'The reality is that an actual major conflict between Russia and the West would be fought overwhelmingly with missiles and drones, and would be extremely one-sided. The Russians don’t have the capability, if they ever did, to overrun western Europe with conventional ground forces: indeed, I’ve argued, and continue to believe, that even the full occupation of Ukraine would be too ambitious a target. But current, let alone near-future, Russian missiles and drones could strike western targets from land sea and air: the Pentagon, the Elysée, 10 Downing Street, would all be vulnerable, and even carpeting the surface of western states with Patriot batteries (if they could ever be deployed in such numbers) wouldn’t do much to stop them. And it’s enough to look at a map to see why, even if the West were to develop similar missiles, its aircraft wouldn’t be able to get close enough to launch them. Geography is a bitch. But then this isn’t a new discovery. In one of the least-studied parts of Book 1 of On War, Clausewitz insisted on “the country” as an “integral element” of conflict, and the importance of fortresses, rivers and mountains for swallowing up forces that would otherwise be available for combat: something that those who complain about the Russians “going slow” in Ukraine might do well to reflect upon........In other words, the “war” that politicians and pundits seem gleefully to anticipate, will not take place, because it can’t take place. There are a number of things that could happen, ranging from small-scale air and sea clashes, to massive and paralysing Russian attacks on one or more western countries, to very small-scale political deployments on the flanks. But not much more than that. The idea of massive armoured battles in the Baltic States is a fantasy, and let us hope that no western government ever actually takes it seriously. There are more important and more fundamental things to worry about just now.'
Precisely, which begs the question 'Why do we' (in the UK mainly) insist on continually baiting Russia? I have thought about this for decades and reached the conclusion that 'we' are the problem (mainly). During the Soviet days the 'comrades' in the USSR really believed in 'peaceful co-existence' BECAUSE THEY KNEW IT WAS THE WEST THAT WANTED TO DESTROY THEM. There was a long history of it.
This is why when they built new buildings they all incorporated reinforced concrete air-raid shelters in them, some of them nuclear capable - the very buildings that in the line of fortress towns in the Donbas are now having to be systematically demolished by FAB 3000 bombs.
What did we build? Nothing. Our inate feeling of superiority told us that we would never be on the receiving end of missile attacks.
All they (Russia and China) want is to develop and win global credibility and influence in that way - thus 'Belt and Road' and BRICS. War is wasteful and hard and unpleasant.
This explains why Russia (and China) have concentrated on missile technology and missile defence (S500 series) and now appear to be ahead of 'the west' in hypersonics etc. If 'we' attack them, then they will wait for our non-existent army to roll eastwards, and take out our military central nervous system. The new Oreshnik missile is something of a mystery but in my view is a hypersonic surgical instrument that can demolish GCHQ (for instance) without much collatoral damage and no fall-out. Hypersonic Brain surgery is the new form of war - along with information space propaganda (the only thing 'the west' is remotely good at mainly thanks to advertising and Hollywood).
What should we do about this? First STOP PROVOKING CONFLICT. Second, develop an effective air defence system round Britain which at the moment is just a patchwork. Third, abandon our overseas bases and build a domestic defence naval force. Fourth - concentrate on domestic investment to develop our infrastructure and offer partnerships to work with Russia and China. SUCK UP TO THEM - LIKE WE DID TO THE USA FOLLOWING WW2. We are the past. They are the future.
In other words acknowledge we are no longer 'world players' and abandon the deep cultural superiority that sees all others as somehow being inferior to us. The staggering complaceny that refuses to accept that Russia has weapons superior to 'ours' and that China outproduces the west now in virtually everything amuses but also angers me because it is such a waste. Am I alone coming from a background and education that admires those who are successful and doesn't hate them for it? I do not want to be enemies with them.
We need a complete rethink of everything. The elite that I was brought up with and have fought all my life had the capacity to acknowledge and do this. But the present lot are simply incapable of self examination and reflection. They won't even discuss it.
Dear Sir, I fully support your comments, however you assume that the UK is a sovereign country. I am afraid that the UK government (like the most of the world’s governments) is just a part of middle management, in charge of selling the narrative to the plebs, collecting taxes and deploying the forces (military, intelligence, diplomacy, etc) as per the masters’ orders.
None of our political leaders have been elected. They have been pre-selected, vetted and then planted in the parties, to be voted for on the election day. Thus, they don’t serve the people but rather the interests which have promoted them to the position of power.
It's true. Russia watches in amazement as the West abandons its "stars": industry, rationalism, culture, and so on.
Modern Russians grew up on the British ZX Spectrum and American Star Wars. Therefore, we will happily restore our friendship. But first, we need to survive your imperial crisis. Nothing more.
"Precisely, which begs the question 'Why do we' (in the UK mainly) insist on continually baiting Russia? I have thought about this for decades and reached the conclusion that 'we' are the problem (mainly)."
Duh. At risk of repeating myself, the West is led, not by do-gooders who sometimes get a little bit carried away in their zeal for truth and justice, but by full blown Game Of Thrones sociopaths.
No, the British themselves are like that. I've met ordinary English people in Europe. Even a little English girl passing by the pool at the hotel said: "Russian pigs". Her mom laughed nervously and started swearing, and I pretended I didn't know English.
The British are big nationalists and they still have a class society. Italians still have "signors" too. In the sense of noble titles. I have never seen this among the French.
You need an editor mate, and a slight change of emphasis on to the positive. I could easily moan all day on the whyfores/whynots/whodids/and the endless details of a putative/maybe/couldbe/armed conflict/war or whatever you wanna dream up: but the underlying problem we have in the West is that most of our current leaders wouldn't know if their arses were on fire. As soon as Russia or anybody else makes a serious move that threatens the freedom-loving attitudes of our liberal societies with their version of dictatorship, real leaders in the West will leap into action and sort these narrow-minded anti-freedom clowns out. Our intelligence services must be rubbing their hands with glee because these clowns think they have our " meaure". They dont; and as long as Freedom lives, they never will.
Roy's regurging his own internalised version of BBC News and Panorama worldview. (Pax) Britannia rides the waves, unicorns and rainbows are everywhere. What can go wrong...
'with just one bound' presumably. Tell us exactly where these leaders are currently hiding, and also why they are not in fact currently leading. Or are you maybe thinking of King Arthur, or Hereward the Wake, who are presumably in a sort of Schrodingers cat' existence, somewhere under perhaps the Mendip Hills or the South Downs, waiting traditionally for the call to action to come?
And: "threatens the freedom-loving attitudes of our liberal societies with their version of dictatorship". Are you aspiring to be a caricaturist - or just a caricature?
PS 'Freedom' is a concept, and a concept which to say the least is not exactly clear-cut - there are as many versions as there are people.
Leaders don't "hide": they wait to serve. Freedom begets endless leaders; and their replacements when or if they are promoted above their level of competence.
Well, if they are so good why aren't they 'serving' already? Are they looking on on the chaos just because they are too polite to intervene? Because the present 'level of competence' is on a highly negative rating just now. You'll have to come up with a better story if you want anyone to believe you.
Just one reflection. There was a time when the British and French did have the capability to deploy relatively large armies very far from home in unfamiliar territory across oceans. The Crimean War was one example. Despite the myriad of British blunders they did it and even resolved the logistics after the first winter with such innovations as a railway being newly built from Balaclava up to the front lines. Such a feat today would likely take years. Just think how long it took the sclerotic MoD to address the need for appropriate armoured vehicles in Iraq.
The more I think about modern western states (and the private sector too) the more I believe that relative capability to do any thing real has heavily regressed. I am exaggerating but we seem to be a civilisation that can do PowerPoint and reports but not much else. Perhaps it’s a good thing. The European states of 1914 (even the allegedly backward ones) all had the ability to mobilise mass armies and send millions of men off to fight. The modern day regimes cannot even send a battalion off to war.
Such a dramatic decline can be justified by the fact that we are witnessing the end of a vast period of civilization: stage 2, the scientific. It began with the establishment of papal power (8th century) and lasted, accordingly, over 1,200 years.
The main processes of stage are analogous to the internal combustion engine cycle (the Otto cycle):
1. Injection. Before the Renaissance, there was an accumulation of potential.
2. Compression. By the end of the First Industrial Revolution, there was a sharp rise.
3. Power stroke. Growth rates remained at their highest until the end of the Second Industrial Revolution.
4. Exhaust. By the end of the internet's spread (2008), a slowdown occurred, the opposite of the progress of the second stage.
So, we are now paying history for a very long period of growth.
Some consolation is that the inhabitants of the dying Roman Empire were paying an even greater debt to the stage 1 - the mythological one, which began 90 thousand years ago with the mastery of language by humans. (It also had its own four processes from the Otto cycle)
There is a major flaw in this Aurelian speculation. My understanding is that the Soviet Union had a 'no-first strike' policy while it was the West who did not. Historically, Russians seldom attacked but only defended, best seen with Napoleon and Hitler's aggression, but arguably seen in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Georgia. Any Russian leader will clearly say that the SMO was in response to Ukrainian aggression. Actual facts confirm this. As well, the Soviet attitude in the Cold War was purely defensive, although a defensive posture that escalated on both sides.
Still, danger to Russia has always been attack, whether from the Mongols from the East or the Europeans from the West.
If the Nato countries don't have much to counter a Russian attack with, why should the Russian have any wish to do so, since they no doubt know? Wars cost a lot of resources that can be used differently and more profitable. If there is no urge to attack, why do it?
In fact, Dale Copeland proposes (Economic Interpendece and War, 2015) that the most common is that for a great power to start a war it has to consider itself as losing the economic competition. This covers most of the great power wars since 1800. The Germans attacked 1914 as well as 1939 because they were locked out from the British and French empires and not allowed to get raw materials from there. And the Japanese attacked in 1940, as we know, because the US had decided not to sell oil to it.
And if there is anyone who is losing the economic competition it is Europe (and possibly US). Not Russia.
So behind the frantic war-mongering among the Nato powers, particularly Europe, there must be other motives, for example:
- that they want to "do a Putin", i.e. use a national emergency to discipline their own oligarchs
- that they want to discipline their own workers with cuts, and that these cuts would be politically impossible without a lot of war scare
- that they know that they have to invest to survive economically, and the bourgeoisie doesn't want to invest and doesn't accept other public investments than arms, as Keyes said
- that they know that they are unpopular, and blaming an external enemy is a very old favourite for unpopular regimes
- that they are scared from their wits by not being the top guy any more but only an equal
- that they, i.e. the Europeans, are even more scared by not being able to expect any help from the US
- that they, i.e. the Europeans, suddenly have to grow up and do their politics for themselves, which is not easy to do after 80 years of minority; a lot of bungling is unavoidable.
Good text. Moreover, I started reading him with great skepticism, but then I said to myself several times, "He guessed right." Of course, there are many mistakes about the invasion of Nazi Germany in the USSR. But this is typical for English-speaking authors.
1. You're right about Helsinki. I don't want to sound bloodthirsty, but this will be the first target if NATO starts twitching in the Baltic Sea. In 20-30 minutes, NATO will be without Helsinki. The Ashes of Leningrad are pounding in every Russian heart. I hope that at this moment the wind will blow towards Stockholm. However, it may take longer.
2. Stalin's mistake was precisely that he did not concentrate the army at the border. The forces were stretched too much. As a result, the Germans, thanks to a quick maneuverable war, defeated the Soviet troops piecemeal at the very beginning. This is easy to understand from the mass of materials. Everything is available online now. This German tactic was in effect for several months, until the Russians concentrated large forces during the Battle of Moscow. After that, it was all over for Hitler. German tactics have stopped working at the operational level. The rink went the other way. On this topic, you can type the words "Ten Stalinist blows" in the search engine.
The purpose of any future cold war is like the last cold war and all other wars through to Ukraine, the Sahel, Venezuela, Taiwan; it remains the same, which to borrow and twist the words of a great man is: "The goal is an endless war, not a successful war. The goal is to use *fear* to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe, the retirement funds, the physical infrastructure, the mineral wealth, the exorbitant privilege of the USD reserve currency, and so on and so on from out of the public weal into the hands of a transnational financial elite. "
The MIC does not want an actual war with China, as that will not only prove their weapons were a fraud, but will destroy their future business by removing their critical customer base, The Marching Morons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons The problem is they make so many mistakes trying to out compete each other that they'll probably still wind up killing themselves along with all of us.
Thanks to the current government in Germany, getting ready to fight the Russians in 2026 (?!) per Boris Pistorius, our genial Minister of War, the transportation infrastructure here has been a border-to-border disaster now for months on end. Included in this is the latest public transport upheaval; Cologne main train station was closed for ten days in November for infrastructure upgrades (signal box+software failure). Can you begin to imagine this? Cologne is THE major transportation hub in North Rhine Westphalia. The most populous state in the Federal Republic. The state of the Autobahn system is also nightmarish. Of course, the bridges across Germany have become the focus of huge tranches of federal money and are under repairs. Hint: don’t try to get anywhere quickly by freeway either. So, the railways and Autobahn are all either torn up or will be in the near future. Naturally, this has nothing to do with fighting back the forces of evil in 2026. But everything to do with Merkel’s tightwad policy. Agreed, she was in from 2005 to 2021, so the wrack and ruin can be partially attributed to her very long tenure. But the federal states have to pony up as well for their infrastructure. The money was found for these projects out of the public coffers. Tramlines are sporting Bundeswehr camo, and Germans, according to the national news service, are “gestresst”.
I have no quarrel with the many excellent comments nor with the conclusion of the essay. I found it clarifying and reassuring. The Russians are not coming as European hysteria proclaims not is NATO marching East as European bravado and chest thumping exclaim. Sound and fury signifying, if more than nothing, little. But NATO is already at war with Russia, isn't it? Nope, distance and logistics and trained personnel and all that other tedious stuff. Now it is if shipping in weapons unopposed, and the people to operate at least some of them, supplying targeting information, aerial and satellite surveillance from a distance, all while enjoying immunity from attack beyond the borders of Ukraine and, finally, having Ukrainians to do the fighting and dying, then yes, NATO is at war with Russia. But consider this one sentence and repeat it every time you hear belligerent voices: "An armoured brigade can have anything up to 250 combat vehicles, and as many in support roles, and you can’t send it as an attachment to an email or as an Amazon package."
"An armoured brigade can have anything up to 250 combat vehicles, and as many in support roles, and you can’t send it as an attachment to an email or as an Amazon package."
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That's why FedEx and UPS are going to deliver our armoured brigades. The neoconservative/neoliberal geniuses who took over after 911 authored a master stroke in privatizing such minor & peripheral facets for greater efficiency, right?!
Pardon me for asking, but isn’t the next US/NATO “war with Russia” already ongoing, with “Ukraine” as the US/NATO proxy and their goal kicking Russia out of Crimea?
Can we form even the slightest notion of what “defeat” will look like in “Ukraine” when the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas of Estonia, is a virulent Russophobe who claims that Russia is still Stalinist and who as PM strongly opposed cultural rights for the 25 percent Russian minority in her country? Won’t the US/NATO demand a fight to the last “Ukrainian?”
Will the next US/NATO goal be to “avoid another ‘Ukraine’” by the forcible expulsion of the 25 percent Russian minority from Estonia and Latvia, and by driving the Russian presence from Kaliningrad Oblast via a land and sea blockade that may now be facilitated from Finnish and Swedish territory as well as from Poland, Estonia, and Latvia?
Will the Russian leadership respond as they have in Crimea and the Donbass? Will they finally start lobbing conventional missiles into NATO territory? Will the US/NATO respond by lobbing stand-off conventional missiles into Russian territory? If so, can China remain on the sidelines?
It’s been 50 years since I got into trouble with my university “Arms Control” professor for citing English translations of Pravda and Izvestia in my essays, but it seems as if these questions about Estonia, Latvia, and Kaliningrad ought to keeping us up at night…
Settle down. The war is not over, not by a long shot.
Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated. Ukraine and the europeans have already gotten Trump to water down the "peace proposal" into something that Russia cannot possibly accept (and the french have already said that they will send troops to Ukraine, thus making doubly sure that no peace will be reached). The next step is for the europeans and Ukraine to whine that Russia doesn't want peace.
Trump will then be needled into continuing to escalate.
As the sunk cost of the War On Russia rises, Trump (egged on by the european catamites) will be forced to keep escalating rather than be the one to "lose Ukraine".
It's an obvious trap, and Trump, being a moron, is walking right into it.
The use of military forces to compel another country to do your will is simply one of the tools available. In the West, the war must be financed - the troops must be paid, the air / ocean carriers must be reimbursed for transport, the civilian logistics providers must have confidence that they will not be stiffed by the government or nothing is going to happen (quickly).
A spoiling attack on financial institutions would go far to stymie the rapid response of forces. For instance - a deniable cyber attack on the government accounting system, a flux compression generator detonation in the Square Mile, disruption of the glide slope system by 2-3% for 747F and all Airbus aircraft within the FAA would all slow response times without affecting friendly assets. Shorting Treasury bonds to would general disruption in the market. There is apparently a back door to the SWIFT system which would also create chaos. These deniable attacks could be distributed among like minded members of the BRICs community.
With adequate disruption, the local economies of the West could collapse to the point where civil disruption (incentivized confusing and contradictory DeepFake social media plants) would completely inhibit a coordinated response to moves by the interested parties.
With that non-military approach, the existing military, by simply existing as a force in being, would be adequate to deter a military intervention by the West.
The question then returns to what action the initiator wishes the recipient to take? With decoupled economies, there is no immediate advantage to be gained by demanding resource access. The continued migrant flows do not incentivize occupation of territory. Lacking the means to enforce political will using military forces, there is no need to further degrade the Western military in the short term. Demanding non-interference in the domestic activities of the non-Western nations simply repeats the existing mantra - and acquiescence by the West means nothing based on their past performance. Until the desired goal can be clearly formulated, there is no point in launching such an exercise - the underlying conditions will not change in the interim and the attack modes can be further honed to minimize mitigation of their impact.
Agree that it’s wonderful to create money out of thin air. If you can’t transfer it to where it can be useful that’s a problem. If you can’t verify what’s been disbursed and what hasn’t that’s another. There’s a lot of ruin in a nation but eventually a tipping point will be reached.
You should read "Deluge" by Adam Tooze, outlining just how far the uk government was willing to go to keep WWI financed, and no, they weren't terribly concerned with normie stuff like "accountability" or "budgets".
So did also the German government, but they had to pay for it with a superinflation after the war. There was simply too much money in circulation.
It's not about money, it's about real, material and human, resources. To throw these into the war machine they will have to cut a lot of other things. Perhaps that is intended, see my comment above: the war may be needed to teach the proles who rule.
If resources are the issue, the world is awash in cheap commodities. For that matter, "resources" were a bigger problem for britain in 1917 than for the US today. Keep in mind how resource-poor the uk was.and is.
I doon't mention commodities, I talk about production factors like machinery (mostly shipped away to China) and human labour (probably with the wrong specialization, at least if it is squandered on wars).
My city, 500 km northeast of Ukraine, is regularly targeted by British drones (Russia tracks suppliers and sponsors). A week ago I even heard their nasty buzzing in the night sky!
Yes, it's a trendy technology, but the damage from these mosquito raids is more than limited. And it boosts patriotism among people like me.
It really is like poking a bear with a stick. Even if that stick is made of carbon fiber, "royally". :)
Firstly, I repeat, the damage is minimal. The enemy is not crossing a certain line.
Secondly, Britain is acting through proxies. It's easier to respond to direct intervention. For example, in the case of a repeated invasion of Ukrainian soil, as happened in Crimea in the 19th century.
Yes, the West openly exploits both its technological advantage and, most importantly, its narrative of defending freedom. It's like a rapist committing a crime under some kind of right. A nasty story.
But the East is accustomed to endurance. We endure, but we remember, and therefore we grow stronger. The West, however, doesn't even remember all its aggressions.
I tend to under think things. Especially when everyone else overthinks them. There is an easy solution to Ukraine. Return to former neutrality. First, you cant say it is impossible, because Ukraine was neutral with no fighting for years.
Secondly, all the peace plans involve contingency for the next Ukraine war, no? Troop levels, etc, etc, etc. With Neutrality, those become moot.
Thirdly, no one gives a damn about eastern Ukraine as a place. They care about what they think it means. The world order. Playground theories of geopolitics (punish Putin for being bad boy), the theory that NATO wants war with Russia (NATO being peaceful), A countries civil rights (like they can petition the US civil rights enforcement division (Ukraine has the RIGHT to....) etc.
Forth. Everyone wants a deal: Russia wants to sell Germany petroleum, Germany wants to buy it. Trump (always...his mantra), no one wants to pay for war, unless it's the EU and the money is Russian), no one wants to die for it. Etc.
While I appreciate the general gist of your argument, I would like to point out an erroneous assumption. You are assuming that NATO response to an armed incursion on its east flank would involve gathering forces from Germany, France, and perhaps the UK, and projecting them to the theater. You then correctly conclude that this is unworkable.
But "NATO forces" are not just an international contingent of Western European expeditionary troops. There is the Polish army, one of the most numerous, and by NATO standards well armed in Europe; and it is right on the border of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics. This force has its own logistics, such as they are, and could be reasonably quickly projected into these territories, in numbers far in excess of the two brigades you envisioned, and without the need for collective NATO decisionmaking.
Now, the Polish army is completely inadequately armed for a modern conflict, being organized mostly on Guderian's principles of a century ago; and for that reason would eventually catastrophically lose a conflict with a starkly modern opponent such as Russia. But it would be there, and it would be there quickly and in numbers. So there is your quick response force in being.
Finland, of course, is totally on its own, apart from any piddling reinforcements Sweden might put together, and of course the putative nuclear umbrella from the US. But mourir pour Helsinki?
"There is the Polish army" - Indeed there is, and there is also the Polish government, and the Polish people, many of whom in all these categories are very anti-Russian. But up until now they have also had a healthy regard for their own skins, and I doubt if they would sacrifice the one in pursuit of the other.
The propaganda campaign against Russia, which has been going on for ages, mainly since Putin took control of the industrial and energy sectors plundered by the British and Americans after the fall of the Berlin Wall, explains the level of Russophobia among Western elites and populations towards Russia. This soft propaganda has revived the old themes of American propaganda from the Cold War era. It has been supplemented by the manipulations in which the British intelligence services have become masters: pseudo-murders, failed attempts, Novichok, the pseudo-poisoning of Navalny (whom Russia allowed to go for treatment in Germany, where doctors found no trace of this extremely deadly poison, which leaves its victims alive... where's the mistake!), financing of Ukrainian Nazi parties, Maidan, etc. The West would do well to mind its own business and take care of its own people, who are currently in the midst of a cultural and existential crisis.
The Skripals and Navalney survived exposure to the fearsome novichok family of nerve agents which rapidly "age in" & become impossible to remove from their target sites in nerve junctions with conventional CW antidotes within half an hour of exposure.
Somehow, despite all of that? Alison McCourt, the British army’s chief nursing officer at the time was (absolutely serendipitously and with no pre staging) near the Skripals at the time they were overcome, immediately deduced their condition and offered life saving first aid, despite having no medical equipment or drugs with her.
IMO, Skripal & his daughter presented the affect of an old and well known CW incapacitating agent, "BZ" rather than a novichok family agent. (Most particularly? By continuing to live, despite over 30 minutes passing between exhibiting symptoms and the arrival of paramedics with medications).
Dawn Sturgess who allegedly died July 8th when exposed to novichok in a discarded perfume bottle (which had somehow evaded being tipped for over 4 months? Perhaps when a bit more publicity was wanted?) Not so much, but she wasn't anyone important.
The most incredible series of near fatal & fatal events in Britain since Dr. David Kelly committed suicide with a dull penknife, Britain is truly the land of high improbabilities.
'The reality is that an actual major conflict between Russia and the West would be fought overwhelmingly with missiles and drones, and would be extremely one-sided. The Russians don’t have the capability, if they ever did, to overrun western Europe with conventional ground forces: indeed, I’ve argued, and continue to believe, that even the full occupation of Ukraine would be too ambitious a target. But current, let alone near-future, Russian missiles and drones could strike western targets from land sea and air: the Pentagon, the Elysée, 10 Downing Street, would all be vulnerable, and even carpeting the surface of western states with Patriot batteries (if they could ever be deployed in such numbers) wouldn’t do much to stop them. And it’s enough to look at a map to see why, even if the West were to develop similar missiles, its aircraft wouldn’t be able to get close enough to launch them. Geography is a bitch. But then this isn’t a new discovery. In one of the least-studied parts of Book 1 of On War, Clausewitz insisted on “the country” as an “integral element” of conflict, and the importance of fortresses, rivers and mountains for swallowing up forces that would otherwise be available for combat: something that those who complain about the Russians “going slow” in Ukraine might do well to reflect upon........In other words, the “war” that politicians and pundits seem gleefully to anticipate, will not take place, because it can’t take place. There are a number of things that could happen, ranging from small-scale air and sea clashes, to massive and paralysing Russian attacks on one or more western countries, to very small-scale political deployments on the flanks. But not much more than that. The idea of massive armoured battles in the Baltic States is a fantasy, and let us hope that no western government ever actually takes it seriously. There are more important and more fundamental things to worry about just now.'
Precisely, which begs the question 'Why do we' (in the UK mainly) insist on continually baiting Russia? I have thought about this for decades and reached the conclusion that 'we' are the problem (mainly). During the Soviet days the 'comrades' in the USSR really believed in 'peaceful co-existence' BECAUSE THEY KNEW IT WAS THE WEST THAT WANTED TO DESTROY THEM. There was a long history of it.
This is why when they built new buildings they all incorporated reinforced concrete air-raid shelters in them, some of them nuclear capable - the very buildings that in the line of fortress towns in the Donbas are now having to be systematically demolished by FAB 3000 bombs.
What did we build? Nothing. Our inate feeling of superiority told us that we would never be on the receiving end of missile attacks.
All they (Russia and China) want is to develop and win global credibility and influence in that way - thus 'Belt and Road' and BRICS. War is wasteful and hard and unpleasant.
This explains why Russia (and China) have concentrated on missile technology and missile defence (S500 series) and now appear to be ahead of 'the west' in hypersonics etc. If 'we' attack them, then they will wait for our non-existent army to roll eastwards, and take out our military central nervous system. The new Oreshnik missile is something of a mystery but in my view is a hypersonic surgical instrument that can demolish GCHQ (for instance) without much collatoral damage and no fall-out. Hypersonic Brain surgery is the new form of war - along with information space propaganda (the only thing 'the west' is remotely good at mainly thanks to advertising and Hollywood).
What should we do about this? First STOP PROVOKING CONFLICT. Second, develop an effective air defence system round Britain which at the moment is just a patchwork. Third, abandon our overseas bases and build a domestic defence naval force. Fourth - concentrate on domestic investment to develop our infrastructure and offer partnerships to work with Russia and China. SUCK UP TO THEM - LIKE WE DID TO THE USA FOLLOWING WW2. We are the past. They are the future.
In other words acknowledge we are no longer 'world players' and abandon the deep cultural superiority that sees all others as somehow being inferior to us. The staggering complaceny that refuses to accept that Russia has weapons superior to 'ours' and that China outproduces the west now in virtually everything amuses but also angers me because it is such a waste. Am I alone coming from a background and education that admires those who are successful and doesn't hate them for it? I do not want to be enemies with them.
We need a complete rethink of everything. The elite that I was brought up with and have fought all my life had the capacity to acknowledge and do this. But the present lot are simply incapable of self examination and reflection. They won't even discuss it.
Dear Sir, I fully support your comments, however you assume that the UK is a sovereign country. I am afraid that the UK government (like the most of the world’s governments) is just a part of middle management, in charge of selling the narrative to the plebs, collecting taxes and deploying the forces (military, intelligence, diplomacy, etc) as per the masters’ orders.
None of our political leaders have been elected. They have been pre-selected, vetted and then planted in the parties, to be voted for on the election day. Thus, they don’t serve the people but rather the interests which have promoted them to the position of power.
It's true. Russia watches in amazement as the West abandons its "stars": industry, rationalism, culture, and so on.
Modern Russians grew up on the British ZX Spectrum and American Star Wars. Therefore, we will happily restore our friendship. But first, we need to survive your imperial crisis. Nothing more.
"Precisely, which begs the question 'Why do we' (in the UK mainly) insist on continually baiting Russia? I have thought about this for decades and reached the conclusion that 'we' are the problem (mainly)."
Duh. At risk of repeating myself, the West is led, not by do-gooders who sometimes get a little bit carried away in their zeal for truth and justice, but by full blown Game Of Thrones sociopaths.
No, the British themselves are like that. I've met ordinary English people in Europe. Even a little English girl passing by the pool at the hotel said: "Russian pigs". Her mom laughed nervously and started swearing, and I pretended I didn't know English.
Both statements can be true at the same time. The uk leadership are sociopaths, and the average frustrated brit is, well, a brit.
The British are big nationalists and they still have a class society. Italians still have "signors" too. In the sense of noble titles. I have never seen this among the French.
You need an editor mate, and a slight change of emphasis on to the positive. I could easily moan all day on the whyfores/whynots/whodids/and the endless details of a putative/maybe/couldbe/armed conflict/war or whatever you wanna dream up: but the underlying problem we have in the West is that most of our current leaders wouldn't know if their arses were on fire. As soon as Russia or anybody else makes a serious move that threatens the freedom-loving attitudes of our liberal societies with their version of dictatorship, real leaders in the West will leap into action and sort these narrow-minded anti-freedom clowns out. Our intelligence services must be rubbing their hands with glee because these clowns think they have our " meaure". They dont; and as long as Freedom lives, they never will.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Roy's regurging his own internalised version of BBC News and Panorama worldview. (Pax) Britannia rides the waves, unicorns and rainbows are everywhere. What can go wrong...
It seems Roy still rules the world. He's just on hiatus for now. )
"real leaders in the West will leap into action"
'with just one bound' presumably. Tell us exactly where these leaders are currently hiding, and also why they are not in fact currently leading. Or are you maybe thinking of King Arthur, or Hereward the Wake, who are presumably in a sort of Schrodingers cat' existence, somewhere under perhaps the Mendip Hills or the South Downs, waiting traditionally for the call to action to come?
And: "threatens the freedom-loving attitudes of our liberal societies with their version of dictatorship". Are you aspiring to be a caricaturist - or just a caricature?
PS 'Freedom' is a concept, and a concept which to say the least is not exactly clear-cut - there are as many versions as there are people.
Leaders don't "hide": they wait to serve. Freedom begets endless leaders; and their replacements when or if they are promoted above their level of competence.
Well, if they are so good why aren't they 'serving' already? Are they looking on on the chaos just because they are too polite to intervene? Because the present 'level of competence' is on a highly negative rating just now. You'll have to come up with a better story if you want anyone to believe you.
@Roy
You funny guy!
They kill you last.
'Leap into action' and 'sort them out'! Unintentional humor is the funniest kind.
Thanks.
Just one reflection. There was a time when the British and French did have the capability to deploy relatively large armies very far from home in unfamiliar territory across oceans. The Crimean War was one example. Despite the myriad of British blunders they did it and even resolved the logistics after the first winter with such innovations as a railway being newly built from Balaclava up to the front lines. Such a feat today would likely take years. Just think how long it took the sclerotic MoD to address the need for appropriate armoured vehicles in Iraq.
The more I think about modern western states (and the private sector too) the more I believe that relative capability to do any thing real has heavily regressed. I am exaggerating but we seem to be a civilisation that can do PowerPoint and reports but not much else. Perhaps it’s a good thing. The European states of 1914 (even the allegedly backward ones) all had the ability to mobilise mass armies and send millions of men off to fight. The modern day regimes cannot even send a battalion off to war.
Such a dramatic decline can be justified by the fact that we are witnessing the end of a vast period of civilization: stage 2, the scientific. It began with the establishment of papal power (8th century) and lasted, accordingly, over 1,200 years.
The main processes of stage are analogous to the internal combustion engine cycle (the Otto cycle):
1. Injection. Before the Renaissance, there was an accumulation of potential.
2. Compression. By the end of the First Industrial Revolution, there was a sharp rise.
3. Power stroke. Growth rates remained at their highest until the end of the Second Industrial Revolution.
4. Exhaust. By the end of the internet's spread (2008), a slowdown occurred, the opposite of the progress of the second stage.
So, we are now paying history for a very long period of growth.
Some consolation is that the inhabitants of the dying Roman Empire were paying an even greater debt to the stage 1 - the mythological one, which began 90 thousand years ago with the mastery of language by humans. (It also had its own four processes from the Otto cycle)
There is a major flaw in this Aurelian speculation. My understanding is that the Soviet Union had a 'no-first strike' policy while it was the West who did not. Historically, Russians seldom attacked but only defended, best seen with Napoleon and Hitler's aggression, but arguably seen in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Georgia. Any Russian leader will clearly say that the SMO was in response to Ukrainian aggression. Actual facts confirm this. As well, the Soviet attitude in the Cold War was purely defensive, although a defensive posture that escalated on both sides.
Still, danger to Russia has always been attack, whether from the Mongols from the East or the Europeans from the West.
That's my understanding too.
If the Nato countries don't have much to counter a Russian attack with, why should the Russian have any wish to do so, since they no doubt know? Wars cost a lot of resources that can be used differently and more profitable. If there is no urge to attack, why do it?
In fact, Dale Copeland proposes (Economic Interpendece and War, 2015) that the most common is that for a great power to start a war it has to consider itself as losing the economic competition. This covers most of the great power wars since 1800. The Germans attacked 1914 as well as 1939 because they were locked out from the British and French empires and not allowed to get raw materials from there. And the Japanese attacked in 1940, as we know, because the US had decided not to sell oil to it.
And if there is anyone who is losing the economic competition it is Europe (and possibly US). Not Russia.
So behind the frantic war-mongering among the Nato powers, particularly Europe, there must be other motives, for example:
- that they want to "do a Putin", i.e. use a national emergency to discipline their own oligarchs
- that they want to discipline their own workers with cuts, and that these cuts would be politically impossible without a lot of war scare
- that they know that they have to invest to survive economically, and the bourgeoisie doesn't want to invest and doesn't accept other public investments than arms, as Keyes said
- that they know that they are unpopular, and blaming an external enemy is a very old favourite for unpopular regimes
- that they are scared from their wits by not being the top guy any more but only an equal
- that they, i.e. the Europeans, are even more scared by not being able to expect any help from the US
- that they, i.e. the Europeans, suddenly have to grow up and do their politics for themselves, which is not easy to do after 80 years of minority; a lot of bungling is unavoidable.
A good take indeed, Aurelien.
My impression is that all this talk of war is a smokescreen to cover for the ongoing invasion of Europe for the goal of ethnic replacement.
Good text. Moreover, I started reading him with great skepticism, but then I said to myself several times, "He guessed right." Of course, there are many mistakes about the invasion of Nazi Germany in the USSR. But this is typical for English-speaking authors.
1. You're right about Helsinki. I don't want to sound bloodthirsty, but this will be the first target if NATO starts twitching in the Baltic Sea. In 20-30 minutes, NATO will be without Helsinki. The Ashes of Leningrad are pounding in every Russian heart. I hope that at this moment the wind will blow towards Stockholm. However, it may take longer.
2. Stalin's mistake was precisely that he did not concentrate the army at the border. The forces were stretched too much. As a result, the Germans, thanks to a quick maneuverable war, defeated the Soviet troops piecemeal at the very beginning. This is easy to understand from the mass of materials. Everything is available online now. This German tactic was in effect for several months, until the Russians concentrated large forces during the Battle of Moscow. After that, it was all over for Hitler. German tactics have stopped working at the operational level. The rink went the other way. On this topic, you can type the words "Ten Stalinist blows" in the search engine.
The purpose of any future cold war is like the last cold war and all other wars through to Ukraine, the Sahel, Venezuela, Taiwan; it remains the same, which to borrow and twist the words of a great man is: "The goal is an endless war, not a successful war. The goal is to use *fear* to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe, the retirement funds, the physical infrastructure, the mineral wealth, the exorbitant privilege of the USD reserve currency, and so on and so on from out of the public weal into the hands of a transnational financial elite. "
The MIC does not want an actual war with China, as that will not only prove their weapons were a fraud, but will destroy their future business by removing their critical customer base, The Marching Morons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons The problem is they make so many mistakes trying to out compete each other that they'll probably still wind up killing themselves along with all of us.
Thanks to the current government in Germany, getting ready to fight the Russians in 2026 (?!) per Boris Pistorius, our genial Minister of War, the transportation infrastructure here has been a border-to-border disaster now for months on end. Included in this is the latest public transport upheaval; Cologne main train station was closed for ten days in November for infrastructure upgrades (signal box+software failure). Can you begin to imagine this? Cologne is THE major transportation hub in North Rhine Westphalia. The most populous state in the Federal Republic. The state of the Autobahn system is also nightmarish. Of course, the bridges across Germany have become the focus of huge tranches of federal money and are under repairs. Hint: don’t try to get anywhere quickly by freeway either. So, the railways and Autobahn are all either torn up or will be in the near future. Naturally, this has nothing to do with fighting back the forces of evil in 2026. But everything to do with Merkel’s tightwad policy. Agreed, she was in from 2005 to 2021, so the wrack and ruin can be partially attributed to her very long tenure. But the federal states have to pony up as well for their infrastructure. The money was found for these projects out of the public coffers. Tramlines are sporting Bundeswehr camo, and Germans, according to the national news service, are “gestresst”.
Then, try to wrap your minds around the logistics and propaganda in this year-old article from the redoubtable U.S. army rag “Stars and Stripes”. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2024-01-18/eucom-nato-russia-war-12716615.html
I have no quarrel with the many excellent comments nor with the conclusion of the essay. I found it clarifying and reassuring. The Russians are not coming as European hysteria proclaims not is NATO marching East as European bravado and chest thumping exclaim. Sound and fury signifying, if more than nothing, little. But NATO is already at war with Russia, isn't it? Nope, distance and logistics and trained personnel and all that other tedious stuff. Now it is if shipping in weapons unopposed, and the people to operate at least some of them, supplying targeting information, aerial and satellite surveillance from a distance, all while enjoying immunity from attack beyond the borders of Ukraine and, finally, having Ukrainians to do the fighting and dying, then yes, NATO is at war with Russia. But consider this one sentence and repeat it every time you hear belligerent voices: "An armoured brigade can have anything up to 250 combat vehicles, and as many in support roles, and you can’t send it as an attachment to an email or as an Amazon package."
@John Ham
"An armoured brigade can have anything up to 250 combat vehicles, and as many in support roles, and you can’t send it as an attachment to an email or as an Amazon package."
----------
That's why FedEx and UPS are going to deliver our armoured brigades. The neoconservative/neoliberal geniuses who took over after 911 authored a master stroke in privatizing such minor & peripheral facets for greater efficiency, right?!
Pardon me for asking, but isn’t the next US/NATO “war with Russia” already ongoing, with “Ukraine” as the US/NATO proxy and their goal kicking Russia out of Crimea?
Can we form even the slightest notion of what “defeat” will look like in “Ukraine” when the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas of Estonia, is a virulent Russophobe who claims that Russia is still Stalinist and who as PM strongly opposed cultural rights for the 25 percent Russian minority in her country? Won’t the US/NATO demand a fight to the last “Ukrainian?”
Will the next US/NATO goal be to “avoid another ‘Ukraine’” by the forcible expulsion of the 25 percent Russian minority from Estonia and Latvia, and by driving the Russian presence from Kaliningrad Oblast via a land and sea blockade that may now be facilitated from Finnish and Swedish territory as well as from Poland, Estonia, and Latvia?
Will the Russian leadership respond as they have in Crimea and the Donbass? Will they finally start lobbing conventional missiles into NATO territory? Will the US/NATO respond by lobbing stand-off conventional missiles into Russian territory? If so, can China remain on the sidelines?
It’s been 50 years since I got into trouble with my university “Arms Control” professor for citing English translations of Pravda and Izvestia in my essays, but it seems as if these questions about Estonia, Latvia, and Kaliningrad ought to keeping us up at night…
Settle down. The war is not over, not by a long shot.
Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated. Ukraine and the europeans have already gotten Trump to water down the "peace proposal" into something that Russia cannot possibly accept (and the french have already said that they will send troops to Ukraine, thus making doubly sure that no peace will be reached). The next step is for the europeans and Ukraine to whine that Russia doesn't want peace.
Trump will then be needled into continuing to escalate.
As the sunk cost of the War On Russia rises, Trump (egged on by the european catamites) will be forced to keep escalating rather than be the one to "lose Ukraine".
It's an obvious trap, and Trump, being a moron, is walking right into it.
Yes, as long as the Ukrainian army does not fall apart, it will be so.
The use of military forces to compel another country to do your will is simply one of the tools available. In the West, the war must be financed - the troops must be paid, the air / ocean carriers must be reimbursed for transport, the civilian logistics providers must have confidence that they will not be stiffed by the government or nothing is going to happen (quickly).
A spoiling attack on financial institutions would go far to stymie the rapid response of forces. For instance - a deniable cyber attack on the government accounting system, a flux compression generator detonation in the Square Mile, disruption of the glide slope system by 2-3% for 747F and all Airbus aircraft within the FAA would all slow response times without affecting friendly assets. Shorting Treasury bonds to would general disruption in the market. There is apparently a back door to the SWIFT system which would also create chaos. These deniable attacks could be distributed among like minded members of the BRICs community.
With adequate disruption, the local economies of the West could collapse to the point where civil disruption (incentivized confusing and contradictory DeepFake social media plants) would completely inhibit a coordinated response to moves by the interested parties.
With that non-military approach, the existing military, by simply existing as a force in being, would be adequate to deter a military intervention by the West.
The question then returns to what action the initiator wishes the recipient to take? With decoupled economies, there is no immediate advantage to be gained by demanding resource access. The continued migrant flows do not incentivize occupation of territory. Lacking the means to enforce political will using military forces, there is no need to further degrade the Western military in the short term. Demanding non-interference in the domestic activities of the non-Western nations simply repeats the existing mantra - and acquiescence by the West means nothing based on their past performance. Until the desired goal can be clearly formulated, there is no point in launching such an exercise - the underlying conditions will not change in the interim and the attack modes can be further honed to minimize mitigation of their impact.
Governments that can print their own currency never let finances get in the way of doing anything that they really want to do.
The history of H.M. Exchequer during WWI is most instructive.
Agree that it’s wonderful to create money out of thin air. If you can’t transfer it to where it can be useful that’s a problem. If you can’t verify what’s been disbursed and what hasn’t that’s another. There’s a lot of ruin in a nation but eventually a tipping point will be reached.
You should read "Deluge" by Adam Tooze, outlining just how far the uk government was willing to go to keep WWI financed, and no, they weren't terribly concerned with normie stuff like "accountability" or "budgets".
So did also the German government, but they had to pay for it with a superinflation after the war. There was simply too much money in circulation.
It's not about money, it's about real, material and human, resources. To throw these into the war machine they will have to cut a lot of other things. Perhaps that is intended, see my comment above: the war may be needed to teach the proles who rule.
If resources are the issue, the world is awash in cheap commodities. For that matter, "resources" were a bigger problem for britain in 1917 than for the US today. Keep in mind how resource-poor the uk was.and is.
I doon't mention commodities, I talk about production factors like machinery (mostly shipped away to China) and human labour (probably with the wrong specialization, at least if it is squandered on wars).
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6upLGdsduiA&list=RD6upLGdsduiA&start_radio=1
Светлая Россия я буду с тобой!
My city, 500 km northeast of Ukraine, is regularly targeted by British drones (Russia tracks suppliers and sponsors). A week ago I even heard their nasty buzzing in the night sky!
Yes, it's a trendy technology, but the damage from these mosquito raids is more than limited. And it boosts patriotism among people like me.
It really is like poking a bear with a stick. Even if that stick is made of carbon fiber, "royally". :)
So, what is Russia waiting for?
Firstly, I repeat, the damage is minimal. The enemy is not crossing a certain line.
Secondly, Britain is acting through proxies. It's easier to respond to direct intervention. For example, in the case of a repeated invasion of Ukrainian soil, as happened in Crimea in the 19th century.
Pretend that Russia or anyone else were to do anything remotely comparable to the United States. We would not be hearing these excuses for indecision.
The American response would be immediate, brutal and unmistakable. Which is why nobody does it.
Russia's enemies will continue to escalate, until forced to stop.
Yes, the West openly exploits both its technological advantage and, most importantly, its narrative of defending freedom. It's like a rapist committing a crime under some kind of right. A nasty story.
But the East is accustomed to endurance. We endure, but we remember, and therefore we grow stronger. The West, however, doesn't even remember all its aggressions.
Humans have a bad habit of trying to claim moral victories in lieu of the genuine article.
In the end, winning is the only thing that matters. The West wins ugly, but it works.
I tend to under think things. Especially when everyone else overthinks them. There is an easy solution to Ukraine. Return to former neutrality. First, you cant say it is impossible, because Ukraine was neutral with no fighting for years.
Secondly, all the peace plans involve contingency for the next Ukraine war, no? Troop levels, etc, etc, etc. With Neutrality, those become moot.
Thirdly, no one gives a damn about eastern Ukraine as a place. They care about what they think it means. The world order. Playground theories of geopolitics (punish Putin for being bad boy), the theory that NATO wants war with Russia (NATO being peaceful), A countries civil rights (like they can petition the US civil rights enforcement division (Ukraine has the RIGHT to....) etc.
Forth. Everyone wants a deal: Russia wants to sell Germany petroleum, Germany wants to buy it. Trump (always...his mantra), no one wants to pay for war, unless it's the EU and the money is Russian), no one wants to die for it. Etc.
So why not?
While I appreciate the general gist of your argument, I would like to point out an erroneous assumption. You are assuming that NATO response to an armed incursion on its east flank would involve gathering forces from Germany, France, and perhaps the UK, and projecting them to the theater. You then correctly conclude that this is unworkable.
But "NATO forces" are not just an international contingent of Western European expeditionary troops. There is the Polish army, one of the most numerous, and by NATO standards well armed in Europe; and it is right on the border of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics. This force has its own logistics, such as they are, and could be reasonably quickly projected into these territories, in numbers far in excess of the two brigades you envisioned, and without the need for collective NATO decisionmaking.
Now, the Polish army is completely inadequately armed for a modern conflict, being organized mostly on Guderian's principles of a century ago; and for that reason would eventually catastrophically lose a conflict with a starkly modern opponent such as Russia. But it would be there, and it would be there quickly and in numbers. So there is your quick response force in being.
Finland, of course, is totally on its own, apart from any piddling reinforcements Sweden might put together, and of course the putative nuclear umbrella from the US. But mourir pour Helsinki?
"There is the Polish army" - Indeed there is, and there is also the Polish government, and the Polish people, many of whom in all these categories are very anti-Russian. But up until now they have also had a healthy regard for their own skins, and I doubt if they would sacrifice the one in pursuit of the other.
The propaganda campaign against Russia, which has been going on for ages, mainly since Putin took control of the industrial and energy sectors plundered by the British and Americans after the fall of the Berlin Wall, explains the level of Russophobia among Western elites and populations towards Russia. This soft propaganda has revived the old themes of American propaganda from the Cold War era. It has been supplemented by the manipulations in which the British intelligence services have become masters: pseudo-murders, failed attempts, Novichok, the pseudo-poisoning of Navalny (whom Russia allowed to go for treatment in Germany, where doctors found no trace of this extremely deadly poison, which leaves its victims alive... where's the mistake!), financing of Ukrainian Nazi parties, Maidan, etc. The West would do well to mind its own business and take care of its own people, who are currently in the midst of a cultural and existential crisis.
@Yannick
The Skripals and Navalney survived exposure to the fearsome novichok family of nerve agents which rapidly "age in" & become impossible to remove from their target sites in nerve junctions with conventional CW antidotes within half an hour of exposure.
Somehow, despite all of that? Alison McCourt, the British army’s chief nursing officer at the time was (absolutely serendipitously and with no pre staging) near the Skripals at the time they were overcome, immediately deduced their condition and offered life saving first aid, despite having no medical equipment or drugs with her.
IMO, Skripal & his daughter presented the affect of an old and well known CW incapacitating agent, "BZ" rather than a novichok family agent. (Most particularly? By continuing to live, despite over 30 minutes passing between exhibiting symptoms and the arrival of paramedics with medications).
Dawn Sturgess who allegedly died July 8th when exposed to novichok in a discarded perfume bottle (which had somehow evaded being tipped for over 4 months? Perhaps when a bit more publicity was wanted?) Not so much, but she wasn't anyone important.
The most incredible series of near fatal & fatal events in Britain since Dr. David Kelly committed suicide with a dull penknife, Britain is truly the land of high improbabilities.