Opinion: Let the Frogs Boil

Escalation Management and Persistent, Incremental Change

Published: 2024-08-09

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The following text re-expresses some of the ideas from yesterday’s podcast.

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You want war? Ok.

In response to the US and some of its NATO allies authorizing the use of their weapons by and from Ukraine to attack the Russian Federation within its 1991 borders President Putin signaled that Russia would arm groups who opposed the US and its compliant allies, world wide. He quickly visited North Korea to sign what is essentially a mutual defence treaty and then visited Vietnam to reinforce ties with the Vietnamese leadership.

During the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine it has been revealed that not only are US made weapons exorbitantly expensive and only partially effective in the new form of land war being fought there, but also that the US does not have the military production capacity to support a war with a peer power.

The current atrocities being committed by US ally Israel against the indigenous people of Palestine have been further extended to wanton assassinations and provocations across neighbouring nations in southwest Asia. Since 2006, after Hizbollah defeated an Israeli attack on southern Lebanon, Iran via its Iranian Republican Guard Corp (IRGC) has been training and arming like minded militias against the US and Israel. These two nations have been running wars in the region non-stop since the 1980s with only a few years of peace here and there, and none without financial attack. These two nations are the 'agent provocateur' in the region. Because of this behaviour and with the assistance of the IRGC and other organisations, today the region has a loose alliance known as the Axis of Resistance comprised of the IRGC, Iraq's PMUs (Popular Mobilization Units, which are a part of Iraq's national defense forces), Hizbollah in Lebanon and Ansar Allah in Yemen. Syria's Syrian Arab Army is also aligned with the group. All of these groups are continuously being provoked by Israel and/or the US as can be read on a near daily basis in Western media.

Due to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, intensified 10 months ago, all of these groups are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. One can thus partially add Hamas to their group.

Persistence

Many of their most significant military bases are located under ground. This strategy has been advocated by the IRGC. It nullifies much of the effectiveness of attacks from the air, allowing the core of the groups to persist through bombing campaigns used by Western militaries. What this means is that, if you want to defeat these groups, you need to attack with ground forces. An aircraft carrier strike group just wont do.

Another of their most potent strategies is "escalation management". They recognize that Western politicians live in a media environment, to which they must respond. The manner in which these organisations employ operations is designed to have both a military and media effect. They are careful to not attack civilians or civilian infrastructure to feed outrage in Western media. Instead, they inflict strategic damage on valuable Western military assets and target Western military personnel. This inflicts an economic cost and angers the domestic populations of the enemy. Israel's use of the Hannibal Directive (to kill its own citizens rather than have them captured by Palestinian militias) on October 7th, 2024, displayed its fear of domestic pressure to limit its military freedom. This, in turn, shows the efficacy of "escalation management" and careful military-only target selection.

These strategies, coupled with sufficient finance and arms supplies, allow these resistance organisations to maintain their resistance and to cause political difficulties for their opponents.

Their key strength, beyond these strategies, is persistence. As many have noted, Hamas wins in Palestine by continuing to exist.

Incremental Change

A similar approach is, I believe, being taken by China and Russia, with their partners in the growing international organisations of BRICS+ and the SCO.

The US hegemony has ended, but it still maintains a huge amount of global power from two primary sources. The first is the US dollar (USD), the global reserve currency for international trade. The second is its influence on dominant global financial organisations like the International Monetary Fund, and other major global banks.

The new BRICS+/SCO block are slowly undermining the strength of these two sources of US power. The first is being weakened by increased trade in any other mechanism than the USD. The current preferred alternative is exchange of national currencies. Trading exchanges for important national currencies, outside of the West, are being established to facilitate these trades. A potential new international currency has been worked on for years now. This is an extremely complex project, and its success is shrouded in the uncertainty of the future.

The second mechanism, US control of major global financial institutions, is being undermined by creating alternatives. While some of these, like the New Development Bank, have been established, their employment has been limited. It may take some time for confidence to be built in these alternative mechanisms.

This brings us back to the key property of persistence, combined with "escalation management". The new block's success requires a transition. This process is far more likely to be successful if it occurs incrementally. Sudden dramatic shocks often produce reactionary change which is far harder to control.

The approach of persistent and incremental change can be seen in Russia's response to the US approval for attacking Russia. Due to the war in Ukraine, Russia recreated its arms industries. It can produce effective weaponry at a fraction of the cost being charged by the West's military industrial complex. With approval from its allies it can distribute arms to groups opposing the West's belligerence without requiring massive profits. The US can continue to spend vast sums of printed money, racking up its international debt, as a response. This is an incremental economic attack on the US via its debt.

Raising the Heat

This will not affect the oligarchs who run the West's military industrial complex, for they will take their money and move it to various low-tax non-US locations. What is actually happening is a slow 'boiling the frog' approach. The question becomes how long the US population will continue to suffer a broken society with no healthcare, damaged roads, no public transport, a corrupt political system and all of the rest of its problems? Russia does not need to care about how long the US continues to hollow itself out from inside. All it needs to do is maintain its relations with the rest of the world. It has finally turned its back on Europe as well as the US.

The cards are in the favour of the BRICS+/SCO group. All they need do is continue to undermine the USD by building alternatives for international trade. They allow the US to run its little wars, but not let them get out of control, and the West will whimper into indebted impotence.

Given the behaviour it has been displaying since the early 1990s, this is an entirely fitting outcome.

Let the frogs be boiled.

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Sources

[Podcast] Patient Progress as a Policy, YesXorNo, 2024-08-08

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