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Saturday, Oct 21, 2023 - 21:43 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

To The Last Of Us

It's back to the Reds after that little peek behind the curtain, and a normal-sized green man places the card:


Turn 14, Action Round 6 (Team Red)

Team Red plays Solidarity for 2 Ops; since "John Paul II Elected Pope" is not in effect, the Event is not triggered, and the card goes to the discard pile.


So ronery...
(Original sources: twilightstrategy.com, hindustantimes.com)


Misleading as the viral photo of Zelensky standing alone at July's NATO Summit - after some exposure locally - might have been, the Ukrainian President does face an uphill battle in keeping Team Blue hangers-on united towards his cause, in the face of competing global trends. Brusquely thrust onto the biggest stage of all in February 2022, the former comedian became an unlikely superstar on the European political circuit, and his carefully-curated olive green fatigues have since been omnipresent in the Team Blue media space.

On the ground, however, it has been quite a different story, with there being barely any change in territory occupied by the opposing belligerents, since the start of 2023. These hard facts might be disconcerting for the fine common folk, who have been bombarded with headlines lauding Ukraine's many victories against the Russian orcs, in their long-awaited righteous counteroffensive - which, as it turns out, has not quite budged the frontlines, despite persistent and at times extremely imaginative efforts by the Team Blue media to put a positive spin on their (non-)progress.

While reiterating that Russia's invasion of a sovereign state is unequivocally wrong, the presentation of this stalemate as not actually being one, is easily understood - from the beginning of it all, it had to be known that Ukraine's fate would rest on outside support, given their insignificant production capacity, and said outside support in turn depended on political will - and public opinion in the benefactor countries. Were the general mood to be that Ukraine had no real hopes of prevailing, so the thinking goes, further (military) aid would no longer be as forthcoming, and pressure towards a negotiated settlement - involving some loss of Ukrainian land - increased.

This loss of interest is doubtless what Team Red elements have been counting on, and repeated assurances of continued commitment by America and certain European nations aside, memories of previous broken promises in Afghanistan, Syria, Vietnam etc. - all non-core U.S. interests eventually deemed to have become too costly to be worth it - will have to haunt Zelensky, the lack of interest in the Global South besides. It's tough to see NATO getting themselves involved at this point, unfortunately for Ukraine, and there has been some perceived ungratefulness on their part on insufficient weapons being provided. Best not have another conflict diverting arms, then...


1 Ops: +1 Influence in India (3/4). If Team Blue/America were hoping that their Cold War I tactic of setting one Asian giant against another would do the trick again, the mid-September spat between Canada and India might suggest otherwise. Then, Trudeau would up and accuse India of assassinating Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh activist, in June. Bearing in mind that India has denied involvement, the killing if true has been noted to be technically more serious than the Khashoggi case from a diplomatic perspective, since it represents a foreign subject being murdered on his own soil.

Wider Team Blue/Anglo involvement would come into play with Canada presenting evidence drawn from the communications of Indian diplomats, and the presumed eavesdropping under Five Eyes auspices could not have endeared them to India, who appear of the opinion that while they did not take Nijjar out, he was a designated terrorist anyway. Granted, the death of one man was never likely to swing bloc-level strategy, with key Canadian allies initially reluctant to back them on this.

However, the unexpected conflict does still remind that India were never going to play ball all that nicely with the Blues, and that as the most-populous nation on Earth with over 1.4 billion souls, India will have their own pride and ambitions - which may well soon extend to overhauling the U.S. too. Neither party is backing down, with India expelling 41 Canadian diplomats and the Anglos closing rank with (somewhat ironic) charges levelled over Indian spies infiltrating the West. The way it's going, it might not be long before their diaspora gets targeted too à la Japan in the 1980s, or China today.

1 Ops: +1 Influence in Gulf States (3/4). Team Red continues their prying of Middle Eastern states from the Blue camp, with the United Arab Emirates withdrawing from the U.S.-led Combined Maritime Forces security coalition, notably soon after signing up with Iran, India, Saudi Arabia and a few others in their own naval alliance. New era, indeed...



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