The Houseguest

Gabi Mitchell discusses the Gantz-Abbas meeting. Plus: Global Eyes

Today at the Cosmopolitan Globalist, Gabriel Mitchell discusses the exceedingly unusual visit of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Israel and particularly, to the home of Israel’s defense minister.

Like a rare visit from an estranged family member or friend after many years of separation, the powwow dubbed by many as “The Rosh HaAyin Summit” served as the latest reminder that we are as far away from brokering peace between Israelis and Palestinians as we have ever been. And the critics had plenty to say about it.

Read the rest here.

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Global Eyes

US collapse and Russian madness edition

If you read only one article today (besides ours), read this one by Françoise Thom, “What does the Russian ultimatum mean?”

Reading the Western press, one is under the impression that nothing is happening. Westerners do not seem to understand what is at stake. They think that only the fate of Ukraine is being decided, which is of less concern to them than that of Armenia, judging by the pilgrimages of our presidential candidates. Many French officials find it normal that Russia should claim a sphere of influence. They resemble those who in 1939 believed that Hitler’s demands would be limited to Danzig. However, one only has to look at the texts proposed by Moscow to understand that the stakes are quite different.

Having read it, use the magic goggles to follow the links in the article. Particularly, have a good look at Russtrat, a highly Kremlin-aligned think tank. Consider articles like these:

The West has entered the epicenter of ideological, political and socio-economic crisis.

The current model of the world system, the foundations of which were laid in the ‘Yalta Peace’ after the Second World War, is definitively cracking. The United States, which even after the victory in the Cold War pretended to adhere to the established rules and the role of the UN in international relations, is no longer able to maintain the former balance of power … in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, spiralling inflation, as well as the energy crisis in Europe, Western elites cannot even force their own population to pay extra for “green energy,” because under such conditions they will not be able to be reelected within the framework of democratic procedures. … rising social tensions in the world are inevitable, and mass protests against coronavirus restrictions are just the beginning. In the face of falling living standards and the fiasco of the “climate agenda,” the liberal ideology will decline and the ideas of socialism will be revived … the public will become radicalized and reach out to the nationalists, who will offer quick and simple solutions to the urgent problems.

Political and economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

Although the United States continues to try to position itself as the world's most developed, richest, most diverse, most advanced, and therefore most resilient economy, the coronavirus pandemic has caused it much more damage than China. David Cutler, an economist at Harvard University, and former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers argue that it has already surpassed the amount of losses that are expected in the future due to climate change on the planet in the next 10-15 years. … the US economy does not have the means to continue the “crisis subsidies" in the same volumes, but the budget is forced to find money for this due to the high risk of civil riots. 

… Practice has shown that states with a stronger central government and an internally more cohesive society cope with the crisis much better and more effectively than “free democracies.” A comparison of the results of the “passing of the crisis” between the countries of the world convincingly shows that in terms of internal political and economic structure, Russia is not only not inferior to the “countries of the golden billion,” but is also able to serve as an example to emulate them in many ways. This is not so much a question of economics or propaganda, it is an objective fact, on the basis of which we should now rebuild the ideological education of society.

This automatically leads to increased attempts of its interference in the internal affairs of Russia and an attempt to destabilise society and the state socially and politically. To fight this only with purely defensive methods means a direct road to the ideological loss of Russia. 

Russian-Chinese alliance: How to maintain strategic unanimity?

Moscow and Beijing need to work seriously and benevolently on strategic partnership relations—this is the key to a successful common future.

… Now time is on China’s side. America has been torn apart by an internal fight between its largest clans. Society is plunging into a destructive abyss of “new reality and new democratic values,” undermining the integrity of even such fundamental institutions as the armed forces. And the obvious slowdown of American progress in advanced technologies no longer allows the United States to hope to maintain world hegemony based on the concept of the “silver bullet” (RUSSTRAT report on this here), which previously allowed winning wars over backward countries due to the indisputable technological superiority.

(For those much impressed by Tucker Carlson’s view of geopolitics, this should be bracing reading.)

The US armed forces: condition and trends of development.

Since 2017, the US military department notes that 71% of male recruits, and 84% of women, are unable to pass the entrance test of military commissions on physical, educational and intellectual level. If the army can somehow stop the problem with unexpunged criminal records, even if not completely, but overweight, physical weakness and a completely low level of education lead to a chronic inability to fill more than 14% of vacancies in the staffing table.

Moreover. If finding suitable material for ordinary positions in the conditional linear infantry as a whole somehow happens, then there is an acute shortage for positions related to the development of complex equipment. And since, for political reasons, especially against the background of the aggressive introduction of “new liberal values” into society, it is not able to refuse recruits en masse, the Pentagon has to reduce first the entrance standards for recruitment, and then the entire set of standards and rules for its subsequent performance.

According to experts, modern American youth aged 17 to 24, which has always been the main source of mobilisation of promising cadres of the rank and file and command staff, is now practically unsuitable for most of the responsible tasks. …

The steady and irreversible degradation of the intellectual level of personnel is beginning to put pressure on the Pentagon's demands for new weapons, communications and other military and logistics equipment in the direction of increasing their primitivization. If at the end of the 90s the average level of qualification of the field repair battalion was able to completely disassemble and reassemble the entire range of light armoured vehicles on his own, confidently eliminating its breakdowns along the way, at present such a task is above the level of its competence. …

Where will the Americans leave after Afghanistan? The US strategic retreat is not limited to Afghanistan, other regions of the world are next in line.

Afghanistan was lost by the Americans because the main export product of the United States—a democratic society—turned out to be rotten. Moreover, it began to deteriorate during the Vietnam War. Unless then it turned sour purely externally, for the world outside of America, and now it is already rotten to its foundations.

The United States for the first time lost to China in life expectancy.

… the year 2021 turned out to be even more terrible for America. As of December 28, 818,371 Americans have already died from the virus since the beginning of the pandemic. It turns out that this year, 2021, the number of COVID deaths in the US will reach about 470,000 people—120,000 more than a year earlier. Compare this with China, where this year the coronavirus has claimed the lives of only about 900 people—again, according to the WHO. …

… by the end of 2021, Americans’ personal income will decrease again and their lag behind the Chinese may well become insurmountable. … Sad statistics disavow the recent words of President Joe Biden that the United States is in a better position than in March 2020. Even more unpleasant for Washington is that the inexorable figures allowed the Chinese to get ahead in the fundamental competition of the two systems. It turned out that in the “developing” China under the “authoritarian” leadership of the Communist Party, people are healthier and they are destined for a longer life than on the territory of the “light of democracy” and the “only superpower.”

You get the picture, we trust. Russians believe the West is morally weak, in chaos and terminal decline, and the moment is right for reversing the humiliation Russia suffered at the end of the Cold War.

Nor are they the only ones who think so.

The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare.

A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past year we’ve turned our attention inward, distracted by the challenges of COVID-19, reconciliation, and the accelerating effects of climate change. But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unravelling of democracy in the United States.

2022 is the year America falls off a cliff. How will Canada hang on?

Increasingly, the query dealing with those that care about the United States is how, not if, the republic will finish. There are a number of attainable situations. At least one former normal has already called for a Myanmar-style coup. Senior figures and authorities—senators, governors—have began overtly discussing secession. Hard-right partisans, the ones who sparked the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, haven’t been quietly ruing the day; they’ve been planning for the subsequent time. Countries require solidarity to survive. Solidarity in the United States has evaporated. The American political system is very dry tinder certainly. One spark is all it will take. [We corrected obvious typos.]

Something a bit different for you today: The Army Cyber Institute’s graphic novel, “Invisible Force.”

By 2030, the nature of information war has changed. Combined with new, ubiquitous technology and levels of individual customization from data extraction, people don’t even realize they’re being manipulated.

Well worth reading in full.

As for 2022? It promises to be an interesting year.