Plan A: The war was predicted, it will get worse
A review of what the state of things were more than two years ago and why we knew that this was coming
I wrote this very late in 2019 (on the eve of 2020). Things have obviously progressed significantly ever since and now we are in an effective “hot war”1 situation, with indications pointing to an active role by the US in the Ukraine theater.2
It is in a way a little hard to believe and yet here we are! Some of us did warn everyone about what was coming, but of course no one listened and even now they say: “this will be resolved soon’'. Wrong answer…
I reproduce part of what I wrote, here.
.
.
Things have moved along toward global conflict in leaps and bounds over that last 10 years and especially over the last 5…I have written on this page about the various aspects of the escalations between US and Russia for five years now.
These escalations, they’re not going away.
Just a few weeks ago US Senate advanced a plan to declare Russia a ‘state sponsor of terror’ a few steps forward (see further below).
Similarly, there have been tit-for-tats for a long time between the two rivals.
For example, on 14 December 2019 Russia was reported to have shot down a US drone over Libya -- this is just the latest over a litany of confrontations that are not reported widely on MSM hence most people just don’t know about them.
These kinds of escalation are only getting worse.
There are also asymmetric escalations, for example in the Mediterranean. I will talk about those later.
As we go into the New Year, it pays to think about what follows a little, especially given these five facts:
1) we’ve had 75 years of relative peace;
2) we’ve usually had a very large war (a world war) every century;
3) the situation between the US and Russia is dire and worse than it has ever been, and it keeps on getting worse by the day -- Trump isn’t even able to hold a private talk with Putin to deescalate growing tensions, lest he be labelled a traitor – absolutely unprecedented;
4) if a war between these two belligerent sides takes place, it will go nuclear in a very short time, and so, this world war, will be quite different than all the rest.
5) China has overtaken US in all world trade and that’s what the Trade War is all about. That’s why Trump had no choice but to raise tariffs and kill off the World Trade Organization ‘court’, among other steps that he’s taken. These steps are said to have been “successful” but this just isn’t true (a discussion for another day).
Add to that the fact that the Western banks are also in dire straits with a massive liquidity crisis, this will mean disaster -- the US Fed will pump-in another 500 billion (yeah that’s “BILLION”, but there is talk of an estimated 1.3 Trillion – TRILLION -- in total being pumped ) into the system by Dec 31, 2019, in addition to the trillions the Central Bank has already ‘printed’ since 2008, to ensure that the banks stay afloat.
But this is all a temporary fix and a fool’s errand because it can only last so long as the US Dollar is the reserve global currency. But that’s not going to last because Russia and China are collaborating on bringing down the US Dollar and a war might neutralize the efforts of one or both of these actors. Russia has taken a leading role in this, liquidating “almost all its [Dollar] treasury holdings in mid-2018” and buying gold like there is no tomorrow.
So the best thing that will delay the collapse of the western financial system long term is war.
********************************************************************
Now with all that edging us closer to war the ‘propagation of information war’ (or the ‘propaganda war’) is also very hot right now.
Here’s an example of what may partially at least be called ‘the fog of war’.
Look at this RT article (see first comment). RT calls a certain New York Times article fake news (see second comment) [Articles not furnished here].
This has gone on both ways, for some time-- the tit-for-tat has been escalating for five continuous years now and it of course, constitutes an intense propaganda and information war (or the Fog of War).
I have never seen it this bad (or read about things being as bad as they are now since WWII).
In the Fog of War, both sides engage each other to create a psychology which attempts to undermine their opponent’s capabilities and to psychologically impact their opponent’s assets, resources and populations.
The intensity of all this increases before the actual hot war begins (and the hot war can begin quite ‘accidentally’ and quite unintentionally).
What we now have are two opposing sides which are engaged HARD in the information, censorship and propaganda war in respect of just about every aspect of the others’ capabilities, strengths, weaknesses and sins.
In one way we can see that Russia has been under much more intense US pressure for the last 5 years (ever since Russia’s Syria intervention and Ukraine/Crimea and the Maidan events).
Consider the following steps taken against Russia, by the US and its allies:
- INF treaty withdrawal;
- Ending of the Open Skies Treaty;
- Arming of Ukraine and provocations there, including Kerch ‘freedom of Navigation’ exercises near Russia;
- Banning Russia from the Olympics and the World Cup;
- NATO expansion (unbelievable move into Montenegro in 2017) with tanks in Estonia and missiles in Poland;
- Blaming Russia for the MH17 downing, the Skripal affair, and killing of civilians in Syria;
- Attacks on Syria (most recent on 30 Dec 2019) and occupation of oil fields there;
- Reports (unconfirmed) of killing Russian contractors in Syria;
- Nuclear Posture Review to allow for pre-emptive strikes;
- Unending sanctions, including expropriation of Russian assets, deportation of Russian personnel, restrictions on Russian media (including RT), and a continuous threat in relation to an ultimate sanction: of cutting Russia out of the SWIFT international payment and exchange system; and
- finally the fact that US Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently approved a bill (‘Stopping Malign Activities from Russian Terrorism (SMART) Act’) asking the State Department to determine whether Russia falls under criteria of a state sponsor of terrorism.
It seems that the US is hands-down winning this initial round of the ‘Fog of War’ and this is extremely dangerous.
Russia’s polite diplomacy has been met with wild screams of “Russian aggression”, repeatedly.
I can’t emphasize this enough: this is unprecedented.
It’s not been this bad since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in any event, this new iteration of the ‘fog’ is just altogether a very different creature and in a very dangerous way: this particular fog is significantly more intense, more belligerent, more repetitive and ongoing with no end in sight, and it only seems to be heading in one particular direction.
It is also more dangerous because if a lower-house-impeached Trump attempts to resolve and deescalate the situation with Putin, he will be immediately labelled a ‘traitor’.
When in the post-war era, did a US president have this kind of problem? I can’t think of a time, not even with Nixon.
And we’ve already been very close to the commencement of the next global conflict.
In 2014 USS Donald Cook was ‘locked on to’ in the Black Sea. If it hadn’t retreated, it would have been blown away and the war would have started.
In 2017 there were close calls in Syria especially in April of that year, when Russia was ready to go to war with the US if the pre-planned Patriot attack on Syria ‘got out of hand’.
People may think that the things have been calmer since, but as the list above shows, that’s just not true.
So Russia seems ready and it seems at times to be resigned to the idea that global conflict is coming.
It recently released into full operational capacity the Avangard hypersonic missile system (pictured) which looks like a ‘fireball coming down from the sky’.
One can easily see what can potentially happen: Russia has been cornered and a ‘cornered bear’ will eventually only behave one way: when the proverbial ‘last straw’ is placed on its back, Russia will probably take an action against the US interests directly, or against one or more of US’ close and or strategic allies (e.g. Turkey).
Turkey and Erdogan (as well as others in Eastern Europe, countries like Ukraine) could constitute the spark.
Turkey’s been escalating for a while now including recently by making outright claims on various Greek Islands and areas within the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean as far as Libya. There are now some escalations with regard to the civil war in Libya with Turkey on one side and Greece and France on the other.
Greece recently blocked Turkey from flying sorties against Libyan factions over its airspace (never mind that Turkey violates Greek airspace daily).
If Turkey escalates somehow (it has many options, including hitting in on the Aegean Sea Greek islands), Russia could take the opportunity and take the NATO member Turkey out wholesale, taking into possession the most important gateways in the world, Bosphorus [Bosporus] and Dardanelles, and completely debilitating the US and NATO strategic position over the area.
The West (US) just can’t allow that to happen. It will have to go to war to take the straits back whether Trump wants it or not.
Same thing with Ukraine. Any escalations in eastern Ukraine could lead to a Russian invasion of Ukraine (and may be an invasion on places like the NATO Estonia). NATO will then prepare for a hot war.
I include [here] a simulation which I posted some time ago. This one has to do with the conflict commencing in Baltics. As someone said, the simulation shows “34 million [fatalities] in 5 hours then x 10 in 50 hours to 340 million dead. Then x 10 again in 5 years to 3.4 billion dead. That last one from Radioactive fallout, collapse of the world economic system, famine, contaminated food and water, lack of medical supplies, and disease. Everyone in the whole world will be effected no matter where you live.”
[Added below. Edited further on 5 March 2022 for typographic errors in the sub-title and introduction to the extracted text — the extracted text was original published in Facebook.]
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/russian-foreign-spy-chief-says-cold-war-with-west-has-turned-hot-2022-03-03/ visited 4 March 2022
https://t.me/FatimaRussia/2493 ; https://t.me/FatimaRussia/2510 ; https://t.me/FatimaRussia/2509 ; and