Who wants to march on Moscow

Western rhetoric over the Ukraine conflict has ratcheted up in recent weeks with repeated reports that Russia is threatening nuclear conflict, followed by the threat from France’s President Macron that he won’t rule out sending French troops to Ukraine.  Let’s look at who said what and also at what the people of Europe think about sending their troops to Ukraine.

President Putin made a significant keynote speech on 29^th February 2024, where he set out his position on all aspects of Russia’s domestic and foreign policy.  This was a major speech in the run-up to his re-election.  This may not have been his best ever speech, but he did hit a few high notes, he made it clear that Russia’s development and even existence depends upon the sacrifices of the armed forces.  In terms of what he said about the war, I am including a short video which incorporates the officially approved English translation, this is the only way to get an accurate picture of what was actually said, that is directly from the horse’s mouth:

Rather than threatening an escalation to nuclear conflict, I believe he is setting out what escalation would look like.  I also think that he is correct in saying that many in the West who advocate for more war have no first-hand experience of the horrors of war and have no intention of involving themselves in any actual fighting.

If we play the who said what and when game, then the earliest and clearest threat of nuclear conflict came from Washington  before the conflict even started in December 2021.  This is from Republican Senator Roger Wicker in December 2021:

French troops to Ukraine

The big event of this week has been Emmanuel Macron’s double negative threat of sending French troops to Ukraine, expressed as not ruling out such a more.  In some quarters this has been wrongly reported as a positive decision to send troops.  People may be becoming accustomed to the idea that the political/media “elite” are increasingly comfortable with imposing their misguided ideas on the people, rather than representing the wishes of the people. 

However on the subject of sending troops to Ukraine, this should hopefully represent a bridge too far given the enormous opposition to this move from European and American populations.  The chart below shows an opinion survey from YouGov based on fieldwork in January 2024¹.  I treat surveys with care as they can be engineered to produce a pre-determined outcome, with that caveat these results show that a huge majority of people in every country oppose sending troops to Ukraine (yellow) versus supporting this move (red);     

The average ratio (not population weighted) is 2.9 opposed to 1.0 supporting, with Germany showing the highest level of opposition with 5.5 people opposed to sending troops to Ukraine for every one expressing support.  Another way to look at this data is to calculate net support (support – oppose), which is significantly negative for all of the countries in the survey;

For full disclosure, you will find higher levels of support expressed for less extreme measures, such as economic sanctions.  However even then, there is a strong downward trend over time for support levels for every measure, indicating that many populations are feeling war fatigue and support is flagging despite the relentless Western state propaganda.

So who does want war?

There seems to be two groups of people who want to prolong, or escalate the conflict, whilst ignoring offers of peace negotiations.  First and foremost are the employees of the Washington Deep State think-tanks.  These individuals are implacably aggressive and have made it fairly clear that their objectives include regime change inside Russia, and/or the complete break-up of the Russian Federation into constituent Republics and oblasts.  These individuals are also handsomely rewarded for their pro-war position by think-tanks, who are in turn funded by the world’s largest arms manufacturers.

I have never seen any of these individuals make any meaningful effort to disclose the fact that a significant portion of their income (consultancy fees) is financed by arms manufacturers via think-tanks.  This is of course a glaring conflict of interest, calling for escalation of the conflict whilst indirectly receiving income from arms manufacturers.  Presumably, these disclosures are not made because the average listener would be concerned that the think-tanker’s views would be biased.  Ben Hodges chastised me via Twitter for questioning his motives by raising the issue of his $ 200,000 income as Pershing Chair of arms funded CEPA, I find it unrealistic to believe that these arrangements have no bearing on his media activities.

The table above is a summary of the funding arrangements in place for the most vocal war mongers.  It was far from straight forward to piece these facts together from various disparate data sources².  The onus is really on these individuals to disclose these arrangement, not on independent researchers to have to dig out these important facts.

The second group of war mongers are a handful of current and former East European leaders who appear to want to settle scores with the Soviet Union dating back to World War Two.  Chief among this group is relentless war monger and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas who regularly refers to events that took place over seventy years ago involving a country (the Soviet Union) that has not existed for over thirty years.  (Incidentally, this is taking place against a background of an enormous increase in Estonian exports to Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries neighbouring Russia).  Kaja Kallas is also a candidate for the position of NATO Secretary General.

Defending European values

Many of the justifications given to continue the war and avoiding any kind of peace negotiations are absurd, the suggestion that Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked”  is gradually disappearing as many citizens realise that attempting to bring Ukraine into NATO was provocative.

The idea that Western military intervention could be justified based on defending “Western values” is also not credible, given that even the U.S. Department of State has had to admit that Ukraine’s governance is a mess³.

Next stop Paris

Another justification is then that if the Western military doesn’t engage with Russia in Ukraine, then they will have to confront Russia later and further West.  Here again objective evidence suggests that this assertion is fact-free.  NATO Defence College’s own assessment from May 2022 entitled “War in Europe: Preliminary Lessons”⁴ makes clear that throughout Russia’s military modernisation programme from 2008 onwards, the country was not investing in offensive military capability.

“Consider Moscow’s investments in its defence and deterrence posture against NATO.  As part of its fifteen-year military modernization project begun in 2008, Russia invested a large part of its defence budget in capabilities that support a defence and deterrence mission but not an offensive military campaign..”

It would be hard to argue that this source is “Kremlin misinformation”, the clear implication then is that Western claims that President Putin intends to recreate the Soviet Union and/or invade the West are flatly contradicted by the fact that no meaningful investment was made in the military capability which would be required to implement this alleged desire.

What next

Great Game geopolitics is something that unfortunately political leaders feel they must play, with ordinary citizens paying for their decisions in blood  and treasure.  Many of today’s conflicts can be traced back to the leaked version of the 1991 Wolfowitz Doctrine which showed that the neo-cons wanted to use the collapse of the Soviet Union as an excuse to grab power and create a global U.S. hegemony.  There were no noble motives behind this aggressive foreign policy, which would only really benefit a select group of vested Deep State interests.

In Russia, President Putin is able to muster domestic support based on the obvious fact that NATO has expanded ever eastwards and he can also present a credible case for protecting ethnic Russians in the Eastern four regions that joined the Russian Federation in September 2022.  Even then, there is some domestic opposition and a general feeling that this is a defensive war that Russia has been forced to fight.  I don’t get the feeling that there is any kind of bellicose wish to empire build.  

There really is no equivalent argument for a French, or German politician to present to their respective citizens.  Although Western governments are becoming increasingly unrepresentative and more willing to impose destructive “elite” agenda items on their populations, I imagine that ignoring such overwhelming opposition to sending troops to Ukraine would be a step too far.

Alex

Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial COVID model⁵, he is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach (www.thinkingcoalition.com)

For further analysis of this topic, please see the ThinkingSlow Rumble channel and the videos “Who really sets U.S. foreign policy“ and “The Brzezinski Doctrine in Ukraine“

1. https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/48720-ukraine-war-two-years-on-the-view-from-western-europe-and-the-us

2. Coffey joined Hudson in 2022, so information not yet included in 990.  The amount of $ 320,000 refers to individual with same position (senior fellow) in Hudson Institute.

Money routed from CEPA via a private UK company Lambrook UK Limited – which upon investigation, is owned by Edward Lucas’ wife.

Actual data shown in 990 filing to December 2021.

Last publicly disclosed income from Peterson Institute from 2013 form 990.  No disclosure available for period with Atlantic Council

3. https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/ukraine/

4. https://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=1696&lang=fr

5. https://x.com/ThinkingSlow1/status/1257578069797339137?s=20