RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/the-next-phase-of-the-ukraine-war/

The fog of war doesn’t just apply to generals, sergeants, and privates. It applies to strategists and outside observers, including the best-informed journalists on the ground. All are swamped by a confusing barrage of information, some accurate, some not, none of it complete or definitive. That’s why, after over a month of fighting in Ukraine, it helps to step back, consider the basic outcomes, and try to project what will happen next.

Remember, though, the “fog of war” applies to these assessments, too.

First, let’s clear away Russian misinformation. The Kremlin’s recent claim that their main goal was never to seize Kyiv but always to take eastern Ukraine is simply false. They wanted both and the whole Black Sea coast, but their main goal was always to seize Ukraine’s capital, to kill or capture President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government, and to install a puppet regime, much like the one headed by Aleksandr Lukashenko in Belarus.

That ambitious plan failed for two reasons. First, Ukraine’s fierce and effective resistance stopped the Russian blitzkrieg on the capital city and began systematically destroying the invader’s stalled forces. Today, Ukraine is actually pushing those forces back, to the surprise of both Russian military planners and US intelligence analysts, who expected a swift and successful Russian campaign to take Kyiv.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18383/china-undercuts-russia-sanctions

“For China… the Ukrainian crisis provided a unique opportunity to increase its access to Russia’s natural resources, particularly gas, gain contracts for infrastructure projects and new markets for Chinese technology, and turn Russia into a junior partner in the relationship between the two countries.” — Report by the European Council on Foreign Relations, February 2015.

In addition to undermining sanctions through the commodities trade, China is possibly also helping Russia hide its money.

Despite all of the above, the Biden administration continues to talk about China as if proof were still needed that it is undercutting sanctions on Russia.

China has clearly been giving material help to Russia. So where are the “consequences”?

The closest that the U.S. has come to going beyond words is the announcement, along with other G7 leaders, of an “enforcement initiative” to prevent Russia from evading sanctions, but it is — presumably deliberately — unclear what that initiative actually entails.

“The trade and the purchase of long-term energy supplies undercut the sanctions, because it shows Putin he has got somebody in his corner for the next five years or more.” — Michael Pillsbury, author of The Hundred-Year Marathon, Fox News, March 21, 2022.

The Biden administration, by repeatedly threatening “consequences” and issuing “warnings” to China, “if” it helps Russia undercut sanctions, merely continues to project indecision, weakness and lack of leadership …[and] will only result in the additional loss of credibility and the further degradation of U.S. deterrence to the detriment of the West.

Despite tough Western sanctions on Russia, President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has now lasted for more than a month and Putin is showing no signs of backing down. The power helping him to withstand the effects of the sanctions and continue the war is Russia’s most powerful ally — China.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/america_and_the_two_chinas.html

Credible sources suggest that Xi Jinping plans to attack Taiwan in the fall. Indeed, this is inevitable given the war in Ukraine. However, any attack would be the end of a very long path through Chinese and American history.

To fully understand what is playing out, one must look at the past to understand how Taiwan came into being, what Mao Zedong’s goals were, what President Nixon’s rapprochement offered, and how Xi Jinping views China’s role in Southeast Asia.

China was ruled by the Manchu’s Qing Dynasty for 267 years before its overthrow in 1911. This was followed for a half-century by military failures, revolts, famines, and civil wars. The imperial regime had also signed a series of unequal treaties with Western countries. Since the Opium War, successive demands from Western powers and Japan had left China with a paralyzed economy.

At age 19, Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) expressed his strong nationalistic feelings with a desire to “expel the Manchu Qing and to restore China.” He prepared for a military career at the Baoding Military Academy. He continued with four years of training at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in Tokyo.

Returning to China, Chiang joined the National Revolutionary Army—the military arm of the nationalist Kuomintang (which Sun Yat-sen founded). In 1926, Chiang became the army’s commander-in-chief, known as “ Generalissimo.” It was Chiang who ended the Civil War (1916-28) and reunited China. In 1928, he formed the Republic of China (Taiwan included) As head of state, Chiang followed Sun Yat-sen’s Chinese version of Abraham Lincoln’s governing philosophy for America: “government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/terrorism-ukraine-taiwan-and-outsourcing-wars-daniel-greenfield/

In the 90s, Russia was a spent force. The consensus was that free enterprise had defeated Communism. And it had. Russia isn’t fighting for Communism, but for market dominance.

A generation later we’re watching what may be the largest outsourcing war of a new century.

Russia, like China, rebooted its economy by exploiting the growing desire of western liberalism to accommodate environmentalists and socialists by offshoring their ‘dirty’ industries.

The United States outsourced its manufacturing to China which took on everything from making dollar store trinkets to recycling our used soda bottles while our elites focused on preparing the populace for the “jobs of the future” that would all involve using a computer. Now the PRC has a rising middle class and America has a falling one. China is building entire new cities for its middle class while the American middle class can no longer afford to buy a house or a car.

Europeans outsourced the responsibilities of powering their cities and heating their homes to Russia. While they tinkered with windmills and solar panels, Russia built an energy monopoly. Now it’s expanding its monopolistic control the way that most powers and empires used to.

Russia may want all or part of Ukraine for nationalistic reasons, but, more importantly, because of pipeline routes and energy reserves. The underlying motive for this war is gas and the European nations decrying the invasion were the ones who provided the motive for the war.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/04/putins-war-and-the-lessons-of-history/

The Hon. Tony Abbott was Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015

We who shrink from war because it’s morally wrong have to make others shrink from war because they’d likely lose. —Tony Abbott

In his prescient address to the Danube Institute in Budapest on February 21, Tony Abbott criticized Western democracies’ failure to boost their military capabilities and predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine that took place just three days later. We print here the full text of his address, courtesy of Tony Abbott and John O’Sullivan, president of the Danube Institute and Quadrant’s international editor.

* * *

SOME years ago, at an East Asia Summit in Burma, I found myself standing with Japan’s Shinzo Abe, plus China’s Le Keqiang and the Sultan of Brunei. China’s premier was upbraiding the prime minister over Japan’s war record, so to create a distraction, I grabbed the sultan and loudly told him that he must be very angry about British colonialism.

Having thus seized the antagonists’ attention, I observed to Le Keqiang that history was a good teacher but a bad master. So with that in mind, I’ve adjusted the topic of this talk from the revenge of history to the lessons of history, because history isn’t malicious, just instructive.

It tells us that progress isn’t inevitable; that justice isn’t always done; that good won’t always win; and that danger always lurks. Above all, it tells us that individual and collective choice matters: that our beliefs drive our actions, and that havoc can be wreaked, or stopped, because people decide to make a stand.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18395/eu-global-power-strategy

The goal is “strategic autonomy” — the ability for the EU to act independently of, and as a counterweight to, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — in matters of defense and security.

The key component of the Strategic Compass is the development of a so-called EU Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC), a military force able to intervene in “non-permissive environments” anywhere in the world.

The RDC is to become fully operational by 2025 and commanded by an institution called the “EU Military Planning and Conduct Capability.” (The term “capability” is a politically correct substitute for “headquarters,” as in “military headquarters.”)

The push for Europe to achieve strategic autonomy from the United States is being spearheaded by Macron, who, as part of his reelection campaign, apparently hopes to replace former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the de facto leader of Europe.

The danger is that many of the pie-in-the-sky policy proposals in the Strategic Compass will divert and drain resources and finances from where they are actually needed: NATO.

A logical course of action would be for EU member states to honor past pledges to increase defense spending as part of their contribution to the transatlantic alliance. That, however, would fly in the face of the folie de grandeur — the delusions of grandeur — of European federalists who dream of transforming the EU into a geopolitical “great power.”

The European Union has published a new strategy aimed at transforming the 27-member bloc into an independent geopolitical actor on the world stage.

The long-awaited “Strategic Compass” lays out an ambitious ten-year plan for the EU to develop an autonomous European security architecture. The goal is “strategic autonomy” — the ability for the EU to act independently of, and as a counterweight to, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — in matters of defense and security.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18394/putin-misunderstood-rumsfeld

Putin began by calling it “special operations” so that he would not have to obtain the consent of the Russian Parliament (Duma) to wage war.

This may have been because he expected a quick victory and did not wish to share the glory with anyone.

Putin also refused to name a commander-in-chief of the forces unleashed against Ukraine.

But even if we go by conservative estimates based on Russian official leaks, Putin’s army has suffered a 20 percent loss in killed and wounded. This is twice the maximum accepted in classic military doctrines….

Apart from its political impact on the international order, the war that Russia has launched against Ukraine contains countless features that should interest military analysts and planners across the globe.

This is the first time since World War II that the Russian Army (formerly Soviet Red Army) is tested on the battlefield against a medium-sized adversary in a classical war.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18385/russia-iran-axis-of-evil

Now Western security officials believe that Iran and Russia have struck a cooperation deal to work together to evade Western sanctions once a new nuclear deal has been agreed by the Biden administration.

Iran is known to have established a clandestine banking and finance system to handle tens of billions of dollars in annual trade banned under U.S.-led sanctions.

Iran, according to Western security officials, has offered to provide Russia with access to its illegal sanctions-busting network in return for Moscow’s support in getting a new nuclear deal in place.

Russia and Iran are in the process of negotiating a multi-billion dollar arms deal, including the purchase of Russian warplanes and submarines, and Moscow is keen that the deal will not be scuppered as a result of Western sanctions.

Following a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in China this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that Moscow would work with Tehran to take steps to evade Western sanctions, the RIA news agency reported.

Western security officials believe the outline of a sanctions-busting deal between Moscow and Tehran is already in place, with Iran promising not to enforce Western sanctions against Russia. As part of the deal, Iran has offered to use its existing evasion network to help Russia sell its oil on international markets once the nuclear deal is signed, and sanctions have been lifted against Tehran.

The imposition of these measures is certainly a long overdue recognition by the Biden administration that Iran is simply exploiting the nuclear negotiations to further its own regional ambitions. And the fact that Iran and Russia are now actively colluding to evade Western sanctions, thereby forming a new “axis of evil”, should finally persuade the White House to end once and for all its involvement in this gross act of diplomatic folly.

Thanks to the Biden administration’s ill-judged obsession with reviving the flawed nuclear deal with Iran, the world can soon look forward to the creation of a new “axis of evil” between Russia and Iran.

In recent months, as negotiations over reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal’s official title, have continued in Vienna, Western negotiators have expressed concern about the negative support Iran is receiving from Russia in the talks.