Trump seems to be conspicuously motivated to present his questionable adventure with the B2 bombers striking Iran’s nuclear facilities as a resounding success. Everybody seems to dismiss it, attributing it to his normal egomania, but I do wonder if there’s more to it.

For instance, Netanyahu could have framed the situation in terms where only an American nuclear strike at the underground facilities, and a decapitation nuclear strike at Tehran, would guarantee the end of Iranian nuclear programme, and the Islamic regime there. Trump would have been very disinclined to see things this way and proposed an alternative scenario, where he uses conventional bombs to disable the nuclear facilities, and only decapitates Iran if they prove disinclined to make any kind of a deal.

So, even if those conventional strikes achieved next to nothing, which in fact seems to be the case, Trump would try very hard to present them as a complete success, so that he wouldn’t have to resort to a nuclear strike, because that’s a can of worms he doesn’t want to open.

There now seems to be some kind of a very questionable ceasefire in action, but the entire thing doesn’t look over to me.

The Russians, on the other hand, are making more of a progress in Ukraine. They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry, and their actions are constrained by aversion to losses and the geopolitical chess game, because the sooner they deal with Ukraine, the sooner they will have to deal with the unfortunate next Slavic country to be thrown at them by NATO. So, they are doing this very slowly, hoping that the degradation of the West will do most of their work for them without them having to resort to either nuclear weapons or mass battles with huge losses. The things are proceeding slowly, but apparently due to choice rather than necessity. I, however, don’t share their optimism. Putin wants to avoid nuclear war even at the cost of deterrence, but anyone who knows anything about game theory can tell you that this is a terrible strategy that actually encourages further encroachment to the point where it in fact causes the thing it meant to prevent.

The current situation is highly unpredictable, since too many clowns are running the circus, and Putin played certain moves contrary to conventional logic, which is not a good thing. His response to the bombing of the “Bears” on airfields, which are intentionally exposed so that the other side can count them and see their activity via satellite imagery in real time, and are therefore considered inviolable by both sides, should have been either nuclear, or a super-destructive conventional strike at the NATO intelligence and command&control centres that orchestrated the attack. That would be the tit-for-tat expected in the game, and would inform the other side that further encroachment will not be tolerated, thus reducing the risk of escalation. By not responding in an immediate and nasty enough manner, Putin sent a very dangerous signal, essentially encouraging further encroachment. It’s as if he’s actually trying to encourage the other side to start the nuclear war. Either his Christianity went into his head, turning the other cheek and that kind of stuff, or he actually wants a nuclear exchange to take place, but he wants the other side to appear guilty. It’s weird. Too many poorly judged, unconventional strategic moves have been taking place from both sides, resulting in a situation that is volatile as it is unpredictable.

Israel attacked Iran – and quite successfully, killing most of their top leadership and nuclear scientists, sabotaging air defence, infiltrating who knows what; essentially, it’s a typical first-strike done American way, which is to say in a sneaky, treacherous, cloak and dagger way. The Russians and Chinese should take notice, because they are next. Basically, Iran’s mistake was wishing to have the “moral high ground”, the way Putin does, and their enemies don’t care about that; they merely own the media and lie, and sheeple believe them.

Iran eventually got their shit together, which is to say they got their air defences working again, and they retaliated somewhat, but they are still running around like headless chicken, because Israel pulled off a successful first strike, and the side that does that has a huge advantage in a modern war.

Now Israel has the balls to publicly cry and pretend to be some kind of a victim of the whole thing. No you’re not a victim. You started a war, the enemy fought back, now you are hurt and understand why war is a bad thing and reasonable people avoid it.

I wonder whether Iran was smart enough to buy plutonium for the first dozen or so nuclear warheads from North Korea, in case of such contingency, where Israel attacks them and damages their nuclear programme, they decide that their refusal to build nuclear weapons was a mistake, start a nuclear programme in earnest, and in the meanwhile, which is to say 6 months, they have several weapons as deterrence, because let’s be clear, it’s obvious that Israel is going to nuke them next if they think they are going to get away with it, which translates to “if Iran doesn’t have nukes of their own with which they can retaliate in kind”.

In the meanwhile, since there’s nothing I can do about it, I’m finding inconsequential things to do. Clearing fallen trees with a chainsaw, backing up computers, getting a Skylake mini pc that won’t run win11 for almost free on ebay, and I don’t care because I’m putting Debian 12 on it anyway. Things like that. Listening to ’80s music in the background. Waiting for the time to pass, because my work here is done.

I’ve been listening to a song and the lyrics made me think… there is a country where a poor street kid can grow up to become the President of the most powerful country in the world.

That country is the Russian Federation.

🙂

I expected the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk to be mopped up within days of it having started; essentially, I thought it was a diversionary force of a few hundred men, essentially a motorised battalion at most. Nobody in their right mind would have sent anything more on a guaranteed suicide mission on the territory of Russia proper, in a situation when they are already lacking manpower.

And I was right – nobody in their right mind would. However, the Ukrainians sent more.

They sent an entire army corps, of over 100000 men, with all the best Western armour and other motorised gear they could muster. Not only that, but they kept sending re-enforcements for lost men and equipment. Almost all of those men are now dead, and I don’t think there are any wounded because they were logistically too deep and all their wounded men died. All the gear is lost, too. Absolutely nothing was achieved, other than pissing off Russia more.

And since they re-routed men and equipment from their main defence positions into this cul-de-sac, their defensive positions were either lost or are currently at risk, and they de facto lost the war, which makes it understandable why Trump is now doing the peace talk, under false pretence that both sides are stuck and he’s offering a solution. Yes, he’s offering a solution to himself – Russia essentially broke NATO’s back here, and Trump is trying to avoid a shameful defeat and turn it into some kind of a victory.