The pundits are relaxing a bit, NATO meets, and the timelines are off.
So pay clear attention to the story told by Alex Christoforou here:
Okay, so the West is out of ammunition -- or at least it's out of the type of ammunition that Ukraine wants. So Ukraine is getting cluster bombs. Meanwhile Ukraine is getting "until Christmas" to "so something" and then maybe they'll review the situation again (while Zelensky is begging NATO for membership).
And then we have Moon of Alabama, who, looking at the same topic, argued yesterday that NATO's refusal to make Ukraine a member is in fact a "climb-down":
Since 2008 the Ukraine was to be used as a tool to nag Russia. It is otherwise of little value. It will end up as a discarded rag while NATO will, in the end, again recognize the Russian Federation as the super power that that it is. NATO will have to relearn to listen to and negotiate with it.
Now lets wait and see what NATO's climb down will do to the morale and motivations of the Ukrainian army and people.
"While NATO will, in the end," Moon of Alabama said. Underline those words. When is this end? It would appear that the actual situation -- a situation that was predicted by the likes of Scott Ritter and Douglas Macgregor in this spring of this year with rather startling accuracy -- is that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have now, in mid-summer on schedule, run out of ammunition and there's nothing NATO can do about it. One might wonder how Zelensky is supposed to fill the time between now and Christmas given that he'll completely run out of ammunition long before then, assuming that is that he's got some hidden cache somewhere in Ukraine that he can deplete for the time being. Given that reality, it would appear that _the end_ is going to come a lot sooner than "Christmas."
The tentative nature of this "climb-down" and the wildly-inappropriate deadline for Zelensky to "show something" appears as an aspect of another of NATO's needs: saving face. Saving face was discussed in detail by Simplicius the Thinker in a post of six days ago. Obviously they've been trying to "saving face" for the past sixteen months by having Zelensky stage horrifically-bad "counter-offensives" without air cover and then pretending that "Putin is weak" and that therefore it wouldn't take much to bring him down. But this activity hasn't saved them any face at all! They've had to sacrifice one of the world's larger countries, lie an awful lot, and recruit an enormous number of useful idiots in the mass media of the US and of Europe, in order to maintain the charade being played for the past sixteen months.
So here is Simplicius' speculation:
If things progress much worse by the end of this year, and the U.S. begins to get desperate as the 2024 election cycle grows near, and the festering sore of this war is still not comfortably cleaned up and threatens to become a major lightning rod and open wound for Biden’s campaign, then there is a possibility that U.S. can make a secret agreement with Russia to ‘throw Zelensky under the bus’.
The reason this would work is because we know there’s already been months of rumors of Zaluzhny butting heads with him and secret power struggles within Bankova, with rumors swirling that Zaluzhny himself could overthrow Zelensky who’s increasingly unpopular with the actual armed forces. It’s said that Zaluzhny is the second most popular figure in Ukraine. So it could be possible that if brought close enough to the brink, U.S. will secretly sponsor a coup to get rid of Zelensky and wrap up the war with a secret agreement with Russia to partly save face on both sides. Russia would get their desired effect of having ‘brought down Zelensky’s regime’ while making some concessions to make U.S. not look as bad.
So I don't know. Speculation can only go so far with this sort of thing. It appears that NATO wants to waste six months of Ukraine's rather limited time on Earth because the member nations want to think of something face-saving. But there is no face-saving -- there's only either an off-ramp or a nuclear escalation. And there's nothing to think of because there are no real thinkers here. They, and by they I mean the member-nations of NATO and the gang of useful idiots they have in tow, have had to be rather disastrously stupid to continue with the Ukraine con job for as long as they have. And there is neither ammunition nor trained bodies for six months of the current "counter-offensive" nonsense. So -- if it's an off-ramp -- it's not going to be six months from now.
Is it?
Face-saving? Dear members of NATO: see those conical hats saying "dunce"? Go put them on. Sit in a corner of the room. You may come out when you've decided to resign, and retire.
FOOTNOTE: Cornel West is certainly not a useful idiot. Keith Olbermann certainly is. Here's Sabrina Salvati doing commentary:
Comments
What will Russia do as Ukr military collapses?
I think the Russians will take more land until the the newly formed republics are no long under threat by HIMARs and various other missiles and artillery. Once the Russians do this, then Biden, the UK, etc can declare that the Russians feared the mighty military of combined NATO and thus were stopped from going into Western Ukraine.
But then again, the Western leaders, media, and good numbers of their populations have been propagandized into a hatred of Russia matched only in history by the original German Nazis felt toward European Jews. As Europe collapses they will have a convenient scapegoat. In which maybe some real suicidal actions.
Europe will be in for some tough times.
-- Mostly this will be because of climate change, neoliberalism, and the mass migration of Africa, Asia, and Ukraine into Europe. Things might improve when Macron is out in France in 2027.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
face saving overtures
it is a bit late in the game to expect that scenario
Ukies get crushed, NATO is exposed, the Biden crime
consortium burns. This charade may have been a media
propagated attempt to extend the comeuppance, but it
looks like the bad guys are bering caught in their own hubris.
It's about time.
You know, I just realized something:
Volodomyr Zelenskyy is, quite officially, the world's foremost nudnik: https://www.thejc.com/judaism/jewish-words/nudnik-1.7671
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
but Z is in no relation
to Hebrews in any cohesive way
I'm not sure I understand your qualm
Based on the bit you cited, are you just saying he hasn't exactly been embodying "movement"?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
think of it as an attempt to describe
the motion of a pendulum
it is restrained movement
forward swing constricted
by the resultant reverse
the apogee has passed
Okay...
...now can you condense that into a haiku?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
perhaps, if I thought about it
funny that
condensing an explanation for someone
not knowing their grasp
is difficult
but I try anyway
thanks for being here
If anybody wants to do anything about global problems like
climate change and political instability, the first step is to break the Anglo-American domination of the planet.
Sleepy Joe gets his orders from somehwere, and we have just watched unprecedented global coordination in the Covid campaign, with perverse results -- on a par with the diaster that is Ukraine.
I don't understand why so many people are ready to believe that powerful institutions are run by morons who fuck everything up through incompetence rather than by design.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
This is hard to unpack.
The logic-focused response to such a sentence would be: "it hardly matters if the morons f@ck everything up through incompetence or design. They're morons, and they've f@cked everything up." After all, this is exactly what has happened. They thought that, through magical thinking, if they could get Ukraine to attack Russian forces that were solidly entrenched and that if Ukraine did so without benefit of air cover, that Russia would magically collapse as a result. They said they thought this was going to happen. They lied about Putin's "weakness" time and time again in hopes that if they did so often enough it would magically become true. They did not care that Zelensky was losing eight Ukrainians for every Russian killed. They thought their weapons pipeline was just fine because they'd been fighting for-profit warfare for so long they couldn't distinguish it from warfare in which the actual objective was victory. And they completely ignored the signs that would otherwise have told them the present-day outcome was by far the most likely one. Meanwhile the world outside of the US and Europe is de-dollarizing and Europe is getting poorer. So does it really matter if the morons worked by design or by incompetence?
The writing instructor in me thinks: "perhaps the sentence could be improved to say what its author intended." So how would this sentence be improved? I am not its writer.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
I am not its writer.
At least that sentence is correct. I disagree with every other sentence in your highly insulting post, Ms. Writing Instructor.
I meant exactly what I said, contradicting you and your cited sources. Conceivably Biden is so senile that he actually believes his moronic bleating, but I doubt that. The idea that the assholes running our government are too stupid to understand that Russia would kick Ukraine's ass suggests a far different kind of problem than what we face. In short, I believe you and your sources are being chumped.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
I *don't* doubt either proposition
There is very little evidence of intelligent life in the Washington DC power corridors, and none whatsoever for it in the White House.
Incompetence or malicious design, pick your poison. Neither one offers much hope for change (remember when that was placed on offer and then pulled away again?).
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
obomber ruined the hopey-change thing
the consequences of ignorance among the rulers
will never catch-up with them at this rate
APR = about 35%
I disagree
One hypothesis sees the Biden Administration and the permanent National Security "community" as agents working on The Great Re-set, leading us all toward a Global Technocracy which is utterly incompatible with Anglo-American hegemony and The Dollar as the universal reserve currency. So we are being driven toward economic suicide by our senile President and the spooks.
The other "reality" is that our ruling class has hired a bunch of incompetent and delusional apparatchiks who are just fumbling and stumbling toward catastrophe.
In one sense, I can relate to the fatalism that claims to see no difference between stupidity and malevolence. We are probably screwed either way. But whereas there is no cure for stupid, criminals can be fought. I will leave off the how for now.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Narrative Control
The most useful insight I have gotten from this message board came from JtC. While most of us can easily see the massive effort that goes into Narrative Control, Johnny pointed out that the control might include generating both sides of the various debates going on around public health and the Ukraine war.
Draw your own conclusion.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.