Posted on 12/26/2022 6:55:05 AM PST by MarMema
My short answer to the question — Yes! I received an interesting response to my request for opinions on what constitutes the “Endgame” in Ukraine from a man named Matt. Here is his analysis:
The end game is to diminish/weaken Russia. The US has determined they cannot fight and win a war against both China and Russia. The US and it’s allies have sought to pick off the weaker of the two. The longer the US bleeds out Russia, via Ukraine, the better. Not all NATO (think Germany) were onboard with the plan. Hence, NATO starts talks with Ukraine about joining. Such talk provoked a response from Russia. Blowing up Nordstream forced Germany fully on board. The US/NATO will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. NATO weakens Russia; US clears the decks to more capably deal with China; arms manufacturers make money, and politicians skim money here and there. The way the conflict is currently postured, this can go on for some time, all of which benefits US/NATO. Last thought, the EU will need to take laboring oar on rebuild. Current projections are $1 trillion and rising. EU will need to issue bonds. Interest rates currently too high. Plus, you get into problems between the rich northern countries, and poorer southern countries ((PIGS)). The US won’t publicly announce they win by weakening Russia, by taking away a Chinese ally, and saddling Europe with a generation of debt, but that seems to be happening. What do you think?
My response — “Matt, Thank you for taking the time to write something thoughtful. I think the facts on the ground contradict you. For example, the US economy is in recession with the added whammy of inflation. Russia’s economy is growing not shrinking. It is the United States that cannot supply Ukraine with an adequate supply of artillery rounds and HIMMARs. Russia by contrast is not running out of weapons/missiles. It continues to fire and hit targets in Ukraine. It is the US that is bleeding out. Why do you believe that the US is so strong militarily? We no longer meet recruiting goals and the military leadership is more worried about proper pronouns rather than a competent military.”
I think Matt is correct observed that the original plan of the United States and NATO was to “bleed out” Russia. The phrase, “bleed out,” refers to an arterial wound that cannot be staunched. A person with such a wound will die within four minutes if the bleeding is not stopped. Only one little problem — Russia ain’t bleeding; it is NATO and the United States that are hemorrhaging.
The Wall Street Journal published a news item this week making this very point, Europe Is Rushing Arms to Ukraine but Running Out of Ammo:
Europe, home to some of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers, is struggling to produce enough ammunition for Ukraine and for itself, jeopardizing NATO’s defense capacity and its support for Kyiv, officials and industry leaders say.
A lack of production capacity, a dearth of specialized workers, supply-chain bottlenecks, high costs of financing and even environmental regulations are putting a brake on efforts to increase output, presenting the West and Ukraine with a fresh challenge for next year.
The United States and its European allies have been deceived by their use of military force over the last 30 years. They have never had to fight a peer nation with the capability to produce all of its own military equipment that is on par with what the West relies on. They have deployed their military forces against ill-equipped, poorly trained armies that lacked air power and effective artillery and tank forces. The United States and NATO were lulled into a state of complacency.
Compounding the problem was the decision of the West to shift much of its manufacturing capability to foreign countries. American can no longer do what it did in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, when the United States switched its massive industrial base into manufacturing tanks, planes, ammunition, battleships and air craft carriers. Modern day America specializes in producing grotesquely expensive, unreliable weapons that take months and years to appear on a battlefield.
This also is an intelligence failure. It appears the CIA bought into the nonsense that Russia had a small, weak economy and would crumbled in the face of Western sanctions. A real analyst would have raised the fact that sanctions, historically, have been ineffective in forcing regime change. Cuba and Iran are primary examples. It looks like the CIA donned its cheerleading uniform, complete with Blue and Yellow pom poms, and parroted the lie that Russia could not produce the rockets, artillery shells and precision missiles to support a long war. We are ten months into Russia’s “Special Military Operation” and they continue to shred Ukraine’s troops and infrastructure like a lethal Energizer Bunny — those pesky Rooskies keep going and going.
We enter the New Year under a dark and dangerous cloud. The failure of the United States and NATO to stop Russia may lead the Western alliance to act with more desperation and recklessness. Russia, for its part, admitted as much this week and is taking steps to bulk up its forces in the event this escalates into a World War. I continue to pray for peace, but there are no Western leaders embracing that approach. They are pinning their hopes on getting rid of Vladimir Putin without taking a moment to consider that Putin’s replacement would likely be more nationalistic and less inclined to negotiate. We are living in an historic, epochal moment that likely signifies the beginning of the end of American dominance in world affairs.
Yes.
Compounding the problem was the decision of the West to shift much of its manufacturing capability to foreign countries. American can no longer do what it did in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, when the United States switched its massive industrial base into manufacturing tanks, planes, ammunition, battleships and air craft carriers. Modern day America specializes in producing grotesquely expensive, unreliable weapons that take months and years to appear on a battlefield.
Putin is being forced to upgrade Russian weapons systems and manufacturing capability.
Can you imagine the Russians pulling their museum T-55s and older model tanks out of retirement and winning this because the Ukes ran out of anti armor weapons? It would look like the 1950s all over again with their tanks rumbling down Kiev in operational relics. I predict the U.S. and NATO will show their backsides to the Ukes.
The plus side of this will be the Black Sea fleet will have to evacuate Sevastopol or be destroyed. Furthermore, when Sweden and Finland join NATO, the Baltic Sea becomes a NATO Lake. It will be interesting if the Baltic fleet relocates to Murmansk or the pacific.
Quantity has a quality all it's own.
--Joe Steele
I still believe that this was about switching the center of the “eastern orbit” from Moscow to Kiev.
I don’t think NATO has any strategy. They do whatever their American masters tell them and I see no evidence that American Oligarchs are particularly smart.
The problem is that our MIC is geared towards either providing force sustainment in far off places [building bases and things] or high tech gadgetry so we don't get anywhere near the kinetic war [except for some poor grunts who get caught in the cross fire because of those pesky inurgents disguised as friendly civilians].
We are not geared up for intense fighting along a battlefront with a peer who has lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of rather inexpensive artillery to shoot across the other side of the FEBA.
We are revisiting WWI like warfare only it is our side that chose to dig themselves into trenches and fortifications.
How does this work when our nuclear startegy tries to assure itself that the Russian leadership will pay the price in the event of nuclear armageddon? What do our leaders think the counterstrategy looks like? Or do we think that the world's greatest chess players don't think about countermoves? Probably since our leadership plays shoots and ladders.
Don’t make me tap the sign:
“If a headline ends in a question mark, the answer to the question is always ‘No’.”
Is Biden partnering with Putin on Iran part of this “bleed Russia” strategy? How about Germany building those giant gas pipes to Russia? Also to “bleed Russia”?
Arrogant, greedy, ideological neocons and globalists in DC live in a fantasy world, but we will suffer the consequences
its one of the ultimate and unavoidable contradictions of running a globalist empire and world reserve currency. A nation running a world reserve currency and financial/economic empire needs to send increasing amounts of jobs, industry and US Dollars overseas. At some point, that process becomes self-defeating.
Putin rules over an economic and social system that is incapable of sustained competence in any field.
OK, let's see if I correctly understand your meaning.
The US-Western Europe (EU)-NATO-Globalist group (and their Western Media Propaganda Arm) desired to try to shift Economic, Business and Natural Resource orientation and control of Eastern European nations from Moscow to America oriented Kiev.
To do so, the West first subverted Kiev to Western control by operations to remove Russian influence from Kiev and finally a complete Maidan Coup installed government.
Then the unexpected problem of Crimea choosing Russia and Donetsk and Luhansk Regions choosing independence.
Finally, Russia goes to war in support of the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions and it all turns to crap, Kiev will not be the American controlled center of "the Eastern Orbit" for Eastern European Nations.
Have I got that right, or do I misunderstand you?
Fully Agree.
Like the other Thomas, Sowell is a traitor to his “race” by selling out to white racist western logic.
Fielding of weapons became a lost art. Even paying attention to the Air Defense leapfrog by the Russians and Chinese, which we are seeing chew up Ukraine and NATO support weapons, became too much trouble. Now the Russians are exposing the paper tiger of American and NATO military power as they “demilaratize” us as well as Ukraine. Our response to the huge new challenge to carrier groups and old fashioned manned bombers is the Idiotic B 21. We are strangled by past legends, an arrogant assumption of continued postwar hegemony, and are sliding towards becoming a 2nd rate power.
Whatever US staff planned the support operation for Ukraine should be shot. We sent them the wrong armaments (lacking the right ones) and sat by while they ran through all the warehoused support we had like a drunken teenager. Now we can no longer support them. And they are hanging on the ropes.
After Napoleon, the Russians are the best artillerymen in the world. This war was always going to come down to artillery. And we sent them a air deliverable special operations design basic howitzer M777 that wasn’t tough enough for the job and easily disabled from excessive use and then ran out of ammo. We should have seen all this coming up front. We not only proceeded on an arrogant basis without proper study, We knew we were in an industrial war and that was a game we couldn’t play for long. This was a military catastrophe from the beginning....
https://sonar21.com/the-war-in-ukraine-has-exposed-the-weakness-of-the-u-s-military/
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