There’s a lot of nonsense going around, including talk of Russia losing the war because, less than five days into the war, they haven’t conquered Ukraine.

The German blitz of Poland took five weeks. The conquest of France took six weeks — and people were astonished. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe except for Russia itself.

The sources I respect say that Russia is taking losses, but the war is not in question, and they are advancing about as fast as the US did into Iraq. Russia will win the war, though they may take more damage than they expected (but as we have no idea what they expected, who knows?). Ukraine is a modern equipped army; it isn’t Iraq with obsolete equipment, or Libya, or Afghanistan.

The question is not whether Russia wins the war, it is who wins the peace.

What the US and Europe want is to turn Ukraine into a guerilla quagmire, like Afghanistan in the 80s, or like Iraq and Afghanistan were for the US.

What Russia wants is to turn Ukraine into a guaranteed neutral state and withdraw its troops out of the country, minus Donbas and Luhansk.

The good result for the Ukraine, which most Westerners don’t seem to get, is what the Russians want. Austria was neutral in the Cold War, and that was not horrid. A multi-year guerilla campaign will devastate Ukraine in ways that will take generations from which to recover, because if the Russians have to fight an insurgency, they will be utterly brutal, as they were in Chechnya (successfully).

Moralist yapping about “the right to choose” is off the board. The only good result for Ukraine and Ukrainians is a negotiated settlement. The West egged them on and left them to swing, as the smart people said they would.

This video, predicting this situation in 2015, is pretty much required watching.

As for the economic consequences for Russia due to sanctions, it depends on what they are. If they are stopped from selling oil, natural gas, and wheat to the West, that will hurt. Sanctions less severe than that will be painful, but not crippling.

The problem here is China. For the last six years or so, the US has declared that China is an enemy. They used sanctions to cripple the most important tech company in China, Huawei, and have slapped sanctions and tariffs on China.

Chinese leadership sees a confrontation with the US as inevitable. They had hoped to keep good relations with Europe, but European countries have bowed to US pressure to shut out Huawei based on jingoistic claims that “they’ll spy on you,” which is hilarious. “Instead of us being able to see all your info, the Chinese will!”

China needs Russia’s resources: oil, wheat, and minerals. They know that they can be cut off from most other sources, but because of geography, and because Russia needs China, Russia is a safe supplier. In turn, China can let Russia into their SWIFT equivalent, finance them, and sell that almost every manufactured good they need, with a few exceptions (primarily semiconductor based, but China’s working on that).

Further, to let Russia fall would mean that China would be encircled. The CCP isn’t that stupid.

Basically, the West wants to use sanctions to “choke out” Russia, but China believes the West will then want to use sanctions to choke them out. If they let Russia go down, they’re next (they’re next either way, really, but they can have a major ally or not).

What the US has succeeded in doing is making Europe choose to turn their back not just on Russia, but, inevitably, on China as well.

This is a strong cold war coalition (Cold War is our future, as I have been saying for about four years now), but notice that it is not as strong as the previous cold war, because China is now the primary manufacturing power and the most populous nation, not the US.

Most of Africa, the Middle East, and South America is staying out of this. Even India refused to vote against Russia in the Security Council. Three of the four gulf states refused to vote against Russia, and, in the UN general assembly, the West is struggling to get 50 percent to vote against Russia.

In the West, we have a huge propaganda bubble going on — “Russia is the worst ever, blah, blah, blah.” What they have done is certainly a crime, but no one outside the bubble can take American and European whinging seriously; they remember Iraq, and Libya, and know that the US still occupies Syrian oil fields, while US ally Saudi Arabia bombs the hell out of Yemen, and Israel has annexed land from neighbouring states (supposedly Russia’s great crime).

Russia has done something bad, but this is not about morality. It is about power. Only the US and its allies are supposed to be able to do what Russia is doing, and people outside the Western bubble recognize this hypocrisy.

The Chinese Embassy in Russia tweeted this:

Indians I follow are noting that Russia has been a firm friend to India since independence, and that the US and Europe have not been.

So the question here is whether or not Russia gets drawn into a guerilla quagmire. If it doesn’t, the question then becomes: How hard will the sanctions hit? In the medium to long term, this leads down the road to two separate economic and political regions and a new cold war, as I have been stating for years.

Despite the hysteria, nothing here is surprising. Russia asked for Ukraine as neutral and security guarantees, and didn’t get them. So they invaded, exactly as I wrote (in advance) was likely. Measheimer predicted this in 2015 (video above), and George Kennan, the architect of the Cold War containment policy, noted that NATO expansion would lead to this back in the 90s.

Russia is not Iraq. It is not Iran. It is not Venezuela. It is not Libya. It cannot be treated as minor state who can be choked out by the West at the West’s whim, especially not when the US has been stupid enough to tell China it is also an enemy.

Even in realpolitik terms, telling both Russia and China they are your enemy, at the same time, is breathtakingly stupid.

If you want the best for Ukraine, hope they negotiate soon. The longer they wait, the weaker their negotiating position. The best case for Ukraine is now (as it was three months ago) an Austrian-style neutrality agreement. There will be overflights and inspections, but that’s just how it’s going to be.

The world, outside the West and some of its closest allies, is not in hysteria about this. They recognize it’s aggressive war, but they do not see that what Russia has done is worse than American and European behavior over the last 20 years. Indeed, at least so far, and unless the US gets its wish for a guerilla quagmire, this is not nearly as bad as Iraq.

So relax and take a deep breath. This is bad, and there is a tiny chance of a miscalculation that will kill us all in nuclear armageddon. But, mostly, this is just geopolitics playing out as anyone with sense knew it would. The US has split Europe from Russia — and soon China and Russia will be strong allies, and a new cold war will occur, though how soon this will be crystal clear to everyone is, well, unclear.

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