Tag: perpetual war

The EU’s Need For Cheap Ukrainian Labor Imperils Ukraine’s Post-War Reconstruction

Forthcoming developments might lead to Germany and/or Poland, where over two million of them collectively reside, either encouraging their return or incentivizing them to stay.

Zelensky has finally begun to think about his country’s post-war reconstruction plans as suggested by what he said late last week with regard to the need for Ukrainian refugees to return once the conflict ends. The challenge though is that he also accused unnamed EU countries of exploiting his citizens as cheap labor, and if they allow them to remain there, then Ukraine will struggle to rebuild. Here are his exact words, which will then be analyzed in the larger context of this conflict’s rapidly evolving dynamics:

“Let’s be honest: There are many Ukrainians abroad. In some countries, they have been seen as a cheap labor force. And now, they realize Ukrainians are often more skilled than their own citizens. I say: ‘Look, give me a bit more air defense, and I’ll tell everyone to come back immediately. And they reply, ‘No, let those who work here stay, but the rest should return.”

For starters, the immediate context concerns the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ desertion rate, which the Associated Press estimated to be more than 100,000 since February 2022. Zelensky also acknowledged this problem late last week but downplayed it at the same time. Nevertheless, it’s clear that his generals must urgently replenish these losses as well as those from the battlefield, ergo the latest report from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) about how they might soon drop the draft age to 18.

These immediate military imperatives can be exploited by the EU as the humanitarian pretext for not deporting Ukrainian refugees in order to keep them in the bloc so that they can either remain as cheap labor or soon become it. Accordingly, it’s unlikely that any of them will make any serious moves to repatriate them so long as the conflict continues, but it’s also possible that it might end later this year. That’s because Trump campaigned on doing so and Zelensky just suggested that he thinks it’s possible.

Speculation about the timeframe and terms aside, the latter of which could include some of the two dozen compromises that were recently proposed at the end of this analysis here, the end of the conflict could then instantly lead to more grassroots pressure upon EU governments to encourage those refugees to return. The two countries where this might soon become a pressing issue are Germany and Poland, which have around 1.2 million and 988,000 Ukrainian refugees respectively.

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Israel must prepare for potential war with Turkey, Nagel Committee warns

Israel must prepare for a direct confrontation with Turkey, according to the Nagel Committee’s latest report on the defense budget and security strategy.

The committee, established by the government, warns that Turkey’s ambitions to restore its Ottoman-era influence could lead to heightened tensions with Israel, possibly escalating into conflict.

The report highlights the risk of Syrian factions aligning with Turkey, creating a new and potent threat to Israel’s security.

“The threat from Syria could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat,” the report states, warning that Turkish-backed forces might act as proxies, fueling regional instability.

The committee’s assessment comes amid Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly assertive policies in the region, which some analysts view as antagonistic to Israel’s interests.

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Current year US military is hilarious

So, the US lit off a Minuteman-3 recently. This system, with origins in the 1950s, is the land-based part of the US nuclear deterrence triad. The test didn’t go well; it blew up right after launch, probably from rotten capacitors. The google machine tells me this isn’t an isolated incident; the last time we tried lighting one off, the same thing happened. We do have a sea based ballistic missile deterrent in the Trident-2. The US hasn’t had any problems with them yet. The British have, and they draw from a shared pool with the US. The other arm of the triad is the B-2 and B-52; the B-2 can’t fly when it’s raining, and the latter dates from 1952. There are plenty of nuclear tipped cruise missiles; fortunately most of those were designed in the 70s and 80s when America still mostly had its shit together.

Unfortunately none of the American cruise missiles are particularly long range or stealthy (there was a stealthy one, retired),  all are subsonic, and they have shorter ranges than the Russian gizmos, which also come in supersonic and hypersonic varieties. Rooskies also have newer generations of ballistic missiles, and are really good at shooting down cruise missiles, so there’s that. Supposedly they also have nuclear tidal wave torpedoes capable of wiping out US coastal areas in radioactive sea water, SLAM hypersonic nuclear  ramjet cruise missiles and who knows what else. Pretty obvious who wins a nuclear war scenario: it won’t be the US. I mean, nobody wins a nuclear war, but the days of US supremacy or even basic competence with maintaining nuclear forces are long over.

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The IDF Will Plan For Total Defeat Of Hamas In Gaza If Hostages are Not Released By Trump Inauguration

Israel’s Defense Minister Yisrael Katz instructed the IDF to bring him a plan for the complete defeat of Hamas in Gaza as soon as possible:

“I have instructed the IDF to present me with a plan for the total obliteration of Hamas in Gaza, should they fail to release the hostages by the time President Trump assumes office.”

The Defense Minister emphasized that it is unacceptable to be dragged into a war of attrition against Hamas in Gaza, while the hostages remain in the tunnels, putting their lives at risk and suffering severely.

Katz asked the IDF to indicate what points might make it difficult to implement the plan, including humanitarian issues and other issues, and to leave it to the political echelon to make the necessary decisions.

On another note, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump declared there will be ‘Hell to pay’ if the hostages are not released by the time he assumes office in 10 days.

What does that mean? U.S. involvement in the conflict?

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Media Downplay Israeli Violations of Hezbollah Ceasefire

Israel and Hezbollah signed a ceasefire agreement at the end of November that required both sides to refrain from attacks on each other. The terms also included a mutual pullback from southern Lebanon after 60 days.

Despite the deal, Israel has subsequently launched repeated strikes on Lebanon against targets it claimed were Hezbollah, killing hundreds of Lebanese civilians. The violations began immediately, with Israel attacking journalists and vehicles mere hours after the deal was signed.

Within a week of signing the deal, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) reported that Israel had violated the ceasefire around 100 times, killing 15 people. Shortly after these initial strikes, Hezbollah launched two strikes into the disputed border zone that it called an “initial defensive and warning response” to Israel against continued ceasefire violations. These strikes did not kill or injure any Israelis. Despite this, Israel responded by continuing its ceasefire violations, killing more and more, bringing the post-ceasefire death toll to more than 30.

Despite the overwhelming number of Israeli attacks in the post-ceasefire period, news audiences have heard that a “tense ceasefire holds” (AP, 12/1/24). Media repeatedly reported on these violations as both sides “trading” or “exchanging” fire (New York Times, 12/2/24; AP, 12/3/24; NBC, 12/3/24; Semafor, 12/4/24; Financial Times, 12/3/24; Wall Street Journal, 12/3/24). While technically accurate, such reporting frames both sides as equally culpable in violating the ceasefire, allowing media to avoid acknowledging that Israel that Israel is by far the primary and more consistent violator.

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Macron urges Kiev to be realistic as French-trained Ukrainian soldiers desert

Ukraine must have “realistic” discussions on territorial issues, French President Emmanuel Macron said on January 6. According to him, the solution to the situation in Ukraine will not be “simple and quick,” a bitter realization he likely came to after it was revealed that French-trained Ukrainian troops were deserting the battlefield en masse, leaving the Kiev regime no chance of gaining the initiative.

“The Ukrainians need to hold a realistic discussion on the territorial questions and only they can do that, and the Europeans are counting on building security guarantees that will be their responsibility,” the French president said.

However, the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict should not happen without the participation of Kiev, just as the issue of ensuring European security should not be resolved without the participation of Europe itself, according to Macron.

At the same time, Macron shifted responsibility to Washington to “convince Russia” to come to the negotiating table to resolve the Ukrainian conflict.

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US Always Knew NATO Expansion Led to War

The present severed from the past is easily misunderstood. In discussions of the Russia-Ukraine war, not enough is made of the historical facts that, at the end of the Cold War, the newly independent Ukraine promised not to join NATO, and NATO promised not to expand to Ukraine.

Not enough is made of the fact that Article IX  of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, “External and Internal Security,” says that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs….” That promise was later enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, which committed Ukraine to neutrality and prohibited it from joining any military alliance: that included NATO.

Nor is enough made of the fact that in 1990 and 1991, the Bush administration gave assurances to Gorbachev – assurances that arguably reached the level of a deal – that NATO would not expand east of Germany, including to Ukraine.

But even less is made of what the Clinton administration later promised Yeltsin nor of what the U.S. already knew at the time of where plans of NATO expansion to Ukraine would lead.

Recently declassified documents clearly show that, between 1993 and 2000, the U.S. already knew that a cornered Boris Yeltsin was distraught about NATO expansion and about the West’s broken promise, that expansion to Ukraine was a red line, and that if Russia ever enforced that red line, the U.S. would respond forcefully.

Though Czechia, Hungary and Poland were invited to begin accession talks in 1997 and joined NATO in 1999, a secret October 1994 policy paper, written by National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and entitled “Moving Toward NATO Expansion,” makes it clear that the decision to expand NATO had already been made by that time. The paper explicitly keeps “the membership door open for Ukraine.”

Interestingly, though Russia is always publicly painted as a predatorial nation with imperial ambitions, a confidential 1993 cable states that most Eastern European states seek NATO membership “not [because they] feel militarily threatened by Russia” but because they believe “that NATO membership can help stave off the return of authoritarian forces” in their own countries. Though the cable makes the exception that Ukraine and the Baltic states may feel threatened by Russia.

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Cost Of Navy’s Newest Arleigh Burke Destroyers Is Ballooning

The U.S. Navy’s Flight III Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) class destroyers are facing cost increases and delays, jumping from an average of $2.1 billion per ship to $2.5 billion per hull, with even steeper cost increases coming in the future, according to a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report. The report analyzes the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan, which calls for a 390-battle force ship fleet by 2054, and includes nine more vessels than in last year’s plan. 

Beyond destroyers, the versatile workhorses of the Navy’s combat fleet, the CBO’s assessment notes cost hikes among other platforms, as well as systemic American shipbuilding industry shortfalls that could impede the service’s fleet size goal. All this long-term planning comes as the sea service races to prepare for a near-term war with China if Beijing invades Taiwan in the coming years. These destroyers and their anti-air, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare capabilities would be crucial to such a future fight.

The Navy currently has 74 destroyers of the Arleigh Burke class, in Flight I, Flight II, Flight IIA and Flight III variants. Two Flight IIAs and 18 Flight IIIs are already either under construction or their purchase has already been authorized by Congress. CBO’s assessment also found that, overall, the 23 Flight IIIs laid out in the 30-year shipbuilding plan will end up costing $2.7 billion on average. 

“The Navy stated in a briefing to CBO and [the Congressional Research Service] that the increase in its estimates of the cost of the DDG-51 Flight IIIs was attributable to shipbuilding inflation’s outpacing economywide inflation as well as declining shipyard performance,” the CBO report states. 

The report added that the destroyers currently under construction “have experienced substantial delays.” To date, just one Flight III destroyer, the USS Jack Lucas (DDG-125) has been commissioned, and the keel was laid for the second Flight III, the future USS Louis H. Wilson Jr. (DDG-126) in 2023. Inside Defense reported in June that other Flight III vessels could see six-to-25-month delivery delays. 

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US Launches Airstrike in Somalia, Claims 10 al-Shabaab Fighters Killed

US Africa Command said on Tuesday that its forces launched an airstrike in southern Somalia on December 31, which it claimed killed 10 al-Shabaab militants.

The command said the strike was launched on a town about 35 kilometers southwest of the southern port city of Kismaayo. AFRICOM claimed that its “initial post-strike assessment” found no civilians were harmed, though the Pentagon is notorious for hiding civilian casualties in Somalia.

AFRICOM framed the attack as a “collective self-defense airstrike” since it was launched in support of the Mogadishu-based government’s forces fighting on the ground.

“In addition to the airstrike, US forces provided support to Somali forces by evacuating Soldiers that were attacked while fighting the terrorist group,” AFRICOM said.

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The Possible Reasons Donald Trump’s Administration Is Recognizing Somaliland

In a move straight out of left field, the incoming Trump administration is slated to recognize Somaliland as an independent state, according to a report by Semafor.

Somaliland is a former British colony bordering Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia that declared independence from Somalia in 1991 without receiving international recognition. Under international law, Somaliland is currently deemed an autonomous district of Somalia.

If media reports turn out to be true, why is the Trump administration moving to recognize Somaliland’s independence? It boils down to advancing Israeli interests.

Due to its proximity to the Arabian Peninsula, an independent Somaliland would give Israel and the United States a forward base of operations to counter plucky Houthi militants in the Red Sea.

After Israel responded to Hamas’ attack on Oct, 7, 2023 with a vicious military assault on Gaza, the Yemen-based Houthis joined the conflict by launching drones and missiles against Israeli and Western vessels traversing the Red Sea. The world faced the Houthis’ wrath in December 2023 when they announced their blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints, where a substantial portion of global maritime cargo passes through.

Somaliland’s strategic location close to the Bab al-Mandab Strait makes it an important choke point on the grand chessboard, thus making it a valuable piece of geopolitical real estate the Israeli-American axis for the use to exploit.

Houthi attacks have bottled up the Red Sea, leading to major disruptions in international trade at a time when the world is still adjusting to supply-chain disruptions brought about during the COVID-19 era.

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