The Blame Game – Who Lost Ukraine? And Who Lost the West?
Photo by Mathias Reding: https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-and-yellow-ukrainian-flag-waving-above-crowd-of-people-11421405/
When things end badly, as we are seeing now in Ukraine, the inevitable blame game begins.
That is happening in the war and the western sanctions on Russia.
Even as western political leaders (I really should avoid the term “leaders” for this class of
cavalier clowns) jockey for better optics in their despicable role for having completely
mismanaged their relationship with Russia over Ukraine, the forecasts we have made in this
Weekly Commentary over the last four months have essentially been proven by events to be
mostly correct.
The Ukrainian army is collapsing in the Donbas, and if you still cannot believe the reality of
this situation because you had believed that good, being Ukraine, will always triumph over
evil (Russia), go read the large number of articles coming out from the western mainstream
media that have turned around 180 degrees to tell you that every day, 500 or more Ukrainian
soldiers are dying, with at least twice that wounded or captured. Every single day…
Kyiv had a pre war army of about 230,000. That army was trained to NATO standards over 8
years since 2014. It is, by Ukrainian admission, being annihilated. It no longer matters
how much territory the Russian army captures any more. The well-trained army that had
existed is history.
There is no possibility for a million-man army to be reconstituted, retrained and redeployed
to take on the Russians. That will take 20 years. They had eight years to train an army one
quarter of that size and it has been crushed in just about 100 days. How long will it take to
train a fresh million-man force even if the men and the money can be found by Kyiv. Today,
the Ukrainian government is having difficulty finding recruits who are actually hiding from
the drafters to avoid becoming cannon fodder. Even if there is another army, formed perhaps
from Polish, Lithuanian or other Western “volunteers” or mercenaries (some of whom are
already being captured), it will not be able to take on a now battle-hardened Russian army.
The war in the Donbas is over.
So is the economic war against Russia. That proceeded, right from the beginning of that
effort in early March, without disagreement that the sanctions do not work. Worse, the
sanctions are undermining the US and every western European economy and wreaking
financial calamity. At the rate it is going, the EU will collapse by the end of the 2023 winter
with the richest countries entering a deep recession. Trump will be back in the White House
on the backs of a real insurrection against the Democrats.
Can I be wrong?
Well, have I been wrong in the last four months, covering exactly the same issues? If I can
be a little immodest, all my major conclusions have been correct so far.
In fact, in terms of the economic war, it has unravelled faster than I had imagined. If I have
been wrong, it is because I was too careful predicting the speed at which Russia has shrugged
off the sanctions and how fast the vicious cycle of inflation and the destructive forces of
working-class prosperity would engulf the American and European nations. The Russian
Rouble is getting stronger by the week, now at 56 roubles to the US Dollar with its interest
rate below pre-war levels, while in the US, interest rates have risen by the largest amount in
four decades, European interest rates are forced to go up as well, and even the Swiss National
Bank, the safe haven of all Europe, has to raise interest rates for the first time in 15 years.
The Russian economy is benefitting from the sanctions, not the other way round.
So much so that at an annual economic conference in St Petersburg last week, Putin stood
confidently to taunt the west - if you want to bring Russia to its knees, come on, do it.
Foreign Minister Lavrov, in an interview with the BBC, directed a similar challenge to Boris
Johnson and Liz Truss, if you want to break us, just do it. If those were not iron gauntlets
thrown on the table, I don’t know what else they would represent.
That same St Petersburg economic conference, sanctioned by the Americans, turned out to be
more successful than planned. Sixty-nine countries were there, including Germany and
Japan, which the US have been trying to persuade to boycott the event. They didn’t. It
shows the growing economic resilience and strength of the Russian Federation. A record
volume of trade deals was signed at the conference. So much for the sanctions.
As Henry Kissinger has warned a month ago, the Ukraine war must end in another month.
We are seeing signs of that being reluctantly being executed by the collective west.
What are the signs?
Firstly, Biden is shouting at the top of his voice, supported by the New York Times and other
leading American mainstream media, that Zellensky does not listen to American military
advice, and that the US does not know what he is doing. The implication is that if he had
listened, he would not be losing so badly. Really?
In reality, it is a sign that Biden is getting frustrated with the clown, and is ditching him. Just
look at the military support Biden is sending his way. Forget the fact that the fool is asking
for ridiculous amounts of arms aid – 1000 pieces of high-end artillery, 500 tanks, 300 MLRS,
etc when in fact, the entire west do not have such high inventory levels of these weapons,
without becoming totally naked. But Biden’s response is truly classic. He sends Zellensky
18 artillery pieces and 30,000 shells (enough for just six days firing at the rate of 1/10 of the
Russian side). The numbers speak for themselves. Biden is casting Zellensky aside and is
changing tack on Ukraine.
Then we have the leaders in all of the major EU countries, Scholtz, Macron, Dragi and
separately Johnson, rushing into Kyiv in the wake of Biden’s military aid announcements,
and reading the message as an American cop-out, did not want to be caught holding the bag
supporting Ukraine without the US in fighting the proxy war against Russia.
None of them is giving Kyiv any more heavy weapons. They have not even delivered on
what has been promised. Still, they announced EU candidate status for Ukraine. Wow!
What a breakthrough! That candidacy will run for another couple of decades while Ukraine
is forced to make structural adjustments to its economy. A couple of decades? The war
will likely end in a couple of weeks.
And which Ukraine are we talking about? Is it the one that is losing 50 percent of its
economy because all its best parts in the East and South have been captured by Russia? Or
are we talking about the one that is in deep hock on at least $55 billion in lend lease aid from
the ever-transactional Americans? Or perhaps the one that no longer has any tax revenue to
collect? Or the one that has lost the flower of its youth and talent, fleeing the country as
refugees, and not forgetting the brave young soldiers who have died for a cause that was bred
by western lies, hypocrisy and deceit?
Which Ukraine are these western leaders talking about in conferring EU candidacy that needs
to make structural upgrades over two decades when the country is not even viable right now
and unlikely to ever recover?
It’s all optics. And it’s cruel how political optics work…
Besides that, these European leaders must feel a pang of conscience for having led Ukraine
up a primrose path to destruction (Prof John Mearsheimer’s words, not mine). An empty is
probably better than none at all.
Oh, by the way, here is Prof Mearsheimer’s latest analysis (from two days ago) on the war in
Ukraine and its consequences… it’s worth a watch on Youtube.
The causes and consequences of the Ukraine war – A lecture by John J Mearsheimer
https://youtu.be/qciVozNtCDM
As he said in conclusion to this hard-hitting talk, “the war in Ukraine is a colossal
disaster…those who believe in facts and logic will quickly discover that the United States
and its allies are mainly responsible for this trainwreck.
“The tragic truth is if the west had not pursued NATO expansion into Ukraine, it is
unlikely there would be a war in Ukraine today and Crimea would still be part of Ukraine.
“In essence, Washington played the central role in leading Ukraine down the path of
destruction.
“History will judge the United States and its allies with abundant harshness for its
remarkably foolish policy on Ukraine.”
That’s the view from one of the top scholars on international politics in the world today.
And he’s American, from top ranked University of Chicago, who has studied the situation for
decades. Does anyone know any better?
And Boris Johnson was also in Kyiv a couple of days ago to tell Zellensky that the UK would
commit to training a new Ukrainian army. 10,000 troops at a time for 120 days (so
1,000,000 would take 400 months). Is that another Boris joke? Is the British army itself
trained to fight the Russians? The remnants of the battle-hardened Ukrainian army, having
already survived just about 120 days, should be training Boris’ troops…on how to avoid
capture by the Russian army. Boris is trying his very best to avoid becoming the victim of a
regime change in the Conservative Party by using optics and brave words to bolster his
image.
And in case you think it is only the poor Ukrainians who are suffering from the debacle of
corrupt leadership under Zellensky, take a read of this article posted by a young American
writer on the plight of the millennial generation buffeted by the constant search for war on the
part of their leaders. The writer is Jessica Wildfire, whom I have found to write intelligently
with heartfelt angst in her articles, found mostly on Medium, an internet website.
A Lifetime of War Has Destroyed Us
Letter from a millennial.
By Jessica Wildfire, writing for Medium, 16 June 2022
“Hello, I’m a millennial.
I graduated college into one of the worst recessions in American history. For anyone who wasn’t in the
top 10 percent, it was really more of a depression. I spent my 20s and most of my 30s living in
apartments without furniture, and sometimes without heat or air conditioning. Sometimes I woke up
with roaches in my bed, or crawling on my toothbrush. While the children of affluent Americans were
out partying, I was the one cooking their food and bringing them beers for substandard wages.
I’ve known war my entire adult life.
I’ve watched president after president tell me he was going fix things. He was going to make life better.
But first…
He needed to defend human rights and democracy somewhere else. He needed to do it with tanks and
missiles. He needed my tax money to buy them. If that money wasn’t enough, he was going to create
new money to pay for it. He could do that, create money.
He just couldn’t ever do it for me.
We’re losing.
Four months after invading Ukraine, Russia is now gaining ground. They’re inflicting heavy
causalities on Ukrainian troops. They’re taking key cities. They’ve remained largely unhurt by
sanctions.
Meanwhile, the current president who promised to make my life better seems to have simultaneously
made Ukraine the hill he’s going to die on, while also trying to distance himself from the inevitable
defeat. Recently, he even took a swipe at Zelensky, saying he “didn’t want to hear” U.S. intelligence
regarding Russia’s plan to invade.
That sounds like finger pointing…
The sanctions that politicians bragged about have blown back on us, fraying supply chains further and
driving up the cost on everything from gas to fertilizer and emptying store shelves. Of course, there’s a
big helping of corporate greed in there, too.
It would be one thing if our wars ever worked, but they don’t. They never actually deliver on their
promises.
Biden has merely provided the cover story for corporations to extract more wealth from us. He keeps
talking about the federal reserve, like they’re going to ride in to save the day.
They’re not.
If we’re going to be totally honest, the tens of billions we’ve spent on war have done very little to help
Ukraine. Instead, what Biden has done is enrich the military and fossil fuel industries.
He helped them, nobody else.
Now he’s making excuses.
And promises…
If nothing else, we want to know: Why can’t we ever find the money to fund all the other things we
really need?
Why is it just war?
They’ve mortgaged our future, again.
Even now, as he talks about creating an economy that “works for everyone,” Biden is doing the exact
opposite of what he promises. He continues to pay lip service to climate change action, issuing
executive orders with no real plan or funding to back them up.
He forgives a fraction of student loans, when most people say it will do almost nothing to help them
financially.
It’s all optics.
Biden’s few remaining supporters reveal their privilege when they lecture everyone around them on
inflation, saying it’s the price of higher wages, or that it’s just a temporary inconvenience. They follow
it up with the tedious, tone-deaf mantra to “vote blue no matter who.”
They tell us to be grateful.
It seems pretty clear, what these people really care about is winning elections, and they don’t care
about what happens after that. They don’t really care if Biden ever makes good on his campaign
promises. They don’t care if we lose the right to abortion, or if we ever finally get to own a home
without the constant fear of losing it. For them, there’s always a very good reason why he or any other
politician can’t deliver.
Something else always matters more.
Yes, it’s depressing to admit that Russia will eventually come to dominate Ukraine. We know it’s going
to happen.
Putin will win.
He’ll pay a higher price than he intended. He’ll stoop to new lows, like weaponizing food and energy.
It doesn’t matter to him. He’s willing to pay anything, and he’s willing to put his own people through
hell to get what he wants. Of course, it’s not so different from what the last five or six American
presidents have done to the working class.
It’s not weakness for the poorest working Americans to finally stand up and say they’ve had enough.
It’s not selfish or entitled for the essential workers who carried us through a pandemic to say they
finally deserve some assistance, and not those pitiful stimulus checks everyone keeps blaming for our
current economic problems.
If anyone thinks the average American is still holding on to money they got more than a year ago,
they’re showing their privilege. That money went toward rent and groceries long ago.
It’s gone.
What we have now are working class people trying desperately to organize against massive corporate
bullies like Howard Schultz, and a labor movement trying to counteract a bastion of entitlement who
thinks Americans don’t want to work anymore, simply because we’re exhausted from two years of
constant trauma, after a lifetime of hustling to make up for an economy that only ever exploited us.
We’re sick of it.
It’s not just the higher prices, by the way.
Privileged jerks talk about the “inconvenience” of high prices.
They don’t get it.
It’s not having to pay a few cents more for tomatoes or green peppers. It’s the shortages. It’s the stress
of spending hours to find baby formula, while half the country gaslights you and tells you that your
baby’s hunger is your fault, because you’re not breastfeeding.
It’s the stress of trying to prepare for what crucial item will go out of stock next. Food for your pet?
Tampons?
Cooking oil?
Bread?
It’s working two jobs, twelve or fourteen hours a day, and still barely having enough money to buy gas
to get to work.
Seriously, imagine that.
Imagine working all the time, only so you can buy the gas that gets you to and from your lousy job.
Then your own president blames you, because you can’t afford an electric vehicle, assuming you can
even find one, and it might burst into flames anyway, so why bother?
On top of that, there’s the litany of op-eds and social media posts making fun of you for being upset,
calling you selfish and spoiled, mostly from the type of people who never truly lived through poverty.
They never went a summer without air conditioning.
They never woke up next to roaches.
They never worked eight hours at one job, four hours at another job, and then tried to stay awake
through a college class they were paying for, that was supposed to earn them a better future.
This is what millennials deal with. We’ve spent our entire lives working all the time, in order to pay for
wars. We delayed milestones to the point where many of us are now hanging them up for good.
Our parents are blaming us.
We’re tired of it.
America is already getting ready for another war.
Our politicians are getting bored with Ukraine.
Now they’re looking at Asia.
We’re worried. We’re scared that our country is going to provoke yet another war, that costs
yet another $50 billion, and does even more irreversible damage to the planet.
This time, there’s more than money at stake. Our last chance at a sustainable future lies
in cooperating with other superpowers, especially since we depend on them for things like
solar panels and the raw resources to make them. Our politicians don’t seem to care about
that either. They’re happy to squander that last chance over semiconductor chips, plunge us
into irreversible global warming, and spark a new age of conflict.
Let’s get clear on something.
The U.S. can’t afford any more wars.
Americans are poorer and sicker than ever. We have an entire new class of citizens called the
working homeless, people with full-time jobs who still can’t afford food or even a place to
sleep. Half of us are living just above that threshold, and we’re in constant fear that it’ll be us
one day. The problem is that the people who want war don’t want to see anything else. They
choose to ignore it. Instead, they want to pretend that the suffering is happening a thousand
miles away.
Our leaders aren’t standing up to fascism right now. All they’re doing is pretending. They’re
bankrupting us and destroying the economy, all for a set of ideologies that make no sense.
They’re not saving democracy, and they’re most certainly not thinking about our future.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sending aid to Ukraine. We just want to know why we
always only spend so much money on war, and almost nothing for everything else.
We can’t do it anymore.
It’s got to stop.”
All in all, the American ship of state is on a disastrous course.
The economic situation in the west continues to worsen. The inflation pressures that were
announced in the previous week, represented by a CPI at 8.6 percent, the highest since 1981,
should actually show something like 16-17 percent if the numbers had not been moderated by
excluding food and fuel prices. According to many reports I have read, changes to the
construction of the CPI in the US have distorted what it should have meant.
The Fed has a monumental task ahead of it. Other than the headline inflation figure, petrol
prices in current dollar terms, have reached a record high at US$5 a gallon on average across
the land. The war in Ukraine and the constant needling of China in yet another pissing
contest – over whether to back Tsai Ing-wen’s subversive efforts to maintain power in
Taiwan with loose talk about independence – have real consequences. The more the financial
markets worry about how stupid politicians can get, even if they don’t have the guts to really
act out their scenarios of being tougher than the next guy, the more there will be a
concomitant spiral in the price of energy and food.
And even more importantly, the abject failure to address very serious domestic economic
problems – because they have no clue how – is leading to a complete breakdown of policy.
Biden declares, it is not his problem; Powell and Yellen on their part, yell (pardon the pun) –
“the sanctions are hurting ourselves” - into the deaf ears of the ignorant neo-cons at the State
Department, obsessed only with the idea that they must somehow retain their status of
hegemon in a fast-changing world, and that is leading to a bankruptcy of policy at all levels in
the America that was once great.
It is no longer great. In a country that has lost its direction after twenty years of spending
trillions, chasing ghosts in the Middle East, and bankrupting itself in the process, it still thinks
a military solution is appropriate to solve economic problems. How asinine can you get? In
wars, things are destroyed, not built.
For one thing, the military confrontation is forcing the creation of the one geopolitical entity
that will undermine America’s chances to reverse its economic situation – an Eurasian bloc of
Mackinder proportions (Mackinder was the geopolitical theorist of the 19th century who
conceptualized the World Island in Eurasia and Africa that will become an unchallengeable
world power). And it is happening as idiots force sanctions on Russia who can dodge them
just by being friends and trading partners with 85% of countries in the rest of the world. The
economic strategies coming out of the political leadership in the west and the US are just
illogical. Totally outclassed by Putin and his inner circle.
Perhaps the neo-cons’ real strategy is to start a nuclear war with Russia and China
simultaneously so that the planet is reset to zero, and then pax America can be re-constituted
from basement level. If the Blinkens, Sullivans and Nulands of the world really think that,
they are seriously underestimating how Russia and China will react when those ICBMs are
let loose. They have a lot more space to survive a nuclear fallout, if that is at all possible,
than crowded and smallish Europe as well as the two coasts of the continental US. I hope
they are not that stupid.
But in the meantime, the pushing and shoving of both Russia and China is leading to
immediate fallout in the current economic environment. Russia has already suggested a new
G8 economic bloc, which all the current BRIC economies seem eager to join, if only to break
out of a unipolar economic system. The US on its part tried to form an Indo-Pacific
Economic Framework, trying to entice sophisticated Asian countries with a blank cheque.
Two weeks after they signed a piece of paper with no terms, the world has not heard anything
about it again.
This is yet another typical Biden/State Department fuck-up. Remember Build Back Better?
Or the global alliance of democracies? Or an AUKUS that slapped France on the face?
Now they want to do this IPEF, which has no substance or even a decent explanation of what
that is supposed to be. There is no change in tariffs or preferential access to domestic
markets. What then are we talking about? It is a meaningless Framework, doomed to almost
immediate neglect by everyone who signed.
Biden recently got angry with reporters pestering him with good questions on the failure of
money printing policies. He shouted, for god’s sake man, he was trying to help the poor.
Well, if we take him at his word, that $55 billion of stuff given to Ukraine, blown up by
Russian artillery or channelled off to black markets in the shady world of the underground
arms trade, would have really helped a lot of poor Americans live a little bit better. As
would have been in the case of Jessica Wildfire…Why didn’t he think of that, as an
American president should.
The worst is not over. The western economies are spiralling out of control. If they cannot
even figure out that there won’t be any replacement for low-cost Russian food, grain and
fertilizers that have sustained their economic vitality since the end of the Cold War, how can
they claim the mandate to govern?
I mean, this is not even rocket science that these politicians are supposed to figure out. If it
were, we can excuse them for being better speech makers than deep thinkers. There is no
great intellectual problem solving needed here. All they need to recognise is that pipeline
gas would be much easier to use than ship borne liquified gas. Or that Russia is a lot closer
than the Gulf coast of America, or that Russia and Ukraine supplied one third of the world’s
grain. You don’t kick anyone in that position in the balls and hope to get away with it.
But the collective west did just that. By sweet-talking a corrupt country and its crooked
politicians led by actors and other shady characters without any sort of administrative and
planning expertise or experience, into the fiction of joining NATO as a way to contain Russia
which they themselves hated, they created a crisis that they cannot possibly cope with. Now
that the Russians have proven that they would react robustly and that their capabilities -
military, economic and diplomatic - are far greater than the entire western bloc, including
America’s, western politicians are caught with their pants down.
I mean, how stupid can these guys, not just the current crop but all those since 2008, get?
There are serious strategic errors at every level in the last three months, and there is no way
out, without losing face/credibility and their own constituents’ confidence that they are
qualified to do the job they have been elected to do.
They are all going down in flames.
Maybe they do see it coming. The blame game has started. This is all part of the western
political playbook. It is repeated again and again, through all the wars that have gone wrong,
from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, and it is the same story, “it’s always someone else
fault”.
Here is a defining analysis of the recent massive failure in the mainstream media in the west
on how blame can be assigned when Someone Lost Ukraine…
“Western Media is Turning on Ukraine”
By Mitchell Peterson, writing in Medium, 16 Jun 2022
“I didn’t think the blame game would come this fast – And the NY Times had the most embarrassing
podcast on the subject.
Most of my recent pieces have been leaning towards media analysis. I find it fascinating how the
wording, framing, and subtle inferences in headlines completely shape Americans’ and Europeans
perspectives on any subject and then the world at large. I see it first hand all the time.
The war in Ukraine has put all of that into propaganda overdrive. I wrote an article about how the
narratives were shifting from ‘gung-ho hurrah hurrah the good guys are winning, let’s send them
bigger guns’ to preparing the ‘Western’ public for the inevitable settlement and loss of territory.
Things that were obvious and true in February were not allowed to be uttered in the mainstream until
late May or June.
At the beginning of the invasion, I wrote multiple pieces on a negotiated settlement and my curation
rate tanked, but now my articles about peace are getting picked up once again – could be a
coincidence, but I find it very strange.
As the invaders took control of some twenty percent of the country and slowly chipped away town
after town, the 'Western’' media had to reluctantly report some truths. The words ‘negotiated
settlement’ were finally put in the headlines.
Everyone from Henry Kissinger to the NATO chief has started talking about a diplomatic resolution.
They’re even reporting that Pope Francis said the war was ‘perhaps somehow provoked’ and that
NATO was barking at the gates of Russia.’
All three men could have said the same things back in March, but they would have been condemned,
shouted down, and calls for their resignations would be flying everywhere – not that the 99-year-old
Kissinger is still in office, thank God.
Unfortunately, nothing stops delusional Medium writers from continuing the cause in the face of
mountains of evidence and long after mainstream media has come to terms with reality. I hate to call
people out and create drama on this platform, but there are certain writers, one in particular, who’s
written multiple pieces detailing the ‘next game-changing weapon’ and constantly repeats how the
invading army ‘is on the brink of collapse’ and how Ukraine ‘must never give up territory.’ It’s been
absolutely delusional.
I see the headlines, scan the pieces, see how many thousands of freaking claps and cheerleading
comments there are, roll my eyes, debate leaving a comment, but then bail, wondering if this guy is
ever going to retract these articles that have no basis in reality or if he’ll make excuses as to why they
aged so poorly.
It’s very very very easy to passionately parrot mainstream narratives, get a ton of attention, and fail
upwards – or maybe I’m the one way off base and will need to explain myself.
In either case, the mainstream press has finally started to give ‘Western’ minds a more realistic
picture of the war and prepare them for the ugly, unfair, and heart-breaking resolution that’ll
probably come in a month or a year or five.
But they need to give readers a reason why it went south.
Why, after months of non-stop propagandistic spin on everything, has the war on turned out the way
pundits and analysts were implying?
Why were the sanctions not working? How come most of the world is still doing business with
Moscow?
How, after reporting on Ukrainian win after Ukrainian win after Ukrainian win, have the invaders
taken control of twenty percent of the country?
The press needs to give an answer. And so the articles blaming Ukraine are starting to be
disseminated.
The shift from purely pro-war propaganda to ‘this might not be going well’ to ‘they should probably
negotiate’ to the now ‘Ukraine messed it up’ has been slow and steady. The latest iteration kicked off
with Biden’s speech last Friday.
Speaking to a fundraising reception in LA, he said, “I know a lot of people thought I was
exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain (the assessment). (Russian President Vladimir
Putin) was gonna go into the border. And there was no doubt, and Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t want
to hear it, nor did a lot of people, I understand why they didn’t want to hear it, but he went in.”
The headlines whipped around the globe: ‘Biden Says Zelensky ‘Didn’t Want to Hear It.” Articles
from outlets like The Guardian create the impression that America and NATO did what they could but
those stubborn Ukrainians wouldn’t listen and bear the brunt of the blame.
In that Guardian piece, they even quoted a British general who said Europe and America have no
strategy and they 'ought to be considering if there was an opportunity to “persuade a weakened
Russia to align with the west" rather than be drawn into China's influence.'
That's a bananas statement on so many levels. ‘It turns out we couldn’t cripple Moscow with
sanctions so maybe we should put aside the fact they invaded their neighbour, completely shift course,
and get them on our team to defeat their ally in Beijing.’ It is nice to see the mask fully come off in a
mainstream outlet, but I keep imagining the reaction if all of these statements were made back in
early March.
Then there was this unbelievable podcast episode from The Daily, which is, unfortunately, one of the
most-listened to podcasts in the world.
The title and episode description are a sight to behold. The Incomplete Picture of the War in
Ukraine. This summary takes some balls: In the nearly four months since the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, the United States has been giving officials in Kyiv a steady stream of intelligence to aid them
in the fight. But what is becoming clear is that the Ukrainians are not returning the favor.
The US is giving ‘a steady stream of intelligence,’ and the Ukrainians are ‘not returning the favor?’
Jesus.
The freaking New York Times has been consistently spreading dubious reports on the war,
uncritically repeating Ukrainian military statements, and routinely spreading baseless CIA press
releases. Now they’re blaming Ukraine for the faulty information?
I wish I could post the whole twenty-minute transcript, but it doesn’t exist so I tried to play
stenographer for some of this ridiculousness and really wanted to write every word.
National security reporter Julian Barnes, who covers US intelligence agencies for the paper, which
means he repeats anything the CIA tells him to, contributed some ‘insights’ into this ‘unusual war’
while gently placing the blame on Kyiv for withholding information. Barnes claimed he was
‘nervous’ that he ‘was getting an incomplete picture.’ He says we were only receiving information
about improbable and impressive Ukrainian victories and stories of a Russian ‘military that didn’t
know how to fight.’
In some ways, we hear a lot more about Ukrainian successes and Russian failures than we do the
opposite – J.B.
Yeah, Julian, that’s called war propaganda. Anyone with a semi-impartial view could see that the
‘Western’ media was giving a highly distorted narrative of the invasion, the NY Time included.
That’s not to say that there weren’t really impressive victories by the defenders or huge losses and
strategic blunders by the invaders, but it was so freaking obvious the coverage was biased, slanted,
and one-sided.
In the podcast, they talk about how much intel the US is sharing on command posts, movements, and
targets and then claim that somehow magically American intelligence agencies have no idea what the
Ukrainian defense forces are thinking or doing. Pretending US intelligence isn’t aware, involved, or
informed throughout is ridiculous.
I lean towards the Georges Malbrunot perspective, the French journalist who went to Ukraine and
came back saying the Americans are ‘in charge’ of the war. Sure, Ukraine is probably making some
moves without Pentagon approval or knowledge, but I have a hard time believing they’re out of the
loop.
After all, even Chuck freaking Todd on MSNBC says this is America’s proxy war. If it’s a proxy war
US intelligence is balls deep in every aspect.
The episode gets worse as The Daily host Sabrina Tavernise went on to say she, “remembers that
same pattern when I was in Ukraine all those weeks. That we would get a press release from the
Russian Ministry of Defense, and we would look at it and say obviously that’s not right…but then we
get a press release from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and we’d think, hold a second, that’s not
right either.
Hey Sabrina, if you’re reporting in Ukraine and don’t think the information is accurate, how about
you freaking report that in real-time and not months later on a podcast? Did she tweet or write from
Lviv about how we’re not getting an accurate picture of the war? Maybe I seemed to have missed it.
The whole episode had me stopping rewinding, furrowing my brow, shouting to myself as I walked
down Prague streets, and shaking my head in crazed frustration.
They big up the ‘amazing’ and ‘sheer amount of money’, generous military aid, and then actually
acknowledge that many of the weapons can’t even be used by the Ukrainian military while at the same
time blaming them for not ‘returning the favor’ with accurate information.
Again, I could have transcribed the whole freaking thing because I was aghast after every sentence.
Here’s a chunk of a few minutes of back and forth:
Is this normal? Is it normal that an ally would withhold information like this?...The US is not seeing
the full picture…and the implications are massive for the United States….it matters because of all of
that aid, all of that military assistance. We don’t know how Ukraine can absorb, how quickly they
can absorb it, where they need it most, or what will be the most effective help at the current
time…we’re giving them equipment they don’t know how to use. We talked about this pair of high
tech binoculars, right? That comes with English language manuals that they have to use Google
Translate to try and figure out how to do. The problem could only get worse with the rocket artillery
that President Biden has promised. When that arrives at the front line that could very well be a
game-changer, but are they going to know how to use it?
These two work for one of the most influential news outlets in the world. If they were hesitant or
thinking about these things, why wouldn’t they write about it BEFORE the US pledged fifty-four
freaking billion dollars in aid? From day one, everything they said in this episode was incredibly
obvious to teenage Twitch streamers, pothead comedians in their garages, and my dumbass over here
in Central Europe.
How do these two journalists justify coming to these very obvious conclusions so late or not reporting
if they felt this way before? Tavernise goes on to say:
When it comes to the money that the US is giving, I would imagine, if I’m the US, I would want to
know where that money was going. I mean, I would want some accountability for it…And there’s
another problem here, right, which is that if the Ukrainians don’t tell the US what they’re about to do,
then the US does not have a clear picture of the war and where the war is going.
Again, where was the coverage when only a tiny handful of right-wing-loony lawmakers opposed the
$40billion aid package or when libertarian-doosh-but-sometimes-has-morals Rand Paul was asking
for oversight of that money?
Maybe I missed it – I don’t follow either journalist on Twitter – but the articles before the bill passed
from the NY Times about the need for discretionary oversight of such a sum of money seemed to have
escaped me.
And again, they blame Ukraine for the failures, like the whole thing wasn’t a military-industrial
complex money-laundering operation that was bound to be a catastrophe anyways. Nope. For the
NT Times, this is all because Kyiv is not sharing accurate information. Julian Barnes has a direct
line to the CIA but is pretending he’s just scanning Bloomberg headlines like the rest of us and had no
idea that the war wasn’t going the way CNN and the team said it was.
It's all chalked up to a lack of information from Ukraine.
Barnes then has this gem: “Nobody likes to put good money after bad and it becomes harder to make
another massive package of aid if the first one wasn’t effective.”
I have to assume that they’re both educated enough to know the answer to all of these conundrums
and are speaking down to the isolated upper middle class audience that consumes this rubbish.
America loves to put good money after bad, and Congress has all the patience in the world for
military adventures. The American people have no say so they don’t matter, and Congress is largely
funded by military contractors, so they’re more than down to continue writing fat checks to Raytheon
and Halliburton that the taxpayers will be responsible for.
The good money after bad is not a problem, but it is becoming harder to hide the fact the ‘West’ is
losing and that there’s no strategy. On the ground, Ukrainians are battling hard, but they were never
going to match the might of Moscow. The sanctions are swinging back and smashing Europe and
America in the face with inflation while the ruble is the strongest performing currency this year.
“The West’ needs an excuse, and so Biden threw Zelensky under the bus saying he didn’t want to hear
the warnings. The NY Times is throwing the Ukrainian military under the bus by saying they aren’t
‘returning the favor’ and sharing accurate information.
The media blame game will continue. The narrative around the war will evolve.
It is only a matter of time before the ‘democratic values’ in Ukraine will start to be questioned. The
war will slide off of the front pages. Readers will be reminded that Ukraine is one of the most
corrupt nations in the world and that Zelensky was implicated in the Pandora Papers.
Having sold tens of billions of dollars of weapons and locked European nations into further weapons
contracts, Uncle Sam will wash his hands of this affair, dumping whatever piece of Ukraine is left at
the end into the EU to rebuild and admit into some sort of economic agreement.
It won’t matter to Washington DC because it never really mattered. As Obama once said, Ukraine is
a core issue for Moscow; for America, it’s not.
The US will leave Europe to squander and shift it focus to the real target: Beijing.
The media will dutifully play along, blame Zelensky, Ukraine and a weak Europe, and wipe this whole
thing from the collective American memory.
The United States of America will move on, a power-drunk mafia don who won’t realise until it’s too
late that he’s turned all the other families and most of his own capos against him, his greed and
domineering leading to his inevitable downfall”
Doesn’t this article by Mr Peterson sound familiar (the podcast can be googled)? If I had not
written all the same opinions, analyses and conclusions in the past several weeks BEFORE
Mr Peterson did, everyone would think I’d plagiarised the man. But I did write the same
conclusions before he did.
I urge all readers of this Weekly Commentary to understand the following:
1) The Ukraine war is essentially over, won hands down by the Russians. The myths of
Russian defeats on the battlefield, including the non-battle of Kyiv, were highly exaggerated
to persuade western audiences that Ukraine was winning and to keep aid flowing.
2) The mainstream media, as they had carried the alternative view that the Russians were a
disorganized and demoralized military force, have been pulling wool over your eyes. Now it
is all out in the open.
3) The economic war has been won even more decisively by Putin and his country. The
more sanctions there are, the more the EU and the US will suffer. Whose fault? The
western political class. They are not even fit to plan strategy. Idiots who ought to suffer
regime change. And I hope most of them will be gone by the time the next winter is over.
4) Ukraine has become a bankrupt wasteland, and that can be attributed largely to
Washington’s failed policies. It will never recover because of the long tail of its debt that far
exceeds its earning capacity. This is a fatal tragedy.
5) And it will never be able to join the EU nor NATO, in spite of false hopes given to them
by two-timing western politicians.
6) The EU will not survive the regime change in many of the countries that have piled onto
the American bandwagon to fight Russia. The underlying fault lines in the grouping will tear
it apart in due course. It may retain the semblance of a trade bloc, but with Brexit, and now
Hungary and some of the Eastern European countries hankering for independent economic
policies, the notion that the EU can become a united states of Europe will be a passing dream.
7) The Euro will decline as the Ruble will ascend. What a strange turn of events…
8) All of Europe will have to now really fear Russia, because it is very clear the US will not
start a war with Russia, in spite of Article 5 and crazy neo-cons in State. NATO has no
credible army and can be threatened by a Russia furious over its treatment in the last three
months. It is mind-boggling that in the short space since Angela Merkel retired, Europe has
gotten into this mess.
9) NATO is revealed to be a weak defence organization and cannot even muster the unity to
bring into its membership Sweden and Finland, who foolishly gave up neutrality to be stuck
on the fringes of NATO, without the protection of Article 5 (for what it’s worth without
American participation). And that deficient aid package to Kyiv has revealed that NATO
has neither the weapons that can work against Russian artillery or in such quantities that it
can serve as a counterweight to Russian might. After all, Ukraine had a NATO trained army
armed with western weapons, and it was vanquished on the battlefields of Donbas in 100
days. Both Putin and Lavrov are now super confident – if you want to bring Russia to its
knees, come on, do it. Those statements are massive game-changers. That should worry
NATO military planners.
9) Zelensky, as we have concluded from February, is an incapable moron who has wrought
disaster on his country. He will go from hero to zero. He is unimportant in the grand
scheme of things.
I am just an unimportant un-influencer in all the matters above. I hope to be wrong. But if I
have been right about the Ukrainian war, and continue to be right in my assessments, then we
will see a global reset in which I see Russia, China and India and some semblance of the new
G8 displacing American and European power in the coming decades.
That is a desirable, and inevitable, outcome.
Wai Cheong
Investment Committee
The writer has been in financial services for more than forty years. He graduated with First Class Honours in Economics and Statistics, winning a prize in 1976 for being top student for the whole university in his year. He also holds an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
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