By Batiushka for the Saker blog - February 2, 2023

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest….Instead of enquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted for so long." - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon

Introduction: Imperial Failures

Empires in terminal decline, like the American today, go from one usually military disaster to another. ‘Might is Right’, is the old dictum they wrongly believe in. It happened to the Roman, as described above. It happened to the British, starting with the Boer War, then the bankrupting Pyrrhic victories in two World Wars and ending with the Suez humiliation in 1956. And the French with their World Wars and Indo-China and then Algerian debacle. It happened to the Soviet Empire in Afghanistan, though its failure was more about its failure to deliver on its promises to consumers because it could not finance debt like Western countries. Imperial failure is always a frightening phenomenon.

After catastrophic failures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Empire has now chosen to bet everything on someone else’s country in Europe. This is the big one, not a war against sandal-wearing tribesmen, but against a Superpower with a professional army and the best rocket artillery, drones and hypersonic missiles in the world. This was is in the south-western borderland backwaters of Russia, called the Ukraine. Having lost its attempt to occupy the naval port of Sevastopol in the Crimea and so control the Black Sea, the US aggressor-state has turned the Ukraine into yet another failed attempt to try and impose its global hegemony. At present, attention is focused on a town called Bakhmut in south-eastern Ukraine.

The Bakhmut Bloodbath

Bakhmut (its name is Tartar and is a deformation of Mohammed – Mahmut), to use its pre-Revolutionary name, is in itself not of vital importance. Its pre-war population was only 73,000, though it is a regional route-centre. However, the West has made it vitally important, indeed existential, for the Kiev regime, and for itself. The regime was forced by its US backer to bet almost everything on it. When Bakhmut does finally but inevitably collapse in the coming weeks, with much of the Ukrainian Army destroyed or surrendered, then much of the south-eastern half of the Ukraine could be liberated by Russian freedom-fighters. Some even predict the fall of the whole of the Ukraine after Bakhmut, and its liberation by Russian freedom-fighters. Maybe.

At present the Ukraine is surrounded by nearly 700,000 Russian troops. As they are not taking part in the fighting in Bakhmut or anywhere else, it is assumed that they are being held back to form a future Army of Occupation after Bakhmut. They will restore freedom and normal life to all Ukrainians who want to get of their Western-enforced isolation and join a Free Ukraine, allied with the Russian Federation and Belarus and the Free World of international organisations like the EEU (the Eurasian Economic Union), BRICS and the SCO. They all represent the seven billion, the 88% of the world, who constitute the Global North, the Global South and the Global East. The million or two isolationists who do not want this will flee across the Polish border, together with Zelensky and his corrupt clique – if they are still alive by then.

The Western War Crimes

Since this Washington neocon war broke out in 2014, over 160,000 Kiev troops (some say 250,000, some 320,000; in any case several thousand are foreign mercenaries, notably Poles) and over 20,000 Russian-Ukrainian and Russian freedom-fighters have been killed. This is on top of the deaths of some 14,000 Russian civilians who lived in the Ukraine and nearly 7,000 Ukrainian civilians from all over the Ukraine. Kiev has lost around 50 percent of its energy infrastructure. It needs to increase its debt by $3 billion a month just to keep afloat. A note to the West: this debt will never be repaid. Since 2014 16 million Ukrainians have been displaced – 10 million to various countries in Europe, especially to Russia, and 6 million internally. It is not clear what proportion of those 10 million will return to the Ukraine, whose population is now only around 20 million, with 4 million in the south-east now in Russia.

Western support for the Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, has done nothing for America’s authority. It had already been undermined by war crimes, water-boarding, economic decline, a drugs epidemic, mass shootings, a trashed health system for 40 million in poverty and military debacles from Vietnam to Afghanistan. The ‘regime changes’, assassinations, electoral frauds, black propaganda (also called PR), massacres, torture in global black sites, proxy wars and military interventions carried out by the United States since 1945 have resulted in over 20 million dead and planetary revulsion for U.S. imperialism. ‘Yanks go home’. Blood lies on the US. Did they really expect to get away with this?

The Last Hope

The conflict in the Ukraine is effectively World War III, or if you prefer, World War I, Part III. A proxy hot war between Washington and Moscow. Yes, the military phase is local, having started between Russia and the Ukraine in 2014. But the repercussions for Russia are enormous. They mark the end of a 300-year period when Russia was enamoured with the West. Now Western deceit means that Russians have lost their illusions and naivety for ever. Now Russia will fight on until the Armed Forces of Ukraine and all those who took up arms and have been fighting Russians for almost nine years are no longer a threat to anyone. The Kiev Army will be routed and Russia will return to its roots of over 300 years ago.

However, the political and economic repercussions for the Western world, held on a tight leash by its feudal US owner, are even more enormous: the end of the rule of the dollar. True, there are those who predict a second military phase between Iran and the US colony of Israel. And a third could be between China and the US, the pretext being the Chinese Ukraine, Taiwan. But nothing is certain. After the coming Russian victory in the Ukraine, all could still be averted, for that victory will be sobering for the Western world. This indeed is the last hope, that defeat here will at last bring the Western world back to its senses and reality. Only through such a crushing defeat for Western hubris can further crazy adventures, including nuclear ones, be avoided.

Leaving the Ukraine

If sanity does prevail, then the US will abandon Kiev. For example, it could suddenly discover, as it just seems to have discovered (following a tip-off from Hunter Biden?), that the Ukraine is corrupt and that, like any tinpot Latin American gangsters put into power by the CIA, Zelensky and his clique have been stealing all that wonderful US aid, the gift of the unwitting American people. That is why Kiev is losing the war – it stole the invaluable aid for itself! And as regards the cheese-eating surrender monkeys of Europe, it is also their fault because they refused to back the US to the hilt, especially those funny Hungarians, Croats and other Non-Anglo-Saxon traitors who could not keep control of their revolting (in both senses for the neocon elite) peoples.

So, as honest people, the US will regretfully be obliged to ‘do a kabul’. The US will be freed from all further subsidies for the Ukraine, who brought this all on themselves because of their corruption, and will then be able to concentrate on the real problem, that evil China. Hell-holed Europe can be left to sort out the consequences of being forced to back the wrong horse in the Ukraine. Western ‘leaders’ will be falling over themselves to go to Moscow and blame the US for being lied to. Who will go first? Macron or Scholz? Who is the biggest bootlicker in Europe? Who needs what used to be cheap gas the most? The choice is very wide and the bets are on. Maybe a Georgian? Perhaps the alcoholic Johnson will be sent to apologise for ‘not understanding and that he didn’t really mean it’?

Conclusion: Imperial Excuses

Saigon, Kabul and now Kiev? How do you mask it? Mass distraction with a scandal at home? Maybe a movie star could be arrested for insulting a transgender? How about Trump being arrested for ‘inappropriate behaviour’ with a woman, preferably a black one, so that he cannot run for President in 2024? . . .

[SNIP]