Bad Assumptions, Bad Results

Easily, lightheartedly, stupidly –

if you don’t know anything, everything looks easy.

False assumptions and false history explain how Washington and the NATO it controls got into this mess.

1. Assumed Russian economic weakness. They believed that the Russian economy was weak, easily demolished and that Putin’s rule was based on sharing the loot with underbosses. Sanctions would cripple the economy and cut the underbosses’ takings and they would get rid of Putin and that would be that. Maybe Russia itself would break up. “Cripple the economy”, “Ruble to Rubble“.

2. Assumed Russian battlefield incompetence. They swallowed the “Three Alibis“. Russians were no good at war and only beat the Germans because Hitler made stupid decisions, it was cold and they had endless manpower resources. The work of David Glantz’s team was forgotten.

3. Assumed NATO superiority. They believed that NATO training, weapons and everything else were wonderful, superior and “game changers” – ooh, so powerful! Russian weapons were junk, they were running out of them, superior NATO training and weapons would make the disheartened and untrained Russian oafs run screaming in terror.

4. Bad history. They swallowed the postwar falsification of history – captive nations, “communist subjugation of free people” – all Nazis were Germans and Hitler drove the trains. Nazi collaborators became brave freedom fighters who dreamed of the American Way. We knowingly let Nazis into our countries? No way. So when Putin talked of Nazis in Ukraine, they knew he was just making it up.

All wrong.

And so they bet the farm on an innocent “captive nation”, yearning to be a democracy just like us, which was attacked by a clumsy, stupid mass army of imperialist incompetents from a country with a feeble economy and unstable politics. No wonder it all looked so easy.

Russia hasn’t collapsed, run out of weapons, the ruble isn’t rubble and Putin is still there. The Russian economy, says the IMF, grew more than any G7 country last year and its military, says General Cavoli, is stronger and those who were then sure that “Putin is finished”, now tremble for their foundations. And maybe NATO has ruined itself.

Have they learned anything? Let’s ask Victoria Nuland who is just returned to Kiev for the tenth anniversary of gluing the thing together. Nope. Failure.

If you start with imaginary assumptions, you’ll get imaginary results. As they say in German “Putin wurde brutal unterschätzt.”

(NOTE. Regarding Nuland’s failure. Yes, I do understand that she and the group she represents don’t care how many Ukrainians are sacrificed in the project of weakening Russia. But the outcome of their ten years’ plotting is that Russia has become stronger and US/NATO has become weaker. That is failure. On the other hand, the EU is f—ed. So partial props to her. One is left to wonder which outcome was more important to the neocons.)

(ANOTHER NOTE. Sites like this are dedicated to what used to be called “intelligence”. Which, in the simplest terms, is trying to figure out how the other side perceives and reacts to things. These days, however, this is condemned as “Putin-apologizing” and is blocked. The bosses just want to hear what they want to hear. And so we admire our reflection in a cracked mirror illuminated by a flickering ten-watt bulb.)