The NY Times decided now was the proper time to push our government to get tough on Ukraine. I wrote in April of ‘21 that Ukraine would be a battlefield. The media megaphones now want it. We need to get serious and beef up the troop deployments to regional NATO members upwards of 5,000 with the possibility of ten times that. If all else fails, the Times openly states we can fund an insurgency. This is a clear display of the declining imperial power.

Immediate point against our rhetoric is that America will use former Soviet bloc nations for staging assets to fight Russia despite us saying there is no threat to Russia by us expanding NATO eastward. Second issue is that America can put up to 5,000 troops in place while Russia supposedly has 100,000 in place This is nothing. It is jawboning what we, the mighty USA, can do. The jawboning fits with the final piece of decline by admitting we will fund an insurgency with Gladio style operations. America can maybe recreate the 1980s Afghanistan battlefield.

Why would they explicitly lay this out? Gladio was carried out and operated for decades before revelations around it, which were still denied. American officials now say what they will do, which destroys any element of surprise and put the invading force on alert to use COIN techniques. Russia effectively destroyed an insurgency in Syria, so their techniques may work on the steppe and urban battlefields.

These ghouls are spitting lines like there will be a large European war on national television. Impossible with the piddly troop numbers America can send on short notice and lack of desire in Europe. No one wants a big war right now. Who escalates? There is a weird status quo in the far east of Ukraine, but Russia has been careful to protect deployed assets and quietly have those breakaway republics be administered by men friendly to Russia. If Russia does raise the stakes, what point is there in the US & whatever NATO allies it can force into joining it escalating the situation with a nuclear power?

We saw Afghanistan. We also saw Syria. We also know that America to this day has a base at Al-Tanf inside Syria. This base has two purposes. First, it stops Assad from receiving supplies from Iran via the Baghdad-Damascus Highway (spiteful on America’s part) and second, US troops are sitting ducks to potentially become reasons for full intervention. There is no purpose for that base but to hamper resupply and reconstruction efforts, but Israel & Saudi Arabia ask for that. This does not lead to any victory. America knows how to take in Third World Refugees from these failed theatres of war, but no longer how to win.

We have seen Russia act, too. Syria is a good example. Russia witnessed what happened in Libya and failed to appreciate the speed of US/NATO in forcing No Fly Zones and toppling autocrats. It did not veto UN proposals geared towards Gadafy. It did learn though and did veto similar attempts aimed at Assad and Syria. It did watch as America pulled off a Color Revolution in Ukraine after an economic agreement didn’t go the EU’s way and then made sure the same did not happen in Kazakhstan. In both instances, Russia is portrayed as an aggressor or interloper when they merely responded to American meddling after previous iterations of the same acts.

Our media cannot explain those change because to do so would admit America is the malicious disruptor. There is no justification for fighting directly, which our involvement would make us the disruptor. Russia appears to learn and adapt to America’s methods, changing approach and policy. America, well America loves a reboot. We keep doing the same procedures with the same characters and the same methods. When the NY Times states America could do X or Y, pay attention. They are selling their audience and the broader pundit class on this. These are explicit policy choices, and the framing is that Biden’s team is making a decision this week. This is a sales pitch for proxy war.

One thousand or five thousand troops will not fight directly, but they can run the insurgent training camps just as they did in Jordan for the Syrian debacle. Even if they did fight, it would be a suicide mission to only justify further involvement. Better to train and keep the men & women out of harm’s way while earning promotions. Gladio can get a remake, maybe with an LGBT and female casting change for the Netflix and Reddit professional class to support. It worked for Kurdish troop public relations, well it did until the writing was on the wall for the Pentagon. The war drums beat louder, and the world worries all because America doesn’t want to see anywhere on the map slide out from their dominion.