Since its founding in 1776, the United States has been involved in an armed conflict for approximately 91% of its history. While most Americans prefer to view these armed conflicts as separate and singular, the view from the outside is that this has been one single war: the US vs. the World. For most of this time, this war had been beneficial for the US and, most importantly, profitable: good for the economy, popular politically and generally good for morale. But now, at 250 years old, the US is facing a situation where it can no longer win — economically, militarily or politically.

• Economically it has been surpassed by China, which serves as the single largest import partner for approximately 40% of all countries worldwide. Most alarmingly for Pentagon’s strategists, the US military industrial complex would be unable to manufacture or service most weapons systems without a steady stream of products and parts from China. This, in effect, provides the Chinese leadership with a kill switch for the US military and all other militaries (such as all of NATO) which it supplies with weapons.

• Militarily by Russia, which, thanks to continuous experimentation on the proving ground provided by former Ukraine, has developed the world’s only military able to deal with modern warfare. Also, Russia has not only learned to mass produce hypersonic rockets which the US doesn’t have and cannot intercept, but has even learned to intercept them in case the US ever develops any.

• Politically, the US is isolated while China and Russia have learned to coordinate their policies to a considerable extent, making their very considerable trade with each other immune to any US sanctions. The combination of superior Russian weaponry and the Chinese economic kill switch puts the US in perpetual check. In chess, a perpetual check is automatically a draw; in the real world, there is no referee to make the call and it is up to the participants to recognize the situation and what it means. And what it means is an end to superpower competition. The signal is clear: there are still three superpowers in the world — China, Russia and the US, but the US is no longer a contender.

It remains to be seen whether the various assorted power structures in the US are capable of receiving that signal. Be that as it may, each next military conflict, be it the proxy war in the Ukraine or the failed attempt at regime change in Iran, results in financial losses and humiliation for the leadership. What’s more, the US can no longer afford the luxury of such foreign adventures: it is broke, with its federal debt about to top $40 trillion. Next, modern warfare requires prodigious quantities of oil (the US military is the largest single consumer of petroleum in the world) but the shale oil miracle is nearing its end and while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is essentially empty (the remaining third of it trapped inside salt caverns; it cannot be used because of equipment failures). Finally, the US lacks the internal solidarity which is needed to prosecute successful military campaigns, with many signs of an incipient civil war between the various factions of a fractured population.

Does this mean that the permanent war of the US vs. the World is nearing its end? Of course not! It will simply change venue… to Europe. The recent NATO summit in Ankara, Tükiye, was a beg-a-thon. The US demanded ever more money for weapons such as Patriot missile batteries or F-35 jets which are one or two generations behind state of the art and which it is yet to manufacture. The US was not willing to provide anything more, no longer willing to contribute to the proxy war in the former Ukraine and looking for a way to pull out of Europe altogether. The consolidated European response was: “Take the money! Please don’t leave us!”

The European position, humiliating though it is, is easy to understand. Europe is in the terminal stages of an invariably fatal disease known as “radical liberalism.” Its decadence, which it had once attempted to pass off as “universal human values,” revolts the rest of the world. An important symptom of its decadence is a rapidly declining standard of living. Its native populations are morbid, their families destroyed by radical feminism. Its social systems are burdened by hordes of freeloading migrants. Its economy is hamstrung by idiotic energy policies borne of global warming madness. As a result, it cannot hope to compete. Germany’s industrial might is all but gone and with it Europe’s ability to field an army that would be of any consequence.

Meanwhile, the only excuse Europe’s leadership is able to offer to its increasingly restive population for its plummeting standard of living is that this has been made necessary by the exigencies of a wartime economy. But a war requires an enemy and the only enemy available is Russia (which, by the way, is completely disinterested in fighting Europe and wouldn’t even be interested in militarily engaging the former Ukraine were it not so sorely provoked). But then Europe cannot possibly stand up militarily to Russia were it not backed by the US. But then the US is incapable of standing up to Russia either (and wants to trade with Russia, which remains an essential source of enriched uranium for American nuclear power plants and much else besides). Sometimes it is not too early to cry “Vae victis!” (that’s Latin for “Woe to the vanquished”) even before any battles have taken place.

In order to make such a fictional battle even remotely plausible, even at the level of theatrical suspension of disbelief, it must be possible for Europe to portray Russia as posing a credible threat. For the past four and a half years, Russia has been forced to oblige, substantiating the claim of “Russian aggression” with its Special Military Operation in the former Ukraine. But Russia just liberated Konstantinovka, leaving just Kramatorsk and Slavyansk to still be liberated in the Donbass region while Lugansk region has been free of Ukrainian forces for some time now. There are still a few cities to be liberated further south — Kherson and Zaporozhye — but there is very little doubt that Russia will liberate them as well. Russia is also well on its way to demilitarizing the former Ukraine, and with it the rest of NATO, by destroying what’s left of their war materiel. Next will come the task of denazification — it involved lengthy sojourns in labor camps and some hangings for the Nazis the last time around — but this process is likely to take a few decades. And with that the plausibility of “Russian aggression” against Europe will recede in the rear view mirror, making it ever more difficult for European leadership to justify further militarization as an excuse for further austerity.

It is already accepted as a foregone conclusion, and it appears to be slowly sinking in even in Europe, that the former Ukraine is a lost cause. The Americans are only willing to supply the Kiev regime with weapons if the Europeans pay for them, money up front, and intelligence and communications services. These are farmed out to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system for battlefield communications and Alex Karp’s Palantir AI outfit for targeting information, among others. American direct funding to Kiev has been zeroed out while European funding has shrunk by a factor of five, year on year. In short, the former Ukraine is… the former Ukraine, ready for the boneyard and, in the case of the Kiev ringleaders, the gallows. Once it fades out, the European leaders will be forced to look elsewhere for that magic elixir that will prolong their political careers — “Russian aggression,” that is.

In order to make this elixir flow, it will be necessary to provoke Russia into being aggressive. But how? To this end, NATO-heads have hatched a plan as ingenuous as it is daft: attack Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad is a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea, Russia’s easternmost region, surrounded by NATO members Poland and Lithuania. NATO-heads find it possible to think that it is therefore isolated and an easy target. They have therefore contrived the euphemistically named Eastern Flank Deterrence Line , It is designed to neutralize the heavily fortified enclave from the ground and dismantle its air-defense systems quickly should a conflict arise. And a conflict would indeed instantly arise should NATO attempt to neutralize Kaliningrad and dismantle its air-defense systems, giving rise to… “Russian aggression,” of course, mission accomplished. Europe’s leaders could then simulate injury like a pro footballer and proceed with wasting money on armaments while bamboozling their constituents.

There are just a few problems with Eastern Flank Deterrence Line. The first is that the Russians would be exquisitely well informed of any upcoming attempts to neutralize Kaliningrad and dismantle its air-defense systems. This is because NATO is full of officers who have no intention of fighting Russia (as a matter of self-preservation) and would want to end up on the right side of a firing squad should hostilities arise. The second is that Kaliningrad, by itself, is designed as a very large rat trap for the NATO-heads, and not of the humane kind; touch it and it breaks your neck. The defenders of Kaliningrad are equipped and stand ready to neutralize those giving orders to neutralize it using rockets for which no NATO countermeasures exist.

The third is that the brilliant NATO plan ignores the existence of the Leningrad military district. Kaliningrad falls in its purview. It consists of 100,000 men under arms not counting reservists and has ground, air/space and naval components. If Kaliningrad is attacked, it will counterattack, after which point Kaliningrad will no longer be isolated. In the course of this counterattack, the tiny statelets of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will cease to exist. The total number of active duty military personnel in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania combined is approximately 38,000 soldiers, but this mighty army will dissolve in an instant once it becomes obvious to it, as it already is to most, that the local NATO contingent does not wish to die defending Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania. If asked what right they have to dissolve and annex these tiny statelets, Russia would furnish the Treaty of Nystad of 1721, according to which it bought these territories from Sweden for 2 million silver riksdaler (roughly $100 million USD). Once these events take place, European leaders will be happy and go on blithering in public about “Russian aggression” while looting their treasuries in favor of their friends the defense contractors with the excuse of “countering the Russian threat.”

At the end of this process, whether or not it includes the failed provocation against Kaliningrad, and the loss of the three Baltic statelets, the remainder of NATO will be armed and highly militarized, but still unhappy and still nowhere near ready to take on Russia. They will, however, be ready to take on each other. Various historical irredentist claims will be put to good use.

Poland is likely to kick off the process, feasting on the rancid remains of the former Ukraine while upholding its reputation as the “hyena of Europe” (the term coined by Winston Churchill). Following WWII, the Soviet Union forcibly shifted Poland’s borders westward. Poland lost its eastern borderlands—known as the Kresy—which included historically culturally Polish cities like Lviv (Lwów, Lemberg) and Ternopil.

Not willing to be left out, Germany will join the fray. After World War II, allied powers shifted Poland’s borders westward, compensating it with roughly 25% of pre-war Germany’s territory, including Silesia, Pomerania, Danzig (now Gdańsk) and East Prussia (now Kaliningrad). We have already discussed Kaliningrad and the free city of Danzig would be a reach, but Silesia and Pomerania would certainly be up for grabs. Germany might also wish to avail itself of the currently French Alsace-Lorraine.

This would set the scene of a traditional European war gambit: “Springtime for… Germany, autumn for Poland and France”, in accordance with the memorable show tune from Mel Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler.” Who knows how the situation will evolve from there? Who knows where revanchism and irredentism will take a newly militarized yet economically enfeebled Europe? Will the Europeans come to their senses before it is too late? Only time will tell.

“But what about Russia?” you might quite reasonably want to know. Russia is ready whatever comes, but it no longer needs Europe, has disengaged from it economically and politically and is working on disengaging from it culturally. There is a general understanding that big, global changes are taking place. In 2022, President Putin, speaking at Valdai, said the following:

“…We stand at a historic turning point. Ahead lies, perhaps, the most dangerous, unpredictable, and yet most important decade since the end of World War II…”

A decade, dear comrades! Not two years, not five but ten. And only four have passed. The Russians (using this term expansively) are ready. Not just the Russians, but the Tatars, the Bashkirs, the Komi, the Udmurt and the Tuvans… and the other 100 or so nations of Russia. Here is a badge that recently caught my eye:

“We are the Tatars. The Russians are with us. God is with them.”

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”