Ukraine, South Korea, Britain and Germany which form half of the list of the world’s strongest armies, do not operate without Uncle Sam’s expressed permission.

This recent Infographics post listed the world’s top ten military powers. In pole position was Russia, followed by the United States and China. Making up the rest of the field in this order, from fourth to tenth, were Israel, South Korea, Ukraine, Iran, Britain, Germany and Turkey.

First off, the United States is no more an autonomous actor than was the Roman Empire or, indeed, the British Empire at its height and Israel, Ukraine, South Korea, Britain and Germany which, between them, form half of that list, do not operate without Uncle Sam’s expressed permission. Thus, although Ukraine has put up a good show against the Russian women and children it has been slaughtering for over a decade now, that genocide would have to stop this very day, if the United States and its British, German and sundry other satrapies willed it. Though Ukraine is a very successful criminal enterprise, it is not a military power of any consequence.

Having Russia and Iran on that list is reminiscent of how NATO’s media hyped up the Iraqi military here, here, here, here, here, here and here before its criminal genocide in Iraq. Although Iran necessarily has had to develop a range of defensive weapons’ systems, the next twelve months will show how effective they are in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran itself. Much more dangerous to Uncle Sam and its Israeli monster child is how Iran has used soft power, diplomacy and the like, to forge an anti-imperialist alliance across The Fertile Crescent and beyond. China’s can can dancers should be, at the very least, taking copious notes.

For what it is worth, I expect the United States and its Israeli bastard child to bomb Gaza, Southern Lebanon, Syria and Iran itself the same way the Yanks bombed the Củ Chi tunnels, Cambodia and Laos. It is, as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman explained, the reason God loves the US Marine Corps: like Israel, to which we shall return, they kill everything they see. And, like Israel, they get away with it time and again.

South Korea is an odd addition to this list. The role of the Korean peninsula is to act as a buffer between Russia and China to the north and Japan to the South. Should things really kick off against China’s can can dancers, South Korea would once again have its hands full containing their cousins to the north. In the bigger scheme of things, they ain’t, to coin Humphrey Bogart, a hill o’ beans in this crazy world.

Japan, which didn’t make the cut, is a different prospect. Not only have they one of the world’s very best navies but the Yanks are training them to do a Pearl Harbor on the Chinese. As that would provoke a robust reaction from the lethargic Chinese, all bets would be off as regards who is North East Asia’s top dog. Certainly, Chinese reaction would be a good reason to avoid Japan’s cherry blossom season, which would be a shame.

One problem in assessing Japan’s military might is that the United States deliberately ensured that Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would all be but vassals, mere Asian spokes to its own imperial plans and that the United States would remain the hub from where key Asian decisions would be made. Though that has worked admirably since 1945, let’s see how that works out when the Chinese get really rattled and, say, lob barrages of missiles into down-town Tokyo.

The Chinese, for their part, want to be the reincarnation of Churchill’s Russia, a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma. If China wishes to be a great power, it should start acting like one and not just parrot cliches at the United Nations about Gaza, or whatever else happens to be the topic of the day. Nobody, least of all the Palestinians, needs recycled speeches from the Chinese. Until they are prepared to send Chinese troops to Lebanon and Syria to help Russia defend the territorial sovereignty of those two countries, they should do us all a favour and just shut the fuck up.

If China is in some sort of loose alliance with Iran and Russia, then it should act accordingly with regard to whatever common goals they have. Alliances work best when all parties agree upon what they should do and how their various roles are demarcated. It is not the job of Iranian and Russian soldiers to die in Syria, Ukraine or anywhere else whilst the Chinese just line up contracts to keep their businesses ticking over and, if the Chinese continue to think and act that way, they are planting the seeds of their own destruction.

Every Russian child, I imagine, is well aware that the people and land of Russia soundly defeated the two greatest armies Western Europe ever assembled against their forefathers. Although the Wehrmacht was a first-class army, it should be remembered that they quickly knocked over the French which, prior to September 1939, had the world’s largest and greatest army.

But they did that by blitzkrieg, by their novel lightning war methods which suited them, not by the horrendous slog fest they and their allies stupidly immersed themselves into on the Eastern Front, which was best described by German Colonel Bernd von Kleist as an elephant killing massed colonies of Red Army ants, before being eaten to the bone by ever more colonies of those same Red Army ants.

But, in fairness to the Wehrmacht, constant and unremitting war is what their leaders’ ideology demanded. We see that same rabid ideology rampant amongst America’s Republican and Democratic Parties who think that their greatest (GI) generation’s trick of giving the least and getting the most can be replicated again, just as it was in the First and Second World Wars.

Had the Russian Army folded in Ukraine, it is possible those unearned good times could have returned to Yankee land but that was not to be and so it is again the turn of Palestinian children for NATO’s abattoir. And certainly, Palestinian babies in Gaza’s intensive care units make much easier and, one could say, more traditional American targets than do Chechen troops in Ukraine.

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