Bread and Circuses | Submersibles, Coups & Crackheads
Mike Kimelman
Partner, Silverbear Capital | Strategic Advisor | Investor | Speaker | Bestselling Author | Executive Coach
While I intended to lead off this week’s issue with nepo-baby Hunter Biden’s corrupt DOJ sweetheart plea as the most important story of the week, events in Ukraine and Russia have unfortunately eclipsed the top of the news cycle.
First, let's establish some groundwork before we delve into the details surrounding the alleged Wagner coup.
The week was notably framed by two disturbing incidents.
First, the Defense Department admitted it forgot to ‘carry the one’ and undervalued the ‘aid’ we sent to Ukraine by $6.2B. So just like that, with a snap of their fingers, the Pentagon was able to conjure up an additional $6B for the Kiev Meat Grinder.
Even more disturbing, leaked information surfaced about a peace deal proposed by Putin to Ukraine early last year. Ukrainian President Zelensky?appeared poised to accept this agreement until the Biden administration and its 5 Eyes allies ?applied enough pressure to deter him.
This scuttled peace accord could have potentially saved Ukraine, the Donbas region, and the lives of over 350,000 Ukrainian men claimed by this avoidable confrontation. But, it begs the question: what difference do the lives of several hundred thousand Ukrainians make when viewed against the larger canvas of a glorious Neocon proxy war with Russia?
Now, following the resounding failure of Ukraine's much-touted counteroffensive, the Biden administration and their neoconservative affiliates may have a potential saving grace at hand courtesy of burgeoning internal conflict within Russia (Note to liberals: this is what an actual ‘insurrection’ looks like as opposed to misdemeanor trespassing and selfies that characterized Jan 6th).
As I pen this on Friday/Saturday morning, the situation is far too tumultuous to confidently forecast an outcome in either direction, but there are certain axioms that merit consideration.
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Firstly, stability generally trumps disorder, a notion that holds even more weight when nuclear weaponry and superpowers enter the equation.
Number two,?realpolitik?means the devil you know is often better than the devil you don’t. In this case, a coup in Russia with Prigozhin toppling Putin might not be the event that all liberal former blue-checks should be blindly cheering for.
After all, did we learn nothing from Libya or Iraq?
Saddam was an absolute garbage human, a strong arm dictator and human rights abuser. But he was the lawful ruler of Iraq for 40 years, supported by most of the population, and a credible counterweight to rising Shiite militarism and terror from Iran.
We invaded Iraq under false pretenses (WMD anyone?), toppled Saddam, and unleashed MORE chaos and terror than existed prior to the invasion. Iraq also became a vassal state of Iran, a greater enemy of the Western world than Iraq ever was in its heyday. Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences, especially when the consequences are quite obvious to many.
The situation in Ukraine now reads like a shitty Hollywood remake of the same exact movie, only much scarier since it involves nuclear and actual WMD.
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