The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Benjamin Cole]

Russia may have fallen into a ‘Ukraine trap’ set by the U.S.

April 8, 2022 9:19 AM CDT  BY C.J. ATKINS--People's World (a labor newspaper)

 

A Russian marine runs after jumping from a landing helicopter. By invading Ukraine, a top political economist says that Russia may have landed in a trap set by the U.S. | Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP

 

Fresh analysis is pointing toward the conclusion that, with its invasion of Ukraine, Russia may have stepped into an Afghanistan-style trap set by the U.S. In launching a criminal invasion of its neighbor and thus economically isolating itself from much of the world, the Kremlin has effectively done exactly what the U.S. and NATO wanted.

That according to Robert H. Wade, Professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of Economics. In an extensive analytical article just published by LSE, Wade argues that although Russia’s actions in Ukraine are inexcusable, the designs for the current war were drawn up more in Washington than in Moscow.

---30---

Interesting perspective.

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/russia-may-have-fallen-into-a-ukraine-trap-set-by-the-u-s/

---30---

As in the JFKA, 9/11 or the 1/6 events...there may be a lot behind the curtain. 

[Guest]

49 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

CB-

It may be that Russia will go "scorched earth" on Ukraine, though short of nuclear weapons. 

Some experts say Sri Lanka's war on insurgents was a success as they obliterated the opposition brutally. And Russia appears to have prevailed in Georgia and Chechnya (I know not details). 

But Ukraine is a nation of 40 million, perhaps 5 to 10 million willing to pick up arms, serve in the military. The US intel-military-industrial complex may find a long war an interesting and worthy proposition. 

Both the US and Russia lost in Afcrapistan. 

Sadly, I see Ukraine setting as a stalemate. Putin (an aggressor) is not going to quit, but the Ukrainians are in the for the duration. 

If I had to lay odds, Putin will eventually lose. But that could be 10 years from now. 

 

Yep - He doesn’t even need to use nukes which ultimately would harm his people because of the proximity. Vacuum bombs will flatten entire blocks. 
Ukraine is already accusing Russia of using such weapons. 
 

The US / West is excellent at economic wars but, Russia has resources and markets. I don't know how we define winning and losing here? All sides claim victory and sides lose in some ways. The west will write it's own history but, it may go down as one of the final nails in the coffin of a civilisation that has endured since the ancient Greeks. 😞

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

the designs for the current war were drawn up more in Washington than in Moscow.

That’s what I think. That's not to say that Russia hasn’t seen the day coming since the 90’s. 

Edited October 23, 2022 by Chris Barnard

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Chris Barnard said:

Yep - He doesn’t even need to use nukes which ultimately would harm his people because of the proximity. Vacuum bombs will flatten entire blocks. 
Ukraine is already accusing Russia of using such weapons. 
 

The US / West is excellent at economic wars but, Russia has resources and markets. I don't know how we define winning and losing here? All sides claim victory and sides lose in some ways. The west will write it's own history but, it may go down as one of the final nails in the coffin of a civilisation that has endured since the ancient Greeks. 😞

We just have to wait and see at this point. 

IMHO, the West may implode, but due to internal weaknesses, not a relatively small war in Ukraine (from the US perspective--a huge and horrible war if you live in Ukraine). 

Side note: Did you see this?

At first review, it looked like a public humiliation and sacking of Hu Jintao.

But then it may just be Jintao was ill, to put it gently, had stomach problems. 

One thing has always puzzled me. China has a culture extending back thousands of years. They (like many countries) see themselves as "the Central Kingdom." 

So why does CCP leadership...dress like Western investment bankers? 

The one thing I liked about Mao was the Mao jacket with matching pants. Very practical. 

 

 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

So why does CCP leadership...dress like Western investment bankers? 

The one thing I liked about Mao was the Mao jacket with matching pants. Very practical. 

🤣

Because they aspire to western decadence? What is stronger; communism or heritage? 
 

I hadn’t seen the vid. Thats the control.

[Steve Thomas]

One of the more bizarre things I've read recently:

Mutiny in Putin's ranks? Conscripts drafted into Ukraine war 'threaten to topple Russian regime over spluttering invasion'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11343917/Conscripts-drafted-Ukraine-war-threaten-topple-Russian-regime-failing-invasion.html

"He ridiculed an army-issued foreign guitar when they are not supplied with adequate weapons.

'They give us an [imported] guitar,' he said to cheers from fellow conscripts. 'Are we going to shoot a guitar on the battlefield?'"

"He mocked a policy in his region - the Tuva republic in Siberia - to gift a ram to each family of those mobilised.

'You give our families, children, a manky ram [sheep], and some groceries,' he said, adding disparagingly: 'What is this?'"

A sheep and a guitar? 

Steve Thomas

[John Cotter]

10 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

To be sure, read many viewpoints.

But as a layman, I wonder if some who predict Russia success are making the same mistake that military analysts made in Vietnam or Afghanistan, or other occupations. 

They see one side with superior equipment, maybe even a larger economy. They predict victory for the militarily superior force. The Russian artillery and tanks. 

How long until Ukrainians figure out IEDs, which caused US to remove tanks from Afghanistan (the Marines have entirely forsaken tanks, btw). 

Occupied fighting forces adapt, and often never quit. 

Putin's invasion, a volitional war, is looking increasingly cruel, including the destruction of civilian areas and infrastructure. The Ukrainian civilians see that. That does not inspire surrender, but rather hardens resolve. 

Putin now says he wants regime change in Kyiv, and the US wants regime change in Moscow. 

This could be a quagmire. Putin's Afcrapitsan. 

A reasonable suspicion is that the Biden Administration was adrift, and US intel-state engineered this war, by all but inviting Putin into Ukraine. The "offering Zelensky a ride" moment.  The US intel-state predictions, widely leaked, that Russia would prevail quickly. 

Maybe so, maybe Putin was baited. That does not excuse Putin. A volitional war is a criminal war. 

 

 

Ben,

You say, “A volitional war is a criminal war”.

In view of what you seem to be implying by the term “volitional”, could you please answer the following question?

How do you know that the Russians didn’t consider the invasion of Ukraine necessary for the survival of the Russian nation?

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

How do you know that the Russians didn’t consider the invasion of Ukraine necessary for the survival of the Russian nation?

As per Mearsheimer’s view, I think this is the case. Russia is in a strategic noose, its the very reason the 90’s agreement stated that NATO was not to expand past the Elbe river. 

I think all of the super powers are tyrannical at this time. The nature of tyrants is incremental. If they are given an inch, they’ll take a mile. 
 

 

[Matt Allison]

8 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Wade argues that although Russia’s actions in Ukraine are inexcusable, the designs for the current war were drawn up more in Washington than in Moscow.

LOL

There it is again, "The Devil made me do it!"

[John Cotter]

1 hour ago, Chris Barnard said:

As per Mearsheimer’s view, I think this is the case. Russia is in a strategic noose, its the very reason the 90’s agreement stated that NATO was not to expand past the Elbe river. 

I think all of the super powers are tyrannical at this time. The nature of tyrants is incremental. If they are given an inch, they’ll take a mile. 
 

 

I’d seen that Jordan Peterson clip before, and he’s spot on about the insidious manner in which we’ve been tyrannised in recent years. I hadn’t been a fan of Peterson, but he has played an important part in speaking out against this psychic tyranny.

The point of my question to Ben was to “problematise” the Manichean western view of Russia, and, as you suggest, Mearsheimer’s analysis is exemplary in this regard.

One of the problems with demonising Russia is that, moral questions aside, it flouts the “know your enemy” principle which is important to observe in life and war.

In this case, the notion that the Ukrainians are in a stronger position than the Russians because they’re fighting a quasi guerrilla war of survival on their own turf against an opportunistic invader is not necessarily true.

It's not necessarily true because it’s complicated by the mentality of the Russians – it’s quite likely that the Russians view the war as a war of survival also. Mearsheimer’s analysis shows that that view is objectively valid and I have yet to see a cogent critique of his analysis.

In more general terms the Manichean western view of Russia is self-destructive and downright stupid. It’s essentially a version of the Dunning-Kruger effect which has been described brilliantly by John Cleese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU

Edited October 23, 2022 by John Cotter

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

I’d seen that Jordan Peterson clip before, and he’s spot on about the insidious manner in which we’ve been tyrannised in recent years. I hadn’t been a fan of Peterson, but he has played an important part in speaking out against this psychic tyranny.

The point of my question to Ben was to “problematise” the Manichean western view of Russia, and, as you suggest, Mearsheimer’s analysis is exemplary in this regard.

One of the problems with demonising Russia is that, moral questions aside, it flouts the “know your enemy” principle which is important to observe in life and war.

In this case, the notion that the Ukrainians are in a stronger position than the Russians because they’re fighting a quasi guerrilla war of survival on their own turf against an opportunistic invader is not necessarily true.

It's not necessarily true because it’s complicated by the mentality of the Russians – it’s quite likely that the Russians view the war as a war of survival also. Mearsheimer’s analysis shows that that view is objectively valid and I have yet to see a cogent critique of his analysis.

In more general terms the Manichean western view of Russia is self-destructive and downright stupid. It’s essentially a version of the Dunning-Kruger effect which has been described brilliantly by John Cleese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU

Every super power needs the bogeymen, a persistently demonised enemy, which help control the internal population. Orwell depicted the Eurasians as this. Sometimes it seems warranted but, we should be aware that its being done. 
 

Just at a social function but, I’ll watch the vid later. I feel the opposite regarding Russia, they are aware of their weakened position on a global scale vs the US. They also have their sting in the tail in terms of nuclear and bio warfare deterrents. In the Clinton era the USA learned the disturbing news from a Russian scientist (defector) that Russian were ahead in bio-weapon development. If Russia has released what they had back then, they would have won the war without firing a single bullet. I think I read that in Annie Jakobsen’s bestseller “the Pentagon’s brain.” 
 

PS I think Peterson is very much maligned in the MSM, mainly because he is staunchly pro western culture, Judaeo Christian values, and the stoic values of the ancient Greeks. His views are very much a mix of Nietzsche and Jung. He is actually incredibly compassionate too. I am a big fan but, if I were to recommend anything of his to watch it would be his analysis of the Soviets and poopoo’s during WW2, which is in his lectures to students. He understands totalitarianism and the nature of tyrants incredibly well. 
 

[W. Niederhut]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

You can lead a man to data, but you can't make him think.

-- W. Niederhut

 

I've tried to lead our local Putin apologists to the data, but I can't make them think.

Who is Vladimir Putin, really, and what has been his geopolitical agenda during the past quarter century?

They're still swearing by Mearsheimer, and blaming the West for Putin's longstanding imperialist/FSB agenda in the deconstructed Soviet Union.

I attribute much of the ignorance about Putin to the pervasive Kremlin propaganda that has been funded in the West during Putin's tenure in the Kremlin-- and to the justifiable distrust of U.S./NATO/CIA propaganda.

But, wake up, fellas!  Putin is, in fact, a psychopath.

Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West: Belton, Catherine: 9780374238711: Amazon.com: Books

Even as Putin is bombing civilians and infrastructure throughout the Ukraine, his apologists are still blaming the West for his war crimes!  It's bizarre.

Imagine blaming liberal Western democracies for Hitler's blitzkrieg of Poland in 1939...

"Hitler needs lebensraum!"  "There's a noose around Germany's neck!"  etc., etc.

Chris Barnard, John, Cotter, Benjamin Cole, et.al., obviously haven't taken my advice about studying Catherine Belton's historical opus, Putin's People.   And they have repeatedly dismissed Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's debunking of Mearsheimer.

As a general rule, people should trust historians more than social theorists.  Historians focus on data, not theories.

Perhaps our Putin apologists around here could, at least, take the time to study this Atlantic book review of Putin's People.

I'm including some brief excerpts about Putin, the FSB, and Ukraine.

A KGB Man to the End

The origins of Putin’s worldview—and the rise of Russia’s new ruling class

Review: ‘Putin’s People’ by Catherine Belton - The Atlantic

September 2020

Excerpt

      But the pivotal political event for Putin took place in 2005, when a pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, came to power in Ukraine after a street revolution. The Russian president blamed these events on American money and the CIA (an organization that, for better or worse, never had anything like that kind of influence in Ukraine). “It was the worst nightmare of Putin’s KGB men that, inspired by events in neighboring countries, Russian oppositionists funded by the West would seek to topple Putin’s regime too,” Belton writes. “This was the dark paranoia that colored and drove many of the actions they were to take from then on.” Not coincidentally, this scenario—pro-Western-democracy protesters overthrowing a corrupt and unpopular regime—was precisely the one that Putin had lived through in Dresden. Putin was so upset by events in Kyiv that he even considered resigning, Belton reports. Instead, he decided to stay on and fight back, using the only methods he knew.

        Although the American electorate awoke to the reality of Russian influence operations only in 2016, they had begun more than a decade earlier, after that first power change in Ukraine. Already in 2005, two of Putin’s closest colleagues, the oligarchs Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev, had begun setting up the organizations that would promote an “alternative” to democracy and integration all across Europe. With the help of intermediaries and friendly companies, and more recently with the assistance of xxxxx farms and online disinformation operations, they promoted a whole network of think tanks and fake “experts.” Sometimes they aided existing political parties—the National Front in France, for example, and the Northern League in Italy—and sometimes they helped create new ones, such as the far-right Alternative for Germany. The most important funder of the British Brexit campaign had odd Russian contacts. So did some cabinet ministers in Poland’s supposedly anti-Russian, hard-right government, elected after a campaign marked by online disinformation in 2015.

        The pro-Russian “separatists” who would later launch a war in eastern Ukraine got their start around 2005 too, with an even more apocalyptic result. Russian propaganda deliberately sought to divide Ukraine and polarize its citizens, while Russian corruption reached deep into the economy. Within a decade, the Russian operations in Ukraine led to mass violence. Some of the Ukrainians who attended Kremlin youth camps or joined the Eurasian Youth movement during the 2000s—often funded by the “charities” created by Malofeyev, Yakunin, and others—took part in the storming of Donetsk’s city-administration buildings in 2014, and then in the horrific Russian-Ukrainian war, which has disrupted European politics and claimed more than 13,000 lives. Russian soldiers, weapons, and advisers fuel the fighting in eastern Ukraine even now.

      All of these Russian-backed groups, from refined Dutch far-right politicians in elegant suits to the Donetsk thugs, share a common dislike for the European Union, for NATO, for any united concept of “the West,” and in many cases for democracy itself. In a very deep sense, they are Putin’s ideological answer to the trauma he experienced in 1989. Instead of democracy, autocracy; instead of unity, division; instead of open societies, xenophobia. Amazingly, quite a few people, even some American conservatives, are taken in by Russian tactics. It is incredible, but a group of cynical, corrupt ex-KGB officers with access to vast quantities of illegal money—operating in a country with religious discrimination, extremely low church attendance, and a large Muslim minority—have somehow made themselves into the world’s biggest promoters of “Christian values,” opposing feminism, gay rights, and laws against domestic violence, and supporting “white” identity politics. This is an old geopolitical struggle disguised as a new culture war. Yakunin himself told Belton, frankly, that “this battle is used by Russia to restore its global position.”

         Ultimately, all of these tactics had their culmination in the career of Donald Trump. In the last chapter of Putin’s People, Belton documents the activities of the biznesmeny who have circled around Trump for 30 years, bailing him out, buying apartments in his buildings for cash, offering him “deals,” always operating in “the half-light between the Russian security services and the mob, with both sides using the other to their own benefit.” Among them are Shalva Tchigirinsky, a Georgian black marketeer who met Trump in Atlantic City in 1990; Felix Sater, a Russian with mob links whose company served, among other things, as the intermediary for Trump buildings in Manhattan, Fort Lauderdale, and Phoenix; Alex Shnaider, a Russian metals trader who developed the Trump hotel in Toronto; and Dmitry Rybolovlev, an oligarch who purchased Trump’s Palm Beach mansion in 2008 for $95 million, more than double what Trump had paid for it in 2004, just as the financial crisis hit Trump’s companies.

[Matt Allison]

25 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Even as Putin is bombing civilians and infrastructure throughout the Ukraine, his apologists are still blaming the West for his war crimes!  It's bizarre.

It's a job.

[John Cotter]

31 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

You can lead a man to data, but you can't make him think.

-- W. Niederhut

 

I've tried to lead our local Putin apologists to the data, but I can't make them think.

Who is Vladimir Putin, really, and what has been his geopolitical agenda during the past quarter century?

They're still swearing by Mearsheimer, and blaming the West for Putin's longstanding imperialist/FSB agenda in the deconstructed Soviet Union.

I attribute much of the ignorance about Putin to the pervasive Kremlin propaganda that has been funded in the West during Putin's tenure in the Kremlin-- and to the justifiable distrust of U.S./NATO/CIA propaganda.

But, wake up, fellas!  Putin is, in fact, a psychopath.

Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West: Belton, Catherine: 9780374238711: Amazon.com: Books

Even as Putin is bombing civilians and infrastructure throughout the Ukraine, his apologists are still blaming the West for his war crimes!  It's bizarre.

Imagine blaming liberal Western democracies for Hitler's blitzkrieg of Poland in 1939...

"Hitler needs lebensraum!"  "There's a noose around Germany's neck!"  etc., etc.

Chris Barnard, John, Cotter, Benjamin Cole, et.al., obviously haven't taken my advice about studying Catherine Belton's historical opus, Putin's People.   And they have repeatedly dismissed Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's debunking of Mearsheimer.

As a general rule, people should trust historians more than social theorists.  Historians focus on data, not theories.

Perhaps our Putin apologists around here could, at least, take the time to study this Atlantic book review of Putin's People.

I'm including some brief excerpts about Putin, the FSB, and Ukraine.

A KGB Man to the End

The origins of Putin’s worldview—and the rise of Russia’s new ruling class

Review: ‘Putin’s People’ by Catherine Belton - The Atlantic

September 2020

Excerpt

      But the pivotal political event for Putin took place in 2005, when a pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, came to power in Ukraine after a street revolution. The Russian president blamed these events on American money and the CIA (an organization that, for better or worse, never had anything like that kind of influence in Ukraine). “It was the worst nightmare of Putin’s KGB men that, inspired by events in neighboring countries, Russian oppositionists funded by the West would seek to topple Putin’s regime too,” Belton writes. “This was the dark paranoia that colored and drove many of the actions they were to take from then on.” Not coincidentally, this scenario—pro-Western-democracy protesters overthrowing a corrupt and unpopular regime—was precisely the one that Putin had lived through in Dresden. Putin was so upset by events in Kyiv that he even considered resigning, Belton reports. Instead, he decided to stay on and fight back, using the only methods he knew.

        Although the American electorate awoke to the reality of Russian influence operations only in 2016, they had begun more than a decade earlier, after that first power change in Ukraine. Already in 2005, two of Putin’s closest colleagues, the oligarchs Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev, had begun setting up the organizations that would promote an “alternative” to democracy and integration all across Europe. With the help of intermediaries and friendly companies, and more recently with the assistance of xxxxx farms and online disinformation operations, they promoted a whole network of think tanks and fake “experts.” Sometimes they aided existing political parties—the National Front in France, for example, and the Northern League in Italy—and sometimes they helped create new ones, such as the far-right Alternative for Germany. The most important funder of the British Brexit campaign had odd Russian contacts. So did some cabinet ministers in Poland’s supposedly anti-Russian, hard-right government, elected after a campaign marked by online disinformation in 2015.

        The pro-Russian “separatists” who would later launch a war in eastern Ukraine got their start around 2005 too, with an even more apocalyptic result. Russian propaganda deliberately sought to divide Ukraine and polarize its citizens, while Russian corruption reached deep into the economy. Within a decade, the Russian operations in Ukraine led to mass violence. Some of the Ukrainians who attended Kremlin youth camps or joined the Eurasian Youth movement during the 2000s—often funded by the “charities” created by Malofeyev, Yakunin, and others—took part in the storming of Donetsk’s city-administration buildings in 2014, and then in the horrific Russian-Ukrainian war, which has disrupted European politics and claimed more than 13,000 lives. Russian soldiers, weapons, and advisers fuel the fighting in eastern Ukraine even now.

      All of these Russian-backed groups, from refined Dutch far-right politicians in elegant suits to the Donetsk thugs, share a common dislike for the European Union, for NATO, for any united concept of “the West,” and in many cases for democracy itself. In a very deep sense, they are Putin’s ideological answer to the trauma he experienced in 1989. Instead of democracy, autocracy; instead of unity, division; instead of open societies, xenophobia. Amazingly, quite a few people, even some American conservatives, are taken in by Russian tactics. It is incredible, but a group of cynical, corrupt ex-KGB officers with access to vast quantities of illegal money—operating in a country with religious discrimination, extremely low church attendance, and a large Muslim minority—have somehow made themselves into the world’s biggest promoters of “Christian values,” opposing feminism, gay rights, and laws against domestic violence, and supporting “white” identity politics. This is an old geopolitical struggle disguised as a new culture war. Yakunin himself told Belton, frankly, that “this battle is used by Russia to restore its global position.”

         Ultimately, all of these tactics had their culmination in the career of Donald Trump. In the last chapter of Putin’s People, Belton documents the activities of the biznesmeny who have circled around Trump for 30 years, bailing him out, buying apartments in his buildings for cash, offering him “deals,” always operating in “the half-light between the Russian security services and the mob, with both sides using the other to their own benefit.” Among them are Shalva Tchigirinsky, a Georgian black marketeer who met Trump in Atlantic City in 1990; Felix Sater, a Russian with mob links whose company served, among other things, as the intermediary for Trump buildings in Manhattan, Fort Lauderdale, and Phoenix; Alex Shnaider, a Russian metals trader who developed the Trump hotel in Toronto; and Dmitry Rybolovlev, an oligarch who purchased Trump’s Palm Beach mansion in 2008 for $95 million, more than double what Trump had paid for it in 2004, just as the financial crisis hit Trump’s companies.

Good man William.

We can both list the respective sins of Russia and the USA till the cows come home, but it’s irrelevant to the current Ukraine situation. One of the great advantages of the “Realpolitik” approach of geopolitical experts such as Prof Mearsheimer is that it avoids such moralistic pissing contests. 

I ended our previous discussion of this topic with the following couple of paragraphs:

“A manifestation of Russian exceptionalism comparable to the Ukraine situation would be, for example, as follows: the progressive Russian domination of South and Central America culminating in the intensive planting of intelligence and military assets in Mexico and the engineering of a coup there so as to instal an anti-American government.

“It’s hard to believe that the US would not view that kind of Russian aggression as an existential threat and take whatever action was deemed necessary to defeat it.”

Do you agree with that assessment, which is my attempt at a distillation of Mearsheimer’s thesis? If you don’t agree, why not?

 

PS. Please excuse the large font. I've tried to correct it to no avail.

Edited October 23, 2022 by John Cotter

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Former longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg expected to be star witness in company's tax fraud trial (msn.com)