Patrick Baab on Europe’s March to War with Russia

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 291 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, PayPal. Clover, or Wise. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what we’ve accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, supporting the comments section.

here. As many of you may know, I find the shift of commentary from articles, blogs, and social media to YouTube and podcasts to be frustrating, since it’s extremely difficult to find exactly what one might have heard again, meaning both the original source (program, speaker, date) and what exactly they said compared to written sources. However, we are republishing an important YouTube discussion between Glenn Diesen and German journalist/best selling author Patrick Baab. Baab lays out a persuasive case as to how many critically-placed European decision-makers are driving towards a full-scale war with Russia, and due to deep personal investment and bad career incentives, will only press more aggressively forward as Russia progresses towards whatever flavor of Ukraine conquest it decides to implement.

Yours truly has warned from the outset that Russia could win the war but lose the peace. We had also consistently pointed out that there would be no negotiated end to the war, since there was no bargaining overlap between the Russian and Ukraine/Western positions. We held to that view during the Trump attempts to come to an agreement with Russia over the heads of Ukraine and NATO by pointing out that Ukraine and the Europeans had agency. One must add that domestic and military-industrial complex support of the conflict was sufficiently high that Trump could not pull the lever that might have brought Ukraine, and reluctantly, the Europeans to heel, which would be to end all intel support, including, critically, satellite information and US assistance in targeting, which is required for many US and NATO weapons platforms (aside from setting off a political firestorm, Trump could also have run into non-compliance, recall the military defying his orders in Trump 1.0 to exit Afghanistan).

We had assumed that “losing the peace” might amount to a sustained effort at terrorism, both in Russia and parts of Ukraine that Russia occupied (and presumably incorporated into Russia, but Russia may attempt to set up a neutral state of some sort in Western Ukraine that gets more sovereignity over time; the treatment of Germany after World War II is a precedent). John Mearsheimer, however, has been pointing out for a while that even after the Ukraine war was resolved, that the West had plenty of flash points where it could stir up low-level conflicts, with the intent of imposing continuing costs on Russia, such as Kaliningrad and Transnistria.

But what Baab describes below is more dire, and also more consistent with the current direction of travel, which is a hot war with Russia. Consistent with his analysis, just now, the Guardian posted a new piece, Britain may already be at war with Russia, former head of MI5 says, which contends that it is Russia that is “at war” with the UK due to alleged hostile acts perpetrated by Russia, such as cyberattacks.

However, Baab does not fully connect the dots he sets forth below, perhaps because he’s not yet ready to make what might be depicted as a hyperbolic call (you will see that Baab is exceedingly measured). If one does, the risk of a hot war looks far more imminent, in no small measure due to what both Russian and some US officials have called the Estoniazation of Germany (as to some degree the rest of Europe, which is the batshit hysteric belief that Russia fully intends to go beyond Ukraine and take more European territory.

Baab stresses the dire budget condition of Europe and even Germany due to how it handled its post-financial crisis bank rescues, and that the result is governments are even more hostage to financiers than before. He points out how Europe and the moneymen need more “collateral” and point to the mineral and agricultural wealth of Ukraine as a potential source now no longer available to them. He also points out that Germany is making what looks like unaffordable commitments to funding Ukraine and to a military buildup.

What he largely skips over is the frozen Russian assets, of which over $200 billion are in Euros and hence in Euroclear. Even though many EU leaders have been scheming to get their hands on them, their latest too-clever idea would require them to be confiscated via a transfer out of Euroclear. Euroclear is in Belgium and Belgium has been howling no way, no how, that this would be the end of anyone trusting European financial institutions as a place to keep deposits and investments.

Now what would provide for a legal justification for an asset grab that even Euroclear might not be able to stare down? A bona fide hot war with Russia. There is ample precedent for seizing the extraterritorial assets of belligerent states and their nationals.

And Baab gives an obvious trigger below: the West closing Baltic airspace to Russia. We had warned in the runup to the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton’s promise to declare a no-fly zone in Syria amounted to a commitment to initiate a hot war with Russia, since Russia would not accept that restriction. If you think Russia would sit pat with EU states trying to prevent its use of Baltic airspace, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

Baab does stress that the German military is highly cognizant of the fact that is it in no position to take on Russia, and pols similarly accept that it would take years of rearmament, recruiting/conscription, and training. However, the level of official and press screeching over alleged Russia drone and aircraft trespasses into NATO members’ airspaces, none of which hold up well to scrutiny, intended to rope the US back into recommitting to Project Ukraine, are in danger of assuming a life of their own. Things are so out of control that three officials from NATO states, the UK, France, and Germany, went to Moscow to threaten that they might shoot down Russian jets that encroached on member state airspace and was backed by Trump, leading to a tart Russian response. From Anadolu Agency:

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that statements by Western leaders about shooting down Russian aircraft are “reckless” and could have “dangerous consequences.”

“Statements about shooting down Russian planes are, at the very least, reckless, irresponsible, and, of course, dangerous in their consequences,” Peskov told a journalist in Moscow.

The remarks came after US President Donald Trump suggested NATO should shoot down Russian jets if they entered the airspace of alliance members during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York.

Russian Ambassador to France Alexei Meshkov earlier warned that such a move by NATO would “mean war.” He had claimed Western countries have not provided “tangible proof” of Russia’s involvement in alleged airspace violations.

“You know, there are many NATO aircraft that violate Russian airspace … it happens quite often … (but) they are not shot down,” Meshkov said, stressing that Moscow “categorically denies” the accusations.

So this version of “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” is risking nuclear war. Every scenario of a hot war between the US and Russia ends that way.

We have extracted key quotes from Raab and put them beneath the video. I hope you can listen to it in full.

By Glenn Diesen. Originally published at his YouTube channel

My hypothesis is Western elites, especially Western European elites, are heading for war. They want to drive their own countries into a fullscale war with Russia. They let their countries into a dead end street and they they are unable to make a U-turn right now.

So I’d like to substantiate that in terms of economic, political, cultural, psychological and military reasons and all these reasons and tendencies convene in a single direction the direction to war. It’s a simple conclusion but resulting from a complex assessment.

So I want to make sure from my point of view elites are not defined by their intellectual quality or superiority superiority but only by access to power and one-way street means there is no way back with these elites. they must be replaced by the people and have to I have to go a bit deeper into the economic history especially of Germany..

The Europeans overstretched their budgets to win the war and now their own countries are in economic decline and
they are left with a pile of debt. And so the last point is Chancellor Merz proposed to give a loan of 140 billion euros to Ukraine as military aid and to use the frozen Russian assets as collateral and this will have two consequences….

I think they hope to continue with this war and to widen the war, to extend this war, for example, for the Baltic region by provoking the Russians. and they hope that in 5 to 10 years they are strong enough to bring Russia to its knees. The whole thing is about unbalancing Russia because they need no collateral. First of all, the Ukraine minerals as collateral, the black soil, for example, rare earth, , and then to unbalance Russia to bring
Russia again into the capitalistic circle of the EU and the so-called collective west. I think this is the background. And currently NATO is escalating. The so-called drone attack in Poland seems to be a false flag operation by Ukraine. Not a single drone was equipped with a warhead. No damage. The Polish army was warned by Belarus. It that’s a complete fake. And the origins of the drones observed over Denmark is still unclear. And the so-called airspace violation near Estonia resulted from the expansion of the airspace by Estonia and was absolutely no attack. And the rules of air policing are very clear at that point. You have to communicate with Moscow and
to clear the situation. And there is no reason to shoot down Russian fighter jets.

But NATO is escalating by manipulating the public in the EU countries. And this is a form of cognitive warfare. The Europeans will force Trump to align with their escalating cause against Russia and they want to impose Russia a difficult decision. Either accept the closure of airspace over the Baltic Sea or retaliate militarily and that means fullcale war in Europe. And they hope that this war will not end into a nuclear war.

But this is in the hand of Moscow. and not in the hand of the Europeans. This is a is a Russian decision. And this shows the miscalculation of Russian military and economic power by NATO states. All this shows how
desperate NATO is. They fear to lose the war and they are trying to expand the war and to open up new battlefields, for example, over the Baltic Sea to force Russia splitting up its military forces….

We are facing many years of war and the war will go on and go on. I don’t see that Mr. Trump will come to a peace solution. They are negotiating. But for the United States, it is very very good if the European politicians,
their European vessels will bring the American war forward because they are making money with that. They are selling weapons and they’re making big profits.

And America is 6,000 kilometers away over the ocean. And it in America it doesn’t matter so much if more countries in Europe will be destroyed.