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(LifeSiteNews) — The remarks of retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor throughout the U.S. proxy war with Russia have provided a consistently well-argued source of information for the reality-based community. 

His most recent offerings do not disappoint in this regard. The value of Macgregor lies not only in his obvious capability in military analysis, but also in his ability to render complex ideas about world affairs accessible. 

Macgregor asks whether there ever was a plan to win, bringing into question what “winning” might look like. He points to the problem of thinking – specifically about the future beyond the war – which has so far proven insoluble to our leadership. 

His contributions do much to clear the fog of war, in a time when U.S. and EU leaders have remained committed to “doing whatever it takes” for Ukraine. 

This time is drawing to a close, as Macgregor predicted it would. The United States has told Ukraine it cannot continue this level of support indefinitely 

The European Union is also showing signs of internal division where once a unified Ukraine policy was pronounced, repeated most recently at the February 2023 Munich Security Conference. 

The signs of faltering support threaten to open wider fissures in the fundamental alliances and structures of the West. German deindustrialization, economic shocks in Europe, and the lack of any realistic plan for a post-Ukraine world are, according to Macgregor, threatening to tear both NATO and the EU apart. 

MacGregor is not alone in claiming that for the U.S. and its allies “There was never any strategy with a specific end state that was attainable.”

The war goals of the West, led the U.S., appear to reduce to impossible demands, namely:

  • That Putin dies or is removed 
  • That Russia’s army is destroyed 
  • That the Russian state is overthrown  

None of the above are – or ever were – realistic aims. The Prime Minister of Finland, Sanne Marin, has declared victory regardless, remarking to Zelensky last Friday, “In our hearts, you have already won.”

Formerly, when asked about an exit plan from the war, she rejoined the war will end “When Russia leaves Ukraine.”

The greetings-card wisdom of our leadership perhaps explains why the West seems incapable of diplomacy. This is the practice of finding agreement between competing interests without the immediate resort to threats, sanctions, warfare and assassination. The continent which gave us Talleyrand, Metternich and Palmerston has, according to former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, lost the art of diplomacy in a pivot to “PR and communication.” 

This decline, or the switch to optics, has been remarked upon by Col Macgregor, who claims the U.S. directed policy of the Ukrainian government has been determined by media and not military strategy. It was about keeping the show on the road. Yet even the most committed showmen are tiring this journey without end. 

The U.K., which under Boris Johnson remained the most bellicose of U.S. satellite states, has now stated the war must end in a negotiated settlement with Russia – and the partition of Ukraine. 

The intrusion of reality into U.K. foreign policy is by no means universal, as the remarks of Defense Select Committee chief Tobias Ellwood show. Following his statement at the end of January, in which he called for a “war footing” for the U.K. to “face Russia directly,” he rejoined:

We must unite around the single mission of liberating all of Ukraine and park any discussion of deals or ceasefires – otherwise Russia will claim a form of victory then re-arm and attack again in a few months’ time.

The “liberation” of Ukraine is a tall order. As Macgregor points out, this is to demand the impossible. Not only will the Russians never surrender the regions they now claim, but the U.S.-led intervention has completely backfired. 

What we have done is effectively expand, modernize and professionalize the Russian army.

Whilst Victoria Nuland still presses for attacks on Crimea, the Hungarians have joined the Chinese in calling for a ceasefire. The cracks in the European Union are found elsewhere, with the Polish government antagonistic to their German neighbors.  

As the Germans saw their pipelines explode mysteriously, the Poles began pumping gas the next day from a previously dormant gas line to Norway. They also restated their claim to a trillion euros in war reparations from the German state, announcing their demands to the EU, NATO, and the United Nations. 

Diplomacy is not faring well beyond or within the borders of the formerly free world. Macgregor argues that this is due to the fact that:

People inside the beltway [of Washington DC] have ideological blindness…they are incapable of seeing the reality about Russia. Sharing a very unrealistic view of the Russian state and its leader, they are filled with so much hatred that they cannot see that what they want simply will not happen.

So what will happen instead? “Some European governments will fall,” claims Macgregor, in a second radio interview. If the NATO position remains unchecked, Macgregor says the Russians will have no alternative other than to show the complete impossibility of the U.S./Ukrainian demands by surrounding Kiev and forcing unconditional surrender. 

At this point Macgregor believes that Europe will simply detach from NATO, as it seeks to repair critical economic relations with both Russia and China. He maintains that the thought of what comes after the war is beginning therefore to affect policy – now. This is what is causing the rupture in NATO – and in the EU – which may see them become “empty buildings in Belgium somewhere.”

In Macgregor’s third, but perhaps most striking recent audio interview, he relies on a diplomatic assessment of European history to explain the forces in play. That the destruction of German-Russian relations is effectively the sabotage of peace on the continent is his argument, which also entails the ruin of German industry, and with it the economy of the European Union itself. 

The European economic crisis created by the sanctions and the destruction of German industry are accompanied by the growing threat of de-dollarization. Macgregor reminds his audience that the United States dollar is backed by two things – oil, and the willingness of other nations to buy U.S. debt. 

The major oil producers of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia are all content to make off-dollar trading the norm. The Chinese-backed BRICS bloc is growing, and should these trends continue it another impossibility looms – that of preventing an economic crash in the United States. 

Macgregor notes that both Japan and China have been offloaded their U.S. debt bonds, with the Federal Reserve stepping in. How long can the United States continue to print money to buy its own debt? 

The value of any thinker lies not only in their provision of answers but in the furnishing of better questions. With his latest interviews, MacGregor gives a summary of the state of the West at home and abroad, noting that “We are no longer in control.”

His best question he saves until last:

Who is in control?

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