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Published on the Doomstead Diner on March 2, 2014
Discuss this article at the Geopolitics Table inside the Diner
The Frosbite Falls Daily Rant is the latest Feature of the Collapse Cafe on the Doomstead Diner. It can be found daily on the Homepage of the Diner on the right menu bar.
The transcript for this rant can be found at the bottom of this article.
Day 2 has arrived here in the Valve War between Ukraine and Russia, centered mainly in Crimea at the moment, but bound to move Eastward as time goes by here. I covered a few of the main issues in the daily rant yesterday, for today we will look a little more closely at the logistics involved here.
As you can see from the Infographic at the top of the page, this isn’t a small military exercise by any means. More than 10,000 troops are being repositioned, which is quite a tidy sum considering the Ruskies were downsizing their Military.
2008 Russian military reform
(H/T Newzy Joe on the Diner for this table)
While the Ruskie military is still pretty large, you have to remember that all “active personnel” are not “Boots on the Ground” aka Grunts who do the dirty work and get regularly sent to the Great Beyond in one of these actions. So Vlad is committing quite a large percentage of what is left of his military assets to try and take control of Ukraine.
While the mostly Russian speaking eastern Ukrainians are mostly lined up with Vlad, even they don’t necessarily want to become a vassal state of Russia again. They only got out from under the old USSR hegemony 20 years ago! The Western half of the population definitely isn’t too happy about this state of affairs, so you basically have now a War in all but official declaration, and even that gets closer all the time.
NATO and Obama-sama still haven’t done anything but bluster, and it is unlikely they will do much on the military end at this time. The NATO countries don’t have that many troops they can call up at the drop of a hat (or bomb), and most available FSoA military assets are currently deployed far and wide at a bazillion global Military bases as well as being mired down in places like Afghanistan.
However, just because they don’t have military assets to throw at this problem doesn’t make them helpless, they do have financial ones. Accelerating Capital Flight out of both Ukraine and Russia can do a lot more damage to Vlad the Impaler’s political control than a Firefight in Sevastopol. So this is probably where we have to look for the Action to be next week from the NATO/western Illuminati end.
Logistically speaking, all the “Big Power” Militaries of the Ruskies, the Chinese and the FSoA are over-extended past what they can actually support anymore to try and control far flung regions of the earth. The Chinese are buying up African Land and Oz Mines, but they need their own Million Man Army right at home to keep control. The Ruskies have the same problem, their last failed adventure outside of their own region in Afghanistan was a magnificent failure, and subsequent adventures inside their sphere have not faired much better. All their border states like Georgia are contantly in virtul revolt; just keeping the lid on there stretches them pretty thin. For the FSoA part, we send Carrier Groups willy-nilly around the world as a “show of force” in each latest Hotspot, but we only got like 11 or so of these Carrier Groups I believe. Drop a couple in the Mediterranean, a couple in the Indian Ocean, a couple in the South China Sea, a couple in the North Atlantic, a couple off the coast of Brasil and one in the Gulf of Mejico and POOF, you are frehs OUT of Carrier Groups! Not to mention all a Carrier Group does at best is to allow you to control the local Sea Lanes and drop Death From Above on the nearby locals, they don’t allow you to put enough Boots on the ground in ANY of these places to do much more than take over a few Goobermint Buildings in the central city, for that you gotta mobilize a lot of troops ships, land tanks and APC yadda yadda.
In all likelihood at this point, it appears that the “Powerful” Goombermints and Militaries of Russia, china and the FSoA will soon be engaged much more in keeping their own Local Populations in control, so trying to control anywhere else is pretty much a non-starter. Ukraine is close enough physically to Russia with enough traditional ties they can make this physical attempt one more time, but they will face a constant state of revolt inside Ukraine, just like Georgia and the rest of the peripheral states now really starting to hurt.
The problems in Ukraine will move themselves quickly enough to Poland, Hungary, Belarus etc, and the Western European states will see Blowback as Gazprom energy gets shut off at critical Valves through Central Europe. This further roils the markets and their economies, already very shaky to begin with, so they too will begin to topple.
Building up this whole interconnected Global system has been ongoing for 500 years here. It will come apart a whole lot quicker than that. The World Trade Center is the best analogy I can come up with here. The project had it’s inception right near the end of WWII in 1943, took until the 60s to get funding, and didn’t open up until 1973.
The idea of establishing a World Trade Center in New York City was first proposed in 1943. The New York State Legislature passed a bill authorizing New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to begin developing plans for the project[11] but the plans were put on hold in 1949.[12] During the late 1940s and 1950s, economic growth in New York City was concentrated in Midtown Manhattan. To help stimulate urban renewal in Lower Manhattan, David Rockefeller suggested that the Port Authority build a World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.[13]
Initial plans, made public in 1961, identified a site along the East River for the World Trade Center.[14] As a bi-state agency, the Port Authority required approval for new projects from the governors of both New York and New Jersey. New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner objected to New York getting a $335 million project.[15] Toward the end of 1961, negotiations with outgoing New Jersey Governor Meyner reached a stalemate.[16]
At the time, ridership on New Jersey’s Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (H&M) had declined substantially from a high of 113 million riders in 1927 to 26 million in 1958 after new automobile tunnels and bridges had opened across the Hudson River.[17] In a December 1961 meeting between Port Authority director Austin J. Tobin and newly elected New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes, the Port Authority offered to take over the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad to have it become the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH). The Port Authority also decided to move the World Trade Center project to the Hudson Terminal building site on the west side of Lower Manhattan, a more convenient location for New Jersey commuters arriving via PATH.[16] With the new location and Port Authority acquisition of the H&M Railroad, New Jersey agreed to support the World Trade Center project.[18]
A good 20-30 years to get those buildings up. They came down in seconds. So it will go with this as well, when it Blows, it will Blow Big and it will Blow Fast. In the words of Leonard Cohen,
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Transcript of the Ukraine-Russia War Rant
Greetings Doomfans, and welcome to another edition of the Frosbite Falls Daily Rant.
Tonight we are revisiting a topic from a few nights ago, the ongoing spinout in Ukraine. A few nights ago it was a Civil War in progress, tonight it is a WORLD WAR in the making.
Reason? Vlad the Impaler, the Noble ex-head of the KGB over in Ruskieville decided since he could not or would not Pony Up $35-50B in FOREX scratch the Ukrainians need to keep their version of the Industrial Society running, the better option was simply to roll over them with APCs, Helicopters and Troop ships!
On the NATO side of this battle, John Kerry offered up chump change of $1B in loans from the sharks at the IMF, which barely could keep an Oligarch in Maseratis and Airbus Double Decker Private Jets for a week or two, much less pay off on Pensions to the Ukrainian Population.
Why does EITHER side here give a Flying Fuck who is wandering the halls of the Ukrainian Parliament and running the show there? Why not just leave them alone and let them work out their OWN fucking problems?
Two main reasons. First off, Ukraine has a shit load of pipelines running across the territory which ship Gazprom Energy from Mother Russia over to Western Europe, which is a MAJOR source of FOREX revenue for the Ruskie Oligarchs, including of course Vlad the Impaler.
Second reason is Ukraine is (like everybody else) in HUGE debt to the TBTF banks, and if they don’t get some new Hard Currency FOREX Scratch to roll over their old loans, they will default. This will play nasty HAVOC with the Russian banks, which have the biggest exposure, but of course all the TBTF banks in the West are exposed to this mess also in the Daisy Chain Circle Jerk of derivatives, interbank loans and Worthless Collateral they used to rehypothecate still other loans made elsewhere. If anybody here on either side has to write down Ukrainian debt, the TBTF banks will have to pay a LOT of Overtime to their Accountants so they can cover it up and not be blatantly Insolvent, just Shadow Insolvent.
For their own part, the Ukrainians hold one Ace in the Hole, they actually have their fingers on the valves that transit NG over from Mother Russia to Eurotrash. If SOMEBODY doesn’t pony up some more money for them to keep going here, the average J6P Ukrainian has NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE, so why not blow a few Pipelines and pass the Suffering on to the folks to the West and East of them? They shut down the pipelines, the Eurotrash runs short on energy to keep the Lights on, and the ruskies run short of Forex to keep the Rouble floating as a Happy Currency. Everybody suffers with them!
Herein lies the big PROBLEM with Vlad the Impaler’s physical takeover of the apparatus of Goobermint in Ukraine, the Western interests don’t necessarily have to retaliate with rolling their own APCs and Helicopter Gunships into Ukraine on a UN Sponsored “Peacekeeping” Mission, they can simply mount a concerted Financial Attack on the Rouble. Putin’s Goobermint already has plenty of issues maintaining control over the pretty vast Ruskie territory (even though shrunk from the Lacyon days Back in the USSR), if the Rouble gets driven down in FOREX trade and they can’t sell NG to Western Europe, their own economy will flush down the toilet in a big hurry.
For the Ruskies to take control of this problem on the Physical Level, they have to control the ENTIRE transit of Energy from the Ruskie Gas Fields across to the Eurotrash Konsumers of that energy, and they cannot do that simply by holding Crimea, which they also can’t do with a few 1000 Shock Troops. All that enables them to do is hold a few Goobermint Buildings and install some Puppet Leaders there. They have to roll across the WHOLE of Ukraine, and they have to not only prop up Puppet Leaders in Goobermint, they have to keep the local VERY unhappy population from dropping a few IEDs at critical nodes in the NG pipeline transport system. That will take a LOT more boots on the ground to do, and it is highly questionable that Vlad the Impaler could bring such a force to bear. Very similar to NATO trying to control the energy transit down in MENA with so many of the locals hostile to them.
It remains to be seen how this will play out medium to long term, and in what manner. However, both sides are between a Rock & a Hard Place. Under no circumstances can I see will the Energy flow through Ukraine continue Unimpeded. This will negatively affect all of Europe and Russia too. Neither side can back down here, so escalation seems likely. Duck and cover Doomers, we are now at DefCon Orange.
And that’s all the Doom, this time until next time here on the Frostbite Falls Daily Rant.