for Russia and overnight complete economic destruction for West block Europe.

Germany and Italy are now furiously firing up coal plants. In the almost certain event of power rationing, it’s estimated 1/5 of companies in Germany will be facing closure. Greece already decided to do it months ago. By also sanctioning Russian coal, they’re now forced to burn lignite (brown) coal, highly polluting BTW, so you can kiss Germany’s green revolution goodbye for the next decade at least, if not forever. The Netherlands is lifting all restrictions on power produced by coal while also appealing to businesses to reduce the amount of power they use. How in God’s name are they supposed to remain competitive in a global business environment with a stricture like that hanging over them? Denmark is already owning up that come winter, they’re going to have a heating energy crisis. They’re going to have lots of company. The French government have already admitted there’s an energy crisis looming and urging the government to restart all the old coal plants.

Within the last week we’ve had both a NATO and G7 summit with not much sense coming out of either except to press on with the current strategy of economic suicide and spending Ukrainian lives. The ideas that came out of the meetings were laughable. Banning buying Russian gold will cost Putin an estimated $19bn a year, offset by $30-40 bn revenue per month from the sale of energy. I wonder what’ll happen to the price of gold when the world’s second largest bullion miner and a major source of supply is cut off from the Western market? Strangely enough, Russia is hoarding its gold rather than selling it, so this “sanction” seems as senseless as the others. When they do sell, it’s only to friendly East block countries like China and India.

Another spiffing idea was to declare a price cap on Russian oil. Initial spin, originating with the usual anonymous source was that they reported China would go along with it but within hours the Chinese vehemently denied any such undertaking as did India. How dare any third party group try to dictate the price of any freely traded commodity between two countries? The fiction of China and India selling out Russia for some cheap oil hasn’t worked. The unpleasant truth for G7 is that Russia is now so cash rich, it could live very comfortably for the next year without selling any oil to anyone, and all of that due to their sanctions forcing up the price of oil globally. As for OPEC members like Saudi Arabia, I can really see them going for a proposal which means they’ll earn less for their oil sales.

Instead of throwing two decades of creeping green useless energy overboard and simply admitting defeat in the sanctions war with Russia, they’d rather go backwards. You see, the hard reality is they know something they simply don’t want to admit to their electorates.

The Russians are not withholding all the energy and commodities they used to export to the EU, they’ve simply found new markets and avid buyers of everything they can produce and all in less than three months. They not only don’t trust the EU, they don’t need its money either. They can trust China and India to pay promptly and without stealing Russian money and assets.

Another thing that came out of the G7/NATO dance around the fantasy maypole was an undertaking to keep supporting the Ukraine indefinitely. The stupidity and hate behind that has all the fingerprints of that arch Russia hater Ursula von der Leyen. I can only think the single result of such a declaration will be the Special Military Operation isn’t going to end anytime soon – they now have to completely destroy an armed to the teeth Ukraine. There won’t be a Ukraine at the end of it. If the Russians get their way, Zelensky and co will be arrested and tried as war criminals. There will be no negotiated peace because Russia is fed up dealing with bad faith brokers. This war ends with unconditional surrender or absolute annihilation of the Ukraine.

Diplomatically, they’ve left Russia no other way out.

It gets better though. Last Saturday, Putin informed his close ally President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus that he has approved supplying him with long-range nuclear capable Iskander missiles. How’s that for a bit of role reversal? Instead of NATO via the EU creeping ever closer to the Russian Federation, he’s creeping Russian nuclear missiles westwards towards their borders. It’s not as if he doesn’t have any to spare – at the last published intelligence assessment, Russia has about 6,000 of the things. The immediacy of it makes me think that it might be a first response to Lithuania blockading off Kaliningrad but before long, I imagine he’ll be coming up with more punishments for Lithuania. In case your geography is a bit rusty, Lithuania is directly north of Belarus. They’re now for the first time going to have nukes stationed right on their border. It also means their neighbours Poland and Latvia have the same threat hanging over their borders for the first time.

I think it’d be a fair bet that supplies of any commodity Lithuania used to get from Russia are about to get turned off permanently, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Latvia and Estonia get the same treatment, just to underscore the point with the Baltic triumvirate that neither the EU or the US will do a damn thing to help them out once Russia decide to give them a damn good kicking. Lithuania has made the same freezing bed for all three of you, so enjoy it together.

Just to add a cherry on top of the G7/NATO meetings as diplomatic disasters, Russia and China are both to be taken off the partners list and added to the threatening children in the naughty corner. There’s nothing like pushing two of your nuclear armed enemies even closer together, is there?

Basically, they’ve got themselves into a mess with no way out except to plough on with the same failing strategy while their own economies are being destroyed, they’ve emptied their arsenals and the Russians are stomping all over the Ukrainian military. There’s no plan B, no contingency plans of any sort. It’s that bad. The whole mess is just going to be passed onto the new faces that will appear next year in regime changes across all of western Europe.

The US president said the outcome would be decided by how much damage each side is prepared to sustain in the Ukraine conflict. To cap it all, Biden is now saying things like he anticipates a ‘waiting game’ between Western Europe and Russia. Note, America isn’t being included in that game. Let me translate that diplomatic speak for you. Having ruined and thrown into recession all the economies of western Europe in four months flat, he’s washing his hands of the whole bloody mess and moving onto pastures new.

Yes, it’s another Afghan style bolt for the exit door by the Biden administration.

©Pointman

Related articles by Pointman:

The Sledgehammer.

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

The Ukraine war – the military realities.

All articles in the Sledgehammer series

All articles about the Ukraine situation

Click for a list of other articles.

Filed under Article · Tagged with East block, Russia, sledgehammer, Ukraine, West block