Drums along the Potomac – louder than along the Dnieper.
20220124
Quite a few of you correspondents write me about the impending war. I'm answering in this blog post.
The United States press goes on incessantly about Russian troop movements. The special culprits are the Nadozhniy Novosti – Trusted News Initiative - who have given us such infallible reporting on the Covid 19 situation.
I have never seen them present a map of where these dangerous troops might be collecting. That's suspicious – of course Russian troops are on Ukraine's border. That's where they live! But are they menacing?
I tried the same thing with a search in Ukrainian. Surely if the Russians are a threat, they must be a threat in some specific place. Here is my search argument:
пересування російських військ на кордоні
Russian troop movements near the border
Searching for text, it leads me back to alarmist articles from the United States. Even though I search in Ukrainian, it's the New York Times. No maps in any language in the articles themselves.
Searching for images, it gives me page after page of pictures of Russian soldiers, but only three maps. The maps are very large-scale – embracing the entire border region – and they don't show any concentrations that I can discern. You can repeat the search and see what you find. This is the most detailed image I get and as far as I can tell that simply shows where the Russian bases are. By the way, somewhat removed from the border, as would make sense if their purpose were more defense than offense.
The top story returned in the Ukrainian search , dated Jan 22, shows a picture of the Pentagon. Odd. Here is a translation of the text:
"The situation on the border of Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the head of the national security and Defense Council Alexey Danilov said that so far there is no risk of an imminent invasion of Russian troops in Ukraine. Danilov stressed that the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, is trying to destroy Ukraine, but so far there is no direct threat of invasion. According to the head of the national security and Defense Council, statements about the preparation of a Russian invasion of Ukraine can destabilize the situation in the country and play into the hands of the Kremlin. Since November, Ukraine's Western partners and journalists have been reporting on an increase in the number of Russian military personnel and weapons near the border with Ukraine. However, according to AFP journalists, the Ukrainian leadership downplays the risk of an open Russian invasion. According to Kiev estimates, the number of Russian troops along the borders of Ukraine has increased from about 93 thousand people in October to 104 thousand at present. According to the former head of intelligence of the 92nd separate Mechanized Brigade, Combat officer Pyotr Nedzelsky, Russian citizens do not have objective factors to wish for war with Ukraine. See also: https://www.online.ua/"
It is no secret that the United States has been training a great many snipers, and providing sniper rifles here in Ukraine. The ostensible purpose is to prepare an embedded, organic resistance in case the Russians invade. That seems improbable – for exactly the same reason it is improbable that the supposed militias in the United States will be able to pose a threat there. They would be absolutely outorganized and outgunned unless the military deserted to their side.
The far more likely next step might be to encourage some of those snipers to engage in target practice against the Eastern Ukrainian People's Republics, harassing them until they fight back. Or continuing to send in Turkish drones against armored vehicles, as has already been done. It would put the People's Republics in the difficult position. They could strike back into Ukrainian territory, providing a casus belli, or suffer in silence.
Russia's best defense might be to get a lot of independent journalists in the area to document what happens. Al Jazeera makes a great deal of sense. The South China Morning Post, Asahi Shimbum and the independent Western news, such as it is – Glenn Greenwald, Scott Ritter and Matt Taibbi - might manage it.
The United States has a long history of false flags. Just to name a few: Gulf of Tonkin. Weapons of mass destruction. Hillary Clinton's provocations in Lybia. Of course Putin is no virgin. Look at the Moscow apartment house bombings and the supposedly spontaneous uprisings here in Ukraine that led to the People's republics. Since Putin knows the game so well, he has to be very sure that the Russians have a spotlight on everything.
It would be foolish for the Russians to cross the border. Doubly foolish for the Ukrainians. World opinion would certainly be against whichever country did so. Let us hope that some degree of reason prevails.
In the event, both sides have fairly well dug in defenses. Russia needs no allies, and Ukraine has NATO. Russia has excellent antitank weapons and aircraft. Ukraine has the javelin antitank missiles recently provided by the United States. The best and most likely solution is that they maintain the status quo, at least as far as the de facto borders go. Russia will have to negate the provocations which seem to me more likely to come from the Ukrainians than the Russians.
A leader often uses war as a distraction to take attention away from domestic problems. Does Biden have any? He seems to be losing control of the Covid narrative. The government response looks increasingly draconian and misguided. The middle class has suffered job loss and inflation. The stock market is teetering. A substantial portion of the population is appalled that the handling of the January 6 situation. Biden's mental capacity is being questioned even by members of his own party. Russia needs to factor a large measure of irrationality into the American provocations, and perhaps be willing to endure them in the short term betting that in the long term the situation in America cannot endure.
Russia is beset by its own problems, chronicled in a serious way by my friend, ex-NYT Ukraine expert Robert Homans and less seriously by Edward Slavsquat. These include a decreasing standard of living, dismal demographics, a disastrous vaccine campaign, and uprisings in Kazakhstan and Belarus. Putin the poker player should, in my opinion, decide that however poor his hand, he is holding a better one than Biden and simply bide his time.
Putin and China together could put a heavy thumb on the scale by buying precious metals futures and simply demanding delivery upon maturity. The prices appear to me to have been heavily manipulated downward in order to make the stock market look good. Many others such as James Ricards, much more knowledgeable than me, share this opinion. The market value of all precious metals is only about 2 trillion, and the float is only in the tens or hundreds of billions. I am confident that these countries would have the wherewithal to make a dramatic splash in the market if they made concerted buys.
True, doing so would crater the value of their own US treasuries. Russia has pretty much totally divested itself of treasuries, and China has been heading that direction. It is a question when they decide the time is right. This may be it.
Ukraine Business News talks about business deals – not much about impending war. The hryvnya to dollar exchange rate has crept up from 26.5:1 to 28.35:1. Worry, but not a great amount.
To repeat, the impetus for war seems to be coming more from the United States than anyplace else. But credit where credit is due. As noted in the above false flag operations, the United States has been pretty successful getting wars when it wanted them.
Our house is located in a cut off cul-de-sac many miles from any military base or airport and, a couple of miles from any major highway, and 2 miles from the nearest target of any military significance, a railroad bridge over the Dnieper. I survived four years of war in Vietnam in places more exposed than where we now live. I'm not too worried about getting blown up. A bigger concern would be a loss of electric power. Our oil and gas logistics could also be pretty easily disrupted. I am sure the Russians know that as well. I don't think they would want to make civilians suffer, but it is a possibility.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are getting stronger day by day, albeit at a much slower pace than they would like; the good-looking women are just about over Covid, ivermectin having done what it should, and the children are increasingly bouncing off the walls. It is time for school again!