"A Matryoshka of Psyops: And Why General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere" by Pepe Escobar

 

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A Matryoshka of Psyops: And Why General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere

Pepe Escobar    June 30, 2023

The main problem faced by Russia is not the Hegemon and NATO: it’s domestic, Pepe Escobar writes.

The secret of a perfect psyop is that no one really understands it.

A perfect psyop accomplishes two tasks: it renders the enemy dazed and confused while achieving a set of very important goals.

It goes without saying that sooner rather than later we should see the real goals emerging out of the strategic play in Russia I described as The Longest Day.

The Longest Day may or may not have been a larger than life psyop.

To clear the fog, let’s start with a roundup of the usual “winner” suspects.

First one is undoubtedly Belarus. Due to the priceless mediation of Old Man Luka, Minsk is now gifted with the most experienced army in the world: the Wagner musicians, masters of conventional (Libya, Ukraine) and non-conventional (Syria, Central African Republic) war.

That is already inflicting the Fear of Hell in NATO, which is suddenly facing in its eastern flank a super pro army, very well equipped, and de facto uncontrollable, and on top of it hosted by a nation now equipped with nuclear weapons.

Simultaneously, Russia props up dissuasion on its western front. Like clockwork that is leading NATOstan to invest in ballooning military budgets (with funds it doesn’t have). That process happens to be a key plank of Russian strategy since at least March 2018.

And as an extra bonus Russia creates a 24/7 threat to the whole of Kiev’s northern front.

Not bad for a “mutiny”.

The Dance of the Oligarchs

Way more complex is Russia’s internal dynamics. Putin’s current and subsequent difficult decisions may entail loss of popularity coupled with loss of internal stability -depending on the manner Kremlin-defined strategic victories are presented to Russian public opinion.

Whatever 24/7 NATOstan mainstream media spin may come up with, the Kremlin’s official explanation for June 24 boils down to a Prighozin demonstration: he was just trying to shake things up.

It’s way more complicated than that. There were strategic gains, of course, and Prighozin seems to have followed a very risky script that in the end favors Moscow. But it’s still too early to tell.

A key sub-plot is how the Dance of the Oligarchs will proceed. Independent Russian media was already expecting some – treasonous – players, including state functionaries, to buy their one-way ticket when the going got tough (or to say they were “ill”, or refuse to answer important calls). The Duma – fed by Bortnikov’s FSB – is already working on a hefty list.

The Russian system – and Russian society as well – see people like these as supremely toxic: in fact much more dangerous than the demshiza (a term that mixes “democracy” and “schizophrenia”, applied to globalist neoliberals).

On the military front, it gets even more complicated. Putin has charged Defense Minister Shoigu to compile the list of Generals to be promoted after The Longest Day. To put it mildly, for quite a few people, from many different persuasions, Shoigu has become a toxic element in Russian politics.

Wagner – rebranded, and under new management – will continue to serve Russia’s interests via Minsk, including in Africa.

Old Man Luka, wily as ever, has already firmly stated there won’t be any provocations against NATO via Wagner. Wagner recruiting bureaus will not be opened in Belarus. Belarussians may join Wagner directly. As it stands, most of Wagner fighters are still in Lugansk.

For all practical purposes, from now on the Russian government won’t have anything to do, militarily and financially, with Wagner.

Additionally, there are no heavy weapons to be confiscated. Already on Monday, June 26, Wagner had moved their heavy weapons to Belarus. What remains – and had not been moved during The Longest Day – was returned to the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

The Dance of the Generals

A clear winner in the whole process is Russian public opinion: they made that graphically clear in Rostov. Everyone was supporting Putin, Russian soldiers, Wagner and Prighozin – at the same time. The overall objective was to improve the Russian army to win the war. It’s as straightforward as that.

The purge inside the MoD will be tough. Under the pretext of repression or “rebellion”, operetta Generals” (as defined by Putin himself) that did not train their soldiers properly, did not organize the mobilization properly, or were incompetent in battle, will definitely be axed.

The problem is that they’re all part of Gerasimov’s circle. To put it diplomatically, he needs to answer a lot of serious questions.

And that’s what brings us to the “General Armageddon has been arrested” monster fake news gleefully parroted by the whole of the NATOstan info universe.

General Surovikin did receive Prighozin in Rostov – but he was never an accomplice to the “rebellion”. Vice-Minister of Defense Yevkurov was also at the HQ in Rostov, and received Prighozin alongside Surovikin. Yevkurov may have played the role of strategically-placed observer.

The Prighozin rebellion soap opera de facto started back in February – and nothing was done to stop it. Regardless whether one shares the official narrative – or not.

What this implies is that the Russian state saw it coming. Does that make The Longest Day the Mother of All Maskirovskas?

Once again: it’s complicated. Unlike the collective West, Russia does not practice or enforce cancel culture. Wagner was protected via martial law. Any insult against a “musician” fighting neo-nazi Banderistan would be met by as much as a 15-year jail term. Each Wagner fighter is officially a Hero of Russia – something Putin himself always stressed.

On the maskirovka front, there’s no question the simmering tensions in Russian military circles before The Longest Day were manipulated, fog of war-style, to disorient the enemy. It worked like a charm. On the fateful June 24 itself, Surovikin was running a war, and not spending the day drinking brandy with Prighozin.

The NATOstan axis is really clutching at straws. It took just a Surovikin-related rumor to send them into rapture – proving once again how deeply they fear General Armageddon.

A key vector is how Surovikin is regarded by public opinion compared to the surviving “operetta Generals”.

He built the now legendary three-layered defense which is already burying the “counter-offensive”. He introduced the wildly successful Shahed-136 Iranian drones in the battlefield. And he organized the meat grinder devastation in Bakhmut/Artemyovsk – which has already entered the military annals.

Way back in the Autumn of 2022, it was General Armageddon who told Putin that Russian forces were not ready for a large-scale offensive.

So whatever the 5th columnists fabricate, General Armadeggon is not going anywhere – except to win a war. And Russia is not “leaving” Africa. On the contrary: a rebranded Wagner is there to stay, and remains on speed dial in several latitudes.

The trend, short term, seems to point to a – convoluted – draining of the Russian military swamp. The Longest Day seems to have galvanized Russians of all stripes into identifying who the real enemy is – and how to defeat it, whatever it takes.

“Nothing happens by chance”

Historian Andrei Fursov, reviving Roosevelt, observed that “in politics, nothing happens by chance. If it happens, you bet it was foreseen.”

Well, maskirovska rides again.

Yet the main problem faced by Russia is not the Hegemon and NATO: it’s domestic.

Based on conversations with Russian analysts, and their impressions from very sharp people who lived in Russia, Ukraine and in the West, it would be possible to identify basically four main groups trying to impose their idea of Russia.

1. The “Back to the USSR” gang. Includes, of course, some former KGB. Have some kind of support from the general population. A lot of educated specialists (old school pros, mostly pension age). This project suggests a revolution – a 1917 on steroids. But where is Lenin?
2. The “Back to the Tsar” people. That would imply Russia as the “Third Rome” and a prominent role for the Orthodox Church. Hefty funds behind it. A big question mark is how much popular support, especially in “deep” Russia, they really have. This group has nothing to do with the Vatican – which is sold to The Great Reset.
3. The Plunderers – as in robbing Russia blind in favor of the Hegemon. Congregates 5th columnists, and all manner of “totalitarian neoliberals” worshipping the “values” of the collective West. The remaining ones will soon get a knock on the door by the FSB. Their money is already blocked.
4. The Eurasianists. This is the most feasible project – in close collaboration with China, and aiming towards a multipolar world. There’s no place for Russian oligarchs here. Yet the degree of collaboration with China is still highly debatable. The real burning question: how to really integrate, in practice, the Belt and Road Initiative with the Greater Eurasia Partnership?

This is just a sketch – open for discussion. The first three projects may hardly work – for a series of complex reasons. And the fourth still has not gathered enough steam in Russia.

What is certain is that all of them are fighting each other. May the current draining of the military swamp also serve to clear the political skies.

"The Long, Hot Summer" by James Howard Kunstler

 

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Source: Clusterfuck Nation

The Long, Hot Summer

“Vladimir Putin is clearly losing the War in Iraq.” — “Joe Biden,” US President

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     Russian Revolution Two kicked off the long, hot summer freak show of 2023. Unlike Russian Revolution One (1917), which lasted over seventy years, RR2 clocked out in under twenty-four hours. It didn’t propel Russia into a political paroxysm as perhaps expected by crisis engineers in Langley, VA, and Washington’s Foggy Bottom. Rather, it energized the resolve of arch-nemesis Vlad Putin, solidified his support among the Russian populace (who turned out singing patriotic hymns along the Neva River when the revolt was quashed), and sunsetted the increasingly rogue Wagner private paramilitary company in its Ukraine duties, now to be taken over by regular Russian Federation army units.

     According to commentator Andrei Martyanov — see yesterday’s colloquy on Tommy Carrigan’s Podcast — Wagner had already gone off the rails in Ukraine, inciting the costly Bakhmut operation on its own to fluff its reputation while preparing for the mutiny executed and aborted on June 24. The fate of Wagner’s business manager, Evgeny Prigozhin, remains murky now while he cools his heels in Belarus — a trial, perhaps, at some later date when Ukraine itself stops being a geopolitical psychodrama. He has been publicly branded a “traitor.”

     It was perhaps the hope of America’s feckless Neocon war-dogs that Russia would fall into chaos. This has all along been the hope and expectation of our country’s official stated policy. And it turns out to be ever more at odds with the reality of the situation. Mr. Putin aims to conclude this tragic US-provoked misadventure as swiftly as possible now. This ain’t no Mud Club; this ain’t no foolin’ around. It looks more like the last days of disco in Kiev. The question for the people there is: just how much of Ukraine do you want to be left with intact when this thing is over? Go ahead… choose.

       Despite its master-slave relationship with America, Euroland may not be so avid for World War Three as the “Joe Biden” regime seems to be. The Wagner coup fiasco marks the true crackup of NATO as the Ukraine project fizzles. Surely Europeans with some functioning brain cells must be asking: “what was the point of all this killing and waste?” The clear-eyed may suspect that the point was to get Europe to commit suicide, because that is the obvious result. No more natgas for you, Europe, meaning farewell to major industry and a comfortable standard of living. A lot less wheat and corn coming out of Ukraine to Euroland nations, too. When food costs too much, or is just plain scarce, governments fall. Wait for it.

     Do you suppose that “Joe Biden” & Company can keep up this charade of a proxy war with Russia much longer? $150-billion pounded down the Kiev rat-hole, purchasing yet another foreign relations humiliation. Never has an American president been heaped with such an ignominious foundering and dishonor. He can only pretend to run for reelection as he wrecks the country. The DNC poohbahs, cross-eyed in transports of Woke-ism, must know that this bumbling grifter personifies a failing state. The White House press pool reporters are even flinging harsh questions at him these days as he desperately searches for doors to escape through.

     The tally in the Biden family bribery operation stands above $30-million now, with government whistleblowers pouring out of the agencies like termites from a burning house. Most of them have not testified in Congress yet, or in any other venue, nor have the various DOJ and FBI officials associated with the broad-based cover-up of these blatant crimes. Do you doubt anymore that Attorney General Merrick Garland perjured himself testifying that the Delaware US attorney David Weiss was not interfered with in the Hunter Biden tax and gun violation case?

     The mounting evidence of foreign influence-peddling is hard and vivid now, viz., the Whatsapp text out this week of Hunter, “sitting here with my father,” extorting Chinese business associate Henry Zhao to fullfill his commitment or “regret not following my direction.” Hmmmmm. Explain that. Or the email archive carefully saved by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who was prudent enough to back up his story with docs apt to prove DOJ malfeasance.

     It’s unfortunate that America suffered three fake presidential impeachments in recent decades — Bill Clinton’s over a sexual impropriety, which is hardly a high crime, and the two utter charades involving Donald Trump — because now our nation is faced with serious presidential crimes explicitly laid out in Article II Section Four of the Constitution: bribery. “Joe Biden” will be impeached if he doesn’t bail altogether, and he might not do that because then he loses the power to pardon the other Biden family members involved. The impeachment of Merrick Garland for debauching and dishonoring the Justice Department logically would be the warm-up act for the impeachment of the president. They’ve both got to go and they both could save our country a lot of trouble by just stepping down. Then we can see about Kamala Harris.

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Please contribute to Kathie Breault’s legal defense fund.
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In April, 2023, Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) Kathie Breault was indicted in the Eastern States District Federal Court for “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States” for giving vaccination cards to people who did not receive Covid-19 vaccinations. Her defense is that the vaccinations were ineffective and harmful, and to administer them would violate the Hippocratic oath of health professionals (First do no harm). Her legal battle against a dishonest and vindictive federal government will require lawyer’s fees that exceed her ability to pay — a reminder that “the process is the punishment.”

Kathie has also been accused of “professional misconduct” by the New York State Licensing Board for prescribing Ivermectin via telehealth visits in July 2021. Many other medical practitioners across the United States have been similarly persecuted and some have lost their licenses to practice. Kathie has been under investigation by New York’s Office of Professional Discipline since March 2022. No decision has been reached as of May 2023.

"Sea Monsters Threaten the World With Their Tridents" by Edward Curtin

 

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Source: Edward Curtin

Sea Monsters Threaten the World With Their Tridents

June 27, 2023 ejcurtin  8 Comments

Sometimes you wake up from a dream to realize it is telling you to pay close attention to the depth of its message, especially when it is linked to what you have been thinking about for days.  I have just come up from a dream in which I went down to the cellar of the house I grew up in because the basement light was on and the back cellar door had been opened by a mysterious man who stood outside.

I will spare you additional details or an interpretation, except to say that my daytime thoughts concerned the media spectacle surrounding the Titan submersible that imploded two miles down in the ocean’s cellar while trying to give its passengers a view of the wreck of the Titanic, the “unsinkable” ship nicknamed “the Millionaire’s Special.”  The ship that no one could sink except an ice cube in the drink that swallowed it.

Cellar dreams are well-known as the place where we as individuals and societies can face the flickering shadows that we refuse to face in conscious life.  Carl Jung called it “the shadow.”  Such shadows, when unacknowledged and repressed, have a tendency to autonomously surface and erupt, not only leading to personal self-destruction but that of whole societies.  History is replete with examples.  My dream’s mysterious stranger had lit my way through some dark thoughts and opened the door to a possible escape.  He got me thinking about what all of us tend to want to deny or avoid because its implications are so monstrous.

The obsession with the alleged marvels of technology together with naming them after ancient Greek and Roman gods are fixations of elite technologues who have lost what Spengler called “living inner religiousness” but wish to show they know the classical names even though they miss the meaning of these myths.  Such myths tell the stories of things that never happened but always are.  Appropriating the ancient names without irony – such as naming a boat Titanic or a submersible Titan – unveils the hubristic ignorance of people who have never descended to the underworld to learn its lessons.  Relinquishing  their sense of god-like power doesn’t occur to them, nor does the shadow side of their Faustian dreams.

They will never name some machine Nemesis, for that would expose the fact that they have exceeded the eternal limits with their maniacal technological extremism, and, to paraphrase Camus, dark Furies will swoop down to destroy them.

Nietzsche termed the result nihilism.  Once people have killed God, machines are a handy replacement in societies that worship the illusion of technique and are scared to death of death and the machines that they invented to administer it.

The latter is not a matter fit to print since it must remain in the dark basement of the public’s consciousness.  If it were publicized, the game of nihilistic death-dealing would be exposed.  Because power, money, and technology are the ruling deities today, the mass media revolve around publicizing their marvels in spectacular fashion, and when “accidents” occur, they never point out the myth of the machines, or what Lewis Mumford called “The Pentagon of Power.”  Tragedies occur, they tell us, but they are minor by-products of the marvels of technology.

But if these media would take us down to see the truth beneath the oceans’ surfaces, we would see not false monsters such as the Titanic or Moby Dick or cartoon fictions such as Disney’s Monstro the whale, but the handiwork of thousands of mad Captain Ahabs who have attached the technologues “greatest” invention – nuclear weapons – to nuclear-powered ballistic submarines.

Trident submarines. First strike submarines, such as the USS Ohio.

These Trident subs live and breathe in the cellars of our minds where few dare descend.  They are controlled by jackals in Washington and the Pentagon with polished faces in well-appointed offices with coffee machines and tasty snacks.  Madmen.  They hum through the deep waters ready to strike and destroy the world.  Few hear them, almost none see them, most prefer not to know of them.

But wait, what’s the buzz, tell me what’s happening: the Titan and the Titanic, wealthy voyeurs intent on getting a glance into the sepulchre of those long dead, while six hundred or so desperate migrants drown in the Mediterranean sea from which the ancient gods were born.  These are the priorities of a society that worships the wealthy; a society of the spectacle that entertains and distracts while the end of the world cruises below consciousness.

The United States alone has fourteen such submarines armed with Trident missiles constantly prowling the ocean depths, while the British have four.  Named for the three-pronged weapon of the Greek and Roman sea gods, Poseidon and Neptune respectively, these submarine-launched ballistic missiles, manufactured by Lockheed Martin (“We deliver innovative solutions to the world’s toughest challenges”), can destroy the world in a flash. Destroy it many times over. A final solution.

While the United States has abrogated all treaties that offered some protection from their use and has declared their right of first use, it has consistently pushed toward a nuclear confrontation with Russia and China.  Today – 2023 June – we stand on the precipice of nuclear annihilation as never before.

A single Trident submarine has 20 Trident missiles, each carrying 12 independently targeted warheads for a total of 240 warheads, with each warhead approximately 40 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb.  Fourteen submarines times 240 equals 3,360 nuclear warheads times 40 equals 134,400 Hiroshimas.  Such are the lessons of mathematics in absurd times.

James W. Douglass, the author of the renown JFK and the Unspeakable and a longtime activist against the Tridents at Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action outside the Bangor Submarine Base in Washington state, put it this way in 2015 when asked about Robert Aldridge, the heroic Lockheed Trident missile designer who resigned his position in an act of conscience and became an inspirational force for the campaign against the Tridents and nuclear weapons:

Question: “What did the Nuremberg attorneys say about war crimes that had such a deep impact on Robert Aldridge?”

Douglass: “They said that first-strike weapons and weapons that directly target a civilian population were war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg principles. Those Nuremberg principles, which are the foundations of international law, are violated by both by electronic warfare – which is why we poured blood on the files for electronic warfare [at the base] – and also by the Trident missile system, which is what Robert Aldridge was building.”

Robert Aldridge saw his shadow side.  He went to the cellar of his darkest dreams. He refused to turn away.  He became an inspiration for James and Shelley Douglass and so many others.  He was a man in and of the system, who saw the truth of his complicity in radical evil and underwent a metanoia.  It is possible.

If those missiles are ever launched from the monsters that carry them through the hidden recesses of the world’s oceans, there will never be another Nuremberg Trial to judge the guilty, for the innocent and the guilty will all be dead.

We will have failed to shed light on our darkest shadows.

Writing in another context that pertains to today’s high-flying nuclear madmen whose mythic Greek forbear Icarus would not listen, the poet W. H. Auden put it this way in “Musée des Beaux Arts”:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

We turn away at our peril.

"MEP Mick Wallace: “'What are the working-class people of Ukraine dying for?'” by Colin Todhunter

 

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Source: Dissident Voice

MEP Mick Wallace: “What are the working-class people of Ukraine dying for?” 

by Colin Todhunter / June 29th, 2023

US neoconservatives like Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken are using Ukraine as the linchpin of their strategy to undermine and destabilise Russia.  

Since the start of the conflict in February 2022, billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware has been sent to Ukraine by the EU. By late February 2023, it had forwarded €3.6 billion worth of military assistance to the Zelensky regime via the European Peace Fund. However, even at that time, the total cost for EU countries could have been closer to €6.9 billion. 

In late June 2023, the EU pledged a further €3.5 billion in military aid.  Josep Borrell is the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the EU Commission.  

Following this latest pledge, he stated on Twitter: 

“We will continue to double down on our military support on both equipment [and] training. For as long as it takes.”  

Great news for European and UK armaments companies like BAE Systems, Saab and Rheinmetall, which are raking in huge profits from the destruction of Ukraine (see the CNN Business report “Europe’s arms spending on Ukraine boosts defense companies“).

US arms manufacturers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are also acquiring multi-billion-dollar contracts (as outlined in the online articles “Raytheon wins $1.2 billion surface-to-air missile order for Ukraine” and “Pentagon readies new $2 billion Ukraine air defense package including missiles“).

And as for BlackRock, JP Morgan and private investors, they aim to profit from the country’s reconstruction along with 400 global companies, including Citi, Sanofi and Philips. 

As reported on the CNN Business website (“War-torn economy needs private investors to rebuild“), JP Morgan’s Stefan Weiler sees a “tremendous opportunity” for private investors.

At the same time, in “War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land“, the Oakland Institute describes how financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests.

With Ukrainian forces struggling on the battlefield, it poses the worrying question: with so much money at stake for Western capital, just how far will the US escalate in order to prevent Russia from securing control over areas of the country?   

Meanwhile, away from the boardrooms, business conferences and high-level strategizing, hundreds of thousands of ordinary young Ukrainians have died.  

Irish MEPs Mick Wallace and Claire Daley have been staunch critics of the EU stance on Ukraine (see Claire Daley talking in the EU parliament about Ukraine burning through a generation of men on YouTube).  

Wallace recently addressed the EU Parliament, describing the heist currently taking place in that country by Western corporations. 

Wallace said:  

The damage to Ukraine is devastating. Towns and cities that endured for hundreds of years don’t exist anymore. We must recognise that these towns, cities and surrounding lands were long being stolen by local oligarchs colluding with global financial capital. This theft quickened with the onset of the war in 2014.

The pro-Western government opened the doors wide for massive structural adjustment and privatisation programmes spearheaded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the IMF and the World Bank. Zelensky used the current war to concentrate power and accelerate the corporate fire sale. He banned opposition parties that were resisting deeply unpopular reforms to the laws restricting the sale of land to foreign investors.

Over three million hectares of agricultural land are now owned by companies based in Western tax havens. Ukraine’s mineral deposits alone are worth over $12 trillion. Western companies are licking their lips.

What are the working-class people of Ukraine dying for?

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Colin Todhunter is an independent writer specialising in development, food and agriculture. You can read his new e-book Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order for free here. Read other articles by Colin.

"The Negotiator’s Nightmare" by Alastair Crooke

 

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Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

The Negotiator’s Nightmare

Alastair Crooke    June 26, 2023

“Uncomfortable questions [we] are not yet prepared to answer”

President Putin has said that he is open, at any time, to talks with an American interlocutor.

Why then, has no one come forward? Why, when there is growing anxiety amongst the American public that the war in Ukraine seems locked into forever escalation, and fears are palpable that “Joe Biden and the ‘warmongers in Congress’ are leading the U.S. to a ‘nuclear holocaust’”? This was the stark warning from former Presidential Candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, on Tucker Carlson’s widely-watched show.

The urgency to halt the slide towards escalation is clear: Whilst the space for political manoeuvre continuously shrinks, the momentum amongst the neo-cons in Washington, as well as Brussels, to land a fatal strike on Russia is not spent. Far from it, the talk in the lead-up to the NATO summit rather is one of preparing for a ‘long war’.

Urgency? Yes. It seems so simple – start talking. But seen from the perspective of a putative U.S. mediator, the task is anything but.

The western public has not been conditioned to expect the possibility of a stronger Russia emerging. On the contrary, they have endured western ‘experts’ sneering at the Russian military; denigrating the Russian leadership as incompetent; and being presented on their TVs with the ‘horrors’ of the Russian ‘invasion’.

It is – to say the least – a highly adverse environment for any interlocutor to ‘venture foot’. Dr Kissinger (a year ago at Davos) was ‘roasted’ when he tentatively suggested that Ukraine might have to yield up territory to Russia.

What would be the mission? Well, clearly it would be to find that ‘off-ramp’ to which Kissinger alluded. But the first problem would be how to frame a prospective mediator’s mission from the perspective of a U.S. public that has experienced a year of propaganda (much of it delusional) and much of which is hostile towards Moscow (the intended dialogue partner).

When Putin speaks of ‘an American interlocutor’, he must mean someone who has credibility within the wider U.S. sphere – and some mandate of authority (however nebulous). In the past, Senator George Mitchell played this role twice (in the Israeli-Palestinian and Irish conflicts). There were other mediators, too, of course.

What were Senator Mitchell’s particular qualities? Well firstly, he had a reputation for convincing both conflicted parties that he could see and understand their position; that he was not hostage to immediate circumstance but could assimilate the long sweep of history too. Empathy was essential, but his job nonetheless was to disinter the underlying structure to the conflict – and to make ‘a fix’ for it.

Our putative negotiator would have to consider how to frame his/her mission in such a way as to carry support in at least part of the U.S. power-structure. But here is the first problem: The conflict – for the western public – has been framed in extreme binary, ultra-humanitarian clothing deliberately: ‘Russia – unprovoked – invaded a sovereign state, and committed atrocities on its people’.

The choice of narrative hides the bigger geo-political purpose to destroy any prospect of a Eurasian heartland coming into existence that might threaten U.S. primacy. It is the Kosovo war playbook again: a hypocritical ‘humanitarian intervention’ to “save” the Kosovan people from massacre and tyranny.

The ‘Realist’ approach – rationally setting out ‘the facts’ to the conflict – hasn’t worked for some years: In Syria, in particular, the ‘war party’ understood that one single photo of a child dying in her mother’s arms trumped any rational explanation to the conflict, and obscured all routes out of it. It was used ruthlessly to quash any alternative understanding. Pulling at the western ‘heart-strings’ invariably prevails over facts.

This is always the ‘nightmare’: As ‘talks’ progress, an atrocity – a bus bombing, civilians lying bleeding in the street – sweeps reason aside and displaces it with raw emotion.

Framing an U.S. putative interlocutor’s mission therefore is not easy. The architects of the Ukraine conflict – having framed the conflict as a humanitarian mission – the question then becomes, how then to get to the desired political outcome? How to by-pass (or overcome/re-frame) the humanitarian issue?

To challenge the unprecedented propaganda onslaught is pointless. The ‘war party’ will always discover a new atrocity (and if there isn’t one to hand, there are always the producers and directors of TV companies always ready to oblige).

Tactically therefore, it is better to finesse ‘the framing’ (rather than go head-to-head against it). Yes, there may be a humanitarian dimension arising out of military action (there always are), but potentially it may prove possible to shift the focus towards that other largely unreported ‘humanitarian disaster’: The hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian men being killed, pointlessly, in an unwinnable war.

It may seem shallow simply to shift rhetoric to saying his/her mission is a ‘humanitarian one’ – that of saving Ukrainian lives. Simply said, however, every negotiator must protect his back. The Brutus is behind, as much as in front.

Yet, that is but the first hurdle facing any imagined U.S. interlocutor. The western extreme reductionist framing – asserting an ‘unjustified Russian invasion’ accompanied by concomitant ‘atrocities’ – simply is the move which strips away the surrounding context to the issue in contention. The ‘eye’ or the intellect is separated and disengaged from the ‘object’ under scrutiny: precisely that issue of ‘how there came to be this war’ in the first place, and how its’ underlying structure came into being.

In short, the western framing is the attempt to create an abstract ‘clearing’ or spatial void around Russia’s Special Operation in which the visible thing – the ‘invasion’ – is to be positioned, and set before the external spectator as the unique cause, and sufficient explanation to events, so that the ordinary U.S. citizen delves no further.

The ‘Senator Mitchell’ (or whomsoever it is) cannot entirely roll-back monocular vision but must insist in his/her public discourse of making a point always to emphasise ‘seeing with two eyes’: Perhaps taking a cue from JF Kennedy’s 1963 speech, pointedly noting that almost uniquely among the “major world powers” the U.S. and Russia had never been at war with each other. And acknowledging the massive human casualties that Russia suffered during World War II.

In the non-West, this quality of being able to ‘see’ double (at times seemingly oppositional aspects to the world around us) arouses absolutely no concern. It is precisely the western Enlightenment tendency to fragment the ‘whole’, and then to categorise, that tends us toward seeing conflict – when what we are observing are different polarities presenting themselves distinctly.

The most thorny issue, however, is the ‘war party’ ruse of presenting Ukraine as a some homogenous sovereign state in the 19th century mould of an ethnically coherent nation-state composition (shades of the Young Turks and the cleansing of the Turkish State, to make it ‘ethnically pure Turkish’).

This is the Big Fabrication. Ukraine never was ‘that’. It had been always ‘borderlands’ – ‘neither one thing nor truly another’. And there has been fierce resistance from the very outset (1917) by those who felt themselves culturally Russian, to being ‘dumped’ into a hodge-potch ‘Ukraine’ – the ethnically conflicted patchwork-state that emerged from Lenin’s minorities’ strategy.

In 1917, a new state, violently opposed by Ukrainian nationalists, the Donetsk-Krivoy-Rog Republic, was declared, (based around the Donbas), that petitioned to remain a part of the Soviet Union. But Lenin would have none of it. It was the start to the continuous ethnic killing spree that has segued out from that failed initiative to gain autonomy for Donbas.

Here is the ‘rub’. There are ways of managing two communities holding mutually incompatible views of the future and having irreconcilable readings of history. (This was Senator Mitchell’s main task in Ireland). But a successful outcome is only possible when both parties (however grudgingly), come to accept that the ‘the Other party’ is a legitimate expression of their community’s views, even as both parties simultaneously reject the Other’s vision for the future – and categorically refuse their reading of history.

This acquiescence is essentially the necessary precondition to any political solution – where two culturally and ethnically divergent peoples, at complete odds with one another, share one territory.

Achieving this jump-off point to a political outcome – whilst retaining the framework of a unitary Ukrainian state – was actually, precisely what the Minsk Accords were all about.

And the European leaders (by their own admission) conspired to sabotage Minsk (and therefore the prospect of one population achieving autonomy within ‘the whole state’). Europe chose instead to arm one side, in order to militarily crush ‘the Other’ (the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics).

Compounding this tragic European decision (fuelled by the neo-con aspiration to use Ukraine as a cudgel to strike at, crack, and fissure Russia), the Europeans’ exaggerated their investment in ‘the credentialled Ukrainian narrative’ – a move which has served only to facilitate the toxic twist to the ethnic rancour that today grips Kiev.

The prospect for any Minsk-type of resolution was destroyed. If this story ends with only a ‘rump-state Ukraine’ remaining, the Europeans have only to look to themselves for responsibility.

The imagined U.S. interlocutor will have little choice but to recognise reality. The various psychologies (more important than reason during prolonged war) are now too embittered for any attempt to re-orientate the underlying structures to the conflict.

The only solution is ‘separation’, which already is ‘in course’ and may extend to the Dnieper River and Odessa (but which may extend further, with unforeseeable ‘bites’ to the territory chewed-off, by neighbours to the West).

Frankly, the Europeans brought this outcome on themselves, with their deceit over Minsk. They bet all of Europe’s future prosperity on a U.S.-led neo-con project to bring-down Russia – and lost. Moscow is not interested now even to talk with the EU political class: they have no ‘agency’ anyway; the agency that matters resides in Washington.

Any U.S. interlocutor will find all this – – a hard ‘sell’ at home. A stronger Russia, a truncated rump-Ukraine, will get no thanks from the power-élites in the U.S. – only poisonous barbs directed at the messenger. But a key success should not be lost to sight.

Our putative U.S. interlocutor can focus on finding how an (inevitably diminished) West can exist, in security, with a thriving and politically expanding Eurasian Heartland. Not easy. Some in the U.S. will ‘go wild’ at the very thought, and will try to undermine it; but the great majority of the world will thank handsomely whomsoever can achieve this essential task.

Which takes us to the last point – timing. Do the dominant U.S. power-élites even want an ‘off-ramp’ at this point?

The Washington Post reported on 15 June:

“As Ukraine launches its long-awaited counteroffensive against entrenched Russian occupiers, both Kyiv and its backers are hoping for a rapid retaking of strategically significant territory. Anything less will present the United States and its allies with uncomfortable questions they are not yet prepared to answer … As he heads into next year’s re-election campaign, Biden needs a major battlefield victory to show that his unqualified support for Ukraine has burnished U.S. global leadership, reinvigorated a strong foreign policy with bipartisan support and demonstrated the prudent use of American military strength abroad” [emphasis added].

And if the battlefield victory is not forthcoming? Well, perhaps the answer will be that this lacuna will be disguised by promising more weapons and more money, so as to keep some glimmer of a Ukrainian prospect alive, through the 2024 U.S. elections. Unless, of course, the Kiev centre ‘fails to hold’, and suddenly implodes(maybe quicker than many expect). Don’t bet on a long war: the Kiev ‘camp’ is, as an abandoned Chrysalis shell with the caterpillar out, searching forage – in new directions.