Dear NATO Nations, Analysts, and Anyone Still Pretending This Isn’t World War Three
- john raymond
- Aug 8
- 5 min read
Jake Broe has finally locked onto Pillar One—regime security—by reading Putin’s flight plan for what it is: personal survival doctrine masquerading as diplomacy. Paul Warburg has, at last, stepped into Pillar Two—asymmetric warfare—by showing how a few thousand Russian troops and hollow base shells can panic Europe into starving Ukraine.
That leaves my task: bring Pillar Three into focus—the Byzantine traitor–general paradigm—because that is where the hardest, most necessary conclusions live. It is harder to climb each pillar. It demands courage to say the quiet parts out loud while others cling to comforting ambiguities.
This is why William Spaniel is useless: he parks at Pillar Zero—fear of analytic courage—and mistakes accountancy for strategy.
I don’t have privileged access or classified feeds; I have OSINT, Trump’s public record of alignment with Putin, and the consistent betrayal of Ukraine. That is enough. And it forces me to walk the ladder: Pillar One, then Pillar Two, then Pillar Three—because each frame depends on the last.
Pillar One: Regime Security (Prime Directive) Assume autocrats optimize for personal survival over national interest, then reinterpret everything. Putin’s route over the Arctic, a venue in Alaska kept fluid until the last minute, and the obsessive operational security around his movements are not optics; they are survival math.
On the U.S. side, the same lens explains why Trump’s “deadlines,” “red lines,” and “conditions” always collapse into delay: delay preserves his power, not American interests. If an act increases the survival odds of the actor—politically, financially, legally—that is the real objective function.
Pillar Two: Asymmetric Warfare (Perception as Battlespace) The Kremlin’s cheapest wins are psychological arbitrage. A press cycle of “massing on Finland’s border” buys Europe billions in misallocated spending while Ukraine is left short today.
Warburg is correct: offense today is defense tomorrow. But he stops short of the hardest implication: because Washington is captured by Putin-istic influence, Europe must plan and execute without U.S. political reliability. Build the independent supply chains, industrial pooling, and joint munitions pipelines now. Treat U.S. support, if it appears, as a windfall—not a given.
Pillar Three: The Byzantine Traitor–General Paradigm (Enemy Inside the Citadel)
Here is the leap most analysts refuse to take: sometimes the center of alliance paralysis is not confusion—it is sabotage.
In late-stage empires, traitor generals do not need to hand the gates to the invader; they only need to slow-roll orders, misallocate resources, launder the invader’s narratives, and call poison “peace.”
Through Pillar One we see Trump’s incentives; through Pillar Two we see the perception tools; through Pillar Three we recognize the role: an internal actor whose predictable pattern—delay, doubt, diversion—systematically maximizes Kremlin payoff at minimal cost.
If you want the operational test for Pillar Three, use these thresholds:
Incentive Coherence (P1): Does the actor’s move increase their personal survival while harming allied objectives? If yes, proceed.
Mechanism Fit (P2): Does the move rely on fear inflation, narrative flooding, or procedural choke points (appropriations, red-line theater, rules-lawyering) rather than battlefield risk? If yes, proceed.
Adversary Payoff Consistency (P3): Over time, do the outcomes line up with the adversary’s strategic needs (buying Russia time, splitting allies, constraining Ukrainian deep strikes) even when domestic alternatives existed? If yes, treat the actor as a traitor–general for planning purposes. You do not need a signed confession to protect your flank.
Map that to the present:
Delay as a Weapon: Two weeks here, fifty days there—the calendar is the kill chain. Every slipped tranche, every performative “review,” costs Ukraine airframes, interceptors, shells, momentum. That is not incompetence; it is enemy doctrine.
Poisoned “Peace” Offers: Any deal that hands populations to Russian control is not peace; it is future mobilization fodder and leverage for the next bite. A traitor–general sells it as “pragmatism.”
Narrative Kayfabe: Nuclear scare theater, “red line” pantomime, and synchronized talking points with Kremlin media are not coincidences; they are signals meant to freeze allied will while Russia reconstitutes.
Industrial Veto Points: Starving co-production and munitions ramp-ups while over-advertising “readiness gaps” in Europe is how you keep the front starved without ever saying “aid denied.”
Now I will embed the Raymond Method so others can run this logic without flinching:
Step 1: In asymmetric warfare, trust no one until they prove reliability; always accept that betrayal is possible.
Corollaries (Steps 2 & 3): When someone proves they are your enemy, trust that they are your enemy.
Step 4 (Ambiguity Rule): If a seemingly ambiguous move can plausibly harm you, assume that harm is the intended outcome until disproven.
Minimax (An Operational Rephrase of Step 3): When a proven enemy moves, start from: They are trying to harm you, beat you, destroy you. Ask only: What harm does this enable?
What Analysts Should Do—A Laddered Workflow
Pillar One Dossier: Chart decisions against personal survival incentives (legal exposure, money, power). Flag every instance where “national interest” loses to “personal interest.”
Pillar Two Map: For each decision, log the perception vectors (headline inflation, fear levers, procedural choke points) and the cost-exchange ratio Russia earns.
Pillar Three Attribution: If the same actor repeatedly converts leverage into outcomes that select adversary-optimal branches, designate them as a traitor–general for planning. Remember: You are not adjudicating morality; you are protecting logistics and time.
Falsifiability: Specify what would disconfirm Pillar Three (e.g., decisive early delivery of capabilities that Russia most fears; breaking red-line kayfabe; accepting political cost to accelerate Ukraine’s deep-strike capacity). Require sustained behavior change, not meaningless one-off gestures.
Indicators to Watch: Unexplained schedule slips; venue secrecy that only benefits the autocrat; synchronized narratives with Kremlin media; sudden “legalistic” vetoes on already-validated aid; performative readiness scares that justify hoarding; attempts to criminalize or chill reporting on adversary-aligned financing.
What NATO and the EU Must Do—With or Without Washington
Decouple Planning: Treat U.S. reliability as variable. Build a Europe-first munitions and air-defense spine, joint training pipelines, and cross-border logistics that survive U.S. political shocks.
Overweight the Present Front: Increase the proportion of stocks flowing to Ukraine now—where Russian combat power is destroyed—while maintaining a credible, lean deterrent at home.
Target Russia’s Bottlenecks: Finance and co-produce the weapons that collapse Russia’s power projection fastest: air defense, ISR, long-range precision, counter–EW, and deep-strike enablers.
Harden the Mindspace: Pre-bunk the headline war. Publish the delta between “claim” and “fact” in near-real time; price fear properly. If 2,000 troops trigger 200,000-worth of spending, you are being played.
Climbing the pillars is not rhetoric; it is risk acceptance. It means choosing the possibility of being wrong over the certainty of being deceived by an enemy who has already proven their intent.
Broe has Pillar One in hand. Warburg is executing Pillar Two.
Pillar Three is the frame that names what Trump is inside the alliance: not an unreliable partner, but a traitor–general whose pattern serves Moscow’s needs.
Analysts who stop at the first two pillars will keep missing the center of gravity.
But those who climb to the third—eyes open, receipts in hand—can finally plan to win.
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