Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
The Pentagon has appointed a Lt. General (3 stars) Terry Wolff to head a new Army headquarters in Germany with a staff of 300 US military members to coordinate security assistance for Ukraine.
Gen. Wolff is a graduate of the US Army Ranger School, a former officer of an armored division, and former director of Strategic Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is not the kind of officer that is given inventory assignments.
As previously reported, Washington already has a division of troops deployed, not training, on Ukraine’s border and uniformed personnel in Ukraine ostensibly to prevent Ukraine from selling the weapons supplied by the West in black markets. Is “security assistance” a cover story for setting up a War Command Staff for the purpose of waging war in Ukraine against Russia?
If it is a subterfuge, it is one similar to those used to get the US involved in the Vietnam War.
Putin might be on the point of learning that his “limited operation” has left him with two choices: conclude a face-saving truce with Ukraine, if permitted, or find himself at war with the United States.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin is trying to revive Russian financial integration with the West, having learned nothing from the sanctions. Russia wants financial reconnection to the SWIFT payments system in order to be paid for food and fertilizer shipments. In other words, the Kremlin wants to bail out Washington from the responsibility for the hardships Washington’s sanctions policy is imposing, not on Russia, but on countries where hunger is a threat. Again, we have the Kremlin protecting her enemies as in Ukraine. The Kremlin certainly behaves strangely for a country at war.
I hope Putin doesn’t think he is going to earn brownie points in Washington.
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putin stated that a world without a russia meeting its ambitions and it’s goals while leading the world politically is not a world worth being a part of. this from a fella with a finger on the button that can basically end it all for everyone.
if putin was some central american dictator running fentanyl into the US, I know what the CIA would plan on for his future. a guy wonders if some of the lower level minions in Moscow that cannot afford a dacha in siberia for the wife and kiddies are planning for him.
“if putin was some central american dictator running fentanyl into the US, I know what the CIA would plan on for his future.”
Yeah, me too. The CIA would keep an eye on him and make sure they got their cut. Eventually Putin would become their bitch. Then let him go until one day he got too big for his britches and crossed them, then Putin would be brought to the US for trial with the result of his residing in a SuperMax never to be head from again. Then again, they might just put a slug through his cranium. Just ask Manuel Noriega.
In an RT article about the SWIFT issue, a commenter offered a different perspective….
https://www.rt.com/business/566434-russia-bank-reconnected-to-swift/
Reconnecting one bank to SWIFT is a complete sellout and “shameful betrayal”… that commenter is really displaying Western-style brain-dead perfectist attitudes.
If our being at war stops being a “secret” & becomes part of the narrative, then dissenters about virtually anything can be labeled as Russian bots/agents. That may be one of the goals.
Uncle Stasi-Sam is running on a full tank of hubris and arrogance, but in terms of taking on the Russians in Europe, me thinks a shocking curb stomp would ensue for the so-called Gov’t Of, For, and By the People. Losing thousands of troops in short order will be a real eye opener for some.
Deep Shekels gonna’ need a bigger Division.
“There are now 540,000 Russian troops stationed around the outskirts of Ukraine preparing to launch a major offensive that I think will probably end the war in Ukraine. 540,000 Russian troops, 1,000 rocket artillery systems, 5000 armored fighting vehicles including at least 1,5000 tanks, hundreds and hundreds of tactical ballistic missiles. Ukraine is now going to experience war on a scale we haven’t seen since 1945.” Colonel Douglas MacGregor,
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/endgame-ukraine-putins-battleplan/
I’m counting 44 tanks in this column alone
https://t.me/intelslava/41821
For comparison, that is a 9th of the total German army tank number.
Next the US might open another Army headquarters in Poland, just imagine how then Putler will be truly fooked!
MacGregor:
“the American people need to know, that while we don’t have very large forces and our forces are not in the best shape, as a proportion of the force we have more generals and Admirals than we have had in our entire history. We have them falling out of the trees, we had so many headquarters with so many Admirals and Generals, it’s not even funny it’s a disgrace it’s a joke”
Lt. Gen Terry Wolff Confident in Afghan Security Forces (nine years ago)
Oh.MyGawd….
Looks like she is on meth.
Fentanyl.
Little by little Russia is decoupling from the West contrary to what the writer would have us believe. Russia recently created a system called MIR that will rival VISA and Master Card for purchasing and Putin is working with China to circumvent the SWIFT system. Russia has a system set up already. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-russia-alternative-swift-payment-cips-spfs-yuan-ruble-dollar-2022-4
The US sanctions have not crippled or devastated Putin or Russia. In fact they have backfired on the US and their NATO EU lapdogs. Germany and several European nations will suffer greatly this winter and beyond because of their mindless fealty to Uncle Sam. The energy shortages are real and they will not increase the German government’s popularity with their people!
In case you haven’t noticed, the world is taking sides, choosing between Russia and the US/NATO hydra. The Global South is not in America’s camp and many are openly seeking membership in the BRICS alliance and other non-Western security entities.
Yes the US and NATO are moving their assets around in anticipation of a war or military action against Russia or China (which I think is the real reason the US withdrew from Afghanistan) but the US is in no position to wage a direct war on any powerful sovereign nations anywhere! It is quite revealing that Biden (and his handlers) did not take Zelenskyy’s bait about Russian missiles hitting Poland two weeks ago. This is an indication the US is not ready for a full on frontal confrontation with Russia as their proxy war isn’t going all that well. Meanwhile Putin has ordered the mobilization of reservists and has placed the military on high alert. The question is who is going to blink first and back down?
yours is the first reasonable analysis I’ve read.
the American people are being played by a very media-conscious Zelenskyy who’s carefully read the history of how we lost the war in Viet Nam and watched Leni films many times.
V. Putin has recently backed the Russian ruble with gold; what can we say about the petro-dollar?
I think it would be a damned shame (all attributable to the person hiding in the WH basement) if one drop of Americcan blood were to be spilled in this ridiculous border war that doesn’t concern us in the least.
As far as I can see, the only people pushing for our entry are the (grand?)children of the very same people who were demonstrating against our involvement in Viet Nam.
Uh, if you were really informed and not cherry-picking facts,
you’d mention that Russia half a year ago announced that they would team up with China’s [existing] UnionPay – that didn’t happen. (I have not seen a clear explanation of why, so far.)
Just for the record.
To your “The question is who is going to blink first and back down?”
That was pretty much decided, already in June.
Back then NATO declared they will never back down, which means we since then are in a situation where one party will need to completely lose and basically unconditionally surrender – and it will be either Russia or NATO.
That’s a fact.
Now the only remaining open question -a mini-back-down if you will- is if this will happen with or without a full nuclear exchange.
MacGregor:
“[Milley] watched the Russians completely change their approach. They went into Ukraine with one hand tied behind their backs they never used more than 20 percent of their ground force and of that only a hundred and ten thousand troops initially in Ukraine. And then they went entirely on the defensive uh in August, and that’s what they’ve done ever since, consolidated their position pulled in their horns, because the generals told Putin the only way we can end this is if we do it militarily. If we’re going to end it militarily that means massive offensives more troops more material that’s going to take time, and so the Russians have said fine we’ll trade ground for time we will consolidate our position minimize our losses and let the ukrainians expend themselves. Millie knows all of these things and he is concerned because he’s talking to people who don’t seem to be in touch with reality. That’s the danger and he doesn’t want to walk to the president, and say Mr President our conventional force is in danger of being annihilated because we staggered in there or we’re dragged into this somehow, and the only way we can end this is to talk to the Russians and try to get out [retreat under a seize fire], or opt for a nuclear response – and he doesn’t want to go there. Nobody in Washington with a brain wants to go there.”
“Nobody in Washington with a brain wants to go there.”
“Nobody in Washington with a brain”
Um ….
Uncle Schlomo ain’t to be trifled with. He’ll leave an enemies’ country literally littered with billions of dollars of resalable war trinkets…take that ebil Putler!
Gosh this is entertaining.
It would be even more so if I were not in the country that is going to lose the most, not Ukraine, the USSA.
Love the pic of Zelinsky nursing on mother of death, former mother of liberty.
My last mentee in the Air Force has just under a year left to complete his last enlistment which will give him 22 years. He has the same mindset that I had my last two years before I retired. He is surrounded by idiots. His leadership staff are all morons, his peers are suck-ups incapable of higher thought processes, and the junior enlisted are lazy dweebs incapable of any higher thought processes outside of being behind an X box controller.
So nothing has changed in the Air Force.
And the Air Force is generally considered the brightest of the arms of the military.
It may be that Putin suffers from a malady similar to one Trump apparently suffers, that is, a developed moral sense. This malady often leads to the sufferer mistakenly attributing the same sense generally to others with whom he interacts.
In American ‘elite’ culture Bill and Hilry Clinton have been avatars of leftist modernity. Both appear to have a completely undeveloped moral sense, seemingly remaining at the level of young toddlers.
The young toddler’s sense of morality is contained in the formulation ‘what I desire is good’ and nothing else. One’s heart breaks when one sees the toddler voluntarily give a toy to another, as evidence the child is on his way.
It is impossible for a young toddler to be immoral for he has no conception of such a sense. Likewise an adult who has never developed that sense is incapable of immorality, he is amoral.
This appears to be the condition of the current leadership and financial elite class in the entire western world.
Short of righteous rage a person with a developed moral sense is a weak opponent against an amoral competitor. That is why we have such a vile leadership and elite and it is why we suffer them as well.
If the current leadership and elite sexual abuse and mutilation of our children, often with enthusiastic participation of morally deformed or deficient parents does not arouse our righteous rage then likely nothing will. The faked up war in Ukraine certainly won’t, even if it is expanded to a world war including nuclear exchanges.