OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT
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Standing Down for Putin?At the time of writing on September 20 this had not yet occurred. The main reason for this reluctance to proceed has been widely interpreted across alternative media as a Western reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement in Saint Petersburg on Thursday September 12 in which he declared, in effect, that any such greenlighting of long-range missiles on Russian targets would be considered by Russia to be a direct participation by NATO in its otherwise proxy war against Russia over Ukraine. Only NATO, he pointed out, is capable of using these weapons, only NATO has the satellite reconnaissance capability necessary to navigate them, and the engineering skills to maintain, launch and fire these systems.
In short, NATO would have embarked on World War Three, and Russia would respond accordingly.
Did Washington back down after Putin’s statement? Did we witness a Pentagon coup that day against the State Department and White House? Was Washington reluctant to proceed knowing that Israel was about to trigger mass murder and mayhem in Lebanon on September 17 and 18, which has so far caused 3,400 casualties and 34 dead as a result of Israeli-rigged pagers (a form of booby-trapping that is a violation of an international treaty to which Israel is a signatory), and that the US might very soon find itself engaged in a war on Iran on behalf of Israeli Zionists? (So far, Washington concedes only that it was notified of an upcoming “ difficult operation” a few hours in advance which if true would be a catastrophic failure of Western intelligence).
Did it simply decide not to go public but to give the green light anway, at least to the British? Does Russia think that the West will provide this green light? Yes, according to a review of Russian media by Gilbert Doctorow, Moscow generally assumes that Washington has already given the green light or will do so soon.
Did Washington already actually respond to pressure for use of long-range missiles by ordering or permitting the firing of some form of successful ballistic missile attack on Russia’s ammunition depot at Toropets, 400 kilometers west of Moscow on September 18? Ukraine claimed this was the result of a 100-drone attack. But many if not almost all of these would have been shot down, and drones typically do not have anything like the impact as was inflicted on Toropets. Even less likely is it that drones would inflict significant damage on sophisticated concrete bunkers, reinforced at Toropets in 2018 to withstand even a nuclear attack.
The nearest NATO country to Toropets is not Ukraine but Latvia, and Latvia is a much more logical source for the attack, thus suggesting that NATO’s direct participation in what was formerly its proxy war with Russia over Ukraine is now established.
The reported use by what the Houthis in Yemen claimed was a hypersonic missile (others say it was a long-range ballistic missile) for an attack on Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on September 15 may be a signal from Russia of how its supply of weapons to the West’s enemies, in retaliation for any Western move towards the use of long-range missiles against Russia, will quickly reconfigure global geopolitics to the West’s disadvantage.
Some western analysts take comfort from the fact that Russia, they say, has not yet retaliated to Western escalation, and that this indicates not just Russian weakness but that the West can proceed towards its long-term goal, defined by NATO’s think tank, the RAND corporation, as the disintegration of the Russian Federation and the opening up of its territory and economy to Western neocon entrepreneurs.
An alternative, more sagacious point of view argues that just because somebody has not retaliated against provocation does not mean that they will not in the future. It may also suggest that they choose not to engage in war simply at the convenience of their opponent. In this case, I would argue that Russia does retaliate, but not in the obvious ways that Western analysts recognize as retaliation, and that Russia does not need an overt declaration of war to pursue what has so far been a highly effective war of attrition both against Ukraine and the West generally.
Previous Long-Range Missile Attacks
But these attacks have not figured prominently in the Western conversation recently, given that the focus now is on the firing of missiles “deep” into Russia, and given previous US agreement for Ukraine to use such weapons against sources of Russian fire directed to Ukrainian positions in Kharkiv, following the Russian offensive centered on Vovchansk in May this year.
Anxiety in Washington, where it is widely understood that the Pentagon is not enthusiastic about, and is even hostile to, the use of long-range missiles (a statement by US Secretary for Defense, Lloyd Austin, to this effect was issued before Putin’s statement of September 12) created an expectation that Russian targets for NATO missiles might be limited to certain categories, or that Washington would allow Ukraine to use British Storm Shadows but not US ATACMS. Nonetheless, some kind of positive indication of permission for the use of long-range missiles had been expected during or in the immediate aftermath of a meeting between President Biden and UK Prime Minister Starmer on Friday, September 13, even if there has so far been no such statement. There was not even any indication that the White House would approve the use by Britain of its Storm Shadow missiles, even if the US decided to hold back its ATACMS missiles from use by Ukraine.
From East and West
White House Stalled or Stalling
At that time, it is being suggested, Zelenskiy could better explain to Washington what is Ukraine’s overall strategy for victory. Zelenskiy’s current proposal calls for the use of long-range missiles against Russia, more weapons of every kind to Ukraine and the positioning of NATO troops in the rearguard of Ukraine in order to facilitate the release of more Ukrainian troops to the front lines. These demands do not command credibility in a context in which Ukraine is clearly losing the war, its President illegimate, and which has run out of reserves even as Russia plans to increase the size of its own army by 200,000 - to a total of one and a half million, making Russia’s the second largest army in the world after China.
Zelenskiy might introduce some kind of resolution to the Assembly in a bid to secure majority approval for an escalation to long range missiles against Russia. This would not be binding, and it might not even capture a majority of votes. The strength of world opinion, therefore, might become a factor influencing Washington’s final decision. The substantial support, expressed already in the General Assembly for a motion requiring Israel to withdraw from all the occupied Palestinian territories within a year, might counsel Zelenskiy against pouring fuel on the fire of world anger with the reckless evil of US imperialism and its Israeli protege.
This is not to say that it is impossible that a decision in favor of long-range missiles has indeed been taken but simply not disclosed. This seemed unlikely in view of expressions of great disappointment in the British Sunday Times on September 15 that the Starmer government had not been given the green light for the deployment of Storm Shadows, and expressions of angry dismay by five former Defense Ministers and by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson (who has recently proposed that Ukrainian forces could “back fill” for NATO if the US withdrew). These seemed to raise the prospect of a campaign to pressure Starmer to “go it alone.”
Britain to Go It Alone?
(1) First of all, and for many decades now, the British have been Washington’s poodles, allowed only to bark and attack on Washington’s command. (Which is not to rule out the possibility that Washington has given a secret but deniable permission to London).
(2) Secondly, it would be highly inadvisable for Starmer to give the appearance of any such bid in advance of the UN General Assembly.
(3) Thirdly, the threat of use of Storm Shadows is in itself facile. The weapon is an Anglo-French-Italian production, that the French call the “Scalp.” A year ago it was reported that production of the Storm Shadow would be halted. In any case, stocks of these missiles are limited. The same is true, incidentally, of stocks of ATACMS available for use in Ukraine, as US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has explicitly said. If their production is indeed continuing, then their numbers are nowhere near comparable to the volume and speed of Russian production of equivalents and cannot possibly meet Ukrainian consumption. Furthermore, Russia has long ago developed its electronic warfare capability to shoot most of them down.
(4) Even a few hundred of these are not going to change the course of the war. Besides, Russia has already withdrawn many of its most valuable military assets well behind the 300 kilometer range of the Storm Shadow. American JASSM air-to-surface stealth missiles would be far more of a threat, but there are unlikely to be a large inventory of these for some time, if ever. Russia has its own equivalents for almost all Western categories of weapon and more besides, although for the time being Russia has set itself only one direct target - Ukraine.
(5) The Storm Shadow depends on US satellite surveillance and contains US components, of which perhaps the most significant is one that would reportedly overcome Russian electronic hacking of the Storm Shadow’s current reliance on GPS positioning. In other words, in the event that Washington was truly opposed to British or Ukrainian use of Storm Shadows, it could simply bring production lines to a sudden halt.
(6) If the UK Starmer government really does try to “go it alone,” it is doing so at a time when Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and even the US, are showing indications of reducing their military engagement in the conflict; that is to say, they are reducing the scale of their promises to supply weapons. Germany has again refused to supply Taurus missiles and its latest promised aid package of $1.5 billion is underwhelming; the Netherlands is no longer going to supply Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine; Italy is opposed to the use of long-range missiles against Russia; and there is growing opposition to the idea in France, despite Macron’s habitual anti-Russian bellicosity.
Despite the forgoing, however, one must concede that the signals are confusing. Plans to raise money for Ukraine in the form of loans based on the interest earned on seized Russian assets in Europe (primarily) will likely encounter stiff legal resistance outside of Europe, are unpopular with potential bondholders who know that Ukraine will never repay the debts, and will forever scare off the Global South from parking their money in Western banks. In their newest manifestation, still to be approved by the Commission and by member governments, the EU will furnish $40 billion in loans guaranteed by the Commission and likely to be repaid by taxpayers in the likely event that Ukraine does not repay them.
European enthusiasm for this wobbly project is in part sustained by the ambitions of the European Commission under neo-empress Ursula von der Leyen to further centralize power in Europe, acquire the power to raise money on its own and to issue its own bonds, and to raise its own army in potential competition with NATO itself.
Soundings of Congress by the Biden administration are advising there is a distinct cooling on Capitol Hill for the idea of any further major aid package for Ukraine of the scale that we saw earlier in the year. There is talk of $6 billion, way down on the $40 billion approved in May.
In short, if Starmer persists with Storm Shadows now, or if he engages in a lobbying campaign on Washington for Britain to be allowed to deploy them, he is swimming against the tide in a fashion that may mark him out for ridicule and render the UK peculiarly vulnerable to Russian retaliation (as in Russian supply of weapons to enemies of Britain around the world).
(7) On the eve of the US November presidential election it is likely that neither the incumbent, Biden, nor his vice-president and possible president-to-be, Kamala Harris, actually wants to rock a boat that might just about be able to float by itself until after the election. Anyone intelligent left in Washington - a diminishing fraternity, perhaps - now understands that a country with $3.5 trillion debt, its economy perhaps long surpassed by China in terms of purchasing power parity, and a foreign policy that commits the US militarily to fighting on at least three fronts - Russia over Ukraine, a regional war on Israel’s behalf against Iran, and a war with China over Taiwan as proxy - is a country whose existential future is in grave doubt.
On the other hand, it is perhaps precisely the scale of the debt that is making Washington so fatally reckless. Without command of the global economy through the dollar, and the widespread manipulation that this status has allowed up until now, the USA and the Western economies could implode.
Pressure to Negotiate
Because Russia is winning on the battlefields in the Donbass and because it looks increasingly as though Ukraine will be kicked out of Kursk at the cost of very heavy casualties, there is little incentive for Russia to enter into negotiations at this point of time. One should not underestimate the pain and suffering that the Kursk invasion has inflicted on Kursk residents. But such considerations do not yet impact broader geopolitical strategic considerations.
Russia will be paying attention to the attitude of its allies in the BRICS, and this is indeed a factor that may end up being more important than anything else in persuading Russia to re-enter negotiations. As chair of the BRICS in Kazan in October Russia is deeply cognizant of the necessity for hard gains in the drive to de-dollarization of the global economy. And Russia is showing great caution in the handling of bids for membership from countries such as Algeria and Turkey that it perhaps sees as potential spoilers.
Even in the eventuality of negotiation there can be no doubt whatsoever that Russia will insist that the starting point of any such discussion must be “Istanbul Plus.” The more time that elapses between March 2022 (when Ukraine and Russia signed a draft agreement that was then sabotaged by the likes of Victoria Nuland and Boris Johnson on behalf of the Neocon crazies in NATO) and the restart of negotiations, the greater is going to be the “Plus” in “Istanbul Plus.” My own view is not against this but, given that this is really a war between the West and the Global South, then I think all the actual participants need to be around the table, something that I think China obliquely recognizes.
Pressure from India and Brazil on Russia towards what some might describe as “moderation” of Russia’s stance on negotiation is tempered somewhat by China which, under the partnerhsip of Xi Xinping and Wang Li, clearly has a deeper understanding than either India or Brazil as to why Russia has had to fight this war and for how long it has been fighting it - definitely since the Western instigation of a coup in Kiev in 2014, but, more reasonably, since 2008 when Putin first “read the Riot Act” to the West on NATO encroachment on Russian border security.
Both Russia and China now realize that the Neocon West has no “reverse gear,” and that the West, under US tutelage, will never give up its hegemony, even, it sometimes seems, at the expense of launching World War Three and igniting nuclear Armageddon.
A Nuclear Response?
Given the miserable quality of Western leadership we might expect the West to resort to nuclear weapons before Russia does. Yet no matter how deep the anger, I think it prudent to assume that nobody at the helm of national governments, at the end of the day, is quite stupid enough to trigger global suicide. It remains the case that there is a very big risk of the triggering of nuclear war by accidental signalling and misinterpretation. This danger has been recklessly expedited by US positioning of nuclear offensive weapons around the borders of Russia as in Poland and Romania and, quite soon possibly, in Germany. The US intended this also in Ukraine had it been allowed to do so. A similar process is unfolding in Asia against China with pressure for the stationing of nuclear weapons in South Korea.
For the moment we should anticipate that in response to any move to greenlight long-range missiles on Russian targets, there will be fiercer Russian attacks on Western missile systems in Ukraine (whose data, servicing and operation depends considerably on NATO personnel); together with release by Russia of more lethal weaponry to Western enemies in countries such as Yemen, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela; and ever closer strategic coordination between Russia, China and Iran.
Israel’s plunge this week into mass murder of Lebanese citizens, and the bombing of Southern Lebanon and Beirut greatly increases the likelihood of a regional war against Iran.
Russian weapons will strengthen the backbone of Islamic retaliation against Israel for the Gaza and West Bank genocides, and of responses by Iran, Syria and Iraq to daily Israeli murder and other aggression, even as the US reduces its aircraft carrier presence in the region down to one (with the return home of the Eisenhower and the Roosevelt, perhaps to be redeployed to the Pacific in a game of diminishing imperial returns).
Russian missiles will sustain Houthi crippling of Western international trade (trade through the Red Sea already down 80%) and precipitate the economic collapse of Israel. But Israel’s plunge this week into mass murder of Lebanese citizens, and the bombing of Southern Lebanon and Beirut increases the likelihood of a regional war against Iran. The West can no longer presume the automatic rallying to Western defense of Israel by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are now part of the BRICS, or that Turkey will persist in its deft balancing between East and West, or that King Abdullah in Jordan can restrain the massive pressure of his people (who include several million Palestinians) in favor of Palestine, which lies right next door. Or that Egypt’s military-friendly, authoritarian, pro-Western regime under Abdel Sisi can do the same.
In a further demonstration of the extent to which the Ukrainian and Middle Eastern fronts are now integrated, Ukraine’s special forces are planning or are already executing a plan to provide drones to Al Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in the Turkish protectorate of Idlib in Syria and to provide advisers who will train militants to use them against Russian bases. These are there legitimately at the request of Damascus and have been critical to Assad’s ability to withstand Muslim Brotherhood hostility to Assad’s multi sectarian system of governance. The decades’ old Muslim Brotherhood extremist Sunni war against Damascus has been exploited by Qatar and the UAE and other authoritarian Arab regimes in collaboration with Western powers anxious to diminish the strength of Russian allies in the region.
The Iranian Factor
Perhaps Iran can provide certain categories of missile more cheaply. And perhaps Iranian supply of weapons to Russia has the symbolic advantage of demonstrating to the peoples of both countries the degree of political, military and economic solidarity between these two important members of the BRICS.
Blinken’s unlikely claims about Iran are merely a pretext that justify yet more Western sanctions on that country and continue the West’s decades-old demonization of Iran on one false pretext after another, disguising how this vindictiveness sustains a divided Middle East to US advantage. More worryingly, Western propaganda against Iran may make it easier for the US to succumb to Netanyahu’s provocations which are designed to lure the US into a regional war that Israel cannot possibly fight and win on its own.
A country that has for so long been falsely accused of wanting to develop a nuclear weapons capability should now surely realize the advantage of prioritizing the acquisition of just such a weapon. It is not impossible that Russia has already supplied Iran with nuclear warheads; nor is it impossible that, under the terms of a join defense treaty that both sides are still working towards (this delay, by the way, deserves more consideration in a future post) Russia might assist Iran towards this objective. Either way, we should take serious note of Iran’s denial of any such intent or ambition, and recent history would counsel respect for Iranian declarations on this matter.
In a possible bid to distract Chinese attention from the gathering crisis in the region of the world on which China depends for a substantial proportion of its energy supply, the US is ratcheting up anti-Chinese tensions in East and southeast Asia, pretending that China is about to invade Taiwan, or do something else that the US deems problematic in the South China Sea. Perhaps the US should be more mindful of China’s own ramping up of its nuclear force. Ahead of what almost certainly will be the end of START early next year and the demise of restraints on nuclear weapon production by both the US and Russia.
The most important thing about Iran to weigh into the analysis at this time is that Russia and Iran have now publicly confirmed their commitment to a comprehensive mutual defense which now only has to be signed into law by President Putin.
Conclusion
Editor's Note: The above is a summation/conclusion we can all rally around.
Unless the Western powers succeed in their desperate bid to cling on to hegemonic advantage, they will no longer be able to keep plugging the dam that protects them, ever more leakily, from the flood of debt that may finally swallow the West’s so-called civilization. The Western struggle is currently playing out along three front lines: the war with Russia over proxy Ukraine; the war with Iran over proxy Israel; the war with China over proxy Taiwan. The front lines are closely intertwined. The situation is explosive, more dangerous for the world than any that has been encountered before, ever.
Significant Drone Strike on Largest Russian Arms Depot
Dima of the Military Summary Channel, reporting very shortly after the event occurred and now endorsed by some other media I have seen this morning of September 18 (California time), including Radio Free Europe - speaks of a 100 Ukrainian drone attack on Russia of which some got through to the town of Torovets, 400 miles west of Moscow in the Tver region. Dima claims that Russia’s largest ammo dept was hit and possibly destroyed; RFE sources and witnesses speak of a nearby village having been destroyed and of other local damage.
Dima suggested there was some controversy over the nature of the missiles (in other words, could this have been a NATO long- range missile, which the scale of the damage might indicate) and about their launch location, with some sources suggesting they were launched in the Baltics, currently a venue for NATO military exercises.
If the latter is proven or found even to be just likely then we are talking about the kind of NATO involvement of which Putin last Thursday warned, in effect, would constitute the start of World War Three.
The other major smoldering trigger of World War Three is in the Lebanon. Reports today mostly suggest that the pager attack yesterday which killed at least 200 and wounded around 3000 was not to do with the pagers’ lithium batteries as Associated Press had initially indicated, but the result of the injection into each phone of a small packet of explosive. Further explosions are reported today.
Associated Press cites an anonymous source claiming that Israel fully briefed the US on this operation. If so, the US must add itself to its own list of terrorist states and organizations, and sanction itself. And if the US was party to the information of an upcoming act of terrorism and did nothing to prevent it happening, then the US is implicated in yet another episode of egregious terrorism carried out indiscriminately.
We can fully expect that the estimated numbers of casualties and deaths will increase in the coming days.
First reports suggest that this act of mass terrorism has not impacted the state of tension between Southern Lebanon and the IDF, but has elicited Hezbollah threats of commensurate retaliation.
My own assessment is that Hezbollah has suffered a major setback, thus creating a window of opportunity for Israel to invade. This could very well lead to further escalation that would drag Iran and then Russia into the war, but we should also listen to those who say that Iran is a divided polity, compromised by Mossad penetration, in which reformists are not sympathetic to Iranian expenditure of scarce resource on support for Palestine.
Both these developments (above) are extremely recent. The relevant facts and their significance are likely to evolve and to surprise in the coming days.
Russian strikes on and around the west Ukrainian city of Lviv in the past few days including, most recently, a strike on an airfield that caused significant damage to fighter jets on the ground indicate that Ukraine has been unable to re-secure as tight an air defense capability as it once possessed. We know that many Patriots have been destroyed. We know that of the six F-16s that recently arrived in Ukraine, one was destroyed either by Russian fire or in an accident. Others are said to have played a role in air defense although their total impact so far appears slight.
Following a recent meeting in Ramstein of Ukraine’s sponsors, US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, has retained the US prohibition on Ukrainian use of Western long-range missiles against targets in Russia.
It is entirely plausible that this may represent the outcome of a covert US deal with Russia. Russia had threatened that US greenlighting of the use of long range missiles against Russia might trigger the supply of equivalent Russian arms to enemies of the West such as the Houthis of Yemen who have already inflicted significant damage on Western trade through the Red Sea in retaliation for Israeli genocide of Palestinians. So it would make sense for the US and Russia to cut a deal for as long as both parties can restrain their hawks.
I get the impression that the bases for Western hawkishness are flagging somewhat amidst pre-election uncertainties and anxieties in the US and growing hostility against aid to Ukraine in Germany in the wake of recent electoral successes of the AfD and the BSW whose main problem in the eyes of the governing SPD-led coalition and the establishment opposition CDU party is that these newer parties are responding to the real issues that the electorate care about - something the establishment describes as “extreme.”
In Russia, I suspect the strength of the hawks is increasing as they begin to suspect that Putin is already or will go soft, and that the West knows this This perspective depends heavily on the view that the Kursk invasion has indeed been a major embarrassment to, and set-back for, the Putin administration especially given Russia’s perennial vulnerability to the West’s superiority in the propaganda war. Hawks fear that Putin will settle for Russia’s minimalist aims (acknowledgment of Crimea and the unoccupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zapporizhzhia and Kherson as Russian) plus Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis NATO, but whitewashing earlier demands for demilitarization and denazification.
A “soft” resolution of this kind might be fine and dandy for the capitalist and oligarch class whom Putin mainly represents but will be very objectionable to Russian nationalists and the military.
These considerations may go hand in hand with a relative de-escalation at Ramstein of Western gifting of Western taxpayer wealth to Ukraine, iconized by the reduction in Germany’s latest package of weapons aid that includes only 70 Leopard One tanks whose history goes back to World War One.
Notwithstanding the prohibition on use of long-range missiles on targets in Russia, the West continues to gift such missiles for use on the battlefield and to escalate in terms of the type of missile it supplies as in the matter of JSSMS, whose advantage of stealth is undermined by reliance on GPS which Russian electronic warfare may be well equipped to hack.
The backbone of Russian missile strength is the triad of Iskander-Kinzhal-Avangard hypersonic missiles, one that is probably superior in quality and quantity to anything NATO can put up. Talk of Western supply of a couple of hundred or so JSSMS needs to be placed in the context of: (1) the 10000 cruise missiles that Russia has already fired on Ukraine in this war, (2) of Ukraine’s ability to keep fighting nonetheless, and (3) the vast geographic scale of the Russian Federation. In other words, all the missiles supplied to Ukraine have done little or nothing to make Russia desist, and while Russian missile offensives on Ukraine have been devastating they have not yet forced Ukraine to desist. Why then would one expect that the far, far more extensive territory of Russia will succumb to a few more Western missiles fired from Ukraine?
Oliver Boyd-Barrett
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- In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
- Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
- Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.
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