Ukraine Blog 61 – World War III
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
Yes, you read it well in the title. Quite a catcher, right? Well, on a more serious note, the ones that read my earlier blogs know that I always considered the start of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, the start of World War III. During the past two months, we are now really starting to see this being operationalized. We start to see who the players will be on the bad side, what the root causes are for this and that everything will get much worse in case the West doesn't finally wake up. And no, this will not go nuclear (for the doom thinkers amongst you)
The main reasons for where we are right now, are as follows:
A. Western weakness/appeasement: The
Biden government over the past two months, showed multiple acts of weakness and
appeasement reminiscent of the disastrous Obama years.
1. What is happening in the U.S.
congress right now, is absolutely disastrous for the U.S. reputation and
commitment to what’s so far the worst global crisis in the 21st century. Not
only is Ukrainian aid exempt from the deal to avert a shutdown of the U.S.
government, an inner rebellion of a small group of Pro-Kremlin Republicans,
resulted in the first ever ouster of a U.S. speaker of the House.
2. The first point is disastrous, but
the Biden government, together with appeasement knights like Olaf Scholz and
Emmanuel Macron really made very dangerous and weak statements about
postponement or even cancellation of crucial allied arms deliveries like the
ATACMS and Taurus cruise missiles and F-16’s.
3. However, the most dangerous act of
appeasement was not picked up en masse by the mainstream media. The Biden
administration paid 6 billion USD dollars!!! in ransom to free five Americans
that were held captive by the despicable Mullah regime in Iran.
Iran
Prisoner Swap Gives Tehran $6 Billion. How Will It Be Spent? - WSJ
B. Necessity: Where Iran is already for
years on the brink of bankruptcy and the regime rules there with terror, for
its foreign military adventures, it could always count on support from Moscow’s
logistics as seen by the deployments in Syria. However, on multiple fronts, the
Russians start to get into serious visible problems for the first time right
now.
1. No matter what the Russian
government does, either injecting money from the national wealth fund or raise
the general interest rate, the Rubble keeps tanking. In addition the export of critical
processed petroleum products is suspended and Ukraine by blasting the Black Sea
fleet and retaking critical oil riggs has secured once again access to the
Black Sea (and practically closed of Russia’s). As Joe Blogs predicted multiple
times based on figures from Russia’s own finance ministry. By the end of 2024
Russia will run out of cash at the current rate.
2. Russia’s arms storages become
notably emptier. At some storage facilities there’s still equipment, but not
movement, which means the only thing left behind is likely scrap. Thanks to Perun’s
and Covert Cabal’s excellent studies, we know that Russia is able to produce
some new military equipment, but a month’s production nowhere near enough to
make up for the horrendous losses suffered per day by the Russian armed forces.
Whereas Iran and North-Korea will be able to supply artillery ammunition for
the foreseeable time, those countries will not export their artillery barrels
to Russia since they are needed by their own militaries. This means that we are
seriously heading to a situation where Russia’s conventional arms stocks become
empty.
Russian Defence Production
2023 - Can Russia keep up with equipment attrition in Ukraine? - YouTube
Can Ukraine Stop Russian
Artillery? Is it Possible for Russia to Run Out? - YouTube
I’m convinced that the pure necessity and opportunity convinced Vladimir Putin in Russia and Ali Khamenei in Iran that now the time is there for significant escalations across a wide number of fronts. They think they can win by causing as much chaos as possible across the globe with a West that shows ultimate weakness and yeah, Putin and Khamenei are not wrong in their assessment. Actually, from their point of view, it makes real sense that Russia and Iran start their escalation right now.
My initial assessment is that this World
War III in the current stage has much more in common with World War I than
World War II. Just like World War I,
1. We have one giant frontline in
Europe where combat seems to be mostly at an impasse (“seems,” but that’s food
for the next blog).
2. Multiple smaller fronts seem to pop up in Africa and the Middle East, with limited or no theaters in East-Asia And the America’s.
The composition of the “bad guys”
looks more like the Axis of World War II. This new Axis of Resistance (how they
like to call themselves) has two main players that operate in conjunction, but
just like Nazi Germany and Japan have different objectives:
1. Russia
2. Iran
The support nations that operate
more along the supporting/following line of World War II Croatia, Romania and
Italy are:
1. Belarus
2. Syria
3. North-Korea
4. Various African nations with Wagner
installed or Wagner supporting regimes
a.
Mali
b.
Burkina
Faso
c.
Niger
d.
Central
African Republic
e. Sudan (Rapid Support Forces operated by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti”)
I know that a lot of you expect
China to appear on this list. Although I’m convinced that China definitely has
the intentions to attack Taiwan, they
1. Know they don’t have the power to do
that yet.
2. Have very serious doubts about the survivability of Russia. China knows Russia is at its weakest point in hundreds of years when it comes to military and economic power. China is quietly waiting out how the position of Russia plays out. Unfortunately, I think the 21st century will have two world wars, just like the 20th century.
So with the players in place, let’s
have a look at all the hot spots:
1. Israel versus Iran Proxies: the
conflict that was on everybody’s lips for the past two days. Every aspect of
the Hamas attack bears the hallmark of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC), the planning, the sophistication and most of all the brutality. What
happened over the past couple of days is unlike anything we have seen before in
the 75 year old conflict. Mass casualty attacks on the Israeli proper, this is
unheard of. Usually Israel started to bomb the hell out of Gaza if a lonely Hamas
rocket killed one Israeli. I’m convinced Iran wants a big regional war to
rearrange all the decks of cards. Just like Putin sees Ukraine as his big
escalation moment, Iran sees a frontal attack on Israel as the same after
seeing confirmation of the weakness of the Biden administration. Although we
have seen for the first time in 50 years a state of war in Israel, I’m
convinced the Iranian regime is going for a cautious approach:
a.
I
think Iran anticipated a bigger success of Hamas in the south (a total collapse
and involvement of West Bank Palestinians)
b.
The
Americans deployed USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group in front of the
Israeli coast and created a small air bridge to provide Israel with the most
needed weapons (also for the first time since the Yom Kippur war of 1973). I
think Iran’s plan still is to launch an attack on Israel from multiple fronts,
in addition to Gaza, Hezbollah from the north and even the involvement of the
Syrian regime. I think the strike group the Americans deployed and Israel's
reestablishment of control on the Southern border is currently the main
deterrent to deploy Hezbollah and the Syrians.
That Russia is at least aware to what’s
happening is that it contributes to the bizarre story that Western supplied Ukrainian
weapons ended up at the hands of Hamas. It’s very likely Russia supplied Hamas
with Western weapons it captured in Ukraine. Israel at least didn’t took the
bait:
2. Armenia versus Azerbaijan: Many
people state that Azerbaijan re-took control of the Armenian populated
Nagorno-Karabakh enclave because of Russia’s weakness. I think this is very
much according to Russia’s plan, lose Nagorno-Karabakh, create Armenian
domestic unrest and use that unrest to oust the current government that wants to
leave the Russian orbit to bring it firmly back under Moscow’s control.
3. The ECOWAS front (Mali, Burkina Faso
and Niger): Where coup d'états were very common in Africa in the seventies and
eighties of the 20th century, coups were increasingly rare during the past
twenty years. However, over the past three years, many coups took place in the
nations that are members of the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS) block. In all these nations regimes were installed that immediately
started to bring in a large number of Russian Wagner PMC mercenary forces.
Officially to fight Al Qaeda and ISIS forces, but very clearly to cement
Russia’s influence. Where we should absolutely use all the forces we have there
to fight Wagner and the regimes there, instead UN and French forces are
withdrawing from Mali and Niger.
4. Central African Republic: Same
situation as the ECOWAS nations, but Wagner doesn’t fight Islamist groups, but
a wide range of rebel groups.
5. Sudan: This is a very complex
conflict between the Sudanese Armed forces (SAF) led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan
on one side and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by the earlier mentioned “Hemedti”
on the other side. I can write multiple blogs about Sudan, but I would like to
focus on the fact that “Hemedti” asked the Wagner group for support to fight
against the SAF, reportedly promising access to Sudan’s natural resources in
case of an RSF/Wagner victory.
6. Romania/Baltics/Finland: I’m very
convinced Putin wants to “test” NATO’s article 5 soon. The political situation
in the U.S. and the election of his friend Robert Fico as once again
prime-minister to be in Slovakia is sufficient evidence for him that the block
is sufficiently divided to test the resolve of the alliance by actions like
a.
Sending
drones even deeper into Romania than the previous incidents
b.
Provoke
border incidents with the Baltic states
c.
Attack
crucial undersea cable or pipeline infrastructure in the Baltic Sea
It’s only to hope that NATO responds firmly in such an event. When
showing more weakness, Putin will escalate absolutely further.
7. Balkans/Serbia: a little bit of an
outlier. I don’t consider Serbia to be firm part of the Axis of Resistance, but
I think it’s totally plausible that the Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić will
answer to calls from Moscow to cause some chaos for Putin with potentially something
to gain.
8. North-Korea: Although I don’t expect North-Korea to join in an attack on South-Korea, there's now hard evidence that the isolated nation started to supply serious quantities of ammunition to Russia. According to my calculations Russia almost completely burned through its stockpile of 16 million tons of artillery shells. Even though North-Korea’s shells are known for their high failure rate (50 percent), a supply of a couple of million shells (and the North is suspected to have more than 21 million shells) makes sure that Russia can prolong the war by at least a couple of months.
It’s very clear for me that Russia is absolutely unable to execute a major offensive war at this moment, but in Putin’s head this is still possible. And who knows, with a divided West that is sleeping, he actually might have more than a chance to succeed.
The only ones that are not sleeping
are the Ukrainians. They are the only militarily powerful nation that knows the
true effect of appeasing Putin. The only nation that is now actively
encountering the Wagnerites in Mali and Sudan, is Ukraine. This leads to
bizarre situations where we see things like
1. Drones hitting RSF vehicles in Sudan
with the trademark accuracy of Ukraine’s drone operators
2. Twitter messages by Bedouin rebel
groups who want to form their own state Azawad in Northern Mali in Ukrainian
and Tamasheq (the Bedouin language)
I’m convinced that Ukraine silently submitted to the fact that it’s seriously possible that the West will force them into negotiations or will bail out on providing aid. Going into negotiations with Putin is simply not an option for Ukraine. That’s why you see increasingly messages where Ukrainian defense companies set up partnerships with Western companies to produce weapons or weapons components together in Ukraine itself.
Ukraine lures Western weapons makers to transform defence industry | Reuters
I think the West will eventually wake up, the war in Ukraine shows Western military equipment and tactics are not still, but increasingly superior to old Soviet tactics and equipment. It’s just a question when the West wakes up. Unfortunately when looking at both World Wars, Europe was and still is dependent on the United States. Not that I want to imply something, but in World War I the sinking of the RMS Lusitania and in World War II the bombing of Pearl Harbor were needed to finally wake the politicians in Washington. What will it take to wake them up this time…
Слава Україні!
Niels
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