What is it Good For?

Absolutely Nothing!!!!!!

Welcome my readers and while there is much in the news, I have decided to cover the second half of last week’s conversation.  As a result, today, we will examine how close, if at all, we are to WWIII.  I have covered the Russia Ukrainian situation and its ramifications several times (here, here, and here).  If you have read it, awesome. If you haven’t, you should. And, if you just don’t have the time, here is the Reader’s Digest version in bullet points.

·         There are no good guys. Both sides are horrible.

·        

Putin has some legitimate gripes.

·         The United States (US) blocked even attempting a diplomatic solution before the invasion.

·         The people in the eastern half of Ukraine want to be independent or Russian.

·         The US supported overthrowing the democratically elected government in 2014 (root cause of the current war).

·         The sanctions are helping Russia economically more than hurting.

·         There haven’t been any willful atrocities above the base line for war.

·         This isn’t purely just a war of aggression so Russia can beat up a smaller neighbor.

Sources and commentary are in the links above.

In the event of a world war, Russia and China are the only two powers capable of really resisting US hegemony over the entire world, and unfortunately our government, the EU, and NATO have seen fit to unnecessarily antagonize, based on the belief that American citizens will ultimately pick up the tab.

I have pointed out in my articles before (linked above) that Russia, while they are not a “Good Guy” does have some legitimate gripes, ones that could have probably been handled diplomatically rather than through war, but the US essentially forbid even the attempt at negotiations before Russia invaded Ukraine.  It is important to note here that, contrary to popular belief and media lies, Ukraine hasn’t been a united country since the regime change of 2014, when a democratically elected government was over thrown by US backed insurgents who, as soon as they had consolidated power, pivoted the revolution into a genocide of ethnically Russian Ukrainians in the eastern half of the country.  At that point the eastern parts of Ukraine like the Donetsk and Luhansk had been fighting a Civil War of independence since shortly after the revolution of 2014, where the duly elected pro-Russian government was over thrown and a pro-western government was seated. As the BBC reported in 2014 (here and here), the pro-western government was heavily backed and influenced by neo-Nazi forces that gained significant political power, including the ability to organize military units around a Nazi ideology in the form of the AZOV Battalion (here).  It is also good to note that the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are comprised primarily of ethnic Russian people and were part of Russia for nearly a thousand years before being separated in the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Ukraine has essentially been a shit show for the last 8 years and since the fall of the old USSR the US has used NATO to keep Russia in an adversarial position.  This is unlike our behavior towards Vietnam or China.  After we lost the Vietnam War and after we fought the Chinese and North Koreans to a stand still in the Korean War, we opened diplomatic and trade relations and did little to interfere with their domestic or international affairs.  This resulted in both countries becoming more open and capitalistic (This is not to say they became “free” countries, but they have both improved over the last 30 years).  Since the 90s, rather than encourage Russia to become more open and more integrated with Europe, we have sought to isolate Russia as a nation.  We have sought to surround Russia with NATO member states (NATO is an organization devised specifically to fight Russia when it was the USSR), and we have frequently conducted live fire and other war games essentially right on Russia’s border, simulating fighting Russia.  I get that that has made them nervous and insecure (here, here, and here).  Seriously, for the last 32 years, at the behest of the US we have been engaged in the geopolitical equivalent of ‘I am not touching you’ like some bullying elder sibling.  If the tables were turned and the old Warsaw Pact recruited Canada and Mexico and then engaged in the same activity within a few miles of our border, what do you think we would have done?  We blockaded Cuba for less (here).

Like so much of history, we can see a repeat of past world wars in the events of today.  In WWI, the United States put passengers onboard an English war ship carrying war materials and when it was sunk claimed the Lusitania was a passenger ship, when in fact it was and had been chartered by the British Admiralty, retrofitted to add cargo space, and its hold was stuffed with war materials (here).  Then in WWII, the US, with no alliances or requirements to do so, diplomatically forced Japan into a corner and, playing on the Japanese people’s culture of respect and shame, baited them into the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Both Wilson and Roosevelt needed to shift US public opinion to engage in wars they desperately wanted to fight.  The antagonization of Japan was such that after Pearl Harbor former president Herbert Hoover wrote “I was willing to go to war for the preservation of America, but I believed we should not go around alone sticking pins in tigers, or alone impose futile sanctions” (here).  Hoover also stated “As for Japan, we stuck pins in the rattlesnake with an injurious trade embargo, and at Pearl Harbor, the snake bit us hard” (here).  The point here isn’t to discus the merits of entering either war, but to show how the political class manipulates and pushes in order to force wars.  To get involved in Vietnam, they totally faked an attack on a US ship in the Gulf of Tonkin that never even happened (here).

Armed with this knowledge, we are more prepared to judge our current times and form correct opinions based on all available current and historical facts.  Russia invaded Ukraine and it is a bad deal, but had our CIA not toppled the democratically elected government in 2014 (here), that probably wouldn’t have happened.  It is true that Russia is generally a repressive and unpleasant nation, but the idea it must be stopped or opposed is pure blather playing for emotional responses from the non-thinking.  The US as a nation generally doesn’t have any issues with repressive, generally unpleasant nations. The proof is in the relations that we maintain with China and Saudi Arabia, among others.  When we look at Russia’s war in Ukraine, what is the difference between that and the Saudi’s war in Yemen, other than the fact that Saudi Arabia poses no threat to total US domination of the world?

Rather than attempt to address Russia’s concerns about their security, the US thumbed its nose and refused to entertain any kind of talks, and then engaged in serious grand-standing and rhetoric essentially daring Russia to do something about it.  As a result, Russia invaded Ukraine, in truth, as just a more open and honest version of what we did in 2014, and they didn’t even have the stated goal of taking over the entire country.  In response, the US and NATO, at our behest, have only continued to escalate the tension and situation rather than look for ways to find a real resolution.  To date, NATO and the European Union (EU) have sort of put sanctions on Russia. I say that because most of Europe is not only still buying fuel from Russia but they have also caved and are now paying for the fuel in Russian currency (They have to sell goods into Russia to obtain the Russian currency to buy the fuel) (here).  These sanctions, however, have very much acted to strengthen Russia by drawing it closer to China and the belt and road trade system, making Russia much less vulnerable to western economic sanction.  The West has spent billions to send arms to Ukraine, even knowing that they cannot win (here and here).  NATO doubled down on surrounding and isolating Russia by inviting additional nations, close to the Russian border, to join (here).  EU and NATO member Latvia has stopped shipments from Russia, to Russia that have to transit rail lines on Russian trains that pass through the country (here).  These are not export goods or trade. This is literally Russia sending stuff to other parts of Russia.  Ask yourself what would the US do if Canada decided to embargo our ability to ship things to Alaska over rail (I don’t think there is a rail line, but the analogy is solid).

Bottom line, it seems that, lead by the US, NATO and the EU have decided to look at Russia’s list of problems and then double down to make them more severe, intentionally and wherever possible.  To me, it looks like we are and have been trying to pick a fight without actually throwing the first punch (Optics you know).  The only real problem here, and one Washington doesn’t seem to realize, is that this isn’t like anything we have done in the last 40 years.  This isn’t some underdeveloped backwater we can slap around with no real chance of significant consequences back home (There was that thing on 9/11 but…).  This is Russia and this would be a real war, one that could vary easily end in thermo-nuclear annihilation.

If there is a war, it won’t be just US soldiers. It will be all of NATO, but remember the armed forces of all NATO members combined (excluding the US) is about equal to the US so any way you look it is going to be, at minimum, half us (here).  This right after we got done with 20 demoralizing years spending blood and treasure for absolutely nothing in the Middle East and Asia Minor.  Seriously, Afghanistan reverted back to pre-invasion normal over a weekend after we left our 20-year occupation.  I guess we did leave them significantly better armed than when we got there.  Iraq is no better.

We find ourselves, my dear friends, in a pool of lies pushing towards a war only the insane would want and it is just a matter of time before NATO pushes just a little too hard or the senile idiot in the White House gets impatient.  Either way, do you really believe that if we go to war with Russia that China won’t be landing troops in Taiwan the next morning?  In that case, do we then go to war with both China and Russia?  If we do, who will assemble the electronics for our missiles and targeting computers?  In all seriousness, if a war goes hot with either one, the odds are it will with the other as well.

If you read last week, now you know why I feel we are on the verge of both WWIII and Civil War 2.0 and who knows when or if either will pop off.  I honestly think WWIII is more likely for two reasons.  The first, if WWIII doesn’t happen, there is nothing the West can do to avoid being replaced as the dominant power in world trade and will be supplanted, ending the dollars reserve status in the next 5-10 years, if not sooner (Check the archives. I have written about this).  The second is, I firmly believe that there are extremists in the US government that would rather the world burn in atomic fire than give up their power.  They have shown themselves to be ruthless in every other aspect. So, why not here?

Matthew 24:6-13

6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

God Bless you

-Sam