"Disarming Ukraine - Day 7"
by b
Moon of Alabama (March 7, 2022)
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/disarming-ukraine-day-7.html
The crisis, and especially the reaction of the 'west' to it, is much worse than I had feared.
The U.S. government and 'western' media claim that the World condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That is however far from reality. It is only true if true if you believe 'the world' solely exists of the 5-eye spying cooperation (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the European Union, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore.
The view differs when you zoom out.
The much bigger 'rest of the world' has not condemned Russia but understands how the conflict came about. They blame, like political scientist John Mearsheimer, the U.S. for causing the crisis. This includes, as far as I can tell, all of Africa (54 states), South America, Central America, the Middle East, and all of Asia ex Japan and Singapore.
This rest of the world that did not condemn Russia includes several notable U.S. allies and 'partners' like Turkey (Nato's second biggest army!), India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel.
The case shows how much the standing of the once unilateral superpower has been diminished.
Since 2014 the war in east Ukraine against the people of the Donbas regions has cost more than 14,000 lives. Some 10,000 of those were civilians on the Donbas side. The dying there continues as the Ukrainian army and its nazi battalions continue to shell the cities of Donetzk and Luhansk:
At least 136 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, and 400 have been injured since Russia invaded Ukraine last week, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday.
"The real toll is likely to be much higher," Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office (OHCHR), told a briefing, adding that 253 of the casualties were in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Over the last days I also read several commentators claiming that that the Russian 'regime change' incursion into Ukraine would not have the support of the Russian people and would set them up against their president. Here is news for them:
Maxim A. Suchkov @m_suchkov - 19:14 UTC · Mar 1, 2022
Meanwhile #Putin's approval rating has raised from 60% to 71% (survey by FOM)
The sanctions put up against Russia will hurt its people. But due to global price increases they will be probably felt stronger in Europe and the United States and they may even cause mass starvation and revolutions in poorer countries of the 'third world'.
Mark Sleboda has served as nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy. He has studied at the London School of Economics. He has married a woman from Crimea and now lives in Moscow as a Russian citizen. He is a frequent commentator in Russian media. Sleboda has previously criticized president Putin for being too soft with the 'west'.
His analyses and predictions are more dire than mine but he is probably right (thread edited for readability):
Mark Sleboda @MarkSleboda1 - 8:53 UTC · Mar 2, 2022
This is #theGreatDecoupling between the West and Russia. Economic linkages will be cut down to only energy and a few other commodities & chemicals that Europe is dependent on Russia for. The West controls and has weaponized their entire economy in their war to break Russia.
Political, social and cultural linkages will also be severed to a high degree. Weaning Russia off this dependence will be hard and immiserating. But with Chinese and some other Eurasian support, Russia may just weather it. The entire global economy will suffer as well.
But once the dust has settled and new domestic and import substitution formed - Russia will at least be economically & financially independent from the West. They will never again be able to weaponize their economic hegemony to coerce, blackmail, or wage war on Russia.
The same weaponized economic war too will also soon be turned on China and the Rest of the world's holdouts from US-led Western Hegemony. The Unipolar world will truly be over, but the Multipolar world will be stillborn by US attempts to hang on to their hegemony. Instead US/Western pressure will directly result in the formation of an anti-Western bloc led by China and Russia for survival and independence. Neutrality will be difficult to maintain. A new Bipolar world is coming into being, just decades after the last ended.
The Golden Age of the Global Internet is also now over resulting not from Russia closing itself off, but by censorship and exclusion by Western and the social media platforms and the internet fixtures they control - because they don't trust their own people to hear alternative perspectives and narratives and judge on their own. The world's internet will now break down into regional spheres with limited connectivity. It will be a new, much smaller, less connected, more localized and divisive world.
We are of course already seeing the physical connections around the world break down - with closures of entire swathes of the globe's surface to each others' airlines and global shipping connections being severed one by one as we speak. Global distribution networks will be disrupted & chaos result for months. Because Russia & Ukraine are primary sources of so many of the world's commodities - energy & food costs around the world will skyrocket. In the First world prices will go up, in the Third - starvation.
Ultimately the cause was the US-led West trying to maintain and extend their Hegemony, while they can and Russia resisting it. NATO expansion east in waves, US meddling and hybrid warfare to bring into power pro-Western/anti-Russian governments in formerly neutral, unaligned, national identity-divided post Soviet states was the endgame of this NATO expansion to geopolitically consolidate all of Europe under US-led Western Hegemony up to Russia's borders.
Russia resisted this geopolitical flipping by color revolution in Georgia, Belarus & Ukraine. And now the ultimate target of this economic war on Russia is forcing regime change in Russia itself for having the temerity to resist the Hegemon's geopolitical expansion right on her very borders.
The great Realist IR scholar Mearsheimer foresaw all of this. As did Kissinger, George Kennan, US Ambassador John Matlock and many others. They tried to warn what the consequences of the US trying to geopolitically flip Ukraine would be, but to no avail.
For Russia the only path forward, the goal to survive is, must be - separation, autarky (self-sufficiency), and independence from US-led Western Hegemony.
[COMMENTS]
Under the philosophy that a short war is much better than a long war, and that this is true of an economic war, also, then shouldn't Russia bring things to a head by cutting off all oil, gas, mineral and wheat exports to the hostile nations, until their sanctions against Russia are lifted?
Posted by: metamars | Mar 2 2022 14:55 utc | 2
In India the "liberal" media and sundry "liberals" on Twitter - for example @ajay43 - who never even mentioned Russia before have suddenly, as though a switch was turned on, begun parroting Amerikastani Empire propaganda nonstop. This is especially interesting because none of these people even attempt to reply to criticism of their stand, implying that they have no counter arguments but are just repeating what they're told. Obviously this is a paid campaign and one doesn't need to be a genius to know who's doing the paying.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Mar 2 2022 14:56 utc | 3
Emergency statement of the official representative of the People's Militia of the DPR at 15.30 02.03.2022
According to operational information received in the city of Mariupol, on the territory of the Azov-Stal plant, the commander of a separate special forces detachment "Azov" of 12 armored units of the National Guard of Ukraine is preparing for a mass provocation with the death of civilians. For this purpose, the civilian population is brought into the territory of the Azov-Steel plant, which is placed in mined workshops and office premises. Military equipment is placed in the courtyard of the enterprise. In the event of a breakthrough in the defense of the city of Mariupol by units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the nationalists plan to blow up the plant's buildings, with further accusation of the Russian side of destroying civilians and civilian infrastructure with artillery fire.
In the basement and premises of school No. 34 on 17 Gastelo Street, more than 60 civilians are forcibly detained, of which more than half are women and children. All civilians who tried to leave the city through the provided humanitarian corridors are forcibly brought to the school. According to information from the teachers of the Priazov State Technical University, located along Universitetskaya Street, 7, militants from the Azov unit began to mine the building, as well as the approaches to it with controlled explosive devices.
Posted by: alaff | Mar 2 2022 14:57 utc | 4
B, please skim through the German news and post about the car industry: BWM stops production, same for Porsche and VW due to missing small parts from Ukraine. Gas price hits record high. If BMW, VW and Porsche stop production, all small parts suppliers will reduces their production as well. The car industry is Germany's backbone. https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen/leipzig/leipzig-leipzig-land/porsche-produktion-stopp-leipzig-ukraine-krieg-100.html If you live in Germany, brace yourself. Posted by: Arne Hartmann | Mar 2 2022 14:58 utc | 5
Russia won the battle and it is most likely to win the economic war with US driven NATO as well.
Why you may ask? The propaganda news around the world is so loud explaining the Putin is a madman and does not make progress in Ukraine story?
Please. see Falsehood In War Time by Arthur Ponsonby
This is all bullshit. Almost no proofable news are coming from the Ukraine. That is because the russians are able to keep strict communication restrictions and USA is not interested to share satellite intel.
If Putin really does what he has announced he will not throw all his army into the Ukraine. He will destroy all military assets, punish the „Ukra-Nazis“ and make Ukraine neutral. It is not neccesseary to play the US shock and awe game since the russians see the ukraine as „brother“ state and I assume most of the ukrainians do it vice versa.
Maripol is trapped with 30 to 60.000 well armed and motivated ukranian troops, most likely what people call „Ukra-Nazis“ that have limited to no support in ethnic Russian areas in Ukraine like Mariupol. If they do not surrender today or tomorrow the Russian army will destroy them quick to save the normal people. Zelensky will want to negotiate but it is not likely that Putin will let them go.Remember Putin announced to punish all „Uka-Nazis“ responsible for the 7 year bombing of east ukraine and not following the Minsk treaties.
Crimea has a good demilitarised area in the ukrainian mainland around them and we will see if the russians are taking the whole area on the seaside to keep Ukraine away from own access to the ports. They will not face much resistance.
I am not sure if they will take Kiev since it is not neccessary and I do not expect that they want to humilate the ukraine more than neccessary.
Coming to the real war.
The US is trying to be master of the universe. They will not reach that goal.
The US has a strong wish to keep control over Europe and keep russia down. And most of all keep russia and Europe separated (please see Sir Halford John Mackinder)
There are a lot of actions that were taken since WW2 to reach this goal.
Their main asset is the NATO. Remember that they did not allow Russia to participate. NATO implies that all armies are knitted very tightly to US army. They managed to infiltrate more or less all politicians with atlantic council and other NGO groups with the same agenda. The agenda is very simple: do what we told you.
But not only politics is corrupted, its press and media as whole as well. All deviating media is restricted, under surveillance or will be banned and therefore all our ideas, convictions and persuations regarding US and Russia are more or less biased in one way - as you can see today in the reactions of the people in europe and western counties. Compare that to the reactions in the rest of the world that have seen the US club before [emphasis added].
And most of all compare it to the reactions on the killing, wounding, hunger, displacement and all the suffering 10s of millions ordinary people had to suffer in the name of the „humanitarian“ fight for western values like democracy and gender rights in other countries.
They as well were not legitimated by the UN - with a good reason!
So what will they (we) do?
We will use a method formerly known as siege.
It will not work because first we strongly need the goods only the besieged can deliver and we most likely can not buy them elsewhere in quantities needed and in prices we can pay [emphasis added].
That means we have to pay them in rubles, yuan or most likewise in gold. Whereas they can buy and sell everything they need on the world market (even paying with gas, coal, wheat, rare earth or whatever). Remember, China, India and the countries that felt the US club before or saw what us friendship and western values in real means wont be part of the siege [emphasis added].
If you follow that to an end it leads to an end of the USD as world currency that every country had to accept that wants to be part of the worldwide economy. And this means that US is not able to print as much money as they want without producing goods in the same range. This will lead most likely to a massive US inflation and given the inner splitting of the US to massive problems on their own continent [emphasis added].
The second action is another great risk to the US as well. If we start to confiscate russian assets we can lay hand on, Putin will do likewise. That does of course not only mean houses, money, companies [emphasis added].
Most likely it will be patents. If russia can give a shit on patents and other assets held by „The Free Democratic West“ tm he can for example start the production of BMW in Kaliningrad on his own and sell them in the world as BMW by himself. Or he could produce any drug and sell it very cheap in the whole world - big pharma would really like that. There are billions of possibles he could do completely legal [emphasis added].
Why hold on contracts or agreements when „The Free Democratic West“ tm is not doing likewise as anybody could see. Ask the people in Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Irak, Vietnam, Syria, Yemen or Northern Korea or yugoslavia and many others how they see this. This list is uncomplete but even if you do not live in a country that was affected directly, everybody could see what this friendship and democracy is in reality. As you can see it in Ukraine right now. The US is absolutely willing to shed every drop of blood of every ukranian soldier and the blood of the common people as well - just to reach their goals [emphasis added].
The foundation of any trade and economy is trust, and that is what we are losing in the world right now [emphasis added]
There is an arabic saying:
Peace makes wealth
Wealth makes arrogance
arrogance makes war
War makes poverty
Poverty makes humility
Humility makes peace
I do not like to see the US losing its power. In history any imperia losing its power lead to a long lasting dark age.
We will see…
Posted by: mac | Mar 2 2022 14:59 utc | 7
Russians haven't lost their jobs over this, and they all have a roof over the heads, still go to the markets and buy what they want/can. Russian Federal economy looks a bit less because of all the infrastructure projects going on. That takes a lot of money. Things will get tighter in this respect.
The loss of life is the worse thing happening in Russia today. America/EU means nothing to Russians because they know who is responsible for all of this death and destruction. Russians haven't figured out how the Americans and Europeans, themselves, can't see the whole picture going on - since it has been so obvious since 2014.
Posted by: GMC | Mar 2 2022 15:11 utc | 14