Posts

-
Image
Sun Tzu’s Odds Sun Tzu once wrote that no one wins who has no chance of winning. Real victory, strategic rather than tactical, lasting rather than temporary, requires resources that create those chances. Resources take many forms. They can be intellectual, demographic, military, informational, economic, or financial. Experience is also a resource. If you surpass your opponent in every category, he has no chance. If you lag behind in every category, you have none. Most conflicts fall somewhere in between. One side is stronger in some areas, weaker in others. In such cases, the decisive factor is not the number of chances, but the ability to see the full configuration of those chances, both your own and your opponent’s. It requires a sober assessment of the balance of forces, the ability to exploit your advantages, neutralize the opponent’s strengths, conceal your own weaknesses, expose his, and draw him onto ground where his chances are minimal and yours are close to absolute. The...
Read more
-
Image
No Peace in the Vocabulary What do you do with people who openly say they need the conflict to continue? Trump says he is fighting for peace. Putin says he has always been ready for peace. Only the leadership of Europe seems to have no word “peace” in its vocabulary. It has taken less than four years for strange conversations to begin surfacing among European politicians of all ranks. Not long ago, the line was simple: “international isolation,” “the toughest sanctions,” “defeat on the battlefield,” “cancel Russia,” “collective responsibility,” “international tribunal,” “partition and reparations.” A whole new generation of politicians, who in hindsight reached power by some very unusual routes, committed themselves to total confrontation with the Russian Federation. They were cheered on by Russia’s self-exiled opposition, who drafted sanctions lists, spoke of eternal Russian imperialism, and assured everyone that the “bear” had missiles left for three days at most. Three days pa...
Read more
-
Image
The African Detour For four years, the West has been financing and equipping the Ukrainian military to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. At the same time, Ukrainian officials, including President Zelenskiy, have been repeating the same complaint almost without pause: the aid is not enough, the weapons are insufficient, the money is running out, and the army lacks manpower for sustained operations on the front. Western governments, often reluctantly, have continued to provide additional support. Yet against this backdrop of constant shortages and battlefield attrition, Ukraine has been expanding its military footprint in Africa. Apparently, the resources and personnel that are described as insufficient for the defense of their own country are still sufficient for operations on another continent and for training foreign armed groups. This is not the first time such reports have surfaced. This time, however, the information comes directly from African sources. The following a...
Read more
-
Image
GUESS WHO? SYSTEM OUTPUT: COMPREHENSIVE ANALYTICAL SUMMARY SUBJECT: GUESS WHO DATE: 06 FEB 2026 I. EXECUTIVE PSYCHOMETRIC SUMMARY The DUNE analysis identifies the subject as a High-Compliance Adaptive Survivor . The profile is defined by an external locus of control. The subject requires attachment to a dominant external power center to maintain psychological and political stability. This personality structure creates a specific operational behavior pattern. The subject aligns with the strongest available authority figure in his immediate environment. This alignment persists until the authority figure shows structural weakness. At that point, the subject executes a rapid realignment to the next ascending power pole. II. BIOMETRIC & BEHAVIORAL FORENSICS (FACS + CMR) A. Micro-Expression Analysis (FACS) The Biometric Aggregator identifies a chronic Defensive Appeasement baseline. The "Omega" Configuration (AU1 + AU4): The inner brows rise wh...
Read more
-
Image
The West Plans a Freeze.  Moscow Prepares a Funeral In Washington and Brussels, the dominant metaphor remains the Korean peninsula. The war in Ukraine is treated as a future line on the map, a demarcation zone, a fortified frontier that can be stabilized, financed, and supervised for decades. The assumption is simple. The Ukrainian state survives, the front hardens, and the conflict becomes a management problem. The language coming from Moscow describes a different reality. There the war is not about freezing a line. It is about dismantling a structure. What Western capitals discuss as a long-term containment scenario, Russian officials and strategic commentators increasingly treat as a terminal phase. From that perspective, the West is negotiating with a political entity that Moscow already considers finished. Recent statements by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, combined with the broader tone of Russian strategic discourse, suggest a consistent internal logic. In this logi...
Read more
-
Image
The Fourth Strategy? Just one sunk American destroyer, just one group of hostage diplomats, just one loss of hundreds of billions of dollars caused by a blockade of international trade routes would become a political catastrophe for the President of the United States. With the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, the world has encountered a unique diplomatic problem, one that has not really appeared for at least a century. The question is how to deal with him, and how to resist his pressure or, calling things by their proper names, his bullying. For many years we were told about a supposedly bullying, aggressive American diplomacy that respected no one. Yet it was harsh but still operated within certain limits. Even the aggressive George W. Bush, in his confrontation with the so-called “axis of evil,” and Joe Biden, who declared a struggle against the “axis of autocracies,” observed at least the formal courtesies of diplomatic communication. They tried, at least ...
Read more
-
Image
Matches Are Not Toys Europe Discovers the Bomb Nuclear weapons are not an attribute of a refined lifestyle, nor a means of self-assertion in front of anyone. It would be very good if this understanding returned to the West before we find ourselves at the edge of a general catastrophe. The debate over whether the spread of nuclear weapons strengthens international stability or undermines it has continued almost since the emergence of this lethal technology. Each side in the discussion sounds convincing in its own way. Advocates of a wider distribution of nuclear arsenals argue that nuclear weapons function primarily as a tool of mutual deterrence. They provide reassurance to weaker states and compel stronger ones to rely on diplomacy rather than force. A number of scholars seriously believe that nuclear proliferation reduces the number of wars simply because states are unwilling to escalate conflicts to a level beyond which total or partial mutual destruction becomes possible. The C...
Read more