NATO authorized direct attacks with its weapons on Russia and it becomes increasingly confirmed that Macron will deploy French troups in Ukraine. We are about to reset the World War Three counter to zero. The counter is currently at 828 days, which I trace back to 24 February (2022), when Putin launched an attack on Ukraine. Doing so, I realize now, it seems that I back up the interpretation that Putin is responsible for starting the war. Instead, this counting is a manifestation of the inevitable unravelling—appreciated since at least this time, towards a global conflict. More clever people had their counter ticking since the end of the Soviet Union. Others since the Nuremberg trials. Still others since the Napoleonic wars.
The event I chose no doubt marks the ignition of a wick that has been consuming all this time the fragile thread towards the dynamite stick, which is about to detonate. This does not make Russia the agressor. You need Two to make a war. One side had the match, and used it, but the other planted the dynamite stick and has been, since then, blowing on it to make sure it won't go off and fail to reach the powder.
If you ask me, one is wreckless (Russia) but the other (NATO) is responsible. One is like an inconsequential child (Russia), the other (NATO) is a criminal. The child is playing with fire, is daring himself to see what would happen if one would do something bad but that looks cool. The other lured the child to set the fire, setting a trap with a systematic and vicious plan to make his actions irreversible and lead to dire consequences.
Today is also the day that France's debt has been degraded to AA-. The only way out of the financial crisis is war. I'm not sure how much Russia wants war in the sense that it needs it to get through the next decades. I surmise they repent themselves and now realize it was a bad idea to fall to the temptation of using the match on a wick they thought they could always quickly switch off before it gets too close to the charge. I am convinced, on the other hand, that the collective west, the USA and its "colonies", France at the forefront of them, need the detonation and will do all that is possible to get us to the fireworks: a big, generalized, destructive World War III.
As a consequence of this postulate, one can see that it is impossible that Trump gets re-elected, as he made it clear he would seek negociations, de-escalation and ending of the conflict. In a break with political traditions, he also proved to be a man of his word. Trump is not compatible with the main geopoligical agenda. Incidentally, a few days ago, he got convicted on all counts in a minor fiscal problem, that could send him to jail for four years. If that fails to make him understand he should stop, if that actually boost his popularity as seems to be currently the case (people like the oppressed), he'll probably get shot, sick or victim of some spectacular accident (I can already see the headlines of the commotion: "Donald Trump part of the victims"). War must go on. In France, no risk of such threat to hatred and bellicism, we even have in charge the loony-in-chief who will manage to spread the conflict from Ukraine to the rest of the planet. In Russia, it is out of their hands already, they cannot stop it. It is my belief they would like to, but they are in a Tchernobyl type of situation again. A slight miscalculation leading to an unstopable chain of events. Given China's understandable reluctance to put its fingers in the middle of gears now in full motion, Trump seems to be the only, actual actor able to put an end to this madness, and who cares if it's a vulgar one who would do it by peeing on the fuse? Quite an irony that he, of all people, might save the World. I don't think he's up to the taks though and he will get flushed out one way or the other.
Although Russia probably neither needs nor want this war, clearly, it will not shy away from it. When I depicted it as a child previously, I was leaving out an important aspect of the metaphor: it is a bullied child. I keep saying to friends and close acquaintances—I don't know if I wrote it before, but will now—that Russian people are patient, in fact more than patient, they are enduring, they seem almost resigned, they are very slow to react, they will suffer all the humiliations, outrages, abuses, only opposing puny and almost ridiculous verbal protestations, that are taken as signs of weakness, or "bluff" or impotency, the type of whimpering of a bullied child indeed: "stop it, stop it now, stop it or...". The bully in such situations irremediably increases his nagging and goes "or what? or what? Or WHAT???" as the slapping increases both in magnitude and severity.
But Russia is not, ultimately, a child. It is a nuclear country. If we would want to stick to our metaphors, it would be more appropriately pictured as a placid bear, that can turn into a ferocious, savage beast in the flick of an instinctive reaction. Fierce animals alway take you by surprise. When Russia will finally react, it will be shocking. Everybody will go "who on Earth could have imagined that? have hey gone completely mental?" I indeed believe it will be out of the wildest proportions. What will it be? Use of nuclear weapons? Bombing Europeans cities? Invading Poland? Indeed, one cannot imagine. They took both Napoleon and Hitler by utter surprise and their snapping back was so deep and vicious that it was mortal. You don't utterly destroy the two last biggest military geniuses who conquered everything they touched without some disposition for total war. Even Hitler who was up to the challenge and sent his civilians, children and elderlies directly into the fight, got swept like a flea. In fact, the Russians might not even had noticed the Volkssturm.
Russia destroying our modern occidental countries seems unreal, unbelievable. It's going to happen. You don't pinch the testicles of a bear indefinitely without consequences. Now NATO knows that. They want that. Importantly, to understand how the drama is unfolding, NATO wants to keep the narrative side of the story that Russia started it, and will start what is coming. So of course any sudden escalation is a victory for NATO. It will allow them to keep face in the light of events which they know could be arbitrarily devastating. We are speaking here of hundreds of millions of deaths and the second wave of destructions of our European heritage (there's much less of UNESCO value to preserve in the United States). In the eye of those who want that, on the other hand, the bill is worth every penny of the debt that needs to be wiped out, burned away, reset to zero. Nobody in the West actually cares about Ukraine, this does not even need to be discussed. Still, in the narrative, all the destructions will have been because of a geopolitical dispute at the frontier between ethnicities that interpolate between Poles and Slavs. How do you justify that? You can't. Hence it must be blamed on Russia, hence it must start the war. It already did, 828 days ago. And will start the next episode. In a few days.
When the shocking move comes, WW3 will become official, it will get a date on the Wikipedia and history books, it will still be imparted to Russia. At least we will all agree on the date, if not on the causes and the responsibilities.
The main problem with NATO's strategy, as far as they are concerned, is that they don't contemplate the possibility that they might loose. If Russia wins the war, Russia will write the "official" version and in its narrative, NATO will have been the bad guy all along and exclusively. It will not be difficult to articulate. NATO's attempts at hiding the North Stream attack, the Kerch bridge, the generalization of the conflict by keeping their foot in Ukraine as they extend their arm into Russia, all this will be futile. It will be worth something only if they win. It is very possible, however, that they will not. In fact, the most likely outcome is that there will be no winner, and nobody to write the History books. Not in a language that we'll be able to read anyway.