From ‘The Analyst’ (Military & Strategic) X: MilStratOnX

SOMETHING INTANGIBLE THIS WAY COMES

Over many years I have come to respect what my ‘gut’ feeling is about a situation. And right now it’s crying out to me that something is happening right in front of us and we can’t yet see what it is.
It’s big and it’s important, but there’s something going on - things have changed. I feel we’ve reached some kind of crossroads.
Undoubtably the situation in America is changed for the better. President Biden’s selfless and patriotic leadership in deciding to step away from the race has changed the trajectory of that country’s future drastically. Trump’s got his work cut out fighting a woman he once gave $6000 to in support of her reelection as California prosecutor. The tables have turned on his age claims - he’s now the oldest ever candidate.
Britain has taken a step away from selfish politics and government by chaos and elected a sober almost logic based government, without changing its stance on Ukraine.
Europe avoided the right wing chaos it was afraid of by the skin of its teeth.
The right in Orbans Hungary is increasingly unpopular and he struts the stage like a fool. And everyone sees it.
Russians are clearly pretending nothing is wrong as their army slaughters thousands of its men every day and its economic situation brings worse news as each day passes. It’s slow and it’s incremental, but it’s now tangible.
The long arm of Ukrainian strategic drone and missile strikes are starting to become so relentless hardly a day goes by where something deep inside Russia isn’t blown up or on fire. It was never meant to get like this. The Russians who see it are shocked by it. The other day a group of them complained in one of those cringeworthy videos to the mighty Putin, that they had lost electricity for 12 hours! Welcome to rolling blackouts and energy shortages faced by Ukrainians every day! And you Russians are responsible for it. They have no idea what they’ve done.
Yes many of these things are anecdotal and there is no evidence to say the sands have unquestionably shifted.
So why do I have this gut feeling that something has changed?
The course of history is full of such moments. At times they are defined by shocking and instantaneous events- The assassination of Arch-Duke Frank Ferdinand, Pearl Harbour, 9-11, The invasion of Ukraine; all of these yanked the world from one path onto another going in a very different direction.
Yet other times the long progress of events curves the path over a long period, its apex taking it into the far forest of uncertainty, before curving slowly but surely back towards the light. I feel we just saw the light at the end of the tunnel for the first time.
The hardest part is keeping your nerve when you can’t see where you’re going. The west has done that. China is an economic mess internally and far from being in a place to wage a war.
Russia is thrashing about on the frontlines in desperation, trying to hold itself together before something gives. Something there is clearly very wrong and it’s held together by ever thinning threads of fear. Societies like Russia don’t fall apart, they implode and they do it when you least expect it.
Talk of peace by Christmas is maybe a bit too much to hope for. But it’s being talked about. Ukraine is on the cusp of reversing its equipment and manpower shortages just as Russia is reaching the point it’s maxed out the credit card and the manpower reserves, without going all in and mobilising the real Russians - Moscow and St Petersburg. That step is one even Putin won’t take. He won’t survive it.
Am I sensing hope? That the EU, NATO and the US might actually have tipped the scales just a bit in their favour and Ukraine’s?
It’s the first time in a long time I have sensed anything that might suggest it.
Maybe, just maybe, this will all turn out alright in the end?