By Jacques Baud, The Postil, 10/1/22

Jacques Baud is a widely respected geopolitical expert whose publications include many articles and books, including Poutine: Maître du jeu? Gouverner avec les fake news, and L’Affaire Navalny. His most recent book is on the war in Uktraine, entitled, Operation Z.

The recapture of the Kharkov region at the beginning of September appears to be a success for Ukrainian forces. Our media exulted and relayed Ukrainian propaganda to give us a picture that is not entirely accurate. A closer look at the operations might have prompted Ukraine to be more cautious.

From a military point of view, this operation is a tactical victory for the Ukrainians and an operational/strategic victory for the Russian coalition.

On the Ukrainian side, Kiev was under pressure to achieve some success on the battlefield. Volodymyr Zelensky was afraid of a fatigue from the West and that its support would stop. This is why the Americans and the British pressed him to carry out offensives in the Kherson sector. These offensives, undertaken in a disorganised manner, with disproportionate casualties and without success, created tensions between Zelensky and his military staff.

For several weeks now, Western experts have been questioning the presence of the Russians in the Kharkov area, as they clearly had no intention to fight in the city. In reality, their presence in this area was only aimed at affixing the Ukrainian troops so that they would not go to the Donbass, which is the real operational objective of the Russians.

In August, indications suggested that the Russians had planned to leave the area well before the start of the Ukrainian offensive. They therefore withdrew in good order, together with some civilians who could have been the subject of retaliation. As evidence of this, the huge ammunition depot at Balaklaya was empty when the Ukrainians found it, demonstrating that the Russians had evacuated all sensitive personnel and equipment in good order several days earlier. The Russians had even left areas that Ukraine had not attacked. Only a few Russian National Guard and Donbass militia troops remained as the Ukrainians entered the area.

At this point, the Ukrainians were busy launching multiple attacks in the Kherson region, which had resulted in repeated setbacks and huge losses for their army since August. When US intelligence detected the Russians’ departure from the Kharkov region, they saw an opportunity for the Ukrainians to achieve an operational success and passed on the information. Ukraine thus abruptly decided to attack the Kharkov area that was already virtually empty of Russian troops.

Apparently, the Russians anticipated the organisation of referenda in Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhe and Kherson oblasts. They realised that the territory of Kharkov was not directly relevant to their objectives, and that they were in the same situation as with Snake Island in June: the energy to defend this territory was greater than its strategic importance.

By withdrawing from Kharkov, the Russian coalition was able to consolidate its defence line behind the Oskoll River and strengthen its presence in the north of the Donbass. It was thus able to make a significant advance in the Bakhmut area, a key point in the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk sector, which is the real operational objective of the Russian coalition.

As there were no longer any troops in Kharkov to “pin down” the Ukrainian army, the Russians had to attack the electrical infrastructure to prevent Ukrainian reinforcements by train to the Donbass.

As a result, today, all Russian coalition forces are located within what may become the new borders of Russia after the referenda in the four southern Ukrainian oblasts.

For the Ukrainians, it is a Pyrrhic victory. They advanced into Kharkov without encountering any resistance and there was hardly any fighting. Instead, the area became a huge “killing zone” (“зона поражения”), where Russian artillery would destroy an estimated number of 4,000-5,000 Ukrainians (about 2 brigades), while the Russian coalition suffered only marginal losses as there was no fighting.

These losses come on top of those from the Kherson offensives. According to Sergei Shoigu, Russian Defence Minister, the Ukrainians lost about 7,000 men in the first three weeks of September. Although these figures cannot be verified, their order of magnitude matches the estimates of some Western experts. In other words, it seems that the Ukrainians have lost about 25% of the 10 brigades that were created and equipped in recent months with Western help. This is a far cry from the million-man army mentioned by the Ukrainian leaders.

From a political point of view, it is a strategic victory for the Ukrainians, and a tactical loss for the Russians. It is the first time that the Ukrainians have taken back so much territory since 2014, and the Russians seem to be losing. The Ukrainians were able to use this opportunity to communicate about their final victory, undoubtedly triggering exaggerated hopes and making them even less willing to engage in negotiation.

This is why Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, declared that the moment “is not one for appeasement.” This Pyrrhic victory is therefore a poisoned gift for Ukraine. It has led the West to overestimate the capabilities of the Ukrainian forces and to push them to engage in further offensives, instead of negotiating.

The words “victory” and “defeat” need to be carefully used. Vladimir Putin’s stated objectives of “demilitarisation” and “denazification” are not about gaining territory, but about destroying the threat to the Donbass. In other words, the Ukrainians are fighting for territory, while the Russians seek to destroy capabilities. In a way, by holding on to territory, the Ukrainians are making the Russians’ job easier. You can always regain territory—you cannot regain human lives.

In the belief that they are weakening Russia, our media are promoting the gradual disappearance of Ukrainian society. It seems like a paradox, but this is consistent with the way our leaders view Ukraine. They did not react to the massacres of Russian-speaking Ukrainian civilians in the Donbass between 2014 and 2022, nor do they mention Ukraine’s losses today. In fact, for our media and authorities, Ukrainians are a kind of “Untermenschen” whose life is only meant to satisfy the goals of our politicians.

Between 23 and 27 September, there were four referendums in progress, and the local populations have to answer different questions depending on their region. In the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, which are officially independent, the question is whether the population wants to join Russia. In the oblasts of Kherson and Zaporozhe, which are still officially part of Ukraine, the question is whether the population wants to remain within Ukraine, whether they want to be independent, or whether they want to be part of Russia.

However, there are still some unknowns at this stage, such as what will be the borders of the entities that will be attached to Russia. Will they be the borders of the areas occupied by the Russian coalition today or the borders of the Ukrainian regions? If it is the second solution, then we could still have Russian offensives to seize the rest of the regions (oblasts).

It is hard to estimate the outcome of these referenda, although one can assume the Russian-speaking Ukrainians will most probably want to leave Ukraine. Polls, whose reliability cannot be assessed, suggest that 80-90% are in favour of joining Russia. This seems realistic due to several factors.

Firstly, since 2014, linguistic minorities in Ukraine have been subject to restrictions that have made them 2nd class citizens. As a result, the Ukrainian policy has caused Russian-speaking citizens to no longer feel Ukrainian. This was even emphasised by the Law on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in July 2021, which is somewhat equivalent to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which give different rights to citizens depending on their ethnic origin. This is why Vladimir Putin wrote an article on 12 July 2021 calling on Ukraine to consider Russian speakers as part of the Ukrainian nation and not to discriminate against them as proposed by the new law.

Of course, no Western country protested against this law, which is a continuation of the abolition of the law on official languages in February 2014, which was the reason for the secession of Crimea and Donbass.

Secondly, in their fight against the secession of Donbass, the Ukrainians never tried to win the “hearts and minds” of the insurgents. On the contrary, they have done everything to drive them further away by bombing them, by mining their roads, by cutting off drinking water, by stopping the payment of pensions and salaries, or by stopping all banking services. This is the exact opposite of an effective counter-insurgency strategy.

Finally, the artillery and missile strikes against the population of Donetsk and other cities in the Zaporozhe and Kherson region in order to intimidate the population and prevent them from going to the polls is further alienating the local population from Kiev. Today, the Russian-speaking population is afraid of Ukrainian reprisals if the referenda are not accepted.

So, we have a situation where the Western countries announce that they will not recognise these referenda, but on the other hand they have done absolutely nothing to encourage Ukraine to have a more inclusive policy with their minorities. Ultimately, what these referenda could reveal is that there has never really been an inclusive Ukrainian nation.

Moreover, these referenda will freeze a situation and make Russia’s conquests irreversible. Interestingly, if the West had let Zelensky continue with the proposal he made to Russia at the end of March 2022, Ukraine would more or less retained its pre-February 2022 configuration. As a reminder, Zelensky had made a first request for negotiation on 25 February, which the Russians had accepted, but which the European Union refused by providing a first package of €450 million in arms. In March, Zelensky made another offer that Russia welcomed and was ready to discuss, but the European Union once again came to prevent this with a second package of €500 million for arms.

As explained by Ukraïnskaya Pravda, Boris Johnson called Zelensky on 2 April and asked him to withdraw his proposal, otherwise the West would stop its support. Then, on 9 April, during his visit to Kiev, “BoJo” repeated the same thing to the Ukrainian president. Ukraine was therefore ready to negotiate with Russia, but the West does not want negotiations, as “BoJo” made clear again on his last visit to Ukraine in August.

It is certainly the prospect that there will be no negotiations that have prompted Russia to engage in referenda. It should be remembered that until now, Vladimir Putin had always rejected the idea of integrating the territories of southern Ukraine into Russia.

It should also be remembered that if the West were so committed to Ukraine and its territorial integrity, France and Germany would certainly have fulfilled their obligations under the Minsk Agreements before February 2022. Moreover, they would have let Zelensky proceed with his proposed agreement with Russia in March 2022. The problem is that the West is not looking for Ukraine’s interest, but to weaken Russia.

Partial Mobilization

Regarding Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a partial mobilisation, it should be recalled that Russia has intervened in Ukraine with considerably fewer troops than the West considers necessary to conduct an offensive campaign. There are two reasons for this. First, the Russians rely on their mastery of the “operative art” and play with their operational modules on the theatre of operations like a chess player. This is what allows them to be effective with reduced manpower. In other words, they know how to conduct operations efficiently.

The second reason that our media deliberately ignore is that the vast majority of the combat actions in Ukraine is carried out by the Donbass militias. Instead of saying “the Russians,” they should (if they were honest) say “the Russian coalition” or “the Russian-speaking coalition.” In other words, the number of Russian troops in Ukraine is relatively small. Moreover, the Russian practice is to keep troops only for a limited period in the area of operations. This means that they tend to rotate troops more frequently than the West.

In addition to these general considerations, there are the possible consequences of the referenda in southern Ukraine, which are likely to extend the Russian border by almost 1000 kilometres. This will require additional capabilities to build a more robust defence system, to construct facilities for troops, etc. In that sense, this partial mobilisation is a good idea. In this sense, this partial mobilisation is a logical consequence of what we have seen above.

Much has been made in the West about those who have sought to leave Russia to avoid mobilisation. They certainly exist, like the thousands of Ukrainians who sought to escape conscription and can be seen in the streets of Brussels driving powerful and expensive German sports cars! Much less publicity has been given to the long queues of young people outside military recruitment offices and the popular demonstrations in favour of the decision to mobilise!

Nuclear Threats

As to the nuclear threats, in his speech on 21 September , Vladimir Putin mentioned the risk of nuclear escalation. Naturally, the conspiratorial media (i.e., those that construct narratives from unrelated information) immediately spoke of “nuclear threats.”

In reality, this is not true. If we read the wording of Putin’s speech, we can see that he did not threaten to use nuclear weapons. In fact, he has never done so since the beginning of this conflict in 2014. However, he has warned the West against the use of such weapons. I will remind you that on 24 August, Liz Truss declared that it was acceptable to strike Russia with nuclear weapons, and that she was ready to do so, even if it would lead to a “global annihilation!” This is not the first time that the current British Prime Minister has made such a statement, which had already prompted warnings from the Kremlin in February. Moreover, I would like to remind you that in April of this year, Joe Biden decided to depart from the US “no-first use” policy and thus reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first.

So clearly, Vladimir Putin does not trust Western behaviour that is totally irrational and irresponsible, and which is ready to sacrifice its own citizens in order to achieve objectives guided by dogmatism and ideology. This is what is happening in the field of energy and sanctions at the moment, and this is what Liz Truss is ready to do with nuclear weapons. Putin is certainly worried about the reactions of our leaders who are in increasingly uncomfortable situations because of the catastrophic economic and social situation they have created by their incompetence. This pressure on our leaders could lead them to escalate the conflict just to avoid losing face.

In his speech, Vladimir Putin does not threaten to use nuclear weapons, but other types of weapons. He is of course thinking of hypersonic weapons, which do not need to be nuclear to be effective and which can thwart Western defences. Moreover, contrary to what our media say, the use of tactical nuclear weapons is no longer in the Russian employment doctrine for many years. Moreover, unlike the United States, Russia has a no-first-use policy.

In other words, it is the Westerners and their erratic behaviour that are the real factors of insecurity.

I am not sure that our politicians have a clear and objective view of the situation. Ignazio Cassis’ recent tweets show that his level of information is low. First of all, when he mentions Switzerland’s role and neutrality in offering its good offices, he is a bit out of touch with geography. In Russia’s mind, Switzerland has abandoned its neutrality status and if it wants to play a constructive role in this conflict, it will have to demonstrate its neutrality. We are a long, long way from that.

Secondly, when Cassis expressed his concern about the use of nuclear weapons to Lavrov, he clearly did not understand Vladimir Putin’s message. The problem with today’s Western leaders is that none of them currently has the intellectual capacity to deal with the challenges that they themselves have created through their own foolishness. Cassis would probably have been better advised to express his concerns to Truss and Biden!

The Russians—and Vladimir Putin in particular—have always been very clear in their statements and have consistently and methodically done what they said they would do. No more, no less. One can of course disagree with what he says, but it is a major and probably even criminal mistake not to listen to what he says. For if we had listened, we could have prevented the situation becoming what it is.

It is also interesting to compare the current general situation with what was described in the RAND Corporation reports published in 2019 as the blueprint for trying to destabilise Russia.

Figure 1—From the RAND Corporation’s 2019 paper on how to destabilise Russia. This document shows that the US was aiming for a campaign of subversion against Russia, in which Ukraine was only an unfortunate instrument.

As we can see, what we are witnessing is the result of a carefully planned scenario. It is very likely that the Russians were able to anticipate what the West was planning against them. Russia was thus able to prepare itself politically and diplomatically for the crisis that was to be created. It is this capacity for strategic anticipation that shows that Russia is more stable, more effective and more efficient than the West. This is why I think that if this conflict is going to escalate, it will be more because of Western incompetence than because of a Russian calculation.

On episode 9 of the show Ritter is joined by Vladislav Shurygin, an author, military expert and war correspondent. Member of the Russian Writers Union and a permanent member of the Izborsky Club.

Link here.

By STEPHEN BRYEN AND SHOSHANA BRYEN, Asia Times, 10/15/22

It is increasingly clear that the destruction of part of the Kerch-Crimea bridge and the destruction of three strands of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines required highly sophisticated technology and the skill of secret operators.

According to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) investigation, the truck bomb that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Crimea bridge “was concealed in 22 pallets of plastic film rolls weighing a total of 22,770 kilos.”

The Russians blame the Secret Service of Ukraine (SSU), but Kiev would have needed considerable professional help to design such a huge weapon. The biggest bunker buster in the US inventory, for example, is the GBU-57 A/B at 14,000 kilograms. Experts would have known that to knock out the bridge they needed something even more powerful.

The investigative journalism site Greyzone said on October 10 that the British Secret Service (MI-6) drew up a plan last April to blow up the Kerch Bridge and shared the plan with Ukraine.

As Greyzone reported, the British plan was to bring in explosives by sea, perhaps using underwater vehicles or divers, and blow away the main bridge supports. An alternative, the British allegedly recommended, was to use cruise missiles – but doing so would remove any possibility of plausible deniability.

The Russians may have known about the plan. Interestingly, they positioned a special force to guard against an underwater attack and moved an S-300 air defense system from Syria to Crimea to deal with a possible cruise missile strike.

Assuming Greyzone is accurate, the Russian countermeasures forced an alternative plan. Perhaps, though with no evidence yet to support the thesis, UK or US experts were commissioned to determine the scale of the explosion needed to blow the bridge from the roadway.

For the record, Ukrainian cruise missiles lack both the accuracy and destructive power needed for such an attack. HIMARS, which has been supplied to Ukraine, might be capable of damaging the bridge (but not destroying it) and is accurate.

But its 90-kilogram warhead is too small to demolish a structure as large as the Kerch Bridge. Any sensible Russian should have spotted the cruise missile part of the British proposal as a possible fake if Moscow managed to get its hands on the report.

Little is known about how the massive amount of explosives was assembled, exactly where, and how it was done in secret – other than the FSB statement that the shipment originated in the nearby Ukrainian city of Odesa.

While the Russians appear to have been reading Ukraine’s mail, they entirely missed the possibility of a truck bomb. Is it possible that the Greyzone-reported British-devised plan was, in its entirety, a ruse intended to mislead the Russians?

A deception operation like this has its roots in the famous World War II British Operation Mincemeat, in which incorrect information was strategically placed on the body of a fake UK officer for the Germans to find. If so, the ruse worked again, and brilliantly.

The organizers of the bridge bombing put together a concealed but highly sophisticated operation.

Working backward, it looks like this: There were two trucks. The first went from Ukraine across Turkey, through Armenia and Georgia, and to the border of Russia. The explosives were inside, wrapped to hide from Russia’s X-ray inspection system on the border.

At the Russian border, trailers must have been attached to different, Russian trucks. If the explosives were in the first truck and the trailer was detached and hitched to the second but not again X-rayed – although Russian sources say it was later searched by security guards when coming onto the bridge – then the Russian inspection at the bridge’s approach appears to have been poorly handled and perfunctory.

There is a general belief that the trucker who picked up the load had no idea he was hauling explosives, meaning that the bomb in the truck was detonated by radio from a remote location. The truck driver was killed in the blast.

The Ukrainians put out a story that the blast came from the sea and not from the bridge span. There is no hard evidence to support the theory.

Nord Stream operation

The attack on the Nord Stream pipelines also suggests a sophisticated operation but one that could have gone partly wrong. The raw facts: The first explosion, near the Danish island of Bornholm, happened at approximately 2:03 am local time on September 26.

Gazprom, the Russian pipeline operator, reported the possibility of a leak when pipeline pressure dropped at 8:30 am. It was not until approximately 1:00 pm that the Danish air force sent F-16s to investigate. Those jets spotted the gas leak on the sea’s surface.

The first explosion was relatively small and picked up seismically, as was the sound of escaping methane gas.

At 7:04 pm a much larger explosion occurred along the pipeline route in the Swedish Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). According to seismic experts, this blast was greater than 100 kilograms and less than 200 kilograms, equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.

There is a possibly related story. In November 2015, Gazprom discovered a device adjacent to Bornholm sitting up against one of the two Nord Stream 1 pipes.

The device, it turned out, was a SeaFox mine-disposal unmanned underwater vehicle manufactured by the German company Atlas Elektronik’s division located in Maine. It was controlled by a fiber optic cable, part of which was discovered connected to it.

The battery-powered SeaFox carries a 1.4-kilogram-shaped charge to blow up mines and has a limited endurance of about 100 minutes. The drone was recovered and disarmed by Danish authorities. The US Navy admitted it had been lost, but never explained why it was found parked next to the pipeline.

Fast forward to the present, SeaFox has a small explosive charge that is more than adequate to punch a hole in a pipeline or blow up a sea mine. Its blast would have been more than adequate to create the first hole in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

But why was the second explosion, hours later, so large when a smaller explosion clearly had already compromised the pipeline?

Possibly, the results of the Bornholm explosion were not enough to satisfy the perpetrators and they tried again, this time in the Swedish ADIZ. The second mission could conceivably have consisted of a larger bomb – or could have created what was, in fact, a third explosion by hitting an old sea mine lingering on the seabed near the pipeline.

The Baltic Sea is a disaster area when it comes to unexploded mines and munitions, including chemical weapons, left there after World War I and II. Approximately 80,000 German and Russian-moored sea mines, most in unknown locations, litter the sea bottom.

This created serious concerns when the first Nord Stream pipeline was under development. While care was taken to try to avoid them, many are buried under sand and still others have broken free from their moorings and moved far from where they were originally sited.

Northern Europeans have spent a great deal of effort trying to remove ordnance from the Baltic Sea, but what they recover is a tiny fraction of what remains. Denmark is now complaining that its effort to investigate the first underwater explosion off Bornholm is being hindered by old unexploded mines and ordnance.

Like the operation carried out against the Kerch Bridge, the sabotage attacks of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were a sophisticated operation that almost certainly involved underwater devices or professional divers.

SeaFox, for example, can be launched from a surface vessel including the rapidly inflated boats (RIB) often used by US Navy SEALS. The British, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Poles and others have similar systems; even the Ukrainians have frogmen.

Since it is unlikely any saboteur stayed around to witness the explosions, the devices used for both attacks had to have been planted earlier, equipped either with timing devices or capable of receiving remote signals. That suggests significant planning and advanced technological capabilities executed by experienced operators.

A US Navy P-8 antisubmarine aircraft flew from Naval Air Station Keflavik over the blast area at 3:00 am local time on the day of the blast. The plane proceeded to Poland where it was air-refueled by a C-130. It returned to Bornholm at 4:44 am.

According to tracking data, it made a number of loops around the area and then headed toward the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. There is no flight data available between 5:39 am and 8:20 am local time, probably because the P-8’s transponder was turned off.

The US Navy acknowledged the first overflight of Bornholm and said it was a normal mission and had nothing to do with the pipelines. But whoever carried out the attacks, which is still unclear, launched their assaults with the utmost secrecy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims it was an operation by the “Anglo-Saxons” (meaning the US and UK). The Russians are complaining that they have been deliberately excluded from the Swedish-run investigation, although the Swedes invited the US to participate. Sweden has also cut off the Germans and Danes from a planned joint investigation, citing “secrecy.”

As the Kerch Bridge and Nord Stream blasts indicate, war by other means involving highly secret operations with significant organizational and technological skill is now underway. And there are few nations that have the experience, resources and capability, including the organizational skills, to manage and successfully launch such attacks.

By Ivan Safranchuk, Russia in Global Affairs, September/October 2022

Safranchuk is a Candidate of Political Sciences, Director and Leading Researcher at the Center for Eurasian Studies of MGIMO University, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Associate Professor of the Department of International Relations of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

The Cuban Missile Crisis holds a special place in the history of the Cold War. Then the USSR and the USA in practice found the limits of their direct confrontation. Of course, there were practitioners on both sides who were ready for more decisive action, but at the level of political leadership, the understanding prevailed that the superpowers had come to the brink. Then there is a nuclear war with unacceptable consequences for anyone.

This general awareness helped to move towards the conceptualization of mutual nuclear deterrence, on the basis of which the process of nuclear arms control was launched. The task of the latter was to carry out this very deterrence more rationally and safely.

From the point of view of the realistic school of the theory of international relations, the Cuban Missile Crisis can be understood as the establishment of a balance of power. Further, it was strengthened (although attempts were made to win back unilateral advantages), the rivalry proceeded within its framework. The liberal-idealist school interprets the Cuban Missile Crisis as such a convincing demonstration of the danger of confrontation in the nuclear age that opponents had to go beyond actions based on selfish interests and turn to the idea of ​​the common good – the prevention of nuclear catastrophe .

On the one hand, the Cuban Missile Crisis remained in the history of the Cold War as a dangerous culmination of a confrontation that must not be repeated. On the other hand, as great-Power rivalry has grown in the twenty-first century, there has been a sentiment that a new crisis that will have the same functional consequences as the Caribbean is inevitable, if not necessary.

“Red Lines”

In practice, Russia and the United States have already stooped to the lower level of relations. But even the Ukrainian crisis did not become “Caribbean”. One can, of course, expect that the “real Caribbean” is yet to come. On another line of rivalry, the Sino-American one, there is a rapid aggravation, but even there there are no signs of a “Cuban Missile Crisis”. Therefore, it is appropriate to hypothesize that technically the “new Cuban Missile Crisis” happened, but never became the “real Caribbean”, that is, it went according to a different scenario and did not lead to the structural consequences that the original provoked at one time.

In October 1962, the United States essentially marked its “red line”, the crossing of which could lead to a direct military clash – it was implied that escalation to the nuclear level was almost inevitable. The USSR did not cross this “line”, although it put forward symmetrical conditions regarding American nuclear missiles in Europe.

In early 2022, Russia, in turn, also drew a “red line” – the non-admission of Ukraine to NATO. However, the US refused to promise that it would not cross it.

Instead, Washington has begun to challenge the legitimacy of Russia’s red line.

It should be noted that the question of the legality of the designation of the “red line” is irrelevant. In 1962, the United States had no formal right to restrict military-technical cooperation between the USSR and Cuba, and Moscow accused the American leadership of piracy. But these rhetorical exercises and appeals to the legitimacy of actions served only as an external entourage. The United States firmly declared its understanding of national interests and readiness to protect them by any means. The Soviet Union denied the legitimacy of the demands, but recognized the “red line” drawn, understanding the decisiveness of the opponent’s mood. The United States did not recognize the Russian “red line – 2022”.Functionally, this is the main thing, and all the talk about the illegality of the designation of red lines is generally meaningless.

The same practice of denying “red lines” is being adopted by the United States in the Taiwan Strait. For China, the “red line” is the inevitability of reunification (while the PRC showed great flexibility regarding its timing and forms). However, the Americans’ emphasis on the topic of inviolability of the “status quo” with the still remaining formal recognition of the “one-China” principle means that Washington will oppose the PRC in implementing the unification course.

The refusal of the United States to recognize Russian or Chinese “red lines” can easily be explained by the emotional and psychological background that was cultivated after the Cold War. Much has been said in recent decades about American leadership and superiority. Rhetorically placing themselves on the pedestal of the world hierarchy, Americans cannot make concessions to those who challenge them and set conditions for them. There are also arguments about how much the world has changed, about new problems, about the inadmissibility of returning to the past. And within the framework of such a narrative, the “red lines”, again, cannot be perceived as anything other than a historical relic.Therefore, it is natural for the United States to dismiss the restrictive conditions set by someone else.

Balance by someone else’s hands

But that doesn’t seem to be the only point. In practical policy, the United States has moved to actions close to what American professor John Mearsheimer called “offshore balancing.” This refers to indirect (by proxy) regional balancing/containment, that is, the creation of a balance in important parts of the world based on the relations of regional players. Never mind that none of the significant figures in the foreign policy establishment has openly accepted such a concept.

The British approach has long assumed that there should be no dominant force on the continent capable of challenging a global maritime power. For these purposes, London implemented a strategy of direct balancing, which can already be called classical. Not being able to defeat everyone alone, Britain could provide its fleet (the strongest in the world) to one of the coalitions of warring powers, thereby making a decisive contribution to its victory and becoming entitled to a significant part of the dividends. Such a strategy was successful, but did not solve the problem of the costs of participation in a major war. As a result of the two world wars, Britain, although it was on the side of the victors, lost its position in world affairs.The task of the United States is not to repeat this experience. Therefore, instead of the British direct (with their own hands) global balancing, the Americans are engaged in indirect (by proxy hands) regional balancing / deterrence.

During the Ukrainian crisis of 2022, the United States also used a “homemade billet” – it imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia. And despite the fact that they stopped hiding this “blank” since the end of last year, its practical implementation still seemed incredible to many. Now the prevailing opinion in the West is that a geo-economic siege will ensure the achievement of geopolitical goals, that is, deprive Russia of resources for the continuation of the geopolitical conflict. However, we can assume the opposite: in fact, the geopolitical dimension of the Ukrainian crisis was only a pretext to launch a geo-economic blitzkrieg, to justify it. That is, the geo-economic dimension is the main one, and the geopolitical dimension is the official one, not vice versa.

The aggravation of the crisis around Taiwan, despite the different entourage, is following a trajectory similar to the Ukrainian one. The United States does not recognize the Chinese “red lines”, leads the PRC to the need for aggravation, which, on the one hand, justifies the political and military-technical pumping of Chinese opponents, and on the other hand, can legitimize unprecedented measures of pressure – the opening of a geo-economic front.

Theoretically, the scheme for Washington is a win-win. Their regional vassal, who bears the brunt of the burden of deterring the United States’ global rivals, will either prove to be a geopolitical hero and survive, with broad American support, in a battle with a stronger adversary, and then offshore balancing will work . Or he will become a geopolitical suicide bomber, whose suffering can be maximally propagated and justified by measures of geo-economic coercion that are unthinkable in a normal situation.

In any case, the goal of the United States is not to negotiate with rivals on the basis of the balance of power, but to show them their place in the global system and force them to stay in this place.

Therefore, the recognition of the “red lines” of Russia or China, their independently formulated ambitions for the United States is unacceptable.

A Settlement Without America

Russia and China hoped to create conditions for deals with Washington that would correspond to the ideas of Moscow and Beijing about their worthy place in history and modernity. By and large, both countries were sympathetic to the reluctance of the United States to part with its dominant position, but considered it a temporary phenomenon, a coincidence of circumstances after the Cold War and believed that it was simply unreasonable to claim its long-term consolidation. Therefore, the task was to bring the United States to the agreements, if necessary, to force them by creating counter threats and demonstrating its own economic and geopolitical significance.

For a long time, it may seem that a sufficient level of pressure has not yet been created for Washington to agree to equal agreements with Russia or China. And in light of this, a tipping point of escalation that would be the “moment of truth,” the “new Cuban Missile Crisis,” was considered necessary. However, the way the United States behaves in the Ukrainian and Taiwan crises gives reason to believe that they are fighting not for the conditions and parameters of compromises with Russia or China, but for the fact that there were no agreements and could not be.

Russia and, apparently, China also face the question of basic goal-setting. Should attempts to force the United States to accept itself as equal partners and push them towards mutually acceptable settlements of controversial and conflictual issues, or to seek to resolve critical security and economic issues without American participation?

It is clear that in the acute phase of the crisis, the United States imposes its participation. By acting directly, although formally indirectly (“by proxy”), the United States deprives Russia (potentially in the Taiwan crisis – and China) of the opportunity to respond directly and adequately, but at the same time gives grounds to block the participation of the United States outside the acute phase of the crisis.

Taking America out of the game can be a goal for Russia, the main international outcome of the Ukrainian crisis, and in the event of a further aggravation of the Taiwan crisis, for China.

The active involvement of the United States in regional situations does not allow a transition to a non-military settlement, and it would be acceptable to the main regional players, although painful for some of them. So far, the only realistic option is a decisive military victory over the American vassal, which deprives both the defeated and his patron of the right to vote on the subject of the conflict over the exhaustion of the subject as such. This scenario can be considered a minimum program. And the maximum goal for both Russia and China is to acquire the ability to politically resolve complex situations (preferably at the pre-war stage, but at least at the post-war stage) without American participation, and not at the expense of agreements with them.

Taking the United States out of the game may seem unattainable and, therefore, a false basis for practical goal-setting. But what are the alternatives? Either Washington’s no more likely coercion to equal agreements, or implicit agreement to compromise with retreat beyond its own “red lines”, or a fixation on military means.

This paper uses the results of the project “Contemporary Great Power Rivalry: Theoretical and Practical Aspects”, carried out within the framework of the research program of the Faculty of World Economy and International Politics of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2022.

By Gilbert Doctorow, Blog, 10/15/22

Some readers have commented in direct emails to me that they have taken comfort from my writings insofar as I have been a moderate voice, avoiding alarmism over the often troublesome daily news in and around the Russian war with Ukraine, or more properly speaking today, Russia’s proxy war with NATO in and about Ukraine.

For this very reason, I hesitated whether to share with readers the deep pessimism that overcame me a couple of days ago over our chances of avoiding nuclear Armageddon. This followed my watching the latest Solovyov political talk show on Russian state television. I have used this show regularly as a litmus test of the mood of Russian social and political elites: that mood has turned black.

Whereas in the past, going back six months or more, I had reported on the open contempt which leading and highly responsible Russian academics from university circles and think tanks were showing for the American political leadership in their statements on the political talk shows, this contempt has moved into an actionable phase, by which I mean that serious, God-fearing Russians are so furious with the rubbish propaganda coming out of Washington, repeated with bullhorns in Europe that if given the chance they would personally “press the button” and unleash nuclear attacks on the United States and Britain, in that order notwithstanding the possibility, even probability of a return strike, which, however enfeebled, would be devastating to their own country. That is to say, deterrence as a policy is fast losing its psychological impact on the Russian side of the argument.

Whatever the words of the Biden Administration about nuclear war being ‘off the table,’ America’s aggressive and threatening behavior, including the ongoing ‘training in nuclear weapons’ currently going on in Europe under U.S. direction, has made rational and very serious Russians ready to give it a try.

One of the most sober-minded international affairs experts to appear on the Solovyov show, Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Institute of the Near East think tank, contained his rage with some difficulty, saying only that while he had once held some sympathy for the United States, he would see its utter destruction now with little regret; he left no mention where his feet are pointed when he added that he could say no more on air for fear that he will be censored and his words removed from the video.

For these reasons, I have given to this essay addressed to the Collective West, and in particular to the fomenters of world disorder in Washington and London, a title that fits the current situation.

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As we have seen from even before the launch of the ‘special military operation,’ Russian talk programs identify by name individuals in the Biden team whose outstanding stupidity, obtuseness and rank ignorance they find unbearable, with the likes of Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Lloyd Austin among those coming in for special mention. We are left with the impression that when Biden calls in his advisers to the Oval Office, he, senile dimwit that he is, is the bright light in the room. The Russians conclude from this that they have no one to negotiate with.

Now the naming of idiots in high places carries over to all discussion of European Union and British leaders. The denunciation of incompetence, rank stupidity and, yes, neo-colonialist or fascist mindsets among European leaders was well reflected in the latest Solovyov show. The most discussed whipping boy was the EU’s commissioner on external action, Josep Borrell, who seems to be speaking to the world daily and acknowledges no limits on what he may proclaim, as if it were official EU policy in defense as well as diplomacy.

The Solovyov show put up on screen a brief video recording of Borrell expounding smugly on Europe’s privileged position as ‘a garden of liberal democracy, good economic prospects and social solidarity’ which is surrounded by ‘the jungle.’ That jungle reference fits in well, Solovyov remarked, with the colonialist mindset of Rudyard Kipling and is deeply offensive to the Rest of the World, of which Russia is a part. More to the point, Borrell was also notorious in Russia this past week for his statement that any use by Russia of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be met by a massive non-nuclear attack from Europe which would ‘annihilate’ the Russian army. However, Borrell was not alone in the stocks: other European leaders who were decried for their stupid policies this past week included German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emanuel Macron.

So you have no bomb shelter? Then, as the Russians said decades ago, it is high time to throw a bed sheet over your shoulders and slowly walk to the nearest cemetery.

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One of the two latest fake news stories being disseminated simultaneously and ubiquitously in Western major media this past week is that Russia is considering using against Ukraine ‘tactical nuclear weapons,’ meaning warheads with a destructive force equivalent to the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombs mounted on cruise or medium range ballistic missiles. Our print and electronic media speculate on the numbers of warheads Russia currently possesses (2,000 or more), as if that would make any difference in an assault on Ukraine.

Rubbish say the Russians on Solovyov’s show: we have no need of nuclear arms to finish off the Ukrainians. The only nuclear forces we would deploy in the current situation are strategic arms, and they are directed against….Washington with the help of the Sarmat and Poseidon delivery systems.

The other major fake news disseminated massively by Western media in recent days was the allegation that the Russians are seeking to freeze the Ukrainians to death by their strikes against power generation infrastructure. Images of Stalingrad were evoked by our broadcasters. A similar freeze is said to be inflicted on Western Europe by the cut-off of Russian energy supplies to the EU.

More rubbish say the panelists on the Solovyov program. The attack on the electricity grid in Ukraine is not directed against civilians per se; it is intended to halt rail deliveries of advanced weapons systems and munitions coming into Ukraine at the Polish border and being moved by train to the fronts in the east and south of the country. Without these inputs, the Ukrainian army will be kaput and the war can come to an early conclusion with the capitulation of Kiev. As regards the EU, whatever chill out may be coming this winter is due solely to the unprofessional and ignorant decisions of the Commission on imports of Russian hydrocarbons that have been blindly followed by the Member States without due consideration of consequences for their own populations.

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