CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Gen. Strangelove or: How I Learned that DC Never Changes and Almost No One Understands Russia’s War in Ukraine

Dr. Strangelove trying to resist his alien hand – Public Domain

Last month, I had the opportunity to give a talk at a US university as part of a conference where many of the speakers were dredged directly from the gelatinous goop that produces each successive generation of State Department apparatchiks and DC think tank flunkies. I was something of an outlier as I came with a presentation all about the decline of US power in the age of so-called “multipolarity” and the ways in which US criminality over the last 40 years has created the conditions for it.

As you might imagine, the right-wing Republicans with whom I was on the panel had little interest in anything I had to say. They were veterans of the George W. Bush, Trump 1, and Biden administrations whose views seemed to range from neoconservative to stridently neoconservative with very little in the way of analysis of US power abroad, the alleged theme of the panel discussion. Be that as it may, I’d like to provide some basic observations about the human beings that form the machinery of the US state and the decaying imperial apparatus in 2026, and how we should understand US power today.

First, there was the featured speaker, a retired Brigadier General in the US Army. This extremely forgettable man — literally his name would easily escape me had I not written it down for later use — stood in a lecture hall of about 75 people to deliver a presentation on the war in Ukraine that managed to discuss neither the actual war in Ukraine nor any of the political context that surrounds it. Instead, he spent roughly thirty minutes proudly showing photos of the medical equipment he bought for Ukrainian troops with money bagged from his wealthy golf pals and fawning Wall Street donors. From there, he proceeded to spend about fifteen more minutes describing the battlefield, Ukrainian materiel and their needs, and the ways in which the US could do much more to help.

But then he spent a little time discussing the ineptness of the Russian military, its outdated and poorly maintained equipment, and the general disorganization of the Russian armed forces. No argument from me.

From there, he waxed moronic about China and their growing military capabilities which this strategic genius regards as paling in comparison with the US. I could see where this was going…

Then came the mineshaft gap; the moment when the comically stupid becomes inconceivably dangerous.

This general – a man who reached the highest echelons of the US military – calmly and nonchalantly proclaimed that the US could “easily take out both Russia and China if it wanted to.” As I picked my jaw off the floor and restrained myself from screaming out, I listened intently as he described the nuclear double-strikes required to take out reinforced Soviet era nuclear silos, and the alleged ability of the US to mitigate the risk of nuclear retaliation and global war through first strikes and diplomacy.

This military pre-vert was describing a global war scenario instigated by the US that would devastate most of humanity; he was gleefully painting the picture of a postwar world of peace. Such is the thinking of the truly depraved ladder-climbers that become “Our Trusted Military Leaders.” These are the creatures that the delusional Liberal fantasizes will one day march into the Oval Office and remove the degenerate-in-chief on 25th Amendment grounds.

The basic takeaways from this presentation were:

1. Neocon millenarianism is alive and well throughout the military leadership and broader institutions of the State. Despite the old cast of ghouls like Cheney and Rumsfeld thankfully dying out, their proteges and intellectual descendants continue to infect the US........

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