Connexion
From the archives: “U.S. game-plan to conquer Russia & China is clarified”
Posted on December 29, 2016 by Eric Zuesse.
America’s Secret Planned Conquest of Russia
The U.S. government’s plan to conquer Russia is based upon a belief in, and the fundamental plan to establish, “Nuclear Primacy” against Russia — an American ability to win a nuclear war against, and so conquer, Russia.
This concept became respectable in U.S. academic and governmental policymaking circles when virtually simultaneously in 2006 a short-form and a long-form version of an article endorsing the concept, which the article’s two co-authors there named “nuclear primacy,” were published respectively in the world’s two most influential journals of international affairs, Foreign Affairs from the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security from Harvard. (CFR got the more popular short version, titled “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”, and Harvard got the more scholarly long version, which was titled “The End of MAD?”.)
This article claimed that the central geostrategic concept during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Mutually Assured Destruction or “MAD” — in which there is no such thing as the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. conquering the other, because the first of the two to attack will itself also be destroyed by the surviving nuclear forces of the one responding to that attack — will soon be merely past history (like the Soviet Union itself already is); and, so, as the short form of the article said, “nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United States”; and, as the long form said, “the United States now stands on the cusp of nuclear primacy.” In other words: arms-control or no, the U.S. should, and soon will, be able to grab Russia (the largest land-mass of any country, and also the one richest in natural resources).
Neither version of this article mentioned the key reason why nuclear victory is exceedingly dangerous even under the most favorable conditions, which reason is the concept (and the likely reality in the event of nuclear war between the two superpowers) “nuclear winter” — the scientific studies showing that a resulting sudden sharp cooling of the atmosphere after all those enormous explosions would produce a global die-off. America’s aristocracy and its vassal-aristocracies controlling the U.S.-allied nations (billionaires, centi-millionaires, and their top agents in both the public and private sectors) are buying and building deep-underground nuclear shelters for themselves, but they wouldn’t be able to stay underground and survive on stored feedstuffs forever. (As for everybody else, those other people are not involved in geostrategic decision-making, and so are being ignored.) However, many of America’s (and associated) elite are paying those bomb-shelter expenses, but none of the West’s elite are condemning the path toward nuclear war that their governments are on. So: buying or building nuclear-war shelters is more acceptable to them than is stopping America’s planned conquest of Russia. The higher priority is to conquer Russia.
A far less influential scholarly journal, China Policy, published later in 2006 a critical article arguing against nuclear supremacy, but that article has had no impact upon policymaking. Its title was “The Fallacy of Nuclear Primacy” and it argued that, “American nuclear supremacy removes the root source of stability from the nuclear equation: mutual vulnerability.” It presented a moral argument: “U.S. leaders might try to exploit its nuclear superiority … by actually launching a cold-blooded nuclear attack against its nuclear rival in the midst of an intense crisis. The professors discount significantly the power of the nuclear taboo to restrain U.S. leaders from crossing the fateful threshold. If crisis circumstances grow dire enough, the temptation to try to disarm their nuclear adversaries through a nuclear first-strike may be too strong to resist, they argue.” The concept of “nuclear winter” wasn’t even so much as just mentioned (much less dealt with) in this article, just as it was ignored in the two that it was arguing against.
The co-authors of (both versions of) the article that had proposed and endorsed nuclear primacy, then published in 2007 (this one also in International Security), a response to that critical article. This reply’s title was “U.S. Nuclear Primacy and the Future of the Chinese Deterrent”. But it had no more impact than did the obscure article it was arguing against.
Thus, nuclear primacy has become U.S. policy, and MAD no longer is U.S. policy (though it remains Russian policy). The U.S. government is planning to take over Russia (basically, to install a puppet-regime there). That’s the reality.
Central to the nuclear-primacy concept is that of what’s variously called a “Ballistic Missile Defense” (BMD) or “Anti Ballistic Missile” (ABM) system: a system to disable or knock out Russia’s retaliatory nuclear weapons so that a U.S. blitz nuclear attack won’t be able to be met by any nuclear counter-attack.
As “The End of MAD?” put it: “Russia has approximately 3,500 strategic nuclear warheads today, but if the United States struck before Russian forces were alerted, Russia would be lucky if a half-dozen warheads survived.”
In other words: America’s aristocracy aren’t necessarily hoping to protect all of the U.S. population from a counter-attack, but are willing to sacrifice perhaps a few million Americans here and there, in order to achieve the intended result: conquest of Russia.
That article then says that a BMD-ABM system wouldn’t necessarily indicate America’s determination to pursue nuclear primacy against Russia, because it could instead be intended purely and authentically defensively, to protect against nuclear attack from Iran, North Korea or some other country. However: “Other U.S. nuclear programs are hard to explain with any mission other than a nuclear first strike on a major power adversary. For example, the decision to upgrade the fuse of many SLBM warheads (the W76s) to permit ground bursts makes sense only if the mission is destroying hundreds of hardened silos. One might argue that ground bursts could be useful for a variety of other missions, such as destroying North Korean WMD bunkers or remote cave complexes housing terrorist leaders. The United States, however, already has a large number of highly accurate, similar-yield warheads that would be ideal for these purposes.” The article even notes that: “Other analysts have noted that the current U.S. nuclear force looks surprisingly like an arsenal designed for a nuclear first strike against Russia or China.” And, “A group of RAND analysts agrees: ‘What the planned force appears best suited to provide beyond the needs of traditional deterrence is a preemptive counterforce capability against Russia and China. Otherwise, the numbers and the operating procedures simply do not add up.’” So: the co-authors here are claiming to be merely giving a name, “nuclear primacy,” to America’s existing strategic military policy — not to be inventing or creating it. They are, above all, saying that this is the reality now in U.S. policy-making circles; that MAD no longer is.
And their article has, indeed, described the guiding strategic-planning objective not only of the George W. Bush Administration, but also of Barack Obama’s — as will now be documented.
U.S. President Obama has always been saying that the reason why America is installing anti-ballistic missiles (“ABM”s, otherwise known as ballistic-missile defense or “BMD”) in Romania, Poland, and other nations that border (or are near to) Russia, is in order to protect Europe against Iranian missiles that might be aimed against Europe. He says that this is purely defensive, not aggressive, and that what it’s defending from is Iran, not Russia — so, Russia has no reason for complaint about it.
But then, Obama reached his nuclear deal with Iran; and this deal ended, for at least ten years, any realistic possibility that Iran would develop any nuclear-weapons capability — Obama himself emphasized that this was the case; he wasn’t denying it.
So: Obama’s claimed reason for installing ABMs in Europe was now, quite simply, gone. (Not that it had been credible anyway, since Iran didn’t have any nuclear weapons. It was merely a pretext, not honestly a reason.)
Here is how Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, stated the matter, at that time, during the meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, on 22 October 2015:
“The use of the threat of a nuclear missile attack from Iran as an excuse, as we know, has destroyed the fundamental basis of modern international security – the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The United States has unilaterally seceded from the treaty. Incidentally, today we have resolved the Iranian issue and there is no threat from Iran and never has been, just as we said.
The thing that seemed to have led our American partners to build an anti-missile defence system is gone. It would be reasonable to expect work to develop the US anti-missile defence system to come to an end as well. [But] What is actually happening? Nothing of the kind, or actually the opposite – everything continues.
Recently the United States conducted the first test of the anti-missile defence system in Europe. What does this mean? It means we were right when we argued with our American partners. They were simply trying yet again to mislead us and the whole world. To put it plainly, they were lying. It was not about the hypothetical Iranian threat, which never existed. It was about an attempt to destroy the strategic balance, to change the balance of forces in their favour not only to dominate, but to have the opportunity to dictate their will to all: to their geopolitical competition and, I believe, to their allies as well. This is a very dangerous scenario, harmful to all, including, in my opinion, to the United States.
The nuclear deterrent lost its value. Some probably even had the illusion that victory of one party in a world conflict was again possible – without irreversible, unacceptable, as experts say, consequences for the winner, if there ever is one”
He called Obama there a “liar,” and that’s a blatantly truthful characterization of the situation. But Putin missed there saying what’s even more basic for an understanding of what Obama was doing in this matter — and which makes that “lie” from Obama particularly heinous: Putin missed saying that an anti-missile system can be at least as important as an aggressive weapon as it is as a defensive one, because if a first-strike attacker wants to eliminate the defender’s ability to strike back from the attacker’s first-strike attack, then an anti-missile system is the weapon to do that, by eliminating the defender’s missiles before those strike-back missiles can reach their targets. It nullifies the other side’s defense — and to do this is enormously aggressive; it strips the victim’s retaliation. The whole distinction between offensive and defensive can thus be pure propaganda, nothing having to do actually with aggressive and defensive. Whether the use will be defensive, or instead offensive, won’t be known until the system is in actual battlefield use. Only the propaganda is clear; the weapon’s use is not.
So, Putin understated the heinousness, and the danger to Russians, that was actually involved in Obama’s tricks. All that Putin did was to vaguely suggest an aggressive possibility: “It was about an attempt to destroy the strategic balance, to change the balance of forces in their favour not only to dominate, but to have the opportunity to dictate their will to all.” Most people don’t relate to such abstractions as “strategic balance.”
Obama and other agents of the U.S. aristocracy know that their public have been trained for decades, to hate, fear, and despise, Russians, and especially the Russian government, as if it were the Soviet Union, and as if its Warsaw Pact and communism still existed and Russia hadn’t ended its hostility to the U.S. in 1991 (though the U.S. continued its hostility to Russia — that rump remaining country from the former communist empire — and during Obama’s second term the hostility soared). So, for example, at the conservative website Breitbart, when that statement quoted here from Putin was posted as part of an honestly written and presented article titled “Vladimir Putin: U.S. Missile Defense System Threatens Russia”, almost none of the reader-comments indicated any ability or inclination of the readers to sympathize with the plight for Russians that Putin had just expressed. Instead, to the extent that the comments there were relevant, they were generally hostile, such as:
“Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he has concerns that the U.S. ballistic missile defense system threatens Russia’s nuclear capability.”
Vlad, its supposed to, its called defense. The only way it could harm your nukes is if they were shot down…………….after you launched them!
and
How can a defense system threaten anything? Like Obama would attack Russia. That is laughable.
Most people’s minds are straightjacketed in bigotries of various sorts, preconceptions such as that a “missile defense” system, and a “Defense” Department, can’t be aggressive — even extremely aggressive and war-mongering. The first thought that comes to mind about anything that’s ‘defensive’ is that something else must be ‘aggressive’ or ‘offensive’, and that whatever is ‘defensive’ (such as an ABM) is therefore good and even necessary. That’s thinking, and receiving the term “defense,” like thinking just one move ahead in a chess-game, but this is the mental limit for most people, and every propagandist (such as the people who professionally design propaganda or PR slogans and campaigns) do precisely what Obama and the rest of the aristocracy and their agents do in order to deceive their gulls: they phrase things for one-move-ahead-limit thinkers, like that. The cardinal rule in the deception-professions is therefore, first, to find people with the desired prejudices, and then to play them as that, with one-move-ahead-limit sales-pitches, which are directed to precisely those prejudices. This report at the Breitbart site was instead presenting a high-quality news-report, to a low-quality audience, and so the reader-comments it generated were few, and generally hostile.
Obama is a master at deception. Another good example of this was 26 March 2012, during Obama’s campaign for re-election, when he confidentially told Dmitry Medvedev, “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [the incoming President Putin] to give me space. … This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Obama was privately communicating to Putin (through Medvedev) that Obama was pushing the ABM installations only so as not to be politically vulnerable to charges from the knee-jerk Russia-haters, Republicans, and that Obama’s fakery regarding the supposed ABM-target’s being Iran was only in order to appeal to yet another Republican bigotry (against Iran), and so Obama was intending to back away from supporting the ABM system during his second term.
But actually, Obama had had Russia in his gunsights even prior to his coming into office. Two specific objects in focus were Moscow-friendly leaders of nations: Assad of Syria, and Yanukovych of Ukraine. America’s strategy, ever since 24 February 1990, has been to strip Russia of allies and friends — to leave Russia increasingly isolated and surrounded by enemies. When Obama entered the White House on 20 January 2009, there already was a plea in the pipeline from the Syrian government for urgently needed food-aid to address the all-time-record drought there, which had decimated Syrian agriculture. Obama’s Administration never even answered it. Well before the Arab Spring demonstrations in 2011, Obama was hoping for turmoil in Syria and the overthrow of Assad — lots of starving Syrians would be just the thing.
Moreover, the planning for the February 2014 coup to overthrow the Moscow-friendly democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, started in the U.S. State Department by no later than 2011.
So: when Obama told Medvedev and Putin, on 26 March 2012, not to worry about Obama’s intentions toward Russia, he was lying. He wanted his intended victim to be off-guard, unprepared for what was soon to come.
On Obama’s way out the door, he did two things that significantly advanced America’s ABM-BMD threat against Russia.
On 10 December 2016, ‘Defense’ Secretary Ashton Carter stated, burying it in a speech he gave in Bahrain — site of a major U.S. military base — “just this week, we reached an agreement for Qatar to purchase a 5,000-kilometer early-warning radar to enhance its missile defenses,” and he said nothing more about it, as if this announcement weren’t the bombshell it actually was. Alex Gorka headlined about that at Strategic Culture, “US-Qatar Deal Threatens Russia: Reading News Between the Lines” and he explained that this system “is designed to be used as an early warning system against strategic offensive assets – something Iran does not possess.” Near the start of Carter’s speech, Carter had said that he would be talking about “checking Iranian aggression and malign influence, and helping defend our friends and allies,” including Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Gorka noted, “The announced range of 5,000km (3,100mi) by far exceeds the requirement to counter a missile threat coming from Iran,” and, “There is no other reasonable explanation for the choice, except the fact that the AN/FPS-132 can monitor large chunks of Russian territory,” the objective being “to surround the Russian Federation with BMD sites and neutralize its capability to deliver a retaliatory strike if attacked.”
One of Obama’s last actions as the U.S. President was to sign into law a bill that had been quietly passed in Congress, which included a key change in U.S. law that would enable the government to spend unlimited funds on realizing former President Ronald Reagan’s dream of a space-based ABM system, “Star Wars.” On December 22nd, David Willman of the Los Angeles Times, headlined “Congress scrapped this one word from the law, opening the door to a space arms race”, and he reported that the eliminated word was “limited.” Willman explained that, “The nation’s homeland missile defense system is designed to thwart a small-scale, or ‘limited,’ attack by the likes of North Korea or Iran. As for the threat of a large-scale strike by China or Russia, the prospect of massive U.S. retaliation is supposed to deter both from ever launching missiles.” He noted: “The bill awaits action by President Obama. The White House has not said what he will do.” Willman also noted that on an earlier occasion, “the Obama administration criticized the changes in the Senate bill, saying it ‘strongly objects’ to removing ‘limited’ and to placing anti-missile weaponry in space. The statement stopped short of threatening a veto.” But then, the next day, on December 23rd, Willman bannered, “President Obama signs defense bill that could spur new space-based arms race”. Whereas Obama’s public rhetoric portrayed himself as being the type of person who had deserved to win the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, almost all of his actual decisions in office were the exact opposite — and here was a superb example of that.
Whether Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, will continue with that longstanding (ever since 24 February 1990) plan to conquer Russia, or instead finally end the Cold War on the U.S. side (as it already had ended in 1991 on the U.S.S.R.’s), isn’t yet clear.
This is what happens when what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex” takes over the country, and everything (including the ‘news’ media) serves it, rather than the military-industrial complex’s serving the public.
It fits in with the massive data which indicates that the U.S. government is run by an aristocracy or “oligarchy”, instead of run by people who represent the public — a “democracy.” Obama as President fit right in.
Additional details “Summing Up Russia’s Real Nuclear Fears” were provided by a superb article from Jonathan Marshall, on December 28th.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Officials in Tel Aviv say the US president gave the ‘green light’ for the attack in the allied Gulf country
The Israeli military and Shin Bet have confirmed launching an attack in the Qatari capital, Doha, on 9 September that targeted Hamas leaders who were meeting to discuss US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire proposal.
“Today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation,” the office of Israeli Prime Minister and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu said in a social media post.
“Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” the statement added.
Reports by Reuters and Al Jazeera say the Hamas delegation survived Israel’s assassination attempt. However, sources speaking to Quds News Network say that the son of Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya and his office director were killed in the airstrike.
A senior Israeli official told Channel 12 news that Trump greenlit the strike in Qatar. White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly had no comment when pressed by reporters.
In response to the bombing of its capital, the Qatari Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the Gulf monarchy “strongly condemns the cowardly Israeli attack that targeted residential buildings housing several members of the Political Bureau of Hamas.”
“This criminal assault constitutes a blatant violation of all international laws and norms, and poses a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents in Qatar,” the statement adds, highlighting that “investigations are underway at the highest level, and further details will be announced as soon as they are available.”
According to Israel’s Channel 14 News, at least 10 Israeli air force jets took part in the attack on the Qatari capital. A report by Israeli Army Radio estimates that “it will take a few more hours to understand who the senior Hamas leaders that were assassinated are and who survived.”
“A meticulously planned assassination, according to the book, with an element of deception. As it seems? A crazy operation. They offered them a deal to return … They gathered in one place, and the rest became history,” Israeli journalist and analyst for Walla News Amir Bohbot said following the attack.
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Notes: These are two notes from Marwa Osman on her Telegram Channel
Two weeks ago, Israel assassinated Yemen’s Prime Minister along with six ministers in Yemen’s capital Sana’a, and not a single Arab state, Lebanon included, issued a word of condemnation. Yet today, watch how the same boot-lickers of Washington and the Gulf monarchies rush to denounce the strike on Qatar. Let’s be clear: these statements are pure theater. If they truly meant what they say, the GCC would have acted swiftly. But in reality, they remain nothing more than obedient lapdogs to Trump and Netanyahu.
Countries that Zionist Israel attacked ‘defended themselves from’, this year only.
All in the name of self-defense, of course.
As a surprise to many, I would like to leave a short commentary by Scott Ritter, specifically because he understands who has eyes in the skies in the region, and who must have known because of this. (Scott still preaches about the US that “This is not Us” in general in his commentary. He has a problem in truly integrating that it is. I’m posting this for the early commentary in the piece, as to who could see who specifically.)
This is then the good news but we will certainly hear with time who has been killed. So far it seems the main body of the Hamas negotiators and Leaders have survived.
Hamas formal statement:
Hamas:
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In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Important Statement
The treacherous assassination attempt by the zionist occupation to assassinate the negotiating delegation of the Hamas movement in the Qatari capital, Doha, today is a heinous crime, a blatant aggression, and a flagrant violation of all international norms and laws.
This crime represented an aggression against the sovereignty of the sisterly State of Qatar, which, along with its sister Egypt, plays an important and responsible role in sponsoring mediation and efforts aimed at stopping the aggression and reaching an agreement for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange. This again reveals the criminal nature of the occupation and its desire to undermine any chances of reaching an agreement.
We confirm the enemy’s failure to assassinate the brothers in the negotiating delegation, while a number of martyred brothers ascended to the heights of glory, and they are:
– Martyr Jihad Labad (Abu Bilal) – Director of the Office of Dr. Khalil al-Hayya
– Martyr Hammam al-Hayya (Abu Yahya) – son of Dr. Khalil al-Hayya
– Martyr Abdullah Abdul Wahid (Abu Khalil) – companion
– Martyr Moumen Hassouna (Abu Omar) – companion
– Martyr Ahmed al-Mamlouk (Abu Malik) – companion
We also mourn the martyr, Warrant Officer/ Badr Saad Muhammad Al-Humaidi, from the Qatari Internal Security (Lekhwiya).
We ask Allah to cover them with His vast mercy and to admit them to His spacious gardens.
The targeting of the negotiating delegation, at a moment when it is discussing the latest proposal of US President Donald Trump, confirms beyond any doubt that Netanyahu and his government do not want to reach any agreement, and that they are deliberately seeking to thwart all opportunities and foil international endeavors, heedless of the lives of their prisoners held by the resistance, the sovereignty of nations, or the security and stability of the region.
We hold the US administration jointly responsible with the occupation for this crime, due to its continuous support for the aggression and the occupation’s crimes against our people.
This crime has proven that the zionist occupation is an imminent danger to the region and the world, and that Netanyahu is trying to erase our national cause and the rights of our people, and to push them towards forced displacement, continuing his criminal plans of genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, and displacement.
We in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) call on the countries of the world, the United Nations, and all living forces and free consciences to condemn this criminal aggression against the sisterly State of Qatar, and to take urgent action to pressure the occupation to stop the war of genocide and ethnic cleansing, to do justice to our Palestinian people, and to support their legitimate right to freedom and self-determination.
The cowardly assassination attempt will not change our clear positions and demands, which are: the immediate cessation of the aggression against our people, the complete withdrawal of the occupation army from the Gaza Strip, a genuine prisoner exchange, and relief and reconstruction for our people.
We affirm that these terrorist crimes will not undermine the resolve of our movement and our leadership, nor will they deter us from adhering to the national rights of our people, and from continuing on the path of resistance until the occupation is removed from our land, and our independent Palestinian state is established with Al-Quds as its capital.
Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas
Tuesday: 17 Rabi’ al-Awwal 1447 AH
Corresponding to: September 09, 2025 CE
Exploring the dystopian technofeudalism at heart of the western A.I. race
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— Karen Hao (@_KarenHao) April 4, 2025
The A.I. Religious Cult: “Just like empires of the past were competing against one another, so are these tech giants. There was this aggressive race of we, the French Empire, are better than the British Empire. We, the British Empire, are better than the Dutch Empire.
And we need to continue to relentlessly race and be number one because we’re the ones that have the right civilizing mission to bring modernity and progress to all of humanity.
And where their missions might have once been about scientific exploration and transparency, they are now about profit, which has resulted in a landscape where they are just scaling at all costs.”
this is about controlling “the civilizational transformation” of the “one global village.” “Our collective attention is their Manifest Destiny.” From Maggie’s “there is no society” to now, “Culture is just what is Next on your phone — and that is A.I.”
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The endgame is clear: the US losing the entire Eurasian land mass. Ukraine, under these immense geopolitical imperatives, is only a sovereign-deprived pawn in the (Great) Game.
By Pepe Escobar at the Strategic Culture Foundation.
Did President Putin really change the game by proposing the resumption of negotiations on the proxy war in Ukraine in Istanbul – over three years after the first ones were scotched by NATO?
It’s complicated. And depends on which “game” we’re talking about.
What the Russian move instantly accomplished was to throw into total disarray the European warmongering Three Stooges (Starmer, BlackRock chancellor, Le Petit Roi) Cocaine Express.
Irrelevant Europe was not even at the table in Istanbul – except via extensive previous briefing of the low-rent, shabby-dressed Ukrainian delegation. That was compounded by the noisy barking threat in the sidelines advocating “more sanctions” to “pressure Russia”.
In March 2022 in Istanbul, Kiev could have stopped the war. Every one of us who were in Istanbul at the time could foresee that Kiev would eventually have to be forced to the table all over again.
So in essence we are back to the same negotiation – with the same top Russian negotiator, competent historian Vladimir Medinsky, heading a delegation composed by pros, but with Ukraine now facing over a million dead; deprived of at least four regions – more on the way; what’s left of its mineral wealth de facto controlled by the US; and a horrendous black hole that passes for an “economy”. We are talking about country 404 territory.
During the negotiations on Friday, Medinsky went straight to the point:
“We don’t want war, but we are ready to fight for a year, two, three – as long as it takes. We fought with Sweden for 21 years [the Great Northern War, 1700-1721, as it is known in Russia]. How long are you ready to fight?”
That’s the geopolitical/military state of things for Kiev and their “to the last Ukrainian” warmongering backers: either you capitulate, or we’re going to hurt you even more.
What’s the point of these negotiations?
Turkiye under uber-opportunist Sultan Erdogan in fact hosted a P.R. meeting between Moscow, Kiev and itself – with the Ukrainians unleashing a blitzkrieg of infantile tantrums only designed to influence global public opinion. In sharp contrast, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, did his best to put a positive spin on the proceedings.
Istanbul 2.0, Dmitriev asserted, achieved a large exchange of prisoners (1,000 on each side); ceasefire options to be presented by both sides; and a continuation of dialogue.
That’s not much. Well, at least they discussed in the same language: Russian. Nothing was lost in translation.
A serious case can be made that to propose the resumption of these negotiations, under this format, was meaningless. There’s no evidence in the horizon both parties might touch the fundamental issue anytime soon: the whole geopolitical strategic equation in Eastern Europe, from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea and beyond – leading to an “indivisibility of security” new deal with global repercussions.
That implies that whatever track these negotiations may follow further on down the road, they are an objective impossibility. Meanwhile, the proxy war in Ukraine – and the SMO – will go on.
That would also suggest that the Moscow security establishment considers the neo-nazi instrumentalized goons in Kiev at best as a re-enactment of the 6th Army of Paulus, with which you negotiate the end of a battle, but not the end of the war.
Even NATO semi-realists as retired Commodore Steven Jermy have been forced to admit that “Russia is in the driving seat” and clueless Europeans “appear to believe that the losers should dictate the terms of ceasefire or surrender.”
All the barking by the – European – chihuahuas of war cannot disguise the fundamental geopolitical/military fact: a massive NATO humiliation. Trump’s humongous problem is that he has to manage it – and sell it to domestic public opinion and the global public opinion as some sort of “deal” he struck with Putin.
It’s enlightening once again to go back to Grandmaster Lavrov, always the uber-realist, back in September 2024: “In April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reached agreement in Istanbul. If that agreement had been observed, Ukraine would have preserved part of Donbass. But every time another agreement, always accepted by Russia, is broken, Ukraine shrinks in size.”
The (Great) Game, revisited
Now back to the (Great) Game. Kiev negotiators eventually admitting Ukrainian capitulation means a NATO capitulation and an Empire of Chaos capitulation. That’s the ultimate anathema for the US ruling classes. Even an ultra-negotiated, carefully managed Ukrainian surrender will be an impossible sell – not to mention Washington under Narcissus Drowned Trump acknowledging a strategic defeat.
Because that will mean the Empire of Chaos losing Eurasia for good: the ultimate Mackinder/Brzezinski nightmare. Coupled with the consequential solidification of the multi-nodal, multipolar world.
The Russia-China stategic partnership is very much aware of every nook and cranny in this larger-than-life process. Beyond the current Turkish kabuki, they clearly understand the Big Eurasia Equation.
Beijing is fully aware NATO’s real goal was always to confront it via Russia. Ukraine was NATO’s pawn to take down Russia then get to China from the West. The goal of the US ruling elites as they configured their thalassocratic empire remains to blockade China from the West by land and sea, using Russia; then use Taiwan as a staging area to blockade China from the East by sea. No wonder control of Taiwan is a Chinese strategic imperative.
Enter Mackinder panic – all over again: the China-Russia strategic partnership can beat NATO hands down – and Russia, by itself, is already doing it. Xi and Putin once again discussed the chessboard in detail, in person, prior to the Victory Day parade last week in Moscow.
The endgame, once again, is clear: the US losing the entire Eurasian land mass. Ukraine, under these immense geopolitical imperatives, is only a sovereign-deprived pawn in the (Great) Game.
As for the tantrum-addicted clown in Kiev, he is merely an actor with no authority whatsoever, negotiations included. He is completely dominated by Ukrainian neo-Nazis who will kill him if and when the war is over. He merely fronts for them and gets paid off. And that’s why – enthusiastically supported by inconsequential London, Paris and Berlin – he’s obsessed to continue a Forever War destroying the very nation he claims to represent.
National Capitalism (Nacism) is the idea that capitalists should run nations. As we reach the ‘into the ground’ part of that calculation, the whole project is plagued by two glaring contradictions. If capitalism is the best, how can it get better? If communism is the worst, why get redder? Master Sun said you need to know both yourself and your enemy, and Nacis know neither. Mazer Rackham said the enemy is your teacher, but the Nacis have dropped out of history class to smoke their own propaganda. Thus they end up like the Nazis of yore, genociding pointlessly and retreating from Russians. Unable to resolve their contradictions, the Nacis become one. A dead man walking, whistling through the graveyard of better people.
From indi.ca
The First Contradiction Is No Contradictions
In 1989, Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history, calling time saying “the fundamental principles of socio-political organization have not advanced terribly far since 1806.” He declared National Capitalism the last ideology standing, and said it would be a thousand years right. Describing the ideal Naci state, Fukuyama said, “We might summarize the content of the universal homogenous state as liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic.” So really just the Nazi Axis again, with the Japanese safely nuked into submission.
Fukuyama dismissed contradictions entirely saying “surely, the class issue has actually been successfully resolved in the West.” This was laughable when he wrote it, and should be a riot today. Fukuyama also said, “Are there, in other words, any fundamental “contradictions” in human life that cannot be resolved in the context of modern liberalism, that would be resolvable by an alternative political-economic structure?” Like an over-confident American at a job interview, Fukuyama said, essentially, our only contradiction is that we have no contradictions.
This belief in no contradictions leads to one big contradiction, which is that you actually do have contradictions, you’re just not paying attention. America actually does have class issues, it does have cash issues, it has the same issues any other society has, and none of them disappeared by virtue of the USSR falling over. That was a different country a continent away, America didn’t cause the fall of the USSR and they’re not immune to the effects of ideological sclerosis themselves. Competition with the USSR had, in fact, motivated the USA; fear of socialism led to many of their social programs, and the productive power of socialism inspired their own production. The fall of their competitor was the worst thing that happened to them, they stopped competing after that. Without the USSR, the USA was like Larry Bird without Magic Johnson. They honestly didn’t know what to do with themselves, and retired in pain shortly afterwards.
Since the end of the Cold War (actually a hot war for colored people), America has been pointlessly dunking on Muslims in a long genocide now culminating in Gaza, pointlessly punking Russia in a conflict now fulminating in Ukraine, and pointedly dumping Japan for China, a trade now terminating in trade war. Now that great power conflict has resumed, however, America discovers that they’re not a great power anymore. Their proxy army is beaten by Russia, their paltry navy is beaten by Yemen, their pussy air force is only good for bombing children from afar, and their pathetic economy is beaten by China. The Nacis are catching a righteous beating, and you can’t say they didn’t have it coming. They’re still trying to cross the bar to hit China but can’t even get there without everyone else hitting them first.
Like the hare losing the race to sleeps, America thought the space race gave them the earth for keeps. In your dreams. The Nacis thus fell into the worst of contradictions, which is thinking that you have none (only true for the deceased, or about to be). This leads to all sorts of diseased thinking, and morbid symptoms (now is the time of morons). Worst importantly, it leads to stasis, which is death for any organism that must adapt or die.
But why improve ideologically, if all other ideologies are disproven? Why progress historically if history is over? Why hedge your bets at all if you’re hegemon? This is how the end of history became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The capitalist hare fell asleep thinking no way the commie tortoise could outrun them, and now it’s too late. All they can do is cry foul and blame the judges for a race they set and just slept through of their own accord. Thus the first lesson of the first contradiction is this. If you rest on your laurels, they soon enough become a funerary wreath soon enough.
Catchecism-22
The Nacis second contradiction is that they need direct government intervention to beat the commies, but they can’t because that would make them commies. America has made the very idea of governance seem communist and a bit gay, which makes them ungovernable. All the US government can do is give money away to rich people and hope that some invisible hand compels them to do something useful, which it doesn’t, it’s just giving everyone the finger while pocketing the difference. Sometimes government has to ‘just do it’ themselves, but private companies have trademarked the very phrase and you just can’t. Even Naci dicktators can’t do much directly, just raise tariffs on a spreadsheet. They can’t even control interest rates cause that’s run by a private banking cartel (the Fed is not, in fact, federal). America has been dismantling the very idea of government for decades and now they get what they wished for. The place is ungovernable and the people are helpless.
In 1986, America’s patron Satan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” This has become a capitalist catechism, what I call Catechism-22. The basic idea is that governing itself is suspiciously communist. ‘Small government’ has been the animating principle of American politics since the 1980s and they haven’t had an original idea since. They just keep reanimating Reagan in different forms, and he was just a phony spokesman in the first place.
Remember that every US President since 1980 has been a pale Reagan impersonator, including Reagan himself. From senile Reagan to venal Reagan now, it’s all Reagan, all the way down. Like the astronaut from Ohio said, always has been. America was always by the money, for the money, and everything else was just marketing. At the beginning, rich people thought they should keep their money from the king using ‘the people’, and now they want to keep their money from the people using a king. Americans pretend like they follow a leader, but America has always followed the money. This does not really connect to anything but I’m keeping it because the lines are good.
To return to the party line, Catechism-22 states that governing itself is communist and quite possibly gay. You want to have as small a government as possible, small enough to drown in a bathtub as Grover Norquist said. The catch is that America needs, nay, requires government programs to beat the communists, but they can’t do it because that would make them fucking communists! As the book Catch-22 goes, “Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. “That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed. “It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.”
The Catch-22 of the book was that you had to stop flying bombing runs if you were crazy, but if you wanted to stop those suicidal raids you were obviously not crazy and had to do it. Catechism-22 is that America has to do government programs to beat the commies, but if they want to do government programs they are commies and have to beat themselves up over it.
Hence the venal Reagan, Donald Trump is caught in all sorts of contradictions. He wants to rebuild manufacturing without building a single factory. He wants to refine rare earths without building a single refinery. He wants to reorient the entire workforce, but without hiring people. Governments can actually just do things, but that idea has been trademarked by Nike and you just can’t. All they can do is motivate rich people with money or poor people with poverty, psychological experiments on entire populations without consent or even a coherent theory. They do they worst and hope for the best and call this economics. Nacis can’t do anything directly because that would imply a nation not run by capitalists, which isn’t Nacism, which is the best ever, as mentioned.
The End Of The End Of History
The USA’s ideological rigidity becomes its undoing just as it was for the USSR. It’s not necessarily the content but being overly content that leads to ruin. As Isabella Weber said (in How China Escaped Shock Therapy),
In fact, we may observe a parallel between the idealization of the planned economy in Soviet Marxism, where the whole national economy was imagined to function as one centrally planned factory, and the idealization of a market economy underlying the shock therapy approach. While the two theoretical approaches oppose one another on the question of the superiority of a plan or a market as a regulating mechanism, they are united in striving for an optimal, rational economy.
China, on the other hand, learned the opposite lesson from the collapse of the USSR. They learned that they had to change, and they had to learn, from whatever source. So at the same time America was rolling and smoking its laurels, China was working hard at ‘reform and opening up’, using Marxism as a living science instead of a dying dogma. As Xi Jinping said at Karl Marx’s 200th birthday party,
Approaching scientific theories requires a scientific attitude. Engels once made the profound point that, “Marx’s whole way of thinking is not so much a doctrine as a method. It provides not so much readymade dogmas, as aids to further investigation and the method for such investigation.” Engels also noted that theories “[are] a historical product, which at different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different contents.” The basic principles of scientific socialism cannot be discarded; once discarded it would cease to be socialism. Likewise, scientific socialism is not an immutable dogma. I once said that China’s great social transformation is not a masterplate from which we simply continue our history and culture, nor a pattern from which we mechanically apply the ideas of classic Marxist authors, nor a reprint of the practice of socialism in other countries, nor a duplicate of modernization from abroad. There is no orthodox, immutable version of socialism. It is only by closely linking the basic principles of scientific socialism with a country’s specific realities, history, cultural traditions, and contemporary needs, and by continually conducting inquiries and reviews in the practice of socialism, that a blueprint can become a bright reality.
The vitality of theory is in its continued innovation, and promoting the continued development of Marxism is the sacred duty of Chinese Communists. We need to be persistent in wielding Marxism to observe and decipher the world today and lead us through it, applying the lively and plentiful experiences drawn from contemporary China to drive the development of Marxism, and utilizing an extensive worldview to draw on the civilizational achievements of all of humankind. We need to be persistent in protecting our foundations while constantly innovating to continually outdo ourselves, and learning widely from the strengths of others to continually improve ourselves.
Personally, I have read a lot about China (and Weber’s book a lot of times) to try and learn China’s ‘masterplate’ to apply to my own basket case country (Sri Lanka). But as Xi said, it doesn’t work like that. You cannot assume that there is some end state of development, unless you aspire to dénouement, and you cannot stop learning and adapting, unless you aspire to denial. Like the Buddha’s path through misery, Marxism offers a path through history, but you have to walk it with your own feet and your eyes open to the endless changes around you. As Darwin didn’t say, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
Contradictions, in this sense, are not something to be avoided, but the very engine of adaptation, the polarity of power, what motivates a society to change along with its changing environment. Like pain, contradictions teach us about our environment and how to move away from what hurts and towards what’s good. If you think you’ve eliminated contradictions you’ve just gone numb and your toes are about to start falling off. And if you think you’ve nothing to learn, especially from your enemies, you’ve already gone dumb and the fall has already begun.
How do you reason with such unreason? How do you logic such illogic? Nacism is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a fortune cookie which they daren’t open cause it’s Chinese. The National Capitalists could learn something from their mortal enemy, communism, but that would make them fucking commies, so they’d rather die stupid.
The Nacis could learn from history, but they already declared an end to it, and cannot open a book they’ve already burned.
All they can do is unload high-powered weaponry on children in a vain attempt to kill the future but the future, inshallah, comes. Nacism cannot resolve contradictions it doesn’t admit with tools it will not use. So it goes the way of Nazism. To the historical dustbin, forsooth, but unfortunately not soon enough.
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