Yes, it was a quiet retreat after Ukraine destroyed pretty much the entirety of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
Russia never escalates after getting drubbed. It only escalates after being coddled and appeased. Which is why the US policy that has been dedicated to appeasement since George W Bush is producing terrible results.
A standard tactic used by big companies when they get sued is to draw out the proceedings for as long as possible. A quick resolution might be cheaper, but a long battle can bankrupt their opponent or at least discourage future attempts.
The current war is imposing negligible cost on the US, while Russia is running down their entire Soviet weapons stockpile as well as greatly damaging their society. If the goal is to weaken Russia, the best strategy is to encourage them to fight for as long as possible.
LikeLike
That makes sense… in that it also is agnostic about what happens to UKR.
LikeLike
If only I could hope that somebody in the US had the remotest capacity to formulate a strong long-term goal like weakening Russia. I don’t believe that, though. Our leaders are weak, reactive, and aggressively not smart.
LikeLike
There is an ancient Chinese proverb to appear strong when you are weak and appear weak when you are strong. I’m pretty sure they have noticed Russia’s need to project strength.
LikeLike
Another example of Unappeasement from today, sending a message to Iran too:
explosions in Yeme’s port city of Al Hudaydah, controlled by the country’s Houthi rebels, two days after the terror group’s drone exploded in Tel Aviv near the U.S. embassy in the city.
“A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the area of the Al Hudaydah Port in Yemen in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the State of Israel in recent months,” the military said in a statement.
Estimations say the strike was likely coordinated with Saudi Arabia in order to cross airspaces located close to its territory. The strike targeted Iranian military equipment facilities, oil dispensers and a military airport in an attempt to harm the main path for Iran to deliver weapons to the terror group.
At the beginning of the war in Gaza, Israel debated whether and how to respond to Houthi threats. Some believed they should be attacked and deterred — among other things, by attacking Houthi assets including ports — but it was ultimately decided to leave action against the terror group to the U.S. as part of the international coalition that formed in the area.
The coalition occasionally attacks inside Yemen and intercepts missiles and drones launched from Houthi-controlled zones, while the Houthis continue to attack ships in the Red Sea — both civilian and coalition-owned. The Houthis have also never stopped their launching toward Israel, leading to Friday’s deadly attack.
LikeLike
The way the US has armed Iran and encouraged the Houthis is such a scandal that it’s weird nobody ever talks about it.
LikeLike
There is more (bold is mine):
Erik Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, has raised the question of whether the White House is doing enough to halt the attacks in the critical waterways.
“Many people found the tone of [Kurilla’s] memo to be a bit shocking,” a defense official said. It said essentially that “U.S. service members will die if we continue going this way.”
U.S. Central Command officials said their forces could not prevent the Houthis from hitting ships in the Red Sea or the Bab al-Mandab strait, since they had not received approval for large-scale attacks. “If you tell the military to re-establish freedom of navigation and then you tell them to only be defensive, it isn’t going to work,” said one U.S. official. “It is all about protecting ships without affecting the root cause.”
U.S. warships have had close calls with missiles and drones from Yemen. In recent weeks the Houthis have expanded their campaign, including by launching missiles into the Arabian Sea.
Though Kurilla called for an intensified “whole of government” effort, a Biden administration official said some measures have already been taken to complement the military actions.
On Thursday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller announced the sanctioning of several individuals and entities, along with five ships, “that have played critical roles in financing the Houthis’ destabilizing activities.”
LikeLike
Btw, Yemen is further from Israel than Iran.
A spokesperson for the Houthis posted on social media that the Israeli jets had attacked civilian facilities, oil tanks and the electrical power station in the city of Hodeidah, in an effort to pressure the group to end its support for Gaza — something the spokesperson, who goes by the online handle @abdulsalamsalah, said was a “dream that will not come true.”
He said the Israeli retaliation would only “increase the determination of the Yemeni people” who would continue to support the Palestinian people in what he termed “the most just cause on the face of the earth.”
Does anyone believe their heart breaks for Palestinians, that it’s the real cause of attacks?
An Israeli blogger writes (in Russian):
Yemen is not just a poor country, but a very poor one. If we destroy their infrastructure, power plants, oil industry, ports, etc., then Iran will have to invest in them to keep them afloat. This will lead to the diversion of even more resources and forces from Tehran. Some ordinary Iranian engineer or military specialist will go not to Syria and Lebanon, but to Yemen. Profit? Definitely a profit.
Only to achieve this goal, such actions should not be one-time, and it is necessary to bomb not launchers, as the British and Americans did before, but the infrastructure, so that the functioning of cities in Yemen collapses.
No, not to make people there come to their senses. I don’t care about those people at all.
It’s in order, as I wrote at the beginning, to redirect resources there. Yes, Iran is not poor, but still not unlimited in its resource capabilities.
LikeLike
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment