He’s doing a series of favors for Trump so that he’d have his back if trouble ever arises with Russia, which is an increasingly realistic scenario given Kazakhstan’s recent decision to produce NATO-standard shells and its new military-logistics corridor with NATO via Azerbaijan and TRIPP.
Thanks for this article. Overdue. I've been watching this development since the upheavals in Georgia.
There is a site called MINEX forum. Originally it seemed to be Russian, but situated in London. Posting articles on the development of mineral resources. About 80% concern Kasakhstan, Usbekistan and the like.
Of course these countries want to exploit their resources. They need investment and above all, they need demand. I cant help but think its part of the greater scheme to prevent Russia by sanctions and warring from busying themselves with doing the investment and selling part.
And the US need an alternative to China. They are made for each other.
OTOH maybe Russia just keeps mum not to draw attention to their preparing for the worst case?
I don't think it's the case where Russia's top experts are keeping mum on TRIPP since they could still acknowledge it in their latest comprehensive report on the region, which was prepared for the conference that they just held on this subject, even without drawing too much attention to its military-strategic consequences vis-a-vis Russian national interests.
I really do believe that this is yet more proof that feedback loops within the policymaking bureaucracy are broken and arguably irreparable at this point. Even if intel reps quietly briefed Valdai's experts on TRIPP's negative implications for their country, that doesn't change the fact that they were totally oblivious to this before that.
Sure, it might make them more aware of these threats and perhaps they'd write and/or talk about them more (or perhaps they'd play coy to avoid the optics of their club's closeness to Putin being manipulate to fearmonger that he's plotting a special operation against them or whatever), but it wouldn't fix the root problem.
This group of Russia's top experts (see the first pages of the report which lists everyone and their prestigious positions) should never have all been blind to this. All that it would have taken is just one of them bringing up TRIPP and insisting that it at least be mentioned, yet not a single one seemingly did since it's not mentioned even once.
Remember, Russia's expert class still indulges in "wishful thinking" despite Putin's warning early on in the SMO that summer not to do so since that was the West's mistake, yet few ended up listening to them. As they say, it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks, so to speak, plus Russian bureaucracy is top-down and extremely rigid, resisting most reforms:
Once the Ukrine war is put to bed Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan will suddenly rediscover there manners and Tripp will vanishingly into the mists. Its not just Russia this threatens, its China too. There is literally zero point for Russia to make a fuss now, they would only appear weak, no they have to bite there tongues, until they can act with effect.
Andrew, as long as President Puting is weak, nobody will treat him seriously. I mention many time that in my opinion he is a mossad assset. Therefore he is going to destroy Russia in the same way like Gorbatchev. It is sad that Russians are not going to protest and Lavrov is lamenting. trump as a servant of iSSrahell is doing what is told. If Putin wants to save Russia he must:
1) Provide nuclear umbrella for Teheran. If usa or iSSrahell are going to attack Teheran, Russia will use nuclear weapon to protect Iran
2) Provide nuclear umbrella for CUBA on the same condition
3) bomb the following embassies in Kijev: finland, eastonia, lithuania, latvia, azerbaijan, iSSrahell, germany, sweden, uk, usa and canada.
4) bomb all border crossing between ukrabandera and poland and romania,
5) bomb NPP in Rivne so radiation will fall on europe.
6) bomb all bridges on Dniepr, Dniestr and Bug Rivers.
7) Take over Odesssa Oblast,
8) bomb all ukrabandera government buildings: duma, offices etc...
9) where is Russian Navy??? Not existing. By totay Puting shall have: 6* battlecruiser T-055, 6* destroyer T-054B, 6* Admiral Gorshkov fregattes 6,600t, 12* strereguschyi corvettes, 6* nuclear powered attack sub T-093B, 6* NP attack Sub Yasen-M 13,800t, 6* Borei class ballistic NPP 24,000t, 3* Amphibious ships Type T-071 25,000t, 3* helicopter landing ships type T-075 40,000t. 120* stealth fighters Su-57. I have the impression that Putin overslept.
West does not respect Russia, do not be naive. Only such action will bring fear in the west and in iSSrahell.
I don't have the highest opinion of them either, no disrespect to them personally, it's just that our overall views seem to have little in common other than being Russian-centric.
Many of these folks used to be pro-Western, then they were in strategic shock for the first year of the SMO, and finally many became what I call pro-BRI or balancers in the second year.
The first relates to being gung-ho about China with no care about the consequences while the second describes someone who envisages balancing between it and others.
Bordachev is clearly a formerly pro-Western expert who now despises the West as you can tell by the scorn that pervades some of his writings, and I feel that clouds his judgement.
It's difficult to place him as either pro-BRI or a balancer, but I'd lean towards pro-BRI since they as a faction seem to regularly downplay latent threats to Russia.
But it really was shocking to me to read through their entire report yesterday and not see a single reference to TRIPP despite it being unveiled over half a year ago. I had to do a keyword (CTRL+F) search for Trump and TRIPP to make sure I didn't miss it.
For so many experts to contribute to that report, as prestigious and highly esteemed as they are, and for not a single one to realize this glaring omission made me think much more poorly of Valdai as a whole than before, and I was already pretty critical.
It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable that these folks, who don't even consider TRIPP to be important enough to mention (if they even know about it, maybe they're still in strategic denial/paralysis!), are advising the MFA and are also policymakers in their own way.
Agreed, it doesn't inspire much confidence in that class, to say the least. I hold out hope, however, that the intelligence services -- who are are trained to identify latent threats and devise realistic ways to preempt them-- are aware of this and planning policy accordingly like I concluded my piece.
In this case, the experts aren't helping one iota, they're oblivious to what's going on around them. The broken feedback loops have created echo chambers and groupthink, and it seems like nobody wants to rock the boat, or perhaps, they innocently don't even acknowledge this threat, it's unclear.
"Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation."
AKA "Communication occurs only between equals". Celine calls this law "a simple statement of the obvious" and refers to the fact that everyone who labors under an authority figure tends to lie to and flatter that authority figure in order to protect themselves either from violence or from deprivation of security (such as losing one's job). In essence, it is usually more in the interests of any worker to tell his boss what he wants to hear, not what is true.
In any hierarchy, every level below the highest carries a subtle burden to see the world in the way their superiors expect it to be seen and to provide feedback to their superiors that their superiors want to hear. In the end, any hierarchical organization supports what its leaders already think is true more than it challenges them to think differently. The levels below the leaders are more interested in keeping their jobs than telling the truth.
Take the example of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Hoover saw communist infiltrators and spies everywhere, and he told his agents to hunt them down. Therefore, FBI agents began seeing and interpreting everything they could as parts of the communist conspiracy. Some even went as far as framing people as communists, making largely baseless arrests and doing everything they could to satisfy Hoover's need to find and drive out the communist conspiracy. The problem is, such a conspiracy was greatly exaggerated. Hoover thought it was monolithic and pervasive, and any agent who dared point out the lack of evidence to Hoover would be at best denied promotions, and at worst labeled a communist himself and lose his job. Any agent who knew the truth would be very careful to hide the fact.
Meanwhile, the FBI was largely ignoring the problem of organized crime (the Mafia), because Hoover insisted that organized crime did not exist on the national scale. Not only does the leader of the hierarchy see what he wants to see, but he also does not see what he does not want to see. Agents who pursued the issue of organized crime were sometimes marginalized within the organization or hounded into retirement.
In the end, any hierarchy acts more to conceal the truth from its leaders than it serves to find the truth.
I don't think it's intention but due to the broken feedback loops that I earlier described here (which I'm linking to for readers who might not have read it):
The problem here is that TRIPP very obviously has dual military-logistics purposes but that's completely lost on what truly are (whether one agrees with them or not) Russia's brightest minds.
In my opinion, the intelligence services should urgently brief these experts so that it can be known for sure that they're even aware of TRIPP and its adverse military-strategic implications for Russia.
They might still eschew warning about them, perhaps due to the optics of their membership in Valdai being spun as them "speaking on behalf of Putin" or whatever, but at least there'd be no doubt that they're aware.
For example, they could have at least referenced what is indisputably the greatest US strategic advancement along Russia's entire southern periphery since the end of the USSR even if they downplayed its consequences.
But for them to make no mention of it at all was surreal, even I didn't expect that despite already being critical of Valdai in general. It looks really bad from the perspective of foreign expert observers.
Imagine for example if Pakistan pioneered a "trade" corridor via China and Myanmar to Bangladesh with dual military-logistics purposes but India's top minds didn't even mention it in their latest regional report half a year later.
Contrasting Russia with the West is also shocking in this respect because the West goes as far as fearmongering about even the most miniscule Russian strategic advancement while Russia's experts are oblivious to this game-changing Russian one along their country's entire southern frontier.
Imagine what Trump 2.0 and his intelligence community is thinking after reading this. They must be celebrating how utterly naive Russia's brightest minds are that they haven't yet realized TRIPP's real military-strategic importance, which might embolden them to further accelerate their already fast-tracked plans on the presumption that Russia can't possibly have any countermove in mind if its top experts don't even acknowledge TRIPP.
And what I understand in reading these guys, and in every of them articles on this topic, is that seemingly, Russians keep of strong colonial mentality ( and disdain). We, French, paid, are paying and will pay more, for that mentality.
These countries owe nothing to Russia. If Russia treat them like minors or kids, West will be wise enough to cuddle them and switch them against Russia.
Even a ten year old child can understand that.
But seemingly, not Russians pundits.
That reminds me a young Russian I met in 1990, brillant, member of komsomols,only by ambition. He was really sure that in giving up communism, West would have welcome Russia with open arms.
I was stunned. When I said to him that he didn't know west, that if USSR gave up, Russia would have beentreated like "snow niggers", exploited to death like Westerners always did with those they consider as inferior and Russian were considered as inferiors.
He laughed in shaking the head, said that I was a damned....communist( me, communist...) and I was raving.
At least, he had the excuse of innocence.
But now?
All those jesters lived the horrible Elstine's years.
Did they so take advantage of this time that they want it come back?
Tyes, sure, but it's true for common humans.If a leader, his advisers and even the pundits in geostrategy are like common humans, the country is lost.
A leader can make believe what he want but the country is in danger when he finish in believing his own craps.
Untill now, I thought that only European jesters at top and their advisers lived in an alternative reality. I learn that greatest russian pundits live in their own Potemkine village.
Yes, since I've understood that, I reduce ten time my time on blogs and sites and I work my garden. At least I will eat good vegetables this summer. I'm working to beautify my home. I'm more quiet and my wife is happy.
Thanks for this article. Overdue. I've been watching this development since the upheavals in Georgia.
There is a site called MINEX forum. Originally it seemed to be Russian, but situated in London. Posting articles on the development of mineral resources. About 80% concern Kasakhstan, Usbekistan and the like.
Of course these countries want to exploit their resources. They need investment and above all, they need demand. I cant help but think its part of the greater scheme to prevent Russia by sanctions and warring from busying themselves with doing the investment and selling part.
And the US need an alternative to China. They are made for each other.
OTOH maybe Russia just keeps mum not to draw attention to their preparing for the worst case?
I don't think it's the case where Russia's top experts are keeping mum on TRIPP since they could still acknowledge it in their latest comprehensive report on the region, which was prepared for the conference that they just held on this subject, even without drawing too much attention to its military-strategic consequences vis-a-vis Russian national interests.
I really do believe that this is yet more proof that feedback loops within the policymaking bureaucracy are broken and arguably irreparable at this point. Even if intel reps quietly briefed Valdai's experts on TRIPP's negative implications for their country, that doesn't change the fact that they were totally oblivious to this before that.
Sure, it might make them more aware of these threats and perhaps they'd write and/or talk about them more (or perhaps they'd play coy to avoid the optics of their club's closeness to Putin being manipulate to fearmonger that he's plotting a special operation against them or whatever), but it wouldn't fix the root problem.
This group of Russia's top experts (see the first pages of the report which lists everyone and their prestigious positions) should never have all been blind to this. All that it would have taken is just one of them bringing up TRIPP and insisting that it at least be mentioned, yet not a single one seemingly did since it's not mentioned even once.
Remember, Russia's expert class still indulges in "wishful thinking" despite Putin's warning early on in the SMO that summer not to do so since that was the West's mistake, yet few ended up listening to them. As they say, it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks, so to speak, plus Russian bureaucracy is top-down and extremely rigid, resisting most reforms:
https://voiceofeast.net/2022/07/03/president-putin-cautioned-russian-strategic-forecasters-against-indulging-in-wishful-thinking/
I suspect that, regardless of anything Putin says, the Russian leadership wants to be fed happy horseshit.
Maybe they slipped in some magic mushies! So DILIGAF.
Once the Ukrine war is put to bed Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan will suddenly rediscover there manners and Tripp will vanishingly into the mists. Its not just Russia this threatens, its China too. There is literally zero point for Russia to make a fuss now, they would only appear weak, no they have to bite there tongues, until they can act with effect.
Andrew, as long as President Puting is weak, nobody will treat him seriously. I mention many time that in my opinion he is a mossad assset. Therefore he is going to destroy Russia in the same way like Gorbatchev. It is sad that Russians are not going to protest and Lavrov is lamenting. trump as a servant of iSSrahell is doing what is told. If Putin wants to save Russia he must:
1) Provide nuclear umbrella for Teheran. If usa or iSSrahell are going to attack Teheran, Russia will use nuclear weapon to protect Iran
2) Provide nuclear umbrella for CUBA on the same condition
3) bomb the following embassies in Kijev: finland, eastonia, lithuania, latvia, azerbaijan, iSSrahell, germany, sweden, uk, usa and canada.
4) bomb all border crossing between ukrabandera and poland and romania,
5) bomb NPP in Rivne so radiation will fall on europe.
6) bomb all bridges on Dniepr, Dniestr and Bug Rivers.
7) Take over Odesssa Oblast,
8) bomb all ukrabandera government buildings: duma, offices etc...
9) where is Russian Navy??? Not existing. By totay Puting shall have: 6* battlecruiser T-055, 6* destroyer T-054B, 6* Admiral Gorshkov fregattes 6,600t, 12* strereguschyi corvettes, 6* nuclear powered attack sub T-093B, 6* NP attack Sub Yasen-M 13,800t, 6* Borei class ballistic NPP 24,000t, 3* Amphibious ships Type T-071 25,000t, 3* helicopter landing ships type T-075 40,000t. 120* stealth fighters Su-57. I have the impression that Putin overslept.
West does not respect Russia, do not be naive. Only such action will bring fear in the west and in iSSrahell.
Shalom and Hei Hitler
I don't have the highest opinion of them either, no disrespect to them personally, it's just that our overall views seem to have little in common other than being Russian-centric.
Many of these folks used to be pro-Western, then they were in strategic shock for the first year of the SMO, and finally many became what I call pro-BRI or balancers in the second year.
The first relates to being gung-ho about China with no care about the consequences while the second describes someone who envisages balancing between it and others.
Bordachev is clearly a formerly pro-Western expert who now despises the West as you can tell by the scorn that pervades some of his writings, and I feel that clouds his judgement.
It's difficult to place him as either pro-BRI or a balancer, but I'd lean towards pro-BRI since they as a faction seem to regularly downplay latent threats to Russia.
But it really was shocking to me to read through their entire report yesterday and not see a single reference to TRIPP despite it being unveiled over half a year ago. I had to do a keyword (CTRL+F) search for Trump and TRIPP to make sure I didn't miss it.
For so many experts to contribute to that report, as prestigious and highly esteemed as they are, and for not a single one to realize this glaring omission made me think much more poorly of Valdai as a whole than before, and I was already pretty critical.
It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable that these folks, who don't even consider TRIPP to be important enough to mention (if they even know about it, maybe they're still in strategic denial/paralysis!), are advising the MFA and are also policymakers in their own way.
Oh dear me is all that I can think to say, thanks again for such an eye opener that is as you said absolutely surreal. Be
Agreed, it doesn't inspire much confidence in that class, to say the least. I hold out hope, however, that the intelligence services -- who are are trained to identify latent threats and devise realistic ways to preempt them-- are aware of this and planning policy accordingly like I concluded my piece.
In this case, the experts aren't helping one iota, they're oblivious to what's going on around them. The broken feedback loops have created echo chambers and groupthink, and it seems like nobody wants to rock the boat, or perhaps, they innocently don't even acknowledge this threat, it's unclear.
Mostly boosted from Wikipedia:
Celine's Second Law
"Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation."
AKA "Communication occurs only between equals". Celine calls this law "a simple statement of the obvious" and refers to the fact that everyone who labors under an authority figure tends to lie to and flatter that authority figure in order to protect themselves either from violence or from deprivation of security (such as losing one's job). In essence, it is usually more in the interests of any worker to tell his boss what he wants to hear, not what is true.
In any hierarchy, every level below the highest carries a subtle burden to see the world in the way their superiors expect it to be seen and to provide feedback to their superiors that their superiors want to hear. In the end, any hierarchical organization supports what its leaders already think is true more than it challenges them to think differently. The levels below the leaders are more interested in keeping their jobs than telling the truth.
Take the example of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Hoover saw communist infiltrators and spies everywhere, and he told his agents to hunt them down. Therefore, FBI agents began seeing and interpreting everything they could as parts of the communist conspiracy. Some even went as far as framing people as communists, making largely baseless arrests and doing everything they could to satisfy Hoover's need to find and drive out the communist conspiracy. The problem is, such a conspiracy was greatly exaggerated. Hoover thought it was monolithic and pervasive, and any agent who dared point out the lack of evidence to Hoover would be at best denied promotions, and at worst labeled a communist himself and lose his job. Any agent who knew the truth would be very careful to hide the fact.
Meanwhile, the FBI was largely ignoring the problem of organized crime (the Mafia), because Hoover insisted that organized crime did not exist on the national scale. Not only does the leader of the hierarchy see what he wants to see, but he also does not see what he does not want to see. Agents who pursued the issue of organized crime were sometimes marginalized within the organization or hounded into retirement.
In the end, any hierarchy acts more to conceal the truth from its leaders than it serves to find the truth.
Very apt!
Continuing shock and horror seems the only response possible in the face of the broken feed back loop you referenced in an earlier piece.
Could it possibly be intentional for nefarious purposes??
I don't think it's intention but due to the broken feedback loops that I earlier described here (which I'm linking to for readers who might not have read it):
https://open.substack.com/pub/korybko/p/lavrov-soberly-acknowledged-the-challenges?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=214396019
The problem here is that TRIPP very obviously has dual military-logistics purposes but that's completely lost on what truly are (whether one agrees with them or not) Russia's brightest minds.
In my opinion, the intelligence services should urgently brief these experts so that it can be known for sure that they're even aware of TRIPP and its adverse military-strategic implications for Russia.
They might still eschew warning about them, perhaps due to the optics of their membership in Valdai being spun as them "speaking on behalf of Putin" or whatever, but at least there'd be no doubt that they're aware.
For example, they could have at least referenced what is indisputably the greatest US strategic advancement along Russia's entire southern periphery since the end of the USSR even if they downplayed its consequences.
But for them to make no mention of it at all was surreal, even I didn't expect that despite already being critical of Valdai in general. It looks really bad from the perspective of foreign expert observers.
Imagine for example if Pakistan pioneered a "trade" corridor via China and Myanmar to Bangladesh with dual military-logistics purposes but India's top minds didn't even mention it in their latest regional report half a year later.
Contrasting Russia with the West is also shocking in this respect because the West goes as far as fearmongering about even the most miniscule Russian strategic advancement while Russia's experts are oblivious to this game-changing Russian one along their country's entire southern frontier.
Imagine what Trump 2.0 and his intelligence community is thinking after reading this. They must be celebrating how utterly naive Russia's brightest minds are that they haven't yet realized TRIPP's real military-strategic importance, which might embolden them to further accelerate their already fast-tracked plans on the presumption that Russia can't possibly have any countermove in mind if its top experts don't even acknowledge TRIPP.
If those jester are the most brilliant of Russia, I don't dare imagine the others...
No need for elaborate conspiracy. Good old cluelessness does the trick.
Yes.
And what I understand in reading these guys, and in every of them articles on this topic, is that seemingly, Russians keep of strong colonial mentality ( and disdain). We, French, paid, are paying and will pay more, for that mentality.
These countries owe nothing to Russia. If Russia treat them like minors or kids, West will be wise enough to cuddle them and switch them against Russia.
Even a ten year old child can understand that.
But seemingly, not Russians pundits.
That reminds me a young Russian I met in 1990, brillant, member of komsomols,only by ambition. He was really sure that in giving up communism, West would have welcome Russia with open arms.
I was stunned. When I said to him that he didn't know west, that if USSR gave up, Russia would have beentreated like "snow niggers", exploited to death like Westerners always did with those they consider as inferior and Russian were considered as inferiors.
He laughed in shaking the head, said that I was a damned....communist( me, communist...) and I was raving.
At least, he had the excuse of innocence.
But now?
All those jesters lived the horrible Elstine's years.
Did they so take advantage of this time that they want it come back?
Humans are very good at telling themselves what they want to hear.
Tyes, sure, but it's true for common humans.If a leader, his advisers and even the pundits in geostrategy are like common humans, the country is lost.
A leader can make believe what he want but the country is in danger when he finish in believing his own craps.
Untill now, I thought that only European jesters at top and their advisers lived in an alternative reality. I learn that greatest russian pundits live in their own Potemkine village.
Yup. Once I figured that out was when I started to get wise.
Yes, since I've understood that, I reduce ten time my time on blogs and sites and I work my garden. At least I will eat good vegetables this summer. I'm working to beautify my home. I'm more quiet and my wife is happy.