World War 3: Hybrid forever war continues

In full swing, it was never going to look like WW2

May ‘23

In The Shadow of Artyomovsk, VST wrote:

World War 3 - The Hybrid War

WW3 is, in VST’s opinion underway. It is foolish to believe that WW3 should look or feel like WW2. WW2 fighting is taking place on the ground in Ukraine, but is updated via modern weapons and tactics. The WW3 element is far more expansive and involves war being waged not just against a stated enemy, but against the citizens of the nations supporting the action in Ukraine. Your nation is waging war against your brain through cognitive warfare. You are your nation’s enemy to be contained, controlled and used. Your masters are using your nation’s resources for ends that you never sanctioned, and diverting money and wealth from you to themselves at rates and on scales that have never been seen before. All of it is being done using fear of people who will never actually attack you and threats to your daily life that don’t exist.

WW3 does not actually employ nuclear weapons, which simply lie at the periphery as a nominal backstop that keeps the fights out of the nuclear nations and inside a proxy theater and narrative. NATO is attacking Russia directly, on its territory. Russia simply must absorb, tolerate and contain those attacks through non-nuclear means. This is why these attacks can be executed - because NATO knows that Russia cannot and will not respond to terrorism with nukes.

Even after Ukraine winds down, WW3 will continue. The game here is to clear the west’s inventories, activate the war economies, rearm on a next gen basis, and use the fomented Chinese and Russian threats to do it. Of course, there is serious economic and political competition from Russia and China, but it’s nothing that the west hasn’t knowingly and deliberately created, enabled, employed and directed via economic, political and financial decisions spanning decades. Right now, it is utterly nonsensical to think that within 12 to 24 months, the US is capable of repeating Ukraine in Taiwan and “win”. That’s a given. That’s not the game.

The US cannot project enough conventional military power in the Taiwanese theater in either the South China, East China or Philippine Sea to defeat China in any kind of kinetic war and “take” Taiwan. To do so would require multiple carrier battlegroups, submarines and the ability to launch imported air and ground troops from neighbouring territories on a persistent scale that would defeat China’s forces. The US has significant foothold across the region, but the truly valid pre-text and explicit agreement of all of those nations would be required. This takes considerable time and effort to credibly convince them that China is worth attacking, given that it is the world’s nuclear armed sweatshop among other things. At risk in Taiwan is 60% of the world’s chip supply, which could be annihilated in days. Replacing that capability is an ongoing effort that will take years, with Intel’s European plans slated to produce from 2027. The possession of hypersonic missiles by China and Russia (whose operational capability is proven and inventories suspected to be increasing) means that a single missile is required to destroy each US carrier and with it the mobile air power that has been key to its dominance. A 2,500km range based in Hong Kong puts all neighbouring countries, the whole of the three seas and the tip of Japan in strike range. Russia could literally deliver Kinzhals into China through Russian and Chinese airspace unhindered to be stationed anywhere in China.

The USA therefore needs time to develop a mobile or installed defence against hypersonics, and proven hypersonic attack capability of its own. No doubt, both things are being continually worked on despite recent claims that US development failures may have spelled an end to a hypersonic program. There’s no way that the US has just downed tools on this programme, given that Russia and China prove it’s possible and decisive.

Overcoming any of the above force imbalances does not explain or justify why the US could legitimately face off directly against Russia and China over Taiwan in kinetic war. Furthermore, according to JP Morgan:

“The reality is that a complete decoupling of the US economy from China is neither possible nor desirable. It will take many years to shift the supply chain, and the US will remain dependent on China in many areas. However, investing in the technology sector now requires a change in thinking to navigate the economic implications of multi-polarization. Investors need to consider the broad investment themes associated with geopolitical risks rather than just taking a bottom-up view.”

If war cannot unpick the above and isn’t even technically feasible in the next several years, what purpose does this seemingly nonsensical narrative serve?

On a simple level, it is simply a different take on the “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Trump claimed that his plan was to do deals, be strong in the face of China and Russia (but do deals with them to keep everyone happy), onshore money, jobs and manufacturing back into the USA, increase energy independence and exports and re-establish the former glory of the USA. This was rubbished by his myriad opponents.

All of these things are being enacted through war in Ukraine and a potential war in China. The Democrats are pursuing the Trumpian objectives while using on overt war to do it, but refusing to acknowledge that it’s really the same plan. Europe is being forced to up its defence expenditure just like Trump wanted. It is a captive customer of US energy exports. Its connections to Russia have been severed. The money flow from Europe to the US is making the US greater at the expense of its vassals. Looks like Trump’s plan was everyone’s plan all along. Maybe that’s because it’s not really Trump’s plan. It’s THE strategic objective that can be messily implemented in many different ways by whichever puppets are pulling levers behind a thin curtain.

Ukraine is a disposal ground for out of date war tech and a testing ground for full scale warfare where old, largescale tactics can be re-established by testing Russia. The “new” enemies of Russia and China replace the failing “war on terror” narrative and its narrower anti-terror tactics, which could morph (see above) thanks to weapon proliferation. These new enemies justify and drive the west into war economy mode via Cold War 2, which is an economic pathway alternative to the failing post-Cold War financialization. The rebalancing of the world in Cold War 2 will see the underlying co-ordination of financial instruments including dollar dominance, CBDCs and integrated control systems over citizens across the globe. In all of this, many nations are playing a part. Ukraine is being enslaved with debt and makes promises to be the testing ground for any WEF policy. Sri Lanka and India are willing to use Digital ID, as the west has already implemented the systems in all but app. The globe is getting to grips with controlling crypto and making it the tool of the masters, and will co-ordinate financial resets and CBDC implementations for cross-compatibility and interchange.

Cold War 2 is the way you move 8 billion people into a global reset. It doesn’t have to be perfectly orchestrated or fully planned. You just need to light a fire in a nightclub, hit the alarms and watch literally everyone run for the exits. It doesn’t matter how many of them die in the stampede, as long as you made the suckers go where you wanted them: outside, into the rain, where you are standby to sell them medical care, umbrellas and taxi rides to safety.

Eighteen months later, VST stands by that entire excerpt. However, it's essential to note the following:

…because NATO knows that Russia cannot and will not respond to terrorism with nukes.

We believe this remains true but someting else is now undeniable: the present US administration including the Penagon leadership believes that nuclear war with Russia is executable, surviveable and winnable. It reportedly claims to be readying for a limited nuclear exchange with Russia that is going to be containable.

This is insane.

This takes considerable time and effort to credibly convince them that China is worth attacking, given that it is the world’s nuclear armed sweatshop among other things.

China is not a sweatshop. That term was lazy, inaccurate and callous.

In other fora of record, VST has made some specific predictions about what the near future holds for the UK & EU, and these things are happening and accelerating.

Subsequent articles will lay this out, although it should not come as a surprise. Others are on this line of thinking too.

Tonight, Syria has fallen to the US hegemony and its terrorist proxies. No one VST follows predicted or expected it. Even over the last few days, no one we saw called the events of today correctly.

Where we left our view of the Middle East, in our last article on Gaza, was selected for multiple reasons. What we then said in The Future of Israel Palestine - fighting will and must continue - remains true and is what at least the US hegemony itself seeks. Exactly why, for how long and to what end is still up for discussion but it includes objectives to which we alluded to in our last Middle East Meltdown article: military, political, pseudo-eschatological and ideological reasons fundamental to Judaic Zionism and possibly Christian Zionism, both of which are deliberately butting heads with Islam for political and power ends.

What we are comfortable saying with certainty is that the Realist view of state politics appears to hold more water the deeper World War 3 gets. Through that lens individual states act in their own perceived best interests ahead of that of others or some sense of a greater good, cause or values howsoever defined. Overlaid and intermeshed amongst all of this remains the increasingly opaque notion of hybrid warfare waged internally and externally against citizens, allies and enemies.

In reviewing VST's complete back catalogue, we feel it is accurate and has demonstrably manifested, including the thematics, issues and questions of The End of Hope Hypothesis, Do You Want To Believe and Concepts around radical technological and energy transition.

VST has never been for its audience. It was for its authors. That it has an audience is for the audience to explain. What we've put forward wasn't based on no evidence, wasn't all conjecture or conspiracy. We haven’t set out to craft painstakingly referenced and footnoted papers. We set out to express naturalistic, non expert, multi-aspect/integrational viewpoints, commit them to an accountable and visible medium and then assess their accuracy over time. Almost all of the articles here have been written in flow and all reflect the author’s genuine view of the world.

Under these conditions, we remain wedded to the view that World War 3 has been on for up to a decade already in clearly identifiable ways distinct from the Global War on Terror, although it is born out of and integrates with it and the strategic stance underpinning it. WW3 now continues and escalates. It will continue to transform life in the US hegemony in increasingly tangible and radical ways.

None of this is stopping.

None of this will revert.

It's a ride. Just a ride.

But you cannot get off unless you have the will, means and chance to leap.