Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Russia and Eastern Europe Page 1 of 18

The Tiny Dictate to the Large

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On October 12, 2025

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After reading this article at @RStatecraft by @connor_echols I am more convinced than ever that admitting the Baltic States into NATO was the biggest mistake NATO ever made: three miniscule states with three tiny militaries dominate policy yet contribute nothing but acrimony and accusations towards Russia. 

Just read the stridency of their claims towards Russia. Former Latvian PM: “Putin acts the way he acts, and the only options for the West are either to submit or to resist.” Or the present Estonia FM: “Russia’s war against Ukraine is driven by one thing and one thing only: its refusal to accept the Soviet Union’s collapse and its unrelenting imperialist ambitions.”

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Look, I get the Baltics are paranoid about chimerical Russian irredentism towards the three republics. NATO can’t and shouldn’t allow alliance policy to be dictated by its three smallest members, who are tiny, paranoid and are lead by some critically undereducated fools, like Kaja Kallas, who said, “Chinese are very good at technology but they are not that good in social sciences . . . . The Russians… are not good at technology at all, but super good in social sciences.”

I’ll let that one go without comment. The bottom line is tiny states are dictating the policy of huge institutions and nations, just take a look at how the Israeli tail wags the American dog.

We’re supposed to make peace with enemies, folks, not friends.

Dialogue is essential more than ever. Not paranoia.

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Bad Faith and Criminality

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On September 19, 2025

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

In the aftermath of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, US president Teddy Roosevelt brought together negotiators from Russia and Japan to hammer out a peace. This was the first time the US was ever seen as an ‘honest broker’ in international relations. In 1919 President Wilson sailed to Paris with his 14 Points doing his level best to get the Europeans to negotiate an honorable peace. The wily Europeans outfoxed the rigid and moralizing Southerner in just about all the negotiations. Nevertheless, the US retained the aura of ‘honest broker’ until this century. I can’t say exactly when we lost it—probably when Colin Powell lied to the UN in testimony before the Second Iraqi War—but lost it we did. Somewhere in there we lost the aura of exceptional power we possessed by pissing away a metric shit-ton (yes, an American who can do metric!) of blood and treasure in the sands of Iraq and mountains of Afghanistan—and with that loss, we shot whatever credibility we retained right in the foot. But those, shall I say, are different discussions for a different day.

Lost auras being the one thing—at least we still got a chakra, right? (Ugly and poisoned though it may be.) It’s the second thing that grates the teeth at night: an everlasting chronicle of bullshit deeply eroding any sense of diplomatic norms that’s transfigured us into OG rogue nation. So, grab some popcorn, rewind the Wayback Machine and head back to 2014 cause I got a whopper to tell you.

It’s late summer of 2014 and a brushfire war is simmering between Russia and the Ukraine. The US and its European allies are eager to see the Ukraine join NATO. They bring Russia and the Ukraine together and pretty much force feed them the Minsk Accords. Then, over the course of the next eight years the NATO allies string the Russians along encouraging the Ukraine in its ever persistent demands to renegotiate the Minsk Accords.

Nota bene: yes, I write it as the Ukraine. I know the Ukrainians desire their benighted lot to be call Ukraine.

Do I care?

Not one iota.

It was always called the Ukraine—I mean, the Russians use the partitive genitive (don’t ask) when describing the Ukraine as a nation—and it will ever thus be called the Ukraine.

Now, it took the Russians—rarely gullible—a long time to figure out our stunning acts of “bad faith.” But “bad faith” it was. The US and its European allies had no intention of ever compelling the Ukraine to live up to its international agreements with Russia. They were only ever playing for time, waiting for the day they could present Ukrainian membership in NATO as a fait accompli, hoping for a démarche, a dénouement. Damned if we got war in its place.

But the forever-war nation ain’t gonna let a little war-war stop it, no, no, no! Once America sets a precedent it’s game on, bitches! So, in late May-early June 2025 the US negotiated directly with Iranian diplomats signaling that no military action was imminent. While negotiations were held, the US and Israel agreed on America logistical support for an Israeli attack on Iran. A week after Israel launched its first strikes against Iranian nuclear sites, the United States followed suit. Not only is this acting in “bad faith” it’s outright deceit, a line no nation should ever cross in the conduct of negotiations. It’s one thing to bring two sets of instructions to negotiations, one always needs a fall-back position. But deceit? WTF?

Twice then, the US has acted in “bad faith.” It’s at number three when the wise recognize a pattern, three also being proof of outright illegality in the conduct of international affairs, at least according to international and domestic law. So, there is that, you know?

Domestic law, you ask? How so?

“Young grasshopper,” says Master Po, “sit and I will tell you.” (Anyone who gets the reference wins a cookie.)

Treaties signed by the United States and ratified by the Senate are, in accordance with the 1920 Supreme Court ruling Missouri v Holland, the supreme law of the land.

Skeptical-like, you query, “what treaty did we violate, Sean Paul?”

Easy, the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. This treaty enshrined, in international and domestic law, a norm of diplomacy dating back 575 years to the city-state of Milan and its then ruler Francesco Sforza—a norm, or custom only violated three or four times in the last century it’s so sacred. So basic, so important is the principle of the personal sanctity of the negotiator, aka the diplomat, that it is respected by every nation on the goddamned planet.

It is the singular, fundamental law of diplomacy from which spring all the other elements of reciprocity evident in the conduct of international relations. And in typical American fashion, just days ago, we nuked that norm into oblivion when we in concert with Qatar and Israel arranged for an attack on credentialed Hamas negotiators.

I don’t have anything else to add except a few questions. Why would any nation enter into negotiations with us ever again? Who would be that stupid and reckless? And what, if anything, can ever be done to regain international trust? What I’ve detailed are fundamentally outrageous betrayals of diplomatic norms, norms developed over 500 years ago and used for centuries.

It’s not rocket sceince. Hell, it ain’t even algebra. Christ, it’s more basic than fractions. It should be easy to comprehend. And the behavior is so fucking counter-productive I would expect even the stupid to fathom.

I would be wrong.

P.S. And consequences,those things be bad, like ju-ju bee tree bad shit. Didnae take long, aye?

P.P.S. Oh, and by the way, this leads directly to the massive diversification away from petrodollar settlements, which gets us a fuckton closer to the end of the dollar as global reserve currency. That’s going to be one serious painful adjustment for Americans to make, domestic production notwithstanding.

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Four Randon Econonic, Political, Geopolitical and Scientific Musings

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On September 15, 2025

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First economic: The US dollar is down 5% over the last six months against a basket of currencies. And over the past year, it’s lost 9.6%. The biggest winner against a dollar has been the euro which has gone up 13% however, which truly is a win for Europe because it makes their natural gas imports from the US less expensive. But their natural gas imports are still a poison chalice. Expect the dollar to continue its slide, perhaps precipitously at some point in the New Year.

There were large moves out of US equities in the spring confirming the adage “sell in May and go away.” What September will look like is anyone’s guess, especially as Israel is more than likely to start the second phase of its war against Iran? Or October—that worst of months for Wall Street? What happens if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz and oil goes above 100 dollars a barrel? That would be great for oil producers, but it would be terrible for markets across the globe, even China, possibly leading to a worldwide recession, especially with Chinese growth being somewhere between 4% and 5% at present.

Regardless of what happens in September or October—both always being bad month’s economically for the US economy, America’s bond market and the value of the dollar will continue its downward trajectory because America’s lenders are now demanding gold for loans instead of treasuries. This smells to me like the beginning of the end of dollar hegemony.

It makes me wonder what kind of “store of value” the BRICS will adopt to support their currency? Will it be a basket of their currencies? Will it be backed by gold and petroleum? That would be truly hard-core, because it would mean we were in for a long era of tight money. Our entire lives, actually, the entire history has been based on easy money. And as you know money creation is only possible when using a fiat currency.

There are many ways to imagine what they’ll do. Maybe blockchain? Who really knows? But there are other commodities that do have a store value, silver among them, maybe even rare earths and others they could use. It certainly is an interesting time to live.

Second domestic political: Niall Ferguson in his interview by Charlie Rose posted a week ago on the Internet was asked about Trump‘s challenges of outright ignoring the constitution with the following question: are we the Roman Republic, is this or are we witnessing the collapse of the constitutional order like the Roman republic. Rose asks if Trump is Augustus. He clearly is not. I would say that Trump is more like Marius and the Kennedys were more like the brothers Gracchi. In fact, I made this argument on a graduate school paper that I got a very good grade on, but in which my professor seriously disagreed with my analogies. Regardless I would say that we are at the beginning of the end of our constitutional order, and that we are looking down the barrel of Caesarism. It’s on the way. Maybe two years, maybe four years but it’s coming. Will it be a general? Will it be a politician? Those are questions we simply can’t answer. But as Ian Welsh has consistently predicted America is heading for a collapse, be it constitutional or economic or both it’s gonna happen and there isn’t anything anyone of us can do about it. Besides, Ferguson, while whip-smart, is kind of a tool.

Third is about some weaknessess the SCO currently must contend with if they are to become the anti-NATO military block. Here they are in no particular order of importance: One, the nations that make up the SCO are too diverse and often times their interests do not align with everyone in the SCO. For example, China and India have serious border issues. Pakistan and India have serious issues in Kashmir. Those are just two examples of several potential conflicts between members of a block, supposedly to oppose NATO. The issues between Pakistan and India make the intra-NATO issues between Greece and Turkey look like a family arguement on Thanksgiving.

Second, as the former director general of Russian international affairs Council said in a recent interview, “ the mandate of the SCO is too general.” The SCO can focus on security, development, or terrorism. Not all three.

Third, China is by far the most powerful member of the SCO and that creates a dangerous asymmetry in the organization. Much like the United States dominated NATO for so long and skewed it’s purpose after the Cold War for its own unfathomable means.

Fourth: This essay on the relative merits of “Superradiance,”.  Is well worth the three minutes it will take to read, plus it is comprehensible to the layman. The essay describes Superradiance as “a collective quantum optical effect in which a group of emitters, such as atoms or molecules, emit light in a highly coherent and amplified manner.  In the context of mammalian neural systems, superradiance occurs when a group of neurons collectively emit photons, resulting in a stronger and more coherent signal compared to individual neuron emissions. This coordinated emission of photons across vast networks of microtubules within neurons could potentially achieve the long-range coherence necessary for the emergence of consciousness.”

The essay stands as a correction of sorts to Sir Roger Penrose’s “Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR)” theory of human consciousness, which Wikipedia describes thusly: Orch Or “is a controversial theory postulating that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons (rather than being a product of neural connections).” In short, says Penrose, “Consciousness does not collapse the wave function; instead it is the collapse of the wave function that produces consciousness.”

One thing we do know is that consciouness is decidely not computational and most likely occurs in the quantum realm.

As you can tell, I dig this kind of stuff.

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Come and See: A Belarussian and Russian Film On The Partisan War In 1943

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On September 15, 2025

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I just watched the first half of иди и смотри, in English, “Come and See.”  I had to stop. It was just too much. It’s not like the first 25 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, it is random, crazy, evil violence committed on peasants who are not really supporting the partisans.

This rarely happens to me, but on minute I smiled, the next I wanted to wretch, and the next I got misty eyed.  I’m attemping to watch it in the original Russian but it is hard because it is in essence peasant Russian and their accents are pretty damned hard to unpack at times so sometimes I have to rewind and turn the subtitles back on.

I was told by a dear Russian friend–who lives in Russia–that Come and See captures the wanton brutality of war in its essentially random nature.

I can not say yet as I reccoment this film from 1987–that was damn near shitcanned by Soviet censors and I can understand why. It is harsh, beautiful, tender, cruel and arbitrary in equal measures. If you have the stomach, go ahead but be warned.

More when I finish.

If you have seen it, please share.

If you’ve read this far, and you’ve read some of my articles and most if not all of Ian’s, then you might wish to Subscribe or donate. Ian has written over 3,500 posts, and the site, and Ian, need the money to keep the shop running. So please, consider it.

The War in Ukraine Enters A New Phase

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On June 26, 2025

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The Russo-Ukrainian War of 2021-present has entered a new phase. In the wake of the Ukraine’s hybrid/asymmetric attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet (a.k.a., Operation Spiderweb), Russia is getting its revenge in the smartest way possible. Russia has begun a massive, month-long air/missile/drone campaign that is systematically attacking command and control centers all over the country. The latest was a Russian X-22 missile attack on a former drilling rig disguised as a seaborne command and control center. A Tu-22M3 Backfire bomber launched the X-22 cruise missile where it reached Mach 4 and then dove into the command center and obliterated it. There are dozens of videos out now on reputable sites indicating this campaign is ongoing and will continue.

Couple that withpolling data coming out of the Ukraine where 73.2 percent of Ukrainians polled believe the conflict should end along the current line of control, and it just gets worse.

This is very, very bad news for Ukraine. This might not be the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the middle.

The site for reasonably unbiased updates is Military TV. But, viewer beware, this is uncensored warfare.

UPDATE: At the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which I watched in Russian — the translators often miss subtle points. Putin was talking about how Russia always respected Ukraine’s right to independence, and he gave an enormous amount of context in his answers, but, when it came to discussing Russia’s army moving into new regions in relation to Ukraine’s independence, he did so in the Russian past perfect aspect. Russian verbs have tense. But they also have aspect, meaning is an action fully completed, or temporarily or ongoing, etc. Putins use of the past perfect aspect signifies to me two things: 1) Putin has come around to the necessity of destroying the Zelensky regime, and the will of the Ukrainian people, and; 2) Following on logically, peace will not be negotiated; it willl be dictated, and there is fuck all Ukraine can do now except suffer for the deceitful sins of the West.

UPDATE 2: Medvedev just announced that Ukraine will not be allowed to enter the EU. At one time, Russia was fine with Ukrainian EU membership — so long as it remained militarily neutral, like Austria. In Medvedev owns words (apologies in advance for the terrible translation): “Brussels today is a real enemy of Russia. In such a distorted form, the European Union is no less a threat to us than the North Atlantic Alliance. Therefore, the complacent slogan, “Join anywhere but NATO” must be adjusted. Thus, the so-called Ukraine in the EU is a danger for our country. There are two ways to stop this danger: A) Either the EU itself must realize that it does not need the Kiev quasi-state, in principle, or a certainly preferable; B) There is simply no one to join the EU.”

Medvedev is always the one who lets the trial balloon loose, so it is only a matter of time until Putin makes options A and B into official Russian policy.

Losing Our Asian Allies – And Fast

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On June 25, 2025

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Ian in his last post mentioned that our Asian allies are slipping away from us. While we pretend to strategically re-orient the Japanese are engaging in massive rearmament begun by Abe and being continued by the current government. Japan has lost confidence in the American security umbrella because of the deceit we’ve displayed in foreign relations. The Koreans? I lived in Korea. They’re simply apoplectic. Some are even at the point where they are willing to consider a loose confederation with the north, an entente of sorts so the South has the protection of the North’s nuclear umbrella and the North gains goods and services from the South.

This is simply unheard of. When I talked to one of my former students who now works in the foreign ministry and he told me this I was gobsmacked.

Ian’s correct. For 400 years the balance of payments from the rest of the world went to the Littoral seapower states. For the last 50 years the balance of payments has been reversed.  All that gold is going back home. In one generation the United States has squandered all the goodwill and wealth it received during WWI and WWII. China in the last 50 years has lifted more people out of poverty than the rest of the world did during all of recorded history. Chew on that stat for a moment.

I will be visiting China and South Korea to do a 20 year retrospective tour and a 30 year retrospective tour on the former and the latter. I don’t know what to expect, but I remember China 20 years ago and being blown away.

The USA is in deep strategic shit. For 200+ years our power has been based on our complete hegemony of this hemisphere. For 75 of the last 100 years our main strategic goal has been the prevention of one power or an alliance of powers attaining hegemonic power over the Eurasian landmass. In the last six years we’ve abandoned that VITAL national interest for what? We’ve driven Russia into the arms of China. India lost all confidence in us. Now East Asia has.

If a single power or coalition of powers dominate the Eurasian landmass our two oceans will not protect us.

It appears I might have been wrong about the Israeli-Iran pissing contest being the opening act of WWIII. Good. What it really feels like is the first Balkan War in 1912. The calculus is being made in Beijing. And Tokyo. And Seoul. And Taipei. We lack the ability to protect our allies conventionally. And no one wants nukes.

I don’t have any smart quip to conclude with except a Spanish expletive, “la puebla es jodida.”

You get the idea.

Wars Metastisize

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On June 22, 2025

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The title says it all. So did Clausewitz.

We committed an act of war against a sovereign state that had every right to peaceful nuclear power.

Tulsi Gabbard told Donald Trump in March that Iran had NO nuclear weapons program.

There is a huge difference between radio medcine and nuclear power, and a nuclear weapons program. Iran has the former by legal right under the NNPT and does not, nor has plans for the latter.

This war will spiral out of control, just like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in July 1914.

Prepare yourselves. We will all suffer before this is over.

Ukrainian War End Prediction

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On June 11, 2025

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When the war started, I predicted that Russia would win militarily. That was an easy, obvious prediction based on the fact that Russia is larger, has more industry, and that China would not allow sanctions to take out Russia, knowing it would be next, but would keep the Russian economy running.

This prediction is a little more risky because the war could end due to a peace deal. There’s no question that Ukraine is losing, and that the battlefield is getting worse and worse for them.

Russian forces are back within 300 kilometers of Kiev. While advances are slow, they are speeding up. The Ukrainians are running out of manpower, are considering mobilizing women for infantry, and have huge problems with desertion and recruitment. Russia has ramped up weapon production far more than the West.

So I’m going to keep this one simple: The war will end next year with the Ukrainian army collapsing. Ukraine will be forced into an unconditional surrender, and Russia will take what it wants.

There’s lots of ways this could go wrong. The Euros could rush in “peacekeeping forces.” Putin could agree to peace before then. The “Ukrainians” could provoke Russia into using tac nukes with their strikes of strategic nuclear infrastructure. Putin might die, and if he does he’ll be replaced by someone far more aggressive. So this isn’t a “sure thing” prediction, just a best guess.

But basically, that guess is that the Ukrainian army collapses next year, and we see huge “big arrow” movement.

Putin is likely to remember the lessons of Syria’s frozen conflict, and of Russia and Ukraine’s fake peace of 2014/2015. No frozen conflicts, no fanatical enemies still able to fight. Russia has paid dearly to crush Ukraine, and it would be foolish to throw away what is being won on the battlefield at a fake peace conference with Europeans and Americans who have no intention of keeping any deal.

So, most likely, he will win the war and impose the peace. If he’s really smart, he’ll take Odessa and turn Ukraine into a landlocked state, even if that means some extra casualties and time.

Russia was always going to win the war. The questions are simply when, by how much, and what Ukraine is left with afterwards.

***

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