SIGNALLING

SIGNALS

How can the shooting down of a US spy drone over the Black Sea be interpreted and what are the immediate political consequences?

 

By Sidney Hey

I don't remember who it was who said that human beings are the only animals that trip over the same stone twice, but it is a truism. I think I would rephrase that saying with one of my own that says "the only human beings who do the same stupid things twice are the Anglo-Saxons" in the light of recent events in both Ukraine and the USA.

While I was resting peacefully in Horbat, one of my contacts who is up to date on what is happening in Ukraine sent me the news of the terrorist attack on the Crimean beaches committed by the Ukrainians of Zelensky, in which two children were killed. What's new about that, you tell me? What was revealing, though not so revealing, was that a US-made ATACMS missile caused this and Washington is playing the sore-eyed.

It is true that the US and its Atlanticist partners have been intervening in Ukraine since the beginning of the war and that their weapons have killed many Russian civilians including those in the Donbas. Even the CIA trying to create internal commotion and discredit against Putin has committed terrorist attacks in Moscow itself and they have refined this tactic by employing their Islamist assets as we saw in Crocus Hall and most recently in Dagestan.

I am sure that the Russian public already knows all this. There are also signs that Putin has said enough is enough, beyond the return bombing of critical Ukrainian infrastructure, and has begun to implement more effective measures to prevent these terrorist actions from being carried out with impunity.

The first loud and clear signal was the shooting down more than eight days ago of a US Navy "MQ9-Reaper" drone operating over the Black Sea. While Washington has denied this episode -a blow to Yankee pride- the fact is that the flights of these aircraft were unexpectedly suspended until further notice. No one in Washington or Langley has said a word.

Those familiar with the subject know that such aircraft are used by the Americans (and NATO) as one of their ISR assets for reconnaissance, surveillance and marking of targets to be attacked by their patrons. In short, they are part of the electronic intelligence assets that the Americans collect and then provide to Ukrainian far-right battalions to carry out their terrorist attacks. There is no doubt that the ATACMS missiles that fell and caused the massacre on the Crimean beach were guided by information provided by this intelligence source.

But beyond the countermeasures that Russia seems to be successfully implementing to end this strategic cooperation on terror, there is a very complex scenario at the moment in both the US and the EU that does not favour plans to continue the war.

In the case of the US, we saw this with the hilarious show staged to promote the presidential candidacies between Donald Trump and incumbent Joe Biden and candidate of the war party. After such a demonstration of absence and lack of intellectual coordination by the current president, Americans who maintained some degree of credibility in his administration began to question whether it wasn't really true about his inability to govern, including his decisions to continue solving other people's wars.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump lent a hand to this reflex. In addition to exposing the senile condition of his adversary, he put on the table his view of what he would do if he gets to the White House, and that would be to end the war.

As far as the EU is concerned, the tectonic (not to say cataclysmic) changes in the domestic politics of its main members are already causing panic among Washington's subjects such as Ursula Von Der Leyen, the brand new NATO Secretary Mark Rutte and the entire staff of subordinates that make up the Union. In particular the situation in France, with the landslide victory of Marine Le Pen's right wing, which will undoubtedly bring about serious changes for French institutions and citizens that could mean, in addition to a redirection of foreign policy, reforms in the country's status as a member of the EU or, if that were more convenient for France, simply its exit from the bloc.

This in turn would be compounded by the change that is already underway in Britain with Labour's return to power, which seems to have been listening to the cries of ordinary Britons and their needs, issues so neglected by Rishi Sunak and the Conservative camp as a whole. 

Beyond these extraordinary circumstances, Vladimir Putin has already begun to structure a new multipolar security system that does not necessarily resemble NATO but aims to be more effective and efficient in building a security framework against the malicious interference of the collective West, extending to all states that agree with the principles of the BRICS+ to guarantee autonomous development, free from subtle interference and detached from Washington's extortionist hegemonism.