Trump Keystone Cops Shoot Themselves; Russian Army Bests US&NATO; China's New Army to Surpass US

New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.

Freezing and Unfreezing Trump’s Freeze

There is an absured amount of confusion within the Administration and within the mainstream media as to what exactly is going on with Trump’s purported freeze of foreign aid. Let us note, first of all (1) how Trump’s executive orders have been delivered on the basis of only minimal consultation with the agencies most directly impacted by them; (2) are in several or perhaps all cases constitutionally suspect; (3) they provide insufficient reaction and planning time for those who are most impacted or victimized by them. Even worse, (4), their language appears not to be readily accessible, and (5) there is great uncertainty as to what the orders mean and as to how they should and can be legally implemented. They do indeed (6) represent a slide to authoritarian if not dictatorial or even despotic government, but not even at a particularly intelligent level. Musk’s school-boyish and energetic (and, above all, plain silly) Nazi salutes notwithstanding, we are not headed for a particularly competent regime of fascism.

Did you expect different?

In my earlier posts this week, I noted a degree of confusion as to whether the stop orders impacted both military and non-military forms of aid, whether they impacted domestic and foreign deliveries or both, whether they applied to Ukraine and, if so, how. Then on Tuesday I reported that a federal judge had placed a brief injunction on the stop orders but that this appeared to apply only to orders issued by the Office of Budget and Management (OBM). Yesterday, we were treated to the news that the order has been rescinded.

NBC, in an extraordinarily confused and confusing account trying to make head or tail of all of this, told us that the rescinding applied only to OBM orders and that the executive orders otherwise remained in full force and effect. At one and the same time, NBC claimed that Trump had never issued an executive order authorizing a blanket freeze of all federal assistance programs, and yet went on to say that the rescinding of the OBM order technically rescinded the blanket freeze on all federal assistance, pending review. Further, it informed us that several of the President’s executive orders pause or end some federal funding. These are said to include funds to federal grantees and all funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act. The White House, meantime, said that those freezes remain in effect.

At this point in time, I am not at all certain as to whether, how or to what degree any of this directly impacts Ukraine or is likely to do so within the next few days or weeks. The original orders were for a period of 90 days. It appears that some of these have been rescinded but the White House tells us that everything remains in force. There definitely exists great concern in Ukraine that Ukraine may be impacted, and one program that is impacted, according to Zelenskiy’s former adviser Oleksiy Arestovych, is the flow of funding to 90% of Ukraine’s media space which may tell us that most Ukrainian media content is Washington-pleasing BS.

A War That Might Be Over

I do not share the confidence with which Gilbert Doctorow expressed to Judge Napolitano earlier today that what I call NATO’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine is “effectively over,” but certainly I can see that if Washington funds dry up, and given that most of Europe is experiencing an economic crisis and that even Europe’s plans to steal from seized Russian assets are being disputed by their main guardian namely Euroclear, then we are likely to be witnessing not so much the end of the war as Russia’s gradual absorption of Ukraine to the point of surrender and/or the sharing out of Western Ukraine amongst neighboring powers Poland, Hungary, Slovakia (and, further afield, Germany). I see that in Germany, by the way, likely future chancellor Merz is indicating openness to talks with AfD.

Zelenskiy is showing no serious interest in negotiations; Putin says that Zelenskiy is illegitimate - so illegitimate in fact that he cannot even legally rescind his own prohibition on any Ukrainian entering into negotiations with Putin. Although Putin doesn’t go so far as to say it, the reality is that the entire Ukrainian regime is illegitimate first, because there have been no elections when there should have been and, second, because the current regime is heir to an illegal coup d’etat in 2014 that criminalized what was then the country’s leading party, Party of the Regions, as well as the Communist Party.

Chinese Military Growth

A mutliple-authored article in the FT today (China Builds Huge New Wartime Militatry Command Center in Beijing) reports that China’s military is building a massive complex in western Beijing that US sources say will be far larger (10 times larger) than the Pentagon. It refers to a 1,500 acre construction site started in mid-2024, lying 30km south-west of Beijing, possibly with bunkers to protect military leaders in the event of a nuclear war. The PLA is reported to be rapidly expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal

Russia Military Superiority Over US&NATO combined

A Substack article at Institutional Warfare Theory (Institutional Warfare Theory) argues that since NATO invited Georgia and Ukraine to join it in 2008, Russia kicked its military industries into overdrive and recruited hundreds of thousands of troops and that Russia is capable of such rapid transformations in ways that the West cannot replicate, with the result that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are now more powerful than the United States Armed Forces and NATO combined.

Russia’s success in the battle of Avdiivka in the conflict over Ukraine, in February of 2024 was a major turning point in this trajectory. As to the reasons, the article cites Wyatt Mingji Lim, the analyst behind Defense Politics Asia:

“Russia built 7,000 km of defensive fortifications and minefields, built thousands of kilometers of highway and rail lines, deployed 1,700 drone crews, built 440 military hospitals, multiplied ammunition production by seventeen times, and reduced weapon development times from several years down to a few months. Lim explains that NATO, by giving massive amounts of lethal aid to Ukraine, forced Russia to modernize and expand its military. He concluded that, based on these numbers, Russia is turning into a global superpower and that the U.S. will need its own peer-level land war to achieve the same level of development.”

The U.S. & NATO spend eleven times more on defense than Russia, but Russia has the advantage over them in terms of (1) purchasing power. (2) economies of scale. (3) contract price gouging. The cost of American labor is 6.78 times greater than the cost of Russian labor. American steel costs 1.67 times more. American energy costs exactly three times more. Russian weapons cost roughly 41% that of American weapons. Larger scales of production also reduce unit costs, so a smaller military budget can yield an equal or greater number of weapons.

“Russia produces 250,000 to 375,000 large caliber artillery shells (152 mm) per month. NATO states together produce 83,800 to 125,800 shells (155 mm) per month. Russia produces at least 3,500 glide bombs (FAB & KAB) per month. NATO states together produce 700 glide bombs (JDAM) per month. Russia produces 174 to 213 offensive missiles per month. NATO states together produce 129 offensive missiles per month. Russia produces 120,000 FPV drones per month. It is unclear how many FPV drones NATO & Ukraine together produce, but it could be between 17,000 and 84,000 per month. Russia produces 1,633 large platform suicide UAV (Geran-2, Lancet) per month. NATO produces as many as 83 intermediate platform suicide UAV (Switchblade) per month. Russia produces multiples more of each explosive weapon type than NATO: 3.5x the artillery shells, 5x the glide bombs, 1.5x the missiles, 2x the FPV drones, and 19x the larger suicide drones, a scale of weapons production 6.2 times larger”.

U.S. Department of Defense use of monopolized contracts allows manufacturers to charge whatever they want. U.S. defense spending totals more than half of discretionary spending, and this proportion is increasing. The Russian Ministry of Defense, by contrast, appears to create profit incentives through higher output volumes rather than monopolization. Russia is able to produce significantly greater quantities of weaponry for a fraction of the cost.

Russia is highly adaptive, developing practical, cheap, and increasingly lethal modifications. Russia’s diversification of specialized drone types has accelerated in the last year, as illustrated by their turn to first person view (FPV) drones and deployment of non-jammable fiber optic drones. The Russian Air Force uses cheaply produced JDAM-style glide bomb kits that fit standard FAB bombs and KAB thermobaric vacuum bombs. Russia also uses real, battlefield tested superweapons already in serial production like the Kinzhal, Zircon, and Oreshnik, and is now fielding the Poseidon.

Russia is now able to jam and intercept many of NATO’s most advanced systems and has a system for quickly assessing and adapting to the characteristics of unfamiliar systems.

“The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation currently numbers 2,219,000 active personnel with 1,330,000 soldiers, a recruitment rate of 30,000 per month, and an additional 1,500,000 reservists. The U.S. Armed Forces stand at 1,326,000 active personnel, 443,000 soldiers, a recruitment rate of 4,600 per month, and 806,700 reservists. NATO, including the U.S., stands at 3,471,200 active personnel with 1,395,290 soldiers, a recruitment deficit, and 2,414,000 reservists”.

NATO member states have six times the population of Russia, but calling up all available reservists and conscripts puts an enormous burden on the economy, and if reservists and conscripts were called up for World War III, a strategic nuclear exchange would likely occur before reservists and conscripts were trained up and ready for deployment.

The Russian Ministry of Defense uses pay incentives to increase recruitment levels. Its base pay is $2,100 per month. This is roughly four times greater than the national median income of $625 per month. For comparison, entry pay in the U.S. Army (E-1) is currently $2,017 per month, or less than half the national median income of $4,241 per month. Russian soldiers are paid slightly more than American soldiers in exact dollars, and at least eight times more when adjusted for cost of living, without even counting bonuses or benefits. Russia’s personnel costs only comprise 10% of its total military budget while the U.S. personnel costs comprise 22% of the total American defense budget.

“The Russian military is now, by far, the most experienced and best trained military in the world. According to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, at least 650,000 Russian troops are now experienced in combat, and new troops are regularly rotated in, further raising this figure”.

The article goes on to discuss at length such issues as tactics and power projection, and weighs the seriousness of counter-arguments to its broad thesis that Russia is now a more powerful military nation than the US and NATO combined. The author does not believe that Russia poses a threat to the US or NATO for so long as these powers do not constitute an existential threat to Russia.

West Asia Note

I do not have sufficient time today for any substantial comment on events in West Asia other than to call attention to the speculation of Douglas Macgregor earlier today to the effect that he thinks Israeli abuse of Palestine, its recklessness in dealings with Egypt over the border, and the unprecedented vileness of suggestions from Blinken, Trump, Netanyahu (soon to be vomit-making guest of Trump in Washington) and Smotrich, of displacing Palestinians illegally and unwillingly into Egypt or Jordan or Saudi Arabia - all of these things are pushing the hitherto docile and submissive Arab world into revolt. Israel can have Iran in its sights all it wants but, if it is paying attention, it should be more concerned about Egypt, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia. In Syria it may meet with Turkiye sooner than it wants or expects.

Oliver Boyd-Barrett is Professor Emeritus of Bowling Green State University in Ohio and of California State University. His books include The International News Agencies; Le Trafic des Nouvelles (co-authored with Michael Palmer), Contra-Flow in Global News (co-authored with Daya Thussu), The Globalization of News (co-editor with Terhi Rantenan, and contributor), Communications Media, Globalization and Empire (editor and contributor), News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet (editor and contributor); Hollywood and the CIA (with David Herrera and Jim Baumann); Media Imperialism; Interfax: Breaking into Global News; Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis; Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change (with Taneer Mirrlees, eds.); RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media; Conflict Propaganda in Syria: Narrative Battles; RussiaGate Revisited: Aftermath of a Hoax (with Stephen Marmura, editors, and contributors). In preparation for 2025 is Afghanistan: Occupation and its Aftermath (with Sumanth Inukonda and Lara Lengel, editors and contributors) and, for 2026, The Sage Handbook of News Agencies (co-editor with Pedro Aguiar and Christian Vukasovich).

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