A Soft Coup in the US

The problem of production

Jan 23, 2024

Published: 2024-01-24

Production

The Cradle's editor, Sharmine Narwani, recently stated:

The Americans are now militarily engaged, supplying, or bogged down on 5 separate fronts: Ukraine, Gaza-Israel, Yemen, Iraq, Syria. US adversaries can easily hold out until the fatigue sets in; they are nowhere near depleted.

An examination of current and potential future conflicts in which the US is or threatens to be engaged reinforces Narwani's point based on a concept well understood by military leadership, production.

So alarming is the situation that during this year's US Presidential campaign its military leadership may be forced to instigate a soft coup.

Wars

In Patrick Lawrence's article "This Is Not Another 'Phoney War'" he quotes NYT establishment writer David Sanger:

With the American-led strike on nearly 30 sites in Yemen on Thursday and a smaller strike the next day, there is no longer a question of whether there will be a regional conflict. It has already begun. The biggest questions now are the conflict’s intensity and whether it can be contained.

Yemen

The US+UK coalition for Operation Prosperity Guardian to 'protect international shipping' has been doing more than just launching missile attacks all over Yemen.

Yemen's Anṣār Allāh has been attacking shipping bound for or owned by Israel in solidarity with their Palestinian brothers and sisters in accordance with the spirit of the UN Genocide Convention. One of their primary weapons are $2000 dollar drones. To prevent construction of more of these the US attacked a ship transporting goods internationally.

Yes, the US hypocrits claim that Operation Prosperity Guardian is ‘protecting international shipping’ as it attacks international shipping and Yemen.

We know of this because two US special forces soldiers died attacking a vessel, the same crime they accuse Anṣār Allāh of committing and used to justify their internationally illegal (no UN Security Council approval) and locally unapproved (no Congressional approval) attack on Yemen. This, an unapproved aggression, a war, is the supreme international crime "for within it are contained all the other crimes".

Returning to Lawrence's article, he later provides a conclusion, which echoes that earlier stated by Narwani:

I do not think there is any longer any stepping back from the reality that the U.S. is now in a regional war involving Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

To date, the US' war against Yemen involves extensive missiles strikes. US President Biden has admitted that these are ineffective in curbing Anṣār Allāh's capability. Saudi Arabia ran a war against Anṣār Allāh with full US+UK backing for a decade and could not dislodge them. They still control the ‘most populous areas of Yemen’ and the capital. No informed individual believes the US+UK missile strikes will dislodge them now either.

The US has entered an unwinnable and indefinite war with Anṣār Allāh in Yemen, which is making money for their Military Industrial Complex and consuming munitions.

Iran

Neither Larry Johnson nor Alastair Crooke believe the US can win any war with Iran. Launching one which creates any realistic threat to Iran will, not may, result in the absolute destruction of Israel via thousands of precision guided missiles stored in subterranean Iranian facilities. These are essentially Israel's "dead man's switch".

Iran also possesses a collection of powerful allies in the region, even beyond the "Axis of Resistance".

Iraq

Iraq's parliament passed a resolution to expel all uninvited foreign militarizes from its territories on 2020-01-05, just after the combined US assassinations of IRGC Quds Force General Soleimani and Iraqi PMU Commander al-Muhandis. Iraq's Prime Minister al-Sudani has just reaffirmed the need for to the US to leave Iraq, saying it is "necessary" for security.

This diplomatic language informs the US that Iraq's parliament does not possess the political capacity to restrain its own armed forces from attacking the unwelcome US presence on its territory. The Popular Mobilization Units, now a part of Iraq's defence forces, have been attacking the US military presence in the country for weeks. There are no signs that this will stop while the US continues to support Israel's genocide and attacks Yemen's Anṣār Allāh.

The US' DoD has stated that they have no plans to withdraw from Iraq. The DoD is putting the lives of its personnel deliberately at risk and will certainly ‘shoot back’, consuming more munitions.

Syria

Syria has the support, not only of mutual defence treaty ally Iran, but also that of Russia. The US has already failed with its decade long Dirty War against Syria and has no chances of improving on that. The US military base at al-Tanf on the crucial international road junction between Iraq, Syria and Transjordan has been a continued thorn in Syria's side. It would be no surprise to see attacks against it develop in the very near future.

The only force which could prevent this is Syria's President al-Assad, possibly at the behest of Russia. Should that restraint not be successful, anyone can see where this leads.

Lebanon

Another political group with an armed wing which the US has branded an international terrorist organisation is Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, a member of the Axis of Resistance, is a very well trained militia which defeated Israel in southern Lebanon in 2006. It has 150 000 precision missiles, has been attacking and blinding Israeli military installations in the occupied Golan Heights and has caused approximately 100 000 Israeli Zionist settlers to flee. Israel desperately needs these settlers to re-settle, which they will not do until Hezbollah is prevented from attacking the area. Thus, Israel needs someone to defeat Hezbollah. It would dearly love for the US to perform this service for it. Ray McGovern fears an Israeli initiated false flag operation to trap the US into providing this 'service'.

The US has, as we would say here in Australia, “two chances” of defeating Hezbollah, Buckley's and none.

Zooming Out

The recent root cause of all of this is the genocide being conducted by Israel as revenge for a single day rebellion by Gaza's Hamas in which they were so stunningly effective as to defeat multiple Israeli battalions, including one 'special forces' type, and return with 250+ hostages.

The US has made itself complicit in Israel’s vengeful, genocidal response by providing both political and explicit military support. The US then kicked off the wider regional war in southwest Asia by attacking Yemen. As we have seen, it has no chance of victory anywhere.

All that will happen is that people will die, including US persons, while orders build up for the US' Military Industrial Complex (MIC).

The Israeli hostages captured by Hamas are now creating political pressure in Israel to reach a settlement to secure their release. Israel's attacks on Gaza have been just like the recent Kiev regime’s attacks on Russia: targeted at civilians and having no military value.

The hostages held by Hamas will remain hostages unless a political settlement is reached because Israel's attacks are killing civilians, not members of Hamas. Israel's military leadership has informed its political leadership of this known situation.

Hamas offered terms to end the conflict and return the hostages which Israel rejected 'outright'. Israel has responded with an offer of another 'pause', in exchange for all of the hostages. While this has no chance of success, that it was offered is a welcome development and speaks of the political pressure which Netanyu is feeling.

Ukraine

Numerous MSM reports have been issued over the last few weeks acknowledging that Russia has defeated Ukraine's military. This was true last northern summer, and predictable the autumn before that, as this newsletter and other alternative media voices have been declaring. Ukraine's doom is undeniable and inevitable.

Russia has defeated all assistance provided by NATO to Ukraine, including hardware, command, intelligence and personnel in the garb of ‘mercenary’. Russia has not only additionally defeated the economic sanctions, but grown its economy. Alexander, a guest on Judging Freedom with Scott Ritter, informed the audience of the Russian peoples' sense of humor when he related how they thank Biden for his gift of the sanctions.

Ukraine President Zelensky recently toured the World Economic Forum at Davos to find no friends and push an unrealistic resolution to the conflict he's overseen. This has lost his nation a third of its population, a generation of young men and 25% of its land area, the core of the doom it will suffer. The Ukrainian military are still shelling markets and other civilian targets in Donetsk, using long range missiles to attack Kharkov's sister city Belgorod, and using operatives inside Russia to launch drone attacks on power infrastructure, none of which has any military value. They are terror attacks.

Ukraine is following the West's approach to war; expending munitions and lives to no military strategic advantage.

Geopolitics

Patrick Lawrence provides another valuable report in Russia's Turn From the West. He reports on Russia's position via its veteran, "quick witted" diplomat Sergei Lavrov. The report is so concise that a quote suffices as a summary.

Lawrence quotes Lavrov at a recent event:

“Relations between Russia and China currently experience the best period of their centuries-long history.
Their relations are firmer, more reliable, and more advanced than a military union as we understood these in the previous Cold War-era.
[...]
Relations of particularly privileged cooperation with India develop gradually. Russia also takes relations with African states to a truly strategic level. It develops relations with the Latin American continent. Russia’s close circle also includes Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Qatar.
[...]
About 30 states are interested in rapprochement with BRICS. This association has a great future. Being a superregional global structure, BRICS symbolizes the diversity of a multipolar world.”

This is the international situation which this newsletter has been reporting on for more than two years. The two organisations of BRICS+ and the SCO, both lead by Russia and China, have created a geoeconomic and geopolitical counter-balance which exceeds that of NATO.

Lawrence delivers the key assessment, this time quoting TASS quoting Lavrov:

Russia’s objective in 2024 — this is TASS again — is “to remove any dependence on the West.”

Russia has moved beyond viewing the West as "agreement incapable" to wishing to have nothing do with it at all.

Production

The West lost the war in Ukraine within two years, and are about to lose a multi-front war in southwest Asia.

The stocks of NATO military supplies are depleted due to the completed and ongoing supply of more than four armies worth of equipment to Ukraine. UK Defense secretary Shapps recently called for restocking the UK's armory because of the US's rhetorical threats of impending wars with Russia, China, Iran and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Irrespective of the rhetoric, the truth is that the UK's armory is empty. Its barracks are rather empty too.

Depleted armories can be found NATO-wide. Recall Poland asking Germany for modern Leopard tanks and Germany responding with (paraphrasing) "Yes, in a few years, after we've filled our own reserves"?

Contrary to the wishful thinking spouted by the leading western newspapers these past two years, Russia is not running out of military hardware.

When Russia overtly entered the Ukraine conflict, it relied upon its gargantuan inventory of artillery shells left over from the Soviet era. These were used during the early "force Ukraine to negotiate" phase and the "stabilize the lines" phase of their campaign to liberate the Donbas and surrounding regions from the Ukrainian forces, some Nazi, which had been attacking them for 8 years. During that first northern summer, after UK Prime Minister Boris "the clown" Johnson scuttled the Ukraine-Russia peace deal, Russia re-instantiated its WWII era council purposed with transforming its economy to support their response to the proxy-war.

Uniforms needed to be made, along with howitzers, ammunition, drones, rockets, missiles and tanks. Following a small initial exodus of people not wishing to participate in the conflict, Russia has been training thousands and thousands of recruits every month to fill those uniforms, man the guns, missile launchers, tanks and drone controllers.

This has not stopped.

Russia is outproducing the entire West in military equipment. It also has the best missile technology, both in defense and in hypersonic offense. The Russian Armed Forces are now, without a doubt, the best trained, most experienced and most efficiently supplied military force anywhere.

US Bravado

The US likes to strut on the international stage, threatening other states with violence. The most consistent recent threat is to China over Taiwan. The US MIC is very happy to sell weapons to Taiwan who are ill advised to purchase them. The recent history of Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine should be enough to give the Taiwanese pause. They could perhaps talk to the Kurds about the reliability of US assurances.

China's understanding and intentions are clearly stated and have not changed. They are expressed in the One China policy to which the US State Department declares it adheres. They entail the peaceful re-unification of Taiwan with the Chinese mainland. US war-hawks see this as an opportunity to weaken China in the same manner as their proxy war in Ukraine was meant to weaken Russia.

Given the outrageous difference in the production capacity of these two nations there is no chance whatsoever that the US could prevail. To this, add Russia's support for China and the whole project is no more than wishful thinking.

"We've got more conflicts than we can handle. We don't have the industrial capacity to supply both Ukraine and Israel and God help us if we decide to get in to a shooting war with Iran."

Larry Johnson, Judging Freedom, 2024-01-22 (see sources)

The West's armories are depleted and emptying. The US just cannot fight more wars without restocking and increasing production capacity. This means re-investing in manufacturing. Actually, its goes one step further back. The US needs to re-invest in machine tools, the capacity to manufacture manufacturing capacity. This combined process will take many years.

The US just cannot wage more wars without depleting its own reserves until these production processes are increased. For this reason alone, the US' military leadership may need to intervene in this year’s Presidential election against candidates prone to or promising more wars in the near term.

The US military leadership's political intervention may be as gentle as withdrawing or denying support for these dangerous candidates.

A soft coup is on the cards.

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Sources

This Is Not Another 'Phoney War', Patrick Lawrence, ScheerPost, 2024-01-19

US Military: Two US Navy SEALs Missing Off Coast of Somalia Are Dead, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-01-21

Iraq parliament passes resolution to expel US-led coalition troops from country, no author, France24, 2020-01-05

Al-Sudani Says US-Led Coalition Withdrawal 'Necessary' for Iraq's Security, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-01-18

Pentagon Says US Has No Plans to Withdraw From Iraq, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-01-09

US Troops Injured in Heavy Missile and Rocket Attack on US Base in Iraq, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-01-21

Pressure of Reality Causes pre-Earthquake Tremors in Narrative-land, YesXorNo, 2024-01-21

Israeli Commanders Believe Diplomacy Is the Only Way to Free Israeli Hostages, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-01-21