The Art of War Watching
It is a good time to start learning how to really watch what is going on
There is an old saying which goes back to an ancient Greek playwright, Aeschylus, who wrote a lot of plays about ancient Greek wars. It is that “In War, the First Casualty is The Truth”. In recent times, when it has become very true, some sagacious person added; “The Rest are Mostly Civilians.”
Alive at the same time as Aeschylus was a Chinese named Sun Tzu. I have a feeling they ever met. Sun Tzu was an advisor to some warlords of that time and wrote a book called “The Art of War” which is still a best seller.
People like to quote from Sun Tsu even if many quotes attributed to him are not in his book. This book was really less about waging wars than preventing wars, or at least keeping them short. Most modern warlords do not follow his advice very well.
As in Aeschylus’ time, truth goes out the window when a war starts. But unlike those times, truth has been rejected by most of the world’s population well before the shooting wars start. This may be because we have a kind of war going on nonstop in these times which was unknown or poorly developed in Aeschylus’ time.
This is what yet another, but more recent, smart old guy called Marx called “class war.” A class war is mostly a propaganda war, aimed at keeping the subordinated class under control and in support of what is called “imperial war”. An imperial war is, of course, a war to gain and maintain an empire.
This essay will refer to one imperial war which is going on right now. This is the one in Ukraine, which carries a serious risk of getting us into a kind of war which has been theorized about but never seen. This is called a Nuclear war and there is a very good reason why it has never been seen and if it is ever seen, will be seen once.
To make sure a nuclear war never gets going, we must stop imperial wars from being waged. This is not going to be done by any kind of moral persuasion, as advocates of “antiwar” and “nonviolence” delude themselves. It is going to be done by eliminating ruling classes which need war in order to stay in control.
Ultimately these kinds of people are going to have to be defeated and removed militarily and that is a very big subject. It would help to at least make it harder for imperialists to wage effective propaganda wars. However, the Atlanticist ruling classes have got extremely good at them.
By Atlanticists I mean the imperial ruling complex which developed in Northeastern Europe from about five centuries ago, which has ruled the world, and which is now losing its control. Its core is in the countries around the North Atlantic, and it exerts its power through the United States and the NATO alliance.
The war going on in Ukraine right now is about the Atlanticists using Ukraine as a proxy with which to attack Russia and through it China. These are the two leaders of the new Eurasian bloc which has emerged as an alternative to the Atlanticists. No, it is not merely a conflict between two empires; the Eurasians have enough sense not to try to create an empire.
What the Atlanticists are waging in Ukraine is what is called a “hybrid war.” This is a euphemism for a very ugly way of fighting, but which is very effective when you are a sociopathic piece of shit without the strength or courage to directly take on someone who is precluding your dominance. All the weapons in the high school bully clique’s arsenal have analogies with the methods of hybrid war.
However, what makes these methods work is the application of propaganda to turn upside down what should be the obvious truth of the situation. The Russians have been astonished at the effectiveness of the Atlanticist propaganda campaign against them. They need not have been.
Propaganda methods have not grown greatly in sophistication since the time of the Nazis, as some commentators seem to believe. It is still based mainly on intimidation. As one of the Nazis greatest propagandists noted, propaganda will always win if it cannot be silenced.
The propaganda campaign against Russia is based on fear, virtue signalling, and excluding alternatives, and on no more than that. There is a substantial core of people who resist this, including me, but we are effectively caged. I have discussed in my previous blogs my efforts to break through the shadow ban around anyone but the chosen influencers.
Just as there is no point in directly challenging a stupid but much more powerful enemy until he defeats himself, there is no point in pushing against the propaganda juggernaut. The time will come when the Atlanticists have collapsed and sane people may be able to take control in their core territories. Then it should be possible for clueful people to influence the public in a good direction.
Until then the fight is to maintain some space in which reality can be discussed outside of all the intimidation, story telling, and deplatforming. We have the internet, which they cannot totally shut down, and large parts of the world they, the Atlanticists, do not control. It should not be difficult in this space to develop the ideas for a better way of living and of running things.
So, we have a new war to watch. For some it is just a weird kind of entertainment. For others it is a good way to refine our thinking skills and our understanding of the world. We learn how to work through misinformation and build a clear picture of what is really going on.
Like old Sun Tzu telling us that war has to be fought on several levels, we find that wars in modern times must be understood at several levels. There is the level of the actual fighting on the ground, which is almost impossible to understand while it is going on. You gauge what has happened when the soldiers, and civilians effected, can be interviewed.
The emphasis is on the civilians; “…the rest are mostly civilians.” Imperialists fight wars mainly to either get control of or to destroy human populations, human herds. If they cannot do that the next level is to destroy the populations means of living; its physical infrastructure and economy.
Many commenters on imperialist aggressions are hung up on the idea that it is all about control of resources. They are often focused solely on oil and gas. There is that element to it, but at the highest level it is about preventing any challenge to the Atlanticists dominance of the globe from ever emerging.
They have already failed at that. The Eurasian block has emerged. What we are seeing is a last, frantic effort to break Russia as a first step to going after China. Failing that, they will try to seal off the Eurasians in their own zones.
They will fail at this too. They are failing because their system, capitalism, really is not very good. It only works if there is room for expansion, and there is no competition to it.
Further, their system relies on intense propaganda, driven by a flawed education system, to keep its subjects stupid and deluded. The problem with propaganda is that, while it is almost impossible to beat if it cannot be silenced, the propagandists inevitably start believing their own propaganda and making themselves stupid.
This is the highest level of war watching; observing the replacement of a bad system with a better system. The dumbest is the armchair generals approach, criticizing the way the war is being fought without knowing anything. Oh, why haven’t the Russians just done a ‘blitzkreig’ and cleaned up the Ukies in about a week?
War watching at best is a very good way to develop the thinking and reading skills to be able to be useful in developing and promoting the right ideas for a post capitalist world. Given the volume of crap out there, and the time to track down good ideas and good information, developing these skills is almost a full time job.
The key to it is to have a concept of objective truth; a willingness to know what is going on. When first you have this, it is not hard to sort out the truth value of different commentators. What you want are people who actually have information to impart; who have expertise in a subject or are there on the ground.
There are different political personality types and perspectives, but people with ideologic lines they are trying to drive are to be rejected. Core truths transcend left, right, or centre. The net can be used in such a way that it draws together people with varied perceptions but good thinking skills, building a common understanding in their own space. This can finally be communicated to the larger world.
So, I will keep watching the Ukraine war and commenting about it as I am able. I think it will go on for a few years; this situation developed over a long time. It will take a long time for the Russians to finish what they are there to do; fix the mess created by the Atlanticists.
I will leave my loyal readers with some useful links to get them started at serious war watching.
The first thing is to get up to speed on the history of the conflict.
Despite attempts to drive them off the net, there are some very good documentaries about the origin of the Ukraine conflict.
Meersheimer; why Ukraine is the west’s fault
Oliver Stone has produced two good documentaries on Ukraine. By the way, Medvedchuk would be a good leader of Ukraine. He is currently under house arrest in Kiev, his life in great danger.
The Atlanticists really hate ‘Russia Today’, “The Kremlin’s” excellent counterpropaganda arm. It runs a good series on the development of the Donbass conflict.
This excellent documentary about the Donbass managed to win a bunch of awards in the west. A Snipers war.
There is some good written work on the development of the conflict. I wrote this;
Here is something which is useful but needs to be read critically. Great insider stuff but the guy is also a libertarian type.
However, as they say, what is past is prologue. Here is good material on what is happening now.
First the good video journalists who are mostly found where the war is, not in hotel rooms next country over.
Graham Phillips (Not quite sure why Gruesome Graham is unable to get back into Donbass.”
Of course, RT on air is always available.
Some good written material from good bloggers
Vinyard of the Saker is always a good source.
Also, do not forget Sputnik.
Finally, some writing about what is going to happen in the near future out of this war.
Pepe Escobar is brilliant. They tried especially hard to suppress him, he now has his stuff carried all over the net. You sometimes have to track him down.
That is enough to get anyone started in serious war watching. You should always be on the lookout for the best sources. New ones are coming up all the time. But alas, you can not follow everything.
Hope for Peace, but be prepared for a long war. It will not even end when Russia has fully cleaned up Ukraine. It will end when the Atlanticist empire collapses. That has been coming slowly for some time. Now it is coming on rapidly.