Sourcehttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1512804018220937228.html: Richard Tiffin


Before the war started, Zelenskyy refused an offer for peace. Russia required 3 things;

1) Water in Crimea: no water was destroying the economy there.

2) Minsk 2 imposed: peace for the people of Donbas, within Ukraine, but greater autonomy.

3) Ukraine to remain neutral: no NATO.
Liberal discussion of 'sovereignty' in a world of Great Power Geopolitics is fair, but pointless.

In the world we actually live in, rather than the world we'd like to live in, there are plenty of reasons for Russia to have taken this position. Read this.

To prevent war and secure Ukraine, make Ukraine neutral — Defense Priorities

https://www.defensepriorities.org/explainers/to-prevent-war-and-secure-ukraine-make-ukraine-neutral

Zelenskyy actually increased the provocation against Russia in January 2022 by;

1) Intensifying the bombardment of Donbas
2) Threatening to retake Crimea
3) A group of Republican congressmen intended to introduce a bill declaring Ukraine a NATO-plus country.

The die was cast.
Russia inevitably invaded. The important questions are;

1) Why did Zelenskyy increase provocations when Biden said "Putin has to do something"?
2) What will happen now?

Zelenskyy pushed because he's a US puppet, a tool in the Great Game that's been played for 100's of years.


The latest iteration of the Game has of course been planned for some while.

US sponsorship of the 2014 coup; the training and arming of a huge army of 600,000 led by ultra nationalists; ignoring the horrors of Donbas. These and many other clues are there, questions to answer.

The plan was made public in late 2021 when Elbridge A. Colby published The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict.

The Great plan was for a moral proxy war. Support for the little nation whose sovereignty had been impinged.
This would justify an endless supply of arms to fight Russia, coming from some of the wealthiest nations in the world.

The clincher? Not a drop of US or European blood will be spilt, other than Ukranian, and the nationalists wanted it. The US could fight to the last Ukranian.
The Great Game isn't really Russia, they are a small, though important player. A collapsed nation and neo-liberal reconstruction would be very profitable of course. All those lovely commodities. Yum yum!

No, the real target is China. They're the US global peer competitor.
By most every economic metric China has surpassed, or is about to surpass, the US.

China are also the second largest military spender.

The US retain one important power, control over the global financial system, bringing the benefits of a reserve currency and one more thing.


The power to decide against whom, why, how, and when to impose sanctions.

As president Woodrow Wilson said of sanctions, “Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy and there will be no need for force.”

Whoever controls sanctions controls the world.
This brings us on to the real reason the US is acting against Russia now, why Zelenskyy pushed on to the inevitable consequence.

China is in the process of forming an alternative global financial system. They already have an alternative to SWIFT, the interbank payment system.
What is worse, from a US perspective, Chinese currency is more solid, has greater value.

Its been argued many times the US dollar is propped up by being the reserve currency, by people holding dollars, else its vast QE programme and huge public spending deficit would haunt it.
China has no QE programme, no deficit, in fact it has huge reserves and a massive economy.

In short, if the Chinese global financial system took over, if ever more banks join and use CIPS rather than SWIFT, the US has had it. It becomes what Britian drifted into.
A sad island dreaming of a glorious past and lost opportunities. Why? Because the US would no longer be able to impose sanctions.

So, China must be stopped and Russia via Ukraine is the first step.

Next, this little nation with her sovereignty impinged strategy will be Taiwan.


In the world of Great Power Politics China will be provoked to act as Russia did, by force of arms, when Taiwan declare independence.

That begins my answer to question two, what next?

The US is shocked that Russia is winning the war against an army 3 times its size.
Very soon Russia will have achieved its objectives, a buffer zone, water to Crimea and peace in Donbas. They will withdraw and invite the UN to come in and keep the peace.

Ukraine will have lost hugely. Crimea, Donbas and perhaps more will not be autonomous Ukrainian.
They will be independent states of the Russian Federation.

Ukraine will also be neutral.

Its clear NATO have no intention of fighting Russia directly, so they will drop the provocation when Russia achieve their aims an withdraw.

But the US has now over reached.
There will be consequences. The worst one, from a US perspective, they have actually sped up the alternative global financial system.

Russia has been forced to trade outside of the dollar and nations are buying. Gas, oil, wheat, fertiliser, etc, all commodities the world needs.
Russia has also backed its currency with gold at a guaranteed price, how long before the Yuan joins suit?

What is more, most nations of the world didn't sanction Russia.

They might bide their time before risking the wrath of the US by buying oil etc. in roubles, but they will.


They will want to get their national reserves out of dollars after watching on in horror as Russian reserves were seized. They'll prefer a Chinese 'law based system' to US whims in a 'rule based system'. All they need is confidence.

Unfortunately, this increases tensions.
The US will now be in a hurry in this race against time.

As in the case of Pakistan and the removal of Khan, it will want to show little nations of the world it's still the big bully in town. She will want to frighten them from daring to use roubles and CIPS.

Worse yet.
This will push forward the Taiwan provocation.

That's why Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and and Japan were invited to the NATO ministers meeting over the past two days. They will be getting the heads up over Taiwan.

The notable thing of this meeting is India's absence.
Modi has clearly thrown his lot in with China and Russia, so he was snubbed, despite being a key member of the soon to be defunct Quad.

China and Russia are aware of the plan, which explains why Russia made such excellent preparations against the harshest ever sanctions.
How they will counter the Taiwan provocation? Will President Tsai have second thoughts now she saw the consequences in Ukraine? How quickly will trade transfer to CIPS?

These are the questions for Crystal balls. But the answers hold the question to all our futures, to WWIII.
You got this far, thank you for your perseverance.

Please take four and a half minutes more and listen to this.

This was for thr invasion of Iraq, but it still resonates.



Most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path. No-one listened to them and here we are. Small compilation � of these warnings, from Kissinger to Mearsheimer.

The first one is George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy. As soon as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia".

Then there's Kissinger, in 2014 ⬇️ He warned that "to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country" and that the West therefore needs a policy that is aimed at "reconciliation". He was also adamant that "Ukraine should not join NATO"


Ukraine is the battlefield chosen by US/NATO for its long-planned war with Russia.This This was made clear by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at a press conference earlier today. He stated:
1/
"Since 2014, Allies have trained Ukraine’s armed forces, and significantly strengthened their capabilities. They are putting that training into practice now, on the front lines, with great bravery. In the last months, Allies have stepped up military support.
2/
"Providing anti-tank and air defence systems, drones, fuel and ammunition. As well as financial aid." Stoltenberg made no effort to conceal NATO's massive buildup of Ukrainian military forces over the last eight years.

3/ Big Arrow War—a primer. For all those scratching their heads in confusion, or dusting off their dress uniforms for the Ukrainian victory parade in Kiev, over the news about Russia’s “strategic shift”, you might want to re-familiarize yourself with basic military concepts.

4/ Maneuver warfare is a good place to start. Understand Russia started its “special military operation” with a severe manpower deficit—200,000 attackers to some 600,000 defenders (or more). Classic attritional conflict was never an option. Russian victory required maneuver.

5/ Maneuver war is more psychological than physical and focuses more on the operational than on the tactical level. Maneuver is relational movement—how you deploy and move your forces in relation to your opponent. Russian maneuver in the first phase of its operation support this.


What's really behind conflict in Ukraine - a thread The U.S. is engaging Russia in three wars. Let me discuss them in increasing order of importance and the likely repercussions on the U.S.-led global order. The first is the military war taking place on the ground in Ukraine. Then there is the propaganda war taking place at Western media outlets like CNN and on social media platforms like Twitter.

Finally, and most significantly, there is the economic war which may accelerate the destruction of the US-led power structure that has dominated the world since the end of World War II.


Does anyone remember media or Twitter 'blue ticks' talk about sovereignty, to send arms to resist, when Yugoslavia was bombed? Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? Syria? Yemen? So, what makes the Russian invasion of Ukraine different? Clearly, sovereignty isn't the defining feature.

In every example I gave here sovereign nations were attacked. What about cruelty of the regime? 14,000 have died in the East, in Dombas, largely killed by Ukranian forces. Was it about weapons of mass destruction? We know that there are biolabs in Ukraine and tons of missiles.

Perhaps the regime pose a threat to world order? Have you seen the fascists in the Ukranian regime, the barbarity with which they treat Russian 'orcs'? For all we know people committing those atrocities are from the 'Foreign Legion' and will be returning to Western Europe.

Colby wrote, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict The book outlines how Russia and China can be provoked with their 'red lines'. For Russia it was Ukraines NATO membership and threat to retake Crimea. For China its an independent Taiwan.

We can understand or work with big power politics, 'Realist International Relations', or we can suffer the inevitable consequences. This paper provides an excellent analysis of cause and consequence of big power red lines and what to do about them.

defensepriorities.org/explainers/to-

To paraphrase Colby's argument. US encourages nations to inflame red line tensions, provoke a reaction, then, when it comes, take the moral high ground, finance an endless proxy war whilst populations wave Ukranian and Taiwanese flags. I bet Colby cannot believe his success.

Another strategy of the media is to change the narrative over time. Its only when one returns to read contemporaneous articles that it's clear just how stories the media present us change. Back in 2014, just after the coup in Ukraine, there were spontaneous seperatist movements.

As this article shows, at the time there was even fears that Ukraine could descend into civil war. I read accounts how the Ukranian army were driven out of Mariupol and it was retaken a month later by Azov and Dnipro-1 when they were still militia, before they were made official.
Now the narrative is one of Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea and Donbas and the referenda held were under the barrel of Russian guns. Little mention is made of how 'volunteer police forces' full of fascists, such as Tornado, used murder and violence to intimidate.

Earlier I tweeted about a lack of objectivity in our media, here's an example. A missile hit a railway station in Kramatorsk as crowds of people attempted to board trains to escape the city in anticipation of a Russian advance. There are images of identifiable missile fragments

Ukraine claim it was a brutal attack on civilians, Zelenskyy said; "Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop".

Russian defence ministry have claimed they have not used missiles of the type the fragments suggested for some time. Perhaps Russia's claim is verifiable, I don't know, but one might imagine that media objectivity would at least have Russia's statement in a news item.

Efforts continue to provoke China to take action against Taiwan and threaten her if she does so. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson was bellicose. Calling it an "attempt to confuse public opinion and profit from the chaos. This is playing with fire".

fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_6

The Chinese response comes because of what China views as a "handful of seperatists" in Taiwan and the US "colluding with each other". The spokespersons comments were in response to a question from a press member following comments made by two senior government officials.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman both warned againt China taking action against independence efforts taken by Taiwan. Let's hope sense prevails, but China views Taiwan independence as a red line, which is why the US are engaged.

Provocations against China will continue to rachet up. Just weeks before Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia signed a joint statement agreeing to a host of foreign policy goals, including Taiwan being "an inalienable part" of the mainland. All good so far.

This was against a background of a 2016 election where Tsai was elected as "President of the Republic of China". As you can see, the office title shows that Taiwan is part of China. But in power Tsai has been a little more challenging, moving toward Taiwan's independence.

Tsai argued that China should “face reality” and “review” its current policy toward the de facto nation that Beijing claims is part of its territory. Clearly, a rhetorical move toward independence. Despite the US/China declaration regarding Taiwan's status, Pompeo next.

This war is beginning to drag

Ukrainian could have avoided this... But, they were spurred to war by the west.

THE VALIANTS DIE ONCE.

peggywebbs:

Sourcehttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1512804018220937228.html: Richard Tiffin


Before the war started, Zelenskyy refused an offer for peace. Russia required 3 things;

1) Water in Crimea: no water was destroying the economy there.

2) Minsk 2 imposed: peace for the people of Donbas, within Ukraine, but greater autonomy.

3) Ukraine to remain neutral: no NATO.
Liberal discussion of 'sovereignty' in a world of Great Power Geopolitics is fair, but pointless.

In the world we actually live in, rather than the world we'd like to live in, there are plenty of reasons for Russia to have taken this position. Read this.

To prevent war and secure Ukraine, make Ukraine neutral — Defense Priorities

https://www.defensepriorities.org/explainers/to-prevent-war-and-secure-ukraine-make-ukraine-neutral

Zelenskyy actually increased the provocation against Russia in January 2022 by;

1) Intensifying the bombardment of Donbas
2) Threatening to retake Crimea
3) A group of Republican congressmen intended to introduce a bill declaring Ukraine a NATO-plus country.

The die was cast.
Russia inevitably invaded. The important questions are;

1) Why did Zelenskyy increase provocations when Biden said "Putin has to do something"?
2) What will happen now?

Zelenskyy pushed because he's a US puppet, a tool in the Great Game that's been played for 100's of years.


The latest iteration of the Game has of course been planned for some while.

US sponsorship of the 2014 coup; the training and arming of a huge army of 600,000 led by ultra nationalists; ignoring the horrors of Donbas. These and many other clues are there, questions to answer.

The plan was made public in late 2021 when Elbridge A. Colby published The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict.

The Great plan was for a moral proxy war. Support for the little nation whose sovereignty had been impinged.
This would justify an endless supply of arms to fight Russia, coming from some of the wealthiest nations in the world.

The clincher? Not a drop of US or European blood will be spilt, other than Ukranian, and the nationalists wanted it. The US could fight to the last Ukranian.
The Great Game isn't really Russia, they are a small, though important player. A collapsed nation and neo-liberal reconstruction would be very profitable of course. All those lovely commodities. Yum yum!

No, the real target is China. They're the US global peer competitor.
By most every economic metric China has surpassed, or is about to surpass, the US.

China are also the second largest military spender.

The US retain one important power, control over the global financial system, bringing the benefits of a reserve currency and one more thing.


The power to decide against whom, why, how, and when to impose sanctions.

As president Woodrow Wilson said of sanctions, “Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy and there will be no need for force.”

Whoever controls sanctions controls the world.
This brings us on to the real reason the US is acting against Russia now, why Zelenskyy pushed on to the inevitable consequence.

China is in the process of forming an alternative global financial system. They already have an alternative to SWIFT, the interbank payment system.
What is worse, from a US perspective, Chinese currency is more solid, has greater value.

Its been argued many times the US dollar is propped up by being the reserve currency, by people holding dollars, else its vast QE programme and huge public spending deficit would haunt it.
China has no QE programme, no deficit, in fact it has huge reserves and a massive economy.

In short, if the Chinese global financial system took over, if ever more banks join and use CIPS rather than SWIFT, the US has had it. It becomes what Britian drifted into.
A sad island dreaming of a glorious past and lost opportunities. Why? Because the US would no longer be able to impose sanctions.

So, China must be stopped and Russia via Ukraine is the first step.

Next, this little nation with her sovereignty impinged strategy will be Taiwan.


In the world of Great Power Politics China will be provoked to act as Russia did, by force of arms, when Taiwan declare independence.

That begins my answer to question two, what next?

The US is shocked that Russia is winning the war against an army 3 times its size.
Very soon Russia will have achieved its objectives, a buffer zone, water to Crimea and peace in Donbas. They will withdraw and invite the UN to come in and keep the peace.

Ukraine will have lost hugely. Crimea, Donbas and perhaps more will not be autonomous Ukrainian.
They will be independent states of the Russian Federation.

Ukraine will also be neutral.

Its clear NATO have no intention of fighting Russia directly, so they will drop the provocation when Russia achieve their aims an withdraw.

But the US has now over reached.
There will be consequences. The worst one, from a US perspective, they have actually sped up the alternative global financial system.

Russia has been forced to trade outside of the dollar and nations are buying. Gas, oil, wheat, fertiliser, etc, all commodities the world needs.
Russia has also backed its currency with gold at a guaranteed price, how long before the Yuan joins suit?

What is more, most nations of the world didn't sanction Russia.

They might bide their time before risking the wrath of the US by buying oil etc. in roubles, but they will.


They will want to get their national reserves out of dollars after watching on in horror as Russian reserves were seized. They'll prefer a Chinese 'law based system' to US whims in a 'rule based system'. All they need is confidence.

Unfortunately, this increases tensions.
The US will now be in a hurry in this race against time.

As in the case of Pakistan and the removal of Khan, it will want to show little nations of the world it's still the big bully in town. She will want to frighten them from daring to use roubles and CIPS.

Worse yet.
This will push forward the Taiwan provocation.

That's why Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and and Japan were invited to the NATO ministers meeting over the past two days. They will be getting the heads up over Taiwan.

The notable thing of this meeting is India's absence.
Modi has clearly thrown his lot in with China and Russia, so he was snubbed, despite being a key member of the soon to be defunct Quad.

China and Russia are aware of the plan, which explains why Russia made such excellent preparations against the harshest ever sanctions.
How they will counter the Taiwan provocation? Will President Tsai have second thoughts now she saw the consequences in Ukraine? How quickly will trade transfer to CIPS?

These are the questions for Crystal balls. But the answers hold the question to all our futures, to WWIII.
You got this far, thank you for your perseverance.

Please take four and a half minutes more and listen to this.

This was for thr invasion of Iraq, but it still resonates.



Most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path. No-one listened to them and here we are. Small compilation � of these warnings, from Kissinger to Mearsheimer.

The first one is George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy. As soon as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia".

Then there's Kissinger, in 2014 ⬇️ He warned that "to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country" and that the West therefore needs a policy that is aimed at "reconciliation". He was also adamant that "Ukraine should not join NATO"


Ukraine is the battlefield chosen by US/NATO for its long-planned war with Russia.This This was made clear by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at a press conference earlier today. He stated:
1/
"Since 2014, Allies have trained Ukraine’s armed forces, and significantly strengthened their capabilities. They are putting that training into practice now, on the front lines, with great bravery. In the last months, Allies have stepped up military support.
2/
"Providing anti-tank and air defence systems, drones, fuel and ammunition. As well as financial aid." Stoltenberg made no effort to conceal NATO's massive buildup of Ukrainian military forces over the last eight years.

3/ Big Arrow War—a primer. For all those scratching their heads in confusion, or dusting off their dress uniforms for the Ukrainian victory parade in Kiev, over the news about Russia’s “strategic shift”, you might want to re-familiarize yourself with basic military concepts.

4/ Maneuver warfare is a good place to start. Understand Russia started its “special military operation” with a severe manpower deficit—200,000 attackers to some 600,000 defenders (or more). Classic attritional conflict was never an option. Russian victory required maneuver.

5/ Maneuver war is more psychological than physical and focuses more on the operational than on the tactical level. Maneuver is relational movement—how you deploy and move your forces in relation to your opponent. Russian maneuver in the first phase of its operation support this.


What's really behind conflict in Ukraine - a thread The U.S. is engaging Russia in three wars. Let me discuss them in increasing order of importance and the likely repercussions on the U.S.-led global order. The first is the military war taking place on the ground in Ukraine. Then there is the propaganda war taking place at Western media outlets like CNN and on social media platforms like Twitter.

Finally, and most significantly, there is the economic war which may accelerate the destruction of the US-led power structure that has dominated the world since the end of World War II.


Does anyone remember media or Twitter 'blue ticks' talk about sovereignty, to send arms to resist, when Yugoslavia was bombed? Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? Syria? Yemen? So, what makes the Russian invasion of Ukraine different? Clearly, sovereignty isn't the defining feature.

In every example I gave here sovereign nations were attacked. What about cruelty of the regime? 14,000 have died in the East, in Dombas, largely killed by Ukranian forces. Was it about weapons of mass destruction? We know that there are biolabs in Ukraine and tons of missiles.

Perhaps the regime pose a threat to world order? Have you seen the fascists in the Ukranian regime, the barbarity with which they treat Russian 'orcs'? For all we know people committing those atrocities are from the 'Foreign Legion' and will be returning to Western Europe.

Colby wrote, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict The book outlines how Russia and China can be provoked with their 'red lines'. For Russia it was Ukraines NATO membership and threat to retake Crimea. For China its an independent Taiwan.

We can understand or work with big power politics, 'Realist International Relations', or we can suffer the inevitable consequences. This paper provides an excellent analysis of cause and consequence of big power red lines and what to do about them.

defensepriorities.org/explainers/to-

To paraphrase Colby's argument. US encourages nations to inflame red line tensions, provoke a reaction, then, when it comes, take the moral high ground, finance an endless proxy war whilst populations wave Ukranian and Taiwanese flags. I bet Colby cannot believe his success.

Another strategy of the media is to change the narrative over time. Its only when one returns to read contemporaneous articles that it's clear just how stories the media present us change. Back in 2014, just after the coup in Ukraine, there were spontaneous seperatist movements.

As this article shows, at the time there was even fears that Ukraine could descend into civil war. I read accounts how the Ukranian army were driven out of Mariupol and it was retaken a month later by Azov and Dnipro-1 when they were still militia, before they were made official.
Now the narrative is one of Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea and Donbas and the referenda held were under the barrel of Russian guns. Little mention is made of how 'volunteer police forces' full of fascists, such as Tornado, used murder and violence to intimidate.

Earlier I tweeted about a lack of objectivity in our media, here's an example. A missile hit a railway station in Kramatorsk as crowds of people attempted to board trains to escape the city in anticipation of a Russian advance. There are images of identifiable missile fragments

Ukraine claim it was a brutal attack on civilians, Zelenskyy said; "Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop".

Russian defence ministry have claimed they have not used missiles of the type the fragments suggested for some time. Perhaps Russia's claim is verifiable, I don't know, but one might imagine that media objectivity would at least have Russia's statement in a news item.

Efforts continue to provoke China to take action against Taiwan and threaten her if she does so. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson was bellicose. Calling it an "attempt to confuse public opinion and profit from the chaos. This is playing with fire".

fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_6

The Chinese response comes because of what China views as a "handful of seperatists" in Taiwan and the US "colluding with each other". The spokespersons comments were in response to a question from a press member following comments made by two senior government officials.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman both warned againt China taking action against independence efforts taken by Taiwan. Let's hope sense prevails, but China views Taiwan independence as a red line, which is why the US are engaged.

Provocations against China will continue to rachet up. Just weeks before Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia signed a joint statement agreeing to a host of foreign policy goals, including Taiwan being "an inalienable part" of the mainland. All good so far.

This was against a background of a 2016 election where Tsai was elected as "President of the Republic of China". As you can see, the office title shows that Taiwan is part of China. But in power Tsai has been a little more challenging, moving toward Taiwan's independence.

Tsai argued that China should “face reality” and “review” its current policy toward the de facto nation that Beijing claims is part of its territory. Clearly, a rhetorical move toward independence. Despite the US/China declaration regarding Taiwan's status, Pompeo next.

well articulated write up. Especially, on the economic front, Western countries are trying so much to retain their "power"
payment system versus sanctions and the rest. There is more to this war that meets the eyes.