Category: WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

TRUMPERY: MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF HOT AIR AND PRESTIDIGITATION.

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn THE WORLD IS CHANGING, TRUMP MYSTERY, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

My goodness! Trump’s done it again. From a mess of bloviation, trash talking, boasting, theatrical productions, deception and deflection, empty gestures and gas, he’s made something. The Israel-Iran war is apparently stopping (for now). And, part of the deal is that we are all supposed to agree that Iran’s nuclear program has been obliterated so we must all stop talking about it. (Interesting to see how that bit of mental gymnastics is handled.)

Some people whose analysis I respect (notably “Armchair Warlord” and “Simplicius”) suspected a theatrical production from the start (did any B2s even fly there?) and I was reminded of other wonderful, spectacular, powerful nothingburgers from Trump.1. For example in 2017 the loud and completely ineffective strike on Syria with a reprise the next year. Inconsistent inconsistencies I called them. The American strike was matched by Tehran’s equally theatrical production today: advance warning, loud bangs, victory claims and not much else. (But from Tehran’s perspective some more Patriot missiles used up: how many are left in the locker do you suppose? 600 to be produced this year they say but they keep needing more and more in Ukraine and there’s a lot to be replaced in Israel.)

So, what have we learned?

  • Iran is a lot more powerful than many people thought.
  • Western air defence systems aren’t very effective.
  • Who knew those little Iranian lawnmower-engined dorito drones could get all the way to Israel?
  • Hypersonic missiles are invulnerable and very frightening.
  • Tehran now knows which missiles in its arsenal are most effective and which most effectively soak up the enemy’s air defence and will build accordingly
  • Tehran’s decision to follow the missile-based armament route is vindicated. Suvorov: “Fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks“; Sun Tsu: “avoid strength and strike weakness“. `Others will notice.
  • Israel has used up the sleeper cells and intelligence penetration that it had built up in Iran.

Questions for the future

  • Has Tehran learned that the Kims were right all along?
  • Israel was supposed to be the place where Jews were safe; how many feel that way now?
  • Has Israel learned anything? Its wars have been rather offstage since 1973; the people are not used to seeing collapsed buildings in their neighbourhoods.
  • Is this the end of Netanyahu?
  • Do you think NATO is more cohesive or less cohesive after this 12-day rollercoaster ride in which every time they dutifully snapped to attention, they had to salute something different?

My predictions.

  • The damage in Israel will be much greater and much more effective than we have been told.
  • In Iran, not so much.

One final observation.

For 500 years, the West has been confident that all the best, the most powerful, the most sophisticated weapons have been in its arsenal. That hasn’t been true for some time and now the world has seen so. I was fascinated that Israel would show these photos of F14s it had destroyed as if it had accomplished something. Manned aircraft? That’s so yesterday.

AN IDIOT’S GUIDE TO WAR

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, UKRAINE, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

There’s a longstanding apothegm about war that says that amateurs talk tactics but professionals talk logistics. To this I would add that beginners talk weapons (remember Saint Javelin, M777s, Leopard tanks, F-16s? Seen a lot of game changer weapons come and go haven’t we?)

Logistics is the really hard part of planning: it is the business of making sure that the fighting end of the effort has all the things that it requires where it needs them when it needs them. The end comes when your guy kicks in the door of the enemy’s leader’s office. Everything else: aircraft carriers, tank armies, artillery, air fleets, medical support, planning is about getting him there. Here’s the photo. If the infantryman at the tip of the spear doesn’t have rations and ammunition he’s useless and will soon be out of the game. Getting these (and many other things) to him is extraordinarily difficult and many popular accounts of wars leave this somewhat boring aspect of the war business out of the story.

But war is a combination of many things all of which have to work together. All are necessary but none is sufficient. It is, I believe, the most complicated thing humans do (and, depressingly, history shows that it’s our favourite outdoor sport.) Saying one part is the most important is plain wrong. War without purpose (grand strategy and strategy) is just killing people and smashing things. Soldiers without training are dead men walking. Tactics without logistical support is just Brownian movement. And so on. Everything has to be planned and coordinated and carried out hampered by what Clausewitz called “friction”; against an enemy who’s doing everything to upset and counter you. Once you’ve planned it all out, you have to start all over again on the fly because “No plan survives contact with the enemy“.

What’s going on in Ukraine is an industrial war which is consuming enormous amounts of ammunition and weapons with tremendous destruction and hundreds of thousands of casualties. NATO is used to flying over a target with no air defence and dropping bombs, or small infantry groups who call in air or artillery when somebody shoots at them. And, in the end, NATO loses the war anyway and goes home. Alex Vershinin got it right at the beginning in June 2022 in The Return of Industrial Warfare.

The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either.

And, it should be clear it could be much more: Moscow calls it a “special military operation” and therefore Kiev looks like this; if it were a full-scale war Kiev would look like this.

What do we hear from NATO? More money. Must get to 2% of GDP. That’s not enough, 3% is needed. Maybe 5%. Money.

NATO’s money talk and boasting (remember “taking chips from refrigerators” and “Russia’s industry is in tatters“; Russia is running out of weapons?) has been replaced by some recognition of reality. In January the current NATO GenSek told us “When you look what Russia is producing now in three months, it’s what all of NATO is producing from Los Angeles up to Ankara in a full year“. Russia is four-to-one against the whole enemy coalition.

It’s production, not money. You don’t fight wars by firing bundles of dollars at the enemy. One of the primal errors of Western intelligence was measuring Russia’s economy using the ruble to USD exchange rate. (NATO GenSek still believes it though: “Russia is not bigger than the Netherlands and Belgium combined as an economy“.) In 2017 I wrote Exchange Rating Russia Down and Out which I concluded by saying Russia had a “full service economy”. And, whatever the GenSek may imagine, the World Bank tells us that “the Netherlands and Belgium combined” with its “industry in tatters” has become the fourth-largest economy in the world.

There is nothing that money can do to remedy the four-to-one ratio except with a lot of investment in production over a long time. Thanks to offshoring manufacturing, the Western industrial base mostly has to be built from the ground up. Is that even possible? If you think about it, an apprentice machinist on an assembly line fifty years ago was being taught how to do it by a master machinist who had been taught by a previous master and so on back to the middle of the 1700s when industrial production was invented. Each in the series advanced the technique, of course, but it’s still a chain you could trace back, machinist by machinist, for all that time. If that sequence of teacher-learner-teacher is broken, if the teacher has retired or died leaving no apprentices, how long will it take to get it back? Putting a pallet of engraved paper in the floor of an empty building and hoping it will turn into a pallet of artillery rounds is magic thinking. We know this from history. By winter 1914 it was evident that artillery ammunition consumption far exceeded anybody’s expectations and Britain, a manufacturing giant then, started tooling up. Even so it took a year and a half to manufacture the vast number of artillery rounds for the Somme offensive and about a quarter of them did not explode because the fuses weren’t properly made. How far away is the West from meeting the real demand?

Meanwhile, the EU economy isn’t doing so well and, with a stagnant or shrinking economy, just keeping the same amount of money flowing means that the percentage will have to grow. So the planned 3-4-5-whatever percent GDP increase they’re all calling for may turn out to be just enough to maintain the existing inadequate amount. As the Red Queen told Alice: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!“

The ends of “Last Summer’s Ukraine“, NATO and the EU are visible, don’t you think?

Beginners talk weapons;

Amateurs talk tactics;

Professionals talk logistics;

Idiots talk money.

ANOTHER ONE THAT’S APPROPRIATE

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn THE WORLD IS CHANGING, TRUMP MYSTERY, WAR ON RUSSIA, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/11/23/nato-a-dangerous-paper-tiger/.

And, now that it’s given up about half of its stuff to be blown up in Ukraine, what kind of tiger would you call it now?

Trump 1.0 was advised by the Blob. I think Trump 2.0 is being advised by people better clued in. After all, JD and Tulsi (Presidents 48 and 49?) have been there and done that.

Clocking off after another mind-blowing day and having a drink or two or three. The Trump Team is inside the enemy’s decision loop. Amazing to watch.

EUROPE GETS AN ANATOMY LESSON

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, POLITICS AND POWER, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, TRUMP MYSTERY, UKRAINE, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

Well, “Fuck the EU” she said, and here we are.

Vance’s speech was a bombshell. Left them weeping, it did. Gotta say though, if Zelensky is where you find your “values and principals” these days, I think you should look somewhere else. We can only hope that Vance’s lecture has killed this sanctimonious and hypocritical values talk. Or reduced it a bit, anyway.

Many see it as complementary to Putin’s speech in the same forum in 2007, Here it is for comparison. For example: “Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves” certainly strikes a chord with Vance’s speech. But Putin’s principal theme (quoting FDR) was that security is indivisible. And surely that is the truth that we see in 2025: if one major player feels insecure then, at the end – say, in 18 years — everybody will. And here we are. The light-hearted attempt to destroy the country that “makes nothing” now has the IISS bemoaning the fact that Russia makes more weapons than all of Europe. Europeans, so confident so recently, now give themselves the fantods about Russia invading.

Two days before, the new US Defense Secretary had put in the first punch: Ukraine is now Europe’s problem. Lots of people are commenting on these announcements and the forthcoming negotiations between Moscow and Washington. This is my little addition to the discussion.

But first read my essay from 2018 on how to fix Ukraine because I think we are starting down that road. It will be a long road and there is still more fighting to come. One can hope, though, with the revelation of how short a time “as long as it takes” is, that the wretched Ukrainians pressed into the slaughterhouse will abandon the Galician cause and vote with their feet. (I am trying to train myself to always remember the distinction between Ukrainians and Galicians).

Everyone should recognise that it would have been more honest had Hegseth admitted Washington’s responsibilities starting from coddling Bandera, building up Stetsko, the five billion dollars, the cookies and “Yats is our guy”. OK, I appreciate that a new team is there, that the new team plans to make big and real changes across the board, is very much the opposite of the last Administration, but still Washington has been the principal author of the Ukrainian cataclysm. After all, in its original declaration of independence Kiev wanted to be neutral and, as Nuland said, it took a lot of money to change things. So some admission of Washington’s very (VERY) large role in the catastrophe would have been more sincere than leaving the impression that the Europeans did it themselves. As to de-industrialisation, don’t pretend Washington had nothing to do with blowing up the gas line that powered it; Nordstream wasn’t eaten by a passing shark. At least Vance said “we” when he talked about uncontrolled “refugee” admission. So, altogether, some admission that Europe was following Washington’s lead in many of these errors would have been better.

But the speeches were certainly truth bombs.

What have we learned? Well, something that Moscow learned a long time ago: Washington is not reliable (the complicated Russia word is недоговороспособны which essentially means that you can’t make an agreement with it and even if you do, it won’t keep it). In a word, Washington caused the Ukraine disaster and, now that it’s gone irredeemably bad, is walking away from it and leaving it to Europe. The simple geopolitical truth is that the United States of America lives on an invulnerable island, with weak and friendly neighbours. No outside force can do anything to it except by the mutual suicide of nuclear weapons. It took Moscow a while to learn it but, eventually, all the broken promises taught it that Washington’s word was worthless. So, in the negotiations that start tomorrow, Moscow is not going to take anything for granted and will accept no verbal assertions.

Now Europe has learned this. In the simplest, bluntest and most brutal terms the fact that has just hit it in the face is that USA is over there and Russia is here. The USA can make a mess anywhere and walk away at any time; remember Vietnam? Afghanistan? Well now it’s you.

So Europe, there’re four things you’d better do immediately: 1) figure out what your real interests are; 2) get yourself into a position to defend them; 3) make your peace with Moscow. (A European master of realpolitik told you years ago “The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia“.) And fourth, read and meditate on the joint Russia-Chinese statement of three years ago. Why? Because that’s the future. What to do? – the European Dilemma. But to start on this program you’ll certainly need a different bunch at the top, won’t you? The German elections next week will give us a clue.

What is the Trump team’s idea of a new world? My guess at the moment is that it envisions a future world of three Great Powers each with its own sphere of interest (I would further guess that it sees Europe in the US sphere and not on its own). This is very far from what the Chinese Foreign Minister spoke of at Munich which would be a world of many countries, big and small, rich and poor, all with a voice deserving of a listen and that is the future Moscow envisions also. See the joint statement and bear in mind that both Russia and China were exceptionalist powers before they learned that that’s a dead end. So, if I’m reading these tea leaves aright, there is still much to be worked out between Washington and Moscow-Beijing. The talks that start tomorrow are the first step in a long and painful road. They will require many adjustments by the American side because Washington doesn’t fully understand how much the correlation of forces has changed and I’m not confident that it can. In a week or so we’ll have a better idea.

Interesting times, indeed.

PS Someone the other day referred to me as a Cassandra: a prophet, usually pessimistic, often right but doomed never to be believed. I guess that’s a sort of compliment. Depressing though to have several friends close me out as a “Putin apologist”.

BOUGHT JOURNALISM

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn THE WORLD IS CHANGING, TRUMP MYSTERY, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

(The title is a homage to the late Udo Ulfkotte whose book Gekaufte-Journalisten described how reporters in Europe were bribed and controlled by the CIA. A conspiracy theory Wikipedia assures us. Bet they’ll be editing that out pretty soon!)

We are told (by Politico, of all things) that DOGE’s attention was drawn to USAID by the suspicion that it was trying to end-run Trump’s freeze on foreign aid spending. DOGE entered the building on 27 January and two weeks later, the name came off and most of its employees were dismissed. A fortuitous choice as it turned out because it uncovered a long, expensive and remarkably varied list of highly suspect expenditures.

What I am concerned with here is this part of USAID’s activities: USAID’s funding of over 6,000 journalists, 1,000 platforms worldwide raises concerns over independence and transparency; USAID: $270 Million for ‘Independent’ Journalists; USAID Funded Massive ‘News’ Platform, Extending ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ To Billions Worldwide. Reporters Without Borders sums it up (disapprovingly)

President Donald Trump has frozen billions of dollars around the world in aid projects, including over $268 million allocated by Congress to support independent media and the free flow of information. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounces this decision, which has plunged NGOs, media outlets, and journalists doing vital work into chaotic uncertainty. […] According to a USAID fact sheet which has since been taken offline, in 2023, the agency funded training and support for 6,200 journalists, assisted 707 non-state news outlets, and supported 279 media-sector civil society organizations dedicated to strengthening independent media. The 2025 foreign aid budget included $268,376,000 allocated by Congress to support “independent media and the free flow of information”.

“Independent” indeed. A quarter of a billion for the year 2025 and similar sums for decades! If any other country were doing this it would be called propaganda, disinformation or shoving their POV down your throat.

Can’t call Ulfkotte a conspiracy theorist after that, can you? USAID was a major producer of what you could call the news that fits. One can wonder how often these planted stories were picked up by truly independent sources, reinforcing the disinformation creators’ convictions, and then fed back into the decision loop in Washington. Could that explain the endless series of catastrophes and failures? Drinking your own bathwater is never a good diet.

A particularly significant consequence of DOGE’s strangling of that fake news factory is felt in Ukraine. The Kyiv Post informs us that USAID Funding Halt Leaves Ukrainian Media Seeking Support and another Ukrainian source tells us 59,2% of journalists predict US international grant suspension to have catastrophic impact – IMI survey. Meanwhile none other than the WaPo (not a recipient as far as we know) tells us Independent media in Russia, Ukraine lose their funding with USAID freeze.” “Independent media”! Bet there was a powerful feedback loop there!

************************************

This is Day 21 of DOGE; imagine what we’ll know on Day 63.

************************************

At least the Soviets were straight-up about their propaganda. Pravda (Truth) said on its masthead that it was the Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Izvestiya (News) was the “news” of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This is what the Party wants you to believe and this what the government wants you to know. In case there’s any doubt who’s in charge, the Constitution tells you that the CPSU is the leading and guiding force in the USSR. No hiding behind sanctimonious mottoes like “Democracy dies in darkness” or “The Most Trusted Name in News”.

THE WORLD IS CHANGING

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

About five years ago I wrote this in a Sitrep:

SAUDI ARABIA. The visit of Salman bin Abdulaziz was pretty significant I think. The deal on the petrodollar was that Riyadh would insist on USD for payment in return for protection. Because Washington’s wars in the MENA have only made Iran stronger, Riyadh cannot think the deal is working out and it may be looking for a new sponsor: it happened before when Abdulaziz switched from London to Washington. My thoughts here. I believe that the sale of S-400 air defence systems could be a geopolitical gamechanger. Another of Moscow’s strengths is that it talks to everybody: and so it has offered to mediate between Riyadh and Tehran. Because Washington takes sides, it is useless should Riyadh want to negotiate its way out of messes with its neighbours. “The success of the Euro-Asian triptych is based on the essential principle of transforming enemies into neutral players, neutral players into allies, and further improving relations with allied nations.” Slowly, patiently, bit by bit the long game is played.

So what do we have now? About to join BRICS; diplomatic relations with Iran; Mandarin lessons in schools; Renminbi in oil transactions is coming. Sounds as if history has restarted.

I don’t pretend to know much about the Saud family enterprise, but I’ve always suspected that there’s a council of elders or something like that in the background. If so, I wonder if they looked around and decided that, of all the descendants, MBS was the most like his grandfather.

A remarkable man; I recommend this biography.

And finally, who’s the dominant man in this photo?

RUSSIA UKRAINE 2

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn RUSSIA'S NEIGHBOURS, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, UKRAINE, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

TACTICS, STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS

So far the Russian military operation in Ukraine has been a reconnaissance in force preceded by the destruction of the supplies and headquarters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces by standoff weapons. The object being to suss out where the Ukrainian forces are, to surround them, to check existing Russian intelligence against reality and, at the same time, destroy known headquarters, air and naval assets, supplies and ammunition depots. And, perhaps, there was the hope that the speed and success (Russian/LDPR forces dominated an area of Ukraine about the size of the United Kingdom in the first week) would force an early end (aka recognition of reality).

At the moment they are readying for the next phase. The long column that so obsessed the “experts” on CNN is the preparation for the next phase. And that is this: “You didn’t get the hint, so now we have to hit you”. The fact that the column has been sitting there indicates that the Russians know they have complete air superiority. Secondly it is a message to the Ukrainian armed forces that it’s over, give up. (And one should never forget that the Russians/Soviets have always been the best at strategic deception, so who knows what’s actually there versus what the images show?)

As far as I can see they’ve created three cauldrons (encirclements). Probably the most important one is the one around Mariupol where the main concentration of Azov, the principal nazi force, is. Another is being established around the main concentration of the Ukrainian Armed Forces facing LDPR. And there appears to be another developing to the east of Kiev. A super cauldron of all three is visible. The nazis will be exterminated; the ordinary Ukrainian soldier will be allowed to go home. The nightmare question is how many ordinary Ukrainians will be free to choose.

The dilemma for the Russians is city fighting. They do not want to have a Raqqa in which every building is destroyed, every person killed and solitudinem is declared to be pax. They know that at the end of the day there will still be Ukrainians and they will want them to be friends: Washington can create solitudes far away, but Moscow cannot create them nearby. This greatly complicates their problem when they try to clear the nazis out of Mariupol knowing that the nazis are using the city’s people as hostages. The same problem exists, to a lesser degree, in the other cities of Novorossiya. My guess is they will surround most cities and hope that Zelinsky & Co come to their senses. But I fear that the Mariupol battle will be horrible.

There are some slight indications, on Day 8, that Ukrainian negotiators are realising that neutrality is something they have to agree to. I also see the realisation creeping up on the American side.

The ultimate Russian aim is not visible. By this I mean the ultimate strategic aim; we know what the grand strategic aim is. Are the Russians planning to create a Novorossiya which will be independent or are they aiming to create a Novorossiya which will be a bargaining chip with rump Ukraine? I think the answer depends on what Zelinsky and Kiev (and the locals) decide. In about a week’s time, an independent Novorossiya will exist and Russia will continue to have the hammer.

I would expect large-scale surrenders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to begin in the next 24/48 hours (Chechen forces already claim one and have an impressive collection of “trophies” to prove it). A significant proportion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is now surrounded and, as is usual (vide Sun Tsu) the Russians have left them an exit.

GRAND STRATEGY

The impotence of the EU and NATO is clear to everyone (Well, OK, not anyone on CNN, or in the US Congress or in the halls of power in the West. But they are not the whole world). In this respect, I recommend watching Riyadh – Abdul Aziz was very good at seeing how the wind blew and one can assume his descendents are too.

The 97, or whatever they were, fighter planes that were excitedly announced, are obviously not coming. The no fly zone can’t be “declared”. The Chechens have picked up a lot of MANPADs that NATO supplied. All that NATO support will get you is destruction when you fight the war it suckered you into and an extra special Christmas card when you’re defeated and ruined.

We are seeing the collapse of post Cold War triumphalism, “end of history”, “unilateralism” and all the rest of it. Reality is biting, and biting hard. All you have to do is watch CNN’s parade of talking heads and “experts” speculating about how crazy Putin is: they don’t understand, therefore he must be nuts. For the West, as it has been, it’s over. The confusion, the bullshit, the boasting, the hysteria, the bans: the West has nothing left in the locker. Pour Russian vodka down the toilet, fire a singer and director, change the name of a drink or a salad, ban cats or trees, sanction a Russian plutocrat and steal his yacht, wear a blue and yellow t-shirt. Pathetic. And don’t, under any circumstances, allow a Russian outlet to tempt the sheeple with “disinformation”. Just like the USSR but stupider. And who thought stupider was even possible?

Judo is about deception and using the opponent’s strength against him. Putin, the judoka, has judoed the West into suicide. Put your money in our banks, we can confiscate it; put your assets in our territory, we can steal them; use our money and we can cancel it; put your yacht in our harbour, we can pirate it; put your gold in our vault, we can grab it. That is a lesson that will resound around the world. A naked illustration that the “rules-based international order” is simply that we make the rules and order you to obey them. In 2 or 3 weeks everybody in the world who is on the potential Western hit list will have moved his assets out of the reach of the West. Xi will permit himself a small smile.

As to Western sanctions against Russia, I think there’s a very simple answer to that: last week 1000 cubic metres of gas cost $1,000; today it’s over twice that. Next week it certainly won’t be cheaper. Ditto for aluminum, potash, titanium, wheat. Russian airlines lease their planes; now what? Russian rocket motors. What the people in the West do not understand is the ruble is the currency the Russians use inside the country but the price of oil and gas is the Russian currency outside the country. I am astounded at the stupidity: they’re cutting their own throats and destroying their own economies.

Russia sits back and laughs: fly into space on your own broomstick.

The world order has changed. Week Two.

RUSSIA UKRAINE 1

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn RUSSIA'S NEIGHBOURS, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, UKRAINE, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

I’m surprised both of the size of the operation and the type of operation. While I did expect standoff destruction of the nazi units and considered the possibility of standoff destruction of Ukrainian military assets I did not expect to see troops on the ground other than a few Spetsnaz. The operation is much, much more than I expected. Putin & Co surprised me too.

Had I been at home I would have read Putin’s speech earlier and understood sooner. What he is talking about is what the Soviet Union tried to do from 1933 onwards: namely to stop Hitler before he got started. This time Russia is able to do it by itself. In other words, Putin feels that he is making a pre-emptive attack to stop June 1941. This is very serious indeed and indicates that the Russians are going to keep going until they feel that they can safely stop.

I believe that I am starting to see the outline of what they’re trying to do. Bear in mind that the aims to de-militarize and to de-nazify are rather large. I believe Putin and Company have decided to do them thoroughly and that is the reason for the troops on the ground.

At the large end, the grand strategy, is the destruction of  NATO  and the so-called New World Order. Scott Ritter has explained this in his piece. The “new” new world order will be that as described in the joint Chinese-Russian statement I have discussed elsewhere.

It will be obvious that NATO is useless and its friendship worthless. In fact, NATO/Western support is dangerous because it makes you think you have something when you actually have nothing. In a week it will be clear to all who can think that Washington and its minions cared nothing for Ukrainians – they were a sharp stick to poke the Bear with. Many will notice.

At the next level down, the strategy, the aim is to make the Kiev government an offer it can’t refuse. Essentially the demand will be, as I believe Lavrov has outlined, a Ukraine that is neutral, the nazis removed from power, and with a serious degree of autonomy given to its many minorities. Failing that, I think we will see Novorossiya as an independent force and Ukraine subjected to periodic winnowings. On a more positive note, this would allow Zelinsky to become the president he was actually elected to be. Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence states that it should be a neutral country. The desire to get into NATO is the result of Nuland’s 5 billion dollars of  “democracy assistance”.

Moving down to the operational level, I believe Mariupol is going to become very important. First it appears to be the main nest of Azov which is the most powerful nazi grouping. Second, with Russian forces coming from the east, LDPR forces coming from the west and Russian forces coming in the rear, there is the opportunity to form a cauldron. The forces trapped inside the cauldron (котёл) will be running short of supplies, have no air cover and have their command-and-control seriously degraded; they can be left to come to their senses and take the offer of putting down their weapons and going home.

Putin in his most recent statement has made it clear that he regards the Ukrainians as the victims of a coup and therefore innocent of the crimes. One would expect Russian intelligence to have a very good appreciation of who supports them and who does not.

Being in a hotel, I have the opportunity to waste my time watching CNN. I am truly fascinated by how completely clueless the so-called experts, generals, politicians, that they have on are about this. They have no understanding of the Russian motives, they have no conception of what is actually going on, and they can’t see what is in front of their faces. My personal favourite is the US senator that says Russia is running out of food because it’s a communist country and therefore needs to conquer more agricultural land. This is a man whose office is bigger than your house, has a staff of dozens with a huge budget and that’s what he thinks is going on.

The new new world order was born two days ago.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE RUSSIA CHINA STATEMENT

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn RUSSIA'S NEIGHBOURS, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

“Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era and lobal Sustainable Development” 4 February 2022. (English) (Russian).

This document is the grand strategic manifesto of a new world order and there is much more to be said about it than what follows. I believe that 4 February 2022 will be remembered as the proclamation of a new disposition of world power and relationships.

It is a truly new order of things, not the old “new world order” which was based on US supremacy. And it is most certainly not the so-called Rules-Based International Order in which one side makes up the rules, breaks them when it wants to and orders everyone else to obey. (A perfect example of the mutability of the “rules” is that gay rights are very important in Russia but not at all in Washington’s new “major ally” of Qatar.) The old “new world order” was always about making them conform to us: “The foremost goal of US strategy should be to cause China’s ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order…”

The Russian-Chinese document speaks much of “democracy” but it’s a different vision than the one common in the West. The West today is focussed on the process of democracy – was the voting up to acceptable standards? Did the opposition have a fair chance? were there enough candidates? was the advertising even-handed? were “administrative resources” used to shift the vote? and like questions. Never mind that the West is often hypocritical in its discussion – microscopes analyse the treatment of dissidents in Russia and but the house arrest and treason charges against opposition figures in Ukraine are ignored – these are the metrics used in the West’s assessment of whether a country is “democratic” or not. Now it may well be that fifty or sixty years ago concentrating on the process of democracy was appropriate but it is very questionable whether it is today. This one graph, showing the relationship between productivity and wages and compensation shows that all is not well. Up until the late 1970s, the two curves kept step with each other – the “rising tide” was indeed lifting all boats. Afterwards, however, they diverge until today there is a considerable gap between the two “Productivity has grown 3.5x as much as pay”. The rising tide is floating only a few super yachts. The richest one percent owned six times as much as the bottom fifty percent in 1989, now it’s 15 times as much. A Princeton University study in 2014 concluded “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose“. These findings suggest that, however good the process may be, the δεμος does not have much κρατος.

The Russian-Chinese document speaks of the results of democracy.

The sides believe that democracy is a means of citizens’ participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of population and implementing the principle of popular government.

Note the purpose: “improving the well-being of population”. Whatever one may say about the process of the governance of China or Russia, no one can doubt that the well-being of the population has mightily improved in both countries. We shall see for the future how this holds up but the document describes a different approach to democracy: don’t concentrate on the process and assume the results will follow – which they are not doing in the USA in particular and the West in general – but instead never mind the process, ask whether the are results desirable? Throughout the document – fifty times – we see the word “development” (“развитие” in the Russian version).

The sides believe that peace, development and cooperation lie at the core of the modern international system.

A world in which everyone has a chance to get rich. And who can doubt that the government in Beijing knows how to do that? We will see, in the coming world competition of ideas, which approach is more attractive and successful.

A second theme, repeated throughout the document is that all countries are equal and they have their own ways of doing things, it is their right to do this, no one may preach to them and no one may interfere with them.

The sides call for the establishment of a new kind of relationship between world powers on the basis of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation.

This is what might be called a descriptive take on the world rather than the prescriptive take more common in the West. To explain what I mean, let us consider Soviet-Polish relations. Although it’s very unfashionable to admit it today, Warsaw, as the first country to form a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s Germany and by its refusal to allow Soviet troops into its territory to fight Germany, played a consequential role in the outbreak of the war. Poland suffered terribly, losing 20-25% of its population and was liberated by the Soviet Army after immense destruction. Stalin then designed a Poland which, for the first time in its long history, included all of the historical Polish lands and no irredentist minorities. Then imposed the blessing – or so Moscow saw it – of socialism and transformed Poland into a loyal ally of the USSR. Except that, the moment it became clear that the tanks weren’t coming, Poland quit the alliance, threw off socialism and turned to NATO and the EU. All the “fraternal, socialist, ally” rhetoric turned out to be empty declarations of people compelled to say them. In other words, the lesson is that you can’t change a country except temporarily by force or very slowly over a very long time. Moscow has learned this lesson. Hence my use of the world “descriptive” – countries, quite simply, are what they are and outsiders can’t change them; therefore outsiders have to live with them. It’s that simple: the prescriptive notion – we have the truth and you should follow it (we must make Beijing follow the “US-led liberal international order”) simply can’t be done. Therefore, the emphasis throughout the document that countries are as they are and are to be treated as equals is firmly based on reality. You can’t make a particular country go along with your notions of propriety but you still have to deal with it: treat it as it is. The West has long lost sight of this despite its numerous failures of prescription: even if the Western ideas actually were “better”, you can’t bomb Afghans into accepting them. Therefore, this position in the document is quite simply realistic and practical.

I have said before that Russia, in the communist days, was an “exceptionalist state” and so was China under Mao. They then regarded themselves as a pattern for others to follow – a pattern that others should follow – and the USSR imposed that pattern on many of its neighbours. Both Beijing and Moscow have learned that exceptionalism is a route to failure. Therefore, what I am calling a “descriptive” approach to world variety is the result of the failure of trying a prescriptive approach. This is not, therefore, a point of view adopted to gull people into acquiescence, it is one that is based on cold, bitter experience. It is a lesson that Washington has not yet learned: exceptionalism is a road to a blind alley, as Putin put it a quarter century ago. It is, in fact, something the West should remember: “Westphalianism” is the principle of cuius regio, eius religio adopted after Europeans had torn themselves apart trying to impose religion on each other. Not uniformity, but variety. The China-Russia manifesto is rooted on a truth that not only they, but Europe as a whole, have learned the hard way.

The Chinese-Russia relationship is described as follows:

They reaffirm that the new inter-State relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ”forbidden“ areas of cooperation, strengthening of bilateral strategic cooperation is neither aimed against third countries nor affected by the changing international environment and circumstantial changes in third countries.

Time will show just what is meant by this but it is clear that it is a relationship both deep and wide. A complete commonality of interest which is not uniformity of interest. (It will be amusing to watch Western “experts” fail to get that distinction.) And not one to be easily split apart as some naïve people in Washington think. They trust each other and neither trusts Washington.

Finally, the new world order that they are calling for is described as:

The sides reiterate the need for consolidation, not division of the international community, the need for cooperation, not confrontation. The sides oppose the return of international relations to the state of confrontation between major powers, when the weak fall prey to the strong. The sides intend to resist attempts to substitute universally recognized formats and mechanisms that are consistent with international law for rules elaborated in private by certain nations or blocs of nations…

A new world order for all, not just those who accept “the better way”.

I would expect, as details are filled in at the “strategic” and “operational” level, that this “grand strategic vision” will prove to be widely attractive across the globe. Washington and its allies will, no doubt, concentrate on the many criticisms of its behaviour, but the manifesto is positive in tone.

People are attracted to success and the West doesn’t project that any more.