Assessing the Russian military as an instrument of power

This article was written for the Unz Review: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/assessing-the-russian-military-as-an-instrument-of-power/

It has been a quarter of a century now since the fall of the Soviet Union and yet the memory of the Soviet Armed Forces is still vivid in the minds of many of those who lived through the Cold War or even remember WWII. The NATO-sponsored elites of eastern Europe still continue to scare their citizens by warning of a danger of “Russian tanks” rolling down their streets as if the Soviet tanks were about to advance on Germany again. For a while, the accepted image of a Russian solider in the West was a semi-literate drinking and raping Ivan who would attack in immense hordes with little tactical skills and an officer corps selected for political loyalty and lack of imagination. Then the propaganda narrative changed and now the new Russian bogeyman is a “little green man” who will suddenly show up to annex some part of the Baltics to Russia. Putatively pro-Russian “experts” add to the confusion by publicly hallucinating of a Russian deployment in Syria and the Mediterranean which could wrestle the entire region away from Uncle Sam and fight the entire NATO/CENCOM air forces and navies with confidence. This is all nonsense, of course, and what I propose to do here is to provide a few very basic pointers about what the modern Russian military can and cannot do in 2016. This will not be a highly technical discussion but rather a list of a few simple, basic, reminders.

Russia is not the Soviet Union

The first and most important thing to keep in mind is that the Russian military is truly focused on the defense of the Russian territory. Let me immediately say that contrary to much of the Cold War propaganda, the Soviet military was also defensive in essence, even if it did include a number of offensive elements:

1) The military control of all of Eastern Europe as a “buffer zone” to keep the US/NATO away from the Soviet Union’s borders.

2) An official ideology, Communism, which was messianic and global in its stated goals (more or less, depending on who was in power)

3) A practice of global opposition to the US Empire anywhere on the planet with technical, political, financial, scientific and, of course, military means

Russia has exactly zero interest in any of these. Not only did the nature of modern warfare dramatically reduce the benefits of being forward deployed, the messianic aspects of Communism have even been abandoned by the Communist Party of Russia which is now focused on the internal socio-economic problems of Russia and which has no interest whatsoever in liberating the Polish or Austrian proletariat from Capitalist exploitation. As for a global military presence, Russia has neither the means nor the desire to waste her very limited resources on faraway territories which do not contribute to her defense.

But the single most important factor here is this: the overwhelming majority of Russian are tired and fed up with being an empire. From Peter I to Gorbachev, the Russian people have paid a horrific price in sweat, tears, blood and Rubles to maintain an empire which did absolutely nothing for the Russian people except impoverish them and make them hated in much of the world. More than anything else, the Russians want their country to be a “normal” country. Yes, safe, powerful, wealthy and respected, but still a normal country and not a global superpower. Many Russians still remember that the Soviet Politburo justified the occupation and subsequent war in Afghanistan as the completion of an “internationalist duty” and if somebody today tried that kind of language the reply would be “to hell with that”. Finally, there is the sad reality that almost all the countries which were liberated by Russia, not only from Nazi Germany, but also from the Turkish yoke show exactly zero gratitude for the role Russia played in their liberation. To see how our so-called “Orthodox brothers” in Bulgaria, Romania or Georgia are eager to deploy NATO weapons against Russia is nothing short of sickening. The next time around, let these guys liberate themselves, everybody will be happier that way.

It is a basic rule of military analysis that you do not look at the intentions but primarily at capabilities, so let us now look at Russian capabilities.

The Russian armed forces are relatively small

First, the Russian armed forces are fairly small, especially for the defense of the biggest country on the planet (Russia is almost twice the size of the USA, she has a about half the population and land border length of 20,241km). The total size of the Russian Armed Forces is estimated at about 800’000 soldiers. That puts the Russian Armed Forces in 5^th position worldwide, somewhere between the DPRK (1’190’000) and Pakistan (643’800). Truly, this kind of “bean counting” makes absolutely no sense, but this comparison is useful to show something crucial: the Russian Armed Forces are relatively small.

This conclusion is further bolstered if we consider the fact that it is hard to imagine a scenario in which every Russian solider from Kalinigrad to the Kamchatka will be engaged at the same time against one enemy. This is why the Russian territory has been broken up into five separate (and, de facto, autonomous) military districts (or “strategic directions): East, Central, Northern, Western and Southern.

While there are a number of units which are subordinated directly to the high command in Moscow, most Russian units have been distributed between the commands of these strategic directions.

[Sidebar: it is also interesting to know that when Putin came to power the Western military district was almost demilitarized as nobody in Russia believed that there was a threat coming from the West. The aggressive US/NATO policies have now changed that and there now is an major program underway to strengthen it, including the reactivation of the First Guards Tank Army.]

There is no US equivalent to the Russian military districts. Or, if there is, it is very different in nature and scope. I am talking about the US Unified Combatant Commands which have broken up our entire planet into “Areas of Responsibility”:

Notice that all of Russia is in the area of “responsibility” of only one of these commands, USEUCOM. In reality, however, in the case of full scale war between Russia and the United States USCENTCOM and USPACOM would, obviously, play a crucial role.

The Russians are *not* coming

The size and capabilities of the Russian Military Districts are completely dwarfed by the immense power and resources of the US Commands: in every one of these commands the USA already has deployed forces, pre-positioned equipment and built the infrastructure needed to receive major reinforcements. Furthermore, since the USA currently has about 700 military bases worldwide, the host countries have been turned into a modern version of a colony, a protectorate, which has no option than to fully collaborate with the USA and which has to offer all its resources in manpower, equipment, infrastructure, etc. to the USA in case of war. To put it simply: all of Europe is owned by the USA who can use it as they want (mainly as canon fodder against Russia, of course).

It is important to keep this immense difference in size and capabilities in mind when, for example, we look at the Russian operation in Syria.

When the first rumors of an impending Russian intervention began flooding the blogosphere many were tempted to say that the Russians were about to liberate Syria, challenge NATO and defeat Daesh. Some had visions of Russian Airborne Forces deployed into Damascus, MiG-31s criss-crossing the Syrian skies and even Russian SLBMs cruising off the Syrian coast (though they never explained this one). At the time I tried to explain that no, the “Russians are not coming” (see here, here, here, here and here), but my cautionary remarks were not greeted with enthusiasm, to put it mildly. A Russian task force did eventually materialize in Syria, but it was a very far cry from what was expected. In fact, compared to the expected intervention force, it was tiny: 50 aircraft and support personnel. What this small force achieved, however, was much more than anybody expected, including myself. So what happened here, did the Russians really do everything they can, or did they get cold feet or were they somehow pressured into a much less ambitious mission than they had originally envisioned?

To explain this, we now need to look at the actual capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces.

The true “reach” of the Russian armed forces

First, Russia does have very long range weapon systems: her missiles can reach any point on the planet, her bombers can fly many thousands of miles and her transport aircraft have ranges of several thousand miles. However, and this is crucial, none of that amounts to a real power projection capability.

There are two main ways to project power: to take control over a territory or, failing that to deny it to your enemy. The first one absolutely requires the famous “boots on the ground” while the second one requires air supremacy. So how far away from home can the Russian solider and pilots really fight? How far from home can the Russian Aerospace forces establish a no-fly zone?

Let’s begin by dispelling a myth: that Russian Airborne Forces are more or less similar to the US 82^nd or 101^st Airborne. They are not. The 82^nd and 101^st are light infantry divisions which are typically engaged in what I would call “colonial enforcement” missions. In comparison to the US airborne forces, the Russian Airborne Forces are much heavier, fully mechanized and their main mission is to fight in the operational level support of the front to a maximum depth of 100km to 300km (if I remember correctly, the Russian Aerospace Forces don’t even have sufficient aircraft to airlift an entire Airborne Division although they will acquire that capability in 2017). Once landed, the Russian Airborne Division is a much more formidable force than its US counterpart: not only are the Russians fully mechanized and they have their own artillery. Most importantly, they are far more tactically mobile than the Americans.

But what the Russians gain in tactical mobility, they lose in strategic mobility.: the US can easily sent the 82^nd pretty much to any location on the planet, whereas the Russians most definitely cannot do that with their Airborne Forces.

Furthermore, even a Russian Airborne Division is relatively weak and fragile, especially when compared to regular armed forces, so they are critically dependent on the support of the Russian Aerospace forces. That, again, dramatically reduces the “reach” of these forces. All this is to say that no, the Russian VDV never had the means to send an airborne division/Brigade/Regiment to Damascus any more than they had the means to support the Russian VDV company in Pristina. This is not a weakness of the Russian Airborne Forces, it is simply the logical consequence of the fact that the entire Russian military posture is purely defensive in nature, at least strategically.

Like any other modern military force, the Russians are capable of offensive military operations, but those would be executed primarily as a part of a defensive plan or as a part of a counter-attack. And while the Russian Ground Forces (aka “Army”) have excellent terrain crossing capabilities, they are all designed for missions of less than a couple of hundred kilometers in depth.

This is why in the past I have written that the Russian Armed Forces are designed to fight on their national territory and up to a maximum of 1000km from the Russian border. Now, please do not take this “1000km” literally. In reality, 200km-400km would be much more realistic, and I would say that the capabilities of the Russian military diminish in a manner roughly inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the Russian borders. Here is what this maximal 1000km looks like on a map showing the western and southern borders of Russia:

Map by Harry

Keep in mind that the real distance the Russian armed forces can “reach” is not primarily determined by distance, but much more by terrain and the possible defenses encountered in this zone. Flying over Estonia to reach the Baltic Sea would be much easier than to fly over Turkey to reach Syria. It is much easier to cross the Ukrainian plains that it would be to cross the snow covered forests of Finland. Again, the conceptual 1000km distance would often be much shorter in the real world.

If we now take a closer look at the Middle-East, here is what we see:

Map by udbc

Notice that Khmeimin is just at the edge of this 1000km distance, but only 50km from the Turkish border and that in order to resupply it the Russians would need to either cross Turkish airspace of fly around Turkey via Iran and Iraq. In other words, Khmeimim and Damascus are way too far for the Russian armed forces to insert anything but a relatively small force and give it a relatively limited mission. And while the Russians were extremely successful in Syria, I would argue that Putin took a huge risk, even if he, and the Russian General Staff, calculated the odds correctly and achieved a truly remarkable success.

Has the recent Iranian offer to use the Hamedan airbase made a difference in Russian capabilities?

Yes and no. Yes because it will now make it possible for the Russians to use their Tu-22M3 in a much more effective way and no because this improvement does not fundamentally change the regional balance of power or allow the Russian to project their forces into Syria. To put it simply: the Russians are years away from being capable of executing something similar to what the USA did during “Desert Shield”. In fact, such operations are not even part of the Russian military doctrine and the Russians have no desire to develop any such capability. There is a reason why the AngloZionist Empire is broke: maintaining a global empire is prohibitively expensive, the Russians painfully learned that lesson in the past and they have no desire to emulate the USA today. Doing so would not only require a dramatic change in the Russian military posture, but also to imitate the US political and economic model, something Russia neither desires nor is capable of.

There are, however, also big advantages to the Russian force posture, the main one being that Russians will only fight on “their turf” not only in terms of location, but also in terms of capabilities. The very same inverse square “law” which so severely limits the Russian military power projection capabilities also acts in Russia’s favor when dealing with an enemy approaching the Russian border: the closer this enemy gets, the more dangerous his environment becomes. In practical terms, this means that the three Baltic states, the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland, most of the Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Caspian are all, for all practical purposes, “Russkie-land”. The fact that NATO pretends otherwise makes no difference here: the kind of firepower, capabilities which Russia can bring to bear simply dwarfs what the US and NATO can commit. This is not an issue of number of tanks, or helicopters or combat aircraft, it is the fact that over and near the Russian territory the Russian armed forces would act as an integrated whole, exactly what they cannot do as far as, say, in Syria. So even if NATO can in theory bring more aircraft to the battle, Russian aircraft would be supported by the multi-layered and fully integrated Russian air defense network, a large number of sophisticated electronic warfare systems which, together with highly capable and long range interceptors: land based like the S-400 or airborne like the MiG-31BM would make it extremely dangerous for US/NATO aircraft to get anywhere near Russian airspace, especially for the AWACs the US air doctrine completely depends on.

The real meaning of A2AD

The American nightmare

The US and NATO are, of course, very much aware of this. And as is typically the case, they concealed this reality behind an obscure acronym: A2AD, which stands for anti-access area denial. According to US strategists, Russia, China and even Iran are plotting to use A2AD strategies against the USA. What this means in plain English is simple, of course: some countries out there actually can fight back and defend themselves (hence the burning aircraft carrier on the cover of this book). The arrogance of it all is simply amazing: it is not like the USA is concerned about Iranian A2AD in Paraguay, Russia A2AD in Africa or even Chinese A2AD in the Gulf of Mexico. No, the USA is concerned about these countries defending their own borders. Indeed, how dare they?!

Fortunately for the world, Uncle Sam only get’s to whine here, but cannot do much about it except conceal these realities from the general public in the West and obfuscate the dangers of messing with the wrong countries under bizarre acronyms like A2AD. And that brings me to the Ukraine.

A quick look at 1000km map will immediately show that the Ukraine is also well within the conceptual “Russkie-land” zone (again, don’t take 1000km literally, and remember that this is a maximum, a couple of hundred kilometers are much more realistic). This does not at all mean that Russia would want, or should, attack or invade the Ukraine (the the Baltic states and Poland, for that matter), but it does mean that such an operation is well within the Russian capabilities (at least if we forget about public opinion in Russia) and that to try to counter that would take a truly immense effort, something nobody in the West has the means to undertake.

In truth, that kind of scenarios only exist in the demented minds of western propagandists and in the artifical world of US think tanks which make providing the politicians with frightening fairy tales their daily bread (for an example of the latter, see here). To be sure, the fact that both sides have long-range standoff weapons, including nuclear ones, makes such a scenario even less likely unless we assume that the Russians have gone insane and are trying to force the US to resort to nuclear weapons. The opposite scenario – the US taking the risk of forcing Russia to use her nukes – is, alas, not quite as unlikely, especially if the Neocons take full control of the White House. The difference? The Russians know that they are neither invulnerable nor invincible, the Americans don’t. This is why the latter are far more likely to trigger and conflict than the former.

A full-scale war between the USA and Russia would be far different from anything described here: it would last a week, maybe two, it would involve conventional and nuclear strikes on both the USA and Russia, and it would be fought primarily with standoff weapons, “boots on the ground” or armored warfare would matter very little in such a scenario.

The Ukraine is located well inside Russkie-land

So if in Syria the “Russians are not coming”, then in the Ukraine they are already there. I am not referring to the sending of equipment (the voentorg) or volunteers (the “northern wind”) but to the fact that the Ukraine and, especially, the Donbass are so close to the Russian border as being basically undeniable to the Russians should they decide to take it. Again, I am not suggesting that they will, or even that this should happen, but only that all the hot air from the regime in Kiev about “defending Europe against the Russian hordes” or “teaching NATO on how to fight the Russians” is absolute nonsense. Ditto for the talk about supplying “lethal weapons” to the Ukronazis. Why? Because the situation in the Donbass is extremely simple: it is highly unlikely that the Ukronazis would succeed in taking over the Donbass but if, by some miracle, they did, they would be destroyed by the Russian armed forces. Putin has made it abundantly clear that while he will not intervene militarily in the Ukraine, he will not allow a genocide to take place in Novorussia. In fact, just the Russian artillery deployed along the border has the means to destroy any Ukrainian force invading Novorussia. In fact, that is exactly what happened in July of 2014 when in a single cross-border 2 minutes long fire strike by Russian multiple rocket launchers and long range artillery guns completely destroyed two Ukrainian mechanized battalions (a first in the history of warfare).

As I wrote many times, all parties to the conflict know that, and the only real goal of the Ukronazis is to trigger a Russian intervention in the Donbass, while the Russians are trying to avoid it by covertly supporting the Novorussians. That’s it. It is that simple. But the notion of the Ukronazis ever getting their hands on the Donbass or, even less so, Crimea is absolutely ridiculous as even the combined power of the US and NATO could not make that happen.

Conclusion: Russia ain’t the Soviet Union and it ain’t the USA

It is absolutely amazing how hard it is for so many people to understand the seemingly simple fact that Russia is not a USSR v2 nor an anti-USA. It is therefore absolutely essential to repeat over and over again that the Russia of 2016 has no aspirations to become an empire and no means to become a global challenger to the AngloZionist hegemony over our planet. So what does Russia want? It is simple: Russia simply wants to be a sovereign and free country. That’s it. But in a world ruled by the AngloZionist Empire this is also a lot. In fact, I would say that for the international plutocracy ruling the Empire, this Russian aspiration is completely and categorically unacceptable as it sees this Russian desire as an existential threat to the USA and the entire New World Order the Empire is trying to impose upon all of us. They are absolutely correct, by the way.

If Russia is allowed to break free from the Empire, then this means the end for the Empire’s global domination project as other countries will inevitably follow suit. Not only that, but this would deprive the Empire from the immense Russian resources in energy, potable water, strategic metals, etc. If Russia is allowed to break free and succeed, then Europe will inevitably gravitate towards Russia due to objective economic and political factors. Losing Europe would mean the end of the AngloZionist Empire. Everybody understands that and this is why the ruling 1%ers have unleashed to most hysterical full-spectrum russophobic propaganda campaign in western history. So yes, Russia and the Empire are already at war, a war for survival from which only one side will walk away while the other will be eliminated, at least in its current political form. This war is a new type of war, however, one which is roughly 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% military. This is why the ban on the Russian paralympic team is every bit as important as the delivery of US and British counter-battery radars to the Nazi junta in Kiev.

If militarily and economically Russia is dramatically weaker than the US led block of all the countries forming the Empire, on the informational front Russia is doing much better. It is enough to see all the hysterics of western politicians about RT to see that they are most definitely feeling threatened in an area which they used to completely dominate: information operations (aka propaganda).

The goals of Russia are quite simple:

a) military: to survive (defensive military doctrine)

b) economic: to become truly sovereign (to remove the 5^th columnists from power)

c) informational: to discredit and de-legitimize the Empire political and economic basis

That’s it. Unlike the grandiose hopes of those who wish to see the Russian military intervene everywhere, these 3 goals are commensurate with the actual capabilities/means of Russia.

One cannot win a war by engaging in the kind of warfare the enemy excels at. You have to impose upon him the kind of warfare you excel at. If Russia tried to “out-USA the USA” she would inevitably lose, she therefore chose to be different in order to prevail.

There are still many out there who are nostalgic for the “good old days” of the Cold War when any anti-US movement, party, regime or insurgency would automatically get the support of the USSR. These are the folks who deeply regret that Russia did not liberate the Ukraine from the Nazi junta, who fault Russia for not standing up to the USA in Syria and who are baffled, if not disgusted, by the apparently cozy relationship between Moscow and Tel Aviv. I understand these people, at least to some degree, but I also see what they plainly fail to realize: Russia is still much weaker than the AngloZionist Empire and because of that Russia will always prefer a bad peace to a good war. Besides, it is not like there was a long line of countries waiting to defend Russia when her interests were affected. Does anybody know which countries, besides Russia, have recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia? Answer: Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru! Yep, not even Kazakhstan or Syria… Isn’t friendship and partnership a two-way street?

The truth is that Russia does not owe anything to anybody. But even more importantly, Russia does simply not have the means to engage in a planetary zero-sum game against the AngloZionist Empire. Since Vladimir Putin came to power he achieved a quasi-miracle: he made Russia into a semi-sovereign state. Yes, I wrote semi-sovereign because while Russia is militarily safe she remains economically subservient to the AngloZionist Empire. Compared to the Empire, her economy is tiny and her armed forces only capable of defending the Russian homeland. And yet, just as the tiny Russian contingent in Khmeimim achieved results way superior to anything which could have been expected from it, Russia is still the only power on the planet who dares to openly say “niet” to the AngloZionist Hegemon and but to even openly challenge and even ridicule its legitimacy and so-called ‘values’.

The war between the Empire and Russia will be a long one, and its outcome will remain uncertain for many years but, as the Russian saying goes, “Russia does not start wars, she ends them”. The Papacy fought against Russia for 1000 years. The Crusaders for roughly a century. The Swedish Empire for 21 years. Napoleon for just a few months. Queen Victoria, Napoleon III and Abdülmecid I (what I call the “Ecumenical Coalition against Russia) for about 3 years. The Kaiser Wilhelm II also for 3 years. The Trotskysts for a decade. Hitler for 4 years. The Jewish mobsters (aka “oligarchs”) for 9 years. And yes, they all eventually were defeated, even after a temporary victory, but each time Russia paid a huge price in blood and suffering. This time around, the Russian leaders have chosen a different strategy, they try as hard as possible not to give the West a pretext for a full-scale military confrontation. So far, this strategy has been successful and besides a two terrorist attacks (in Egypt and Syria) and a two-year long recession (apparently ending soon), Russia did not have pay the horrendous price countries at war with the West typically have had to pay. It would be delusional to expect the Russians to change course at this time, especially since time is now clearly on the Russian side. Just look at all the problems all the enemies of Russia have to which she does not have to contribute at all: the US and EU are both in a deep and potentially devastating political crisis, the US is sitting on an economic time-bomb while the EU is quite literally imploding. The Ukraine has turned into a textbook example of a failed state and is likely to break apart, while Turkey is undergoing the worst crisis since its foundation. And each passing day just makes things worse and worse for the Empire. This reminds me of the monologue of Captain Willard in the movie “Apocalypse Now”: “I’m here a week now… waiting for a mission… getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter”. Replace Charlie with Ivan and the jungle with the taiga, and you get a pretty good picture of the dynamic taking place: every days the walls of the Empire are moving in a little tighter while the AngloZionists are completely clueless as to what to do to stop this.

Conclusion

In international affairs, as in many other areas, it is better to never say never. So I will only say that to see the Russian armed forces going into an offensive operation remains exceedingly unlikely. Nor will Russia defend even an important partner at “any cost”. The primarily mission and military posture of the Russian armed forces will remain fundamentally defensive and while Russia might use her armed forces in support of a political goal or to help an ally, she will do that with extreme caution not to allow that engagement to escalate into a regional war or, even less so, a direct war against the Empire.

Unlike the West where a possible war with Russia is almost never discussed (and, when it is, it is done in an absolutely ridiculous manner), the prospects of war with the West are discussed in the Russian media on an almost daily basis, including on the main, state-funded, TV stations. As for the Russian armed forces, they are engaged in huge rearmament and force-training program which, so far, has been roughly 50% completed. These are all clear signs that Russia is preparing, very intensively, for war. Should the Neocon “crazies in the basement” trigger a war they will find Russia ready, militarily and psychologically, to fight and to win, no matter what the costs. But Russia will never again volunteer for the role of global anti-US agent or engage her armed forces if there is a viable alternative to such an engagement. So no, most definitely not, the Russians are not coming.

The Saker

Anonymous on August 28, 2016 · at 2:59 am EST/EDT

Hi Alex, I am not sure that I can help, but perhaps I can clarify things a bit – but beware, I am a partisan of my own opinions and the grades of comprehension I accomplished – again in my opinion.

I think it will be very difficult to find a „history of relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodoxy in the last ten centuries, written not by a partisan for one side or the other“. You know the word that „history is always written by the victors“ – but only in closed cases, while in ongoing struggles both sides write their version (through the pens of partisans of theirs), and an „objective“ history is difficult to obtain if archives are lost or burnt or closed for centuries.

In this case there is the catholic church‘s (CC) version of their relations with the rest of the world, probably in fine latin, and although I never touched it something tells me, the CC‘s wish to destroy every decent movement, including the quite decent Orthodox church, will not be mentioned *by that name* in it. There are of course church historians outside the church, and one of them is our Karlheinz Deschner (1924-2014) with tons of books, including 10 tomes of „Christianity‘s Criminal History“ (Rowohlt) of whom wiki/EN says:

„(…) Karlheinz Deschner published novels, literary criticism, essays, aphorisms, and history critical of religion and the Church. Over the years he gave more than 2,000 public lectures. (…) Outside of Germany, his works remained largely unpublished until the eighties, when translated versions (where necessary) were published in Spain, Switzerland, Italy and Poland. ((…)) Deschner worked on his ambitious Criminal History of Christianity from 1970 to 2013. He had no official research grants, honoraria, stipends, emoluments or official positions, but had been financially supported by a few friends and readers. (…) In 1989 German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel published a recension of the first two volumes. The article was written by Horst Herrmann, a former professor of Church law at Münster University who left the Catholic Church in 1981. During the summer semester of 1987 Deschner taught a course entitled Criminal History of Christianity at the University of Münster. Karlheinz Deschner was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Historical Sciences.“

We all know by now „the“ church did criminal things, but less well known is what „the“ church is, what the crimes were, and why they were committed. „The“ church that speaks of itself as „the“ church“ is always the CC, and it says „the“ as if it was the only or first or genuine one (making their point by repeating it endlessly, which was necessary ) because it was and is neither the only (christian) one, nor the first nor the „genuine“ church who only teaches the real truth while the others never do. That is what the CC wants every one to believe, and to prove its point the simplest way seemed to be to silence the others, and the simplest way to silence them was to kill (burn, behead etc. etc.) all adherents of all the others – e.g. the Cathars, adherents of the „Bosnian“(!) church. The next necessary step was to completely kill off all of the competition – in the other churches,and in their protectors, e.g. states. These events appear in history books but not necessarily as „the CC fighting Russia“.

My own impression is that in religious teachings there is a rift between those teachings that let the faithful decide themselves what exactly they believe, and the others who describe their content as the only admitted one and punish those with other opinions („heretics“). Such trials appear very early in Christianity, and the faulty ones were first blemished, later expulsed, then killed. My impression (as a result of what I read, not a ready quotation) is that the spiteful attention of the law-and-order-christians turned from the faulty individuals to the faulty organisations (the competition of the CC) and then to their protectors, the „bad“ regimes (and this is where we are still today). The CC was always a hierarchic org, thus antidemocratic by definition, and every other version of Christianity which allowed others to live on and even to teach their different views (which make them „democratic” in our vocabulary) were „anathema“ (reason for a Christian fatwa). And these two possibilities of worshipping God, and Jesus, and The Holy Virgin etc. were more or less distributed then like today: fascists (antidemocrats willing to win by every possible means including murder) in the West, and „democrats“ (in practical life, not necessarily in constitutional forms) in the East. And thus „The West“ started to combat „The East“, and not the other way round: the one who wants to subdue the others must attack endlessly until he is successful, those who do not want to kill the others will not attack but have to defend themselves – this is the theme of this article of TheSaker‘s.

And thus „The“ Church of the West, the CC, started to attack everything East, and continued until today.

In the beginning of Christianity „the“ Roman empire still existed, then (395 AD) it was factually or officially divided into The Western Roman empire (with Rome as capital) and The Eastern Roman empire with Carigrad (the Emperor‘s city) or Constantinopolis or Byzantium or Instanbul as capital, one agressing everybody else and asking everybody‘s protection in doing so – the others protecting the innocent and themselves against these attackers. Emperor Constantine was born in Nis in Srbija, and the Eastern Empire became greco-slavic in contrast to the romano-germanic empire in the West. It seems that the local traditions of those who became Christians played an important role in shaping their variant of Christianity. Thus a paper like Trece Oko (Beograd) had several articles about how pre-Christian concepts diffused into the balcanic version of non-CC, „orthodox“ Christianity, and these were in everything the contrary of marching SS troups. The „free“ or „democratic“ traditions of the balcanic slavs were thus the foundation of their offshot in the West, the Cathars (Bougres, Bogumils, Albigenses), which the CC for that reason destroyed completely in 1200+. In the 4th c. AD „the Church-in-the-East“ still had territories in the western parts of the empire, e.g. in Italy. At one point the Vatican stole these territories and pretended that emperor Constantine had granted them as a gift – this known fraud of „Constantine‘s donation“ is until today the territorial basis of the existence of the „state“ of the Vatican.

In short, the CC was formed to destroy the original Christian church founded and developed in Palestine, Egypt and Greece including today‘s Turkey. Byzantium could be defeated by the Turcs after the Western, CC commanded Crusaders had destroyed it in 1204, and this – in the Nazi‘s ever present data fetishist mannerism of „tat“ in revenge for „tit“ in delays that are divisable by 25 – 150 years after 1054 when the head of the Orthodox church had finally rejected the popes insolent „order“ to acknowledge him as supreme commander of all Orthodox Christians, too. The end for Byzanz came another nearly 200 years later, in 1453, as if the Turcs worked already then on a Western timescale, in collaboration with the West. In the Balcans the Catholic West freed those territories from the Turcs that were Catholic, and did nothing to help tho Orthodox territories occupied by Turkey – the preferred to let the Turcs pressure them to become Muslims – a pattern repeated in the Nazi war against Yugoslavia 1990-1999.

Now to Russia: Russia „accepted the Cross“ in 988, the Russian Orthodox Church became a part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and separated from it in 1548, the independence of the Moscow Patriarchate was acknowledged by a synod in Constantinople in 1590. „Russia“ itself, ruled by a „czar“ came into existence only in 1547 by the coronation of Ivan IV Groznyj as „Czar of All Russia“. Which means that according to the letters there cannot be a 1,000 years war against Russia, since a land called „Russia“ exists only for 469 years by now.
However, „Russians“ exist much longer – when you accept the Russian pronunciation of „Rossija“ (Rassiya) and look at places and tribes/peoples with -ras- you find among others the first Serbs (in Rashka, near the Adriatic), but also the Etruscans in Etruria may have been „Et-Russkies“, and a systematic destruction of their historical documents may be the reason why this people, more developed than the early Romans, enigmatically „left no written documents“. Without documents „we know nothing about the Etrussian language“, but there are a number of private prints of outlawed scientists (I remember the name of an East German prof Strnad) who collected bits and pieces, enough to write whole books and print them at their own cost. I bought one or two of them but did not yet find the time to study them – living in Germany it is easily possible that our neonazi police already stole them behind my back like several other books (among them, strange to say, an unopened copy of the most main stream book on the „Protocols of the… (Jesuits of Sitten/Switzerland)“ by the Israeli judge Hadassa ben-Itto).

There are theories that the Vatican is built upon an ancient temple to Satan, there are accusations of the CC to be satanist, and there are claims that even the foundation of Rome by Aeneas, who fled from the Trojan war in 1200 b.c., was somehow satanist. Such claims are surely made to explain why a certain strain of history, the one the CC belongs to, is sytematically wicked, and then feats like building Rome upon Etrussky foundations but denying their existence, or founding „the“ Church‘s state of the Vatican on a territory which belonged to their opponents and the lie that it was a gift from the emperor, or the non-official alliance between papacy and Turc occupants in the Balcans for deleting that Christianity which was not CC, form a consistent picture. There are Serb and Russian claims that the whole history of their nations as written („invented“) by Western historians was falsified („Berlin-Vienna school of history“), and this with the same goal of denigrating the feats of their competition and denying anything coming from it. Thus in the „Russian History“ (Wiki/DE) we can read that in the 13th c. „the Rus“ (the territory inhabited by Russians) was much weakened by attacks by the Tatars, and this weakness was exploited by Swedes, attacking mainly the Republic of Novgorod from the Baltic coast in the North. Musing about the reasons for this attack, the wiki author says that one explanation is that the Swedes wanted to get hold of the mouth of the Neva for controlling the commerce, but another explanation says that „behind the Swedes stood the pope who wanted to push also from the North for the union of the church (the capitulation of Orthodoxy), and who after the defeat of the Swedes repeated the attack through the Teutonic (in German: „German“) Order“. Both attacks were defeated by Aleksandr Nevskij (in 1240 and 1242, so data fetishist A. Hitler I. tried again 700 years later). I don‘t know about the Swedes, but the religious, CC, Teutonic Order probably acted upon the orders of the pope.

Now I invite you to build *your* synthesis of various sources re The Eternal War of the CC against „Russia“ or all the Slavs that are not members of the CC. I hope I made clear why a non partisan description of the case is unlikely to exist or to appear – at least when you postulate that what a Russian writes must be pro-Russian etc. And nobody in the West cares for the problematic ones in the East, or only to teach them what to do (to obey us) and not to explain them their problems in a non-partisan way (which automatically would be seen in the West as treason, thus as dangerous, which you are ready to endure only as a partisan). Deschner was definitely an anti-CC partisan, but I don‘t think he had any interest or insight into the Slavs‘ problems with the CC – although his being a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences may mean he had.

There are tons of books on „Why and how they always were against us“ in Serbia, but written always as a miserably or not paid work of love, of a partisan.

If you want a real „thousand years“, you may want to have a closer look at the coronation of Boleslaw Chrobry in 1000 AD in Gniezno by „German“ aka „Roman“ emperor Otto III. (996-1002, born 980 (!)) who happened to appear there as a „pilgrim“. The CC nazis were always data fetishists, and visibly grabbed the opportunity of such a „round date“ to begin something special. The pope at that time was Silvester II (999-1003), a person with much scientific knowledge, in mathematics and astronomy among other things. Otto III. was the son of emperor Otto II, became „King of Germany” at age 6, and was raised by his mother Teophanu, a byzantine princess, to become an „ungerman“ Kaiser. A monc Gerbert taught this child, the future emperor Otto III, the sciences, and Otto made his teacher Gerbert pope Silvester II. In a letter Gerbert decribed how to build a globe – so geopolitics were certainly within his interests and abilities. He is also said to have had a pact with the devil, which adds to the number of already mentioned devil appearances around the CC. This early mackinderist then sent his pupil to the utmost East of the CC world, who there bribed a local prince into happy cooperation by making him a king, and his territory a kingdom which ever since acted as a thorn in Russias side. My sympathies today and in history are with the Russians as well as with the Poles, so that sometimes I have difficulties explaining things to myself. The case of Boleslaw‘s coronation looks to me – now, the first time I think about it – like a well planned strategic action, which accomplished exactly what we see today: a CC fortress to the West of „the Russkies“ – exactly what NATO is doing today, e.g. with their Warsaw meeting some weeks ago.

Later, one of the military „religious“ orders thrown out of Palestine by the Arabs (in 1211) stranded first in Transsylvania to defend it against the Kipchaks. These held at that time the Kipchak khanat of the Mongol empire, and its territory, sez wiki, is that of today‘s Russia+UA+Kazakhstan – thus these CC soldiers fought against Russia, and this for Hungary. Hungary threw them out in 1225, when this order tried to redefine themselves not as part of the army of Hungary, but of the pope – again the old CC game of gaining power and territories by playing around with definitions, pretensions and so forth. Since they could not have made themselves papal knights without the pope knowing and wanting it, it was again the pope trying to control the Eastern border of the Easternmost CC land in the region, and the army was, like today, one of attack, for attacking Russian territory: The Teutonic Order. In 1230 this order was upgraded with the Golden Bull and sent to the Baltic Coast, where they were to „christianize“ the Old Prussians. Contrary to the knowledge at this site the Baltic People are not just idiots fallen from an asteroid, but the „indians“ of that region, who lived before the others came and made them their targets. Thus „Prussia“ is (lika Dakota) the territory where once such people (Prussians, Dakota indians) lived. In Russia and Poland the Baltic people were allowed to live, in Teutonic Order land they were not and their name is all that remained of them: a typical CC and German genocide. Wiki: „Starting from there, the Order created the independent Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, adding continuously the conquered Prussians’ territory, and subsequently conquered Livonia. (…) The Order theoretically lost its main purpose in Europe with the Christianization of Lithuania. However, it initiated numerous campaigns against its Christian neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic (after assimilating the Livonian Order)“. Yes, Aleksandr Newskij showed them where their place was, but papacy had tried to „take out“ future Russia just as easily as the Old Prussians.

In a word: the Eternal war of the CC against the East and the values of the East is a fact, but you have to extract it from various sources. I never read what I told you here about the coronation of Boleslaw Chrobry – in fact I tried to find a Polish biography of him, but never found one, in spite of his being celebrated in every Polish town with a street or a monument.

And the 1000 years war is a fact, too, when you assume what I proposed, that Boleslaw‘s coronation as King or Poland was one step in an early Barbarossa plan drawn at the Vaticani HQ with the aim of annihilating any competition or opposition completely.

Cheers
bp

124 Comments

Larchmonter445 on August 25, 2016 · at 5:37 am EST/EDT

Concur.

Russian cannot be defeated if attacked.
Russia won’t attack anywhere.
The sophisticated special forces and skills of other units with devastating weapons and munitions gives the Russians advantages.
The hubris and dependency of the US and NATO on technology reduces surprise and adaptation.

Russia’s doctrine of first use tactical nukes also presents an insurmountable challenge.

I don’t think a real war of one week or so is realistic. The way the US fights is missiles and bombers.
Such an attack would garner a salvo of nukes if any of the US air force weapons got through.
There just is no way that a conflict between the US and Russia would not go strategic within hours.
It would have to begin with the air assault of cruise missiles and bombers. That alone would signal the US intended to destroy Russia as a nation. The response would be total.

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- mrr25 on August 25, 2016 · at 6:05 pm EST/EDT
  
  I asked Saker the following and would appreciate your views also. Is it your view that Syria will be partitioned? Do you believe that Russia will not use force to prevent creation of an independent state in eastern Syria? Thank you.
  
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  - Larchmonter445 on August 25, 2016 · at 8:08 pm EST/EDT
    
    The final task will be to make Syria whole, in some federated sense, most likely. There are lots of ways to formulate a new Syria without partition, which would destroy it. Russia is in it to hold it together. But the reality on the ground indicates it will have power-sharing of some form. Federal systems exist as viable means for solving the kind of issues that led to the civil war which was generated into total war by the US.
    
    We are a long way from knowing how the Kurds are dealt with, how Turkey behaves, how the US extracts itself, how thoroughly all rebels are destroyed or disarmed.
    
    We do know that the Wolfowitz plan was to cut up Iraq and Syria into pieces. That will still be on the front burner if Clinton wins. Trump wants to get out.
    
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    - mrr52 on August 26, 2016 · at 2:49 am EST/EDT
      
      Some thoughts for you. The Wolfowitz plan, in my view, is merely warmed over Manifest Destiny applied to the entire planet. It’s been the plan since the first Thanksgiving here, in one form or another, and continues to be rebranded to suit the target du jour. It’s an abomination that keeps on giving. I expect to be disappointed once again in January when whoever wins repeats the same drivel about an indispensible nation. Suggest preparing yourself for same. If you hear it, run for appropriate shelter. Bottom line: the forces underwriting the ‘war on Syria’ (phrased accurately, I believe) do not extract peacefully. They leave when defeated, an historically rare occurrence. I see no economic collapse assisting their extraction. We ordinary citizens may collapse, but they don’t care. I see them rapidly, confidently, consolidating gains from the Baltics to Ukraine to eastern Syria, and more. While Russia bombs near Aleppo, they burrow in Hasakah. This war is about square meters, everywhere. If they get one square meter of eastern Syria, they win. A $5B investment bought them 90% of Ukraine, and Minsk guaranteed them Donbass, another 5%. So the question I try to answer each day is how far will Russia (and China) go to hold Syria together when it becomes crystal clear that peaceful extraction is simply illusory? Saker appears to answer this question, and the message is not good for the future of the biosphere. Russia will keep backing up until absolutely desperate (which of course is too late), and then…the six legged critters take over.
      
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    - mrr52 on August 26, 2016 · at 2:46 pm EST/EDT
      
      See this published today: “http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/08/26/voice-of-america-pentagon-revolts-against-cooperation-with-russia-on-syria/”
      
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      - ioan on August 26, 2016 · at 8:36 pm EST/EDT
        
        You pointed the finger at exactly what I fear
        
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  - Sdirst on August 28, 2016 · at 1:26 am EST/EDT
    
    It is important to understand that Syria is just a piece of land needed to get Saudi oil and Qatari gas up to the EU for the purpose of reducing Russian oil and gas sales to the EU. The ONLY persistent US goal in Syria is to end up with a channel through it sufficient to carry this oil & gas toward its northwesterly EU market. If calling this transit channel a partition is helpful, please do. But understand, nobody kills for a partition, they kill to get their oil & gas to a huge EU market and similtaineously to deny that same market to Russia.
    
    But wait, there’s more… Russia’s REAL sin in US Federal Reserve eyes is that it is using the proceeds from its oil & gas sales to the EU to buy physical GOLD. Buying gold is the most fundamental attack possible on the US $ and therefore upon the US government’s ability to pay its bills including bills for its military.
    
    Russia’s more sarcastic critics have called it “little more than a gasoline station.” Russia however correctly perceives that the USA is primarily a Federal Reserve PRINT SHOP fully dependent upon a weakening fiat currency called USD $. Absent general global acceptance of the fiat USD $, the American military overseas cannot be paid for and will need to be withdrawn.
    
    Buying gold is a Russian strategy for shrinking the US military and thereby protecting Russia’s borders… all potentially without war. Protecting Syria and preventing a transport channel through it towards the EU energy market is simply Russia’s way of blocking Saudi oil and Qatari natural gas sales to the EU so that Russia can continue to buy physical gold and weaken the paper dollars behind the US military forces now arrayed on Russia’s borders.
    
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    - Nils on August 28, 2016 · at 4:59 pm EST/EDT
      
      Unless of course they can pivot to a new currency shared under a global consortium, i.e. NWO, that encompasses so many important economies that undermining it is much harder and causes self-infliction on their own economies.
      
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- Veritas on August 25, 2016 · at 6:37 pm EST/EDT
  
  Dear The Saker,
  
  Thank you again for your insightful piece. I am glad you keep re-iterating the facts. Sadly, it needs to be done – too many armchair warriors or naysayers around.
  
  Russia must do what is right for her. Full stop.
  
  @Larch445
  
  Thank you too for your response.
  
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- Arminius on August 26, 2016 · at 1:07 am EST/EDT
  
  I wholeheartedly agree with you that in the undesirable scenario of an all out war between Russia and US/NATO, the evens will unfold dramatically fast. I keep telling my wife that if anything major between this two military powers were to happen, it would be over before I get home from work if I happen to be at work when it all starts.
  The most likely point of attack for the Americans – knowing their modus operandi with massive cruise missiles and stealth bombers taking out the ground to air missile sites, airfields and command post- would be eastern Mediterranean sea. There is not way on earth NATO would be so foolish to attack from the Baltic or Black See as any military assets in that area would be taken out by the Russians in less than 10-15 minutes.
  However, it is conceivable that they might attempt to take out the air defense systems in Crimea and southern Russia by launching a massive cruise missile and stealth bomber attack from eastern Mediterranean and from their base in Diego Gracia which is beyond the reach of Caliber missiles which equip the Russian frigates in the Caspian Sea,
  This Russian military concern explains the increased presence of the Black See fleet in the Mediterranean. The Russian are keeping a close eye on any developments in that area. Any augmentations of forces in that area, might signal nefarious intentions on part of NATO/USA.
  I would argue that the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean and the air-force base in Syria play the role of the canary in the coal mine. Before launching any massive attack on Russia proper, USA would first have to take out these military assets; otherwise, their first salvo of Tomahawks would likely be the last for the staging ships and submarines; once such an devious attempt is undertaken by NATO forces, the Russian would know that the final countdown has come; how will they re-act is anyone ones guess. For sure not with prayers, flowers and peace marches as the emasculated masses of the West nowadays cowardly react to terror attacks. Pathetic on their part!! The Russians have not lost their spine and brutish nature. Not yet. I am sure they will prevail.
  
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  - Anonymous on August 26, 2016 · at 8:25 am EST/EDT
    
    Modern warfare in general will unfold very, very fast. The modern weapons strike quickly and at great ranges. Everything from an infantry platoon to an air-craft carrier has far more striking power than anything seen. Lots of ships will be sunk, lots of planes will be destroyed, and lots of ground positions can be obliterated very, very quickly after hostilities start.
    
    Of course, if it turns nuclear, then we all find out how very destructive humans have become, just before we leave it all to the cockroaches.
    
    The interesting part is what happens when the missile stockpiles that create much of this intense striking power start to run low. For instance, I think the shock and awe attack on Irag in 03 put a serious dent in US stockpiles at the time. And I know that Israel had to call for more ammo just a couple of weeks into the ’73 war.
    
    So, expect everyone to fire off a lot of killer missiles in the first few days or a week. Then, like in WW1, they’ll learn they don’t have the stockpiles for that and will have to conserve or make-do without.
    
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RussG on August 25, 2016 · at 6:13 am EST/EDT

I have followed your site for some time now (and yes, I have contributed). This article was the most informative on the Russian military doctrine that I have read, and I know that you are an expert.

So thanks for the article. It has helped me understand why the Russians have not done certain things and yet have been so successful in others. Being so defensive minded, the Russians would be ones I would not like to confront. I’ll bet the Russians have several defensive military surprises that the world does not yet know about. I hope the Imperialists realize the same thing.

All we need now is for the realization by the US citizens that all of this military hegemony is being paid for by paper dollars that will shackle many future generations in choking debt.

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- JTF on August 25, 2016 · at 8:28 am EST/EDT
  
  I appologise for jumping on a seemingly out of context snippet – but, I disagree that the future US generations will be choked by the mouning debt – long before that prosepct, the US (joined by most of the Est) will initiate a war against the debt holders, so to prevent payment – that has been the main reason to start wars historically, whereby the politics and the MSM portraited whoo-haaa plays only a musical background role, is not it, ?
  
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  - Siotu on August 25, 2016 · at 9:47 am EST/EDT
    
    Quoting, “the US (joined by most of the Est) will initiate a war against the debt holders”.
    
    Right. So a nuke strike against the superannuation fund…..
    
    Siotu
    
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    - Expat Swede on August 27, 2016 · at 4:00 pm EST/EDT
      
      Is “superannuation fund” what they call the People’s Republic of China these days? Interesting.
      
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  - Zula on August 29, 2016 · at 6:47 pm EST/EDT
    
    I have read a while back, both Russia and China fund US for their own impediment. This doesn’t make sense that why these nations keep doing it while US is against them.
    
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Lee Francis on August 25, 2016 · at 7:14 am EST/EDT

It is stated that:

”The Russians know that they are neither invulnerable nor invincible, the Americans don’t.”

Is this really true? The more sober American commentators have a different view. See below

The National Interest – March 2015 – Steven Pifer

Defending the United States against a major Russian or Chinese ballistic missile attack is currently not feasible. A reliable and affordable defence that could protect America against a Russian ICBM and SLBM force that could launch some 1,500 ballistic missile warheads simply does not exist. While the Chinese force is much smaller, numbering several dozen ICBMs, it probably includes countermeasures that would seriously complicate disruption by missile defence systems.
For the foreseeable future, offense wins the offense-defence relationship. Offensive ballistic missile technology is far more mature than that of missile defence, and cost considerations favour the offense. Adding fourteen more GMD interceptors by 2017 will require the Pentagon to spend about $1 billion. The Russians and Chinese can each add fourteen more warheads to their strategic offensive forces at considerably less cost. One reason that the Russians are building a replacement for their heavy SS-18 ICBM is to have a missile that can carry ten-fifteen warheads as a means of overwhelming a future American missile defence.

It is also important to remember that the other side may not sit passively as the U.S. military develops missile defences. Other nuclear powers may choose to build up their strategic offensive forces in response, increasing the number of nuclear weapons targeted at the United States (China, in particular, comes to mind). Indeed, it was concern that the ABM systems of the 1960s would spark an uncontrollable strategic offensive arms race that led to negotiation of the 1972 ABM Treaty.

None of this is to say that a future technological breakthrough might not produce a change in the offense-defence equation. Some new technology could be developed that would make defence against ballistic missiles far more lethal, cost-effective and attractive, tilting the equation to favour defence instead of offense. But that breakthrough does not appear to be on the horizon, at least not for the next fifteen-twenty years. And a key lesson of the past thirty-two years is that technology in the missile defence area often does not deliver on its potential—at least not as rapidly, or as inexpensively, as originally thought.”

The crazies in the basement may not have the last word and the realists might decide the issue. It is possible.

Steven Pifer directs the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative.

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Goran on August 25, 2016 · at 7:50 am EST/EDT

A good article a joy to read but I would like to point a few other weaknesses of Russia (BRICS and Allies) economically.
If the USA doesn’t fail economically in a couple of years then their sponsored projects of :

-electric cars(drastically reduces demand for oil)
-renewable energy(reduces demand for all fossil fuels)
– reusable space flight (already pushing russia out of commercial satellite launches and space mining that will compete with Russian mining)

have a good chance of materialising.

Add to that fracking for oil and natural gas and the USA has a 1-2-3… Punch (baseball terminology) against: Russia, Iran, Venezuela (the USA establishment doesn’t like Saudi Arabia much either…).

As for China they plan to “scale them down” with industry 4.0 fully automated everything, robots for everything… this Will be much cheaper than Chinese sweat shop work…(example Tesla gigafactory, the largest building in the world that will be fully automated and double world battery production)

I don’t know how Russia and China plan to counter this… They should adapt fast or they will be beaten economically…

So I would disagree with the author a bit, don’t count out the establishment just yet…

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- Uncle Bob 1 on August 25, 2016 · at 8:14 am EST/EDT
  
  I don’t know what you mean by “a couple of years”. Those things won’t be widespread enough for any real impact until the end of this century or even the next. By then they will be seen Worldwide,in Russia and China as well as the US. Russia doesn’t live only on gas and oil (though that has at least a century more to prosper with). They have,and are advancing even more other industries. And China by 2030 is projected to reach almost double the US economy. Those countries have nothing to fear from tech advances. They themselves are also leaders in those same tech advances.
  
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- Siotu on August 25, 2016 · at 9:08 am EST/EDT
  
  “Yer dreemin’!” _ Quote from “The Castle”
  
  -electric cars(drastically reduces demand for oil)
  
  Not really. You still have to mine and win minerals and metals, in particular the rare earths. That takes energy to do and it isn’t electrical energy that is primarily used in those tasks.
  
  Next, you have to generate a lot more electricity than ever before and the USA predominantly uses hydrocarbons for that purpose. It don’t appear they are going to expand their nuclear generating capacity anywhere near as much as they’d need to were they serious about electrics replacing hydrocarbons.
  
  You’d need to redevelop the entire electricity distribution network to handle all the extra energy that it would be expected to distribute. All this would take time and is seriously costly.
  
  Right now the USA is a debtor nation. Assuming electric car technology is feasible and economic (which it isn’t really, economic that is), where is all the money going to come from to build up all the infrastructure required? Borrow and print even more? Good luck with that idea. And how is the average Joe, em-burdened with debt, maxed out credit cards and mortgage, how is he going to be able to afford the new technology electric cars and operate them (assuming they were practical- which they are not really, not for most people anyway)? Borrow even more? Surely not.
  
  -renewable energy(reduces demand for all fossil fuels)
  
  Very costly to develop, build and operate. Unreliable. Require storage technologies that don’t exist in mature, reliable form. Require huge infrastructure to distribute. Ruinous to the grid. Complex and risky. Completely uneconomic. Tiny capability.
  
  – reusable space flight (already pushing russia out of commercial satellite launches and space mining that will compete with Russian mining)
  
  Russian outfits can invest and compete should they desire. Likely they’ll do it better. Anyway, has even one reusable space-flight occurred wherein a commercial satellite was placed in orbit that would otherwise have gone to a Russian launch? I don’t recall so. Do you?
  
  Look, people have been dreaming about all sorts of these technologies for as long as I’ve been alive. And, for as long as I’ve been alive, these same people have been woefully ignorant of the shortcomings of what they dream for, the costs to develop their dreamy wishes and the actual engineering issues involved. The reality is that the state of the world economy will pull the curtain down on many of these scams in the not too distant future. Those that survive may have something, but if they do what their promoters claim, if they can do what they say the’ll soon be able to do, then there is not reason to try to gain control of Russian mineral resources in the first instance is there? The fact that there are interests around the world that continue to pursue Russian mineral resources for themselves that tells us that the fact of the matter is that electrics, renewables and reusable space flight is all marginal at best, pointless at worst.
  
  Siotu
  
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  - Goran on August 25, 2016 · at 11:05 am EST/EDT
    
    Chill we’re on the same Russophile team :)
    
    “-electric cars(drastically reduces demand for oil)Not really. You still have to mine and win minerals and metals, in particular the rare earths. That takes energy to do and it isn’t electrical energy that is primarily used in those tasks.”
    
    Correct, but you mine them only once and the battery lasts for up to 10 years, and then you recycle a substantial part of minerals.
    
    “Next, you have to generate a lot more electricity than ever before and the USA predominantly uses hydrocarbons for that purpose. It don’t appear they are going to expand their nuclear generating capacity anywhere near as much as they’d need to were they serious about electrics replacing hydrocarbons.”
    
    “Very costly to develop, build and operate. Unreliable. Require storage technologies that don’t exist in mature, reliable form. Require huge infrastructure to distribute. Ruinous to the grid. Complex and risky. Completely uneconomic. Tiny capability.”
    
    The reduction in fossil fules does not need to be 100% right away, solar cells on every home… that collect energy the entire day… main component is silicone, one of the most abundant minerals in the earth’s crust. So you don’t need to invest that much in the electric network because the energy is produced locally. Just look at the ever increasing proportion of wind power generation in UK or Denmark.
    
    The Netherlands plans to introduce a ban in 10 years on all new gasoline, diesel cars… so you will be stuck with electric.
    
    USA has the largest stash of gold of any country, maybe it’s not at fort knox but I don’t believe that the establishment squandered it all foolishly, they have an A, B, C… plan. If fiat currency fails, they will be very well prepared…
    
    “– reusable space flight (already pushing russia out of commercial satellite launches and space mining that will compete with Russian mining)
    
    Russian outfits can invest and compete should they desire. Likely they’ll do it better. Anyway, has even one reusable space-flight occurred wherein a commercial satellite was placed in orbit that would otherwise have gone to a Russian launch? I don’t recall so. Do you?”
    
    Spacex is going to launch one (reused first stage rocket) this year. I sure hope that Russia catches up! On youtube there is an interview of Elon Musk in wich he explained how the USA which absolutely dominated the commercial satellite launches lost almost the entire market share in just a couple of years, after the breakup of the Soviet Union. He said that the Russians learned to be capitalist real fast… Because Russians can produce a rocket a lot cheaper than most of USA based companies for now. So the situation can reverse pretty quickly just like it did before, in the past the US companies failed to adapt to new Russian competiton.
    
    “that electrics, renewables and reusable space flight is all marginal at best, pointless at worst”
    
    We will see what will materialise… Us Army started investing heavily in drones, now Russia is doing the same and that probably seemed like far fetched 20 years ago.. The same pattern can be said aobut stealth fighters/bombers… and a lot of other technologies…
    
    My opinion is that partialy reusable cargo transport will definitely be commercially viable… probably too dangerous for human flights, because every now and then 10th or 20th flight – the reused rocket will explode because of tremendous stress on the materials during the es cape from the earths gravity pulll.
    
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    - Zidar on August 26, 2016 · at 3:46 am EST/EDT
      
      Goran, I am able to see North America from inside. It is rotten. School system is the most rotten part, guarantees ignorancence on a short and long term. Brakthrougs in energy use happened 2-3 times in history of mankind – first time when we learned how to produce fire, next time when we learned how to use steam, and when tesla figured out electrical energy. None of that was orederd or sponsored . USA and Canada are sliding into a Dark Age of Ignorance, fast and steady.
      
      Do not even mention Hraward and likes of it. If lawyers and accountants could produce something usefull, then yes, otherwise forget it. True, theer are brilliant scientists at USA universities, but they produce to few capable engineers. The critical mass of ignorance has been reached. It may not be visible to the untrained eye, because everything has inertia. They are where your and my native country was in early eighties. If you are old enough to remeber, you will understand. And it took about 20 years to partially destroy everything, and yet we stand, divided though, but still standing, in spiet of 5th column goivernments. So the process may take more for USA and Canada, slowly, but we are getting there. I work in education business and my son is at harward, beleive me, I know it first hand, from inside out.
      
      Sioutu is absolutely right. gren and alternative enrgy is a delusion. I can imagine what would happen to 120V grid when a milion electrical cars plugs in over night. In former Yugoslavia, just before the war, we ha serious energy restrictions. Charlatans were coming out with incredible ideas. One of them, and engineer, 50 years old, made it to national TV peddling his solution – a mini electrical turbine that hooks to a kitchen tap, you open the tap and get enough electricity to power few bulbs. Beautiful idea, only nobody told him that energy must be used to generate pressure his machine would use. Also, city water storage tanks would go dry in minutes. Then, capacity for producing enough water for domestic consumption is pretty much fixed. And so on and on.One can never explain believers that gold cannot be obtained from lead. Even Sir Isac Newton believed such crap. He was avid alchemist. Obviously, physics was his field, eh?
      
      Plug-in cars? Wind generated lectrical energy? Sacuvaj Boze i da se prekstim levom rukom :-) (Serbian proverb, innocent but untraslateable to English) We could organize few “runs for cure” events, raise funds for research in green energy, as well. It would make us feel better, for sure.
      
      :-)
      
      Zidar
      
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  - Hamis on August 25, 2016 · at 4:09 pm EST/EDT
    
    Elon Musk may think he is the future, but those folks at Chevron, ExxonMobil, Eni and Conoco Phillips are good at making people disappear mysteriously and their company’s stocks crash uncotrollably.
    
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- Anonymous on August 25, 2016 · at 10:54 am EST/EDT
  
  In this analysis it sounds like the US achieves Juche and becomes a hermit kingdom like the DPRK. This is also a good outcome because it avoids war.
  
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- Student on August 26, 2016 · at 5:24 am EST/EDT
  
  Uncle Bob and Siotu are more gentle in their responses than is necessary. Reference to ‘Chinese sweat shops’ in 2016 is more than enough to discredit your views. Pepe Escobar has some work published regarding China that is easy to read. Jeff J Brown has a book for $9.99 on Amazon, ‘China Rising’. You should read that. Perhaps it will cure you of a ridiculous Euro/Western/American centric outlook on technology and economic developments.
  
  America imports its science and technology personnel from China and India. Once the fiat dollar is decoupled and the Petro-dollar disappears, the purchasing power of the US will decrease and those of the rest of the world will increase. People with technical backgrounds will stay in their native countries.
  
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  - Bruce Marshall on August 29, 2016 · at 1:29 am EST/EDT
    
    And then some intelligent people might wake up in the United States of America, to do what was
    done in response to the Great Depression and properly implemented at the outset of World War II, and is still U.S. Law, should a President recognize the situation and the power so granted: To implement PARITY for Agriculture.
    
    Parity will immediately return to the American Economy billions of dollars of what was lost Earned Income, starting by ensuring that the producers of what is essential wealth are paid at a level in balance with the manufacturing and service sectors of the economy. The reason we lost our domestic manufacturing base is because we did not generate enough earned income in the economy to support it. When we dropped Parity in 1953, in order to go towards a debt based dictatorship of international proportions.
    
    It was the crisis of World War II that forced FDR to actually do what the original language as regards the Agricultural Adjustment Act, to compensate Agriculture at Parity. For surprise surprise
    FDR favored the market hoax of supply and demand, thus destroying wealth in order to bring up
    prices, rather than to realize that life comes before numbers, and that production to continue, one
    must ensure that the producers are compensated in accordance with value exchange with manufacturing and service. U-Boats sinking food laden convoys in the Atlantic brought back the point to that which George Peek and Carl H. Wilken and the Raw Materials National Council
    emphasized.
    
    Artificial Capital must take a back seat to the capitalization of raw materials wealth production, such that Earned Income capital is gathered in exchange for such wealth, and where by the entire National Income is dependent upon earnings starting at the Agricultural level of raw material production,that is the most efficient means of distributing wealth, and fostering free enterprise: When the value of our currency finds itself to be of a value the best balances the earning powers
    of agriculture to manufacturing and service.
    
    The Parity levels used to set the standard for the 1942 Steagall Amendment that set the markets to
    90% of Parity, was the period 1910-14 when the markets naturally had found itself in a balance and worked.
    
    What does not work is wheat at 35% of Parity, where the present Subsidy system merely rewards
    agribusiness to get bigger, while the family farm……well now we know why America is really sick.
    
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- Ivan on August 28, 2016 · at 9:37 pm EST/EDT
  
  I don’t see why this should be a problem. If all conflicts were to be solved like this then everybody would be better off, except for the warmongers.
  
  The point of Russias opposition to the US is not to destroy the US but to retain sovereignty in order for Russians to maintain freedom which is a prerequisite to prosperity. (which is done by hard work and innovation)
  
  If the US works harder and is more innovative then they deserve by all means to be richer and more prosperous.
  
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- Zula on August 29, 2016 · at 7:07 pm EST/EDT
  
  The idea of machines, robots give me shivers. This might be reality and the world can’t do anything about. It is said that human labor will no
  longer be needed that is probably why they are favoring depopulation of 1/3 of the world population. In future, humanity will be irrelevant. That is why the unity of world population including those of the West headed by China and Russia is crucial .
  
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Paul on August 25, 2016 · at 8:20 am EST/EDT

Its becoming clear that despite a year of russian airpower the syrian gov cannot beat the rebels unfortunaly. Look at a map of allepo rebel areas are about 1-2 km accross 4-5 high. Not exactly a large area is it.

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- Marshal Rokossovsky on August 25, 2016 · at 9:34 am EST/EDT
  
  Syrians are fragmented, chickens, but above all badly trained. No Air Force can help them.Russian keep them alive.
  
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Fabien on August 25, 2016 · at 8:26 am EST/EDT

Excellent anylisis, txs a lot!
The dynamics may change though if the US keep provoking China.
we’ll see if any formal military alliance will take shape in sept after joint navi execices in teh south china sea and if the US keeps provoking or only posturing…

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- Uncle Bob 1 on August 25, 2016 · at 8:47 am EST/EDT
  
  I’m worried about the US’s constant provoking of North Korea. The North Koreans are developing (on their own,astounding actually) nuclear weapons for protection against the US. It would have been fairly simple to have stopped that several years ago if China or Russia had taken North Korea under their protection. And announced that an attack on them would be viewed as an attack on them.But they didn’t,they instead foolishly acquiesced in the US ‘s UN vote penalizing North Korea for trying to protect themselves from the US.Just how smart does Russia and China need to be to realize that siding with the US on things like that only gets them tricked. Did Libya not “sink in” enough.Now the US is trying to get the stooge UN involved more against North Korea. And what will Russia and China do,if history is a guide they’ll side with their most hated enemies. Its totally beyond belief. Its just that type of foolishness that makes other countries think twice before siding with them.At the rate they are going there they’ll end up with US troops on Russia’s Eastern and China’s North Eastern borders. Setting up missile bases there.If that happens they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
  
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  - Arminius on August 26, 2016 · at 12:46 am EST/EDT
    
    Not sure how the Russian would react to a regime collapse in North Korea, but I am positive the Chinese would rush to the DMZ faster than the Maglev train. I very much doubt they would allow US troops in south Korea to approach their border; they would probably withdraw from NK and agree to peaceful unification once the Americans troops in SK would be withdrawn.Not before/ The Russians would likely mightily support the Chinese in this endeavor for the same reasons, even if their border with NK is just 24km long or so.
    
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    - Emily on August 27, 2016 · at 2:43 pm EST/EDT
      
      Let’s just look at a few facts about North Korea and we needn’t dwell on the US bombing of Korea in the 1950s which killed a third of their population.
      
      In the nineties, DPRK had no nuclear weapons.
      Instead what had evolved between the 2 Koreas was a policy called “the Sunshine policy” which was leading to a reduction in tensions and improvement of ties between the two parts of Korea.
      
      When Bush junior came to power he immediately told the puppet regime in S. Korea that this détente between N and S Korea must end.
      A massive propaganda campaign against N. Korea was drummed up in the west with any kind of slanderous remark about the country and it’s leader acceptable in the western Zionist press.
      
      Readers will be aware of the Project for the new American century in which the Zionist neo-con US regime declared it’s intention to rule the world by force and it’s production of a list of countries labelled “the axis of evil” to be destroyed – amongst which was the DPRK.
      In 2003 the results of this policy became evident for all to see with the destruction of Iraq ad the mass slaughter of it’s people.
      
      The DPRK saw this and was absolutely terrified that the same fate awaited it which it would have.
      
      That was when they acquired nuclear weapons – to protect themselves. The Russian and Chinese governments justify their possession of nuclear weapons as a defensive measure and the government of the DPRK have the same obligations to their people – to keep them alive – as any other country.
      
      When the DPRK “shows off” it’s nuclear weapons they are simply making it clear to the aggressors what the North Korean people are capable of should the country come under attack.
      
      N. Korea suffers endless belligerence from the US regime and it’s puppet regime in Seoul. This goes on almost non stop, hardly reported and even then couched in terms of DPRK “aggression”
      
      Try and understand, people, that N. Korea is absolutely terrified by all this and is merely waving the only stick it has to hopefully ward off the destruction of it’s country.
      
      Russia and China should definitely have offered the DPRK a protective umbrella and it was very telling to see both China and Russia rush to obey the US demand to impose crippling and massive sanctions on this small country. I cannot understand the sanity of their agreeing to this. Do Russia and China not see that the US wants the DPRK destroyed all the better to threaten both their countries?
      
      What was particularly nauseating was the fact that even when Russia / China do what they’re told, such moves are interpreted by the west as “weakness” and they up the anti and demand even more.
      Haven’t we seen enough examples of this already eg NATO’s relentless eastern march in Europe and events in the S. China sea.
      The government of the DPRK is doing exactly the right thing by it’s people and we can be sure if they hadn’t acquired nuclear weapons the country today would look like Libya or Iraq. And if China won’t even stand up for it’s socialist neighbour at the UN they certainly wouldn’t rush to defend it in the event of a US/ S Korean invasion.
      
      China in particular should reflect on what will happen if the DPRK is starved to death, and falls to the west thus enabling the US to put – if it wants – nuclear missiles right on China’s border.
      I personally hope that there are voices within China pointing all this out and encouraging the government of China to generate a policy of unity amongst all the countries under threat of US aggression.
      
      If they don’t unite against their enemy they will surely die separately.
      
      NATO understands the importance of having a big gang.
      Sadly as Russia’s – solitary – fight (notwithstanding Iran, Syria and Hezbollah) against the US terrorists shows there seems to be a complete lack of unity of purpose amongst the “victim” countries of the US global hegemonic plan.
      
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Riha on August 25, 2016 · at 8:32 am EST/EDT

http://ekurd.net/us-kurdish-not-cross-euphrates-2016-08-25

http://ekurd.net/kurd-not-retreat-euphrates-2016-08-25

After the US (Biden in Turkey) said the Kurds must not cross the Euphrates, the spokesman of the YPG, Redur Xelil (patriotic Syrian Kurd) said that they will not retreat.

So the YPG (dont confuse them with the US backed SDF or the political PYD) is publicly telling the US and Turkey to screw themselves.

Quite a while ago the PYD (probably with US influence) told the YPG to go directly to Raqqa. This man Redur Xelil became angry and told the PYD leaders to not instruct them where to go. It seems that most of the YPG prefer Russia as partner and having some kind of agreement with Assad/Syria.

Also the PKK leader Ocalan was against US imperialism and opposed to Israel.
Guess what happened to him? Caught by CIA/Mossad and given to Turkey.

Its a pity to see so many anti-Kurdish people nowadays. Accusing them of US puppets or accusing them to create a little Israel.

Remember why this Kurdish resistance and rebellion exists. After WW1 they were buried alive. No country, no nation. But worst of all, those country’s tried to assimilate them. Some more so than the other. Turkey denied them everything, they even went as far to deny the Kurdish language in public. I heard stories that people had to whisper to each other in the cities so they couldn’t be heard. Of course over the years it fills and heats them with extreme frustration and anger.

But they must never side with the ” West””. Instead side with Russia and come to an understanding with Syria so they can live proud and in dignity.

Here is a clip of the great president of Libya (murdered by NATO thugs) talking about the Kurds.

https://youtu.be/Bk7TNgNi-yo

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WizOz on August 25, 2016 · at 9:30 am EST/EDT

The greatest threat that Russia poses to the West is to totally decouple from it. I wonder whether the ‘West’ can absorb the shock of realising that Russia simply does not need them. That she can survive without their ‘values’.

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- Outlaw Historian on August 25, 2016 · at 8:46 pm EST/EDT
  
  “The greatest threat that Russia poses to the West is to totally decouple from it. I wonder whether the ‘West’ can absorb the shock of realising that Russia simply does not need them.”
  
  When you look into Russia and China’s plans for Eurasian integration, they are doing exactly that–decoupling–because they no longer need the “West.” They are going to prove Mackinder’s thesis that Eurasia is indeed the Heartland where those residing within need no more than that–Autarky on a massive scale.
  
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  - WizOz on August 26, 2016 · at 2:17 am EST/EDT
    
    They actually never needed the West. It was the West (England in the first place) which desperately tried to break into the Heartland ‘fortress’ because they needed it.
    
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    - A.T. on August 26, 2016 · at 9:13 am EST/EDT
      
      Actually no, the A-Zs never needed the world heartland of Eurasia because they had the North American Heartland (NA Great Plains).
      
      Technically they still don’t; its just that the present mode of dominance, financialization, would be greatly convenienced by tapping Eurasia to ease the pressure of its entangling webs of debt. However, that would quickly play out; Russia’s big but not that big.
      
      The ‘threat’ presented by Eurasia was that MacKinder’s world heartland was so much bigger then North American Heartland, it couldn’t help but be the natural world empire. Unable to see beyond themselves, the A-Z fear is that a united Eurasia would be just as capricious as themselves because they can’t envision any other kind of power.
      
      The neoconned West needs to believe the Russians/Chinese are coming to justify their self-aggrandizing aggression. So while its true the Russian’s aren’t coming and can’t come; it won’t stop the A-Zs from wanting and needing to believe they are so they can justify wanting to ‘get’ the Russians.
      
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Anonymous on August 25, 2016 · at 10:33 am EST/EDT

@”The Russians know that they are neither invulnerable nor invincible, the Americans don’t. This is why the latter are far more likely to trigger and conflict than the former.”

The US empire believes that “victory is possible” and would sacrifice 20 million US citizens in a nuclear war against Russia to achieve “a postwar world order compatible with Western values.” That is why the US empire builds that ABM system.

“Victory is Possible
by Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne
…
If American nuclear power is to support U.S. foreign policy objectives, the United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally.
…
Surely no one can be comfortable with the claim that a strategy that would kill millions of Soviet citizens and would invite a strategic response that could kill tens of millions of U.S. citizens would be politically and morally acceptable. However, it is worth recalling the six guidelines for the use of force provided by the “just war” doctrine of the Catholic Church: Force can be used in a just cause; with a right intent; with a reasonable chance of success; in order that, if successful, its use offers a better future than would have been the case had it not been employed; to a degree proportional to the goals sought, or to the evil combated; and with the determination to sparre noncombatants, when there is a reasonable chance of doing so.
…
Small, preplanned strikes can only be of use if the United States enjoys strategic superiority — the ability to wage a nuclear war at any level of violence with a reasonable prospect of defeating the Soviet Union and of recovering sufficiently to insure a satisfactory postwar world order.
…
The United States should plan to defeat the Soviet Union and to do so at a cost that would not prohibit U.S. recovery. Washington should identify war aims that in the last resort would contemplate the destruction of Soviet political authority and the emergence of a postwar world order compatible with Western values.
…
Strategists cannot offer painless conflicts or guarantee that their preferred posture and doctrine promise a greatly superior deterrence posture to current American schemes. But, they can claim that an intelligent U.S. offensive strategy, wedded to homeland defenses, should reduce U.S. casualties to approximately 20 million, which should render U.S. strategic threats more credible. If the United States developed the targeting plans and procured the weapons necessary to hold the Soviet political, bureaurcratic, and military leadership at risk, that should serve as the functional equivalent in Soviet perspective of the assured-destruction effect of the late 1960s.”
http://home.earthlink.net/~platter/articles/80-summer-payne.html

“If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal — if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes, because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and decoys left.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20060511183633/http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85204/keir-a-lieber-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-u-s-nuclear-primacy.html?mode=print

Ted Postol on US “conventional” war planning with nuclear weapons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pXPgK9Pld8&t=91m25s

“SIOP-3”
http://web.archive.org/web/20070401081613/http://www.nd.edu/~klieber/Foreign%20Affairs%20article%20documents/2005_SIOP-3.pdf

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- A.T. on August 26, 2016 · at 9:18 am EST/EDT
  
  True enough; the Western peons are to believe themselves invulnerable; the elitists know well better and have bunkers to hide in.
  
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Petri Krohn on August 25, 2016 · at 11:14 am EST/EDT

PUTIN ORDERS RUSSIAN FORCES TO FULL READINESS

Unannounced inspections in all European military districts. This is the first time all troops have been put on alert at the same time.

Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation – August 25, 2016 11:14 am (Moscow)

Russian Defence Minister General of the Army Sergei #Shoigu has declared the start of an unannounced combat readiness inspection of the Central (#CMD), Southern (#SMD) and Western MD (#WMD) troops.

Upon the decision of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces, the troops of the Southern MD, separate formations and units of the Western and Central Military Districts, the Northern Fleet, the Aerospace Forces, the Airborne Troops are put on full combat readiness.

Intensive preparations for the #Caucasus-2016 strategic exercise are held in the Southern MD.

The Russian Defence Minister ordered to check within 24 hours the capability of troops to perform missions under full combat readiness within the inspection; to deploy formations and units at the assigned ranges and training areas, to prepare for training task performance; to estimate the readiness of the Southern MD to deploy self-sufficient groupings in order to localize crisis situations; to check troop buildup capabilities of Central and Western MDs in the south-west strategic direction; to carry out full procedure of preparation of the Armed Forces for protection of national interests in case of security treat.

Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov is ordered to inform foreign military attachés of the unannounced inspection.

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- Anonymous on August 27, 2016 · at 1:58 am EST/EDT
  
  Petri Heil! Here you fished a big one! Does your source, facebook, function as a foreign military information source now? Did Zukerberg write this personally, or if not, who did? Or is it your text, and you simply published it first on fb? Then, who are your sources and how credible are they?
  
  Funny thing is I read something similar on 16-8-25 at http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index2100.htm („Sirens Wail As Russia Awakens To Full Combat Alert, NATO Alliance Begins To Shatter“), an information service that usually quotes „a SBR report circulating in the Kremlin today“, but this time quoted a „statement of the (Russian) Ministry of Defense (MoD)“. Perhaps the fb account you quoted is one of this MoD? Does „Krohn“ mean that you are a crony to the Russian MoD?
  
  In other words: how credible/important are such informations which appear now daily on wdim where the pace used to be much more leisurely until recently. The next report, #2101, even began with the headline „Top Russian Ministries Flee To Bunkers As ‚Hillary Clinton War‘ Warned May Be Unstoppable“.
  
  Are such texts and such sources – which sound alarming, especially when compared with TheSaker‘s calm tone and sober collecting and commenting facts – in any way serious or pure alarmism? Especially in connection with the Hitler Revival Team (A.Hitler+Maiziere) führing Germany into, uh, the next days, which first requested us to become preppers (which in the brazen ways of German officials would until now have been dement conspiration theorists) and hoard water and foodstuff for a few rough days ahead, and then informed us that Angela Hitler will be meeting every (important, uh, like Latvia) european member state‘s führer during the days leading to The Glorious 77th Jubilee of A. Hitler‘s father, A. Hitler, starting his famous War For Bringing Freedom to the East – as if she wants to quickly set up a Waffen-SS-Revival (our german Légion étrangère), so that she might complete her father‘s work which he had to leave unfinished in early 1945… is this what is up next?
  
  In the past I pointed to the (german and other) nazis‘ habit (‚data fetishism‘) to start their big crimes in 25-years intervals (on the basis of 1×14), but we then also already had Angela Hitler‘s Smolensk mass murder and it‘s follow up with a prominent place for the number „14“ (for more see David Lane: 14 words… – in that context „14“ means „we are nazis and proud of it“) without necessarily adding 25s and 50s and 100s on top of it… and then we had the famous Lagarde Prophecy, again about 7s and 7s, which together are 14s, yes, but also a nice prophecy about, say, something happing at a 77th jubilee.
  
  In other words: is the world renazification mafia doing IT now, in four (4) days?
  
  bp
  
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  - S113 on August 27, 2016 · at 6:49 pm EST/EDT
    
    bimboplumpe, what are we to think, however, when Putin awards BMWs to each of Russia’s medal winners from the Olympics? Is the German elite, a house diveded? I always read analysis that the German elites are stubbornly Russophobic, yet Putin chooses BMW for this honor.
    
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    - Anonymous on August 27, 2016 · at 9:47 pm EST/EDT
      
      Hello S113,
      
      these are several questions in one, and I am not sure whether I am able to answer just one of them. My own question/s was/were a. whether anybody here thinks that articles at wdim are of any value (except for Petri Krohn who quotes them if only masqueraded as fb content, but who seems to post the first time here, so that we don‘t know well WhatDoesItMean if he throws such an excerpt at us), and b. whether anybody else here thinks that the sudden prepper ukaz of Maiziere and the sudden reiselust of naziqueen Angela and the wdim/fb/Krohn texts about a sudden state of high alert in Russia and the Hitler/Hitler/Lagarde date of 16-9-16 may be somehow connected.
      
      Your questions were about the German side of the Olympics/medals/BMW affair, but the non-posed question about the Russian side, aka Putin‘s probable motives is much easier: yes Putin is generally thought thought to love cars and lovely cars more then boring cars. So if he wants to show how content he is and he chooses the gift of a car as an adequate sign of his state of mind, then it is obvious that he chooses BMWs, and not Toyotas or Vauxhalls, and not even Morgans, alas. Around 1980 I once was driven in a Volga M24 with a straight six by BMW under the hood, an experimental car without any realistic perspective of ever being produced… so this is one of the secret dreams of Russian males, including Russian engineers and Russian presidents. In such things Russians are not nationalistic at all and in general they don‘t indulge in the poorness of tit-for-tat accountancy as Germans do. „If Germans are Russophobic, Russians cannot buy German Cars“ makes no sense in Russian reality. The other way round it is done and preached everyday: „Since the Russkies did this, we must do that to them…“ etc. etc.
      
      „German elites“ – please define *your* understanding of „german elites“ first. *My* understanding is that since 1933 they are creatures pushed into action by the english scum services (english shpitzels, e.g. A.H., Herbert Wehner, Markus Wolf, R. Weizsäcker), with Angela Hitler declared „european queen“ by the mouthpieces of the english elite, aka Liese Hunover, the german queen of England. We gave them a royal family, and they thanked us by giving us one in return: the Rotschild-Schickelgruber („Hitler“) family. The title was bestowed upon Angela at her first bid of WWIII (MH370 sham), and now she seems to have finally assumed her royal duties: to concoct a multinational military mob that will be able to damage Russia, a never ending wet dream of the English – no connection to german angst, weltanschauung or befindlichkeit. As to Germany, yes it was divided (not existing) until Bismarck, it was divided under Bismarck (pro and contra Bismarck), and it was divided after Bismarck (democrats vs royalists/imperialists, democrats vs. nazis, angloamerican mouthpieces vs soviet mouthpieces, then neodemocrats vs. neonazis, and now in Berlin we are divided e.g. into normal humans vs. Schwaben, a tribe from the south that unnerves us terribly). There was a discussion of „russophobia“ a while ago somewhere, probably here, and I pointed out that while those suffering from a „phobia“ can do nothing against their suffering while living in „fear of …“, this is not the case with so called „russophobes“, who make a decent and pleasant living by spitting out hate and disdain on command of their superiors. Those who could make a better living by selling goods to the Russkies obviously have another opinion but no newspapers and TV-stations. The East Germans definitely do not suffer from R-„phobia“, while many Westgermans, who never met Russians, may. The nazis did not „fear“ or „hate“ Russians just like English slavetraders did not fear or hate Negroes (or Irish people)- they simply dealt with them their way.
      
      There is another unposed question in your questions: why do certain Russians including Putin always court Germans and Germany even if brushed off the rudest possible way for the umpteenth time? I think in the beginning it must have been a predilection, like for BMW engines, but a car owner who would throw out the native motor for a XYZ-engine, and who would witness again and again that this type of engine ruins his cars and his travels as a matter of course, and who would insist again and again that the blown engin be replaced by one of the same make and type … I have no idea… except a tale from biology I found apropos: There is a mighty, terrible predator that attacks everything else, no matter how big or strong, so that every other living thing is in awe of them. This terrible fighter is called „tarantula“. There is, however, one exception to a tarantula‘s wrath: this is when a certain type of wasp arrives – then the tarantula becomes peaceful, accepts to be inoculated by the wasp without resisting, and becomes the home of a new generation of wasps who will eat up the tarantula from within. What is that? God‘s will, into which the tarantulas and Putins of this world consent?
      
      Cheers,
      bp
      
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      - S113 on August 28, 2016 · at 1:14 am EST/EDT
        
        Thanks for the reply, bimboplumpe, I appreciate the clarification (and always appreciate your perspective).
        
        I hope someone more informed than me does reply to your initial questions. From my mostly uneducated point of view, I do think the sudden state of high alert and that date are connected. The reason I brought up the BMWs is because I thought it might indicate that some part of the German ruling class is not on board with this recent Merkel/Maiziere initiative. Which we could presume is connected to the high alert and the significant date? I wondered if this is in part yet another round of Merkel vs. Seehofer, somehow? That’s assuming BMW is part of Seehofer’s camp, and would therefore be highly influential (I assume) to his decisions.
        
        I always hear discussion of how the German elites will never ever agree to partner with Russia. Mark Sleboda on RT’s Crosstalk frequently voices this opinion. And I find myself wondering to whom specifically he is referring. Surely, “German elites” constitutes some individuals with names!
        
        I am guilty of the German vice of accountability, it seems. When I imagine myself in Putin’s place, I can’t imagine giving that kind of recognition to members of a political class, who are trying to destroy the country I lead. I may just be too female to appreciate the raw allure of a BMW, also. Although I was impressed when I saw this photo of the Olympian BMW:
        
        https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dssn7mKxecU/V8A9_uL-GhI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/1pdgUYBYnUg-US1ASSycKcIP9J1jR0FxwCLcB/s1600/13658491_176907672732646_1150292074_n.jpg
        
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- Anonymous on August 30, 2016 · at 2:55 pm EST/EDT
  
  Hello S113,
  
  thanks for the nice words, the recognition is mutual.
  
  Yes, this is a big, bad, great and, as it seems (a SUV?), very macho BMW… Perhaps Ms. Kudrjavceva would have preferred one of the more feline models, but this is the gift of a macho… who, like everybody else thinks that everybody else is, feels, reacts like himself, must like what he likes.
  
  Your harmless questions have a tendency to lead to long answers, so I waited a bit, hoping they might dry up a bit before being written down. But in waiting, additional topics come up, here your honest and harmless „When I imagine myself in Putin’s place, I can’t imagine …“ Aw yes, that seems to be the source of at least half of the world‘s problems: everyone thinks and feels in a certain way about himself and others, and this thinking is mostly shared by those around him – the family, clan, nation (your „German vice of accountability”)- whereas others traditionally think otherwise. Then, when two such groups, uh, meet… or clash… or try to sort out after a clash what has just happened and why… or when they try to predict what will happen before the next clash…
  
  Well, „the Russians are magnanimous“, they like to think that of themselves and act accordingly if possible, and even if it is not possible they are within their limits (the famous Russian gastfreundschaft or hospitality even of (very) poor persons). Acting accordingly to such a self-picture secures the position within the group („he really is one of us“) and hopefully will be a success formula in the outside world, too: „They must see now that I am a nice guy, they can trust me and will want to cooperate with me“ – which is received as „This guy thinks he can fool us, but we never trust ourselves, thus so much less him, we will cleverly smile at his offer, and go on searching for a way to bring him down“. Thus, a „self-picture“ is an inner affair of persons, but strives for the outside for such practical reasons: „they will, they must love me, if I do what we really are best at“. Unfortunately the contrary seems to be the norm: „Russians are braggers, they don‘t know what to do with their riches“, „Germans are stingy“ etc. There is some truth in such stereotypes and much misunderstanding, so they become for themselves alone major reasons of disaster. Russian magnanimity forgave the Germans Hitler on 1945-5-9 already („The Hitlers come and go, but the German people remains“), and Putin‘s magnanimity forgave Erdogan the shooting of the plane the moment Erdogan said the magic word „I apologize…“ – So, those who think of themselves as sly and mean and ruthless, and are proud of it, and are keen to prove it to themselves and everybody else, think, say and act like that: „Putin thinks he is clever, but he is not, and that‘s how we will get him…“ – and this, using the opposition‘s self-picture for destroying them, seems to be the core of the newest development in Syria as discussed in Mercouris’ new article „Erdogan Calls Putin …“
  
  Your question about „the ruling class of Germany“ seems to be strangely connected to this issue of self-picture. What is a „ruling class“? Well, they should have influence/power, probably money and money-producing engins (land, factories) but also fun the others cannot have (glamour), they are by definition at the top of „the“ power pyramid of the country (but only if there is only one in that country), and they know and are known to be the elite, the people who count, they should have „charisma“, too, and with that even the sympathies (support) of those co-nationals who otherwise have nothing in common with them. Also ,they should have a continuity and thus a history, the country‘s history should ideally (and wickedly) be „simply the history of its ruling class”. Applying all this to Germany I see but a void – no, we do not have a ruling class, and no elite, only a machine of ruling, which, the picture implies it, cannot be „*the* ruling machine“, but an instrument of power for everyone who uses it. One reason is the eternal „partitioning“ of Germany which was already mentioned (several pyramids, not one)- France has „le tout Paris“, but we in Berlin only laugh at the „schickeria“ that is popular in Munich and only there; Hamburg has no schickeria, but rich people who do not steer Germany but their businesses and became rich by it, on that local basis of an ideal place for a port, and the well developed structure there.
  
  No, Hamburg is not Germany, whatever they have there is discreet, thus not generally known as elite, and thus necessarily not the „well known elite of the whole country“. Munich is not Germany, Berlin is not either. The ruling class in Berlin, when Berlin was great, were the Prussian junkers who staffed the emperor‘s army, but without the army were only landowners in the East, none really rich, and some on the brink of disaster, nothing which made everybody else in Germany dream about being in their place. This splendor ended in 1918, and today the nobility in Germany (*not* in the East, but the poor oppressed ones in the South and South-West, finally freed from the Prussian upstarts) may posses castels and be rich, but has no influence, no followers except in the readership of some specialized yellow press title.
  
  One thing I read about the Nazis seemed convincing: they were attractive also for promising and indeed building up a new elite – like in the early middle age everyone loving combat and knew to use a sword or now an MP was welcome and had the chance to get to the top and, if he survived, to be the founder of a 1000 years dynasty. This elite officially disappeared on 1945-5-8 – they had never existed since all Germans had always been sceptical or critical of Hitler… – But not only the dream, the reality continues: the very rich people of FRG (West Germany) were those who made their money thanks to Hitler, his war and his robbing all occupied territories. So, they are still rich and multiplied what they had at the end of the war.
  
  One example is BMW (who you asked about) whose owner is the Quandt family, who became very rich through Hitler but now seem to prefer to be just rich, very secretive, with no contact with politics, not a driving force for renazification. Yes, the Porsche-Piech family had problems in 1945, but by now they are very rich, but not politically powerful – to the contrary: VW is ever now and then attacked as if they were ruled by Putin (like just now: everybody cheated on emissions, but VW is to pay for it), and I looked into it in 1996+, when, within the Lopez false flag affair (a row with GM about alleged industrial espionage), the whole German press wanted to bring down VW‘s boss, Piech, for being a dangerous lunatic.. I did write down what I found then already, on paper sent by snail mail to people I thought should be interested, mostly without answer of any effects. However, in early 1997, when Der Spiegel once again attacked Piech with a new turn, I looked into the new allegations, drew my conclusions, and wrote them down, along the lines of your thinking: „the new attacks are connected to Bavaria, Bavaria is BND land, who do the Bavarians want to protect if not their Bavarian car maker, BMW? BMW must be a BND shop, and they are behind the attacks on VW… – nobody else in Germany but the BND can order the whole German press to scream “Hüh!“ today and “Hott!“ already the next day.“ A few days after that Piech flew to the USA and had a meeting with the GM boss, where they displayed their great friendship (the whole deadly attack upon VW ended in common laughter), later VW acquired a new management with people from BMW, so that VW and BMW were also friends… It seemed I had done something right by pronouncing something wrong I believed to have found out. Later in 1997 some other things came together and made clear that the assassin within the German car industry, who stabbed at their competition from behind using the Elite/Power apparatus built up during the nazi time and still in this function today – the renazification mafia of the BND – was („of course“) nobody else than Hitler‘s personally preferred make, Daimler-Benz. Yes, Mercedes had already killed off Borgward with the same tricks in 1960 (and builds the C-class in Borgward‘s old factory in Bremen), they cheated the Americans with their fake Chrysler deal (and the Mercedes boss openly ridiculed those Americans who had thought that he could have wanted anything else than ripping them off by cheating them), and they must have felt terribly (and justly) threatened by Piech‘s proud announcements that he planned to turn the big but humble beetlemaker into a powerhouse of car technology with most advanced luxury cars as an obvious part of the spectrum. In the end of 1997 someone in the know approached me in Berlin and told me that the Mercedes building at Salzufer had been the illegal BND rezidentura in West Berlin all through the Cold War – this finally explained to me why, when once I had the lock of my old Mercedes Diesel changed at Mercedes Salzufer because several times it had been opened in my absence, the same happened again the same night with the new lock which only Mercedes knew about. Twice an old Mercedes of mine was killed while parking: the legendary immortal engine, good for a million kilometers, refused to start and could never be brought to life again – yes, I had written a nasty poem about a part of the pre-/after war nazi elite of Germany, the Weizsäckers, and this was immediately punished this way and then again exactly 10 years later, as a typically nazi data fetishist reminder and power demonstration. And yes, Deutsche Bank chief Herrhausen, who had wanted to help the Soviet Union find stability again in 1989 with a DB credit was killed in his heavy Mercedes by a bomb that was successful, because armoured Mercedesses do have a weak, permeable spot for such purposes. And the data fetishist follow-up for that, to prove that no silly lone „terrorists“ executed the West‘s antisoviet agenda on Herrhausen? Came exactly 20 years later, in the Moscow Metro – yes, our ruling nazi apparatus BND rules in Russia, too! You didn‘t know?
  
  I hope I demonstrated that „the rulers will“ is always executed very precisely in Germany – only nobody knows who the ruler is. Definitely no „ruling class“. By the way, not only very rich people survived as nazi elite, also dynasties outside business and money-making, now in their third generation, e.g. the Weizsäckers and Maizieres. But again, they are used, they do not command. Seehofer has a bit of the charisma of Franz Jozef Strauß (FJS) – who, although being papist, conservative and a cold warrior, was esteemed in the CCCP. In fact, the Russians often point to their common points with the Bavarians, which may be one more reason for Putin‘s choosing BMWs as gifts and not Mercedesses. In a filthy brain-dead country like Germany where everyone is silent about everything important in awe of the inevitable consequences of saying the wrong thing to the wrong listener, the Bavarians stand out to speaking their mind – which is received as funny Bavarian folklore in the rest of the country. But Strauß never became chancellor and was chased out of his beloved Defense ministry after a short time, and Seehofer must know very well that people who are intelligent, honest, outspoken and in politics have a very bad prognosis: Strauß was stopped, Barschel was murdered by the MoSSad (vee germans never investigate anything delicate, but in that oriental people with another self-image, where boasting is „good“, israeli MoSSad members revealed „it was us!“), Möllemann was ridiculed „by the whole german press“ like Piech and around the same time, then murdered „by bad luck“ or „“by his own fault“ or both – we never investigate because we always „already know“. Lafontaine was stabbed once and warned by Der Spiegel how easily this might happen again, and in the end silenced with a brand-new warden/nurse with a smashing exterior… Seehofer may be in the same league, yes, but he may want to live yet a little longer, see grand-childs grow up…
  
  I hoped to succeed in keeping it short this time but failed again. Have a nice day!
  
  bp
  
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  - S113 on August 30, 2016 · at 6:03 pm EST/EDT
    
    I just can’t get enough of all these details! Valuable, valuable stuff!!
    
    Because I like to (over) talk (yet another vice in addition to the German accounting), I thought I’d reply with some initial responses.
    
    That BMW photo is from Fort-Russ. There was a second article which again included a photo of the BMWs, from above this time (drone, I presume?) of the truck unloading 50+ of these cars in front of the Kremlin (or behind it, I guess). What struck me is the visual impression of it: “I am an iconic German-manufactured car!”, it calls out to me.
    
    If we presume that Putin today bears some resemblance to the KGB man of his younger years, perhaps he has a more cunning or strategic purpose in gifting this to the innocent, virtuous Olympic medal winners. Perhaps behind the innocent, virtuous presidential pleasantries, he is anticipating a particular response from other German car-makers when they view these photos. Embarrassment? Could this provoke a visceral response that would lead to the start of a chain reaction, ending in equal access to the Russian market for all German manufacturers?
    
    I’d expect other Bavarian manufacturers in other industries are receiving similar treatment — and will receive similar high visibility ” reveals” of their products in a Russian setting. Right now, as a North American, I am viewing Bavarians as a European Hezbollah! :-) Who, in all of Europe, dares to stand up to Merkel? Who will successfully defy her commands? Well, there seems to be this one, lone figure, standing tall in Bavaria. They call him Seehofer.
    
    I jest – but in the seemingly ultra repressive/submissive environment of today’s Europe, this really stands out to me. I, too, worry about personal risks to him. Perhaps if he keeps his focus within the boundaries of Bavaria, his non-cooperation will be permissable.
    
    I am also reminded of that car accident in Rio, during the Olympics, which killed one of the German coaches. Was this car a BMW, I wonder? Maybe it was just an accident, but given the larger events, it is worth investigating more closely. A German sports scientist was also in the car, apparently, and was unharmed. I would have thought the scientist would be a more desirable target than the coach. It is shocking to me, the death rate among prominent Germans. (of course, nothing in comparison to those living in the Middle East or North Africa)
    
    Let’s talk German accounting for a minute. I was completely surprised by the cavalier response of the German political establishment to the Deutsche Bank financial problems. It stuck with me for many days… And I finally remembered an interview that Paul Craig Roberts gave, in which he mentioned that the US owed Germany a lot of gold. In brief, the US was storing Germany’s gold and Germany asked for it back. Turns out this wasn’t agreed to by the Americans, and neither was a request by the Germans to actually see their gold. Finally, an arrangement was made where the US would deliver a small quantity of gold to Germany every year, over a long number of years, and Germany would get its gold back. I wonder if German accounting types in the government and at Deutsche Bank have worked out a different repayment schedule. Pure speculation on my part, that one.
    
    Has a chain reaction been triggered which will see Germany shifting towards Eurasia much sooner than expected? I guess, time will reveal all.
    
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    - S113 on September 03, 2016 · at 12:46 am EST/EDT
      
      (can’t let this go) During the Olympics, Aug. 15, the dsy that German coach, Stefan Henze, died from injuries received in a taxi car accident (his taxi smashed into a concrete barrier), a French journalist was also in a serious taxi crash (car smashed into her taxi, her side of the vehicle) but came away without serious injury. In case someone out there is investigating.
      
      http://www.aipsmedia.com/2016/08/15/19339/security-rio-2016-france-tv-journalists
      
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Delmar Bolshie on August 25, 2016 · at 12:52 pm EST/EDT

When just after WW2 the US ambassador wrote “the long telegram” he described the USSR as destined to collapse due to its “internal contradictions”. The “correct” strategy he urged was called “containment”. Kennan’s advice was well-reasoned, but he ought to have urged cooperation. Why? Because without the USSR there will be — Russia. Now look at where this has brought us all!

Of course Kennan was neither inclined to or allowed by circumstances to urge anything but “containment”.

It seems logical to ask where the modern Russian strategy, which Saker describes, may take us. The strategy is working, RF is winning, largely many might say, due to the internal contradictions of the US. Also because the servile satraps don’t like being what they are – a sort of export version of “internal contradiction”, eh? Then there are the internal factions vying for loot – these are “contradictions” – and economic collapse is seriously forecast…

So, assuming that America fails, as Empires do, should then the RF simply forget about America? That would be foolish, and dangerous.

This strongly implies that, in the fullness of time, the present grand strategy of the RF is going to change from “containment” to “assistance”. Russian Strategy will, if the present strategy works, have to “interfere” in the US. And the US, whatever it looks like in defeat and collapse, is going to have to ask for this help. This does not necessarily mean the projection of power by direct military force – it may simply mean soft-power help in medical and educational matters, feeding the destitute – the usual aftermaths of violence..

I ask, could Russia feel safe, or be safe, with a defeated giant like the US left to fester and to perhaps cause great harm? At the very least the US would have to keep responsible stewardship of dangerous materials – and they could not be permitted to lose control of these infernal potentials. The US might need help in such critical matters.

History’s funny stuff…

And Russia has done this before. She saved the Union during the US Civil War – just for starters.

So, while I see Saker’s essay as accurate and true, it is a snapshot still-frame of this moment in History. The History however, is changing fast. I think that it’s very probable that over the next decade, the Russian Strategy with respect to the far abroad and particularly the US, is liable to be forced by circumstance to change to adapt to us weakness rather than US strength.

Let us hope that our History continues – nuclear disaster lurks hungry in the abyss.

Looking a bit deeper – the political evolution of Russia may also change the Russian domestic agenda in a way that will affect foreign policy. I myself in ignorance entertain vague notions that the large Communist influence in Russia (and elsewhere) may rise to again influence the use of power…

Pax, Brothers

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David of Rascia on August 25, 2016 · at 1:47 pm EST/EDT

An article that is great and informative, as well as level-headed, about Russia’s military (and other) capabilities. However, two passages attracted my attention concerning Russia’s “imperial” past and its relation with the rest of the Orthodox world, specifically those countries who owe their present-day existence to Russia’s efforts at liberating and defending them. Since I am from Serbia, this issue relates to me very much.
The first quote is:
“But the single most important factor here is this: the overwhelming majority of Russian are tired and fed up with being an empire. From Peter I to Gorbachev, the Russian people have paid a horrific price in sweat, tears, blood and Rubles to maintain an empire which did absolutely nothing for the Russian people except impoverish them and make them hated in much of the world.”

I would venture that under “empire” in this passage, the author means a physical empire which stretches beyond the borders of Russia? Since, no matter what the Russians were to do, the West will always view Russia as a threat. Not so much because of the physical manifestation of “empire”, as because of the great potential that the idea of spiritual empire which Russia has inherited from the Eastern Romans with the fall of Constantinople. The values which Russia (and the “Byzantine Commonwealth,” as D. Obolensky put it) represents are completely opposite to those espoused by the West, whose basic values revolve around plunder and subjugation, moral relativism, deconstruction and spiritual decadence and a legalistic approach to human relations. Will there ever be peace and understanding between these two opposed sets of values? I believe not, no matter what we do. At least until something changes in the spiritual and religious outlook of a majority of the people in the West.

The second quote is:
“Finally, there is the sad reality that almost all the countries which were liberated by Russia, not only from Nazi Germany, but also from the Turkish yoke show exactly zero gratitude for the role Russia played in their liberation. To see how our so-called “Orthodox brothers” in Bulgaria, Romania or Georgia are eager to deploy NATO weapons against Russia is nothing short of sickening. The next time around, let these guys liberate themselves, everybody will be happier that way.”

This is a particularly thorny issue. During my stay in the US in 2010-2012, I had the chance to read a book by Robert Seton-Watson, “Gladstone, Disraeli and the Eastern Question,” 1935, where the author states that Russia’s diplomacy in the Balkans was completely illogical to the Western powers. Russia’s interventions in the Balkans and participation in the liberation wars of the Balkan peoples brought no benefit to Russia. Another quote worth mentioning is the words of Prince Gorchakov, Nicholas I’s Minister of Foreign Affairs: “The English cannot understand a war led because of religious or national sentiments, as they are incapable of such a gesture. Therefore they look for arrières pensées.”
F. M. Dostoevsky also mentions the attitude of the Balkan peoples towards Russia’s contribution to their liberation in his “Political Writings,” stating that the elites of the newly liberated countries will always look towards and emulate the West and despise Russia, while the ordinary people will be aware of the sacrifice of the Russians. It is hard to reconcile these facts, unless both the ordinary people of the Balkans – those aware of Russia’s sacrifice and cultural ideals – and Russia itself cooperate in changing the situation.
I hope my thoughts will contribute in some small way to resolving these matters.

David of Rascia

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- The Saker on August 25, 2016 · at 3:27 pm EST/EDT
  
  Dear David,
  
  Thanks for every interesting comment. Let me clarify two things:
  
  Empire: what I mean by Empire is not so much a policy or country size, as a psychological state of mind which subordinates the spiritual and internal to the worldly and international. You could say “Holy Russia” vs “Great Russia”. The desire to be “like”, say, the British Empire. To be a major player in Europe instead of minding our own business and try to live pious and prosperous lives. To me imperialism is fundamentally opposed to Orthodox values which always focus on inner struggles and not on external power. I am also deeply suspicious of any form of Russian messianism which would state that Russia has some kind of unique historical mission to protect Slavs or Orthodox Christians. I am all for helping and even protecting friends and allies, of course, but the very least one should do is ask for their opinion instead of just assuming some God-given right (or, worse, duty) to intervene. I guess you could say that I will always prefer the silence of a monastery to the sound of tanks rolling down the street.
  
  Our so-called “Orthodox brothers” in Bulgaria, Romania or Georgia: I am sure that you must have noticed that I did *not* include Serbia in this list of fake brothers. After my family fled Russia at the end of the civil war, we were received in Serbia as honored guests even though we were stateless, poor, destitute and beat-down. This is a debt of gratitude that I personally feel I owe the Serbian people. And I have personally met enough Serbs myself to know that they are our real friends, even if right now there is a Eltsin-like regime in power in Belgrade (that too shall pass). No, if Russia ever had a true friend, then it was the Serbian people and I hope that in the future Russia will play a central role in restoring the historical truth and justice to the Serbian nation which right now is basically living in a state of semi-occupation which reminds me of the 90s in Russia.
  
  Kind regards,
  
  The Saker
  
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  - David of Rascia on August 25, 2016 · at 4:08 pm EST/EDT
    
    Dear Saker,
    
    Thank You for Your reply! That is what I meant by physical “Empire” and spiritual Empire or, as Serbian epic songs put it “The Earthly Empire” and “Heavenly Kingdom” (carstvo zemaljsko i carstvo nebesko). I have been following your site for the past 4-5 years, eagerly reading on every topic that appears, and I have finally found the courage to participate with some of my musings. I hope to mature in these musings of mine here, among people who have a deep insight and incisive thoughts about the problems plaguing our countries.
    
    P.S. I live presently in Serbia, but I was born in the USA and I am also a citizen. I feel sorry for my American compatriots the most, as I feel that they are going to have the worst of it from the actions of their rulers.
    
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    - Nightingale on August 25, 2016 · at 5:41 pm EST/EDT
      
      Thanks David for chiming in! Hope to see more of your messages here. In my experience, Serbs are deep souls and make phenomenal friends. Real friends!
      
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    - The Saker on August 25, 2016 · at 10:36 pm EST/EDT
      
      carstvo zemaljsko i carstvo nebesko
      
      Exactly. We agree 100%
      Khvala :-)
      The Saker
      
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  - Zidar on August 26, 2016 · at 3:56 am EST/EDT
    
    Dear Saker, I think one of your middle names is Rayevsky. I just happened to know there is a palce in Serbia, where a brave man named Collonel Rayevsky has his grave. He came from Russia in 1830 or 1870 or something like that, as a volunteer to help serbian brothers fight for liberation from ottoman turks, and got killed leadin a sturm against turkish artilery positions. Any connection?
    
    There is also a legend, I don’t know how much truth is in it, that he was actual Vronsky from Ana Karenina. Cool, even if not true. Given the timing, though, leavs room for at least reasonable doubt…
    
    All the best and keep up with good work.
    
    :-)
    
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    - The Saker on August 26, 2016 · at 12:24 pm EST/EDT
      
      Dear Zidar,
      
      Since my identity was revealed against my will by a couple of dishonorable people I rather not discuss it and I prefer to use my nom de plume of The Saker. I also rather remove personalities, including myself, and focus on issues. I hope that you will understand my reasons.
      Kind regards,
      The Saker
      
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  - Uncle Bob 1 on August 26, 2016 · at 5:48 pm EST/EDT
    
    The 19th century was an interesting time (not good but historically interesting) ,for the peoples of the Balkans.The Russians were directly responsible for the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire. They also contributed greatly to Greece’s success in becoming free.While with Romania ,they helped a bit. But mainly they were responsible for the Ottomans not being able to tighten their over-lordship there.Until the Romanians broke away totally. Serbia,got “some” Russian aid. And certainly many Russian volunteers came to help them (a la Donbass).But she mostly liberated herself from the Ottomans.She was too far away in that age for much direct Russian aid to get through.Had the “West” of that period not prevented it by supporting the Ottomans at the Congress of Berlin (and before). The Russians would have been able to liberate much more of that land from Ottoman rule.But instead the peoples there suffered many more years of slavery because of the West (especially Macedonia,Northern Greece,and Southern Serbia and Southern Bulgaria).Until they were strong enough to break their chains.
    
    Its disgraceful how the leaders in many of those states today have forgotten their debt to Russia. Most especially Bulgaria. That state without Russian help would either not exist at all (and be like the Kurdish,or ex-Armenian areas of Turkey today) or at least would have been smaller,and have suffered more decades under Ottoman tyranny before seeing freedom. I can “understand” somewhat the Romanians. They don’t see Russia as their liberator,forgetting the aid they got. And Greece,somewhat the same.But there is no excuse for Bulgaria.That one is the worse betrayal of all. Certainly as some say ,the people remember. But if the people continue to put into power NATO lackeys,then it doesn’t matter what they “believe ” in their hearts.
    
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    - WizOz on August 27, 2016 · at 5:48 am EST/EDT
      
      What is constantly disregarded is the fact that Romania sits on a line of fracture between ‘East’ and ‘West’. Part of what is today Romania (Transylvania) was effectively occupied by the ‘West’ for thousand years, whereas the other parts which fell under Ottoman domination (Wallachia and Moldova) have been alternatively occupied by the Russians and Austrians, being a political football in the struggle for the control of the Danube and the Black Sea and for ‘containing’ Russia. The ‘West’ did not spare any effort to include Romania in its sphere and detach her from the Russian influence (which contributed a lot to the creation of modern Romania). It was not lack of gratitude from her part towards Russia, but a constant political pressure (going to mass-murder) from the ‘West’ to keep her into its fold and make her a springboard for an invasion of Russia (speculating the egregious mistake made by Tsarist Russia by the occupation of half of the Principality of Moldova (the so-called Basarabia which is now the Republic of Moldova, the former SSR Moldova) which was not ‘liberated’ from the Ottomans (because it never belonged to them, as Bulgaria did) but simply annexed. Also, we should take into account the fact that after WWI and the creation of the Great Romania a great role was played by the Uniate Romanians from Transylvania and that persisted up to now. They are indeed ‘so-called’ Orthodox brothers.
      
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      - Uncle Bob 1 on August 27, 2016 · at 6:09 am EST/EDT
        
        I try to avoid much discussion on Romania (pre-independence) because it is such an extremely complicated area. The “eternal” dispute over Transylvania is a minefield worse than the Croat-Serb dispute in Bosnia.But you are right in that its always been the “odd man out” in the “Balkans”. A good case could be made that it really shouldn’t be considered as a Balkan state geographically at all (or at least only maybe Wallachia could be included as Balkan.The Transylvanian Uniate’s have been a problem. Though the rest of Romania is Orthodox.
        
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        WizOz on August 27, 2016 · at 4:27 pm EST/EDT
        
        Well, indeed the problem of Transylvania was and remains a minefield. It is annoying, to say the least, that this problem is treated always in the ‘Dracula mode’, as a ‘curiosity’, a piece of pop culture and not as a real political, even existential problem. The Transylvanian Uniates have been a thorny problem, but what was always overlooked is the fact that the Orthodox Romanians are the absolute majority of the population of Transylvania and despite the fact that they are not Slavs they have always been well disposed towards their Orthodox Russian brothers. But Orthodoxy is not a preserve of a mythical Slavdom (and neither of Moscow Patriarchy for that matter).
        
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    - Zula on August 30, 2016 · at 6:30 pm EST/EDT
      
      Why do you think there is always special relationship between West and Ottoman/Islam? It still exists today including the GCC. I do think the alliance is to contain the people of ME. When time comes west has its hand all over ME then they will illiminate Turks and GCC.
      
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- Castellio on August 25, 2016 · at 3:55 pm EST/EDT
  
  Was Dostoevsky right? Are the non-elite of the Balkans aware of the Russian sacrifice?
  
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  - Anonymous on August 25, 2016 · at 5:07 pm EST/EDT
    
    Dostoevsky is still right:
    
    “As the official institutions laid wreaths at the Monument of Freedom, Bulgarians booed their own president, the prime minister, all ministries and all present Members of the European Parliament. Only Russia (the Russian Embassy and Vice-Consul of the Russian Federation from the town of Ruse) received the applause of the Bulgarian people.
    
    The Service was held in Memory of the fallen for the liberation of Bulgaria in the years 1877-78.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6OJgX5ZZM8
    
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mrr52 on August 25, 2016 · at 3:10 pm EST/EDT

Saker, is it your view that Syria will be partitioned? Do you believe that Russia will not use force to prevent creation of an independent state in eastern Syria?

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- The Saker on August 26, 2016 · at 12:21 pm EST/EDT
  
  Saker, is it your view that Syria will be partitioned? Do you believe that Russia will not use force to prevent creation of an independent state in eastern Syria?
  
  No it is not my view. But that does not mean that I am confident that this will not happen. The official Russian position is that Russia opposes any partition. Israel and, therefore, the USA would, of course very much welcome that. The Syrians and the Iranians would oppose this, as would probably the Turks (assuming that would increase the risk of a Kurdistan appearing near the Turkish border). Right now I don’t think that anybody has a good solution except al Assad and Iran who favor a total victory over Daesh and a full liberation of all of Syria. The Russians seem dubious about that. So, for me at least, it is hard to tell where this is all heading. Probably too early to call.
  Sorry for that half-answer :-)
  Kind regards,
  The Saker
  
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  - mrr52 on August 26, 2016 · at 1:12 pm EST/EDT
    
    Thank you for replying. I asked because I believe the war on Syria (and Ukraine) is approaching a juncture where these questions will be answered officially, and your article appears to provide that answer indirectly. Please see replies under Larchmonter445 at the top, where I asked the same questions.
    
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Bente Petersen on August 25, 2016 · at 4:41 pm EST/EDT

Great piece… Thank you…. VERY MUCH INDEED…

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Vor on August 25, 2016 · at 6:55 pm EST/EDT

This is an insightful analysis of Russia’s military capability & how it compares to the US, I would add a caveat however. US force projection capability is based on a technical assessment, the same kind of technical assessment that declares the US can wage 3 major wars on 3 separate fronts/theaters at any one time. This is no doubt what lead Cheney & Rumsfeld to believe that Iraq would be a “cake walk” & we witnessed how that turned out. Iraq is a major lesson, it demonstrated, as with Afghanistan, that the US only has a technical force projection capability but in real world qualitative terms the US does not have the ability to wage a war on any front any more. The US military for example would not withstand one year of a Vietnam style war today, it would collapse. Hence the reliance on proxy forces, this is essentially where the US is going in terms of global hegemony, but this carries a price, look at Turkey, the US is beginning to have to pander to its erstwhile vassals because it is so dependent on them militarily. So I would say that whilst Russia can not be complacent & must prepare for the worst, in reality there is no way that the US can really take Russia on – & whilst they may act like they don’t know it, I suspect they do. Evidence? The planned attack on Iran which never materialized. It never materialized because the Pentagon said no, we won’t do it, because our military can not endure another Iraq like defeat & it would mean being forced out of the Middle East overnight.

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- WRFB on August 26, 2016 · at 7:51 am EST/EDT
  
  I think your right. Why else did they not attack Iran 3 yrs ago when they were all in position and ready to go? Were they sure of success then they would have gone in surely, So they were not sure . Therefor they understand that they were not actually able . So why then would they take on an even more powerful axis of resistance now?
  
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драконис on August 25, 2016 · at 7:20 pm EST/EDT

U can never have true friendship based on thinking like this, this is every man for himself attitude and dont cry when bulgaria dont want to build south stream or turkey shoot down your jets, u will never have respect russia deserve with this. This attitude explains collapse of sssr u just give up and thats it, we dont want to play anymore. My country(serbia) experince this , we didnt want war but we got not one but many and now we cant even deccent life of poor man. Something tells me that Russia is still under same thinking patterns as under gorbacov and untill that mind-set is erased u can`t realise full potential.

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- gT on August 25, 2016 · at 9:05 pm EST/EDT
  
  You have a point with the every man for himself attitude. It is a very Western way of thinking. The unofficial British Royal Navy motto, from the empire which once ruled the earth’s oceans, supposedly more applicable for when the ship was sinking, was ‘Every man for himself and God for us all’.
  
  Just take the case of damn Turkey, yesterday they should have been exterminated – and rightly so, and today they might not be such bad blokes after all. The Abrahamic way of thinking has its limitations, I’m susceptible to it also. A more Buddhist approach of keep an open mind and change it often is perhaps better. Notice it just says keep an open mind, not trust everyone or forgive everyone like the Christian perspective does, Eastern ways of thinking have strange practicalities to them.
  
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  - Anonymous on August 25, 2016 · at 10:42 pm EST/EDT
    
    Churchill used to say the RN motto was “grog, sodomy, and the lash!”
    
    The US Navy also has a motto: “When in Danger or in Doubt, Steam in Circles, Toot, and Shout!”
    
    My vastly delusional fellow US “citizens” are, as is said, firm believers in the idiotic myth of the “rugged individualist”. It is not, in my view, a “way of thinking”. To the contrary, it is a way of avoiding thinking – which is why it’s a delusion. This delusion is, in turn, also a product. A product of propaganda playing against the public mind, which is itself gripped in a painful disease we might call “nostalgia”. The population is atomized and delusional, while the ruling class, the “1 per cent” is seduced by looted wealth and the love of money. What could go wrong?
    
    Yes, things in US are liable to be very disagreeable. If I were young… But I’m old and in no condition to move. (Mr “Texas” managed it, but he’s younger and unattached. I hope he gets his Tex-Mex Restaurant!) We shall ride it out, if the Fates permit it…
    
    Thanks Saker, for the good work.
    
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    - jim of olym on August 26, 2016 · at 1:48 am EST/EDT
      
      then there was once upon a time: “Damn the torpedoes, full stream ahead, and Don’t give up the ship”
      unless someone sinks your aircraft carrier with 3000 men aboard…..
      
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      - Anonymous on August 26, 2016 · at 11:49 am EST/EDT
        
        And “You may fire when ready, Gridley” = when the US “took” the Philippines. “Taking” – isn’t that a nice name for “stole”, simply say “took” – so much more genteel!
        
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  - драконис on August 25, 2016 · at 11:42 pm EST/EDT
    
    Hmmm maybe i didnt write my comment well, now when i read it it isnt clear at all, i wanted to say that this article- analasys – atitude is every man for himself. That has happened when sssr broke down. i dont think the poland wanted to be part of nato or ukraine to broke down like that. But sssr fell apart what choice do they have? They left alone on targeting range. If they dont cooporate they get sloughtered like serbia ,couse russians fend for themselfs. Russia IS empire that what u dont get it has tremedous potential which is not used( becouse of political nature). If they dont want to be empire they will collapse…
    
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    - gT on August 26, 2016 · at 6:36 am EST/EDT
      
      Ok, what you are saying is that if Russia doesn’t get involved (aggressive and expansive), Russia will die. Fine, that is a possibility. But if Russia does get involved (aggressive and expansive), Russia could die also. So neither route actually guarantees Russia’s survival, though it is better to die on the front foot so to speak …
      
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pedro_sanchez on August 25, 2016 · at 7:55 pm EST/EDT

Tremendous article; I linked it to some friends and family. Can anyone provide a article, or better yet a book, to enlighten me on the topic of “The Papacy fought against Russia for 1000 years”? If I can attain that knowledge, I will probably be the first american protestant to do so :)

The Saker has written a book which is available to purchase. Please see at the end of the article. Mod

Also, any details/pointers on the Russo-Serb alliance (beyond what wikipedia can tell me) would be great appreciated. Thanks.

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- The Saker on August 26, 2016 · at 12:17 pm EST/EDT
  
  I can suggest the following articles:
  
  http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/vatican_russia.aspx
  http://www.reformation.org/vatican-against-orthodox-church.html
  http://thesaker.is/ukrainian-nationalism-its-roots-and-nature/
  http://thesaker.is/follow-up-to-my-post-about-the-roots-and-nature-of-ukrainian-nationalism/
  http://arcticbeacon.com/books/Avro_Manhatten-The_Vaticans_Holocaust,2007.pdf (not about Russia, but about the Orthodox Serbs)
  
  I hope this helps!
  
  The Saker
  
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gT on August 25, 2016 · at 8:11 pm EST/EDT

‘But the single most important factor here is this: the overwhelming majority of Russian are tired and fed up with being an empire. From Peter I to Gorbachev, the Russian people have paid a horrific price in sweat, tears, blood and Rubles to maintain an empire which did absolutely nothing for the Russian people except impoverish them and make them hated in much of the world. More than anything else, the Russians want their country to be a “normal” country.’

I nearly fell off my chair when I read this – history repeating itself, deja vu. Taken from Grey Wolf – An intimate study of a dictator by H.C.Armstrong, a book about Turkey and its rise from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire through the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, later Ataturk, the best leader Turkey ever had.

This was Mustafa’s thinking in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of Turkey. It is very interesting from a historical perspective.

‘He had no delusions. He knew exactly what the Turks could do. He was not going adventuring with dreams of empire or foreign conquest. The Ottoman Empire was dead and broken up: good riddance to it, for it had sucked the marrow out of the bones of real Turks. For five centuries, in Irak, in Arabia and Africa, Turks had fought and died; … :”Was it not,” he said, “for the Caliphate, for Islam, for the priests and such-like cattle, that for centuries the Turkish peasant has fought and died in every climate?” “It is time that Turkey looks to herself, ignores Indians and Arabs, rids herself of her contacts with them, rids herself of the leadership of Islam. Turkey has enough to do to look after herself. The Caliphate has sucked us white for centuries.”

‘He would not lead Turkey into these follies nor become the champion of the East against the West, of Islam against Christianity, of subject races against their masters….He would make Turkey, within its natural frontiers, into a small, compact nation and into a prosperous State’

There you have it, same thinking, at the end of different empires. Proof that we are stuck in the Matrix???

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- gT on August 28, 2016 · at 8:32 am EST/EDT
  
  Ok, have to state the obvious, given the above, Russia, great Russia, mother Russia, the home of the ak-47, is not following in the footsteps of the despicable, slimy Turks, is she? It must be my imagination.
  
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  - Zula on August 30, 2016 · at 7:17 pm EST/EDT
    
    Dear gT,
    
    The whole idea of religion /power wars in the ME, Eurasia (particularly Eastern Europe) should be in the back burner. They should unite for humanity. When we came out of womb, we weren’t Christians, Muslims (Shiites, Sunnis) or even Buddhists. What is happening is religion is being used to illiminate ME and Eurasian races. The people should bypass the dictators installed for them and go across nations to protect Humanity without alterior motive. What they all have in common is God. What better reason is there other than protecting the children of God which we all are. The idiots ISIS, al-Qaeda, etc, especially if they are from any country other than Zionists/NATO are shameful for fighting to set up NWO/world empire that is working against their own nations and races. The people of West/Israel must also join against this NWO if they truly believe in God=Humanity.
    
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Richard Steven Hack on August 25, 2016 · at 11:57 pm EST/EDT

I generally agree with almost everything in this piece.

Nonetheless I want to point out two critical issues:

1) Any time Putin gets an “agreement” with either the US or Turkey or Israel, it isn’t worth the air molecules disturbed by the agreement. If he doesn’t realize this, he will lose.

2) Russia SHOULD invade Ukraine, wipe out the neo-Nazi battalions and disarm most of the military’s arms, heavy weapons and vehicles, kill most of the oligarchs, install a puppet regime, and then – crucially – GO HOME (unlike the US, which engages in stupid occupations and “nation building” solely for the profit of the military-industrial complex.)

Why do I say this? Because such an action would QUIET the Ukraine issue for several years. Sure, it would piss of the EU and US. Who cares? Second, it would give propaganda wins for the EU and US. Again, who cares? The EU and US will NEVER NOT tar and feather Russia no matter what it does. The end result would be a Ukraine which will be unable to do much against Russia, and the EU/US would be unable to do ANYTHING to change the status quo other than escalate their “forward deployments” to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, which, as Saker rightfully states, would be militarily meaningless in the event of actual war between Russia and NATO.

In short, taking out Ukraine would give Russia an Eastern European “breathing space”. If the US can go around invading any country it wants, even countries thousands of miles away from it, I think Russia could successfully take out a hostile country right on its borders and live to tell about it.

Would this risk World War III? Maybe. But given the speed with which Russia could take down Ukraine, it’s doubtful the US and NATO could respond fast enough before the take down was a fait accompli. After which, again, what can they do? Basically impose more sanctions, move troops around, and gnash their teeth – while Russia gives them the finger.

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- Michel van Dijk on August 26, 2016 · at 10:27 am EST/EDT
  
  Russia holding back tells me they aren’t yet sure how to reintegrate the Ukraine.
  
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- Zula on August 30, 2016 · at 7:33 pm EST/EDT
  
  Dear Richard Steven Hack,
  
  This is what is upsetting, what is exactly the relationship between Russia and China? It is too vague. Ukraine control of Russia as defacto is good idea only if Russia has backing of China, just like US and NATO. This would decrease the possibility of WWIII because US wouldn’t dare fight two super powers at the same time. US is very clever, it sets one nation, against other who even have more common with each other as in iraq vs iran by following “the process of illimination”
  
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Panafrican Lion on August 25, 2016 · at 11:58 pm EST/EDT

Thanks for the article it was very informative. From where I sit I hope Russia succeeds and prevails. The alternative would be a nightmare. VV Putin and the Siloviki’s sitting in the Kremlin are our objective allies.

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Kampfbeobachter on August 26, 2016 · at 1:28 am EST/EDT

All out nuclear exchange. I recommend reading Hermann Kahn On Escalation.

Base: A base in a far away land is expensive to maintain, the more so, the further away it is from the motherland and the larger it is. A military base requires almost to be supplied from the motherland unless it situated in a friendly country with ample natural resources. I am talking here basics like food, water, electricity and maybe fuels (for ships, aircraft cars). Now keep island bases supplied even with those necessities against an active enemy submarine force and you get the scope.

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Richard Cley on August 26, 2016 · at 1:40 am EST/EDT

A truly wonderful tour de force of the Russian mindset by Saker. An excellent analysis of Russian thinking is slightly let down by a failure to understand Russia’s actual and real tactical capabilities.

When Saker asked for help to produce the above map with a 1000km extention around Russian borders from his helpful, as it turned out, readers, I realised what he was most likely up to.

Unfortunately this 1000km exclusion zone, as Saker admitted to in his article is pure fantasy…even the 200-300km claim he makes is fantasy…and should only be taken as hearsay at best.

Arkangel, Kaliningrad, Crimea and Krasnadar for a radius of perhaps 350km will be no fly zones for the West. S400 and Khibiny will negate any airforce, army or surface naval activity in those areas.

This means that the Baltic and Black Sea will be Russian lakes. Infact all of Scandinavia, northern Europe and much of eastern Europe will be no go zones for the West.

Limited action will be carried out much further afield. While Iskander will be used to pick off certain tactical units in those limited zones, conventionally armed Kalibur cruise missiles will hit any potential enemy in most of the rest of Europe and the Mediterranean.

And for good measure, should anything get really out of hand, nuclear armed Kalibur has a range of 2,200km placing any surface warship or carrier group within the Western Approaches as viable targets.

Essentially the whole of Europe and Scandinavia is a dead zone…and any military operation started by NATO will be just dead men walking.

But this is only the case for certain chosen targets OUTSIDE the lethal 350km radius of the above mentioned strong points protected by S400/500 and Khibiny.

The other area of conflict is intercontinental nuclear and conventional attack…which Russia seems to be mastering more quickly than America can respond to.

The main advantage though, and this is not mentioned by Saker, is the the brain dead neocons in the US are incapable of understanding either the Russian mindset or Russian thinking.

Russians are Christians in the old fashioned sense that is understood by Christians anywhere in the middle East, where as Americans are a Judaic-Christian miasma of contradiction where reinterpretation of the Bible is considered normal (Morons, Christian Scientists being two of the greatest extremes).

Americans have no sublety but only arrogance, amorality and greed…all traditional non-Christian traits common amongst all levels of their society. They really are Satanic and yet firmly believe they are the epitome of Christian righteousness. IS (ISIS) are nothing compared to the hypocrisy of the USA…the nation that created and nurtured IS.

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- Anonymous on August 26, 2016 · at 12:02 pm EST/EDT
  
  ” no sublety but only arrogance, amorality and greed…all traditional non-Christian traits common amongst all levels of their society. They really are Satanic and yet firmly believe they are the epitome of Christian righteo…”
  
  I take the point. But there is no need for metaphysical or religious explanations – they’re simply blinded by delusions. Nothing special about that, dangerous, but ordinary.
  
  Take heart – what happens when blind delusional army, controlled by blind delusional officers and politicians, goes to fight? Like a professional boxer against a drunk… That’s right, they lose.
  
  I am far more interested in the period that will come after the War is finished. More interested in the “shape” of the Peace. I see indications that Comrade Colonel President is also far more interested in the Peace than in the War. Very mature, expert, and good way to approach fighting.
  
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Concerned world citizen on August 26, 2016 · at 2:20 am EST/EDT

“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” Lord Palmerston quotes (English Statesman, 1784-1865). A few clarifications- 1) the “revolution in the USSR was opposed by ~ 80% of the population. See: Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System by David Kotz & Fred Weir; 2) Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (a political lightweight/ incredibly naive) along with China “abstained” on the UN Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya and military action to back it up (to his credit, Putin saw through this immediately); Link: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/03/21/russia.leaders.libya. We now know how this turned out….. 3) Russia halted their military campaign in Syria prematurely, allowing ISIS to rearm/regroup , which was readily understood by China (See: China Increases Its Involvement in the Syrian War; Link: thesaker.is/china-increases-its-involvement-in-the-syrian-war)

Bottom line- as the US economic position continues to decline, US foreign policy has become increasingly bellicose and reckless. Expect more of the same, regardless of who prevails in Nov. Very dangerous times ahead.

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Maeda on August 26, 2016 · at 4:57 am EST/EDT

Very interessant your analyse…
It’s clean, that the impire anglozionist ‘ll be come to finalized the “2.0 old cold war”, but now the ideologic concept it’s just a Neocon concept or Total War with Russie…
So, this is a worldwide catastophic situation…
2017 and 2018 ‘ll be very dagerous for Global Civilizations…

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Anonymous on August 26, 2016 · at 8:17 am EST/EDT

Somewhere between the Napoleonic Wars and World War One, the nature of warfare shifted from one where manpower counted to one where firepower counted. Even in the Napoleonic era, Napoleon was starting to experiment with grand artillery batteries and the firepower it provided, and by WW1, the shift was complete. This was one of the fundamental differences between the Germans and the French and especially the English (who were very slow to adapt and thus lost tens of thousands of men in a single day trying to throw waves of manpower against German firepower at the Somme).

So, by now, its clearly the amount of firepower that a force can contribute to a battle. And the Russians just showed this very nicely in Syria. That small group of planes delivered very effective firepower onto the battle-field at key places and at key times. Russia also showed how in modern warfare if might be units far away from the physical battlefield that contribute firepower. Whether it be cruise missile strikes from great distance, or heavy bombers that refuel along the way, or that temporarily stop at a nearby base to cycle through a few sorties before returning to their normal bases.

Actually, it looked like in Syria that Russia has been testing and drilling for capabilities they think they’ll need later.

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Anonymous on August 26, 2016 · at 9:55 am EST/EDT

When I grew up in America, during the 60’s-early 70’s, we had the same saying in America. America does not start wars, it finishes them.

Of course, this was based on a popular misunderstanding of what had happened and was happening in Vietnam, but it was only a little out of date. For most of the 20th century, it had been true. Just don’t ask an American Indian or a Spaniard about that saying. But, generally, America didn’t start wars. Way back when, Americans used to make pretty speeches about not going abroad seeking monsters to slay.

Its a marker of how far America has gone in my lifetime, as these days its hard to imagine an American saying that, and its since become much more bellicose and aggressive and now Americans brag about starting wars and their threats to open a giant can of whoop-ass. Of course, when a lot of talk about cans of whoop-ass meets a modern A2AD, well ……. hope no one I know is flying a plane in that first wave.

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Harry_Red on August 26, 2016 · at 11:20 am EST/EDT

As always in these longer and very informative articles (whether from the Saker or others), there is one thing that usually strikes my attention the most, since the other parts I either already know about or are not surprising to me.

In this article, the most thing that caught my attention is how the Saker continuously and repeatedly is trying to remind the reader that the current Russian Federation is not an Empire like the US or a superpower like the USSR.

The Saker knows why many of us want or would wish Russia to be something it is not (anymore), and tries to patiently explain why Russia is the way it is based on its historical process, its limitations, its resources and most importantly its people at this moment in history.

I personally believe that most people who come to read the Saker are people who are fed up of the lies, the injustice, the arrogance, the hubris, the oppression, the destruction and the absolute evil that is caused by the AngloZionist (Western) Empire……..and these people want to see an end to the Empire’s power in one form or another.

The injustice and oppression has reached to such monstrous levels that there are people in the West that are willing to die and get nuked just to know that this Empire will be finished off.

But as the Saker points out, Russia is much weaker than the Empire’s “block” and this is a fact.

Another fact is that the Empire is continuing and increasing its oppression and destruction of the world, while its arrogance is causing it to see the weakness of others as a green light to do what it wants.

There has always been an argument in my brain about what will cause the Empire to be destroyed: (1) an economic collapse or (2) a nuclear annihilation.

If the Empire with its strongest outward projecting military on Earth can continue to print money and control a global economic (monetary) system that even Russia and China are a part of, it does not seem likely that an economic implosion can destroy the empire itself.

However, if the Empire is on the verge of an economic collapse, they could instigate a final war as a last measure of hope, just prior or even after the collapse itself.

For this reason, the only way the Empire will be taken down is if they directly threaten or attack the Russian-Chinese partnership/alliance, causing the Russians and/or Chinese to strike back the US-NATO alliance with everything they have……and this is where the West is naturally heading to.

The elite ruling the Empire are constantly getting more arrogant, angrier and crazier, and will keep destroying as much as they can in their path until they come up against Russia-China.

The ruling elites in Ukraine are basically a forward prediction of what the Western elites will turn into….either crazies or cowards.

The people of the world who want to see an end to the Western Empire, will have to wait until the people ruling the Empire become crazy enough to physically take on Russia-China, whether it is on their borders or abroad.

As Paul Craig Roberts points out:

“Neoconservatives remain very influential in the Obama regime. As examples, Obama appointed neoconservative Susan Rice as his National Security Advisor. Obama appointed neoconservative Smantha Power as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Obama appointed neoconservative Victoria Nuland as Assistant Secretary of State. Nuland’s office, working with the CIA and Washington-financed NGOs, organized the U.S. coup in Ukraine.

Neoconservatism is the only extant political ideology. The ideology is “America uber alles.” Neoconservatives believe that History has chosen the United States to exercise hegemony over the world, thereby making the U.S. “exceptional” and “indispensable.” Obama himself has declared as much. This ideology gives neoconservatives tremendous confidence and drive, just as Karl Marx’s conclusion that history had chosen the workers to be the ruling class gave early communists confidence and drive.

This confidence and drive makes the neoconservatives reckless.”

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- Jonathan on August 26, 2016 · at 3:13 pm EST/EDT
  
  Odd that PCR appears to have no idea what a “neoconservative” actually is. The ideology he describes: “America uber alles” and so forth is paleo-conservative. Neoconservative ideology is “Israel uber alles.”
  
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- Helen on August 27, 2016 · at 12:03 pm EST/EDT
  
  @ Harry_Red,
  
  I agree Harry, and am glad that the Saker keeps pointing this out so clearly.
  
  We dissenters from the western neocon ideology should not be sitting waiting for Russia to save us from our own murderously idiotic leaders–if we are to be saved we must save ourselves. That means rejecting the dominant narrative and ideology and sponsoring alternatives in our own vassal countries, a difficult and uphill struggle for all of us ordinary working people but it has to start somewhere.
  
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  - Zula on August 30, 2016 · at 7:59 pm EST/EDT
    
    Dear Helen,
    
    Here you go!
    
    Please see my comment to Richard Steven Hack.
    
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Delmar on August 26, 2016 · at 4:44 pm EST/EDT

The matter of Russian capabilities exists at this time primarily due to the US ambitions and capabilities. It seems therefore relevant to cite a pair of url’s that address just that: US capabilities. These may be very great abilities, but it is argued cogently that the foundations are unstable. This implies that one power will eclipse the other, with a period of great danger as this takes place obscured by delusion and distorted perspective:

http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/08/09/why-the-centre-cannot-hold/

http://takimag.com/article/a_slow_drifting_apart_james_miller#axzz4ISLuZyuN

I recall I. Panarin predicting US fragmentation. These two url’s seem to support his position.

For whatever my own opinion may be worth – well I can see only a tiny rural space – but I can’t say that anybody in rural California says anything to indicate that they do not expect catastrophe. Most evidently do. But it’s a tiny, tiny, sample. People seem appalled at the History, and they seem to be hoping that the shoe does not drop, even as they deny what they see.

Come to think of it . our Brother Linh seems to share this opinion. http://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2016/08/postcard-from-end-of-america-fort.html

My apologies, Saker, if this is too far afield. Seem to me that conflict always has poles.

Thanks, Delmar

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ItaliaUno on August 26, 2016 · at 7:11 pm EST/EDT

Hi Saker,

You have written an excellent article which covers both Russian land and air forces. However……

What about naval power? What is the primary use of Russia’s naval forces? How do they stand up to the US carrier groups? Is there any point in having a naval force if you do not wish to project power?

I would to hear your thoughts on these points.

Many thanks,

Mark

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- Delmar on August 26, 2016 · at 10:45 pm EST/EDT
  
  Saker may decide to reply, and I defer to his opinion. But I will put in my view:
  
  Projection of power from the sea upon either the sea or upon the littoral lands is the strong arm of the Sea Peoples. Just now that is the alngo-saxon Empire as it seeks to control the Great Land Mass, which Mackinder calls “the Earth Island”. The goal of the sea-people is to prevent a unification of the earth island and thus force sea commerce to replace land commerce, and to control the sea commerce.
  
  Projection of power from the land upon either the land or the littoral seas is the strong arm of the Land Peoples. Their goal is an economic unification based on land transport.
  
  Look up “Mackinder Thesis”. Look on an map. Think about what an army or navy costs…. Economics underlies, ultimately, all military endeavors.
  
  Thus, for example, Ivan has little need for “carriers”, while Uncle Sam has great need of them.
  
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  - WizOz on August 27, 2016 · at 1:44 am EST/EDT
    
    For Russia and the Heartland ‘projection of force’ means keeping the pirates at bay. The Heartland is simply impregnable. An invading force would have to keep communications by sea or air with their rear, which would be forbiddingly costly. Communications in the Earth Island can ultimately be done by foot! Mackinder was talking from the 19th Century British point of view, an exclusively commercial Empire. America is the second “Earth island’ and possesses its own resources which make it less dependent on maritime commerce. Actually, it may link with the first Earth Island by land. I can’t believe that Americans really want to kill the goose with golden eggs when they have the prospects of a fruitful collaboration.
    
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    - Delmar on August 27, 2016 · at 12:37 pm EST/EDT
      
      Indeed, great prosperity awaits, but the opportunity to avail itself of the fruits of prosperity is stymied in the US due to factional political and shaky economics within a post war (W2) arena – now with idiots and delusion the fruits cannot be theirs. But the logic, the political gravity, is toward the US joining the Eurasian Earth Island”…so, in time…
      
      But the Island is not impregnable. Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Germany – the list of occupied wedges of the Island exist, and latterly, expand. And the nations of the periphery and even the deeper regions of the Heartland are being de-naturalized and destroyed as nations via mass flows of refugees.
      
      Yes, Northamerica is a large island. It could do a lot, and ought to, but it’s led by the blind and greedy whose love of money blinds them.
      
      The US does indeed seek to kill the golden goose in order that a few may rule the globe. But in time this must change – hence the appearance of delay – the opponents are waiting for reality to descend upon America… As Comrade President said: “We know everything.”
      
      It seems to me, after some rather extensive considerations and “tests” in real dialogue with a large sample of Americans, that they suffer from an undiagnosed disease. Once this was understood as a disease, but not now – it is “nostalgia”. The very rapid rate of social and economic and political change – often resonant and pumped by the so-called “media” creates a distemper in the public – they miss the stability and security they once imagined or even lived in. Therefore they devour and make their own a personal delusion, a story, like a religious belief or an ideology. The ideology can be manipulated to control their behavior, and it is.
      
      The delusional state affects the “leadership” class too, as well as the client class that serve the elite – the lawyers and civil servants and so forth.
      
      This helps explain their stupidity and obdurate refusal to look and see what is in front of their eyes.
      
      “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” –
      
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Anonymous on August 27, 2016 · at 3:23 am EST/EDT

Love your work Saker but by my reckoning you are wrong. Russia cannot afford a loss in Syria. The Syria equation is zero sum. Everything is on the line. Russia stated its position at the outset – nuclear strikes – back everything it does in Syria. That is an all or nothing statement if ever there was one. Your limited Russian force projection thesis avoids contemplation of the opening statement. Russia therefore has nigh on as much force projection capability to that of the West. Russia has less than 100 aircraft and a small set of on ground groupings in Syria because nuclear weapons backstop the deployed capabilities. Putin himself has uttered the word Armageddon. Eschatology is in play. Christian, Hindu, Muslem, Jew, Han, and perversions like LDS. All of the above eschatological bases have significant representation in their respective war rooms and many of them hunger for manifestation. So stop seeking rational reassurance when the muscle and bones reaching for the triggers are blinded soul led. Capice.?

Izaates bar Monobazeus =
Jesus son of only son of God

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- Jez on August 27, 2016 · at 4:40 pm EST/EDT
  
  Two responses to comments above:
  
  The Zionist elite of the US and it’s cohorts really do practice occult Satanic rituals in the belief that self will is all that matters and there is no God.
  There is much written about this which can be found on the internet and the death cult which these satanists are members of.
  Readers can investigate Satanism and Zionism and it’s beyond atrocious activity of child sacrifice in ritual killings. One researcher has said that paedophilia is the glue that holds the elite together. Without overstating it what Mr Putin symbolizes is the fight here on Earth between good and evil. To this extent he is at a disadvantage because he actually has moral scruples whereas the Western elite have absolutely none.
  I fully understand why Lavrov talks and talks to Kerry but in truth he is wasting his time because none of them listen.
  
  Secondly as Dmitry Orlov points out much of the bloated US military is useless eg 19 billion dollar aircraft carriers which can be sunk by a motor launch firing a missile or hundreds of military bases rendered impotent by electronic disabling of their communications. I’d love to read about Russian/Chinese capabilities in this latter area – killer satellites and electronic warfare surely the way the technology is going.
  I have no idea but might it be possible to disable their missiles before they are even launched?
  
  Saker’s article is unparalleled in it’s depth. The showdown is coming but if you read what he says carefully – Russia needs time, it has only been on it’s feet the last ten years.
  
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- WizOz on August 28, 2016 · at 12:51 pm EST/EDT
  
  Almost amusing contorted propaganda for Kurdistan. It will fall on deaf ears because too few people have any knowledge about the ancient Kingdom of Adiabene. Rest assured that the new ‘Adiabene’ would have the same fate as the old one.
  
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Patrick Pappano on August 27, 2016 · at 10:47 am EST/EDT

A fine exposition from a source that emerges as one of the reliable ones, in a world made opaque by opaque people. Who are they? We don’t really know beyond interpreting their actions. But what seems clear is that they work behind the scenes pushing their proxies forward to both administer punishment but also take the blowback. The real powers remain safe. The question is, how much loyalty are they going to get from their proxies? Does the whole thing delaminate at some point? I am an American and amazed not so much at our slumber, after all, the essential American is a solitary figure in a wilderness of his own seeking. No. What amazes me are the proxies. These are the most puzzling people; totally devoid of any soul – robots made out of flesh. I think they are blank slates upon which anything may be written. They are lifted from an obscurity born of ignorance and are given a script which for the first time, gives them meaning. There is nothing to work with there – they are your enemy and mine and humanity’s.

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Alex on August 27, 2016 · at 1:17 pm EST/EDT

Dear Saker (or anyone else who can help),

A quick request. This may not be the place for it, but it is prompted by a couple of comments in the article.

Is there a history of relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodoxy in the last ten centuries, written not by a partisan for one side or the other, but by a scholar conscientiously striving for objectivity?

Likewise, is there such a history of the post-Soviet oligarchs, and in particular the semibankirschina?

Thanks.

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- Anonymous on August 28, 2016 · at 2:59 am EST/EDT
  
  Hi Alex, I am not sure that I can help, but perhaps I can clarify things a bit – but beware, I am a partisan of my own opinions and the grades of comprehension I accomplished – again in my opinion.
  
  I think it will be very difficult to find a „history of relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodoxy in the last ten centuries, written not by a partisan for one side or the other“. You know the word that „history is always written by the victors“ – but only in closed cases, while in ongoing struggles both sides write their version (through the pens of partisans of theirs), and an „objective“ history is difficult to obtain if archives are lost or burnt or closed for centuries.
  
  In this case there is the catholic church‘s (CC) version of their relations with the rest of the world, probably in fine latin, and although I never touched it something tells me, the CC‘s wish to destroy every decent movement, including the quite decent Orthodox church, will not be mentioned *by that name* in it. There are of course church historians outside the church, and one of them is our Karlheinz Deschner (1924-2014) with tons of books, including 10 tomes of „Christianity‘s Criminal History“ (Rowohlt) of whom wiki/EN says:
  
  „(…) Karlheinz Deschner published novels, literary criticism, essays, aphorisms, and history critical of religion and the Church. Over the years he gave more than 2,000 public lectures. (…) Outside of Germany, his works remained largely unpublished until the eighties, when translated versions (where necessary) were published in Spain, Switzerland, Italy and Poland. ((…)) Deschner worked on his ambitious Criminal History of Christianity from 1970 to 2013. He had no official research grants, honoraria, stipends, emoluments or official positions, but had been financially supported by a few friends and readers. (…) In 1989 German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel published a recension of the first two volumes. The article was written by Horst Herrmann, a former professor of Church law at Münster University who left the Catholic Church in 1981. During the summer semester of 1987 Deschner taught a course entitled Criminal History of Christianity at the University of Münster. Karlheinz Deschner was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Historical Sciences.“
  
  We all know by now „the“ church did criminal things, but less well known is what „the“ church is, what the crimes were, and why they were committed. „The“ church that speaks of itself as „the“ church“ is always the CC, and it says „the“ as if it was the only or first or genuine one (making their point by repeating it endlessly, which was necessary ) because it was and is neither the only (christian) one, nor the first nor the „genuine“ church who only teaches the real truth while the others never do. That is what the CC wants every one to believe, and to prove its point the simplest way seemed to be to silence the others, and the simplest way to silence them was to kill (burn, behead etc. etc.) all adherents of all the others – e.g. the Cathars, adherents of the „Bosnian“(!) church. The next necessary step was to completely kill off all of the competition – in the other churches,and in their protectors, e.g. states. These events appear in history books but not necessarily as „the CC fighting Russia“.
  
  My own impression is that in religious teachings there is a rift between those teachings that let the faithful decide themselves what exactly they believe, and the others who describe their content as the only admitted one and punish those with other opinions („heretics“). Such trials appear very early in Christianity, and the faulty ones were first blemished, later expulsed, then killed. My impression (as a result of what I read, not a ready quotation) is that the spiteful attention of the law-and-order-christians turned from the faulty individuals to the faulty organisations (the competition of the CC) and then to their protectors, the „bad“ regimes (and this is where we are still today). The CC was always a hierarchic org, thus antidemocratic by definition, and every other version of Christianity which allowed others to live on and even to teach their different views (which make them „democratic” in our vocabulary) were „anathema“ (reason for a Christian fatwa). And these two possibilities of worshipping God, and Jesus, and The Holy Virgin etc. were more or less distributed then like today: fascists (antidemocrats willing to win by every possible means including murder) in the West, and „democrats“ (in practical life, not necessarily in constitutional forms) in the East. And thus „The West“ started to combat „The East“, and not the other way round: the one who wants to subdue the others must attack endlessly until he is successful, those who do not want to kill the others will not attack but have to defend themselves – this is the theme of this article of TheSaker‘s.
  
  And thus „The“ Church of the West, the CC, started to attack everything East, and continued until today.
  
  In the beginning of Christianity „the“ Roman empire still existed, then (395 AD) it was factually or officially divided into The Western Roman empire (with Rome as capital) and The Eastern Roman empire with Carigrad (the Emperor‘s city) or Constantinopolis or Byzantium or Instanbul as capital, one agressing everybody else and asking everybody‘s protection in doing so – the others protecting the innocent and themselves against these attackers. Emperor Constantine was born in Nis in Srbija, and the Eastern Empire became greco-slavic in contrast to the romano-germanic empire in the West. It seems that the local traditions of those who became Christians played an important role in shaping their variant of Christianity. Thus a paper like Trece Oko (Beograd) had several articles about how pre-Christian concepts diffused into the balcanic version of non-CC, „orthodox“ Christianity, and these were in everything the contrary of marching SS troups. The „free“ or „democratic“ traditions of the balcanic slavs were thus the foundation of their offshot in the West, the Cathars (Bougres, Bogumils, Albigenses), which the CC for that reason destroyed completely in 1200+. In the 4th c. AD „the Church-in-the-East“ still had territories in the western parts of the empire, e.g. in Italy. At one point the Vatican stole these territories and pretended that emperor Constantine had granted them as a gift – this known fraud of „Constantine‘s donation“ is until today the territorial basis of the existence of the „state“ of the Vatican.
  
  In short, the CC was formed to destroy the original Christian church founded and developed in Palestine, Egypt and Greece including today‘s Turkey. Byzantium could be defeated by the Turcs after the Western, CC commanded Crusaders had destroyed it in 1204, and this – in the Nazi‘s ever present data fetishist mannerism of „tat“ in revenge for „tit“ in delays that are divisable by 25 – 150 years after 1054 when the head of the Orthodox church had finally rejected the popes insolent „order“ to acknowledge him as supreme commander of all Orthodox Christians, too. The end for Byzanz came another nearly 200 years later, in 1453, as if the Turcs worked already then on a Western timescale, in collaboration with the West. In the Balcans the Catholic West freed those territories from the Turcs that were Catholic, and did nothing to help tho Orthodox territories occupied by Turkey – the preferred to let the Turcs pressure them to become Muslims – a pattern repeated in the Nazi war against Yugoslavia 1990-1999.
  
  Now to Russia: Russia „accepted the Cross“ in 988, the Russian Orthodox Church became a part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and separated from it in 1548, the independence of the Moscow Patriarchate was acknowledged by a synod in Constantinople in 1590. „Russia“ itself, ruled by a „czar“ came into existence only in 1547 by the coronation of Ivan IV Groznyj as „Czar of All Russia“. Which means that according to the letters there cannot be a 1,000 years war against Russia, since a land called „Russia“ exists only for 469 years by now.
  However, „Russians“ exist much longer – when you accept the Russian pronunciation of „Rossija“ (Rassiya) and look at places and tribes/peoples with -ras- you find among others the first Serbs (in Rashka, near the Adriatic), but also the Etruscans in Etruria may have been „Et-Russkies“, and a systematic destruction of their historical documents may be the reason why this people, more developed than the early Romans, enigmatically „left no written documents“. Without documents „we know nothing about the Etrussian language“, but there are a number of private prints of outlawed scientists (I remember the name of an East German prof Strnad) who collected bits and pieces, enough to write whole books and print them at their own cost. I bought one or two of them but did not yet find the time to study them – living in Germany it is easily possible that our neonazi police already stole them behind my back like several other books (among them, strange to say, an unopened copy of the most main stream book on the „Protocols of the… (Jesuits of Sitten/Switzerland)“ by the Israeli judge Hadassa ben-Itto).
  
  There are theories that the Vatican is built upon an ancient temple to Satan, there are accusations of the CC to be satanist, and there are claims that even the foundation of Rome by Aeneas, who fled from the Trojan war in 1200 b.c., was somehow satanist. Such claims are surely made to explain why a certain strain of history, the one the CC belongs to, is sytematically wicked, and then feats like building Rome upon Etrussky foundations but denying their existence, or founding „the“ Church‘s state of the Vatican on a territory which belonged to their opponents and the lie that it was a gift from the emperor, or the non-official alliance between papacy and Turc occupants in the Balcans for deleting that Christianity which was not CC, form a consistent picture. There are Serb and Russian claims that the whole history of their nations as written („invented“) by Western historians was falsified („Berlin-Vienna school of history“), and this with the same goal of denigrating the feats of their competition and denying anything coming from it. Thus in the „Russian History“ (Wiki/DE) we can read that in the 13th c. „the Rus“ (the territory inhabited by Russians) was much weakened by attacks by the Tatars, and this weakness was exploited by Swedes, attacking mainly the Republic of Novgorod from the Baltic coast in the North. Musing about the reasons for this attack, the wiki author says that one explanation is that the Swedes wanted to get hold of the mouth of the Neva for controlling the commerce, but another explanation says that „behind the Swedes stood the pope who wanted to push also from the North for the union of the church (the capitulation of Orthodoxy), and who after the defeat of the Swedes repeated the attack through the Teutonic (in German: „German“) Order“. Both attacks were defeated by Aleksandr Nevskij (in 1240 and 1242, so data fetishist A. Hitler I. tried again 700 years later). I don‘t know about the Swedes, but the religious, CC, Teutonic Order probably acted upon the orders of the pope.
  
  Now I invite you to build *your* synthesis of various sources re The Eternal War of the CC against „Russia“ or all the Slavs that are not members of the CC. I hope I made clear why a non partisan description of the case is unlikely to exist or to appear – at least when you postulate that what a Russian writes must be pro-Russian etc. And nobody in the West cares for the problematic ones in the East, or only to teach them what to do (to obey us) and not to explain them their problems in a non-partisan way (which automatically would be seen in the West as treason, thus as dangerous, which you are ready to endure only as a partisan). Deschner was definitely an anti-CC partisan, but I don‘t think he had any interest or insight into the Slavs‘ problems with the CC – although his being a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences may mean he had.
  
  There are tons of books on „Why and how they always were against us“ in Serbia, but written always as a miserably or not paid work of love, of a partisan.
  
  If you want a real „thousand years“, you may want to have a closer look at the coronation of Boleslaw Chrobry in 1000 AD in Gniezno by „German“ aka „Roman“ emperor Otto III. (996-1002, born 980 (!)) who happened to appear there as a „pilgrim“. The CC nazis were always data fetishists, and visibly grabbed the opportunity of such a „round date“ to begin something special. The pope at that time was Silvester II (999-1003), a person with much scientific knowledge, in mathematics and astronomy among other things. Otto III. was the son of emperor Otto II, became „King of Germany” at age 6, and was raised by his mother Teophanu, a byzantine princess, to become an „ungerman“ Kaiser. A monc Gerbert taught this child, the future emperor Otto III, the sciences, and Otto made his teacher Gerbert pope Silvester II. In a letter Gerbert decribed how to build a globe – so geopolitics were certainly within his interests and abilities. He is also said to have had a pact with the devil, which adds to the number of already mentioned devil appearances around the CC. This early mackinderist then sent his pupil to the utmost East of the CC world, who there bribed a local prince into happy cooperation by making him a king, and his territory a kingdom which ever since acted as a thorn in Russias side. My sympathies today and in history are with the Russians as well as with the Poles, so that sometimes I have difficulties explaining things to myself. The case of Boleslaw‘s coronation looks to me – now, the first time I think about it – like a well planned strategic action, which accomplished exactly what we see today: a CC fortress to the West of „the Russkies“ – exactly what NATO is doing today, e.g. with their Warsaw meeting some weeks ago.
  
  Later, one of the military „religious“ orders thrown out of Palestine by the Arabs (in 1211) stranded first in Transsylvania to defend it against the Kipchaks. These held at that time the Kipchak khanat of the Mongol empire, and its territory, sez wiki, is that of today‘s Russia+UA+Kazakhstan – thus these CC soldiers fought against Russia, and this for Hungary. Hungary threw them out in 1225, when this order tried to redefine themselves not as part of the army of Hungary, but of the pope – again the old CC game of gaining power and territories by playing around with definitions, pretensions and so forth. Since they could not have made themselves papal knights without the pope knowing and wanting it, it was again the pope trying to control the Eastern border of the Easternmost CC land in the region, and the army was, like today, one of attack, for attacking Russian territory: The Teutonic Order. In 1230 this order was upgraded with the Golden Bull and sent to the Baltic Coast, where they were to „christianize“ the Old Prussians. Contrary to the knowledge at this site the Baltic People are not just idiots fallen from an asteroid, but the „indians“ of that region, who lived before the others came and made them their targets. Thus „Prussia“ is (lika Dakota) the territory where once such people (Prussians, Dakota indians) lived. In Russia and Poland the Baltic people were allowed to live, in Teutonic Order land they were not and their name is all that remained of them: a typical CC and German genocide. Wiki: „Starting from there, the Order created the independent Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, adding continuously the conquered Prussians’ territory, and subsequently conquered Livonia. (…) The Order theoretically lost its main purpose in Europe with the Christianization of Lithuania. However, it initiated numerous campaigns against its Christian neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic (after assimilating the Livonian Order)“. Yes, Aleksandr Newskij showed them where their place was, but papacy had tried to „take out“ future Russia just as easily as the Old Prussians.
  
  In a word: the Eternal war of the CC against the East and the values of the East is a fact, but you have to extract it from various sources. I never read what I told you here about the coronation of Boleslaw Chrobry – in fact I tried to find a Polish biography of him, but never found one, in spite of his being celebrated in every Polish town with a street or a monument.
  
  And the 1000 years war is a fact, too, when you assume what I proposed, that Boleslaw‘s coronation as King or Poland was one step in an early Barbarossa plan drawn at the Vaticani HQ with the aim of annihilating any competition or opposition completely.
  
  Cheers
  bp
  
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  - Alex on August 28, 2016 · at 9:57 am EST/EDT
    
    Thank you for taking the time. Your comments are thought-provoking. You are of course correct that it is naive of me to ask for an account without bias, even at this late stage. On other historical topics, I’ve found the only way is to read one side and then the other. Each generation provides a corrective to the previous, and gradually more of what happened is revealed. My request was an admission of ignorance. There is a compendious history of Christianity by an English scholar whose own expertise is in the English Reformation. I was startled by how little there was in it about the conflict between the Church of Rome and Orthodoxy. There must be work done on the subject somewhere. Karlheinz Derschner sounds a hoot, bur perhaps not the best on this specific subject. I don’t have German and I think the only work of his in English is on the Vatican and the Nazis, a subject well-covered in English (even by scholars who are practising Catholics).
    
    Thank you, again.
    
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    - Anonymous on August 28, 2016 · at 1:53 pm EST/EDT
      
      You are welcome, thank *you* for your thought-provoking question.
      Yes, there are wonderful catholics – those that take their org‘s window-dressing literally.
      Yes, translating is necessary but very time-consuming. I „wanted“ to translate one thin Serbian booklet, but gave up before starting after trying the first sentences, which I understood, yes, but now, how to write them down correctly…
      Learning languages may help. Reading foreign literature on one and the same topic is „easy“ once you mastered the basic structures of that language, because the vocabulary of one topic is restricted, once you have mastered your first book on that topic, the next ones will be „just a snap“. This is not a way to learn to order a Coke in a restaurant, but quite effective for finding what you look for.
      
      One clue to the whole problem – as difficult to prove as writing a good translation – seems to be the ever more popular ET factor: „The CC stands behind all this evil – yes, but the white pope only does what the black pope, the general of the jesuits (SJ), orders him to do – yes, but the jesuits want to do and do what „Black Sun“ tells them to…“ And „Black Sun“ is anywhere in the universe, starting with Sitten/Switzerland („Sion”), Patagonia and Antarctica. A fine anti-CC writer of the past, Rudolf von Habsburg, son of Franz-Jozef II, suicided a few weeks before the appearance of A. Hitler I. on earth, wrote about the SJ that it is clear that they are the evil-doers, but the unclear thing is and remains, where they have their secret headquarter. He seemed to suspect that it was not their official HQ in Rome and not likely to be found anywhere here. What always baffled me in following leads like now your question is how unchanged by time and historical events the goals and acts of the CC are – how identical with itself: this is not the way humans live and act. This straight line through human history seems much more the acting of someone to whom „a thousand years are like one day“, because he lives on a different time scale… Perhaps the folks from Nibiru will enlighten us on that matter when they appear „real soon now“.
      
      I wish you much success in your quest.
      bp
      
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    - Konstantin on August 28, 2016 · at 7:36 pm EST/EDT
      
      Dear Alex,
      
      One of the best works available in English on the history of separation of The Roman Catholicism from the original Orthodox Catholic Church is a collection of letters by Alexey Khomyakov to his English friend, an Anglican priest William Palmer.
      
      Alexey Khomyakov, (1804 – 1860), was a Russian historian and theologian, who, having mastered ancient Greek and Latin had studied the history of both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism for several decades and is probably the best source on the issue.
      
      https://ijov.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/khomyakov%C2%B4s-letters-to-palmer/
      
      Another good source is a recent work by Deacon Victor E. Klimenko, a graduate of the Pastoral School of the Chicago and Mid-America of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Interestingly, Victor also holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Virginia.
      
      Part I: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/46463.htm
      Part II: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/46465.htm
      
      Thank you everyone for your contributions. Please could you take this discussion to the MF Cafe as its off topic. Any further comments will go to the MFC.Thx Mod
      
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  - WizOz on August 28, 2016 · at 2:26 pm EST/EDT
    
    Very good understanding of the origins of the attack against Russia by the CC through its military orders (the Teutons). A correction is necessary (and it’s not your fault, it’s a mistake made and accepted without more criticism by generations of historians). The Teutons have never been in Transylvania. They have been garrisoned somewhere at the northern frontier of Hungary (most likely in the region of today’s Carpathian ‘Ukraine’ – Ruthenia) to fight against the Cumans and convert them to Catholicism and the ‘schismatics’ (Russians) who were suborning the ‘Catholics’. It was the moment when the center of gravity of the Kievan Rus was slowly moving towards the North-East (Vladimir-Suzdal and later Moscow).
    Of course, the Teutons (like all military orders, the Templars in the first place) were directly subordinated to the Pope and that would explain why they came in conflict with the King of Hungary who expelled them from Hungary.
    
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    - Uncle Bob 1 on August 30, 2016 · at 5:52 pm EST/EDT
      
      Not so sure about that:
      
      “Originally based in Acre, the Knights purchased Montfort (Starkenberg), northeast of Acre, in 1220. This castle, which defended the route between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea, was made the seat of the Grand Masters in 1229, although they returned to Acre after losing Montfort to Muslim control in 1271. The Order also had a castle at Amouda in Armenia Minor. The Order received donations of land in the Holy Roman Empire (especially in present-day Germany and Italy), Frankish Greece, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.”
      
      “Emperor Frederick II elevated his close friend Hermann von Salza to the status of Reichsfürst, or “Prince of the Empire”, enabling the Grand Master to negotiate with other senior princes as an equal. During Frederick’s coronation as King of Jerusalem in 1225, Teutonic Knights served as his escort in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; von Salza read the emperor’s proclamation in both French and German. However, the Teutonic Knights were never as influential in Outremer as the older Templars and Hospitallers.”
      
      “In 1211, Andrew II of the Hungary accepted the services of the Teutonic Knights and granted them the district of Burzenland in Transylvania. Andrew had been involved in negotiations for the marriage of his daughter with the son of Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia, whose vassals included the family of Hermann von Salza. Led by a brother called Theoderich, the Order defended the South-Eastern borders of the Kingdom of Hungary against the neighbouring Cumans. They settled new German colonists among the existing inhabitants, who were known as the Transylvanian Saxons. In 1224, the Knights petitioned Pope Honorius III to be placed directly under the authority of the Papal See, rather than that of the King of Hungary. Angered and alarmed at their growing power, Andrew responded by expelling them in 1225, although he allowed the new colonists to remain.”
      
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutonic_Order#Foundation
      
      Burzenland:
      
      ” The Burzenland lies within the Southern Carpathians mountains ranges, bordered approximately by Apața in the north, Bran in the southwest and Prejmer in the east. Its most important city is Brașov. Burzenland is named after the stream Bârsa (Barca, Burzen, 1231: Borza), which flows into the Olt river……”
      
      “Based on archaeological evidence, it seems German colonization of the region started in the middle of the 12th century during the reign of King Géza II of Hungary.The German colonists from this region are attested in documents as early as 1192 when terra Bozza is mentioned as being settled by Germans (Theutonici).”
      
      “In 1211 the region was given to the Teutonic Knights by King Andrew II of Hungary in return for guarding the southeastern border of the Kingdom of Hungary against the Cumans. While the king retained his right to mint currency and claims on gold or silver deposits that would be uncovered, he granted the Teutonic Order the right to establish markets and administer justice. The crusaders were also free from taxes and tolls.The Teutonic Knights began building wood-and-earth forts in the area and they had constructed five castles (quinque castra fortia):Marienburg, Schwarzenburg, Rosenau, Kreuzburg, and Kronstadt,some of which were made of stone. The military order was successful in reducing the threat of the nomadic Cumans. Transylvanian Germans and volunteer settlers from the Holy Roman Empire developed farms and villages nearby to support the forts and settle the land.The territory was already populated at the time when was disputed. Some medieval sources indicate it was uninhabited, a view challenged by some scholars invoking archaeological and documentary evidence. Bountiful agricultural yields led to further colonization by German immigrants.”
      
      “The Teutonic Knights disregarded the rights of the local bishopric, however, and angered Hungarian nobility which already had settlers in the region. Led by Béla, the heir to the throne, the nobility pressed the need to expel the knights upon King Andrew II after his return from the Fifth Crusade. Grand Master Hermann von Salza attempted to loosen the Order’s ties to the Hungarian crown by drawing closer to the Papacy. Andrew subsequently evicted the Order with his army in 1225, although Pope Honorius III protested to no effect. The confusing status of the Teutonic Knights within the Kingdom of Hungary led Hermann von Salza to insist upon autonomy before committing the military order to Prussia.”
      
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzenland
      
      The area of Transylvania was very complicated during the Middle Ages period ,as it is today. Only even more so back then.
      
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  - Zula on August 30, 2016 · at 9:38 pm EST/EDT
    
    Dear bp,
    
    Thanks for the info. Is there a book on this, or some kind of reference?
    
    In reality Roman empire still covertly exists through the Vatican. With recent attack against the Vatican using pedophilia, there seems to be war within the West itself? Protestant seems to be the rival. There is the rise of Protestant in the West particularly in North America replacing the CC. When GW Bush became president, he funded billions in other nations spreading Protestant replacing the Catholic or other religions, dividing populations further (divide and conquer).
    
    Where do the Jews come in this case.? I mean if the Jews of today (if they are truly descendants of Hebrews) follow the story in the bible, there was convenience of relationship between the Roman Empire and the Hebrews of the bible, where Christ was crucified by Rome after torture, approved by the Hebrew Clergies. Was it 70AD? These Hebrews were annihilated by Rome in this period. Did Rome accept Christianity during this time? According to a site I read once (didn’t keep record), supposedly, there were no Hebrews left since then. What we say Jews today are converts from kazar. It is possible a small significant of them could have escaped Jerusalem, after all what we are told today, this is the reason why the Jews are spread around the world with no home of their own.
    
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Waqas on August 28, 2016 · at 12:14 am EST/EDT

Bit confused. In the presence of ICBMs the concept of war has changed. Russia is a big country so just by staying in their country they can strike anywhere against the “empire” easily. On top of that we have nuclear deterrence. Considering all this the arguments about Russian marching and liberating does not make sense and so does the explanation of why would they not go that route.

I think Russians woke up bit late even if they were weak they should have stopped the empire by saying Nyet for the gulf war 1. Ok they didn’t do at that time then they should have done that for gulf war 2. Ok they didn’t do at that time they should have stopped them their onslaught in Libya. They only woke up when they were 1000km away in Syria or even couple of hundred km away from them in Ukrain.

The thing is it’s not about saving other counties from empire it’s about morals. if a fire burns in a neighboring house you do not just sit cozy in your house and say o well my house is safe. If Russians got some nice weaponry they should have better put it to use long time back.

Considering the above argument they should now put their full force to oust the empire from Syria and build strong alliance with whatever allies they have.

The successes in Syria show that they could have watched their global interests even without having the biggest armed forces in the world or propaganda machines as of empires just a simple “nyet”.

Saker I don’t agree hopefully Russia would be the savior of the weak against the empire.

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- A.T. on August 28, 2016 · at 10:04 am EST/EDT
  
  Its not realistic for Russia to save the world, and if that happens it would be a byproduct of Russia saving itself.
  
  Conventional warfighting is expensive, and even as the primary world reserve currency tapping into everyone else’s GDP, the U.S. has hit hard limits. Russia could never have gone toe-to-toe with the U.S. in any of the recent wars or it would have hit its own financial limits far sooner.
  
  Finally, the U.S. has a massive nuclear arsenal. Those seeking a battle of annihilation, that final decisive fight that ends it, seem to ignore that if having nothing left to lose, the U.S. as it is today would go nuclear.
  
  The Russians are playing the Long War adroitly, but only Westerners and particularly Americans can end this by disempowering the neocons and putting down their own rabid dogs of war.
  
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  - Bro on August 28, 2016 · at 3:49 pm EST/EDT
    
    Well said, AT.
    
    The job is massively daunting, (particularly in the first days or even years of dawning awareness) and you have a widespread but unrealistic desire among the awakening that someone else (Russia, Mr Putin, etc…… “Please, please, oh please help us!) will do the work for them so they can go back to their former comforts in safety, with no more nagging responsibilities disturbing their earthly paradise.
    
    It’s like the UFO controversy followers that see almost no hope in their own efforts or capacities (at present, they are right about that, but they may actually have time to improve their prospects of acting effectively, if they get off their assets, and start investing in themselves….) so they place all of their hopes in rescue from other worlds. And the evidence of other “intelligences” existing IS quite extensive, so this yearning is not difficult to comprehend.
    
    Trouble is, real intelligence, be it God Almighty, other beings from a base very far away, or simply the most thoughtful among us earthlings realize a very simple truth:
    
    We are here on this planet to develop in consciousness and learn something from our collective experience as a species capable of holistic intelligence. A potentially “Final Exam” is underway, and most of the aware students are sweating bullets, in fear of flunking the test. So they are looking around to see if any other aware beings are taking the test with more composure than they can muster, hoping to get a few pointers or clues, because so far, they are acutely aware that they have less than 50% of the correct answers. And the questions aren’t getting any easier.
    
    But the purpose of the test is not for a) ace student VVP to pass his notes to you or b) the Architect of the whole thing to announce that He was just kidding, everybody is saved, everyone passes.
    
    That (a) would be cheating and (b) would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise in being in the first place (to develop consciousness and will, and allow you and billions of others to actually earn your passing grade and, therefore either a) or b) would deprive you/them from the thrill and fulfillment of passing the test yourself. Ergo, c) Get to work! And no cheating, bailouts, or divine intervention served up on a silver platter by God or Head Waiter VVP (or some flying saucer from outer space….) !
    
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    - A.T. on September 01, 2016 · at 10:26 am EST/EDT
      
      Fermi’s Paradox and the Great Filter supposes that there should be galaxy-spanning civilizations – but where are they?
      
      Well, possibly they develop to the point where they can destroy themselves, and do so.
      
      http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
      
      … I think this eon’s batch of planet Earth sophonts are flunking out big time….
      
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  - Jonathan on August 29, 2016 · at 5:01 pm EST/EDT
    
    Good points. However, removing the neocons is no small task. I am frustrated to see that even commentators such as Paul Craig Roberts seem not to know what a “neocon” actually is. Beyond that, their history, how they came to power and how they continue to remain in power as well as their program and goals are important to piece together in order to develop any strategy against the neocons. It’s actually a little more complicated than just pointing to Wolfowitz or PNAC.
    
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    - A.T. on September 01, 2016 · at 10:32 am EST/EDT
      
      I still can’t get the spectre of the DNC convention, where a smattering of boos met Panetta’s pro-war speech followed by chants of USA. It was that easy to shut up antiwar protest.
      
      http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/dnc-2016-leon-panetta-chant-226335
      
      OK, so in exchange for the most ‘progressive’ Democratic platform ever, a green light for war with Russia.
      
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-most-progressive-democratic-platform-ever/2016/07/12/82525ab0-479b-11e6-bdb9-701687974517_story.html
      
      ummm… ok, so these are the smart hip progressive Americans?
      
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Kok on August 28, 2016 · at 10:18 am EST/EDT

I believe that Russian misses one crucial fact; if Russia could purge unwanted elements within own borders, the West would talk and behave differently.

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Zula on August 29, 2016 · at 4:16 pm EST/EDT

“The Papacy fought against Russia for 1000 years. The Crusaders for roughly a century. The Swedish Empire for 21 years. Napoleon for just a few months. Queen Victoria, Napoleon III and Abdülmecid I (what I call the “Ecumenical Coalition against Russia) for about 3 years. The Kaiser Wilhelm II also for 3 years. The Trotskysts for a decade. Hitler for 4 years. The Jewish mobsters (aka “oligarchs”) for 9 years. And yes, they all eventually were defeated”

This reading brought me to tears. This war has always been between good vs evil and still, the good prevails. Russia, must work on propaganda mechanism like West/zionists countering it with the truth (changing evil with goodness)letting the US population and the world know the truth.

Yes, we in other part of the world were duped how we thought jeans was greater than any Russian made piano, or how growing up, Hollywood MGM or when the tiger roars at the start of a movie appearing on our black and white tv, we would jump up and down with happiness it is American movie, as supposed to never ending Russian war movies. This was back in the 80s. I have a feeling, even during USSR, the fifth column may have been part of portraying and giving bad image for Russia to the world, being passive aggressive. We should admit that, the US did great job luring most of us “to win heart and mind” and for its “democracy”.

Why is it since the turn of a century and even beyond that, how refugees/immigrants were created. US immigrants/refugees who now have become 2nd, 3rd, 4th generations so on do not put two and two together why the US opens its doors to them. It is the foreign policy of the anglosaxons that still persists today that brought immigrants to US and demand full patriotic loyalty. What is sad is the same immigrants now work against their ancestral land to make US number one. Irish famine imposed by British brought Irish refugees to US, wwII brought Germans, Eastern Europeans, jews. Civil wars in poor nations brought refugees. All these crimes done by Anglo Saxons is to translocate refugees, still taking place today. There is some kind of conspiracy to make mixed-race world so that no one should feel nationalistic so that populations keep serving the empire.

If Russia transformed as China did with hybrid capitalist-communist system gradually in early 90s, it would still have been a powerful country.

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Mauricio Garcia on September 03, 2016 · at 12:02 pm EST/EDT

I really admire The Saker and his blog is excellent, but this article is tremendously flawed – what a pity. I will not dwell into all of the details concerning Russia’s military capabilities because the main point was actually whether or not Russia will attack the West. The Saker makes the mistake in explaining that Russia will only engage in war if attacked and totally ignores what Putin has already loud and clear said “The main lesson from WW2 for me was, if war is inevitable be the first to hit” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QxWYIAtCMU. I do not believe you don’t know he said this Saker, so how on earth can you say that Russia is not prepared to attack first when it’s leader has telegraphed that he will if pushed into a corner – which is exactly what’s happening.

In the end being incinerated by a Russian or US thermonuclear blast makes no difference to humanity and I fully understand Putin’s position, which is if you are going to be wiped off the board, why not hit first? This means that your closing statement “So no, most definitely not, the Russians are not coming” is incorrect and for the wrong reasons you have tried to describe in this post.

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Military bases on April 15, 2018 · at 9:43 pm EST/EDT

The navy is the most integral part of the US army. The navy was established by America’s first president George Washington in 1775. The US Navy had a successful engagement during America’s revolution. Nowadays, the US Navy is the best-decorated army in the world.

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Assessing the Russian military as an instrument of power

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