Longer the War, Greater the Weakness

The war came. From the early hours of Tuesday local time, Israel has launched a ground offensive on Lebanon although at this moment (midday, California time, of Tuesday October 1st) it is too early to say with any certainty as to how widescale this will be or how far it will penetrate. I have seen it reported that Israel has ordered the evacuation of 25 villages close to the border.

AP reported today, that according to Israeli sources, Israel’s ground forces have been operating covertly in Lebanon for the last year, carrying out dozens of small ground operations. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the army’s spokesman, said the current raid is an expansion of these activities.

The Lebanese army and UNIFIL, a U.N. peacekeeping force stationed in southern Lebanon, have not confirmed that Israeli troops crossed the border, although UNIFIL said it was notified that they were going to. Hezbollah has said that it is ready for an Israeli invasion but had not yet seen it happen.

We do not know the state of preparedness of Hezbollah.

Most commentators, on all sides, appear to agree that Hezbollah has been seriously weakened, first as a result of Israel’s terrorist pager and walkie-talkie attacks a fortnight ago and secondly, by Israel’s assassinations over recent weeks of Hezbollah top leadership, culminating in the attack last Friday of a meeting in Beirut of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and other top Hezbollah leaders together with visiting IRGC commanders from Iran. This attack involved 86 2,000 kilo precision guided bombs on high rise buildings in southern Beirut which have likely killed hundreds. The meeting may have taken place at an underground venue which required Israel to strike “layer by layer.”

That the strike was facilitated by top level espionage and penetration of the organization by agents in the pay of Israel seems very likely. Nasrsallah has been criticized for allowing such a meeting to happen. In view of the pager attacks it is not surprising that the leadership would have been very anxious about coordinating by means of any electronic devices, but to hold such a physical meeting of so many top leaders on the precipice of an all-out war seems to have been reckless.

Other critics are suggesting that such recklessness was merely the top of an iceberg. Despite its reputation, the organization has grown too comfortable and lazy since its success in booting Israel out of Lebanon in 2006 and that it is has long ago fallen prone to corruption and enemy penetration.

All this is well and good but we still don’t know about the state of the many missile launch platforms buried in deep silos throughout the mountains of southern Lebanon nor about the morale and caliber of the lower-cadre members of Hezbollah. The coming hours and days will surely cast much more light on these existential questions.

For a moment it seemed as though Iran might choose to abandon its militia affiliates (whom some commentators say are not subordinate to Tehran but which make their own decisions). President Pezeshkian and Iran’s entire leadership were looking humiliated and weak, not least for trusting Western sources who assured them that in return for a non-retaliatory stance by Iran, ceasefires would be achieved in Gaza and Lebanon.

We do not yet know whether Iran is a paper tiger. But within hours of the start of Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon, Iran launched hundreds (200 according to Israel) of missiles on Tel Aviv. Some of these landed - one of them within yards of a CNN team. Footage from the Daily Mail suggested that few if any of these were causing significant damage on the ground, while Israeli air defenses (the Iron Dome) seemed to be functioning well. But it is too soon to be definitive. Israel, as it typically does, is minimizing the damage and is already calling the Iranian strike “ineffective.”

The Daily Mail footage suggested drones rather than ballistic missiles although other reports seem certain that ballistic missiles were involved. Israel has issued dire warnings of a powerful response against Iran. Israel seems ready to strike major assets of its top regional enemy — including, perhaps, Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy facilities - while Iran has issued dire warnings of more severe attacks from Iran if Israel decides to retaliate.

We should not assume that Iran will continue to fire missiles or that it will escalate in the nature and power of the missiles that it does fire. We cannot assume that Israel will hold off from its major playing card, a nuclear weapon. Israel hardly seems to need US permission for such a strike (Washington would not give it), since Israel may control the US more than the US controls Israel, via Israel’s network of Manchurian candidates that it has sewn over many decades throughout the entirety of the Washington machinery of State, some of whom, like Tony Blinken, are not afraid at times to confess their primordial fealty to Israel.

In addition to these huge unknowns are the thinking and plans surely ongoing right now in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq and Syria and, above all, in Russia. Russia may not want a wider war (like the US it is very wary about being caught fighting two major fronts at the same time) but it can hardly stand by and watch Iran being torn apart by Israel, just as the US cannot stand by and watch while Israel ignites a regional war that it presume the US will fight on its behalf. Europe will be divided but may not even count except through the services of the UK in feeding US troops into the region from UK bases in Cyprus.

Israeli deep-state strategy may envisage the mutual destruction, to Israeli advantage, of both the US and Russia although such a scenario barely seems credible without an accompanying encompassing of the globe by a blanket of toxic sun-denying cloud cover, radiation and fire.

The Cradle relays reports that US forces at Washington’s occupation base in the Conoco oil field near eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor governorate came under heavy attack during the early hours of 29 September. The intense shelling on Conoco is said to have included direct hits on the headquarters of the armored division and left casualties among the occupation troops. The strikes were launched in response to a series of US airstrikes on Deir Ezzor’s Harabeesh neighborhood.

Over the past year, US bases in Iraq and Syria have come under repeated attacks by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) umbrella group, which came together last October in support of Gaza and solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. The IRI also been attacking targets in Israel.

A Weak Israel

Patrick Lawrence, writing for Consortium News, reports that Moody’s, the debt-assessing agency, dropped Israel’s credit rating from A2 to Baa1.

This is a cut of two notches, a not-unserious downgrade.  A–rated debt is considered of high quality and low risk; B–rated debt is ranked “medium grade,” carries more risk, and “may possess speculative characteristics,” as Moody’s puts it. “The outlook remains negative,” the agency adds. 

“Economic growth cratered as soon as Israel began its assault on Gaza last Oct. 8. Gross domestic product dropped 21 percent in the final three months of last year. In July the Bank of Israel cut its 2024 growth forecast nearly in half, to 1.5 percent; a month later JPMorgan put the figure at 1.4 percent. These forecasts are almost certainly optimistic”. 

“Foreign investment has dried up, defense spending is nearly out of control, and tens of thousands of businesses have closed because (1) there is little business to do and (2) the IDF has called up too many employees to serve in Gaza”.

Half a million Israelis, mostly young, professional, technocrats — have already expatriated, out of a population of 9.5 million.

“Israel of the not-distant future will be substantially devoid of expertise, leaving untrained ultra-orthodox Zionists to run ministries and government departments. A failed state, in short”.    

In short, Israel’s economy is a mess and the mess is growing more serious by the hour. The longer the war, the greater is the likelihood of a financial implosion of Israel which, together with its political implosion in the judgment of world opinion (apart, of course, the US and its cronies), could spell the end for Israel as a state. While this may advise Israeli leaders to stop the bloodshed now and stem their losses, such a reaction is not what we have come to expect of the criminal cabal that now controls Tel Aviv.

Israel’s enemies may take a terrible hit from Israel in the opening days of its display of shock and awe while there are still sufficient US missiles to sustain it (US’ favorite parnter in crime, the UK, has said it is pretty much out of weapons), but they can almost certainly sustain conflict for a long while to come. This is attritional warfare and it is the kind of warfare that continues to undermine Ukraine and that may eventually suck the West dry.

Some BRICS Considerations

The conflict so far has been deeply damaging to Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iran and Shiite militia in the region. If the damage is allowed to get worse, then this not only further weakens the already poisoned credibility of the United Nations - which has been unable to sustain meaningful action that would actally provide real protection of Palestine - but it also reveals the BRICS as possibly just another talking shop for the elites of the world, at the very moment that Russia is doing everything in its power to create the conditions for a productive BRICS summit later this month.

A weak Iran may prompt BRICS member Saudi Arabia to revisit the question of its otherwise stalled rapprochement with Israel, and wonder about the usefulness to Saudi interests of the China-brokered rapprochement between the Saudis and BRICS-membe Iran. A weakened Iran amid further unchecked Israeli aggression in the region would also call into question the reliability of Russian and even Chinese support. At best the Middle East conflict further exposes the deep actual and potential divisions of interest within the BRICS.

China, Argentina and the BRICS

In Naked Capitalism, Nick Corbishley notes an unexpected hint of warmer relations between Milei’s regime in Argentina and the Chinese government which a year ago, Milei had described as an “assassin.” Corbishley considers this is evidence of further US loss of economic influence in South America. If so, this might even suggest a possible recovery of Argentine interest in joining the BRICS.

A delegation of senior Argentine ministers, including Karina Milei, the president’s sister who is also general secretary of the presidency, Economy Minister Luis Caputo and Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, had met with China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, on the side lines of the recent UN General Assembly. The purpose of that meeting was to relaunch the strategic economic agreement between the two countries.

Corbishley writes that Argentina may want to renew the Chinese swap line that underpins Argentina’s central bank reserves as well as facilitate investments by Chinese companies in lithium and copper, two minerals that Washington considers globally strategic. China is already Argentina’s second largest trade partner. In May, when Argentina’s central bank needed new 20,000 peso notes in order to keep up with the country’s triple-digit inflation rate, it awarded the contract to the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, a state-owned corporation that carries out the minting of all renminbi coins and printing of renminbi banknotes for the People’s Republic of China.

Milei appears to have been impressed by China’s policy of non-interference, and its efficiency, as in the rescheduling, last June, of the payments corresponding to an activated tranche of the currency swap that both nations are keen to maintain.

Milei will be travelling to Beijing in January to take part in the China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum. This was inaugurated in 2011 by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Its purpose is to deepen regional integration and reduce the overweening influence of the US on Latin American politics and economics. It has been mooted as a possible replacement for the Washington-corrupted OAS. The China-CELAC forum will be held in Beijing in January. Milei reportedly hopes to use it as a springboard for closer China-Argentina relations.

“Beijing has been a major creditor of Argentina since signing a currency swap in 2009 with then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchener. That swap is now the largest source of foreign reserves in the central bank’s depleted coffers. It is also the biggest yuan swap line in the world, worth $18 billion. To keep servicing its outsized debts, including the roughly $40 billion it owes the IMF, the Milei government desperately needs that swap line to keep flowing. It has already pawned a significant chunk of the country’s gold reserves”

Trade between China and Argentina the two countries had declined since Milei’s election, with both exports and imports falling.

“China has looked to alternative markets for agricultural goods, including neighbouring Brazil. It is also heavily invested in many of Argentina’s strategic sectors, including lithium and gas — sectors that US government and corporations also have their eyes on — as well as the construction (stalled since 2022) of Argentina’s nuclear plant, Atucha 3, and the Néstor Kirchner-Jorge Cepernic hydroelectric plant, the largest bilateral infrastructure project ever attempted between the two countries”.

In August Argentina’s gross domestic investment was down 25.8% year over year. The Milei government has little choice but to take a more pragmatic, as opposed to dogmatic, approach to foreign relations.

The Uselessness of Western Sanctions

Kit Klarenberg, in his Substack column yesterday discusses a recent Washington Post exposition of the failure of the US sanctions regime which has “become an almost reflexive weapon in perpetual economic warfare” against “enemy” states, individuals, organisations, and businesses the world over.” The US imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty. 60 percent of all low-income countries now live under some form of financial penalty.

“While US leaders have been sanctioning adversaries since the country’s 1776 founding, Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait “gave rise to a new form of the weapon.” Baghdad was immediately subject to a total international blockade, making exporting oil - its primary source of revenue - and importing even basic supplies all but impossible. Following the Gulf War, with the country’s decimated infrastructure incapable of being rebuilt, hunger and preventable diseases spread like wildfire. A 1991 UN report described conditions locally as “near-apocalyptic” and “pre-industrial”.

The US Treasury is gatekeeper to the world’s banking operations, and sanctions are the gate:

“Treasury officials “can impose sanctions on any foreign person, firm or government they deem to be a threat to the US economy, foreign policy or national security.” Targets needn’t be accused, much less convicted, “of a specific crime.” Once sanctions are applied, it immediately becomes “a crime to transact with the sanctioned party.” Growth of sanctions has been exponential over the past three-and-a-half decades”.

Russian Military Spending

The US spent at least and probably much more than $820 billion on the US military-indulstrial or national security complex in 2023, representing 13.3% of the entire Federal budget and 3.45% of GDP. Nonetheless, from within the heart of darkness, The Bell is indignant with the possibility that Russian military expenditure - at a mere $110 billion (roughly one seventh that of the US) - is soon to account for over 6% of GDP. Even accounting for what the Bell dubiously finds is Russia’s “secret” militsry spending it is clear that Russian military expenditure is nowhere near comparable to that of the US, nor more secret, as indicated by the notorious failure of the Pentagon to have ever successfully passed an audit.

Russian Battlefields

Russia has been making steady progress northwards towards the city of Zapporizhzhia in the south. The biggest recent news is the fall of Vuhledar in southwest Donbass, following yesterday’s dismissal of the commander, Ivan Vinnik, of Ukraine’s 72nd mechanized brigade on account of his surrendering to Russian forces. Russian forces are now close to taking Bohoiavlenka to the north, and Novoukrainke to the west. To the east near Vodiane, Russia has taken Donbass mine number 3.

Further north near Kurakhove, Russian forces are moving further west from Ukrainsk and Zhelanne Persha, have taken Tsukuryne and will shortly complete the gap between Tsukurye and Hirnyk to the east and Ismailivka to the south.

Russian forces are close to surrounding Selydove from multiple directions. Once Selydove has fallen theh the move to Pokrovsk becomes inevitable. There are further Russian advances in the Toretsk area around Leonidivka and Nelipivka, and in the Siversk area where Russian forces are making progress towards the city from Vasiukivka (west of Sakko I Ventsetti and Zaliznianske). Russian forces are making progress in the Terny area, moving from the north (Vyshneve) and the south Pischanne) on Lozova, south of Tabaivka.

To the north, Russian forces have been pushed back from the aggregate plant in Vovchansk. In the Kursk region, Russia has recovered ground around Kerenevo and Snagost, while to the east, Nikoeyevo-Darine is still contested all the way to and including most of Sudzha. East of Sudzha, Russian forces are fighting for Plyokhovo, while they now hold Borki and Spulnoye. There is little news of the more recent border incursion into Glushkovo from Veselyo

Continuing Casualty Chatter from Ukraine

As I reported recently, the best sources on Russian casualties are the periodic BBC-MediaZona reports which have a relatively transparent and plausible methodology and which also make allowances for the possibility of underestimating, and that on this basis we could safely assume 150,000 dead.

I find no reason to think that the numbers of severely wounded would be less than the number of dead, but that, more plausibly, they would be several times higher. But let us assume for the moment that the number of seriously or severely wounded is equivalent to the number of those killed. This would give us a total of killed and severely wounded of 300,000 on the Russian side. I dont think we should be overly occupied by the numbers of lightly wounded as many of these will rejoin their units upon recuperation.

The great scandal of the war is that many western sources and commentators who should know better, simply take Ukraine’s own estimates of its dead and wounded at face value without sensible interrogation. Zelenskiy’s own figures are simply not believable. Russian figures, which have their own methodology (including intercepts of Ukrainian communications) had assessed the number of Ukrainian dead and severely wounded at around 400,000, a year ago, and the total will since have grown significantly and can hardly be less than 500,000 today.

For Responsible Statecraft, Aaron Sobczak, recently reported that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) had introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which “requires a report on the casualty and equipment losses for both sides involved in the conflict in Ukraine.” This amendment was accepted into the House’s version of the NDAA and awaits review by the Senate. Massie told Sobczak that the House Speaker didn’t know how many Ukrainians have been killed or injured in the war, and that State Department officials - even in classified settings - seemed to know only Russian casualty statistics — but not those for Ukraine. Massie believes that representatives are just being fed propaganda in classified briefings. He thinks this is because the State Department is afraid that any bad news about how the war is going will deepen the reluctance of Congress to fund or end it.