The Possible Dire Consequences of NATO & Ukrainian Escalation

No need to be insulting chimpanzees.

They are not the apes with delusions of grandeur.

The mind boggles at the rapidly growing use of doublespeak; how in one sentence Biden says we are not fighting a proxy war with Russia, and in the next he says he wants$33 billion for arms for Ukraine.

But then, Americans are the most thoroughly propagandized people in history, so one can expect no less.

Oh, and interesting developments in Transdnistria…

So . . . . the UK Foreign Secretary has said all that. Does she speak for the unified entirety of Her Majesty’s Government? Is she speaking without unified UK government agreement? Hoping to convert them all to her position? Is she laying down a marker in preparation for the internecine battles to come within Her Majesty’s Government as to what Great Britain’s final official War Aims will be finally and officially announced to be?

And if this either already is, or soon enough becomes, the unanimous War Aim of the entirety of Her Majesty’s Government, is it or will it become the War Aim of France? Of Germany? Of Italy? etc. etc?

Will it become the War Aim of all Nato Eufukustan as a unitary bloc of governments?

I wonder who is in charge — is it all really being driven forward by a loosely internetwork of self-interested interest groups operating on auto-pilot, with only marginalized critical voices and a brain-dead gerontocracy atop it all?

It’s difficult for me to believe that the U.S. wants to fight China militarily or wants to risk regime change in China. They want to weaken China, keep Taiwan quasi-independent from China, and most importantly keep the world handcuffed to the dollar but to defeat China militarily would necessitate reshoring and relocating manufacturing facilities and I don’t see our rulers getting enough support amongst themselves on that because the benefits of kicking around U.S. labor and financializing the US economy has worked out so well for so many of them.

But they do want to get rid of Putin and are willing to risk all life on planet earth in a mad attempt to do so. If Russia is weakened it will also weaken China of course and that’s a bonus to them. Even if they didn’t see China as a problem though they’d be just as aggressive towards Russia. They didn’t loot Russia in the 90s to weaken China. The Maidan revolution wasn’t ginned up by the CIA with the ultimate goal of weakening China.

Z

Z, I thought similarly to you when I first saw the stuff about missiles on the first island chain but if you hung around the posts and threads on Twitter as presented by Ian, it seems we are being too optimistic.

I would love to be wrong but I think Ian’s on the money here as usual.

“we should be spending trillions on preparing for climate change and ecological collapse, not playing war games”

We should be, but taking over Russia seems to be their climate adaptation plan. Canada and Greenland, too. The maps of surface temperatures, sea level rise, “new” floodplains (the lowest land within a catchment basin) from increased rates of rainfall, and wildfires (drought), grow increasingly dire. Even Florida is burning (again). Fires are burning from northern Arizona to Florida, the North Carolina mountains, and Nebraska, with high winds expected in the west for all the existing fires there. Southern California is moving to severe water restrictions, and drought is ramping up in Oregon as well, probably where they added all those new server farms that need water as a coolant.

Since so many politicians enter politics to become celebrities it’s very hard to tell what is motivated by “true belief” vs. showmanship”.

GrimJim

The problem there is that previously, politicians had left all the actual running of government, and the generation of the advice they needed to keep things running smoothly, to the professional bureaucrats, whatever branch of government or military they night be in. This left the actual running of the country to a solid base…

A weekend or two ago, I watched Noam Chomsky answering questions on the War in Ukraine. He re-iterated the the observation that the US’s goal appeared to be to “fight to the last Ukrainian” in a drawn-out war to weaken Russia (which of course, is the absolutely WORST outcome if you’re genuinely concerned about Ukraine). But he also went into the history of the US’s record of aggression—how Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and even Putin wanted to have a “Europe stretching from the Atlantic to Vladivostok” with Russia a eager parttern–and how we spurned them.

Chomsky then went on what Russia did get was a promise that NATO would not be expanded “one inch” further east. It was Clinton who started to renege on that promise, before the 1996 election, possibly to win Polish-American votes in the US (Polish immigrants are right up there with Cuban immigrants in screwing up US foreign policy). This prompted a deluge of protest among US foreign policy and military veterans—including Cold Warriors not particularly friendly to Russia such as George Kennan, Robert Gates, Strobe Talbott, Thomas Friedman, William Perry, and even *Henry-fucking-Kissinger* all said, after a fashion, “DON’T DO IT”. But we did it anyways.

Later, of course, Obama piled on with his intervention in the Maiden uprising in 2014.

So much of this is all due to what you said–political leadership in this country throwing red meat to their ill-informed base and not listening to the experts. While no, experts, aren’t always right, in this case–especially since all these were not in the slightest inclined to be friendly to Russia–they should have been heeded. The fact that Clinton decided the winning option for his 1996 campaign was cajoling the Eastern European vote instead of, say, fighting the cruel and stupid TATNF replacement of AFDC, is especially noteworthy.

Ian said “they [China] need to increase their navy to the point where it can fight the US navy in international waters and win. “

Surface navies are largely obsolete. If WWIII breaks out, most of the U.S. navy will quickly be on the bottom of the ocean, sunk by missiles. The missiles can be launched from planes, ships, subs, or from land. So if I were China, I would focus on missiles, and missile defenses.

Even non-hypersonic missiles like the Kalibr are quite capable of taking out American ships and largely evading American air defenses (note the Sauds have been hit repeatedly by Houthi drones & missiles despite the Sauds having the best American air defenses money can buy).

Missile warfare is partly quality and partly quantity. It’s nice to have a hypersonic missile that can evade defenses 100% of the time, but if you have a subsonic missile that can evade defenses 1 time out of 10, then all you have to do is fire a salvo of 20 of those missiles and 2 of them will strike the target.

WWIII will be decided by missiles, and missile defenses. If WWIII happened today, Russia could sink all our ships, vaporize all our military bases, shoot down all our planes, and hit all our major cities and critical infrastructure, all the while intercepting the majority of U.S. missiles. The U.S. would lose, badly.

Tanks and infantry are necessary if you want to establish control on the ground, as Russia is doing in Ukraine. But they are not necessary to bring a country to its knees.

Agree with Ian’s main point that there is a real danger of the Ukraine war escalating. Poland is threatening to invade Western Ukraine and Romania is threatening to invade Transnistria. It’s like WWI all over again.

Ian, I don’t disagree with your analysis of the current extremely dangerous situation.

I’d go a little farther, though, and suggest that given what’s happening globally, not simply in the Ukraine, the rulership in the West is practically begging for a nuclear first strike from the Rus/Chi alliance, and I’m suspecting that if they don’t get it, they’ll launch their own first strike or have one of their nuclear armed satrapies do it just to get it over with.

The crises are compounding quickly; underlying most of them is the climate crisis which isn’t being addressed at all any more perhaps because our rulers believe it’s too late, the tipping point has passed and the only thing left is to move, get out of the way. Have we heard from Greta lately? Nah. And you know that a Buddhist activist set himself on fire at the Supreme Court Plaza the other day, name of Wynn Bruce, from Boulder, CO, in the hope of drawing attention to the now completely neglected climate crisis. He died and was disappeared.

It’s no longer just that they are fighting To The Last Ukrainian (what a meme), they’ve decided to fight to the last of all of us.

Sick fucks, all of them, with a special nod to the British FM.

Escalation is the preferred method for those who think they’ll have nothing to lose. Did the PTB ever imagine that supporting a few dusty mujahedeen could morph into something costing their nation trillions? Possibly. They just didn’t care enough to think that far ahead. This is evidenced by observing all the really bad decision makers who get to make good money on the lecture circuits. So who are these lecture circuit groupies? Why doesn’t anybody bring rotten fruit to these lectures? I have many questions.

Are the Russians evil? If no, then are the Ukrainians? Is it really those Americans behind it all?

Why not target the dysfunctional PTB wherever they are? Aren’t they the ones making all the bad decisions? Aren’t they the ones gaming the system so they get to be the ones making all the bad decisions?

I never understood the thinking behind random shootings or terrorism that targeted innocents. As if the PTB will reach for the fainting couch. Everybody knows it’s a handful of masters who get to dance around all the powerless puppets. So why not make their random shootings or terrorisms count? There has to be a social psychology behind all this. If so, then why hasn’t it become common wisdom yet?

@GrimJim,

Here is how the Pink Pussy Hat Democrats can make Trump’s 2024 victory into a Landslide of Nixon-in-’72 proportions. They can run their God-Empress Hillary yet again for President Preciousssss.

That should do it.

Is there any way to slow it down or even stop it just long enough to kick it over sideways and stomp on it? I can think of only one desperate slender thread-of-hope way.

And that would be for Tulsi Gabbard to gather all her forces and supporters and figure out which states to run in and win in . . . . in order to deny an Electoral College Victory to either Trump or Clinton. If she can do that, and succeed, then she can sit back and watch and let the shit fling where it may.

The only place there’s any room or need for escalation is from the NATO side.

I cannot stress enough the incredible disconnect between the western media’s portrayal of events and the actual events on the battlefield. Ukraine isn’t just not winning, they’re getting absolutely curb stomped. Russia is now hitting the Donbass front with a thousand air, missile, and artillery strikes a day. Ukraine is suffering completely unsustainable losses to whatever is left of its vehicle pool daily, and their troops are disintegrating, either literally under a relentless bombardment they have no ability to respond to (a couple of weeks ago they still had some artillery to fire back with, but now they have almost nothing left, hence all the publicity for NATO donated pieces, including a whopping dozen from France. Surely that will turn the tide!) or figuratively as scores of them surrender every day, and those numbers are only going to increase. And this is all in the context of Russia still not having unlseashed its main offensive. Everything now is still prepatory artillery and probing attacks.

The ball is entirely in NATOs court in terms of if they want to escalate. Because this war is over. All that’s left is a lot of unneeded dying. There is no saving Ukraine. We can pump in as many weapons as we like, but they’ll all get blown up before they ever reach the Dnieper (which they have no means of crossing even if they get there). The only thing left is for NATO to escalate to direct involvement, which means WW3 and all of us dead.

For everyone here who is absolutely convinced that the West is going to start a nuclear war, I would just point out that so far only one side of this conflict has threatened nuclear war, and it ain’t the West.

What fascinates me regarding modern warfare is how direct EMP bombs, grenades, and even “ray guns” (aka “Ion Gun” in Star Wars parlance) have not been developed.

The basic technology has been known for decades. One little grenade, delivered by drone or even thrown by a partisan, could take out a whole group of tanks. A rifle-sized gun could be used again and again.

Very effective, even against US infantry, due to how much they depend on satellite and other communications.

Yet nothing like this has been developed, except at the ICBM level, and even then it is little better than just a calibrated nuke.

Is there some science block I am unaware of (power/miniaturization issues)? Or is lack of development of such weapons mostly due to the lack of dollars/rubles going to the Military-Industrial Complex for these “less sexy/less destructive” types of weapons?

The nuclear threat is implicit any time you have nuclear armed militaries in confrontation. The nuclear threat is implicit whenever a nuclear power confronts a non-nuclear armed nation or people.

The only nation that’s ever used nuclear weapons in combat is the United States, and it’s possession of a nuclear arsenal is a threat to the rest of the world — at least from the rest of the world’s point of view.

Russia has pointed out that the continued conflict in Ukraine has the potential to spread beyond Ukraine’s borders (it already has), and that in turn risks triggering nuclear war — which is self-evident.

I would welcome the kind of wisdom on the part of leaders which would eliminate the possibility of nuclear war, but I’m not seeing it on any side of this conflict. Instead, I’m seeing greater and greater provocation by Ukraine, the USandNato, and Russia toward an inevitable nuclear exchange.

Sadly, we don’t have a choice in the matter.

NL

For everyone here who is absolutely convinced that the West is going to start a nuclear war,

Why is that mockable? We never swore off a first-strike nuclear attack during the Cold War against the USSR. In fact, we *practiced doing just that!!* (Example: Able Archer, 1983).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83

Peace activists I recall at the time begged the US and the West to say “we won’t be the first to hurl nukes” to which our governments refused to make that commitment. Well, if you were the Soviets observing all this, what would you conclude?

All my boyhood I grew up hearing that we in the US and West were the good guys while the Russkies were the expansionists and the aggressors. A less partisan review of the Cold War, and the 30 years since it ended, calls me to question that ‘truth’. The average Russian regards their spies who helped steal US atomic secrets to help the USSR catch up in nuclear weaponry as heroes, heroes that saved the world from a one-sided nuclear war, and now I see their point.

I see their point especially now given the behavior of the US since the Cold War; without having the USSR to oppose us we’ve been invading countries ’round the world, all for the greater glory not of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ but for our Exxon-Mobils and United Fruits. The Ukraine is no different, given now that we’ve handed the reins of our economy over to a capitalist class that cannot create, but can only loot and steal, and they want expand eastward to loot Ukraine (and no doubt, past that too). I recall also in my boyhood seeing all the Cecil B. DeMille Roman Empire movie-fare, and now I think, like Rome, the West is turning into a plunder economy.

Might I add a plunder economy has no future? Eventually you can’t expand to plunder more, and that is one of the things that happened with Rome.

NL and NR represent opposite ends of some spectrum. Best not to confuse them in your mind.

Bruce wilder:

I understand the issue just fine, thanks. Multiple people in these comments have talked about the West starting a nuclear war with a first strike, which is why I pointed out the fact that so far, Russia is the only one who has threatened to do that, not the West.

“An island which had never been part of the US”. My bad.

It’s also pretty funny that there are people who think that in the event of World War III, only one side would lose badly.

It’s duly noted this was completely ignored by the commentariat taking NR to task for his comments. I too have noted what NR has noted, and that is the Putin Apologia on the far right and far left has approached the nuclear question as though a nuclear war could be won by either side, but in their case that Russia could actually win a nuclear war.

I’m not defending the West and NeoLiberlism here, but who again has been revamping their nuclear arsenal the past decade or longer? That’s right, not America but Russia instead. If America is hellbent on a nuclear conflict then surely it would have restructured its nuclear arsenal making it state of the art with hypersonic missiles carrying tens of nuclear warheads that can strike multiple targets.

Newscasters on Russia Today have claimed the Russian people are now squarely behind a nuclear war if that’s what is needed. Who knows if that is true or not. What we do know is that it is insane and preposterous and it means the Russians believe they can win a nuclear war.

https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/01/29/russia-is-updating-their-nuclear-weapons-what-does-that-mean-for-rest-of-us-pub-80895

Since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, the Russians have begun to build up basing sites for their advanced systems there too, including the Iskanders. If Russia brings nuclear weapons into Crimea, it will spark complex political, legal, and moral problems. The world community has largely held firm in condemning Russia’s seizure of Crimea and considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory. Should Russia bring nuclear weapons to Crimea, it will be violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in a fundamental manner, for Ukraine is a non-nuclear weapon state under the NPT. Russia in this case would be behaving in a manner no better than North Korea.

I want to ask the peeps laying all the blame for the Ukraine “war” at the feet of the West, what will you say if or when Putin puts nukes in Crimea? Will that be the West’s fault too? If that’s the case, your logic is disgustingly unsound and not logic at all. Your illogic dictates that Putin has a permanent get-out-of-jail card because no matter what he does, it will always be the West’s fault. He could nuke Western Europe and you would still blame it on the West and roll out the irradiated red carpet for him. Get some objectivity and put your grinding axe down. It’s clouding your better judgment.

You’re entitled to your opinion but not facts. Facts speak for themselves.

https://warontherocks.com/2018/04/americas-endangered-nuclear-deterrent-the-case-for-funding-two-critical-capabilities/

Every U.S. administration since the end of the Cold War has affirmed the need to sustain a credible triad of ICBMs, long-range bombers, and nuclear ballistic missile submarines. Yet until recently, these same administrations have also chosen to truncate, delay, or cancel needed triad modernization initiatives, including programs to replace 35-year-old air-launched cruise missiles carried by B-52s and the nearly 50-year-old Minuteman III ICBMs. This is reflected in funding allocated to the Defense Department’s “Strategic Forces” investment portfolio, which includes triad weapon system life extension and modernization programs.

From 1964 until the end of the Cold War, this portfolio accounted for about 9.6 percent of the department’s annual Total Obligation Authority on average. This share has decreased to an average of about 2.4 percent since FY 1992, a level that was barely sufficient to upgrade and extend the operational lives of the aging triad.

While many in Congress and the Defense Department considered this acceptable given the absence of a hostile power capable of challenging America’s military supremacy, it is increasingly clear that these systems will not meet future requirements in an era of renewed great power competition. While the United States essentially deferred nuclear modernization, Russia and China took the opposite tack by aggressively pursuing modernization of their nuclear forces across the board. China has fielded ballistic missile submarines and the world’s largest and most capable inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles, including variants that may be dual-capable. Both Russia and China continue to fund multiple programs to develop new capabilities. They have also invested in conventional systems to deter, degrade, or prevent the United States from intervening in crises in their respective regions.

A war monger’s press release, lightly edited?!

Thank you.

“The latest example is that when confronted with the issue of western weapons moving east on the rail lines, Russia chose not to just start bombing the trains because they knew that Ukraine (the supposed good guys in this conflict) were intentionally storing gear in passenger trains and intermixing them with cars filled with civilians. So instead Russia took out part of the electricity system and shut down the entire train grid.”

Ha ha good one! I’ll bet they had a hard time filling rail cars with civilians wanting to go east.