Jan. 20—The reality that won’t be addressed at Friday’s Ramstein meeting is that Russia has mobilized a serious military force, has secured their positions across the board, and can afford to clean out the remaining occupied portions of the Donetsk region at their own pace. The “Western alliance” can huff and puff over Ukraine militarily defeating Russia, or even just try to push Russia back somewhere, hoping to earn a bargaining chip in a future negotiation that will put Russia in its place in the ‘rules-based’ civilized West—but they are playing with a naked hand, in a morally and economically bankrupt system.
Perhaps the latter option, risking nuclear war for a bargaining chip, appears only semi-crazy, when compared to the off-the-wall crazies—those who, having played too many video games, steeped themselves into one too many Wagnerian operas, or fantasized over God rewarding them for bringing on Armageddon, allow nothing to disrupt their fantasies short of nuclear warheads settling the issue.
So, at Ramstein, ten tanks or a hundred tanks have no military reality for any so-called Kiev offensive. The game is to keep Europe held hostage that much longer, importantly not engaging in any real issues of energy, economics, living standards and, yes, security arrangements that recognize the right of sovereign nations to exist.
The ever-present danger is that the real crazies amongst those in Kiev, in London, and in Washington, as their bluff is called, haven’t had their hands removed from the buttons.
Study two cases of concern to the ‘forever war’ gang. Germany’s Chancellor Scholz appointed Boris Pistorius as his new Defense Minister, and Scholz is reported to have set as a condition that Germany will not send their tanks to Ukraine unless the US sends its Abrams tanks. So, the mobilization for Europe to unite in the symbolic ‘tank coalition’ might be stalled. And everyone knows that the US tanks, with massive logistical issues with fuel consumption and major training issues, have no practical use in Ukraine. The last 24 hours have seen an assault upon Germany to fall into line, particularly coming from the British, the US, and Poland.
In Kiev itself, President Zelensky’s own official advisor, Oleksey Arestovych, first caused a firestorm when he didn’t “drink the Kool-aid” on the “Russia bombed the Dnipro apartment” narrative, the latest trigger for a Western avalanche of weaponry. He accidentally or intentionally let slip the obvious, that Ukraine had shot down a Russian missile, which was redirected away from its target and into the residential building. After resigning two days ago, he gave an interview, intentionally making the obvious point, that Kiev was stupidly nasty to its own population, turning its own citizens into enemies, and could never hold the loyalty of whole sections of the country with such an idiotic approach. No one should make Arestovych into a hero, but when the little boy simply asks why the emperor has no clothes on, the possibility of an outbreak of public sanity comes into play. Of course, the Mirotvorets gang immediately placed Arestovych on their hit list.
Finally, consider the reaction to Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, when he hit the nail on the head, stating that the ideology of the Nazi “Final Solution” is no different than the ideology of the present West’s “Final Solution” for dismantling Russia and wiping it off the face of the earth. It is deliberate, it is ugly, and, before counting up numbers, one might recall that somewhere around 26-27 millions Russians died in opposing Hitler. But, predictably, reactions from the US, from Canada, and from Israel show that some find it outrageous to even attempt to wrap their minds around such an idea. In such strategic miscalculations are genocides and more genocides born.
Better to deliberate over something appropriate, something capable of ending such horror stories.
And for today’s birthday of the American poet, patriot, and intelligence officer, Edgar Allan Poe, may we appreciate the ironic touch: If you’d prefer we not engage in a thermonuclear conflagration, just say, “No tanks.”
