Dear readers, to my great regret, I am once again duty bound to walk the streets bearing the sign ‘The End of the World is Nigh’.
I watched the news digest program Sixty Minutes yesterday on Russian state television’s smotrim.ru platform. Before turning the microphone over to the panelists in talk show format, the first 30 minutes of the show presented a hair-raising video montage of excerpts from US, German, European, British news reporting about dirty bomb accusations, about the current exercises of the aircraft carrier George Bush Sr. in the Eastern Med and its loud message to Mr Putin about nuclear attack capabilities, about the 2400 American ground assault troops just delivered to Romania and placed at the border with Moldova, ready to move in there and, one may safely assume, to continue up into Ukraine to face off with Russians around Odessa – Nikolaev at a moment’s notice. Well, the impression of this pending escalation was overwhelmingly that we are on the cusp of the war to end all wars. The US is game for it, whatever Biden mutters to the contrary reading from his teleprompter. The Russians are game for it. And so here we go!
On a less dramatic note but one from the same musical composition, I have just felt obliged to add a Postscript to my last essay on Rushi Sunak, noting that I was wrong about the kind of marching orders he has from the City of London: while he replaced most of the Truss cabinet ministers, he has retained Ben Wallace at Defense. Note that Wallace is calling for large increases in defense spending to support Britain’s contribution to the Ukrainian armed forces at the same time that Sunak is about to wield the knife on social services in the name of a balanced budget and austerity in times of inflation. The Sunak premiership will not last a year, assuming we have a year ahead of us before all hell breaks loose. He shares with Macron a background in working for US international bankers and the fact of being the youngest head of government in his respective country in two centuries. He also apparently shares the status of political lightweight, but unlike Macron, his position is very fragile because of British constitutional practices. I say that these developments fall in line with the general musical composition, because they show that the marching orders he had received from those who installed him in power, the City of London, are as ideologically driven as the newspaper they all read daily, the viciously anti-Russian Financial Times. And so I conclude that in the U.K., too, Capital is as removed from the real world as the lightweight and incompetent politicians who rule over us on the Continent.
What I cannot understand is how India, China and other big, serious players on the world stage do not take note that the rising escalation in the Russia-NATO confrontation and the lurch towards nuclear exchange will mean the end of life on the planet, their lives as well as ours. Why are they all silent? And where is the United Nations before the looming Armageddon? When General Assembly votes are dictated by one global hegemon and its lackeys, the U.N.’s relevance to keeping the peace is vitiated.
The avoidable tragedy of WWI is something that is foremost in my thoughts every time I stay in my Pushkin apartment outside Petersburg. We live 200 meters away from an entrance to the Catherine Palace park and less than a kilometer from the separate palace which Nicholas II used as a family home. Each time there I wonder to myself how they could have been so foolish as to throw European civilization to the winds, and, as regards the tsarist family, to throw away their own lives. Now I see similar foolishness daily watching the news, whether it is Russian news or Western mainstream broadcasters. I see the growing likelihood of our collective suicide in the weeks if not months before us.
*****
Among patriotic Russians, there has long been a lot of criticism about the way the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine has been waged. People say that Putin has been too soft on the Ukrainians, that he should have destroyed the energy infrastructure in the first days of March, without waiting seven months and allowing the escalation to reach its present critical point. However, that is to ignore the political dimension of war making. And it is to ignore the reality that public opinion is a major restraint on what its President can or cannot do, irrespective of constitutional provisions and supposed authoritarianism at the top.
The Russian public was not ready to accept an all-out war on Ukraine in February. The personal, familial and historic ties binding the Russian and Ukrainian peoples together were simply too strong. Russians, including those in power, could hold out the hope that once the campaign ended, the sides would kiss and make up. It took all this time, it took the crossing of all Russian red lines in terms of attacks on the Russian homeland by artillery and rockets from across the border with Ukraine, it took the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines and the terrorist attack on the Kerch bridge for the Russian people to be psychologically prepared to murder Ukrainians by the tens of thousands of soldiers on the battlefield as you do in any normal war and to inflict great hardships on the civilian population.
However, the Kremlin cannot be let off so easily for its share of the blame as the world teeters towards nuclear war. I find it incredible that the professional intelligence analyst Vladimir Putin, whom all of our biographers describe only in relation to his KGB career, could have allowed himself to be so misled by his own intelligence advisers about Ukrainian capabilities and intentions before he decided to go in and denazify, demilitarize Ukraine on 24 February. That was a miscalculation of colossal proportions that resulted in serious military setbacks in the opening weeks of the war, which in turn emboldened United States and NATO decision-makers to go for the jugular and finally ‘take out’ Russia. I will say no more.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022
Gilbert Doctorow 
“Well, the impression of this pending escalation was overwhelmingly that we are on the cusp of the war to end all wars. The US is game for it, whatever Biden mutters to the contrary reading from his teleprompter. The Russians are game for it. And so here we go!”
““The Americans are sending an extremely clear signal – for them, nuclear war is no longer unthinkable, and not impossible.”
That is what the US thinking at the time seems to be, I do not think however that in light of the analysis by Vzglyad Russian military is thinking along the same lines.
“Russian strategic submarines are few in number today compared to the Soviet times. Together with the qualitative superiority of the US Navy, this creates an environment where the Americans can destroy our submarines immediately before the attack begins. This, alas, is a fact known to specialists. At the same time, 44% of all strategic nuclear warheads in Russia are placed on submarines. And almost all of them are in two (!) fleet bases vulnerable to the first strike. The Russian strategic aviation has never learned to fight like the American one, and it is not a means of guaranteed retaliation.”
http://johnhelmer.net/the-us-signals-readiness-to-launch-nuclear-strike-against-russia/#more-69043
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I’d find it hard to believe all the Russian nuclear submarines are just sitting in port waiting to be annihilated, especially as Putin put the Russian nuclear deterrence forces on heightened alert at the start of the Ukraine operation.
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“I’d find it hard to believe all the Russian nuclear submarines are just sitting in port”
Maybe someone who can read Russian can confirm the google translation of the original? Maybe there is another explanation for this statement.
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“Russian strategic submarines are few in number today compared to the Soviet times. Together with the qualitative superiority of the US Navy”
Regarding this statement I did some checks, and here are some figures from https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/russia-submarine-capabilities/ and
https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/united-states-submarine-capabilities/
Russia:
Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs): 11
Nuclear-Powered attack submarines (SSNs): 17
Nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines (SSGNs): 9
Diesel-electric attack submarines (SSKs): 21
USA:
Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs): 14
Nuclear-Powered attack submarines (SSNs): 52
So there is a clear advantage of attack submarines (tactical?) by the USA vs an actual larger number of ballistic and cruise missile (strategic?) subs by the RF. That of course may lead to doubts about the veracity of other claims made in the article.
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There are such things as Hunter Submarines that go after other subs.
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We can only hope that Republicans prevail in the midterm elections and curb support to Ukraine. I was hoping that the fact that communication is now open between the Pentagon and the Russian military implied more control over each other’s operations. There is also growing dissatisfaction among Europeans with how the war is continuing with no sight in end. I will myself march for peace on 5 November. I was somewhat comforted by these developments but maybe I was wrong to be.
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End in sight that is 😉
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Dear Sir,You provide excellent insight as usual. I’ve just read this article by M.K. Bhadrakumar who takes a somewhat more optimistic view on what is happening behind the scenes, and he also gives some details on the trade between the USA and China which shows that relationship in a better light than we might gather from the MSM. Yours faithfully, Stephen J. Emmott US breaks ice, Russia thaws – Indian Punchline
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Depressing. There are no adults in the room, whether that room is in Germany, Europe, NATO, UK, US, even China-India et al. Active listening, anyone? Nah.
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…intended to include UN in the mix of children….
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Ben Wallace, a former British Army Captain (probably his true career ceiling) is a jingoistic war monger.
In February 2022, Wallace was apparently filmed saying that the Scots Guards “kicked the backside” of Nicholas I of Russia in the Crimean War, and could do so again. Not a particularly helpful comment and not an accurate one.
We seem to have a generation of western leaders and elites who see war as a game. The passing of the WW2 generation has no doubt contributed to this. War in the west has become a TV morality play with no blowback to the home front. We just wreck other countries and have other people do the dying. We are then totally selective in the horrors we choose to focus. Ukrainian victims are given wall to wall coverage but no one looks at Syria, Lebanon or Yemen for example. Eventually we give up, the helicopters come and the evil circus moves on to the next “cause”. This time though there is a real probability that such an imperial approach has run out of road.
Let’s hope that sanity prevails but with over promoted people like Ben Wallace in responsible positions I am truly pessimistic.
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Sir: According to Larry Johnson on his blog, the “new” US 101 1st Airborne troops are a replacement of existing 82nd Airborne troops that have been deployed in Romania for about 4 months. Largely a photo op for US propaganda.
https://sonar21.com/101st-airborne-does-photo-op-in-romania/
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Reblogged this on Unorthodox Truth.
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I don’t really understand the logic in putting the blame on Russia as well and on Putin, for the present situation. Putin is blamed for not properly identifying the strength of the Ukrainian Army. SO assume they had a better assessment? Would / should have that deterred Russia? Or would have instilled even more panic and urgency in Russian response.
From my reading of history, Russia can be categorized as a reactive countries, especially with its western neighbours. The US push to the Russian borders is intolerable and had to be answered. Russia was next on the list to be dealt with, before taking on China. It is a war that has been declared by the US long time ago. Russia is slowly responding to the US attack.
Thus, I fail to understand what is Russia/Putin accused of, for? For not rolling over?
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As a kind of exercise in Holmesian logic (eliminate the impossible…) intended to take one’s mind off mankind’s inability to live in peace with the rest of life on earth, I ask the following. Seriously. Where is the tail, and where is the dog?
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Maybe if Putin hadn’t decided he wanted to be President-for-Life back around 2012, there would be a (different) Russian president not surrounded by a cohort of yes-men, and more flexible and realistic in his thinking.
I can’t believe there is only one person in whole huge Russia who knows how to run the place. He should have heeded De Gaulle’s statement that “the cemeteries are full of irreplaceable men.”
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What do you imply exactly? That some other president would not confront the West, or would not “get back” Crimea, or would not start the special military operation? William Burns, who is now a director of CIA, and was an ambassador to Russia in 2007-2008, sent several confidential memos to Condoleezza Rice emphasizing that “it is not just Putin, but the entire Russian elite, who sees NATO expansion to Ukraine as the brightest of all red lines” and that “it will likely lead to a war”. I believe Putin was also talking about that, in somewhat different terms, in 2007 in Munich. To behave very differently, that “different” president should have been somebody not from the elite? And also the entire elite, that sees NATO’ization of Ukraine as the red line, should have been disposed of? An example is Medvedev who perhaps look more democratic in 2008. Look at him now, look what he writes, would he be different? An honest question.
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My reply appears to have been removed for some reason, so I’ll just say, read Gilbert’s last paragraph for an illustration of the danger of one person staying in office for too long.
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Agreement in spades — re “the danger of one person staying in office for too long” — for (e.g.) Biden and the full span of his (?) 40-plus years!
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The difference between WWI and a nuclear war today is that the lives wealth and power of the ruling elites of Europe and America were far better protected then than now. The power elites in DC, Wall Street, the Hamptons, and their like throughout the West cannot imagine that Russia’s elites will not destroy them if they are attacked. They are perfectly happy to sacrifice the rest of us in order to save the hegemony on which so much of their wealth and power depends, but I don’t for a minute believe they are ready and willing to sacrifice their lives and power if they are convinced they are highly likely to be obliterated by Russian missiles and Poseidon drones, which I’m sure enough of them are to keep the brakes on. So, don’t press the panic button, what Western government spokespeople and their complaint media amplifiers are doing is intended for show, like tribesmen sticking out their tongues howling and baring their behinds to intimidate their enemies, reassure their friends, and keep their domestic rivals in check.
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“What I cannot understand is how India, China and other big, serious players on the world stage do not take note that the rising escalation in the Russia-NATO confrontation and the lurch towards nuclear exchange will mean the end of life on the planet, their lives as well as ours. Why are they all silent?”
Because tactical nukes only damage an area a few hundred meters and up to about 3km around the blast, and ICBM damage is not nearly as bad as advertised, and military people know it. Japanese were growing watermelons in Hiroshima the next year after the blast, contrary to what the “scientific community” suggested back then. I don’t say it is a bad lie, like the myth about tobacco causing cancer, this is a noble lie, but professionals know more. This of course makes war more likely to happen. Politicians must be kept ignorant and scared for their own lives.
Click to access 7906.pdf
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Dream on, Stefan. The rest of us know better. And for those who may have questions about the scale of destruction, here is a forecast based on realistic estimates of a nuclear war’s power:
https://www.nuclearwarmap.com/nuclearwarmap.html
That’s the bad news. The good news is, the active part of the war may be over in just a couple of hours! And there will be open space for one hell of a watermelon patch!
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At a super-quick scan, that site is super-well presented. Thanks. I didn’t look deeper, but I admit to being disturbed that the author wasn’t identified, no bona fides, no institutional affiliation, etc.
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For a detailed exploration of the long-term effects of nuclear war on global climate and food production in a peer-reviewed journal, here is a recent article from the journal Nature Food, published 15 August 2022:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0
By this analysis, an all-out nuclear war between the US and Russia would lead to the death of about 5 Billion people. The number of acute (short-term) deaths would be around 360 Million (similar to the nuclearwarmap estimate, when European and Russian deaths are included). The many long-term deaths (ca. 2 years out) would result from famine.
The article is open-access.
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l ‘operazione in Ucraina da parte russa aveva alcuni vincoli ben precisi nella consapevolezza che quello e’ uno dei teatri di confronto col mondo Nato per cui il modo graduale con cui ci si è mossi impegnando poche truppe e in modo flessibile è stato un elemento di forza più che di debolezza.
va sottolineato infatti che al di là di tutto il bailamme mediatico l’iniziativa e la gestione del conflitto è sempre rimasta in mani russe che hanno con forze minori rispetto a quelle ucraine occupato e annesso una porzione di territorio ucraino strategico senza mai consentire agli Ucraini di portare contrattacchi militari. questa modalità è pertanto stata pensata e progettata su dati reali e questo va sottolineato
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Google translate:
the operation in Ukraine by Russia had some very specific constraints in the awareness that this is one of the theaters of confrontation with the NATO world so the gradual way in which we moved with a few troops and in a flexible way was an element of strength rather than weakness. It should be emphasized that beyond all the media hype, the initiative and management of the conflict has always remained in Russian hands that have with smaller forces than the Ukrainian ones occupied and annexed a portion of strategic Ukrainian territory without ever allowing the Ukrainians to carry out military counterattacks. This mode has therefore been conceived and designed on real data and this should be emphasized
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H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956): “The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
Alexis de Tocqueville : “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”… or US Quisling allies.
“I find it incredible that the professional intelligence analyst Vladimir Putin, whom all of our biographers describe only in relation to his KGB career, could have allowed himself to be so misled by his own intelligence advisers about Ukrainian capabilities and intentions before he decided to go in and denazify, demilitarize Ukraine on 24 February. That was a miscalculation of colossal proportions that resulted in serious military setbacks in the opening weeks of the war, which in turn emboldened United States and NATO decision-makers to go for the jugular and finally ‘take out’ Russia. I will say no more.”
Mr. Doctorow isn’t the first commentator to blame Russia and Russians for US-NAYOYO crimes against humanity and the planet. It doesn’t make his observations any less odious.
Putin and Russia did everything possible to avoid this war. Not giving Russia any choice was the deliberate US-NAYOYO strategic plan devised and brought forward by every President since Carter, who gave them a strategic excuse via Mackinder.
Simon Bolivar: “The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague America [and the world] with misery in the name of liberty.”
US-NAYOYO deliberately did everything in its power to start this war with the intent of fatally weakening Russia. It involves isolating attacks on Russia’s economy no matter how damaging to the world. It involves directly threatening legitimate Russian leadership and government. It involved training and arming Banderite Nazis, supporting their genocidal goals against every argument for peaceful settlement, even against their own government, leaders, and ‘democratic system’.
Homer: “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
Continued shelling of Zaporozhye NPP reactors, dry and wet long term spent fuel storage, threatens the equivalent of a ‘dirty bomb’ as the ‘dirt’ for these bombs comes from spent nuclear fuel. The terrorist quadruple murders surrounding the attacks on the Crimean Bridge signals a vast widening of this war to include any energy facility or transportation infrastructure anywhere in NAYOYO territory. Can Mr. Doctorow say, ‘Chunnel’, ‘TGV’, ‘North Sea wind power’, ‘Polish Thermal Power Plants’, or ‘Norwegian Pipelines’? More recently, the destruction of the NordStream pipelines, obviously by US Navy resources, signalled there will be no peace negotiations.
NAYOYO leadership chose to make allies of Bandera Nazis infamous for genocidal massacres. They began their murderous careers with the opening cannon fire of Operation Barbarossa. They celebrated allegiance to Hitler’s racist cruelty by slaughtering Ukrainian Jews, Poles, Romani in the very first days. They participated joyfully in the Babi Yar massacre and went on to murder hundreds of thousands of children, women, and men without pity or remorse. The CIA and MI6 loved their murdering skills employing them as contract killers and terrorists in post-war Ukraine and Europe. Bandera Nazis continue to employ Einsatzgruppen ‘cleanse Ukraine’ of Russian speakers and supporters.
Frantz Fanon: “Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe.”
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Yes, Europe, the centre of two world wars, and Germany specifically, now heading into another one, likely to involve nuclear exchanges. Don’t be fooled into thinking food will grow and be healthy soon after nuclear explosions. Studies on the testing of nuclear weapons by the US, France and Britain, criminally performed on beautiful Pacific Islands, using Pacific Islanders as experimental subjects showed that 60 years after nuke explosions the food grown was still toxic.
See article: Nuclear contamination of food continues from weapons testing in the Pacific, in Pacific Ecologist issue 22,
Russia won the war against Nazi Germany’s cruelty, at great cost of life with at least 27 million Russians killed as a result. President Putin’s brother died as a result of war deprivation/ starvation, lack of food. You might think that Germans today would have learned to treat Russians today with greater empathy. I read today that young Germans are not keen on getting involved in the war. But German leaders are terribly stupid not to oppose the war on Ukraine that was forced on Russia, which needed to defend the ethnic Russians in the Donbass region about to be attacked by a large Kiev military force assembling by mid Feb 2022, with the Russian hating Azov battalion in the front line. It’s tragic and terrible the lies that have been told to bring all this about – Jacques Baud writes very lucidly about it. See The Hidden Truth about the War in Ukraine via the postil.com
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“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I’m using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/russia-s-ukraine-invasion-may-have-been-preventable-n1290831
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Wow. Wow. Thanks for the lead to Pacific Ecologist/22. (I was not given access to the complete article.)
Memo: I’m glad that I’m 79 yo.
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hello Robert – very sorry you can’t access the full article on Nuclear contamination of food continues from weapons testing in the Pacific. I just looked at website of the Pacific Ecologist issue 22, and can see all the pages of the article – i can’t understand why you can’t see the whole article – anyway you seem to have read enough to know the long-lasting nature of contamination of the soil and food.. – extraordinary those criminal tests were allowed – the depraved minds of the colonialist western allies known no bounds
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Kay, you write and sound like my kind of human being! Thanks and cheers…Bob
(Yes: Depravity, Hypocrisy, Belligerence, Arrogance, Warmongering (and Wars), Non-Diplomacy, Wholesale Thievery/Rape of Natural Resources, Disrespect, Injustice…the mind boggles.)
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It really is incredible that people keep thinking a nuclear war can be won. As if there was no Dead Hand. As if Russia didn’t know quite well how to strike back, as if Russia didn’t have their hunter submarines too and all of their quite new weapons. It’s the old “superiority of the USA” myth again. I would suggest reading “On the Beach” for two reasons: although written in the fifties it is extremely actual and it describes in a very dispassionate (all the more gripping) voice the end of human life after nuclear war. But it also describes how such a war starts almost accidentally, because of a conflict in a “small” nation that draws superpowers tragically in. I do agree with other commentators here that for now the blame should in no way be laid at Russia’s side. What the US/UK are doing is simply monstrous and Russia had no other option than to start the SMO. If that SMO evolves into total war, it won’t be Russia who can be blamed. I respect Mr Doctorow but I fear that his angst for a nuclear war makes him too cautious in assigning the blame correctly. Notwithstanding, I do hope the Russians keep their head cool as before, or we all die a horrible death.
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