End of the "superpower"
by Lorenz Glatz
[This article posted on 12/21/2021 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.streifzuege.org/2021/ende-der-supermacht/.]
1.
The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan probably marks the definitive end of the "new world order" proclaimed thirty years ago at the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even the 2001 invasion had little to do with such a design. It was a retaliation for the 9/11 attack, which cost the lives of 3,000 people. The Taliban government in Afghanistan had been accused of harboring the al-Qaida network, which had claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack. There was talk of "to eradicate evil from the world," "war on terror," "crusade" against "the Evil one," Satan in the form of al Qaeda leader bin Laden. Suicide terror as revenge for the superpower's "humiliation of the Islamic world" and its bloodthirsty retaliation - a "brave new world."
In this frenzy of revenge and retribution, the Taliban's power was overthrown within a short time, a pleasing government installed, and the terrorists hunted down. By 2021, a quarter of a million lives had been lost. On the side of the invaders, incomparably fewer, yet more than double the casualties of 9/11. Of Afghanistan's civilian population, close to 50,000 died in the fighting, raids, and attacks, and a much larger number were wounded and maimed, not to mention the millions of refugees.
The result of this twenty-year occupation and terrorist hunt is the return of the Taliban to power. Obviously, to a large part of Afghanistan's war-weary peoples, oppression by the Islamists seems more bearable than the regime of the occupying forces and their native helpers.
2.
These twenty years of "war on terror" were preceded by the first war against Iraq. It was waged in the triumphant name of the "new world order" by the remaining superpower, the USA, in 1991/2 "to liberate occupied Kuwait". By the swift end, Kuwait's oil wells were burning, the Gulf was poisoned, Iraq's infrastructure was destroyed, the population was starving, first because of the war, then because of the blockades imposed, and the country remained under the control of the U.S. and allies, who continued to terrorize the people with punitive military actions.
Only months after 9/11, the U.S., with a "coalition of the willing," again invaded Iraq on a large scale to overthrow Sadam Hussein's regime - under the bogus pretext of a "threat to the U.S." from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, whose storage and production facilities had already been sought out and destroyed in the first war. The dictator was quickly removed, but the lasting result of the war is a torn and devastated "failed state" that has become not a vassal of the superpower but a bone of contention among neighboring states, the site of insurgencies and attacks against the occupiers, - and an ideal breeding ground for Islamist groups like the "Islamic State," which is once again explosively alive despite its military defeats.
3.
The unrest of the 2011 "Arab Spring" tipped over in Libya and Syria into military confrontations between governments and sections of the army and ethnic and religious militant groups. In Libya, this paved the way for the U.S. and its NATO to intervene by air "to protect civilians." However, the defeat of Gaddafi's government did not contribute to the "new world order." The country is drowning in war between rival militias and has become a training ground for the rivalries of powers far below the level of a superpower.
And the fate of Syria's Assad regime hinges on support from Iran and Lebanon's Shiite militias, but mostly on Russia's air force and mercenaries and whatever Putin and Erdogan agree on. The U.S. is in the second tier there.
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Catastrophic logic of escalation in Ukraine
By Tomasz Konicz
[This article posted on 4/21/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.streifzuege.org/2022/__trashed-3/.]
From the offensive in the Donbass, the looming declaration of war, and the demise of "Moscow." Caught in a spiral of escalation, Russia and the West are lurching toward disaster.
The "Moscow" was the flagship and pride of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Now the Soviet missile cruiser, which was commissioned in 1979 and did not undergo a major refit until 2021, lies at the bottom of the Black Sea. While Moscow spoke of an out-of-control fire aboard the ship, which is believed to have run into a storm while being towed and sank, Kiev reported hours earlier that the "Moscow" had been hit by a land-based Ukrainian anti-ship missile.
Since the Russian flagship had an air defense system that can actually engage several such targets simultaneously, a successful Ukrainian attack must be attributed either to a seemingly unbelievable failure on the part of the Russian navy or to tangible support from NATO (such as real-time satellite-based tracking). In the meantime, moreover, there are increasing indications that the ship was equipped with nuclear weapons when it sank: The "Moscow" may have carried several nuclear warheads with it to the bottom of the Black Sea.1
The loss of the "Moscow" represents yet another military disaster for the Kremlin - after the withdrawal from the Kiev region and northern Ukraine - leading to a substantial weakening of the Black Sea Fleet and a tremendous loss of prestige for Russia as a major military power (the Russian Navy last lost a flagship during the Russo-Japanese War, i.e. in the late stages of rotten Tsarist Russia - at least in this respect Putin is already very close to his imperial ideal). The Russian flagship served primarily as a floating air defense battery, so now possible landings by Russian marines on the Ukrainian coast, say around Odessa, have become less likely. In addition, there is the powerful impact of this loss on the Russian public and the already battered morale of troops in Ukraine.
The reactions of the Russian army also speak for a successful Ukrainian-Western attack on the "Moscow": the remaining Russian ships were withdrawn from the Ukrainian coast,2 an intensified bombardment of Ukraine began,3 Moscow announced intensified missile attacks on Kiev, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned Kiev that Russia might feel compelled to declare war on Ukraine in case of further "provocations" (Ukrainian troops have recently been able to attack quite a few targets near the border in Russia). 4 Moreover, the Kremlin warned the U.S. and the EU of "unforeseeable consequences" if Western arms deliveries to Ukraine were not stopped soon.
Putin thus finds himself in the same position as after the failure of his "blitzkrieg" in the first week of the Russian invasion, which so far has amounted to a string of Russian military disasters and catastrophes. At that time, advances by Russian units into Ukrainian cities such as Kiev and Kharkov failed, prompting Moscow to move to the use of heavy weapons in a step of escalation. Either Moscow responds to the current disaster with an escalation, or the Kremlin submits to defeat and seeks a way out of the war. But the last option hardly seems feasible for Putin without risking the loss of power. The further the war, which in effect resembles a sequence of escalation steps, has progressed, the greater the political stakes. Russia's army has taken enormous losses in men and materiel, so that a mere "freeze" in the conflict, or even a further partial withdrawal from Ukraine, would be tantamount to a crushing defeat that would call into question the survival of the Putin power vertical and even the Russian Federation.
Moscow can no longer back out of the logic of military escalation without first having at least achieved its already scaled-back goals (control over the Donbass and parts of southern Ukraine). At the same time, so far the Russian army seems unable to deliver anything to the Kremlin that could be sold to the Russian public as a victory. This chasm between the imperial aspirations, which increasingly invoke tsarist Russia, and the rotten reality of an inefficient army plagued by corruption and mismanagement (which, according to the original assessment of Western experts, should win the conflict within a few days5), not only brings out the Kremlin's prevailing delusions of grandeur, it is also the greatest risk factor in this war.
For Putin, there is so far no withdrawal option that would show him a way out of the war6 - and the West does not seem to be able or willing to provide him with one, since it is itself caught up in this Ukrainian escalation spiral. For the U.S. and the EU, not only is the integration power of NATO, reanimated in the course of the war, at stake, they can now speculate on inflicting a strategic defeat on Moscow that would end Putin's reign, or even the existence of the Russian Federation in its current form. In a sense, both sides are speculating on the disintegration of the opponent, which only points to the fragile character of late capitalist states: Russia wants Ukraine to disintegrate into "people's republics" in order to absorb them, while in the West there has long been open speculation about Russia's collapse.7
Moreover, the West also has to pay a high price for the war: it is an economic price, as the war acts as a crisis accelerator and manifests itself in the upcoming recession and accelerating inflation.8 In a nutshell, as the stakes in this war have been steadily raised, both sides face a catastrophic fallout in case of defeat, while victory would bring a great increase in power. If, for example, Russia were to make substantial gains in terrain, NATO would be massively weakened.
The escalation spiral is thus likely to continue. And here Moscow - as long as the conflict does not turn into a nuclear exchange of blows - ultimately has the longer levers at its disposal. For one thing, Russia could indeed move to have its military act along military logic without any consideration. So far, the Kremlin has not brought the full conventional potential of its military machine to bear in Ukraine, which also unmasks the left-liberal German talk of a Russian "war of annihilation" in Ukraine as opportunistic bellicism and historical revisionism that casts the actual Nazi war of annihilation in the East in a milder light.9
Russia's military machine is currently operating with the handbrake on, so to speak, as U.S. military officials explained to the weekly magazine Newsweek at the end of March.10 According to the report, Putin has so far not allowed his army to unleash its full destructive potential - despite all the visible "massive damage." Kiev, for example, has "hardly been hit" so far; moreover, mostly military targets are being bombed. The entire strategic bomber fleet, which could "devastate" Ukraine, was hardly in action. Consequently, Russia's military has so far shown "restraint" in its bombing campaign because, despite all the "unprecedented destruction" in the east and south, civilian casualties could be much higher. Moscow has so far mainly refrained from destroying Ukraine's infrastructure in accordance with naked military logic, he said.
So, before further propagandistic incitement of the conflict by constructing a "Russian war of annihilation" in Ukraine by offering up academic phrases, perhaps the simple fact should be reflected that millions of Ukrainian refugees were able to flee via a functioning rail network and that the lights are still on in large parts of Ukraine. There has been, according to U.S. experts, no "methodical attack" by Russia so far on bridges and transportation routes, which not only enables escape movements but also facilitates supply and troop redeployment for the Ukrainian army.
Similarly, despite the many civilian casualties, the bombardment of frontline or contested cities in Ukraine, such as Kharkov and Mariupol, where Russian missile and artillery strikes, according to U.S. military assessments, at least attempted to hit those "Ukrainian military units" operating "out of necessity in urban areas." The emphasis here must probably be on the "attempt." In plain language, the capture of cities is accompanied by high civilian casualties if they are not evacuated beforehand, as was the case in Mariupol, for example. The talk of targeted attacks by Russian artillery on civilians is thus untenable, according to the U.S. military's assessment.
This does not absolve the Kremlin of historical responsibility for this murderous war of aggression, but it does clearly reveal its character as a military escalation dynamic, which so far is by no means a war of extermination or even genocide. In a sense, Russia's actions in Ukraine are similar to those of the United States in Vietnam, which also gradually increased its military involvement. In Iraq, on the other hand, Washington relied on the immediate, shock-and-awe use of all means of force,11 in order to paralyze a coordinated military resistance by the Hussein regime. But these remarks by U.S. military officials suggest that things can get much worse, as Moscow can turn the escalation spiral even further in response to the sinking of "Moscow." Russia's recent announcement to bomb Kiev more heavily in the future12 and the deployment of strategic bombers in Mariupol13 - these current developments point precisely in this devastating direction.
The coming offensive in the Donbass, which Russia's army is currently preparing despite all setbacks, also represents an escalation step in which both sides are raising the stakes - and which is likely to bring a de facto preliminary decision in the war. The West is supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine, while Moscow is mobilizing all its remaining military reserves in the east to compensate for the losses it has suffered so far. And it is precisely against the backdrop of this possible "decisive battle" that the Kremlin's warnings mentioned at the outset about a formal declaration of war by Russia on Ukraine are alarming, mocked in their ignorance precisely by the bourgeois left-liberal milieu, which also likes to hallucinate a Russian war of annihilation in Ukraine.14
A formal declaration of war, which would put an end to the Kremlin's Orwellian talk of "special operation," could compensate for the most important disadvantage of the Russian military machine: the lack of human material. A state of war would entail the same forced mobilization of the Russian population fit for military service that was carried out in Ukraine after the outbreak of war. Russia's professional army had great advantages in materiel and technology at the outset of its war of aggression, but forced mobilization enabled Kiev to field a numerically larger army that, thanks to better motivation, superior strategy and tactics (Defense in Depth)15 and extensive Western military assistance and real-time satellite-based reconnaissance, was able to inflict on the Russian military its greatest defeat since the first Chechen war.
A mass mobilization in war-minded Russia,16 which Putin has so far shied away from for domestic political reasons (the current enthusiasm for war could then fizzle out very quickly), would be an implicit admission of the Russian army's inferiority to date, but it would mobilize a Russian army that outnumbers Ukraine in the medium term and could only be kept from achieving its war aims17 at the price of direct NATO intervention. Against the background of these emerging escalation steps, the warnings of the CIA against the use of nuclear weapons are also to be taken quite seriously.18 Germany's war-mongering left-wing liberalism in the environment of the Greens and the Left Party, which in its inimitable mixture of ignorance and arrogance continues to fuel the conflict instead of fighting for an immediate de-escalation, could thus very soon learn how a war of annihilation in the 21st century proceeds - possibly even on its own body.
