‘For as long as it takes’ is a commitment. Any single person can commit to a cause, but it is not his, of her place to doom others. Fully committed people are ‘hardliners’, religious zealots, and ofter driven by a lust for power, or conflicted love. In the days when marriage was still ‘sac…
Blog posts : "In English"
Five dimensional chess
War is the extension of politics with other means. And politics is often dirty, with players who are after power for themselves, hardened in the ‘art’ of ‘dirty tricks’, especially in our part of the world. Kicks to the head, and below the belt to take an opponent down are not merely common, b…
To put lipstick on a pig
This is not going to be an easy essay for me to write. Moments before Trump was supposed to impose massive tariffs on countries still trading with Russia, we got the news that Trump and Putin will meet eye to eye, in the UAE. Some kind of breakthrough is afoot, by the looks of it. A Russian spokesma…
Smoke and mirrors
What am I missing? And does it even matter?
In my essay yesterday, I hi-lighted some ‘unusual facts’ which are not part of the shared narrative. It happened as described, there is proof, but we prefer the shared fiction, which is our common reference, because these pieces of the puzzle do n…
The gravity pull of a victim-culture
There are victims in every culture. Unfair treatment, bad parents, misfortune, you name it. But some cultures bend over backwards to cultivate an image of victimhood, even though those using it to their benefit are criminal minds. Which is not to say that everybody in that culture feels comfortable …
Bonfire of the cynics
How much of what we are witnessing is planning? Here on these pages I maintain that the ‘Plan’ called for using Ukraine to topple Putin and regain control over Russia, before knocking on the Chinese door. I provided the published ‘Plan’ produced by the Rand Corp, still available on line, thoug…
Money and weapons for nothing
Is Trump going to kill the goose which is laying the Golden Eggs for the ‘Collective West’ by imposing 100% tariffs on countries which continue to trade with Russia? Unless ‘BRICS’ does an ‘Ursula’ that is what he says he will do. It is unlikely that China will follow the example of the Eu…
Head in the Clouds
If you push for answers when you have time on your hands, you will have time when the pressure is on, if you acted on those answers so as to come prepared. Provided you made the correct assumptions for the situation you find yourself in. To anticipate on likely developments was essential in my profe…
To what end?
The front in Ukraine is collapsing, while people are out on the streets to protest against the Zelensky government. These events are not formally connected, and we're not talking about huge crowds protesting, nor are they made up of people with the same political background. A far right politician, …
Too much going on
To stay on top of developments which can make or break our lives requires plenty of time, and stamina. Boris Johnson complained that the people in the UK are losing interest in his 'Project Ukraine', and 'War with Russia' as an exciting adventure while he was visiting the Ukrainian embassy in London…
Which part of 'No!' is it that you do not understand?
In 2007, at the 'Security Conference' in Munich, and multiple times after that, Putin said that NATO-expansion into Ukraine would not happen without a fight. 'No is No!', was what the American ambassador in Moscow wrote back to Washington. The man subsequently served as the head of the CIA under Bid…
There is no such thing as a winnable war
British pop-icon Sting produced a song called ‘Russians’ back in 1985 on the album ‘The Dream of the Blue Turtles’. The Soviet Union was much closer to becoming history than many thought possible, and people were dreaming of a lasting peace. It was not a military conflict between the ‘Supe…
Magic Mushroom driven policies
Trump gave Putin Fifty days to kiss his royal backside and call him ‘Daddy’. Putin, and others within the Kremlin, immediately said that wouldn’t happen. Not now, not in Fifty days. Simply never. As much as Putin would like to be part of Europe, as a partner of existing countries, bypassing th…
An unhappy, unproductive marriage ruining the world
As the ‘Cold War’ ended, scholars tried to look into the future to identify the root causes for possible conflict. While Francis Fukuyama famously declared that we were witnessing the ‘End of History’, since there no longer was an alternative for ‘Liberal Democracy’, Samuel Huntington, his…
Hiding in full view
Our collective memory is filled with half-truths and lies, as well as improbable stories using snippets of confirmed facts. We all know that from our own experience, where people who were with us during a certain event may have a ‘distorted’ memory, unless our own memory happened to be imperfect, …
Which questions do you need to ask?
If you ask the wrong questions, work with the wrong data, and if your assumptions about the intentions of decision makers are ‘out of the ballpark’ beside the real motives, you get the wrong answers. This is true for me, and for everybody else in the whole wide world. Hence I look at video’s, and …
And take that dog with you!
You are cruising East from Brussels, where you have your shiny new headquarters costing billions of taxpayer money, towards Beijing, humming along, taking one country after the other. What could go wrong? The most powerful alliance in history, at least in your own perception, and that of those who v…
Activating the Caucasus
The Trump-Administration killed its commitment to ‘Project Ukraine’, which it inherited from the Biden-Administration, for now. The argument provided is that the US can’t afford to give Ukraine more ‘Patriots’ and more ammo because they are running low on stuff like that themselves, and prod…
Something is dreadfully wrong
There are two competing narratives related to the war in Ukraine related to the most likely outcome. One narrative says that Russia will win on the battlefield. The other says that NATO will win since Russia will collapse economically. Oddly they may both be correct. Although my money is on Russia w…
A few words about attrition
The First World War ended when Germany simply gave up. They were not conclusively defeated, but they saw no way out. Prior to that moment the new Communist rulers in Russia withdrew from the war. The people had enough of it. On the surface you might say that this development benefitted Germany, poss…