MIKE WHITNEY—What makes the RAND Corporation’s latest report on Ukraine so significant, is not the quality of the analysis, but the fact that the nation’s most prestigious national security think-tank has taken an opposite position on the war than the Washington political class and their globalist allies. This is a very big deal. Keep in mind, wars don’t end because the public opposes them. That is a myth. Wars end when a critical split emerges between elites that eventually leads to a change in policy.
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MIKE WHITNEY—The issue, of course, could have been resolved long ago if Washington had acted in good faith, but Washington has not acted in good faith. In fact, Washington is still determined to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in order to implement its “pivot to Asia” strategy to ensure its future as the world’s only unchallenged superpower. These goals cannot be achieved without escalation, confrontation and a full-blown war. The NATO summit is merely a prelude to a broader and more violent conflict between the nuclear superpowers.
The question we should be asking ourselves is whether NATO can actually win a war with Russia. Can it? The answer is “No”, it cannot.
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MIKE WHITNEY—Today’s political leaders in Israel—greatly emboldened by their perceived triumph over the civilian population of Gaza—are pushing for an invasion of Lebanon and a confrontation with their arch-enemy, Hezbollah. Most of these politicians either don’t know what transpired in 2006 or think that today’s “stronger and more capable” IDF will prevail with relative ease. They appear to discount the idea that Israel could face a humiliating defeat that would undermine their future security and deterrents. They are so convinced of their own invincibility; the prospect of defeat has never entered their minds.
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MIKE WHITNEY—Where Putin chose to take the diplomatic approach, Medvedev opted for the hammer-blow. ‘If you attack Russia, we will bomb you back to the Stone Age.’ Not much wiggle-room there. But perhaps clarity is what’s needed for people who do not understand the potential consequences of their actions. In any event, no one in Washington or Brussels can say they weren’t warned.
We cannot exclude the possibility that Washington actually wants to expand the war despite the fact that cities across Eastern Europe could be incinerated in the process. It could be that Beltway warhawks see a broader conflict as the only way to achieve their geopolitical ambitions. Putin knows that this is a real possibility, just as he knows that there is a sizable constituency in Washington that support the use of nuclear weapons. This might explain why he is proceeding so cautiously, because he knows there are crazies within the US establishment who look forward to a clash with their old rival Russia so they can implement their pet-theories about “usable” nukes for tactical advantage.
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MIKE WHITNEY—The reason Israel continues to kill non-combatants who are in-no-way connected to Hamas, is because it convinces everyone else that the bombing is “indiscriminate” which, in turn, suggests that the perpetrator is a deranged madman driven by irrational hatred. This is how one terrorizes the public into doing whatever is demanded of them. We expect that much of Israel’s current pysops in Gaza was meticulously worked out with a battery of behavioral psychologists long before the first bomb was dropped, perhaps, years before the Hamas attack on October 7.
