ISRAEL SHAMIR • JANUARY 26, 2018 • 2,100 WORDS

While you have probably already forgotten the feast, Russia is only now slowly coming back to life after its overlong Christmas break completed on January 14 by the quaintly named Old New Year, or even perhaps by the Epiphany on January 19. Everybody went somewhere, even candidates for the presidential race coming in on March 18: the Communist one went to ski in Austria, while the right-winger went to Bali. On the eve of Epiphany, they dipped in the ice-cold waters: the ultimate trial of Russian fitness. Not only he-man Putin, but even she-woman Sobchak did it!

And now, at last, as the feasts are over, the real trial begins. The US is preparing a new round of sanctions, including seizure of Russian oligarch assets. They are ripe for collection. The confiscation of Russian holdings in Cyprus banks in 2013 passed without a hitch and served as a trial balloon. Putin didn’t object overmuch, for he is a sworn enemy of offshore accounts. None of the fleeced Russian businessmen succeeded in recovering their losses in court. Now is the time for the real thing, and much of the anti-Russian hysteria is aimed at preparing the ground for the seizure. In this way, they plan to get a cool trillion dollars into the US Treasury. Who will lose his assets and who will survive, this is the talk of the day in Moscow.

The Russian assets in the west could be divided into New Money, assets of Putin’s people, and the Old Money, assets of Yeltsin’s people. The sanctions are supposed to deal with Putin’s people, but Russian experts think the Old Money is more vulnerable, for a good reason. The New Money is under Putin’s protection. If the US or any other western authority grabs it, the Russian government may seize Western shares in Russian companies and properties.

But what about the Old Money? Its owners, elder oligarchs, are extremely worried about Putin’s nonchalance. Putin takes it easy, they say. Ma’alish, the Arab in Putin says. Que sera sera, says his inner Frenchman. And this nonchalant attitude drives the oligarchs crazy. They want him to fight and save their money. They insisted on his meeting with President Trump in Vietnam; some say the meeting took place in the depth of the night, far from prying eyes, and didn’t bring results. Now Putin says to the Old Money: if you want to save your money, repatriate it to Russia. We aren’t that mad, they reply. You have to defend us anyway! That was the Deal!

Now we are coming to a difficult part. The Deal. Connected people, in-the-know, claim that a top-secret agreement was reached between the late Mr Yeltsin and his cronies, on one side, and The West, on the other side, in 1991. Yeltsin et al had sold Russia’s interests down the river, and in return, The West allowed the bastards to hoard their ill-gotten gains in the Western financial system. Yeltsin et al had promised to let the Soviet republics go; to disarm; to follow the Washington Consensus, i.e. to stick to the liberal economic model; to allow the free import of consumer goods; to allow Western access to the Russian military complex; to let the West write Russian laws; to permit the free outflow of capital from Russia. The West promised to bring investment, to let Russia live in peace, to keep NATO away from Russian borders.

Mr Putin inherited The Deal. Slowly, the Deal has been eroded from both sides. NATO troops moved eastward, no sizeable investment came in, the West supported Chechen rebels. Russia limited Western access to its military-industrial complex; took Crimea; regained some of its international independence.

Putin was elected, or you may say, he was appointed to stick to the Deal and to serve as the Supreme Arbiter among the oligarchs, with very little of a power base of his own. Slowly, he created his own oligarchs (they are described as “siloviki”, though not all of them have some security forces background), and he had built up a limited power base; though many important positions, in particular in the economic sphere, remained in the hands of the Old Guard, Yeltsin’s men. This, too, was a part of the Deal.

The powerful personalities of Yeltsin’s era remained embedded in the upper echelons of Putin’s state. Chubais and Kudrin were and are untouchable. They are connected with the FRS and the IMF, they go to Bilderberg and Davos, they are often described as ‘the colonial administration’. They steal with both hands, and do it with impunity. Just last week it was revealed and published that Mr Chubais and Mr Kudrin appropriated a cool billion dollars of Russian state money while repaying the Soviet debt to the Czech Republic. The worst Putin can do about them is to give them a fat chunk of the Russian economy to chew on, while limiting their access to the rest. So he gave Mr Chubais the Rusnano company that made no profit but embezzled billions. This was the Deal.

Yeltsin’s oligarchs remained as rich as they were; Yeltsin’s family still possesses immense riches. And Putin does not dare to touch them. He goes hat in hand to open a Yeltsin’s Memorial Centre; he is courteous with Yeltsin’s widow and daughter. Putin’s establishment cautiously avoided celebration, or even mention of the Revolution centenary, in keeping with Yeltsin’s anticommunism. This is the Deal.

The topmost schools of Russia, the most endowed, the most privileged schools for the children of the new nobility are the HSE, (the Higher School of Economics, a clone of the LSE and the economic think-tank of the government), and MGIMO, (Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the school for perspective diplomats). Their graduates were been trained to despise Russia and admire the neo-liberal West (just like the Indian students trained by the Brits, had admired England and despised their country in the days of the British Raj). Professor Medvedev of the HSE called upon Russian government to transfer the Russian Far North to the international community, though this is the place of the greatest gas reserves (he kept his position). Professor Zubov of the MGIMO had compared Putin to Hitler, and denounced Russian diplomats as liars (his contract hasn’t been prolonged). All that is a part of the Deal.

Putin has been unhappy with the Deal for a long time, vocally so since his Munich talk in 2007, but he stuck to the script. Even now, Russia’s economy follows the liberal model; billions of dollars are being siphoned out of Russia monthly; billions of dollars’ worth of Western manufactured consumer goods are imported and sold in Russia, though it would make perfect sense to organise local manufacture. Russia’s Central Bank is directly connected to the Western finance system, and its emission is limited by the amount of hard currency in its coffers. The Rouble carry trade prospers, like the Yen carry trade did years ago.

Meanwhile, the Deal has been undone from the West, as a result of the epic struggle between Bankers and Producers, otherwise described as Liberals vs. Conservatives, or Globalists vs. Regionalists, personalised as Clinton vs. Trump. Yeltsin’s people are historically aligned with the Clinton camp. Now, their assets in the West, previously protected by the Deal, have lost their protection and come up for grabs.

The Old Money people are putting their effort into persuading the West, namely the US, to let them live in peace and instead confiscate the pro-Putin New Money.

This presented the golden opportunity for the anti-Putin activists, the time they can collect the fruit of their hard work. A somewhat typical anti-Putin activist is an émigré, Mr Andrey Illarionov, a Yeltsin man, an ex-adviser to President Putin (until 2005), a US resident, a member of the loony Cato Institute and an adept of Ayn Rand. He is an anti-Russian fanatic; next to him Rachel Maddow is a Putin groupie and Tokyo Rose a symbol of patriotism. Speaking to the Congress Committee of Foreign Affairs in 2009, he famously claimed about the US administration policy towards Russia that “it is not even an appeasement policy so well known to us by another Munich decision in 1938, it is a surrender. A full, absolute, unconditional surrender to the regime of secret police officers, chekists and Mafiosi”. Despite these fighting words, he is a frequent visitor to Moscow, and he never misses a demo where he can call out “Putin must leave” apparently unafraid of the “secret police officers, chekists and Mafiosi”. This is all you should know about the totalitarian Russian regime!

(Émigrés are frequently like that, and the US, a country of immigrants, had been vulnerable to the attack by Illarionov Syndrome, by listening to Masha Gessen, or to Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi émigré who claimed Iraq has had WMD, to Alexander Solzhenitsyn with his horror stories about GULAG, etc. I made it a rule to moderate my critique of Israel while abroad, in fear of failing the Illarionov Sanity Test.)

Now Mr Illarionov is lobbying the US Congress to remove its threats from the heads of those deserving oligarchs, who (in his words) amassed their fortune before advent of Mr Putin and “in order to survive, they had been forced to pay a large tribute to the Kremlin”. His lobbying effort on behalf of the Old Money people has been shared and supported by two notorious Putin haters, a fellow émigré Piontkovsky and a Swedish Neo-Con Anders Aslund.

Direct and generous beneficiaries of their lobbying are the Three Alpha Jews, Peter Aven, Michael Friedman and Herman Khan. They are owners of the Alpha Bank, a very big Russian bank , and they are Old Money oligarchs from Yeltsin’s days when their kin ruled the land.

Michael Friedman, the fat guy with a jolly piglet face, rose to his eminence from being a ticket tout selling illegally obtained opera tickets to Western tourists near Bolshoi Theatre; afterwards he became The Mind behind all ticket mafias in Moscow, and then proceeded to banking and so many other things.

Like many Old Money guys, Friedman earns money in Russia, but siphons it off for Jewish causes. He is a co-founder of a “Jewish Nobel Prize”, also called Genesis Prize, a cool million dollars being given annually to a deserving Jew, the most recent one being the notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg who called Donald Trump, “the faker”. This is not a coincidence; the Russian Old Money is solidly in bed with the Clinton camp. If Friedman succeeds in escaping the sanctions, it will be an additional proof that the Bankers still have the upper hand in the US Administration.

Alternatively, it could mean they are just smart and able to play the both houses. The Three Alpha Jews had been mentioned in the Steele Dossier as the conduit of Putin influence for Trump and against Clinton in the recent US Presidential elections. (They are suing Fusion GPS and BuzzFeed for spreading the accusation).

According to an even better conspiracy theory spread on the social networks, both Mr Illarionov and the smart Alpha Jews are a sleeper cell organised by cunning Mr Putin to ensure his survival in the most adverse conditions. All of them were very friendly with Putin; perhaps they just pretended to become his enemies, the conspiratorially minded journalist from the anti-Putin Echo Moskwy has implied.

Leaving the conspiracy theories aside for a while, we can reach a conclusion. The forthcoming attack of the US establishment on Russian assets is likely to undermine the Old Money of the Yeltsin Oligarchs, and not only them. This confiscation will spell the death knell to the notorious Deal, and then we shall see Putin Unbound.

But perhaps it is too late for him. An unverifiable odd rumour has risen in Moscow. They say that the Communist candidate Pavel Grudinin has strong backing among the “siloviki”, that is Putin’s appointees, often but not exclusively of security services background, for they are unhappy with Putin’s adherence to the Deal. But that will be the subject of my next piece.

Israel Shamir can be reached at adam

This article was first published at The Unz Review.

EDITOR’S CHOICE | 28.01.2018

Eric S. MARGOLIS

While we agonize over such life and death questions as clumsy men groping women and the crucial need for gender and racial ‘inclusion,’ let me spare a few seconds thought to something really important and scary: Russia’s doomsday nuclear torpedo.

Code-named by NATO ‘Kanyon,’ it’s reportedly something new and terrifying, a ‘third strike’ weapon designed to obliterate the US east and west coasts in a nuclear war. US intelligence seems to think this doomsday weapon is very real indeed.

I just re-watched for the umpteenth time the wonderful, 1964 Kubrick film, ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and marveled anew at how prescient this razor-sharp satire was. In the film, the Soviets admit they ran out of money to keep up the nuclear arms race with the United States. Their answer was to create a secret, automated doomsday nuclear device that would destroy the entire planet in the event of a major war.

Now, the Russians appear to have responded to a new, trillion dollar US program to develop and deploy an anti-missile system that would negate their ballistic missile system: the ‘Kanyon.’ Fact imitates fiction.

This revelation comes just after the Trump administration has also embarked on new programs to deploy an entire new generation of lower yield nuclear weapons that can be used for tactical war-fighting purposes. North Korea and Iran are the evident targets, as well as Afghanistan. But there is now talk aplenty in Pentagon circles about waging a limited tactical nuclear war against Russia. New US bomber and drone programs are being speeded up. War talk is in the air. Military stocks are booming.

‘Kanyon,’ according to the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a cheerleader for military spending, is a mammoth 100-megaton nuclear device carried by an unmanned submarine. This monster weapon is designed to detonate on the US west coast, destroying the ports of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The device is reportedly covered with cobalt, for maximum radioactive effect.

A similar device launched from the Atlantic Ocean would devastate the US East coast, leaving it under a lethal shroud of radiation for generations.

If these reports are true, any hopes that some US generals have of fighting and winning a ‘limited’ nuclear exchange with Russia or China (never mind India) are absurd. But in fact any serious nuclear exchange between the great powers would be a death sentence for the entire planet, wrapping us in a lethal shroud of nuclear winter.

One US intelligence study done of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan estimated two million immediate dead and 100 million deaths within weeks. That was from a rather limited nuclear war using first generation weapons. Today’s weapons have ten times the explosive power.

Russia has a large and effective nuclear arsenal. The sharp decline of Russia’s once-mighty conventional military forces after 1991 drove Moscow to place ever greater reliance on nuclear weapons to defend its interests. Russia has also begun introducing modernized nuclear weapons in strategic and tactical versions. China is also slowly developing its nuclear forces to be able to fight a thermonuclear war against the United States and India at the same time.

President Trump, who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War on spurious medical grounds, appears infatuated by military affairs and the panoply of weapons that he commands. In an act of historic irresponsibility, he has brought the US to the edge of nuclear war against North Korea heedless of the dire consequences of even a ‘small’ nuclear war in Asia.

Anyone who thinks a nuclear war can be waged without permanently polluting our planet should be put under psychiatric care. As crazy as this notion sounds, there are some senior US generals who share this view and, most likely, President Trump, the man with the big red button. Russia’s marshals are more cautious. They still see the scars of World War II, in which some 27 million Soviet civilians died, and know what war means.

Perhaps leaks about this Russian monster weapon are clever disinformation spread by Moscow to give the Americans a big scare. Let’s hope so because, if real, they should scare the pants off all of us.

ericmargolis.com

I am all good with this being a world that people choose to come to to enjoy, compete, even spar/war with others. But I object to it being a world, where those who do not want to participate in murder and mayhem are forced to die at the hands of those who want to kill.

I wonder if it even matters. If we are on the cusp of a major financial crisis, that budget will take a hit regardless of the actual numbers. Our military has accumulated a lot of ‘drag’ in the form of a growing number of seriously injured war vets. That number is constantly growing, and each new addition brings another lifetimes worth of medical costs. The VA is swamped now, today, at current levels.

Also, the growing divide within America means fewer will be joining up out of patriotism, and the caliber of recruits will continue to decline, greatly increasing the likelihood of battlefield mishaps due to incompetence and eroding everyone’s confidence in the people serving around them.

This will lead, inevitably, to losses on the battlefield. Big losses, both in numbers and in prestige, and eventually in domestic support. Apparently Trump still believes the problems we have can be resolved by throwing more money at them. I think what he is missing is that we are now past the point where a bigger budget will have any effect. It simply does not matter what amount you hurl at them, they have now progressed so far that they WILL unfold now regardless of what you do. The bigger budget will only go down the same rathole as the trillions before, and we won’t get any more value from that investment. The quality of both recruits and equipment (sourced from corporations that have been given total freedom to profit at all costs) will continue to decline, as will the credibility and ultimately the authority of the US military around the world.

What the military, and all the other agencies of .gov needed was CLEANSING and REFORM. There’s no price tag on those, you either do them or you don’t. But if you don’t, then no amount of money will make a bit of difference, except to your blown-up budget.

This is one area where me and Col. Trump FUNDAMENTALLY disagree. (Warning: spoof).

The defense budget needs to be increased five fold, not 13%, but 65%, to $1,026,300,000,000, by fiscal 2019.

The coming war with Iran, then Russia, demands our utmost preparedness for the terror attacks they will partner up with North Korea to sponsor beforehand. It is simply a new geopolitical reality that it will cost at least half a trillion dollars more each year to keep America safe from international haters of freedumb who hate us for our freedumbs.

Once we decide to bravely, heroically, and distinctively preemptively nuke Pyongyang, it is imperative we increase our defense budget to $2,052,600,000,000 for fiscal 2020, so we are able to hire enough Dreamers to both fight the Chinese and build alligator, eel, and pirhana infested moats around all government buildings, financial institutions, and synagogues here in the Homeland.

Then, and ONLY THEN, once the moats have been built, we should make a two part statement announcing plans for another five fold increase in the defense budget to $10,263,000,000,000 for fiscal 2021, along with another statement announcing imminent nuclear war with everyone. It is debatable which should be announced first.

But the new ten trillion/year defense budget will definitely keep us safe, while also allowing us to hire, at better wages, considerably more military personnel to help with the tens of millions of Islamic refugees we will take in per year to resettle in America’s rural communities.

written by paul-martin foss

Friday January 26, 2018

A year after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, analysts and commentators are assessing both his performance in the first year of his presidency as well as the outlook for the remainder of his first term. Entering office as a surprise winner and a political neophyte, many people didn’t know just what to expect from Trump. Would he do what he pledged to do as a candidate, or was his campaign rhetoric just a lot of hot air to bamboozle enough people into voting for him? One of Trump’s most popular promises was to “drain the swamp” and, while the President has tried to make some strides in that respect over the past year, there are concerning signs that any swamp draining may be coming to an end.

Personnel Is Policy

One of the primary rules in politics is “personnel is policy.” What a politician says he’ll do is less important than who he hires to implement his policies. In many cases, the people he hires may not agree with his policies and may work to surreptitiously (or not so surreptitiously) undermine and co-opt him. We certainly see this on Capitol Hill all the time, where class after class of freshman Congressmen enters Congress pledging to fix the way Congress works. Yet time after time they get corrupted by the system in Washington. Why is that? It’s because of the people they hire.

Coming into office often with no experience of how things operate in DC, they rely on their respective party apparatuses to staff their offices. They’ll hire Hill veterans as their chiefs of staff and legislative directors, staffers who are more concerned with the future of their careers and who consequently do everything they can not to upset party leadership so that they can maintain their ability to work on the Hill and work the government/lobbying revolving door. We’re seeing much the same thing happening in the White House today too, as Trump continues to hire establishment Republicans who wouldn’t be out of place in a Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, or John McCain White House.

A prime example of that was Reince Priebus, President Trump’s first White House chief of staff. Trump’s initial appointment of Priebus as chief of staff was a confusing one, as Priebus’ establishment credentials all but guaranteed that he would try to bring as many establishment operatives to the White House as possible. By all accounts there was a civil war of sorts within the White House regarding appointments both within the White House and at cabinet agencies, as the pro-Trump insurgent wing fought things out with the establishment and its cadre of opportunistic former never-Trumpers.

While rumors of Priebus’ ouster were at first thought to be a promising sign that the insurgents were winning, Trump’s appointment of Secretary of Homeland Security and former Marine Corps general John Kelly as Priebus’ successor dashed any hopes of that occurring. Kelly immediately cracked down on access to the President, appointing himself as the gatekeeper through whom all information to and from the President was to flow. In less than a month Kelly had forced Steve Bannon out of the White House, and he slowly began to purge the White House of Trump loyalists. Anyone who wasn’t going to go along with Kelly’s organizational plans wasn’t going to last long.

One of the more recent loyalist departures was that of Omarosa Manigault, the former The Apprentice contestant who served as Director of Communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison and who reportedly enjoyed direct access to President Trump. By all accounts Omarosa bristled at Kelly’s attempts to control staffers’ access to the President, and attempted to continue contacting the President directly. Kelly obviously couldn’t handle what he viewed as insubordination and, after a series of scathingly negative articles in the media about Omarosa’s personality and job performance, she was forced out too.

Trump Supporters Replaced With Establishment Figures

It isn’t just the White House that has seen departures either. Cabinet agencies have witnessed similar incidents, such as Tom Price’s resignation as Secretary of Health and Human Services. In Price’s case, as with Omarosa and others, his departure fell into a familiar pattern. The official is targeted for removal, either by disgruntled insiders or outside political opponents, a series of negative articles in the vehemently anti-Trump media ensues, the media continue to fan the flames as long as they can, and eventually the target either resigns or is forced to quit.

In many cases the replacements after these resignations are retreads from previous administrations, or candidates favored by the establishment. For instance, the nominee to succeed Price at HHS, Alex Azar, served as General Counsel and Deputy Secretary at HHS during the George W. Bush Administration before becoming the top lobbyist for pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and later President of the company’s US operations. Kelly’s replacement as Secretary of Homeland Security was his chief of staff while at DHS, Kirstjen Nielsen, another veteran of the George W. Bush Administration.

Trump’s replacement for Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser was LTG H.R. McMaster, an Army general whose 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty, was critical of Vietnam-era military leaders for not questioning and criticizing the strategy they received from civilian leaders. McMaster’s deputy national security adviser was Dina Powell, a former managing director and partner at Goldman Sachs, and his pick to replace her is Nadia Schadlow, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The policies these appointees pursue, too, are nothing more than a continuation of some of the worst violations of our freedoms, such as pushing for reauthorization of Section 702 of FISA and forcing states to comply with the REAL ID Act. These appointees and their policies wouldn’t be out of place under any other establishment administration, so how exactly does Trump expect to drain the swamp by appointing these people and why is he doing it?

Foreign Policy Is the Canary in the Coal Mine

President Trump is increasingly hemmed in by the people he has chosen to staff his administration. Kelly is doing his best to control the flow of information to the President so that he can control what ideas Trump can choose from. Kelly’s relationship with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, a former Marine Corps general, and National Security Adviser McMaster is said to be a close one, meaning that Trump’s foreign policy will essentially be controlled by generals who have fully embraced the mindset and world view of the military-industrial establishment. Given the trust Trump has placed in “his generals,” it is unlikely that we’ll see a sensible foreign policy coming from the White House any time soon.

Trump’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has taken a far more hawkish line than candidate Trump ever did, and has been doing that since day one with no repercussions. Trump’s Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, recently announced a “new” US policy towards Syria that is committed to the overthrow of Syrian President Assad, a policy whose outcome would have a severe destabilizing effect on the Middle East and whose execution would continue the risk of provoking a war with Russia. The US Senate has increasingly become emboldened in standing up to President Trump too, questioning some of his anti-establishment appointments or, in the case of former Congressman Scott Garrett, Trump’s nominee to head up and reform the Export-Import Bank, rejecting them outright. Establishment figures finally sense that the populist wave that swept Trump into office is subsiding, and they are beginning to feel their oats.

Many in Trump’s electoral base are unaware of the political machinations that are going on to isolate and co-opt the President. They see passage of a tax reform bill, withdrawal from TPP, and continued movement towards building a border wall as signs that Trump is still “winning.” But recent comments from Kelly, who called Trump’s previous stances on immigration and the border wall “not fully informed” make it clear that the cabal encircling the President has its own ideas and will continue working to bring them to fruition. They’ll chip away at Trump and his policy ideas piece by piece until they are able to substitute their own ideas for his.

The establishment’s ideal is to surround the President with policy experts who present him with a limited range of policy options which have the establishment’s stamp of approval, excluding any non-interventionist or outside-the-box thinking. They hope to then get the President to claim their ideas for his own when doing his victory laps, making him think that he was responsible for what are actually the same doomed-to-fail policies that have circulated throughout DC for decades. When things inevitably go belly up, it will be Trump taking the blame in the media while the establishment figures advising him slink back to their think tanks, law firms, or lobbying firms to await the next President they can hijack.

The establishment isn’t averse to using the media to nudge Trump towards their side either, as Kelly’s latest interview indicates. Although there have been some reports that Trump is getting fed up with Kelly, he recently took to Twitter to support his chief, capitulating to the establishment to ensure the appearance of a unified front within the White House. One thing is for sure, there won’t be any changes in the direction of White House policy until Kelly leaves or is fired. But even then, Trump may be so hopelessly encircled by now that he’ll end up picking another establishment chief of staff, perhaps even at the recommendation of those closest to him.

Parallels Between Trump and Reagan

Trump’s current situation brings back memories of President Reagan’s first term, when chief of staff James Baker, a former Democrat and Bush family friend, was able to put his allies in key positions, ensuring that he was largely successful in keeping President Reagan from enacting any real conservative policies or appointing conservatives to key positions such as the Supreme Court. Another poor personnel pick, Treasury Secretary (and later White House chief of staff) Don Regan, chaired the US Gold Commission and was instrumental in neutering the nascent movement to return the US dollar to a commodity standard, thus completely sidelining a policy that was important to Reagan.

What the Reagan Revolution could have accomplished was nipped in the bud, replaced by what we have now come to know as neoconservatism – a focus on hawkish and interventionist foreign policy, making peace with the welfare state, and economic views that pay lip service to free markets while continuing a policy of big government and crony capitalism. Large budget deficits and a series of proxy wars all over the world were the Reagan legacy, and set the pattern for the actions of future Presidents.

Had it not been for the Soviet Union’s collapse and the post hoc ergo propter hoc assignation of the collapse to the Reagan Administration’s military spending, Reagan’s stature would not be nearly what it is today. Unfortunately the timing of that collapse, even though it was economically inevitable, provided neoconservative foreign policy with a shot in the arm that it has continued to ride for the past quarter of a century in an attempt to maintain its veneer of legitimacy.

We’re facing a similar, Reagan-like situation with President Trump now, as the voters who put him into office intending to give Washington the middle finger have found their man stymied at every turn. If Trump supporters fail to understand what is going on and reflexively support everything coming out of the White House because they view it as originating from President Trump, then their ability to actually effect a change in Washington’s policies will be virtually nil.

The policy establishment surrounding the President knows what it wants and has a strategy to achieve it. They believe that dangling red meat issues like the border wall in front of Trump supporters, or occasionally rattling sabers against North Korea or Iran, giving those in the base just a taste of what they want, is enough to keep them placated while the establishment pursues its own ambitions. Trump supporters are still in the honeymoon phase right now, so that strategy may work, at least for the present.

If Trump supporters don’t wake up and recognize what is transpiring very soon, by the time they realize that they’ve been hoodwinked and that Trump has become the establishment’s Manchurian President it will be too late. Any possibility for good that could have come out of the Trump White House will have been squandered and it may take another generation or more before a similar opportunity presents itself.

Reprinted with author’s permission from Red Tea News.

Nikita Kruschev noted this: Maybe America can destroy Russia “many times” (by today’s standards), but Russia only needs to destroy America once –

“Yes, I know what Kennedy claims, and he’s quite right. But I’m not complaining… We’re satisfied to be able to finish off the United States first time round. Once is quite enough. What good does it do to annihilate a country twice? We’re not a bloodthirsty people.”

• As quoted in Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (1974)

We already know that Russia’s 69bil dollar army can rival the USA military at every level except the Navy. Can you imagine what the 215bil Chinese military can do? and what they can do together with Russia?

 

“Don’t be surprised if S-400’s make their way to Damascus in the near future. It would be a provocation to Israel for sure, but at some point they have to know that continued aggression against the Assad government will end.”

By TOM LUONGO 

Souurce: Gold Goats ‘n Guns

The more I read the headlines the more I hope our nukes are no longer at Incerlik air base in Turkey. U.S. policy in Syria has morphed into this zombie strategy of advancing the “Assad Must Go” no matter what.

No matter how many times the pro-Assad coalition shoots our goals in the head, the more our tactics shift so that we can keep coming.

It’s embarrassing, really. When things become an unmitigated failure on the ground, we normally just ‘declare victory and leave.’ But, in the case of Syria, where the groundwork for this invasion began fifteen years ago, we simply won’t let it go.

Syria was to be the crowning achievement of the Brzezinski/Wolfowitz Doctrine of sowing chaos in Central Asia and isolating Iran from Russia and both of them from China.

An atomized or compliant Syria would be the wedge which would put a docile Turkey on Russia’s southern border.

It would create a staging ground for further destabilization of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iraq, pushing Iran’s influence in the region back behind its borders.

At the same time we would cut Iran off from the world via economic sanctions against not only it but anyone who dared to business with it.

From there the entire continent could be kept in the dark ages, fighting internecine tribal wars for another two generations while gunboat dollar diplomacy would perpetuate the conflict by selling arms and drugs to all sides.

It was a nice plan if you are a would-be world emperor. There’s only one problem.

The Power of No

Putin said no. Iran said no. And there was no way to stop them from saying no strongly enough to use their logistical advantages against us. This exposed our duplicity of ‘fighting ISIS.’

We were behind all of this but it was the proxies who were going to be blamed for it.

And that’s where Turkey comes in. President Erdogan was perfectly willing to go along with the plan until it became obvious that we couldn’t seal the deal in Syria.

When Russian air support and Iranian/Hezbollah ground support turned the war around it exposed his complicity in ISIS’s oil trading to finance ‘the caliphate.’

Erdogan saw the writing on the wall. He was to be the patsy.

He began backing off on the U.S.’s plans. He cut deals with Putin over Turkstream, nuclear power and missile defense systems. He stopped the free flow of terrorists between Idlib and Aleppo, around the Kurdish enclave of Afrin.

Without Erdogan doing this, Aleppo would never have been liberated. The war would be a quagmire.

Once this path was set in stone, the Saudis tried to blame Qatar last summer after Trump read everyone in the Arab world (and Israel too) the riot act on funding terrorism.

The biggest miscalculation in the Syrian war was the failed attempt to remove Erdogan. We were behind that. Putin saved Erdogan’s life. And for that the foundation of the current situation was laid.

Turkey’s military intrusion into northern Syria last year was met with zero howls of protest from Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. The only ones to complain were Syria, which they must for legal reasons.

But, Turkey’s actions, despite some two-faced rhetoric from Erdogan, has been solidly in its own interests which dovetail with Russia’s goals to secure the territorial integrity of Syria. And for the military brass in charge of our operations there to not see or expect this is incredibly short-sighted, and now, frankly, incompetent.

Defense Secretary James Mattis continues to not get it when it comes to Turkey and the Syrian Kurds. Mattis still wants to use the ISIS hobgoblin to sell a blatant abrogation of Syria’s sovereignty and U.S. colonization of Kurdish-controlled territory to pressure Iran.

From RT:

He urged Turkey to exercise restraint, stating that it has already disrupted the peaceful return of refugees and could be seen as an opportunity for Al-Qaeda and IS.

“This could be exploited by ISIS and Al-Qaeda, obviously, that we’re not staying focused on them right now. And obviously it risks exacerbating the humanitarian crisis that most of Syria is going through,” Mattis said

At the same time Secretary of State Rex Tillerson looks completely out of the loop in Syria, backing off on the plan to build a 30,000 strong ISIS 2.0 “Border Security Force” in the region east of the Euphrates River where Kurdish SDF forces have had to stand by and watch Mattis’ military escort ISIS fighters out of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to fight the Assad government in the future.

With friends like these why would Erdogan show any restraint whatsoever?

The Wrath of Erdo-Khan

The biggest tell that this is now a full-blown proxy war is the Russians pulling all military assets out of there before Turkey’s move.

In fact, after he’s done in Afrin, Erdogan will have his military move east and begin sweeping the entire region of U.S./SDF forces along the Turkish/Syrian border.

And that sets up a potentially ugly outcome for the U.S. Its NATO ally is already attacking our proxy army while our leadership can only issue weak verbal protests.

Why? Because to do more would be to admit that there are more than 2000 troops in Syria. It would have to admit we are building more than a dozen bases around the country. We’re in violation of international law, but the U.S. public doesn’t know the extent.

Notice also that President Trump isn’t saying squat about Turkey. All the minions of the Deep State are – Pence is in Israel, Tillerson still keeps to the “Assad Must Go” script and Mattis is actively handling diplomatic duties.

What happens when the Turkish army moves against Manbij or crosses the Euphrates?

Remember, the Syrian Arab Army still controls two major towns in the hart of SDF-controlled territory. The U.S. dare not attack them in response to Turkey advancing east.

Moreover, I see no hew and cry from the usual suspects at the U.N. over this. The U.K. came out in support of Turkey.

At some point everyone acts in their own best interest. And for Erdogan, acting as Russia’s proxy army against the U.S.’s proxy army is the height of survival instinct.

Russia’s Proxy War

Meanwhile, Russia is letting everyone know that the drone strike on the airbase in Latakia was a one-off event. Another recent RT report has S-400 missile defense systems being delivered to both the air base that was attacked as well as the naval station at Tartus where the Russian navy is parked.

Don’t be surprised if S-400’s make their way to Damascus in the near future. It would be a provocation to Israel for sure, but at some point they have to know that continued aggression against the Assad government will end.

And while Russia can’t and shouldn’t directly intervene over Israel’s bombing campaign, giving Syria the tools it needs to defend itself it can do.

These S-400’s are a clear statement by the Russians that they will not tolerate further harassment for political purposes. They will be staying in Syria. The drone strike was meant as a warning to Putin. It was also an ill-conceived plot to weaken his political support at home during the election season.

Putin knows the U.S. Deep State will not stop trying to wriggle out of the trap set for them in Syria. He knows how far they are willing to go to win. No plot is too desperate and if is sparks another war on Syrian soil, so be it.

But, all it will do is erode what bargaining position we have left in Syria. The choice now is orderly retreat or a rout at the hands of our NATO ally, who will not stop until the Kurdish threat to Turkey’s integrity is over.

And with it the ignominious end of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s dream of a subjugated Asia.