The degree of damage that these mistakes and miscalculations have wrought is inestimable. The effects will be felt by all future generations in the West and historians will inevitably assign blame where it is due even though those involved seek by every possible means to justify themselves and to cover their tracks today. This will be cold comfort indeed for the general populations of those countries who have lost so much at their hands and who will surely seek justice before too much longer, but in vain.
The genesis of the present and future catastrophe for the West lies in a combination of hubris and ignorance. It has been the level of institutionalised overconfidence in the overweening might and influence abused repeatedly in recent years (to little positive and much negative effect) that has led directly to this point. It appears no lessons were learnt from the negative outcomes seen plainly by the rest of the world. Contrition appears to have been totally absent concerning these failures, there being an unacceptable risk of denting the confidence that had to be maintained at all costs.
The institutional blindness created among western political elites regarding past failures and their desperate need to shore up confidence in the face of the goals set up post 9/11 to transform the world in their favour, meant that a disaster at some level was inevitable. But what made the disaster so incredibly catastrophic, continuing to this very day and showing no sign of diminishing, was the continual doubling down in the hope of eventually finding a way to prevail and achieve those goals.
The anvil that has broken every western hammer brought down upon it is of course Russia. The primary hammer that western politicians believed would crack Russia forever and drive it out of the league of great powers was of course Ukraine. Ukraine was the tool the West believed would be used to devastating effect in the undermining of their secondary target Russia, before engaging in the campaign against their most important target of all, China. The political and military failures of the West,along with their disastrous consequences, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya and Syria were consigned resolutely to the past. This time they would succeed as they knew they must. Failure was not an option. There was no Plan B when it came to the goals set after 9/11. To relent was unthinkable. For these reasons and despite monumental failure, doubling down was considered the ONLY option.
The Miscalculation.
There is a certain “Yes Sir!” mentality within the highest echelons of the U.S. political hierarchy in particular which sees a reflection of sorts across all its allies, particularly so in the United Kingdom. This evidences itself in a determination only to reflect confidence and deliver what is asked with as few questions asked as possible. In the environments where this mentality prevails reality fast fades from discussion replaced by a show of confidence, positivism and a perpetually maintained can-do approach. The vital details of reality are replaced by a vacuous level of overconfidence that initiates ever greater degrees of blindness which over time breed a fantasyland where mistakes of enormous proportion become inevitable.
Russia was portrayed in the political circles of the West as weak, a ‘gas station with nukes’. Those who new better within the U.S. state department and UK foreign office had long been silenced due to the effects of 9/11 whereby only information that helped achieve the post-9/11 goals was required. All western intelligence agencies were politicised to one degree or another and that of the USA to by far the greatest degree. Being realistic was out of fashion, hard facts with which to come to sound conclusions began to be replaced by politically useful soundbytes. The myopia of the political decision makers of the West once institutionalised could not help but grow until it led to the complete disaster we see unfolding before us now.
Russia was no longer weak by early 2022 when the disaster for the West began to unfold. The notion that Russia remained unchanged from the catastrophic Yeltsin years continued to hold sway in the fantasyland milieu of western elite mindsets. She would be a pushover, her undermining would be easy. And so an entire roster of financial and economic sanctions were prepared. In order to unleash these against Russia it was required that Russia be cornered with no way out but to enter the trap set for it. Ukraine was of course the trap and the baiting of that trap and the channeling of Russia toward that trap continued all the way from 2014 to the early months of 2022. There would be no escape for Russia, every possibility of a peaceful outcome to the Ukraine question would be denied.
No matter how much Russia attempted to avoid the trap set for her no such escape was allowed. For the USA and its allies it was vital (due to the requirements of the post-9/11 goals) for Russia to be destroyed and Ukraine was the only way seen to effectively accomplish this. Russia was weak, the economic tools to dismantle her were in place, all that was needed was to allow her no escape from the jaws of the Ukrainian trop that awaited her. No diplomatic escape was to be encouraged. In late 2021 Russia put forward proposals for the creation of a new security architecture for Europe whereby a framework for stability and trust could be erected. It was dismissed. Just as the Minsk Agreements had been a ploy to set Russia up for the initiation of the trap and to ready the forces necessary to destroy Russia within it so this last attempt at finding a diplomatic settlement by Russia was also doomed to failure.
The western elites succeeded and on February 24th 2022 Russia entered the trap set for it and her military crossed the border into Ukraine. The trap closed and remains closed to this day. Russia remains inside. But the expected death of Russia within that trap has not occurred. Quite the reverse has occurred. Russia grows in strength despite the efforts of the West to double down time and time again, continuing to do so even now. Russia continues to win, not lose, both within that trap set for her and internationally.
The defeat of the current Ukrainian counteroffensive, the growth of the BRICS group and the obvious signs of economic and political distress in the West point with absolute clarity at a trap gone horribly wrong. It is the western world that is suffering, not Russia, the western elites who set the trap are being inexorably humiliated even while they continue to pour ever more scarce financial resources into Ukraine. It is their economies that are tottering toward recession with high inflation, not that of Russia. Russia, on the other hand, is showing economic growth and is ever more closely embraced by nations worldwide, in Eurasia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Global South, particularly so in Africa.
The catastrophic mistakes and miscalculations made by the political elites of the western world are monumental in scale. Vast financial resources have been squandered in constantly feeding their lost gambit to undermine Russia in Ukraine while vital infrastructure in their home countries increasingly show signs of major distress. The dominance of the dollar, for long seen as supreme, is now being seriously challenged by nations no longer as scared of the economic whip the USA and its allies could apply to them. Aligning with BRICS in their droves provides a long-sought level of protection. A strong China and strengthening Russia mean they have reliable, trustworthy allies to depend upon and trade with who are vitally interested in their well being as trading partners and who can and will invest in them and their future success. The tyrants to the west, the all-domineering and forever manipulating colonisers and exploiters who abused and threatened them for so long can now be treated as they deserve with a disgusted revulsion.
And left to descend into the economic, political and social morass which they have so ignorantly, arrogantly and so very blindly, created for themselves.
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