On October 14, the White House dismissed a proposal by President Putin to send Prime Minister Medvedev to the United States to discuss military cooperation in Syria. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the proposal a sign of "desperation." Said Earnest: "We're not interested in doing that, as long as Russia is not willing to make a constructive contribution to our counter- effort," <http://www.rferl.org/content/white-...>
But where is the evidence of Russian...
... earth, has more than enough natural resources and the nationalistic will of its people, to withstand virtually anything the West can throw at it, in the way of sanctions. It had already lived through seventy years of relative isolation, through the Cold War years. It could live, again, if need be, for many more years in relative isolation. The Russian’s know how to do it. They have had seventy years of practice at it. Today, however, Russia also has other partners to trade with – from ...
... as the SCO or BRICS. In sum, the world is gradually acquiring a bipolar shape, with the traditional divisions between “us” and “them”, global “good” and global “evil”, reminiscent of the decades of the Cold War. Needless to say, the United States and China appear to be the centers of gravity for this new polarization of global politics.
One might ask the question: is there anything fundamentally wrong about a bipolar world? Was it not the Soviet-US ...
It is perhaps a misnomer to discuss future ‘blowback:’ there have been groups actively pursuing technological attacks on American targets simultaneously alongside the development of the U.S. drone fleet. Keep in mind blowback comes in forms other than just anger over actual attacks. There is growing dissent across the Middle East at what is perceived to be a total lack of transparency and scrutiny by the American public over its government’s use of drones. This concern was growing...
There is no stronger example of the schizophrenic nature of American foreign policy toward Russia than comparing statements written in the formal National Security Strategy (NSS) of President Obama with actual testimony given by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. In 2010 the NSS asserted that the U.S. would endeavor to ‘build a stable, substantive, multidimensional relationship with Russia, based on mutual interests.’ What’s more, the NSS called Russia a 21st century...
... mania that is obsessed with remaining a great Derzhava (powerful state) and will not recognize its culpability in creating its own future political cataclysm.
This perfectly matches what Stephen Cohen astutely called several years back as ‘Cold War Triumphalism.’ In basic terms, since Russia lost the Cold War it was and should be treated as a de facto defeated nation. This triumphalism has arguably never left American decision-making power, given that the advent of this attitude began ...
America seems reluctant in accepting the fairly benign fact that countries do not like to be dictated to and thus misses opportunities for creating new dialogues. This is especially prominent in explaining the poor relationship at the moment with Russia. There seems to be an element of purposeful animosity in the way Russia is viewed, analyzed, and engaged, especially at the so-called expert level and most prominently within the now Republican-controlled United States Congress. Perhaps one of the...
There are numerous think tanks, both in the United States and Russia, which are deeply concerned about the state of Russian-American relations. Places like the Moscow Carnegie Centre or the Brookings Institution in Washington DC are regular go-to places for the media when seeking expert opinion and analysis. However, these centers of independent knowledge production have had a decided slant in allocating blame for the poor bilateral relations to the Russian side, with the explanations ranging from...
... of the United States. If Russia truly does make inroads to enact measures that might achieve this goal long-term, then the entire nature of the Russian-American global relationship could change fundamentally.
So here we sit, once again looking at a Cold War-like detente between Russia and America with the latter side utterly confident that its maneuvers and actions will have the desired deterrent effect on the former, bringing it to heel and making it more compliant with Western interests. But what ...
Anyone who has worked through post-mortems on the Iraq war is familiar with the pitfalls associated with ‘groupthink’ and preconceptions. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the few modern examples of consensus across American partisanship. Some have argued such assumptions emerged from an administration not interested in counter-arguments and alternative information. Others pointed to embedded preconceptions within the Intelligence Community itself, making it impossible to jump off the analytical...
