Paul Craig Roberts – paulcraigroberts.org March 17, 2022

As readers know, I refer often to “dumbshit Americans.”  I am beginning to wonder if the same applies to Russians.

As for dumbshit Americans, the evidence is never ending. We now have a Pew Research poll of Americans, if it is accurate, that finds that 36% of American Republicans and 35% of American Democrats support American military intervention against Russia in Ukraine “even if it risks a nuclear conflict with Russia.”  The Poll finds that half of the US population thinks that Russia’s concern with her national security is a “major threat” to US interests.  https://www.rt.com/news/552095-americans-nuclear-war-ukraine/ 

It blows my mind that more than one-third of the US population are willing to endure nuclear armageddon for  the utterly corrupt, nazi-dominated Washington puppet state of Ukraine. Americans have no interest whatsoever in Ukraine, and Ukrainians are an insignificant percentage of the US population.  The dumbshit Americans who are willing to go to nuclear war for Ukraine are the dumbshits who sit in front of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, listen to NPR, read the NY Times and Washington Post.  These are people who are brainwashed and live in a false reality created for them by official narratives that serve only the narrow interests of the ruling elite. Most of the dumbshits wouldn’t die for their spouse, parents, or children.  But they are so programmed by the whore media that they are willing to die so Ukraine can shell Donbass Russians in their villages and cities.  Really, this is stupidity beyond imagination.

I have always thought that Putin and the governing class in Russia were more intelligent, but I am beginning to wonder.  Certainly Putin called Washington out at the 2007 Munich Security Conference when he said that Washington’s unipolar world was over, that there were now on the scene other powers with independent interests. However that was 15 years ago.  Since that time, other than repel the US orchestrated Georgian attack on South Ossetia and the recent attempt at color revolution in Kazakhstan, Russia has done nothing to protect her vital interests.  To the contrary, the Russian central bank placed its foreign exchange reserves abroad where they have been confiscated. The Kremlin has encouraged the West’s opinion of Russia as pussies by permitting eight years of shelling of the Donbass republics by Ukrainian neo-Nazis using weapons provided by Washington and its NATO puppets. And now the Kremlin has permitted all sanction outrages against Russia without applying devastating counter-sanctions. Putin has adopted the role of the government leader who obeys international law alone in the world. Amazingly, Putin thinks this show of righteousness will have an impact on Satan. https://www.rt.com/business/552077-russia-will-respect-private-ownership/  In a world of gangsters, what good does it do for Putin to respect contracts and private ownership?

As I have often thought, the Kremlin has no idea what it is dealing with. Russia is riddled with doubt about the Soviet past and is a sitting duck for Washington’s psyops operation.

As I said would happen, Russia’s go-slow war has played 100% into their enemies’ hands. Russia needed a quick victory to forestall a devastating psyops campaign against her and to intimidate further NATO expansion. What the Kremlin achieved by  believing that the West would respect  humanitarian intentions is infamy.  Instead of discouraging provocations of Russia that will eventually lead to nuclear war, the Kremlin’s liberal goody-goodly war policy, which the West sees as  irresolution, has encouraged more provocations  Now the Kremlin is faced with in a few days the former Russian province of Georgia participating with NATO in military exercises.  Finland, seeing nothing but Russian weakness in Ukraine, as portrayed by the Western pressititues,  is now brave enough to apply for NATO membership.

It looks as if it will take the Russian military longer to subdue part of powerless Ukraine than it took Hitler to conquer all of Europe.  This does not impress Europeans that it is dangerous to provoke Russia.  It doesn’t shake the belief in the expansion of NATO. All NATO members know that the expansion of NATO is an offensive measure, not a defensive one. The purpose of missile bases on Russia’s border is to remove Russia as a constraint on Washington’s hegemony.

The Saker and Andrei Martyanov defend Russia’s military capability, but what good is it if it cannot be used, because the Kremlin doesn’t want to harm many civilians or scare Europe?  Putin thinks that Washington’s empire is going to fail, but not when Europe sees Russia failing. If reports are correct, the Kremlin didn’t even have enough sense to get its foreign exchange reserves out of the hands of its enemies, where they have been confiscated, before initiating its limited military intervention in Ukraine.

The question  that the Russian press hasn’t asked is why did Russia’s Finance Minister, Anton Siluanov, who has announced that half of Russia’s gold and foreign exchange has been seized by sanctions, permit the incompetent head of the Russian bank, Elvira Nabiullina, to disperse Russia’s foreign exchange reserves abroad where it was easily stolen by the sanctions?  This level of incompetence is unbelievable even in a third world country. Why does Putin support these obviously incompetent officials whose every action supports the effectiveness of the West’s sanctions against Russia?

Russia’s problem is that the Kremlin cannot get its mind around the fact that the West is Russia’s enemy, not its partner. The Foreign Ministry seems to think that only misunderstandings need to be cleared up so that Russia can be part of the West.

An article published in 2014 explains Russian impotence despite Russia’s clear, and unused, military superiority.  The author explains that “President Putin’s inability or unwillingness to stand up more vigorously to the geopolitical aggressions of the Unites States and its allies stems, therefore, not so much from military weakness, or lack of economic resources per se, as it is from the way its economy has become dependent on oligarch’s economic role and, therefore, on the skittish global markets, or the imperialistic whims of Western powers. Sadly, Russia is not alone in grappling with this dilemma of economic dependency and/or vulnerability to globalization of markets—in essence, to the whims of international financial markets, or the aspirations of the global plutocracy.” https://politicaleconomicsinfo.wordpress.com/putin-blinks/  In all these years, Russia (and China) have done little to insulate themselves from adverse forces operating against them.

In short, Washington conquered Russia in the Yeltsin years when the Russian intellectual class and the oligarchs, who privatized in their bank accounts Russia’s national resources, found that their interests resided in the West and not in Russian sovereignty.  The Kremlin, demonstrating its commitment to democracy and openness, has permitted innumerable Western and CIA financed NGOs to operate inside Russia in behalf of Washington. The Kremlin, in its naivete, has tolerated, perhaps even supported, a fifth column against Russia within itself. The Kremlin’s toleration of a fifth column working against Russia is beyond comprehension.

I am aware that the sanctions against Russia will alert other countries that might have aspirations of sovereignty and that awareness will spread that it is Washington’s hegemony, not Russia, that is a threat to the world.  But can this awareness be effective?

The Western pressitutes control the narratives. Facts do not matter to the West, no matter how many times Putin and Lavrov stress the facts. They waste their time and energy.

In the Western world facts are powerless, as is evidence of all kind.  In the place of facts there are official narratives that turn lies into truth and that turn fiction into fact.  The Russians waste their time responding to false accusations. The accusations are a psyops operation.  By responding the Kremlin validates the accusations.

I have come to the conclusion that the Kremlin lacks the awareness that it is dealing with evil that is smarter and more determined than the Kremlin.  The Kremlin’s failure to deal with the West with force is leading the world to nuclear armageddon. Washington, sensing Russian weakness  and having so many allies against Russia is going to push the provocations to the point that the only alternative to Russia’s surrender is nuclear war.

Even The Saker, a needless apologist for Russia as objective facts support the Russian case, has come to the conclusion that the situation is “headed towards a full-scale military confrontation (conventional and nuclear) between the Empire of Lies and Russia.”  https://thesaker.is/russian-special-military-operation-in-the-ukraine-day-20/

This is what I said from the beginning.  The fact-based world the Russians think is there is not there. The world in which the Kremlin is operating has no relationship to the world in which Washington is operating.

In his speech yesterday Putin showed a dawning realization that the West was closed to Russia and that Russia faces a conflict with a West that “is simply moral degradation, complete de-humanization.” https://www.rt.com/russia/552096-putin-ukraine-west-speech/ 

Only a few, and they are not widely heard, are aware that the West’s sanctions and seizure of Russian central bank assets are acts of war as are US and NATO arms deliveries to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces.  The Kremlin has warned against interference with their military operation.  If the Kremlin chooses to regard the West’s actions as interference, wider war will be upon us.  That Washington takes such risks reflects its insistence on hegemony and the Kremlin’s toleration of years of provocations

Source