World War 3 Escalatory Ladder

Originally sent to VIXCONTANGO subscribers on February 17th, 2023

Boy, a lot of action on the geopolitical front and I have a lot of ground to cover here.

Nordstream & Biden’s Successor

First, the prominent Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist Seymour Hersh put out a substack story (because he couldn’t get it published in a newspaper) about how the Biden administration tasked a Navy unit of divers to bomb the Nordstream pipeline and deliberately evaded Congressional oversight in the process of accomplishing that task. Obviously, both Republicans and Democrats wanted to bomb Nordstream so it is not like American Congress would have done anything different but as a matter of semantics Biden now has committed an act of war against NATO ally Germany and a nuclear power Russia without seeking official Congressional consent. There was no debate in Congress and American people were not consulted before committing this act of war (destruction of infrastructure abroad). Congress has the sole power to determine whether America should go to war and in this case the Executive Branch went around the Legislative Branch. This is direct reason for impeaching Biden since he didn’t follow the Constitution and abused his executive powers. Now, I don’t think anybody is going to impeach Biden at the moment, but his impeachment could be part of a negotiated settlement with the BRICs.

Now, the question is if you impeach Biden who do you replace him with? Obviously, Kamala Harris won’t fit the bill so Kamala Harris will have to be removed for corruption first. This is what happened when the CIA removed Richard Nixon from power in the 1974 Watergate scandal. First his VP Spiro Agnew was removed in a corruption scandal and replaced with CIA puppet Gerald Ford. Then Nixon was forced to step down before being impeached and removed from office. Spiro Agnew resigned about 9 months before Nixon. So if you see Kamala Harris being nailed for corruption, Biden is 9 months later. Obviously, Hillary Clinton is the strongest remaining politician in the Democratic Party, but America will split into pieces quickly if Hillary becomes President this way. After Hillary, the most prominent politicians in the Democrat Party are California Governor Gavin Newsom and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Newsom is from the left wing while Cuomo is from the center. I don’t think Russia will agree to a Newsom presidency (although China will). All other Democratic Party politicians such as Buttiegieg or Klobuchar are too small time and completely unacceptable.

Breakup of America

Generally speaking breakup of America is not desirable for the same reason a break up of Russia is not desirable. Who is in charge of the nukes? Just like you don’t want Russia’s nukes spread over a 6 different generals with looser launch controls, you don’t want America’s nukes spread over 6 different generals with looser launch controls. Nuclear silos are scattered all over America. Notable concentration of nukes is in the Upper Midwest (Wyoming, Montana, Dakotas) but there are also clusters on the East Coast and California. If there is a split up of America, I see it splitting up into 3 major military-economic areas – California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada into a larger California Republic that is West of the Rockies. The North East from Georgia and Alabama to the South to Chicago in the West which will form the Union States of America. And then the rest of the Mid-West will be consolidated into the Great Texas Republic (includes Florida). The Great Texas Republic will be a commodity superpower and have the most amount of nukes. The Union and California will be industrial powers without natural resources similar to Germany

The question is how much can these states be relied upon with nuclear weapons? Clearly having nukes in the arms of Californians or North-Easterners is kind of crazy given the Prohibition, the Civil Rights Act, now transgenderism and the recurring completely insane political movements that we see in America every generation. America is a country without an ethnic and religious identity and thus without an identifiable moral code. The ideologies that run through its vast lands are extreme and many. They constantly change. The Americans as a whole don’t have any guiding principle that unites them. Giving nukes to California or the North East is like giving nukes to Ukrainians or Poles. An absolutely insane proposition since you are dealing with total madmen.

But even crazier are some of the characters from the Mid-West who have never been anywhere in the world and are completely delusional about America’s place in the world. You have some moron with a cowboy hat who can barely put two pieces of wood together who thinks he is better than the King of France or something. Or who thinks that libertarianism and complete lack of government is somehow how you run civilized countries that have infrastructure. I am sorry but two cowboy hats can’t run a city subway system. I understand that Montana has two sticks of grass with a bison on top but that’s not every other place in America, much less the world.

Inherently breaking up America puts its nukes in significantly more volatile hands. As it is there is a lot of different voices over the American nuclear arsenal and so far has made it safer. But I am not sure for how much longer America can continue as a single country. The breakup of America is a puzzle just like the breakup of the USSR was. The USSR solution was very simple – the Russians pulled their nukes from the other 15 Republics. What is the American solution? I can see California giving up its nukes, but I don’t see the North East doing that. And that is why we have a problem, because people have lost trust in the Northeasterners given what has transpired in the last 2 years.

What Russia Wants

Ukraine has lost 400,000 soldiers in the past year to death or injury and essentially its fighting capacity is spent. Ukraine has lost about 10 million citizens to out migration as well. We arrive at 2023 summertime offensives with Ukrainian military, energy and industrial capacity severely damaged and almost non-existent. Bakmut is almost finished (the takeover is slowed down to kill more Ukrainians) and after that last line of defense falls Ukraine is wide open. Russia has amassed an additional 500,000 troops on various parts of the Ukrainian front and is about to launch a massive offensive towards the cities of Odessa, Kharkov and Kiev that will be reminiscent to the initial days of the SMO. With the only difference that Russia now will execute a slow grinding offensive as opposed to fast penetrating attacks.

What are the Russian objectives in this war against the West going forward? After America failed to fulfill its obligation to not expand NATO eastward over the past 30 years, Russia wants a complete rollback of the eastern expansion of NATO. This means the following:

1. No neutrality for Ukraine.

Ukraine will be folded back into the Russian Republic. Parts of Western Ukraine can be given to Poland, Hungary and Romania. Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa are all Russian cities the way Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston are American cities. There is no scenario in which those remain in some form of “independent” country after “independent” Ukraine committed such acts of persecution against Russians over the past decade

• Baltics, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria out of NATO.

Russia will demand a neutral bloc of countries to isolate it from NATO. Those countries will likely remain part of the European Union but also become participants in the BRIC economic alliance. At least Hungary and Bulgaria will. NATO participation of the Baltics is out of the question after their behavior over the past year.

• Split Germany into East Germany and West Germany.

The reunion of Germany in 1990 was a grave geopolitical mistake for Russia. Germany has not lived up to its bargain to be a neutral entity. Germany has been too prone to acquiesce to American hawkish foreign policy. Russia got nothing for pulling its troops out of East Germany. The new unified Germany has taken the side of America one too many times and has fallen for every crazy neoliberal idea that has come out of America. It has failed to act as a brake to American and NATO expansionism. Germans have shown yet again to not have emotional stability and moral code to govern themselves effectively. As such a unified Germany is not really an acceptable entity anymore for neither Americans nor for Russians… and certainly not for the rest of Europe. Germany has abused its economic might time and again. Since US is making Poland be the next Ukraine and has stationed NATO troops there, for balance of power, Russia will want to station Russian troops in East Germany.

To achieve these objectives Russia has prepared for a 30 months kinetic war with the West. That will be 2 ½ year war from now on. That takes us out to 2025. We will see a massive offensive in Ukraine this year.

To prepare for this geopolitical scenario, Putin will soon announce integration of South Ossetia, Abkazia and Belarus into the Russian Republic. Putin already added the Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporozhie and Donetsk regions to Russia last year. America continues to try to organize color revolutions in Belarus and Putin will take that option completely off the table by bringing Belarus under the Russian security umbrella. That will bring Russia directly to the border of Poland.

Odessa Moment

This brings me to the Odessa moment. Odessa is a critical Ukrainian city which is much more important for Ukraine than Kiev. From Odessa Ukraine can launch attacks on Crimea and provides Ukraine with key Black Sea access. That is no longer an acceptable proposition for Russia. America has stationed its famed 101 Airborne brigade in Romania which can drop into Odessa at a moment’s notice. At that point, Russian and American troops are getting into a direct confrontation with each other over Odessa. Odessa is a beautiful city built by Catherine the Great but unfortunately the devils in America will want to ruin yet another beautiful Russian city in defense of their precious neoliberalism. Odessa will be razed to the ground and then rebuilt like Mariupol. Either way, this is the last time there will be any question who owns Odessa. When the Odessa moment comes and Russian and American troops start shooting at each other, the war can escalate rapidly.

Escalatory Options

What type of escalatory actions can happen once we arrive at the Odessa moment? I am going to cover only things that will happen to America since I am writing to an American audience and that is what people reading me care about:

1. Cyber-attacks and disruption of infrastructure.

You have seen a number of train derailments and airport shutdowns in recent weeks including the big train disaster in Ohio. Those were all done by Russian hackers even if the media doesn’t want to say it. The German airport of Frankfurt is now shut down because Russian hacking group Killnet shut down its air traffic system. JFK airport in New York was down yesterday for the same reasons. Russia can ruin different parts of American infrastructure remotely through hacking and can do quite a bit of damage that way. The computer systems in America are old, outdated and insecure and America no longer has the computer personnel to protect them. So you will see stuff not working and various form of sabotage – fires and explosions – everywhere around America.

• Nuclear bomb in the American heartland

Russia can send a very effective message to America about its nuclear capacity by detonating a nuclear bomb somewhere in the heartland of America. For example, West Texas. You can detonate 1000 nuclear bombs in the West Texas desert and no one will notice. The political class will notice though and especially the rabid hawks out of Montana and South Dakota. One scenario after a nuclear bomb on the American homeland is a breakup of America as described above which frankly no one wants. The second scenario is the crazy American politicians getting doused with a bucket of cold water and sit down to negotiate with Russia and China over the structure of the new Multi-Polar World Order (MPWO). I have illustrated above the geopolitical structure that Russia wants in Europe to which America will have to agree. This is not much different than what we have right now with the exception that Eastern Europe can leave the totalitarian American foreign policy bondage and seek to improve its fortunes further with the BRIC countries. American ambassadors in Eastern Europe will become again figureheads on vacation instead of colonial governors.

• Destruction of international infrastructure

I have already covered Russia cutting the internet cables in the Atlantic in a prior write up. Russia can also shoot down satellites and disrupt the GPS system on which all American mobile phones and its military depend on. After the Nordstream blowup, Russia is fully in its right to retaliate with similar action – destruction of infrastructure in questionable international waters/space.

• Destroying an aircraft carrier/s or destruction of American Navy ships

Russia can destroy one or more of America’s aircraft carriers. Each carrier is about 5,000 people and American nuclear doctrine states that an attack on aircraft carrier is equivalent to nuking a city and as such opens the door to a nuclear response. As much as America wants to make itself be everywhere, the international community knows that an aircraft carrier is not the American homeland and as such a nuclear attack by America on Russian homeland after that puts it in the unenviable position to have initiated a nuclear attack on land twice (Japan and Russia). That immediately makes America an international pariah and the UN falls apart and all of the institutions America has built after WW2 (World Bank, IMF, etc) fall apart. European countries, Russia and China will pull out of those. Due to America nuking Japan at the closing moments of WW2, the onus of nuclear tolerance is on America. If America abuses its nuclear capacity once more, America’s international leadership is completely over. So America may suffer the loss of substantial part of its Navy and its only response will be to down a few Russian ships. That leaves China as the ruler of the seas with its massive fleet everywhere except around America.

• Destruction of America infrastructure

Russia can use tactical nukes to bomb coastal LNG plants, ship factories, ports and other critical American infrastructure. This is now a more serious escalation that touches the American homeland and its industrial capacity.

• Electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack over a major American city/cities

This is now a very serious thing as it can deny electricity for 10 or more million people – this is alongside what we see in Ukraine today. Electricity stops completely and all devices have to be replaced. This can result in large human casualties and the destruction of some American industrial and human capacity. This could be grounds for America to retaliate with nukes.

• Nuclear attack on a major American city

This is the next level and America will engage in tit for tat complete destruction of cities. For example if San Francisco is leveled, America might level Vladivostok.

• Poseidon Tsunami attack on the North East and Californian coast

Poseidon is a nuclear torpedo fired from a Russian submarine which can trigger 300 yard tsunami wave in the Atlantic Ocean and thus wipe out New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC and Boston in one shot. This type of attack can be claimed to be a weather event and Russia can evade responsibility (legally). This attack will result in the destruction of at least 25% of America’s industrial capacity without Russia nuking any single American city. America can’t do anything to defend this. The coastal North East and California are easily one of the worst places to live in the world in the event of bigger level of escalation in this World War 3. Russia can wipe out California’s and East Coast coastal cities and then sit down on the table to negotiate with the remaining Great Texas Republic

• Mutually Assured Destruction

Not going to cover that. You know what it is. Bad for everyone.

So, everything after option 2 is catastrophic for your stock market portfolio and even for your bond portfolio and pray that things don’t get there. I think the most likely scenario is at some point Russia nuking some desolate spot in West Texas and then the world power structure getting redrawn at the negotiating table. That to me is the best and most likely scenario. America needs to eat its humble pie. The only problem here is that 500,000 Ukrainians (which Russia considers to be Russian) have died and that requires that Russia to bleed the West a little more. So not sure exactly when Russia pushes the nuclear button over Texas. Obviously all this could be over tomorrow if the West comes to its senses and sits to negotiate but so far there are no indications of that yet.