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Comment by Auslander
Our world is slowly, actually in the last month not so slowly, approaching the active continuation of the war that started in 1914. While there have been interludes of relative ‘peace’, read the main antagonists were not bayoneting each other by the tens of thousands daily, reality is there has been no peace since that fateful day in 1914.
The fall of the Russian Empire, to a more or less great extent by it’s own hand, was one of the main events of that war and this destruction effectively negated any Russian influence in world events for a generation during which time all the protagonists managed to grow another generation of fighting age men. Looking back from the relatively clear vision of a century, one can see that the second part of this war was inflicted on themselves by the supposed victors of the first active phase of the war with their draconian sanctions and reparations pushed on Germany and Austria. The ‘victors’ certainly harvested what they had sown and in spades, as did most of the northern hemisphere of this rock we are on.
Through the three decades after the second active phase of the 1914 war, massive rebuilding was done in all the continental areas of the fighting and in China and Japan. Entire cultures had been flattened and some completely wiped out, never to return, in the first two active phases of the war. Such is war which saw England die on Flanders fields, France had died on the retreat from Moskau in 1812, bayoneted yet again in the 1870’s and effectively destroyed at Verdun. Russia was prostrate after 1918, rebuilt herself by the 1930’s and attacked again in 1941, being almost totally destroyed from Moskau west to the borders of ‘olde Europe’ by 1945. Reality is USA was the only one standing in 1945, Europe, North Afrika, Japan and China were destroyed.
In the ensuing ‘peace’, aka Pax Rossiya, of 1954 to 1990, Europe, Russia and Japan rebuilt themselves from the ground up. Both Russia and US occupied Europe and US occupied Japan, US still occupying these areas, Russia having withdrawn when SSSR disintegrated around 1990. In the ensuing 25 years since SSSR ceased to exist, Russia has pulled herself up by her boot straps and to a fair extent stopped the wholesale looting and plundering of former SSSR riches and resources.
In the meantime, US has, against all guaranties given to SSSR and Russia, expanded nato to the very borders of Russia and has actively engaged Russia in several fronts, most recent in Gruzya and Syria. The Gruzya war was short and a lesson to both us/nato and Russia. Now, at the request of the legal government of Syria, Russia has stepped in to stop the ‘civil’ war, read attempt to destroy and fragment Syria, and to a large extent defeated ISIL (or whatever name they go by on this day) and pushed us/nato away from the main population centers of Syria. The cost has been horrendous but there is a glimmer of victory, and peace, on the horizon.
Us/nato have done their very best to negate Russia’s efforts in Syria and the success of President Putin in stopping any possibility of war and occupation by us/nato of Krimea and Sevastopol, both entities being the prize of the coup in Kiev in 2014. As a result of President Putin’s success in these two agendas and President Putin stopping the genocide and destruction of Novorossiya, to some ‘Donbas’, us/nato are now fully committed to war against Russia. They are slowly but steadily putting a ring of missile defenses around Russia, from the Baltic area down to the east and southern Black Sea (and shortly in Gruzya), now Korea and Japan, and of course defenses are in and have been in Alaska.
Now, here’s a little breath of reality. When the wagon train, aka Russia, has circled, and the bad guys, aka us/nato, are slowly moving closer and closer to the circle of wagons while continuously muttering platitudes and disavowing any ulterior motives, what is one to think whilst sitting inside the circle of wagons? We KNOW what to think and we know what is coming, the only question is when. The problem is us/nato knows they can not defeat Russia in a conventional war and they know a ‘non conventional’ war will see the utter and total destruction of at least the northern half of our home planet.
Therefore us/nato have only one, actually two, possibilities of action at this time. One is the ongoing and ever increasing sanctions against Russia, each an act of war in and of itself. The other is to actively fight against Russia in Syria and this is what us/nato have been doing since Russia was invited by the legally elected government of the Sovereign State of Syria to help defeat the terrorists/us/nato attempting to destroy Syria. In this ongoing war, and that’s exactly what it is, a war between us/nato and Russia, losses have and will occur to both sides. Both sides will use whatever propaganda they can to make themselves look like virtuous warriors while denigrating the other side. Such is life for eons. The reality is us/nato and Russia have tried not to actively fight each other with their own troops, they use proxies in general and both sides have advisers helping their proxies and for Russia helping the armed forces of Syria. As a result of these advisers and proxies, losses occur on each side.
The actual fight ballyhooed in the news was simply an air attack by illegal us/nato forces against Syrian government forces approaching an area us/nato did not want them near. It is unknown if Russia or Syria was aware of the actual quite small force advancing towards a ‘us/nato secure zone’ but the air attack did happen and reliable reports are three contractors and ‘a few’ Syrian troops were killed. Such is war and the end result was some more grieving widows and families on both sides as us/nato protected their ISIL proxies, nothing more.
Now as far as reality in this ongoing continuation of the 1914 war. Who are you to believe and put your faith in? Are you to believe a man who came from virtually nowhere in 1999, reached down and pulled Russia from the deadly morass she was sinking in, rebuilt the Russian economy, rebuilt the Russia armed forces in to a force that is both patriotic and a force to be reckoned with, restored the diplomatic corp of Russia with the likes of Minister Lavrov, restored the faith of the population to Russia and enjoys somewhere around 80% approval of his policies both home and international? Or are you to believe in the likes of Tillerson and Mattis, in the likes of a country whose president has no real power to this day and in my opinion is the midst of an ongoing and vicious coup d’etat against the legally elected government and the president, whose military is a half assed experiment in social engineering and is scattered all across the globe with no real power in any one given area? A country that actively stifles any descent against it’s will all over this globe and is steadily moving to war against a nuclear armed country that has displayed no aggression since 1990? A country that is rapidly turning in to an economic disaster and becoming a police state the likes of which Goebbels and Beria would love and admire?
I know that’s a difficult question but sitting here on one of many ground zeroes, I know who my faith is in.