IT Man DT

Should we now refer to Donald Trump as the IT Man (idiot Trump), the man who sent Javelin missiles to Ukraine in December 2017, imposed tariffs on China and applied the brakes to globalization in March 2018, destroyed the JCPOA treaty with Iran in May 2018, whitewashed Israel’s illegal occupation of the Golan Heights in March 2019; withdraw the US from the intermediate nuclear treaty in August 2019; and ordered the assassination of Iranian major general Soleimani in January 2020?

Thus Trump initiated or contributed mightily to the staging of US wars on three fronts. Of these it is the withdrawal from the intermediate nuclear treaty that should be most on the minds of global leaders today, a measure that former CIA officer Larry Johnstone today speculated with Judge Napolitano may have been taken merely to open up a new bounty for US nuclear arms manufacturers on the false pretext that the treaty was being violated by Russia. Johnstone’s former colleague Ray McGovern was instrumental in crafting that treaty, and former weapons inspector Scott Ritter was largely in charge of monitoring compliance with that treaty for two years from Siberia.

Of course the Democratic Party has been very bit as much toxified by neocon thinking as the Republicans. Trump’s reputation as being more disposed against war, however, needs correction under the troubling grey horizon of a nuclear war for which he holds grave responsibility.

Russia’s new Oreshnik (Hazel) medium-range intermediate (3,000 to 5,500 km range) , nuclear-capable hypersonic, ballistic missile flies at a speed of up to 13,500 kilometers an hour, and carries six independently targeted warheads of which each has up to six independently targeted sub-munitions. This is merely one innovation in nuclear weaponry among several that Russia has been developing since Trump’s crass measure of August 2019.

The Oreshnik was successfully tested under combat conditions against a missile-production facility in Dnipro in Ukraine yesterday. The missile was carrying only conventional weapons. On this occasion.

Western air defense systems are reportedly incapable of taking down the Oreshnik. For the Pentagon, Richard Johnson has just said that the US overhaul to its nuclear weapons strategy may not be sufficient to take on the threats posed by Russia and China.

On national television yesterday, Putin promised there will be other tests and that Russia will soon enter into serial production of these unique weapons. It would have been better for Russia, perhaps, had the weapon already been in serial production but, presumably, Putin considered it necessary to provide the clearest possible warning to the West that it will regret its persistance in firing missiles on Russia. His readiness to order use of the weapon on Dnipro this week perhaps suggests that there are other test models available or there are test models of comparably lethal weapons available.

Yesterday’s test, said Putin, was the direct result of what have been in effect short-range missile attacks on Russian territory by US ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles earlier this week. He said that the Storm Shadow attack had killed Russian officers and soldiers of the Sever Group in Kursk.

Germany and France have not used their Taurus and Scalp missiles, respectively, on targets in Russia. Ukraine is believed to have 38 more Storm Shadow missiles available to be fired by Britain for Ukraine on Russia.

Arrival of the Oreshnik may provide cautionary warnings to all those countries that the US has suckered into stationing its so-called defensive anti-nuclear missile systems in Poland and Romania (on the laughable pretext of providing them defense against a country, Iran, that does not have nuclear missiles) and also to Germany, whose compliant Chancellor, Scholz, had agreed to host them on German soil from next year.

Poland’s Prime Minister, fiercely anti-Russian and neoliberal Donald Tusk, soberly greeted the firing of the Oreshnik as the beginning of a “decisive phase,” and a “historical situation.” Dima of the Military Summary Channel at noon today November 22nd (California time) likened it to the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, not that the Oreshnik yesterday was itself carrying a nuclear warhead and conceding that therefore its damage was relatively slight, but that just as Hiroshima had told Japan that its war had no future and told Russia that its forces should move no further than Berlin (was there any question they were so inclined?), so the Oreshnik should tell the West that now is the best time to stop.

Instread, Dima predicts, less merrily, that the West will try to “exhaust Russia,” which strikes me as a tad too similar, and a tad too prone to failure as RAND’s 2019 bid to “extend Russia.”

For Antiwar.com David DeCamp (DeCamp) reports that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said today that a controversial US missile defense base in Poland is a potential target of the Russian military.

“The Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile system in Poland has long been a security concern for Russia as its Mark-41 launchers are capable of fitting nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles. A land-based version of the Tomahawks was previously banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019. The integration of the Aegis Ashore system into NATO’s defensive network has just been formalized. The Aegis Ashore Ballistic Missile Defence System facility at Redzikowo, Poland. Also today, Vladimir Putin has confirmed that Russia has the right to strike the military facilities of countries that are supplying Ukraine with the missiles”.

A NATO summit begins today and a Ukraine-NATO emergency meeting has been called for November 26th in Brussels. In Ukraine, Russia has launched further missile strikes, not the Oreshnik, but including Iskanders. These have targeted Dnipro which appears to be a significant ambition for the medium-term future of Russian war objectives to establish complete control over Kherson, Zapporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk.

On the battlefields, Russian forces have surrounded and are beginning to enter the important logistical center of Velyka Novosilka in the southern Donbass, which is northwest of Vuhledar and east of Rivnopil (now Russian), Vremivka and Urozhaine (now Russian). The area between Velyka Novosilka and Russian-held Zolota Nyva will almost certainly fall completely to Russia in the nesr future. Russian forces are moving on Rozdolne to the north of Velyka Novosilka; they have all but taken Illinka (adjacent to Russian-held Antonivka); they have taken Trudovoye, south of Uspenivka, and are well positioned to clear Ukrainian forces that are held up between Uspenivka and Russian-held Dalnie, creating a cauldron for Ukrainian forces to the east who have little opportunity for evacuation.

Russian forces are currently stalled around Kurakhove where they have taken part of the town of Beretsky on the northern banks of the reservoir, whose eastern end is largely under Russian control. Russian forces are moving south towards the reservoir from Novoselydivka. North of Dalnie, Russian forces have taken Novodymtrivka, Novodeksivka and Yurivka, west of Selydove, and southwest of Pokovsk. They are moving in the direction of Pushkine to the north. There are no recent major developments in Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, where Russia appears to have taken at least half of each settlement. In southern Kupyansk Russian forces are moving on Borova, north of Lyman, while to the north they are consolidating their foothold along the banks of the Oskil into the city of Kupyansk itself.

Certainly, Russia faces economic headwinds in the near future, as the Russian Central Bank tries to reduce the rate of economic growth, the resulting higher inflation and higher interest rates. Russian debt levels as percentages of GNP do not even begin to compare with those of the West. Its economic challenges are not only the results of a war economy but equally the product of the redomestication of Russian wealth that is no longer being wasted in profits to Western corporations or invested in the West. Other factors include the stimulus to domestic production of Western sanctions, the burdgeoning of Russian oil and gas sales to China, India and the Global South while continuing to sell LNG extensively and at much higher prices than the former pipeline equivalents, to the West. Household wealth is increasing as a result of higher real wages, attractive military wages and improved social services.

All countries face economic headwinds on a regular basis and Russia is no exception. Russia will surmount the challenges, even as European economies, at the very same time, show signs of contraction, recession, de-industrialization, high debt, failing social services and greater poverty. We will see how they fare.

Meantime China emerges stronger than anyone from the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru and from the G20 summit in Rio. In Lima, China was able to celebrate progress on the estsablishment of Chancay, a massive deepwater port north of Peru in which Beijing has sunk $1.3 billion. It will connect by rail to Brazil for the exportation of Brazilian agricultural and other goods to China, weakening the hold of the Panama Canal for Latin trade with the rest of the world. In Lima, President Xi warned the West of its futile and silly attempt to cause trouble for China by fomenting separatism in Taiwan; of the West’s deteriorating human rights record in the light of Western complicity with the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and of the murder of Lebanese in southern Lebanon; and the unstoppability of China’s Belt and Road initiatives globally which are securing its alliances with the Global South in ways in which the West no longer know how to compete.

The West offers weapons and death. China offers wealth.

China no longer needs the US. Trump’s threatened 60% tariffs are already meaningless.