red lines are there as a challenge, like a board game, which is the next one to cross.
Posted by John Monro on September 11, 2024, 9:52 pm
So, as predicted by the Duran and Mercouris for what seems like all of the Russo/Ukraine SMO, the latest red line to fall is the one preventing long range US and NATO weapons being used to hit targets deep in Russia.
The article seems to wish to appear more considered and mature than some gang-ho ones but even so nowhere does the sheer obvious craziness and serious dangers of crossing this particular red line get any airing. This is not a matter of the inappropriate anodyne final sentence: "Missile diplomacy may not have been so significant since the time of the cold war." - because first where is the "diplomacy", and secondly where is the understanding?
Perhaps that latter might come when the first Russian missile lands in some NATO military installation in Europe, or even more so in the UK itself. If I were Russian, if NATO wishes to send massages, so can Russia.
Re: red lines are there as a challenge, like a board game, which is the next one to cross.
Lost count of the times I have read infantile "reports" about how "we" or "the west" are "enabling" Russia if we don't do incredibly escalatory actions like the one in your links, John.
As you rightly observe though, Russia can also send messages and as far as I know, Russia doesn't need "enabled", it can comprehensively "enable" itself.
Consider the thread below which segues into that issue ..
There is of course, as Mercouris mentions, Kazan BRICS get together in October, so there is a chance that septics and poodles just may attempt a provocation to keep Russia on the backfoot.
Re: Consider the thread below which segues into that issue ..
And of course the threat to the whole of Europe keeps ringing around the corridors of power, it's exactly the same as the long since discredited domino theory used to justify the Vietnam war.
Though perhaps there is something to the domino theory from another point of view,
Spread a map of Europe out and put it on the table with the West at the top, and Russia at the bottom. Put dominoes on those countries of the ordinal NATO organisation, then start putting dominoes on the others in order, East Germany, Poland,Hungary, Czech, - later Lithuania,Estonia etc Romania, and now possibly suicidally Finland. That surely is a domino theory in practice.
The war establishment & media sidesteps the real crux by focusing on the non-issue of Ukraine's moral "right" to do so. ( see Stollenburg: Ukraine has the right to strike “Russian military targets outside Ukraine” in line with international law...)
This is wrapped up with the notion that NATO / the West are actually applying constraints on Ukranian action: a pretence that they are restricting the geographical extent of the war by tying Ukraine's hands.
As has been pointed out repeatedly ( Berletic, Mercouris etc) this is incorrect as Ukraine is actually incapable in this regard. It not just that it cannot arm, service, target nor fire these systems without western "assistance", it's that that every step of the whole process is totally western and Ukrainian input merely nominal.
This is the real "Ghost of Kiev": an entirely mythical Ukrainian presence fighting a war against Russia.
on September 11, 2024, 9:52 pm