Stab in the back redux
The political, physical and moral dangers of negotiations
General Milley, of Trump Lafayette fascist walkout infamy where he and Trump showed the evil Antifa (since when is being antifascist bad? And I don’t count the Soviet claim to anti-fascism) that only good patriot fascist racist Americans have a voice, has been torpedoing Ukraine’s diplomatic and military position in the upper reaches of US government. Sort of sounds like he’s trying to stop the anti-fascists do their job again.
(Photo: NPR)
His recent sad back-pedalling doesn’t convince me.
Oh God, I really have an issue with some American generals recently. They lose wars, they can’t speak without it being a word salad, and they retire to atrocious 25-post Twitter threads of nothing.
Blah blah.
A couple are great, though. And all are better than the UK’s General Nick “Country boys” Carter, a natural product of the British officer training system.
I think we’ve proven here on Fallout how stridently pro-Ukrainian we are. We do however point out worrying details in the Ukrainian military like the Zelensky bodyguard with the SS patches. Only matched by the guy wearing Dirlewanger patches. That said - Ukraine isn’t committing genocide, Russia is. We called it genocide before most, which is why we wrote Russian Genocidal Warfare. WE WROTE THE BOOK IN THE SUMMER. Politicians like Macron are terrified to call genocide, genocide.
We certainly were quicker than most academicians or lawyers. Perhaps hasty. But we have been proven right with a call most were scared to make.
All of Ukraine, especially newly occupied land, needs liberating to stop Russian genocide, murder, rape, looting and torture.
Look, I said Russia is abusing the Twitter system way before the anti-semitic pics. Now they’re laughing and Musk is laughing with them.
The occupied dream of liberation.
The occupied sometimes dream just of bread.
General Milley doesn’t realise that Ukraine needs to reconquer its land, not as some game of Risk or a geopolitical wargame or to protect a distant homeland. He doesn’t understand that the Ukrainian HOMELAND is occupied. America has never been occupied and invaded seriously (1813 doesn’t count). The 9/11 attacks caused a response that has shattered the world and destroyed Pax Americana, imagine how they would handle Boston being flattened like Mariupol. Not 2000 dead in one attack, but hundreds of thousands. Children kidnapped, let me repeat that, kidnapped - a supreme act of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Ukraine’s homeland isn’t the rodina demanding blood sacrifices of Russia, but the place of the fields and sky and rivers and lakes and forests and hills where Ukrainians live. Preferably in peace.
How can you negotiate to give away land and people to the Russian genocide? You cannot.
The West has a moral imperative and a political need to defeat Russia utterly. Because if it is not stopped, then a new Russia will come back, stronger and better under Tsar Navalny. The streets running red with blood in Bucha and Kherson torture basements of 2022 will be replaced with death trains to Siberia and gas chambers for Ukrainians, Poles and Balts in 2042.
General “Antifa” Milley waxed about World War I stalemate to Biden.
He’s a blonde, grey-haired, blue-eyed (yeah I know how he looks), tall American cookie cutter general rank military man, so all he cares about is flankiness and manoeuvrability. Too many of his ilk live in the cult of Rommel and Patton. Manoeuvre, manoeuvre and never fight attrition warfare. Also ever so slightly right wing. Patton their hero, not Eisenhower.
Sometimes you have to fight. The French fought from 1914-1917 because their homeland was occupied. They fought to liberate their land until the badly coordinated and planned with outdated tactics, NOT STRATEGICALLY UNNECESSARY, attacks bled their army dry over 3 years and they lost offensive ability until helped by fresh American troops. The Brits and French could have possibly won with only minimal help as the Germans collapsed economically and politically (I may be wrong, we won’t know). New weapons of war were on their way. Coordination of arms improved. The Kaiserschlacht accelerated a likely, Americans or no Americans, defeat. American massive intervention certainly saved millions of lives on both sides. Allied and Central Power troops in doomed, for the Germans, attrition war which could have lasted a year or two longer (though the Allies had figured out how to use tanks) while millions of civilians starved to death in Germany and Austro-Hungary. Disease, the Spanish flu, would have killed many more during the war than after it.
So the difficult subject of this post and it’s related to WW1.
Remember the stab-in-the-back myth that led to Nazism? The myth of Versailles being a sell-out? The myth that Germany wasn’t militarily defeated?
Now imagine you are as blind as General Milley and after the liberation of Kherson on a slow but steady wave of Ukrainian success, with Russian atrocities being discovered daily… Zelensky goes to Putin and agrees on peace on ANY terms other than a return to 24 February control? Or even if Zelensky gets the 24 February control line, complete civilian exchange and POW release?
How long would Zelensky be President of Ukraine before he was toppled in a military or civilian revolt, and/or assassinated? He doesn’t have a personal security army like Putin who has coup-proofed his regime as much as is possible. Much better than Beria (useful lesson to Putin) ever did and possibly to the level of Stalin.
Zelensky’s lifespan would be weeks.
How utterly utterly, utterly stupid and blind is General Milley to treat a map with living people and countries like a game of Hearts of Iron IV? I accept that US Generals are not supposed to talk strategy and politics, a rule he is breaking already, but doesn’t he realise the implication of what he is saying?
Both in political terms - Zelensky would be toppled and killed
and
in moral terms - Ukrainians would be subject to Russian atrocities in occupied Ukraine PLUS Russia would get a respite to gather fresh resources and combat internal dissent. Meanwhile, resolve in Europe would crumble as Merkel’s Morons in Germany and Macron’s Mediocre naivete argued for a ‘reset in relations. The ‘best’ case would be Navalny toppling Putin but that’s both both unlikely and dangerous for the reasons given.
General Milley knows nothing about WW1 except it was an insult to American flankiness theory.
So quick reminder - the Kaiserschlacht was launched because Germany (Central Powers) was losing the war. The German economy was falling apart, it could not win against growing Allied numbers and technology on the ground and in the air and attrition was killing the German army. Revolution was in the air in Germany as well as Russia - where the collapse had freed up large numbers of German soldiers for the last offensive in the west. A last reserve to go big for a final round.
It was a roll of the dice and the Germans lost.
Ludendorff, the proto-Fuhrer and Hindenburg, his Mini-Me and Nazi enabler, abandoned the war and their Kaiser (who they had effectively replaced in power), leaving it to the civilians to get peace at any cost. A subject which the film All Quiet On The Western Front LIES ABOUT. It’s Nazi propaganda. Shows how little people know about WW1 that Netflix commissioned a film that presents the Nazi origin myth.
There was an Armistice which stopped the Allies from annihilating the German armies in the field after which Germany was partially occupied. A peace was eventually dictated to Germany, the terms of which were not particularly onerous despite the myths people (Moron Macron) believe. Thank you, Kynes you political idiot, the ashes of the Holocaust are ALSO on your hands!
How and why the Versailles Peace wasn’t that onerous is outside of the scope of this piece but start here.
If Zelensky now sits down to peace negotiations and achieves anything other than the impossible, which includes Crimea - he will be toppled and assassinated.
There will be a revolution in Ukraine, successful or not. Civil war is also possible. Maidan showed that Ukrainians will revolt and fight internally, on both sides of the political divide.
I am also certain that the far fight in Ukraine, including ancient foundational Azov, would love to seize power. Remember that the Nazis were a radical party but a tiny one in the early 1920s. Slowly they took over the political scene by absorbing their less radical friends. An economic depression helped. I can certainly see one or two happening in the next decades, which will hit Ukraine hard. The UK is already collapsing into recession, we will see what happens with Europe during the most difficult part of the switch to renewable energy while cut off from Russian gas. So an ultra-nationalist Ukraine is easily conceivable with the founding myth of a stab-in-the-back.
And you know what?
At this time the myth would be partially correct. I think Ukraine is exhausting its manpower reserves, the best soldiers are dead or dying. But it still has momentum or just the perception of momentum. Russia is still in trouble.
So Azov or friends would be somewhat justified to cry treachery if Ukraine went to the table for anything other than a crushing settlement - which Putin would not accept because he would also potentially get toppled.
So both leaders face possible revolt and death, Zelensky even more than Putin.
That does not change the imperative that Ukraine cannot negotiate to leave its citizens to Russian genocide.
The real stab in the back comes from the knives wielded by Gen Milley, Macron, Orban and the German post-Merkel establishment. But hard-core old and new nationalists will grab those knives and get rid of the long-nosed traitor if given the chance.
War creates angry wounded physical, emotionally, psychologically and politically stormtroopers. Men who cannot stop fighting. They will fight their internal enemies even more gladly than the external ones.
Imagine a heroic bearded ‘leader’ veteran (of Kherson, Azovstal, Bukhmat, Snake Island) leading a new government. I can.
Russia is conducting genocidal warfare. Peace cannot be negotiated while it is committing genocide. It will not stop committing genocide until Ukraine is fully liberated. And any negotiated peace on ‘acceptable terms’ will lead to Ukrainian internal collapse. There will not be a repeat of the Minsk farces.
So everybody talking nonsense about talks… on what terms and with what consequences? Further genocide on liberated land and with the fall of the Zelensky government and replacement with a radical government that might hate the West more for ‘a stab in the back’ than Russia?
And
The government Lt Samoilenko blames got him out of Russian hands… now I realise he might have been terribly angry, bitter and scared when he said what he said… but… has he changed his mind about betrayal?
No links because I’m not pimping our book with this content. I realise what I wrote can be misconstrued and misquoted. I haven’t even mentioned Azov more than I could have. I have been looking through Telegram around May and June this year and its interesting. But you never know who wrote what.
After 1919 hundreds of German politicians were murdered by angry right wing ex-soldiers. Now why would bitter angry Ukrainian soldiers ‘betrayed’ by Zelensky and the ‘globalists’ behave differently? Zelensky isn’t a fool. He knows WW1 history outside of France better than Macron. Ukraine was temporarily reborn after 1918. Freikorps will be reborn if there as any kind of not absolute victory peace. And even if there is one, then Zelensky will still be branded as a traitor for reasons by angry broken ex-soldiers. There is no way to avoid that. Just he might be less likely to be gunned down by his bodyguards. Angry soldiers tend to turn a blind eye to comrades out for revenge.
(Freikorps, Wikipedia)
As my friend Nick Budd pointed out to me… Zelensky was unpopular in Ukraine before the invasion. His polling was terrible. After a big boost during this year for the obvious reasons, because he’s a hero, he has actually lost support in polling. War leaders don’t have guaranteed election wins. Abraham Lincoln was threatened in 1863. George Bush Sr. had Zelensky ratings, the highest ever for a President, after the Gulf War and then lost ignomiously. Winston Churchill beat Hitler and got kicked out for a radical change. Zelensky won’t be popular forever and his popularity now won’t protect him from election defeat down the line, let alone a coup if he negotiates a peace.
Just to be clear, I’m not attacking Zelensky or saying he doesn’t negotiate because he’s personally afraid. He is much braver than I am or most people. But I am pointing out to everybody who demands ‘negotiations’ that they will result in:
occupation and continued genocide of Ukrainians under occupation - thats the most important part
and
a coup against Zelensky and possible civil war with the rise of an extreme right with a bearded tattooed hero figure leader.
2. is not because Ukrainians have a tendency to fascism, they don’t. But crippling wars, even ones that are won, lead to the rise of fascism. Fascism is born in warfare and failure. It is born of angry young men who can’t stop fighting or despair of improving their lot. Germany saw the rise of fascism because of a lie of the stab in the back and of economic ruin. Italy ‘won’ that war but was bitter over the result. Poland was straying towards fascism despite being a great ‘victor’ in regaining its statehood. This model was repeated throughout Europe and even in the UK and the United States. Ukraine after this war will see a rise in fascism. There’s no two ways around this, this always happens. There will be powerful liberal and democratic tendencies at the same time. We have seen how fascism can easily usurp power even in a stable, developing, happy country like Hungary. Or Poland. And a shattered ruined country rebuilding?
So death and destruction.
We need to support Zelensky in achieving an absolute military victory. He will still be branded a traitor and his life will always be at threat from some Ukrainians as well as Russians. That’s the insanity of politics and of broken angry bitter men coming back from war. His ethnic background will just make some people even more angry and liable to shout traitor. The Russians already try to play on those terrible emotions. And believe me, there will be stupid Ukrainian politicians who will try and ride the tiger of nationalism and accusations of treachery like German ‘moderate’ right wing politicians tried to ride Nazim.
UPDATE 22 January 2023
Milley.
Update 23 January 2023
I’m a social media demon.
April 27 2023
I see Azov flexing its muscles
