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.

“Russia has achieved the potential for a decisive military victory. And what they need to do right now from a military standpoint is to continue to put pressure on Ukraine across the entire spectrum of the battlefield, to exhaust Ukrainian air defense, to annihilate the Ukrainian air force, to chew up the Ukrainian armor and manpower,….And if you do this, you will see a collapse not only of the Ukrainian military, but Ukraine as a nation state,“ Scott Ritter, former US Marine intelligence officer, told Sputnik.

by Philip Pilkington via American Affairs Journal

The war in Ukraine has exposed some serious misperceptions about the relative economic size and military power of major nations. Before the war, it was fashionable to say—usually sardonically—thatRussia possessed an economy similar in size to that of Italy or smaller than that of Texas. “The Russian economy will be cut in half,” President Biden tweeted on March 26, 2022, “It was ranked the 11th biggest economy in the world before this invasion—and soon, it will not even rank among the top 20.”1

The statistics that the president used for this comparison were nominal GDP numbers measured in U.S. dollars. It is unclear why the president’s economic advisers did not direct him to the purchasing-power-parity-adjusted (PPP) GDP metrics, which are the standard tool economists use to compare the relative size of national economies. That statistic would have showed that Russia’s economy is the sixth largest in the world—almost as large as Germany’s and well over twice as large as the economy of Texas. Perhaps PPP-adjusted metrics have become embarrassing in D.C. of late as they show that the Chinese economy is roughly 20 percent larger than the American economy.

Yet this is only the first layer of a rather unsettling onion. In a previous essay, I pointed out that even PPP-adjusted GDP measures may be misleading when it comes to determining the relative importance of various economies.2 This argument is simple enough: not all GDP is created equal. A dollar of GDP generated by a casino is fundamentally different from a dollar of GDP generated by extracting oil. Since econo­mies like China and Russia have far larger mining and manufacturing industries, their relative economic importance is far greater than even a PPP-adjusted GDP figure shows. This goes a long way toward explaining why the Western sanctions did not cut the Russian economy in half, as President Biden promised, but instead created a severe energy crisis in Europe—and the continent now faces the horrifying prospect of dein­dustrialization.

Bad metrics can impose severe costs; that much is now clear. But can they also affect military planning? Could underestimating the relative size and power of a rival country’s economy go beyond economics and affect military readiness?

Misleading Macro Metrics

The usual metric that policymakers and pundits reach for when assess­ing military strength is military expenditure as a percentage of GDP. The fact that commentators typically use macroeconomic statistics to assess military strength today says a lot about how we tend to view military affairs in the modern world. It would hardly have occurred to, say, the Romans to assess the strength of their legions in terms of expenditure—much less expenditure relative to the total size of the Roman economy. In the Roman Republic, the Senate seemed mainly concerned with manpower and kept a close eye on recruitment and battlefield casualties.3 It seems likely that this is how military matters were viewed in most places and at most times.

States appear to have become more attuned to the relationship between military and economic power as the costs of large-scale materiel started to rise. Before the emergence of large-scale military equipment, soldiers generally supplied most of their own weaponry. A medieval knight, for example, is widely known to have had to purchase and maintain his own armor, weapons, and steed—all of which became symbolic of his wealth and power.

This seems to have changed in the Age of Sail, when large and expensive galleons became one of the most important weapons of the early modern period. These large ships required significant government expenditures. It was perhaps only natural, then, that a whole theory would develop around accumulating as much treasure as possible through trade so that the treasure could be used to build a large and powerful navy. That theory was known as “mercantilism” and was the de facto governing theory of the economy in Europe between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Still, one would imagine that when states compared their naval power to that of their rivals during this period, they had their spies count the number of ships on the opponent’s docks rather than the amount of money spent on the ships.

It seems likely that the best explanation for the move to compare military strength using economic measures is simply the creation of the economic measures themselves. The national accounts were developed as a response to new developments in economic theory, most notably the gradual emergence of the field of macroeconomics in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The first modern national accounts were published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and were built by the Ukrainian American economist Simon Kuznets.4 This development was just in time for the Second World War, during which modern economic tools were deployed both to restructure the economy and to estimate military strength.

Over time, the use of GDP figures to analyze military strength became commonplace. We now know that, during the Cold War, up to 25 percent of Soviet GDP went to the armed forces, indicating at once the seriousness of the Soviet threat as well the USSR’s deep economic problems. Since the “end of history” was proclaimed after the Cold War, and peer-to-peer military competition seemed to recede, spending as a percentage of GDP is often the only measure of relative military power discussed in nonspecialist media.

Thus, the table below is one many have likely seen before. It shows overall military expenditure by country in nominal U.S. dollars for 2021.5 It also shows this spending represented as a percentage of each country’s GDP and as a percentage of total global military expenditure.

At first glance, this table seems to allow for an easy comparison of relative military strength among major world powers today. Yet a closer look at the actual military power of the countries listed reveals the severe limitations of these metrics. Let us examine Russia and the United Kingdom. If we look at the military expenditure in raw dollar terms, we will conclude that Russia and the United Kingdom are relatively similar in terms of military power. But anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the two militaries knows that this is almost certainly not the case.

Let us compare these two militaries considering what we have learned from the Russo-Ukrainian war, the first interstate, large-scale land war in Europe since the Second World War. Figure 2 shows manpower, tanks, artillery pieces, and nuclear stockpiles (which allow a belligerent to deter conventional escalation past a certain point) for Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.6 Air power is cer­tainly significant as well, but as the war in Ukraine shows, it is not necessarily decisive in a peer-to-peer conflict.

The results are shocking. Even though Russia and the United Kingdom spend approximately the same on their military in dollar terms, Russia has a military that is comparable to—if not substantially larger than—that of the United States. The United Kingdom is not even in the same league as Russia. This raises serious problems for measuring military strength by relative spending. Nor are these problems solved by using a PPP-adjusted metric. If we adjust Russian and British military spending for relative purchasing power, we get $149 billion for Russia versus $77.8 billion for the United Kingdom. True, this implies that Russia spends roughly twice what Britain spends on its military, but this does not explain the extreme differences between the Russian and British armed forces.

Of course, some of this can be explained by quality and some by stockpiles. Much of the Russian armaments, especially their nuclear weapons, are stockpiled from the Soviet Union. But the manpower differential cannot be explained in this way. Moreover, if past military expenditure contributes to current military strength, this only buttresses the case against using current expenditure measures to judge relative military power.

The use of macro metrics has also led to enormous complacency on the part of Western powers with respect to their capacity to reproduce stocks of basic ammunition. As we have seen in the comparison of the United Kingdom and Russia, large expenditures in no way guarantee the procurement of large quantities of the basic materiel needed for a functional military. This fact has been hammered home during the Russo-Ukrainian war. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has released estimates of how long it will take the United States to rebuild stockpiles of core munitions that have been sent to Ukraine.7 Even at surge rates, CSIS estimates that it will take the United States five years to replenish 155 millimeter ammunition stocks; 155 millimeter precision ammunition, 4 years; Javelin, 5.5 years; himars, 2.5 years; and stinger, 6.5 years.8 In general, U.S. defense manufacturing requires any­where from two to six years to replace core munitions after less than a year of sustained conflict—and with allies picking up some of the slack in terms of the required materiel. Macro metrics of military spending appear completely meaningless if the manufacturing capacity is not there to sustain a proxy war with a peer for even a year.

Micro-Level Mischief

The problems do not stop there. Even if we accept that the macro military spending metrics are broken, and that standardized attempts to adjust them fail, we might nevertheless hold out hope for some sort of clever statistical fix. But this hope disintegrates when we zoom in to the micro level and find some rather disturbing discrepancies.

Let us compare two similar weapons systems and see what their relative prices tell us about military spending. The U.S. Virginia-class submarine is a relatively new class of nuclear-powered, fast attack submarine. Its Russian rival is called the Yasen class. Military analysts broadly agree that, while the two ships have their strengths and weaknesses, they are roughly evenly matched.9 But how about the cost? This is where things get interesting. The latest listed price for a Virginia-class submarine is around $3.45 billion per unit.10 Meanwhile, the Yasen-class submarines are estimated to cost around $1.6 billion per unit.11

If we adjust $1.6bn using a PPP metric, we arrive at a purchasing-price-parity cost of around $3.48 billion for the Yasen, almost identical to the price of the Virginia-class. This shows the undoubted power of the PPP framework—and it shows why nominal dollar estimates of military spending are extremely misleading. PPP adjustments may not work perfectly, but they provide us with a better basis of comparison than nominal dollar spending.

The question is whether this holds for all comparable materiel. In figure 3, I have attempted to compare materiel in various categories using publicly available information.12 I have also included PPP-adjusted results and have added a cost-ratio metric.

What we see is that PPP-adjustment sometimes makes the costs of these weapons systems comparable and sometimes does not. What stands out from our cost-ratio metric, however, is that when the PPP-adjustment fails, it always fails in one direction: that is, even when PPP-adjusted, Russian equipment tends to be cheaper than American equip­ment. This means that, when we aggregate up to total spending, even when using a PPP-adjusted measure, we likely underestimate Russian military potential. This fits with the evidence of PPP-adjusted metrics failing when comparing British and Russian spending. The Russians—probably due to being a poorer country with lower wage costs—seem to get more bang for their military buck.

Market Prices for Materiel

Yet even these measures break down when we bring in more qualitative issues. Consider what is arguably the most pressing problem for military planners today: the existence of the high-speed anti-shipping missile.13 In the modern world, navies retain the status that they possessed during the Age of Sail; they are key to global power projection. Navies allow great powers to control shipping lanes and provide a platform to strike at countries far away. The U.S. Navy is absolutely central to America’s ability to project power in the Asia-Pacific region.

The U.S. Navy has faced a fundamental problem since the time that it became dominant, however. On October 25, 1944, at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, American sailors encountered a new type of weapon: the Japanese kamikaze bomber. The tactic was simple enough: load a fast plane up with massive amounts of explosives and then have the pilot fly it into the enemy’s ships. By the end of the Second World War, thirty-four ships had been sunk by kamikaze pilots and hundreds damaged.

The problem that kamikaze attacks pose is obvious: warships are large and slow while flying vehicles packed with explosives are small and fast. Warships are also very expensive, while flying bombs are relatively inexpensive. Today, of course, air forces no longer need their pilots to fly to their deaths because of the development of high-speed missile technology. Missiles are even more lethal than the old kamikaze planes because they are smaller and much, much faster. A World War II–era Mitsubishi A6M Zero had a top speed of around 350 miles per hour, while a modern Russian 3M22 Zircon anti-shipping missile has a top speed of around Mach 9, or 6,900 miles per hour!

One need not be a military expert to recognize the problem here. A credible case can be made that a ship could defend itself against one of these missiles. A credible case could even be made that it could defend itself against ten of them. But what about a hundred or a thousand? At a certain point, it becomes prima facie illogical to make the case that a large ship can defend itself against hundreds of anti-shipping missiles moving at Mach 9.

Together with the quantitative problems that we highlighted above, all of this suggests that we need a new way of pricing materiel. The underlying problem seems to be that there is no real market price based on combat effectiveness. Of course, defense companies “bid” on defense procurement contracts, but what programs are pursued and what contracts are available are essentially set by diktat, based on the objectives of military planners. This process might be adequate to identify the cost of producing various weapons systems, but it does not necessarily reflect their combat value. Even when weapons are sold to other countries, they are usually sold based on marketing. After all, many have not been tested in real war—by which we mean advanced combined arms warfare.

Yet it may be possible to come up with a market value, or something resembling one, and the case of the anti-shipping missile might give us a hint of what that might be. A piece of weaponry is only as valuable as it is potentially successful on the battlefield. Under conventional military procurement, if an arms manufacturer could convince a government to purchase extremely well-constructed trebuchets with expensive aiming technology for millions of dollars, the prices of those trebuchets would be millions of dollars. But that would not stop the trebuchets from being worth exactly nothing on the battlefield. Their stated price may be millions of dollars, but their value would be zero.

What this suggests is that we should be able, with prudential judg­ment, to determine the value of materiel with reference to its potential battlefield effectiveness. A weapon’s value can only be measured against its potential counter-weapon. Analysis based on this concept, if done properly, should be able to generate a “market price.” We can do so with two very simple equations:

The table below provides the definitions of the variables in an example using the cost of a U.S. Navy Carrier Battle Group and the cost of its Russian counter-weapon, the 3M22 Zircon.14

What these equations do is simply model the market price of a weapon based on its potential for battlefield success when weighed against its counter-weapon. So, taking the price of both, we adjust the counter-weapon using PPP to get a better comparison; we then take the amount of manpower being put at risk in their usage—sadly, a dollar price on human life—and finally, the probabilities that the weapon and counter-weapons will destroy one another. We have no idea how many 3M22 Zircons it would take to sink a Carrier Battle Group, but we have made the conservative assumption of 250—i.e., a probability of a single weapon sinking the carrier of 0.4 percent.

These equations, which are similar to those used in war-gaming, can also be used to “back out” how successful a weapon would need to be against its counter-weapon to justify its price. In the case of our model, a Carrier Battle Group could only justify its cost if the probability of being sunk by a 3M22 Zircon was 0.04 percent—or,what amounts to the same thing, that it would take almost 2,400 3M22 Zircon missiles to sink a Carrier Battle Group. Perhaps more realistically, one could also adjust the value (or price) of the carrier group based on the fact that it can only be deployed in situations where the threat from hypersonic antiship missiles is minimal.

With access to sufficient information about the capabilities of various weapons systems, an economist could, in theory, calculate an assessment of the economic value of a military based on its likely performance. This would be the closest we could come—without access to complete battle and weapon data—to determine the true market value of materiel. Of course, most of us do not have access to the relative performances of various weapons systems; this information is typically top secret. But even with incomplete information about these capabilities, a reason­able approximation is possible.

Many militaries around the world already use similar calculations in making threat assessments. They could therefore provide better statistics on comparative strength, without having to divulge how the statistics are calculated, although this would, of course, raise issues of trust. Nevertheless, given the clear problems policymakers and the general public have encountered in trying to determine military strength from simple economic spending metrics, this seems the most promising way to get something closer to true materiel values and more accurate military comparisons.

This article originally appeared in American Affairs Volume VII, Number 1 (Spring 2023): 90–99.

by Gilbert Doctorow via Gilbert Doctorow

The mood of panelists and presenter on this past Sunday’s Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show was deeply pessimistic and the reason had nothing whatever to do with Russia’s situation in its war with Ukraine. On the contrary, feelings about the war were entirely upbeat. The recently published interview in The Economist by Ukrainian commander in chief General Zaluzhny confirmed to the world public the dire prospects facing the Ukrainian army that Russians had been saying among themselves for some time. Indeed, even in Western media it is now estimated that the Ukrainians have lost 10 to 12 soldiers killed or severely maimed on the field of battle to one Russian casualty. The Ukrainians are said to have lost more than 400,000 soldiers and officers. And concurrently, both financial and military aid from the United States and its European allies is becoming problematic.

The pessimistic mood on the show had other, more general considerations that should give us pause as well. As one panelist remarked, global politics today very much resemble the period that preceded the outbreak of World War I. There are nasty wars here and there. There are peace conferences which lead to nothing. There are powers, meaning the United States, which in the recent words of Joe Biden, exult in being the most mighty on this earth, able to fight on multiple fronts. All of this led Vladimir Solovyov to sum up what comes next: a nuclear war is now inevitable. he said.

Of course, the vicious Israeli rampage in Gaza was a contributing factor to this gloom. All arguments from morality or ‘universal values’ have been stripped away. We are left with might makes right being practiced by those who believe they are untouchable.

If you pay attention, you see that the West, and Europe in particular, is staging one provocation against Russia after another with complete indifference to where this may lead.

One month ago, Latvia was threatening to close the Baltic to Russian ships as punishment for the possible Russian involvement in damage to the Balticonnector pipeline. That scandal quickly dispelled when the Finns announced that the likely cause was the anchor of a passing Chinese merchant vessel which detached during a storm.

However, now a similar threat has been issued by the European Commission as it has directed Denmark to inspect and possibly arrest oil tankers carrying Russian oil passing through Danish territorial waters on their way to the Atlantic for deliveries worldwide. The inspections will be to see if the vessels have proper European insurance coverage or not and the pretext for arrest will be that the vessels pose an environmental hazard. All of this is in answer to the findings of the Financial Times that nearly all Russian oil exported by sea is now being sold at well above the $60 ceiling mandated by Europe thanks to a shadow fleet that Russia assembled in the past year. October oil was sold for $80. which was just $10 below Brent.

One wonders whether anyone in Brussels or in Copenhagen stopped to think what response the Russians may make to any threats to stop their oil shipments by force on the seas. Russia is not some far away Iran without the wherewithal to react in these waters. No, the Russian Baltic naval fleet is very powerful, not to mention their available air power and ship destroying missiles fired from several thousand kilometers away. And the Danes? Wikipedia tells us their entire navy consists of 3,400 personnel, “16 ships, 28 vessels and 30 boats.” I assume that is in descending order of size and might. How many days or more likely how many hours would they hold out against the Russians? And what comes next?

The Finns, for their part, are also busy poking the bear. Yesterday they announced the closing of border crossings with Russia, claiming that Moscow is sending illegal undocumented migrants from Third World countries to them just as Belarus had allegedly been doing a year ago at their border with Poland.

Having crossed that border six or eight times in the last couple of years by bus, I know full well that the Russian bus operators were very strict in demanding that the paperwork of all passengers be fully in conformity with the relevant regulations on both sides of the border. Nearly all of these passengers have necessarily been dual nationals since tourists with only Russian passports are not admitted into Finland.

In response to the Finnish action, the two main bus lines carrying passengers between St Petersburg and Helsinki, EcoLines and Lux, have just announced termination of their services effective 18 November. This means that the only practical way for Europeans to get to Russia will be by flying via Istanbul or Dubai. This will double or triple the cost of a visit and take people to people exchanges back to the worst times of the Cold War. Only this war is more likely to be Hot.

“The West was not ready for a war with Russia, which has significantly increased its military potential over the past decades”

Skepticism continues to grow in Europe about the ability to defeat Russia. And if earlier it was only about Ukraine’s chances, now high-ranking military officials doubt that even the West itself is capable of this.

French general and geostrategist Jean-Bernard Pinatel believes. that the West made a strategic mistake by underestimating Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO countries “relaxed” and stopped seeing the “threat from the East”, starting to curtail their own military production as unnecessary. In parallel with the fact that the collective West was reducing the production of ammunition and disbanding entire army units, the Russian Federation relied on militarism and took advantage of the moment to prepare for the coming “big war”.

“In 1989, the French ground army consisted of three armored mechanized army corps (9 divisions), rapid reaction forces and operational defense of the territory. Its population reached 296,000 people. Today it has been reduced by two-thirds and now has only two divisions, each with one armored brigade.”

All military experts note the critical importance of artillery ammunition in our war. General Pinatel is convinced that on this point, too, our enemies have a significant advantage over Ukraine’s allies, who were unable to increase large-scale military production almost two years after the start of the war.

“When Putin started the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s production capacity for 155mm rounds was about 2.5 million per year, while the United States produced only 93,000 rounds. Thus, in 2022, Russian forces could fire up to 40,000 shells per day, while the Ukrainians averaged only 8,000 shells per day. And although they produced 5 times less than the Russians, they consumed in one month two and a half times the annual production of the United States. Also, to allow Ukraine to fire 2.5 million shells in 2022 and stockpile for its counteroffensive, the United States transferred 2 million shells from its stockpile to Ukraine, more than 500,000 from South Korea, and tens of thousands from European stockpiles. It will take at least 5 years for the United States to replenish its stockpile of artillery ammunition, and Israeli needs do not improve the situation for Ukraine.”

Forecasts for 2024 are also extremely pessimistic for our country. The French military man is convinced that the strategic potential of the Russian armed forces will gradually increase, while the resources of Ukraine and its closest partners are systematically depleted. The general announces the completion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ counter-offensive and also questions their ability to conduct an effective defense.

Russia’s warships may get permanent docking rights at a Libyan port, most likely Tobruk in east Libya. Source: Google Maps

via Bloomberg
Russia will soon make a military base in Libya in the Tobruk region, in agreement with Marshal Haftar, who studied at a military school in Moscow and who now controls the Libyan National Army and the richest third of Libya with Benghazi oil and oil terminals. This military base will allow Russia to listen to the entire south of NATO and the EU and have a base for ships and aircraft.
Negotiations are being completed, Bloomberg writes. Russia is an ally of Haftar, along with Egypt, KSA and the UAE. It will be interesting if this is their joint military base.

**************

(Bloomberg) — Russia is moving to expand its military presence in eastern Libya, a plan that could lead to a naval base, giving it a significant foothold on Europe’s southern doorstep.

A defense accord is being hammered out between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Libya’s eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar following their meeting in Moscow in late September, according to people briefed on the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.

The escalation of Russian activity in Libya represents a fresh challenge to the US and its European allies, which are already locked in a standoff with the Kremlin over its invasion of Ukraine and the country’s potential role in any wider Middle East conflict stemming from the Israel-Hamas war. Russia has been heavily active in neighboring Syria throughout that country’s decade-long civil war.

The threat is being taken “very seriously” by the US administration, said Jonathan Winer, a former US special envoy to Libya. “Keeping Russia out of the Mediterranean has been a key strategic objective — if Russia gets ports there, that gives it the ability to spy on all of the European Union.”

Covert Presence

Russia has had a covert presence in the North African oil exporter for several years via the Wagner mercenary group, which moved in during the power vacuum and civil war that followed the NATO-backed removal of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. The Russian defense ministry has been systematically taking control of Wagner’s activities since its mutinous leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his top aides died in a mysterious plane crash in August.

The groundwork done by Wagner to advance the Kremlin’s interests in Africa and the Middle East has allowed Moscow to quickly ramp up its foreign military assets. It’s also seeking a naval base on the Red Sea in Sudan, which would give it permanent access to the Suez Canal, Indian Ocean and Arabian Peninsula, though a civil conflict in that country may put back those plans.

Libya is divided between dueling administrations in the western capital, Tripoli, and the east, where Haftar holds sway. It’s common for each side to oppose foreign policies and other decisions made by its rival.

Haftar, 79, controls many of the major oil facilities in Libya, an OPEC producer that’s home to some 40% of Africa’s reserves. He’s looking for air-defense systems to protect him against rival forces in Tripoli, who have been backed by Turkey’s military, according to people close to his self-styled Libyan National Army.

He also wants training for his air force pilots and special forces, they said. In return, a handful of air bases currently occupied by Wagner paramilitaries will be upgraded to host Russian forces.

Russian warships may also get permanent docking rights at a Libyan port, most likely Tobruk, located just a few hundred kilometers across the Mediterranean from Greece and Italy, according to other people with knowledge of the talks. However, that is a longer-term prospect because it will require substantial upgrading of port facilities, they said. Russia so far has only one naval base in the Mediterranean, at Syria’s Tartus.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, didn’t reply to questions on the potential military deal. The Defense Ministry in Moscow didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Libyan National Army, Ahmed Al-Mismari, didn’t pick up calls to his phone. The Tripoli-based Libyan government didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Breakthrough Meeting

Haftar’s Sept. 28 audience with Putin marked a breakthrough for the Libyan commander in his relations with Russia. During his previous visit to Moscow in 2020, Putin declined to meet him while lower-ranking officials pressed him to sign a cease-fire with Tripoli. He left the country abruptly without accepting a deal.

Haftar’s deepening ties with Moscow have raised concern in Washington and prompted a series of high-level visits to the country this year in a bid to persuade him to change course.

A week before his talks with Putin, the commander of US forces in Africa, General Michael Langley, and the current US special envoy to Libya, Richard Norland, met Haftar in Benghazi. They pressed him to remove foreign forces, according to US Africa Command.

Libya should be in a position to “choose from a range of security cooperation partners,” Norland told reporters in a conference call last month. He denounced the Russian military role in Libya as “destabilizing.”

Biden’s Problem

US President Joe Biden’s problem is that Russia is offering military assistance that the US cannot provide because of Haftar’s failed attempt to overthrow the internationally recognized government in Tripoli in 2019-2020, according to Winer, the former US envoy. At the same time, it hasn’t been prepared to discuss sanctions, he said, so there’s little obvious cost for Haftar in turning to Putin.

Nevertheless, a defense deal with Russia will reinforce divisions between the east and west of Libya, currently governed by rival administrations, and make it less likely the country can reunite after more than a decade of strife since the overthrow of Qaddafi, said Claudia Gazzini, senior Libya analyst at the International Crisis Group.

That scenario suits Russia just fine, said Kirill Semenov from the Kremlin-founded Russian International Affairs Center.

“For Haftar, the key is to maintain his armed forces and the US isn’t giving him any other option but to stick with Russia as his main partner.”

–With assistance from Simon Marks.

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

via Gilbert Doctorow

A couple of days ago, Russian evening news showed a brief video of Vladimir Putin arriving at the southern military command center in Rostov on Don for a meeting with Valery Gerasimov, Head of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces. We were shown their handshakes at the start and their handshakes at the conclusion of the meeting as Putin was on his way to his aircraft, but nothing was said about the reason for the visit.

This evening we found out about the likely topic of the talks two days ago. Breaking news on Russian television gave some sketchy details of the tests just carried out on the war readiness of the country’s nuclear triad for response to some incoming nuclear missile from an unnamed enemy. Gerasimov reported to Putin on the satisfactory results of the launch from the nuclear submarine Tula in the Barents Sea of a Sineva ballistic missile with 5,500 km range; the launch of a Yars ballistic missile with 12,000 km range from an underground shaft in Kamchatka; and the launch of a 5,500 km range cruise missile from a TU-95 “Bear” turboprop bomber-missile carrier (location unspecified). Considering the location of the missile launches and the radius of possible strikes, it does not take much imagination to conclude that the enemy being attacked was the U.S. of A. The actual tests consisted of one missile each; the capability being tested was for a massive retaliatory strike.

We may assume that the tests were Russia’s response to the announcement within the past week of American ‘pre-tests’ of nuclear weapons, which Moscow took to indicate that Washington intends to proceed with weapons testing in one way or another now that the treaty banning such tests has become a dead letter. Or we may assume that the Russian missile firings were a warning to the United States against escalation in the Middle East by attacking Iran.

On the subject of Iran, Russian state television yesterday told us about the visit to Teheran of Foreign Minister Lavrov, who arrived from meetings in Pyongyang with North Korean leader Kim and had talks with the Iranians and representatives of Armenia and Azerbaijan over resolution of their conflict. Lavrov told a reporter inter alia that talks with Teheran over conclusion of a Strategic Partnership agreement are 90% complete.

Today Russian state television related news from Prime Minister Mishustin on his talks with Iranian leaders over furtherance of bilateral trade and also on the likely conclusion before year’s end of a Free Trade Zone agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union. Clearly the ‘axis of evil’ is forming with amazing speed under pressure from the wars in Ukraine and now in the Middle East.

I call attention to the difference in tone with respect to Iran by Israeli leaders these past two days and by spokesmen of the Biden administration. A member of Netanyahu’s cabinet has threatened Iran with utter destruction, whereas American officials are focusing their attention on the various proxies that Iran is helping to prepare for military action against Israel if the ground invasion of Gaza proceeds. Moreover, it is now unclear whether the large naval task forces that the United States is assembling in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Red Sea are intended for offensive action against Iran or for defensive action, to protect American bases in the region against attack from pro-Iranian forces and to evacuate American military and civilians from the region if necessary.

Watch on YouTube here.

This is a 2 hour long interview of Scott Ritter.  Scott answers questions from the audience with host Jeff Norman most Friday nights at 5 PM. 

Scott provided an explanation that makes sense, there’s a scenario that he details. “Scott Ritter Extra Ep. 108: Ask the Inspector – hospital strike”:

https://youtube.com/live/5wKAJDNaAXw?si=dlyNdLfE8-CBP5O
This was a hit on a car at the hospital because someone important enough was using his phone incorrectly. The damage matches the missile type and the image of the flipped car.
It was a targeted hit.
Overall brilliant analysis, bringing transparency and clarity to key world events during these dangerous days of mass media propaganda and establishment’s corruption. Two very brave individuals, telling the truth which can be a dangerous business.