A Triplet of Trouble vs. a Trio of Troubadours

Perishing via Platitude or Writing Warnings

[Image: A collage of cretins and a triptych of troubadours.]

Published 2023-04-19

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Introduction

In a recent publication an AP article was stripped down to identify a modern legacy media template. This media's role of reinforcing approved narratives was also examined

This article tips a hat to Brian Berletic of The New Atlas for an artful piece of media lampooning. He goes through, in video format, an opinion piece published in The Guardian (UK) and exposes it vapidity, stupidity and approved narrative pushing.

From there we move to Gonzalo Lira's recent "Roundtable" in which Berletic joins Lira and Pepe Escobar. A few ideas expressed during the discussion are explored.

In both cases, nothing beats the original, so sources are provided.

Opinionated, Vapid, Narrative Pushing Talking Points

Call me a fanboi, but I do appreciate Berletic's military analysis. As a former USA Marine Corp "tanker" he has the training and experiece to speak of combined arms warfare and anything to do with tanks. He is also erudite and intelligent. I like to group him with Col. Macgregor, who obviously has far more experience both in the military and on a battlefield. They are both straight talkers and possess a keen analytic mind.

He begins his most recent video monologue by citing a Reuters article to validate his repeated claim that Russia has the advantage in the current conflict in Ukraine. Brian would not but I will describe the advantage as outrageous; more men, longer range weaponry, better commanders, at least equivalent intelligence and a far superior military industrial base to the entire west. As we know from the US Intelligence Leaks Ukraine is drastically low on air defense systems and ammunition for them which has been proven by the Russian airforce using many, many, "glide bombs" on Ukrainian targets within a few tens of kilometres of the contact line. The problem for Ukraine is that these bombs cost a fraction of a missile and can be produced far more rapidly with factories requiring less advancted technology. Or in layman's language they can blow it up more, faster and cheaper.

Berletic continues by laughing at a piece from the USA foreign policy think tank rag "Foreign Policy" which bases its recommendation and analysis on a complete misunderstanding of what happened during Ukraine's two offensives last summer in Karkiv in the north and Kherson in the south.

It is, however, his takedown of the opinion piece from The Guardian which amused the most. He pays only brief attention to the authors for his target is their text. So, here's the author analysis based on the bio's for each provided by the publication, with a sub-text translation from this author:

• Simon McDonald is Master of Christ’s College Cambridge, former permanent under-secretary at the FCO, former UK ambassador to Germany and a former diplomatic adviser to Prime Minister Gordon Brown

  • the FCO is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which for US readers, is the British equivalent of the State Department and it is just as stuffed to the gills with intelligence operatives as is the USA version. So, one can expect that McDonald will profer platitudes from the accepted narrative.

• Christoph Heusgen is chair of the Munich security conference, former German ambassador to the UN and a former diplomatic adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel

  • As a former German Ambassador to the UN and advisor to Merkel one should expect a skilled diplomat who is well versed in the NATO line

• Stéphane Abrial is a former Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (Sact), former chief of staff of the French air force and former chief of the military staff to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin

  • If you're a bit lost as to who Raffarin is, he was the French PM from 2002 to 2005. Apart from that Abrial is a NATO man, through and through

• Jim Jones was a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, is a former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (Saceur) and chair emeritus of the Atlantic Council

  • I mean how NATO can you get? Supreme Allied Commander and chair emeritus of the Atlantic Council.

• Stefano Stefanini is senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, senior adviser at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies and a former diplomatic adviser to President Giorgio Napolitano

  • The senior fellowship at the good ol' Atlantic Council places the NATO label on Stefano's lapel, but "King Giogio", as many an Italian would refer to Giorgio Napolitano, is the longest serving President of the modern Italian Republic (born, the Republic that is, 1946). So, as a diplomatic adviser to ‘Re Giorgio' one should assume that Stefano has some nouse about him.

One can see from the lineup where this is going to go. The title is a subtle as a smack in the face with the flat side of a wet shovel:

Freedom needs to be better supplied than tyranny. If democracies stand firm, Putin’s war on Ukraine will fail

If you'd like to enjoy Berletic ripping the article into little pieces and then playing with them, the takedown starts at offset 00:15:30 (HH:MM:SS), see Sources.

But, that is just the Hors d'Oeuvres. For the main course ...

Pepe Escobar, with Intelligent People to Feed Him Interesting Questions

Back on my "Interesting Analysts" page Pepe sits very close to the top for several reasons. I came across him early in my geopolitical studies. He writes beautifully. He is truly cosmopolitan, rather than being draped in some western chic. He will happily quote ancient Greek or Roman texts, speak about antiquity anywhere from Europe to China, or wax lyrical about central Asia from before the Mongols until now. He's also Brazilian and has lived in south east and central asia and parts of Europe for most of his life. I dont know how many languages he speaks fluently but if its less than 5 I would be surprised. I'd guess you could throw in "conversational" for another 3 or 4. The man is a walking geopolitical, historical and cultural encyclopedia.

So, when I saw that he and Berletic were to join Lira for 2 hours, I knew I was in for a treat.

At one point, perhaps a quarter of the way into the discussion, Lira must have seen the clock and noticed that Berletic had said almost nothing. He attempts to include the mostly silent guest in the discussion. To which Brian responds (paraphrasing from memory):

No. I could listen to Pepe all day.

Here, Brian are in agreement.

But, enough praise. I wish to riff off a topic which the three revisited several times and one which has puzzled me for a while. Presented below is a synthesis of some of my ideas melded with those presented during the discussion often originating from other figures such as Ray McGovern or Andrei Martyanov.

The Triplet of Trouble

The topic begins with a couple observations:

• The USA's unipolar moment is ending as China rises economically, Russia has a robust economy and the world's best non-nuclear military tech in missiles and missile/air defense, and the international communities which they have been building (BRICS+ and SCO) rival anything "the west" can haphazardly glue together

• This situation has largely been created by the actions, or lack thereof, by the USA and its EU/NATO vassals.

The three troubadours agree on this, as does your author. The question is why? Or how did that happen?!

There are obvious first level answers including things such as the USA has not invested in itself for years, allowing other nations to "catch up". Neocons might like to point the finger of China stealing manufacturing technology, to which I would reply "well, what did you think was going to happen when you moved all of your non-military manufacturing to China?" One could point at the financialization of the USA economy as Michael Hudson has so clearly described. This, of course, is the other half of the "globalization" which meant offshoring the manufacturing sector for lower wages. One could look at the use of the IMF as the dominant (financial) arm of the USA's neocolonial policies and figure that eventually the "developing" countries would cotton on to this, which they have. And lo and behold, now with a properous China it has joined the national loans market and is investing in foreign infrastructure which will benefit both China and the host country's population rather than just its elite.

One could continue down this line, but it doesn't really give a unifying core to the answer sought. Maybe there isn't a single answer? The troubadours wander around the land of ideas and history looking for a one or more. A starting point, which they largely skipped, is the military economy. Many manufacturers need to expend effort to design flaws into their products so that they have an approximate lifespan, which will then regenerate demand as the product fails. This is not true with ammunition. It is designed to destroy itself. As for complex products like figher jets or frigates, they need maintenance and that is how the manufacturers continue to profit. All they need are "threats" and the occassional war and the arms manufacturers are happy. This is what the USA does to feed the blood soaked arms manufacturers (to quote Pope Francis) who pay their piper via political campaign donations and Think Tank sponsorships. The feedback loop from political funding to war to military budget allocation, which is essentially theiving public funds, is a through-line, but does not provide a satisfactory explanation to the questions asked.

One may ask when was the last reasonable opportunity for the USA to wake up and recognize that its unipolarity was going to be under threat and that they needed to look into the future and begin applying policies that would take 5 to 10 years to implement to maintain their hegemonic position. Counting in Presidential eras, one could look at the NATO expansions in the later Clinton years, but perhaps that's a bit early. One could look at the 9/11 crimes and the extremely dubious explanations of them, but 99.99% of the western world are too scared to open that book. I'll draw the line in late 2007 when the "GFC" (Global Financial Crisis) hit due to idiotic, underhanded financialization tactics by western banks. It was also when Putin made his famous speech to the Munich security complex. Soon thereafter NATO published plans to invite Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. At this point it was also obvious that Iraq was going to be a long, hard slog and global support for it was waning, not to mention Afghanistan. The writing was beginning to be written on the wall.

From there, we saw during the Obama presidency the USA's left wing fell asleep, Iraq and Afghanistan occupations falter, Libya ripped asunder for French Oil companies and to prevent the African Dinar coming into existance, the lauching of the Syrian proxy war, Murder Tuesdays in the Whitehouse as Obama decided who would be droned to death (including USA citizens, one of them a minor), the Maidan coup in Ukraine and finally Queen Hillary rigging the Democratic Primary against Bernie Sanders only to lose to a lying, misogynous, philandering con-man who couldn't construct a sentence to save his life. Then we're away to 4 years of the USA's intelligence services constructing completely fabricated accusations of treason against a sitting president as the media plays the tune fed to them, with the undermining the few good policies Trump proposes while the left fall in love with those same lying intelligence services which their parents had told them to never trust. The USA really went bonkers.

But that is a description, YesXorNo, not a cause! Ok. Sorry, got carried away there. I promise that the troubadours did tread some of this territory.

Ok, cause. But first, lets look at the current symptoms: Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland. These are the people who are driving USA's insane foreign policy, supported by the MICIMATT (Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence MEDIA Academic and Think Tank; thanks Mr Ray McGovern) Complex. The policy drivers have a titular head who probably can't remember where he put his shoes last night. It is they who are running policy.

The three troubadors raise Ray's observations as they wander through the topic. Ray describes this troublesome triplet as sophomores, while the trio described them as closer to children, so short sighted and narcisistic are their behaviours and policies. The troubadours ponder a very good question, which has also been asked by Andrei Martyanov: How did the triplet get there? Now we are approaching the cause, the mechanism which gifted the USA this cancerous clutch of cretins.

The crux of the argument is that these people are selected for their ability to manipulate within a closed system of national power politics. They have been trained at the relevant Ivy League schools and Universities which gets them in the door. They then maneuvre to serve people of influence and display their skill at navigating the corridors of national politics, moving between sponsors, positions at think tanks and connecting with the relevant political donors until finally they are ready to be appointed into the positions of power which they now occupy. However, nowhere along their journey have they been required to demonstrate the skills which will be required of them in these positions, and are clearly out of their depth. Nuland may be an exception here. She seems to possess manipulative skills both nationally and internationally, this does not mean that these manipulations are wise.

It is also the case that their "training" at University and then in Think Tank land occurred during the 1990s and early to mid 2000s when the USA was the hegemon and everyone was singing from the same Fukiyama "End of History" hymn book. During Bush Jr.'s presidency his Secretary of Defense may have been evil incarnate, but was also, unfortunately, clever. From him we get such pithy statements as the "known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknows" classic. He also breathed the Straussian idea of "reality creation". So, ontop of the "god given right to rule the world" the current crop of cretins also learned from a master craftsman at reality creation and propaganda. Rumsfeld would leak bullshit to the NYT during the week and then quote them on the weekend talk shows to justify the reality of the steaming pile.

The triplets of trouble stopped learning in their mid 30's which is exactly this period. They have failed to see the world changing before them because their efforts were placed towards ladder climbing. They believed that the old tricks of propaganda, bluff and beligerence still work. Sadly for many USA citizens they do not, and it is the citizen who will suffer, not the triplets.

The troubadors ask themselves what needs be done to once again have intelligent, educated and patriotic people in these positions? One conclusion is the dismemberment of the MICIMATT. What could be easier?

Let's go destroy the Horcrux!

Postscript

In Sources below are two articles by Professors. In one, Jeffrey Sachs calls for a change in USA foreign policy. In the other Paul Robinson describes a recent change in Russian foreign policy.

Sources

Freedom needs to be better supplied than tyranny. If democracies stand firm, Putin’s war on Ukraine will fail, Simon McDonald, Christoph Heusgen, Stéphane Abrial, Jim Jones and Stefano Stefanini, The Guardian (UK), 2023-04-17

The Need for a New US Foreign Policy, Jeffrey Sachs, Consortium News, 2023-04-18

PAUL ROBINSON: RUSSIA AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE POST-WESTERN WORLD, Paul Robinson, republished at Natylie's Place: Understanding Russia (originally from Canadian Dimension), 2023-04-19

Ukraine's Offensive: Taking Territory vs. the War of Attrition, Brian Berletic, The New Atlas (his channel), 2023-04-19

• 00:15:30 for the opinion article takedown

The Roundtable #54: Brian Berletic and Pepe Escobar, Gonzalo Lira interviews Brian Berletic and Pepe Escobar, The Roundtable, 2023-04-18

Bonus Pepe!

PEPE ESCOBAR LIVE ON RUSSIA AND CHINA LEADING A MULTIPOLAR WORLD IN REVOLT!, Danny Haiphong interviews Pepe Escobar, The Left Lens, 2023-04-17

Culture

Hedwig's Theme, John Williams, his youtube channel, uploaded 2017-07-21

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