“Do We Really Want a ‘Pre-emptive’ World War with Russia? by F. William Engdahl

Engdahl is always superb. A must-read!

Do We Really Want a “Pre-emptive” World War with Russia?

By F. William Engdahl

Washington continues making an international fool of herself by her inability to effectively counter the impression around the world that Russia, spending less than 1

Recent reorganization of the Russian state military industrial complex as well as reorganization of the Soviet-era armed forces under Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s term are visible in the success so far of Russia’s ISIS and other terror strikes across Syria. Clearly Russian military capabilities have undergone a sea-change since the Soviet Cold War era.

In war there are never winners. Yet Russia has been in an unwanted war with Washington de facto since the George W. Bush Administration announced its lunatic plan to place what they euphemistically term “Ballistic Missile Defense” missiles and advanced radar in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Turkey after 2007.

Without going into detail, BMD technologies are the opposite of defensive. They instead make a pre-emptive war highly likely. Of course the radioactive ash heap in such an exchange would be first and foremost the EU countries foolish enough to invite US BMD to their soil.

Then came the highly provocative US-instigated coup d’etat in Ukraine in February 2014, installing a cabal of gangsters, Neo-Nazis and criminals who launched a civil war against its own citizens in east Ukraine, an ill-conceived attempt to bring Russia into a ground war across her border.

It followed two UN Security Council vetoes by Russia and China of US proposals for No Fly zones over Syria as was done to destroy Qaddafi’s Libya. Now Russia has surprised the West by accepting the request of Syrian President Bashar al Assad to help eliminate the terrorism that has ravaged the once-peaceful country for over four years.

What the Russian General Staff has managed, since the precision air campaign began September 30, has stunned western defense planners with Russian technological feats not expected. Two specific technologies are worth looking at more closely: The Russian Sukoi SU-34 fighter-bomber and what is called the Bumblebee hyperbaric mortar weapon.

Sukhoi SU-34 ‘Fullback’ Fighter-bomber

The plane responsible for some of the most damaging strikes on ISIS and other terror enclaves in Syria is manufactured by the Russian state aircraft industry under the name Sukhoi SU-34. As the Russian news agency RIA Novosti described the aircraft,

“The Su-34 is meant to deliver a sufficiently large ordnance load to a predetermined area, hit the target accurately and take evasive action against pursuing enemy planes.”

The plane is also designed to deal with enemy fighters in aerial combat such as the US F-16. The SU-34 made a first test flight in 1990 as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaos of the Yeltsin years caused many delays. Finally in 2010 the plane was in full production.

According to a report in US Defense Industry Daily, among the SU-34 features are:

• 8 ton ordnance load which can accommodate precision-guided weapons, as well as R-73/AA-11 Archer and R-77/AA-12 ‘AMRAAMSKI’ missiles and an internal 30mm GSh-301 gun.

• Maximum speed of Mach 1.8 at altitude.

• 3,000 km range, extensible to “over 4,000 km” with the help of additional drop tanks. The SU-34 can also refuel in mid-air.

• It can fly in TERCOM (Terrain Contour Matching) mode for low-level flight, and has software to execute a number of difficult maneuvers.

• Leninets B004 phased array multimode X-band radar, which interleaves terrain-following radar and other modes.

New EW Technologies

Clearly the aircraft is impressive as it has demonstrated against terrorist centers in Syria. Now, however, beginning this month it will add a “game-changer” in the form of a new component. Speaking at the Dubai Air Show on November 12, Igor Nasenkov, the First Deputy General Director of the Radio-Electronic Technologies Concern (KRET) announced that this month, that is in the next few days, SUKHOI SU-34 fighter-bombers will become electronic warfare aircraft as well.

Nasenkov explained that the new Khibiny aircraft electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems, installed on the wingtips, will give the SU-34 jets electronic warfare capabilities to launch effective electronic countermeasures against radar systems, anti-aircraft missile systems and airborne early warning and control aircraft.

KRET is a holding or group of some 95 Russian state electronic companies formed in 2009 under the giant Russian state military industry holding, Rostec.

Russia’s advances in what is euphemistically termed in military jargon, Electronic Counter Measures or ECM, is causing some sleepless nights for the US Pentagon top brass to be sure. In the battles in eastern pro-Russian Ukraine earlier this year, as well as in the Black Sea, and now in Syria, according to ranking US military sources, Russia deployed highly-effective ECM technologies like the Krasukha-4, to successfully jam hostile radar and aircraft.

Lt. General Ben Hodges, Commander of US Army Europe (USAREUR) describes Russian ECM capabilities used in Ukraine as “eye-watering,” suggesting some US and NATO officers are more than slightly disturbed by what they see. Ronald Pontius, deputy to Army Cyber Command’s chief, Lt. Gen. Edward Cardon, told a conference in October that, “You can’t but come to the conclusion that we’re not making progress at the pace the threat demands.”

In short, Pentagon planners have been caught flat-footed for all the trillions of wasted US taxpayer dollars in recent years thrown at the military industry.

During the critical days of the March 2014 Crimean citizens’ referendum vote to appeal for status within Russia, New York Times reporters then in Crimea reported the presence of Russian electronic jamming systems, known as R-330Zh Zhitel, manufactured by Protek in Voronezh, Russia.

That state-of-the-art technology was believed to have been used to prevent the Ukrainian Army from invading Crimea before the referendum. Russian forces in Crimea, where Russia had a legal basing agreement with Kiev, reportedly were able to block all communication of Kiev military forces, preventing a Crimean bloodbath. Washington was stunned.

USS Donald Cook

Thereafter, in April, 2014, one month after the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation, President Obama ordered the USS Donald Cook into the Black Sea waters just off Crimea, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, to “reassure” EU states of US resolve. Donald Cook was no ordinary guided missile destroyer. It had been refitted to be one of four ships as part of Washington’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System aimed at Russia’s nuclear arsenal. USS Donald Cook boldly entered the Black Sea on April 8 heading to Russian territorial waters.

On April 12, just four days later, the US ship inexplicably left the area of the Crimean waters of the Black Sea for a port in NATO-member Romania. From there it left the Black Sea entirely. A report on April 30, 2014 in Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta Online titled, “What Frightened the American Destroyer,” stated that while the USS Donald Cook was near Crimean (Russian by that time) waters, a Russian Su-24 Frontal Aviation bomber conducted a flyby of the destroyer.

The Rossiyskaya Gazeta went on to write that the Russian SU-24 “did not have bombs or missiles onboard. One canister with the Khibin electronic warfare complex was suspended under the fuselage.” As it got close to the US destroyer, the Khibins turned off the USS Donald Cook’s “radar, combat control circuits, and data transmission system – in short, they turned off the entire Aegis just like we turn off a television by pressing the button on the control panel. After this, the Su-24 simulated a missile launch at the blind and deaf ship. Later, it happened once again, and again – a total of 12 times.”

While the US Army denied the incident as Russian propaganda, the fact is that USS Donald Cook never approached Russian Black Sea waters again. Nor did NATO ships that replaced it in the Black Sea. A report in 2015 by the US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office assessed that Russia, “does indeed possess a growing EW capability, and the political and military leadership understand the importance…

Their growing ability to blind or disrupt digital communications might help level the playing field when fighting against a superior conventional foe.” Now new Russian Khibini Electronic Counter Measure systems are being installed on the wingtips of Russia’s SUKHOI SU-34 fighter-bombers going after ISIS in Syria.

Killer Bumblebees

A second highly-advanced new Russian military technology that’s raising more than eyebrows in US Defense Secretary ‘Ash’ Carter’s Pentagon is Russia’s new Bumblebee which Russia’s military classifies as a flamethrower. In reality it is a highly advanced thermobaric weapon which launches a warhead that uses a combination of an explosive charge and highly combustible fuel. When the rocket reaches the target, the fuel is dispersed in a cloud that is then detonated by the explosive charge.

US Military experts recently asked by the US scientific and engineering magazine Popular Mechanics to evaluate the Bumblebee stated that, “the resulting explosion is devastating, radiating a shockwave and fireball up to six or seven meters in diameter.”

The US experts noted that the Bumblebee is “especially useful against troops in bunkers, trenches, and even armored vehicles, as the dispersing gas can enter small spaces and allow the fireball to expand inside. Thermobarics are particularly devastating to buildings — a thermobaric round entering a structure can literally blow up the building from within with overpressure.”

‘Status-6′

We don’t go into yet another new highly secret Russian military technology recently subject of a Russian TV report beyond a brief mention, as little is known. It is indicative of what is being developed as Russia prepares for the unthinkable from Washington. The “Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6” is a new Russian nuclear submarine weapons system designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing missile defense systems, while causing heavy damage to “important economic facilities” along the enemy’s coastal regions.

Reportedly the Status-6 will cause what the Russian military terms, “assured unacceptable damage” to an adversary force. They state that its detonation “in the area of the enemy coast” (say, New York or Boston or Washington?) would result in “extensive zones of radioactive contamination” that would ensure that the region would not be used for “military, economic, business or other activity for a long time.”

Status-6 reportedly is a massive torpedo, designated as a “self-propelled underwater vehicle.” It has a range of up to 10 thousand kilometers and can operate at a depth of up to 1,000 meters. At a November 10 meeting with the Russian military chiefs, Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would counter NATO’s US-led missile shield program through “new strike systems capable of penetrating any missile defenses.” Presumably he was referring to Status-6.

US Defense Secretary Carter declared on November 8 in a speech that Russia and China are challenging “American pre-eminence” and Washington’s so-called “stewardship of the world order.” Carter added that, “Most disturbing is Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling,” which in his view, “raises questions about Russian leaders’ commitment to strategic stability, their respect for norms against the use of nuclear weapons…”

Not surprisingly, Carter did not mention Washington’s own very loud nuclear saber-rattling. In addition to advancing the US Ballistic Missile Defense array targeting Russia, Carter recently announced highly-advanced US nuclear weapons would be stationed at the Büchel Air Base in Germany as part of a joint NATO nuclear program, which involves non-nuclear NATO states in Europe hosting more than 200 US nuclear warheads.

Those NATO states across Europe, including Germany, have just become a potential Ground Zero in any possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Perhaps it’s time for some more sober minds to take responsibility in Washington for restoring a world at peace, minds not obsessed with such ridiculous ideas of “preeminence.”

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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20 thoughts on ““Do We Really Want a ‘Pre-emptive’ World War with Russia? by F. William Engdahl”

  1. Russia is sort of an Riddle. While the LADA looks prehistoric, their Military equipment is quite capable. The eupheism about “sky’s” Like F-15sky, Concordsky, Or B1-Lancerskys. Tupolev 160 looks exactly B1- Lancer, weighs more has teh same external design. Maybe Russians just gather physical designs. Since most of their equipment is functional. They are not dumb people. Ther must be people who are smart and working hard while we only see Russian Road Rage and Stoned Videos.

    Some of their coutermeasure thoughts and succeses to to superior US tech in Submarines, C-4 etc is Shval Super-cavitating torpedo that nearly reaches Mach one under water. USA tried to spy on this. I dont know if USA has one such. Their Air Defense S-400, etc keeps getting better. Looks like they are countering Expensive US Tech with low cost, smarter solutions. Again, their War doctrice is different, I guess primarily to defend their Homeland. .

  2. Most of the waste and failure the modern U.S. Military suffers from today can be traced back to our stupid obsession with stealth and trying to base our navy and Air Force around “smart tech” command and survalence systems.

    Both are unreliable and almost
    comically expensive.

    In contrast, Russia just keeps building large numbers of high performance, traditional planes that won’t be knocked out of the sky or lose the ability to navigate to their target the moment a single component of their satalite or comand systems experience a malfunction.

    In the not distant future, most traditional powers will poses very effective anti stealth systems that will reduce the effectiveness of slow moving bombers and drones dramatically.

    That combined with newer interception systems like lasers and ultra high accuracy shells/bullets will make a large portion of our stealth and drone systems, which we’ve invested so much into, ineffective when faced by large numbers of tough, fast, and difficult to jam/hack/blind fighters with high capacity payloads.

  3. The American F-35 is a complete failure, and a very expensive one at that, development of this multi role jet fighter is lagging far behind due to many problems, most notably in the software dept. Does H1B come to mind?

    1. Yes, especially since India has openly and publicly sided with Russia. It would not surprise me at all to see H1B scabs sabotaging America — quietly, of course, and then whining “racism” if they ever get caught.

      The expense part, even with H1B, is because every part of a jet is made in a different State — in a different district, if they can!

      1. I meant to say many H1Bs(Hindu1B) are just incompetent programmers, but as you point out EPGAH some might as well be saboteurs, so good of you to point that one out man!

    2. Why would an H1B work on an Defense Programme? It looks llike WW3 will happen sooner than later, H1Bs out, economy down, then maybe Americans will get their Jobs back.

      If I have to write Americas Obituary for that matter European. Its Fast and Furious Mentality. And also, one needs Multi-dimenionsal development. Science, Tech, Social, Economic, and most important Spiritual. One must keep pace with Nature and respect Nature. Europe & USA is combust, burnt-out. Chinese are just imitating USA.

      If you were to take word of wisdom from a Spiritual perscpective. Karma cuts both ways, its better to do nothing but just sit and meditate. To go to Heaven you must have Zero Sins. To go into the GodHead You must have Zero Good Karma and obviously never ever have sinned.

      1. Respecting nature went out the window when we KEPT importing more people even though our foremost experts said we were unsustainable even at our current population Level.

        Right now, to be sustainable again, we’d have to have a deportation/eugenics program that would make Chairman Mao weep!

        But that’s JUST to make AMERICA sustainable, what about the rest of the world? Unicef says that Africa ALONE will have 4 BILLION people by the end of this century at the latest. To put that in perspective, that was the population of the *WHOLE WORLD…in 1994! (When we first got concerned about overpopulation as a GLOBAL problem instead of just a European problem. But that didn’t stop us from pumping them full of meds and food, without sterilizing the excess! Our bad? Or part of some Plan?)

        1. What is your take on New World Order, One World Currency, One World Religion, RFID, Eugenics as part of that. GMO. Will a Tech [Military] & a present economic Super power get whatever it wants by any rules? What are your takes on Karma?

          Anyway I think internet is not totally a bad thing, it has been of some use to me, find some solutions to some common problems, download Music etc. Anyway it has been a nice Diversion for me, to keep me away from boredom.

          As time moves, I need to me on, with me all things do need to chnage.

        2. Yes, a technological and military superpower would get whatever it wants, the ones with power ENFORCE the rules. For a long time, America being on top ENFORCED world peace, because the bad guys “knew” that if they stepped out of line, what happened to Japan would happen to them next. Once the bad guys started getting equal firepower, wars started again, but it was about 20 years of peace.
          I explained this concept in more detail to Starry Wilk below.

          If you think America losing power in the world is a unilaterally GOOD thing, take a real hard look at what Russia&China do with power when they got a little and imagine them doing that to the WHOLE WORLD!
          Particularly look at the Communist overthrows of nearby countries and the Mass Death/purges/starvations that always occurred, then look at the suffering of Eastern Europe compared to the prosperity of Western Europe. You’ll figure something out!

          Yes, I think New World Order is a VERY bad thing, especially the promise/threat of world equality. The only feasible way to bring everyone to the same Level is to bring the people who’ve EARNED our way up down to the Third World losers’ Level. Better people than me have tried to civilize them, to bring them up for CENTURIES, and look what happened? (Hint: Do a search on Foreign Aid Workers, then add either the word “raped” or the word “murdered” at the end. Either way, you’ll have enough reading material to “keep you away from boredom” for weeks!)

          One World Currency makes it easier to steal from EVERYONE, instead of having to specialize which country you want to steal from. RFID chips in credit cards actually make it LESS secure, not MORE, as Nigerians have already figured out how to make it accept any transaction. Sure, that gives THEM an Unlimited Money cheat, but then the rest of us have to pay for it!
          http://www.wired.com/2015/10/x-ray-scans-expose-an-ingenious-chip-and-pin-card-hack/

          I think Karma is a made-up concept by the losers of war, or just economic losers, to think that the people better than them would get punished by some Celestial Being/Force. Basically, it’s God without personifying it!
          Problem is, they don’t get that what happened to them IS/WAS the very Karma they’re crowing about.

          Take the savages who whine now about their imagined “genocide”? If there WAS a genocide, there would be noone left to complain. They sold us land, they suckerpunched us to take it back, they lost — REPEATEDLY!
          They don’t get that if “Karma” exists, their losing was “Karma” for their very bad-faith negotiation “tactic” of trying to kill who they sold land to and take it back! Or for their savagery, before their betters MADE them stop being so openly cannibalistic/necrophilic/bloodthirsty savages?
          http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n3p-7_Beary.html

          Or take the savages now invading the Civilized World, whether from Syria or just other countries PRETENDING to be Syrian “refugees”, then ingratitude (Space omitted on purpose) attacking their betters!
          What is that “Karma” for? Trying to improve their lives for a few centuries? Or is it punishment by “Karma” for being idiots and letting your enemy in the front door?

  4. Wait, why was an ANTI-nuke system seen as an act of war? Since Russia and Iran are certainly not building or going to launch nukes against the Civilized World, but only building them for use against terrorists (Or for terrorists to steal?), they should welcome our anti-nuke systems in keeping the peace!

      1. Yes, it would make Russia a lot tamer — and Iran a lot less uppity — if they suddenly thought their nukes were useless against Civilized World targets. After all, they claimed to be making them ONLY to stop terrorists, right?

        The best way to enforce peace is to have one entity WAY above the others in Power Level. We tried with a multipolar world, that was the stage before WWII, and earlier yet, in the so-called Dark Ages!

        1. No, one-sided war is what Black Lies Matter, Mexicans, and Moslems are doing to whites, especially Paris, Ferguson, Los Angeles, Detroit, and now…Milwaukee?

          I want the bad guys to know they will be PUNISHED, and unable to hurt US, if/when they step out of line. No “war”, just make very clear if they fuck with us, THEIR extinction results not ours. They will not attack. They might even be polite, but that’s a bonus, not a goal.
          The enemy will only FIGHT if there’s a glimmer of hope they can hurt us as much or more than we hurt them. If that hope is extinguished, they will not fight.

          My “version of peace” as you call it, is already working in at least two points in American history.

          First, the Mongoloid savages that formerly occupied this continent. WHY have they not attacked us in almost 200 years? They kept making deals with us, kept reneging and making surprise attacks on us, sometimes DURING their pretended “surrenders”. They stopped when and ONLY when it was clear their NEXT betrayal would be their LAST betrayal.
          Their only attack now is on the Internet, pretending their ancestors were enlightened and peaceful, and whining about “genocide”, not realizing if there WAS a genocide, there’d be noone left to whine!

          Second, Japan. Why have they not attacked us since WWII? They too kept attacking us, and our conventional warfare pried them off the various islands in the South Pacific, decimated their navy, and swept the skies clean of their “Air Force”, but they didn’t surrender until the SECOND nuke! They even dismissed the first nuke as a “Lucky Punch”! The second nuke broke their Superiority Complex COMPLETELY, they actually ASKED to Unconditionally Surrender! Then they added the condition, that we hold the Emperor blameless and pretend that the military leaders did it against the Emperor’s will. Sadly, we acquiesced, and now they’re rewriting history that none of the bad things they did actually happened, and we nuked them for shits&giggles.

          As a corollary, every time we win big enough, bad guys don’t fuck with us for awhile. Every time we LOSE, it makes the next bad guy braver.
          After WWII, there was 20 years of peace. Russia didn’t fuck with us AT ALL until they stole our nuclear tech. Then we had Korea and Vietnam in rapid succession. And ever since, the bad guys of the world have not left us alone even for 2 consecutive years. Do you really believe that was a coincidence, or our failure in one emboldened the other enemies to fuck with us?

          Also, domestically, we didn’t have any REAL problem with Black riots until the 1960s. Do you believe THAT was a coincidence, rather than because they KNEW any fucking with their hosts would be put down fast&hard? Compare the response to Black thuggery in the 1950s to the LACK of response this month in Milwaukee, or at any of the major riots in the last two years, then tell me again that one-sided punishment DOESN’T cause peace?
          And/or that the chance of winning doesn’t make bad guys willing and even EAGER to fight their betters?

  5. “Kremlin propaganda” is almost always correct from what I can tell. The only thing they do ids deny some things that they actually do, for instance, Russia denied that was sending men and arms to the Ukraine when in fact they were.

    On the other hand, that was something that they could not exactly admit to doing without paying some very serious consequences. To me, the Russian outlets are far more honest than the Western outlets. The enemies of here is the West! We need to support all of the enemies of the West like Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Russia, China, etc. NATO is the North Atlantic Terrorist Organization and it needs to be dismantled or destroyed.

    That guy is a Ukrainian nationalist. Almost 100% of Ukrainian nationalists are fascists, usually of the Nazi variety. This guy spends almost all of his time calling Russia and its allies fascist, which weird since he is associated with fascists himself. Anyway Ben you yourself are a fascist so it should not bother you if Russia were fascist and furthermore, why would a fascist like you quote an antifa writer like this guy?

    1. We no longer clear-cut our enemies, we try to “only kill the bad ones”, and until we return to clear-cutting our enemies, ALL our wars will be Sun Tzu’s “Noise Before Defeat”!

      Russia’s ruthless, but even the most “feels”-ish SJW has to grudgingly admit RUSSIA’S WARFARE WORKS!

      Kill the savage, save the world, or a long war of attrition that whoever breeds less will eventually lose, your choice.

      Nice use of Lord of the Rings, there. What if Gondor or Rohan had decided NOT to fight? Or worse, decided they “Need More Diversity” and let in a shitload of Orcs? What if the ELVES had decided it’s “Not Their Fight”, let Gondor and Rohan and the Dwarven Kingdom get wiped out before they turned back and crushed the Elves, using the ruins of the other 3 as a Staging Area/Resource Base?
      Take a wild guess which events in “real” life I might be alluding to?

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