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Thursday, Feb 09, 2023 - 23:05 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Will Wonders Never Cease


To a complete lack of surprise
(Source: seymourhersh.substack.com)


I wasn't about to get on with the next Twilight Struggle: New Moon Action Round this quickly, but got inspired by the latest spoiler leak - according to legendary American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in a Substack post (authenticity verified by other notable reporters), it was the CIA (in cooperation with the Norwegians) who planted remote-controlled C4 explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines in June 2022, under cover of the BALTOPS22 naval exercises. These explosives were then triggered several months later (so as not to make it too obvious) in late September, via a low frequency tonal code from a sonar buoy dropped by a Norwegian surveillance aircraft, on demand from the White House.

Gentlemen, it looks like our early-October analysis of CIA Created in Action Round 2 was right on target, then - and for those attempting the Cluedo game, if you picked the first options of "CIA" and "Frogmen", congratulations! Now, Russia's invasion was clearly wrong, but the mainstream media mindfuckery in insisting that they blew up their own precious pipelines, and that any doubt was siding with the Ruskies, must sound rather ridiculous on second examination now. Given the known motivations and capabilities of the various actors in the mix, the CIA always had to be probably the top suspect, but try getting that past the Twitter/Reddit mod bots.

The White House has categorically denied involvement with Russia pressing the issue, but it is difficult to imagine what else they could have said - given that if admitted, this would amount to an illegal unauthorized act of war, moreover against multiple allied countries (Germany, France and the Netherlands for their stake in the energy infrastructure, and Denmark for the sabotage occuring inside their exclusive economic zone). Assuredly, it's far from impossible that the dastardly ploy happened with the quiet acquiescence of at least some of the above (as it would conclusively quell demands for Russian gas supplies by their constituents, as also previously noted)

Despite some airtime by mainstream outlets such as The Times and the Herald Sun, the narrative appears to have been ignored by the corrupt majors and swiftly whitewashed, with Hersh's reliability attacked. About this, it might be considered that Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize and five-time Polk Award winner (or at least until the wokies vandalize his Wikipedia profile for reporting inconvenient facts, already reflected in the page history), who has built his reputation on multiple massive scoops including the My Lai massacre and cover-up in Vietnam, Watergate and Abu Ghraib etc. - all of which were strenuously denied by the powers to be initially, until truth prevailed.

Well, if eventually corroborated, this wouldn't even figure all that highly on the list of shitty things that the CIA has done (and been forced to admit to), so it's perhaps best to just accept it as advance warning about how dirty Cold War II's gonna be.


Turn 12, Action Round 5 (Team Red)

Team Red plays Arms Race for 3 Ops.


How many divisions does the Pope have?
(Original sources: twilightstrategy.com, myrecordjournal.com)


As the well-worn quote goes, amateurs talk strategy and professionals talk logistics, but if recent historical evidence is anything to go by, winners often just crank out sufficient materiel and warm bodies for the meatgrinder. All pretense of the war being anything other than one of attrition (which would have gotten one pooh-poohed at its inception about last March) has been dropped by the FAKE NEWS, which has been trying to maintain an incongruous balance between insisting that the Russians are complete incompetents and that Ukraine has it in the bag, and hollering that Ukraine are on the verge of being overrun, and need every last tank that Team Blue can spare.

Of course, any modern conflict involving nuclear powers is a "false war" in the sense that their final trump card is necessarily being held in reserve, and while not exactly advertised in the mainstream disinformation media, the obvious analysis is that what's happening in Ukraine is not much more than a warmup involving outdated gear on both sides (and expendable irregular forces for Russia), and that big bad Russia has, really, not yet begun to fight. A true mobilization is only just beginning for the Team Red bruisers, and the initial reluctance of Germany and other European nations to send tanks might at least be partially explained by them really not even having all that many for themselves - which applies to ammunition too. Given that further escalation beyond Ukrainian borders is a distinct possibility, one kind of understands Team Blue reticence.

1 Ops: +1 Influence in Iran (0/3). The attempted colour revolution appears to have fizzled out with the regime having arrested tens of thousands of protestors, while retaining enough bandwidth to defeat Team Blue representatives (for now) Saudi Arabia (still 3/2), in the Yemeni minor league proxy war. Iran have been a reliable supplier of drones and missiles to Russia throughout, and while they'll probably get bombed by Israel or something soon enough, Iran do have a direct land connection to Russia via Afghanistan (0/1), where Team Blue is sadly out of Influence right now.

1 Ops: +1 Influence in North Korea (0/3). Kim Jong Un might be in a good mood with his daughter's birthday forthcoming, from how Best Korea has been cosying up to Russia. They have been one of the few countries to recognize Russia's annexation of Donetsk and Lugansk, and while a supposed offer of 100,000 troops might be a little far-fetched, the deployment of workers to eastern Russia to free up bodies for Ukraine - alongside the supply of artillery shells - isn't all that out there.

1 Ops: +1 Influence in Syria (3/3). Russia has consistently cultivated Influence with the Assad administration here, and Syria has in turn been another source of recruits for Putin.


Turn 12, Action Round 5 (Team Blue)

Team Blue plays Summit for 1 Ops.


Ah, the poor relations turning up to eat your food again!
(Original sources: twilightstrategy.com, foreignpolicy.com)


Ukraine remains just one of the many battlefields of Cold War II, and Team Blue had to play some long-overdue defence in Africa. America would host a U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December, with Biden declaring that the U.S. was all-in on Africa's future. One however believes that leaders canny enough to rise to the top of the continent's oft-fatal political process would probably realize that the U.S. could have given two hoots about them had China (and to a lesser extent Russia) not spent Influence there, and that this is merely a new Scramble for Africa, by a new set of wealthy imperialists.

Given that the Cold War I edition saw plenty of CIA shenanigans in the Congo and elsewhere, one understands if the Africans are a teeny bit cautious about new Team Blue promises here, what with them having delivered relatively little infrastructural developments compared to China for one. There will be scarce change on that end with the U.S. stating that they are "not interested in having tens of thousands of our workers coming to Africa and building the infrastructure", to which one might figure that the Africans might view Chinese workers' willingness to sweat alongside them, as a sign of sincerity.

With Blinken already quoting Idris on how Africa doesn't need aid but innovation, actual American largesse reasonably remains a concern, and here I will repeat the advice I offered to a Sudanese chap (who was inordinately proud of their pyramids) that I conversed with in Kenya several years back - it shouldn't be about the West or the Chinese; they should be out to secure the best deal possible for themselves.

1 Ops: +1 Influence in Nigeria (2/1). Still, the summit was probably not for nothing, with a number of big deals cut under GEOTUS's Prosper Africa initiative. Nigeria appears a particular winner with exposure for their Nollywood and other industries, which has seen them signing on to the Atremis Accords together with Rwanda. Guess the earlier diplomatic outreach worked, then, in the latter case.



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Next: Turn Twelve Ends


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