Too many people try to analyze geopolitics like it is a game of chess.
Move, counter-move. Push a pawn? Threaten a knight, that type of thing. It’s easy to understand and makes for good copy.
In the past I’ve tried to liken it to a multi-player version of Go, with anywhere from four to 6 different colored stones on the board trying to take territory. It was a better metaphor but nearly impossible to describe adequately. In fact, at times, it was exhausting.
The reality is that neither of these metaphors are explanatory.
Because the only accurate model for geopolitics is actually Calvinball.
You know that game. That’s the one from Calvin & Hobbes.
Contrary to your memory of the legendary comic strip, there were rules to Calvinball that went something like this. Calvin got to make the rules up as he went along.
In geopolitics it pretty much comes down to whoever the strongest player got that power.
Here’s the thing. Up until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and yes, it is an invasion, justifiable or otherwise) there was something called the ‘rules-based order’ promoted by mainly the US but also supported directly by the European Union and the Commonwealth.
The rules of the ‘rules-based order’ were simple. We make the rules, you follow them. We reserve the right to change the rules whenever we want to suit our purpose.
It was the geopolitical equivalent of Sam Francis’ idea of ‘anarcho-tyranny,’ which boils down to, “rules for thee, but not for me.”
We’ve heard the Russian diplomats complain about this for years. Why have these rules if they are not ever enforced?
As I point out all the time when talking about leftist ideologues purity spiraling towards self-destruction, we have these rules because only others’ hypocrisy counts. Sub-humans are not allowed to talk or even be a part of the conversation.
And in the world of diplomacy as practiced by the collective West, the Russians are definitely sub-human, just like the unvaxxed and now anyone to the immediate right of Karl Marx and isn’t a furry.
All that changed when Russian tanks crossed the border, stand off missiles hit anti-aircraft and artillery batteries, and marines came onshore in Ukraine.
For months we’ve been treated to the dumbest and most infuriating facsimile of diplomacy I’ve ever witnessed. It beggared belief listening to the nauseating virtue signaling of US ‘diplomats’ who refused to engage Russia’s concerns in even a half-serious manner while blaming them for every issue on the planet.
It was as clumsy as it was stupid, to quote Darth Vader.
It was clear that Putin and his staff would be given this ultimate option, invade Ukraine and face global opprobrium or kneel before Zod.
Their miscalculation was in thinking that Russia actually cares one whit about that global opprobrium at this point. By their actions in Ukraine this week, it is clear they are not.
They weren’t afraid of NATO’s posturing, Biden’s threats of sanctions or of Liz Truss’s difficulties with basic geography. The longer this standoff over Ukraine went on the more it was clear that most of the people in positions of power and their support staff have less than zero understanding of the parameters of their jobs.
Because of this their constant invocation of the ‘rules-based order’ rang more and more hollow since they were simply acting like a precocious six-year old boy playing with his stuffed tiger.
Pronouncements of consequences and ‘sanctions from hell’ and threats of holding our breath until we pass out were rightly ignored by Putin and his staff.
For decades NATO enjoyed the luxury, thanks to US military primacy, of making up the rules and forcing everyone else to react to them.
What’s been clear to me is that those placed in positions of power by Klaus Schwab and the rest of The Davos Crowd they still think we live in this type of world. That no matter what the people want or other countries need, they will dictate the time, place and parameters for any and all confrontations.
However, the longer this went on the more it was clear that Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, were inching towards that moment where they would change the rules. I wrote back in March 2018 that Putin’s State of the Union address where he unveiled new weapon systems was a major turning point.
For the next four years we have seen a steady escalation of neoconservative insanity in a vane attempt to push US missile systems closer to Moscow, contra to all signed international agreements, UN resolutions about resolving the breakaway republics of Ukraine and, frankly, common decency.
After a 2021 where things in Ukraine kept getting hotter and hotter, Putin and Lavrov, having backed Biden down over the summer with June 16th’s summit, knew the time had come to change the rules of the game.
If they didn’t Russia would cease to be.
Less than a day after Russia wiped out both Ukraine’s military power and political architecture, President Sundowner confirmed that all the West’s threats were as empty as the heads of the Millennials running the propaganda desk at the State Dept.
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