Dear friends,
Here is the latest installment of my quarterly conversations with Catherine Austin Fitts. This time the topic was The Emerging Multipolar World with The Saker: Cold Wars, Hot Wars. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
Here is the main page of the interview: https://solari.com/blog/the-emerging-multipolar-world-with-the-saker-cold-wars-hot-wars/
You can listen to the interview here: https://solari.com/audio/sr20170907_InterviewHQ.mp3
You can get the transcript in PDF format here: https://solari.com/00archive/web/solarireports/2017/sr20170907_Saker.pdf
I highly recommend that you check out the rest of the Solari Reports and the Solari Books.
Enjoy!
The Saker
Hi Saker. Regarding the recent Russian/Belarussian “zapad” drills you said –
“It’s actually an exercise very limited in size. First of all,
it’s a joint effort between Russia and Belarus. That is one thing that
annoys them. The exercise is more westward – closer to Europe.
Secondly, it’s a joint international exercise, which they basically use as a
way of creating a panic.”
Well now we see the reason for the created panic, an excuse to implement a plan to put armoured troops on the Russian border. The public are played, time after time –
“Washington took advantage of the hysteria in Europe over the joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2017 drills to deploy its armored division to Poland near the Russian border, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
“Amid the hysteria over Russia’s planned military incursion right from the Zapad-2017 drills, the 2nd armored division of the US arrived quietly in Poland and was deployed there also with its armored vehicles,” Konashenkov said.
http://vestnikkavkaza.net/news/US-deploys-armored-division-to-Poland-near-Russian-border.html
I don’t understand why the Poles put up with this, they make themselves into a bigger and bigger target. Do they really believe all this “Russia invasion” bullshit?
The Poles just don’t seem to learn from history, they make the same mistake over and over again and then they are stunned with it backfires. Yup, right now they seem to be thinking that their russophobic rhetoric combined with US/NATO forces deployed in Poland is the pinnacle of wise strategic thinking. Frankly, I don’t think that they even *CAN* operate differently, this stuff has now become part of their cultural identity. The good news is that Russia can more or less ignore them because other than active like idiots (see their recent interception of Shoigu’s aircraft) they really cannot do much harm. Poland and the Baltic states have turned themselves into something of a poorly ventilated latrine: they are annoying for sure, but not much of a threat, except to themselves. In case of war, of course, they will be the first ones to be vaporized, but I hope and believe that it will not come to that. There are still plenty of mentally sane folks in the West who have too much to lose in such a case.
So, frankly, my personal advise to the Russian Foreign Ministry is simple: just ignore Poland and the Balts and wait for them to return to sanity even if that takes decades…
The Saker
Poland is a Catholic country. The sad aspect of Polish history is that they have been Catholics first and Poles second. The Vatican always influenced Polish history. To the West they had Protestant Germans (Prussians) and to the East Orthodox Russians. Currently they are, foolishly, making double enemies, demanding war reparations from Germany and destroying Soviet war memorials. They still have to grasp what is going on. After the Warsaw Pact disintegrated, Poland should have played it smart and stayed neutral, being a bridge between East and West, and enjoying benefits from both. But no, they wanted to be part of both the EU and NATO, and now they are beginning to have their first regrets, like being asked by the EU to accept a heap of false “refugees”. As Dr.Jim Willie has stated, Poland needs to find itself. That will indeed take some time.
The pointy is that Russia played it smart. The Russian military budget is smaller than that of the US, so they gave priority to defensive missile systems, like the S-300, S-350, S-400, S-500 and others. After that came introduction of other new technology, like the SU-35, SU-57, the Armata tank, including upgrades of existing weapons. NATO has been encircling Russia with military bases, waiting to move in. It’s plan is basically simple. Russia was to be destabilized, after which NATO would move in to restore “law”, “order”, “democracy” and “human rights”, and in the process break up Russia and plunder Siberia and the Caspian region, two of the richest regions in the world. As political economist Lyndon LaRouche has stated, Wall Street cannot save the dollar if it does not plunder Russia. It’s latest headache is the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union. Alas for NATO, it’s plans are falling apart. It cannot destabilize Russia, which is gaining strength and influence. It cannot launch a conventional war against Russia, as it would be suicidal. What NATO did in Iraq, it cannot repeat in Russia. For a successful attack to be launched, it would require complete air superiority, which is impossible with the latest Russian missile systems. NATO planes would be blasted out of the sky, while NATO tank units would be destroyed by Russian missile systems like the Kornet and upgraded Russian tanks, which would be dug in, waiting for them. So, what is the point of still having NATO bases encircling Russia ? I think that neither NATO, the Pentagon nor Washington can answer that question. For the first time in their history they have been brought into a position where they don’t know what to do. They dare not attack, and they dare not withdraw, as they would be admitting complete political and military defeat. As for the Russian military and political leadership, they are basically just watching how long the US can handle its huge foreign and domestic debt and how long NATO can afford to exist from the financial point of view. That cannot be too long.
“I think that neither NATO, the Pentagon nor Washington can answer that question.”
I can answer that question easily.
Them rockets are now pointing east, but can easily point west.
The Empire is at war with everyone, even its vassals.
Enough said.
Best part are your thoughts on North Korea and China.
The key, that NK thinks China cannot protect them.
China can stop NK from falling into US hands. But cannot stop US from regime change.
So, NK will turn more to Russia.
I’ve seen the increments of Russia moving this way, signaling to US military that the costs are going to be EW disruption of any move against NK.
Conversely, Russia wants NK to stand down on nukes, to give them up in time, like Syria gave up chemical weapons.
Also, concerning the conflict in diplomatic relationship between Russia and US, you clear away the fog and confusion. It is a break. It will be a break for a decade or more. The US won’t relent. They have only one path with Russia under the new neocon rise in DC. Cold War II may not be cold enough to describe where this is going.
I fully agree with you.
It’s amazing what one or two rational leaders can accomplish ( VVP and Xi ) .
This planet hasn’t seen such statesmanship and diplomacy by powerful leaders for a century. Russia and China have millennial entropies while USA/GB/Zios are but a painful fart in history.
Question remains: how will the neocons try to kill human goodness ?
Question remains: how will the neocons try to kill human goodness ?
By making any effective expression of it a criminal offense.
Don’t laugh until you see how many laws there are already against helping anyone they are out to get.
In any other epoch our oars would cut together.
Some argue for eschatalogical purposes far greater tragedies lay in store for Syria and her peoples.
That is, if one starts from the honest assumption that for some politics is lived prophecetic fulfillment.
It is a prayer I hear far and wide…a cold war with a splash of hot here and there but this prayer is naught but a hope fading. Only the fires floods and winds hold back the begining of the end now.
Soon we shall be sundered from each other as the net is further moderated.
So cherish these days when the rare likes of The Saker walk amongst us.
The other part of the interview which stuck out was your agreeing with CAF that we are dealing with a demonic entity, the sheer malevolence in so much of what the west does being plain to see.
PT Carlo wrote in Katehon about this idea entitled “There Can Be No Peace With The Post-Human American Empire”
Amongst many useful obervations he says –
“The world is presently witnessing some of the most dramatic and important geopolitical events since the fall of the Soviet Union. The American Empire,has begun to unravel. The forces of Nationalism and Identity have risen to challenge the Universalist Totalitarianism preached by the Globalist Technocrats living in Brussels and Washington. Leading this revolt is the New Russia which, though not as populous as China or zealous as Iran, still remains the ideological leader of this war of resistance against Western Totalitarianism.
This may come as unwelcome news to Russian moderates who seek a compromise with the American Empire. The pretension of the realists is that, since in a pragmatic realpolitik sense the U.S. and Russia have very few areas of actual friction and in fact share many areas of mutual interest, that peaceful coexistence should be an obvious choice. This analysis misunderstands the actual nature of the United States as a political player and the mindset of the elites who control it.”
” The truth is that such a detente is no longer possible; this is the harsh reality that those who advocate for realism would rather not see. It is now a zero sum game, a war of annihilation – a war which pits the advocates of Liberal totalitarianism, led by the Empire of the United States, on the one side against the forces of traditional human values, led by Russia, on the other.”
The conflict between the forces of Humanity and Post-Humanity has already begun and cannot be stopped. One side or the other will eventually triumph, so long as they control the levers of power in the American Empire.
The choice offered by Washington’s fanatical Liberal elite to Russia and all those opposed to the Post-Human future it dreams of is simple: submit to its edicts or face annihilation. When faced with such a choice, there is only one valid conclusion that can be drawn:”
http://katehon.com/article/there-can-be-no-peace-post-human-american-empire
This is why perhaps it is impossible to see rhyme or reason in so much of the hellish behaviour of the US – fully human people wouldn’t do what they do but they’re not fully human.
@Zena. “fully human people wouldn’t do what they do but they’re not fully human”. Too few people really understand how profound this is. Fully human people don’t routinely slaughter their fellow human beings both at home and abroad. That there is an alien influence on this planet is dismissed as fantastical even by those with the most open of minds.
In his book (which I urger everyone t read), Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purpose, Andrew Lobaczewski study of psychopaths concludes that to all intents and purposes they are a different human species and are present in 5%-10% of the population. More than enough to ruin the world.
There is a lot to read on this topic at http://www.ponerology.com. Everyone should read at least that much. Please.
#### With respect to Fitts’ query on the first-strike plans of the neocon/PNAC clique:
> Fitts: What I’m getting at is that what it appears to me, is if you saw what happened throughout the Bush Administration, through Obama and into what Trump is up to now, the neocon strategy is a desire to establish a first strike capability that can avoid retribution. That is the point of moving missiles in close to, basically, ring Russia and China. Am I wrong about that?
> Saker: I think you are. Here is the deal: Circling China and Russia with missiles is a political action. But in pure military terms, it doesn’t make much sense. First of all, Russia has the means of overwhelming and destroying these forward positions and all that forward deployment of NATO.
—————————————————————–
While I do not claim high-level military-technical competency, particularly to the extent that such would require knowledge of technical parameters that are actively hidden away from public view, here I believe you are in error, logically and obviously.
Put most simply, _if_ there is a first-strike utility to missile installations in close proximity to Sino/Russian territory, _then_ it is not relevant that these installations could be overwhelmed in short order in the event of a war, for reasons so obvious they hardly bear repeating: _as_ a first-strike tool, the munitions emplaced there would be in the air or already detonated by the time the installations would be overwhelmed. Overwhelming them would be redundant; their destruction would be factored into the cost of victory. The same can be said for other types of military hardware. If there are powerful radars on Sino/Russian borders that see with great detail deep into the territories of those states, and may have offensive EW capabilities, it can not be completely reassuring to know that those radar installations could be destroyed quickly in the event of a war, for their utility at the outset of such a war and in its critical opening phases could be very significant indeed — recall again the prospective speed of situational evolution in the event of a Tier-1 missile duel at the highest level of human technical capabilities. Every second counts. A billion dollar installation with a lifespan measured in minutes could yet provide the advantages that yield victory. A Ford class CVN operating 500km off of Vladivostok might expect to be incinerated within a few hours or less of the commencement of hostilities, but if there are a few squadrons of combat capable aircraft _in the air_, it hardly matters, if they are capable of generating some advantage which contributes to the final goal. Their loss would simply be factored into the cost. All of this I believe we can safely conclude without privileged military-technical competency, as we have granted the assumption that these platforms would indeed be of the specified utility in the specified first-strike scenario.
So, what of the assumption itself ? Is the utility there ? Again, your assertion to the negative hinged entirely on the fact that these platforms could be quickly overwhelmed in the event of war, while I hope to have demonstrated this kind of argument cannot hold. Back to the question: is the utility there ? I think yes, but really don’t know. would love to hear your opinion, and others from the field.
In terms of thinking yes to the question, I can offer speculations and some salient observations to support.
1. Missile technology, in particular anti-missile (nothing at the Tier-1 level is “ballistic” anymore) technology, is developing rapidly, and in a way likely not only hidden, but obfuscated from public view. It’s not clear if the US-MIC chooses to over-state or under-state its capabilities with weapons like the SM-3. If truly they were planning for strategic surprise and an actual hot strike, they might choose to appear weaker in this regard than they are. This observation merely in support of the idea of keeping an open mind as to the possibilities, not to advance a particular idea of which possibility is most likely.
2. Boost-phase intercept is now a ‘thing’, and the SM-3 is designed for it. If the AMM (anti-missile-missiles, aka misnomed ABM) are fast enough and close enough to launch sites, they could reach ICMs in boost-phase, or as they put it, before release of combat truck.
https://sputniknews.com/world/201710131058186800-usa-global-missile-defences-arms-race/
3. With the stakes so high, it’s irresponsible to breezily conclude that the A-M (‘ABM’) systems cannot and will not work on the basis of the publicised tests results. (a) There is the issue of strategic technical deception to consider, which could include a great deal of creativity in the manner of conducting development research. (b) There is the simple fact that with as much resources as are being poured into the field by both sides, it is likely that there will be periodic breakthroughs, and that on a regular basis, something which was impossible yesterday is possible tomorrow. There is simply no room for complacency in this regard.
4. Geographic proximity is not obsolete in the era of hypersonic warhead delivery. It wasn’t obsolete during the Cuban missile crisis (the threat significantly complicated defensive calculations for the USA), it’s not obsolete today, and it won’t be obsolete tomorrow. If the USA has a mix of SM-3s/THAADS, hypersonic attack missiles, EW/radars on the Korean peninsula, I speculate that this constitutes a major blow to the Chinese strategic position, precisely in terms of their utility as a first-strike tool. Again, it doesn’t matter that China could overwhelm all the above platforms within hours of commencement of hostilities. Their job would be done, the missile containers would be empty, the warheads detonated, the intelligence from the radars extracted and already acted upon, the EW potential of same instruments already employed to degrade Chinese defensive & offensive measures.
5. Russia faces the same threat, mostly emanating from the western flank, and only partly ameliorated by her huge landmass — it’s more difficult to conceal hot mechanical systems in the sparsely populated expanses of Siberia than in the industrial heartland.
6. I believe (total speculation, total guess) Russia has the means to meet this threat, but it will require the best her scientific & engineering establishment can offer. Creative solutions to redundant strategic retaliatory capabilities likely abound, the nuclear torpedo just one of many vectors being developed. I believe Sarmat will play a central role, with its expanded potential of routing, the extreme defensive measures planned for its silos.
7. I believe (total speculation) we are getting to a ridiculous phase in the evolution of the missile-duel arms race, in the sense that it will soon be necessary to employ anti-anti-missile-missiles, which we could give the absurd acronym AAMM. Infinite regression beckons. Incredible ? Consider the situation when Russia is firing Sarmats on a southbound trajectory, and the USA has SM-3s waiting on crusiers in the Indian Ocean to pick them up. The clear technical solution is to escort the Sarmats with weapons that can destroy the SM-3 warheads before those same can destroy the southbound Sarmats. Arms races are expensive, and if anything will stimulate another badly needed round of arms-control negotiations, it will be the absurdity of the cost.
8. (speculation): The reason Russia apparently spends so little on defense has much to do with her (perhaps emergency enforced) relative integrity in matters of MIC, but also for the reason that most of the conventional weapons systems (MiG-35) designed around the potential for a major combined-arms conflict simply don’t matter that much. Such a conflict is low-stakes and largely in the realm of fantasy, simply because the escalatory potential to graduate to a full-blown intercontinental missile duel, firestorm, etc. Russia is spending money, mostly where it matters most, in missile tech, space systems, EW, directed energy. I guess.
9. I believe we are a long way off from a new round of meaningful arms-control negotiations that would meaningfully enhance international stability and security. In the meantime, this arms race will heat up, and it is extremely dangerous — not on a timescale of months kind of danger. It’s a danger that does not pass, it just slowly gets worse and worse.
10. MAD is dead. No one wants to announce this, and it’s not clear how dead it is without privileged access to both sides’ secrets — which just goes to show that we are in the doubly dangerous situation where _neither_ side knows just how dead is MAD, but I think it’s a safe bet that MAD is dead. And these forward installations are a big part of that death.
It’s wonderful to hear a serious conversation between serious people, who are able to disagree and then LEARN something from the disagreement.
Toward the end Fitts says that state and local governments are the best hope.
No, there isn’t any hope at all. Local gov’ts are owned by Michael Bloomberg, and state gov’ts are locked onto the Federal tit. They have no incentive to change things.
Depends where you live. I agree that things look pretty hopeless, but some states did throw up their hands and yield to popular demand on the Cannabis issue. There’s also hope in trying to be a good neighbor, farmer’s markets, and anything outside the system. The states are horribly corrupt and imperfect but they may be all we’re left with.
I enjoyed listening to the audio interview. When it comes to the Washington political establishment,it has brought itself into a very dangerous situation. It is still living in the past, unable to understand reality. It cannot grasp the fact that the rest of the world is watching it, and is not impressed with what it is seeing. Worse, Washington is under the impression that the international community will accept its every move it makes, believing every word it says. When the latest sanctions were introduced against Russia, Washington found fit to target European firms building the Nord Stream-2 pipeline, which in Europe was received with astonishment, as the US is now issuing imperial decrees to the Old Continent. As for the US media, it has disgraced itself with its anti-Russian rhetoric, its childish propaganda creating the impression that America is a nation of adolescents, requiring supervision. Washington better clean up it’s act, or the whole of Europe will turn to Moscow, which is now being perceived as a factor of stability.