Yves here. Urie’s cool headline introduces a sober analysis of how batshit crazy the Ukraine attacks on Russia have been. At best, they reveal a seriously miscalibrated risk-return assessment, due one presumed to having inhaled lots of Ukraine propaganda and hopium.
A point that seems to be missed in terms of crossing red lines on Cold War nuclear understandings is that this will put at least Russia on heightened alert, and may also do so in other nuclear powers. Heightened alert = heightened propensity to [re]act = greatly increased odds of mishap.
A new video with Chas Freeman on Neutrality Studies confirms a point GM made in comments yesterday from GM that readers seemed not to want to hear, that a conventional weapons attack on nuclear-deterrence assets, per Cold War agreements, is tantamount to a nuclear strike, and therefore per the rules of engagement, does legitimate a nuclear response:
Traditionally the elements of a nuclear deterrent force on both the American and the Soviet side, the Russian side if you will, have been exempt from attack for the very simple reason that both countries regard a an attack with conventional weapons on their nuclear deterrent capacity as equivalent to a nuclear attack and justifying a nuclear response. Both sides take this very seriously. Of course, Ukraine is not part of the salt uh agreements, nor is the UK. So, they are free, I suppose, mischievously to challenge this exemption, and they’ve done so, and it’s very dangerous.
By Robert Urie, author of Zen Economics, artist, and musician who publishes The Journal of Belligerent Pontification on Substack
Theories abound that recently increased hostilities between Ukraine and Russia are to gain strategic advantage for upcoming negotiations. Irrespective, the recklessness of the American assault on Russia— carried out by Ukraine, begs the question of why rabid poodle Volodymyr Zelensky remains in power? An American leader who objected to the drone attacks would have placed Zelensky on the back burner for the recklessness of the act.
What appears to have taken place is that the US, through its Ukrainian proxy, used the nuclear weapons treaty requirement that strategic nuclear bombers be kept in the open for monitoring purposes as it tried, but failed, to murder the President of Russia in a separate, but related, incident. Five or six strategic bombers out of forty are rumored to have been destroyed. Vladimir Putin lived.
How precisely not-constructive these actions have been is difficult to convey in words. The West’s pre-nuclear mindset, where nuclear weapons are just larger conventional weapons, now appears to represent the American view. They aren’t. They produce wildly different effects than conventional weapons do. Add to this the nuclear postures of the key players, and it is the psychology of nuclear escalation tied to their destructive power that makes nuclear weapons such a horrible idea.
One drawback to attacking airplanes that are housed in the open due to treaty requirements is that doing so incentivizes treaty participants to hide them going forward, to abrogate a key provision of the treaty. But the larger problem is that attacking nuclear assets signals to the Russians that their nuclear assets are being attacked. Similar actions might be taken were the West to launch a nuclear first-strike. (No such conclusion is known to have been drawn by the Russians).
The questions of 1) what Donald Trump knew about the attack and 2) when he knew it, are almost moot. This infantile daring-the-gods-to-destroy-us was a primary characteristic of the Biden administration’s foreign policy. Most Americans have no idea how close Biden’s foreign policy team brought the US to nuclear Armageddon in its final days. So, suicidal nuclear gamesmanship against Russia while committing genocide in Gaza? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
While optimists are still holding out hope that Donald Trump will pull a rabbit out of a hat and come to terms with Russia regarding Ukraine, trying to murder one’s negotiating partner is an Israeli tactic that signals that decapitation and regime change are the ultimate goals of the attack. In early 2022, the reported goal of the Biden administration’s war in Ukraine was decapitation and regime change inside Russia. Reports stating such were scrubbed from the internet within a few days of the launch of Russia’s SMO.
The problem for humanity is that if Donald Trump can’t see the players for who they are and the play for what it is, even more war will be the result. Mr. Trump had an opportunity to 1) end arms shipments and war funding to Ukraine and 2) declare an end to US participation in the war. His choice to surround himself with neocons is easy enough to explain. The bipartisan religion in DC is war. It feeds the MIC, which in turn feeds the campaign coffers of the uniparty. Mr. Trump only has neocons in his administration because only neocons inhabit official Washington.
Were Trump to exhibit a clue, his much-lauded interest in peace might be more plausible. As Mr. Trump negotiates with Iran, the Israeli state— armed and funded by the US, is committing genocide once again in Gaza. This is being carried out with American weapons, American funding, American logistical support, and American political support across West Asia. This makes it an American genocide. Or a ‘proxy-genocide’ if you prefer.
The tiptoeing around this point by those who want the Ukraine war to be ended is likely less shrewd than imagined. The drone attack against the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in an apparent assassination attempt, is the stuff of geopolitical nightmares. The ‘Israeli’ model of murdering foreign leaders in the midst of negotiations misses that Mr. Putin is the best negotiating partner for American interests that the West is likely to find. And nuclear war isn’t in anyone’s interest.
For skeptics of US involvement in the plot, the attacks appear to have required global satellite coordination which the Ukrainians do not possess. The aspirational date for Ukraine possessing satellites is 2030. From Adam Entous’ reporting in the New York Times, the CIA built facilities inside Ukraine for purposes like this. Additionally, per Entous, the war in Ukraine has been run from Wiesbaden, Germany by Americans and Europeans. The Ukrainians are the bodies that the West convinced to die in the conflict. Questions of Ukrainian agency are ignorant in this context.
As evidence emerges in coming weeks of CIA – MI6 ties to the attempt on Mr. Putin’s life, it will become clearer that1) the locus of power inside the US doesn’t reside in the Oval Office and 2) the CIA is now openly running US foreign policy. The plot on Mr. Putin’s life, if successful, would likely have brought Russian hardliners to power who would match Western bellicosity, but with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s threats against Russia are even dumber than US actions to date. Herr Merz is threatening to deploy Taurus missiles to Ukraine to be fired deep into Russia. Some in the Judge Nap(olitano) crowd, I believe Scott Ritter, have claimed that the Taurus missiles can carry nuclear warheads. The information that I could find separately is ambiguous, stating that the Taurus can’t accommodate nuclear warheads ‘in most cases.’
The problem with the Taurus, should Ritter be correct, is that they can carry nuclear warheads as well as conventional. In practice, the Russians won’t know if a Taurus missile that has been launched at Russia is nuclear or conventional until it explodes. The rational assumption is therefore that any Taurus missile fired into Russia is nuclear. And should the Taurus missiles be incapable of carrying nuclear warheads, Russia’s Oreshnik missile is its conventional hypersonic counter. If Germany wants war with Russia, it can probably be found.
An analogy is that in the US one can be sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for robbing a Post Office of $100, or to three years in prison for stealing the same $100 from a Mini-Mart. In terms of risk / return, robbing the Mini-Mart is the rational choice. However, Herr Merz wants to rob the Post Office. For similar quanta of initial destruction, Herr Merz is choosing the one with the outsized blow back. This would be fine if Herr Merz were putting his own life on the line in such a stupid way. But he’s putting our lives on the line for his choice.
For Americans, the Biden and Trump foreign policies are merging. Initial speculation in the establishment press has it that a possible reason is that both Trump and Biden are old and losing their cognitive function. More plausibly, the CIA is now openly running US foreign policy, thereby sidelining presidential prerogative. Conversely, trying to manage US foreign policy with regular CIA bombs going off that are intended to shift the policy direction suggests a rogue agency.
By favoring maximally provocative acts over those likely to cause less blow-back, the US is acting on emotion, not strategy. In one of Donald Trump’s rare moments of lucidity, he stated that American Generals and the foreign policy establishment (including CIA) have deep hatred toward the Russians. Question: in what Podunk hellhole do Generals (or the CIA) get to act on their passions rather than what is good for the US?
Continuing public pronouncements from Western politicians that stupid and self-defeating acts must be carried out to ‘send a message’ to some foreign entity misses that the telephone was invented well over a century ago and has proven to be an effective tool for conducting long-distance conversations. The problem is that the Americans and Europeans are only speaking amongst themselves. The infamous ‘echo-chamber’ of bad ideas promoted in closed forums is how the Ancien Regime West operates in 2025.
The rumors swirling that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth may have watched the attempt on Vladimir Putin’s life in real time should deeply concern every American. Irrespective of what readers may think of Mr. Putin, he is 1) a national leader, 2) who has the backing of the people of Russia, 3) with the support of political leaders representing 80% of the population of the planet, and 4) he leads the nation that has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.
Should the rumor be true, Hegseth is unqualified to clean Port-o-Potties for a living. Had his rumored efforts been successful, he would have been the proverbial dog that caught the car tire. Between the assassination effort and the destruction of Russian nuclear assets, an assumption by the Russians that an attack on Russia was underway would have been rational. This is an instance where the Russian Nuclear Doctrine is clear— Russia will use nuclear weapons if the existence of Russia is threatened. But the drone attacks don’t match that scale.
Further, Americans should really consider how the US would respond if the leadership of Ausland (an imaginary country) attempted to murder the President of the US while doing its best to create fears of nuclear calamity. Before pushing back that the leaders of Ausland were conducting a war against innocents abroad, the same has been a criticism of US foreign policy for all of my life. So, under the Western theory that murdering foreign leaders (e.g. Israel v Iran) is okay, what possible complaint could the US have were a US President to meet this same fate? To be clear, this is a matter of political logic, not a threat. The US would respond to end the threat, even if doing so meant ending humanity.
As Americans survey their fine works— escalating war with Russia and an unfolding re-genocide in Gaza, the question of the genesis of the conflict with Russia has re-arisen. The question du jour: did Russia have a choice but to launch its SMO in 2022? The existential point— that even with a gun to one’s head, one always has a choice, has been the fallback cliché for Americans. American liberals (who launched both the war and the genocide) have maintained that some vaguely defined force (the UN, the French, the Germans) could have been appealed to to mediate between the US and Russia.
But this assumption is unrealistic, and the only reason that it persists is that no one promoting it has gone through the steps to explain how it would work. Former leaders of both France (Hollande) and Germany (Merkel) have publicly stated that the Minsk II negotiations were only put forward to buy time for Ukraine to be armed. Given this history, how could either France or Germany then be counted on to be fair mediators between Russia and the US? And the UN has been understood to be a tool of the West for all of my lifetime.
More to the point, who imagines that the US would be in any way beholden to French or German views on anything. Self-imagined hegemons don’t do allies. While Olaf Schulz may have imagined that the Biden administration blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline was somehow a favor to Germany, Germany has been in economic recession since the deed was done. If the US gave the slightest damn about the wellbeing of the German and French people, it wouldn’t have destroyed Europe’s cheap energy supply.
Westerners sanguine about the prospect of nuclear war are fools. The people who will be making nuclear decisions will most likely be making them on narrow, technical grounds. The path along which nuclear annihilation will unfold is explained here by MIT nuclear physicist Ted Postol. Reader opinions regarding Postol are irrelevant unless they address his thesis of nuclear annihilation. While I included this link in my last post, the comments that I am encountering, mainly from young people. are frighteningly naïve about how their lives would be affected. They would end.
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Steven Starr has a short piece up here via James Carden:
Will Putin Abandon the Special Military Operation and Declare War?
Nuclear expert Dr. Steven Starr on what might come next in Ukraine…
by Steven Starr
Jun 03, 2025
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/will-putin-abandon-the-special-military
I only know Starr as a good commentator on the pages of Moon of Alabama a while ago.
p.s. He published a book on EMP as weapon last year which I have not yet been able to read:
Nuclear High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse: A Mortal Threat to the U.S. Power Grid and U.S. Nuclear Power Plants
https://www.empshield.com/steven-starr-nuclear-high-altitude-electromagnetic-pulse-a-mortal-threat-to-the-u-s-power-grid-and-u-s-nuclear-power-plants/
p.s.
#1:
Arestovych had predicted the war for 2021 or 2022 in his infamous TV interview 2019:
see the TV excerpt TC 3:30+
Glenn Diesen with Jacques Baud just one day before the fun…
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/col-jacques-baud-russia-pursues-military
#2:
NYT had reported fall 2024 that Biden + EU officials had been thinking about providing UKR with nukes.
Trump’s Vow to End the War Could Leave Ukraine With Few Options
One question is whether the new administration and Europe will provide security guarantees to prevent Russia from taking more territory.
Nov. 21 2024
https://archive.is/4G56L
“(…)Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications.(…)”
The fact that this much was admitted most likely means that they actually tried to pull it off but failed.
I still wouldn´t discount Martyanov´s view that the Oreshnik attack was directed against Yuzhmash because there such niceties were in preparation.
Thanks for posting this clip with the Arestovych interview from 2019, in which he predicts the future with astonishing accuracy. A must-watch for anyone who doubts that UKR provoked RU’s invasion — and continues to provoke RU into doing something that will prompt NATO into coming to UKR’s rescue.
Arestovych now lives in exile (either Estonia or USA, not clear which). He faces criminal charges in both RU and UKR: quite a feat!
“He faces criminal charges in both RU and UKR”
Good job! – “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People “…
That’s what you get when you swing both ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o72BAmIUtg&t=159s
what.the.fuck.was.that???
🎃🙃
Seconded.
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you
Wowsers, the Biden people were ignorant to the point of being in la la land.
The weapons “taken” from Ukraine were never Ukraine’s and never went to the West. They were USSR nukes located in Ukraine but the USSR, and then Russia, had the launch codes.
Russia nevertheless gave some minor concessions (I can’t recall what they were) in the breakup pact in return for Ukraine handing over the nukes without a lot of fuss. That included Russia recognizing Ukraine’s borders and Ukraine committing to neutrality.
Tell that not one reporter on that NYT story… but 4! (speaking of staff size in times of crises?)
Helene Cooper, Andrew E. Kramer, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes
I remember Hersh asking around 2 years ago who the fuck that Barnes guy is who he had never heard about…
p.s. G. Doctorow´s latest:
“all of Russia’s ambassadors have been called home and will be meeting with Lavrov and likely with Putin during this week before heading home to officiate at Russia’s National Day festivities, the equivalent of their July 4th on 9-10 June. I fully expect Putin to issue an address at this meeting that represents Russia’s response to the attacks of this past weekend.”
Mentioned here
“WION (India): Russia-Ukraine War – White House Confirms Donald Trump Was Not Informed About The Attack”
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/06/04/wion-india-russia-ukraine-war-white-house-confirms-donald-trump-was-not-informed-about-the-attack/
The minor concession was that Russia took the burden of paying Soviet Union’s external debt, and Ukraine got to start from a clean slate.
Well, that means that, if US ever does leave NATO, Germany, Japan, and Turkiye, among others, can ask for “their” nukes back…. (NATO sharing agreement allows US allies (I think basically the same agreement covers Japan and SK, too) who are not nuclear to carry US nukes while US retains the “key.” I think that is analogous to Ukraine’s “possession” of the former Soviet nukes.)
Arestovich’s statement on 2021-22 being the “critical period” fascinates me. How would you determine this empirically?
I assume he says this because Nordstream 2 was due to open a paradigm shift in Russo-German relations, rendering Ukraine much less relevant to US strategy. Thus conflict would be necessary to renew the Russo-European split.
But I could be wrong. All I know is that Ukraine, Russia and NATO all foresaw war in the specific 21-22 time frame.
What do you think made this particular period so critical?
Likely it was estimated that by then Ukrainian armed forces would be capable (with NATO training and support) of solving the “anti-terrorist” problem called Eastern Ukraine, and that by then The West was ready to implement the sanctions that would cripple Russia and prevent it from intervening effectively – and hopefully lead to a regime change in Russia as a bonus.
Would a nuclear war end all life on earth? Probably not, but Starbucks, Amazon, and Door Dash will be out of business so hiding in your basement until “things get back to normal” isn’t going to work. In my lifetime I have gone from, as a nine-year-old, being quite excited by this new thing, an Atomic bomb, to being smug because WE had it and THEY did not. The “smug” was punctured at age thirteen. It quickly became apparent that, Curtis LeMay et al aside, the mere suggestion of using nuclear weapons was prima facie evidence of an unsound mind. I have come across the idea that LeMay wanted to assassinate JFK because he said no nukes during the Cuban Missile Crisis. (LeMay? Think Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove.) Now I look around and there are people entertaining the idea that a nuclear war is winnable. Perhaps for the cockroach who has lived through everything for 500 million years. I can think of nothing more dangerous than an arrogant smart ass who knows better. This is the description of some of the youngsters that Elon Musk loosed on us. As far as I know none of them are advocating a nuclear first strike.
One last point. If as is reported, the drone attack on the airbases was in preparation for 18 months and if, as is confidently reported, the US and UK were each eyeball deep in those preparations, who are your candidates for the great mind(s) in the Biden administration who gave the go ahead?
The problem with the “18 months in planning” which came from a Ukraine official very shortly after the strikes, is that listeners project meaning on to that.
Let’s take it as true in some sense even though the same official made false claims at the same time, that Ukraine had destroyed 40 Russian aircraft.
What does “planning for 18 months” mean? It could include:
1. Someone came up back then with the bright idea of smuggling a lot of drones into Russia and making mischief. That does not mean the scheme was worked out in any detail then or for a very long time. One reader who seemed to have an idea of process thought this could have gotten done in three months. Remember, Ukraine already has networks of agents in Russia which would speed implementation time. The UK likely does too, albeit smaller ones, if they were part of the scheme.
Specifically, the targets would not necessarily have been identified until late, like in the last six weeks.
2. A variant: 18 months ago, Ukraine came up with #1, a high concept (remember Zelensky’s team comes out of TV, so they probably gravitate towards starting with 15 second elevator pitch) and tried selling the mischiefers in chief, the UK and or US on it.
3. Variant #2: As many have pointed out, this is a very UK sort of stunt, so the UK might have come up with it and enlisted Ukraine and maybe the US.
4. As RT pointed out per Links today, citing Le Monde, Biden told Lula that Russia should be destroyed. If he told Lula, he told his foreign policy team that regularly.
5. However, under Biden, the Pentagon was curbing some of the excesses. They would put their feet down. I cannot imagine them greenlighting a plan to strike Russian nuclear deterrence assets. Ukraine did take down an AWACS plane, but based on a quick search, AWACS do not seem to be considered to be nuclear deterrence assets even though they are important early launch detection systems.
6. The Trump Administration views anything form the Biden Administration as tainted. And Trump until at least late April probably still believed he could somehow get a ceasefire, which for him is close enough to a peace deal to do. So Trump would not have been on board with any such attack (even if he had known) until pretty recently. By contrast, the UK and EU have been very upset with the fact that Trump has been communicating with Putin.
Now of course it could be that under Biden understandings, the US was giving Ukraine all sorts of intel that would support terrorism in Russia and the spooks told the Trump peeps about it so as to make it sound like no biggie, like a well-established, non-controversial intel procedure.
I’ll stop here but you can see how that supposedly true factoid serves as a platform for recipient imagination.
Maybe I missed it in the news but Trump seems to have gone into silent mode since that attack. At least I have read no comment by him on them one way or another. I find that very, very strange as Trump is a person very prone to verbal & text-based diarrhea. Maybe he got rattled because after this attack the Russians did not pause but proceeded to issue their demands in Istanbul the very next day and just blew the whole thing off.
In the Wilkerson interview yesterday, IIRC, he expresses the opinion that Trump did not know about the assassination by drone attempt. If he is correct then I begin to wonder if he knew about this, or for that matter, who’s in charge.
Deja vu!
“who’s in charge”
That´s the big issue.
fwiw Martyanov doesn´t buy that:
“Of course he knew. In fact, it is reasonable to assume that this was encouraged by him because this PR stunt mentality is exactly how he operates. He lost all credibility. ”
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/06/correct-trump-is-finished.html
Could be Trump is busy figuring out who’s still loyal to him. If that’s the case, I expect he’ll break X silence when he’s ready to announce summary dismissals & arrests. Time will tell.
I have been trying to follow this and am more inclined to believe Trump was out of the loop. I totally see that the answer cannot be known. Nobody with a populist flair thinks these attacks were a good idea for the world or America, and they pretty obviously required significant support from either America or European assets. Zelinsky has taken a flogging from Trump, and Trump has continuously threatened to pull out of the region if he can’t get a deal. Nobody can tell what propaganda comes from Trump, but he is likely embarrassed within his followers in either case. I still believe he would not have wanted an escalation because his priorities are elsewhere, but it is not a good look to be caught flat footed. There are many in the world who have an incentive to embarrass him, especially in light of him trying to realign trade, for better or worse. It is still way too early to draw conclusions, but I am spending time researching who has an interest in this kind of destabilization in both America and Europe.
John Helmer rejects the 18 month claim. He sees this a means to pin the tail on the Biden Admin. He contends the planning complexity was akin to that of the Crimean bridge truck bombing and would have taken only months to put together.
See starting at 4:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_jQmghifv0
thanks!
Pure speculation, but Israel would have a lot to gain if the spotlight went to Ukraine/Russia and does have the surveillance and intel to accommodate such an attack. And would be a useful proxy to avoid direct-Trump/US approval.
Yesterday, I happened to be listening to my playlist which includes the Pete Seeger song, Last Night I had the Strangest Dream, about the hope that world leaders might come together and ban war. This article brought back memories of growing up in the 50s and 60s when stories like this were mainstream and common. Anti-war and anti-destruction of the entire world were themes of mainstream primetime tv shows like Twilight Zone, the Smothers Brothers, and others. We desperately need more observations such as this from the news media, celebrities, and public influencers. This is obviously the most important story of today, and every day when we have leaders who are unfathomably ignorant.
For me, the most sobering aspect of our current situation is the complete absence of such voices *anywhere* in our mainstream political, media, or academic institutions. At all. The rational voices – not just utopian peaceniks but even “realist” advocates for sane policy – have been completely banished to the powerless margins. No William Proxmires in the Senate. No John Kennedy to counter today’s Curtis LeMays. I think Rob’s key observation is this one:
“Mr. Trump had an opportunity to 1) end arms shipments and war funding to Ukraine and 2) declare an end to US participation in the war. His choice to surround himself with neocons is easy enough to explain. The bipartisan religion in DC is war. It feeds the MIC, which in turn feeds the campaign coffers of the uniparty. Mr. Trump only has neocons in his administration because only neocons inhabit official Washington.”
Neocons dominate the foreign policy Establishment. Neocons dominate the administrations of both parties, and heterodox officials who slip in are eventually marginalized. Congress is completely bought and paid for, with the ironic exception of a handful of libertarian Republicans. The mainstream media is completely hopeless, *especially* on the Ukraine issue. The only academic “experts” that are ever cited are Russophobic propagandists. The Chalmers Johnsons or John Mearsheimers or even the Lawrence Wilkersons that once would have been part of the mainstream discussion have been banished to the “alt” media, so *we* know who they are but most people never hear their arguments. I honestly don’t know what Trump actually knows or believes. And I’m not sure it really matters.
Those old Twilight Zone episodes seem very relevant these days.
I have a very distinct memory of Pete Seeger singing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on a Sunday night in ’68. We have a lot of “big fools” advocating to “move on” as the water swirls under our noses.
For Seeger fans, Edward Norton plays him in a major supporting role in the Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown.”
An oldy but goody from Tom Lehrer: We will all go together when will go…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs
I have never heard of any good reason, since ww2 that endless wars and war has anything to do with defending freedom advancing democracy except from chicken hawks, sleezy self interested politicians in prostituted position to the cowardly meglomanical special interests.
War, huh, good god
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me
Peace, love and understanding, tell me
Is there no place for them today?
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But lord knows there’s got to be a better way – Edwin Starr lyrics.
These war crims- lining the halls of congress and occupying the highest offices in the land….shamefully abdicating their duties to uphold the Constitution at every opportunity while wrapping themselves in the cloth of patriotism….answer me this
How can you advance human liberty and freedoms while claiming righteousness, when, your policies uphold genocide, endless wars, massive human rights violations, the production of whole countries into debt bonded slavery and deliberate skirting of the constitution in ever more desperate ways.???
“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.” -George Orwell
So here the world stands…. not knowing what it is fighting for or over…money? mastery? freedom? liberty? Life? Pursuit of happyness? food? nuclear Armageddon for a more balanced and less populated planet? Digital control of everyone and everything – the ultimate dashboard?
This fight over, whatever, to appease human greed and domination over other humans (seems like a natural trait in humans) at the cost of humanity itself….this seems like a true self-correcting natural system unlike the one humans invented to support their halucinogenic superiority complex.
I guess humans, as far as mal-adaption to this planet is concerned, will prove ourselves to be superior to all other species in this regard. yea
I apologise to myself and others for my bitter critic of the state of humanity of which I am a part — and I am still trying to leave a better world behind for those not yet enjoined in humanity.
Biden requested 479 million USD for the USA’s Peace Corps for FY 2025.
Possibly a portion of this money is spent on propaganda efforts, so the actual promotion of global peace is less than this amount indicates.
The USA’s requested FY2025 Defense Budget is 849.8 billion USD, or about 1774 times the size of the Peace Corps budget.
It is difficult to imagine peace breaking out with this level of war vs peace funding.
“[War] to appease human greed and domination over other humans […] at the cost of humanity itself … [seems like a true self-correcting natural system]. […] I am still trying to leave a better world behind for those not yet enjoined in humanity.” Damn the humans, bring on the apocalypse!
The warfare on sanity is succeeding.
Thank you Tom D. I don’t think that you need to apologize for our human condition. Your comment reminds me of a response that GK Chesterton is said to have given to the Times of London sent to well known authors of the time – “What’s wrong with the world today?” and Chesterton responded simply,
“Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”
As per Pogo — “we have met the enemy, and he is us” …
From the intro, seriously miscalibrated risk-return assessment. I remember much discussion here about a new risk assessment paradigm brought on by the pandemic.
On my mind too.
If Trump knew…..
If he did not US is a banana republic.
The drone attacks show US and vassals as contemptible not worth talking to.
This has been existential since 1992 when Clinton won.
Not that Bush Sr. may have been less contemptible.
I’m going to come out and say that the US has been in a war with the Russian Federation that past few years. This whole idea of a “proxy war” is just the lipstick on the pig. Consider.
-US sent at a minimum $5 billion to overthrow the Ukrainian government – and chose the new leaders.
-They spent years training and equipping the Ukrainian army to NATO standards.
-Much of the military equipment used by the Ukrainians has been of American origin or design.
-The US provides the overall command and control for this theater and probably controls the logistics as well.
-The US provides real time intel such as that used to attack part of Russia’s nuclear triad or earlier in long-range detection radars or other nuclear bomber bases.
-The US established about a dozen secret CIA bases to coordinate this war.
-There have been US forces on the ground doing ops while sheep-dipped as local forces.
-The US designed and implemented the first massive sanctions package that was to break Russia and bring in a pliant Yeltsin-like regime.
Those are just the points off the top of my head but that is the war that the US is waging against Russia. And if you do not agree, flip those points and imagine that that was happening against the US. It’s a war.
Several years back, Noam Chomsky noted that there are two issues that stand head and shoulders above all others facing humanity: The threat of nuclear war, and global climate change. We seem well on our way to ingiting the first, and the second appears to have disappeared from the mainstream news. We need another Freud to explain this massive, collective denial, as we march on to oblivion.
Well, the former would solve a lot of the latter, no? (Dark…but I’m not the first dipping into this)
Topping the list would be those who think we can “win” a nuclear war.
It would ‘solve’ it by triggering a lot of the worst case consequences up front – global climate disruption, mass extinctions, a sharp decline in the human population, considerably reduced life expectancy for the survivors due to complications of radiation, the breakdown of modern society, food scarcity etc.
There would probably not be enough humans left to generate the kind of carbon emissions that have been fueling the crisis, but all of the baked-in warming from generations of emissions would still need to run its course. Possibly it would be offset by the effects of nuclear winter, or possibly the two would interact in ways that made each other even worse.
I’d like to think we can all agree that the (relatively) sudden and unpleasant death of most of the world’s human population, and biosphere in general, would be among the worst-case consequences that we’re trying to avoid, even if it would have the side effect of fixing the problem in the long run. Otherwise we’ll end up hailing the nuclear first-strike wingnuts as climate saviors, and that way lies madness.
The first might take care of the second: particulates in air to reduce intake of solar radiation and a much reduced population with capacity to produce and consume and thus polute and destroy biodiversity…
The US is clearly trying to get Putin out of the way so that the hardliners react and give the US a pretext to convince the masses to go to WWIII. Similar strategy Cordell Hull used in the summer and autumn of 1941 to push the somewhat moderates out of control in Japan with his unreasonable demands. Then the hardliners came in and did the only thing possible short of capitulation in December.
One can only hope that the Russian hardliners know the US game and will not be tricked into it should the US ever be successful in killing Putin. Certainly because of Russian autarky and smaller population density they have better options than Japan did in 1941.
The question is whether Europe has better options than Japan in 1941 or US does than Germany in 1941…
One US option is to recreate the Reich. I think Michael Hudson wrote an article shortly after the special military operation began to that effect. And look what has happened since: pipelines destroyed, German industry being redirected from peacetime to war products, a Chancellor with less that a plurality who openly wants war with Russia, and people who have family connections to the Reich are in positions of power like Ursula.
Germany is a vassal state and American propaganda is better and more sophisticated than Goebbels. I wouldn’t be surprised to see their population line up to be the next cannon fodder sent to the front.
Japan 1940 is a better analogue for USA 2025:
– governed by bloodlusting militants,
– dependent on imported critical strategic materials
– has a superiority complex
– is unwilling or unable to change course or learn from mistakes
– has very high end military tech but a limited ability to replace it should the supply become attrited.
And rather limited spare capacity (esp the army) to do much: 3/4 of the IJA was committed to China as early as 1939 and would remain so throughout the war. They had only air and naval forces plus a handful of ground troops to take on the Allies in the Pacific and SE Asia.
Russia is winning and so far we have only seen some very annoying pinpricks caused by even more annoying mosquitos.
Bear down and grind down. With this attitude Russia will end up winning the PR war as well…
I think the Ukrainian motive is easy to understand. From the outset, the Ukrainian government’s strategy has been to make their war the world’s war. This has taken a heavy toll on Ukraine, but the Sunk Costs Fallacy forms the highest logic of most long wars. The Ukrainians have made their country one more example for the text-book.
The Russians face a dilemma: many of the Western leaders won’t believe they can get nuked, until they actually do get nuked. The problem here is not Russia’s lack of credibility, but the Western elites’ abundance of self-faith.
I’ve commented before on this subject: there has emerged among the upper classes in the West a belief, amounting to religion, that reality must ultimately conform to desire. How does one deter such opponents?
Besides Russia’s own burden of sunk costs, there remains the resentment for what happened during the 1990’s. It’s hard to imagine that any political leader in Russia will concede a vital interest, without a big show-down. Gorby is dead, both in body and in spirit.
Thus, the Russians, because they’re committed heavily, and because the thought of another humiliation is unendurable, could very well indulge the Western elites with a suitable test of their worldview. Putin has been a rational enough leader in his time, but he wouldn’t be the first rational person to step into the Abyss, with open eyes and a clear mind.
Odd as it is to say, I think Trump is the sanest one. If he seems to flounder, it’s because he’s casting about, trying to find a way for everybody to make it through: Ukraine, Russia, Europe, America. But what if nobody else wants everybody else to make it through?
Trump doesn’t want to simply dump Ukraine. He doesn’t want a complete rupture with Europe. Nor does he want to go to war with Russia. But each of those three, in their own way, prefers war. The Russian reasons for wanting war might make more sense than their enemies’ reasons, but their wanting is the same, and the sunk costs pull them down just as much.
Rationally, if USA dumps UKR, then EU should back down. But are European leaders rational? Look at how they behave. Just because they shouldn’t war on Russia doesn’t mean they won’t try anyway. We see how Ukraine tries to make their war the world’s war. That’s what Europe might do, but on a bigger scale. Make fun of Europe if you like, but France and Britain have nuclear weapons of their own, and there’s the punch line.
So then, can one truly insist that the war can be ended simply by USA dumping Ukraine? Certainly, the war could have been avoided that way. But it wasn’t avoided, so here we are. Ukraine is a compound proxy, not just America’s client.
The longer the war goes on, the more likely we are to see the employment of nuclear weapons. I think that nuclear weapons are indeed like other weapons, in a critical respect. Like any other weapon, a nuclear weapon will be used, whenever those who have the weapon, decide to use it. The greatness of the result need not affect the smallness of the choice.
I think I can fully agree that (unpopular opinion notwithstanding) that Trump is the sanest one among the Western “leaders.” But whether that’s really a plus is debatable.
The trouble is that the one (halfway) sane man in a sea of nutjobs is the crazy one, especially if you come with all the baggage that he comes with….
Stating that because governments might treat nuclear weapons like conventional weapons, they are therefore like conventional weapons, doesn’t make it so. Please spend some time with the Ted Postol link in the piece to understand how different they are.
In the video, Postol explains how within a day or two of the first launch of a tactical nuke in Europe, most of Europe will be poisoned with radiation for the remainder of human existence. This result comes through inevitable escalation— inevitable for some of the reasons that you offer.
Conventional weapons won’t make the earth uninhabitable. Nuclear weapons will.
But it is nuclear winter that will end humanity. While it has been debated over the years, the science that I have seen supports the theory of nuclear winter. Again, conventional weapons will not produce nuclear winter. Nuclear weapons will.
Your comments about Russia operating from a sunk cost fallacy are not correct.
1. The claim of 1990s resentment is false. Russia has had a 5x per capita increase in GDP under Putin. Resentment would be operative only if Russia were in poor shape economically.
Putin invaded to force Ukraine to the negotiating table, which worked, see the Istanbul draft agreement, which would have preserved territorial Ukraine. It was the West that broke that up. Russia under Putin has been trying hard to integrate more with the West. It was the revelation of the duplicity over the Minsk accords and the vicious rejection of Russian culture after the SMO started that finally made him and nearly all Russians give up on that.
2. Russia CORRECTLY regards this war as existential. What would the US do if Mexico, with Chinese support, started persecuting English-speakers, had to take 1 million refugees from a civil war, and had China arming and training a very large anti-US army in Mexico? Oh, and had China regularly taking about the need to regime change the US and even break it up?
Interesting observations all. Except for one: Trump is not sane, not contemplative, not calculating, nor seeking compromise. He is psychologically diminished and hoping like Hell the Russians don’t send a bullet flying much closer to his ear. Assassination is now on the table, for everyone.
If/when Trump is killed, it will be because some Blackwater type in the White House puts a pillow over his face, not because of Putin. As Caesar’s behavior becomes increasingly addled and his voting base suffers attrition, were more likely to see “I, Claudius”- type court intrigue…
Similar to Caligula’s curtain call, but its the Praytorian Guard?
Muskular Christianity ?
To paraphrase and update Livia’s classic line, “Don’t eat the Big Macs.”
~chortle~
These provocations by Ukraine (and I think Britain) are attempts to goad Russia into doing something that will force the US to saddle up and join in ‘full-scale’, to adopt an official propadjective.
If Trump was already up for it they wouldn’t be necessary. Putin knows the score and won’t fall for it. It is scary shit, but they are talking to each other. Trump’s public silence may indicate a moment of contemplation. Perhaps Sir Keir can expect a phone call.
I think the word “humiliation” should be banned from serious discussions. Especially when “nuclear war” is mentioned not long after…
“I’ve commented before on this subject: there has emerged among the upper classes in the West a belief, amounting to religion, that reality must ultimately conform to desire. How does one deter such opponents?”
It is an ancient religion called Gnositicism (or perhaps a meta-religion) that had versions related to Judaism and Christianity. The Gospel of Thomas, not in the canon of the Greek bible, is a Gnostic text. Marcion, a 2nd century CE church figure, was an early Gnosic. Christian Scientists and A Course in Miracles are modern manifestations.
A core tenet is that this world is an illusion that can be overcome with the special gnosis (knowledge) of how to control reality through controlling one’s thoughts. Whether these “create our own reality” people know it or not, they’re Gnostics.
Reminds me of when The Secret (Law of Attraction) book was all the rage.
The true common value of the Western world is Nazism. This ideology asserts that those who differ from us must be enslaved or exterminated at any cost, whether they are Palestinians or Russians. Ukraine is not the only place that needs to be denazified; the entire Western world does.
Martyanov with no new info but making the point again with that quote by Lula, one by Putin, and US refusing to back Europe in case they wish to install some “peace force”, now called “reassurance force”:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/06/yes-that-was-plan.html
Thomas Röper from Anti-Spiegel reports that allegedly Trump agreed with Putin for RU to strike against UKR targets. I can´t translate the page.
Here the German original containing Trump´s English Truth post:
https://anti-spiegel.ru/2025/trump-scheint-putin-gruenes-licht-fuer-vergeltungsschlaege-gegen-die-ukraine-gegeben-zu-haben/
+
Andrei Martyanov´s latest on Dialogue Works with a grim but accurate picture of the Trump presidency:
45 min.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/06/nima-and-yours-truly.html
He speaks of 2 bombers destroyed, 5 damaged most likely will be repaired.
He again expressed his outrage – which I share – that the killed on the trains are worth zero mentioning by European “civilised” media. It´s a goddanm, fucking disgrace. And it´s getting worse by the month. The brain-washing of those who have already been perceptible increasing.
The Americans deceived the tsar in the negotiations again. They said, let’s negotiate, but almost all the aircraft were destroyed right at the airfields. Therefore, the king is obliged to shed blood in return.
Hitler also told Stalin: “Let’s be friends” and even signed a non-aggression pact. As a result, the first strike destroyed almost all Soviet military aircraft at airfields.
This is what it looks like when viewed from Russia.
For a view from the other side
https://theconversation.com/the-secret-to-ukraines-battlefield-successes-against-russia-it-knows-wars-are-never-won-in-the-past-258172?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20June%205%202025%20-%203400934671&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20June%205%202025%20-%203400934671+CID_8d3adbc323026360d6b056d420c8fd3e&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=The%20secret%20to%20Ukraines%20battlefield%20successes%20against%20Russia%20%20it%20knows%20wars%20are%20never%20won%20in%20the%20past
This is boilerplate Western propaganda, not a view from some imagined ‘other side.’ You can find these very same talking points on any US-based propaganda site (e.g. CNN) that you turn on. It represents the state view in the US, as in the view of the US state.
Even the Ukrainians are correcting (link below) US propaganda regarding the damage caused to the Russian air force. While the Ukrainian estimate is still three times larger than estimates made by knowledgeable Russian-affiliated speakers (Martyanov), it is less than half of the US-propaganda estimate. This means that the Russian air force is still substantially intact.
https://kyivindependent.com/reuters-ukraine-struck-fewer-russian-bombers-during-operation-spiderweb-than-estimated-us-officials-claim/
If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be hilarious to see the West confronted with its own b.s. by testing these types of fantasies.
But the stakes are very high. Can’t we do better than this?
via Moon of Alabama
English-language video by the Austrian Army.
(The guy appears to be the only person in the Austrian Army whose face is shown abroad. He also publishes texts and gives interviews in Germany.)
It is by design I assume that anything the Russians do is either evaluated neutraly or rather negatively. While controlled sympathy towards AFU and SBU regardless what they do. That the Sunday attacks were either terrorist or at least violating intern. treaties – who the fuck cares. Not the Austrian Army for sure.
From watching this one will get the impression that its unclear who is winning the war! Well done!
Okay I have no clue why Bernard is posting this nonsense (I am being nice because we owe a lot to MoA)…
A new russian offensive
Day 1195 of the War in Ukraine
17 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEJQ7I1jqLA
p.s. Marat Khairullin front reports:
https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/brief-frontline-report-may-30-2025
https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/brief-frontline-report-june-4th-2025
The Austrian dude has been doing reports for a while, and has been considered as more realistic part of the Western side, and thus interesting as a reference point. I never found him worth watching, because he brings nothing new to the table.
Has Beijing spoken ?
(I went searching but came back with nothing).