Yesterday RT International was licking its wounds over the forced closure of its operations in the European Union by order of the EU Institutions in Brussels. Here is yet another pitiful demonstration of the false claims to Western values of tolerance and respectful debate with those holding different points of view that the herd of ignoramuses and cowards running Europe today perpetrate day by day. Like their darling of the moment, the Kiev regime run by book burners and radical ideologues, the gang headed by von der Leyen and Michel daily abuse the trust of the European peoples and take away value from the institutions they head. By their grandstanding, they also dilute the authority of the only person who can, if he wishes, speak for his country and for NATO in a direct negotiation with the President of Russia. It is the Babel now going on which works against the kind of settlement reached in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a crisis that was resolved one on one between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev while the rest of the world just held its breath.
In this context, RT International in Moscow invited me to speak on air yesterday. They kindly allowed me swiftly to move on from their own problems to the greater problems we all now face as both nuclear superpowers have put their arsenals on full alert. Regrettably, willy-nilly we are all hostages of the ill-advised refusal of Mr. Joe Biden and his advisers to reach out to Moscow and together agree on readily available compromises that will snuff out the present conflict over Ukraine and over the architecture of European security architecture.
The main thrust of my brief remarks was to direct attention to the history of the Pearl Harbor attack by Imperial Japan: it was a unforgettable lesson on how economic warfare converts to kinetic warfare when the pressure exerted on your adversary crosses a certain red line. It is a pity that the leadership in the USA has either forgotten or never learned this lesson.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022
Gilbert Doctorow 
At first glance, comparing Pearl Harbor to the Ukraine seems valid but further analysis renders it wrong. In the Japan example, they attacked the country that was inflicting the economic pain whereas for this latest war it is a proxy being attacked – America remains unscathed. Secondly, America wanted this war to happen because it is exactly the resulting economic sanctions that are the whole goal of America. Russia is an economic competitor especially in the all-important energy sector and isolating them will now lead to Europe becoming even more dependent on America for not only for security but for energy as well.There is thus no “kinetic war resulting from economic war” lesson to be learned. America has already achieved its goals. (Just look at Germany´s – where I live – recent commitment to spending 100 billion dollars on armaments as one example of what that success looks like!).
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but the war isn’t over. the US has no control over the Russian military, at all. If Russia comes to the point of collapse it will not be Germany it attacks or Ukraine but the US that is at the heart of this great calumny taking place in Europe, a Europe being overseen by inexperienced and infantile lawyers, accountants and bankers, The Scholz’s and the Baerbocks who are clueless dupes completely out of their depth, who in their 6 months of power have almost caused WWIII and have now de facto destroyed 70 years of German economic structural growth and given it all away to the US. The von der leyens and Stoltenbergs, equally lightweight and confused but clinging tightly to their bought and paid for Russophobia. Europe has destroyed itself the Russians no longer care about it, nope, any further confrontation will not be through proxies it will be direct and take place on american land not just Russian, because that is the conventional and nuclear capacity the Russians have and without a doubt it can all be laid at the feet of the addled Biden and his cabal of whitehouse Russophobes, Blinken, Nuland, Kagan and the cast offs like Bolton, Pompeo, Powers et al. I hope they’ll be happy going out in a blaze of nuclear glory.
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The ruble route today was not as bad as I expected. Also, while genuine information is very hard to come by, it appears that the Russians have started to turn things around militarily from Saturday.
I think there is still the remnants of 1990s disfunction spread all over Russian society, including in their military. The invasion on Thursday started very poorly, but they are learning, as well as increasing the use of force, which they had initially kept to a minimum even against the Ukrainian military.
It seems like Russia finally achieved air supremacy today, and are flying bombers low over the country. They have also now almost completely encircled the Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, Ukraine’s best troops with their best weapons.
Europe and America were smelling blood on over the weekend, I think that’s what all these very aggressive moves (sanctions against the Russian central bank, sending nato planes with nato pilots to Ukraine) are about. They thought, push a little more, and the Putin regime will collapse. But this happened right as the Russians were finally getting in the groove militarily.
One thing that surprises me is how slow the Russians are to announce their own counter sanctions.
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Sean, I would recommend to you to take anything western media tell you about the Russian military operations with a big grain of salt. Real fighting has so far been going only around the eastern republics, led mostly by the Donbas guys. Until the weekend, Russians have deployed less than 80,000 men on the ground and no heavy artillery. They have been criticized for not wanting to engage in “meat grinder” operations, destroying regular Ukrainian troops. They hope the Ukrainian army either lay down their arms or defect. This however is not likely to happen on the scale they thought it would. If the talks in Belarus fail, and they are being conducted without any hope from either side of any success, then Russia will begin the demolition part of the regime’s military. The army will also likely throw a blanket over the western and Ukrainian media’s coverage of the war, by knocking out communication facilities. Expect this to happen first in Kharkov and Kiev.
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The Russians destroyed the Ukrainian airforce, airfields and navy in the first 8 hours. i dont know where you are getting your info from but it is highly innacurate. The Russians stopped for the day on Saturday because zelensky said he was willing to negotiate neutrality then changed his mind at the behest of his CIA handlers, that will not happen again. The troops Russia has sent in are not battle hardened and are not using the best gear, that is being kept in reserve. this is almost like a live fire exercise for the Russian military, testing new ideas and concepts, they have had hiccups along the way but nothing catastrophic, they are making steady forward progress, surrounding cities or subduing troops and by passing less important strategic towns. Keeping civilian casualties low is all important baring in mind that after a settlement these two slavic neighbours will have to get on. Russian EW has suppressed all comms on the ground and the russians are not giving a running commentary like the US do so be careful where you get information from, I haven’t seen a pundit on TV worth listening to, even Patreus is clueless so he just hypothesises about what is happening. no one knows apart from the Russians and the only press conference they will give is when it is over.
Russians do not fight wars like the Americans, completely different mindset. The US destroy Everything using airborne bombing, dont care about civilian casualties or infrastructure, water, electricity, which is why baghdad was such a disaster. The Russians are avoiding infrastructure damage and even in some cases repairing water and electricity supplies to towns, the only evidence of infrastructure destruction is coming from retreating Ukie units. The Russians have time on their side, dominate the airspace, can move navy troops into positions on the coast and can afford to wait it out in some places having surrounded them with no risk of counter attack. It remains to be seen whether they run out of patience but my guess is they will keep on negotiating in the hope that they don’t have to get bogged down in too much urban warfare, whilst zelenskys handlers in.the US will tell him to try
and force the Russians to do just that, move into Cities to finish the war. In kiev the authorities handed out free weapons to all civilians who want them and have released criminals from prison, given them guns and told them to fight, of course they and local gangs have turned the weapons on each other and are fighting turf wars and looting thus doing the Russian armys job for them.
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There are other lessons to be learned from the Pearl Harbor attack, of course.
I’d spell it out but at this citadel of toleration my comments are paradoxically deleted.
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Slightly off-topic but very germane. This article by the brilliant analyst, M. K. BHADRAKUMAR, is perhaps the best news on the war I have seen. I would only add to it a single question: What on earth is going through Antony Blinken’s head, a head that is representative of a very large faction of the Biden Administration? And that question takes us on-topic. Does Antony Blinken not know that there is a “first strike” faction in the American and NATO governments who will seize on any excuse to launch a nuclear attack on Russia, seize on any excuse to create a fait accompli of nuclear war where there will be no choice whose side you’re on?
https://www.indianpunchline.com/ukraine-makes-strange-bedfellows/
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