The crisis, and especially the reaction of the ‘west’ to it, is much worse than I had feared.
The U.S. government and ‘western’ media claim that the World condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That is however far from reality. It is only true if true if you believe ‘the world’ solely exists of the 5-eye spying cooperation (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the European Union, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore.
The view differs when you zoom out.
bigger
The much bigger ‘rest of the world’ has not condemned Russia but understands how the conflict came about. They blame, like political scientist John Mearsheimer, the U.S. for causing the crisis. This includes, as far as I can tell, all of Africa (54 states), South America, Central America, the Middle East, and all of Asia ex Japan and Singapore.
This rest of the world that did not condemn Russia includes several notable U.S. allies and ‘partners’ like Turkey (Nato’s second biggest army!), India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel.
The case shows how much the standing of the once unilateral superpower has been diminished.
Since 2014 the war in east Ukraine against the people of the Donbas regions has cost more than 14,000 lives. Some 10,000 of those were civilians on the Donbas side. The dying there continues as the Ukrainian army and its nazi battalions continue to shell the cities of Donetzk and Luhansk:
At least 136 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, and 400 have been injured since Russia invaded Ukraine last week, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday.
“The real toll is likely to be much higher,” Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office (OHCHR), told a briefing, adding that 253 of the casualties were in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Over the last days I also read several commentators claiming that that the Russian ‘regime change’ incursion into Ukraine would not have the support of the Russian people and would set them up against their president. Here is news for them:
Maxim A. Suchkov @m_suchkov – 19:14 UTC · Mar 1, 2022
Meanwhile #Putin’s approval rating has raised from 60% to 71% (survey by FOM)
The sanctions put up against Russia will hurt its people. But due to global price increases they will be probably felt stronger in Europe and the United States and they may even cause mass starvation and revolutions in poorer countries of the ‘third world’.
Mark Sleboda has served as nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy. He has studied at the London School of Economics. He has married a woman from Crimea and now lives in Moscow as a Russian citizen. He is a frequent commentator in Russian media. Sleboda has previously criticized president Putin for being too soft with the ‘west’.
His analyses and predictions are more dire than mine but he is probably right (thread edited for readability):
Mark Sleboda @MarkSleboda1 – 8:53 UTC · Mar 2, 2022
This is #theGreatDecoupling between the West and Russia. Economic linkages will be cut down to only energy and a few other commodities & chemicals that Europe is dependent on Russia for. The West controls and has weaponized their entire economy in their war to break Russia.
Political, social and cultural linkages will also be severed to a high degree. Weaning Russia off this dependence will be hard and immiserating. But with Chinese and some other Eurasian support, Russia may just weather it. The entire global economy will suffer as well.
But once the dust has settled and new domestic and import substitution formed – Russia will at least be economically & financially independent from the West. They will never again be able to weaponize their economic hegemony to coerce, blackmail, or wage war on Russia.
The same weaponized economic war too will also soon be turned on China and the Rest of the world’s holdouts from US-led Western Hegemony. The Unipolar world will truly be over, but the Multipolar world will be stillborn by US attempts to hang on to their hegemony. Instead US/Western pressure will directly result in the formation of an anti-Western bloc led by China and Russia for survival and independence. Neutrality will be difficult to maintain. A new Bipolar world is coming into being, just decades after the last ended.
The Golden Age of the Global Internet is also now over resulting not from Russia closing itself off, but by censorship and exclusion by Western and the social media platforms and the internet fixtures they control – because they don’t trust their own people to hear alternative perspectives and narratives and judge on their own. The world’s internet will now break down into regional spheres with limited connectivity. It will be a new, much smaller, less connected, more localized and divisive world.
We are of course already seeing the physical connections around the world break down – with closures of entire swathes of the globe’s surface to each others’ airlines and global shipping connections being severed one by one as we speak. Global distribution networks will be disrupted & chaos result for months. Because Russia & Ukraine are primary sources of so many of the world’s commodities – energy & food costs around the world will skyrocket. In the First world prices will go up, in the Third – starvation.
Ultimately the cause was the US-led West trying to maintain and extend their Hegemony, while they can and Russia resisting it. NATO expansion east in waves, US meddling and hybrid warfare to bring into power pro-Western/anti-Russian governments in formerly neutral, unaligned, national identity-divided post Soviet states was the endgame of this NATO expansion to geopolitically consolidate all of Europe under US-led Western Hegemony up to Russia’s borders.
Russia resisted this geopolitical flipping by color revolution in Georgia, Belarus & Ukraine. And now the ultimate target of this economic war on Russia is forcing regime change in Russia itself for having the temerity to resist the Hegemon’s geopolitical expansion right on her very borders.
The great Realist IR scholar Mearsheimer foresaw all of this. As did Kissinger, George Kennan, US Ambassador John Matlock and many others. They tried to warn what the consequences of the US trying to geopolitically flip Ukraine would be, but to no avail.
For Russia the only path forward, the goal to survive is, must be – separation, autarky (self-sufficiency), and independence from US-led Western Hegemony.
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Russia won the battle and it is most likely to win the economic war with US driven NATO as well.
Why you may ask? The propaganda news around the world is so loud explaining the Putin is a madman and does not make progress in Ukraine story?
Pls. see Falsehood In War Time by Arthur Ponsonby
This is all bullshit. Almost no proofable news are coming from the Ukraine. That is because the russians are able to keep strict communication restrictions and USA is not interested to share satellite intel.
If Putin really does what he has announced he will not throw all his army into the Ukraine. He will destroy all military assets, punish the „Ukra-Nazis“ and make Ukraine neutral. It is not neccesseary to play the US shock and awe game since the russians see the ukraine as „brother“ state and I assume most of the ukrainians do it vice versa.
Maripol is trapped with 30 to 60.000 well armed and motivated ukranian troops, most likely what people call „Ukra-Nazis“ that have limited to no support in ethical russian areas in Ukraine like Mariopol. If they do not surrender today or tomorrow the russian army will destroy them quick to save the normal people. Selensky will want to negotiate but it is not likely that Putin will let them go.Remember Putin announced to punish all „Uka-Nazis“ responsible for the 7 year bombing of east ukraine and not following the Minsk treaties.
Krimea has a good demilitarised area in the ukrainian mainland around them and we will see if the russians are taking the whole area on the seaside to keep Ukraine away from own access to the ports. They will not face much resistance.
I am not sure if they will take Kiew since it is not neccessary and I do not expect that they want to humilate the ukraine more than neccessary.
Coming to the real war.
The US is trying to be master of the universe. They will not reach that goal.
The US has a strong wich to keep control over Europe and keep russia down. And most of all keep russia and Europe separated (pls see Sir Halford John Mackinder)
There are a lot of actions that were taken since WW2 to reach this goal.
Their main asset is the NATO. Remember that they did not allow russia to participate. NATO implies that all armies are knitted very tightly to US army. They managed to infiltrate more or less all politicians with atlantic council and other NGO groups with the same agenda. The agenda is very simple: do what we told you.
But not only politics is corrupted, its press and media as whole as well. All deviating media is restricted, under surveillance or will be banned and therefore all our ideas, convictions and persuations regarding US and russia are more or less biased in one way – as you can see today in the reactions of the people in europe and western counties. Compare that to the reactions in the rest of the world that have seen the us club before.
And most of all compare it to the reactions on the killing, wounding, hunger, displacement and all the suffering 10ths of millions ordinary people had to suffer in the name of the „humanitarian“ fight for western values like democracy and gender rights in other countries.
They as well where not legitimated by the UN – with a good reason!
So what will they (we) do?
We will use a method formerly known as siege.
It will not work because first we strongly need the goods only the besieged can deliver and we most likely can not buy them elsewhere in quantities needed and in prices we can pay.
That means we have to pay them in rubles, yuan or most likewise in gold. Whereas they can buy and sell everything they need on the world market (even paying with gas, coal, wheat, rare earth or whatever). Remember, China, India and the countries that felt the US club before or saw what us friendship and western values in real means wont be part of the siege.
If you follow that to an end it leads to an end of the USD as world currency that every country had to accept that wants to be part of the worldwide economy. And this means that us is not able to print as much money as they want without producing goods in the same range. This will lead most likely to a massive US inflation and given the inner splitting of the us to massive problems on their own continent.
The second action is another great risk to the us as well. If we start to confiscate russian assets we can lay hand on, Putin will do likewise. That does of course not only mean houses, money, companies.
Most likely it will be patents. If russia can give a shit on patents and other assets held by „The Free Democratic West“ tm he can for example start the production of BMW in Kaliningrad on his own and sell them in the world as BMW by himself. Or he could produce any drug and sell it very cheap in the whole world – big pharma would really like that. There are billions of possibles he could do completely legal.
Why hold on contracts or agreements when „The Free Democratic West“ tm is not doing likewise as anybody could see. Ask the people in Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Irak, Vietnam, Syria, Yemen or Northern Korea or yugoslavia and many others how they see this. This list is uncomplete but even if you do not live in a country that was affected directly, everybody could see what this friendship and democracy is in reality. As you can see it in Ukraine right now. The US is absolutely willing to shed every drop of blood of every ukranian soldier and the blood of the common people as well – just to reach their goals.
The foundation of any trade and economy is trust, and that is what we are losing in the world right now
There is an arabic saying:
Peace makes wealth
Wealth makes arrogance
arrogance makes war
War makes poverty
Poverty makes humility
Humility makes peace
I do not like to see the US loosing its power. In history any imperia loosing its power lead to a long lasting dark age.
We will see…
Posted by: mac | Mar 2 2022 14:59 utc | 7
Sorry for the highlighted text – my fault
Posted by: mac | Mar 2 2022 15:00 utc | 8
The U.S. government and ‘western’ media claim that the World condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That is however far from reality. It is only true if true if you believe ‘the world’ solely exists of the 5-eye spying cooperation (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the European Union, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore.
The view differs when you zoom out.
I think we need to be more realistic here.
I do understand that the USA first initiated and is now executing a war against Russia on many fronts. This war started many years ago and has been carefully planned to inflict maximum damage on Russian economic and geo-strategic interests with the minimum effort from the so-called western alliance. For the past year or so, Russia held the high moral ground even though the people who most needed to hear were not listening. It resisted the siren calls to war and retained some level of support in the rest of the world.
Russia has already lost (a) the information war mentioned by b and james, and I note that some commentators here claim they don’t care about that. Nonetheless, it is frustrating to see how incompetent they are at it (Russia, I mean). If there is so much support for them all over the world, why have they not managed to drag it out into the open? If they need a new “YouTube” or whatever, then create one.
In the end, Russia succumbed to the pressure and put their soldiers’ boots firmly on Ukrainian soil. I had serious reservations about this from the start. Now we wait to see if they can win (b) the kinetic and (c) the diplomatic wars that follow. Perhaps “win” is not the correct word in the circumstances; “survive” might be more apposite.
Regular barflies probably don’t care about public opinion in the UK, but I can tell them that it is impossible to get people to look past the blanket propaganda put out by the western media including our own BBC. My friends are generally liberals politically-speaking, well-educated and open to new ideas. Nonetheless, they are all fully convinced that Russia is the unprovoked aggressor here and that Putin is a tyrant verging on madness. They resist my efforts to redefine the terms of the debate to such an extent that I have stopped discussing Ukraine at all. It is difficult to analyse complicated geo-political issues while the TV reports yet another wave of bombs falling on women and small children.
In the meanwhile, it seems to me that most if not all of the defined US goals have been achieved:
1. Russia has been re-established as the ever-present danger to world peace
2. NATO has been re-established as an absolutely necessary bulwark against it
3. The endless money flow has been maintained from the paying public to the war machine
4. The EU has been weakened with different countries aligning in different camps
I despise the Americans for their war-mongering ways. (Of course, they don’t actually need to win any of their wars; they just need to keep the money flowing.) But I also feel hugely disappointed by the Russians who have fallen (yet again) for the same old tricks that have been used many times before. I have stopped listening to the news not only because the torrent of propaganda is unbearable but also because the pictures of destruction inflicted on innocent citizens are unbearable too.
They say that truth is the first casualty of war. Russia is (almost) as capable of misleading us as any of the other players in this terrible game. It remains to be seen if any good will come out of all this, despite the high expectations of some of the posters here. I really hope there is a silver lining to these dark, stormy clouds.
Posted by: echelon | Mar 2 2022 15:00 utc | 9
In conversation I keep it simple, Sam.
The UN approved of a peace plan years ago.
Instead of urging Ukraine to implement the plan
the US loaded Ukraine up with weaapons.
(Optional: Zelensky began to implement the plan in 2019
but the neo-Nazis rioted and set fires, so
Zelensky backed off. ((Optional: the role of the CIA
and US State Dept in supporting the rioters is unknown))
Peace was thwarted by Washington and Kiev and that has brought us to today.
When they focus on a 15-year old ice skater Kamila Valieva or the SPD politician in Munich cancels the great Anna Netrebko’s performances at Munich Opera House unless she conforms to his demands to denounce Vladimir Putin – we know the world is psychotic.
Arts and Sports are not political unless the performers (like Hollywood) make political statements – forcing political statements destroys their ability to perform as artists
The politicisation of everything in The Decadent West is symptomatic of Oligarchic Suffocation of Liberty and the Corporate-Politics-Nexus is Fascism in its traditional form.
How easily Motivated Minorities stole Western Liberty in a quest to seek “One Ring to bind them All” in corrupting imperialism.
It is time to look at the family histories of those pursuing these agendas and their obsessional neuroses
Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Mar 2 2022 15:04 utc | 12
The UK propaganda machine (or factory of lies, or ministry of truth) says you are wrong in your world geographic assessment of global support for Russia.
Posted by: James Cook | Mar 2 2022 15:05 utc | 13
Russians haven’t lost their jobs over this, and they all have a roof over the heads, still go to the markets and buy what they want/can. Russian Federal economy looks a bit less because of all the infrastructure projects going on. That takes a lot of money. Things will get tighter in this respect.
The loss of life is the worse thing happening in Russia today . America/EU means nothing to Russians because they know who is responsible for all of this death and destruction. Russians haven’t figured out how the Americans and Europeans , themselves, can’t see the whole picture going on – since it has been so obvious since 2014.
Posted by: GMC | Mar 2 2022 15:11 utc | 14
Danger, fear has indeed surfaced.
China said they will work with Russia
China Will Not Join Sanctions Against Russia, Banking Authority Says
China will not join the unilateral sanctions against Russia, and will continue to maintain normal financial cooperation with all parties, Guo Shuqing, the head of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Committee (CBIRC), said on Wednesday.
Source: Sputniknews.com Updates
Wading into deep quicksand
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has told Al Jazeera that if unleashed, a Third World War would be waged with the use of nuclear weapons and it would be disastrous.
Touching upon the situation in Ukraine, Lavrov said that Moscow is preparing for the second round of talks with Kiev, but that the Ukrainian side is dragging its feet at the behest of Washington.
Russian MFA: No Guarantees There Won’t Be Incidents With NATO in Light of Arms Supplies to Ukraine
Russian Ambassador: There are Calls in British Parliament to Expel All Russians From UK
“ONEWEB?”
Oh, dear Bojo has a March 4th ultimatum. Deploying sanctions without exploring consequences, always not a good idea.
The OneWeb orbital constellation will not work without replenishment of adding new communication satellites.
Roscosmos: OneWeb System to Be Non-Functional Without New Satellites Launched
“There are no other means of launching the OneWeb orbital constellation in the near future, and without replenishment of the constellation, the full functioning of the system is impossible. At the same time, the Russian side is ready to fulfill its obligations if the foreign customer provides appropriate legal guarantees,” Roscosmos said in a statement.
Earlier on Wednesday, Roscosmos urged OneWeb to provide a guarantee of non-use of its satellites for military purposes and to remove the British government from the company’s shareholders before the evening of March 4 or the launch of the Soyuz-2.1b rocket with new OneWeb satellites will be halted.
Factoids:
Blocking Uranium shipments from Russia will impact the USA. Ditto the oil from Urals.
The Swissy government has abandoned centuries of neutrality and no longer seen as a safe financial haven.
