No words.

(forwarded from IntelSlavaZ)

Geopolitically speaking, a “red line” is something that is declared by a sovereign nation as something that can’t be tolerated and will be treated as a declaration of war, which is presumed to eventually escalate, and eventually turn into a nuclear exchange. Basically, it can be seen as something that’s worth not only dying for, but also having everybody die for. As a side note, America behaves as if it’s the only power that is allowed to draw such red lines, which is incredibly ridiculous and arrogant.

The problem is, America is drawing an increasing number of red lines, at increasingly more tactical places, which is also incredibly dangerous and arrogant. During the cold war, the red lines were obvious – if someone inhibits global oil traffic, it’s a red line. If someone fires a nuclear weapon at a NATO member, it’s a red line. If someone performs a massive ground invasion of a NATO member, it’s a red line. If someone strikes American homeland with a weapon of mass destruction, it’s a red line. Sink an American aircraft carrier, it’s a red line. But the red lines kept multiplying and becoming less clear – if someone attacks American infrastructure, including cyber-war, it’s a red line. Attack American military satellites used for war against you, it’s a red line. Attack American bases used for war against you, it’s a red line. Attack American troops on the ground waging war against you, it’s a red line. There are already more red lines than on a Scottish kilt, for fuck’s sake. Basically, the message is “we’ll do whatever we want but if you do absolutely anything to hurt us back, it’s getting nuclear”, and this is a bluff that absolutely needs to be called, because if it isn’t, you accept your status as America’s bitch.

The problem is, America actually wants a nuclear war, so a “what are you going to do about it, launch nukes?” posture won’t work. This red-line inflation reminds me of what Americans did with the definition of “weapons of mass destruction”, inflating it to include pressure cookers filled with firecrackers, because they found it convenient for sentencing some Muslim terrorists. My response to this was “ok, but what then is a MIRV ICBM?” If you increase your sensitivity to violence performed against you, and simultaneously increase your involvement in violent and disruptive actions against others, someone will eventually decide not only to cross your red lines somewhere, but be done with you altogether. Too many sanctions, too many red lines, too many dangerous, threatening actions infringing upon major powers. America created a situation where global trade will not work unless America is destroyed, world banking system of financial transactions won’t be free again unless America is destroyed, Russia and China won’t be able to develop freely unless America is destroyed, and the minor countries of the world will not feel free to behave normally unless America is destroyed, creating a multi-dimensional topology where everybody will be much happier and more free if America is destroyed. Combining this topology with all the red lines placed at every single place where America’s position of dominance is threatened, we get a situation where the countries of the world will try not to trigger American red lines but subvert the present situation, to which America reacts by introducing further red lines, and this sequence is quickly converging to its limit.

Basically, the only way we can avoid a nuclear war is if something else takes America out first. I don’t know what – a supervolcanic eruption, an asteroid strike, aliens or God, but if they are not humbled in a very extreme and radical way, they will keep cooking up a scenario that makes an extreme explosion of global violence inevitable.

Russia did a very strange thing; they withdrew from Kherson city. The strange part is that they had enough troops and soldiers there to keep killing the Ukrainians indefinitely, without suffering significant losses; the Ukrainians basically got a gift they could never have conquered militarily, and not for the lack of trying – they’ve been trying for months, and the result was lots of dead Ukrainians. The strangest part about this is that Kherson is an ideal bridgehead for the Russians for taking Nikolaev and Odessa.

The first-order analysis indicates that the Russians abandoned the plans for using this bridgehead in order to advance towards Odessa and connect with Transnistria.

The second-order analysis asks the question “why”. It is possible that America sold the Russian leadership some bullshit about averting nuclear war by freezing the conflict at the Dnieper river, without any political solution, basically allowing things to cool down. The actual American plan would be to “refurbish” the Ukrainian army which is in very dire straits and would collapse if the Russians were to perform the anticipated winter campaign with the additional 300k troops. The Russian people fear something of the sorts, but are giving their leadership the benefit of the doubt, and if there isn’t a winter offensive, heads will roll, and I mean Putin and his people. This might exactly be the American long-term plan. Another possibility is that the Russians have abandoned the partial plans for Ukraine, which the south belt connecting Kherson with Transnistria through Odessa would be, and that they intend to come into Ukraine hard, pulverize their army, kill their leadership, throw out NATO and send a firm message – anyone fucking with us ever again will end like this. This is what the Russian people want, and if the leadership doesn’t produce this goal, the people will produce new leadership, which might be very bad for everyone, because all the candidates are hot-headed and inexperienced.

I don’t know which one is it, so we basically have a ternary tree, where one branch is armistice, where America and NATO regroup, fix the failing Ukrainian army, and proceed to try to weaken and isolate Russia, where Russia isn’t willing to strike at the core of the problem directly, so by definition their only hope for a victory is America crumbling down due to their own internal issues, or, alternatively, from a war with China over Taiwan. The highest-probability outcome in this war is still nuclear, only with a delay that would give America a better, less chaotic situation, and Russia would have internal political turmoil and wide-spread popular dissatisfaction with the situation preceding the war. This puts Russia in a precarious situation where they enter a certain nuclear conflict weakened and demoralized. They would lose, and they might not even manage to strike at the enemy properly, similar to the 1990s situation. Russia loses, but China performs a full strategic strike at America, because it becomes obvious to them that they are next, and with their main strategic ally lost, the nuclear option is the only alternative to total defeat and eternity of servitude.

The second branch is that the Russians are deciding to be done with Ukraine altogether, and are now giving up on partial solutions, where they would take the south and everything east of Dnieper; no, Ukraine needs to be rinsed of both Nazis and NATO, and the job needs to be done thoroughly, by tearing the filth down, killing all the problematic people there, and rebuilding everything on solid grounds afterwards. Giving up on the Kherson bridgehead means giving up on the concept of having a costly breakthrough in the South, that doesn’t give them a stable outcome in the end, but only increases the front line that is locked in perpetual conflict. This branch means the Russians wait for the ground to freeze and their reinforcements to be ready, and they most likely pulverize everything with aviation and rockets first, and then do a blitz from multiple vectors. As Ukraine falls, NATO goes in from the West, there is a direct conflict, and the Russians decide that the war with the Americans is no longer something they could avoid or limit, and they start taking out American command and control assets in Europe and in space. The Americans retaliate by striking Russian command and control centres with tactical nukes. The Russians perform a full strategic retaliation. What is left of America retaliates at Russian and Chinese cities.

The third branch is something that is usually ignored, because of Putin’s very strong psychological and ethical resistance to being the guy who started the nuclear war with the West. The third branch means to realize that Russia is already in a war with the collective West, and needs to win it. Strike decisively, strike first, strike with the element of surprise, take out all enemy assets, and strike so hard that the enemy never again poses a danger. This branch is something I am listing as an option only because I’m being thorough; it is a single digit probability option.

So, basically, I don’t know what’s going on because at this point everybody is lying and trying to deceive the enemy with everything they have, so I have to basically ignore everything I see and hear, and stick only to what I know. Strangely, it might be the economical factors that push America’s hand – for a while now everything’s been balancing at a knife’s edge, and something will eventually give and we’ll have the entire house of cards crumbling. What I do know is that everything is rotten, and there’s no healthy tissue anywhere in the Western sphere, and it will certainly collapse. I don’t know the exact immediate cause, or the exact conditions of the moment, and I honestly don’t care, because that’s the pastime of fools. I care about the thermodynamics of hurricanes, not which houses will be the first to lose power when it strikes. However, it is very likely that the Americans will have some advance knowledge of the exact circumstances of the collapse, and this will force their hand.

I was thinking about the dual-purpose strategies I started to talk about in the comment section of the previous article:

However, one of my underlying assumptions is that any “Armageddon plan”, even by a ruling clique in the USA, would have to be presented in such a way that it passes scrutiny by the military people who have to implement it, and they would outright refuse to comply with plans that are obviously insane. This means that a plan for nuclear war would necessarily need to be devised in non-obvious ways, for instance working with unrealistic assumptions about the Russian leadership and their expected response to something, and presenting plans as non-escalatory, stabilizing and non-nuclear, which will be approved and implemented by the Pentagon, but a combination of intentionally invalid premises and additional factors (for instance, have plans designed with several components, where the military knows of one, the CIA knows of the other, the Brits know of something else, and only the few masterminds have the whole picture) can create a two-component explosive, where each component can be inspected and found harmless, and their combination creates the blast.

This made me think along the lines of “how do you start a nuclear war by pretending to do something else”. Let’s create a scenario from the position of a powerful group inside America, or in control of America; could be an unknown combination of people in intelligence agencies, Pentagon and billionaires with agendas for the world.

The first thing you need to to is plant a picture into everybody’s mind that their geostrategic rivals are some kind of evil, Nazi-like force, which cannot possibly ever have a good agenda, needs to be opposed at every turn, everything they do is evil (if it’s not evil, it’s for propaganda purposes so it’s evil), and their leader is a Hitler-like character. This will put everybody who tries to exercise diplomacy, make a compromise or even talk to the opposite side in a ridiculous position where they are portrayed as people so stupid they would talk to Hitler, not understanding you can’t talk to “those people”. So, basically, step one if you want to start a nuclear war is to not only stop talking to the other side, but present this as an act of treason and/or disqualifying idiocy. This first step is not perceived as fatal by your side, and it even makes them feel good because they are on the right side of history and the good guys always win.

The second thing you need to do is create a serious geostrategic threat to your opponent, and draw a line in the sand guaranteeing fatal escalation of conflict if they do anything logical and expected about it. Normally, this would be the stupidest thing one could do, but if you did your homework with the first step, even your “insiders” have been propagandised to perceive the opposite side as inherently evil and nefarious, so making “strategic defensive precautions”, such as positioning advanced weapon systems on the adversary’s borders and regime-changing countries that were normally on friendly terms with the adversary, can be sold as something you are perfectly justified in doing if you want to protect yourself from some kind of an aggressive evil empire. Nobody who’s been sold the propaganda from the first step will even think from the position of “how does this look to the other side”. Of course, the other side perceives that you are pursuing an aggressive policy that threatens their security and prosperity, and potentially even existence. As is expected from a reasonable self-serving entity, they try to politely talk about it, but if the propaganda from the first step was successful, all their attempts are rebuffed and they are always put in some sort of a humiliating position if they even try to talk to you and resolve things. Eventually you destroy all normal diplomatic channels and anger the opponent to the point where they feel they have nothing to gain by talking to you, and they must prepare for war.

The third thing you have to do is create a scenario that will seemingly confirm all your propaganda from step 1. Propaganda is all nice and well, but if your adversary is a peaceful country minding its own business it’s very hard to rile people up against them. You need to provoke them by endangering them, and forcing them to defend their interests, and then spin this as an aggressive act that proves all your propaganda. Regime-changing a friendly ally of theirs into a Nazi shithole of murder and money laundering, where killing the adversary’s nationals is seen as a national sport will probably do the trick. It’s important to spin this as promoting democracy or some other politically correct thing, and never report what’s actually going on there; it must seem that the adversary’s defensive action came out of the blue and is some kind of a hitlerite aggression that must be immediately opposed by war, because you just can’t talk to Hitler.

When your adversary actually acts aggressively to defend themselves, try to fuck with them in ways that will formally obscure your participation, so that if they do the logical thing and attack you, because you’re the one who’s actually cooking it all up against them, it will seem as if it’s another unprovoked attack, a Pearl Harbour moment, and draw “red lines” on basically everything – sink my aircraft carrier, it’s nuclear war. Shoot down the satellites I’m using to guide weapons and drones at your forces, it’s nuclear war. Shoot my command centers, it’s nuclear war. Shoot at any infrastructure I’m using to wage war against you, it’s nuclear war. Shoot at my allies I’m using to wage war against you, it’s nuclear war. If that doesn’t work (because either the trap is obvious or your adversary is incredibly disinclined to escalate in any way due to their peaceful nature), state that a chemical attack or a dirty bomb will cross the line, and then do the false flag attack yourself so that you can “retaliate”. When you “retaliate”, do it in the most provocative way possible, that is guaranteed to cause total nuclear retaliatory strike in response – strike at their presidential residence, or the defense ministry, in a decapitation strike.

If you follow all the steps diligently, you can pull off killing everybody while keeping your virtuous posture intact.