All three point, in Alain’s case directly, to an Asia Times piece of March 25 by one David Paul Goldman. Of whom Wiki says<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n David Paul Goldman<\/strong> is an American economic strategist and author [who] writes from a Judeo-Christian perspective and often focuses on demographic and economic factors in his analyses … Goldman was global head of credit strategy at Credit Suisse<\/a><\/strong> 1999-2002, Global Head of Fixed Income Research for Bank of America<\/a><\/strong> 2002-2005, and Global Head of Fixed Income Research at Cantor Fitzgerald<\/a><\/strong> 2005-2008. He subsequently was a partner at Yunfeng Financial<\/a> <\/strong>in Hong Kong, an investment bank later acquired by Jack Ma<\/strong><\/a>. He continues to advise CEOs and institutional investors. He is a regular contributor to Claremont Review of Books<\/strong><\/a>, Law and Liberty, Tablet Magazine<\/a><\/strong>, the Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/strong>, and First Things<\/strong><\/a> (where he was senior editor during 2009-2011).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n Three references to the man on the same morning? Apropos of neither corporate media feeding frenzy nor obviously synchronising event? As I’ve claimed before<\/a><\/strong>, the universe is messaging me! To such uncanny coincidence let me add that former Swiss Colonel Jacques Baud features in both the title and a substantial proportion of Simplicius’s post today. That’s right, he who had top billing in Russia and the art of war<\/a><\/strong>, the aforementioned March 27 post which moved Dave Hansell to throw in his own two penn’orth.<\/p>\n Like Colonel Baud, Mr Goldman merits a mention; if not in that long and lengthening list of men and women I call gamekeepers turned poacher, then in that long and lengthening list of men and women I call canaries in the coalmine. The two have a way of merging inextricably.<\/p>\n To David Paul Goldman then, writing on March 25 that:<\/p>\n Somewhere last weekend a few dozen former Cabinet members, senior military officers, academics and think tank analysts met to evaluate the world military situation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I can say that I haven\u2019t been so scared since the fall of 1983, when I was a junior contract researcher doing odd jobs for then Special Assistant to the President Norman A Bailey at the National Security Council. That was the peak of the Cold War and the too-realistic<\/span>\u00a0Able Archer 83<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>exercise nearly set off a nuclear war.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, the US foreign policy establishment has staked its credibility on humiliating Russia by pushing NATO\u2019s borders to within a few hundred kilometers of Moscow, while crushing Moscow\u2019s economy through sanctions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It has pulled every chit it has with European governments, mobilizing its legion of journalists, think tankers and stipended politicians to promote the Ukrainian proxy war, with the intent of degrading Russia\u2019s armed forces and ultimately forcing regime change in Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n The messaging from the most distinguished participants \u2013 former Cabinet members with defense and national security portfolios \u2013 is that NATO is still determined to win at any cost.\u00a0 Said one rapporteur:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The question is whether Russia can generate strategic reserves. Its officer corps is at 50% strength and it has no depth of non-commissioned officers. The Russians are taking massive losses of 25,000 to 30,000 a month. They can\u2019t sustain the will to fight on the battlefield. The Russians are close to a breaking point. Can they sustain their national will? Not if the rigged election [of Vladimir Putin this month] was any indication. Their economy has real vulnerability. We need to redouble sanctions and financial interdiction of supplies getting to Russia. The Russians have a Potemkin portrayal of strength.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n All the above is demonstrably false and known to be false by the rapporteur in question. The notion that Russia is taking 25,000 to 30,000 casualties a month is ludicrous. Artillery accounts for about 70% of casualties on both sides and by every estimate Russia is firing five or ten times as many shells as Ukraine. Russia has carefully avoided frontal assaults to preserve manpower.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The most important fact about Putin\u2019s re-election is that 88% of Russians voted, a much higher turnout than in any Western democracy. Russians may not have had much choice of candidate but they had a choice of voting or not. The massive turnout is consistent with Putin\u2019s 85% approval rating according to the independent Levada poll. <\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Instead of collapsing, Russia has become the focal point for a reorganization of global supply chains and their financing, and its economy is growing, rather than shrinking by half, as President Biden promised in March 2022.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ukraine is running out of soldiers and can\u2019t agree on a new conscription law. One prominent military historian expostulated, \u201cEverywhere you go in Ukraine you see young men hanging around and not in uniform! Ukraine refuses to go all in.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Russia produces anywhere between four and seven times more artillery shells than Ukraine. Ukraine\u2019s air defenses are exhausted as its old Soviet-era anti-aircraft missiles have been fired and NATO\u2019s stocks of Patriot missiles are dwindling.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Russia has an inexhaustible supply of Soviet-era large bombs fitted with cheap guidance systems, fired accurately at Ukrainian targets from Russian aircraft standing 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) off. With five times Ukraine\u2019s population, Russia is winning the war of attrition.<\/span><\/p>\n Another rapporteur at the weekend meeting denounced Germany\u2019s Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other European leaders for worrying too much about the \u201cnuclear threshold\u201d \u2013 the point of escalation after which Russia might use nuclear weapons. He demanded that Germany supply its long-range Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine, with a 1,000-kilometer range and a two-stage warhead suitable for destroying major infrastructure.<\/span><\/p>\n Senior German air force officers<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0last month discussed using 20 of the Taurus missiles to destroy the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland, in a conversation covertly recorded and published by Russian media. The conversation also revealed the presence of hundreds of British and other NATO personnel on the ground in Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n Taking the war to Russia\u2019s homeland and destroying major infrastructure is one way to transform the proxy war with Ukraine into a general European war. Another is to deploy NATO soldiers in Ukraine, something that French President Emmanuel Macron has broached (but almost certainly does not intend to do).<\/span><\/p>\n Remarkably, not a word was said about a possible negotiated solution to the conflict. Any negotiated outcome at this juncture would award Russia the Eastern Ukrainian oblasts that it has annexed and probably give Russia a buffer zone reaching to the east bank of the Dnieper River \u2013 followed by a normalization of economic relations with Western Europe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Russia would emerge triumphant and American assets in Western Europe would be degraded. The impact on America\u2019s world standing would be devastating: As several attendees observed, Taiwan is watching carefully to see what happens to American proxies.<\/span><\/p>\n The rules of the meeting prevent me from saying much more but I am free to report what I told the gathering: Sanctions against Russia have failed miserably because Russia had access to unlimited amounts of Chinese (as well as Indian and other) imports, both directly and through a host of intermediaries including Turkey and the former Soviet republics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But Russia\u2019s economic resilience in the face of supposedly devastating sanctions is only one reflection of a great transformation of world trade. China\u2019s exports to the Global South doubled during the past three years and China now exports more to the South than to developed markets. China\u2019s unprecedented exporting success, in turn, stems from the rapid automation of Chinese industry, which now installs more industrial robots per year than the rest of the world combined.<\/span><\/p>\n This is evident, I added, in China\u2019s newfound dominance in the world automotive market but it also has critical military implications. China claims that it has automated plants that can make 1,000 cruise missiles a day\u2014not impossible given that it can manufacture 1,000 EVs a day, or thousands of 5G base stations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The implication is that China can produce the equivalent of America\u2019s inventory of 4,000 cruise missiles in a week while American defense contractors take years to assemble them by hand.<\/span><\/p>\n No one disputed the data I presented. And no one believed that Russia is taking 25,000 casualties a month. Facts weren\u2019t the issue: The assembled dignitaries, a representative sampling of the foreign policy establishment\u2019s intellectual and executive leadership, simply couldn\u2019t imagine a world in which America no longer gave the orders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n They are accustomed to running things and they will gamble the world away to keep their position.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That last has been my fear since the earliest days<\/strong><\/a> of this blog. It would be a relief to know the scale of the problem, hinted at in footnote 1, was acknowledged but everywhere I look – most importantly the Alice-in denialism of corporate media systemically incapable<\/strong><\/a> of being truthful on such matters, but also the idiocies of a wokerati<\/em>\u00a0 which, blithely oblivious to the dangers of a dying empire, thinks sexist or racist tweets the worst crimes under the sun; and a Far Left which, without offering any alternative in the face of provocations it readily acknowledges, damns the Russian SMO – I see only sand, and ostriches without discernible heads. <\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n * * *\u00a0<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Events are conspiring to keep me in Ukraine. Today being Easter Monday for non-Orthodox Christians – but still a month away for Russians and Ukrainians, Ethiopians, Greeks and Serbs – I’d intended to post on the 1916 Easter Rising against … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ukraine-war","category-western-decline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120574"}],"version-history":[{"count":57,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120660,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120574\/revisions\/120660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
America has no Ukraine Plan B except more war<\/a><\/h2>\n
US foreign policy establishment blindly intent on beating Russia on the battlefield and crushing its economy. Neither will happen<\/span><\/h5>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/putin-approval-ratings.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPutin\u2019s Approval or Disapproval Rating in the Levada Poll. Source: Statista<\/h6>\n