Er ... a long one
"Expansion Inflation
As the Universe was about 1 second old it expanded at an astonishing rate, and for reasons best explained by ******.
It is something that has stuck in my brain for some reason. As we way back when started discussing the idea of expanding the war into new areas of conflict to cut Russia down, the general idea was to expand it into on country at a time.
I argued hard against this, instead I argued that we should expand into several countries at the same time, and from then on expand ever further, fully utilizing that the world is in a state of transition.
I also argued that the Tuareg insurgency against Russia had not succeeded due to Russia being able to respond since it was their only problem beyond Ukraine. On all other “fronts” Russia was advancing at that point.
I also argued that perfectionism was not in our best interest, instead I argued that shear volume of expansion was our best option, we needed to overwhelm our enemy, and if we went hard enough most of our attempts would succeed just due to the weight of the onslaught.
I also argued that after the first attempts we should start to prepare already then a second even larger wave of “troubles”. Ie., kicking things into galactic inflation mode. Obviously this is where the analogy breaks apart.
If we would go for the galactic inflation of our expansionism we would very shortly have unbalanced the politics of the entire galaxy, if not more.
Question is, is it working, and are we inflating the expansion? Yes.
Time to take a walk around the field and discuss what has happened.
Iran
After openly begging Ukraine to stop killing their beloved Iraqi Shia-militias, Iran started to move them out of the danger zone. And they also told Hezbollah to stay out of things and not support Assad in defending Damascus.
And Hezbollah already being weakened after having their literal “bollah’s” removed didn’t feel that fighting against people supported by something far worse than Mossad was a good idea. They had taken a look at what happened to their Iraqi counterparts and said, “hell no”.
At the same time Assad plonked down into Teheran to beg them for support. That did not end well either for him, the mullahs had huge articles placed in the local newspapers denouncing Assad and declaring that the struggles of the Syrian people was best decided by the Syrian people.
Why did this shift in stance come from? Iran is having internal troubles aplenty, and they no longer have the resources available to support Syria, nor do they have the resources to support Russia in any meaningful way.
What little they have left they now need to secure their own country against its direct enemies. And Iran has oh so many enemies at this point. Saudia Arabia, Ukraine, Turkey, US, EU, the list just goes on for an impressive amount of time.
And to top it off, Russia has turned out to be a rather disappointing ally and is not able to help in the least if needed. And with China having cut ties almost completely, they are all alone in the world.
Internally it is country fraught with conflict, not least with the women of Iran. In a single year the country has gone from fairly stable and unassailable, into something fractured more than ready for that prybar to poke into and start widening said cracks.
All it takes is a bit of support of some movements, a few lost battles around them sending them packing back home, and there you have a revolution waiting to happen.
And beyond the women they also have troubles with their youth in the big cities wanting change. We also have the Kurdish angle.
To all points and purposes Kurdistan already exists in Iraq, officially it is an autonomous republic in Iraq. But it has it’s own army, it’s own economy that is very good, support from some pretty big allies, etcetera.
It is also the by far most Western place in all of Middle East, if you go there you will even find a chain of cafés named “Café Söderköping”. Yes, you can get Swedish coffee and Swedish cinnamon buns in Kurdistan, the definition of civilisation
These are the ones taking a huge chunk out of Syria. They are mainly bothered with the Kurdish part of Syria, the rest they are rather unbothered with. So unbothered that via EU they struck a deal with Erdogan’s militia’s and Erdogan himself.
Officially the Kurdish part of Syria will be an autonomous republic inside Syria, but in reality it is becoming a part of Kurdistan. What does Erdogan get? To keep the Kurdish part of Turkey, Turkey is powerful but going up against a Western trained army of NATO-standard with highly motivated Kurds and oodles of Western weapons… if he can avoid that he is very happy, especially as the world is looking now.
For now, he is happy with expanding Turkey into a huge chunk of Syria, because Erdogan is not leaving again. He is getting parts of his beloved Ottoman Empire back.
Back to Iran. The Mullahs are not blind, they know that as soon as the Kurdish forces are done in Syria, they are coming for their third part of Kurdistan inside of Iran. Regardless, Iran is now living in interesting times.
Georgia
Things are now hanging in the balance. Question is who is having the most stamina, the thugs of the illegal government, or the Revolutionaries fighting for Democracy, Freedom, Justice & Liberty.
Even though it is not by any means decided, my gut feeling is that the Revolution will succeed in the end. There’s just more energy in the Revolution camp.
We should also realise that it has not truly kicked off yet. So far the government has not started to fire on the Revolutionaries. It was though very close last night, and I fear that it will happen tonight.
If the Georgians then react like the Ukrainians did during Maidan, then the fate of Georgia is sealed. If not Georgia will be lost. Something does though tell me that firing into the crowds would be a spectacularly bad idea on behalf of the illegal government. There are after all checks and balances in place for such eventualities.
Syria
Yesterday things moved so fast that what I wrote was totally yesterdays news just a mere two hours later, it was gone together with the roast I had cooked, into the mist of history unfolding.
As Homs fell Russia started to abandon everything, including Hmeimim and Tartus. Civilians and soldiers were told to go to Damascus to take civilian airplanes out of the country. Something that most of them figured out would never work, so many are legging it across the border into Lebanon to fly out of Beirut.
And any Russian with a relative in, or other connection to Israel is going that route to get back home. And in the case of Israel, I suspect that some, if not most, will stay in Israel.
And then out of the blue Putin showed up and held a speech denouncing Assad and stating that Russia could not help Syria due to “troubles” in other areas.
At the same time Iran denounced Assad, and Egypt and Jordan urged him to go into exile and offered Assad to arrange a solution.
This is the Dunkirk of Russia, just imagine the amount of equipment, weapons and ammunition that Russia is leaving behind.
And all of this due to…
Bel Riose
He was the last great general of the malaise ridden Galactic Empire in Isaac Asimov’s trilogy. He was sent out to the farthest reaches of the Galactic Empire to regain what the empire was about to lose, and to stabilise the empire.
But, becoming to successful and popular he became a threat to the Emperor, and he was recalled and executed.
In Russia General Surovikin was their Bel Riose, the last real General. The Hero of Syria, the general that made Tartus possible, the General fulfilling Putin’s Imperial dream.
He is the same general that turned the tide for Russia in Ukraine by creating the Surovikin lines, prolonging the war, and stopping the Ukrainian advances.
He became to popular, and he was removed. But in a twist of fate, in our story of the Empire, he was banished to the farthest reaches of the Empire instead, and with him was an entire army sent.
It was he who was all of a sudden attacked by the Tuareg in Mali and in other places. He responded as well as can be expected by a good general, and with a bit of resources from Russia, he stabilised this front.
He also carved out Africa into a semi-kingdom ruled by him and nobody else. After all, how on Earth would Moscow be able to get rid of him in Africa without the resources to do so.
In the end Kremlin came and asked him to save Syria for Putin, and he refused outright to do so. To be able to do that he would have to abandon his quasi-kingdom permanently, and he probably felt that Syria was a far too risky prospect.
His reply to the MOD in Kremlin was epic and steeped in history:
“Do not call me again unless it is to arrest and execute the “bloodthirsty dwarf”.
The original bloodthirsty dwarf was Lavrentii Beria, but in this context it is obviously Putin. He is also setting up his redemption arc with this sentence. It was after all Zhukov that arrested and executed Beria, and his personal hero is Zhukov. Probably due to him being the only Russian general that has studied the works, battles and doctrine of Zhukov.
He offered to be the Zhukov to any prospective new leader of Russia, and by performing said duty he would then be safe again in Russia under the new leadership. Heck, he might even be safe from Ukrainian assassins if he whacks Putin.
Another not so small thing. Surovikin is rapidly becoming the richest Russian in existence. He is busy stealing the wealth of half a continent. And his money is freely able to move around the world, very much unlike Russia and most of its oligarchs.
Regardless, he is truly not a person we want to roam around building a country in Africa, and one of these days we will have to extricate this ever more suntanned piece of cancer from Africa. And to be quite frank, with my somewhat eclectic military background, I suspect I’m the only one able to do so, I after all have a lot of experience in African campaigns, whereas the rest do not.
Conclusion
With Syria now lost to Russia we can count our blessings, but not rest on our laurels. We need to rapidly continue the Expansion into The Expanse. With Iran in play now we need new targets.
Imagine if Belarus would explode in a colour Revolution to oust the illegal President Uncle Luka? Or Chechnya, Dagestan, or some other area would go for freedom? So many spots we can pry at to make Putins life miserable.
What we had forgotten is that Dictatorships are far more fraught with exploitable tensions than any democracy ever will have. And still we let them use the small cracks that we have.
We did not develop tools to stop them until now, and we did not use their playbook against them either, until now.
And as it turns out it is amazingly effective, and we are learning a lot as we go about how to identify and exploit the vulnerabilities and tensions in such states.
I’m certain that China is looking at what is happening, I am also certain that they are busy figuring out that if they play this game, we will play it too, and that we are far better at it than they are.
We after all have Uighur’s, Tibetan’s, etcetera, to play with, fomenting all sorts of troubles in China, at our discretion.
It turns out that Democracy, Freedom, Justice & Liberty are formidable weapons when used in a sneaky way. Something that I learned from Iain Banks and his Culture series of books.
Why fight a war, when you can change your enemy into your image by deploying your ideals as weapons against him/her?
Yes it takes time, but victory is more likely and comes at a far lower cost in human lives. It also makes EU look much better in the eyes of those who wish to receive the Golden Ticket down the line.
It is also good to remember that the mightiest empire is neither Russia, nor China. So, this lesson might become useful against a Theocratic Kingdom in the West of us, because down the line we might have to restore democracy and sanity there.
Addendum:
As I posted this out I looked at my push notices.
Assads forces just fled from the airport in effing Damascus and Revolutionaries are entering the airport to take control.
This obviously cut the way out for the Russians and Chinese.
It also means that the main assault on Damascus is starting.
Or, maybe is already is over.
I give up on trying to stay ahead of things at this point
It seems like we won. "
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