Ending Western Diplomacy

Global Diplomacy

Richard Sakwa in his book The Lost Peace makes the important observation that the collective West, under its “rules-based” order, no longer has a need for diplomacy. Since the collective West, in its current neoliberal phase, must always be right, according to its own estimation and supported by extremely self-favorable claims to democracy, humanitarianism and freedom, there is no reasonable alternative to its own order and therefore there is never anything to negotiate about - never any role for diplomacy - since there is only one acceptable outcome to all problems of international order. Either its opponents cede to the rules-based order, or the collective West marginalizes them through military and economic (sanctions) means.

This is why it takes so long for western commentators on NATO’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine to even consider the possibilities of serious, meaningful diplomatic outcomes (i.e. outcomes in which Russia could see something possibly positive) against doubling down on military defeats in the expectation that eventually, in western eyes, Right will prevail.

Western strategists will reach out to acts of terror, such as Crocus Hall, before they will give serious consideration to peace. Scott Ritter yesterday described Crocus Hall as an act of war, conducted principally (as Colonel Wilkerson has also recently claimed) by Western intelligence agencies using its creature ISIS-K as proxy (I note that Phil Geraldi does not buy that…he thinks there were other players).

Supreme Diplomacy

China, by contrast, has become the global beacon of diplomacy and rationality, one that promotes its values by helping other countries develop and become more prosperous rather than ravishing the worlod through war and misery. It is currently hosting Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and looking towards a forthcoming visit by Putin to Beijing, some time in May, perhaps in time for the May 9 Victory Day celebrations.

Lavrov referred to a policy by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi of double counteraction to the West’s double deterrence, exemplifying a new era of Chinese-Russian coordination of action in foreign policy, in the UNSC and other world fora, all premissed on principles of harmony between nations with a view to protecting world peace, profoundly different from the objectives of the collective West. Chinese leaders have threatened retaliation against Western sanctions. (Western presumptions of Russian dependence on Chinese military aid, by the way, are complicated by a report today in the Wall Street Journal of growing Ukrainian preference for off-the-shelf Chinse components for Ukrainian drones over components that come from Silicon Valley start-ups with which even Ukraine is losing patience).

An article today in China’s Global Times claims that China’s back-to-back relationship with Russia gives China more leverage over Washington. Russia has kept America trapped in Ukraine, strengthening China’s freedom of manouver. Europe, on the other hand, is less inclined to allow Atlanticist ideology to disrupt whatever remains of its good trading relationships with China, and this too enhances China’s advantage over Washington.

France and Britain, Saviors of Western Civilization

President Macron of France is persisting in his policy of stationing French troops in Ukraine or, at the very least, in places like Romania, ready for action in Ukraine, and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, a former British Prime Minister is allying his country with this French initiative. Whether this has any plausible likelihood of effectiveness is thought by many (incorrectly) to be linked to the fate of the $61billion aid package that may, or may not, soon be tabled on the floor of the US House of Representatives. House leader Mike Johnson has been meeting today with a representative of Republican hardliners, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are very opposed both to Johnson’s enabling of the Democrat’s passage of a $1.2 trillion expenditure package some days ago in order to keep the government running, and opposed to further aid for Ukraine and other such expenditures that greatly enhance the impossible debt load that the US continues to sustain on the back of the hegemon’s dollar role as the world’s reserve currency.

Johnson’s Dilemmas

The hardliners are threatening to pull the rug under Johnson’s continuing leadership. David Cameron’s dinner visit yesterday to Trump’s Florida headquarters at Mar A Lago which would have been an opportunity for Cameron to try to win Trump over to sustained US involvement in Ukraine did not, apparently, proceed very well. Mike Johnson has declined to see Cameron. Cameron clearly fails to understand the depth of irritation Trump must feel when he recalls British involvement - via the likes of Christopher Steele - in the Democrats’ Russiagate hoax in 2016.

None of this therefore augurs well for the likelihood of passage of more US money for Ukraine. This in turn may have the effect of bolstering Macron’s posture as the final savior of Ukraine, under the banner of a newly unified and one-day-eventually-to-be-rearmed-and-glorious Europe.

But Russia will not be fooled by the poodle that yaps.

NATO Preparations for War

The conservative analysis Paul Craig Roberts believes that recent Ukrainian attacks on Russia show that the conflict has spread beyond Donbas into Russia, under NATO guidance and support. Further, he believes there is a perceived NATO force buildup around Russia, evident, for example in the presence of American tanks and armored vehicles in Greek ports and in the building of a military base in Romania near the border with Ukraine. Romanian soldiers and American instructors conduct exercises with Moldavian soldiers. They may be preparing for the occupation of pro-Russian Transnistria, where 2,000 Russian troops guard a large arms depot from Soviet days (although I recall there is controversy as to whether many of the arms in the depot are still there and still usable). The US and NATO may move soldiers into Odessa in order to prevent Russian military support to Transnistria.

Even though the war is supposedly all about Ukrainian membership of NATO and even though NATO has not felt able to permit Ukrainian membership since the idea was first mooted almost twenty years ago, there are some indications now of NATO willingness to allow fast-track access so that Ukraine would fall under the full protection of NATO.

Roberts is counselling that we should not allow ourselves to be fooled by the appearance of weakness behind Macron’s plan or to think all this amounts to a bluff that will compel Putin into negotiations. No, these are moves, Roberts, says, toward general war, and Putin may have to act far more precipitately in order to avoid defeat in such a war.

Roberts may be on to something so far as NATO plans are concerned but this certainly is not the equivalent of proving that NATO has a real chance of winning a war against Russia, especially if it has to fight without continuing US finance. Douglas McGregor thinks Russia will win a land war “hands down;” Alexander Mercouris is skeptical that an air war will do anything very much other than destroy western air power and start a nuclear war.

And even if Macron’s Ukraine policy is a bluff designed to compel Russia to the negotiation table, there is no evidence to suggest that Putin thinks that there is anyone in the collective West that has the credentials, the good faith, the competence, the intelligence - the diplomacy - to make such a thing worth while. Better to win the fight.

The Arctic

I noted yesterday that Western lust for the natural wealth of the Russian Federation is the real agenda behind the proxy war over Ukraine. This is related to at least three considerations of climate change:

• the first having to do with the new Arctic passages and trade routes that are opening up as a result of ice melt, amidst established, expansive Russian influence over vast stretches of the Arctic;

• the second having to do with a new configuration of global access to mineral wealth that may become more constrained for Western exploitation under conditions of extreme climate change in other parts of the world;

• and the third having to do with the advantages that will accrue to Russia and its ally China when the pace of climate change hands Russia certain significant economic advantages over the West (e.g. lower temperatures), until such time, of course, as climate change annihilates the human species.

Ever ready to leap into action to stop the worst effects of climate change (cough), the US government now hopes to prevent Russia’s Arctic development of liquid natural gas. “Our goal is to ensure that Arctic LNG i2 is dead in the water.”

As noted yesterday, this is all about the fact that Russia has become a leading source of LNG for Europe, even though Europe sabotaged cheaper Russian pipeline delivery of oil and gas early on in the war (to the great detriment of Germany which is now undergoing a process of deindustrialization), and because the USA had set great hopes on significantly expanding exports of US LNG to Europe.

Ukrainian Terror

Burisma and other Ukrainian companies are reported to have been involved in Ukrainian terrorism in Russia. Moscow-based analyst Mark Sleboda refers on Faultlines today that Russian investigators of the Crocus Hall terrorist attack claim to have found links between Ukrainian companies - including the energy corporation, Burisma, that once paid Hunter Biden (whose friend Devon Archer has previously said that Hunter sold “the illusion of access” to his father) to sit on its board of directors - and acts of terrorism against public figures in Russia. Sleboda says that Burisma was the equivalent of a slush fund for Ukrainian terrorist attacks on Russia, in return for exemption from tax-related investigations.

Battlefields

In Kharkiv my posts in recent days have referred to the emptying out of the big cities in the wake of Russian offensives on energy as well as military targets, as well as to the impacts of Ukrainian evacuations as Ukraine prepares for a possible Russian offensive in this region. We are told that Ukraine is heavily engaged in the construction of fortifications around Sumy and Kharkiv, measures that it should have started a long time ago, but which may be proceeding with sufficient force that they will compel Russia to make its offensive in this region, if that is indeed its plan, before rather than after celebrations for Orthodox Easter.

Alexander Mercouris over the past couple of days has been moving to the view that Russia has already embarked on what is, in effect, an offensive, whose aim is for Russia to control all territory of the former Ukraine east of the Dnieper. Mercouris seems to think that Russia’s primary focus will be the Donetsk area from Keramik to Chasiv Yar. Areas like Terny and Kupyansk, further to the north, can wait.

West of Avdiivka, Russian forces are already pushing against hastily constructed Ukrainian lines of defense from Umanske to Naielove. North of Avdiivka, Russia is outflanking Ocheretyne along the railway lines and has repelled a Ukrainian counterattack. The fall of most of Pervomaiske to Russia will facilitate the speed with which Russia will take Krasnohorivka (one of two towns with this name in the vicinity of Avdiivka, this one near Marinka), which lies to the south: a third or so of Krasnohorivka has already fallen to Russia.

Russia has reignited its attempt to capture Orozhaine and Staromaiorske on the Vremevka Ledge (towns that it had previously controlled up until the Ukrainian summer offensive in 2023). The steady closing off of Robotyne and Vernbove in the so-called Bradley salient further west, will more surely dunk any future Ukrainian hope to penetrate down to Mariupol via Topmak and cut through the Russian landbridge with Crimea.

In Bakhmut area, the village of Bohdanivka has not been officially declared fallen to Russia by the Russian MoD, but it seems highly likely that it has been well penetrated by Russian soldiers, while Russia continues to pressure Chasiv Yar, from the direction of recently captured Ivanivske to the south west, on the eastern sections of this settlement that was once home to a major Ukrainian concentration of forces (many tens of thousands) during the 2023 battle for Bakhmut. It appears, by the way, that the Chasiv Yar canal is not an insuperable obstacle to invading forces. Russia is already bombing the town of Konstantinivka to the west of Chasiv Yar, and the town is likely to be taken by Russia soon after Chasiv Yar itself falls. It is a town of similar size to Avdiivka but not nearly as well fortified. Absent a more significant Ukrainian pushback, Chasiv Yar may fall more quickly than had been originally supposed. Russian drones, bombs and artillery are hitting supply roads into the settlement. Two Sukhoi-35 ground attack Russian aircraft have been seen flying at very low altitude over Chasiv Yar, without resistance from any Ukrainian air defense, not even from MANPADS. Russia has been taking down air defenses and air defense radar. Russian air forces have been in high evidence, with intensive use of Iskandr M missiles. There has been talk of Russian use of missiles from North Korea.

Klishchiivka and Andriivka further to the south and to the east, close to the Russian mainland, are also under Russian pressure. These too are towns that were previously under Russisn control until the Ukrainian summer offensive.

Russia is close to capturing Bilohorivka which is a target that, once taken, will facilitate Russian capture of the major settlement of Siversk to the southwest. Also, Russia is moving on Vymk. Further south, Russia has taken almost the entirety of Novomykhailivka and is enhancing its pressure of Vuhledar.

Ukraine’s commander in chief, Genearly Sryski, has rescineded a previous decision that would have seen a demobilization of fighters, while the main mobilization bill is still stuck in the RADA and, even if it was passed, would deliver far fewer than the half million men that had been talked about a year ago. All this is symptomatic of gathering crisis for Ukraine and the problems are well beyond the capacity of the odd $61 billion or so to resolve.

By midday of today, April 10, Dima of the MSC was talking as if the mobilization law is now a done deal that would capture every eligible human in its net. The plea of May God Help All of Us would be appropriate here, believers and nonbelievers alike