The idea that USA are not taking part in the war between Russia and Ukraine is laughable it has to be called out every time its said, NATO is still controlled by USA and NATO is helping Ukraine with training advice weapons.
If you think Latvia or any of the other baltic countries are challenging Russia of their own accord you are having a laugh too , in fact none of the european countries will do anything militarily in the Ukraine Russia war without the agreement of USA , we are all being taken for fools by the USA who intend to stoke the fires of war in europe until all the biggest countries of europe are broke and have suffered extensive destruction , the USA want to stand back and watch countries destroy each other and then step in at the end and offer loans to rebuild just like they did in WWII.
Wake up , your enemy is USA not Russia , it was USA that destroyed the supply of cheap gas to you that powered your electricity grid and your industries , they did it to harm your wealth and the wealth of Russians , they started the war between Ukraine and Russia by threatening Ukraine with isolation and sanctions if it did not join NATO and the EU , joining both of those would have allowed the USA to site its NATO weapons on Russia,s doorstep a very very long doorstep but one that in places is just 400 miles away from Moscow.
Wake up , think what your government would do if Russia or China or any other country for that matter , sited its weapons on your border facing your capital city , for example China missiles on the french coast facing London or Russian missiles on the border of Germany and Poland facing Berlin , as long ago as the 1970s the USA , " the west " and NATO agreed that they would not move NATO closer to the Russian border , in response Russia agreed to withdraw from Cuba , but look now , USA , NATO , the west , have broken that agreement again , Ukraine could have safely joined the EU no problem Russia did not care but joining NATO was different because NATO is controlled by the USA , the USA say they are not financing NATO anymore and that may be true but they still control it.
The EU as a 'relevant' sovereign actor is a fiction that the serves both the US and Russia for different reasons and to different extents, I suppose.
It is hard to conceive of the US fighting a more effective war against the interests of the EU that it has done over that last four years, or, as Michael Hudson put it, 'America defeats Germany for the third time in a century'.
To be fair, any time the US makes any noises about ending or even reducing its involvement in the War On Russia, the europeans wail like teenaged girls who just got dumped.
This is because european strategy since 1917 has been to get Americans to do their fighting for them, and leave euopeans to focus on the things they do well and love to do, such as prancing around in fruity pageantry, scheming, whispering campaigns, plots hatched in dark corners, and bending the ears of senile monarchs.
It is rather comical to see pundits talk of how to deal with China , as far as i know there is only one China and its not at war with anyone.
Its comical to see pundits talk of the threat of Russia when Russia has not threatened anyone , of course if you are daft enough to think that NATO and the USA are the policemen of the world protecting us all from the baddies
1. The goal of the West in Ukraine has nothing to do with Ukraine and everything to do with the destruction of Russia. (Nobody important in the west or Ukraine gives a fig for Ukraine, which is why peace would be a calamity for the politicians there.)
2. The goal of Israel is to kill as many people as possible and destroy the surrounding areas to the maximum extent possible. Genocide, in other words.
None of this is difficult to figure out. Once you understand, everything the West does makes perfect sense, even though it is both deeply cynical and profoundly evil.
I don't doubt that there are people in the West who have such fantasies. But don't fall into the elementary error of assuming that nations, and certainly not western nations have "goals" in the long-term sense.
We can argue semantics and synecdoche later, but it's hard to argue that the political class of these nations is not united in pursuit of these goals, and they are the only ones who count.
Well, in so far as Starmer and his cronies are only going to be operative in the short term, that might be true. However, hostility towards Russia has been a long standing tradition in the UK establishment, so I would say that the destruction of Russia has been a long term goal, even if only in a vague and unformed way - which doesn't make it any more acceptable.
I am sure this is as usual an excellently written article.
But I didn't get past the first section. Anything that has 'IRAN REGIME' stops me dead, Its Israel, or the US but not apparently Iran, its got to have 'REGIME' added. Not government, people, nation , no, its REGIME. This makes absolutely clear from which perspective this is being written, whatever follows.
Yes. It's like the Russian 'invasion' of the Ukraine. The mandatory formulation used to be "the unprovoked invasion". Now it is the "full-scale invasion". These phrases are parroted endlessly by the BBC, Guardian, and all the other UK propaganda outlets.
I saw a very funny video once, which unfortunately I have been unable subsequently to track down, where someone superimposed the BBC voiceover of an occasion in North Korea with visuals of the recent UK coronation. " the regimes aging figurehead . . . the threatening formations of military might . . . how much longer can this shaky edifice last . . ." etc. But these sorts of people have no insight into their prejudice - it comes naturally to the Oxbridge and Mandarin set.
Excellent analysis as always. As the saying goes, all models are wrong, some are useful. Looking at the current state of play in geopolitics, I would have to guess, that many in the foreign policy community, previously worked on the collaborative design of safety caps for modern medicine prescription bottles. The harder you try to unlock it, the higher the degree of frustration with the repeated lack of success.
Yes , deal with sometimes does not mean fight , but in the context of USA and its backers many of whom may be reluctant backers , when they say deal with China or Russia or Iran or Venezuela or anyone else they dont like or want to bully and steal from , they definetely mean fight , or other actions akin to fight , such as tariffs , sanctions , truth social comments and threats , tv radio newspaper bulletins presented as truth when they are lies , denials of truth and much more , pundits comments always have an eye on what its worth to them personally , money a better job support from people with power , we live in a world now where saying something the USA does not like can lead to your bank cards credit cards and more being frozen , exclusion is the name of their game and that exclusion is akin to war for many around the world that need medicines food water and other essentials but are purposely deprived by the USA and its helpers
Excellent article. I especially enjoyed the joke on Graham Allison, a likeable man who loved to saddle a pony, meaning a simplistic idea, and ride it for decades until the poor thing died of exhaustion.
Now I don't want to nitpick, but nitpicking: Japan did not invade Manchuria, now a part of China, in 1941. It did it ten years before, in 1931, and turned it into the Japanese protetorate of Manchukuo, ruled by the deposed former Manchu emperor. There is a Tintin album and a Bertolucci movie refering to that. In 1941 Japan was involved in a large-scale invasion and war against China proper, and it was in reaction to this that the US "escalated" by imposing sanctions on Japan, notably on oil imports.
I must have worded it clumsily. Yes of course it was the long-term occupation of Manchuria that sparked the sanctions, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
"There had indeed been a war. Did we win? The question has no meaning. It was a cold war. Nobody was actually fighting, because that would have been boorish and uneconomic. Instead, competing commercial and ideological interests—one of them ours—were spinning the wheels frantically behind the scenes to find a way to beat the others without ever having to fight. You heard about all sorts, from those who remembered those lost, last years. There were gene bombs and attack memes. There were viral ideas gone feral, adverse mental programming on a vast scale. You didn’t know what to believe, they said, and even when you did, you didn’t trust your own faith because someone might have slipped it into your drink.
It was a strange war. It killed ideas but left people standing. Every day our society was written and rewritten."
-Adrian Tchaikovsky
"The Mouse Ran Down"
----------
My theory: Some cynical people at State Dept., RAND & etc. have read a lot of dystopian SF and when at a loss, present the plots to the half bright management who think they're brilliant.
PS: There's a small error in the link to the CZSTRAT website; the link says "cAstrat.cz/" instead of "cZstrat.cz/," making it impossible to reach the site.
I fully subscribe to this highly clarifying analysis. Beyond the interpretive failures of pundits, this theory also explains the incredible blunders in politicians' moves. Leaders rely heavily on these analysts before acting, meaning flawed, abstract models directly translate into disastrous, real-world political decisions.
Very informative. "the hunt is on for some model which has been sighted elsewhere" This chuckle thinking about going after Moby Dick with a bunch of guys who'd spent their time gazing at a goldfish bowl, instead of the experienced crew of the Pequod, and the crazed, but very knowledgeable Captain Ahab, Thanks.
I’m a big fan of Clausewitz thought that war has a gestalt all of its own. You may start a war but the war will (over time) control you. Absent very clear political goals, this seems to me to be a certainty. Also, beginning a war without reference to the enemy’s culture and history is simply asking to lose (unless overwhelming superiority is on your side). The Iranian’s culture of sacrifice made a decapitation strategy at best problematic and at worst, foolish (as an example).
Always enjoy reading Aurelien…takes me back to Navy War College days studying these issues. As a final aside, there are no shortage of well-educated officers who have a reasonable grasp of strategy. There is now and forever an abundance of political leaders who have zero grasp on how to formulate policy that considers strategic ends and means, let alone conduct a realistic appraisal of enemy strengths and weaknesses. One of the results of WW2 was that the world had leaders who’d fought and bled in conflict. It at least made them aware that there was a big picture they needed to grasp. Today, that experience is absent. Hubris in inversely proportional to experience (I just made that up).
This week dear Aurelien you took a Shakesperian path. I see Hamlet and Seneca, Medea and Antigone all wrapped in the sorry state of our world. Maybe some Michelangelo Antonioni and Hyeronimous Bosch. I feel like you left out the last conclusion though, as if you had some reservations out of modesty.
The idea that USA are not taking part in the war between Russia and Ukraine is laughable it has to be called out every time its said, NATO is still controlled by USA and NATO is helping Ukraine with training advice weapons.
If you think Latvia or any of the other baltic countries are challenging Russia of their own accord you are having a laugh too , in fact none of the european countries will do anything militarily in the Ukraine Russia war without the agreement of USA , we are all being taken for fools by the USA who intend to stoke the fires of war in europe until all the biggest countries of europe are broke and have suffered extensive destruction , the USA want to stand back and watch countries destroy each other and then step in at the end and offer loans to rebuild just like they did in WWII.
Wake up , your enemy is USA not Russia , it was USA that destroyed the supply of cheap gas to you that powered your electricity grid and your industries , they did it to harm your wealth and the wealth of Russians , they started the war between Ukraine and Russia by threatening Ukraine with isolation and sanctions if it did not join NATO and the EU , joining both of those would have allowed the USA to site its NATO weapons on Russia,s doorstep a very very long doorstep but one that in places is just 400 miles away from Moscow.
Wake up , think what your government would do if Russia or China or any other country for that matter , sited its weapons on your border facing your capital city , for example China missiles on the french coast facing London or Russian missiles on the border of Germany and Poland facing Berlin , as long ago as the 1970s the USA , " the west " and NATO agreed that they would not move NATO closer to the Russian border , in response Russia agreed to withdraw from Cuba , but look now , USA , NATO , the west , have broken that agreement again , Ukraine could have safely joined the EU no problem Russia did not care but joining NATO was different because NATO is controlled by the USA , the USA say they are not financing NATO anymore and that may be true but they still control it.
The EU as a 'relevant' sovereign actor is a fiction that the serves both the US and Russia for different reasons and to different extents, I suppose.
It is hard to conceive of the US fighting a more effective war against the interests of the EU that it has done over that last four years, or, as Michael Hudson put it, 'America defeats Germany for the third time in a century'.
To be fair, any time the US makes any noises about ending or even reducing its involvement in the War On Russia, the europeans wail like teenaged girls who just got dumped.
This is because european strategy since 1917 has been to get Americans to do their fighting for them, and leave euopeans to focus on the things they do well and love to do, such as prancing around in fruity pageantry, scheming, whispering campaigns, plots hatched in dark corners, and bending the ears of senile monarchs.
It is rather comical to see pundits talk of how to deal with China , as far as i know there is only one China and its not at war with anyone.
Its comical to see pundits talk of the threat of Russia when Russia has not threatened anyone , of course if you are daft enough to think that NATO and the USA are the policemen of the world protecting us all from the baddies
"Deal with"' does not mean "fight." Canada has to deal with the US. Bangladesh has to deal with India. Argentina has to deal with Brazil. Et cetera.
1. The goal of the West in Ukraine has nothing to do with Ukraine and everything to do with the destruction of Russia. (Nobody important in the west or Ukraine gives a fig for Ukraine, which is why peace would be a calamity for the politicians there.)
2. The goal of Israel is to kill as many people as possible and destroy the surrounding areas to the maximum extent possible. Genocide, in other words.
None of this is difficult to figure out. Once you understand, everything the West does makes perfect sense, even though it is both deeply cynical and profoundly evil.
I don't doubt that there are people in the West who have such fantasies. But don't fall into the elementary error of assuming that nations, and certainly not western nations have "goals" in the long-term sense.
We can argue semantics and synecdoche later, but it's hard to argue that the political class of these nations is not united in pursuit of these goals, and they are the only ones who count.
Well, in so far as Starmer and his cronies are only going to be operative in the short term, that might be true. However, hostility towards Russia has been a long standing tradition in the UK establishment, so I would say that the destruction of Russia has been a long term goal, even if only in a vague and unformed way - which doesn't make it any more acceptable.
I am sure this is as usual an excellently written article.
But I didn't get past the first section. Anything that has 'IRAN REGIME' stops me dead, Its Israel, or the US but not apparently Iran, its got to have 'REGIME' added. Not government, people, nation , no, its REGIME. This makes absolutely clear from which perspective this is being written, whatever follows.
Sorry Aurelien, I am very disappointed with this.
Yes. It's like the Russian 'invasion' of the Ukraine. The mandatory formulation used to be "the unprovoked invasion". Now it is the "full-scale invasion". These phrases are parroted endlessly by the BBC, Guardian, and all the other UK propaganda outlets.
I saw a very funny video once, which unfortunately I have been unable subsequently to track down, where someone superimposed the BBC voiceover of an occasion in North Korea with visuals of the recent UK coronation. " the regimes aging figurehead . . . the threatening formations of military might . . . how much longer can this shaky edifice last . . ." etc. But these sorts of people have no insight into their prejudice - it comes naturally to the Oxbridge and Mandarin set.
Excellent analysis as always. As the saying goes, all models are wrong, some are useful. Looking at the current state of play in geopolitics, I would have to guess, that many in the foreign policy community, previously worked on the collaborative design of safety caps for modern medicine prescription bottles. The harder you try to unlock it, the higher the degree of frustration with the repeated lack of success.
Yes , deal with sometimes does not mean fight , but in the context of USA and its backers many of whom may be reluctant backers , when they say deal with China or Russia or Iran or Venezuela or anyone else they dont like or want to bully and steal from , they definetely mean fight , or other actions akin to fight , such as tariffs , sanctions , truth social comments and threats , tv radio newspaper bulletins presented as truth when they are lies , denials of truth and much more , pundits comments always have an eye on what its worth to them personally , money a better job support from people with power , we live in a world now where saying something the USA does not like can lead to your bank cards credit cards and more being frozen , exclusion is the name of their game and that exclusion is akin to war for many around the world that need medicines food water and other essentials but are purposely deprived by the USA and its helpers
Excellent article. I especially enjoyed the joke on Graham Allison, a likeable man who loved to saddle a pony, meaning a simplistic idea, and ride it for decades until the poor thing died of exhaustion.
Now I don't want to nitpick, but nitpicking: Japan did not invade Manchuria, now a part of China, in 1941. It did it ten years before, in 1931, and turned it into the Japanese protetorate of Manchukuo, ruled by the deposed former Manchu emperor. There is a Tintin album and a Bertolucci movie refering to that. In 1941 Japan was involved in a large-scale invasion and war against China proper, and it was in reaction to this that the US "escalated" by imposing sanctions on Japan, notably on oil imports.
I must have worded it clumsily. Yes of course it was the long-term occupation of Manchuria that sparked the sanctions, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
"There had indeed been a war. Did we win? The question has no meaning. It was a cold war. Nobody was actually fighting, because that would have been boorish and uneconomic. Instead, competing commercial and ideological interests—one of them ours—were spinning the wheels frantically behind the scenes to find a way to beat the others without ever having to fight. You heard about all sorts, from those who remembered those lost, last years. There were gene bombs and attack memes. There were viral ideas gone feral, adverse mental programming on a vast scale. You didn’t know what to believe, they said, and even when you did, you didn’t trust your own faith because someone might have slipped it into your drink.
It was a strange war. It killed ideas but left people standing. Every day our society was written and rewritten."
-Adrian Tchaikovsky
"The Mouse Ran Down"
----------
My theory: Some cynical people at State Dept., RAND & etc. have read a lot of dystopian SF and when at a loss, present the plots to the half bright management who think they're brilliant.
SF as warning or blueprint, it's someties hard to know...
I hope they're not reading any Phillip K Dick.
Nah, those boys just watched the dumbed down for TV video projects with P. K. Dick titles.
----------
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
-Philip K. Dick
A short Dick analysis explains a lot about certain people's positions.
(Those who come up short generally consider raising this a total Dick move)
My usual italian translation here:
"Al piano di sopra, al piano di sotto.
Come siamo arrivati qui da lì?"
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2026/05/al-piano-di-sopra-al-piano-di-sotto.html
PS: There's a small error in the link to the CZSTRAT website; the link says "cAstrat.cz/" instead of "cZstrat.cz/," making it impossible to reach the site.
Oh dear. Thanks. I will correct.
I fully subscribe to this highly clarifying analysis. Beyond the interpretive failures of pundits, this theory also explains the incredible blunders in politicians' moves. Leaders rely heavily on these analysts before acting, meaning flawed, abstract models directly translate into disastrous, real-world political decisions.
Very informative. "the hunt is on for some model which has been sighted elsewhere" This chuckle thinking about going after Moby Dick with a bunch of guys who'd spent their time gazing at a goldfish bowl, instead of the experienced crew of the Pequod, and the crazed, but very knowledgeable Captain Ahab, Thanks.
Who are you and what have you done with Joy in HK?!
Same as it ever was. No idea who you are or what you're asking. I changed the photo a couple of months ago, if that's what you mean.
I’m a big fan of Clausewitz thought that war has a gestalt all of its own. You may start a war but the war will (over time) control you. Absent very clear political goals, this seems to me to be a certainty. Also, beginning a war without reference to the enemy’s culture and history is simply asking to lose (unless overwhelming superiority is on your side). The Iranian’s culture of sacrifice made a decapitation strategy at best problematic and at worst, foolish (as an example).
Always enjoy reading Aurelien…takes me back to Navy War College days studying these issues. As a final aside, there are no shortage of well-educated officers who have a reasonable grasp of strategy. There is now and forever an abundance of political leaders who have zero grasp on how to formulate policy that considers strategic ends and means, let alone conduct a realistic appraisal of enemy strengths and weaknesses. One of the results of WW2 was that the world had leaders who’d fought and bled in conflict. It at least made them aware that there was a big picture they needed to grasp. Today, that experience is absent. Hubris in inversely proportional to experience (I just made that up).
Bxxxxxxxx
This week dear Aurelien you took a Shakesperian path. I see Hamlet and Seneca, Medea and Antigone all wrapped in the sorry state of our world. Maybe some Michelangelo Antonioni and Hyeronimous Bosch. I feel like you left out the last conclusion though, as if you had some reservations out of modesty.