SCHIZOPOLITICS - UKRAINE
Why the West acts against its own interests
Why is the rump of NATO trying to start a war with Russia, whilst the West’s wars and sanctions collapse its own economy? In this brief series I will examine the schizoid political culture which has led the once dominant West into decline.
It should take you about 15 minutes to read.
In this first part I use the Ukraine war to illustrate “Schizopolitique” - the political technique of making people believe that there is no alternative to the insane reality you have created, to realise an impossible goal.
We see how a concept of “Pragmatic Boundary Testing” means we are inched up to and over every “red line” in reality, to realise too late how too far we have gone.
CONTENTS
The State of the West that Was
Why don’t the wars make sense?
When was self destruction chosen by the West?
Schizopolitique - what it has made of our world
Ukraine - Schizopolitics gone wild
Red Lines Matter?
Ha! Ha! The Russians haven’t nuked us! (Yet)
Schizopolitics: creating the demand for sanity
The West that was is in a sorry state. The US is fighting a war in Iran which looks likely to resume, in a fresh round of destruction that could devastate the global economic system it used to lead.
The EU and Britain are wedded to a losing war in Ukraine, whose latest escalations threaten Russian retaliation with strikes on European and even British soil.
In both cases the political elites act as if the world has not changed. Its policies of economic and military power to secure its dominance have failed. They are producing a united front against the Western system itself, with its politicians seen as incapable of reliable or even rational agreement.
Neither of these wars makes any economic, political or even basic sense.
Why is the West acting against its own national interest?
This is a post about the split personality of what passes for American and European grand strategy today.
Though these poles are apart from one another in terms of their stated “values”, they are partners in crime against the fortunes of the people they rule.
This is Schizopolitics, and here are some ways in which it has drowned our world in delusions.
For three decades or more we in the West have become used to the idea that war can be permissioned as a sort of civilising instrument, that it works in this way, and that its costs can be made invisible to our way of life. In short, we can watch explosions take place in countries about which we know little, and nothing really bad happens to us.
This isn’t the case with the wars on Iran and in Ukraine. Both were chosen by the West. Trump launched the war on Iran for Israel, as his admin have repeatedly admitted. It has done nothing but harm to America and the global economic system its navy formerly policed.
CHOOSING SELF DESTRUCTION
The ousting of Yanukovich in the 2014 Maidan coup showed the Russians there could be no reasonable hope of a new and cooperative relationship with the West, and so they looked East and elsewhere instead. In the East, the Chinese began to follow a ten year plan to detach themselves from the Western system and to build their own in its place. Both powers have watched the West choose a path of self destruction, whilst building alternatives outside the Western system.
The Western decision to attempt to expand and consolidate power by means of war has been self destructive in both cases to a US-led Western order that is no longer led by the US, and no longer creates or represents much in the way of order at all. It is schizopolitical. It refuses to recognise reality, and this makes it incapable of doing anything but harm - mainly to itself.
SCHIZOPOLITIQUE
The technique of Schizopolitics is to push right up against the limits of sanity and exceed them, little by little, until you belatedly realise you have gone too far.
This mad strategy can be called “Pragmatic Boundary Testing”. It is explained in the US/NATO approach to the war in Ukraine as a means of constantly pushing up against, and crossing, “red lines” set by the Russians1.
This is a prime example of schizopolitique. From the Russian point of view, this political technique is insane, as it reduces to a series of repeated and increasingly outrageous provocations, accompanied by sneering in the domestic Western press.
Of course it exceeds the boundaries of what is sane. Yet it gets us all into a place where this insanity has gradually become our new reality.
Look around and you will see this process of radical change at the tempo of tiny transgressions has taken place everywhere. One little boundary bending move and then another. There is no point at which anyone can say the transition began, but the trans-sanity is everywhere now.
No great leap forward, no sudden change, and one day our system ends up like a self-harming teenager - in a personality crisis, bleeding from a thousand tiny self inflicted cuts. The mildest cajoling to think again, or at all, is met with histrionic screeching.
This is the state of the State in the West, of the Church in the Vatican, of our hysterical media and the crazes it transmits as the only respectable takes.
Schizopolitique makes the basic mention of reality a crime to permission the craziest and most destructive ideas. No one in their right mind would agree to them if presented openly, and so they aren’t. Yet the reality they produce is so awful we do not need people to risk their livelihoods to point it out.
We have to live in the asylum these lunatics have made of our world. The Ukraine war is one example of how this asylum was built.
UKRAINE: SCHIZOPOLITICS GONE WILD
The strategy of constantly “edging” the red lines is partnered with a media campaign to present Russia as weak, unserious, and at the same time dangerously dismissive of the rules based order of the West which claims to contain these threats as it strives to create them.
In the Western think tanks, when the Russian response is not immediate retaliation their warnings are framed as empty threats of bellicose nuclear brinkmanship plus an incapability to enforce them.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is the leading British military thinktank. Founded by the Duke of Wellington, it is now staffed by pantsuit brigades who think in the same tongues as Sanne Marin, Annalena Baerbock, and Ursula Von Der Leyen.
In the lingua franca of their schizoid mentality, Russia is weak, it is also a threat, we must never talk to them and only fight, and we can win a war against them because they will never use their weapons against us if we do so. Why is all this happening? To defend and extend the values of “The West”.
This is a West which has morally and financially bankrupted its own people whilst claiming it examples the supreme - and only legitimate - political and ideological system. Of course, this would not be schizopolitics if that reality were factored in. Instead, outfits like RUSI trumpet illusory triumphs whilst leading everyone into disaster.
In August 2024 RUSI reprinted a section of a Washington Post article which is one example of the schizopolitical escalation of self destruction:
“Putin is spooked, the war is winnable, we have the initiative, there is nothing to fear from the Russians.”
This is pure propaganda of course. It has been proven dangerously wrong.
The vaunted Kursk invasion (a British operation), was a media victory and a military catastrophe.
Now the European nations who believed their own BS belief system have been rattled by the imminent threat of missile strikes on their own territory.
Drone strikes have hit Moscow, as well as Russian oil refineries.
These drones are being manufactured in European and British plants, which the Russians have warned may become legitimate strike targets in retaliation.
These drone attacks have been celebrated in the British press as something Putin wishes to hide from Russians, when in fact Russian public opinion is pressuring him to strike back - rather than pushing him out of office.
This is typical of the schizoid framing of this war. Westerners read of how plucky Ukraine is terrifying Putin, who is losing, and who is dying, and whose people will turn against him, whilst years of escalating Western-backed terror attacks in Russia coupled with long-range missile strikes have changed the national mood of Russians from one of patience to a demand for decisive retaliation.
“Russia resorts to supply chain desperation” in the schizo narrative, whilst in the real world it is Western wars and sanctions which are rapidly dismantling the trade routes and agreements on which the Western economy depends.
CREATING MONSTERS
Schizopolitique always creates its own monsters, because it is one itself, and this is its only real remaining power. Its crazy fantasies are only rendered sane when some enemy can be monstered into being, like the Russians, with whom we formerly traded and who wanted to join us in a post Soviet Europe instead.
The dangerous fantasies and illusions which inspire it produce real life dangers, to which it has no realistic solutions - as it does not recognise reality any more.
This is how you become “agreement incapable”. That means no one trusts what you say any more, as you are obviously just making things up to suit yourself.
This is how you destroy your own credibility, your own energy access, how you outsource everything you depend on to a China you now demonise. It’s how you present your system, which is a weapon of mass destruction, as the only solution to the problems it has created itself.
It is Britain, followed closely by the German government, which has pushed for escalation in Ukraine most aggressively.
Since its former Prime Minister Boris Johnson pressed Zelensky to bin the Istanbul peace agreement and fight on with full NATO support instead, British strategy has been to edge the red lines set out by Russia.
As the Russian ambassador to the OSCE says, it will come as a surprise to Europeans that they are one day soon in a direct war with Russia - but it will be no surprise to the Russians. This is where schizotakes are taking us.
THE PERSIAN GULF
Iran has prepared for decades for the sort of mad war being waged on it today. The Russians have kept their industrial base mothballed to scale up for the sort of conflict being talked up in the European press.
This week Britain relaxed sanctions on Russian oil. This is because they are faced with an energy crisis. This crisis has been produced by US, British and EU actions which destroyed Germany’s cheap natural gas supply.
Sanctions have compounded the problem, weakening the West - not Russia. Now the war in Iran has produced a serious shortfall, which may make crisis a way of life which replaces cheap consumer goods, affordable energy and food with a dramatic downward revision of the Western standard of living. Prices will go up, the value of money down, as more is printed to cover the debts2.
Long term strategic planning is never undertaken in the national interest. Yet the schizo plan to liberate Iranians by bombing them has been developed over decades. So too was the plan to destroy Europe’s cheap and reliable energy supply from Russia.
RED LINES MATTER?
In 2017, red lines mattered to the regime press, which said the US under Trump should be the one to draw them.
In 2021 Putin warned Russia would be “forced to act” if the West ignored Russia’s red lines in Ukraine.
The West did ignore Russia, and so there was a war. Of course it did, because the West believes that it and only it has the legitimate power to draw red lines wherever it likes, and no one else.
This is the reason there are red lines in Ukraine at all, as the West sought to expand its borders to include the Borderlands of Russia. It chose conflict in place of cooperation, creating a New World Disorder in the process. The boundaries were tested, pragmatically producing the “fateful error” which George F Kennan forewarned in 1997.
Now the West refuses to even recognise Russia’s own “red lines” at all, framing Russian attempts to draw them as bluff or empty threats, and Western ones as just by default.
This is the mentality of schizopolitique - only I am to be believed, and only my beliefs are right, and I don’t have to recognise yours.
IMAGINARY DANGERS
The narrative that Russia’s “red lines” are imaginary has been constructed to permission a strategy of constant provocation.
In this mindset, the conditions which will see Russia retaliate against the West with military force are simply empty threats.
This means the West can and indeed did go on to cross every “red line” the Russians drew - “calling Putin’s bluff”.
This was done not instantly, but incrementally, pragmatically testing and then exceeding all the boundaries.
Martin Starchak’s Carnegie report from November 2024 shows the danger of mistaking a change in nuclear doctrine for a nothingburger.
NATO has pushed the red lines so far that there is now serious talk of the Russians striking drone factories in Britain, Germany and the Baltics. This is in retaliation to constant escalation by the West which now sees the weapons it makes, supplies and often helps to operate strike the Russian capital3.
HAHA! THE RUSSIANS HAVEN’T NUKED US!
This works well for two reasons. One, the Russians can be presented as a paper tiger in the regime press. And they are.
Two, this helps to build the narrative that Russia is losing and can be beaten in a war that is no longer going to be fought by America - but by the Europeans and Britain alone.
What this means is that Russia might seem strong, but because it has not used its strategic bomber fleet, vast army and the largest nuclear arsenal on earth, it is in fact weak.
This is a second danger of schizopolitics. You come to believe in your own make belief. These beliefs have been made to make a war with Russia look sane. It isn’t.
LIMITED VIEWS
The limited view of Western thought in the last few decades is also exposed as deeply schizotypical. It sees only its own idea of itself, and never the world from the point of view of the interests outside its political and economic belief system.
It simply does not recognise that the multipolar world is here. The train is leaving the station and it will not come back. Schizopolitics is an addiction to a mirage. It is not the 1990s anymore, US-led Western dominance is over, and it is not coming back. Best to realise the new reality and make the best of it, rather than demonise realism and make the worst of all possible worlds.
From the outside it looks like the West has simply gone mad and chosen to kill itself. This is a fair appraisal, and is shared by growing numbers of Westerners themselves. The moment is coming where something gives, and given the gravity of the moment that could be everything.
CREATING THE DEMAND FOR SANITY
The recent history of Western grand strategy is a series of readily predictable effects, caused by policies whose destructive process of crisis production were all predicted in advance. These warnings were ignored, as the power of self belief at elite level trumped them all.
Trump felt he could win, and so he went ahead and lost bigly despite decades of warnings against the folly of indulging the Israeli’s war on Iran.
The Liberals were dazzled by the prize of their global ambitions, seeing in the conquest of Russia by proxy war the wealth which would defray the costs of Project Domination. The impossibility of victory is resisted at the highest level, because defeat by reality is simply too awful to contemplate.
We all have to live in the mess made by these makers of belief. Where have their schizo takes taken us? We have arrived at a point where the demand for sanity is the most pressing issue in our politics.
Nationally and internationally, we are finished if schizopolicy continues to vandalise reality.
The insanity it has supplied is creating a demand for an end to schizopolitics.
I am away this weekend campaigning for Restore Britain, a party which exists to meet the demand for sanity in our politics.
I hope to return with another instalment on Schizopolitics - Iran, US and Israel - next week.
See Janice Stein’s Escalation Management in Ukraine: Assessing the U.S. Response to Russia’s Manipulation of Risk, Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, April 2023.
See also RAND’s Understanding the Risk of Escalation in Ukraine (Sept. 2023).
These papers present a deranged strategy with sober titles and responsible framing, and there are many more examples of precisely this “boundary testing” brinkmanship.
I will examine the US in Iran, and its relationship to Israel as an example of schizopolitique in the next post.
For an in depth analysis of how serious the crisis created by this “boundary testing” has become, see Glenn Diesen’s interview of May 20th with Dmitry Polyanskiy, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Wow Frank, I've just seen your makerfield interview for vox populi on YouTube! 👏👏
Observers in Communist China have formulated a term 無限上綱 which describes a process very similar to what the author has described. I don't know how the term was formulated initially. My understanding is that it means a process of continuously, incrementally push up a standard. Usually each tiny step seems achievable, and the original direction seems noble. Yet after a while, most people will realize that we have screwed ourselves up.
One example is the refugee problem in Europe. If Europe was rich enough, had spaces, had the preparation, and had the consensus to accept refugees, there was nothing wrong in accepting some refugees. But the society was not that rich and not that ready. The instigators would then say, although we are hungry, every one of us can spare one spoon of food to feed these starving refugees. Next is to share your blanket, then your front porch with refugees. It is NOT that one should NOT share the front-porch with refugees, but rather that the whole thing should have been planned and executed with proper resources allocated. Instead, European politicians simply highlight the moral high ground that we Europeans certainly can afford to feed an extra 10 million refugees. So they come, but Europe has no space to house them. Then, on a humanitarian basis, these refugees were able to enjoy some basic human pleasures, like snacks, maybe a few movies a week, or opportunities to relieve biological pressure.
The lesson I learned from China's social phenomena is that while morality is definitely essential to human society, one needs to pay close scrutiny to people who push others to higher moral standards without themselves moving first. Moral high ground is a nice place to be, but it takes resources, courage, and sacrifices to go up there and stay there. In the real world, both resources and bravery are in short supply. For example, does Zelensky's son join the Azov storm troopers? Does DJT's son volunteer to serve in front-line infantry or man a Patriots battery in Qatar? Does Merkel's house adopt a few refugees and keep them warm? Does Starmer let his daughter serve in the refugee camp? The draft may be cruel. The moral high ground may be too tough to conquer, but if the king and his sons lead the men in a charge at the front, I am sure that a lot of complaining would go silent.