A lot of people seem to have lost the thread when it comes to nuclear weapons.

They think that nuclear weapons are like other weapons, and are designed to be used in war.

But this is pure mental inertia.

According to all the evidence available, nuclear weapons are anti-weapons, designed to prevent weapons, nuclear or otherwise, from being used.

In essence, if used correctly, nuclear weapons are war suppression devices.

Of course, if used incorrectly, they pose a grave risk to all life on Earth.

There are other risks to all life on Earth as well, such as runaway global warming from unconstrained burning of hydrocarbons; perhaps we need to invent a weapon or two to prevent that as well.

Some people feel that the mere existence of nuclear weapons guarantees that they will be used as various nuclear-armed countries find themselves financially, economically and politically in extremis.

As “proof” of this, they trot out the dramaturgical principle of Chekhov’s Gun.

Anton Chekhov wrote:

“Если вы говорите в первой главе, что на стене висит ружье, во второй или третьей главе оно должно непременно выстрелить. А если не будет стрелять, не должно и висеть.»” 

[“If you say in Act I that there is a gun hanging on the wall, then it is a must that in Act II or III it be fired. And if it won’t be fired, it shouldn’t have been hung there in the first place.”]

And if you point out that we are talking about military strategy and geopolitics, not theater, they then quote Shakespeare’s

“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances…”

and believe that it is QED.

Now, I happen to agree wholeheartedly with Chekhov, when it comes to dramaturgy, and I agree with the Bard as well, provided we define “the world” as “the world of theater,” from which the worlds of geopolitics and nuclear physics are both dramatically different.

Let me explain it in terms that a drama major would understand.

If there is a nuclear bomb hanging on the wall in Act I, then, chances are, it will still be hanging on that wall during the final curtain call.

In the meantime, no matter how many other weapons are present on stage during the play, you can be sure that none of them would be used.

Or maybe they will be, but then the entire audience would be dead, in which case you should definitely ask for your money back because this was billed as a family-friendly show.

Back in the real world, it is hard to argue that nukes haven’t been useful as deterrents against both conventional and nuclear war.

When the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they only did this because they could do so with complete impunity.

Had Japan, or an ally of Japan, possessed nuclear weapons at the time, these attacks would not have taken place.

There is a considerable body of opinion that the Americans didn’t nuke Japan in order to secure a victory (the Japanese would have surrendered regardless) but to send a message to Joseph Stalin.

Stalin got the message, and Soviet scientists and engineers got cracking.

There was an uncomfortable period, before the USSR successfully tested their first atomic bomb…

… when the Americans were seriously planning to destroy all major Soviet cities using a nuclear strike…

… but they set these plans aside…

…because they calculated that they didn’t have enough nukes at the time to keep the Red Army from conquering all of Western Europe in retaliation.

But in August 29, 1949, when the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, these plans were set aside…

…not quite permanently, it would later turn out…

…because even a singular nuclear detonation as a result of a Soviet response to an American first strike…

…. wiping out, say, New York or Washington, would have been too high a price to pay for destroying Russia.

Since then—continuously except for a period between 2002 and two days ago—the ability of nuclear weapons to deter military aggression has remained unquestioned.

There were some challenges along the way, but they were dealt with.

The Americans saw it fit to threaten the USSR by placing nuclear missiles in Turkey; in response, the USSR placed nuclear missiles in Cuba.

The Americans didn’t think that was fair, and the result was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Eventually the Americans were prevailed upon to stand down in Turkey, and the Soviets stood down in Cuba.

Another threat to the deterrent power of nuclear weapons was the development of anti-ballistic weapons that could shoot down nuclear-tipped missiles (just the ballistic ones; more on that later).

But this was widely recognized to be a bad thing, and a major breakthrough came in 1972, when the USA and the USSR signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Over this entire period, the principle that kept the peace was Mutual Assured Destruction: neither side would provoke the other to the point of launching a nuclear strike, because such a move was guaranteed to be suicidal.

The two sides were reduced to fighting a series of proxy wars in various countries around the world…

… which were so much the worse for it…

… but there was no danger of these proxy conflicts erupting into a full-scale nuclear conflagration.

In the meantime, everybody tried to oppose nuclear proliferation, preventing more countries from obtaining access to nuclear weapons technology—with limited success.

The cases where these efforts failed testify to the effective deterrent value of nuclear weapons.

• Saddam Hussein of Iraq didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction” and ended up hung.
• Muammar Qaddafi of Libya voluntarily gave up his nuclear program, and ended up tortured to death.

But Pakistan managed to acquire nuclear weapons, and as a result its relations with its traditional nemesis India have become much more polite and cooperative.

To the point that in June of 2017 both became full members of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, along with China, Russia and other Eurasian nations.

And then North Korea has made some breakthroughs with regard to nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.

As a result of that the US has been reduced to posturing and futile threats against it while South Korea has expressed some newfound respect for its northern neighbor and is now seeking rapprochement.

In 2002 the prospect of continued nuclear deterrence was set a major setback when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty.

Russia protested this move, and promised an asymmetrical response.

American officials ignored this protest, incorrectly thinking that Russia was finished as a nuclear power.

Since then, the Americans spent prodigious amounts of money—well into the trillions of dollars—building a ballistic missile defense system.

Their goal was simple: make it possible to launch a first strike on Russia, destroying much of its nuclear arsenal; then use the new American ABM systems to destroy whatever Russia does manage to launch in response.

On February 2, 2018 the Americans decided that they were ready, and issued a Nuclear Posture Review in which they explicitly reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to prevent Russia from using its nuclear deterrent.

And then, two days ago, all of that came to a happy end when Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he unveiled several new weapons systems that completely negate the value of US missile defense shield.

…among other things.

That was the response the Russians promised to deliver when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty in 2002.

Now, 16 years later, they are done.

Russia has rearmed with new weapons that have rendered the ABM treaty entirely irrelevant.

The ABM treaty was about ballistic missiles—once that are propelled by rockets that boost the missile to close to escape velocity.

After that the missile follows a ballistic trajectory—just like an artillery shell or a bullet.

That makes its path easy to calculate and the missile easy to intercept.

The US missile defense systems rely on the ability to see the missile on radar, calculate its position, direction and velocity, and to launch a missile in response in such a way that the two trajectories intersect.

When they cross, the interceptor missile is detonated, knocking out the attacking missile.

None of the new Russian weapons follow ballistic trajectories.

The new Sarmat is an ICBM minus the “B”—it maneuvers throughout its flight path and can fly through the atmosphere rather than popping up above it.

It has a short boost phase, making it difficult to intercept after launch.

It has the range to fly arbitrary paths around the planet—over the south pole, for instance—to reach any point on Earth.

And it carries multiple maneuverable hypersonic nuclear-armed reentry vehicles which no existing or planned missile defense system can intercept.

Among other new weapons unveiled two days ago was a nuclear-powered cruise missile which has virtually unlimited range and goes faster than Mach 10.

And a nuclear-powered drone submarine which can descend to much larger depths than any existing submarine and moves faster than any existing vessel.

There was also a mobile laser cannon in the show, of which very little is known, but they are likely to come in handy when it comes to frying military satellites.

All of these are based on physical principles that have never been used before.

All of these have passed testing and are going into production; one of them is already being used on active combat duty in the Russian armed forces.

The Russians are now duly proud of their scientists, engineers and soldiers.

Their country is safe again; Americans have been stopped in their tracks, their new Nuclear Posture now looking like a severe case of lordosis.

This sort of pride is more important than it would seem.

Advanced nuclear weapons systems are a bit like secondary sexual characteristics of animals: like the peacock’s tail or the deer’s antlers or the lion’s mane, they are indicative of the health and vigor of a specimen that has plenty of spare energy to expend on showy accessories.

In order to be able to field a hypersonic nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range, a country has to have a healthy scientific community.

This means lots of high-powered engineers, a highly trained professional military and a competent security establishment that can keep the whole thing secret, along with an industrial economy powerful and diverse enough to supply all of the necessary materials, processes and components with zero reliance on imports. Now that the arms race is over, this new confidence and competence can be turned to civilian purposes.

So far, the Western reaction to Putin’s speech has closely followed the illogic of dreams which Sigmund Freud explained using the following joke:

1. I never borrowed a kettle from you
2. I returned it to you unbroken
3. It was already broken when I borrowed it from you.

A more common example is a child’s excuse for not having done her homework: I lost it; my dog ate it; I didn’t know it was assigned.

In this case, Western commentators have offered us the following:

1. There are no such weapons; Putin is bluffing
2. These weapons exist but they don’t really work
3. These weapons work and this is the beginning of a new nuclear arms race

Taking these one at a time:

1. Putin is not known to bluff; he is known for doing exactly what he says he will do. He announced that Russia will deliver an asymmetric response to the US pulling out of the ABM treaty; and now it has.

2. “They don’t work”. These weapons are a continuation of developments that already existed in the USSR 30 years ago but had been mothballed until 2002. What has changed since then was the development of new materials, which make it possible to build vehicles that fly at above Mach 10, with their skin heating up to 2000ºC, and, of course, dramatic improvements in microelectronics, communications and artificial intelligence. Putin’s statement that the new weapons systems are going into production is an order: they are going into production.

3. “It’s all political talk”. Most of Putin’s speech wasn’t about military matters at all. It was about such things as pay increases, roads, hospitals and clinics, kindergartens, nurseries, boosting retirements, providing housing to young families, streamlining the regulation of small businesses, etc. That is the focus of the Russian government for the next six years: dramatically improving the standard of living of the population. The military problem has already been resolved, the arms race has been won, and Russia’s defense budget is being reduced, not increased.

Another line of thought in the West was that Putin unveiled these new weapons, which have been in development for 16 years at least, as part of his reelection campaign (the vote is on March 18).

This is absurd.

Putin is assured of victory because the vast majority of Russians approve of his leadership.

The elections have been about jockeying for a second place position between the Liberal Democrats, led by the old war horse Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the Communists.

The Communists have nominated a non-communist oligarch businessman Pavel Grudinin, who has promptly disqualified himself by failing to disclose foreign bank accounts and other improprieties and now appears to have gone into hiding.

Thus, the Communists, who were previously slated for second place, have burned themselves down and Zhirinovsky will probably come in second.

If Americans don’t like Putin, then they definitely wouldn’t like Zhirinovsky.

Putin is practical and ambivalent about “our Western partners,” as he likes to call them.

Zhirinovsky, on the other hand, is rather revenge-minded, and seems to want to inflict pain on them.

At the same time, there is now a committee, composed of very serious-looking men and women, who are charged with monitoring and thwarting American meddling in Russian politics.

It seems unlikely that the CIA, the US State Department and the usual culprits will be able to get away with much in Russia.

The age of color revolutions is over, and the regime change train has sailed… all the way back to Washington, where Trump stands a chance of getting dethroned Ukrainian-style.

Another way to look at the Western reaction to Russia’s new weapons is using Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief.

We already saw denial (Putin is bluffing; weapons don’t work) and the start of anger (new arms race).

We should expect a bit more anger before moving on to bargaining (you can have the Ukraine if you stop building Sarmat).

Once the response comes back (“You broke the Ukraine; you pay to get it fixed”) we move on to depression (“The Russians just don’t love us any more!”) and, finally, acceptance.

Once the stage of acceptance is reached, here is what the Americans can usefully do in response to Russia’s new weapons systems.

First of all, Americans can scrap their ABM systems because they are now useless.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had this to say about it:

«То, что сегодня создаётся в Польше и Румынии, создаётся на Аляске и предполагается к созданию в Южной Корее и Японии — этот "зонтик" противоракетной обороны, получается, "дырявый". И не знаю, зачем за такие деньги теперь этот "зонтик" им приобретать.» 

[“What is being built in Poland and Romania, and in Alaska, and is planned in South Korea and Japan—this missile defense ‘umbrella’—turns out to be riddled with holes. I don’t know why they should now buy this ‘umbrella’ for so much money.”]

Secondly, Americans can scrap their aircraft carrier fleet.

All it’s useful now for now is threatening defenseless nations, but there are much cheaper ways to threaten defenseless nations.

If Americans are still planning to use them to dominate sea lanes and control world trade…

…then the existence of hypersonic cruise missiles with unlimited range and drone submarines that can lurk at great ocean depths for years…

…make the world’s oceans off-limits for American navy’s battle groups…

…in the event of any major (non-nuclear) escalation…

…because now Russia can destroy them from an arbitrary distance without putting any of their assets or personnel at risk.

Lastly, Americans can pull out of NATO, which has now been shown to be completely useless, dismantle their thousand military bases around the world, and repatriate the troops stationed there.

It’s not as if, in light of these new developments, American security guarantees are going to be worth much to anyone, and America’s “allies” will be quick to realize that.

As far as Russian security guarantees, there is a lot on offer:

…unlike the US, which is increasingly seen as a rogue state…

…and an ineffectual and blundering one at that…

…Russia has been scrupulous in adhering to its international agreements and international law.

In developing and deploying its new weapons systems, Russia has not violated any international agreements, treaties or laws.

And Russia has no aggressive plans towards anyone except terrorists.

As Putin put it during his speech,

«Мы ни на кого не собираемся нападать и что-то отнимать. У нас у самих всё есть.» 

[“We are not planning to attack anyone or take over anywhere. We have everything we need.”]

I hope that the US doesn’t plan to attack anyone either, because, given its recent history, this won’t work.

Threatening the whole planet and forcing it to use the US dollar in international trade …

…and destroying countries, such as Iraq and Libya, when they refuse…

… running huge trade deficits with virtually the entire world…

…and forcing reserve banks around the world to buy up US government debt…

… leveraging that debt to run up colossal budget deficits…

…now around a trillion dollars a year…

… and robbing the entire planet by printing money…

…and spending it on various corrupt schemes…

…that, my friends, has been America’s business plan since around the 1970s.

And it is unraveling before our eyes.

I have the audacity to hope that the dismantling of the American Empire will proceed as copacetically as the dismantling of the Soviet Empire did.

(This is not to say that it won’t be humiliating or impoverishing, or that it won’t be accompanied by a huge increase in morbidity and mortality.)

One of my greatest fears over the past decade was that Russia wouldn’t take the US and NATO seriously enough and just try to wait them out.

After all, what is there to really to fear from a nation that has over a 100 trillion dollars in unfunded entitlements…

… that’s full of opioid addicts…

… with 100 million working-age people permanently out of work…

… with decrepit infrastructure and poisoned national politics?

And as far as NATO, there is, of course, Germany, which is busy rewriting “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles” to be gender-neutral.

What are they supposed to do next?

March on Moscow under a rainbow banner and hope that the Russians die laughing?

Oh, and there’s also NATO’s largest Eurasian asset, Turkey, which is currently busy slaughtering America’s Kurdish assets in Northern Syria.

But simply waiting them out would have been a gamble, because in its death throes the American Empire could lashout in unpredictable ways.

I am glad that Russia chose not to gamble with its national security.

Now that the US has been safely checkmated using the new Russian weapons systems, I feel that the world is in a much better place.

If you like peace, then it seems like your best option is to also like nukes—the best ones possible, ones against which no deterrent exists, and wielded by peaceful, law-abiding nations that have no evil designs on the rest of the planet.

The USA is Cracking Up Just Like the USSR Did – In Fact, They Are Related

This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017. Dmitry Orlov Sat, Mar 27 2021 | 1440 words 27,999  Comments

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Today is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It caused a lot of death and destruction, which I won’t go into because you can read all about it elsewhere. It also caused a great outpouring of new art, literature, architecture and culture in general, putting the previously somewhat stodgy Russia securely in the world’s avant-garde.

It also resulted in a tremendous surge of industrialization, rapidly transforming a previously mostly agrarian, though gradually industrializing nation into a global industrial powerhouse (at great human cost).

But perhaps most importantly, the revolution destroyed all of the previously dominant institutions of privilege based on heredity, class and wealth and replaced them with an egalitarian social model centered on the working class.

And it demonstrated (as much through propaganda as by actual example) how this new model was more competitive: while the West wallowed in the Great Depression, the USSR surged ahead both economically and socially.

For all of its many failings, the USSR did serve as a shining city on the hill to the downtrodden millions around the world, including in the USA, fermenting rebellion, so that even there the one-percent ownership class eventually had to stop and think.

Reluctantly, they decided to stop trying to destroy organized labor movements, introduced state old-age pensions (misnamed “Social Security”) and declared a euphemistic “war on poverty.”

And with that a “middle class” was created—so called because it was literally in the middle, having risen out of poverty but still safely walled off from the one-percent ownership class.

But as we shall see this effect was temporary.

Eventually the USSR evaporated, as artificial, synthetic political entities often do.

The reasons for this disappearing act are too numerous to mention, but one of the main ones was that the Soviet political elite turned itself into a much-hated, privileged caste, and then failed to reproduce, turning into a moribund gerontocracy.

MM Comment. Sounds like the USA today, eh?

When the old cadres finally started dying out, the new generation that came in included plenty of traitors who did their best to destroy the system and grab a piece for themselves.

This effect was plain to see, but was it the root cause?

When a complex system collapses, every part of it is touched to one extent or another, and it becomes impossible to say which one played the key role in precipitating the collapse.

With the USSR gone, the owners of the USA had no one to compete against and were no longer under any sort of pressure to maintain the illusion of an equitable and egalitarian society.

Instead, they concentrated on two projects, one [1] ideological, the other [2] economic.

[1] The ideological project involved wrecking what was left of the USSR to the greatest extent possible. And to do so in order to paint a convincing picture of the horrible consequences of communism or socialism. It’s intention was to herd everyone toward wholeheartedly embracing unfettered capitalism.

[2] The economic project involved eviscerating the American middle class—a process that by now has largely run its course.

Since the creation of the middle class was a multigenerational project, so is its destruction.

But the effects of this process on society are already plain to see: there is an overhang of still relatively well-off retirees while their children and grandchildren have greatly diminished economic and social prospects.

Meanwhile, the hastily erected scaffolding that created the appearance of egalitarianism has been knocked out.

Organized labor is all but finished.

Borders have been thrown open to foreign labor and cheap imports.

Entry into the middle class has been blocked through a variety of measures.

These measures include [1] the relentless dumbing down of public education, [2] the equally relentless overpricing of higher education, [3] the health care extortion scheme, [4] the rationing of justice based on wealth and privilege, [5] wealth confiscation using a succession of artificial real estate market bubbles and so on.

Overall, the former middle class is being whittled down to nothing the same way that the Chinese “coolies” were dealt with once the railroads had been built…

…don’t feed them much but give them plenty of opium (now being grown in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of Western troops).

To sum it up: if you aren’t happy with the way things are going in the US, you have a choice.

• You can of course blame Russia and / or China.
• Or you can blame your owners—your one percent—who have owned you ever since the King of England appointed the Lords Proprietors.

Within Russia itself the commemoration of the October Revolution is no longer a public holiday.

But there was a sort of commemoration held on the vast Palace Square in St. Petersburg, which I attended with my five-year-old son on my shoulders.

It was his first time in a crowd of 35,000, and he was duly impressed.

It was a light-and-sound extravaganza consisting of two shows which played in alternation.

On the vast semicircular facade of the General Staff building was broadcast a multimedia retrospective of the October Revolution that included the reading of historical documents (such as the abdication of Nicholas II) and works of poetry.

It ended on an upbeat note—yes, many horrible events took place, but Russia is now reborn—with the General Staff’s façade painted in the Russian tricolor.

A different show was presented on the façade of the Winter Palace across the square.

Here, multimedia artists from across Europe (including France, Italy, Spain and Poland) used projected light to decorate and transform the palace to music that sung praises to the beauty of St. Petersburg.

The audience was invited to use their phones to vote for the best one.

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After the show, as we filtered out of the Palace Square and walked home along the Palace Embankment, my five-year-old son asked some good questions that he had formulated while watching the show.

“Did a lot of people die?” (Yes.)

“But Russia was then and is now?” (Yes, Russia has been around for a 1000 years and will probably be around for 1000 years more.)

“Why do people have to die?” (Because otherwise we we would be full-up with useless old people and there wouldn’t be enough room for young people.)

And then the obvious follow-up: “Why are we full-up with useless old people anyway?” (???)

And finally: “Why do we bury dead people?” (Because they smell really bad.) “Ah…”

A rather unsentimental youth, wouldn’t you say?

But he was only one of the thousands of quite similar-minded ones who were in attendance that day, riding on their fathers’ shoulders or marching along.

Welcome to Russia…

One of the reasons why the USSR failed was because the idiocy of the ideology of Soviet communism became too painful to tolerate.

In a sense, this was inevitable.

You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, making “intellectual idiocy” something of an oxymoron.

We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality.

And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.

By now most thinking people realize that capitalism has failed just has communism had.

We can only hope that one day the US will do with its capitalist legacy what Russia has done with its communist one: turn it into a festive art installation that both children and adults can enjoy.

Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake

Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions –  “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.”

“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”

This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017. Dmitry Orlov Mon, Mar 22 2021 | 1610 words 46,492  Comments

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Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.

I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible.

I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble.

It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right.

It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.

American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.

Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase: “That’s not gonna work.”

Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yadda-yadda, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says…

“That’s not gonna work.”

And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to…

… that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option…

… he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.”

And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.

I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.”

And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it.

Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.

America seems to be blissfully unaware of how it comes across to the rest of the world

It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.

Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.

The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers.

However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics.

Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.

It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse.

While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves.

The larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.

The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters.

The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout.

And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.

Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs.

This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.

It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.

I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.

But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.”

However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.

Internationally, for example:

• Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.

• Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.

• Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.

• Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.

All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.

In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.

The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar.

As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.

Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.

The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.

And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.

The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable.

It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.

Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.

MM Conclusion

Of course, these articles were written by a Russian inside the USA, and his observations at times seem dated. Things have certainly advanced in the last year or so.  All of the articles here pre-dates the Coronavirus, the Biden Presidency, and the March 2021 meeting in Anchorage. they are also Russian centric.

Taken as a whole, we can see other elements in the global struggle that is is bracing for the collapse of America. And in hindsight it looks like the world is trying to let the United States suffer slowly and calmly.  Some, like Dmitry here, argue that it is best to put the thrashing wounded old animal to bed with a short quick bullet to the head, but I remain guarded in regards to that.

There could well be a considerable amount of collateral damage.

Keep in mind that things are now moving into place and alliances and black operations forming. The USA is doing it’s best to entangle the rest of the world with it’s madness, like a schizophrenic lunatic who cannot see the absurdity of their actions, and the rest of the would holding a “clothespin to their noses” and trying to say out of arm’s reach. With the sole exception of Australia for reasons that are not disclosed publicly lest the government leaderships be hung from the rafters.

In any event this is pretty good stuff, and I do hope that you all enjoyed it.

Let this stuff sit a spell in the back of your mind. I have a follow up article that I will release later on this week concerning exactly where we are, precisely,  in regards to the Fourth Turning.