December 14, 2022

Is the Kremlin Out to Lunch? |

paulcraigroberts.org

Is the Kremlin Out to Lunch? |

5–7 minutes


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Dear Readers, you might be tired of "doom and gloom," but the life of the planet is threatened by the continuing conflict in Ukraine, and no one else is addressing the dangerous situation.

Is the Kremlin Out to Lunch?

Paul Craig Roberts

The Russian Foreign Ministry tells us that Moscow is alarmed by the mounting tensions in Kosovo.  https://www.rt.com/russia/568116-kosovo-serbia-west-agreements/ 

Don't tell me the Kremlin didn't expect this and did nothing, such as assassinate the Albanian troublemakers, to prevent it.

I am beginning to think that the Kremlin is even more insouciant than the American public.  How can the Kremlin be unaware that Washington is operating against Russia on all fronts?  How could the Kremlin not expect Washington to brew trouble in Kosovo? And between the EU and Serbia?  And trouble in the former Central Asian Soviet Republics?  And in former Soviet Georgia?  And in the Baltics?

And Putin is cruising along with hardly a skeleton for an army.  What does Putin do when Georgia has another run at South Ossetia while Russia's limited forces are deployed in Ukraine?  When the CIA- organized Albanians begin slaughtering Serbs in northern Kosovo?  When conflicts erupt in former Russian Central Asia?

How can Russia be left so unprepared when Putin acknowledges that it is Washington's intent to destroy Russia?

Why did Putin let the opportunity pass to show what happens when a punk country messes with Russia by destroying Ukraine with conventional means?  No one expected the war to last a week, and after 9 months the Russian advance has been halted and turned back because of unpreparedness, lack of reserves, indecision, and limits placed on the Russia military's use of force.

The provocations mount because Putin does nothing to discourage them.  Indeed, he invites them.  Does Putin understand that he is inviting nuclear war by encouraging provocations when all he has to fall back on are nuclear weapons?

RT reported on December 10 that 

"The US has quietly given Ukraine the go-ahead to launch long-range strikes against targets inside Russian territory, the Times reported on Friday, citing sources. The Pentagon has apparently changed its stance on the matter as it has become less concerned that such attacks could escalate the conflict."

To be certain that readers understand, Putin has convinced Washington's neoconservatives that their contention that there are no  repercussions from violating Putin's red lines, as none have ever been enforced, is correct.  Expect that while Putin acts out his Goody Two Shoes role, Washington green-lighted Ukrainian strikes inside Mother Russia will increase and become more provocative.  The neoconservatives intend the effects to undermine Putin at home and to convince the Russian nation that Putin is incapable of resisting Washington. The still operating Washington-financed NGOs in Russia and the US-financed opposition party will say that Putin has brought destruction to Russia without achieving any purpose in Ukraine.  The plan, or delusion, is that Putin will be replaced by a pro-Western Atlanticist Integrationist and Washington will dictate a peace on Washington's terms.

It is difficult for leaders to survive long drawn out wars that lead to no victory.  The inclination of Putin and Lavrov is to settle the conflict in negotiations, which means a Russian defeat.  A victor dictates the peace.  He does not negotiate it.

The evil that confronts Putin is not impressed by his Goody Two Shoes behavior.  If Putin doesn't toughen up and quickly bring the Ukraine war to a decisive end, he is going to get us all killed, because the pushes he has encouraged are coming to shove.

Until recently I regarded the American public as the most unaware people on earth.  They fall for every false narrative.  They fell for the narrative that President Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman with a rifle known for its inaccuracy without noticing what a total failure that this narrative presented of the US Secret Service.  They fell for the same narrative again when President Kennedy's brother got the same treatment.  They fell for the narrative that freedom was doomed unless America went to war in Vietnam.  They fell for the 9/11 narrative and never wondered how a few Saudi Arabian youths outwitted the entirety of the US National Security State, the most humiliating defeat ever suffered by a superpower.  They fell for the Covid narrative and 70% of them rushed to be vaxxed with an untested, and as it turns out extremely dangerous substance that maims, makes infertile, and kills. They fell for the narrative that President Trump was a Russian agent.

When you observe the stupidity of the American population, you wonder how it could possibly be topped.  But the Kremlin has.  The Kremlin's insouciance is responsible for the "Maidan Revolution," the invasion of South Ossetia by a US trained and equipped Georgian army, for a go-slow war in Ukraine that has provided Washington every opportunity to get involved and expand the war so that it now includes attacks on Russia herself.  Putin has responded only with words, never with teeth, to these humiliating affronts, which has caused the West to lose all respect and fear of Russia's military capability.  Confident now that Russian red lines don't exist, Washington's neoconservatives will drive us to Armageddon.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/12/13/is-the-kremlin-out-to-lunch/

 

 

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December 07, 2022

Washington’s Carthaginian Peace Collides With Reality

 

Washington's Carthaginian Peace
Collides With Reality


The Biden administration refuses to tell the American people the truth: Ukraine is not winning and will not win this war.

The American Conservative
November 29, 2022
By Douglas Macgregor


The national political and military leaders who committed America to wars of choice in Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, did so as a rule because they were convinced the fighting would be short and decisive. American presidents, presidential advisors, and senior military leaders never stopped to consider that national strategy, if it exists at all, consists of avoiding conflict unless the nation is attacked and compelled to fight.

The latest victim of this mentality is Ukraine. In the absence of a critical root-and-branch analysis of Russia's national power and strategic interests, American senior military leaders and their political bosses viewed Russia through a narrowly focused lens that magnified U.S. and Ukrainian strengths but ignored Russia's strategic advantages—geographic depth, almost limitless natural resources, high social cohesion, and the military-industrial capacity to rapidly scale up its military power. 

Ukraine is now a war zone subject to the same treatment the U.S. armed forces inflicted on Germany and Japan during the Second World War, on Vietnam in the 1960s, and on Iraq over decades. Power grids, transportation networks, communications infrastructure, fuel production, and ammunition storage sites are being systematically destroyed. Millions of Ukrainians continue to flee the war zone in pursuit of safety, with ominous consequences for Europe's societies and economies. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration repeatedly commits the unpardonable sin in a democratic society of refusing to tell the American people the truth: contrary to the Western media's popular "Ukrainian victory" narrative, which blocks any information that contradicts it, Ukraine is not winning and will not win this war. Months of heavy Ukrainian casualties, resulting from an endless series of pointless attacks against Russian defenses in Southern Ukraine, have dangerously weakened Ukrainian forces. 

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