NATO claims to be the Yosemite Sam of alliances but the war in Ukraine is showing what it really is.
- A bunch of small countries. Their armies number 2,000 but, taking wokeness, diversity, recruiting shortfalls, pregnancy leave and physical fitness into account, they can field 600. They possess 100 major weapons but, taking incompetent storage, broken parts and maintenance problems into account, they can field 40 of them.
- A bunch of medium-size countries. Their armies number 20,000 but, taking wokeness, diversity, recruiting shortfalls, pregnancy leave and physical fitness into account, they can field 6,000. They possess 500 major weapons but, taking incompetent storage, broken parts and maintenance problems into account, they can field 200 of them.
- One big country. Its army numbers 200,000 but, taking wokeness, diversity, recruiting shortfalls, pregnancy leave and physical fitness into account, it can field 60,000. (Given the enormous number of bases that have to be manned, probably not). It possesses 5,000 major weapons but, taking incompetent storage, broken parts and maintenance problems into account, it can field 2,000 of them. (And this stuff is scattered all over the place). Some of its rulers want to fight Russia, some want to fight Germany and some want to fight China – but they’re sure they can do all three at once.
- Nobody has more than a month or two of ammunition and, actually, a lot less than that because they’ve give so much to Ukraine and it’s all gone. Somewhere.
- All this costs more than you can imagine.
- These countries’ GDPs are the sum of lawyers’ fees, financial flim-flam, fake numbers, real estate commissions, payoffs to politicians and non-stop printing presses. The only one of them that actually makes anything is going bust.
- “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Впечатляет. 5+
I think you meant to write
Впечатляет Блять
(Блять is among my favourite Russki-isms… it’s a bit like garlic salt: add it to anything)
Kratoklastes I meant 5+ per article.
What about 🇹🇷?
Turkey is Putin’s veto within NATO. Their army would not fight a war against Russia provoked by crazies within NATO. They are becoming a Russian outlet for selling gas to Europe. They have Russian S-400 air defense systems and are now banished from receiving F35s. However, while discussing NATO, the article should have made some remarks about the Turkish army.
I also do not think they will fight China; however, they just might fight Germany (and Greece in a heartbeat…….
Why would they want to fight Germany? They already took it, it is called Western Turkey for a reason.
Great summary straight to the point
“They are a legend in their own mind”
How true!
This war is in their mind. It is not real.
And will not become real until somebody close to them gets killed.
For the Russians it is blood and death. It is very close to them.
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/much-ado-about-nothing-western-wunderwaffen
Well put. Bravo!
Well that was to the point.
But in hubris they not only believe they can defeat Russia in Ukraine but also defeat China in Asia. Simultaneously. Because if you’re going to break the rule of never fighting a two front war you might as well double down and fight at least one land war in Asia.
Nemesis calling.
So with such a confirmed lack of material and personnel, what’s the escalation for? They can’t wage a winnable war ar this time. So the goal could be to spill European blood at the hands of the Slavs and that would guarantee a revenge war at a later date, perhaps 2025. Take down Russia and control it’s natural resources, this will deprive China of raw material and open China to a two front war.
To save face, on its face, but primarily to keep the US petrodollar as pre-eminent. This is how an international bully flails around as it goes down.
More words would be superfluous; this short essay says anything and everything about the current geopolitical circumstances that’s worth saying.
As everyone here has deduced, the politicians don’t run anything and what they say varies with the day’s specified spiel. But are their controllers this dumb? While I will be among the first to say that amassing a fortune does not prove genius, can they collectively be making this big a mistake? Or do they have an “October” surprise yet to spring this winter? By March 19, the official end of winter, there will be no Ukrainian army.
I could not did; I dared not rob,
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale will serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
R. Kipling after his son was killed in WWI (before that he was a jingoist)
I also like Siegfried Sassoon “The General” which is apropos
I think you left out the Ottomans, who actually have a functional army though not a great one.
Looks like Bakhmut is pretty much fully cut off today. All major roads are under Russian Artillery fire control with just a couple of gravel roads still open.
It could be cleared possibly in days or a week. Ukrainian forces reported pulling out.
Hit translate this site is Greek
https://warnews247.gr/titloi-telous-gia-to-kievo-rosiki-lailapa-ekapse-tis-oukranikes-amynes-sto-bakhmut-oi-rosoi-elegchoun-to-1-3-tis-polis-bainoun-sto-kentro-tis/
That is a very revealing summary of what NATO truly is despite all the talk and bravado.
Brilliant summation!
I really tried not to laugh because it’s not funny.
I failed.
From Simplicius76’s War Room.
The Coming Russian Offensive 2023 Part 2: The Countdown Begins
You might recognize the name. Simplicius76, on his Bitchute channel, at least to my knowledge, has provided the most video from this war so far. I know I start every day there.
Brilliant anaysis, half Big Serge, half Saker and the Moon. Covers all the bases, from Rasputitsa and the Dnieper bridges, to the neo-liberal interests on both sides, that may indeed be the most influential ones in shaping this battefield.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/the-coming-russian-offensive-part
Once again though, it strikes me that no one besides ole Max424, thinks the Russian plan will be to surround Kiev, build dual lined fortifications, siege it, then starve this UkoNazi regime into TOTAL submission.
Kill 17 birds with one stone with that strategem. No big arrows, very little death and destruction, just a good old fashioned siege that gets you Odessa without a shot being fired.
I spent to much of my life studying Alexander the Great I guess. It didn’t matter to Alex whether he was trying to subdue an enemy without violence, or destroy him on the battlefield, his goal was to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible.
On the march, every foreign domain he encountered on his journey received generous terms. Join me, and become my brother; or slow me down by forcing me to siege your capitol, in which case, I shall kill all your men folk and sell every last women and child into slavery. Needless to say, he didn’t have to play the bad guy all that often.
On the campaign, his strategy was always the same, perhaps for the simple reason, once battle was enjoined, he would be attacking while outnumbered, often by ratios as great as 6 or 7 to one.
Find the enemy, deploy for battle, locate his brain, then stick a needle through it.
Once that was accomplished, the rest was a simple matter of riding down tens of thousands of fleeing warriors and slaughtering them like cattle.
Alex is also very good.
https://bmanalysis.substack.com/p/prospects-for-world-war-3-dedicated
He met his match in Diogenes, though.
(i.e., “Get out of the road – you’re blocking my sun.”)
Two points: 1. Is the Ukro regime in Kiev or Lvov or Warsaw? 2. The “brain” of this war is not in Ukraine but D.C.
Perhaps AtG is not a relevant reference here.
Brilliant summation!
I think that so much “taking wokeness, diversity …”
is simply absurd.
US guys, when they are ultra conservatives, they see what they don’t like in everything they do not like.
Which country in Europe is full of “wokeness”?
It is simply pathetic argument.
PS: yo should have the army that best suits your needs (not the needs of the USA). Spain, we should have an army strong enough to defend our cities in Africa and Canary Islands. Nothing more.
Why does USA keep stirring up trouble everywhere? Is the USA ever genuinely under threat of any invasion? Does anyone doubt that USA will be able to totally destroy any country suicidal enough to attack it? So, if USA itself is so secure, why does it have to stir trouble everywhere else, just for the benefit of the MIC? And why does the American people allow their government to do this? There is totally zero threat to USA in the world, the elites are stirring trouble everywhere but the Americans are not stopping their elites and only saying “It’s them not us!” So the Americans are waiting for someone else to come deal with their elites even though that may lead to end of the world?
Cynic… this article might be interesting and informative
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/how-jewish-is-the-war-against-russia/
I really wonder if the word ‘Jew’ in Philip Gerard’s article really works well in today’s world. The substitute with a ‘Zionist’ might be much more informative.
The US has been in over 100 military conflicts since 1990. That’s about 3/year. The US killed over 1M civilians in the middle east since 1990.
Our elitists have been waging quiet war on us for more than a century. The goal is the eternal goal of aristocracies: a docile, politically-neutered people. They will happily allow us to vote so long as the outcome doesn’t materially matter. But even further, the policies of the globalists are aimed at effectively reducing us (and every other peoples of the world) to human cattle.
They have been very successful over the past 3 decades. The US Constitution stands in their way but they have eroded and eroded it to the point where they can almost replace it by fiat alone. The great question of governance is not how government can prevented from becoming corrupted, but what to do about government once it becomes corrupted. We Americans are going to have to re-learn the answer to this the hard way.
Whatever else you think of Trump, he’s a peacemaker. In order to perpetuate this war on Russia (among other agenda items) the globalists needed to remove him, and they could only do so by cheating so brazenly it beggars any CIA-rigged Central American election that came before it (or Belarussian, 97% is truly funny). It’s a lesson in corruption we are still trying to digest. In the meantime our government acts against our interests both internationally and domestically.
You are right to criticize us. Shout it from the rooftops. Show us how shallow and self-centered we really are. Help the scales fall from our eyes.
Then perhaps we’ll fight for our true and best principles.
Agree on all points Jim
I think it is time to $hi* or get off the pot.
Washington DC is not a shining city on the hill. It is a festering carbuncle that will spread its infection far enough to the host. It is not certain we will survive the political sepsis we are suffering from. But if we want to have a chance, that boil must be lanced.
USA is a predatory creature. It rejected King George III BECAUSE he made a treaty with Native Americans……1763
https://www.history.com/news/native-american-land-british-colonies
Thus the need to de-recognise the authority of The Crown.
The way Hawaii was seized to secure Pearl Harbour was akin to how Ukraine was to deliver Sevastapol
The war against Spain, against Canada when Britain was occupied with Napoleon…….
US has sought to acquire other nations’ dependencies – the way FDR stopped off from the Yalta Conference 1943 to persuade King Ibn-Saud of Saudi Arabia to abandon the British for USA
The way a colonial war against France in Indo-China was hi-jacked by USA after 1954 to seize French possessions – or the way Indian Independence was instrumentalised against Britain – or Palestine by facilitating people smuggling from Italy to Palestine to undermine British-Arab agreements
You view history through a lens that has very little relationship to reality. In more civilized times you would be locked up in an asylum.
About ammunitions, France has 3 days left and the UK even worse ‘an afternoon'(mod uk dixit).
In my country, zero ammo not even a single tank(lol)..but ‘we are protected’ says our PM, the great shape is there in Mons’ and Stoltenberg admin army in Brussels has a new pharaonic headquarters…nukes also in kleine brokel Flemish limburg(but it is ‘secret’)..don’t repeat it who knows maybe Putin reads Larry blog?
France had a lot of ammo in 1940 and hangars full of new unused aircraft. She also had more tanks than Germany. France is led by deluded fools – only de Gaulle came near greatness. He created the Fifth Republic – the longest lasting – but it is broken
You don’t need much ammo, or tanks. You know for sure that you’ll recieve multiple nukes in the first strike. After that, one only needs ammo to shoot at other survivors, or oneself.
Emphatically brief and to the point Helmholzt. Let us hope the good side wins soon and just as concisely finally drives a spear through the heart of the totally corrupt and clearly insane Neocon / Nazi / NATO empire and that soon a new peaceful shared-power multipolar world will emerge, and we can see an end to this hegemonic globalist death cult.
When you consider those stats detailed by Helmholzt, it makes one pause and wonder if the crazies have got something secret that they have been planning / developing for a long time and which they will soon shock us all with when they roll it out / unleash it.
Surely given those stats – even assuming that the numbers may be understated by half (even though I am not asserting that, but rather just giving benefit of the doubt) – surely NATO / Western gang cannot be so off planet?
A clear-thinking cynic can only conclude that, absent some truly game-changing plan backed by equally game-changing breakthrough in weapons technology, the crazies can only be thinking that they can in fact launch a preemptive nuclear attack, blow all their enemies off the map, and after a few years hunkering down in their deep expensive underground bunkers (with ‘got-out-of-jail-free’ Epstein and lots of young children to pass the time with) they will be able to emerge into a vastly depopulated radioactive wasteland and ‘Build Back Better’, with the help of GMO tech to grow radioactive resistant crops; as well as having themselves undergone some transhumanist genetic modifications to enable them to survive and perhaps even thrive e.g. by super-advanced genetic modification that will enable their new bodies to be nourished by the radioactivity – as well as undergoing some AI transplants in their underground hi-tech surgical labs to turn them from the wimps they are into Terminator super-beings.
OK I am being a bit sci-fi silly there – but nevertheless they have been pursuing some seriously dark top-secret research and development in the transhumanist genetics realms.
Just thinking – trying on the crazy hat – trying to figure how it is possible those freaks (the BOJO clown circus) are still beating war drums when they are so short of conventional weapons capable of competing and so short of industrial capacity to compete in the industrial-scale Ukraine conflict – wondering what the wild card might be for them to be continuing down the well-trodden path to their own destruction??
Allan Mountain,
Yes, Stargate was a fun show, but look, the F-35 is the most advanced deployed tech the US has, it barely works and is at bankruptcy prices.
It is years to decades between development / benchtop demonstration (TRL3) and deployment (TRL10) for modern military technology (by super profitable design). How many years has the US been trying to deploy a dummy hypersonic missile body?
Col Lang was fond of calling it drinking the Kool aid.
I can understand the US military command in the East wanting to keep their HIMARS and Patriot systems with enough missiles to make them effective. But tanks? Do they really think a land war in Asia is even possible?
The cost is more than they could possibly imagine. Look at the videos of the open air drug markets in the Rust Belt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSxTYJItfFg
These are the very people whose jobs were shipped overseas to China, and the very people that would work the factories right now to rebuild our stockpiles.
The contradictions of globalist imperialism are unsustainable. Maximizing profits is not the only reason for de-industrializing America. If retail workers, grocery baggers, Baristas, or any of the other myriad of bullshit service workers suddenly went on strike, no one would care. Which is why they like those jobs in the first place.
If they do bring these industrial jobs back, and it looks like they will have to if they want their war with China (sorry Europe), they are only buying themselves a little time. Doing so would only create a new strong working class able to oppose them.
Either way, their time is finished.
All of what Mr. Smith writes about above is traceable to the boll weevil of Liberalism — insane, delusional, soul-damning and country-killing Liberalism.
I have always considered NATO to be nothing much more than marketing hype along the lines of aluminum siding salesmen. It has been obvious for years that NATO was all puffy and good at posturing but suffered from no show and no go. Whilst the average NATO soldier is quite competent the problem lies in the size of NATO, its waning and incapable leadership, and the fact it really does not have a purpose since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most of Europe understands NATO is a dog and pony show for the pleasure of bankers and Statesmen.
NATO and Europe know this and it seems extremely unlikely they will send NATO troops into battle with Europe. Such a blundering stunt would prove how useless NATO is when Russia destroys them utterly and completely. A useless and defeated NATO is a NATO that will loose funding from member countries and of course the ‘powers that be’ cannot have that. Better to eat a bit of crow and keep NATO out of the mix.
The Poles on the other hand, well they have never proved to be a bright lot, will likely pull some mindless little stunt such as move into western Ukraine, all the while hoping to God the Russians leave them alone…knowing full well that NATO will be too busy dispensing Huggies to its soldiers before sending them into Ukraine to fight with Poland. Meaning NATO would be of little help to Poland should Poland turn stupid. Russia probably will leave Poland alone as long as Poland leaves southern Ukraine alone. Perhaps this is the reason for the Russian soldiers on the Belarus boarder, to let Poland know they can only go so far?
Perhaps the author is underestimating the strength of those 50000-60000 troops that NATO can put together. As seen on TV in action movies made in Hollywood each one of those combatants is a complete Army division on his/her own. Fully bomb – bullet proof that nothing can hurt them even after receiving a mortal wound he/she can continue on fighting for hours and hours. Therefore we could say that NATO has 60000 Army divisions ready to put into action 🙂
Americans win in every video game. That is something the rest of the world indulges.
The big point is that our industry can not switch to war mode. Producing bombs instead of butter will not work for different reasons: not enough engineer staff + plain people will protest when there is no butter + No material.
Still, I wonder how Russia will get rid of the NATO. Just expect that NATO will dissolve is not realistic. Poland will not give up and will cling to the US Armee. Same for the Baltic States.
So, we are in a time trap. Nothing will change even after the fall of the Ukraine.
Only war against China could reduce the power of the NATO to zero.
Bombs to butter…not likely. 🙂 First it will prove difficult at best to get anyone in America to go to work in the factory. Those that do will be too self-absorbed taking selfies, and post their daily bomb making activities onto social media and demanding from the owners nicer working conditions.
Well said. Too many so-called “Americans”, being products of the anti-Triune God, Marxist Socialist government schools systems, have not developed the proper work ethic, but instead are trained to look for Big Government handouts. God’s 4th Commandment is clear: “Six days shalt thou LABOR, and do all thy work.” (Exodus 20:9) And so is His 10th: “Thou shalt not COVET… any thing that is thy neighbors.” (Exodus 20:17). Most “American” politicians like government-dependent people because they know they are more prone to vote for them, to keep them in money and power. It’s a vicious circle that, in time, must end with the complete and final collapse of a society and civilization. The religion of Liberalism is truly the ideology of the insane.
What has triune got to do with anything. China does quite well without it.
Well, canons instead of butter was the speach in 1944 from Mr. Goebbels, propaganda minister.
Please don’t underestimate the industrial output of the West. It gets more difficult, but we still produce millions of cars, water bottles, etc. But correct: Cars without China support will not be possible any more. The idea to go without China is a long-term strategy. Whether it will actually work, I doubt.
I really liked the Ozymandias quote.
Whenever John Bolton opens his mouth I think of Yosemite Sam. Mr “I never met a country I didn’t want to bomb”.
Great analysis re NATO. I suspect the combined Defence Ministries + NATO bureaucrats in Brussels, civilians on the gravy train er, payroll, far outnumber the grunts in boots.
Having worked in the defense industry, I can say that it is primarily a government jobs program. One could lay off 60% of the work force and increase productivity. America has become fat, dumb and lazy. On the other hand, there are some really bright, motivated people developing some really good technology. So it would be a bad mistake to pooh-pooh US military capability. The big problem is our feckless leadership in DC. They are bought off with $millions to steer the flow of $billions.
LMAO…well said Helmholtz.
If a war in Europe between Russia and NATO(-) only involved shooting down spy balloons, Russia would be in real trouble…but we all know this is not the case.
Russians have been shooting spy balloons before it was cool. 🙂
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cold-war-balloon-surveillance
I bet next Top Gun movie is going to be a blast.
https://t.me/iEarlGreyTV/4623
Clearly, too few took Pogo seriously
You can say that again! But to take Pogo seriously requires honest introspection and a modicum of humility which the political leadership of the collective West seems to be lacking.
Remember Sun Tzu’s Art of War — “Appear weak when you are strong” ??
All these claims of NATO “weaknesses” seem to assume the sources/data backing them up are actually reliable.
When in reality it could just be a bunch of fake propaganda again by NATO designed to lull the Russians (and any opponents of NATO) into a false sense of security believing that NATO is actually that weak when it isn’t.