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Did anti-vaxxers destroy US germ warfare plans?

There is something insidious about the biological warfare warnings by the Russian and Chinese governments coinciding with acute geopolitical conflict, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the obsession of Western governments and elites with vigilant public health policy.

A US military paper described “public resistance to public health measures” as a military threat to the US preparedness to withstand a biological attack. It is also a threat to US preparedness to launch such a germ warfare attack on an adversary, because it impairs the ability to carry out necessary inoculations of US troops and civilians at home ahead of just such an attack, to avoid the viral weapon backfiring on America.

Inoculation against what, again?

The US government's supposedly defensive Project Bioshield includes the aim of developing vaccines. This makes no sense. Inoculation campaigns would require knowledge of the exact biological threat, both in terms of its identity and the timing of its deployment as a weapon. You would require samples of the specific viral threat to already exist in the lab, to even begin work.

What is Bioshield going to develop a vaccine against, if it doesn't know what the enemy-manufactured virus will be? Inoculations are by definition a preventative measure against a known threat. In a military sense, it is about protecting one's people and resources and preserving them for future action. The development of a military vaccine only seems to make sense if a military is developing an offensive viral weapon and wants to inoculate its own troops to stop the weapon infecting its own forces.

Winning the vaccination debate is a US military objective

The option to impose mandatory inoculations of the population, and especially military forces, is a necessary part of any preparation for biological warfare, whether the attack is to come from an adversary or your own military. The state would necessarily have to forcibly inoculate large parts of its own population, in order to make sure the lethality of its own weapons does not backfire on its people and resources and undermine victory.

Western societies would not simply accept mandatory inoculations without society undergoing the necessary debate over the issue, and we seem to be past that stage now. The intentional politicisation of Covid-19 and very forced attempt to have a public debate over the necessity of mandatory vaccinations (even though the situation was not serious enough for that) could have been preparation to help build offensive biological warfare options against Russia and China. In a way, it is like building nuclear bunkers.

Russians and Chinese spotted something

Then, we come back to the biological weapon claims of the Russians and Chinese, whether one trusts them or not as a source. They allege that the United States has a very aggressive biological warfare program, with facilities near both of these adversary states. They are clearly unnerved, even paranoid. This may be more to do with them noticing Western states apparently hardening themselves for a biological warfare situation at home, taking advantage of the pandemic to overcome any social and political objections to the idea of the sudden inoculation of entire nations on the state's command.

West seems sure of victory

Finally, there is the uncompromising warmongering of Western states, which is uncharacteristic of countries that are held in check by the traditional threat of mutual destruction in a nuclear war. Clearly, Western governments believe they can actually eliminate Russia and China as threats within a short timeframe. This is apparent in their triumphalist attitude, which exceeds their apparent capabilities, as if they intend to lean on indirect or covert means of attack. While many may see the threat in "colour revolutions" (staged uprisings and street violence led by staff at Western embassies), germ warfare also fits such a description. The West talks like it has an ultimate secret weapon, and that weapon could take the form of viruses.

Many of the individuals responsible for advising Western policies (World Economic Forum attendees, for example) have developed an obsession both with pandemics and with enemy regimes at the same time, as if both are certainly on their minds and considerable energy has gone towards both. They also hate alternate sources of information, and especially anti-vaxxers. Their vision is of a society that can live with very harsh public health policies, and also be resolute in its commitment against the "enemy". This is the ideal combination before launching a germ warfare campaign.

Germ warfare preparations failed?

Then again, we can just as easily go back to the US military paper's gloomy conclusion mentioned at the beginning of this post. It may be that anti-vaxxers have ruined everything for them and destroyed their plans.

The extent of rejection of vaccines in Western countries, and official frustrations with much of society's lack of acceptance of harsh health policies, suggest that Western preparations for germ warfare have failed, and our own societies are insufficiently controlled to allow our governments to wage this war. The truth may be that China has a much more compliant population, giving its regime the best capability to both resist biological attacks and launch them.

If Western governments think a biological attack is a viable way to get rid of Russia and China, they are playing with fire. Russia has taken a very aggressive tone since the war in Ukraine started, and would respond brutally to such an attack if it traced it (maybe going straight to nuclear weapons), while China would be able to withstand it and counterattack to deadly effect.

While many on the pacifist left see Russia as hypocritical, modelling its actions in Ukraine on US aggression against countries like Iraq, it is once again the United States that seems to have brought faulty ideas about war and victory to Ukraine.

What kept causing defeat for the United States in foreign conflicts is not a weakness in its excellent military technology, but the intellectual bankruptcy of American leaders and strategists, many of whom are little more than dullards and thugs. For all their military might, such warriors don't understand what war even is.

Americans seem to regard war as nothing more than a shooting competition, getting overly fixated on acts of killing and talking about who they have killed. This may be because of the gun culture that the lives of most American military enthusiasts revolve around.

Killing the enemy

We saw the the trigger-happy approach on display by American leaders in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the mere deaths of insurgents or even civilians were portrayed as victories in the war. It was also a major weakness in the US strategy in Vietnam, which notoriously focused on body counts. Hence, attrition is always the main American goal in wars, despite there being no obvious end to it. It offers no threshold at which one can actually be calculated to win, or even any guarantee that the conflict will ever end.

American military leaders think war is defined as shooting the enemy, and victory is defined as the enemy being dead. The depth of their military thought goes no deeper than that. There is no thought to what happens next, and even less for any agency on the part of their targets.

Coincidently, I’m celebrating the 27,000 dead Russian soldiers and a bakers dozen dead GENERALS! How embarrassing for you!!#SlavaUkraine https://t.co/6n8F66y4ch
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) May 22, 2022

In the American military mind, if you kill the enemy, and you keep killing the enemy, eventually they will all be dead and the war will be won. It does not matter what anyone is trying to do, or who goes where, as long as the enemy is being shot. Based on the reports bragging about the allegedly killed Russian generals and high Russian casualties, this idea is now being applied by American warmongers to Russian forces in Ukraine, even though Russians are far better equipped and able to defend themselves than other factions the US and its allies failed to defeat when applying the same philosophy.

No-one needs to die

Although it will surprise people who play computer games, making sure enemy soldiers won't go home to their mothers is not in tune with how wars are really won. No-one is keeping a score, and it is very often the loser that manages to achieve more 'kills' before losing (just look up deaths in the American Civil War or World War Two). This is because war is not even about killing anyone.

As Clausewitz famously stated, war is the continuation of politics by other means. And we also cannot forget Sun Tzu’s formulation, “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight”. In other words, winning wars is as much to do with not killing people as it is to do with killing them. For Russians to learn that they are being killed by American weapons will not make Russians think they live in a safe world where they do not need to apply military force, and should seek peace.

Imagine if the situation was reversed. This would mean Russia bragging about causing American troop deaths in a war, and expecting America to then withdraw from foreign conflicts and give up on military solutions to threats around the world. Imagine, also, that this foreign conflict is happening just across the border to the mainland United States, and could spill over into American cities or include artillery being fired at such cities, the way the war in Ukraine threatens Russian cities. Would Americans cave in to the pressure, maybe deciding that their military is not very good, and give up?

In fact, needlessly killing an enemy and threatening them with death is not only absolutely irrelevant to waging a war effectively but just complicates the ability to wage it by making the enemy double down, because now they are even more emotionally invested in the conflict and the war is more personal. This approach produces fiercer and more numerous people willing to fight, especially when the war is waged close to home, as the Ukraine war is for Russians.

Understanding how to win a war is all about defining victory, which is actually nothing to do with killing or dying and can be accomplished with no casualties (like Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, which has no parallel in the pointlessly bloodthirsty history of the United States).

Russia brings rulebook for winning

From the start of its intervention, Russia took the opposite view to American warmakers, with no particular interest in how many people it would kill in Ukraine. Even just getting started in what may be a long war, Russia has been just as interested in rebuilding infrastructure as destroying it. The West, on the other hand, tells of Russian brutality and talks up the West's supposedly humanitarian approach to war, but this is drivel. Rebuilding the cities they destroy is something the US and UK never do, and would never do. People in the West are okay with Ukraine becoming a desolated boneyard, as we have no attachment to the country. It isn't our neighbour, we don't know anyone there.

The second reason the US cannot win wars is because it sets no realistic objective, resulting in 'mission creep' as politicians and military leaders continuously imagine how they can hurt their opponent, with no clear idea of where the process ends. This is already a criticism of the US approach to the war in Ukraine.

Defining victory

The objective of wars is to win them, not necessarily to kill anyone. This means putting the opponent at your mercy, whether now or in the future, and then negotiating the end of the war.

The Taliban, through superior endurance, put the American military and the American people at its mercy in Afghanistan and won. It did this not through might, but through endurance: America lost the will to go on, yielding to pressure, while the Taliban did not. It may take a long time, but the side that has the staying power will always win, and the other side will eventually be put at its mercy. Russia has the staying power to stay where Russia and Russians are, and Ukraine is a neighbour of Russia and home to 8 million Russians – more people than the population of Finland. The West's attachment to Ukraine and the need to prop the country's regime up is a recent scheme from 2014 onwards, as fake as our attachment to the cardboard cut-out Afghan regime that collapsed in Kabul.

The United States will lose for the same reason it always loses: disinterest in the people on the ground or the need to win their hearts and minds. The US is involved for its own glory and its need to kill people it sees as bad. US weapons will always kill people, but the end result will not be a favourable political outcome any more than it was in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq.

Western media sources are trying to rattle Russians into thinking their country’s actions in Ukraine backfired and that they are in greater peril, owing to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

Some fans of Russia see a sudden Russian military offensive on Finland, like the attack deep into Ukraine in February, as a realistic possibility. Finland may well be much more vulnerable than Ukraine, as it has a much smaller military than Ukraine, although it boasts a better history of military success against Russia.

The Kremlin certainly is not happy about Finland joining NATO, saying an unspecified response will follow. Meanwhile, Sweden is a power in the Baltic Sea, but has already cooperated with the NATO powers and labelled Russia as hostile, and should have been expected to join sooner or later.

Russia should expect NATO in Finland

Finland has a small population and military, so the issue is more about NATO deploying to Finland than Finland joining NATO. Russia will have to target US forces in Finland, where it previously had no interest.

One can conclude that, far from being taken by surprise, Russia probably expected NATO to compensate elsewhere for the disappearance of Ukraine’s NATO membership prospects due to the Russian military presence in that country. That compensation is likely to now happen in Scandinavia, unless vetoed by NATO members such as Turkey.

Russians would be wrong to get too flustered about Finland joining NATO. One must remember that Finland was always tacitly aligned with the West. NATO and Finnish troops were likely under the mutual understanding that Finland would let Western forces use or pass through that territory during any conflict with Russia, even during the Cold War height of Finnish neutrality. Also, recall that Finland had no hesitation about even aligning with the Axis in World War Two to strike at Russia.

There is a certain peril to Russia associated with Finland’s entry to NATO, but it is solely a conventional military threat and a missile threat, perhaps mainly a threat that US military air power could be permanently based there. Finland’s population and military are likely to be too small to significantly threaten Russia, so Russian troops will be facing US and other NATO troops across that frontier. However, this is far less of a severe threat than what could arise in the much more populous Ukraine, so any claim that the Kremlin now has a bigger problem on its hands is just false.

Ukraine as NATO's 4GW base

Ukraine is highly populated, capable of enormous manpower. It was a viable springboard for fourth-generation warfare (4GW), which is the only reliable means of destroying targets in a nuclear-armed power's territory without provoking a direct conflict with it. Densely populated areas, zealous paramilitary formations practicing Syria-like hit and run tactics using pickup trucks, and sustained political extremism and grievances, all defined what was happening in Ukraine even before the Russian invasion. The war of 2014 to present created a threat in Ukraine that would have spilled over into Russian territory even if Russia did nothing. Supposing the West also funded mass protests within Russia with the aim of toppling Russian president Vladimir Putin, violence and insecurity could have spread across Russia, joined by people crossing over the border from Ukraine.

The Western strategy of creating security threats on the Russian periphery would eventually create conditions of civil war creeping into Russia like Syria, sufficient to destroy the Russian state but not obvious enough to trigger a retaliatory nuclear strike by Moscow. In fact, NATO would have used its current Ukraine pressure tactics to suppress Russia's ability to confront threats on its own territory at that stage, threatening intervention inside Russia if Putin uses chemical weapons, and all such claims that always arise under the NATO watch. What is being played out in Ukraine now is likely exactly what NATO intended to do inside Russia itself, sooner or later, all to the same applause of those who currently praise Ukraine. Putin's intervention likely pre-empted and forced the confrontation on Ukrainian territory rather than Russian territory, but even now there are Western officials expressing their support for the spill-over of the violence to Russian territory and US officials declaring that the violence is aimed to weaken Russia. If Western statements are not gaffes, then Russia's military action in Ukraine provides increased security for Russian people by keeping the confrontation as far outside Russia's borders and as far from Russian civilians as possible, which was also the Russian defence of their intervention in Syria. Such an action is, by definition, a success for the Russian soldier even if he is killed, if his task is to prevent Russian civilian deaths.

Finland as a quiet front

Finland isn't a place of great tension, extreme nationalism and unrest, like Ukraine. If Finland became a springboard to provoke Russia, it would be only a base for conventional warfare, and an ineffective one. As someone who walked in that part of Finland, I can tell you it is all densely wooded terrain in a sparsely populated wilderness, surely still unsuitable for conventional warfare as it was in the Winter War of 1940. Attacking forces would be constrained by the roads. As such, a war in Finland would be an almost entirely aerial and missile war, monitored by radar and missile troops and provoking mutual destruction if anything happened at all. Western attempts to undermine Russia have been desperately trying to dodge a direct military conflict and find unconventional forms of attack, such as those where local civilian hatreds and provocations can give rise to the murk of civil war, like in Syria from 2011 and Ukraine from 2014. Mere tourism-level numbers of Russians live in Finland compared to more than eight million in Ukraine, so Finland's internal affairs don't concern Russia.

On the Finnish frontier, following the country's accession to NATO, whichever side has aggressive intentions is going to either fail spectacularly to advance, or simply provoke everyone's destruction in a nuclear war, which means there will be no change in the calculus on either the Russian or NATO side. US nuclear missiles placed in Finland are a possibility, which will create an increased threat to the adjacent St Petersburg, but not much more than the existing Baltic NATO countries.

The possibility of US biological warfare facilities at the Russian border exists but does not require Finland's membership of NATO, if there is a determined US plan to introduce diseases into Russia as per Russian suspicions. It is hard to see how gaining a tenuous military hold on some forests in Finland at the expense of Russian soldiers' lives would provide much protection against such a threat, if it exists. A better move by Russia might simply be to create its own retaliatory biowarfare programs, as they developed their nuclear arsenal to counter the US.

Finnish cannon fodder for US wars

Finland reacted in a nervous and short-sighted way by deciding to join NATO and announcing it without debate. Its leaders underestimate the value of neutrality and the costs of NATO membership. They now risk selling their souls to a very dangerous neoconservative devil that still is in power in Washington and still believes the West’s destiny is to invade other continents to spread “democracy” and pacify hostile regimes.

Far from defending against Russian invaders, Finnish membership in NATO will most likely result in more Finnish troops dying in Middle Eastern countries invaded by the US in the future, and being deployed to Asia to confront China. NATO’s mission is being constantly expanded to a greater and more aggressive scope (“Global NATO”, as Liz Truss puts it), so there is no limit to what NATO may try to conquer next, with the increased cannon fodder and confidence it gets from the growing list of member states. There is also the potential for terrorist attacks to occur in Finland, as NATO countries all share the burdens, casualties, and inevitable consequences of the dream of Western conquest.

Liz Truss went too far in trying to take ownership of the war in Ukraine and proposing conditions that would never be acceptable to any administration in Moscow, threatening to further inflame and escalate the conflict, even according to The Guardian.

Truss had said that Britain should set a war aim of depriving Russia of Crimea, which Moscow considers core Russian territory and protects under its nuclear deterrent. This is such a delusional statement that it would be less absurd to have heard Russian generals talk of recapturing the Reichstag. Crimea is long gone, and Ukraine is about as likely to send troops there as it is to Vladivostok. Even pro-Western dissidents in Russia refuse to talk of Crimea as anything other than part of Russia.

In addition to her, we see Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey eagerly justifying attacks by Ukraine into Russian territory using UK weapons. Apparently, he is unaware of the potential risk to British territory if we set ourselves a goal of destroying targets in Russian territory.

Total war, by proxy?

In the case of both politicians mentioned here, Britain possibly overestimates its power, having no grasp of how or where Russia could respond in kind or the kind of casualties British personnel could suffer if Russia were to begin maliciously handing out all modern armaments necessary to kill British troops worldwide. It seems some of our leaders just view the Slavic mind as dull, easy prey, incapable of the creativity to even copy what we do.

We also assume that our playing by a set of rules forbidding direct attacks on the other side confines the Russians to also abiding by these rules, when that is not the case if the rules only benefit us and not them. Would we ourselves keep playing by the rules if Russia was the only beneficiary under them, and the costs for us playing were severe? A country will only allow so much damage to them indirectly, before they hastily look for ways to retaliate, even if they are caught doing so.

Any plan that includes averting a nuclear war but still destroying Russia's cities and strategic objects, using Ukrainian troops to do so as encouraged by Heappey, would be folly. Britain's targeting of strategic objects and vital defences in Russia, even using a third country or fiddling with the command structure to hide responsibility for the attacks, would trigger Russian strikes on strategic targets in Britain. It would be no different than if we began attacking Russia directly, so Russia could see nuclear attacks as a proportionate response.

A brag too far

Liz Truss seems at some level to be aware that her foolish and rash warmongering cannot be walked back. She has tried to take full ownership of the Ukrainian war effort, declaring that a defeat in this war is unthinkable and would mean a profound loss of security for us.

In reality, there is an alternative course that keeps the country safe: just get rid of Liz Truss, James Heappey, and the others who displayed misplaced military swagger and tried to take ownership of the Ukrainian war effort. This would restore a level of calm, helping prevent escalation while benefiting still from whatever they had done, if any of it had any benefit.

It is okay for common soldiers to belittle their adversaries and brag. However, a serving government minister, who believes a continent-spanning nuclear hyperpower is some easy prey they will soon hang on their wall as a personal trophy, is an imbecile. That person should not be permitted to speak another word in any official capacity.

Despite the UK presenting itself as the leading defender of Europe, Britain’s armoured vehicle production and repair is going to increasingly take place in Germany, as is shown by British interest in the “Eurotank” project as the means to get a new Main Battle Tank.

However impressive the Eurotank will be, interdependence with the continent we are meant to defend could be a major weakness. We already rely on the Germans to upgrade our panzers at their workshops, somehow managing to brag about it in the process.

We also aim to replace our Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) with Franco-German wheeled designs, rather than choosing to continue the history of unique and iconic British armoured vehicle designs. Bear in mind that the French and Germans were historic enemies of Britain, at different eras, and the current state of affairs is tantamount to British troops dressing in enemy uniforms.

Europe is no haven

From a historically savvy perspective, Britain growing reliant on German help with armoured vehicles is similar to defeat and demilitarisation at German hands, since no wise British leadership would ever have allowed the Germans or French to seize British military production capabilities and take them to their countries. Especially in a place as historically volatile as Europe, which is already undergoing significant disruption due to the Ukrainian conflict and could face an increasingly violent and destabilised future, which is historically normal for the Continent.

Europe, and Germany particularly, also have a strong historical tendency to instability and conflict that goes all the way back to the Thirty Years' War and perhaps earlier. European integration has been a fact for so little time that to think it is permanent is premature and immature. The advantage of Great Britain has always been its isolation from the contagion of European conflict, by the sea.

Even assuming the UK never returns to an era of tension with the Germans or French, it is still a fact that having our military production and repair facilities be in Germany potentially magnifies security and strategic problems, from espionage to the possibility of Germany itself being simply misgoverned and overrun with conflicts or political intrigue in the future. If things get bad in Europe, they could unnecessarily imperil British national security if we are reliant on sites there for defence production and repair.

UK arms production and repair capability being located in a non-nuclear country such as Germany is also problematic because it creates the possibility that our war production could be wiped out, without being protected by our nuclear deterrent. NATO does not necessarily protect Germany from all conflict scenarios, including nuclear ones, with the reliability that the British nuclear deterrent has.

The hollowness of Brexit

Britain’s disinterest in being an independent arms producer, and increased interest in partnering with the French and Germans instead, makes Brexit less significant, nay meaningless, in terms of turning the country into an independent strategic player. Moreover, it reveals that those in business and government who decide our priorities are merely resentful about the departure from the EU and want to do everything to offset any impact on our trajectory as a country.

British government and corporate elites have no real thought for national security. They don’t see our island as anything more than a shabby council estate that is to be left behind, to pursue their interests via the United States and the European Union or via supranational organisations like NATO. This may suit them, but it does not suit future generations who will emerge in a country that has no brand, no pride, and no security, being little more than a dump for foreign powers.

Much of the Western press and leadership are portraying the East-West conflict over Ukraine as a temporary issue that will be quickly remedied by regime change against what they see as problematic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin. In some ways, they are correct.

Since the end of the original Cold War, the main tension in the world was emerging in the North-South relationship, not the East-West conflict, making the current geopolitical situation something of an anomaly. Except for direct contests over hegemony, the main struggle in the world has always been between the exploiter and exploited, or the ruler and the ruled.

War against the Global South

With wars mainly being "interventions" targeting Global South nations like Iraq and Libya, and the Global North having a distinct advantage, able to project the image of itself as a global policeman under the authority of the United Nations Security Council, for a time it seemed as if a simmering North-South conflict was becoming the accepted reality.

The alterations to the language of war in the 1990s and early 2000s to speak of humanitarian intervention, rogue states, terrorism and global policing showed a shift, conscious or otherwise, to waging wars on the economically undeveloped nations. Military technology and wargames changed to target lightly armed resistance groups, rather than peer opponents.

What is happening now, with the renewal of conflict between the West and Russia, is an unexpected hiccup in the dominance of the Global North and especially the Western powers. Russia had essentially been considered a solved problem and a defeated enemy for over thirty years, and the West had moved on to other targets. Russia refusing to be dead, and being capable of challenging the West again, is a potentially fatal impediment Western goals.

The wrong battle

For the West to now be bogged down in a contest with Russia essentially means that the Global North is unable to fight the battle it wanted to fight, namely a battle to maintain dominance over the Global South. The West is mainly responsible, failing to create Global North alliance structures that would include Russia and potentially even China in a world order that would see the North dominate the South.

The selfishness of, very probably, individual politicians and thought leaders in the United States and United Kingdom is most likely to blame for the failure of the Global North to form a united front against the Global South (a godsend for the peoples of the latter). It seems like the idea of having Russians and Chinese as part of the club was just unacceptable to English-speaking elites, who would prefer that the "civilised" world and its economically vital activity are only led by people who look and sound like them.

Russia and China are essentially too "developed" now to be considered an economic periphery that can be conquered or exploited by the West. Countries like India, Pakistan and Iran can also increasingly be considered "developed" and don't really fall into the "Third World" stereotype either, as they may have done in the past.

What next?

While there may be attempts by the East and West to use the Global South as a proxy battlefield again, like they did in the original Cold War, the degree of resistance there against all such interference will likely increase. The Global South was on the rise in its own right, with an increasing willingness of local regimes to defy any expression of global authority or global good, and instead take possession of their own resources. Leaders such as Chavez, Morales, Gaddafi and others were not anomalies but part of a trend that was sure to continue, and will continue.

Even if Western regimes are not impeded much, or Russia and China are quickly disposed of and the Global North falls under Anglo-Saxon authority, their attempts to police and control the Global South will still go severely awry. We will still see terrorism, devastating wars and refugee flows that, in addition to climate change, will complicate Western dominance. They will be unable to pacify the populations of the Global South, who will continue to elect leaders who defy foreign exploitation and dominance. As such, even the most optimistic forecast for the West is one of war, waste, misery and the defeat of global hegemony in the long term.

The thousand cuts to the globally dominant Western powers were already going to be a death sentence for it, even without the West encountering a resurgent Russia and having to fight an intra-North battle.

While the war in Ukraine may be sad for people with blonde hair and blue eyes, it offers much-deserved relief for some people of the Global South. Perhaps they may be spared, for a time, from being the focus of murderous rampages by the supposedly civilised West. The situation in Ethiopia seems to have calmed around the time the conflict grew in Ukraine. We should be mindful, however, that the Western-inflamed humanitarian disaster in Yemen is unabated. As the wars in Bosnia showed us, violence may briefly return to the Global North, but is almost continuously exported to the Global South.

Behind the false moral outrage of British killers at Russian killers, there may be a fear that Russia is still the Second World War victor we merely pretend to be.

After the Second World War, the victors became the United Nations Security Council, the top dogs effectively set up to rule the post-war world order by approving international peacekeeping missions and interventions and providing the military power to enforce them. This was a convenient compromise between brute military realities and the easily corrupted rule of international law.

Powers of the Second World War

Some fools compared the US and UK's pointless lynching and destruction of small Iraq with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. Similar such fools here now belittle the Russian war in Ukraine as somehow inferior to the West's displays of power, despite it being something undertaken against a powerful enemy with heavy foreign support and modern weaponry. It is no exaggeration to say that Ukraine is the most heavily-equipped and powerful opponent to have been confronted by one of the Security Council powers since World War Two. The UK simply doesn't dare wage war on large or heavily-equipped nations, no matter how much it hates them.

Western militaries remain too skittish to attempt anything similar to Russia's war in Ukraine when it comes to countries they complain about, and the reason may have nothing to do with either morality or military astuteness. It could be cravenness on the part of our country, which only attacks the most dilapidated, isolated, small nations where an easy victory can be claimed to much fanfare, and backs away from threats that could actually imperil Western troops.

The Russians evidently do not suffer the above problem, being willing to dive into perilous battles against their enemies as they did in the Second World War, and the resulting perceived difference in the character of our countries may be what actually scares us in the West. What Russia is doing in Ukraine could be an almost precise re-enactment of operations against Nazi Germany. It is fought on some of the same battlefields as that original "Great Patriotic War", as the Russians call it.

Propaganda and reality

The Second World War is certainly on many minds in Great Britain when we think of the conflict in Ukraine. Propaganda coverage and government statements in the UK somewhat resemble those of the Second World War, and the UK kept making World War Two references in the days leading to the outbreak of hostilities. Amid these continuous comparisons, there is likely to be a subconscious comparison between the craven modern Britain and the power that helped win the Second World War.

The unflattering reality is that the UK is not the same power it was in the Second World War. At that time, the UK was independent and played a leading role, devising its own strategies and pursuing its own interests. The US intervened to support the UK, which had entered into the war without any real need for a coalition. Now, the UK is merely led by lackeys of the United States.

Pretend power

Britain's attempts to look tough are now based on the cosplay of our leaders, who model themselves on iconic politicians of the past because they have no identity of their own. At the same time, many in the UK are likely to possess a kind of football hooligan envy of Russia, because that country is acting like the same beast it used to be in the past, whereas the UK is now nothing much more than a weak accomplice. Rather than acknowledge our country's inferior position and microscopic influence, they will claim the Russians are cheats or dishonourable in some way. This way, our subconscious awareness of our own weakness and inferiority is exploited to encourage hatred of the other country.

Where the UK and Russia are similar lies in the dismantlement of their broader empires, both voluntarily. However, where one began to live in its own empire's shadow and compensate with bombast, the character of the other may have remained the same, able to demonstrate its status with the resolve and steel that made it a victor in the Second World War.

The UN Security Council represented a compromise between the reality of military power and the desire for the rule of international law. By painting a member of it as our enemy, when they still have the military power, we risk seeing a military reality that is misaligned with our pronouncements about international law. This will make us like a police officer who can't arrest anyone or even get up from his chair.

"Democracy" is meant to refer to a political system that derives legitimacy from the people, but the word usually gets used when talking of foreign conflicts. Those who talk of it will say the Western countries have a unique ethnicity, which makes them better than others.

Despite Ukraine's government banning all opposition, we are being told that Ukraine is a bastion in the fight for "democracy". As usual, Western countries teaming up to fight someone is usually the main reason to talk of "democracy", even if this is not applicable to the situation all. Someone looking for images of "democracy" won't find it hard to stumble upon scenes of explosions and dead bodies.

In the end, those who meet adoring crowds or talk of any need to serve the people are more likely to be labelled as dictators than democrats. The anonymous members of the American military and intelligence junta are presented as the men of democracy, regardless of whether they are elected or have anything to do with any democratic process at all.

Zones of freedom

The word "freedom" was used in artful equivocation by politicians such as George W. Bush during his invasion of Iraq in 2003. The conquered "zone of freedom" in fact meant an area free to be plundered and preyed on by American corporations, in keeping with the vaunted "free market" so loved by Americans. To the average listener, though, it may have suggested that the country would be freed from torture and oppression, when in fact the United States brought both to the Iraqi people. The term "zone of freedom" was also used for NATO expansion, which precipitated the current conflict in Ukraine.

The "democratic peace" theory died in Iraq in 2003, too, although its well-wishers continued to refuse to write its obituary and are now busy with Ukraine. When democracies were the ones attacking the others, and they were doing so for the very reason of their arrogant belief in their political system, it was clear that associating the democratic system with the establishment of peace was a mistake.

Democracy as a call to violence

"Democracy" is invoked almost always for the express purpose of rallying people to war, not peace. It is used to conjure up images of soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy, which, however heroic, is no image of peace. Those who plead for bringing what they call "democracy" to other lands are the most depraved warmongers of our time, even if they can successfully point to the atrocities of others.

The next time you hear a speech about "democracy", try to locate anything in the speech that offers any substantive commentary on the merits of a system of government by the people. Try to listen out for praise of the people and their wisdom, since they are meant to be the masters in the democratic system. You can almost certainly guarantee that such content will be absent, yet the word "democracy" shall keep appearing, because "democracy" is here being used only in the manner of a stupid idol with no useful properties. It is a mere word, brought forth to persuade and bring comfort to people who like to hear it.

Our countries in the West use "democracy" as false rhetoric. In practice, our governments subvert truly democratic causes and demands in favour of monopolistic power and deception. The "democratic peace" we seek is consequently false, and will never be realised. The West attacks the regimes it dislikes. Its so-called theory confuses a cloud of locusts with a rainbow of peace.

The recent mistaken launch of a missile from India into Pakistan could have had disastrous consequences, and so could a misunderstanding over Ukraine.

The longer the fighting goes on in Ukraine, the more likely it is that an incident will cause a direct exchange of fire between Russia and NATO. Ukraine and NATO's triumphalism, with additional calls mounting in the West for some sort of regime change in Moscow itself, is the reason there can be no reconciliation at the moment and the main reason people are dying.

NATO should offer something to de-escalate

NATO's perception that only the Ukrainians are in trouble, and that it can just support them as a kind of proxy, is false. NATO is too close to wage a proxy war there, and faces too much risk to itself. The longer this goes on, the more likely it is that NATO will be dragged in against its own judgment.

The demands of the Russians have not changed (they just want neutral territories on their borders, not NATO-aligned countries bristling with nuclear missiles), so the choice to use force is no more than the extension of their attempts to come to an understanding with what they see as a deaf and inflexible partner. If diplomacy begins to yield results that are more promising for Russia's security than Ukraine's ongoing loss of military capability and territory, the Russians are likely to eagerly suspend combat operations. This puts the burden squarely on the side of NATO to avoid escalation and just make enough concessions that would allow the conflict to freeze along a new contact line, but they seem to be incapable of this, blinded by a belief that Russia can be thoroughly defeated in Ukraine.

Rather than de-escalation, we see increasing calls for NATO involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. With a drone wandering over the border into the NATO zone from Ukraine, and the possibility of projectiles eventually landing inside NATO territory, like the mistaken launch from India into Pakistan, there is a serious risk of escalation.

An escalation would be more inconvenient to NATO than Russia, which is why their top leadership has been quite sure of the need to stay out. Politicians without any responsibility for the NATO response are making unwise and bullish suggestions about some moral duty to attack Russian troops, likely just to improve their standing with belligerent and jingoistic voters. Anyone whose words carry weight, and could actually result in NATO aircraft taking off to attack Russia, is quiet.

The war should be frozen

NATO enjoys significantly more security than Russia, with substantial buffer states in Eastern Europe that can, I am sorry to say, be sacrificed to protect the core NATO countries like France and Germany without turning the conflict nuclear. Russia, by comparison, has its back to the wall. If events reach a point at which nuclear weapons are exploding in Ukraine, this will present an existential threat to Russia that can only be matched by it launching nuclear strikes as far as Germany to push the threat away. The use of any NATO weaponry to target Russian territory will prompt Russian attacks on the US homeland and cause global nuclear war.

Despite attempts to portray Russia as the side that has engaged in reckless expansion, Russia's back is to the wall. NATO was safe throughout the entire Cold War, when the Russians were in the middle of Germany, and that was considered to be a nicely balanced situation. It seems that now, we are so expectant of total domination and so convinced of the idea that we "won" the Cold War, that we can't allow the Russians any kind of buffer and we have to have NATO troops parading in Moscow.

Unlike between India and Pakistan, there are real heated statements and even deranged and murderous calls appearing right now in relation to the standoff between NATO and Russia. A misread missile launch at this time could lead to nuclear bombardment, recreating the grotesque atomic horror of Hiroshima on a vastly larger scale.

The two sides should pursue every effort to freeze the conflict immediately, no matter how dissatisfying this may be to them, and go no further.

Events in Ukraine are intense and the outcome is unclear. Just about every moral judgment seems to have already been issued. Minds are made up. Virtually all sanctions are being applied to Russia.

The US was trying to pivot to what it sees as the China threat, not Russia. The sanctions applied to Russia are therefore unscheduled, reactive, and possibly disruptive to America's own global strategy.

US thrown off balance by Russian surprises

Because of the degree of coordination between Russia and China, Moscow's decision to act bullishly against NATO-groomed Ukraine may be a calculated move to somehow benefit Beijing and help overturn Washington's domination. The Western leaders react predictably, and all their attention is going to be on Russia for some time.

Events are unfolding similarly to the start of the original Cold War (which was "hot" when it began), but in Ukraine rather than the Korean Peninsula. We are in a period of acute hostility and denunciation that nobody can escape. Crackdowns on allegedly pro-Russian "treason", which encompasses mere remarks and media appearances, may resemble the talk of the 1950s. The dismantlement of global security and arms control treaties guarantees a horrifying nuclear war scare. Both sides will feel as if we confront a faceless, dark, silent enemy whose views and motives we are prohibited from seeing. All news will be the most vulgar propaganda, with barely a shred of truth.

None of the horror will last, however. A kinder politics is always inevitably around the corner, be it ten years away or twenty years away, when thinking people grow tired of the established warmongers and their canards.

Western sanctions on Russia could take a long time to really make people reconsider any foreign policy choices, if they have any effect at all and are not just political gestures to placate our own populations in the West. Difficulty getting something like microchips and the latest mobile phones could, at a guess, take multiple years to actually alarm society in Russia, and they may simply be able to get decent alternative products from China.

Future reset to occur on basis of respect with Russia

The disputes surrounding Ukraine, which at the time of writing were being addressed in a violent and chaotic manner that is difficult to track, could be resolved long before sanctions could hope to damage Russia, and be steadily lifted by dovish future administrations in Western governments. At that point, a certain respect for Russia's security would have developed, rather than merely casting everything the Russians do as villainy.

A final point to consider is that full sanctions on Russia mean the West no longer has any tools in its sanctions box for influencing Russia. If all these sanctions are aimed at Russian policy in Ukraine, more sanctions can't be allocated to deal with other Russian actions, for example, if the Russians choose to be more violent in their intervention in Syria. The West could end up in a position where it has more grievances against Russia than sanctions it can use to retaliate for them, having exhausted them all on Ukraine.

In such a position, Western leaders may be forced to offer sanctions relief in exchange for Russian help on entirely new crises, or the West will appear to be out of options. In seeing as much, Moscow now has every reason to carry on annoying Washington and doing everything to make it uncomfortable around the world, until Washington offers sanctions relief in exchange for Moscow ceasing its own actions.

What better way for bureaucrats to prove their strength than to poke a bear and see what happens? Surely, an angry bear with its back to the wall, cornered in its own den, is the best one to safely poke as it can do nothing?

NATO's defiance of Russian pleas to avoid further expansion are making Russia feel cornered. While this may cause some in the West to gloat over Russia because NATO is growing seemingly invincible, a Russian reaction could be serious.

Should Georgia and Ukraine join NATO?

NATO candidates Georgia and Ukraine have ongoing territorial disputes and Russian troops within their internationally recognised borders (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea), motivating their desire to get NATO membership so the alliance can kick the Russians out. If they join, Russia and NATO will be claiming the same territories as their responsibility. Adding these countries to NATO would lead to regular NATO encounters with Russian civilians and soldiers while Russia's entire armed forces watch from nearby. Russia already complained of NATO's near misses with Russian civilian aircraft and vessels. This could mean an extremely grave and perilous situation that might delegate more and more responsibility for keeping the peace to frontline soldiers and even civilians, removing it from the politicians who created the situation.

Is it good for NATO if airline pilots and merchant captains are responsible for preventing World War Three? Does this make the alliance more powerful, or a step closer to the Stone Age?

Russia is now spoken of dismissively in the press and among leaders, as some minor threat that can be eliminated by sending a few rocket artillery to Ukraine or imposing some financial penalty. Russia, meanwhile, believes the stakes are extremely high and that its national security is in jeopardy.

The encroachment of NATO close to Russia does not create any possibility of interdicting Russian missiles and making the West safe from Russia. In fact, it may crowd the Russian border with missiles threatening both sides and increase the likelihood of a Russian first strike because the stakes are higher for them now.

NATO suggestions about countering Russian nuclear weapons in Europe without nuclear weapons are perplexing. If true, this would put NATO at a significant disadvantage to Russia. The Russians express a lack of trust, meaning they think NATO is lying or is itself deceived.

An accidental nuclear war on the horizon?

If NATO is lying about whether nuclear weapons will be sent to the Russian border, we're in trouble. The Russians being unaware of the types and yields of the weapons being deployed against them could cause an accidental nuclear war, since they won't know this type of weapon is in the area. For Russia to even think NATO is lying entails the same problem.

In fact, being dishonest may be incompatible with NATO's entire mission as an openly declared alliance, making it unable to achieve deterrence. If NATO is dishonest, then the adversary cannot even perceive what it is doing, much less be deterred by it.

This was the problem with the alliances of World War One, whose secrecy made them ineffective at preventing a world war. NATO was meant to be an alternative to this, a clearly defined alliance with its own flag.

NATO troops on Russia border are paralysed by escalation risk

Russia officially reserves the right to a first strike if its statehood is threatened, which could even be short of an actual attack on its territory, if the enemy is at the gates. In a border conflict, Russia would be very resolute about removing an enemy force they say is menacing their civilians, just as the UK or America would be.

Finally, what NATO risks doing if there are tensions at the Russian border is placing soldiers who aren't even authorised to shoot in the direction of their opponent if they take fire. An attack on Russian soil is out of the question, to avoid the risk of escalation into a full nuclear war. This will paralyse NATO troops' ability to do anything, while the Russians have permission to do as they please.

So, what starts like a brilliant plan to corner the bear could instead just end up tying the hands of NATO troops so this bear can eat them.

Russia has been accused of hypocrisy by the United States and NATO, after its satellite destruction test reportedly created debris and panic in orbit.

If you have seen the movie Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, you are familiar with the problem. In fact, this recent event was exactly the plot of the movie, including such details as which country did the deed of taking down a satellite with a missile.

Some may even have been irked when Gravity came out, because back then the most recent offender in destroying satellites was China, yet the movie chose to cast Russia as the aggressor as is so often done in American media. Now, it seems, Russia has finally stepped up and played its movie role for real.

The blame game

Of course, Russia rejected claims that the debris created in the test endangered any space installation. Moreover, Russia pointed to similar satellite destruction tests by the US, China and India. Both sides accused each other of hypocrisy, with the US saying Russia's actions directly contradict its words.

When it comes to hypocrisy at this moment, Russia may be somewhat guiltier than America, and so too could be the Chinese when it comes to their activity in space. For something to be hypocritical, one's words have to contradict one's actions. Russia and China have steadfastly stated that they oppose the weaponisation of space. They may be using a narrow definition, speaking of the stationing of weapon systems in orbit rather than the temporary course of projectiles through space, but to send weapons into space to blow things up is certainly not conducive to preventing the weaponisation of space.

It is the presence of ICBMs, which move at such high altitude that they enter into space, that motivated the desire of the US to weaponise space in the first place, dating even back to the 1980s. Since the US has openly created the Space Force as a branch of its military, and declared space to be a war-fighting domain, the US is not breaking its word when it carries out military activity in space. It is doing exactly as it promises. The Russians and Chinese, however, are playing a diplomatic stalling game in which they likely intend to shame American advances in military space technology.

Warfare inevitably advances

The Russian and Chinese position is roughly equivalent to the Spartans decrying the Athenian use of arrows. Complaining about the other side's developments as being unsportsmanlike, appealing to arbitrary definitions and rules about what constitutes the right and proper way to kill people and blow things up, is unavailing in the end. It could also be deterring huge strides in technological development that could ultimately save humanity itself if we eventually come to depend on space colonies to escape disasters on Earth.

Russia can blow up whatever it wants to blow up, but there is no point in Russia crying foul about the other side coveting powerful technologies that could accomplish military supremacy. Russia has very capable engineers of its own and has surpassed the United States in some areas, such as hypersonic missiles. So, too, has China. This should teach these countries that the answer is not to complain about American advances, but to make advances of their own.

Every breakthrough in space is good

At the end of the day, enemies or not, we are all human, and it is in the human interest to fully exploit space for every benefit to our security and colonise the other planets of the Solar System. The stumbling block to this has been funding, and if one organisation on Earth is not short of funding, it is the US Department of Defense.

This is not a call for American conquest of the Solar System, but an acknowledgment that someone has to start the process and it would be wrong to simply stall them.

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