32 Comments

When it comes to brinkmanship the US has a monopoly, just as they are trying to monopolize the world. They used to speak of "free" enterprise but now it is "captive" enterprise.

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What about Transnistria? Will Russia be able to hang on to it without controlling all of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast?

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I talked about Transnistria here:

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-political-consequences-of-ukraines

I don't expect Russia to liberate/capture Odessa. Of course, I'd be over the moon if they did, but I just don't see it happening. There was a ton of fake news about that over the past three years that exhausted me to the point where I almost openly groan when I hear someone talk or ask about that scenario lol

Odessa would be the crown jewel in the "Novorossiyan Crown", but it appears ever more distant. Moreover, I can't imagine NATO sitting back and not decisively acting to preempt its possible capture, thus activating the tripwire for provoking a nuclear brinksmanship crisis for the purpose of partitioning Ukraine and thus salvaging some of their project.

I don't think that Odessa is important enough to Russia to risk World War III over nor is the majority-ultra-nationalist-populated Western Ukraine (specifically the Galicia region) either. Those who point to the benefits of cutting off Ukraine's port access ignore that it can indirectly obtain such via neighboring Romania anyhow.

Also, practically all NATO equipment sent to Ukraine enters via overland routes, the vast majority of which crosses the Polish border, so I don't think that Russian policymakers (whose decisions often differ from foreign wishful thinkers') believe that the possible costs of risking WWIII over Odessa outweigh the long-term benefits of attempting this.

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Here's some additional insight into this scenario that I wrote about in late 2023:

https://korybko.substack.com/p/putins-reminder-that-odessa-is-a

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I believe Russia needs to take Odessa or forever be busy fending off sea drones. Landlock the rump state and make it very unattractive for NATO (the US) to bother trying to destabilize Russia through Ukraine.

Russia doesn't need to take all of Ukraine. Just the parts that Lenin forced Russia to cede to form Ukraine SSR. What's left will be occupied by peace-keeping forces from Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. Effectively returning lands that Stalin forced the four nations to cede to Ukraine SSR.

The Banderites will become a Polish problem again.

Sweden and Finland attaching themselves to NATO and the EU will prove to be errors.

Both organizations are wonderfully inept and organs of US control.

The EU is the WEF alpha test for Global Fascism. NATO is the WEF's military wing.

Great writing and analysis.

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Ukraine us not ripe for an insurgency. The one thing all successful insurgencies have in common is a young population.

The median age in Yemen is 19. The median age in Ukraine was over 40, and that from before the war.

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The median age in Ukraine is 42 years, for a population of 39 million people. Nearly 5 million males between age 15 and 35. c.2023. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/static/c3755ac583852d85e4a4f39b59d95f5f/15d60/UP_popgraph2023.jpg

I think that's more than enough manpower to effectively resist an occupation of the entire territory of Ukraine by Russian military forces, provided that enough weaponry is cached and the insurgency has the will to fight. Particularly if they're a united opposition, and the Russians aren't able to count on the asset of an Ukrainian Army of Russian loyalists. It's my impression that Russian loyalists in Ukrainian territory are an awfully thin population in most parts of the country west of the Dnieper River. In that region, the Ukrainis could count on a hard core of battle-seasoned combat troops, fighting on their home ground.

I'm less confident that a Ukrainian insurgency could sustain itself east of the Dnieper, or in Crimea. Especially not in Crimea. Unconventional raiding forces might have enough strength to be intermittently nettlesome. Hell to pay for anyone supporting them, though.

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By that logic, all that would be needed for a successful insurgency is a large population.

However, insurgencies have been successful in smaller countries, such as Yemen, Zimbabwe, Guniea-Bissau, etc..

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Yes, that is so. But a large population is an advantage, as long as it isn't completely superannuated.

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Ukraine is a pretty old society, and is only getting older. Not to mention Ukrainians generally weren't exactly in the best of health.

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I do not share the almost ideologic positions of some MSM champions, but for me the idea that Ukraine cannot be controlled by RF seems at least in part disavowed by evidence so far.

The WW1 style of advance along a frontline forces the population to a choice, with pro-Russians remaining (if not killed by the Ukraine fanatics as traitors...) or even returning after "liberation" and the anti-Russians fleeing. A clear split among the two sides as after all this was born as a civil war. This "clean up" of anti-Russians can probably work over much of the east and south, even west of the Dniepr; maybe not on the most nationalist regions in the north-west.

Also, the "denazification" works already with the elimination of the nazi batallions on the front (the slow pace of the war also has advantages, is it on purpose?) and may continue afterwards when the surviving population may be happy to help to eliminate the remnants of a regime that hijacks people from the streets.

All this may give credence to some scenarios that would see an end game with Ukraine split into pieces: new RF oblasts, pro Russian east, neutral or pro EU west.

My crystal ball is not better than anyone else's so I stick to a few facts.

First, so far the RF has largely avoided to invade regions other the the four new RF oblasts. Strategic patience (wait for the AFU collapse) or a deliberate political choice and an indication for the possible war end solution?

Second, failing to take the Odessa region would condemn Transnistria; would that be politically acceptable for Putin or be seen as a partial defeat?

Third, the RF taking control up to the northwestern border would allow to resume energy and trade flows to "rebel" EU countries such as Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, possibly even Austria. It would open far fetched scenarios such as a split within the EU and possibly encourage some countries to seek neutrality with exit from NATO (see Romania elections). A very expensive endeavour indeed, yet with a huge potential price.

So very different scenarios are possible. Time will tell.

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I don't feature any eastern European national government voluntarily breaking with NATO and seeking (re)alignment with Russia. Countries like Hungary are walking a tightrope between the belligerent pro-Western position sought by ahem some NATO members far from the front, and the unwelcoming prospect of returning to Russian domination, which is a result that would cost them much more than they would gain.

To me, the Ukraine fiasco is mostly about Putin attempting to recoup an industrial and resource base in eastern Ukraine that was formerly a development and investment intended to benefit the entire USSR, a largely Russian entity. Without an industrial base of that sort and without reliable and secure Black Sea coastline access to global sea trade routes,, it's much more difficult for Russia to develop beyond the extraction economy that it currently is. Ironically, much of that base has now been destroyed or damaged by a full-scale war. The protected hostilities have in turn introduced new factors into the strategic calculus of Russian leadership. I'm not sure whether Putin's ambitions have been chastened by two years of war, or whether they've shifted to a wider set of ambitions.

The Kagans, the ISW, and the neocon militarist interventionists have continually insisted that a Trump presidency amounts to a guarantee that the entirety of Ukraine will be handed over to Putin on a silver platter, lock, stock, and barrel--with the rest of the old Warsaw Pact dominoes primed to fall under Russian control. "US isolationist weakness" is now supposedly on the verge of being certified as a result of Trump's proclaimed willingness to negotiate a peace plan (swiftly, he sez.) Well, we'll have to wait and see, won't we? Like nearly everyone else, I'm just another rando watching it all unfold on the Internet. The only thing I can say for sure is that talk has never been cheaper.

Counterfactual scenarios make me uneasy. But I can't help thinking that this situation could have already been worked out many years ago by Russia, Ukraine and the NATO alliance in a way that would have proved much more satisfactory to both Russia and Ukraine, without the resort to armed force, wholesale death and destruction.

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"Russia can’t militarily control Ukraine indefinitely" Can you explain why Russia cannot control a conquered Ukraine, but the Soviet Union did for many years?

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Sure, I'll elaborate a bit more.

Most of what's nowadays known as Ukraine was incorporated into the USSR after the Russian Civil War and the Polish-Bolshevik War that broke out right afterwards. Moscow's control was then reasserted over that union republic after World War II.

During both times, Ukraine was utterly destroyed and its people desperate for reconstruction, which isn't the case in contemporary Western Ukraine, which is largely unaffected by the conflict.

You also have the fact that armed Ukrainian organizations were also destroyed by the time Soviet rule was imposed and then later reimposed, which again isn't the case with today's Ukraine, especially not in its ultra-nationalist Western Ukrainian Galician heartland.

While there was still some armed resistance during the first few years of Soviet rule and then its reimposition, there was no analogue to today's situation where a hostile military bloc on Ukraine's borders can arm guerrilla fighters there against Moscow.

Another important difference has to do with the nature of contemporary arms and their widespread proliferation in Ukraine. Stringers, Javelins, automatic weapons, IEDs, etc. are readily available and can inflict devastating losses on Russian troops in ambushes.

After WWI and WWII, there were just some small arms circulating around and no realistic chance of anything more significant entering what's nowadays known as Ukraine in scale, which is why Soviet rule was easily imposed and then later reimposed respectively.

We also see that Russia has struggled to defeat the NATO-backed Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) and hasn't captured a single region in full despite over 1,000+ days of fighting. A similar struggle is therefore expected in the event of a NATO-backed insurgency.

After all, astute observers remember footage of the UAF's ambushes against Russian tank columns and helicopter groups during the early days of the SMO. This could therefore be replicated in Western Ukraine and would require enormous resources to prevent.

About that, the former Ukrainian territory that Russia captured and held from 2022 onward was largely pacified due to the security services' robust operations there, which coupled with the locals' comparatively more pro-Russian attitudes as a whole.

Replicating that in the hypothetical scenario of Russia sweeping across Western Ukraine unopposed by NATO would drain its physical resources and therefore result in an incomplete sweep of local threats, thus putting local military units at serious risk.

Russia's on-the-ground gains over the past year mostly saw it capture almost entirely depopulated areas that don't necessitate much in terms of security operations, but it's expected that Western Ukrainian cities would be depopulated at that level in this scenario.

Every single Russian soldier or member of the security forces walking around Lvov and other cities there would stick out like a sore thumb and could come under attack at any moment by ultra-nationalists (fascists) since it's impossible to fully sweep those cities.

Again, this mostly the result of them remaining populated, still heavily comprised of ultra-nationalists (fascists) unlike after WWI and WWII, and the aforesaid being armed with small arms, IEDs, Javelins, Stingers, etc. that could lead to very devastating ambushes.

Putin has proven himself to be extremely cautious, perhaps even overly so as one might constructively critique him, so it would be an unexpected break from character for him to place his troops at risk by ordering them to carry out such a dangerous mission.

It would also be incredibly demoralizing for Russian troops to occupy Western Ukrainian cities and then constantly come under attack, which could lead to huge losses too, including via attacks on overextended supply chains like in early 2022.

The amount of troops required to hold Western Ukraine and security forces for pacifying its cities far exceeds what Russia currently has, therefore either requiring unpopular mobilization or leaving other areas open for attack, whether in Ukraine or inside Russia.

The entire scenario presupposes that Russia will sweep across the Dnieper largely unopposed, including by NATO which would presumably not escalate to brinksmanship to salvage at least part of Project Ukraine, and I consider this sequence to be very unlikely.

I've interacted with many people on social media over the years who are convinced, some very aggressively and rudely so, that this will supposedly happen, but all that they can say in support of that is some wishful thinking scenario about Ukraine and NATO giving up.

They also assume that there'd be little to no local resistance, that such wouldn't be significantly armed by NATO or even armed at all (despite the 1980s Afghan and 2022-today Ukrainian precedents), and that denazification can be accomplished with ease.

In my experience, I've discovered that these people rely on a combination of Pepe Escobar, Scott Ritter, and/or Douglas MacGregor for their insight, and all three are notorious "5D chess master plan" conspiracy theorists who are regularly wrong.

I'm not saying that everyone who holds this view is influenced by one, some, or all three of those pundits, but everyone that I've encountered is, and my experience is also that most who consume their information products are diehard dogmatists.

What I mean by this is that "it's easier to fool someone than to convince them that they've been fooled", namely that those three have (whether intentionally or not) misled their audience into having the most unrealistic expectations about this conflict's endgame.

Their audience trusts them and therefore believes them, and given how passionate they are about this issue, they've internalized these scenarios and they've subsequently become a part of their identity, which they can't reject without rejecting themselves.

All arguments to the contrary are dismissed, whether aggressively or casually, the latter usually with regard to some associated sentiment of "trusting the plan" a la QAnon. I find it impossible to have a dialogue with them, it never once succeeded, at all.

Every single time without exception is devolves into them reaffirming some general prediction (ex: "Russia will accomplish all its maximum objectives, end of story") and then usually making some ad hominum insults.

Never has any of these people with whom I've engaged on social media about this scenario had a respectful exchange of contrarian ideas with me. The only reason why I'm taking the time to explain my views in detail yet again is because this is literally my site.

I accordingly demand mutual respect and can easily remove insulting comments in order to prevent this dialogue from becoming toxified like has always been the case in my experience over the years whenever this issue comes up.

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Andrew, I agree with you re the Pepe Escobar et al. school of geopolitics which is quite worthless and is mostly a combination of wishful thinking and click bait. I also think you make a strong case for the difficulties that Russia would encounter pacifying and occupying western Ukraine.

I'll offer another suggestion, which is that Putin would be unlikely to undertake what would be in essence an expensive neo-colonial project in western Ukraine. Among other things an ongoing occupation would mean that normalization and trade with the West would be on hold indefinitely and Russia's uncomfortable dependence on China would increase even more.

Furthermore, Putin has a readymade narrative at hand for the re-conquest of all of historical Novorossiya as a fulfillment of Russian history after the Soviet detour. I think that the West in general could come to terms with such a narrative in view of the majority Russian language population and the historical president. On the other hand, the West is unlikely to accept Russian occupation off a non-Russian people on its western borders.

thank you for taking the time to answer my question. Best wishes for 2025.

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Robert Kagan is a Certified Vampire of the Empire. His job isn't accurate analysis; it's propaganda to further the interests of the MIC, and Kagan has never seen a war he didn't like. People like him would LOVE to turn Ukraine into festering pustule of insurgency on Russia's border.

Just think of all the profits from all those arms sales, and-oh! The propaganda people like him can write about the brave anti-Russian rebels for YEARS!

You can practically see the drool dripping off of Kagan's fangs.

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"...has never seen a war it didn't like". has been said aboout the NY Times, going back to 1851 !

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Truthfully said at that.

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How are the Ohio Blue Jackets doin'? I like their "Honest Abe" cannon they have in their crib!

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You've misunderstood. Crimea's elected regional government seceded after the elected President was chased out by a mob that refused to allow a fair election. And the Donbass regional governments asked for a referendum on autonomy, which was never allowed. Most of those born in the regions incorporated into Russia prefer to be Russian than to make heroes of Ukrainians who were allied to Hitler. Who want to deny civil rights to Russian-speakers. See https://gwydionmadawc.com/my-blogs/ukraine-the-current-conflict/ for more.

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Brian Berletic recently proposed the only theory on what's going on here that makes sense to me. That is, the US is intentionally putting all the rising multi-polar states into jeopardy, extending them economically, and sowing chaos everywhere it can on the periphery. They are willing to use both real world military actions and information space asymmetric methods on the rising states, as well as all on their borders in furtherance of the effort. They (the neocons) are prepared for it to all play out over decades.

If this theory is correct, some counter-moves suggest themselves:

1/ Wreak economic damage in Ukr, then get out to preserve resources. Trump is changing nothing and negotiations are a waste of energy. It's just another fake negotiation.

2/ Dare the Europeans to start another "fire" on Russia's border via military means or color revolution. Russia needs to bare its teeth and prepare to invade again or to Oreshnik a European capital to call NATO bluffing.

3/ Urgently firm up all the military alliances and urgently share the military technology or manufacturing capacity. While direct war seems unlikely due to western financial constraints, best to prepare for global conflict.

4/ Close off the information space and all institutions of state interference immediately. There will simply be no innocent interchange with the west until the psychotic neocons are gone. Unfortunately a bit of autocracy is in everyone's future. You can observe Britain hardening its information space today. While US appears to be loosening, Musk can turn on a dime and AI is a powerful tool in this realm.

5/ Work to impair the West's economy by starving it of energy as possible and ending all commerce from China asap. Better to cause the domestic chaos and economic damage to yourselves vs the US doing it to you on their timing and via US military assets.

6/ Convince all sympathetic states to close off the information space, give malicious institutions the boot, and end western aid. Western aid is a drip-line of poison.

7/ Return the favor of inflicting chaos.

8/ Be ready for the monster to turn violent, including use of nuclear weapons.

9/ Pray that this western fever breaks.

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Robert Kagan's track record as a geopolitical thinker shows him to be much more of an axe-grinding alarmist than a level-headed sage whose predictions are borne out in reality. From an early Salon column by Glenn Greenwald:

https://www.salon.com/2007/03/11/kagan_11/

Haters of the controversial Mr. Greenwald can go on and cancel and block every word written my Glenn in that post. But Greenwald also includes excerpts of three articles on the Iraq War authored or co-authored by Kagan in 2003 and 2004, and Kagan's own words aren't so easily hand-waved. They suffice to show his spurious credibility as an Influencer of US foreign policy.

The articles from which the excerpts are drawn:

1) Robert Kagan & William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, March 22, 2004

2) Robert Kagan & William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, February 23, 2004

3) Robert Kagan, Washington Post, June 3, 2003

4) Robert Kagan, Washington Post, April 13, 2003

For some reason, clicking the links in Greenwald's 2007 Salon article takes the reader to:

1) https://carnegieendowment.org/not-found

2) https://www.newamericancentury.org/ (URL purchased by an Indonesian e-slots gambling outfit)

3) https://instapundit.com/

4) http://www.lossless-audio.com/usa/index0.php?page=685713382.htm (defunct German website)

As it happens, I was able to access the March 22, 2004 article with a keyword search, where the now-defunct Weekly Standard article was archived here: https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2004/03/iraq-one-year-later?lang=en

The February 23, 2004 article by Kagan and Kristol is available through the invaluable services of archive.org . It was the cover story.

https://ia800907.us.archive.org/25/items/the-weekly-standard-2004-02-23/the-weekly-standard-2004-02-23.pdf

The June 3, 2003 Washington Post story by Robert Kagan is not findable with any of my keyword searches, either through DuckDuckGo or Google.

The June 3, 2003 Washington Post story by Robert Kagan is not findable with any of my keyword searches, either through DuckDuckGo or Google.

Despite this, I'm reasonable sure that both articles exist, and can still be found with enough persistence. (A library microfiche search may be required. Bear in mind that sometimes the dates of stories as found on the Internet are off by a day or two from the cited date of publication.)

One of the Google searches did turn up a Washington Post article co-written by Robert Kagan later in June, on June 27. I found it as mirrored content on the site Arab News. https://www.arabnews.com/node/251659

Overall, Robert Kagan's online presence from the Iraq war era years seems to be remarkably threadbare, and resistant to ready access. I did manage to find this partial reference source for some of Kagan's early Washington Post stories (ending September 1, 2003), but clicking the link simply leads to the face page of the Post, not to any of his specifically linked stories.* https://universityofleeds.github.io/philtaylorpapers/vp01978a.html

This seems to me to be enough of a problem that I recommend that readers who the linked story by Glenn Greenwald, published by Salon, March 11, 2007, should run off hard copies, and/or mirror the story.

I'm frankly bewildered by Robert Kagan's continuing prominence within the circles of power in American foreign policy. He's never held an overseas diplomatic post, no Foreign Service experience, no military experience. Yet he became a speechwriter for Reagan's Secretary of State, George Schultz, at age 25, and his resume includes leadership positions in more Legacy Media and military&foreign policy think-tanks than almost anyone else I can name. Very mysterious career trajectory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan

[* I need to mention to the younger readers that when Google first began as the premier search engine--a revolutionary advance in information, communication, and knowledge technology--all of these stories were findable. Keyword searches were much more fruitful. The search engine algorithm was plainly more responsive. Search engines are now much more abridged and enclosed. There's no way to interpret this situation as a technical advance. ]

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Thank you for setting the record straight. Kagen is full of it, which is no surprise given he has made a career stoking discord between the US and Russia. Given Rubio's recent Congressional testimony, it seems Russia has already let the Trump team know an end to the economic sanctions is a sine qua non to a peace agreement in Ukraine, and it seems they are likely to get that given the way it has been discussed, if peripherally.

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I think a P.R. strategy for Trump dealing with your point 2) Trump challenge is to remind the plebes that we still live in a M.A.D. scenario (though USA is likely in a worse position for nuclear arms play) and Crazy-ol' Joe and the swamp-Dems (neo-cons) were, and wish to continue, playing nuclear-chicken with the welfare of Americans and their wee 1s. That has a high probability of being a winning political-communications strategy in my not-so-humble opinion. It might get him offed by Kagan and his crew, though.

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“The Atlantic,” which is owned by rich widow Lauren Powell Jobs, who can be seen in pictures on the Internet chumming around in bathing suits with Ghislain Maxwell. As for US neocons, their origins trace back to Trotskyites.

Neither Kagan nor “The Atlantic” should be trusted in any way.

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The worshippers of Manifest Destiny (The Monroe Doctrine is different) obviously weren't Trotskyites. Modern Neo-Con sympathies is as USian as baseball, apple pie and mom. That "exeptionalist" attitude even predates 1776 and runs-deep. USA! USA! USA!

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I’d argue that it’s incorrect to say that Russia doesn’t have the military resources for controlling all of Ukraine. It would be more accurate to say that they’re not interested in making that investment.

There’s a difference between not being able to afford something. And being interested in buying something because it’s expensive.

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I find Kagan's assessment of the situation to be mostly accurate and your response to him unconvincing.

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@Anonymous

I find your statement devoid of any corroborating information/explanation.

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We will find out which position proves to be correct in due time, "Anonymous." (I'm assuming that isn't your real name.)

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