Category Archives: Fuel Shortages

Z Marks the Spot

 

The Big Lie at the root of a war of aggression is that it is going to be easy. Obviously, if an aggressor considers a war to be unwinnable or difficult it will not be undertaken. The lie is needed to neutralize unwinnability; it does so by being de-contextualized and purposefully non-measurable. It defies criticism because there are no points upon which criticism can be attached or leverage taken. Like utopian prosperity, it lives entirely in the future. It’s a claim but everything about it, the sum of assumptions, is contained within the claim itself.

The war will be easy because ‘we are patriots and they are traitors,’ or “they are little more than animals and savages,’ or that ‘we are animals and savages while they are effete and pacifistic.’ How can anyone argue against this, on what grounds? ‘We have a strategic advantage the other side lacks.’ ‘They are the aggressors and we are peaceful and logically we should destroy them.’ That we have ‘fought them for years but everything now is changed in our favor’. What was ‘impossible yesterday is a bagatelle, today’. That the next war will be different from the others that have preceded it or it will be the latest in an unbroken line of conquests; that they will ‘welcome us with flowers’, that the ‘boys will be home by Christmas’. That the war will not cost anything or that it will be profitable to our side.

Some of these are public utterances but moreso they are rationalizations between courtiers or supportive remarks by experts to the Leader. The lie is more of a virus than an advertisement. There are other lies, of course, all of them are closely knitted together tightly so that is almost impossible to separate the strands. If history tells us anything it is that war is never easy, that short glorious wars (Spanish American War) segue into inglorious massacres (Philippine American war), that the shadows of the great wars never clear (World War One).

One of these other lies is that technology applied to war represents the same moral supremacy as the form it takes elsewhere … that war is integral to the progress narrative: more war = more progress;

Z-War is a burglary hidden behind a shitty public relations campaign: “Hi, Mom, I’m off to Ukraine to steal a microwave oven. Wish me luck!” Unknown photographer.

The Big Lie is one the aggressor tells himself. “The only history that matters,” says the dictator, “is that which I will write tomorrow.” The lie forecloses all other options by virtue of the telling, that there is the easy war and nothing else. For the past six months ex-Soviet geriatric Russia have been bludgeoning Ukraine, but wait! Since 2014 the Russians have been attempting to take over Ukraine by way of a quasi-insurgency, this following the rise of Putin out of the ashes of USSR and twenty-plus years of Moscow trying to undermine and absorb the Kyiv government by intrigue. The Russians assure themselves the Ukraines will welcome their new Kremlin overlords with open arms; that after a whiff of Russian gunpowder they will surrender. The Ukrainian boss is a television character, the Americans will airlift him out of the country like he is an Afghan official. Russian soldiers brought parade uniforms and made reservations in Kyiv restaurants for the post-invasion party. How could the Russians not know?

How could the Russians not know what the Ukrainian capabilities were after engaging with them for 30-plus years? How could the Americans not know the Vietnamese attitude after nine years supporting the French or not know after almost a decade of anti-Soviet engagement in Afghanistan?

Lies take root in the garden of disinterest. Little attention was made to Ukraine struggle from 2014 to the immediate run up to the invasion, less was paid to the political gyrations occurring prior. Ukraine was a side show, whereas the center ring of the Eurasian geopolitical circus was Syria and its ganglion of violent- and cynical militants, genocidal governments, Big Power puppetry and the tsunami of refugees. The Maidan in Kyiv, whereby a Russian-planted mob boss was routed by street protests – was dismissed as a George Soros – Victoria Nuland comedy skit. Crimea and The Donbas were Cold War fragments like South Ossetia, Chechnya, Transnistria or Nagorno-Karabakh; dust bunnies to be sucked into Putin’s Neo-tsarist vacuum cleaner. Specialists would be concerned but the outcome would be- and was hand wringing and tepid sanctions. Russia had oil and gas to sell and the West was eager to buy. Russia was a market for European luxuries and technology and they paid cash. The hard currency flowing in- and out of Moscow was good for German politicians, City of London banks and New York City real estate developers. That the source of the cash was thieving Russian oligarchs didn’t matter. Even Ukraine benefited from Russia-Europe trade, skimming a percentage of gas flowing through Ukrainian pipelines for itself. These were self-reinforcing incentives to not challenge Moscow or rock the boat.

Certainly Putin could not possibly be so foolish as to rock that boat himself. If Putin and his claque would not understand Ukraine or bother to care, he would certainly know Russia’s crippling weakness because it was the product of his own corruption. Even the most superficial examination of Ukraine would reveal Putin’s challenge and ultimately his folly: its population is 43 million. It would take a capable army of at least a half million soldiers to gain control over Ukraine. This is manpower the Russians do not have along with support infrastructure – aircraft, transport, training and command – hollowed out by patronage, theft and neglect. Putin’s Russia is not Stalin’s USSR, with its sprawling manufacturing base built by American engineers and its millions of semi-literate young agricultural and industrial laborers ready to be press-ganged into the triumphant march of Bolshevism. Twenty first century Russia has a demographic imbalance skewed toward the elderly with its younger persons working for technology- and commercial firms or in the ‘loan shark’ economy. Like Saddam Hussein or MBS, Russia aims to keep the lid on by cycling some of Moscow’s immense petroleum revenue back toward the citizenry in the form of government jobs. Even among the poorly educated, Russians consider the military as employment of last resort, leaving Russia with legions of bribe-hungry functionaries, police and informants … and a military starved of capable soldiers.

Russia’s efforts to support the Assad government revealed its inadequacies: the Russian military could provide air and artillery cover here and there but little in the way of on-the-ground manpower or the logistical means to provide for them. This did not matter in Syria where Assad’s adversaries were lightly armed militias with no organic air defense whose unpopularity undermined their own successes. Absent proper military targets there were apartments, clinics and other civilian infrastructure to bomb and shell from a safe distance. Its signal attempt at a ground operation against Kurdish forces supported by US air and artillery near Deir-Ezzor was an abject failure.

Comparing Combatants in Syria – Iraq Theater 2016

COUNTRIES WHAT THEY INTEND TO GAIN COST WHAT THEY OFFER GOVERNMENT: CURRENT | PROPOSED ECONOMY
USA Arms sales. To destabilize region to import consumption Operational expenses & loss of influence Transient tactical advantage for no one in particular Corporate plutocracy / None Capital destruction – consumption / Ponzi finance
EC – UK Arms sales, thwart militant attacks on the Continent Irrelevance; expanses related to managing migrant influx Homeland for migrants Corporate plutocracy / None Capital destruction – consumption / Ponzi finance
RUSSIA Arms sales, increased international prestige
Bankruptcy of Russia
Transient tactical advantages for Syrian – Assad government Single party police state ‘Tyrant on a stick’ (TOAS) / Single party police state (TOAS) Petro-state

A large, general war is dangerous because nations can no longer afford to fight them. Marginal oil production would be cut and the resulting finance crisis would cripple both drillers and their customers.

When the big lie perishes, so does all that it contains. The decay is a function of time, suddenly, after months (or minutes) nothing is easy any more. In Ukraine, ‘easy’ lasted about 24 hours. The Teflon-like impenetrability of the speculative abstraction was replaced by the ferocious granularity of the real. On February 24th, Russians crossed the border in many places and Ukrainians immediately started shooting at them. Unlike Syrian rebels, the Ukrainians were heavily armed, well led and enjoyed almost 100% popular support. The air landing strike on Kyiv airports by elite VDV forces aimed at rounding up and taking over the Kyiv government was isolated then destroyed. The Chechen Kadyrov battalion whose appearance on the battlefield was expected to strike terror in the Ukrainians was annihilated almost immediately along with its commander. This was the fate of other, relatively capable Russian armor and combined arms forces plunging headlong into the country from the north and east. Vehicles became stranded along narrow roads in miles-long traffic jams subject to Ukrainian drone attacks, or else became stuck in mud when attempting to travel overland. Russian advantage was artillery but it was rarely where it was needed or lacked ammunition. Russians were subject to non-stop ambushes by nimble Ukrainian units armed with man-portable weapons including ‘smart’ antitank- and air defense missiles for which the Russians had no answer.

Russian logistics unraveled almost before the invasion began. Vehicles ran out of fuel or suffered flat tires, others broke down because of neglected maintenance or missing (stolen) parts. Non-working vehicles were often simply abandoned intact to the Ukrainians. Russian troops lacked food, medical supplies, functioning radios and proper cold weather gear, ironic and fatal to a Russian assault in eastern European winter. Fields were flooded, river crossings on Russian axes of attack were blown to channel Russians into dead ends and kill zones. The Ukrainian railroads the Russians planned to make use of were cut, workers in neighboring Belarus sabotaged rail service by destroying signal boxes. The air supremacy the Russians required for a successful assault never materialized except in the Western media. Prior to Russia initial missile bombardment of Ukrainian airfields, the defenders moved aircraft out of harm’s way or put them in the air. The ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ was a mythical Ukrainian air ace but air defense and fighter jets shooting down Russian aircraft and helicopters in large numbers was no myth. Without air cover the masses of Russian tanks and support vehicles could not advance. Stuck in place the Russian offensive was being bled out by thousands of tiny cuts, forcing first a withdrawal from Kyiv to the north. Where the Russians were able to advance was in the south; Kherson and Melitopol. These gains was not so much by force of arms but by one-and-done efforts of fifth-columnists and spies holding Ukrainian public offices who left these places more-or-less undefended. Where the Russians came up against Ukrainian resistance they were largely repelled with severe losses. Six months of effort reveals the unsustainable expenditure or materials and soldiers on Russia’s part in exchange for modest territory gains and the enmity of almost all Ukrainians including those who were previously pro-Russian.

Russia also squandered the good will of reasonably sentient humans in the rest of the world. Six months of effort includes ongoing nuclear blackmail and threats of atomic strikes; the destruction of Ukrainian civilian targets such as apartment buildings, shopping centers, rail stations and clinics with aerial bombs and guided missiles, the leveling of entire towns and villages systematically with tanks and artillery; also looting and gang rape, torturing- and killing civilians or kidnapping them for ransom, also sending thousands of Ukrainian civilians including children to the far east, killing war prisoners, violating the conventions of war and otherwise committing crimes. Russia is little more than a terrorist group like ISIS.

ISIS convoy in Mosul in 2014. Three years later the group was effectively destroyed.

If the Russians have some ‘new’ kind of strategy or even a coherent goal it is not discernible. It has in its favor is cruelty and the willingness of the West to hold itself hostage. The advantage belongs to the Ukrainians: they know the ground, their own limitations as well as those of the Russians, who don’t care. Russia looks to be the man who decides to hang himself and sets about doing so with a purpose, enlisting his next door neighbor. Because the Ukrainians have little oil and gas to sell they must rely on their wits. Ukrainians leverage their sense of national identity, the Russians’ identity is an edifice cribbed together out of imperial arrogance, abuse and nostalgia. The Ukrainians defend their homes and families, the Russians abandon their own dead and wounded to rot where they fall or to be eaten by dogs. So-called Russian ‘gains’ are negative; their assets burn into ashes and scrap while the Ukrainians become increasingly capable. There is the increase of longer range Western- and domestically produced weapons systems to destroy Russia’s remaining supply capacity. Soon to come is more Western armor and modern jets, more drones and most importantly, an increase in better trained Ukrainians. What does Russia look forward to? Moral- and economic breakdown against the backdrop of jabbering TV madmen. Failing in Ukraine, there is nothing for Russia but turn against itself. It is the man trying hard to hang itself and ultimately succeeding.

Russia’s foolishness amplifies an energy crisis for its customers and by doing so starves itself of credit. Who needs what more: Russian oil and gas for the West or Western credit for Moscow? The conventional answer is the oil and gas which are needed to keep the machinery turning. Credit is needed to gain the machinery itself, or fix it when it breaks. In the debt-based economic regime, credit IS the economy, without access to loans, Russia is a colder, nastier Venezuela.

As credit breaks down insolvency propagates itself throughout banking system. During the Great Financial Crisis, Western banking collapsed because of under-capitalization, hidden balance sheet defects and counter party insolvency. Revival was only possible with the most strenuous efforts (bailouts) by national treasuries and central banks. Nobody is going to bail out Russia. Many of its natural markets have turned themselves away or have been cut off by Moscow out of spite. Russia’s easy war is turning out to be large, crippling and unaffordably costly. Before February, Russia was the world’s number two oil- and natural gas extractor. What will it be next year, or will it be at all? Hydrocarbons are the source of Russia’s income and more importantly, euro- and dollar credit. Only a modest percentage of Russian output is shut-in or flared, this is nevertheless a major shock. It is the marginal oil barrel that has disappeared from the market along with the marginal gas volumes. The marginal dollar of credit is getting harder to find, it is this tightening of credit flows feeds on itself.

Even if the war stops tomorrow and Putin withdraws from Ukraine entirely, what has been casually and carelessly thrown away cannot be retrieved, only with extreme difficulty or perhaps not at all. Casualties include the obvious human- and material resources; also, goodwill, credit-worthiness and business confidence. But Russia will not end the war tomorrow! They will fight on until their country is entirely shattered. Time will tell if everything else is shattered with it.