How successful can a so-called defensive military alliance be when it willfully depleted its own weapons stockpiles while simultaneously provoking Russia to rebuild its own military capability to a level it hasn't had since the 1980s. Add to that the treacherous conduct of the US against its NATO "allies", making them even more dependent on US military might that is itself a shadow of its former self.

Good question, and it seems that more people than our owners are comfortable with see through the rain of bullshit coming down on their heads 24/7 for what it is.

What if our owners have decided that their Republican wing of Government Inc. will take the helm of their ship of state in the next selection contest, and negotiate another Nixonian peace with honor in order to extricate their collective tits from the wringer they've fed them into?

Here's an excerpt from this article that alludes to such a possibility:

After years of Western leaders openly fantasizing about regime change in Russia, frankly entertaining Zbigniew Brzezinski-style visions of collapse and disintegration, publicly insisting that the embattled kleptocracy in the Kremlin was under greater daily strain and in more imminent peril of bursting at the seams than Kate Upton’s bra…after all that, word now suddenly comes that a Putin-less failed state would actually be a really bad thing – and that we better make sure it doesn’t accidentally happen by us overdoing our let’s-weaken-Russia-via-Ukraine strategy. Seems counterintuitive, considering that we’re supposedly right on the brink of total victory and the achievement of all our geopolitical goals, among which was a wrecked Russia, doesn’t it? But no. Wiser heads know better.

Writing in The New Statesman last month, in the wake of the Wagner uprising, noted British intellectual John N Gray – famous for his party-pooper works of nihilism-flavoured philosophy that would depress even Nietzsche – turned his flinty, unflinching gaze to the Russia Question. What he saw troubled him.

“The chain of command is fragmenting,” he asserts. “The logic of events points to further disintegration.” Russia, in fact, underwent a skin-of-its-teeth moment when Wagner mutinied: “The Russian state was shown to be deeply hollowed out. Along with Putin, it survived because the Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov and, for reasons that are unclear, Prigozhin himself chose to keep it in being.” Wow. It was worse than we thought. The whole house of cards nearly came down. Apparently privy to all sorts of facts that support these claims (though he doesn’t mention any), Gray nevertheless doesn’t gloat. He worries. Because although Russia collapsing is a good thing, it’s actually too much of a good thing. Or so he wants you to believe.

Yes, it seems that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s weekend-long imitation of Rambo has proven to be something of a gift to a certain sort of Western off-ramper, like Gray—not so much as bias-confirmation of his fondest fantasies, “proving” that Putin is weak, but as a useful “out.” For Gray recognizes quagmire when he sees it. He knows that the coming winter forecasts for Kiev will be chilly with a 99.9 per cent chance of Kinzhals, and that the ongoing military mismatch that is the Donbass front will lead to nothing but further Ukrainian immiseration and even deeper discontent among European publics. “Western support is nearing exhaustion,” he notes. “Munitions are running out in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, with a manufacturing base weakened by offshoring. Deindustrialized societies cannot sustain a protracted conflict when Russia is operating as a fully fledged war economy. The pro-Putin parties of the far right that are gathering strength throughout Europe will not endorse indefinite assistance, while Biden fears facing an anti-war Republican in the next presidential election.” Shit, he very sensibly concludes, we’ve lost. How do we withdraw our support from this debacle without it looking like another awkward Kabul Airport Moment? Some sort of volte-face that doesn’t look like a volte-face seems called for. So—cue the misgivings, the grimly cautionary tone, the realpolitiky-type considerations that must in the end, alas, outweigh our altruistic wish to help Ukrainian democracy:

“A larger version of the ethnic mayhem that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, intensified by wars for control of unevenly distributed natural resources, is more likely [following a Russian ‘collapse’]. A humiliated Russia would be driven back into an impoverished, nuclear-armed Muscovite redoubt. Floods of refugees would head for Europe, destabilising governments across the continent. We may not be far from a point at which a Chinese takeover of Russia would be welcomed with relief.”

Boy, was that close! Look at all them bullets we dodged when we wisely pumped the brakes of our blue-and-yellow freedommobile, right before it went ploughing into that gas-station with nuclear weapons and blew the whole backward place sky-high! Good thing people like John Gray are now wisely counseling a rethink on our Ukraine policy. Maybe the best thing to do at this point is just…put this whole business behind us. More trouble than it’s worth, in the end. “Unless the West shakes off its liberal delirium regarding the future of Russia, Ukraine’s tragedy could be swallowed up in a still greater calamity.” Ya see? Larger calculations, about greater calamities, have to govern our thinking. “The West is staking its endgame on regime change. What if that has the same result as it did in Iraq and Libya? What if there is then no state in Russia with the authority to enforce a grim peace?”

Forget the failed counteroffensive, folks. The Ukraine, thanks to us, has seriously destabilized Russia. One more putsch and Putin’s kaput. Sure, this was what we wanted all along, but now we don’t, because we can’t have chaos, so we need to support Russia…or at least not not support it…or something.

Confused? Me too. But as disguised backpedalling in the service of imminent policy change, Gray’s piece makes perfect sense. And as Mark has pointed out, Gray is not alone. This kind of face-saving spin is likely to become more and more common.