2018 - War or No War?
The Saker •**December 29, 2017 •
If the first months of 2017 were a time of great hopes following the historical defeat of Hillary Clinton, the year is ending in a sombre, almost menacing manner. Not only has the swamp easily, quickly and totally drowned Trump, but the AngloZionist Empire is reeling from its humiliating defeat in Syria and the Neocons are now treating our entire planet to a never ending barrage of threats. Furthermore, the Trump Administration now has released a National Security Strategy which clearly show that the Empire is in “full paranoid” mode. It is plainly obvious that the Neocons are now back in total control of the White House, Congress and the US corporate media. Okay, maybe things are still not quite as bad as if Hillary had been elected, but they are bad enough to ask whether a major war is now inevitable next year.
If we go by their rhetoric, the Neocons have all the following countries in their sights:
Afghanistan (massive surge already promised)
Syria (threats of a US-Israeli-KSA attack; attack on Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria)
Russia (disconnecting from SWIFT; stealing Russian assets in the US; attack on Russian forces in Syria)
Iran (renege on nuclear deal, attack Iranian forces in Syria)
The Donbass (support for a full scale Ukronazi attack against Novorussia)
DPRK (direct and overt military aggression; aerial and naval blockade)
Venezuela (military intervention “in defense of democracy, human rights, freedom and civilization”)
There are, of course, many more countries currently threatened by the US to various degrees, but the seven above are all good candidates for US aggression.
Let me immediately say here that listing pragmatic arguments against such aggression is, at this point in time, probably futile. If anything, the recent disaster triggered by the US recognition of Jerusalem clearly proves that the US is run by people as least as stupid and ignorant as they are evil and arrogant, possibly even more so. The sad reality we now live in is one where a nuclear superpower lack the minimal intelligence needed to act in defense of its own national security interests, and that is really frightening.
Last week I took a look at the mindset of what I called the “ideological drone“. If we now look at the mindset of the US national security establishment we will immediately notice that it is almost exactly the same as that of the ideological drone. The biggest difference between them might be that the ideological drone assumes that his/her leaders are sane and mostly honest people, whereas those in the elites not only know that they are total hypocrites and liars, but they actually see this as a sign superiority: the drones believes in his/her ideology, but his rulers believe in absolutely nothing.
Take the example of Syria. All the US decision makers are fully aware of the following facts:
Daesh/ISIS/al-Nusra/etc is their creation and they tried everything to save these terrorists.
The joint Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah effort defeated Daesh/ISIS/al-Nusra/etc in-spite of AngloZionist support and attacks on Syrian forces.
The AngloZionist forces are in Syria completely illegally.
Yet none of that prevents them from claiming that they, not Russia, defeated Daesh/ISIS/al-Nusra/etc. This is absolutely amazing, think of it – the entire planet knows full well what really took place in Syria, but Uncle Sam decrees that black is white, water is dry and what is true is false. And the most amazing thing is that they know that everybody knows, yet they don’t care one bit. Why? Because they profoundly believe in four fundamental things:
We can buy anybody
Those we cannot buy, we bully
Those we cannot bully we kill
Nothing can happen to us, we live in total impunity not matter what we do
Besides people with intelligence there is another type of person who has completely disappeared from the US national security establishment: someone with honor/courage/integrity. Let’s take a perfect example: Tillerson.
There is no way we can make the argument that Tillerson is an idiot. The man has proven many times over that he is intelligent and quite talented. And yet, he is Nikki Haley’s doormat. Nikki Haley – there is the real imbecile! But not Tillerson. Yet Tillerson lacks the basic honor/courage/integrity to demand that this terminal imbecile be immediately fired or, if that does not happen, to leave and slam the door really loud. Nope, the man just sits there and takes humiliation after humiliation. Oh sure, he will probably resign soon, but when his resignation comes it will have no value, it will be a non-event, just the sad and pathetic conclusion to a completely failed stint as Secretary of State.
The same goes for the US military: not one single officer has found in himself/herself to resign to protest the fact that the US is deeply in bed with those who are responsible, at least according to the official conspiracy theory, for 9/11. Nope, in fact US special forces are working with al-Qaeda types day in and day out and not a single one of these “patriots” has the honor/courage/integrity to go public about it.
Imbeciles and cowards. I also happen to think that they are traitors to their country and their people. Patriots they are not.
Delusional imbeciles giving orders and dishonorable cowards mindlessly executing them. That is the setup we are dealing with. As Trump would tweet “not good”.
Alas, this is also a very hard combo to deter or to try to reason with.
And yet, somewhere, to some degree, these guys must know that the odds are not in their favor. For one thing, an endless stream of military defeats and political embarrassments ought to strongly suggest to them that inaction is generally preferable to action, especially for clueless people. Furthermore, one simple way to look at risks is to say that risks are a factor of probability times consequences: R = P x C.
I don’t think that US decision-makers actually formally think that way, but on a gut level this is rather straightforward, even for ideological drone types. If we assume that this is the case, we can now revisit our 7 countries listed above as seen by Neocon decision makers (not me! I already outlined how I saw the risks of attacking these countries in this article written this summer):
Possible/likely consequences
Probability
Risk
Afghanistan (surge)
more body bags
high
low
Syria (military intervention & attack on Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria)
Iranian & Hezbollah counter-attacks
high
high
Russia 1 (economic attack: SWIFT & theft of assets)Russia 2 (shooting of Russian aircraft in Syria)
non-military responsemilitary response
highmedium
unknownfor memedium
Iran (renege on nuclear deal)
non-military response
high
low
Donbass (US backed attack on Novorussia)
Russian intervention
medium
low
DPRK (attack; blockade)
Nuclear war in Asia
unknown
unknown
Venezuela (direct military intervention)
quagmire
high
high
A couple of points here:
Afghanistan: is rather straightforward and least controversial: there will be a surge in Afghanistan, it will result in more body bags, it will achieve nothing, cost a shitload and nobody cares.
Syria: very tempting, but the big risk is this: that US forces will find themselves face to face with Iranian and Hezbollah forces who have been dreaming about this day for decades and who will make maximal political use of the US forces they will capture or kill. Frankly, to engage either the Iranians or Hezbollah is a very scary option. Ask the Israelis
Russia option 1: rumors that the US would disconnect Russia from SWIFT or steal (that is politely called “freeze”) Russian assets and funds in the US have been going in for a long time already. And the Russians have been making all sorts of menacing noises about this, but all of them very vague which tells me that Russia might not have any good retaliatory options and that this time around the hot air is blowing from Moscow. Of course, Putin is a unpredictable master strategist and the folks around him are very, very smart. They might hold something up their sleeve which I am not aware of but I strongly suspect that, unlike me, the US intelligence community must be fully aware of what this might be. I am not an economist and there is much I don’t know here, I therefore assessed the risk as “unknown” for me.
Russia option 2: the reaction of Russia to the shooting down by Turkey of a SU-24 in 2015 might well have given the US politicians and commanders a feeling that they could do the same and get away with it. In truth, they might be right. But they might also be wrong. The big difference with the case of the SU-24 is that Russia has formidable air-defenses deployed in Syria which present a major threat for US forces. Furthermore, if a Russian aircraft is under attack and the Russians reply by firing a volley of ground-to-air missiles, what would the US do – attack a Russian S-400 battery? The US is also in a tricky situation in an air-to-air confrontation. While the F-22 is an excellent air superiority fighter it has one huge weakness: it is designed to engage its adversaries from a long range and to shoot first, before it is detected (I mention only the F-22 here because it is the only US aircraft capable of challenging the Su-30SM/Su-35). But if the rules of engagement say that before firing at a Russian aircraft the F-22 has to issue a clear warning or if the engagement happens at medium to short range distances, then the F-22 is at a big disadvantage, especially against a Su-30SM or Su-35. Another major weakness of the F-22 is that, unlike the Su-30/Su-35, it does not have a real electronic warfare suite (the F-22’s INEWS does not really qualify). In plain English this means that the F-22 was designed to maximize its low radar cross section but at a cost of all other aspects of aerial warfare (radar power, hypermaneuverability, electronic warfare, passive engagement, etc.). This all gets very technical and complicated very fast, but I think that we can agree that the Neocons are unlikely to be very impressed by the risks posed by Russian forces in Syria and that they will likely feel that they can punch the russkies in the nose and that these russkies will have to take it. Local US commanders might feel otherwise, but that is also entirely irrelevant. Still, I place the risk here at ‘medium’ even if, potentially, this could lead to a catastrophic thermonuclear war because I don’t think that the Neocons believe that the Russians will escalate too much (who starts WWIII over one shot down aircraft anyway, right?!). Think of it: if you were the commander of the Russian task force in Syria, what would you do if the US shot down on of your aircraft (remember, you assume that you are a responsible and intelligent commander, not a flag-waving delusional maniac)?
What will not stop is the full-spectrum demonization of Russia, thus the relationship between the two countries will further deteriorate. Putin’s Russia is a kind of Mordor which represents all evil and stands behind all evil. Denouncing and openly hating Russia has now become a form of virtue-signaling. Since the entire US political elites have endorsed this phobia, it is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Iran: Trump has announced that he wants out of the deal and while technically and legally he cannot do that, it’s not like he will care one bit. The US has long given up any pretense at respecting any kind of law, including international law. Also, since Trump is clearly Israel’s shabbos-goy I think that we can safely assume that this will happen.
Donbass: will the Ukronazis finally attack? Well, they have been for many months already! Not only did they never stop shelling the Donbass, but they have this new “frog-jump” (pseudo) strategy which consists of moving in military forces in the neutral zone, seize an undefended town and then declare a major victory against Russia. They have also been re-arming, re-organizing, re-grouping and otherwise bolstering their forces in the East. As a result, the Urkonazis have at least 3:1 advantage against the Novorussians. However, we should not look at this from the Ukronazi or Novorussian point of view. Instead we should look at it from the Neocon point of view:
Possible outcomes
US reactions
Option one: Ukronazis win
Russia is defeated, US proves its power
Option two: Novorussians win
Russia is accused of invading the Ukraine
Option three: Novorussians lose and Russia openly intervenes
A Neocon dream come true: the NATO has a purpose again:decades of Cold War v2 in Europe.
The Saker •**December 29, 2017 •
If the first months of 2017 were a time of great hopes following the historical defeat of Hillary Clinton, the year is ending in a sombre, almost menacing manner. Not only has the swamp easily, quickly and totally drowned Trump, but the AngloZionist Empire is reeling from its humiliating defeat in Syria and the Neocons are now treating our entire planet to a never ending barrage of threats. Furthermore, the Trump Administration now has released a National Security Strategy which clearly show that the Empire is in “full paranoid” mode. It is plainly obvious that the Neocons are now back in total control of the White House, Congress and the US corporate media. Okay, maybe things are still not quite as bad as if Hillary had been elected, but they are bad enough to ask whether a major war is now inevitable next year.
If we go by their rhetoric, the Neocons have all the following countries in their sights:
Afghanistan (massive surge already promised)
Syria (threats of a US-Israeli-KSA attack; attack on Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria)
Russia (disconnecting from SWIFT; stealing Russian assets in the US; attack on Russian forces in Syria)
Iran (renege on nuclear deal, attack Iranian forces in Syria)
The Donbass (support for a full scale Ukronazi attack against Novorussia)
DPRK (direct and overt military aggression; aerial and naval blockade)
Venezuela (military intervention “in defense of democracy, human rights, freedom and civilization”)
There are, of course, many more countries currently threatened by the US to various degrees, but the seven above are all good candidates for US aggression.
Let me immediately say here that listing pragmatic arguments against such aggression is, at this point in time, probably futile. If anything, the recent disaster triggered by the US recognition of Jerusalem clearly proves that the US is run by people as least as stupid and ignorant as they are evil and arrogant, possibly even more so. The sad reality we now live in is one where a nuclear superpower lack the minimal intelligence needed to act in defense of its own national security interests, and that is really frightening.
Last week I took a look at the mindset of what I called the “ideological drone“. If we now look at the mindset of the US national security establishment we will immediately notice that it is almost exactly the same as that of the ideological drone. The biggest difference between them might be that the ideological drone assumes that his/her leaders are sane and mostly honest people, whereas those in the elites not only know that they are total hypocrites and liars, but they actually see this as a sign superiority: the drones believes in his/her ideology, but his rulers believe in absolutely nothing.
Take the example of Syria. All the US decision makers are fully aware of the following facts:
Daesh/ISIS/al-Nusra/etc is their creation and they tried everything to save these terrorists.
The joint Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah effort defeated Daesh/ISIS/al-Nusra/etc in-spite of AngloZionist support and attacks on Syrian forces.
The AngloZionist forces are in Syria completely illegally.
Yet none of that prevents them from claiming that they, not Russia, defeated Daesh/ISIS/al-Nusra/etc. This is absolutely amazing, think of it – the entire planet knows full well what really took place in Syria, but Uncle Sam decrees that black is white, water is dry and what is true is false. And the most amazing thing is that they know that everybody knows, yet they don’t care one bit. Why? Because they profoundly believe in four fundamental things:
We can buy anybody
Those we cannot buy, we bully
Those we cannot bully we kill
Nothing can happen to us, we live in total impunity not matter what we do
Besides people with intelligence there is another type of person who has completely disappeared from the US national security establishment: someone with honor/courage/integrity. Let’s take a perfect example: Tillerson.
There is no way we can make the argument that Tillerson is an idiot. The man has proven many times over that he is intelligent and quite talented. And yet, he is Nikki Haley’s doormat. Nikki Haley – there is the real imbecile! But not Tillerson. Yet Tillerson lacks the basic honor/courage/integrity to demand that this terminal imbecile be immediately fired or, if that does not happen, to leave and slam the door really loud. Nope, the man just sits there and takes humiliation after humiliation. Oh sure, he will probably resign soon, but when his resignation comes it will have no value, it will be a non-event, just the sad and pathetic conclusion to a completely failed stint as Secretary of State.
The same goes for the US military: not one single officer has found in himself/herself to resign to protest the fact that the US is deeply in bed with those who are responsible, at least according to the official conspiracy theory, for 9/11. Nope, in fact US special forces are working with al-Qaeda types day in and day out and not a single one of these “patriots” has the honor/courage/integrity to go public about it.
Imbeciles and cowards. I also happen to think that they are traitors to their country and their people. Patriots they are not.
Delusional imbeciles giving orders and dishonorable cowards mindlessly executing them. That is the setup we are dealing with. As Trump would tweet “not good”.
Alas, this is also a very hard combo to deter or to try to reason with.
And yet, somewhere, to some degree, these guys must know that the odds are not in their favor. For one thing, an endless stream of military defeats and political embarrassments ought to strongly suggest to them that inaction is generally preferable to action, especially for clueless people. Furthermore, one simple way to look at risks is to say that risks are a factor of probability times consequences: R = P x C.
I don’t think that US decision-makers actually formally think that way, but on a gut level this is rather straightforward, even for ideological drone types. If we assume that this is the case, we can now revisit our 7 countries listed above as seen by Neocon decision makers (not me! I already outlined how I saw the risks of attacking these countries in this article written this summer):
Possible/likely consequences
Probability
Risk
Afghanistan (surge)
more body bags
high
low
Syria (military intervention & attack on Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria)
Iranian & Hezbollah counter-attacks
high
high
Russia 1 (economic attack: SWIFT & theft of assets)Russia 2 (shooting of Russian aircraft in Syria)
non-military responsemilitary response
highmedium
unknownfor memedium
Iran (renege on nuclear deal)
non-military response
high
low
Donbass (US backed attack on Novorussia)
Russian intervention
medium
low
DPRK (attack; blockade)
Nuclear war in Asia
unknown
unknown
Venezuela (direct military intervention)
quagmire
high
high
A couple of points here:
Afghanistan: is rather straightforward and least controversial: there will be a surge in Afghanistan, it will result in more body bags, it will achieve nothing, cost a shitload and nobody cares.
Syria: very tempting, but the big risk is this: that US forces will find themselves face to face with Iranian and Hezbollah forces who have been dreaming about this day for decades and who will make maximal political use of the US forces they will capture or kill. Frankly, to engage either the Iranians or Hezbollah is a very scary option. Ask the Israelis
Russia option 1: rumors that the US would disconnect Russia from SWIFT or steal (that is politely called “freeze”) Russian assets and funds in the US have been going in for a long time already. And the Russians have been making all sorts of menacing noises about this, but all of them very vague which tells me that Russia might not have any good retaliatory options and that this time around the hot air is blowing from Moscow. Of course, Putin is a unpredictable master strategist and the folks around him are very, very smart. They might hold something up their sleeve which I am not aware of but I strongly suspect that, unlike me, the US intelligence community must be fully aware of what this might be. I am not an economist and there is much I don’t know here, I therefore assessed the risk as “unknown” for me.
Russia option 2: the reaction of Russia to the shooting down by Turkey of a SU-24 in 2015 might well have given the US politicians and commanders a feeling that they could do the same and get away with it. In truth, they might be right. But they might also be wrong. The big difference with the case of the SU-24 is that Russia has formidable air-defenses deployed in Syria which present a major threat for US forces. Furthermore, if a Russian aircraft is under attack and the Russians reply by firing a volley of ground-to-air missiles, what would the US do – attack a Russian S-400 battery? The US is also in a tricky situation in an air-to-air confrontation. While the F-22 is an excellent air superiority fighter it has one huge weakness: it is designed to engage its adversaries from a long range and to shoot first, before it is detected (I mention only the F-22 here because it is the only US aircraft capable of challenging the Su-30SM/Su-35). But if the rules of engagement say that before firing at a Russian aircraft the F-22 has to issue a clear warning or if the engagement happens at medium to short range distances, then the F-22 is at a big disadvantage, especially against a Su-30SM or Su-35. Another major weakness of the F-22 is that, unlike the Su-30/Su-35, it does not have a real electronic warfare suite (the F-22’s INEWS does not really qualify). In plain English this means that the F-22 was designed to maximize its low radar cross section but at a cost of all other aspects of aerial warfare (radar power, hypermaneuverability, electronic warfare, passive engagement, etc.). This all gets very technical and complicated very fast, but I think that we can agree that the Neocons are unlikely to be very impressed by the risks posed by Russian forces in Syria and that they will likely feel that they can punch the russkies in the nose and that these russkies will have to take it. Local US commanders might feel otherwise, but that is also entirely irrelevant. Still, I place the risk here at ‘medium’ even if, potentially, this could lead to a catastrophic thermonuclear war because I don’t think that the Neocons believe that the Russians will escalate too much (who starts WWIII over one shot down aircraft anyway, right?!). Think of it: if you were the commander of the Russian task force in Syria, what would you do if the US shot down on of your aircraft (remember, you assume that you are a responsible and intelligent commander, not a flag-waving delusional maniac)?
What will not stop is the full-spectrum demonization of Russia, thus the relationship between the two countries will further deteriorate. Putin’s Russia is a kind of Mordor which represents all evil and stands behind all evil. Denouncing and openly hating Russia has now become a form of virtue-signaling. Since the entire US political elites have endorsed this phobia, it is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Iran: Trump has announced that he wants out of the deal and while technically and legally he cannot do that, it’s not like he will care one bit. The US has long given up any pretense at respecting any kind of law, including international law. Also, since Trump is clearly Israel’s shabbos-goy I think that we can safely assume that this will happen.
Donbass: will the Ukronazis finally attack? Well, they have been for many months already! Not only did they never stop shelling the Donbass, but they have this new “frog-jump” (pseudo) strategy which consists of moving in military forces in the neutral zone, seize an undefended town and then declare a major victory against Russia. They have also been re-arming, re-organizing, re-grouping and otherwise bolstering their forces in the East. As a result, the Urkonazis have at least 3:1 advantage against the Novorussians. However, we should not look at this from the Ukronazi or Novorussian point of view. Instead we should look at it from the Neocon point of view:
Possible outcomes
US reactions
Option one: Ukronazis win
Russia is defeated, US proves its power
Option two: Novorussians win
Russia is accused of invading the Ukraine
Option three: Novorussians lose and Russia openly intervenes
A Neocon dream come true: the NATO has a purpose again:decades of Cold War v2 in Europe.





