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The Ford Follies: Yes, It Can Get Worse

By Bill Buppert | The Libertarian Institute | December 19, 2024

Brent Eastwood does a splendid job elucidating so many of the problems of the fatally flawed Ford super-carrier. I suspect he had to say “promising” but there is nothing here for the 21st century; this is the chariot and crossbow of the next generation. This is the sunken cost fallacy afloat. The prudent policy is to retire these behemoths immediately and completely rethink US and Western surface naval combat. The era of manned combat aircraft is over, whatever is aloft is a zombie force on borrowed time. The US Navy is quite literally playing chicken with thousands of lives in a gamble that the opponents will blink.

They won’t.

They can’t.

As we have discussed before, the strike package projection from a single super-carrier is less than ten birds with a combat radius of less than 750 nautical miles. China, Russia and Iran (not to mention the Houthis in Yemen) have the capacity right now to disable or sink a carrier near their homelands. They have been perfecting this amelioration effort for years if not decades, they are ready.

Key Points: The U.S. Navy’s Ford-class aircraft carriers represent technological advancement but face five significant challenges.

–First, the cost is staggering, with the Gerald R. Ford exceeding $13 billion and maintenance costs nearing $27 billion over its lifetime.

–Second, construction delays have plagued the program, with delivery timelines stretching years.

–Third, evolving threats like anti-ship missiles, hypersonics, and drones put carriers at significant risk.

–Fourth, resupplying the massive vessel for long deployments remains logistically challenging.

–Lastly, advanced technologies like EMALS and Advanced Arresting Gear have faced reliability issues.

-While promising, the Ford-class program has sparked debates about cost, delays, and future survivability.

The U.S. Navy’s Ford-Class Aircraft Carriers: 5 Biggest Problems

Not only is the super-carrier crippled by existential problems in capability, its very existence is reminiscent of the Battleship Hypnotism that enthralled admirals of the West prior to 8 December 1941.

The U.S. Navy’s Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier ‘Nightmare’ Has Begun

A live-fire battle with China would answer many of the following questions. Can a carrier survive a direct hit from an anti-ship missile? Do carriers need to patrol outside the range of the Anti-Access/ Area Denial defensive bubble that the Chinese have so deftly created around their First Island Chain? Will manned or unmanned submarines be the death of a U.S. aircraft carrier?

These questions will have to be pondered by some of the best thinkers in the U.S. Navy. Otherwise, the Gerald R. Ford will not be worth the exorbitant cost, and future aircraft carriers of the Ford-class may be reconsidered.

The next war may include anti-ship missiles, drones, and submarines. Carrier-based combat could be made obsolete by asymmetric weapons and a determined enemy who is likely to try anything to slow down or destroy the Gerald R. Ford.

A chilling report was just issued by the CRS on 13 December 2024 filled with foreboding and magic thinking.

Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress

December 19, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

America’s Origins of Russophobia

By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | December 18, 2024

For those that grew up in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, the explosion of Russophobia over the past decade likely came as something of a surprise. A brief survey of the history of Russophobia, however, reveals that the decade and a half after the end of the Cold War was something of an anomaly in the past century and a half of American foreign policy, with a blend of inherited geopolitical fears and ideological tensions leading to a generally anti-Russian sentiment in Washington.

Our investigation begins with the so-called “Testament of Peter the Great.” An eighteenth century forgery of largely Polish origin, it purported to show, in the words of the University of London historian Orlando Figes, that the aims of Russian foreign policy were nothing less than world domination:

“… to expand on the Baltic and Black seas, to ally with the Austrians to expel the Turks from Europe, to conquer the Levant and control the trade to the Indies, to sow dissent and confusion in Europe and become the master of the European continent.”

First published in Napoleonic France in 1812, on the eve of the Grand Armée’s ill-fated invasion of Russia, it was to go on to provide the grist for many an English fear-monger’s mill.

In 1817, Sir Robert Wilson’s A Sketch of the Military and Political Power of Russia in the Year 1817 luridly detailed the military and geopolitical threat supposedly posed by Russia, and a decade later George de Lacy Evans’s On the Designs of Russia repeated these earlier warnings—both were favorably received by the public and among the ruling establishment, paranoid as ever about any potential threat to British control of India. Then, in 1834, the highly influential David Urquhart published his own pamphlet, England, France, Russia and Turkey, casting Russia as the perpetual antagonist to British interests in the Near East and Central Asia.

Not everyone was fooled, however. As noted by the Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken, the great British liberals, such as Richard Cobden and John Bright, often opposed these characterizations and exaggerated threats. In turn, they were rewarded only with the scorn familiar to today’s scoffers. Indeed, the perception of Russia as a natural, age-old enemy became embedded in British geopolitical thought.

As the nineteenth century progressed, these ideas influenced American perspectives, particularly as the United States emerged as a power in its own right. Initially, U.S.-Russian relations were cordial, demonstrated by the Russian offer to aid the Union during the Civil War should Britain or France recognize the Confederacy, and by the sale of Alaska. However, this camaraderie began to erode in the final decades of the nineteenth century as American elites increasingly viewed Russia as a backwards autocracy at odds with the progress and democratic ideals of the United States.

The overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy and the seizure of power by the communists in 1917 would only further entrench this ideological divide—totalitarian communism being almost as at odds with the republican capitalism of the United States as the old Russian regime, but more dangerous for its apparently global revolutionary ambitions.

At the same time, the Rhodes Scholarship, established in 1902 and conceived by British imperialist Cecil Rhodes, was bringing American elites into closer contact with British institutions and thinking. Many prominent U.S. policymakers would pass through Oxford, absorbing the geopolitical theories of figures like Halford Mackinder, who viewed Eurasian control as pivotal to global power.

Graduates of the Rhodes program, such as Stanley Hornbeck, who served as an advisor to longest running Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and J. William Fulbright, the longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, carried this thinking into U.S. foreign policy—along with later Rhodes scholars like Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow.

Indeed, during this period, U.S. strategy came to mirror Britain’s in its suspicion of Russian ambitions. Mackinder’s work on the Heartland Theory influenced American realists like Nicholas Spykman, whose views would in turn inform the policies of John Foster Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. The synthesis of British and American grand strategies, marked by shared Russophobia, persisted throughout the Cold War, interrupted only by moments of detente.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked a brief period during which Russophobia seemed to wane. However, the resurgence of tensions over the past decade reflects the deep-rooted nature of these perceptions, which never fully dissipated. The influence of figures educated under British tutelage continued, with Rhodes scholars like Richard Haas and Strobe Talbott playing key roles in shaping U.S. foreign policy post-Cold War. Talbott, as Deputy Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, was pivotal in crafting policies that expanded NATO, a move seen by Russia as a direct threat.

The resilience of Russophobia can also be viewed through the lens of American conservatism’s evolution. In Reclaiming the American Right, Justin Raimondo explored how the original Old Right, wary of foreign entanglements and empire-building, largely resisted the knee-jerk Russophobia that would later define the Cold War. Figures like Senator Robert Taft and journalist John T. Flynn saw anti-communism not as an invitation to global interventionism but as a principle grounded in American self-reliance and non-intervention. Raimondo argued that the transformation of conservatism in the post-World War II era—particularly with the rise of the neoconservatives—led to a more aggressive foreign policy, one that embraced Russophobia as both a geopolitical strategy and an ideological necessity.

This shift mirrored the integration of British geopolitical thinking into American policy circles, where Russia remained the perennial “other,” a rival to be contained or defeated. Raimondo’s analysis highlights how historical Russophobia, rooted in fears of Russian autocracy or expansionism, found new life under ideological pretexts—whether combating Soviet communism during the Cold War or resisting Russian influence in the post-Soviet era. As Raimondo reminds us, this hostility was as much about the ambitions of American policymakers as it was about any perceived Russian threat.

In conclusion, Russophobia in America did not arise from a vacuum but from a historical continuum that began with British anxieties and evolved through ideological, cultural, and geopolitical conflicts, and as a function of the domestic political incentive structures in Washington. This lineage of suspicion, and profitable fear mongering, has proven resilient, shaping policy and public perception for over two centuries, much to the detriment of (almost) all involved.

December 19, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Kiev regime assassinates Russian General to hide the truth about bioweapons

By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 18, 2024

In a bold and lethal move, a terrorist attack carried out by Ukrainian intelligence operatives in Moscow killed Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Federation’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense Forces, along with his main advisor. Kirillov, one of the most important figures in Russian national security, became a strategic target due to his investigations revealing the complex and shadowy ties between the West, Ukraine, and the bioweapons research laboratories. His death is not only a blow against Russia but also a critical turning point in international relations, involving the controversy surrounding biological laboratories, the pharmaceutical industry lobby, and, inevitably, Kiev’s connections to U.S. politics.

Kirillov’s investigation into biological laboratories

Since the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine in 2022, Igor Kirillov had been denouncing the existence of bioweapons research laboratories in Ukrainian territory. These laboratories, operating under the guise of “scientific research” and funded by global actors such as the Soros Foundation, Big Pharma companies, and even influential members of the Biden family, have been accused of developing biological weapons aimed at Russia.

In public statements, Kirillov warned of the growing risk posed by these biolaboratories, pointing out that their goal was to create a “universal package” of genetically modified biological pathogens to target Russian people, cattle, and crops simultaneously. The development of such weapons could potentially cause a catastrophe of epic proportions, destroying Russian food production and decimating the population. Once Russia became aware of these activities, it had no choice but to launch a military operation to dismantle these dangerous research centers.

Moscow also raised suspicions that, without early intervention, Ukraine, with U.S. support, could have launched a large-scale biological attack against Russia. This attack would target Russian public health by releasing multiple lethal viruses and bacteria simultaneously, with the aim of creating catastrophic chaos.

The truth obscured by a media blockade

The greatest obstacle Russia faced in exposing these threats was the absolute silence of the Western media. In the European Union, the United States, and even the Global South, an iron curtain was raised on the subject, with most media outlets ignoring or discrediting Kirillov’s revelations. However, Russia believed that without its military operation and the dismantling of bioweapons laboratories in the early days of the conflict, the country would have been vulnerable to a biological attack of catastrophic magnitude.

Furthermore, during the eight years following the Euromaidan coup, citizens of Russian-majority regions in Ukraine were subjected to a series of biological experiments. These included tests of new chemical and biological substances, some of which were administered under the guise of “voluntary treatments” or even by force, as in the case of prisoners or ethnic Russian low-ranking soldiers. The ultimate goal of these experiments was to understand the genetic characteristics of Russians in order to develop even more lethal and ethnically targeted pathogens, thus creating ethnically directed mass destruction biological weapons.

Big Pharma’s involvement and Hunter Biden

In addition to the evidence of involvement by organizations such as the Soros Foundation, another crucial point in Kirillov’s reports was the connection with Big Pharma companies. He spared no effort in revealing the role of pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Moderna in financing bioweapons research in Ukraine. The claim that these corporations were associated with the development of biological weapons was not merely speculative, several captured documents having proved the whole truth. In the same vein, the involvement of influential members of the U.S. government and their families, including Hunter Biden, in contracts and initiatives related to Ukrainian biolabs was a central issue in his revelations. The U.S. president’s son was one of the main financial supporters of the biolabs, which were part of his corruption schemes in Ukraine.

Kirillov’s death, therefore, is not only a significant loss for Russia but also a grim reflection of global corporate interests and the biological risks the Western powers were willing to take in their reckless pursuit of hegemony. The pharmaceutical lobby, with its vast networks of influence, found itself in an uncomfortable position after 2022, when several countries began questioning the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as dismantling the mandatory vaccination campaigns that had been previously fervently promoted.

Kirillov’s sacrifice and the future of the conflict

The death of Igor Kirillov represents a tragic chapter in the global confrontation currently taking place on Ukrainian soil, but it also serves as a dramatic allegory of the hidden tensions between the great powers. While Russia continues to expose the West’s involvement in creating biological threats, the global mainstream media watches in silence, more interested in preserving its narratives than facing the truth about a global power struggle involving the use of biotechnology as weapons.

By revealing these threats, Kirillov had become one of the greatest obstacles to Western hidden interests. His death, caused by a Ukrainian terrorist attack, represents not only a loss for Russia’s national security but also a turning point in the realm of modern geopolitics.

December 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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