This question was broached over coffee this morning and I declined to answer. However, it still nags. There is the possibility that Ukraine, which has been a war zone since 2016, might remain a war zone for decades.

Pshootin had no choice. He was pushed into this by Murica. If he had permitted Murican nukes in YouGotGrain, he would be deposed by other members of the Roosky Oligarchy. The news seems to be mostly lies and exaggerations and I don’t believe any of it. Furthermore, I’m not interested in it. Any news vetted by Murican media is a lie.

Rather, I would like to discuss the proxy war between Murica and Rooskia as what it is, a continuation of The Great Game. America has taken over all of Great Britain’s post-racial, post-Christian, transhuman, mercantile and geopolitical ambitions and burdens. The Murica-Rooskia proxy war makes no sense to most Muricans, because everything before 1945 is a mystery or a lie. This is not the reboot of the Soviet American Cold War, but of the British Roosky Great Game.

Did you know that Great Britain invaded Russia twice, in 1848 and 1919?

This is also related to the British, and later Soviet, and most recently Murican debacles in Afghanistan. In the mid 1800s an entire British army was wiped out there!

Since most of my readers are Murican, let us reference an ancient war, that is very similar to modern Murican discord.

In 431-401 B.C. Athens, the coastal, naval, cosmopolitan, progressive, financial power of Hellas, pushed Sparta, a land locked, interior, agricultural, conservative, second tier power, into an apocalyptic war that would destroy both nations.

Today, in the ongoing American Culture War, the coastal, financial, cosmopolitan, progressive class is literally waging a religious war on culturally conservative people in “Fly Over Country.”

I see this as an expression of a coastal fear of the folk of the interior. The interior, insular and [relative to Murica] conservative nations of China, Rooskia and Persia have been the subject of aggression by maritime powers [European and Japanese] for the entire modern period.

Sweden invaded Russia circa 1700.

France invaded Russia in 1812, I think.

Britain and France invaded Russia in 1848.

Japan invaded Russia in 1905 and again on the eve of WWII!

Britain and the U.S. invaded Russia in 1919.

I have played for an against the Russian position in various war games. The one thing that has always surprised me, is that no modern naval power can resist the urge to attack a land power, even in a game setting. Probably, because the land power cannot strike back without first transforming itself as a nation, which most nations cannot do without first collapsing.

I suspect the mechanism is that coastal, maritime, commercial powers develop more dynamic and robust economies, economies that can fuel military adventure, such as Athens attacking Egypt, the British attacking China, Afghanistan, Zululand, South Africa, Russia, and the Japs attacking Korea, China and Russia.

This seems to be a problem of balance. In America and in Rome balance was achieved, both nations becoming both land powers and naval powers. Such a position makes for a hyper-aggressive nation with the raw materials of a land power and the projection of a naval power, and is very rare in history. The Brits never did it—could not even beat the Japs. It was up too their Murican rebels to do it.

For Murica, the Roosky-YouGotGrain War is a win-win, that will drag down other developing nations faster than Murica, and also destabilize third tier nations [such as the Africans who will not get Roosky grain] to provide soldiers and replacement populations for America’s internal culture war against its own interior, rural, agrarian population.

If Russia installed a puppet government in Mexico or Canada, and this government started slaughtering American residents in that country, and Russia was moving to place nukes on the Murican border, Murica would go to war.

The Great Game was not christened so by accident. Anyone who has read history from before 1914, or who has played war games as the leader of a nation state or empire, realizes that the real geopolitical hammer is the ability to make your peacetime enemy go to war, while you sit back and support the minor powers you have arrayed against him.

In the case of the Rooskies, who must fight to maintain access to a warm water port and keep their borders free of Murican nukes, this proxy war serves Murica very well. But the conflict damages Rooskia LESS than it does their traditional Yougotgranian, Swedish, German, British and French enemies. If I were the Murican or Roosky player, I would be pleased to maintain this proxy war for a decade or more.

Though reports on Newslaw speak of Roosky defeat after defeat and Yougotranian victory after victory, I would be surprised to discover that Rooskia controls less territory than it did before the war, and shocked to discover that Roosky territory has been lost to Yougotgranian forces.

Most importantly, in a time of global cooling, when food production is going down these past three years and set to collapse in ten years, the real threat to continental powers like Rooskia, China and Murica are its own internal divisions. Wars against large distant nations tend to strengthen internal unity. Indeed, there is currently only one thing that Liberal Progressive Muricans and Conservative Traditionalist Muricans agree on—only one—that Rooskia is evil and ruled by a single maniac and Yougotgrain is a fairy tale princess of nations.

The Bear, the Dragon and the Drag Queen, the three greatest nations on the planet, will all be well-served against the rising of their own populations, by maintaining a constant, low intensity war with other great nations. So long as the war does not result in victory or defeat, internal stability of the three great land empires will be served. Not winning wars against tiny third tier nations negatively effects internal imperial cohesion. But maintaining the image of an evil snarling bear, or of a conniving coiled dragon, or of a perverse rapist nation threatening from afar serves the Bad Shepard of the Imperial State every bit as much as the wolves beyond the fold serve the meat shepherd in keeping his sheep close and under control. It is no accident that the dog was bred from the wolf.

More importantly, as we live in a science fiction reality, the current large scale proxy conflict scheme in distant Asia keeps us in line with George Orwell’s Newslaw Rule.

So, my answer for the Major is this: Pshootin is playing his assigned role, unable to win the game of got and trying not to lose.