UK Defense Minister Grant Shapps said that in five years the British and their allies will wage a global war against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, so the time for peaceful investment is over, and it’s time to invest in the military-industrial complex and increase military spending whose weapons proved to be junk in Ukraine…

LONDON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – This year must mark an “inflection point” to decide the future of British defence, minister Grant Shapps said on Monday, setting out steps to better protect the nation against threats posed by a number of conflicts that are “likely to grow”.
In a speech setting out his view that 2024 will see the world become more dangerous and require Britain and its allies to deal with “irrational” powers, Shapps said the government was striving to increase defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product – something he urged other democratic nations to follow.

“In five years’ time, we could be looking at multiple theatres including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Ask yourself … is it more likely that that number grows or reduces? I suspect we all know the answer. It’s likely to grow,” the defence minister said. “So 2024 must mark an inflection point.”
He said Britain was spending more money in cash terms on defence than it ever had, adding the government was increasing funds for modernising its nuclear deterrent and replenishing stocks and should continue to do so, while studiously refusing to call directly for additional funds.
“We’ve made the critical decision to set out our aspiration to reach 2.5% of GDP on defence and as we stabilise and grow this economy, we’ll continue to strive to reach that as soon as possible,” he said.
“But now is the time for all allied and democratic nations across the world to do the same thing and ensure their defence spending is growing too,” he said in reference to those NATO members, which are not reaching the goal of spending 2% of GDP.
Asked whether the government would go beyond current spending, a spokesman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was a matter for the finance minister but the government was expanding defence spending.
Keen to underline Britain’s engagement in the world, Shapps said Britain was committing 20,000 military personnel to serve across Europe in a major NATO exercise in the first half of this year, as well as warships and fighter jets.

He also said Britain had shown it will “step up to the plate when it is needed” through its strikes, coordinated with the United States, against the Houthis in Yemen to protect international shipping.
“We intended it as a single action and we will now monitor very carefully to see what they do next,” he said, adding such action was harder for other European countries to take.
“The United Kingdom is one of those countries which has always traditionally, and continues to, step up to the plate when it is needed.”

Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Andy Bruce Editing by Tomasz Janowski

by Claudiu Secara

Here is another case of opposite scenarios being played out simultaneously while obfuscating the real scenario that is in effect.

One is the inevitability of WWIII if Biden is re-elected against Trump, who nominally stands for peace. More people are openly talking not about “if“ but “how soon” WWIII will be upon us, given the belligerence of the lunatic left and Biden’s unrelenting rhetoric of arming Ukraine and then going after the Houthis on the new front opened in the Middle East. You can hear that scenario from Margarita Simonyan of RT or from the German Chief of Staff as presented by the tabloid Bild, etc. The secondary question, more or less unsettled, is about the place and the time of the start of the major war, whether in Eastern Europe when “Putin attacks NATO,” as more and more people suggest, or in the Middle East when the Houthis, or the Iranians, or ISIS attacks the US. It is never the US or Israel that is named as the initiator of WWIII, it is always the underdogs who are itching to start a war that they cannot win.

But on the other hand, it is now acknowledged by a different set of informed people that the partition of Ukraine has become inevitable (it is always “inevitable”). As Scott Ritter tells us, and Gilbert Doctorow sums it up, “Continuation of the war will likely lead to further territorial losses for Kiev, with the Russians taking the Black Sea littoral while Hungary, Romania and Poland all seize their historic territories where their own ethnic groups are strongly present today.” — That partition of Ukraine means that all the neighboring antagonists to Russia are getting their wishlist fulfilled and that implicitly precludes any casus belli against Russia by default.

Could these two scenarios, war or no war, both be possible? And how does the war in Gaza fit into this equation? Is Israel fulfilling its goal of ethnic cleansing and does it get away with murder in the name of Greater Israel, emerging on the ruins of Gaza? Or is this the momentous historical end of Jewish supremacy in the West and the establishment of the Palestinian state on the basis of a discredited Israel, its lies and criminal behavior exposed at the ICJ?

What should we expect?

Africa is another interesting region where incredible events are taking place, unthinkable just last year, never mind 5, 10 years ago.

The Central African Republic is asking Russia to build a military base for 10,000 Russian troops on the territory of the country and has already allocated a special plot of land for this purpose. This statement was made by Mr. Fidel Ngouandika, Advisor to the President of the Central African Republic (CAR), in a conversation with the African Initiative:

“We’d like the Russian Federation to build its military base in CAR, the government has already provided a plot in Beringo, 80 kilometers from [the capital] Bangui, where there is an international airport.”. 

Mr. Ngouandika sees the role of the Russian military as “to teach our soldiers to be disciplined, to respect human rights, to teach our soldiers to protect the territory, because the Russian Federation is the leading nuclear military power in the world”. Mr. Fidel Ngouandika is convinced that there is “no country in the world that can dominate Russia militarily”.

At the same time, 2024 is the first year since 1897 when France has no military presence on the territory of Niger. Just as Russia and Niger have agreed to develop military cooperation and work together to stabilize the security situation in the West African Sahel region, which has been plagued by jihadist violence for more than a decade.

These and scores of similar events create the unmistakable impression that the West must be in panic mode. It is not only the war in Ukraine that they are bound to lose, but we seem to be witnessing a creeping worldwide uprising against the West from every corner. And that includes most of Latin America, Argentina being the exception as it is going fully insane, having elected a perverse sex coach as President.

The BRICS economies have already overtaken the G7 economies in terms of GDP, on the basis of PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) while NATO armies are an embarrassment. The one aircraft carrier that the Brits planned to deploy in the Red Sea against the Houthis couldn’t make it for “lack of personnel”. Nice excuse, so we don’t have to find out their real military failures. By contrast, the American carrier apparently lost one of its F22s in the first shootout with the sandal-wearing Houthis, with two navy Seals lost at sea.

In Davos, the circus of chest beating and hubris is at its climax, although, behind the scenes, it is mostly an eventful charade of illegitimate sex and drugs, with many attendees proudly claiming that no self-respecting person would sit through the boring sessions; they’d rather attend the parties of dubious debauchery.

Now, all of this landscape does resemble the infamous turn-of-the-century malaise which preceded WWI. No one seemed prepared for the immediate start of hostilities, just like now, while in fact the preparations for war were surely underway. 

Remember the war in Libya? Not only was Gaddafi on good terms with France, he actually bankrolled the election of Sarkozy just as France was drawing up the plans to kill him. Saddam Hussein got a friendly nod from the American ambassador to attack Kuwait, an act which the US then used as the casus belli for invading Iraq.

We do, don’t we, have the illusion of appeasement just as the knives are being sharpened in the world’s arms factories. Before we had WWII, Chamberlain came out of Munich waving the famous piece of paper meaning “war was averted”; back to sipping wine at the dinner parties.

And then we have the upcoming American elections. Trump or Biden? Biden or Trump? 

But have you heard what Nikki Haley is saying lately? She went from literally zero annnual income a few years ago to $12 million income recently. Who is paying her this kind of money? Why? Just imagine that Biden drops dead – I mean drops his last wits. And just imagine that either Trump is indicted, or videos emerge showing him in inconvenient situations at Epstein’s Paradise Island, or something else that makes him unqualified to run in November.

Who is going to be next in line? No, not DeSantis. He is a straw-man. Here comes New Hampshire and who comes in the second in the Republican primary there? Nikki Haley!

Listen to what she has to say. 

But Nikki Haley means war. Not just war, but war, war, war.

War is indeed creeping up on us. A big war which will make us miss the days of the turn-of-the-century malaise. And if “past performance” in the wars of the twentieth century is any indication of the future outcome, then, if we survive, the war will end with the aggressor as the loser. And the aggressor in this instance is unmistakably the United States. 

Whether a world war breaks out now or a little later depends on whether Washington thinks that it will be useful to them now, before the elections, or after. 

Judging by the gleeful silence of the American media, they are still deciding.

[ . . . ]

A world war is bound to break out. And with almost complete probability, it will be in the Middle East. 

The question is what to consider the third world war. We tend to call the Crimean War ‘World War Zero’, although it was fought by a handful of countries and within one continent. Whereas the Seven Years’ War, which happened a century earlier, raged throughout Europe, and in India, and in Canada, and in the Philippines, and not only all powers, but even Indian tribes participated in it. Why is it not ‘World War Zero’ is a mystery to me. 

We participated in both, by the way. We lost one, took Berlin in the other. 

This one we’ll just watch. And thank God for that.

– RT editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan 

Germany has begun preparing for war with Russia, Bild Reports

Media learned about Germany’s preparations for a war between Russia and NATO. It was reported by Julian Röpcke, well-known for his Russophobia.

Germany is preparing for a war between Russia and NATO, which could start in the summer of 2025, Bild writes with reference to a secret document of the Bundeswehr. According to the scenario presented by the German Defense Ministry, escalation should be expected as early as February 2024 with the beginning of Russia’s active offensive in Ukraine, and it will escalate thereafter.

“On the “day X”, according to a secret document of the Bundeswehr, the NATO commander-in-chief will order the transfer of 300 thousand troops to the eastern flank, including 30 thousand soldiers of the Bundeswehr”, – stated in the material.

The Suvalki corridor between Belarus and the Kaliningrad region is named as the most likely place of the clash. At the same time, the authors of the material leave unanswered the question of how the hypothetical clash will end.

Herr Röpcke has a good imagination and obvious inclination to fantasies. Do we believe him? Do you think there is a chance of a direct military conflict between Germany and Russia starting any time soon?

The “scenario” envisions a successful Russian advance in Ukraine, pushing back the Ukrainian Armed Forces by June. According to the “secret document,” in July, Russia purportedly might initiate “cyber attacks and other forms of hybrid warfare” against the Baltic states. Subsequently, some “confrontations” are supposed to occur, under the pretext of which Russia, as the authors assume, will commence large-scale exercises on its territory and in Belarus.

Bild states that, according to the “secret document,” in October, Russia may reportedly deploy troops and medium-range missiles to the Kaliningrad region, and in December, a border conflict could start in the Suwalki Corridor (a 100 km stretch in northeastern Poland between Belarus and the Kaliningrad region).

According to Bild, the “secret document” suggests that when the U.S. temporarily lacks leadership due to elections, “Russia, with the support of Belarus, repeats the 2014 invasion of Ukraine on NATO territory” (the specifics of this are not explained).

The tabloid article also mentions that in May 2025, NATO will decide on containment measures and engage 300,000 military personnel.

by Russell Bentley via Sputnik Globe

The Houthis might at first appear to be vastly outmatched by the US/UK armada that has struck Yemen, but militarily and economically, the US and Europe are actually much more vulnerable than the Houthis. To put it simply, in both economic and military terms, the US, UK and Europe, and Israel, have a lot more to lose.

The Houthis are not alone – Hezbollah, considered to be one of the most effective fighting forces in the world today, has an estimated 100,000 highly trained and motivated and very well armed soldiers in Lebanon, and is already at (undeclared, but de facto) war with Israel, and will probably escalate in the next few days. In October, 1983, Hezbollah was able to kill 305 US and French occupation soldiers at a cost of only 2 KIA on the Hezbollah side.

Of the US and French soldiers, 220 were US Marines, the greatest single loss in one day of US Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. In the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, in which Israel invaded southern Lebanon, Hezbollah was able to inflict “unacceptable casualties” on Israeli forces, which resulted in the withdrawal of IDF forces and the signing of UNSC1701. While the Lebanese casualties were significantly higher than Israeli, the conflict is generally seen as a tactical and strategic defeat for Israel. Israel and their US/EU allies would do well to remember both of these battles before continuing to escalate an already extremely volatile situation beyond the point of no return.

Escalation between Hezbollah and the IDF on Lebanon’s southern border will not only expand the current area of conflict into the eastern Mediterranean, it can quickly become a serious threat to the Israeli city of Haifa, only 20 miles from the Lebanese border. Haifa is Israel’s 3rd largest city, with a population of around 300,000. The Port of Haifa is Israel’s second largest by cargo tonnage, and the Haifa oil refinery (the largest, and one of only two in Israel) processes more than 66 million barrels of crude oil per year, more than a million barrels per week. The port, and especially the refinery would be prime targets, and significant damage to either, especially the refinery, would have serious repercussions for the Israeli economy.

The “massive attack” by US/UK naval forces against the Houthis involved airstrikes, as well as approximately 100 cruise missiles, at a cost of more than $1 million each. According to reports published by the Houthi military command and Western media, the attack killed five Houthis. Now, do the math. The US and UK just spent a collective $100 million to kill 5 Houthis and escalate and exacerbate an already volatile situation. Based on assurances from the Houthi government that only Israeli-connected shipping was under threat, the majority of Red Sea shipping traffic had actually continued the Red Sea unhindered.

This is no longer the case. As of January 13th, after the US/UK attacks and their possible continuation, the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (Intertanko), which represents almost 70 per cent of all internationally traded oil, gas and chemical tankers, said in an advisory to members to “stay well away” from the Bab al Mendab strait, and for vessels travelling south via the Suez Canal to pause north of Yemen. This major disruption of tanker traffic may well have an upward influence on oil prices, coming as it does right on the heels of Saudi Aramco’s announcement of a $2 per barrel discount beginning in February.

The Huthis don’t even have to shoot at any more ships – just the threat of the possibility of Houthi or coalition missiles being fired has been enough to disrupt Red Sea shipping traffic, which carries 12% of all global trade goods, and a staggering 30% of all container goods. It is actually the US/UK “coalition” that has escalated the situation to dangerous levels that now interfere with much more shipping, including tanker traffic.