Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War

This is the best book on geopolitics ever written.  It’s very difficult, too.  His style isn’t that difficult and the subject matter is straightforward.  The difficulty, as the school of Leo Strauss would later point out, is a dialectic between a surface reading and a deeper reading.  

Part of the book’s popularity is the parallel to the American Empire, prompting such devices as a “Thucydides Trap.” Will American overextend itself and force China to attack it?  I think that line of questioning is wrong, but the parallels remain.  America, like Athens, is a sea-based power (in the classical Halford Mackinder sense).  America, like Athens, believes in spreading Democracy by force whether others want it or not.  America, like Athens, doesn’t really practice democracy.

We also see in Athens the “rhetoric of empire.” We must rule you because if we don’t someone will rule us. 

The fatal moment for Athens is the invasion of Sicily and the Battle of Syracuse.

The first set of causes is the Corcyraen and Potidean affairs.  This put Athens in a bind.  On one hand, they were bound to a peace treaty and couldn’t get involved by helping Corinth.  They decided to risk open confrontation because they couldn’t risk Sparta’s allies gaining that much power (I.44ff).  Corinth, Sparta’s ally, saw this as Athen’s breaking a peace treaty (56).

Thucydides gives a penetrating analysis of Athenian democracy. He points out that democracy and empire are connected. In the aftermath both sides then recruit their vassals and allies to prepare for war against the other.

Key idea: “War is not so much a matter of armament as of the finance which gives effect to that armament, especially when a land power meets a sea power” (83).  Sparta fears that Athens is getting too powerful and has to act before it is too late (118).  Athens, on the other hand, knows (or at least believes) that it can “outspend Sparta to death.”

Platea was hostile to Thebes, so the Thebans launched a pre-emptive strike to seize the key ground (II.2). Athens saw this action as breaking the peace treaty, so she began preparing for war.

The highlight of the first year of war is Pericles’ speech to the Athenians (II.35). It’s beautiful, but whitewashed, since his noble talk of democracy doesn’t include slaves or women.

Sections 48ff show the effect of plague upon the war.  It hampered Athens’ war effort, but more importantly it illustrated the social decay.  In times of plague and crisis, men reduce to their natural levels (II.53).

The book ends with Athens in chaos.  Sparta could have really exploited the situation and conquered most of Greece.  Unfortunately, they didn’t.  The democracy in Athens begins eating itself, which I suspect is the nature of democracy.

Pericles is the main figure of this narrative.  He is honest about empire.  Athens is an empire.  We shouldn’t be fooled by silly talk about democracy.  The danger with empire is that when you lose it, your enemies smell blood.  Pericles notes: “The empire you possess is now like a tyranny–dangerous to let go” (63).

Later on Athens is even more crass (but honest) in its desire for empire. She tells the Melians: “If the independents survive, it is because we are (perceived) as too frightened to attack them….It is particularly important that we, as a naval power, should not let islanders get away from us, especially you in your weak position” (V:97).

If that leaves it in any doubt, Athens goes on to say, “We dominate people at home so that others should not control us” (VI:87).

Conclusion

It’s hard to overstate this book’s importance.  It isn’t simply military history.  It explores what happens to a society during war time.  Social morals often reflect external situations.

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Review: Martin Heidegger: Philosophy of Another Beginning

Heidegger was the most powerful non-analytic philosopher of the 20th century.  His language is both poetic and at times indecipherable. It takes a powerful thinker to interpret him and Aleksandr Dugin is such a man.  I am not endorsing Dugin’s larger project (though it is obviously superior to Western liberalism). Rather, Dugin more than anyone else understood Heidegger’s own Dasein.

Thesis: Heidegger is the transition point between the last of the old philosophy (Greece to Germany) and the new way of thinking (Dugin 18). Heidegger’s narrative: something was, something began, something ended (31).  Europe is the evening land (Abendland): it is time to put “Being” to sleep (37).

What makes Dugin helpful is that he clearly outlines Heidegger’s “code.” The root of his thought is ontological differentiation (41).

Seiende: beings. 

Sein: Being

Noema: does not correspond to beings themselves, but to thoughts about beings.

These two form a dyad.  The formation of the verb is always related to its inflection, its linkage to something (elastic bending, 42).  Sein in its pure form is abstract. It doesn’t “bend” to anything. Man already implicitly assumes that beings (Seiende) are. If we reflect upon this, we ask “What is the being (Sein) of beings (Seiende)?  What is common to all beings that makes them beings?

Heidegger reads Heraclitus and Aristotle as saying that Logos = Being = Unity (49).  Heidegger wants to challenge the idea that Being is the foundation of beings. The Tradition, which Heidegger will ultimately attack, says “Being” is the common property of “beings.”

Fundamental Ontology

Ousia is a particular way to conceive of Being–share quality of all beings (54). If we say that Being is the essence of beings, we establish two parallel levels: the level of beings and the level of essence (ousia).

Main argument: if we differentiate Being and beings through essence, we overlook the difference between Being and beings (54).  Thus, Being is not beings. This logically leads to nihilism.

Ontics

Ontic dimension: that which is present to thought.  Thinking about the world. This is the topography of Phusis: the sphere of beings.  This is a collected concept.

Ontology

The distance that arises as ontics reflects upon itself.  Ontology identifies the Being of beings with the essence (ousia: shared class of) of beings.  It attributes Being as an attribute of beings, but also exalts Being to a higher level.  This is what Dugin calls the “double topography” (58).  Greek thought abstracted Being from beings when it should have leapt into the primordial foundation of beings.

Seyn: the kind of Being that eludes ontology and is not grasped by abstracting it from other beings, but rather penetrating to the Nothingness (59). Argument: in the doubled topography logos was severed from beings (63). When we say we  need to explore the nothing, we are not modern nihilists. We are going to beings’ primordial source (63). This is what generates beings but is not beings.

The Beginning and End of Western European Philosophy

The Greek take on Being leads to the oblivion of Being.

Being–beings-as-a-whole–is replaced by the notion (Vorstellung) of it.  This notion then becomes more disconnected and mechanical (92)

The Pre-Socratics took the obvious claim that “beings” are, but they then sought to find what was the “Being” of beings, and they interpreted this as phusis (99).  This means that Being now is. Now Being (Sein) precedes beings and is different from them.

Plato

Being is now an Idea. It is that which is placed before man (106).  That’s Dugin’s language and I don’t think it is the clearest. This is one of those times where German could be clear.  Ideas function in a gegenstand relationship with Man. That’s not all, though. Not only does man stand before Ideas, but Ideas stand before things of the world (107).

Maybe we can say it this way:  Ideas are always across from man.  There is a “gap.” Man is always “before” (across) the ideas.  Thus Heidegger’s conclusion: man (being) is no longer in the world, but across from it.  Man is pre-sented before the world, which means Ideas have to be re-presented to him. Truth is now correspondence between Idea and Object.

I’ll skip Heidegger’s section on Christianity.  For all of his genius, he is utterly incompetent on this point.  If all he had to say was that Thomas Aquinas helped with the oblivion of being, then fine.  But he didn’t understand Semitic thought, nor did he want to. Thus when Yahweh says “I am that I am,” Heidegger just thinks it means Being qua Being.

Descartes

Descartes adapted but never left Plato.  In Modernity instead of Plato’s Idea we have new “representations: the subject, apperception, energy, reality, the monad, etc.” (114). Descartes starts with the Subject.  This subject either is or inside the human mind.

Everything is is re-presented before the Subject.  Descartes calls these beings objects (115). A subject must have an object to stand before it. Modernity will then use Scientism to function as the subject.  This means that Scientism now controls the objects before it, which could be anything from plants to animals to humans.

The chart doesn’t make it clear, but the actual topography stops at Marxism.  I wrote “break” in the margin. Everything below the break is what pertains to the New Beginning.  What I’m interested in is the topography itself.  He shows how Western Philosophy took “Being” and made it into Ideas, Will, reason, Power, and finally techne, the reign of machine over man.

Metapolitics,

Heidegger’s true genius is his opening of political space. I don’t think his attack on “Being-Sein” will hold out, although he does make some valid criticisms of Marxism and Liberalism.

Heidegger uses “Planetarism” for what we call “globalism” (161).  He identifies this with America, or rather an extreme individualism and consumerism. For Heidegger Planetarism is nihilistic because it expresses only one thing: the triumph of techne, which obliterates Being.  Dugin argues that “Liberalism equates the Cartesian subject with the individual and pragmatic calculations in the area of countable tangible and intangible objects” (162).

Communism and Machenschaft

Marx stays true to the metaphysical topography. He has a subject (society, class) and an object (matter, product, thing).  Marx correctly noted that Machenschaft created alienation. His solution is to use techne (objects) to overcome the alienation.  He overcomes the alienation by means of what brought alienation (166)!

This explains why Heidegger identified with National Socialism.  He saw Being at its historical end. Liberalism and Communism were the last manifestation of the history of Being.  National Socialism, so he thought, was the only thing resisting these two. Therefore, the New Beginning would come.  Except it didn;t.

This next section is difficult, even from a Heideggerian perspective.  Heidegger’s argument is that Western metaphysics reached its nihilistic end.  I suppose that’s true. A new metaphysics is needed and this one must focus on Seyn-being (good being).  The only way to do this is what Heidegger calls “Das Geviert,” the four-fold. The only way to reach Geviert is through the Ereignis (the event) which calls for a radical decision, a leap into the abyss.

That’s the summary, anyway.  Let’s unpack it. When we experience Seyn, that is, when we choose to let beings spring up rather than abstracting them into an artificial genus, then we will see everything in a four-fold way: Sky (world), Earth, gods, and men.

Sky: this normally corresponds to Welt or world (totality). It is what cosmos was for the Greeks.  It is the principle of harmony. Heidegger strangely says these principles will be at war with each other, which is odd since sky is supposed to represent harmony.  I think by war he really means risk, the element of uncertainty. Sky is not an object. It is the world in its openness (200). It is an orientation.

Heidegger insists that world/sky is always connected with a Volk, a people.

Earth: the earth leads to presence. It makes sky real.

Gods: He doesn’t mean what we mean by gods.  He means something like the numinous. They can’t be gods like we think because that would put them back into the Platonic metaphysics of being.  The “gods” can’t have being. Well, what are they? I’m not sure. I’m not sure that Heidegger is sure, either. The only close parallel I can think of is “sacramental presence,” which of course Heidegger doesn’t accept.

Men: They are neither subjects of being nor objects, but only a dimension of being.

The four-fold forms a St Andrews Cross.  Seyn-being lives in between (Inzwischen).  Since Heidegger rejects the old metaphysics, it can’t be located in a place, but only between places (but isn’t this also a place?).  Another name for this “in-betweeness” is “Ereignis, the event. This is the single moment where Seyn is manifest. At the risk of sounding like the old metaphysics, let’s take what they call an object but which we will call the Thing (das Ding).  It is being in presence. The sky makes it what it is. The earth makes it present. The gods give it the holy. Man speaks it through language (231). Applied to objects in general this is incoherent. Applied to the Lord’s Supper it makes sense.

I’m not so sure this works as a whole metaphysics.  On the other hand, though, it does function as a cipher to view the current metaphysical chaos, which appears to lead to transhumanism.

Misplacing Geviert

The old metaphysics took the dimension of Sky and place the “Ideas” in it.  The Ideas then replaced sky (235). The earth has now been turned to matter. It is hule.  Man is now a rational animal. He no longer names things through poetry but rather mass produces them in a factory.

After Descartes man is now a subject who transforms everything else into an object (254). Everything, even God, is now an object.   This god “lost the attributes of a subject and became a mental abstraction,” which was soon discarded (255).

Gestell

Gestell is Heidegger’s word for the artificial framing of an object. It is “the essence of the world’s inauthentic concepts” (258).  Applied to the Sky-dimension, we no longer have ideas but satellites (261).

Simulacrum

This is an interesting postmodern concept. It is a copy without an original (see the idiocy of a Rorschach test).  On one hand it is meaningless and empty. On the other hand it represents an endless will to power (268).

The New Dasein

Dasein is not a what but a how. It is the “shock” you experience when you are awakened to a new idea (293). Heidegger wants Dasein to function as a way to overcome the subject-object duality.

Conclusion and Analysis

It’s easy to see why Amazon banned this book.  Dugin is too powerful a thinker for them to deal with.  That’s a shame, too, since this is one of the better books on Heidegger.  Aside from a few typos, this edition is quite nice.  It is well-bound and has a fine finish on the cover.

I question Heidegger’s larger project.  He wants a god who can never be. Literally.  His god that passes by does absolutely nothing.  To his credit I think he realized this.  He saw that National Socialism couldn’t bring about Geviert.

Here is the problem with his take on Christianity:  We do not say that God is a being among beings.  We say that God is beyond being.  Hyper-ousia.

Review: Clash of Civilizations

(This is an older review) I should have picked up Huntingdon’s work earlier. It is awesome. He argues (or at least the structure of his thought necessarily suggests such) that the utopian vision of liberal democracy (whether right or left-wing) has failed miserably and that societies will revert back to their original civilizational paradigms.

I am going to list my criticisms earlier, so that will put some at ease.

* I think the Middle East is in an identity crisis between Fundamentalism and Nationalism. Islamic countries like Syria and Turkey, for all of their problems, lean closer to nationalism than “jihadism.” Likewise, I maintain that Iran is more nationalist than fundamentalist, though it is very much the latter, too (cf Primakov’s Russia and the Arabs).

**Further, Huntingdon really doesn’t account for the fact that much of the unrest is due to Atlanticism’s financing terror regimes throughout the middle east.  If we let Syria annihilate Saudi Arabia, many problems would solve themselves.

Samuel Huntingdon’s Clash of Civilizations. It was truly the work of a genius. Huntingdon is too pro-D.C. and very naive concerning the purity of NATO’s motives, but other than that he is prescient on about every major issue (He wrote this book in 1996).

Civilizations assume the reality of objective cultures, but they are not identical to culture(s). I can’t remember exactly how SH defines civilization. There is an extended discussion on pp. 40-44. Frankly, I don’t think his definition, if any, is really that important. His book deals more with the empirical identity and clash of civilizations, rather than objectively defining them.

Civilizations have core states: states that have at least de facto leadership over smaller states in the civilization. For example, Russia is the core state of the Orthodox civilization (which includes Ukraine, Belarus, and the Balkans, though the latter are compromised by their membership in NATO; likewise, China is the core st ate of the East Asian civilization, excluding Japan).

Wars between actual core states of civilizations are quite rare. However, fault line wars are quite common. These are wars/battles/century-long skirmishes between two smaller states of two different civilizations that border each other. The obvious example is the Balkans: Orthodox Serbia fought Muslim Bosnia, both of whom were at war with Catholic Croatia.

While ideologies (Marxism, democratic capitalism) are nice and make academics and news pundits feel good, civilization/culture has a more primal claim upon people groups/ethnicities/states and in the absence of one ideology (say, Marxism) a nation will more likely identify with prior civilizational loyalties rather than the opposing ideology. For example, an old joke in former Soviet Union: our leaders lied to us about communism, but they told us the truth about capitalism.

Pros of the book:

His analysis is top-notch. We are reading a world-class scholar. Unlike 99% of elites in America, he knows that simply waving the magic wand of democratic capitalism will not make the nations swoon and willing become colonies of New York–and Huntingdon was actually attacked for making this obvious point!

He calls the Islamic threat for what it is. He is notorious for his famous “The borders of Islam are bloody.” I don’t really know how people can objectively respond to this claim. Yeah, it might be mean and bigoted, but look at the major hot spots of the world today–what religion is causing most of the trouble? In 1996 (at the time of the writing) 49 of the world’s 58 current conflicts had Islam involved. If it looks like a duck…

He gives an accurate (though extremely dated) analysis of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Of course, a lot of his musings are moot considering NATO’s bombing of civilians in Belgrade in 1999. Still, per his thesis on civilizational clash on fault lines, he does a stellar performance. Catholic Germany supported Croatia, the entire Muslim world–along with Hillary Clinton and Sean Hannity–supported the Muslim Bosniaks, and Russia supported Serbia. (he also documents American double-standards and calls them for what they are: when Muslims massacre a village and kidnap teenage girls it is because they are noble freedom fighters w. When Serbs execute 8,000 men in the 28th Bosnian Muslim infantry, it is because they are evil and genocidal. Even more strange, American conservatives who are almost 100% anti-Islam never challenge this fact and actually support Muslims).

Stuff Calvinist International doesn’t want you to know.

Along similar lines is the Turko-Armenian-Azeri wars of the 1990s. Armenia was an Orthodox state who was beset by Muslim Turkey and Muslim Azeribaijan. During the Cold War the Soviet leadership had Armenians serving in high-rank positions and being trained by elite special forces. When the USSR fell, the Armenian military, keeping the Motorized Rifle divisions of that region, had a fairly impressive, if small, military. Russian intervention in the 1990s kept her smaller sister Armenia from being overrun by Muslims.

Huntingdon ends with a fairly interesting scenario on what WW3 will look like and how it will start. A few qualms with the book: he actually thinks NATO is preserving Western civilization and evidently he ignores the fact that his best friend, Zbignew Brzezinski advocates using the War on Terror as a way to surround Russia with missiles and bases. Ironically, Huntingdon had argued that doing so would actually make America lose the next world war, which will be a clash between a Chinese or Islamic (or both) civilization.
Huntingdon didn’t write many more books after this. He had a high standard of writing and actually threw away many top-notch manuscripts because they weren’t good enough. Too bad, for he is definitely worth reading.

War of the World Island

In this work A. Dugin advances and develops the typology of Eternal Rome vs. Eternal Carthage–land empires against sea, mercantile empires. So his thesis: Russia cannot be interpreted apart from the Russian land (Dugin loc. 128). From this he deduces a Geopolitical theorem: “the geopolitical system depends on the position of the observer and interpreter” (loc. 147). All observers are already embedded in a context.

Russian geopolitician: geopolitics of the heartland. Russia is going to be a “civilization of Land.” Of course, this is the typology of Eternal Rome vs. Eternal Carthage/Atlantis. This ties in with Dugin’s thesis: we are always already observers. Russia, therefore, will observe itself from a certain perspective, a land-based perspective.

Dugin extends the analysis a step further: Russia as Land-Civilization means its gradual becoming in history will ultimately be on a planetary scale (loc. 188). It is a “continental Rome.” Unfortunately, this means it will be drawn into conflict with “Carthage/Atlantis,” Britain and America. As Dugin notes, “The fact that Russia is the heartland makes its sovereignty a planetary problem” (loc. 259).

He gives the reader a brief treatment of Russian history from the October Revolution to the current day (though not including Putin’s presence in Syria). Readers may chafe at his neutral account of Soviet terror, but one supposes it fits his thesis: the Soviet Union strengthened Russia’s presence as a Land Civilization.

The Politics of Yeltsin:

Retells Chesterton’s narrative of Rome vs. Carthage. Rome’s defeat of Carthage was the defeat of Moloch. Dugin sees the contrary of this happening in 1991. I disagree. Rome’s sordid, almost dead state was parallel to Yeltsin’s Russia.

New Atlanticist Geo-Politics: The structure of the bi-polar world remained but with one of the poles withdrawn (loc. 1527ff). There was no longer a West-East Axis, but a “Center-Periphery” one. Nato was placed at the center of the world and everyone else on the periphery.
Dugin’s conclusions.

(1) There is a need for an energetic, post-Putin head of state (2741).
(2) Although working for a multipolar world, Russia must have global ambitions to thwart Atlantis.

Critical of Putin

Some say Dugin is the brainchild behind Putin. This is false. Dugin criticizes Putin on a number fronts.

*Dugin says Putin should not have allowed US support in Afghanistan, as this placed more NATO bases on Russia’s border (2144).

*Dugin notes no matter how important Putin’s gains are, they are not irreversible (and thus, they are open to a NATO/Atlanticist turn; loc. 2741).

Conclusion:

The book was surprisingly good. I had heard horror stories about Dugin (see the shrill hysteria at National Review), but most of his analysis is level-headed and familiar territory to Russia readers.

Something happened the ring did not expect (Putin)

I wrote this article five or six years ago, but I will update it via prefatory remarks.  Had Putin not intervened in Syria, Assad would have fallen and ISIS/moderate rebels (and a moderate rebel is just a jihadi who hasn’t yet uploaded his beheading video) would have butchered Christians and Shi’ites.

Globalism died in the sands of Aleppo and we have Putin to thank, praise be to Thee, O Christ!

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One has to be careful with “conspiritorial” views of history.  It’s not that they are wrong-headed, but that given the nature of the case there is so much information that “just can’t be known.”   Theologians who stand in traditionalist schools of thought (some Catholics, some Orthodox, maybe one or two Evangelicals) usually have a better angle on conspiracy history than the average “pop news” watcher.   These theologians have some training in writing, have read and interacted with numerous footnoted and scholarly peer-reviewed books, and given the nature of their reading, and reading in general, they don’t have time to watch TV (which means they miss out or ignore what Fox News says).

Yes, the above title is a reference to the Lord of the Rings, particularly the movie version of the Fellowship…The Ring didn’t expect to be found by a Hobbit.    The title represents another problem with conspiracy views–the unexpected often happens, and when this does, it shatters paradigms.

While it’s a controversial thesis, it seriously cannot be gainsaid that the Anglo-American bankers, particularly the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, have orchestrated European politics for over 100 years.  The Rothschilds–with their Jewish agents in Thessaloniki– were behind the Armenian genocide of 1915.  Some scholarship has been done on the connection between London/New York bankers and the rise of the Bolshevieks.   Unfortunately, when the Bolsheviks became too powerful, the Regime needed a counter-weight, and they found one in the person of Adolf Hitler.

Unfortunately…well, the rest is history.    The West became entangled in one huge dialectic–it was social engineering at its finest.   When the Nazis were able to place key individuals in the “freedom-loving West,” essentially turning America into a military-industrial complex, the only entity powerful enough to stop them was Soviet Russia.  Not really a happy array of choices.  This is social dialectic at its starkest.

The bankers themselves weren’t too bothered.   They were able to heavily invest in Soviet infrastructure.

I suppose even the most ardent socialist saw the coming demise of the USSR.  However, given that Marxism and capitalism share the same root presuppositions, and that these economic forces control the Western countries (if you doubt that, google which entity contributed both to McCain and Obama’s campaign.  When you are done, get back to me…), the fall of socialism presented no real problem to these elites.   In fact, given there was no strong leadership in Russia, it was now possible to siphon trillions of dollars of Russian capital back to the West via Harvard university, the Carnegie Institutes, and others.   Given that Yeltsin was a dying alcoholic, and that the Russo-Jewish mafia controlled Russia, the game went on as before.

But something happened which the ring did not expect.   One of Yeltsin’s last moves to was appoint Vladimir Putin as his successor.   Putin was not Yeltsin.  Putin had his training in the security services.   Long story short, Putin marginalized the Jewish Mafia in Russia, rebuilt the military, and was able to capitalize on Russia’s nigh-infinite oil reserves.  In short, he brought Russia from a Third World Country to a First World Country in fewer than ten years.

Unfortunately for the Regime, Putin is a nationalist.  While his Orthodoxy is not always perfect, and he has compromised on some issues, Russia has began a slow revival under Putin (and the Moscow Patriarchate).  Putin’s moves have blocked the Regime in countless ways.  The most obvious is when Putin prevented an Israeli-trained Georgian army from ethnically cleansing Russian citizens in South Ossetia.

Few realize just how major this was.   For the first time in ten years, NATO-inspired military interests were stopped cold.   America was clearly not in a position to react.   Secondly, after the debacle in Kosovo in 1999 the Russian army demonstrated it could respond to highly sophisticated threats.    For Americans, this meant that the Regime would wait a little longer before sending American boys to die in Iran (some suggest that Putin’s moves in Ossetia delayed a Zionist war against Iran).

I know there are some in the extreme “white nationalist” camp who think that Putin is a Zionist stooge and Putin supporters like Daniel Estulin are simply Zionists front-men.   Besides questioning their IQ, I don’t know really what to say.  If Putin were really a Zionist front-man, why has he been consistently thwarting Zionist designs?  Further, for those who still think Putin is a front-man for the New World Order, why did the Bilderbergers try to kill him?

European Plain: What’s at Stake for Hillary in 2017

By J. B. Aitken

Hillary must start WWIII by 2017 if she wants to have any semblance of Atlanticist domination.  Even then, the price might be too high.

Atlantis at the Threshold

Atlanticism, following Dugin, is the geopolitical reality that prioritizes trade and commerce.  It is the Platonic form of Carthage and Tyre.  It’s god is a variant of Ba’al. It opposes itself to Eternal Rome, the notion of a Tellurcratic society.  That society prioritizes tradition and stability.  The DC/London/Brussels nexus is the locus of Atlanticism.

But Atlanticism is quite interested in “land.”  Specifically, it is interested in trade routes that can also function as “funnels” into land-based empires.  This explains the Beltway insistence on foreign military actions and adventures that really don’t make sense.  DC’s goal is quite simple, and is documented by a host of scholars (Dugin, Engdahl, Johnson et al).  It must surround Russia and take advantage of Russia’s lack of geographical borders.  This allows manifestations of Atlantist, notably NATO, key invasion routes.

The Beast Thwarted?

The most obvious invasion route is through Western Russia.  While STRATFOR analyst George Friedman is almost always wrong about Russia, he did raise several interesting points: you can draw a line from Moscow to Rostov and everything West of it is the European peninsula.  This means Moscow is very close to “The West.”  Take away the buffer of Ukraine, and Moscow can be invaded from two points, from Kiev and from the Baltics.

But things did not go according to Soros’s plans.  Novorossiya arose from the ashes of Ukraine and removed any invasion route from the south.  Therefore, Atlantis can only reach Moscow from the West.

Maintaining Air Dominance

No one disputes traditional NATO air superiority, but this must be placed in a context.  Saddam Hussein didn’t have advanced missile systems.  Serbia had out-dated Soviet defenses and still shot down American planes.  How will NATO fare against S-400 missiles in 2016? If Hillary attacks now (which is the only issue that matters in the 2016 presidential race), can we expect something like 70% air casualties, even assuming a technical NATO victory? Russian defense systems are expected to be at the S-500 or even S-600  level in 2018. Not only can Russia negate NATO nuclear superiority, she will knock every NATO plane out of the sky.

But…

Of course, this assumes that NATO attacks first.  What if Russia refuses to be caught off-guard and initiates its own attack?  The RAND corporation has admitted that Russia can overrun the Baltics in 60 hours (of course, holding those gains is another scenario, but neither bodes well for the West).

Wild Cards

The above analysis assumes that this will be a NATO vs. Russia war.  In reality it will be no such thing.  Any war with Russia will be a war with China, and a war with China won’t be merely physical, it will be also economic (Cf Johnson 2016).

I suspect Hillary knows all of this, which is why the Pentagon/gram and Hillary are in such a strained mental state.  They have to act in order for the New World Order to continue, yet they know such an action will be their doom.

 

A tale of different fascisms

Real quick, what does fascism mean?  You are probably thinking it means anybody to the right of me that I don’t like.  While such a definition will get you tenure at the university, it isn’t quite accurate.

A better line of thought is to point to the overlap between national entities and economist interests.  This is better, but in today’s global society that means almost every country is fascist.  Further, a lot of so-called “fascist countries” thrived economically.

So that line of thought won’t do.  A better definition is one that defines identity around “race,” specifically within the contexts of the “Party.”  It’s not perfect but I think it has more explanatory power than the other definitions.  For our purposes today, I will call a group “fascist” that self-identifies as such.  So that people don’t start hyper-ventilating, I am going on record to say that I reject fascism, at least defined as reducing to the racial idea.  I don’t think that is what fascism means, but that is what most people think it means.

Enter Ukraine

So what are the connections with modern-day Ukraine and fascism?  It’s a lot more than simply saying that полк азов or правйй сектор is employed by the Rada.  That’s certainly a sufficient condition for fascism, but the analysis goes much deeper.  To be fair, in the ’40s a lot of Ukrainians rallied around the Nazis because they saw them as a counter to Stalin. I get that.  But those Ukrainians were also anti-Western liberalism.  Today’s “fascists” are financed by Western Liberals.

“But,” the objector exclaims, “fascists hate minorities and liberals love them, so they can’t be the same people.”  Well, Hitler employed a large number of ethnic groups in the Wehrmacht and white liberals are the most racist people on the planet.  But that’s not important.  It comes down to money and power.  Hitler’s goal was never to rid the world of the last Jew.  It’s control.  Lebensraum.  Among other things Hitler did was create a rival economic sphere that would negate the Anglo-American line.

Allowing that things have changed, we see something similar today.  The US/London nexus needs Ukraine.  It negates any natural border Russia has and is positioned as a launching point for any invasion.  This is why the rise of Novorossya terrified the Regime.  The Ukrainian army disintegrated in this war and the West failed to capture the resource-rich eastern part of the country.  Most importantly, it failed to establish Ukraine as an invasion port.  That’s why NATO has switched its attention to the Baltics.  Will you risk nuclear war simply that Latvia can have missile defense shields (which won’t work in an actual war.  Such shields are at least two generations outdated compared to Russian missiles).

“The Americans do not care about the Old World, – military expert Vladislav Shurygin said. – Even if Romania turns into scorched land, the Americans will only care less. The USA is too far, and there will be no explosions there. Deploying missile defense facilities in Europe, the United States is literally setting up its partners in Europe, making them take the blow that can only be struck in response to aggression, of course.”

The panic of the Baltic States, which tirelessly say that the Russians are about to attack them, is just a bluff, the purpose of which is to receive financial aid from Western countries. Russia is not going to seize Ukraine, even though the latter is already tired of digging trenches and building walls on the border. In 2008, during the operation to force Georgia to peace, Russian troops could easily enter Tbilisi, but did not do it and stopped on the borders of South Ossetia, which had fallen a victim of Georgia’s aggression.

But what does that have to do with fascism?  On one level, the US will use openly fascist groups in Ukraine to negate Russia.  On another level, who says that fascism died in the Western hemisphere?

Responding to STRATFOR on Russia

George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR intelligence, did a video interview with Business Insider on Russia’s perceived weakness in the modern world.  STRATFOR has been called everything from the CIA’s lay informants to “The Economist One Week Later.”  Here’s the deal:  all of their facts are usually correct but all of their conclusions have always been wrong.

Examples of Being Wrong

1. Did they really believe Russia would lose Crimea and Donetsk?
2. Friedman claimed that Mexico would be a global power in the 21st century (Friedman, The Next 100 Years).

Before we get to Friedman’s specific interview, we need to identify some of the operating presuppositions,

1. The European Union is a viable and sustainable trading bloc.
2. The American Economy is as strong as it was in the days of Clinton.
3. The most important value is material comfort.
4. Accordingly, men will only fight for shekels or money.
5. Since Russia doesn’t have a lot of shekels or money, Russia cannot win any war.
6. Any war fought today will be a combination of WWII and Desert Storm.  Of course, Friedman is too smart to actually believe this.  Yet when comparisons are made between Russia and the West, it always between the West’s finest hours and Russia’s performance in Afghanistan.

Obviously, all of these are wrong.  Now for the video.

Friedman is correct that the European peninsula offers boundaries and borders that Russia does not have.  Further, he is correct that the loss of buffer states like the Baltics leaves Moscow open (though he doesn’t Transnistria).  After this he gets silly. He calls Belarus a neutral country.  This is false.  The West hate Belarus and Lukashenko more than it does Putin.  Luka. has to ally with Russia.  And the Belarussian army is as competent as any in Western Europe.  

He lists the loss of Ukraine as an important buffer to Russia. True, but the Ukrainian army was defeated by Novorossiya and the rest of the country is an economic wasteland.   

He says Turkey would win in a war against Russia because Turkey would blockade the Bosporus.  This means Russia would lose revenue from sales to America and Europe.  First of all, while this would harm the Russian economy, it wouldn’t harm it immediately. Secondly, this might just be the situation that lets Russia, in accordance with prophecy, retake Constantinople.

Of course there are the claims about “dying demography” (no different from Europe, though).  But the problem here is an immediate war, not a long-term population crisis.  Rebuttals to STRATFOR

Counterpunch.

The Atlantic. (this one is hilarious)