HISTORICALLY, THEY THOUGHT THEY'D GET AWAY WITH IT

 As I read some of the articles this weekend I was struck by another facet of the never-ending-history of failed diplomacy that leads to war. Back in my younger days I wrote a paper for the War College with a title very similar to this one but I've had some time to integrate a few more attacks, a few more invasions and some really pathetic and predictable defeats and I've come to the conclusion that alliances are very very bad for the State in International Diplomacy. It seems it's always the willing underdog that starts wars because they are willing to rip into a superior foe despite knowing that the cost will be unimaginable because they 'know' their ally is going to back them up. All things considered, we live in a more modern time----says every historian ever. "It's not like that anymore!"

The imbecility of World War breaking out over the assassination of the Archduke is still hard to believe. Nobody really cared but it made a splendid opportunity for the people that wanted War! They got it but the ones most desirous of war dragged in every single European power along with them and also rounded up a few of the stupider and more gullible ones like the one headed by Woodrow Wilson and the poor bastards in India, Palestine, Australia, Turkey, etc. Would Serbia really have faced the onslaught of the Empire if they thought that they'd be standing alone? I doubt it, crazy, barking mad though they are.

I see this one twit posted about how our diplomats had to have a better grasp of playground psychology so they don't keep getting their panties twisted off on the playground. Are there really people that seriously believe that nation/state diplomacy is a matter of playground bullying and psychology? Really? 

There are several facets that argue against the idea that nations are playgrounds or that some countries are simply bullies who cannot be, what's the word...... appeased. In the good old days as long ago as last week, little countries that didn't arm themselves with the best weapons and a killer reputation that is so historically diabolical that nobody even thinks about fucking with them, don't piss off their much stronger and more powerful neighbors and most especially not the ones that have demonstrated a historical penchant for launching overwhelming and devastating attacks and wars when confronted by uppity neighbors.

You'll notice that there was a grand total of zero interest by any of the frontline states in NATO or the Warsaw Pact that were interested in starting a fight over ANYTHING. Nuclear annihilation kept the USA and USSR in the bag while that phase lasted but I've noticed that more and more liberals and progressives think that they can use the nuclear weapon club on just about any problem that pops up and bothers them. The old locks on the WMD that generations of men spent their lives forging are rusting away and just about gone now. Nobody seems to have noticed. 

On the gripping hand, I'm not convinced that the USAF and Strategic Command have really got our nuclear weapons all that reliably secured, stowed away, locked up, guarded, etc especially when half a dozen airman can walk into a magazine and waltz out with half a dozen nuclear armed missiles and nobody noticed it as they hung them on the wings of their plane and flew away. I really don't think that the modern recruits are half as good as the ones we had back when that happened so I think that we either tipped all those weapons into a deep hole and filled it in or there are way more loose nukes roaming the earth than people realize and of course nobody who knows the actual story will ever so much as breath a word about it.

Historically, the smaller nations lived on sufferance and damned well knew it. They did not decide to get into a knock down drag out fight to the death with the powerful remnants of the only other superpower on the planet. Something like that has to be carefully engineered and people have to have their palms greased rather heavily and then they have to be held to the deal by the ones that engineered it. The idea that the Soviet Union would surrender control of its only warm water port to Ukraine was a nice scheme but it was never meant to be taken seriously and anybody familiar with history knew it. So what happened when they took it back? Nothing. The adults in the room all knew what happened and refused to make a war out of it since it literally cost the adults nothing and nobody cares about lesser client states and by this point Ukraine was no longer anybody's client state. It stood alone and seemed aware of that until the palms were greased and Victoria Nuland and her cronies stepped in and overthrew the adult government of Ukraine and put in place the current crop of thieves and traitors.

The thieves were looking to strike against the Russians and decided to wage a proxy war against the ethnic Russians living in the eastern half of Ukraine on former Russian territory and thought they had a backup because people like Nuland and Obama and NATO told them it was OK since they would soon roll the NATO frontier right up to the Crimean Peninsula and maybe a little beyond. The thieves and traitors believed this and were well paid so they did as they were told.

Ukraine is not one of history's potent empires/nation-states. It is an amalgamation of the edges of old long forgotten empires that played through the region for thousands of years. It has no natural defensive frontiers or boundaries and there is no bastion where the fruit of the nation can retreat to in the hard times and fester. It is a patsy and plaything of empire and you would think they'd understand that. I guess they have the same kind of primary school teachers and professors that we have running things here. Idiots and morons who believe in anything they want to and never suffer the consequences.

Those little terror states I mentioned above? You know who they are. The Swiss had such a talent for massacring invaders that Europe pretty much decided to never ever do it again. The Israelis achieved a similar dominance over their neighbors and what's significant is that their neighbors finally understood it and decided that they could indeed live and let live. Most of them signed a peace with the State of Israel. The residue that historically got exterminated by the victors however, has remained and has been steeped in evil and armed to the teeth as the proxies of some seriously vicious rulers in Iran who want Israel gone. 

I haven't studied the matter too much due to lack of interest and lack of reliable sources but what motivates Iran and its animus for the Little Satan is an unknown and it didn't exist the last time I studied Arabic and their civilization and cultures. Wahibbis were being loosed on the world at that time by the Saudis who funded them to the hilt and saw them spread throughout the islamic world. This was supposedly as a counter to the shiite cult that ruled Iran. If so, it was fighting fire with fire.

It is time to reread, The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington. And maybe a few other things.