THE AMERICAN EMPIRE CANNOT STAY ON LIFE SUPPORT.
NEOCONS, THE CABAL MOST IMMEDIATELY RESPONSIBLE
FOR ITS TIMELY DEMISE, MUST SEND IT TO HOSPICE.

The Ontological Incoherence of American Imperial Exceptionalism

Jingoism by any other name still smells the same

Jingoism originated during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, when many British citizens were hostile toward Russia and felt Britain should intervene in the conflict. Supporters of the cause expressed their sentiments in a music-hall ditty with this refrain:

We don't want to fight, yet by jingo if we do,

We've got the ships, we've got the men,

We've got the money, too!

Someone holding the attitude implied in the song became known as a jingo or jingoist, and the attitude itself was dubbed jingoism.

Jingoism

Lost Cause

This is ostensibly a critical review of Arta Moeini’s recent essay published at UnHerd: Is the West escalating the Ukraine war? Nevertheless, its purview extends far beyond Moeini’s isolated expression of the pervasive fallacies my critique addresses.

Moeini’s article emerges from the milieu of the past several weeks, during which time we have observed a pronounced rhetorical revolution in the popular western narratives regarding the NATO/Russia war in Ukraine.

“Lost cause” is in the air. Many who have privately known this to be the case for some time have finally been sufficiently emboldened to publicly embrace the obvious – albeit reluctantly, and often with a good measure of rationalization and lingering misinformation in tow.

To be clear, I found Moeini’s essay a worthwhile read; thought-provoking on multiple levels – although not always in the way I suspect he intended. And I more or less agree with the majority of his observations of matters as they currently stand.

But as the poet well-noted, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Nor does it require an aspiring think-tank geopolitical “expert” to inform one at this juncture that the gambit to use Ukraine as a kamikaze bomber to mortally wound Russia has failed abysmally in every fundamental geostrategic respect.

Indeed, it has backfired in multiple largely unforeseen and now irreversible ways.

More on that below.

Meanwhile, I will address those of the author’s arguments that fail principally due to his apparently obligatory compulsion to echo American exceptionalist orthodoxy.

Of course, Moeini lives and breathes in the stultifying atmosphere of the Washington Beltway ideological miasma. His career aspirations are no doubt compellingly influenced by his environment, and therefore it comes as little surprise that he would be so pliant to its domineering imperatives.

He imagines that he is crafting a critique of the shortcomings of what is sometimes called The Chicago School of geopolitical realism, typified by the works of John Mearsheimer. In reality he is merely finding fault with one set of logical fallacies while embracing its seemingly more attractive cousins:

To understand Western decision-making and the peculiar inter-alliance dynamics of Nato, we need a more radical realism that takes seriously the non-physical, psychological, and “ontological dimensions” of security — encompassing a state or an organisation’s need for overcoming uncertainty by establishing orderly narratives and identities about its sense of “self”.

The incoherence of a call for “radical realism” in order to address the “ontological dimensions of security” and “overcoming uncertainty by establishing orderly narratives and identities” clearly eludes our young author, focused as he apparently is on the geopolitical relevance of the “sense of self”.

That said, it is to be expected that a mind cultivated by the current generation of imperial academicians would be loath to question their catechisms, foremost of which is the conviction that the “indispensable nation” is the one sovereign worthy to define the parameters of a “rules-based international order” and, by virtue of its unimpeachable self-perception, conduct the planet to a glorious destiny.

Moeini continues:

In a recent study for the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, which I co-authored, we investigated the structural reasons that drive Ukraine’s strategic calculus. We suggested that, as a “regional balancer”, Ukraine took a massive risk in defying the Russian redlines about Kyiv explicitly rejecting Nato overtures and stopping any military integration with the West. This was a maximalist gambit that presupposed Western military support and risked actively provoking Moscow to its own strategic disadvantage.

This is a distortion of what really happened in Ukraine over the course of the past quarter century.

The Ukraine

The inherently disharmonious nation-state currently assigned the toponym “Ukraine” on maps of Europe is incontrovertibly an artificial construction of relatively recent origin. The socio-political and cultural facts underlying this reality were ably exploited by the Germans in the Second World War when the Nazis successfully recruited large numbers of its western inhabitants (primarily from Galicia) to join them in a war of annihilation against the Poles, the Jews, and the more numerous and prosperous “Muscovites” who inhabited the agriculturally fertile and substantially industrialized regions of historical Novorossiya.

This was the polity within the geographic region known as the Ukraine that, beginning as early as the immediate aftermath of the war, was systematically cultivated by the Anglo-American western hegemon as a disruptive force to undermine Soviet power and influence in eastern Europe.

And in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union which occasioned the rise of the global American empire, this was the polity that was methodically groomed to eventually become a disposable proxy for imperial designs which explicitly aspired to dismember Russia and despoil its nearly limitless natural resource treasures.

Any set of arguments aiming to dispute this interpretation of events is demonstrably erroneous, logically fallacious, and historically revisionist – but I will set aside that debate for another day.

My point for now is that Moeini’s characterization of what happened since 2014 as Ukraine exercising its own agency to effect a geopolitical gambit against Russia is a tortured misrepresentation of the facts.

The reality is that the ruling junta in Ukraine – raised to its principality by imperial intrigues – was cunningly seduced into believing it was uniquely capable of becoming the tip of the empire’s spear to slay, once and for all, the subhuman “Muscovites” who had long-dominated the left bank of the Dnieper River, Crimea, and the regions bordering the Black Sea.

Moeini comes close to acknowledging this reality – apparently without apprehending its necessary implications:

“Practically all of America’s security alliances today are asymmetrical arrangements between the United States and regional balancers — a class of smaller, more peripheral regional states seeking to balance against the dominant middle powers in their respective regions. As a great power, America possesses an inherent capacity to encroach on other regional security complexes (RSCs). In this context, it is reasonable for regional balancers to attempt to coax and exploit American power in the service of their particular regional security interests.”

Running with the Devil

What he is describing is a hegemon/vassal relationship wherein the empire defines, measures, and imposes both the quid and the quo of every transaction between the parties.

In the case of Ukraine, this pact with the devil entailed the empire pledging to equip and train a military force which would become the vanguard in a bold maneuver to not only reclaim Novorossiya and Crimea for Ukraine, but also to substantially attrit Russian military capability; humiliate and depose the despised Vladimir Putin, and then, as their just reward, to assume their supposedly rightful place among the great nations of Europe and the world.

As it were, the emissaries of empire took their chosen Ukrainian aspirants to the top of an exceedingly high mountain, showed them all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory thereof, and solemnly vowed, “All these things will we give unto you, if you will fall down and worship us.”

And, without hesitation, the credulous Ukrainians replied, “Hell yes! We’ll take that deal!”

Enticed by disingenuous flattery and the imagined deliciousness of the promised prize, they worshipfully knelt to kiss the ring, and willfully blinded themselves to the inescapable reality that their reach would exceed their grasp.

For, as Moeini further states:

Setting such a lofty objective, however, effectively meant that Kyiv could never succeed without active Nato intervention shifting the balance of power in its favour. By virtue of its decision, Ukraine, along with its closest partners in Poland and the Baltic nations, became the classic “trojan ally” — smaller countries whose desire for regional clout against the extant middle power (Russia) is predicated on their ability to persuade an external great power and its global military network (here, the US and, by extension, Nato) to step in militarily on their behalf.

In this paragraph we are greeted at the door by a glaring tautology, only to then be treated to the first unmistakable specimen of Moeini’s fundamental miscalculation – and yet not his, for it has been the fundamental miscalculation of the exceptionalist gospel since its genesis: our dutiful author characterizes Russia as a “middle power”.

Herein lies the key to the entire exceptionalist fallacy.

I will expand upon this thought further below.

The Immovable Object

Meanwhile, Moeini continues (emphasis added):

Ukraine’s future as a sovereign state would now hinge on its ability to successfully engineer an escalation.

…

For it is in Kyiv’s interests to steer Nato into becoming more closely entangled in the war.

The essential premise of both phrases is false – preposterously so. If the author is not dissembling in stating them, then he is tragically disinformed as to the reality of events as they have transpired.

Ukraine is not a principal actor in this movie. They are playing the “cast of millions” part.

This is and always has been a power struggle between the current iteration of western empire and its favorite nemesis: Russia. That is the context in which it is being prosecuted, and defines the terms upon which it will be decided.

“Escalation” was always an essential parameter of the empire’s calculus. The dissolution and vassalization of continental Russia has never ceased to be the prime directive. The imperial suzerains simply failed to accurately perceive that the Russians possessed escalatory supremacy. They erroneously imagined themselves to be the irresistible force and dismissed the historical evidence that Russia is the immovable object.

That increasingly evident reality has now abruptly sobered the western masters of war and forced them to reassess the entire equation of the conflict.

Moeini continues:

… Ukraine cannot defeat Russia without Nato fighting on its side. The question now is whether the West should allow itself to be entrapped into that war and jeopardise the fate of the entire world in doing so.

What he apparently fails to comprehend is that the empire is already entrapped – precariously suspended between the Scylla and Charybdis of a scorched-earth tantrum or a humiliating retreat that will forever shatter the myth of American military supremacy, and greatly accelerate the transition to the historical norm of a multipolar world.

And yet he persists:

In the materialist framing of security offered by most realists, there is little upside for America and western Europe, and certainly no genuine national or strategic interest, in getting dragged into what is essentially a regional war in Eastern Europe involving two different nationalistic states.

<sigh>

I am compelled to repeat, this is NOT “essentially a regional war in Eastern Europe involving two different nationalistic states.”

Ukraine is NOT a principal actor in this movie. They are playing the “cast of millions” part.

This is and always has been a power struggle between the current iteration of western empire and its favorite nemesis: Russia. That is the context in which it is being prosecuted, and defines the terms upon which it will be decided.

Nevertheless, in the succeeding paragraph Moeini manages to indirectly affirm this perspective – although he frames the issue once again in the mystifying naïveté of his “ontological” construct:

From an ontological standpoint, however, an Anglo-American foreign policy establishment that strongly “identifies” itself with US unipolarity has been heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, and preventing the formation of a new collective security architecture in Europe, which would be centred on Russia and Germany rather than the United States.

In other words, he frankly acknowledges that this war is, at its root, about the preservation of the unipolar status quo – or restated in terms I have employed for many months now: this war is an existential struggle between Russian sovereignty and American imperial continuity.

Before I elaborate on this point, I want to digress into a brief discussion of vocabulary.

Moeini repeatedly employs the term “ontological” in his paper. Ontological refers to a metaphysical assessment of the nature and meaning of being. It relates to one’s sense of identity. It is abstract in the extreme, inherently subjective, and therefore susceptible to pronounced volatility.

Existential, on the other hand, is a term referring to one’s physical continuance in time and space. It is life reduced to its bare essence. Although it can be employed in an abstract sense, it is fundamentally concrete, and is instinctively perceived as an objective quality – especially when threatened with annihilation.

Returning again to Moeini’s framing of Anglo-American foreign policy within an ontological construct, I fully acknowledge the presumed prerogatives associated with the various vainglorious imperial narratives:

• “the shining city on a hill”

• “the indispensable nation”

• “spreading freedom and democracy”

• “champion of the oppressed”

• et cetera

The Calculated Façade of American Exceptionalism

Of course, all of these expressions are variations on the more ancient western theme of “the white man’s burden”. And all are fundamentally jingoistic at their root. More meaningfully, all are illusory qualities of the empire, whose unbridled imperial avarice and moral hypocrisy have always been insuperable stumbling blocks to its holier-than-thou pretensions.

In any case, as it relates to imperial foreign policy, I adamantly assert that these ontological pretensions have never been more than a calculated façade. The imperial masters do not hold genuine aspirations to spread righteousness and prosperity around the world. As with all declining empires that preceded this one, the imperial elite aspire to dominion as an end per se. It is the self-satisfaction of unquestioned primacy that is the ultimate wellspring of all their actions – at least insofar as the apparatus of tribute and plunder remains adequately intact.

Therefore, in the context of a “collective security architecture” in Europe, it is not the alleged threat of despotic Russian expansionism that has motivated imperial actions, but rather the thought that the Europeans themselves would agree to a mutually satisfactory multilateral security arrangement, and then firmly request that the Americans finally take all their military toys and go home.

Concerningly, it has become increasingly evident that the empire would rather rule over the ashes and rubble of Europe than permit its constituent nations to reclaim their sovereignty on their own terms, and by their own volition.

To reign is worth ambition though in hell:

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

Moeini correctly observes that the empire’s most acute concern in recent years had been the discernible advance of Russo-German reconciliation and economic collaboration. Going back over a century, this prospect has always been understood as the single greatest threat to Anglo-American dominance of the western world, and hence a development that must be arrested before it can ever gain momentum.

He then accurately characterizes the empire’s stratagem to nip Russo-German partnership in the bud:

… the US establishment has worked to destroy any possibility of a Berlin-Moscow axis forming by aligning itself with the Intermarium bloc of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea, repeatedly opposing (and openly threatening) Nord Stream gas pipelines, and deliberately rebuffing Russian insistence on a neutral Ukraine.

The historical naïveté and impaired foresight of this imperial machination is a topic for another discussion. Suffice it for now to say it betrays an abject ignorance of the centuries-old frictions and volatile alignments of the disparate Slavic nations comprising the region in question.

As the often-prophetic Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote during the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War which contested the southern portion of the Intermarium:

Between themselves, these lands will forever quarrel, forever envy each other, and intrigue against each other.

In any event, the empire successfully enticed most of the Intermarium to seek its identity with the rest of the western European vassals – with Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic chihuahuas being most in thrall to the imagined bonanza.

While seemingly blind to the inevitable calamity for the Kiev regime, Moeini obliquely touches upon the cynical reality of how the empire designed to exploit Ukraine to further its own hegemonic goals:

In relation to Ukraine, the initial objective for an ideological Western alliance that is skewed toward “shared values”, as Nato has become with the dissolution of the USSR, was to turn that country into a Western albatross for Russia, to bog down Moscow in an extended quagmire to weaken its regional power and influence, and even to encourage regime change in the Kremlin.

Once again, Moeini inadvertently reveals his bias towards the delusions of western policy makers in relation to their ill-conceived Mother of All Proxy Armies gambit in Ukraine. But rather than crafting anew a response to this reference to the “best-laid plans” of the not-quite-geniuses in the Pentagon, Whitehall, Langley, and Foggy Bottom, I will cite a few paragraphs from my maiden commentary on this war:

I initially believed NATO military leaders must have had a sober view, far in advance, that their half-million-strong, well-armed, trained-to-NATO-standards Ukrainian proxy army had almost no chance of prevailing on the field of battle against Russia.

But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the US military brain trust effectively disdained the Russian military, and its commanders, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield.

Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would mindlessly smash themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.

Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.

They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.

In short, I have come to believe US/NATO commanders actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated in their own back yard.

In other words, they disregarded centuries of European history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.

From Napoleon to Hitler to the amorphous contemporary entity I have dubbed the Empire At All Costs cult, the would-be imperial overlords have fantasized a Russia that is intellectually, organizationally, culturally, and – most consequentially – militarily inferior to its enlightened western cousins. And in every instance it has been proven to be a catastrophic miscalculation.

And yet here we are again.

<sigh>

The Inexplicably Unforeseen Return of Industrial Warfare

Moeini then proceeds to muse tendentiously over the possibilities of the empire somehow finding a way to snatch victory from the inexorable jaws of defeat.

First he imagines that continued deliveries of western weapons to Ukraine can freeze the conflict in a state of attritional stalemate from which some fashion of geopolitical victory can be forged. Apparently he is among those bewitched by the pervasive myths of two-hundred thousand Russian dead and thousands of units of destroyed armor, vehicles, and artillery – not to mention an allegedly impotent and all-but-invisible Russian Air Force whose radically diminished fleet of antiquated Soviet-era aircraft is barely combat capable; far beneath the supposedly lofty standards of the legendary western air armadas.

He, like so many in the overcrowded ranks of ostensibly “prudent and measured” western “experts”, seems to envisage rank upon rank of demoralized, under-trained, under-equipped, under-clothed, under-fed Russian conscripts trembling in frigid terror that yet another in a fictionally inexhaustible series of fearsome HIMARS strikes is about to blast them and their emaciated comrades to smithereens.

In a final leap of ludicrousness, he moots the consequences of even further western escalation in the form of longer-range missiles and F-16s which just might permit the Ukrainians to drive the depleted Russian forces out of the Donbass, and even eventually deliver Crimea from its Russian occupiers.

Consistent with the ontological imperatives of a perspective rooted in unquestionable imperial rightness and might, he cannot conceive that direct NATO intervention could result in catastrophic defeat at the hands of the “obviously inferior” Russian conventional military, but only finds himself capable of fretting over the possibility that, for Russia, the prospect of conventional military humiliation:

… would dramatically increase the likelihood of a nuclear event, given how Moscow regards protecting its strategic stronghold in the Black Sea as an existential imperative.

There are, as I have noted above and elsewhere, true existential imperatives at work in this conflict – for both Russia and the empire. But the essential difference is that Russia entered into this conflict cognizant of that reality, and – contrary to the misinformed delusions of almost everyone in the west – the Russians were much better prepared to prosecute a protracted conventional conflict than all of the atrophied NATO militaries combined.

And now, after a full year of the most high-intensity European war since 1945, the Russian economy is effectively on a war-footing. Latent Soviet-era armaments factories have been running round-the-clock shifts for months already, producing every type of weaponry the prior year of combat has proven to be most effective, and in quantities western military planners can only dream of.

Russian war-time production levels coupled with its now nearly mature half-million-strong mobilization of reservists — virtually all of them as yet uncommitted on the battlefield — projects the tableau of a Russian military substantially more potent than it was just one year ago, and growing stronger with each passing month. Anyone who continues to believe otherwise has simply been comprehensively propagandized by the pervasive western intel psyop that has operated on the cynical principle that:

“If you can’t win a real war, win an imaginary one.”

That works satisfactorily well so long as the narrative can be persuasively perpetuated. But imaginary troops, equipment, and ammunition do not win real wars.

Meanwhile, anything that could have been characterized as “surplus” NATO stores is all but exhausted. Oh, to be sure, there have been recent announcements of new mountains of NATO armaments to be shipped to Ukraine – hundreds of incomparable western main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, mobile artillery platforms, and a long list of other supposedly war-winning sundries.

The Arsenal of Democracy is just beginning to flex its muscles!

Or so the story goes.

However, upon closer examination, the “mountain” of awesome western stuff is revealed to be little more than a modest molehill of mostly antiquated equipment, along with woefully deficient quantities of additional ammunition.

To make matters worse, in the ensuing weeks, what was initially touted as hundreds of main battle tanks has become only a few dozen, most of them long out-of-service and requiring extensive repair to render them combat capable.

The “Arsenal of Democracy” is not a massive muscle waiting to be flexed in the eyes of an easily shocked and awed global public. It is a mirage.

As I described the situation in a succinct commentary published three weeks ago:

The US military is not built nor equipped for protracted high-intensity conflict. Nor can it supply a depleted proxy army with the means to prosecute a protracted high-intensity conflict.

The incontrovertible reality is that the US and its NATO allies are presently incapable of supplying the massive material demands of modern industrial warfare, as Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Alex Vershinin articulated so well in this essential June 2022 analysis: The Return of Industrial Warfare.

And yet the public discussion of potential war always includes convinced voices proclaiming that, just like in the Second World War, US industry could very rapidly ramp up to produce armaments of surpassing quality, and in overwhelming quantities.

This titillates the biases of American exceptionalists in general, and is a particularly seductive fantasy of the #EmpireAtAllCosts cult drones propagandizing for filthy lucre at the countless armaments-industry-funded “think tanks” in Washington and London.

But the notion that the rapidly declining empire can resurrect the Arsenal of Democracy band for one final farewell tour is a singularly delusional vanity.

You see, for all its massive plunder of the public purse, the US armaments industry is effectively a modestly scaled high-end boutique.

Building the Perfect Beast

Even more significantly, in a development I and many others have predicted for several years now – in the face of almost universal ridicule, I might add – the empire’s seemingly endless string of hubris-driven blunders has rapidly accelerated the formation of what is quite arguably the single most potent military / economic / geostrategic alliance seen in modern times: the tripartite axis of Russia, China, and Iran.

In its misguided and short-sighted gambit to thwart the long-dreaded Russo-German rapprochement — incomprehensibly punctuated by the late September 2022 sabotage of the Nordstream gas pipelines — the empire has astoundingly managed to jump from the frying pan of a regional proxy war against Russia into the fire of a global conflict all three of its steadily strengthening adversaries now view as existential.

In my considered opinion, this is almost certainly the single most inexplicable and portentous series of geopolitical blunders in recorded history.

For the time being, the fighting will remain confined to Ukraine. But the entire complexion of this war has been irreversibly altered.

Ontological Insecurity Goes to War

Moeini then proceeds to wax tendentiously verbose about the compulsions of “ontological insecurity” under which the empire and its heretofore thoroughly indoctrinated vassals are now laboring on account of Russia having acted in direct contravention of the dictates of the “rules-based international order”.

He adopts an almost-Hofferesque “true believer” affectation as he characterizes America as an “ideological great power”. In a Manichaean rapture, he implicitly asserts that the greatness of the current hegemonic order is a direct byproduct of the “humanitarianism and democratism” he imagines to be at its core.

He bemoans his conviction that the “compulsion toward escalation” derives directly from an unforgivably aggressive Russia that has disrupted the “unified sense of order and continuity in the world.”

He then concludes with this remarkable rhetorical flourish:

As we begin the second year of the war, it has finally dawned on many in Washington that the likely outcome of this tragedy is stalemate: “We will continue to try to impress upon [the Ukrainian leadership] that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” one senior Biden administration official said this week. For all the talk of Ukrainian agency, that agency depends entirely on Nato’s commitment to continue to support Kyiv’s war effort indefinitely. Such a maximalist desire for “complete victory” is not only highly attritional and suggestive of yet another endless war, but it is also reckless; its very success could trigger a nuclear holocaust.

Moscow has already paid a high price for its transgressions in Ukraine. To prolong the war at this point in an ideological quest for total victory is both strategically and morally questionable. For many liberal internationalists in the West, the clamour for a “just peace” that is sufficiently punishing to Russia suggests little more than a thinly-veiled desire to impose a Carthaginian peace on Moscow. The West has indeed wounded Russia; now it must decide if it wants to let this wound fester and conflagrate the entire world. For unless Moscow is provided with a reasonable off-ramp that recognises Russia’s status as a regional power with its own existential imperatives of strategic and ontological security, that is the precipice towards which we are heading.

It is a breathtaking encapsulation of the analytical transgressions of this archetypal expression of American imperial exceptionalism.

I shall respond to the most noteworthy among them:

The “likely outcome” of this war is not “stalemate”. Rather, it is the all-but-certain scenario of Russia effectively annihilating the hybrid NATO/Ukrainian military force clinging to existence along the current line of contact, and then dictating new borders consistent with Russia’s conception of satisfactory “strategic depth”.

The notion that the US/NATO can “continue to support Kyiv’s war effort indefinitely” is a delusional conceit. As I have written above and elsewhere:

The US military is not built nor equipped for protracted high-intensity conflict. Nor can it supply a depleted proxy army with the means to prosecute a protracted high-intensity conflict.

Escalating the degree of US intervention in this war is not reckless because it risks backing the Russians into a corner from which they will feel compelled to use nuclear weapons, but rather because, in the face of catastrophic NATO losses on the ground and in the air of a conventional conflict, the United States government could very well find itself so desperately humiliated that it will yield to the enticings of the Empire At All Costs cult to sally forth boldly into the nuclear abyss.

The Persistent Myth of Russian Weakness

Moeini imagines that “Moscow has already paid a high price for its transgressions in Ukraine.”

To be sure, Russia has suffered losses in this war. Aggregating all the major components of the Russian military effort so far (Russian regulars, Donbass militia, Wagner PMC, and Chechen volunteer regiments), the Russians have very conceivably incurred as many as twenty-five thousand killed, and twice that wounded.

On the other side of the balance, it is now a near-certainty that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have suffered over two-hundred thousand killed, and at least twice that many irrecoverably wounded.

It is Ukraine that has paid a high price for the transgressions of the empire in its futile attempt to mortally wound Russia!

Utilizing a resolute “economy of force” strategy for an entire year — on both the offensive and the defensive — the Russians have exacted the most disproportionate casualty ratio of any major war in modern times.

Contrary to the propaganda-driven hallucinations of the overwhelming majority of western military analysts — as well as a surprisingly large number of Russian critics of Putin, the Kremlin, and the Russian Ministry of Defense — I remain thoroughly persuaded that future historians and war college professors will acclaim the past year of Russian military operations as the most impressive large-scale campaign of urban combat ever witnessed. It will be admiringly studied for centuries to come.

Meanwhile, as many as a half-million Russian combat effectives remain uncommitted in the theater — a mixture of battle veterans and mobilized reserves. They have been abundantly equipped with the finest armor, vehicles, and firepower yet fielded on the Russian side in this war.

Over 700 fixed-wing and rotary aircraft are dispersed within striking distance of the front.

Russian armaments production has proven all the imperial think-tank naysayers wrong. They have mobilized their latent but massive manufacturing capacity to such an impressive extent that it would take the west at least five years, and more likely a decade, to “catch up”.

The unadorned truth of the matter is that the US/NATO simply cannot and most assuredly will not win this war.

The Moment of Greatest Danger

Moeini concludes his treatise by musing that “unless Moscow is provided with a reasonable off-ramp that recognises Russia’s status as a regional power with its own existential imperatives of strategic and ontological security”, the world stands on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.

He correctly fears a nuclear calamity, but misattributes the source of the risk.

It is the empire that desperately needs an off-ramp at this point. The imperial potentates imagined up for themselves a world in which they commanded the sole “great power” on the planet. In casually dismissing the relative strength of the civilizational powers whom they have converted into mortal foes — Russia, China, and Persia — they have now consigned western civilization to an ontological and existential crisis of their own creation. (read more)