I don't think it's a case of 'ignoring' all these warnings about how Russia would feel about all this, or how Russia would respond. I think it should be obvious that the whole thing was done precisely with the intention of provoking Russia's response.
Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for them, Russia understood this too, and spent a good amount of time progressing its military capabilities. Hypersonics and all that.
Why anyone would ever trust anything the Empire says is beyond me.
On April 25, 1917, the famous British satirical magazine Punch published a full-page political cartoon titled "Cannon-Fodder, and After."
The Cartoon featured Kaiser Wilhelm II dressed in full military regalia, standing next to a young German army recruit. The Kaiser points out an open window toward a sprawling industrial factory complex in the background. The factory's chimneys are belching out thick, oily black smoke, the sign on the building reads: "Kadaververwertungsanstalt" (Corpse Factory) The Kaiser tells him, "And don't forget that your Kaiser will find a use for you - alive or dead."
The cartoon capitalized on a massive international media storm that had peaked just one week earlier when British newspapers like The Times and the Daily Mail published "investigative" reports claiming that Germany, crippled by the British naval blockade and running desperately low on fats, was rendering down the corpses of its fallen soldiers. The newspapers went into great detail about trains arriving at hidden forest facilities. Each train was packed with naked, wired-together human bodies, which were then pushed into giant cauldrons to extract lubricants, and glycerine for explosives, candles, and soap.
Millions of credulous Brits sucked it all up. None of it was true. It was deliberate lie.
And if Substack had existed at the time, they would have come here to spout that lie like it was revealed truth. Just as you do here today about !RUSSIA!.
How about the daily drone attacks all along the border regions of Russia launched by the AFU? Two days AFU drones killed 5 civilians and injured 8 more. This is happening every day and because it is happening to Russians the racist media of the West just ignores it.
In 1999 NATO bombed Yugoslavia, including civilians, without UN sanction.
In order to understand what kind of people run NATO, read this story about bombing a passenger train, and how General Wesley Clark, who was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, showed the video of the bombing at the press conference, claiming that "the train had been traveling too fast and the bomb was too close to the target for it to divert in time". After, The Pentagon and NATO stated that it was an error caused by the result of the video being sped up for "battle damage assessment" purposes, but not being slowed again for the press conference…:
In 2003 NATO started war in Iraq. Again, without UN sanction.
BTW, in April 2004 Ukraine signed the law allowing free access of NATO troops on its territory. And in 2017 NATO base already existed on the territory of Ukraine, even tho there was no formal membership. Russians don't care about formalities if one's trying to fool them. Bismarck's famous quote was right about that.
As Brian Berletic meticulously describes this was scripted from the start. They all knew exactly what they were doing and what would result and nothing has changed to date.
Pax Britannia became Pax Americana after WW2. It is all part of globalism (Imperialism) that was carried out by the fascists of the 19th-21st Centuries.
Created by the British Ministry of Defense Project "Alchemy" of UK Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland already in February-March 2022 developed operations on: undermining the Kerch Bridge, sabotage in Crimea, attacks on the Black Sea Fleet, high-profile propaganda provocations, sanctions, international tribunals, "grain deal", cyberattacks.
From 1945 the United States attempted to overthrow over 50 governments, many of them democracies, and to crush 30 popular movements fighting tyrannical regimes. In the process, over 25 countries were bombed, causing the loss of several million lives?
George F. Kennan, who spoke fluent Russian, who read Russian literature and Soviet documents in the original language - was the architect of America's Cold War "containment" policy. His most famous warning came in a widely read op-ed published in The New York Times on February 5, 1997. In it, he wrote bluntly: "...expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold-War era." [^1]
Kennan was also the original "Mr. X," a pseudonym he used for an anonymous 1947 article in Foreign Affairs magazine titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." [^2] This piece introduced the strategy of containment—the geopolitical framework the United States used to counter Soviet expansion throughout the entire Cold War. However, Kennan later argued that his ideas on containment were misunderstood and taken too far, noting that he had intended a political and economic containment of Soviet political pressure, not a massive, global military alliance. [^3]
Before the "X Article," Kennan laid the intellectual groundwork for this entire strategy in his famous 1946 "Long Telegram" sent from Moscow. [^4] This document effectively reframed the USSR from a wartime ally into a long-term rival, providing the strategic justification for both the Marshall Plan and the ultimate creation of NATO.
Of course the maniacs in America did not listen as doing so would have meant giving up their dream of global hegemony as after the fall of the Soviet Union. As Paul Wolfowitz said "We're in a position where the future is up for grabs in a way that hasn't been the case for 45 years. If we don't actively try to shape that future, someone else will shape it for us in ways we might not like." [^5]
Footnotes
[^1]: George F. Kennan, "A Fateful Error," The New York Times, February 5, 1997, Section A, 23.
[^2]: X [George F. Kennan], "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (July 1947): 566–582.
[^3]: For Kennan's own reflections on how containment was militarized against his intentions, see George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), 354–367.
[^4]: George Kennan to the Secretary of State [The "Long Telegram"], February 22, 1946, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Administration.
[^5]: Eric Schmitt, "Washington at Work; Ex-Cold Warrior Sees the Future as 'Up for Grabs'," The New York Times, December 23, 1991, Section A, 12.
What impossible situation? It wouldn't get invaded by NATO, it wouldn't get embargoed by NATO, it is a nuclear state after all.
The only thing NATO stops Russia from doing is it stops it from invading its neighbours who seek to join NATO precisely so that Russia doesn't invade them(as it did historically).
All this is is a conspiracy theory to justify Russia.
Hardly. Either Russia does nothing while Ukraine arms and invades Donbass to butcher the citizens and enforces galicianism on those in the territory of the regime, or it goes to war.
First of all, Donbas is internationally recognised Ukrainian territory invaded by Russian proxies.
Second of all, Ukraine didn't "butcher citizens", in fact there wouldn't be any death or war in the Donbas if not for the Russian proxies.
And lastly, what Ukraine does in its own territory is none of Russian business. Not to mention that there wasn't and still isn't an all-out ban on Russian language, Ukrainian us heavily encouraged, but Russian itself is not banned, there are stil schools in Russian, just far fewer of them, hundreds of thousands of Russian speaking Ukrainians, including those from the Donbas, are fighting in the Ukrainian militsry right now, none of then asked Russia to come(and I am a Russian speaking Ukrainian myself).
Not to mention that Ukraine only started seeking NATO memebrship after Russia invaded Crimea and Donbas(and I don't count earlier, because Russia tried to joij NATO too in 2010).
So you're saying that Ukraine has a right to butcherr its citizens. And Russian isn't banned. How magnanimous!.
If Ukraine had simply implemented Minsk-2 (after breaking the Minsk Accord) the point would be moot. Of course, Russia spent eight years trying to get Ukraine to implement what everyone other than Putin knew was a sham.
Just want to say: thank you, Kit, for properly informing me generally on the true record of the late Soviet era vis-à-vis a proper dissection of the heralded abominations that magnified after its 1991 fall; while there are definitely various legitimate critiques of the "eastern synarchy" bifurcated policy framework of the USSR, the full record is resoundingly clear for all to see that the imperial-agitated breakup of Soviet order created a grotesque sewer of neofascistic color-revolutionary perdition that never should have been allowed to thrive.
While I personally do remain particularly skeptical toward the early Leninist/Trotskyite strain of Bolshevism in light of its instrumentalized utility for WWI Anglo-American and Germanic intelligence purposes (it might be that you and I respectfully disagree on some of these details re. Bolshevism, though I nonetheless respect your outstanding journalistic and analytical rigor in spite of any such potential outlook differences), your work has vitally helped educate me on the record of Stalin and the USSR he left behind that has been shamelessly slandered by Western imperial propagandists.
The late, great George Kennan in the 1990’s told all who would listen (few did) that NATO expansion, pursued to its logical conclusion, would poison relations with Russia, and create security issues that could end in the worst strategic defeat in US history. His said this before our current clueless blundering in Iran.
A nation that lost 26 million citizens defending itself during Hitler’s war of annihilation, that ever since annually celebrates Victory Day with notable enthusiasm and fervor, will NEVER tolerate NATO missiles on Ukrainian territory, which would be capable of launching a decapitating first strike, with no time for any defensive response. Nor would the United States ever have tolerated Soviet missiles in Cuba, which would have been capable of launching a decapitating first strike. with no time for any defensive response.
Khrushchev actually heard Kennedy’s “NYET!” I want to know why Biden Blinken, and Sullivan refused to listen to Putin’s “NYET!” When Great Power “A” trespasses on vital security interests of Great Power “B”, and does next to nothing when Great Power “B” screams “NYET” at the top of his lungs, then Great Power “B” will exercise his veto, namely, go to war.
Expressing outrage at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when the United Sates did nothing to ameliorate Russia’s security concerns, strikes me as pointless moral posturing. If Khrushchev had not listened to Kennedy, the United States would have done to Cuba what Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, namely, wage war against it in order to eliminate a mortal threat.
Just don't forget the Cuban missile crisis was initially caused by the U.S. placing their "Jupiter" missiles in Turkey and Italy in 1961. They could reach Moscow in 10 min
First, push the other country to the point where it has to retaliate, then use the retaliation to portray it as an "unprovoked" aggression to justify more WAR
Permit me to finish my comment. An inescapable feature of Great Power relations is you simply don’t get something without offering something in exchange. In other words, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. One sided outcomes only happen after one side massively defeats the other in war. Dean Rusk utterly failed to explain Great Power reality to the American people when he said, “We were eyeball to eyeball, and the other side blinked.” No, sir. Both sides blinked. Else we would have had a nuclear exchange. Mr. Rusk pretended American toughness overawed the Soviets. No. Both sides decided discretion was the better part of valor, acted like responsible statesmen, and did a deal: your nukes for our nukes.
Let’s further understand that the United States and the Soviet Union established a binding precedent for their future relations, namely, neither party would ever tolerate what it considered a mortal threat adjacent to its border. “You keep your nuke missiles out of my backyard, I’ll keep mine out of yours.” The thing about precedents is you follow them, then you have a chance to maintain peace. Ignore them, all bets are off.
In the run up to the full blown crisis in Ukraine, it bewilders me that American leaders were impervious to the precedent we and the Soviets created as both sides settled the Cuban Missile Crisis. On top of that, prior to the 2008 summit in Bucharest, whose agenda was to extend NATO membership to Ukraine, we had that generation’s finest diplomat, William Burns, as ambassador to Russia, warning Secretary Rice that Ukraine’s joining NATO was the brightest of red lines among all sectors of Russian politics and society. We were up against a solidly united Russian nation.
Yet we persisted. Someone, with more insight than I, please explain why the United States cannot correct course. Why is a policy adopted by administration A (Clinton’s) followed clear down to administration Z (Trump’s
We are looking at the class battle between the rich and the poor. The rich use every possibility to gain more wealth and control. They don’t mind when the plebs die. The same plebs, you and me, that finance the many conflicts, that give their lives for the happy few. That created and made every invention to be then used by the happy few to control and extract more.
We need to get rid of this parasitical class or it will end very badly for most of us.
Most might suggest Warren Buffet is honest. Let's get our heads around the fact that he once owned the railroad that destroyed East Palestine OH. Rather than fix it, he sold it.
Thanks Kit, what a collective Sh*t-Show from the totally amoral, lying, psychopathic and malevolent USA and GB. It has been an absolutely despicable set of premeditated actions in slow motion from the mid 90s to today. I hope it gets stopped and rolled back, or broken up.
Horseshit. Russia has the largest nuclear deterrent and can not be threatened. Putin was welcomed by Blair and Bush when he was slaughtering Chechnya as they bombed Iraq. Blair invited Putin on a state visit complete with a golden carriage ride with the Queen. Putin floated Russia joining NATO but they blocked him because then NATO member states could spend their 2.5% of their GDP on Russian fighter jets and air defense systems instead of American ones. This is the true point of NATO not any strategic alliance. The war is about whether Russia or America gets to sell fighter jets to Ukraine in exchange for Ukrainian grain and rare earth minerals.
All very academic, in both the literal and political senses. NATO is just a cover for naked DisUS imperialism, which has been intent on world domination since the end of WW2. The collapse of the Stalinist bloc in the USSR & Eastern Europe from 1989-91 put the plans of the Americans for world domination into overdrive. The age of capitalist imperialism, analysed and explained by Lenin at the turn of the 20th Century, means unceasing Wars for raw materials, natural resources, and installing client regimes that bend to the will of imperialism. Now the DisUS imperialists are actively targeting the regimes in both Moscow and Bejing for overthrow, up to and including War if necessary. We have an undeclared WW3 going on in Ukraine between Russia and NATO, with the American imperialists pulling all the strings. Only Socialist Revolution in the DisUS and one or more of the key imperialist countries like Germany & Britain can alter the balance of forces decisively and move the world in the right, that is the Socialist, direction. Socialist Revolution must also come to capitalist Russia and Stalinist China. Unless and until such major political upheavals occur, the world remains on course for extinction in a nuclear WW3. Trump and Putin are both psychopaths who think nothing of mass murder and global destruction if it means clinging on to their wealth, power, & privilege.
Um. How can YOU equate Bumbling narcistic Trump with Putin.
After this China summit: who thinks US has any brain.
What the problem is here: Culturally US is a desert..............money rules.
Whilst the US bombs ancient countries 'back to the Stone Age' you forget that others in this world DO have ancient culture and the US cannot understand this.
I think you were aiming for "narcissistic." Putin is just as much of a psychopath as Trump although he does have greater intelligence, sophistication, and discretion. There is no doubt the American ruling class is extraordinarily degenerate, decadent, corrupt, and ill-educated. Trump is the embodiment of the descent of the American ruling class into open gangsterism and criminality. Previously, they kept most of their dirty deeds and plots under wraps. It poses the greatest threat to the world because it possesses the biggest nuclear arsenal, and with a madman like Trump in control of the nuclear codes, anything can happen. But Putin is a ruthless capitalist oligarch too, presiding over a Russian regime of gangster oligarchs. Working class people in Russia need to fight for Socialist Revolution (again) just as much as the American working class.
I don't think it's a case of 'ignoring' all these warnings about how Russia would feel about all this, or how Russia would respond. I think it should be obvious that the whole thing was done precisely with the intention of provoking Russia's response.
Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for them, Russia understood this too, and spent a good amount of time progressing its military capabilities. Hypersonics and all that.
Why anyone would ever trust anything the Empire says is beyond me.
The "defense organization" that bombed Yugoslavia for over two months you gotta admire the brashness of it all.
It was easier to hide what was going on before the internet when people had a handful of TV news outlets and maybe one or two local newspapers
It works.
Yeah. Killing civillians.
Yup. As I said, it worked. Meanwhile, Russia continues to dither.
Is Russia 'dithering?' I don't know BUT they do not bomb civilians!
Russia literally hits a civilian building at least every few days, what do you mean Russia doesn't bomb civilians?
Ask Ukraine if civilian targets aren't targeted.
Why would you ask the Ukraine?
On April 25, 1917, the famous British satirical magazine Punch published a full-page political cartoon titled "Cannon-Fodder, and After."
The Cartoon featured Kaiser Wilhelm II dressed in full military regalia, standing next to a young German army recruit. The Kaiser points out an open window toward a sprawling industrial factory complex in the background. The factory's chimneys are belching out thick, oily black smoke, the sign on the building reads: "Kadaververwertungsanstalt" (Corpse Factory) The Kaiser tells him, "And don't forget that your Kaiser will find a use for you - alive or dead."
The cartoon capitalized on a massive international media storm that had peaked just one week earlier when British newspapers like The Times and the Daily Mail published "investigative" reports claiming that Germany, crippled by the British naval blockade and running desperately low on fats, was rendering down the corpses of its fallen soldiers. The newspapers went into great detail about trains arriving at hidden forest facilities. Each train was packed with naked, wired-together human bodies, which were then pushed into giant cauldrons to extract lubricants, and glycerine for explosives, candles, and soap.
Millions of credulous Brits sucked it all up. None of it was true. It was deliberate lie.
And if Substack had existed at the time, they would have come here to spout that lie like it was revealed truth. Just as you do here today about !RUSSIA!.
See the problem?
Go and read some proper news
How about the daily drone attacks all along the border regions of Russia launched by the AFU? Two days AFU drones killed 5 civilians and injured 8 more. This is happening every day and because it is happening to Russians the racist media of the West just ignores it.
SO Feral: what do you wish for?
Winning. And if you think that this is "winning" then stop telling yourself comforting lies.
Winning. And if you think that this is "winning" then stop telling yourself comforting lies.
Yes, Russia is dithering. Stop kidding yourself.
Russian principles will do neither they nor anyone else if they losr.
To everyone who still calls NATO a "defensive" alliance:
There is no such thing as "defensive" alliance, just like there is no "defensive" or "offensive" gun.
***
There is either MILITARY (like NATO or AUKUS) or NON-military (economic) alliance (like WTO or BRICS).
youtube.com/shorts/kDfDV2riLhI
***
In 1999 NATO bombed Yugoslavia, including civilians, without UN sanction.
In order to understand what kind of people run NATO, read this story about bombing a passenger train, and how General Wesley Clark, who was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, showed the video of the bombing at the press conference, claiming that "the train had been traveling too fast and the bomb was too close to the target for it to divert in time". After, The Pentagon and NATO stated that it was an error caused by the result of the video being sped up for "battle damage assessment" purposes, but not being slowed again for the press conference…:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grdelica_train_bombing
***
In 2004 war criminal Wesley Clark ran for president of the USA..
youtube.com/shorts/TmHH7n-BK5U
***
U.S. NED Coup in Serbia
youtube.com/watch?v=HGaqIPhCtY0
***
In 2003 NATO started war in Iraq. Again, without UN sanction.
BTW, in April 2004 Ukraine signed the law allowing free access of NATO troops on its territory. And in 2017 NATO base already existed on the territory of Ukraine, even tho there was no formal membership. Russians don't care about formalities if one's trying to fool them. Bismarck's famous quote was right about that.
As Brian Berletic meticulously describes this was scripted from the start. They all knew exactly what they were doing and what would result and nothing has changed to date.
The Round Table Group (aka Milner’s Kindergarten, aka The Rhodes Group) was founded at Oxford by Cecil Rhodes and Lord Rothschild.
And nothing really changed since Palmerston, Milner and Halford Mackinder (The Imperialist "Heartland Theory")..
***
youtu.be/lpf6ZeABP1I?t=2694
youtu.be/fz-Dan7NRss?t=3174
***
The U.S. is just the British Empire's nepo baby.
Pax Britannia became Pax Americana after WW2. It is all part of globalism (Imperialism) that was carried out by the fascists of the 19th-21st Centuries.
Created by the British Ministry of Defense Project "Alchemy" of UK Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland already in February-March 2022 developed operations on: undermining the Kerch Bridge, sabotage in Crimea, attacks on the Black Sea Fleet, high-profile propaganda provocations, sanctions, international tribunals, "grain deal", cyberattacks.
Read "Provoked" by Scott Horton. It'll tell you the sordid history of the most violent country in the modern world.
From 1945 the United States attempted to overthrow over 50 governments, many of them democracies, and to crush 30 popular movements fighting tyrannical regimes. In the process, over 25 countries were bombed, causing the loss of several million lives?
https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/5F/5FC9177D115DFAE199E5204183A6F3E2_Rogue_state__By_sout_al_khilafah.pdf
I haven't read it . . . but I've been a Scott Horton fan for decades.
Scott Horton's books, and his thousands of interviews - amount to a Master Class on Empire foreign policy.
I have a signed copy!
Yes.
When every single member of the U.S. press called Russia's invasion unprovoked you knew they were lying.
And reading from a script.
George F. Kennan, who spoke fluent Russian, who read Russian literature and Soviet documents in the original language - was the architect of America's Cold War "containment" policy. His most famous warning came in a widely read op-ed published in The New York Times on February 5, 1997. In it, he wrote bluntly: "...expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold-War era." [^1]
Kennan was also the original "Mr. X," a pseudonym he used for an anonymous 1947 article in Foreign Affairs magazine titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." [^2] This piece introduced the strategy of containment—the geopolitical framework the United States used to counter Soviet expansion throughout the entire Cold War. However, Kennan later argued that his ideas on containment were misunderstood and taken too far, noting that he had intended a political and economic containment of Soviet political pressure, not a massive, global military alliance. [^3]
Before the "X Article," Kennan laid the intellectual groundwork for this entire strategy in his famous 1946 "Long Telegram" sent from Moscow. [^4] This document effectively reframed the USSR from a wartime ally into a long-term rival, providing the strategic justification for both the Marshall Plan and the ultimate creation of NATO.
Of course the maniacs in America did not listen as doing so would have meant giving up their dream of global hegemony as after the fall of the Soviet Union. As Paul Wolfowitz said "We're in a position where the future is up for grabs in a way that hasn't been the case for 45 years. If we don't actively try to shape that future, someone else will shape it for us in ways we might not like." [^5]
Footnotes
[^1]: George F. Kennan, "A Fateful Error," The New York Times, February 5, 1997, Section A, 23.
[^2]: X [George F. Kennan], "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (July 1947): 566–582.
[^3]: For Kennan's own reflections on how containment was militarized against his intentions, see George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), 354–367.
[^4]: George Kennan to the Secretary of State [The "Long Telegram"], February 22, 1946, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Administration.
[^5]: Eric Schmitt, "Washington at Work; Ex-Cold Warrior Sees the Future as 'Up for Grabs'," The New York Times, December 23, 1991, Section A, 12.
The war was always entirely intentional.
The point was to put Russia in a spot where it had to capitulate or fight.
Since that time, NATO has sought to boil the frog, banking on Russian dithering and indecision in a war they do not want.
Cynical? Yes. Evil? Yes. Moreover, it works.
Ah yes, a war Russia does not want and that's why it started that war
The point of NATO was to put Russia in an impossible situation.
What impossible situation? It wouldn't get invaded by NATO, it wouldn't get embargoed by NATO, it is a nuclear state after all.
The only thing NATO stops Russia from doing is it stops it from invading its neighbours who seek to join NATO precisely so that Russia doesn't invade them(as it did historically).
All this is is a conspiracy theory to justify Russia.
Hardly. Either Russia does nothing while Ukraine arms and invades Donbass to butcher the citizens and enforces galicianism on those in the territory of the regime, or it goes to war.
Rand spelled it out in black.and white.
First of all, Donbas is internationally recognised Ukrainian territory invaded by Russian proxies.
Second of all, Ukraine didn't "butcher citizens", in fact there wouldn't be any death or war in the Donbas if not for the Russian proxies.
And lastly, what Ukraine does in its own territory is none of Russian business. Not to mention that there wasn't and still isn't an all-out ban on Russian language, Ukrainian us heavily encouraged, but Russian itself is not banned, there are stil schools in Russian, just far fewer of them, hundreds of thousands of Russian speaking Ukrainians, including those from the Donbas, are fighting in the Ukrainian militsry right now, none of then asked Russia to come(and I am a Russian speaking Ukrainian myself).
Not to mention that Ukraine only started seeking NATO memebrship after Russia invaded Crimea and Donbas(and I don't count earlier, because Russia tried to joij NATO too in 2010).
So you're saying that Ukraine has a right to butcherr its citizens. And Russian isn't banned. How magnanimous!.
If Ukraine had simply implemented Minsk-2 (after breaking the Minsk Accord) the point would be moot. Of course, Russia spent eight years trying to get Ukraine to implement what everyone other than Putin knew was a sham.
Just want to say: thank you, Kit, for properly informing me generally on the true record of the late Soviet era vis-à-vis a proper dissection of the heralded abominations that magnified after its 1991 fall; while there are definitely various legitimate critiques of the "eastern synarchy" bifurcated policy framework of the USSR, the full record is resoundingly clear for all to see that the imperial-agitated breakup of Soviet order created a grotesque sewer of neofascistic color-revolutionary perdition that never should have been allowed to thrive.
While I personally do remain particularly skeptical toward the early Leninist/Trotskyite strain of Bolshevism in light of its instrumentalized utility for WWI Anglo-American and Germanic intelligence purposes (it might be that you and I respectfully disagree on some of these details re. Bolshevism, though I nonetheless respect your outstanding journalistic and analytical rigor in spite of any such potential outlook differences), your work has vitally helped educate me on the record of Stalin and the USSR he left behind that has been shamelessly slandered by Western imperial propagandists.
The late, great George Kennan in the 1990’s told all who would listen (few did) that NATO expansion, pursued to its logical conclusion, would poison relations with Russia, and create security issues that could end in the worst strategic defeat in US history. His said this before our current clueless blundering in Iran.
A nation that lost 26 million citizens defending itself during Hitler’s war of annihilation, that ever since annually celebrates Victory Day with notable enthusiasm and fervor, will NEVER tolerate NATO missiles on Ukrainian territory, which would be capable of launching a decapitating first strike, with no time for any defensive response. Nor would the United States ever have tolerated Soviet missiles in Cuba, which would have been capable of launching a decapitating first strike. with no time for any defensive response.
Khrushchev actually heard Kennedy’s “NYET!” I want to know why Biden Blinken, and Sullivan refused to listen to Putin’s “NYET!” When Great Power “A” trespasses on vital security interests of Great Power “B”, and does next to nothing when Great Power “B” screams “NYET” at the top of his lungs, then Great Power “B” will exercise his veto, namely, go to war.
Expressing outrage at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when the United Sates did nothing to ameliorate Russia’s security concerns, strikes me as pointless moral posturing. If Khrushchev had not listened to Kennedy, the United States would have done to Cuba what Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, namely, wage war against it in order to eliminate a mortal threat.
Just don't forget the Cuban missile crisis was initially caused by the U.S. placing their "Jupiter" missiles in Turkey and Italy in 1961. They could reach Moscow in 10 min
Indeed. In order to get Soviet missiles out of Cuba, we had to remove our own missiles from Turkey. It’s a blunt fact of Great Power
The bully’s pattern remains the same:
First, push the other country to the point where it has to retaliate, then use the retaliation to portray it as an "unprovoked" aggression to justify more WAR
Permit me to finish my comment. An inescapable feature of Great Power relations is you simply don’t get something without offering something in exchange. In other words, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. One sided outcomes only happen after one side massively defeats the other in war. Dean Rusk utterly failed to explain Great Power reality to the American people when he said, “We were eyeball to eyeball, and the other side blinked.” No, sir. Both sides blinked. Else we would have had a nuclear exchange. Mr. Rusk pretended American toughness overawed the Soviets. No. Both sides decided discretion was the better part of valor, acted like responsible statesmen, and did a deal: your nukes for our nukes.
Let’s further understand that the United States and the Soviet Union established a binding precedent for their future relations, namely, neither party would ever tolerate what it considered a mortal threat adjacent to its border. “You keep your nuke missiles out of my backyard, I’ll keep mine out of yours.” The thing about precedents is you follow them, then you have a chance to maintain peace. Ignore them, all bets are off.
In the run up to the full blown crisis in Ukraine, it bewilders me that American leaders were impervious to the precedent we and the Soviets created as both sides settled the Cuban Missile Crisis. On top of that, prior to the 2008 summit in Bucharest, whose agenda was to extend NATO membership to Ukraine, we had that generation’s finest diplomat, William Burns, as ambassador to Russia, warning Secretary Rice that Ukraine’s joining NATO was the brightest of red lines among all sectors of Russian politics and society. We were up against a solidly united Russian nation.
Yet we persisted. Someone, with more insight than I, please explain why the United States cannot correct course. Why is a policy adopted by administration A (Clinton’s) followed clear down to administration Z (Trump’s
Meanwhile: Poll: Ukrainians more threatened by corruption than by Russia
https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2026/05/poll-ukrainians-more-threatened-by-corruption-than-by-russia/
We are looking at the class battle between the rich and the poor. The rich use every possibility to gain more wealth and control. They don’t mind when the plebs die. The same plebs, you and me, that finance the many conflicts, that give their lives for the happy few. That created and made every invention to be then used by the happy few to control and extract more.
We need to get rid of this parasitical class or it will end very badly for most of us.
There is no such thing as an Honest Billionaire.
Most might suggest Warren Buffet is honest. Let's get our heads around the fact that he once owned the railroad that destroyed East Palestine OH. Rather than fix it, he sold it.
Don't "grandpa" me.
Brother?
Thank you, Kit. The only comment I have is — but of course they knew…and not only the UK.
Thanks Kit, what a collective Sh*t-Show from the totally amoral, lying, psychopathic and malevolent USA and GB. It has been an absolutely despicable set of premeditated actions in slow motion from the mid 90s to today. I hope it gets stopped and rolled back, or broken up.
Horseshit. Russia has the largest nuclear deterrent and can not be threatened. Putin was welcomed by Blair and Bush when he was slaughtering Chechnya as they bombed Iraq. Blair invited Putin on a state visit complete with a golden carriage ride with the Queen. Putin floated Russia joining NATO but they blocked him because then NATO member states could spend their 2.5% of their GDP on Russian fighter jets and air defense systems instead of American ones. This is the true point of NATO not any strategic alliance. The war is about whether Russia or America gets to sell fighter jets to Ukraine in exchange for Ukrainian grain and rare earth minerals.
All very academic, in both the literal and political senses. NATO is just a cover for naked DisUS imperialism, which has been intent on world domination since the end of WW2. The collapse of the Stalinist bloc in the USSR & Eastern Europe from 1989-91 put the plans of the Americans for world domination into overdrive. The age of capitalist imperialism, analysed and explained by Lenin at the turn of the 20th Century, means unceasing Wars for raw materials, natural resources, and installing client regimes that bend to the will of imperialism. Now the DisUS imperialists are actively targeting the regimes in both Moscow and Bejing for overthrow, up to and including War if necessary. We have an undeclared WW3 going on in Ukraine between Russia and NATO, with the American imperialists pulling all the strings. Only Socialist Revolution in the DisUS and one or more of the key imperialist countries like Germany & Britain can alter the balance of forces decisively and move the world in the right, that is the Socialist, direction. Socialist Revolution must also come to capitalist Russia and Stalinist China. Unless and until such major political upheavals occur, the world remains on course for extinction in a nuclear WW3. Trump and Putin are both psychopaths who think nothing of mass murder and global destruction if it means clinging on to their wealth, power, & privilege.
Um. How can YOU equate Bumbling narcistic Trump with Putin.
After this China summit: who thinks US has any brain.
What the problem is here: Culturally US is a desert..............money rules.
Whilst the US bombs ancient countries 'back to the Stone Age' you forget that others in this world DO have ancient culture and the US cannot understand this.
I think you were aiming for "narcissistic." Putin is just as much of a psychopath as Trump although he does have greater intelligence, sophistication, and discretion. There is no doubt the American ruling class is extraordinarily degenerate, decadent, corrupt, and ill-educated. Trump is the embodiment of the descent of the American ruling class into open gangsterism and criminality. Previously, they kept most of their dirty deeds and plots under wraps. It poses the greatest threat to the world because it possesses the biggest nuclear arsenal, and with a madman like Trump in control of the nuclear codes, anything can happen. But Putin is a ruthless capitalist oligarch too, presiding over a Russian regime of gangster oligarchs. Working class people in Russia need to fight for Socialist Revolution (again) just as much as the American working class.
Hear, hear. I agree completely.
All better, now?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-200645203