[ZeroHedge] According to a 2019 Rand report titled "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia", the US goal is to undermine Russia just as it did the Soviet Union in the cold war. Rather than "trying to stay ahead" or trying to improve the US domestically or in international relations, the emphasis is on efforts and actions to undermine the designated adversary Russia. Rand is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military.
The report lists anti-Russia measures divided into the following areas: economic, geopolitical, ideological/informational, and military. They are assessed according to the perceived risks, benefits and "likelihood of success".
Had you read the online report you might have recognized the current administration's roadmap to world affairs. This is interesting as the report from 2019 spans two radically different presidencies.
You might have also noticed, besides energy and military expansion there is a ideological section directed at Russia but appears to be very much in affect within our own borders, on our own population.
I'm very concerned about the 'not yet manifested' measures.
#7
Had you read the online report you might have recognized the current administration's roadmap to world affairs.
Thank you for that link -- very helpful to read the report.
BLUF: the only tactic that offers a very favorable cost-benefit profile for the US with low risk is increased US domestic energy production.
That's the only promising tactic out of 48 total. And Biden ignored it -- in fact did the exact opposite!
The only other set of tactics that even offer moderately favorable cost-benefits are a variety of USAF initiatives like like "reposturing US bombers" and "investing" in RPAs and long-range strike aircraft and missiles.
Which of course are initiatives which RAND would be delighted to study for the next five years. At a reasonable cost -- perhaps $5 million per study with a few follow-ones?
And which options offered the WORST outcomes? Exactly those which Biden has been doubling down on.
note: if you want to quickly scan the RAND report and get the key takeaways, look at each tactic's color-coded row of boxes in the table to the right. Look for crimson vs beige. A crimson box means the policy will greatly sting us and not hurt the Russians much; beige is good for US interests.
There's a LOT of crimson -- that is damage to the US and/or little harm to Russia -- and not much beige in the 48 rows of tactics. Nearly all of the "geopolitical" and NATO-related tactics are either counterproductive or useless.
Most importantly sanctions will hurt the US as at least as much as they hurt Russia. Political interference offers no chance of success. So what does Biden do? Impose self-destructive sanctions and call for "regime change" in Russia!
Thank you again, Skidmark. This report shows once again that US policymakers do not listen to reason and are determined to do the exact opposite wherever possible.
#8
Who are these Defense Intelligence Agency analysts and "Pentagon contractor" analysts who are calling BS on the widely-believed Western notion that Putin and the Russian Army are deliberately targeting civilians?
There's also an illuminating comparison with the US air and artillery campaign in Iraq. Odd that this rational analysis has been quashed.
Sort of like the quashing of RAND's advice to recommendation to increase oil and gas production and focus on drones, bombers, longer-range strike aircraft and missiles instead of NATO and regime change BS. Or shooting ourselves in the foot with sanctions. instead of
#9
I believe it, Skid, because it fits so well into the context of what we already know. What I don't understand is: Why? Why give away the farm to China while waging war against Russia? And what did the Russians do to deserve it?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/29/2022 13:24 Comments ||
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#10
That's the only promising tactic out of 48 total. And Biden ignored it -- in fact did the exact opposite!
"Count on Joe to fuck things up" - B. Hussain Obama
Count on the military industrial complex to keep the gravy train running
Count on the Swamp Creatures to take us to the brink of world war and make us poorer in the process
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited By Oleg Airapetov
[REGNUM] The defeat of the German and the collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires led to a sharp change in the situation in Transcaucasia. The Batumi treaty was canceled, the German and Turkish troops left, their place was taken by the British. New opportunities arose for local nationalist governments, and the main problem was the redistribution of territories in a space where ethnic stripes were the basis for mutually exclusive claims of the parties. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan proclaimed the borders, which made war between these republics inevitable.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin.
[ColonelCassad] 1. Mariupol.
The cleanup continues. Just a few blocks away - quite a serious advance. Over the Sea of Azov, a Mi-8 helicopter of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was shot down, which, apparently, was trying to pick someone up from Mariupol before the death of the encircled group.
Obviously, there will be no deblockade of Mariupol. The only question is whether Azovstal will be cleaned up the same way as the city, or the plant will be sacrificed in order to minimize their own losses. cleanup.
2.Ugledar direction.
Fighting in the area of Glorious and Novomikhailovka. The grouping in this direction has intensified in recent days, so within 1-2 days we can expect further advancement to the Maryinka-Kurakhovo highway.
3. Marinka.
Fights in the slag heap area. The advance is still quite slow, however, the enemy is gradually retreating, having already lost part of the fortified area.
4. Avdievka.
Avdievka itself is without major changes. Fighting near Novobakhmutovka and Novoselovka on the outskirts of New York.
5.LNR.
Severodonetsk - no major changes. Lisichansk - similarly.
In the southern regions of Rubizhne, there are battles with enemy DRGs. The city itself suffers from constant shelling.
There is some progress in the Popasna area and in the city itself, but, of course, it is too early to talk about control over it.
6. Izyum.
The accumulation of forces on the southern bank of the Donets continues and pressure on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the direction of Slavyansk is increasing. Serious fighting is also underway northeast of Barvenkovo.
7. Kharkov.
No significant changes. Fighting north and east of the city. The bulk of the fighting takes place on the outskirts of Kharkov. He doesn't fly into the city very often. Attacks are being made on the Chuguev grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
8. Chernihiv-Sumy.
The pressure on Chernigov is growing, the enemy has suffered serious losses in recent days and has completely pulled back into the city. In Slavutych, the Russian administration has not yet been established; the city, like Energodar earlier, has so far only been provided with checkpoints at the entrance. Amounts unchanged. Fighting continues north of Akhtyrka near the town of Trostyanets.
9. Kiev.
Bucha-Vorzel-Gostomel without changes. The Armed Forces of Ukraine say that the RF Armed Forces continue to try to move south towards Vasilkov. Irpin is partly controlled by the RF Armed Forces, partly by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. No one controls part of the city. He himself suffered greatly during the fighting.
10.Nikolaev.
The "attack on Kherson" was expressed in the indiscriminate shelling of Chernobaevka from the MLRS and an attempt to attack with a mechanized group supported by infantry in the direction of Kherson. In the steppe, the group began to be covered with artillery, and it rolled back to Nikolaev with losses.
In addition, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation also threw well on the outskirts of Nikolaev, destroying several guns and MLRS, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine also had losses, after which they began to urgently collect blood in Nikolaev. The exact number of casualties in this "offensive" is unknown. Perhaps blogger Kim will tell us about this after he finishes eating barbecue at the resort.
[Claremont] Before President Biden’s two-hour conversation last week with Chinese president Xi, the exchange was being billed as having “seismic ramifications.” Biden was going to make it clear that China would suffer “severe consequences” for any financial or military aid it provided Russia in the face of U.S. sanctions.
But it doesn’t appear that Biden threatened Xi with “severe consequences” at all. And if he did, Xi blew any such warnings away. Instead, China admitted to nothing, implicated the U.S. and NATO in causing the war, insisted that Russia’s security needs to be addressed, and pressured Biden to help negotiate a settlement.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi told Biden:
The US and NATO should … have dialogue with Russia to … ease the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine. … Sweeping and indiscriminate sanctions … [i]f further escalated, … could trigger serious crises in global economy and trade, finance, energy, food, and industrial and supply chains, crippling the already languishing world economy and causing irrevocable losses.
Even before the conversation, China was speaking softly but carrying a big stick: it sent an aircraft carrier through the Straits of Taiwan. And to rub in the point, China’s vice foreign minister, one day after the presidents talked, denounced NATO and condemned U.S. sanctions.
In other words, Biden’s call was a flop, like everything else he does. How could it not have been? Our foreign policy is incoherent. On the one hand, a major purpose behind Biden’s Ukraine policy is to signal to China that it dare not invade Taiwan. On the other hand, Biden needs China’s support if sanctions on Russia are to work. He is therefore both threatening China and conceding dependence on it. You cannot be unflinching and abject all at once.
WHY BIDEN CANNOT SANCTION CHINA
Xi knows that the U.S. will not impose any serious secondary sanctions. Biden is heading into a November midterm election, and the U.S. is in dire shape economically. The national debt stands at about $30 trillion. Inflation is devastating not just the poor, but now the middle class. Yet if the Federal Reserve Board seeks to tame inflation by raising interest rates, financial experts warn that the stock and housing markets may collapse.
If to this witches’ brew we added significant trade and financial sanctions on China, our action might well precipitate a deep recession globally and at home. The World Bank forecast late last year that China’s growth would slow sharply in 2022, and our own growth is declining as well. Depressing already slow growth while further inflating prices would mean a historic defeat for Democrats in November. Both Xi and Biden know that.
Xi has the U.S. over a barrel. He has nothing to fear from us. He can unobtrusively aid Russia (while denying that he does) but posture as a peace broker. He can subsidize Russia’s invasion while insisting on the sanctity of international borders. He can blame the war on the U.S. but also embarrass it if it does not encourage its Ukrainian satellite to accept a settlement. He has outflanked the U.S. (much as Nixon outflanked the USSR) by raising the specter that we might have to fight a war on two fronts — in Europe and the Pacific. If we sanction him, it only hastens the day when he and Russia develop a de-dollarized payments system and create a Eurasian trading bloc.
And the U.S. already overuses its sanctions: one in ten countries in the world is now subject to them. At the same time, we expect foreign creditors to continue to buy our Treasury bills (even as the national debt soars) and foreign traders to transact in U.S. dollars. Our policies simply do not cohere. They are reckless.
[AmGreatness] These are people who think they’re clever enough to deal with powerful foreign countries run by sane people. They’re not, and those foreign powers have taken note of that fact. The kind of Americans the world fears or respects have been put out of government and military leadership and replaced by a menagerie of nursing home patients, human resources ladies, affirmative action hires, sexual degenerates, and obese four-star generals angling for board seats on the next Theranos start-up. The day of reckoning has arrived. Leaders like Putin, Xi, and Mohammed bin Salman are no longer amenable to being pushed around and morally browbeaten by the circus freaks that constitute the United States Government.
Posted by: The Walking Unvaxed ||
03/29/2022 00:00 ||
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#1
Excellent. Need to read more of Benjamin Braddock's stuff.
This passage should open some eyes:
A Russian acquaintance of mine volunteered to go fight for the “Donetsk People’s Republic.” From the way he talked about the conditions there, I assumed it was a lost cause, but as a Southerner, I’m a sucker for lost causes. My friend feared that he was a marked man, that if he ever returned to Russia he might be arrested for his participation. Undermanned, underfed, and underarmed, he and his fellow patriots have held on throughout a brutal war that has raged since 2014, with numerous atrocities carried out by both the Ukrainian government and the neo-Nazi “punisher battalions” against the civilian population of Donetsk and Luhansk.
In one such atrocity, a man was nailed to a cross soaked in gasoline and burned alive. In another, a man and a pregnant woman had ropes tied around their necks, the ropes went over a crossbeam suspended between two trees and tied to the back of a car. The car was slowly driven forward and the two victims were slowly lifted into the air and strangled to death. Ukrainian forces have intermittently shelled the inhabitants in Luhansk and Donetsk, including with white phosphorus munitions against civilian targets.
Overall, the war in the Donbass claimed at least 14,000 lives, injured tens of thousands more, and has subjected the population of more than 2.3 million people in Donetsk and Luhansk to the hardship of life in a war zone. This has been a bone in the throat of many Russian people, who view the ethnically Russian inhabitants of Donetsk and Luhansk as their kin. But up until this point, Putin chose not to get militarily involved in a significant way. The tipping point to the invasion was not the survival of Donbass, but the survival of Russia itself.
#2
A number of Rantburg regulars saw that crucifixion video.
I read a few writings by Russian militiamen who fought in Donbas, describing some of the atrocities committed by the Ukrainians against Russian speakers, beginning with the May, 2014 Odessa fire. Some of them were/are my Facebook acquaintances.
And before we get too for into this discussion, a young man, a graphical artist based in Donetsk produced a book on mistreatment he and others suffered at the hands of the separatists.
Bottom line: no one wore angel wings in this thing. Ukrainians and the leaders of both Donetsk and Lugansk had strong ties with local organized crime.
#7
#4 It would appear Braddock has nailed it. The question now is, how do we escape the trap.
Replace these freaks with sane people -- another marvelous Braddock passage:
A month later, investigative journalist Darren Beattie published an investigation warning that the same constellation of NGOs and Washington apparatchiks that coordinated color revolutions abroad were actively plotting one right here at home. Election Night came and it happened: The infamous halt of the vote count; the coordinated declaration by the media that Biden had been elected president before the vote count was complete. Then came the instant social media bans of anyone posting evidence of voter fraud. It was a surreal moment in American history. Anyone questioning the details or pointing out the coordinated nature of this operation was branded a conspiracy theorist or even a traitor attempting to subvert democracy.
Months later, Time published an article titled, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” It explained, “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans” and it described “a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election.” That’s how brazen the people who are doing this are. They gaslight anyone who notices what they’re doing when they’re doing it, and then turn around and brag about what they did after the fact.
The successful overthrow of the Trump presidency returned to power the same cast of characters that had carried out the color revolution in Ukraine in 2014. Joe Biden, who as vice president had shepherded the deal to set up a puppet regime in Ukraine is now president. Victoria Nuland has returned as undersecretary of State for political affairs. Jen Psaki, who served as propaganda mouthpiece for the State Department during the Obama Administration, is now the propaganda mouthpiece for the Biden White House. Biden declared upon taking office, “America’s back,” which is only true if you define America as a government run by insane kleptocratic clowns whose problem-solving abilities amount to those of a farmer who sets fire to his cotton fields to drive out the boll weevils.
#8
/\ Replace these freaks with sane people -- another marvelous Braddock passage:
The Deep State now shamelessly controls the process. Haw is 'replacement' to be accomplished? The entire country has now become Cook County, IL.
Until I see the voting process enforced (poll watchers present and engaged), great piles of Dominion voting machines headed to salvage yards, absentee voting cleansed, the dead removed from voting registrations, an end to ballot harvesting, a return to paper ballots, voter 'drop-off' boxes smashed, and a single election day or two....I am least of all hopeful.
Perhaps I missed all of this, and it is actually taking place. Someone, please set me straight if that is the case.
#10
You want genuine, honest, government that is dedicated to the Constitution, we need to define voter eligibility based on two simple criteria. Either you demonstrate a net tax-payer status, in simple terms you pay more in income taxes than you get, or a period of genuine national service to earn the vote.(Heinlein-esque, I know)
"Two influential OPEC members, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, rebuffed calls to expel Russia from a larger oil-production alliance with almost two dozen countries, saying the group had a long history of working together through armed conflicts.
"A partnership, dubbed OPEC+, between the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia has refused to pump more oil than planned at a time when oil prices have rocketed above $100 a barrel. Producing more crude could bring prices down, some analysts say."
#18
What will it take for Shaky Joe's puppetmasters to wake up and understand that the threat of nuclear war is real? Maybe if Putin retreated to a nuclear bunker after earning he will use nukes? Can Joe's shriveled brain process the term, existential threat?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
