Losing Wars
Israel Losing the Palestine War
It is difficult to say that Israel is winning the war. This is the country that got used to winning wars in matters of days, but on this one we are now talking six months and counting. Israel wont be the first country to lose a war as it commits genocide.
It has lost the credibility war, first of all, as it transpires that a large proportion of the victims on October 7 were killed by friendly fire, and evidence for rapes and the slaughter of babies has largely proved clumsy propaganda. The world is not impressed by the appeals of the Israeli cabinet to historical claims based on the evidence of divine authority.
It has lost the moral war, not simply because of its wildly disproportionate, AI-assisted reaction to October 7th, but because finally that atrocity has prised open eyes that have wilfully remained shut for decades to the fundamental injustice of the foundation of an apartheid state without any remotely adequate acknowledgment of the national right of Palestine. Many sensible commentators remain alert to the possibility that October 7 was an event allowed to happen because of its usefulness as pretext for the Zionist aspiration for a Greater Israel (maybe one that deep State elements of the Israeli intelligence apparatus helped to plot in collaboration with high ranking spies surely placed within Hamas from its very foundation - abetted by Netanyahu himself as a means of weakening the Palestine Authority).
It has lost the military war
because it has not closed down Hamas, nor shows signs of really understanding the extent or whereabouts of Hamas leaders and fighters and their networks;
the resort to genocide, terrible as it is, is an expression of weakness, of a takeover of the army by poorly disciplined, heavily indoctrinated, young hooligans;
because it cannot secure Northern Israel from Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon; the size of the IDF (active and reserves equal 165,000 and 465,000) represents an enormous and unsustainable cost on the Israeli State and will not be sufficient, in men or in weapons, in the event of a coordinated defense by Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, perhaps with Egypt and Jordan, and, most important, with the assistance of Russia.
Russian willingness to engage is signalled this week by Russian attacks on eleven ISIS-style terrorist camps in Syria that had come out of the US-controlled Al-Tanf area. Russia, a nuclear power, cannot stand by in face of the regional aggression of a regional nuclear power, on long-established allies of Russia; Russia, as a member of the BRICS has significant leverage over fellow members, the most relevant of whom include China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE.
On Losing the Persian War
In this context, the Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus has proven an act of idiocy - which also betrays the broader idiocy of the collective West, discussed in a post earlier this weak, in abandoning the most basic principles of diplomacy. The collective West failed to condemn this illegal and murderous act by Israel (instead the US assures Israel of its iron-clad support), just as it has also failed to condemn numerous equally illegal and murderous Israel attacks on Iranian and Syrian military in Syria, just as it has failed to condemn the equally illegal and murderous Israeli attacks on Iranian scientists, just as it has corruptly supported, at Israeli instigation and in response to AIPAC capture of the US legislature, and over several decades, an idiotic narrative of Iran as “nuclear threat,” deliberately misrepresenting a peaceful program of nuclear energy as an intent to devolop a nuclear weapon capability (which, even if it was true, would be as nothing compared to the vast accumulation of nuclear weapons, outside of the framework of international law, by Israel).
(Note: since I wrote the following paragraph there are reports of Iranian drones being launched against and intercepted by Israel. According to a Twitter post from Scott Ritter as many as 7 Iranian supersonic missiles hit Nevatim, the Israeli base from which Israeli F-35s took off before their attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. None of these seven were intercepted - perhaps the result of a prior understanding; perhaps indicative of the shortcomings of the Israeli Iron Dome). Apparently 200-300 drones and missiles were fired at Israeli targets. The IDF claims to have intercepted 99% of them. This would be a particularly high interception rate. Time of travel was a matter of hours. Note that drone swarm attacks are good ways of identifying and locating an enemy’s air defenses and if so that would mean we should expect another round of Iranian attacks in an hour or so. More in my next post).
Despite US, Israeli and other collective West hysterical insistence - without corroborating evidence from Tehran - that Iran would retaliate and that the collective West would need to prepare for what might be a major regional if not world war, Iran has, as usual, demonstrated a demeanor of calm and deliberation and proportionality (and at a “time and place of our choosing”). It hardly needs to do anything, anyway, given the Houthi’s crippling of Israeli and US affiliated shipping in the Red Sea, Houthi and Hezbollah shelling of IDF positions in Israel, and the leverage of Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. There are questionable western media reports of secret talks between the US and Iran, perhaps through Oman intermediaries, that suggest US tolerance for some calibrated Iranian retaliation of which the US will be pre-advised, not unlike Iran’s retaliation for Trump’s murder of Iranian military chief Solemeini in 2020.
On Losing the War for Ukraine
So now we have the mobilization bill awaiting Zelenskiy’s signature. It’s hard to know how many people are available to be mobilized or where they are. The demobilization bill, which would give some rest to men on the combat line after 36 months, is going nowhere. A good many possible recruits fled Ukraine a long while ago, and they are hardly likely to rush back to Ukraine to put their lives on the line for the Great Dictator of Kiev.
Zelenskiy is now saying that if only the West can prop up himself and his henchmen for a few more months, then Ukraine will be ready to launch a new counteroffensive in 2025, that it will be ready, in other words, to sacrifice the remainder of its army-age newly mobilized forces for the benefit of NATO. It is extremely difficult to envisage how Ukraine, having badly lost its 2023 counteroffensive, can possibly do better in 2025, What would victory, even if attainable, look like to NATO? In what ways can NATO imagine that somehow a tepid, half-assed “victory? (e.g. a “frozen” conflict along the Dnieper) could possibly justify such enormous European and US wealth and so many hundreds of thousands of lives, in pursuit of the ostensible objective of allowing Ukraine membership of NATO, something which NATO cannot do and will not do for the foreseeable future. The alternatives would be for the EU to allow Ukraine into the EU - which the EU will not do; or, as is already happening, for individual members of NATO to sign mysterious and probably worthless bilateral agreements with a regime in Kiev that may very well no longer exist in 2025.
The Battlefields
The main lesson of this war: modern warfare between what may still be described as near-peer forces is extremely, not to say tortuously, slow, even when one side, Russia, is clearly advancing, and is encountering less Ukrainian resistance, possibly reflecting Russia’s attritional strategy of slowly degrading the enemy’s forces while doing all it can to protect the lives of its own.
Moving from west to east, then south to north: Russian FPV drones destroyed a railyway bridge in Odessa. FPV drones and missiles attacked the Motor Sich plant in Zapphorizhzhia; the plant very likely is producing military vehicles. Russia has been attacking UAF positions in Shahebaky region west of Robotyne; in Robotyne, Russia still controls only part of the southern end of the settlement, but Russian forces are moving northwest of nearby Verbove in a way that suggests an intent to encircle Robotyne. In the Vremevka Ledge area, Russian forces have crossed the Mokrl Yely river and approaching central Urozhaine from the southwest; they are also subjecting nearby Staromaiorske to heavy FAB bombing, and engaging in counterartillery fire with UAF positions further north without encountering much by way of resistance.
In Novomykhailivka area there is evidence of Ukrainians retreating in the direction of Vodiane, followed by Russian forces; Russia - after a pause of several weeks now - still has not made a final push on the northwestern part of the settlement still controlled by Ukraine, perhaps because it serves Russia as a meatgrinder tool of attrition. Further north, Russia continues pushing towards the center of Krasnohorivka, using heavy 1500 FAB bombs on UAF positions. Russian forces are encountering little or no resistance. Their strategy appears to be to “clear” first of all, before ground operations, and, in the “clearing” phase, to focus on buildings or areas otherwise likely to become defense “hubs.”
In Avdiidvka area Russian forces are reportedly moving on the settlements of Umanske, Yasnobrodivka and Netailove, all well to the west of Tonenke and Orlivka. Russia has attempted an attack on Ukrainian positions in the west of Berdychi, coming at it from the north, possibly with a view to then moving further west to Novokalynove, Keramik and Arkhanhelske, then on to Ochertyne and then further west to Zvirove.
West of Bakhmut, Russia has taken Bohdanivka, and may now be able to move west to Kalynivka from which it could attack Chasiv Yar from the north. The eastern sections of Chasiv Yar, on the eastern side of the canal, are under heavy Russian drone and artillery fire, but it will take a week or so for Russia to make further progress on the ground from their current positions a kilometer or so from the eastern perimeter.
Further north there is significant Russian activity along the railways in the direction of Vymka, and likewise around Ivano-Darivka, Vorkhnokamianske, Spirne and Bilihorivka - all areas of contestation whose main end point is likely to be Siversk. Towards Lyman, Russia continues to maintain a strong concentration of forces near Terny. South of Kupyansk, Yampolivka is becoming a major center of attention in Russian preparations to counter Ukrainian defense lines to the west. North of Kupyansk, the same may be said of Myrnotad.
Russia is beginning to use an anti-FPV drone rifle that allows Russia to lock into and to control the flight of drones.
The cruise missiles that destroyed the thermal power station near Kiev two nights ago were subsonic, delivered with Russian Su57 jets (some 22 are currently operated and likely to be increasing) with a range of around 400 kilometers, were not intercepted, suggesting that air defenses even for Kiev are in a very degraded condition. Kharkiv has been in a state of near darkness for several days and is vulnerable to another strike on a remaining power facility that would likely leave the city completely without power. Such “clearance” operations generally prefigure ground operations.
Putin has said that its recent attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities were responses to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy facilities. Their main targets, he has claimed, is the military-industrial complex of Ukraine. The objective therefore is demilitarization, which has always been a central part of the rationale for the SMO. The Russians will continue to target energy facilities until some kind of peace is finalized.
Peace from Victory: Istanbul Plus?
Putin has expressed ironic exasperation with supposed Western “peace” talks that proceed without invitations to Russia to participate (Switzerland is trying to organize such a peace conference in June). Putin complains that the West says it wants peace, that it needs Russia to negotiate, yet does not invite Russia to negotiation talks. Russia wants nothing to do with such nonsense. Russia is ready, says Putin, for constructive engagement, provided that this is based on the reality of the conditions as they exist in the battlefield (including the integration of Crimea and 4 oblasts of Eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation, in fall 2022; and the neutrality, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine). Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov says readiness for negotiation must start from a position in advance of the 2022 Istanbul talks.
Ukraine will not be interested in Istanbul Plus, nor is it likely that Russia expects anything else. Russia will therefore proceed militarily until it forces Ukraine to surrender, and by that time my expectation is that Russia will have articulated new aspirations and that these will include Kharkiv, Kiev and Odessa regions, regime change in Kiev and/or in Lviv - whoever ends up running the rump - and a good-faith engagement by the collective West in negotiation for a new EurAsia security architecture.
According to an interpretation by Dima of the Military Summary Channel that Putin, in his conversation yesterday with Belarussian President Lukashenko, indicated that in the absence of a serious opening for negotiations prior to May 21st, by which time Zelenskiy needs to have formally initiated new presidential elections for Ukraine then it would be time for Russia to launch a major offensive. I think the logic has to do with the fact that if Zelenskiy does not announce elections then his own legitimacy is questionable. My understanding was that the final date for an indication of such an intention was March 31st. Without a commitment to new elections, one way or another, Putin will have nobody legitimate to engage in negotiations with. The reality seems very likely to be that Zelenskiy will not initiate elections; and he will renew the period of martial law. If there are elections, there is little chance that he will be reelected; his future beyond the Presidency of Ukraine, legitimate or otherwise, is dim.
Energy Connections
Phillipe Benoit and Anne-Sophie Corbeau in an op-ed for The Hill address the vexed question of LNG on which Europe has become far more dependent, at far greater expense than the cost of Russian pipeline oil and gas up until Europe at the end of 2022 - ever subservient to US interests - carefully shot itself in the foot by subjecting Russian oil and gas to heavy sanctions and by complicity in 2023 with the US in the sabotage of Nord Stream, while continuing to pay much more for the same product by importing Russian oil and gas either directly through imports of LNG or, less directly, by importing Russian oil and gas which has been refined by India or other Russian clients and which therefore no longer technically counts as “Russian.” All this has implications for the fight against climate change.
The US had for long salivated at the thought of the revenues it could earn from the sale of LNG to Europe but was always frustrated, until now of course, by the fact that US LNG was more expensive that Russian pipeline exports. As noted in my post yesterday, the Biden administration has paused pending approvals for US LNG to countries without a U.S. free-trade agreement, citing concerns for climate change. Natural gas demand totaled 4,067 billion cubic meters in 2022, including 919 billion cubic meters in the U.S. This produced 7.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide globally, including 1.7 gigatons in the U.S., or 38% of U.S. emissions from fossil fuel combustion. These figures do not include natural gas-related methane emissions. LNG plants currently under construction are unaffected by the pause and will bring the capacity to over 230 billion cubic meters per years by 2030. LNG exports have been growing but still represent a minority share. Global LNG trade reached around 550 billion cubic meters in 2023, representing about 13 percent of global gas demand. US LNG capacity has grown from 0.6 billion cubic meters per year in 2015 to 124 billion cubic meters per year in 2023.
Gilbert Doctorow this afternoon addresses the specific case of the energy crisis for Europe in the case of Germany. The latest growth estimate for Europe 0.6% while Germany is likely entering a second quarter of recession. The BBC misleadingly reports that high energy costs due to the end of cheap Russian gas is not a significant factor in Germany’s economic problems, since only 6% of German industry is very energy dependent. Doctorow argues that natural gas has a far greater role in economic and social life than commonly appreciated but is feedstock for the chemical and related industries as well as for fertilizers needed to maintain German and European agricultural output. Further, prioritization of geopolitics over domestic economic performance has sent the message to industrialists that Germany is not the place to be. He cites the Financial Times - “German industry is unlikely to recover to pre-Ukraine war levels as elevated prices from imported liquefied natural gas have put Europe’s largest economy at a ‘disadvantage’, the chief of one of Germany’s leading energy companies has warned.”
Fortress Europe
Mainstream media reluctance to admit that the declining economic fortunes of Europe - even as those of Russia rise - has anything to do with European facility for shooting itself in the foot, needlessly, on matters relating to Russia in general, and to the proxy war between NATO and Russia over Ukraine in particular, represents an ongoing construction of a mental fortress. This is every bit as thick, in every sense of that word, as the original Cold War and probably more so (given its invocation of new methods of thought control over social media by algorthym).
Its consequences are revealed both in the myopic anti-Russian foreign policies adopted across Europe (including those of faux “neutral” countries such as Switzerland) and in active discrimination against Russians of all stripes who find themselves in Europe, discrimination that is frequently illegal and unofficial but passing as legal and official, ranging from difficulties for Russians in obtaining or renewing visas for visiting or staying in Europe, to the blocking of attempts by Russians to open bank accounts, to contestation of inappropriate application of European sanctions on individual Russians, and of course to “cancel Russia” parodies of the Spanish Inquisition.
All this parallels the more physical fortress that Europe has long been building against immigrants, particularly immigrants from parts of the world that Europe has helped to destabilize and impoverish such as Africa and the Middle East, and that it will further harden through the imposition of more impenetrable border controls, such as Finland’s recent closure of its entire border with Russia. None of this can be good for trade, nor for better international harmony and understanding, nor for many of the other Enlightenment values that Europeans have long cherished and for which their prestigious educational hierarchies have long stood, never mind that Europe has hosted many of the world’s most vicious imperialists and genocides. Few borders seem resistant to hypocrisy.
Although this version of a fortress Europe seems, at the moment and in my estimation, a rather ugly and dangerous phenomenon, it is not difficult to imagine how, beyond the current conflict over Ukraine with Russia, a more unified, less fractious, more dignified, ultimately more prosperous and more self-sufficient Europe, whose foreign policy is embedded in both realism and goodwill, could be a very good thing for Europe and for its neighbors and other world powers including the BRICS. This is far more preferable than the continuing presence of the US in the heart of Europe and than rather pathetic European dependence on a US that consistently places its own interests first and foremost. This would be a Europe positive, confident and intelligent enough to engage in a far more open and fluid relationship with Russia and the US and the BRICS simultaneously, perthaps as open and as fluid as the relationships between the European countries themselves. The strength of this new Europe would not be achieved at the expense, as currently, of the national sovereignty of its members.
Some will argue that the main problem right now is that European leadership is so heavily invested in a losing proposition that there is no likelihood that Europe will get its act together soon enough and that the only power that can force Europe’s hand is the USA.
I would argue, against that view, on the basis that there is no more sign of intelligence in Washington than in Brussels even if there is a tad more open public discussion amongst intellectuals and media in the US than in Europe.
There is some possibility that the lure of a war with China will distract some US neocons from their war for hegemony - a counter revolutionary war against multipolarity - away from Moscow and more towards Beijing.
I find little comfort in this and I do not see it as a basis for continuing support for a US role as chief meddler, even pacifier, in Europe. Europe has to find a way and the way presents itself now if Europe and Europe alone can embrace an Istanbul Plus solution to Ukraine.
Why? Because that is what Russia wants and will quickly agree to if it is an agreement that has broad international consensus. Russia has no interest whatsoever in Western Ukraine and has no interest in any other part of Europe.
There should be a neutral rump Ukraine minus Donbass and Crimea. Probably makes sense to let Kharkiv go to Russia, and for Odessa and Kiev to be jointly secured by Ukraine, Russia and the UN.
There does need to be a new Eurasia/global security architecture and this needs to be the product of conversation between Russia, the BRICS as a whole, and an Atlantic coalition. Imagination is the force to get this into motion. But first we need a statement of intent from the main parties. Otherwise Russia has to keep fighting, and despite itself will begin to acquire new obligations and temptations in Europe that it would not otherwise contemplate.
Istanbul 2 could indeed be a prelude to a world worth living in.