Putin Apeasement Will Only Lead to WW3

Submitted by David Murrin on Thu, 17/03/2022 - 22:21

KHODORKOVSKY WARNS THAT APPEASING PUTIN WILL MAKE HIM MORE AGGRESSIVE

Khodorkovsky has known Putin for 20 years and was imprisoned by him. His insight into Putin’s mindset is definitive, as he clearly states that only strength will back Putin down and that the western appeasement will only encourage him to further acts of aggression. Please watch this clip below, and run it forward until you see the interview start. His views expressed in an interview with Beth Rigby, precisely coincide with the views expressed in our Murrination sent out 10 days ago, supporting our view that appeasing Putin will only exacerbate the situation and guarantee the road to WW3. https://news.sky.com/video/beth-rigby-interviews-gary-neville-12568866

TIME FOR NATO TO INTERVENE IN THE BATTLE FOR UKRAINE

Submitted by David Murrin on Mon, 07/03/2022 - 09:00

The response of America and NATO to the recent attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has revealed the true dynamic behind Western thinking over Ukraine. Our working assumption is that a local Russian Commander decided to lob a few well-aimed shots at a target some 1,500 metres from the rectors (well away from the CEP of modern artillery) to win the facility with minimum loss of Russian life. The response from NATO leaders of concern and outrage shows that their fear of a super Chernobyl that would impact the whole of Europe galvanised them into a whole new level of action, as the US declared that NATO was ready for conflict. In short, if they felt threatened, NATO would act.

When US intelligence services announced that an invasion of Ukraine was a certainty, Biden was very quick to say that NATO would not intervene for fear of creating a wider and potentially nuclear war across Europe and America. In so doing, Putin was given total freedom to do as he pleased by invading, with the only impediment being the resistance of the Ukrainian population. This irresponsible statement at a stroke removed any strategic ambiguity that might have held Putin in check, by creating doubt in his mind. However, it can be forgiven because at that stage, whilst we might have been suspicious of Putin's motives, the scale of his ambition and ruthlessness had not been fully revealed.

However, the resistance and bravery of the Ukrainian people has exposed Putin's utterly evil nature and desire to wage a war on NATO itself, and shown that Ukraine is but a stepping stone to Finland and the NATO Baltic states. With this new information, a NATO war with Putin is now inevitable - it's just a matter of when and where he chooses. With this in mind, it's time to revaluate NATO’s Ukraine strategy, replacing the current peacetime linear thinking of Western leadership with lateral strategic thinking to get ahead of Putin’s plan of attack on NATO.

What Has Changed Since The Invasion?

Putin's 15 years of preparations to destroy NATO and the EU are now very clear, as we detailed in Understanding Putin’s War Strategy Against NATO. Putin sees himself as a cross between Peter The Great and Catherine The Great, determined to build a new Empire of Russia funded by his growing commodity wealth. Such a persona for the West is best incarnated by Hitler, whose playbook Putin is now following very closely. The invasion of Ukraine can leave NATO’s leaders in no doubt that Ukraine will be followed by an attack on Finland and NATO in the Baltic states. Furthermore, as Putin is a strategic thinker he will have planned other avenues of attack yet to be revealed. Most concerning of all, we must recognise that so far NATO has been responding to Putin's game plan, and thus has failed to get ahead of his decision curve. A very dangerous condition in warfare.
Putin is at war with NATO, just as Germany was at war with America as it supplied Britain across the Atlantic before Pearl Harbour in 1942. Putin recognises this reality as it is the UK’s defensive aide in the form of 2000 NLAWs that have been killing his armoured vehicles and soldiers, whilst the UK's economic sanctions have taken his money and that of his central bank. Indeed, Putin has said on television that Russia is at war with the West. This is not just rhetoric but a reality. So, NATO needs to move to a war footing before it is surprised by other avenues of attack.
Putin is not insane, rather he is highly logical in his actions when they are viewed through the lens of a psychopathic dictator on an expansive campaign of battle. We must assume that Putin has learned from how the world viewed Trump's irrational behaviour and has emulated his persona to seed doubt in NATO leaders with his nuclear threats. Such threats have paralysed the West and cowed it into submission.
Sanctions will not stop Putin. Although the weight of sanctions may be unprecedented and severe, Russians are tough people and Putin's strategic relationship with China, selling them all the resources they need, will sustain his economy through the ongoing war.
Putin will not be assassinated, dashing the only hope the West has of ending the war in Ukraine. It was also the great hope of the West with Hitler in 1939/40, but he too was not assassinated. In Operation Valkyrie, the bomb plot to kill Hitler on 20th July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg delivered a suitcase bomb to Hitler at the Wolf's Lair but failed because the bomb was placed on the wrong side of the concrete table support, protecting Hitler from the blast. The subsequent reprisals killed all and every German officer that had or might have anti-Hitler tendencies. Thus, even as the war was being lost in 1945 and Germany decimated, there was no further attempt to kill him. Similarly, the Navalny revolution last year would have had the same effect for any Putin followers. This dynamic coupled with Putin’s isolation regime established during COVID makes the chance that Putin will be assassinated even as the war with NATO intensifies, in our opinion, minimal.
Russia is now under effective martial law and Putin is mobilising his people and the economy for total war, just as the Nazis once did to Germany. The ongoing war in Ukraine, propaganda and casualties will only harden Russia's resolve.
Ukraine’s resistance has surprised everyone and exposed Putin for the monster that he is; a monster that is a war criminal. But the West forgets that it will have to win a war to prosecute him. In the meantime, Putin will keep visiting destruction, seeking to destroy the democracies of Europe. Ukraine's courage is an inspiration to NATO, but to stand back and watch them being eradicated and to then still have to go to war over the Baltic states would be disastrous. Britain once found itself in a similar position, alone against Germany in 1940 and expected to fall by America who would not help. Then came victory at the the Battle of Britain and the perception change, that Britain was worth backing. Today, Ukraine has earned that same right from NATO.
Russia’s weakness is its terrible demographics; indeed they are the worst in the world. As per Five Stages of Empire, Russia is actually in terminal decline and only supported by its wealth from the K wave, making it vulnerable to the high casualty rates of a sustained ground war. This would also explain the underlying poor morale and, unlike China, Russia is not an expansive human system but rather one in contraction, and wars of expansion are hard to sustain when a human system is in terminal decline. In addition, there is a clear demographic split between the under 40s, who are pro-freedom and democracy, and the over 40s who are more likely to support Putin's ambitions and be taken in by his propaganda. This suggests the potential for a major internal split within the Russian forces along the age group divide which should be exploited with PSYOPS (psychological operations).
China cannot allow Putin to fall because they will lose their access to strategic resources that travel across land (avoiding navel blockade by the US Navy) and cannot afford to see Putin replaced with a pro-Western leader that would then break their alliance and see them surrounded and isolated.
Commodities are beating the drums of war. The expanding energy and food supply shock that is now accelerating will only drive Chinese aggression to secure its resource chains and shorten the timeline for action, as driven by the K wave as it moves into its 2025 excessive price spike, bringing the onset of WW3 forward. (The Drumbeat of the Commodity Cycle: The Russian Revolution Part 1)
The high risk of a two-front war. China's systematic rise to military power to match America's and Biden's clear weakness, coupled with a Putin victory in Ukraine, has made China’s impending attack on Taiwan and South Korea inevitable. Conversely, a Russian defeat might delay it beyond 2022. The quicker Russia is defeated, the shorter the risk window of Chinese aggression this year.
Nuclear blackmail. We have seen first-hand that Putin is a man who has always followed through with his threats. So we must take him very seriously when he threatens nuclear attacks. Before the onset of the war, Putin conducted premeditated nuclear launch exercises on land and sea, to demonstrate his capability. He then warned NATO that any interference would result in consequences the like of which you have never seen, and then followed it up by raising the Russian strategic nuclear alert status. Only yesterday, he warned that if NATO enacted a no-fly zone it would be an act of war, and implied that Russia would initiate a major nuclear exchange. In so doing, Putin was exercising his strategic doctrine of nuclear de-escalation, which played on Western weakness and nuclear appeasement, and which consequently has given his huge conventional army free rein in Ukraine. This is not a one-off policy but one Putin will keep using in the future attacks on Finland and NATO nations. The implication is that NATO will have to face Putin’s nuclear policy down sooner or later and overcome its current policy of nuclear appeasement. By implication, this means returning to a clear first use policy that was implied in the Cold War to defend Europe against the huge tank armies of the USSR. Furthermore, it should be made clear that Putin's location is known at all times to Western intelligence and any nuclear attack would be responded to by hitting his location with a super-accurate strike. In that process, NATO and the whole world will have to face down Putin’s nuclear threat. However, it is our assessment that although such an action will take the world to the danger zone of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Putin is a bully who if faced with determined intention and force, with assurance that he and his family would die first in a retaliatory strike, whilst being provided with off ramps, would back off and return to Russian borders.
Using NATO’s air power to repel the invasion. NATO's land power might not be strong enough to push back the Russian army if it attacks the NATO wall, as we have very stupidly dispensed with our large, armoured formations in the past decade, and reinforcement of armoured divisions from the US would take three to four months. Thus, using our air power to break Putin over Ukraine would enact a forward defence and avert a future worse situation within NATO territory. The stagnation of the massive Russian column to the north and landing forces off Odessa, due to logistical constrictions, mud on the roads, blown bridges and aggressive Ukrainian actions, makes this the ideal moment for intervention as the Russian forces are now highly vulnerable to an air assault. NATO air power could swiftly be deployed to gain total air superiority over Ukraine, with a warning that any missile launched from Russia would involve a direct response using anti-radiation missiles, but the Russian border would otherwise be respected. NATO’s F22s (image above) and F35s would make short work of Russian air forces to gain air superiority and then the destruction of Russian armoured forces on the ground would be both assured and take only a short time, leaving Putin humiliated.
Public opinion and the moral perspective. Today, we are shamed in the West by what is going on in Ukraine and yet we have done nothing, for fear that we might be attacked with nuclear weapons. However, even if Ukraine falls we will inevitably have to face the same threats from Putin when he next attacks the Baltic states. So nuclear appeasement now or at any time will not save us. Inevitably, as the loss of life in Ukraine escalates, public opinion in the West will become increasingly loud.
Appeasing a bully only defers the moment of conflict, which then usually comes at a moment of their choosing. So NATO must act now and repulse the invasion of Ukraine and confront Putin and face down his nuclear threats. NATO has that power and capability through its air forces. We must now re-learn the hard lesson that peace is maintained through military power when faced with a hostile power with destructive and domineering intent, AKA Putin and Xi.

What Should The West Do Now?

Move with urgency before Ukraine falls.
NATO, and especially America, needs to recognise it is at war with Russia and will soon be with China.
Remove all linear thinkers from political and military leadership as soon as possible.
America needs to recognise that a Chinese attack on Taiwan and South Korea is imminent and seek to exert maximum military deterrence to prevent China's actions to isolate Russia. For America, now is the time to demonstrate any secret weapons that have been made by the skunkworks and which are operational to deter China.
Mobilise all its forces and reserves.
Integrate Finland and Sweden into NATO ASAP.
Initiate an emergency US, UK and NATO defence spending programme (as per Now Or Never), including an emergency ship-building programme using automated digital shipyards in the UK and across NATO as below.
Initiate a civil defence programme and national resource strategies.
Create a strategy of facing down Putin's nuclear threats, with an equal level of Western intention, i.e. from the UK and France, as Biden will never be credible.
Give Putin six hours' notice that the NATO air forces will attack his forces in Ukraine unless he leaves peacefully, and make it very clear that Russia's borders will be respected.
Once Russia is repulsed, offer Ukraine NATO and EU membership, and make known the offer to Russia of full integration into the EU if they change their leadership and embrace democracy.

Articles Post Publication

31 May 2023 President Macron tells Eastern Europe he should have listened on Russian aggression in a rare political admission of a major mistake as Emmanuel Macron insisted Russia had lost all legitimacy and Ukraine won’t be conquered in a speech at Globsec security think tank. Emmanuel Macron admitted to Eastern European nations he should have listened to their calls to take the threat from Russia on Ukraine more seriously, saying: “We lost an opportunity to listen to you”. “We must be clear: A ceasefire is not enough, we will recreate a frozen conflict that will be another war for tomorrow,” he said. “That is why I’m in favour, and this will be the subject of collective talks in the following weeks... to offer tangible and credible security guarantees to Ukraine,” he added.

18 June 2022 Vladimir Putin’s veiled threat to ex-Soviet states: ‘You’re part of historic Russia’ The clear evidence that Putin’s ambitions to recreate the USSR always have been very much alive, meaning that unless Putin is topped in Ukraine the conflict will inevitably spread.

Please spread the word about Now Or Never as it is the blueprint that Britain and the EU must execute if we are to survive.