By Will Schryver, Twitter, 7/1/22

Twitter bio: Geopolitics – History, Empires, and War – Macroeconomics and Markets – Data Analytics – Music

For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of the unprecedented levels of propaganda beclouding the ongoing Ukraine War are the incessant claims, from the very beginning, of the alleged strategic, tactical, and logistical ineptitude of the Russian military.

The theme of the bumbling Russians was clearly preconceived and coordinated, and commenced in earnest within the first 24 hours of hostilities. It is also apparent, to me at least, that it has emanated almost exclusively from the CIA/MI6 analyst/think-tank complex.

CIA/MI6 fronts like Oryx, Bellingcat, and ISW have pumped out this narrative so relentlessly that it has now been ubiquitously enshrined as “received wisdom”, even to the point of entering into the body of assumptions embraced by many who I expected to be more discerning.

It has given rise to countless evidence-free myths, from the #FakeNews downing of two IL-76 jumbo transports packed with Russian paratroopers, to hundreds of armored vehicles allegedly abandoned for mechanical failure, lack of fuel, or other logistical failures.

One of the more inexplicable narratives included in this disinformation package has been the allegation that Russian troops are poorly trained conscripts, who are thrown into the meat grinder with antique weapons, little ammo, and so little food they are literally starving.

These tall tales are then woven back into the main strand of the narrative: the Russian army is a disorganized mob of demoralized “orcs” whose only real talent is plundering household appliances, raping young women, and randomly gunning down old folks on the streets.

Attached to this constant refrain are repeated comparisons to the allegedly incomparable professionalism, organization, training, and weaponry of US/NATO forces. The implication is that any company of American soldiers would be a match for an entire battalion of Russians.

I’ve concluded this unrelenting narrative must have as its aim the persuasion of the public and policy-makers in NATO countries that western militaries are so vastly superior to their Russian counterparts that no one should have reservations about making war against them.

And thus we continue to hear calls for immediate NATO intervention into the war; the establishment of a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine, and “boots on the ground” to teach the presumptuous and inept third-world Russian army a lesson it will not soon forget.

Never mind the numerous reports from western mercenaries and foreign legion volunteers who managed to escape back to their home countries after brief and terrifying “tours of duty” in Ukraine, all of whom relate similar accounts.

They talk about encountering overwhelming firepower for the first time in their military careers, and they soberly warn anyone else thinking of embarking on a “safari” to kill Russians that it was “nothing like Iraq” and they feel very lucky to have made it out alive.

Never mind also the fact that, to my knowledge, there are few if any conscripts among the Russian forces in Ukraine, and few if any reports in Russian independent media sources of demoralized, under-supplied Russian battalions in any theater of the war.

Quite to the contrary, every indication I have seen suggests that Russian morale is sky high, both among the soldiers doing the fighting and the Russian public at home. To be sure, there have been Russian casualties: best estimates are ~5000 RF and ~8000 DPR/LPR KIAs.

These numbers pale in comparison to the western propaganda mill fantasies of ~100k total Russian casualties, including 35k – 50k KIAs, which, were it true, would be unmistakably reflected both in the morale of the army itself and the public at home – and it clearly is not.

Nor is any of this manufactured narrative consistent with constant Ukrainian appeals for massive replenishment of lost heavy weaponry, and repeated mobilization of territorial guard troops and expansion of the conscript window to include 18 – 60 year-olds and even women.

On the other side, Russian troops rotate out and back in to the battlefield, rested and refitted. Russia has not ordered a general mobilization, and has about the same number of soldiers in the theater that they started with (175k – 200k).

So I leave the reader to judge the facts of the matter in terms of Russian military ineptitude and massive logistical failures.

And with that preface, let’s turn to the primary question: could NATO fight and win a war against the Russians on this same battlefield?

My answer is an emphatic NO, and for three distinct but equally disqualifying reasons:

1) There is zero evidence that NATO soldiers are superior to Russians.

2) Sufficient NATO forces could NEVER be assembled and equipped to defeat the Russians in their own backyard.

3) Even the attempt to concentrate sufficient US forces in the region to take on the Russians would result in the disintegration of the global American Empire and rapidly accelerate the already-in-progress transition to a multipolar world.

As to point #1 above, it bears repeating what I have argued multiple times in recent weeks: this war has seen the Russian military quickly evolve into a battle-hardened and surprisingly nimble and quick-to-adapt fighting force. The US has not faced such a force since WW2.

Many believe the US is a “battle-hardened” force. This is utter nonsense. Of the many thousands of troops in current US combat units, only a minute fraction has experienced ANY battle, and NONE have experienced high-intensity conflict such as is taking place in Ukraine.

I submit that one of the inadvertent and unforeseen byproducts of this war is that, even as the NATO-trained and equipped Ukrainian army has been devastated, the Russian army has been transformed into the single most experienced army on the planet.

Needless to say, this is NOT what US/NATO strategists intended to achieve. But it does explain why we now see them doubling-down on efforts to prolong this war – both to (hopefully) degrade Russian capabilities, and to buy time for themselves to determine what to do next.

You see, if NATO had to go to war today against Russia, and all their troops and equipment could be magically teleported to the battlefield, they simply could not sustain high-intensity conflict for more than about a month, as this analysis shows:

rusi.org/explore-our-re…

The Return of Industrial WarfareCan the West still provide the arsenal of democracy?https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare

The dim-witted will undoubtedly reply: “But muh awesome American air power would destroy them from the sky.”

The average Call of Duty warrior believes such nonsense, but I guarantee very few in the Pentagon harbor such delusions.

To the contrary, they understand perfectly well that Russian best-in-class air defenses would savage attempted US/NATO airstrikes. It would be a massacre, the results of which after even the first 48 hours would see wiser heads calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Not only that, but even attempted, but catastrophically failed NATO airstrikes against Russia would result in a massive series of counterstrikes against NATO bases and warships at distances never seen in previous wars. It would be a no-holds-barred affair.

Staging areas in Poland and Romania would be hit hardest, but strikes would almost certainly range over all of Europe and the Mediterranean. Russian missiles and submarines would sink several ships within hours, including, almost certainly, a US carrier.

This, of course, is the nightmare scenario – one which very conceivably risks an escalation to nuclear war.

But it also assumes that Russia would stand idly by as NATO concentrated forces in the region sufficient to launch a war.

In my estimation, the Russians would NOT sit back and watch the US/NATO methodically conduct a Desert Storm-style buildup over the course of a year (or more) – which is how long it would take to assemble a force large enough to launch a war against Russia.

Just as they preempted Ukrainian designs to retake the Donbass and Crimea, they would likewise strike NATO forces long before they reached a level of strength sufficient to conduct operations against Russia. (This pertains to point #2 above, in tweet #19.)

One final observation on this whole notion of the US/NATO making war against Russia:

People neglect to consider the fact that US forces are dispersed all around the world, in over 800 foreign bases of varying sizes and strategic importance.

In other words, most fail to appreciate the fact that US military might is *highly diluted*, and the only way to possibly concentrate a force sufficient to take on the Russians would be to literally evacuate almost every significant US base on the planet.

Japan, Korea, Guam, Syria, Africa, Turkey, etc. A massive power vacuum would be created all around the world, and would constitute an irresistible temptation for “hostile powers” to exploit.

It would spell the end of American global empire and hegemony.

By Dave Decamp, Antiwar.com, 7/20/22

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that Russia’s goals in Ukraine are now expanded beyond the Donbas region, citing the failed peace talks and Western military aid to Ukraine.

When Russia pulled its forces out of areas in northern Ukraine, Moscow said it would focus on the “liberation” of the breakaway Donbas republics, known as the Donestk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR). Lavrov’s comments are the first time a high-level Russian official acknowledged Moscow’s war aims extend beyond that region.

Lavrov said that geographical realities changed after Russian and Ukrainian negotiators failed to reach a breakthrough at talks that were held in Istanbul back in March. “Now the geography is different, it’s far from being just the DPR and LPR, it’s also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories,” the Russian foreign minister said.

During the peace talks in March, Russia demanded that Ukraine recognize the DPR and LPR as independent and drop its claim to Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014. Before Russia invaded on February 24, Moscow wanted Kyiv to fulfill the Minsk accords to end the war in the Donbas, which would have granted the DPR and LPR autonomy, but they would have remained part of Ukraine.

As the war drags on and Russia continues to make more gains, Ukraine stands to lose more territory. Russia already controls most of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts, and Russian-installed leaders in those regions have said they’re planning to hold a referendum on joining the Russian Federation. Lavrov said that Russia could push even further into Ukraine if the US and its allies keep pumping longer-range weapons into the country.

“That means the geographical tasks will extend still further from the current line,” Lavrov said. “We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Zelensky will control or whoever replaces him to have weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of those republics that have declared their independence.”

The US shows no sign of slowing military aid to Ukraine. The Pentagon pledged on Wednesday that Ukraine will receive four more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) as part of the next weapons package that will be announced this week. The HIMARS are a mobile multiple rocket launch system that have a range of 50 miles.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded to Lavrov’s comments and said it shows Russia isn’t interested in negotiations. “By confessing dreams to grab more Ukrainian land, (the) Russian foreign minister proves that Russia rejects diplomacy and focuses on war and terror. Russians want blood, not talks,” he said.

Lavrov said that peace talks don’t make sense at the moment because Western governments are leaning on Ukraine to keep fighting and not negotiate. Ukraine has maintained that its goals in the war are to push Russia out of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. President Biden has said the US is prepared to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” for Kyiv to win the war, and his administration has abandoned diplomacy with Moscow.

The Bell, 7/17/22

New Deputy PM and Putin’s Daughter to Kickstart ‘Import Substitution’

Rumors were flying all last week about an “extraordinary” session of the Russian parliament, with predictions about what would be discussed ranging from a declaration of war to a new prime minister. In the end, the news was relatively minor: the State Duma convened Friday to promote Trade and Industry Minister Denis Manturov to deputy prime minister. This is apparently one of the ways in which President Vladimir Putin hopes to accelerate import substitution and make Russian industry self-sustaining (a Kremlin ambition since at least 2014). Another way Putin is trying to make this happen is with his own daughter. It was announced last week that Katerina Tikhonova will play a leading role developing import substitution at the influential Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).

• The unscheduled meeting of the State Duma was announced last Sunday, just four days after the close of the regular session. The apparent urgency sparked speculation about general mobilization, the closure of Russia’s borders and even talk of a government reshuffle. Independent media outlet Meduza, for example, cited sources saying that Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin was going to be replaced by Alexei Kudrin, the head of the Audit Chamber.
• All the speculation was wide of the mark. It emerged Friday that the Duma was gathering to rubber-stamp a new ministerial appointment — and one likely planned before the invasion of Ukraine (one of The Bell’s sources described it in detail before the war). Manturov was promoted to deputy prime minister and handed responsibility for the defense industry (in addition to civilian manufacturing). Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov, previously in charge of the defense sector, will head state space agency Roscosmos. That meant the Elon Musk-baiting former Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin was left without a job — although his credentials as an aggressively anti-Western official means he’s unlikely to be out of action for long.
• The special Duma session was required as a result of 2020 constitutional reforms. The main aim of the reforms was to extend Putin’s presidential term through 2036, but for appearances’ sake (and in the interests of a balance of power) parliament was also given the final say over deputy prime minister appointments. The reason Manturov’s promotion wasn’t confirmed during regular parliamentary time a week earlier was, apparently, that the Kremlin forgot.
• Newspaper Kommersant, known for its good relationship with Mishustin, reported that the aim of the new appointment was to give Manturov the tools to speed Russia’s path toward import substitution. Manturov has been involved in Russia’s attempts to reduce its dependency on Western-made goods since 2014.
• But Manturov’s appointment wasn’t the only high-profile one related to import substitution last week. Media outlet RBK reported Wednesday that Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova will soon start in her first official role by taking charge of coordinating the council for import substitution at the RSPP, an association bringing together Russia’s billionaires. The Bell’s sources at the RSPP could not explain how Tikhonova’s presence will help wean big business off Western imports. But it may well be harder to say “no” to the president’s daughter than a government minister.

An unsuccessful battle with import dependency

Before the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the start of Russia’s conflict with the West, the Russian government barely gave a thought to reducing imports.  

Putin himself has frequently expressed public skepticism about import substitution. “We often say that one of the demands of industrial modernization is import substitution. However, I think import substitution should not be a criterion, otherwise we will have to rely on our own strength in the manner of the [North Korean] Juche idea,” he said in 2007.

All that changed when the annexation of Crimea brought the first Western sanctions and the Kremlin realized that, in the event of a conflict, the West could deny Russian industry access to key technologies. Then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated that imports were needed for 90% of machine tool construction, 80% of the civil aviation industry, 70% of heavy engineering, 60% of the oil and gas industry and 50% of energy equipment. 

Later that year, Putin identified import substitution as one of Russia’s economic priorities and called for the market to “return to our national producers.” Over the next eight years, import substitution became an article of faith. Special government commissions were created, 20 government programs were approved, and almost 3 trillion rubles ($50 billion) was approved to support Russian companies moving away from Western imports. But no results were ever officially announced and, in 2019, the program end date was pushed back to 2024. And, despite the invasion of Ukraine and new Western sanctions, the government has not announced a new import substitution strategy.

“The end of further illusions”

There is no single metric to measure the success of import substitution. However, studies by the CMASF think tank — linked to Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov — suggest success has been limited. In 2019, CMASF summed up the results from five years of import substitution. It concluded that in 2014 and 2015, in the immediate aftermath of Western sanctions, there was some progress. However, between 2015 and 2019, imports actually increased. “We can speak with confidence about import substitution only in the manufacturing sector, and not in the economy as a whole,” wrote the report’s author, economist Vladimir Salnikov. “Even then, we are talking only about a short period in 2014-15.” He has not changed his mind since: he told The Bell on Friday that import substitution has only been a success in the agriculture, chemical and defense sectors.

 Analysts at the Gaidar Institute, a Moscow think tank, independently reached the same conclusion. From mid-2015 through 2018, the number of companies intending to implement some form of import substitution dropped to just 10 percent, according to a Gaidar Institute survey of executives. “The scale of import substitution was not great and over time it began to fade,” a subsequent report stated. In 2019, the think tank ceased monitoring all together “due to the clear picture we obtained and the end of further illusions.”

After the war started in February, CMASF reviewed imports from countries officially labeled ‘unfriendly’ by Moscow and found that imports from these countries made up 48.2% of Russia’s pharmaceuticals, 44.7% of chemical products and 32.2% of vehicles. 

There are still sectors where import levels have barely changed from the numbers Medvedev announced in 2015. For example, Russian-made radio-electronics products have just a 12 percent share of the domestic market, equipment for producing baby food is at 3 percent and automatic gearboxes are entirely imported.

CMASF chief analyst Dmitry Belousov (brother of Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov) reached a paradoxical conclusion in a report published last week about import substitution: while Russia is attempting to reduce dependence on imports to produce goods that can compete internationally, it finds itself completely dependent on imports. “As a result, during the import substitution program, our technical dependence in our most successful industries has actually increased,” he concluded.

Why the world should care: Russia’s biggest economic problems since the invasion of Ukraine are not connected with Western-imposed restrictions on exports (it’s clear that, at least for the moment, the Kremlin is earning more money from exports than before the start of the war), but result from bans on the high-tech imports without which Russian industry cannot function.

Putin evidently continues to believe in import substitution — so much so that he has even thrown his daughter into the struggle. “We need to be one step ahead, creating our own competitive technologies, goods and services that can set new world standards,” he claimed last month at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. But the paradox noted by Dmitry Belousov suggests the opposite: Russia cannot build competitive industries without competition. All that remains is for the country to fall back on outdated ideas of economic autarky — exactly what Putin said he did not want to do a decade and a half ago.

Peter Mironenko, Julia Starostina

Translated by Andy Potts

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By Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 7/19/22

A gathering of Russian forces for a major offensive is reported (Mercouris 07.19.22). Zelenskiy has ordered troops to hold Seversk, where Russians are already present and have exceeded, and which is difficult for Ukrainians to defend. A decision to order troops to defend it might appear to fall in that long line of instances where Ukrainian armed forces are being told to try to hold on to the indefensible, against the odds, rather than simply to retreat back to the next line of defense.

This is either with a view to playing out a narrative of gallantry for domestic and international consumption (with a particular interest in aid revenues) or with a view to delaying the Russian advance by all means available no matter the cost in lives, or both. Or perhaps the order is merely a deception to indicate that Ukrainians still hold something that they do not. Russians are very likely to encircle any Ukrainian groups that are being told to stand ground rather than retreat. Unplanned retreats by Ukrainians meet with punishment. Russians now have more drones to monitor such situations. Mercouris speculates that Zelenskiy is trying to draw a line in the sand, which Zelenskiy almost certainly will not be able to do.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian attempts to advance in Kherson have been repulsed, apparently. Ukrainians are either testing Russian air defenses in this territory or are trying to soften up the area before their much talked about counteroffensive. There is talk of Ukrainian ambitions to destroy both a local dam, and a local bridge in Kherson in an attempt to cut off Russian communications across the Dnieper river. But destroying bridges and dams, opines Mercouris, is not as easy as one might think because these things are built with considerable redundancy so that they can survive more than one bomb, or one HIMAR rocket (which are comparatively small: they have to be launched from the rocket tubes of a conventional multiple rocket system). Russian Iskander-Ms are considerably heavier. Either a bridge or, especially, a dam would probably require quite a few HIMARS. It appears that Ukraine has indeed been supplied by HIMARS (300km range).

A green light has been given for HIMARS attacks on Crimea, which will provoke massive Russian retaliation – at the very least, against western and other bases scattered across Ukraine (helping explain the US embassy’s recent alert that all US citizens should leave immediately). Ukraine is talking about destroying the entirety of the Russian Black Sea fleet, a threat which Russia says justifies its entire campaign and which would also elicit a devastating response.

Russia calculates it is inflicting massive casualties which are likely far greater than those inflicted on Ukrainian forces.

The reason for Zekensiy’s recent decision re. Seversk is probably reflective of Washington neocon pressure and Washington fear that support for Ukraine will wane if Zelenskiytfails to deliver some visible sign of success. This might explain why Zelenskiy is ordering troops to take far more punishment than they need to do. If no counteroffensive in Kherson actually happens, that may very well be an end to at least European support, perhaps even American.

So this may be an issue of running-out-of-time desperation. By mid-October, perhaps at this rate, the Russians will be on the Dnieper river, an existential threat to Ukraine.

This ties in with Zelenskiy’s recent purge of security and intelligence sackings, something that is itself triggering concerns in the West that Zelenskiy’s position is growing increasingly insecure as he talks of treason in every quarter. Perhaps the sackings offer him an excuse for being unable to proceed to a Kherson counteroffensive. Perhaps they offer an excuse for evidence of Ukrainian sales of western arms to Russia (if that is indeed is true).

Zelenskiy’s grip on Ukraine may be starting to slip, and may be reflective of a slow-motion coup in favor of a return of Poroshenko. The new acting head of the SBU is a former associate of Poroshenko.

Ukraine appears to be getting fewer weapons and less financial aid from the West (or less than Ukraine would like). The European Commission is finding it difficult to justify to its auditors its recent scale of aid to Ukraine.

Putin, meantime, in Moscow, has been in a series of meetings to discuss the advance of Russia’s high tech sector, with its own minister, and development of a complete production cycle (like China) of the high tech equipment that Russia needs to guarantee its sovereignty and security. This approach has given China enormous resilience, and it makes sense for Russia to try to do the same (and, in any case, I would add, Russia can import from China). There is no sign of a slowing down in Russian delivery of weapons and ammunition to its troops Ukraine.

Russia seems to think it can handle its problems, problems that appear to be routinely overstated by western commentators, reflecting a lingering and dangerous western fancy (projection?) that Russia is a backward nation.

Putin is in Tehran where he will meet with Turkey’s Erdogan,will likely talk about releasing Ukrainian grain, and how to resolve pressure points in Syria. Also about Iran joining BRICS. Turkey has also shown interest in doing likewise. Because Russia is a major member of the BRICS group, BRICS may be a singularly important focus of conversation. A related topic is the establishment of mechanisms for interbank convertibility, and maintaining a process of integration of Iran and Turkey into EuroAsian institutions and alliances. This is more complicated in the case of Turkey which is a member of NATO, and has candidature status, still (!), to become a member of the EU. There may also be a discussion with Iran about improving relations with Saudi Arabia, which has also expressed an interest in BRICS membership.

There is a concern of course about the relationship of Iran, Israel, and US sanctions on Iran (which have been quite successful up until now). Russians are now showing much more interest in being a part of the Iranian economy, involving among other things more Russian supplies of weapons to Iran, amid other commodities.

When the Iran nuclear deal was in effect, the Russians were very cagey about relationships with Iran because they did not want to be hit by secondary sanctions. Those inhibitions have gone because the Russians are now sanctioned in any case and because the nuclear deal has not been renewed. This may lead to an eroding of the efficacy of sanctions on Iran. Similarly, sanctions may grow less impactful on North Korea, since North Korea is recognizing the independent republics in the Donbass, which implies a closer relationship between North Korea and Russia.

The US has thrown away its leverage over Russia and this is changing the geopolitical opportunities for Russia, Iran and North Korea. This in turn might strengthen Turkey’s perspective on Russia and China’s leadership of EurAsian institutions and development projects, via the Shanghai Cooperation group, etc.

All these considerations may be sharpening the conflict in Ukraine.

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine, 7/16/22

Mark Brzezinski, the U.S. Ambassador to Poland, is the son of the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, a descendent of Polish aristocrats and mastermind of U.S. foreign policy for decades, whose dream was to use Poland as a base to try to weaken and destroy Russia.

Mark is now at the center of the implementation of his dad’s plans.

In late June, President Joe Biden announced before a NATO summit that the United States would establish a permanent military base in Poland, the first time the U.S. would have one on NATO’s eastern flank.

The base will provide a permanent headquarters in Poland for the U.S. Army’s V Corps.

At the moment there are already approximately 10,000 U.S. soldiers in Poland, which has provided a hub for U.S. and other Western countries’ arms shipments to Ukraine.

In April, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III agreed to accelerate delivery of U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, HIMARS rocket launchers, F-35 combat aircraft and Abrams tanks to Poland and to help its military become “one of the most capable in Europe.”

Poland’s Defense Minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, said that the U.S. had agreed to sell Poland additional supplies of attack helicopters, drones and multi-role aircraft, which was made possible by passage of a new Homeland Defense Act in Poland boosting Poland’s defense spending to 3% of GDP, one of the highest levels in NATO.

Poland Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki gushed about the results of the NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June, along with the recent invitation by NATO to Finland and Sweden to join NATO, which he said was a “historic decision as the Baltic Sea will, in fact, become a NATO internal sea.”

Intermarium

The Biden administration has accelerated its predecessor’s efforts to move the core of NATO from Paris and Bonn—what Donald Rumsfeld famously termed “old Europe”—to the East, as part of an aggressive drive to control former parts of the Soviet Union and Central Asia.

This policy has been part of the resurrection of the Intermarium—a geopolitical concept originating in the post-World War I era that envisages an alliance of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea over the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea that would serve as an alternative power bloc between Germany and Russia.

In March 2018, Poland signed a $4.75 billion deal to purchase U.S. Patriot missile defense systems from Raytheon, the largest arms procurement deal in Polish history.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov told Sputnik News that the Patriot deployments were “part of a U.S. plot to surround Russia with missile defense systems under the pretext of mythical threats to security.”

Now this plot has become ever more menacing to Russia, with the U.S. surrounding Russia not only with missile defense systems but also action-ready combat troops.

Reactionary Government

The Polish government under President Andrzej Duda is a reactionary regime which has banned the Communist Party of Poland, prohibited the promotion of communist ideas and introduced LGBT “free zones.”

Duda is a leader of the right-wing Law and Justice Party, which legalized government control over the media and has promoted the repression of critical intellectuals.

Duda has also promoted a right-wing revisionism surrounding World War II. In 2018, Duda signed a law that banned people from accusing Poland of Holocaust atrocities committed by the Nazis and from referring to concentration camps as “Polish death camps.”

The Duda regime has made a point of emphasizing Polish resistance to the Nazis, but has underplayed Polish crimes like the Jedwabne pogrom in July 1941, where Poles rounded up and killed their Jewish neighbors.

Meet the Brzezinskis

The current U.S. ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, is the son of Zbigniew Brzezinski, a key mastermind of U.S. foreign policy for decades, who supported Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and 1980s in an attempt to give the Russians their Vietnam.

A life-long Democrat who was close to Joe Biden when he was vice president, Zbigniew came from a Polish aristocratic family who hated the Russians.

His father, Tadeusz, fought for Poland in the Battle of Lvov in the Soviet-Polish War of 1920—the only defeat in the history of the Red Army, which Tadeusz said helped save Western civilization^[1]—and was a Polish diplomat posted to the Soviet Union in the 1930s during Stalin’s Great Purge.

After fleeing to Canada following the Communist takeover in Poland after World War II, Tadeusz moved to Montreal and became president of the far-right Canadian Polish Congress (1952-62).

A chip off the old block, Brzezinski grew up hearing stories from his father about mass disappearances in Soviet Russia, which he said “had an enormous impression on me at a young age.”^[2] A star student, Zbig received a B.A. and M.A. from McGill University in 1949 and 1950 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1953 with a dissertation on the relationship between the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin’s state and the actions of Joseph Stalin.

Around this time, he came into contact with Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, head of the Polish desk of the CIA’s propaganda organ, Radio Free Europe.

Brzezinski subsequently collaborated with his Harvard colleague Carl J. Friedrich to develop the concept of totalitarianism in their 1956 book Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy as a way to more powerfully characterize and criticize the Soviets.

The concept was rebuked by historians because it rejected the possibilty of change within the Soviet system, which occurred under glasnost and perestroika, and created a false binary between the “democratic” West and Communist bloc states.

After teaching at Harvard and Columbia, Brzezinski was appointed Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser. In that position, he advocated for “an arc of Islam” across the Middle East to counter Soviet influence. Brzezinski also lobbied successfully for ending Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s détente policy and for using China as a tool against the Soviet Union.

An early supporter of the Vietnam War who characterized the New Left as “an infantile disorder,” Brzezinski was a founder of the Trilateral Commission, which sought to revitalize U.S. power after Vietnam while strengthening the U.S. alliance with Western Europe and Japan.^[3]

In his 1997 magnum opus, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997), Brzezinski drew on the theories of British imperial strategist Halford Mackinder to advocate for U.S. dominance of Central Asia, which he regarded as the key to world domination.

Brzezinski was despised in Russia, where he was viewed as anti-Soviet and a Russophobe. Before his death in 2017, he warned that Putin was intent on re-establishing the former czarist empire.

He supported sanctions against Russia, NATO expansion and the 2014 coup in Ukraine and U.S. arming of Ukraine with anti-tank weapons so it could carry out urban warfare against the Russians.

Brzezinski said that the U.S. should help those wanting to break up the Russian Federation, irrespective of who they are.

Another Chip Off the Old Block

Zbig’s son Mark—a corporate lawyer with a Ph.D. in political science from Oxford who served from 1999 to 2001 as director of Russian/Eurasian and Southeast European affairs at the National Security Council—has a similar worldview to both his father and grandfather.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an elite think tank advocating for imperialist foreign policies, and the Trilateral Commission like his dad, the younger Brzezinski helped lead U.S. policy implementation in relation to NATO enlargement in the late 1990s.

He also helped oversee a color revolution in Serbia that resulted in the ouster of Socialist Slobodan Milošević, who had tried to keep the Yugoslav Federation together and resisted U.S. regional designs.

In a recent interview, Mark Brzezinski called Lech Wałęsa, the “Solidarity” leader who received CIA funding to overthrow Poland’s communist government in the 1980s, a “freedom fighter.”

With regard to the Ukraine War, Mark Brzezinski claimed that, “for Poland, this is 1939. This is the invasion of a Slavic country, with the people trying to fight back, and the Poles want to help. This is what the Ukraine crisis is for Poland. And it’s an amazing story because, unlike 1939, you now have people getting into their cars, driving to the border, picking up Ukrainian families, and taking them to put them into people’s homes and apartments.” 

In short, the Russians are playing the role of the Nazis and Poles the saviors of the victims of their invasion.

Long Held Dream Being Fulfilled

Being on the front lines of the Ukraine War, Poland has supplied Ukraine with howitzers as part of a $650 million military weapons contract—the biggest in the last three decades—while taking in millions of Ukrainian refugees and serving as a main conduit of Western weapons and aid under Mark Brzezinski’s careful watch.

At the end of June, the Russians claimed to have killed “up to 80 Polish fighters” in eastern Ukraine while at least two battalions of Polish army military personnel equipped with anti-tank guns and American armored cars were transferred to the Dnieper region in Ukraine.

Somewhere both Tadeusz and Zbigniew Brzezinski are smiling from their graves.

Their long-held dream of using Poland as a lever to strike a blow against the Russians is finally being fulfilled—at the potential cost of igniting a world war.

1. At the request of President Woodrow Wilson, the United States granted Poland a war loan of $176 million, enabling the purchase of, among other things, approximately 200 tanks, 300 planes, war materials and food for the Polish Army. An American fighter pilot squadron defended access to Lviv during the Battle of Zadwórze on August 17, 1920, and other Americans fought against the Red Army in Semyon Budyonny’s 1st Cavalry Army. ↑
2. Anna Kasten Nelson, ed., The Policy Makers: Shaping American Foreign Policy from 1947 to the Present (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 111. ↑
3. Brzezinski was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (“Wall Street’s think tank”) and the Bilderberg Group.