The Indispensable John Helmer— THE INCITATUS PRECEDENT IN US STRATEGY, THE CALIGULA CURE IN RUSSIAN STRATEGY

There has never been a transition between US presidential administrations which has been so replete with new Washington-directed violence across the world. That’s to say, the escalation of wars already under way and the instigation of new ones to the furthest limits of the US empire’s reach.

As the Pentagon war-gaming of the Reagan Administration proved in secret, neither escalation of conventional war nor escalation to nuclear war can be controlled when Americans are running the game. That’s because Americans always think they have firepower superiority (aka shock and awe).   

That this superiority has been defeated since 2022 with the destruction of every US weapon and operation plan on the Ukrainian battlefield has spurred the projection of Washington’s denial – that’s Freudian denial  — to every other untested battlefield.

Across the Pacific this US escalation now extends from the martial law attempt in South Korea  to coup attempts in Bolivia and Venezuela, the threat of trade war against Mexico, and forcing Canada to submit, as Donald Trump has just told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to “becom[ing] the 51st state and Trudeau could become its governor.” .   

Australia, the rich rear base of the US, is under orders to spend more on US arms and bases for US and Japanese forces to fight land, sea, air, and space war against China; for less low-cost raw materials to China, for more tributary payment to the US.

This campaign of politics by means of war and war by political means is now existential for both the outgoing and incoming US presidents, and for each of the countries which are their targets. Submission, and the readiness to pay the US demand for billions of dollars in economic and military costs,  have become a display of ambition and fear on Roman imperial scale – of the example of the Roman senators ready to kowtow to Incitatus (“Full Speed”), Caligula’s race horse. The Swiss-Serbian geopolitician Slobodan Despot has recently explained this:

“If [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen appointed her pony as the European Union’s Foreign Minister, do you think anyone would object? And that the brave animal would be less competent in this position than Mr. Borrell [EU Foreign Minister] or Ms. Kallas [EU Vice President]?… What if by chance Caligula had really appointed his equine senator? Without blinking, the senators would have treated him with all the respect due to his rank. These people were probably no dumber than the satraps of today, but they were not driven by their own reason, or even by their well-understood interests. They were spurred on by fear and by its proactive counterpart, sickly ambition.”  

Like the Roman senators and the legion commanders of Caligula’s time (37-41 AD), the fear today is of US-directed political, economic, and physical elimination, as has been tested in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Teheran, and in Slovakia on Prime Minister Robert Fico.

For resistance to Caligula’s horse in Washington, President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated signal success. He has also introduced several innovations in counterforce weaponry against the US and its allies from which they have no effective protection.  With Kinzhal, Oreshnik and other weapons named but not yet launched by the Russian side, US escalation without counterforce protection or defence of city grids and civilian populations is irrational. The Incitatus Precedent can work only when the emperor is mad and his subjects are in abject fear or mad ambition or both at once.

The outcome of that in first-century Rome was the Caligula Cure – elimination by force.

In the Third Rome these days,  there remains a group of high, very high officials who have reason to be afraid of the Incitatus Precedent and the Caligula Cure. They and their oligarch allies have also believed, and for more than twenty years invested in their safe-haven stable beyond the emperor’s reach.

Their names aren’t important to identify; they are well-known. What is important to know for now is what they believe, and especially what they hope the incoming Trump Administration can be persuaded and bribed to do, at least toward themselves.

Vzglyad, the government-financed internet publication in Moscow, is their mouth organ. Yesterday, there appeared in Vzglyad an essay explaining what they are thinking. Their idea, according to the publication, is composed of three options for Russian strategy.   

In translating this verbatim into English, illustrations, map inserts, captions, and URL references have been added to assist the reader. As translator I express no opinion, neither strategic, military, Freudian, nor veterinary.

Vzglyad essay published here on December 3.  The writer is Gevorg Mirzayan, an associate professor at the University of Finance and research fellow of the US-Canada Studies Institute in Moscow.  To date, Mirzayan has not found fault with the translations he has read here.

What will be the finale of Cold War 2.0?
December 3, 2024
By Gevorg Mirzayan

Thirty-five years have passed since the statement of the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States that the cold war between the two superpowers is over. However, Moscow and Washington understood the reasons for the end of the mutual confrontation in different ways – and how it is now necessary to build international relations. On the one hand, the resulting Cold War 2.0 must be ended; on the other hand, in a completely different way.

Exactly 35 years ago – on December 3, 1989 – Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President George H.W. Bush met in Malta. And there they officially declared the end of the almost 40-year period of the cold war. They declared the advent of an era of “lasting peace” where ideological differences would no longer matter.

Left: President Bush on board the USS Belknap off Malta for the summit meeting in December 1989. Behind and to his right was the Soviet missile cruiser, Slava, carrying Soviet Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev.  Right: The launch carrying Bush approaches the Soviet cruise liner Maxim Gorky. Because of storm weather, the site of the December 2-3 summit between Bush and Gorbachev was moved from the two warships to the Gorky at its shore berth.

Today it becomes clear that the parties understood the essence of the agreement in completely different ways. As well as the conditions for the end of the war – the definition of who won it, who lost it, and what should be the further structure of this “lasting peace”.

“Initially, Moscow and Washington had diametrically opposed approaches to this issue. The United States unilaterally declared its unconditional victory – ‘with God’s grace,’ as George H.W. Bush said in 1992 – in the Cold War.  And this victory, from the point of view of the United States, should have marked the beginning of an infinite era of American global dominance.  ["Just more and more and better capitalism till kingdom come.." —Ed.] A unipolar world, the universal spread of American values – and the end of history, which Francis Fukuyama proclaimed,” Dmitry Suslov, Deputy Director of the Higher School of Economics Centre for Integrated European and International Studies, explains to Vzglyad.  

In this case, the end of history does not mean some kind of global apocalypse, but the end of the global competition of ideas (which, in fact, was the story). That, according to the United States, ended with the total and eternal victory of the "liberal democratic" model [capitalist tyranny], which (after first the defeat of fascism, and then of the Soviet project) no longer had competitors. And the era was coming, not just of American domination, but of the complete reconstruction of the world in line with American values, views and interests.

The United States has been acting on this principle since the 1990s. The wars in Yugoslavia, interference in the internal affairs of all countries (including Russia), attempts to force recognition of US hegemony and its right alone to decide the fate of the “conquered” world.

The principle of Brennus, leader of the Gauls, voiced by him to the Romans and adopted by them, worked for the United States: Vae Victis, “Woe to the vanquished”. The winner takes all.

After Brennus had defeated the Romans in battle and the city was surrendering, the Romans tried to ransom themselves from military destruction with an offer of tribute. They then argued over the scales for measuring their compliance, so Brennus used his sword to tip the scale in his favour. A late 19th century French illustration for the sale of a meat extract illustrates what happened.

Russia did not agree with this approach even in the 1990s, during the Yeltsin era. First of all, with the large-scale expansion of NATO to the East. In the decade of 2000-2010, US interference in the affairs of the post–Soviet space was added to this, including a series of colour revolutions. At the same time, Moscow tried to resolve the matter peacefully – that is, to agree on the rules of the game. For example, the proposal for a new collective security system from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

 “From Moscow’s point of view, the Cold War ended with the voluntary agreement of the great powers to end the confrontation. And the cold war should be replaced by a multipolar world in which Russia, the United States and other centres of power on an equal basis had to form a new world order, exercise global governance, maintain international security and so on,” says Suslov.

However, in the United States, Moscow’s position was interpreted differently. “Russian disagreement with American hegemonic policy in the United States was perceived as a relapse of revisionism and Russia’s attempt to rewrite the history of the end of the Cold War. To review its results, including through the use of military force,” Suslov adds.

And this eventually led to the resumption of the Cold War – or as some experts say, Cold War 2.0. But now this looks much more dangerous than the previous one.

As before, the United States is trying to inflict strategic defeat on Russia. As then, sanctions and other methods of pressure are used. But now the conflict zone is not on the periphery – that is, in the countries of the third world, but instead in the space of one of the rival powers. In this case Russia, whose sovereign territory is occupied by Ukraine, which, in turn, is armed, financed and directed by the United States.

“In the last cold war, the confrontation in the central sector was considered fraught with a global war, so, in practical outcome, the confrontation was channeled to the periphery. But now it is taking place both on the periphery (for example, the terrorist offensive in Syria) and in the central direction – that is, in Ukraine,” says Suslov.

RUSSIAN MILITARY BLOGGER SITUATION REPORTS ON THE WAR IN SYRIAMikhail Zvinchuk’s Rybar situation report for the Idlib and Aleppo fighting as of December 3, 22:00. It is made clear in the Russian milblog reporting that the adversaries are the US, Turkey, Israel and their proxies, and that theirs is not a “terrorist offensive”; source --  https://t.me/rybar/65997  There is a ban on Russian mainstream media discussion of the restrictions placed on the Russian command in Syria so that they may not defend against the Turks, Americans or Israelis.

Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad  reports an offensive by US trained, armed and directed proxy forces at Syrian Army positions in the Deir ez-Zor region in eastern Syria. Rozhin does not identify the operation as a “terrorist” one. Source: https://t.me/boris_rozhin/146564 .  

In addition, the quality of American statesmen has plummeted. Brought up in the 1990s era of American supremacy, the current elites of the United States are not just unready to make some kind of compromise (that is, to recognize Russia’s right to its national interests); but also they do not even fully understand all the risks of the absence of compromise. First of all, there is the risk of nuclear combat.   

There are only three possible options for ending the Cold War 2.0. The first, the most terrible and unnecessary for anyone in the world, is its spillover into hot war, and then into the thermonuclear phase.

Just published on December 2-3, 2024, this report of the top-secret 1983 Pentagon war game, Proud Prophet, concludes that the American military and civilian officials who participated on the US and the Soviet sides escalated to nuclear war because “nuclear war cannot be controlled”. The report failed to note this was a conclusion about American warfighters, not Russian ones who were not invited to play their part in the game. Although the report identifies the Harvard economist Thomas Schelling as the game designer, Schelling had already come privately to the conclusion that the evidence of the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War and  USAF plans for nuclear targeting of the Soviet Union were escalatory for ideological and psychopathological reasons on the US side. Privately,  Schelling told me in 1971 he was persuaded that the only option for an adversary was to inflict strategic defeat, as happened in the Vietnam War.  

The second option is the infliction of strategic defeat on the United States through the strategy of a thousand injections (regional wars in the post–Soviet space, the Middle East, and East Asia, which will morph into a split in American society and result in internal destabilization). This outcome is also not needed by the responsible Great Powers. At the very least, this is because it will lead to a global economic crisis since the United States is the second largest economy on the planet.

The best ending to Cold War 2.0 can – and should – be the third option. This is the one which  Russia originally had in mind in the guise of the USSR back in time, thirty-five years ago.

This finale can be formalized through a new agreement between Russia and the United States (as well as China, Iran and other Great Powers). As part of such an agreement, the parties will announce the end of the new cold war, but this time with a common understanding of the terms of their agreement. This will also be perceived in the United States as a defeat – but in fact it will be a universal victory.

The United States must abandon its claims to global hegemony and become a normal Great Power. One of the poles in a multipolar world. And in this multipolar system, the parties will combine both rivalry and cooperation in their relations with each other. And in this outcome,  along with the second cold war the first one will be completely over.
by Editor - Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024