A few weeks ago the U.S. Army War College released a paper which was an urgent call for the U.S. armed forces to adapt to the modern style of warfare being innovated in the Ukrainian conflict. The paper made the rounds due to some startling admissions, which we’ll get to. But what’s most important to understand is that the paper represents a general major shift in thinking propagating throughout the entire sphere of the Atlanticist West, and was released in concert with several other key thinktank pieces and policy shifts announcement from the EU, NATO, etc., which holistically represent a mass internal panic deep within the structures of the West, and a subsequent need to urgently change their strategy.

A two parter really: in the first half an in-depth look at potential developments in US military policies prompted by the Ukraine war.

Nothing particularly shocking here for those who have been paying attention and as the analysis says it is unlikely that the US can turn its military decline around. (Ignore the insert by the conservative author about identity politics and quotas in the US military, none of that has no relevance or bearing on anything being discussed here; the rest of the article is solid.)

The more interesting part comes in the second half with the discussion of a recent RAND think tank paper that reveals how the Atlanticists are desperate to try and find ways to push Russia’s buttons to get them to escalate, as things are not going well for the West in Ukraine and they desperately need a PR win and a casus belli for more direct intervention.

Just as with previous papers from this neocon think tank, such as the one about “extending Russia” which provided a roadmap to provoking conflict in Ukraine which was followed almost to the letter, we can expect most of their proposals for various escalations and provocations to be implemented sooner or later.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.mlOP
      5·
      1 year ago

      You make a lot of good points here, but remember that the reason why the US needs to use proxies like ISIS is because it itself can no longer afford to get directly involved in conflicts in the way they did in say, Korea or Vietnam. Even something like Iraq would be very difficult for them to repeat today. And proxies can be beaten or at least held in check with relatively little effort from a major power like Russia, as we have seen in the case of their intervention in Syria.

      These proxy tactics work best against weak and relatively isolated nations that do not have a friend like Russia who can offer them military help. Even just the supply of advanced weapons by Russia to global south countries, or the assignment of special forces like Wagner to places like the Sahel can have a noticeably stabilizing and beneficial effect.

      The places where western funded terrorist insurgents have been able to run most rampant have been either bombed by the US like Libya, or were foolish enough to trust that they could deal with the problem by inviting Western forces from the US or France in, not realizing that the West are on the same side as the terrorists and are not there to actually stop them.

      The US empire may not be disappearing any time soon, but unipolar US hegemony is most definitely on its way out if not already over. I would argue it ended on February 24 2022.

        • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.mlOP
          4·
          1 year ago

          The proletarian workers in oppressed nations don’t choose to “invite western forces”.

          I never said that the workers invited them. Obviously this was done by governments which are either national bourgeois or comprador, thus not representative of the workers and their class interest. But i feel like this is splitting hairs. The point i was making was that, in my opinion, though US imperialism can still cause significant harm, it is not as all-powerful as you made it out to be. If my comment is not up to your standards i’m sorry, i’ll try to incorporate your constructive criticism and do better in the future, but i am not claiming to be making some clever dialectical argument, nor am i attempting to debate, i’m just expressing my opinion. No need for hostility comrade, i appreciate your comment and i agree with most of what you are saying. And the thread you linked was very informative, thank you.

            • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.mlOP
              1·
              1 year ago

              I understand your frustration comrade, i share it too. And i agree with what Sayyid Nasrallah said, it is absolutely correct, we have to continue to be extremely vigilant, as an empire is at its most dangerous when it is in its dying throes. They are continuing and will continue for a while longer to inflict much harm and suffering.

              But i think it is important that we never lose our revolutionary optimism, and for the first time in many decades, we have much more tangible and objective reasons for optimism today. The world anti-imperialist forces are now stronger than they have been since at least the 1980s and the US empire’s grip on the world weaker than at any time since the end of WW2.

              Even the Soviet Union never posed as great a challenge to their hegemony as China does today. China may not be confronting the US as directly as the Soviets did, but the fact that they have already surpassed the US economically and are only growing stronger is a massive victory.

              The expansion of BRICS was a huge victory. The inability of the US to stop the BRI or to rally most of the world, including some countries it counted as its ostensible allies such as India, Turkey and most surprisingly of all Saudi Arabia, behind its anti-Russia crusade is a monumental sign of the empire’s decline.

              For the first time since European colonialism ruined India and China (who before that point had been the world’s largest economies for hundreds if not thousands of years) in the 19th century, the entire imperialist West once again makes up only a minority proportion of the world economy, and their proportion is shrinking. They are also losing their technological edge.

              The US is of course doing everything possible to try and slow down, halt and even reverse the rise of the global south, but by and large it is not succeeding. Yes there will be local setbacks and defeats, that is inevitable in war, but the trend i believe is going in the right direction.

              And as for the various terrorist attacks that the US still commits and gets away with, we are not anarchists we are Marxists, and as such we understand that this is not a productive strategy. Not for us and not for an empire that is supposed to be globally hegemonic. This is not a sign of strength but of weakness and impotence. Terrorist attacks do not alter the course of wars, they do not achieve meaningful change in the balance of powers. If anything they just make the resolve of the target stronger.

              So i for one am more optimistic and confident than ever in affirming what Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung taught us: proletarians of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains, and we have a world to win!