Shielding Ukraine's Skies: Time For Europe To Grow Up
Putin's increased resort to missile strikes against civilian targets of late is a sign of his desperation. Unable to win on the battlefield, his days are numbered. Time to seize the Ukrainian skies.
This has been a tough week for Ukraine, though not because of the hyped spring offensive parts of the media keep going on about. The pattern of late suggests that Moscow is struggling to sustain enough combat power to meet all current battlefield demands, let alone escalate them.
Even as the enemy tries to take revenge for the Kursk Campaign by pushing - and mostly failing - to breach the border in Sumy district, other fronts more vital to Putin’s only remaining hope of salvaging something he can pass off as a victory are short on reinforcements. In short, Moscow’s winter campaign never truly ended, nor is the fighting this spring likely to dramatically shift in character. To be frank, it no longer makes much sense to describe Putin’s military efforts in classical terms, with relatively clearly defined campaigns attempting to achieve a specific material goal.
The ruscist military machine has degenerated into a self-sustaining violent bureaucracy. It must constantly advance to preserve the illusion of invincibility against all rational evidence to the contrary. Conquering a specific city or even all of free Donbas is no longer the strategic purpose of the war. Nor is destroying Ukraine, not any more.
This is now war for the sake of it, a form of national suicide, pure and simple. Neither Putin nor the core of elderly ex-Soviets who actually support him will be around for much longer. What they’re really doing is demanding that the whole world go down with them.
Unfortunately, the prospects for peace when faced with a mass delusion like this are just about nil. It really is a form of zombie apocalypse. Either the ruscist nightmare turns inward and consumes itself, or it will keep on expanding outward to avoid coping with its fatal internal contradictions.
The lack of any truly material strategic purpose in Putin’s imperial quest - Ukraine was only ever envisioned as step one in an endless push to expand as far as possible - has doomed it from day one. Failure to comprehend that the key to defeating Ukraine was the destruction of its military, mostly deployed on the Donbas front in 2022, doomed the initial invasion. Inability to recognize in 2023 that the best move was to declare victory and wait for the western alliance to fall apart damned each of Putin’s offensive waves since.
Without a clear strategic vision of achievable success, Moscow’s efforts have shifted between domains and regions, never concentrating on achieving one single destabilizing victory anywhere and expanding from that. The result has been Ukrainian forces moving more quickly to adapt in most cases. Moscow has managed to replicate the mistakes that cost Germany the war in 1918, even if the orcs took a couple years instead of a few months to reach near-exhaustion.
The orcs can still advance and seize a limited amount of ground, but never quickly enough to break Ukraine’s defense as a whole. Meanwhile Ukrainian troops have figured out how to offset the enemy’s numerical superiority with technology. This means that whatever Moscow does manage to achieve by summer, its overall strategic position and eventually operational capabilities on multiple fronts will fail, likely before the end of the year.
It is the hard fact that Putin is racing against the clock on both the military and economic fronts which has led to the recent increase in pure terror attacks against Ukrainian civilians that have killed dozens, including children. This is a monster lashing out in frustration at a total failure to break its target by other means.
The story isn’t new: Hitler’s air power shifted from going after British factories, airfields, and radar installations to simple revenge bombing London after Britain managed to score some long-range hits on Germany. Churchill credited this shift with saving the RAF at a critical moment during the Battle of Britain when Germany was getting the better of the attrition fight.
The Battle of Britain, for all the daring of the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots who held back the Luftwaffe, was a grueling battle of attrition. German ability to destroy targets in Britain depended on sustaining a large fleet of bombers. Britain had to take down more than the enemy could replace, with the number of fighters available to intercept incoming bombers playing the key role in this factor. Ground based air defenses just weren’t as flexible, requiring large numbers of guns firing lots of rounds to score kills.
Yes, there was radar and Tilly’s wonderful orifice (a mechanical device invented by one of the women working on Spitfires that improved its performance in certain situations) and the clever way the Royal Air Force organized the defense of Britain. But in the end the number of pilots trained and airframes produced mattered most, and at one point the Luftwaffe began to turn the tide by focusing its fire on the infrastructure keeping Spitfires and Hurricanes in the air.
Churchill deliberately authorized dangerous bomber raids across Germany that couldn’t do much damage, but did have the effect of triggering a political uproar in Berlin. With Hitler’s cronies always fighting for his favor, Goering couldn’t tolerate the embarrassment of having his claim that Germany would never be touched by bombing proven wrong. In revenge, scarce bomber sorties were directed to the area bombing of London, taking pressure off the Royal Air Force, which was soon able to recover its strength and turn the tide. And yes, Churchill hoped this would happen: he sacrificed some civilians to save many more.
The moral of the story is this: only idiots target civilians, especially as part of a strategy for making a conflict too painful to continue. But that’s the choice that Putin is making despite a noted improvement in the accuracy of many of his best ballistic missiles, as well as their ability to evade Ukraine’s already thin air defenses.
I say that this week was hard for Ukraine, despite the dismal performance of the enemy on the battlefield, because there is no way to protect all of Ukraine from orc ballistic missile strikes right now - there aren’t enough Patriots to protect the battlefield and the home front. It’s impossible to properly cover all of Ukraine’s major cities and still be able to credibly threaten orc jets delivering glide bombs to the front. After over three years of war it is absolutely ridiculous that the mighty NATO alliance has only managed to get Ukraine six Patriot and two Aster batteries, a third of objective minimum needs. The systems exist, but are behind held back as a hedge against contingencies.
The result? After nine kids were murdered on a playground at Krivy Rih a bit more than a week ago, the orcs followed that atrocity up with bombing a bunch of civilians in Sumy who were out enjoying Palm Sunday, a Christian holiday Ukrainians often celebrate by meeting up with family. Dozens were killed and over a hundred injured. Naturally, the orcs say there was a group of Ukrainian officers meeting when the missiles struck. Sure, because important military meetings close to the front are always held above ground 3+ years into an all-out war…
It is past time for Ukraine’s partners in NATO to put up or shut up when it comes to proving their readiness to defend not only Ukraine, but their own citizens. Ukraine is offering up the funds to buy ten Patriot batteries, and as they should have already been gifted, someone had better be digging deep into their stocks since we know the USA never will now.
But more than getting Ukraine more SAMs of its own, the time has come to, one way or another, fully enable Ukraine to dominate the skies behind and even over the front line. All the necessary prerequisites are in place. Political will is all that is lacking. And failure to demonstrate it in the face of Putin’s provocations is tantamount to surrender.
Ukraine needs a lot more help to secure the skies. In the other piece of unusually sad news this week, the orcs managed their first Viper kill, taking the life of a young pilot both Ukraine and partner countries put a lot of resources into training. While losses were and remain inevitable, that Ukrainian pilots have to take on additional incredible risks solely because Ukraine’s partners have not seen fit to give Kyiv all the tools it needs to own the skies is a tragedy unto itself. So this week’s brief on the fronts will take some extra time to lay out what should be happening right now if anyone really does hope to end the Ukraine War in 2025.
As the geopolitical brief that follows will suggest, failure to do so will represent the gravest error since the Muscovite assault on Ukraine was allowed to begin. The economic shocks wrought by the USA’s effective secession from the world are not liable to play nice with the geopolitical turmoil of the present day.
Overview of the Fronts: Week 15
Despite the pain in the sky and where orc terror strikes happen to land, on the front line the situation looks markedly better than all the recent talk of a big orc spring offensive would suggest. The enemy continues to send in meat waves, and Ukrainian soldiers cut them down. A notable worsening in the casualties per square kilometer seized statistic appears to be undercutting Putin’s plans for spring before they can even really get going.
Moscow faces an impossible dilemma in choosing where to launch operations in Ukraine. What it needs to do is concentrate so much firepower along one or two narrow vectors that Ukraine can’t stop a chunk of the front from being lopped off, unhinging the defense then slowly peeling back Ukraine’s defense line. If your army requires sheer mass to accomplish anything, concentration of all available assets is key.
But the Network Age makes this strategic approach deeply maladaptive, at least if the enemy isn’t painfully short on firepower. Choking off supply lines can still make it work, but all in all the ability to rapidly and accurately target anything spotted by a sensor makes any attempt to physically concentrate a lot of people and gear much too risky.
Regardless of the compelling evidence offered by ten thousand burned tanks and twice that many armored fighting vehicles, ruscist generals are now substituting civilian vehicles and even just long lines of soldiers on foot, some using crutches, hoping this will solve the problem. It can’t, not unless so much firepower is backing them in the form of drones and artillery that no stable defense can be mounted.
That’s not happening now that Ukraine is avery systematically overwhelming orc artillery assets in sectors where Moscow is building up for a major advance. Reports of destroyed artillery pieces have soared in recent weeks, and drone surveillance is increasingly interrupted on a large scale. Concentration is death against an enemy with as much precision firepower as Ukraine now boasts.
Of course, dispersion creates its own issues. For the past year and a half Moscow has kept trying to expand the scope of the fighting in a bid to get around the flanks of Ukraine’s defense in the east and north. Now the orcs are trying to nibble at the south again near Orikhiv. The obvious objective is to keep Ukrainian forces from concentrating to launch their own offensive - or stopping all of Moscow’s. A breakthrough anywhere could, in theory, be rapidly transformed into an unstoppable steamroller headed for the Dnipro.
But that hasn’t happened, nor is it likely to. Ukraine can shift forces more quickly to threatened fronts, and of late appears to be finding opportunities to rest more of its forces. As Moscow’s resources have dwindled, large portions of the line of contact have gone dormant, from a military perspective. So all that Putin’s generals have in fact accomplished is achieve a costly balance of strategic dispersion with operational concentration. Ukraine is able to maximize the power of the relative geographic concentration of its own forces accordingly, savaging each concentration while threatening surprises between.
This strategic-operational dynamic is responsible for the orcs finally bleeding off most of their real combat potential in the ground fight. That Moscow cooperated in engineering the one scenario that could actually lead to an epic military defeat for the ages will go down as an irony of history no less ridiculous than Trump’s self-sabotage of his own country’s power.
The orcs will continue to advance on select fronts, and in the worst case could even still create one or more serious crises for Ukraine. However, I continue to forecast that the worst of the storm has passed. This summer, even the sun and heat should become allies of Ukraine. If fiber-optic and self-homing drones with a range of twenty kilometers are widely deployed, it should be possible to so thoroughly isolate ruscist positions that they run out of water.
No matter how tough the soldier, dehydration will bring them down in days. Ukraine’s lead in drone resupply will be another crucial advantage.
Northern Theater
The north is still defined by the ongoing orc attempt to break into Sumy, which Ukraine has chosen to resist in part by holding small chunks of ruscist home turf along the border in Kursk and Belgorod. The occupied part of Kursk is slowly shrinking, and Moscow has moved enough troops to Belgorod to contain that incursion.
But so far there’s not much evidence that Moscow has the strength to push more than a few kilometers into Sumy. I’d say that the murder of all those civilians enjoying the holiday this weekend is a sign that the orcs don’t expect to get very far. Ukraine’s response of launching about a hundred drones at Kursk - one of which unfortunately went off course and hit a residential high rise, killing at least one civilian - suggests that orc logistics in the area are under severe threat.
Still no major movement on the Kharkiv front to speak of. Unless Moscow deploys troops away from Sumy, it’s unclear where the reserves needed to advance would come from. Though perhaps the spring leaf-out will help conceal buildups - on either side.
Eastern Theater
Fighting is also much the same on the Kupiansk front, Moscow slowly trying to expand a bridgehead over the Oskil one sector at a time. The reinforcements Ukraine moved to the area seem to have the situation in hand, blocking multiple attempts to set up bridges that would allow vehicles to push across.
Ukraine also continues to threaten a counteroffensive on the east bank that would cut off the biggest orc bridgehead. Considering how the scale of effective movement on the ground has shrunk over the past few years, even a seemingly local level encirclement could have serious broader political and even operational impacts. Moscow is apparently committing whole combined arms armies theoretically staffed with tens of thousands of personnel to maintain bridgeheads a few hundred strong. Something is very off on their side of the lines.
The Borova front, guarded by Third Assault Corps, is intriguing right now, despite relatively little news coming from it. Here orc troops supplied from Svatove have slowly expanded a bridgehead over the Zherebets to match the one more recently seized downstream near Terny. The orc plan seems to be evolving towards an attempt to encircle this corps and push it across the Oskil.
This would both protect Svatove and allow for a subsequent push south towards Lyman, long a ruscist target thanks to its proximity to urban Donbas, across the Siverskyi Donets. A major rail trunk linking Kharkiv with Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Kostyantynivka passed through Lyman before crossing the Siverskyi Donets heading into Sloviansk.
Moscow needs to clear the space betweeen the Zherebets and Oskil to sustain a march on Lyman, which is much hindered by Ukrainian forces operating from the forest plantations along the banks of the Siverskyi Donets. These troops in turn help protect the Siversk bulge by covering the flanks of 81st Airmobile, which holds the blood-drenched quarry at Bilohorivka just south of the forests.
The orcs also hope to break this chain of linked sectors by reaching Siversk, south of the Siverskyi Donets. So far, however, the corps led by 10th Mountain Assault continues to make them pay a high price for every failed attempt.
A long stretch of front along the highway leading from occupied Bakhmut directly to Sloviansk is interestingly almost ignored by the orcs, guarded by a single Ukrainian brigade, 30th Mechanized. It forms an effective internal boundary between the northern, central, and southern stretches of the long Eastern Theater.
On the other side, the central part is defined by the struggles on the Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk fronts, which appear to be similarly linked from the orc frame of reference. Efforts to break through Chasiv Yar and Toretsk having failed, the orcs are now trying to get at Kostyantynivka along the axis I evaluated as most dangerous for Ukraine a year ago.
One enemy convoy at one point was apparently allowed to drive several kilometers beyond Toretsk, at which point it was wiped out. The Ukrainian defense here has been very clever, on the whole.
A perhaps-inevitable effort to roll up the Ukrainian positions on a long slope between Chasiv Yar and Toretsk is also apparently finally getting started, aiming to displace the veteran 28th Mechanized Brigade. Eventually, Ukraine will probably be forced away from both towns, forced to take up new defensive positions roughly ten kilometers out, much as happened in Pokrovsk.
But the ferocity of the forward defense the associated brigades have waged for the past year has thwarted the orcs from getting a lot further much faster. It is highly unlikely that an advance from the east will be accompanied by the necessary flanking thrust to the west north of Pokrovsk. Kostyantynivka itself should stand.
The main reason? Pokrovsk has not fallen, or even been encircled. For all the effort Moscow put into its operations along the central and southern portions of the Eastern Theater this past year, it has little of strategic or operational value to show for it. Reaching the end of their logistical tether, the orcs on the Pokrovsk front are struggling to hold their ground despite receiving large-scale reinforcements and renewing efforts to advance over the past couple weeks.
It seems that Moscow must believe the southern edge of the theater, what I’ve been calling the Donbas-South front, is essential to the effort to surround Pokrovsk from the west. This explains the directions of the ongoing efforts to advance in this sector, which is otherwise of little particular value to Moscow.
In all likelihood, the difficulty the orcs have experienced crossing the Solona river west of Pokrovsk has convinced the orc generals that they need to bridge it on a broader front, much as they’re trying with the Oskil north of Kupiansk. Hindering this is probably the reason why Ukraine’s defense has stiffened far to the east of the confluence of the Vovcha, Solona, and Mokri Yali rivers. Once that line is secured, the orcs will be free to turn north. They do not appear to fear a flanking strike from the direction of Hulyaipole.
As with most ruscist plans, this one continues to make the error of distributing forces just enough to make them uncoordinated but still concentrating them to the point that loss ratios are unsustainable. It’s a worst-of-both-worlds scenario for Moscow, even if the pain is taking a while to bite.
The orcs are making some slow progress towards Bahatyr from the south, which might force Ukrainian troops to pull back. But the pace of the enemy advance remains much too slow to produce a major crisis.
Southern Theater
So far the ruscist push towards Zaporizhzhia has stalled at Ukraine’s forward defense line, unable to push north, west, or east in the past week. Fighting continues, and the situation could still worsen, but this offensive isn’t going very well for Moscow so far.
Neither are operations along the Dnipro, where there are reports of orc detachments starving after being more or less abandoned in the swamps or on some island. Ukraine quietly maintains several small bridgeheads across the river, backed by three coastal defense brigades organized under the auspices of the Marine Corps.
Not much is expected in the south in the near future, save for expanding Ukrainian drone strikes. With Kherson under daily bombardment, hunting down orc artillery and drone operators is probably the priority here.
The Air Domain - Towards Victory In The Sky
Properly shielding Ukraine’s skies has never been a complicated matter in a general sense. It’s about having enough air defense systems and aircraft to make the majority of enemy attacks unproductive. Sadly, stopping terror strikes like the ones against Kryvyi Rih and Sumy, both fairly close to the front line, is inherently more difficult than blocking strikes on Kyiv.
Still, what both have in common is the need for a multi-layered air defense network. The ground-based component of this consists of:
Long-range SAMs like Patriot and Aster that can knock down ballistic missiles coming down within about 50km;
Medium-range ones like NASAMS and IRIS-T which are best against aircraft and cruise missiles out to the edge of the horizon;
Short-range systems like the retrofitted Soviet models using NATO missiles (dubbed FrankenSAM) and even Humvees rigged up to launch converted heat seeking air to air missiles;
Mobile gun systems like the venerable German Gepard or just a machine gun on the bed of a pickup are highly useful for taking out drones and sometimes cruise missiles.
At least one former Ukrainian schoolteacher is credited with knocking down a cruise missile using a shoulder-fired SAM she barely looks capable of lifting, but obviously can. But her personal victory was critically enabled by sensors and networks.
Ukraine has no more than eight or nine long-range systems, which are the core of any air defense network thanks to their ability to intercept ballistic targets. These come down from suborbital altitudes at thousands of kilometers per hour, and while mid-range weapons can sometimes score a lucky hit, they can’t be relied on. Because Ukraine has numerous large cities and a front line spanning many hundreds of kilometers to cover, air defense systems are forced to move around, offering permanent protection only to Kyiv. Everyone else in Ukraine, soldiers included make due with temporary deployments that mainly force the orcs to do careful recon before launching attacks - or hit a target from two directions, as apparently happened in Sumy.
Even though Ukraine’s stock of Patriot interceptors is always dangerously low, it’s the limited number of radars and control vehicles available that represent an even bigger problem. The launcher is only one component of the full system and perhaps the most easily replaced - and hidden. Radars and control vehicles, especially their crews, are prize targets which themselves have to be guarded by other air defense systems. Though Ukrainian technicians have reportedly made old S-300 radars work with Patriot systems to some degree, the crosswalk process probably isn’t smooth.
The only answer is additional air defense batteries, and fast. Which is why Zelensky is again pleading for them, and what’s more, offering to buy them straight up at $1.5 billion a pop for Patriots. Trouble is, D.C. likely has to give the okay for more of these, which are apparently superior to Aster and far more plentiful. Using other global demands (Israel) as an excuse to hold back from additional supplies was one of Biden’s tricks - funny, then, that for all Trump’s talk about Ukraine being Biden’s war, he’s treating the purchase - not donation - of air defense systems that can protect children as a huge ask.
But European countries and several Gulf States that might be open to hedging their security bets are attractive prospects for sourcing more Patriot batteries, with American refusal probably having consequences D.C. would prefer not to accept. After all, anyone who takes a shot at a NATO country is going to suffer a lot more for the attempt than it could possibly be worth. If Moscow is going to start killing Europeans because their air defenses are in Ukraine, then war was inevitable - and coming much sooner than anyone realized. Moscow will as a natural result soon be short major chunks of its war machine. Europe is not defenseless.
Ten more Patriot batteries, as Zelensky is requesting, would transform Ukraine’s air defense network. Ukrainian defenders of the sky would have far fewer gaps in radar coverage to cope with, something the hopefully imminent arrival of two Swedish AWACS will also help remedy. The image below depicts the coverage of just thirteen (13) Patriot systems in operation - fewer than the total Ukraine would have if ten were added to the present six-seven - the inner 50km ring representing coverage against ballistic targets and the outer 150km showing the kill zone for aircraft and cruise missiles.
Even if each of the 4-8 Patriot launchers assigned to a battery is carrying only a quarter of a full combat load, that still means that any orc strike on Ukraine’s biggest cities has to spend a solid $10 million just to guarantee a chance of breaking through to hit a target. A better density of radar coverage will enhance the accuracy of defense shots as well as improve prediction of where hostile weapons are set to land. Those which aren’t set to hit anything important can be ignored. Efficiency will rise, forcing the orcs to spend even more resources per attack to score a hit. The goal is not perfect protection, like you need in naval warfare, but just enough to make Moscow expend a large portion of its arsenal to achieve decisive impacts, something that proved difficult to sustain and was easier to shield civilians against.
It’s also worth noting that certain frontline cities, namely Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Sloviansk, and Kharkiv, if so protected would offer substantial coverage to Ukrainian formations in the field. Also note that the ability to forward deploy enough systems to survive dedicated suppression of air defense campaigns by the orcs means that glide bomb attacks will become ridiculously risky. Attempts to intercept Ukrainian jets near the front line with Sukhois or MiGs will likewise turn into deadly gauntlets for orc pilots.
The first loss of a Ukrainian Viper to hostile fire this week was reportedly the result of no fewer than three multi-million dollar missiles launched at the target fighter. No further details of the circumstances have been released, nor are they likely to come out for some time given the sensitivity of the circumstances. All that is known is that the loss occurred near the front lines, with S-400 ground-launched or R-37 air-launched missiles probably to blame.
Considering Ukraine’s effective public announcement the other week of missions unleashing bombs inside of russia, my suspicion is that someone in Moscow decided that ambushing a Viper was a major priority and deployed assets accordingly on the ground and in the sky. As inept as the orcs are when it comes to strategy and operations, they do retain the ability to innovate with tactics.
Having an aerial radar switch on suddenly after flying dormant well inside ruscist airspace could be just what the enemy needed to burn through the Viper’s jamming and score a hit. Alternatively, if both air and ground launched missiles were involved and came from different directions, the pilot would face an impossible dilemma, as missile evasion requires precisely-timed turns. If the enemy radar lock was strong enough, even the perfect defensive maneuvers might not matter.
Another factor has to be considered: improvements in the orc ability to counter or even exploit Ukrainian jamming. To jam enemy radar signals, you have to emit your own. This provides a signal that hostile weapons can be set to chase down. Both S-400 and R-37 missiles have very large warheads. Even if their home-on-jam mode is crude, it might be enough to score a kill, especially if the Viper pilot was dodging other weapons. And it is also entirely possible that the orcs played around with their own signals to evade the Viper’s own jammers. They’ve had nine months of exposure to the jamming pods that Ukraine uses, and a vulnerability may have been exploited. Engineers will figure out what happened and fix it, but Viper pilots will have to exhibit additional caution.
There’s always so much that can go wrong in any operation, whatever the domain, that it’s sort of amazing anything ever goes right at all. The Ukrainian pilot was given quite a few awards and a posthumous promotion, so I do wonder if some kind of sacrifice was involved during an escort mission. I’d expect Vipers and their jamming pods to be covering more vulnerable bomb-toting Sukhois and MiGs, or even trying to hunt enemy air defenses themselves, Wild Weasel style.
Regardless, more Patriots near the front line and the arrival of AWACS support will only increase the margin of error that Ukraine’s bold pilots enjoy. Provided they get Link-16 or another network to prevent friendly fire incident.
An element of the recent, mostly European discussion about deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine that hasn’t received a lot of press is the fact that to operate they’ll need to be closely integrated with Ukrainian forces. They will also need to bring their own air support and defense systems to the mission.
You might expect this analysis to delve once more into why Ukraine needs additional combat jets and long-range missiles, and this remains true. A squadron of Gripens armed with Meteor missiles would make every orc pilot think twice before agreeing to fly within a hundred kilometers of the front line.
But the reality of the situation in Ukraine is, and has always been, that the failure of Ukraine’s allies to deploy their own forces on Ukrainian soil long ago remains one of the factors that incites Putin to continue this war. It is long since time for foreign troops and aircraft to deploy west of a line running through Kyiv and Odesa in a bid to create an air shield over western Ukraine from the Black Sea to Belarus.
Because of the inherent challenges in organizing a multinational mission, France and the UK, being nuclear powers must lead a joint mission on the ground and in the sky that will create secure refuges on Ukrainian soil. Within them Ukrainian troops will be trained, logistics arranged, and air defenses guarding the skies of western Ukraine organized.
Both Paris and London need to commit a full ground brigade plus a squadron of combat aircraft, roughly twenty Rafales and Typhoons respectively, with AWACS and electronic intelligence support. The rules of engagement are simple: they stay at least a hundred kilometers from any crewed orc jets but actively destroy any drones or cruise missiles that cross the Dnipro or western Black Sea. No more orc weapons falling on NATO territory risking an incident that might trigger Article 5, which nobody wants.
If and when there is a peace deal, these forces will form the nexus of the European peacekeeping deployment. Until then, they protect two cities with particular importance. A maritime peacekeeping force also needs to be deployed to guard the grain corridor between Odesa and Istanbul, including aegis-equipped warships capable of knocking down whatever the orcs might decide to play with.
Forty combat aircraft, of which only around eight would ever be airborne at any given time, might not sound like much, especially if they aren’t allowed to fight the orcs directly. However, NATO airbases and brigades have to be defended by powerful air defense systems, and given the threat level they have to be free to engage targets posing a threat to their immediate vicinity. That’s how you get a little additional ballistic missile protection for Kyiv and Odesa while freeing up Ukrainian systems to cover other targets.
The importance of taking this step cannot be overstated. It would represent a necessary overt slap in Putin’s face, a provocation that he can’t risk responding to with anywhere near the force his rhetoric suggests is required. Not with two nuclear powers staring him down, each with a potent navy and air force capable of severing Moscow’s connections to the rest of the world if required. Especially if Japan is willing to play hardball out on the Pacific side of the orc empire. Everybody seems to have forgotten that Tokyo and Moscow have their own unsettled business from history, and that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are very capable, particularly at sea.
When dealing with a regime like Putin’s, the sooner and more aggressively you call his bluffs the better. Muscovite propagandists can huff and puff and threaten nuclear Armageddon all they like, but just as Moscow gets to move its troops into any country stupid enough to allow it, so does everybody else with their own allies. And if Moscow takes a shot at a protected area and it gets through, causing casualties…
Look, how likely is that to happen, really? After all, NATO has been shipping up to two-thirds of the war material Ukraine has relied on across three years of relentless fighting through a few nodes on NATO territory. Moscow hasn’t even tried to attack them, though at one point I was certain that Putin had to at least try. Yet no strike has ever come, no matter how much military sense one might have once made or how often ruscist war bloggers demand such a move. He simply can’t take on an alerted NATO without settling affairs in Ukraine, first.
The death of NATO soldiers in Ukraine would not spark widespread domestic condemnation of the leaders in the countries running the mission. On the contrary, the perception would be of Moscow choosing to start a war over an effort to protect civilians against a proven menace to their safety. Politically, that’s a win. Moscow is unlikely to be dumb enough to cross that line now. And again, if Putin is, then the moment was bound to come. Better to fight now than in the uncertain future.
But Putin shows no sign of having turned suicidal. Deployment of foreign troops, something his propaganda already alleges anyway, would create zones where his forces would simply avoid operating wherever possible. Look at how Putin and Netanyahu would cooperate to let Israel bomb Hezbollah assets in Syria, sometimes located just a short distance from ruscist bases. The powerful air defense systems Muscovite troops operated on the former Assad regime’s behalf were always switched off.
The only chance of achieving a settlement in the Ukraine war short of a successful major Ukrainian counteroffensive this year or next is Europe stepping up so firmly that Putin fears what might happen next. He, like Team Trump, assumes that Europe is divided and weak. You might have said the same of the USA in the early 1940s. Hitler sure did. And look where that got him.
If France and the UK move, others will follow. As Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, along with a few others, face no true threats to their security, they could jointly put together another brigade and squadron to deploy to far-western Ukraine, perhaps Lviv. In each of these NATO-protected hubs businesses would feel safe making long-term investments. Opportunities for the countries involved would abound.
It just takes a little vision - and intestinal fortitude, as my drill sergeants used to say. But Europeans either make the move now, or all too probably bleed for the mistake later. As too many Ukrainians are presently suffering for the mistakes of the past few years. The correct policy is clear: stop Putin’s robots and drones from accessing the majority of Ukraine’s airspace.
Without killing a single orc, European allies can ensure that more Ukrainian soldiers and civilians survive. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s assets can concentrate on the far more dangerous operations across the Dnipro.
Strike Campaigns
The contrast between Moscow and Kyiv in this war is perfectly exemplified by their respective strike campaigns. Where Moscow visibly aims to maximize civilian casualties while pretending targets are military, Ukraine doesn’t waste ordnance. Even in revenge, the Ukrainians don’t target civilians or even purely civilian infrastructure. While there are civilian casualties resulting from Ukrainian strike operations, these are caused by a weapon being knocked off course by electronic warfare or only partially destroyed by an air defense missile - or the interceptor itself. Which does happen. Ukrainian forces do not target civilians, however, because if they did, they would lose a certain moral high ground that is absolutely critical to Ukraine’s survival.
Successful Ukrainian strikes now happen as frequently as a successful orc raid, terror or otherwise. Light aircraft converted into drones carrying 250kg (roughly 500 lb) bombs are hitting targets 2,000km from the border. The sheer size of the ruscist empire is a vulnerability that Ukraine can now relentlessly exploit, routing drones through the inevitable gaps in Moscow’s own air defense network. At some point I guarantee that a Ukrainian drone developer will manage to strap a couple short range air-to-air missiles on a converted Cessna - or perhaps even a single air-to-ground anti-radar missile - to run escort for strike drones that might otherwise be vulnerable to helicopter patrols.
Small wonder that the orcs are so enraged that they’re using multi-million dollar missiles to kill Ukrainian civilians instead of destroying Ukrainian factories or something actually pertinent to the war effort. Granted, these weapons are increasingly coming from North Korea, so their reliability is questionable. Still, there are better targets for them than civilians, and it’s a blatant sign of weakness to have to resort to terror attacks. As for the nonsense about Moscow targeting gatherings of officers - look, any Ukrainian officers that would gather above ground in sizable numbers within ordinary rocket range of the border at this point are a liability to their own side. You want fools like that in command on the other side if you’re the orcs. No better enemy to fight than one with a hero complex - it should be understood that the American “warrior” culture a certain type claims to embrace without having the faintest clue what that term traditionally means is the just the tired old hero complex put through a rebrand.
That same delusional tripe fed to soldiers a hundred-plus years ago about proper moral spirit being the key to victory is shoved down the throats of American personnel today in modified form. It is bound to end exactly the same: in needless casualties, as officers do what their textbooks say is right and proper despite having been written by people who never experienced anything like the hell of total war in the Network Age. At least a soldier stuck in a hole in 1918 could take some minor comfort in the fact that the artillery barrage landing all around them wasn’t aimed at them personally. Now, hunker in whatever hole you like, a drone operated by a teenager on the other side of the horizon will hunt you down.
In any event, Ukraine’s drone strike campaign is slowly eating away at the sinews holding the ruscist empire on its feet. Moscow’s efforts, by contrast, spark renewed justified outrage abroad that gives wavering leaders a new reason to be seen publicly backing Ukraine. Moscow’s ability to inflict real harm is meanwhile steadily declining, Ukrainian drone developers releasing counters to the now-ubiquitous Shahed-type flights that probe Ukraine’s air defenses pretty much every night.
This is not to say that the harm Moscow does is trivial, only that in military terms it’s nowhere near enough to have the same impact on Ukraine as the countervailing Ukrainian campaign is on Moscow’s war effort. Even in the ever-murky domain of morale, the incessant drone strikes across the breadth of Putin’s empire are doing more damage to him than his attacks, no matter how vicious, inflict on Ukraine. Every day people in the empire look up to see hard evidence of how badly their leaders have failed them. That’s very dangerous for a regime like Putin’s.
Frankly, I’m surprised that the orcs haven’t already staged a mass casualty false flag attack and blamed it on Ukraine. In a war that has already confirmed the validity of Larry Bond and Tom Clancy’s portrayal of the Muscovite military machine in Red Storm Rising, it would be entirely within the realm of imagination for the orcs to kill a dozen or so schoolchildren with a drone they make up to look Ukrainian. I’m sure there are enough downed parts to make the wreckage appear authentic.
One of the core objectives of Moscow’s terror attacks is to get Ukraine to finally reply in kind. Note how Trump is parroting Putin’s rhetoric about the war being Ukraine’s fault lately? That’s basically an invitation for the orcs to try something that will help Team Trump in their mission to equate the two sides. The first step in forcing someone to accept a bad and unjust deal is undermining the moral quality of their cause. Ukraine has avoided this trap so far, but sooner or later, the orcs will try to provoke or fake an atrocity.
Games like that are all a hack spook like Putin has left. This is another reason that avoiding escalation is no longer a valid reason to avoid taking whatever actions are justified from the perspective of demonstrating strength in the face of ruscist provocations and threats. Putin will push and push until someone punches him right in the throat. Failure to respond with sufficient force is perceived by his kind as a sign of weakness that begs to be exploited.
Again, I don’t like this reality, I only offer policy analysis and forecasts. If Putin’s behavior ever actually changed, so would my position. At the start of this war, I never believed the terrible stories about russian soldiers. Then the hard evidence of systematic murder committed by supposedly elite, professional troops long lauded as among the best in the world by Michael Kofman, et al in Bucha and Irpin emerged. Now everyone knows russia for what it truly is, has always been, and will always be.
It is intriguing that some believe there can be two equivalent sides in this fight. But I guess in the warped world of Trump and Vance, the victim is supposed to apologize to the criminal.
Naval Matters
Not much news from the Black Sea lately, which is to be expected most weeks given Ukraine’s triumph in this domain. The surviving orc ships assigned to the Black Sea Fleet stick close to the Caucasus coast, at most launching a few cruise missiles now and again.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is rapidly building up novel drone capabilities, now including full-on miniature warships with the ability to use torpedoes and surface to air missiles. By and large, the littoral regions of the world now belong to drones, larger vessels inherently vulnerable within a few hundred kilometers of the shore. In another example of a mistaken Pentagon arms procurement program, those troubled littoral combat ships are pretty much toast in any real conflict. Ah, another pork program worth about a hundred billion dollars in lifetime costs… and you don’t see Elon Musk’s DOGE cutting that, do you? Huh, wonder if the LCS platform can be turned into a drone… single use only?
An emerging rule of warfare in the drone-infested Network Age is that uncrewed should be small, simple, and plentiful, while crewed needs to be big, powerful, and well protected. This goes for ships, aircraft, and armored vehicles alike.
Leadership & Personnel
The improved efficiency of Ukraine’s defense over the past few months is very notable; some media reports suggest that casualties are down up to twenty percent. That’s the sort of impact you would expect improved training and organization to have.
More corps continue to be formally established, Kyiv making the smart choice of keeping the process as organic as possible. Standout brigades on different fronts are pulling adjacent formations under a single command structure. This should let best practices flow from innovating formations to partners they’re already probably used to working with. Local familiarity with the terrain is now even move important than it used to be, with the degradation in ruscist military art leading to constant attempts to seek any point of weakness along the front.
There are still apparently a whole lot of soldiers on the front line who haven’t been given a proper rotation or allowed to swap roles with someone more used to working in the rear. This is a problem that has no easy fix, but it also can’t be put off forever. According to estimates, around a hundred thousand Ukrainian soldiers are probably long overdue for at least partial demobilization. These veterans have to get some level of relief, because anyone will break under enough constant stress. And the unique knowledge they carry is a resource not to be lightly cast aside.
But whatever Ukrainian veterans and recruits are facing, it pales in comparison to what orc expendables are put through. Some Ukrainian commanders are obviously bad, but there are strong internal incentives felt across the force to find and remove them, even if the process is always too slow. On the other side of the fight, the average orc soldier is brutally abused throughout the process of being transformed into meat dispatched into the grinder.
Two Chinese nationals were recently captured on the Siversk front, and their testimonies add yet more confirmation of how little the ruscist machine cares for its soldiers. It’s a rank pyramid scheme where every level extorts whatever it can from the one below. Moscow visibly sees its own population as sorted into categories based on their value to the state, and anyone who wound up in prison or poor has proven that they are best suited to absorbing Ukrainian fire. The social contract animating the russian world is this: so long as someone else is being abused, I’m safe.
For orcs sent to be slaughtered on the front lines, the delusion holds right up until they find themselves ordered to advance without support, warned that if they turn back or surrender they’ll be killed by their own side. Medical evacuation is not systematic in the least, left up to individual teams. This system is self-perpetuating because tribes will form to create some level of mutual self-protection, playing right into the pyramid scheme. Seniority is reportedly a traditional dividing line. Veteran soldiers push essentially untrained recruits into designated storm units, knowing that it’s the newbies or them who will die when the officers order the next assault. Once pulled into the machine, you become complicit or die.
Yet the thing that totalitarian leaders never understand is that resistance builds despite their best efforts. What makes a free society work better in the long run is the inherent ability to sustain often dramatic changes in configuration without damaging the underlying essence of the thing. This is produced by people freely associating in pursuit of liberty and happiness, as they define them. Deep down, people know that abusive, exploitative situations are bad for everyone. Fear of being victimized creates strong incentives to hide. But the pressures out all the same, eventually.
Trapped in a nightmare that seems to have no hope of ending, small wonder so many orcs kill themselves on the battlefield. This is a system designed to destroy hope in a vain bid to squash resistance that is always going to appear. You harness it, or wind up burned. But in the short run, the ability to find new victims to make suffer the consequences of the upper caste’s delusions is what sustains the thing. That, and insufficient resistance.
In the end, Ukraine will have victory because eventually the ruscist state will hit a metabolic wall and convulse. I hope this moment comes in 2025, and am certain it can be engineered if the right steps are taken in time. But whenever it does, Ukraine will be ready to move, and when it does, the shock stands to shatter the ruscist empire. Probably forever.
And we’d better hope for that outcome, because matters continue to trend like the 1930s are back in style out in the wider world. Economic and political turmoil rarely play nice together.
World System Brief
Globally, the consequences of Trump’s inane trade war aren’t diminishing any time soon, even if some of them are on pause for now. Though he predictably retreated when faced with meaningful pushback, the damage to America’s reputation is done. A long, painful slide not unlike what the British Empire went through in the 1950s is probable: in a generation, what is left of the USA stands to have as much of an impact on global affairs as Brazil.
This is not a knock on Brazilians, whose similarly large, resource-rich, and populated country is only poorer than America because of the way history happened to play out. Both started out as European colonies that fought wars of independence then turned into empires themselves. Brazil is just a few decades farther back on the economic development ladder, something best explained by a later independence date coming after a longer history of being a resource colony.
The USA, in historical terms, has been sitting at the top of the world for over half a century. The Soviet bloc was never as coherent or dangerous as it seemed, content to play off the US-led part of the world to sustain a predatory dictatorship at home. Team Trump is sacrificing the foundations of the stability that made the USA an attractive de-facto world leader. Going from that to Brazil - a respected voice and dangerous military power in its home area, sure, but not one capable of invading and occupying countries in the Middle East - will be a hard road.
And those Americans who see the impending dawn of a truly multipolar world divided into spheres of power each dominated by a major player are also bound to be disappointed with the end result. Because this, contrary to mistaken interpretations of Darwin, is not the true state of nature that European philosophers have always feared. It’s another form of oligarchy, and it isn’t stable, as European history has shown. When the system convulses, as systems always do, the outcome is often catastrophic.
The power interests trying to drag the world down that path are thankfully set to be overwhelmed by a different, more truly traditional dynamic. Like-minded communities will band together and impose order where they can. Those who get moving sooner will be the first to take advantage of the new way of things. Once certain illusions are burned away, they will be revealed as unnecessary to begin with. The imagined indispensibility of the USA has been an impediment to positive change at home and abroad for a long time.
North America
Over the past couple of weeks a certain kind of American has received a stark education in the dismal science of political economy. Simply put, you can’t upend foundational assumptions about how the world works on a whim without paying a price.
Money may make the world go around, but people generally try to exchange it with people they trust. This is rooted in repeated interactions that follow certain rules. For most of the past eighty years the USA had established a unique environment where everyone assumed that no American politician would be dumb enough to break rules that, on the whole, have benefited most Americans. This world is now dead, and capital flows have begun to respond.
In effect, the USA is starting to be treated like a normal country by the stock and bond markets. And if you peer behind all the tired American claims about being exceptional, what you see is a country with decrepit infrastructure, broken politics, mediocre education, over-hyped military and a debt-to-GDP ratio well over 100%.
When presidents start scolding traders for their money management decisions in the wake of an imposed shock, they’ve lost the plot. It was kind of funny watching Team Trump recoil in fear when the bond market started to act rationally, selling off medium-term US debt and kicking mortgage rates skyward. It was - and remains - entirely possible that a rapid flight out of US treasuries will send US borrowing costs skyrocketing overnight, making the deficit dramatically worse, among other impacts.
Both internationally and domestically, the economy depends on politicians not doing certain very foolish things. Trade barriers do not work well for developed countries, because it takes too long to tool up new factories and the profit margins are too thin to bother with anyway. Tariff revenues invariably fail to match hopes, and domestic industry fails to benefit because consumption doesn’t shift from Chinese goods to American equivalents that don’t exist and can’t for years. It just drops as people choose to hold off spending until the presidency changes hands in hopes the new administration undoes everything. And if you nuke the engine of the American economy, enjoy the deep and lasting recession that follows, politicians on all sides!
To top everything off, Trump’s trade nonsense and the recession it has made all but inevitable is pushing the global price of oil to a level that American frackers can’t sustain for long. Want to make the Saudis really, really happy? Keep oil prices just below the breakeven point for already-expensive American unconventional crude for 4-5 years. Watch the industry crater from Texas to Pennsylvania. The Saudis and the rest of OPEC will still be there pumping their (slowly dwindling) supplies of cheap, quality stuff. Their market share goes up, so they wind up coming out ahead, while their primary competitors - the USA and russia - crash out. That’s how you make America great!
On the plus side, the drop in oil prices is a total nightmare for Putin. Already strained past the breaking point by the war on Ukraine, the Muscovite economy is brutally exposed. China is not the sort of ally to bail out a country that made its own bed by paying too much for black gold. Beijing might prop up Moscow’s economy and war effort behind the scenes, but mainly to expand its own market share. Strangely, Trump’s self-induced economic calamity could actually wind up helping Ukraine, on the whole.
Team Trump’s bid to secure a ceasefire by Easter is all but dead for a variety of reasons, and wouldn’t have mattered much anyway, but could have potentially aided Moscow more than Ukraine. Much like Trump’s advice on economic matters from whoever has his ear during this week’s episode, whatever J.D. Vance has been selling him on foreign policy is not having the desired result. Except maybe for Vance, who if he doesn’t get installed as president in 2029 will probably decamp to Germany to join the AfD in a bid to get his apparent dream job of Reichskanzler.
By positioning D.C. as standing between Moscow and Kyiv in peace talks, the USA has given up its leverage over both. Trump is already talking about Ukraine as being Biden’s war, a sure sign of him plotting to throw up his hands and disclaim all responsibility for what happens in Ukraine. This should lead to a purely mercenary approach on his part that allows Ukraine to buy whatever it needs from American suppliers and access US intelligence through NATO but lets D.C. off the hook for playing any active role.
This was always likely to be the end game of Trump’s peace push, as I’ve suggested since the middle of 2024. Trump gave up a golden opportunity to achieve his goals by giving Ukraine all the firepower it could handle while quietly telling Putin he’d better declare victory and call the conflict while there was still time. Now the USA is stepping aside at a moment when Europe has every incentive to unleash its latent power.
Europe
I can’t imagine that the Europeans much mind the prospect of the USA slipping into a recession when their economies have been treading water since 2020. A big part of the reason for that has been higher oil prices, in part caused by the Ukraine War, and the perception on the part of global money managers that the USA was both a growth market and a safe haven.
Now, despite its fractious internal politics, Europe is looking like a far better place to do business than the USA in the near term. Regulations and bureaucracy are at least predictable, unlike whatever policy idea might make it into Trump’s brain tomorrow.
Yet European leaders continue to remain altogether much too cautious, despite increasingly brazen ruscist attacks on Europe. Sending bombs in packages and cutting undersea cables are intentional probes, and it’s good to see several European countries seizing offending vessels and parts of Moscow’s shadow tanker fleet. Muscovite maritime links to the world are a weakness that should be ruthlessly exploited, because Europe at least has lots of ships. If more would focus on the Atlantic instead of tooling around the Pacific that would be ideal, as Japan’s rather large navy can more than handle the orc Pacific Fleet if required.
There continues to be a visible push on the part of Europe to expand investment opportunities for other democratic countries on the continent. Japan and Australia have already expressed interest, and no doubt South Korea is keen on expanding already well established ties with Poland further into the EU space. Investment in Ukrainian companies has proven to be an excellent arrangement for both sides,
Of course, improved air defenses in Ukraine would also make it much easier to attract investment. One reason for the orc terror campaign of late is to remind foreigners that they are at risk whenever they visit Ukraine. It ought to be the obligation of every country with citizens in the country to contribute to their defense. See again my points about finally deploying a viable air shield in Ukraine.
Middle East
Little new to report in the region this week - the US military buildup continues, and Israel is saying it plans to expand operations in Gaza again, but both are to be expected. It’d pretty sad that nobody seems to be willing to prevent Israel from rendering Gaza uninhabitable while it keeps failing to destroy Hamas.
Vinson group is now in the Indian Ocean, so intensified strikes against the Houthis are probably imminent. Truman has has been stuck tooling around the confined waters of the Red Sea, her tour extended, so the window where two carriers are available to launch a wave of intensive strikes in Yemen will last about a month. Though another extension for Truman would not be unheard of.
The back and forth over Iran’s nuclear program is intensifying, on track for military action sometime before the heat of summer starts making daytime thermal imaging more difficult. Late May sounds about right, maybe Memorial Day, for the optics. Team Trump would naturally hope to declare victory by July 4th. Of course, Iran could have its first few bombs by May. Fun!
Pacific
I neglected to cover the latest Chinese practice blockade of Taiwan that wrapped up a bit more than a week ago, but really, these are becoming terribly routine. Which is exactly the point, from Beijing’s perspective.
The odds of Beijing sweeping in and hitting Taiwan with a sudden surprise invasion are incredibly low. Something of that magnitude would give off telltale signs well in advance. And the sort of shock any sudden invasion, even a small attempt at overthrowing the government by special forces, is apt to trigger an outpouring of patriotic fervor in Taiwan that is exactly what Beijing doesn’t need when trying to sustain an invasion. It would also provoke other countries to intervene, knowing that Beijing had chosen the path of malignant empire, with war being inevitable.
What constant exercises around Taiwan do is something far more effective. It is now totally normal for news reports to appear talking about Chinese military forces surrounding the island. Slowly but surely an image of Taiwan being stuck behind a wall of Chinese military might will take shape in the minds of foreign observers. It’s a ruthless process of alienation that aims to make leaders in Tokyo, Seoul, Canberra, and D.C. think twice about resisting an actual military incursion. Why fight for a doomed island, if the cost will be so terribly high? And once doubt on that front sets in, the chances of winning concessions without a fight rise. Hubris also, raising the risk of a fatal miscalculation.
America’s retreat from the world it built will reorder relations in the Pacific, even if D.C. decides that’s its sole focus in the whole world (never happening, because of Israel). Trump has demonstrated clear disregard for Taiwan as anything other than a bargaining chip in the eternal fight with China that is set to become the U.S. federal government’s main concern, aside from some doomed meddling in Mexico as the unwinnable wars on terror and drugs merge.
Japan and South Korea are both aware that in the racial logic which pervades American society, they tend to get lumped in with China. This creates a very real danger of both being pulled into China’s orbit on the social and economic fronts, even if they remain strongly independent and even hostile when it comes to military affairs.
That kind of layered system of give and take is pretty standard in the history and social fabric of all three countries. There’s a predictability to it that is sorely lacking in the Trump style of management. Probably why he’s never been known as a particularly successful businessman, at least not in Pacific terms. If it weren’t for the way economic and social connections blend so easily with the political in New York City, he’d be nothing of note.
On the Pacific, at least our billionaires actually worked to get where they are - mostly. Trump is a daddy’s boy with a big inheritance and misplaced confidence to match. Small wonder that his vision of the Pacific is essentially a cartoon.
The unique hazards of the Pacific make it absurdly obvious that the states of Pacific America need their own autonomous federal government - and defense force. The Pacific Forces, assuming they are allocated 2% of the Pacific American GDP, would have a total annual budget in excess of $100 billion. If Japan, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand match Pacific America’s contribution as part of a Pacific Alliance, that’s a $250 billion annual budget to work with - not much lower than China’s. And this doesn’t count another 1%-2% that each country would spend on local security. Together, we’re a power equal to any on the planet. Got a few hundred nukes up by Seattle, too.
Given that the Pacific States as a group actually lose out financially in a big way by being part of the USA, thanks to all the wealth concentrated in the state’s of Washington and California that funds federal spending in the south and midwest. Our regional budget situation would markedly improve under autonomy, to the tune of having about a third more tax revenue to play with - or give back to the population.
It’s another sign of just how much a canned theatrical performance American partisan politics has become that there’s a sizable group on both teams that would actually prefer a civil war to peaceful separation. Most either think they wouldn’t have to fight themselves. Others fantasize that taking part would be somehow cathartic, but the first drone drop nearby would send them into a panic. And if the global unraveling isn’t managed correctly, that’s a scenario bound to play out in suburbs across America not long down the road.
Far better to peacefully divide than take another step down that path. As Americans are already divided, thanks to simple geography. In a few centuries, we won’t even speak the same language.
Concluding Comments
Well, it’s been another week in the Ukraine War - hard to believe sometimes that this is year four. Looking ahead I can’t help but anticipate more of the same through spring, unfortunately. But wheels are in motion, and the results of prior investments seem sure to reveal themselves in a matter of weeks. The summer won’t be quiet and there will be no lasting ceasefire until one or both sides is totally exhausted.
Here’s hoping that European leaders are ready to move with the requisite speed to ensure that side is Putin’s. There’s no more time to waste. Not when, for all anyone can tell these days, Trump could declare himself king of America and have a majority of Americans go along with it. Vote for us in 2028, the Democrats would cry, even after elections were banned.
I’m being facetious about the banned elections part, obviously. There’s no need for that when you face opposition lacking strategy or spine.
But anyone who holds out hope that the America of yesteryear will ever return is clinging to a fantasy. Whichever partisan loon holds the White House, the USA’s time as a world leader is over. That’s probably a good thing. Something better deserves to rise.