Authored by Pepe Escobar,
Let’s start with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Road to Damascus moment:
“Frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers, the United States helping Ukraine and Russia, and it needs to come to an end”.
Now that’s a howler. Jeffrey Sachs to the rescue. Of course, the correct formulation would be “proxy war launched by the United States”. But still: Hallelujah! Such illumination – by proxy – from Heavens Above could never had hit the previous American Secretary of Genocide.
Now cut to panic. Total European panic.
Le Petit Roi, as popular in France as nighttime mosquitoes in a five-star beach resort, has declared that peace in Europe is only possible with a “tamed” Russia – and that Russia is a direct threat to France and Europe.
On Ukraine, he pontificated that peace simply cannot take place under Russian terms or via the – inevitable – Ukrainian surrender.
Le breathless Petit Roi literally went nuclear. He stressed that France possesses a nuclear deterrent – and offered it to the rest of Europe, while insisting that Europe’s future should not be dictated by Moscow or Washington.
Le Petit Roi napoleonically all but declared war on Russia. Well, the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of France would gladly agree that mini-Napoleon should be dispatched to the battlefields in the black soil of Novorossiya right away – where he would surrender in less than 5 minutes, waving a rainbow flag, as he realizes he’s about to be turned into an instant steak tartare.
Now couple this Moliere farce with the fate of the much larger, fatter, pan-European New Model Woke Army regimented by the Fuhrerin SS von der Lugen out of Brussels, allegedly to be financed to the tune of 800 billion euros – money that no one has, and would have to be loaned then repaid with sky-high extorsion interest rates to the usual international financial system vultures.
SS von der Lugen insists Europe is in danger, so the solution is a massive expansion of the military-industrial complex – in practice, buying more overpriced American weapons – and “rearmament”.
Talk about Gotterdammerung on crack.
Were the New Model Woke Army ever come to light, surrender would also be a matter of less than 5 minutes – brandishing rainbow flags – as its woke warriors would face the dire prospect of being Oreshniked to a pile of charcoal grilled burgers.
Add to it the Return of the Nord Stream Saga – with a new plot twist. Sy Hersh conclusively proved that the Nord Streams were bombed under orders of the previous Crash Test Dummy regime in Washington. Now Nord Stream 2, at least, could be back in business via a not-so-secret U.S.-Russia deal involving Gazprom and American oligarchs.
All that while fanatics in Berlin assure right and left they want to explore every possible way to prevent (italics mine) the Nord Stream system from being repaired – because after all no one, especially the new BlackRock chancellor, can deviate from the official policy of destroying the German economy by all means necessary.
Compounding the Kafkaesque scenario, the Prime Minister of Denmark – which is on the brink of losing Greenland “one way or another” to Trump 2.0 – immortalized the words, “peace in Ukraine will be more dangerous than war.” The Polish Prime Minister did not miss a beat, adding that “Europe is stronger than Russia and capable of winning in any military, financial, or economic confrontation.” Europe is in such a “winning” streak now – as the record shows.
All this discombobulated Tower of Babel proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that Europe is geopolitically – and geoeconomically – dead and buried. No Teutonic Gods – complete with fat lady singin’ – will be able to resurrect it.
Flirting with a one-way ticket back to the Stone Age
The notion that Europe is able to pose a military threat to Russia does not even qualify as trashy propaganda for sub-zero IQs. It would take at least a decade to re-militarize Germany as its economy is moribund, serially stabbed by unmanageable energy costs. Russia for its part is protected from a possible nuclear attack by Le Petit Roi’s puny “umbrella” arsenal by the most sophisticated missile defenses in the world.
The Aegis defensive missiles in Poland are relatively worthless – even if their prime danger to Russia remains that the system can be converted to handle offensive missiles. As a whole, the Aegis, Patriot, THAAD-PAC-3, SBIR-HIGH Ground Based Infrared Systems are all relatively useless.
Other than the U.S., NATO simply has no military worth. And Washington under Trump 2.0 simply will not be involved in the next European War.
The U.S. has satellite systems for targeting but no one else in NATO has them. With the U.S. pulling out, and in the event of a hypothetical von der Lugen-led New Woke Army attack against Russia, Russian missiles can knock out all European ports, airports and manufacturing and energy systems in a day max – instantly returning Europe to the stone age.
This applies to England, France, Germany, not to mention assorted chihuahuas: all of NATO. Russia can knock out all British power systems with Zircons launched from a conventional submarine. Stone Age, here we come. Russian hypersonic missiles cannot be intercepted.
Meanwhile, President Putin insists on talking sense to lunatics. At the Collegia of the FSB on February 27, he noted how, “some Western elites are still determined to maintain instability in the world, and these forces will try to disrupt and compromise the dialogue [with the U.S.] that has begun. We see this. We need to take this into account and use all the possibilities of diplomacy and special services to disrupt such attempts.”
As Andrei Martyanov has noted, superpowers have “only two options in the 21st century: either start WWIII which will end with nuclear exchange or find a modus vivendi.” That’s a conversation for adults that automatically excludes the European hospice and the childish tantrums of the cracked actor in Kiev.
The cracked actor never had any (italics mine) cards. He now cuts a pathetic figure, doing somersaults to cling to power, propped by (former) collective West money, weapons and massive propaganda. Now the 404 nation he “created” is losing not only the war but the P.R. war as well.
The former adviser to the head of Zelensky’s office, Oleksiy Arestovych, as slimy as they come, but always with his pulse on reliable info, is convinced that the Ukrainian Army, blind and cross-eyed, can hold out at best for another one and a half to two months without all those American goodies. Without intel data, Kiev’s forces cannot prepare strikes against the Russian federation or conduct reconnaissance and cyber ops.
Country 404 as a whole is now entering Walking Dead territory. Europe, with or without its SS von der Lugen Invincible Armada, does not have the industrial capacity, the financial might, and the military capability to stop the debacle. Russia has already stated that any European “peacekeeping” troops will immediately become legitimate targets.
The spectacular failure of Project Ukraine is a sight to behold. It’s no wonder the current, tawdry, ghastly political “elites” are in total panic. Without Project Ukraine, and without the Mafia protection of His Master’s Voice, they are just, geopolitically, an irrelevant, post-colonial small peninsula on the western borders of fast-integrating Eurasia.
As for Trump 2.0 and the Kremlin already having hit some sort of pre-deal – even before the start of serious negotiations – there’s no evidence yet to corroborate it. According to Russian intel sources, what has been struck is a general agreement on the framework of discussions, and what can be achieved in practice. This initial stage will last at least a few months.
Themes on the table range from lifting sanctions on Russian banks and the use of MIR cards to restoring direct flights and curbing the militarization of the Arctic.
Everything essentially hinges on whether Trump wants – and is able to ensure – a fast endgame in Ukraine while disengaging, slowly but surely, from NATO.
Considering what seems to be his strategic direction, Trump wants to make sure he won’t have to offer Mafia protection to European NATO members if they insist on keep going with their Forever War against Russia. It’s clear that shutting off Starlink and shutting off satellite ISR would lead to a much faster endgame in the battlefield.
The SMO, meanwhile, will keep rollin’ on. And as the Europeans want it, to the last Ukrainian.
