Russia must not back down, they must not be blackmailed.
Euros had their chance for decades. They asked nicely, invite us to NATO or stop expanding. They gave warnings about Ukraine, they signed treaties to try and avoid conflict that turned out to be dishonest lies from the start, they gave final warnings and despite decades of being lied to, gas-lighted and stabbed in the back with false promises even as the fighting began they offered one last chance, a good deal that would see Ukraine continue to exist minus Crimea that was shot down.
The west is simply not interested in good faith and if they back down here, now they will forever regret it. Better to send out one vicious blow now against the western troops and destroy them, make them think twice than back down and have the conflict back and pushing inside Russia in a few years when they’ve re-armed.
By the way, i thought this was a very good comment from someone on Twitter on the topic of Russia responding to western provocations and escalations:
"“Why don’t the Russians do [x] in response to [y] provocation?”
Because they’re serious people and not in the mood to be led around by their enemies.
“Reflexive control” is the control that you exert over an adversary’s actions when they feel compelled to retaliate against you. The Iranians are quite good at it, they recently managed to get the US Navy to literally steam out of the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean and get into an ever-deepening engagement in the Red Sea - far from Iran, Syria, and Lebanon - by suggesting the Houthis start taking potshots at passing merchant ships. If every military action you take gets a symmetrical reaction then you can control the nature, venue, and tempo of conflict to your benefit.
Any observer of the Ukrainian War can tell you that the Russians rarely if ever launch operations that are directly retaliatory despite provocations - some of them as flagrant as obvious cross-border attacks from NATO countries - that are too numerous to list. If they did, WWIII would have started in 2022. Instead, the Russians have largely ignored these provocations, absorbed whatever minor damage has been inflicted, and carried on with their actual objectives. And because of that, who is in the driver’s seat of the war right now?
Russia."
Minus the part about Iran telling the “Houthis” (Ansarallah) what to do, which i am skeptical is actually the case, this pretty much nails it why you don’t want to be drawn into the trap of waging a reactive war.
Seeing from this perspective and what OP posted below I could see Russia trying to make Ukraine as the only battlefield and allowing the west to send in their troops, their F-35s, their whatever else they have and just aim for atrition against the west until their forces are no match for Russia while at the same time working with China to take all the countries in the Global South away from the west. The problem is that this could take too long and allow the west to reindustrialize enugh to be a problem.
So while I can see at least one possible strategy in this scenario where Russia doesn’t escalate I’m still not sure it would be their best path forward.
I am not sure that the West can reindustrialize. They are structurally and ideologically wedded to the neoliberal financialized economic model that has hollowed out their industrial base and there is no economic impetus to change that. They are and remain slaves to the profit motive, and even as that is proving to be their downfall they keep doubling down.
We can all have our opinions about what Russia should do, but bear in mind you learn more from looking at what is happening and thinking about what could happen than by deciding what ought to happen when you have no way to influence the outcome.
You may think that Russia should be more aggressive but you don’t have available to you the full picture that Russia sees. There is more to this conflict than just the military side, there is a larger diplomatic, geopolitical and economic game being played.
In the end their decision may surprise you, just as it is meant to surprise their enemies, to keep them guessing and unbalanced.
Not really related to the topic at hand, but it’s something that’s been bothering me for a bit and it seems like a good opportunity as any to raise the matter: you are posting articles from this blog quite often, I’ve even started reading it myself occasionally. And while I do find the author’s situation analysis informative (if perhaps too optimistic at times), I have to call into question their ideological leanings (for the lack of a better term). The author has a second blog, dark futura, which focuses on the more abstract meandering and culture stuff. In there, the author keeps mocking climate change as a hoax, has at least one article decrying the attention to trans issues as an agenda of the powers that be (IIRC the Obama admin specifically), and most recently had an article with statistics on which universities were popular among the “1%”. Which is fine by itself, informative even, if not for the fact that throughout the article there seemed to have been nods towards support of US repubs in a positive way. Plus the comment section was frothing at the mouth about the supposed Jewish agenda in these institutions, complete with users “well akschually”-Ing the topic as “not antisemitic”, because (and I quote) “ashkenazim aren’t really Jews, they’re turkic”. And while the author is hardly responsible for their comment section, the fact these comments were permitted to stay and were not challenged says a lot.
So with all that said, I have to call into question why you are posting their things.
That’s all valid criticism of the author of this blog who, as i have warned before, is clearly a right winger and comes with all the baggage associated with that position. I stick to posting their military analysis because it has proven to be a good summarization of information from various other sources that i usually read before this blog’s articles and which allows me to verify the accuracy of the summaries that this blog makes. It saves me the time of having to collate all of the disparate info out there from various telegram channels, social media posts, articles, etc. As for whether their predictions are too optimistic… predictions are always difficult and one should be careful with them, both the optimistic and the pessimistic ones. I always take the attitude “wait and see”.
On their second blog, yes, that is essentially sewage that i wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole and i am glad the author keeps the two separate and the military blog reasonably free of ideological insertions. Also, i don’t ever scroll down to the comments on sites like this, i find that preserves my mental health. Ultimately it’s up to you whether you want to accept sources of diverse ideological inclination or just stick to leftist ones. But if you pick the latter you will have fairly slim pickings. Sometimes good information can come from sources that we don’t agree with ideologically. Hell, sometimes the most useful info comes straight from internal US intelligence agencies or think tanks because internally they are more truthful than in the propaganda they put out to the world. So it’s a question of if it is productive to insist on ideological purity in your news and analysis.
If you don’t find this particular blog’s summaries enlightening or have a better source of up to date summarized news on the Ukraine conflict feel free to make suggestions and i’ll take a look. So far i trust that the readers on this platform are adults who know to consume media critically and not allow the ideological bias of their sources to influence them. And after all, similar criticism could be raised of other sources that are frequently used by anti-imperialists, such as for instance The Grayzone (we had an entire discussion at the time when Ben Norton left them about how Max Blumenthal has some very dubious takes on certain issues…), but they are nonetheless a valuable resource.
I am glad that you raised this concern though because it is important to have these meta discussions every once in a while about the media that we use to keep ourselves informed and how we should treat it.
If a person has good geopolitical analysis and shitty takes on domestic politics and trans issues, does that invalidate their geopolitical analysis?
In my experience, few people (if any) have the correct positions on everything. This used to really bother me. I try now to just pick and choose sources according to how their opinions in their domain of expertise aligns with my values and knowledge. For example, I’ve gotten a lot of useful info and analysis out of the Duran people–a lot of their analysis and predictions regarding their us/Russia Ukraine proxy war has turned out to be correct despite them being paleocons and having bad takes on social issues.
This is pretty much my view too. The Duran are a good example, so are the Grayzone, or Pepe Escobar even. They each have their uses where they offer good news or analysis, but they also have instances where they can turn into utter garbage, for instance when it comes to topics like vaccines or socially progressive views on gender. It is what it is. You just have to learn to “eat around the bad spot”. Take what is useful to you and discard what is not.
If we only ever consumed media from sources that we 100% agree with, firstly we would not have any media to consume at all because there is always something to disagree over even with other leftists, and secondly we would be living in a very small echo chamber. You just have to trust that your own ideological convictions are strong enough to not be swayed by stupid, unscientific, reactionary nonsense. And if you are unsure on something you can always come back here and discuss with your comrades.
Well, isn’t it about time that these biiig and stroong European elite nations got a kick in the balls ? I have complete confidence in Russia winning against Nato, so please attack Russia (officially) and let the liberal blue church get completely destroyed…
Seriously, who will miss little boy Napoleon Macron, Bojo the clown, Pirate sholtz and all the other more or less hysterical and/or dimwitted liberal/capitalist worshipers/warmongers throughout the US vassal nations in EU…
As with every other move they have made so far to try and stick it to Russia, this too will backfire against them, possibly even more disastrously so than the sanctions. In that sense it is likely that such a move would just accelerate Russia and the global south’s victory and the end of Western hegemony. However that does not mean that it is not a dangerous escalation. Indeed i wouldn’t much care if a Mr Kinzhal shall we say “presented his business card” to Macron or Scholz in their offices tomorrow, but i do care that regular working class people would be caught in the crossfire, literally and metaphorically. It is working class people who would be mobilized to go fight their stupid war, it’s working class people who would suffer deprivations of goods and repressions against anyone who would be against the war, it’s working class people who don’t have bunkers to hide in when the bomb drops…
Luckily there is still a good chance that this is just a last ditch desperate bluff, as Europe’s militaries are in critically under-maintained, under-manned and under-supplied condition. Also, Russia has consistently acted like the adult in the room throughout this entire conflict and shown very mature restraint in the face of some extreme provocations. There is reason to trust that they will handle any possible trial balloon of western troops with the necessary finesse to manage the escalation responsibly.
Good comment…
However that does not mean that it is not a dangerous escalation.
You are oc correct, and I can’t really argue seriously for an escalation that will hurt the wrong people. However, I DO feel that we must have some sort of finale on this. The western right wingers have done evil for decades/centuries, they never stopped the colonization but just changed the methods. They must not walk away from this manufactured Ukraine project as ‘innocent bystanders’. If they do that, they’ll never loosen their propaganda grip on western news/information, and they can continue propagandizing the population for new liberal/hegemonic attacks down the line.
So, one part of me wants peace asap, but the other knows that if the liberal elite/believers doesn’t get a serious beating, they’ll never learn, and everything starts over in a handful of years. This shit must end now, but it doesn’t have to be a military defeat as long as the western population wakes up and get rid of their elite and their infantile combative ideology. Perhaps a huge economic crash will do the trick (which again hurts the wrong people)…
I also agree with you that Russia have been extremely professional/calm in everything they’ve done in this conflict. They seem to be acutely aware of the right time to push further without giving Nato an excuse to rally their citizens. Always one step ahead, and definitely the reason things haven’t gone really bad already. Russia have done very well…
However, I DO feel that we must have some sort of finale on this.
Reality seldom delivers to us that kind of catharis.
if the liberal elite/believers doesn’t get a serious beating, they’ll never learn
They will probably never learn even if they do get that beating.
Look, on the whole i agree with your sentiment, but i also know to temper my expectations because life is messy and imperfect and the outcomes of complex geopolitical processes are also most often imperfect. It is likely that not everything will turn out exactly as we want. But at the end of the day what matters is the trajectory, the direction of evolution for the balance of power in the world, and regardless of the details of the exact outcome of the Ukraine conflict that trajectory is already clear and set. The outcome of this conflict can at most accelerate or slow down that already ongoing process, but can never reverse or stop the trends that are already in motion, which are those of the global south rising alongside China. Russia has been playing a long game in Ukraine but China is playing an even longer game across the entire world.
The West’s hegemony is falling one way or another. The Ukraine conflict is not the cause of that fall, it is a symptom of it (while of course also being a powerful catalyst too).
