Archive for May, 2024

Ukraine endgame: The danger of wider war

May 31, 2024

If things go on as they are, Russia will defeat the Ukrainian army and force Ukraine and its NATO allies to accept its terms of peace.

I don’t see how any reasonable person can deny this fact.  The Ukrainians drafting young boys and old men into their army and still are not replenishing troop losses.  The Russians still have most of their forces in reserve.   

But war hawks hope that victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat.  They want to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles that will strike deep into Russia.  

Some still hope that Russian forces can be driven out of Ukraine.  Others are willing to settle for a cease-fire along existing battle lines.

Victory and compromise are both false hopes.  Ukraine and its allies can’t win, and the Putin government is unwilling to negotiate except on the basis of the draft treaty presented prior to the invasion in February, 2024.

Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris, in the video above, sum up the situation very well.

Russia has overall military superiority in Europe, based on the size of its army,  its superior production of missiles and artillery shells and its ability to match Western forces in electronic warfare.

Until now, Russia has been content to limit its proxy war with NATO to Ukrainian territory.  It has gone along with the fiction of the NATO powers that they are not directly involved in the war, but merely supplying armaments to Ukraine so it can defend itself.  Russia has responded to Ukrainian attacks on border areas by massive attacks on the Ukrainian power grid and other targets, but has not struck targets outside Ukraine itself.

President Putin said in a press conference in Uzbekistan on Tuesday that long-range missiles are different.  They require American, British or other outside experts to operate.  And the same is true of use of satellite reconnaissance for targeting.

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An early prophet of American decline

May 29, 2024

AFTER THE EMPIRE: The Breakdown of American Order by Emmanuel Todd (2002) translated by C. Jon DeLogu, with foreward by Michael Lind (2003)

At the dawn of the 21st century, many people regarded the United States of America as the world’s dominant superpower.  Many Americans, in and out of government, hoped to keep it that way.

Emmanuel Todd, a distinguished French historian and anthropologist, wrote this book to show that this was impossible.  He wrote that U.S. power was, in fact, in irreversible decline.

I think my country is in decline, and not just in power.  One of my reading interests is to try to understand the reasons why and whether it can be reversed. 

For much of the 20th century, as Todd notes, the USA was, in fact, the “indispensable nation,” and in his view this was a good thing.  

The USA was the world’s leading manufacturing nation, the leading producer of food and source of raw materials, the greatest exporter and the dominant financial power.

It was as self-sufficient as it was possible for a nation to be.  Although had little need for what the rest of the world produced, the rest of the world was dependent on American goods and American dollars.

By and large, Todd said, the USA was an “empire for good”—at least for the modern industrial capitalist democracies in Europe, the English-settled countries and later Japan and South Korea.

But by the dawn of the 21st century, all this had gone into reverse.  American manufacturing had been hollowed out.  The USA was in trade deficit with virtually every country in the world.  

The world no longer needed the United States, but the USA was completely dependent on the rest of the world for manufactured goods, for oil and natural gas, and for financing to keep our debt ridden economy afloat.

For a time this had been a good thing for the world at large.  U.S. borrowing financed consumption that provided economic stimulus for developing nations, although at the expense of American working people. 

By 2002, Europe, Japan and other trading nations no longer needed the U.S. consumer market in order to flourish.  In fact, the U.S. connection was proving to be a problem.

But American political leaders thought the USA could continue to be a financial and military superpower.

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U.S. military is literally falling apart

May 20, 2024

Indrajit Samarajiva is a worthwhile blogger I recently came across.  He is unimpressed by the U.S. military.  Here is what he has to say.

To understand the state of America’s military, just look at their Secretary of State.  Antony Blinken’s custom Boeing has been grounded twice this year.  Meanwhile, ships Joe Biden sent to Gaza have caught fire or broke down along the way.  

The US military loses every war, its equipment is falling apart, and its soldiers are killing themselves.  They don’t even know what anything costs because the Pentagon is unauditable, six times over.  This is the state of late-stage Empire. It’s physically falling apart.  [snip]

The core reason America’s military [is falling apart] is the same reason my Toyota Vitz fell apart on the highway.  Maintenance.  

America had a strong military generations ago, but those assets have long since depreciated and become liabilities.  They keep covering this up by buying shiny new stuff, but that stuff doesn’t even work and it’s all depreciating into dust and fairy dust as we speak.  [snip]

Maintenance … is a compounding liability. The less you do it, the more you have to do. Just ask my old Vitz, which never went for regular service until it just melted on the highway and required a hideous engine rebuild.  It cost me more than regular maintenance and I never trusted that car again.

This is the basic rule of maintenance.  You neglect it at your peril.  As the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) says about not doing maintenance, “Over time this situation has resulted in worsening ship conditions and increased costs to repair and sustain ships.”  And it’s not just ships, the entire ‘capital’ base of the US military is literally being cannibalized.

Why America’s Military Is Physically Falling Apart by Indrajit Samarajiva for indi.ca.

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Can the USA ever end its wars?

May 1, 2024

Image via Newsweek

We US Americans need to end our wars.  War drains our strength as a nation, and we can’t deal with our other urgent problems – dysfunctional government, financial oligarchy, growing inequality and poverty, drug addiction – until we do.  War keeps the world divided, and unable to unite to deal with global problems – catastrophic climate change, pandemics, the migration crisis.

The United States is currently at war with at least six countries – North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and Russia – and is getting ready add a seventh, China.  All of these are wars of choice.  There is no good reason to be at war with any of these countries.

Technically, of course, we are not at war.  Congress has not declared war on any of these countries.  No uniformed American troops are fighting troops of any of those countries, at least not directly and not in large numbers.

But this is not how wars are fought today.  War is not declared.  It is just waged.  There is no clear boundary between being at war and being “adversarial.” 

War is not limited to fighting by troops.  It includes economic warfare, covert warfare, cyber warfare and proxy warfare, all of which can be just as deadly as armed conflict by troops in uniform.   

Recently two African governments, Chad and Niger, asked the U.S. government to remove its military bases from their soil.  The U.S. Defense Department replied that this is something that will have to be negotiated.  Meanwhile U.S. troops are occupying countries against the will of their governments.  Is this war?

President Biden has criticized Israel for the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, while continuing to provide Israel with money, weapons and military advisers to use those weapons.  Is this war?

When U.S. forces exited Afghanistan in 2021, the U.S. government, along with European allies, blocked the Afghan government from access to its funds in foreign banks, while also cutting off foreign economic aid and grants.  The excuse was that the money could be used to help terrorist.  The result was a collapse of the Afghan economy and a food crisis.  Was this war?

Secretary of State Madeline Albright was famously asked if the blockage of Iraq in the 1990s was worth the deaths of up to 1 million Iraqi children.  Her reply was, yes, it was worth it.  Was this war?  It’s not peace.

My definition of war is that a policy becomes an act of war when it is intended to bring about regime change or when it results in deaths of the innocent.    Or if it is something that a government would only do if it were at war.

This includes attempted assassinations of heads of state (Cuba), support of terrorist groups (Cuba, Iran, Syria), economic blockades (North Korea, Cuba, Iran,  Venezuela, Syria, Russia), confiscation of financial assets (Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Russia), arming of enemies and rebels (Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia) and cyber warfare (Iran).  

Of course the full extent of cyber warfare and covert warfare is not known.  And this  is not an exhaustive list of U.S. military operations, not all of which are known to the public.

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Posted in Foreign Affairs, War and Peace | 2 Comments »