Everybody’s shouting: which side are you one? – Bob Dylan
Let me also restate my opinion, argued in posts like this, that despite a tone markedly different from that of his predecessors, Trump represents greater continuity of foreign policy than either his detractors or admirers recognise. In backing Israel’s expansionism, to tighten US grip on the Middle East, Trump’s crime is to say out loud what Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden kept under wraps. The Ukraine bloodbath differs in that aims set out in a Rand Report of 2019 1 were more modest. Where an ethnically cleansed Greater Israel furthers US geo-strategy decades in the making, US plans for the Ukraine were more opportunistic: to weaken a rising power thwarted at every turn, before finally doing what she should have done decades ago in pivoting to Asia, by US refusal to allow her to join the West except on terms dictated in Washington.
On Zelenksy’s ordeal at the Oval Office
From the start this was to be a proxy war fought to the last Ukrainian. There’s a whole policy paper where this is spelled out in detail; the Rand Corporation’s 2019 paper, Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground. Its table of contents shows geopolitical measure number one as provide lethal Aid to Ukraine, and this was begun under the first Trump Administration: increase support to the Syrian ‘rebels’, promote regime change in Belarus, exploit tensions in the South Caucus [South Ossetia and Georgia] reduce Russian influence in Central Asia [Kazakhstan, Armenia and Azerbaijan] and challenge Russian presence in Moldova. They also talk of economic measures to hinder petroleum exports, reduce gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions or just blow up the pipelines, impose sanctions, enhance Russian brain drain.
All are measures to extend Russia. This isn’t about Ukraine; this is about Russia; about a US policy to overextend, encircle, contain and eventually collapse Russia as part of a much wider strategy to preserve American hegemony over the planet. It also includes a containment strategy aimed at China so the US is unlikely to get involved directly in the Ukraine because it also needs to deal with China. The USA has openly said this, including under the current Trump Administration. They explicitly said this back in February. I have repeatedly got over US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directive to Europe on February 12 2025 in [Brussels]. He told Europe he was not talking about ending the war. He was not talking about peace. He was telling Europe, “you need to take over because we need to take on China. We cannot do both at the same time. We need to divide labor.” He literally said it’s a division of labor; you need to double down on Ukraine while we deal with China and I warned people that if you listen to this directive it tells you everything about America’s true intentions. They have no interest in peace. They told you this all along if only you listened to what they were really saying instead of projecting your own hopes and desires onto the incoming Trump Administration.
Brian Berletic (lightly edited)
Since the first days of the proxy war in Ukraine, Brian Berletic has been my go-to source for his mix of sit-reps I trust with level-headed analysis. Where Alexander Mercouris is indispensable, I’ve learned to allow for a discernible soft spot for Donald Trump. Other voices – Scott Ritter, Pepe Escobar and Andrei Martyanov spring to mind – are likewise too informed to be ignored, but prone to wishful thinking; something I can do on my own without their help.
Brian’s analyses suffer from neither. If there’s a flaw – and I do stress, if – it’s that viewing key events through the lens of a US empire recklessly seeking to maintain global hegemony, given the inability of its ruling elites to tolerate any peer rival, may – and I do stress, may – be a tad reductive.
That said, if anyone has a clearer, more amply substantiated and on both counts more useful lens for what is going down – be it in Ukraine, Caucasus or Central Asia … in the Middle East … in South Pacific, Americas or frozen wastes – I’ve yet to hear it. Meanwhile his insistence on leaving our (understandable) emotions at the door to stay focused on the reality of imperial continuity, below a maelstrom of surface turbulence and attendant cheerleading for this side or that, remains icily lucid. Rarely more so than in this 43:39 dissection of the West’s division of labour as regards Russia and China.
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- Extracts from the 2019 Rand Report, Extending Russia, are given in my post on the eve of the SMO, Kazakhstan: why is the steppe on fire?
This is excellent again Phil.
I wish many more people knew what’s really going on but unfortunately, as you know only too well. they don’t. I never mention Russia/Ukraine to anyone as it’s pointless, just get funny looks and awkward silence. They just think Putin = evil, nothing else to say
That’s the MSM for you, still manufacturing consent.
Hope you’re well.
Know that one only too well. Still can’t figure whether it’s just laziness or a need to hate and blame somebody else for the state this country is in.
Thanks Margaret and, yes, I’m well. The success of the “evil Putin”, and even more of the “unprovoked war” narrative – both in defiance of the most basic and easily attained hard facts – can be dismaying.
If I used the words “manufacturing consent” I’d get even funnier looks.
Maybe one positive thing is that I think a majority are against massive rearmament. But then even if they are, we don’t get a say in anything. Just put a cross next to someone’s name every few years, hope for the best but get the worst.
I’ve given up on that. Voting is a mug’s game.
Good observation and very valid and it needs to be said over and over again even if they don’t understand manufactured consent or cognitive dissonance.
As for voting in this country it’s the difference between a “crook as a dog’s hind leg” or “egotistical narcissistic stuffed shirt” or “myopic wokes with their brains disengaged” choice – why bother?
A couple of good reads:
https://nypost.com/2025/03/04/business/blackrock-to-take-control-of-ports-in-panama-canal-for-23b/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/garthfriesen/2025/01/26/why-trump-wants-greenland-and-canada-strategic-and-economic-goals/
Trump is behaving like a Mafia boss and he wants it all – whatever the cost.
He will(if he can)encircle the world and re-acquire the target countries, Russia and China and bully with ever fiercer sanctions, threaten with war or simply seize from weaker countries, whatever he wants by fair means or foul.
Refreshing to see a wodge of women’s posts instead of the usual men. I’d like to see more of this sort of thing – please get some of your like minded (or even not) female pals to join in too, Susan/Margaret.
As for the article, yes, I agree. Gilbert Doctorow persists in positing that Trump is a master of maskirovka, but more and more I doubt this. US Empire goals will remain the same until the empire dies, and thankfully, that seems to be the way it’s heading. It may however, outlast me, but probably not by much.
Thanks Susan. I’ll check them out. Stay well.
Brian Berletic’s take on this is echoed here:
https://voicefromrussia.ch/en/the-war-of-two-worlds-has-begun-part-5/
Trump is certainly not seeking peace in Ukraine – or the Near East, the Pacific or anywhere else.
However, the rabid Western Europeans – as Prof. Richard Wolff details here……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emwauuU0buI&ab_channel=BreakThroughNews
…..- are most definitely seeking war.
With the UK under the regime of Herr Starmer doing its level best to outdo the German’s and the French.
As noted here by Paul Knaggs on the Labour Heartlands site:
https://labourheartlands.com/from-welfare-to-warfare-benefit-cuts-and-military-conscription/
“Labour’s latest scheme that truly reveals the bankruptcy of their moral ledger: pushing unemployed young people into military service while simultaneously cutting their social safety net. Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall’s announcement in the Commons represents not merely a policy shift but an ideological capitulation that would make even the most hardened Tory blush.
Kendall told MPs on Tuesday she has held discussions with her local job centre and the military and will hold further talks with the Ministry of Defence to get “this plan into action.”
Kendall confirmed in the House of Commons there will be cuts in benefits and it is her aim to get 642,000 people aged between 16 and 24 that are unemployed to join the military.
She said that welfare system is “holding our country back” and Labour is “ambitious for our people and our country, and we believe that unleashing the talents of the British people is the key to our future success.”
Tory MP Mark Pritchard told MPs, “One way of perhaps attracting some people back into work is for her to have discussions with the Defence Secretary. Would she agree with me that getting more young people into his majesty’s armed forces, air force, navy, army would be a starting place?”……
……“We will consult on delaying access to the health top up in Universal Credit until someone is aged 22,” Kendall declared with bureaucratic coldness, before cheerfully endorsing a Tory MP’s suggestion to funnel these same vulnerable young people into the armed forces……
…..Let us be absolutely clear about what this represents: a government that cannot—or will not—create meaningful civilian employment opportunities for its youth is instead offering them as fodder for military recruitment. The message is unmistakable: if you’re young and struggling, your choices are destitution or deployment.
This cynical marriage of benefit cuts and military recruitment isn’t merely callous; it’s a calculated exploitation of economic vulnerability. When basic subsistence is threatened, the steady paycheck of military service becomes less a choice than a necessity.”
Cutting to the chase, what is occurring in real time is the Official Baton Handover from the last Ukrainian has just taken place.
Question is, who are we really going to war with? The supplemental being over what timeframe?
Trump may or may not succeed in putting the Ukraine debacle on the backburner to focus US attention elsewhere. Either way the US is not going to be putting troops on the ground in time to save 404 from the inevitable and neither are the New Coalition Of The Willing.
Simply because of the logistics. Such as transiting through the countries of Eastern Europe (the Baltics excepted, and good luck with that route) who are not, let’s go with, amenable to the idea. Not to mention practicalities like getting troops up to speed; a coherent single command structure (good luck with that one between the countries with the three biggest historical ego’s on the subcontinent); and sufficient equipment.
Six hundred thousand plus 18-24 year olds into the UK military is an ambitious target which suggests a long term commitment to a fight at some point in the future once a sufficient arsenal has been assembled, training taken place and logistics structures constructed – long after 404 has fallen.
Sidebar: Not forgetting the economic and social cost to the country and the subcontinent. ‘Put another Pensioner on the fire, Keir/Emmanuel/Olaf/Mark we’ve run out of women/children/Palestinians/Brown skinned people.’
Such a long term notion, in a context in which the objective is plunder of the resource base of at least the Eurasian Heartland and most likely the rimland and the rest of the Global Majority (which now seems to have taken over from the term ‘Global South’), suggests that it will not only be Russia, ther Near East and China in the cross hairs of this division of labour but the BRICS and everyone else outside the West.
The large states of Western Europe at least seems intent on committing to national suicide.
It struck me sometime ago any modicum of an aggressor state negotiating a ceasefire between its proxy forces and the aggressor State’s geopolitical rival was destined for the dustbin of history. The obvious reason for the hegemonic state to intervene is when the proxy forces have exhausted their potential and need time and space for resuscitation and strengthening. To think the US under a new boss would act as an impartial negotiator intent on a fair and just resolution of the conflict defies common-sense. You could say the whole ceasefire narrative and pantomime with its cast of western actors was contrived to elicit a NO from Russia proving in the eyes of the propagandised western masses the simplistic notion Russia is is not for peace only war. This ruse betrays the need to convince the ordinary man and woman that rearmament is the only solution to their economic woes, insecurities and fears when in fact it is the ruling class who believe they have the most to lose in the present crisis and are pushing for rearmament and militarisation of society to solve their problems not ours!
Congratulations Rick. This comment – lightly edited to fit the space – has made the much coveted steel city masthead quote slot!