Infantry shortage and morale drop harming Ukraine
By Lucas Leiroz | February 9, 2024
The Western media can no longer disguise the critical situation of the Ukrainian troops. In a recent article published by the Washington Post, journalists exposed the lack of personnel in the Ukrainian infantry as well as the serious effects on military morale. The case shows once again how the Ukrainian defeat is an inevitable reality, with all attempts to change the final outcome of the conflict being absolutely futile.
On-the-ground journalists reported to the Washington Post on February 8 that Ukrainian forces are suffering from an “acute shortage” of infantry soldiers on the front lines. In interviews with reporters, Ukrainian military commanders made clear their concerns about the deficiency of troops, as without a sufficient number of fighters it is impossible to conduct operations.
According to Ukrainian military interviewed by the newspaper, the number of casualties has increased in recent times due to intense Russian attacks. With the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Moscow is said to have taken the “offensive initiative” on the battlefield, leading to high-intensity operations that are annihilating Ukrainian soldiers, inflicting massive casualties on infantry units. The article’s sources say that many of the Ukrainian combat units are working with an extremely reduced number of soldiers. In some battalions, the actual number of troops is less than half of what would be an adequate quantity.
“In interviews across the front line in recent days, nearly a dozen soldiers and commanders told the Washington Post that personnel deficits were their most critical problem now, as Russia has regained the offensive initiative on the battlefield and is stepping up its attacks. One battalion commander in a mechanized brigade fighting in eastern Ukraine said that his unit currently has fewer than 40 infantry troops — the soldiers deployed in front-line trenches who hold off Russian assaults. A fully equipped battalion would have more than 200, the commander said. Another commander in an infantry battalion of a different brigade said his unit is similarly depleted.”, the article reads.
Another worrying side effect of the constant losses is the psychological destabilization of Ukrainians. Unable to escape the conflict or end it once and for all, soldiers on the frontlines end up despairing and having their morale damaged – which obviously has terrible consequences on the battlefield.
“They need to be replaced by someone (…) There is no one to replace them, so they sit there more, their morale drops, they get sick or suffer frostbite. They are running out. There is no one to replace them. The front is cracking. The front is crumbling. Why can’t we replace them? Because we don’t have people; nobody comes to the army. Why doesn’t anyone come to the army? Because the country didn’t tell people that they should go to the army. The state failed to explain to people that they should go to the army. Those who knew that they should go, they have already all run out.”, Aleksandr, a battalion commander, told journalists.
Also, Sergey, a commander fighting in Avdiivka, said: “You can feel it; people are exhausted both morally and physically (…) It’s very hard, the weather conditions, the constant shelling. They have a great impact on the human psyche.”
In fact, the report points out some serious problems in the military situation of Ukraine. The absence of infantrymen is due to the rapid exhaustion of Kiev’s forces. Ukrainian troops have been losing soldiers since the launching of the Russian operation, with the regime imposing forced mobilization measures to try to solve the problem. However, given the prolongation of hostilities, there are fewer and fewer citizens able to be recruited – which explains the minimal number of soldiers on the frontlines.
In the same sense, the psychological effects of this “meat grinder” are many. As a large part of the current Ukrainian army is made up of elderly people and teenagers with no previous military training, conscripts tend to become desperate in the face of war, not knowing how to react and simply losing any will to fight – which leads to surrenders and desertions.
Moral-psychological defeat is a key point in military sciences. The side that manages to impose such a defeat on its enemy gains a huge advantage on the battlefield. Even strong and well-equipped armies become unable to win a battle when they are psychologically affected to the point of losing the will to fight. In the Ukrainian case, it is even more serious, since both the material and psychological situations are terrible, there being no way to escape defeat.
There seems to be a vicious cycle in which the more Kiev spends on war and mobilizes soldiers, the more deaths and psychological defeats it suffers. This impasse makes it clear that, for Kiev, there is no military solution to the war. If the regime really wants peace and the reconstruction of the country, it must surrender and sign a peaceful agreement with Russia – otherwise, the losses will be even greater and, even so, there will be no change in the final result, since Russian victory is inevitable.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
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German frigate sets sail to join EU mission in support of Israel
The Cradle | February 8, 2024
The German government on 8 February dispatched the frigate Hesse from its North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven to the Red Sea, where it will join an EU naval mission in support of Israeli commercial interests.
“Free sea trade routes are the basis of our industry and of our capability to defend ourselves,” the chief of the German navy, Vice Admiral Jan Christian Kaack, told reporters in Berlin.
The Hesse air defense frigate is equipped with radars that can detect targets at a range of up to 400 km and missiles capable of countering ballistic missiles and drones at a range of more than 160 km.
EU foreign ministers are expected to approve the mission officially, codenamed “Aspides,” in mid-February.
In addition to Germany, France, Italy, and Greece have also expressed interest in joining the planned EU mission. According to the plans established by Brussels, the mission is expected to repel attacks but not attack Yemeni targets on land.
Brussels’ entry into the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) became a significant point of contention among several EU states last year, particularly Spain, which vetoed the participation of EU naval forces in the coalition in December.
The Yemeni armed forces have conducted dozens of attacks on US, UK, and Israeli-linked vessels trying to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait since mid-November. Sanaa maintains that the operations seek to pressure the west into stopping the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and have repeatedly pledged to stop the attacks once the siege of Gaza is lifted.
The US and the UK have launched over a dozen air raids across Yemen since mid-January in an attempt to deter Sanaa’s pro-Palestine actions. However, Yemeni authorities say they have no intent to scale back the campaign.
On Sunday, Ansarallah spokesman Muhammad Abdul Salam stressed that the western strategy will “not achieve any goal … but rather increase their dilemmas” in the region.
“Yemen’s decision to support Gaza is firm and honorable and will not be affected by any attack. [Our military capabilities] are not easy to destroy and have been rebuilt during years of harsh war,” the official said via social media, adding that Washington and London “should submit to international public opinion, which demands an immediate halt to the Israeli aggression [in Gaza].”
Biden vs Trump has profound implications for the world order
By Glenn Diesen | RT | February 8, 2024
The world is watching the US presidential election closely as it will have significant implications for global governance. President Joe Biden and former leader Donald Trump have very different views on how the world order should be governed and how the US should respond to its relative decline.
Biden wants to restore unipolarity with ideological economic and military blocs, strengthening the loyalty of allies and marginalizing adversaries. Trump has a more pragmatic approach. He believes the alliance system is too costly and limits diplomatic room for maneuver.
Since World War II, the US has enjoyed a privileged position in the key institutions of global governance. The Bretton Woods format and NATO ensured its economic and military dominance within the West. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Americans sought to extend their liberal hegemony around the globe.
They developed a security strategy based on global superiority and an expanded NATO. Washington assumed that its dominance would mitigate international anarchy and great power rivalry, and that liberal trade agreements would strengthen the US’ position at the top of global value chains. The replacement of international law with a ‘rules-based international order’ – in effect, sovereign inequality – was supposed to promote American hegemony and enhance the role of liberal democratic values.
However, unipolarity has proven to be a temporary phenomenon because it depends on the absence of rivals and values are devalued as instruments of power politics. The US has predictably exhausted its resources and the legitimacy of its hegemony, and competing powers have collectively counterbalanced Washington’s hegemonic ambitions by diversifying economic relations, staging retaliatory military operations, and developing new regional institutions of global governance.
The Cold War was a unique period in history because the West’s communist adversaries were largely disconnected from international markets, and military confrontation strengthened alliance solidarity to the extent that it mitigated economic rivalry between the capitalist allies. After the Cold War, however, the former communist powers, China and Russia, gained experience in managing economic processes, and submission to the US-led economic path lost its value for them.
The system of alliances has also begun to decline. The US previously was willing to subsidize European security in exchange for political influence. But Washington shifted its strategic focus to Asia, demanding that its European allies show geo-economic loyalty and not develop independent economic relations with rivals China and Russia. Meanwhile, the Europeans sought to use collective bargaining mechanisms through the European Union to establish autonomy and an equal partnership with the United States.
It is now clear that the unipolar moment has come to an end. The US military, exhausted by failed wars against weak opponents, is preparing for a conflict against Russia and China and a regional war in the Middle East.
The ‘rules-based international order’ is openly rejected by other major powers. US economic coercion to prevent the emergence of new centers of power only encourages separation from US technology, industry, transport corridors, banks, payment systems, and the dollar.
The US economy is struggling with unsustainable debt and inflation, while socio-economic decline is fueling political polarization and instability. Against this backdrop, Americans could elect a new president who will seek fresh solutions for global governance.
Biden’s global governance: Ideology and bloc politics
Biden wants to restore US global dominance by reviving the Cold War system of alliances that divided the world into dependent allies and weakened adversaries. It pits Europe against Russia, Arab states against Iran, India against China, and so on. Inclusive international institutions of global governance are being weakened and replaced by confrontational economic and military blocs.
Biden’s bloc politics is legitimized by simplistic heuristics. The complexity of the world is reduced to an ideological struggle between liberal democracies and authoritarian states. Ideological rhetoric means demanding geo-economic loyalty from the ‘free world’ while promoting overly aggressive and undiplomatic language. Thus, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are smeared as ‘dictators’.
Multilateralism is welcome to the extent that it reinforces US leadership. Biden is less hostile to the UN and the EU than his predecessor, and under his administration, the US has rejoined the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement. But Biden has not revisited the Iran nuclear deal or reduced economic pressure on China to change its supply chains. The institutions that could constrain the US – the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – are not favored by either Biden or Trump.
The deteriorating socio-economic and political situation in the US will also affect Biden’s approach to global governance. Biden will remain reluctant to enter into new ambitious trade agreements as the losers of globalization and neo-liberal economics within the US move into the camp of the populist opposition. Nor will he favor free trade agreements in areas where China has a technological and industrial advantage, and his attempts to cut European states off from Russian energy and Chinese technology will further fragment the world into competing economic blocs.
Western Europe will continue to weaken and become more dependent on the US, to the point where it will have to give up any claim to ‘strategic autonomy’ and ‘European sovereignty’.
Biden has also shown a willingness to disrupt allied country’s industries through initiatives such as the US Inflation Reduction Act.
Trump’s global governance: ‘America First’ and great power pragmatism
Trump seeks to restore American greatness by reducing the costs of alliance systems and hegemony. He sees alliances against strategic rivals as undesirable if they involve a transfer of relative economic power to allies. Trump believes that NATO is an “obsolete” relic of the Cold War because Western Europeans should contribute more to their own security. In his view, the US should perhaps reduce its presence in the Middle East and allies should pay America for their security in some way. Economic agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have promoted US leadership, but under Trump, they have been abandoned because of the transfer of economic benefits to allies. Trump does not reject US imperialism, but wants to make it sustainable by ensuring a higher return on investment.
Less tied to the alliance system and unencumbered by ideological dogma, Trump can take a more pragmatic approach to other great powers. Trump is able to make political deals with adversaries, use friendly and diplomatic language when talking to Putin and Xi, and even perhaps make a diplomatic visit to North Korea. While Biden’s division of the world into liberal democracies and authoritarian states makes Russia an adversary, Trump’s view of the world as nationalists/patriots versus cosmopolitans/globalists makes Russia a potential ally. This ideological view complements the pragmatic consideration of not pushing Russia into the arms of China, the main rival of the US.
Global governance will be utilitarian in this case, and the main goal of the US will be to regain a competitive advantage over China. Trump is fundamentally inclined to blame China excessively for America’s economic problems. Economic pressure on China is intended to restore US technological/industrial dominance and protect domestic jobs. Economic nationalist ideas reflect the ideas of the 19th-century American system, where economic policy is based on fair trade rather than free trade. Trump appears to view the entire post-Cold War security system in Europe as a costly attempt to subsidize Western Europe’s declining importance. These same Europeans have antagonized Russia and pushed it into the arms of China. Trump’s unclear stance on NATO has even prompted Congress to pass a bill prohibiting presidents from unilaterally deciding whether to withdraw the US from NATO.
While Trump is in favor of improving relations with Russia, his presidency would be unlikely to achieve this goal.
The US can be seen as an irrational actor to the extent that it allows domestic political battles to influence its foreign policy. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff fabricated the Steele dossier and Russiagate to portray Trump as a Kremlin agent. In the 2020 election, Biden’s campaign staff attempted to portray the Hunter Biden laptop scandal as a Russian disinformation campaign and accused Russia of paying bribes to kill US troops in Afghanistan. These false accusations were designed to distract the public and make Trump look weak on Russia. All of this ultimately soured relations with Russia and even contributed to the current conflict in Ukraine.
Both Biden and Trump seek to reverse the relative decline of the US in the world, but the difference in their approaches will have a profound impact on global governance. While Biden seeks to restore US greatness through systems of ideological alliances that will fragment global governance into regional blocs, Trump will seek to withdraw from the institutions of global governance because they drain US resources and impede pragmatic policies.
Glenn Diesen is a Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal.
US hints at sanctions if Hungary doesn’t soon ratify Sweden’s NATO membership
REMIX NEWS | FEBRUARY 8, 2024
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a press conference on Wednesday that he had spoken to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán a few days ago, who assured him that the Hungarian Parliament would approve Sweden’s membership shortly after the start of the spring session.
Sweden’s membership of NATO has been in front of the Hungarian parliament for a while now, but no decision has been taken, despite an extraordinary session of parliament on Monday, which the governing party MPs, however, did not attend. This has put Orbán under increasing pressure from international officials.
Stoltenberg held a joint press conference with White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Brussels on Wednesday — the U.S. advisor arrived in the Belgian capital a day earlier. Among other things, Ukraine was discussed at the briefing, but later, The Washington Post asked him about Sweden’s membership of NATO.
The reporter recalled that the Hungarian government had promised that it would not be the last one to back Sweden’s NATO membership, yet this is the case, and it is still not known when Sweden will be a member of the alliance. He also added that some U.S. lawmakers have already proposed sanctions against Hungary for delaying Swedish membership, and asked the two officials if they still trust Hungary.
In response, Stoltenberg made clear that he believed Sweden could join the alliance soon.
“I spoke with (Prime Minister Orbán) a few days ago, and he made it very clear that he strongly supports Swedish membership of the alliance. It is also clear that the Hungarian parliament is not in session now, but they will reconvene at the end of February, and the message was that soon after that, they will make a decision on ratification of Sweden, so I expect that Sweden will be a full member in the near future,” Stoltenberg said.
Sullivan was more forceful in his response, indicating that the U.S. patience was not unlimited:
“So, I’m not going to stand here today and make particular threats or speculations about steps we would take down the road. But of course, our patience on this can’t be unlimited either. So, we’ll continue to watch it carefully but hope that there is a constructive resolution to this issue in the very near term,” he said.
When You Realize You’ve Been Had
BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | FEBRUARY 6, 2024
In Dante’s Inferno, the 9th and final circle of hell, “the lowest, blackest, and farthest from heaven,” is reserved those guilty of treachery against those in whom they have cultivated a bond of trust.
I often thought about this in 2013, when I was living in Menlo Park, California and became friends with a man of who was a benefactor of the VA hospitals in Menlo Park and in Palo Alto. He was especially concerned about young soldiers who’d suffered traumatic brain injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On a few occasions we made the rounds and visited patients who’d sustained this kind of injury. The strangest were those who had retained motor skills and seemed to recognize us, but who also seemed completely indifferent to us. Some had suffered from speech impairment and seemed frightened of us. A nurse told me that it was common for this kind of patient to have developed a passionate interest in Facebook and to spend most of his waking hours scrolling through it.
In 2013, it was hard for me to fathom that hundreds of thousands of young men in the United States—many with wives and small children—had sustained Traumatic Brain Injuries. Many could still function in their day to day lives, but suffered irritability, frequent headaches, and a feeling of disconnection from their family and friends. On the extreme end of the scale were the completely disabled, doomed to spend the rest of their lives in VA hospitals.
In 2017, Lindquist, Love, et al. published Traumatic Brain Injury in Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans: New Results from a National Random Sample Study. As the opening of the report states:
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been called a “signature injury” of Iraq and Afghanistan Conflicts. The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) reports nearly 350,000 incident diagnoses of TBI in the U.S. military since 2000. Among those deployed, estimated rates of probable TBI range from 11–23%.
I thought it notable that the U.S. military was, apparently, completely unprepared for roadside bombs constructed to focus the blast on particular sections of road as a convey is passing by. It wasn’t so much shrapnel and other missiles striking the head as the supersonic, explosive shockwave that does the brain damage. Click on the video below to see an example of a large roadside bomb blasting a U.S. convoy.
I got to be pals with a psychiatrist who worked at the VA. In public, around his colleagues, he tried to put on an optimistic face about it. In private, over our occasional dinners, he seemed very despondent that anything could be done for these guys.
“No one really knows what to do about these injuries,” he told me. “A lot of doctors who work at the VA will talk to you about promising new therapies, but most of them are more interested in getting grant money for their pet projects than in doing anything for their patients.”
I wondered how many of these young men ultimately realized that the United States government had lied to them—that their mission in Iraq had never been about protecting the American people from a hostile foreign dictator and his alleged terrorist network—but rather to pursue the mad dreams of insane old men in Washington.
This morning I thought about my VA experiences in a decade ago when I saw that the same cabal of old hawks in Washington are now beating the drums of war against Iran—a nation three times the size and with twice the population of Iraq.
I wonder if Joe Biden or Lindsay Graham or Jake Sullivan are even aware of the 350,000 men who suffered Traumatic Brain Injuries in the course of Washington’s disastrous military adventures in the Middle East twenty years ago. I sort of doubt it.
Understanding that one has been deceived is one of the most painful experiences in life. It begins with an uneasy feeling of cognitive dissonance — a sinking feeling that someone you have trusted has not been honest about an important matter. Later it dawns on you that you’ve been had. It’s a traumatic experience, and the greater the deception, the harder it is to recover from it. At root of the trauma, I suppose, is the feeling that you put your faith, heart and soul into something that wasn’t real.
Because most Americans have been insulated from the disastrous consequences of its government’s Forever War policy, they are apparently slow to recognize that they are constantly being conned by the terrible men and women who run the U.S. government—selfish, ambitious, power-hungry men and women who do not care at all about the citizenry they are supposed to represent and serve.
Who Will Fight These Wars Anyhow?
By Kym Robinson | The Libertarian Institute | February 6, 2024
The war drums are beating, and public officials and the media are certain that the enemy must be conquered. The war is over there, away from home, in someone else’s land. The public is conditioned to accept that war is inevitable, that for the liberal democracies of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States it is an “obligation.” It seldom matters whether the voting tax base wants war or not. As bombs drop in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, as Israel destroys Gaza and the Russians fight in Ukraine, Washington and its allies talk about expanding the warfront to include Iran, China, and North Korea. Perpetual war is the health of empire, the glory of the nation, and the profit for a few. But who fights these wars?
Many of the veterans who fought in the Global War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan are past their prime, dead, injured, or cynical of the government that exploited them. The recruitment drives, even as the criteria are lowered, are seducing less and less willing bodies to fill the uniforms. The career incentive to join the military is not as appealing when war is a guarantee. Eligible young men are not so naive and removed from the understanding that their mental and physical health may be at risk that they’ll venture into another overseas war. Those who traditionally joined to protect and defend are less inclined to do so given that the mlitary is an offensive instrument of policy, recklessly used without regard for consequence.
In 2024 it’s hard enough for employers to find capable young workers who can handle physical or moderately skilled work, and who will turn up consistently. It’s easier for a lot of people to lean into the welfare state, to seek comfortable, inconsequential jobs or to find careers that don’t involve killing. Physical and mental health is a meandering factor in a culture that swells with obesity and has a populace riddled with depression and anxiety over the mundane. In Australia it is easier and far more profitable for someone to either go on a disability pension (for a litany of real or imagined reasons), or to become a high paid support worker for said pensioners rather than diving into military or even police service.
War is often a voyeur’s experience, where some are cuckolded for the entertainment or cynicism of others. War is the religion of the Anglosphere. Every generation has its war, a foreign land that rolls off the tongue with ease only to return to forgotten obscurity in a generation’s time. Some, however, like Vietnam or Iraq linger permanently. But most are forgotten as war zones and now only exist as destinations for the soldier’s grandchildren to visit, enjoy the food, or marry from, like Korea and Malaysia. The adventurers, true believers, mercenaries, and those with seemingly no other options do still enlist, but there’s less of them.
It’s not just that the military is struggling to get new recruits, but also re-enlistments. The relationship between the military and its members is disfigured as inefficiency and dysfunction become more openly discussed. On social media anti-military voices are competing against their slogans and the empty promises of recruiters in a tug of war between the warfare state and those who are skeptical of its very existence. Social media “influencers” like the Island Boys are paid to push recruitment for the Army alongside the advertising of energy drinks and other affiliate marketing thrown their way—though it is unlikely that they themselves would enlist or be capable of doing so. The children watching are impressionable, all the same.
Woke cultural messaging has also harmed the military, as it has disenfranchised its traditional base while attempting to appeal to those who have no stomach for training, let alone warfare. The wars themselves, along with the government’s own woke cultural shift and attempts at inclusion, have deranged the recruiters task of satisfying numbers and valuable candidates for the services. Confused advertising and a disdain for the people who usually fill the uniforms in warfare has hamstrung the military when it needs bodies to kill and die for it. A woke window dressing to satisfy the academic and corporate zeitgeist may seem empowering, but in reality is another form of mandated delusion.
The government’s will for war exceeds its population’s capacity to wage it. Conscription tends to not be a viable solution. Ukraine and Russia have embraced such traditions of martial slavery and it has unveiled a force of fodder to be killed. Another generation of “McNamara’s Morons” is an unsatisfactory solution which may lead to liability for both commanders and what few skilled and motivated professionals remain in the military.
Regardless of the human attrition and how thinly spread the capable and willing may become in such a war, the high maintenance of modern weapon systems will erode their capabilities over time. Skilled crews and technicians will be required to work almost non-stop, not to mention the manufacture and logistics required to feed such machines for prolonged operations, especially in combat against an enemy who is near peer or in some theaters a peer level threat. It is one thing to attack Houthis in Yemen who are recovering from years of war against the Saudi coalition but it is another to wage war against Iran or China on their home turf, a war they have been preparing for. Let’s not forget, neither of them have ambitions to invade Australia, the United States or United Kingdom. But the reverse is a constant.
Images of drones chasing Russian or Ukraine soldiers around their AFVs, only to detonate once in proximity, exposes us to the modern realities of war. The distance between the killer and the killed is not a new thing. The drone and remote weapon system is becoming smaller, with a greater range and versatility that may have people logging on for a few hours a day from home to assassinate strangers thousands of miles away with as much regard as though they are killing NPCs in a computer game. That in itself is not how wars are to be won. That same technology and efficiency of distance will be used against the invader as well. The likeliness of sympathetic outsiders “logging on” to join the fight is a reality that may also occur. Those who will fight for either side given any incentive is also a reality, so long as they have a device that allows them to connect to the remote killing machines. The future remains.
Contractors are becoming more common, professionals who are not constrained by government religion when it comes to how a military must serve and act in matters of formal tradition and legal status. They’re killers and operators who serve the government, work alongside the military, and should they die will not become a statistic that influences politics at home. Many are ex-servicemen of the government that they now are hired by, trained and motivated elements that perform tasks as a service to their singular customer. The Russians on the other hand have a more varied mercenary custom, one that is made up of contractors while also using prisoner units, inspired by the promise of pay and freedom. Both ancient aspects of war are to be dug up in a modern context.
Mercenaries and even drone operators are still only a finite resource, and automated systems are a little ways off. Wars of such a grand scale on so many fronts will still require boots on the ground. The imaginations of the stoic German soldier manning the Atlantic wall in the weeks before D-Day betray the reality that many of the defending Wehrmacht were former Soviet soldiers and a rag tag of convalescing others. Horse-drawn weapons from those captured to mutations of expedience with men in ill fitting uniforms crisscrossing a frontier that consumed men and material was the other reality far in the East. Contrary to the mechanized depictions of a technologically superior, super race of warriors, the reality, then as it is now, is that logistics, man power, and attrition are immutable factors in war.
Waging numerous small wars on a limited scale or even as an occupying force in an attempt to “civilize” a wilderness will always consume. They can become black holes that suck the life, money, and material out of an invader. Yet, still mostly men will be required for these prolonged operations and the well for such men is running dry. The post-9/11 era provided many eager bodies who felt the euphoria for vengeance against enemies. The terrorists and their “alien religion” was an easy to hate specter as the twin towers smouldered into smoke and ash. Over two decades later and the reality of such wars is more apparent to the wider public, while those willing men are now dead, injured, or robbed of their youth. The next generation does not have the eagerness for war, and the crusader’s zeal is not so widely felt.
So, as the drums of war beat and the call to arms is made by those who will never fight it, the question remains: who will? No matter what the claimed reasons for war is—spreading democracy, human rights, humanitarianism, security, or hegemonic expedience for many at home—many may very well. But agree enough to enlist? Unlikely. Many who do believe in the need for war are the creatures of Facebook or social media bobble heads, spectators and opinion spewers alike. They are most welcome to form their own battalions to fight for their cause. They won’t, but rather instead they will merely support the government in its ambition to send mostly men to die and kill. Those killers, however, are becoming fewer. Improving technology so that the human element for war is less important and finding incentives to pay, reward, and motivate human beings so that they will kill strangers with little regard are weak solutions.
The one constant, regardless of the means and methods, is that war will always hurt the innocent. Perhaps in time, as the liberal democracies depress into ill health and rely on automated machines to do the killing, it will be from the minds of the weapons who grow the morality to say, “No more.” For now, while some minds in government seek more war, the public’s flesh is less willing or too flabby to make it so.
Is a New Korean War in the Offing?
BY GREGORY ELICH | COUNTERPUNCH | FEBRUARY 5, 2024
In recent days, U.S. media have been proclaiming that North Korea plans to initiate military action against its neighbor to the south. An article by Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, neither previously prone to making wild assertions, created quite a splash and set off a chain reaction of media fear-mongering. In Carlin’s and Hecker’s assessment, “[W]e believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” They add that if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is convinced that engagement with the United States is not possible, then “his recent words and actions point toward the prospects of a military solution using [his nuclear] arsenal.” [1]
U.S. officials have stated that while they do not see “an imminent risk of a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim Jong Un “could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after having shifted to a policy of open hostility.” [2] How do these sensationalist claims stack up against the evidence?
It is no secret that lately, the stance of the United States and South Korea has hardened against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea). Since the centerpiece for suggesting that war may be on the horizon is Kim’s speech at the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, its content is worth examining in some detail. [3] What strikes one when reading the text is that mainstream media have taken quotes out of context and ignored much of the content of Kim’s speech, creating an impression of unprovoked belligerence.
Also generally absent from media reporting is the speech’s relationship to the backdrop of events since the far-right Yoon Suk Yeol became president of South Korea in May 2022. Yoon came into office determined to smash every vestige of the improved inter-Korean environment established during his predecessor’s term. Instead, Yoon prioritized making South Korea a subordinate partner in the Biden administration’s hyper-militarized Indo-Pacific Strategy.
To fully understand Kim Jong Un’s speech, one must also consider the nature of the Biden administration’s rapid military escalation in the Asia-Pacific. The United States conducts a virtually nonstop series of military exercises at North Korea’s doorstep, practicing the bombing and invasion of that nation. One South Korean analyst has counted 42 joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises conducted in 2023 alone, along with ten more involving Japan. [4] Those totals do not include exercises that the U.S. and South Korea engaged in outside of Northeast Asia, such as Exercise Talisman Sabre in Australia and Exercise Cobra Gold in Thailand. Moreover, U.S. actions on the Korean Peninsula must also be situated within the broader geopolitical framework of its hostility towards China.
Last year, in an act of overt intimidation, the United States conducted seven exercises with nuclear-capable bombers over the Korean Peninsula. [5] Additional flights involved the B-1 bomber, which the U.S. Air Force says “can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons.” [6] Through its actions, the United States sends far more provocative messages than anything that could be honestly construed in Kim’s speech. But then, we are led to see nothing amiss in such aggressive behavior from the United States. Nevertheless, the threat is real and unmistakable from the targeted nation’s perspective.
It also has not gone unnoticed in Pyongyang that U.S. and South Korean military forces regularly conduct training exercises to practice assassinating Kim Jong Un and other North Korean officials. [7] Just this month, U.S. Green Berets and soldiers from South Korea’s Special Warfare Command completed training focused on the targeted killing of North Korean individuals. [8] The Biden administration avers that it harbors no hostile intent toward the DPRK, but its actions say otherwise, loud and clear.
North Korea, with a GDP that the United Nations ranks just behind that of Congo and Laos, is considered such a danger that the U.S. must confront it with substantial military might. An inconvenient question that is never asked is why the DPRK is singled out for punishment and threats when the other nuclear non-members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – each armed with ballistic missiles — are not. What distinguishes North Korea from India, Pakistan, and Israel? How is it that North Korea is regarded as a threat to peace but not Israel, notwithstanding mounting evidence to the contrary? The essential distinction is that North Korea is the only one of the four that is not a U.S. ally; moreover, one which the U.S. wishes to retain the ability to bomb, whether or not it ever exercises the option to do so.
It is a tribute to the persuasiveness of propaganda that the United States, with its record of multiple wars, bombings, and drone assassinations in recent decades, can convince so many that the DPRK, which has done none of these things during the same period, is a danger to international peace and stability. Yet, such towering hypocrisy goes largely unnoticed. It would appear that there is no principle involved in targeting only North Korea and not the other nuclear-armed non-members of the NPT — unless outrage over a small nation following an independent path being able to defend itself can be regarded as a principle.
Predictably, Washington think tank analysts and media commentators are throwing more heat than light on the subject of Kim’s pronouncements, and they are always ready with a cliché at hand. Some, like Bruce W. Bennett of RAND Corporation, let their imagination run wild, conjuring bizarre absurdities. Bennett suggests that armed with more nuclear weapons in the years ahead, North Korea “could threaten one or more U.S. cities with nuclear attack if the United States does not repeal its sanctions against North Korea.” Or perhaps, he suggests, the DPRK could threaten the U.S. with a limited nuclear attack “unless it abandons its alliance with [South Korea]” or “disengage from Ukraine.” As for South Korea, Bennett warns that Kim might insist that it “pay him $100 billion per year and permanently discontinue producing K-pop…” [9] This is what passes as expert analysis in Washington.
The military section of Kim’s speech was at root defensive, pointing out that North Korea’s “security environment has been steadily deteriorated” and that if it wants to take “the road of independent development,” it must be fully prepared to defend itself. Kim quotes specific threats made by U.S. and South Korean leaders to emphasize his awareness that his nation is in the crosshairs.
At one point in his speech, Kim suggested that the constitution could specify “the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK [Republic of Korea, the formal name for South Korea] and annex it…in case war breaks out…” He added, “There is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war, but once a war becomes a reality facing us, we will never try to avoid it.” Such a war, he warned, “will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea and put an end to its existence” and “inflict an unimaginably crushing calamity and defeat upon the U.S.” Kim continues, “If the enemies ignite a war, our Republic will resolutely punish the enemies by mobilizing all its military forces including nuclear weapons.” Harsh language, indeed, intended to remind the war hawks in Washington and Seoul not to imagine that their nations are invulnerable if they attack the DPRK. Note also the conditional phrasing, which tends to get downplayed in Western media.
Even less attention is paid to more direct clarifying language, such as Kim’s statement that the DPRK’s military is for “legitimate self-defense” and “not a means of preemptive attack for realizing unilateral reunification by force of arms.” And: “Explicitly speaking, we will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us.”
It was entirely predictable that Western media would put the worst spin on Kim’s blunt language that mirrored earlier South Korean pronouncements. The month before Kim’s speech, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik warned, “North Korea has only two choices – peace or destruction. If North Korea makes reckless actions that harm peace, only a hell of destruction awaits them.” [10] A few days later, Yoon ordered his military to launch an “immediate and overwhelming response” to any provocation by the DPRK. [11] Yoon and South Korean military officials use the term ‘provocation’ so loosely as to encompass almost any action the DPRK takes that they do not like, including what is normal behavior for other nations – or for South Korea itself, for that matter. South Korean and North Korean rhetoric identifying each other as enemies and destruction in the event of war differ in that the former preceded the latter. By ignoring the fact that North Korea is reacting to prior South Korean statements, mainstream media can portray Kim’s language as unprovoked.
Last December, Yoon heightened the risk of conflict when he visited an infantry division near the border and gave them an order: “In case of provocations, I ask you to immediately retaliate in response and report it later.” [12] Vague in defining neither “provocation” nor the appropriate response level and delegating to lower-level commanders to decide those questions, this formula potentially can transform a minor clash of arms into a conflict of wider impact.
Kim’s statements are presented in Western media as tantamount to a plan to start a war. Earlier statements of a similar nature by the Yoon administration that created an acrimonious atmosphere are rendered invisible or uncontroversial. It is fair to say that given North Korea’s longstanding practice of responding in kind, Kim may have adopted more restrained phrasing without South Korean officials setting the tone.
Western media have raised concerns over Kim’s labeling of South Korea as a “principal enemy.” We are not reminded that nearly one year before, South Korea had re-designated the DPRK as “our enemy” in its Defense White Paper. [13] Under Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, the defense paper dropped the reference to North Korea as an enemy. [14] The general pattern has been for liberal presidents to shun that tag in the interests of inter-Korean relations and for conservative presidents to embrace it as one element in their project to undo progress. Yoon himself frequently refers to North Korea as the enemy, and his administration’s National Security Strategy document describes the Kill Chain system, which is designed to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea. [15] In omitting such details, cause and effect are inverted, reinforcing the media-constructed Orientalist image of an irrational leader at the helm of the DPRK, prone to unpredictable statements and rash acts.
Patience has run thin in Pyongyang, as Biden’s trilateral alliance with South Korea and Japan, “buoyed with war fever,” as Kim put it, sharply escalates military tensions in the region. In a sharp reversal, North Korea has abandoned its longstanding policy of seeking improved inter-Korean relations and working toward peaceful reunification. Any headway achieved in the past has quickly been undone in South Korea whenever the conservative party came to power. Still, Yoon has taken matters further than the norm, not only willfully dynamiting inter-Korean relations but also deliberately raising the risk of military conflict. Inter-Korean relations have reached such a nadir under Yoon that the DPRK sees no hope of progress in the current circumstances. The North Koreans are not wrong in that perception.
Sadly, in a clear signal of its exasperation with Yoon, North Korea demolished the Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, and all governmental bodies responsible for reunification planning and projects were shut down. The latter steps are not inherently irreversible, however. But as long as Yoon remains in power, there is no conceivable possibility of progress on reunification. Yoon has slammed the door shut on inter-Korean relations.
One would never know it from Western reports, but more than two-thirds of Kim’s speech focused on economic development. “The supreme task,” Kim announced, “is to stabilize and improve the people’s living as early as possible.” Peace is an essential prerequisite for the realization of that goal. North Koreans are well aware of American and South Korean military capabilities, and a war would not only wipe out new economic projects but most of the existing infrastructure as well.
Immense damage has been done to the DPRK’s economy by sanctions designed to target the entire population and inflict as much suffering as possible. [16] The period when North Korea closed its border with China in response to the COVID-19 pandemic added to economic challenges. Reversing direction is imperative. In his speech, Kim called for “a radical turn in the economic construction and improvement of the people’s living standard” and said that progress is being made “despite unprecedented trials.” Kim enumerated industrial, power, housing, and other ongoing projects.
Kim admitted there have been internal challenges in economic development. “It is a reality that the Party and the government yet fail to meet even the simple demand of the people in life…” In particular, regional and urban-rural economic imbalances have plagued the North Korean economy for decades. “At present,” Kim continued, “there is a great disparity of living standards between the capital city and provinces and between towns and the countryside.” Kim acknowledged that these issues have not been adequately addressed in the past, but it “is an immediate task” to do so now.
Kim took the occasion to officially unveil the launch of the Regional Development 20×10 Policy. This ambitious plan calls for substantially raising material and cultural standards in twenty counties over the next ten years, including constructing regional industrial factories and establishing advanced educational institutions. In particular, emphasis is to be given to scientific and technological development. The aim is to even out regional imbalances and to accelerate overall development.
None of this can be achieved if the U.S. and South Korea are showering the DPRK with high explosives, and the Regional 20×10 Policy makes nonsense of Western scaremongering that Kim has decided to go to war. As usual, though, when it comes to reporting on North Korea, assertion substitutes for evidence, and we can expect Washington think tanks, U.S. media, military contractors, and the Biden administration to capitalize on the manufactured image of a war-mad Kim Jong Un to accelerate the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, aimed against the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China. For his part, Yoon can be expected to amplify military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and sharpen his war on South Korean progressives. What is not in the cards is militarism abating in the foreseeable future.
Notes.
[1] Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War,” 38 North, January 11, 2024.
[2] Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. is Watching North Korea for Signs of Lethal Military Action,” New York Times, January 25, 2024.
[3] “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech at 10th Session of the 14th SPA,” KCNA, January 16, 2024.
[4] http://www.minplusnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=14494
[5] Chae Yun-hwan, “S. Korea, U.S. Stage Joint Air Drills with B-52H Bombers Over the Yellow Sea,” Yonhap, November 15, 2023.
[6] https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104500/b-1b-lancer/
[7] Jeongmin Kim, “Drills on Assassinating Kim Jong Un Remain an ‘Option,’ ROK Defense Chief Says,” NK News, December 19, 2023.
[8] Lee Yu-jung and Esther Chung, “Kim Jong-un Instructs North Korea’s Navy to Prepare for War,” JoongAng Ilbo, February 2, 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJF7tbzwfY
Donald Kirk, “U.S. to Enrage Kim Jong Un with Assassination Dry Run,” Daily Beast, August 19, 2022.
[9] Bruce W. Bennett, “Is North Korea Really Getting Ready for a War Against America?” The National Interest, January 17, 2024.
[10] Chae Yun-hwan, “Defense Chief Warns N. Korea of ‘Hell of Destruction’ in Event of Reckless Acts,” Yonhap, December 13, 2023.
[11] “Yoon Orders Swift, Overwhelming Response to N. Korean Provocation,” KBS World, December 18, 2023.
[12] Kim Han-joo, “Yoon Orders Military to Retaliate First, Report Later in Case of Enemy Attacks,” Yonhap, December 28, 2023.
[13] Kwon Hyuk-chul, “S. Korea’s First Defense White Paper Under Yoon Defines N. Korea as ‘Enemy’”, Hankyoreh, February 17, 2023.
[14] Yosuke Onchi, “South Korea No Longer Calls Pyongyang ‘Enemy’ in Defense Paper,” Nikkei Asia, January 16, 2019.
Josh Smith, “South Korea Doubles Down on Risky ‘Kill Chain’ Plans to Counter North Korea Nuclear Threat,” Reuters, July 25, 2022.
[16] https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/trumps-war-on-the-north-korean-people/
West totally wrong about Ukraine – Orban
RT | February 4, 2024
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has expressed hope that the newly-approved €50 billion ($54 billion) package of aid will be used to support civilians by preventing the collapse of the bankrupt Ukrainian state, rather than to fund more weapons and bloodshed.
Orban has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Ukraine and peace talks between Moscow and Kiev, arguing that Ukraine cannot possibly hope to defeat Russia on the battlefield. This position, as well as Budapest’s opposition to sanctions on Russia and blocking of EU military aid to Ukraine, has seen Hungary vilified in Kiev and threatened with sanctions by its EU allies.
“The West still thinks that time is on our side. Yet, I think the opposite is true. I think that time is on the side of the Russians, and the longer the war goes on, the more people will die, and the balance of power will not change in Ukraine’s favor,” Orban told Kossuth Radio on Friday.
According to Russia’s estimates, Kiev has lost more than 400,000 service members killed, wounded, and missing since the conflict began in February 2022. Ukraine’s top commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, has repeatedly insisted in recent weeks that the armed forces are critically understaffed, and even President Vladimir Zelensky admitted on Sunday that combat operations on the ground have reached a “stalemate.”
The Hungarian leader went on to insist that “peace will come when there is change in Brussels,” and that after almost two years of failed hopes to defeat Russia militarily “everything in Brussels should revolve around achieving a ceasefire as soon as possible.”
The EU approved the new aid package on Thursday, having pressured Orban into lifting his veto. The Hungarian painted the decision as a victory for Budapest, claiming that otherwise Brussels “would have taken away the funds earmarked for Hungary and sent that to Ukraine as well.”
“We are not sending weapons, we get our money from Brussels, and we will contribute to the civil financing of Ukraine,” Orban said on Friday, reiterating his firm position that the only way to end the Ukrainian crisis was through negotiations.
New wave of US, UK strikes target Yemen
The Cradle – February 4, 2024
US and UK warships and fighter jets bombed Yemen on 4 February, in a wave of missile strikes US officials claim hit 36 targets.
The US said in a CENTCOM statement that it hit “36 targets at 13 locations,” striking “underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars, and helicopters.”
According to the statement, the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand took part in the attacks.
The strikes were in response to Yemeni efforts to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. The Yemeni attacks are in response to Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.
Rather than press its ally Israel to stop its military campaign, which has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, the US has joined forces with the UK to bomb Yemen.
Saturday’s strikes were launched by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft, and the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the UK Defense Ministry.
The Yemen Armed Forces issued a statement detailing where the attacks took place, reporting 13 raids on Sanaa, 9 on Hodeidah, 11 on Taiz, 7 on Al-Bayda, 7 on Hajjah, and one on Saada.
“These attacks will not deter us from our moral, religious, and humanitarian stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and will not go unanswered and punished,” read the statement.
The strikes come one day after the US sent B-1 bombers to target 85 locations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing at least 16. This was in response to an operation by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that targeted US military outpost Tower 22 in Jordan last week, killing three US soldiers.
US officials reportedly told Al-Jazeera that the strikes on Yemen are “considered a next round of retaliation for the killing of the [US] soldiers in Jordan.”
Like Ansarallah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq coalition, formed after 7 October, has also targeted Israel, as well as US bases in Syria and Iraq. The groups say their attacks are in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the US has supported militarily and diplomatically.
Ansarallah leaders in Yemen say they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the US and UK bombing.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, an Ansarallah official, said, “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote on social media that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”
Possible NATO Corps Deployment to Ukraine May Become ‘Suicide Mission for Those Troops’
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 04.02.2024
The UK has urged its NATO allies to consider sending the alliance’s expeditionary force to Ukraine, an informed source told Sputnik. According to the source, the alleged move came “in connection with the unfavorable developments in the Ukrainian theater of military operations for Kiev”.
The insider added that Britain also called on NATO to consider imposing a no-fly zone over the territory controlled by the Zelensky regime and to increase military aid to Ukraine.
”The UK’s reported plans about deploying NATO’s expeditionary corps to Ukraine is “a fantastical delusion on the part of the Brits and has no foundation in reality,” retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson told Sputnik.
“But just because the Brits are insane does not mean Russia can ignore them. It is a serious proposal,” he added.
Johnson was partly echoed by Matthew Gordon-Banks, an international relations consultant, former member of Parliament and retired senior research fellow at the UK Defence Academy, who said he didn’t think the rumors of a NATO force in Ukraine should be taken seriously.
“The suggestions I have heard are quite unrealistic at present,” Gordon-Banks stated.
Asked to comment on the “unfavorable development of events” for Kiev on the battlefield, he emphasized that “things are collapsing in Kiev quite quickly”.
“[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky has not been able to fire his top general, and I think he is now very much a ‘lame duck’ president,” Gordon-Banks argued, referring to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny.
The same tone was struck by Earl Rasmussen, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel turned geopolitical and military affairs consultant, who warned that if the information about London’s plans is true, and “if this is somebody’s dream, it could quickly become a nightmare for British and NATO forces.
“But it is not a realistic solution or proposal. Russia has complete air dominance, escalatory dominance, logistical dominance, ammunition dominance. This would be catastrophic for any UK forces and definitely would show a symbol of direct NATO involvement, which could really be dangerous, as far as escalation goes,” Rasmussen emphasized, noting that “the British forces would probably be wiped out, fairly rapidly.”
The US Army veteran suggested that someone in the UK military might be having “some type of delusional experience” for even suggesting such a scenario. “It’s a suicide mission for those troops. And it definitely would pull NATO into a much more dangerous situation and direct confrontation [with Russia],” Rasmussen concluded.
Nuland leaves sense of foreboding in Kiev
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | FEBRUARY 4, 2024
The commencement of political upheavals in world affairs sometimes lies with a seemingly obscure event. This is not to say that the shooting down of a Russian Ilyushin-76 military transport plane carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war over the territory of Belgorod Region by two missiles fired from the area of Liptsy, in Kharkov Region (Ukraine) on January 24 is anything like the spark that set off World War I when a Serbian patriot shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the city of Sarajevo in 1914 and within a month, the Austrian army invaded Serbia.
That said, the downing of the Russian plane would have far-reaching consequences now that Russian investigators found irrefutable proof that the plane was shot down with a US-made Patriot surface-to-air system. President Vladimir Putin disclosed this himself.
Russia sought an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in the matter but France as the president disallowed the request, which would have cast the West in bad light. The fact of the matter is that the US and Russia are not at war and the Americans would have no hesitation to call such an outrageous incident as an act of war if a Pentagon plane were to be shot down with a Russian missile in the US airspace.
To be sure, Russia will draw appropriate conclusions and formulate a measured reaction. This is an escalation spiral as Russia’s election approaches.
Indeed, all indications are that the US strategy through this year is to ‘hold, build and strike’ at Russia, as outlined in an article in the War on the Rocks co-authored by Michael Kofman, a leading American military analyst and the director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for a New American Security. Basically, the strategy is predicated on the premise that Russia is still far from its official goal of seizing the entire Donbas and therefore, what happens in 2024 is likely to determine the future trajectory of the war.
Kofman identified three elements as crucial: one, a well- fortified frontline in Ukraine which stalls Russian offensives; two, pressing ahead with reconstituting the battered Ukrainian military; and, three, most important, degrading the Russian advantages and “creating challenges for Russian forces far behind the front lines”, while doubling down on rebuilding capacity to resume offensive operations. In a nutshell, the strategy is to reach a level of capability where Ukraine can absorb Russian offensives while minimising casualties and positioning itself to retake the advantage over time. [Emphasis added.]
Russia is unlikely to remain passive without a counter-strategy. In fact, there is a perceptible acceleration of Russian operations lately. The factors of advantage largely lie with Russia which holds material, industrial, and manpower advantages, and therefore, recreating another opportunity to deal Russia a battlefield defeat is virtually impossible.
Washington should be aware that there is very little realistic chance of the West being able to outlast Russia and force it to accept peace on Ukrainian terms. Time is not on Ukraine’s side, either, militarily or economically. The noted American strategic thinker of the realist school and Harvard academic Prof. Stephen Walt is to the point when he wrote in FT recently, “Both [Biden and Trump] administrations will try to negotiate an end to the war after January 2025, and the resulting deal is likely to be a lot closer to Russia’s stated war aims than Kyiv’s.”
But that is the whole point. The new war strategy — which was outlined in a recent article in the Washington Post — takes into account the possibility of Ukraine becoming a dysfunctional state. But so long as Ukraine remains a cauldron boiling with nationalism that lends itself as a base for hostile moves to destabilise Russia and lock it in permanently in a confrontation with the West, the purpose is served —from Washington’s viewpoint.
The final act of the power struggle playing out in Kiev is, therefore, of decisive importance and is being supervised by none other than Biden’s agent in the administration ever since the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014 — Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State. Nuland’s two-fold mission has been, first, to put in place a calculus of power in Kiev that is firmly under US control and, second, to steer the transition from war to insurgency when the need arises.
The probability being talked about is that President Zelensky who has burnt his bridges with Moscow will remain in power while the army chief Valeri Zaluzhni may be replaced. That said, the outcome of high-stakes power struggles, as the one Kiev is witnessing, is also hard to predict. Gen. Zaluzhni’s nuanced op-ed in the CNN on the day after Nuland left Kiev leaves no one in doubt that the redoubtable general is in a defiant mood.
Chief of Defense Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov’s biggest qualification is that although a man of very limited military experience, his forte is intelligence and covert operations who did brilliantly well to create a network of field operatives within Russia for subversive work — just the man to navigate Ukraine’s transition from attritional war to a full-bodied insurgency against Russia.
The US agenda to weaken Russia in a long-drawn out insurgency is very much in the cards. This agenda enjoys the support of the transatlantic alliance, is “cost-effective” and allows the US to focus on Asia-Pacific, while keeping Russia down for the foreseeable future. No doubt, Russia’s reaction to the downing of the IL-86 military plane by Patriot missiles in Russian air space was anything but an accident.
Moscow’s best option would be to create a buffer that keeps Russian territories out of reach of game-changing western medium and long-range missiles that are capable of degrading Russian logistics and command and control nodes and make large swathes of territories in the east and south of Ukraine, including Crimea, untenable for Russian forces.
But that necessitates a full-fledged Russian offensive to take control of the entire region to the east of Dnieper river. Russia may face the same dilemma that Americans faced in Vietnam stemming from the requirement to expand the theatre of operations into Laos and Cambodia (aside North Vietnam.) For Russia, that involves colossal drain of human and material resources and the erosion of its international standing.
The only feasible alternative will be to end the war — through negotiations or militarily — in 2024. But Biden’s interest in negotiations is zero. That leaves the military option as the only choice. The strategy to degrade the Ukrainian military in the meat grinder was highly successful, but going forward, in reality, the US-led western alliance, especially key functionaries like Nuland (an ex-ambassador to NATO) with a long record of being Russophobic, are showing no signs of attrition.
Now that the US has broken the glass ceiling by enabling a military attack on Russian territory, Moscow should brace for more incidents like the downing of the IL-76 plane. The authorities will be keeping a beady eye. Nuland’s sudden appearance in Kiev as a psychopomp from Greek mythology at this inflection point needs to be factored in.
While in Kiev, Nuland forecast Ukrainian military successes in 2024 and that Moscow “is going to get some nice surprises on the battlefield”. The day before Nuland’s arrival in Kiev, Budanov had said that the Ukrainian military is in “active defence” but somewhere in the spring, Russia’s ongoing offensive “will be exhausted completely… and I think ours will start.” The tone of triumphalism is unmistakable, but how far it is rooted in reality time only can tell.
No Iranian base or advisors targeted by US strikes in Iraq, Syria: Diplomat
Press TV | February 3, 2024
Iran’s Ambassador to Damascus Hossein Akbari says no Iranian bases or military advisors have been targeted in deadly strikes by the US occupation forces on a number of sites in Iraq and Syria.
Akbari said on Saturday that contrary to claims, the attacks aimed to destroy Syria’s civil infrastructure amid the pro-Palestine actions undertaken by the resistance front.
He said the US government’s terrorist act on Friday night was carried out mainly to make up for Israel’s defeats in the Gaza Strip and strengthening armed Takfiri terrorists based on the borders of Iraq and Syria.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on Friday that its forces had struck more than 85 targets “with numerous aircraft” during overnight raids on localities in Iraq and Syria.
The Syrian state media reported that the US aggression targeted positions in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr and the city of al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border, falling short of providing details on the extent of damage and the exact number of casualties.
Sixteen people were killed, among them civilians, and 25 injured in the US airstrikes in Iraq, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s office said.
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Invisible harm from ionizing radiation
By Bjorn Hilt | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War | December 8, 2015
Besides the terrible effects of the burst of light that causes eye damage, the heat that sets everything flammable on fire, the electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all electronic devices, and the blast that produces winds with ten times the force of a hurricane, demolishing everything, the detonation of nuclear weapons also leads to the emission of large amounts of ionizing radiation, which has serious deleterious effects on humans and many other species. Ionizing radiation is, in fact, a lurking danger as we cannot see it, we cannot smell it, we cannot hear it, and we cannot feel it immediately. But we certainly get harmed from it.
To reduce exposure to ionizing radiation and the risk of deleterious effects, we doctors usually warn our patients against having frequent examinations or procedures that involve x-rays. That is because x-rays are ionizing radiation that can harm your body in the same ways as radiation emitted by nuclear detonations. The main difference is that, for medical purposes, the radiation is applied in a controlled way.
The international standard unit for the dose of ionizing radiation is the Sievert. National guidelines in many countries warn against people having a cumulative dose of ionizing radiation exceeding 0.001 Sievert/year. The dose from a full body CT scan is 0.01 – 0.03 Sievert.
The ionizing radiation to which everybody in the vicinity of a nuclear detonation is exposed is so high and immediate that measuring in Sievert does not have much meaning. Such exposures are measured in Gray, where five Gray is reckoned to be lethal to 50% of those exposed (LD50). Even though these types of exposures are not directly comparable, for the common types of ionizing radiation, 1 Gray equals approximately 1.3 Sievert. … continue
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