While all indications are that the US, regardless of who the next president is, will continue to support Israel’s rampage through the Middle East, as well as more confrontation with China, less sure is the direction that Russia policy will take.
We’re now getting a lot of pieces about the new and improved foreign policy team coming in should Kamala win the presidency. Philip Gordon, the odds-on favorite to replace Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, is supposed to be a pragmatist who understands the “limits of American power.”
Gordon and deputy national security advisor to the vice president, Rebecca Lissner, have a vision for a “humbler approach to foreign policy.” Yes they’re Blob neocons, but they’re the more responsible type, we’re told. I wrote last week about Gordon and reasons to doubt the puff pieces about his more reasonable approach, but wanted to expand on that here.
That’s because implicit in these articles championing Kamala’s potential foreign policy team is the idea that the reason that the world is in such disarray and the US is at risk of direct confrontation with Russia is because of Joe Biden. Economist Philip Pilkington on his always-interesting podcast Multipolarity recently took up this argument making the case that Biden, due primarily to his senility, failed to keep the Blob crazies on a leash; instead Biden let them loose allowing Ukraine to spiral out of control.
While Biden is no doubt a senile, angry old man, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is quite stupid, are there reasons to believe that their exits will lead to a less belligerent foreign policy?
While some sort of detente with Russia would certainly be welcome, here are three reasons it is unlikely.
1. We need to remember that the puff pieces about smarter Democrat foreign policy advisers are a genre at this point. The same type of things being said about Gordon and Lissner were being written about Biden’s team four years ago. Sullivan, for example, was supposedly wary of foreign adventures and believed that “the strength of U.S. foreign policy and national security lies primarily in a thriving American middle class.”
He was lauded for visiting 112 countries with Hillary Clinton. And what was his focus going to be in the Biden White House? According to Politico, the Covid-19 pandemic:
The “major focus” of the Biden NSC’s work, at least initially, will be on beating the coronavirus pandemic and restructuring the NSC to make public health a permanent national security priority, Sullivan said.
So all these pieces about the foreign policy brain geniuses on Kamala’s team really mean nothing. These people do very little deciding on priorities or policy. So who does?
2. American plutocrats have wanted to return to the pre-Bolshevik days for more than 100 years. The goal to plunder Russia briefly became a reality upon the breakup of the USSR. In the 1990s, The US’ best and brightest sucked hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country with devastating results. The number of Russians living in poverty jumped from two million to sixty million in just a few years, and life expectancy plummeted. It made the Great Depression in the US look comparatively like a walk in the park. Putin put an end to this national catastrophe inflicted upon the country by the West, and they never forgave him for it. Why is the US and company so dead set on removing Putin and theoretically getting someone more “friendly” in power? Here are the leading countries based on natural resource value as of 2021(in trillions of dollars):
Source: Statista
In the eyes of American plutocrats, Russia is too valuable a prize, and they have now backed themselves into a corner by helping drive Moscow and Beijing together. If the thought of Russia controlling its own resources was intolerable, China having privileged access is unfathomable. The anti-Putin policies have been pumped out of corporate-financier think tanks in the US for two decades. Both of Kamala’s foreign policy brain geniuses, Gordon and Lissner, for example. have had stints at the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). CFR’s funders, according to Influence Watch, include Accenture, Apple, Bank of America, BlackRock, Chevron, Cisco, Citi, ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hess, Meta, JP Morgan Chase, Moody’s, and Morgan Stanley.
It also has corporate affiliations with Bayer, Blackstone, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Dell, Eni, KPMG, Mastercard, McKinsey and Company, PayPal, Sequoia Capital, Veritas Capital Fund Management, and others in its President’s Club program. CFR’s corporate affiliates include American International Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, FedEx, Johnson and Johnson, Lockheed Martin, Merck, Microsoft, Pfizer, TikTok, Twitter, United Airlines, and Wells Fargo.
Think tanks like CFR then steer legislation and foreign policy.
The RAND Corporation, which shares many of the same benefactors as CFR, laid out a plan to weaken Russia and topple Putin in its infamous 2019 paper, “Extending Russia.” It involved economic pressure, as well as starting conflagrations all around Russia — in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and in Central Asia. RAND’s blueprint has largely been followed — more successful in some areas than others.
And while it’s not mentioned in the RAND report, who’s to say the US won’t try to lead Europe or a portion of it (the Baltics, Poland, Germany?) from behind into more of a direct confrontation with Russia (as long as the US could wiggle out of Article 5 commitments)? Sure, it would be a disaster for any and all of them, but does the US care if the goal is to force Moscow to keep putting out fires?
The key question is do US plutocrats view their fight against Russia as existential? Judging by the RAND paper, they likely prefer a world on fire rather than accepting that they must live in a multipolar world. As the RAND report shows, there exists a clear line of thought in the Blob that overextending Russia by upping the chaos all around it will destabilize the country and bring about the downfall of Putin. The opposite has happened so far, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
As I pointed out in a recent piece examining Philip Gordon’s career, a major aspect that supposedly makes him smarter than those on the Biden team is that he’s more in line with Obama and believes in limits of America’s power. But when you really look at what they’re talking about, it’s not that they want to give up on regime change in Russia; it’s that they want to make sure the US isn’t getting too involved, that it isn’t Americans dying in a direct confrontation. One of the things they hung their hat during the Obama years was “leading from behind.” Is that not what the US is doing now? No direct confrontation with Russia, Ukrainians and mercenaries doing the dying, and working on setting the Caucasus on fire via Armenia. The flavor of the month is that the US is a responsible actor that might desire a “reset” with Russia at some point while it’s now the UK leading the escalation charge. France was recently the most gung-ho with Macron calling for troops. The Baltic states are always crazy. The US has largely been enacting the RAND plan while adhering to Obama’s lead-from-behind credo. To the last Ukrainian, as they say.
Speaking of Obama, he’s given credit for being “smarter” about Ukraine. That’s because he uttered some true words back in 2016:
“The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”
What Obama was arguing was that the US should not go to war directly. But in the same interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic he also echoed the RAND strategy, arguing that the US was successfully overextending Russia:
“Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp. And he improvised in a way to hang on to his control there,” he said. “He’s done the exact same thing in Syria, at enormous cost to the well-being of his own country. And the notion that somehow Russia is in a stronger position now, in Syria or in Ukraine, than they were before they invaded Ukraine or before he had to deploy military forces to Syria is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of power in foreign affairs or in the world generally. Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence. Russia was much more powerful when Ukraine looked like an independent country but was a kleptocracy that he could pull the strings on.”
Obama also oversaw the 2014 coup in Ukraine as the Blob was likely working from the same script the whole time. It just so happened that Russia started its special military operation while Biden was president rather than Obama. The Blob was able to continue its efforts to bring about a Ukraine-Russia conflict in the interim under Trump despite the freakout over Russiagate. What indication is there that Trump would be able and willing to take these forces on should he become president again?
So is there any reason to believe whatsoever that the plutocrats funding the DC think tanks and fueling this new Cold War strategy are going to rethink the plan because Ukraine is defeated on the battlefield and a new administration takes over in Washington?
Or is it more likely that the US will continue trying to destabilize regions all around Russia? Is it more likely that the US will accept defeat in Ukraine or try to ensure that Ukraine remains a steaming pile of rubble that Russia must commit men and money towards pacifying Ukraine? Recently the Duran’s Alexander Mercouris and Alexander Christoforou were talking about the possibility that Zelensky will be replaced with the former Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Arsen Avakov, because he’s someone who could effectively keep up a terror campaign in a failed state due to his close ties with neo-Nazi groups and his penchant for collecting damaging information on people.
3. Was it just the fact that Democrats were apparently too lazy to update their platform in several areas, including on Russia, or are they trying to tell us something when the Kamala platform reads:
President Biden will never turn his back on our allies. In his second term, he will continue to strengthen NATO and stand with Ukraine to stop Putin’s atrocities and constrain Russia’s threat to allied nations and America’s vital interests.
If there was any doubt, here’s Harris in her nomination acceptance speech:
And that we strengthen—not abdicate—our global leadership. Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies. Said Russia could—quote—“do whatever the hell they want.” Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, I met with President Zelensky to warn him about Russia’s plan to invade. I helped mobilize a global response — over 50 countries — to defend against Putin’s aggression. And as President, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.
Meanwhile the oligarch-funded think tanks keep pumping out material arguing for an open ended Cold War with Russia. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that advocates for a sustained strategy of “containment.” Gordon co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report with the Russia hardliner Republican Robert Blackwill. They called for the kitchen sink to be thrown at Russia, including sanctions, weapons, an undying commitment to Ukraine and Europe — basically what the US has done since.
While Kamala and the Democrats might not be the ones setting the agenda, they are letting the US oligarchs know that they will adhere to their agenda and continue the Russia policy, which could be a decades-long effort. The think tanks are saying this, that the new Cold War is here to stay. Maybe Gordon and Kamala’s Obama-esque team is more crafty and takes a step back to regroup but policy will not change. It could potentially get even worse, as a new emphasis on leading from behind could help remove the US from the plan’s consequences.
For now, the narrative works out well. Biden can be blamed for Ukraine’s defeat and the new and improved Kamala team can arrive to enact a smarter policy that’s pretty much the same as the old dumb policy. I would love to be wrong.
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Thanks for this article. The increasing certainty that Kamala “Lethal Force” Harris promises four more years of war in Ukraine and Palestine has concentrated my mind.
I realize that the foreign-policy establishment a k a blob is a swamp of incest and self-congratulation, but I checked Gordon and Lissner’s Wikipedia entries for true foreign postings. None. Some overseas think-tank boloney, but not one post at an embassy, not even an easy embassy like London, Paris, or Tokyo. Let alone the front lines of their interest, Helsinki or Vilnius.
Am I missing something? Visiting 112 countries Is pointless. Although Harris, who has no foreign-policy experience, also has shown up in dozens of countries.
These people are qualified for office politics and academic tittletattle, not diplomacy.
This is the kind of stupidity that Blinken shows. They are highly trained in studiously ignoring what displeases them.
Yes, but with the agenda described in the article, they don’t want or need diplomacy. All they need is a docile population behind them and the urging of the MIC ++ etc. to provide impetus
War is inevitable for USA.
There is no treaty or agreement that can impede war
Every treaty has been invalidated and revoked
China and Russia can only trust US to wage war on them
The real question is when Europe unravels into new alignments. Putin is currently the only brake on total war but he will not control STAVKA forever. The Pentagon is aware of what lies ahead and is less ging-ho than politicians
They know what has already been threatened and how easily Rotterdam could disappear and U.K. would starve.
Kamala was chosen for the same reasons Biden was. Biden was going to delegate all the decision making because of his senility; Kamala because she’s green, knows nothing and has no allies. For this reason, expect all of the same. The same people will be calling the shots.
Not disagreeing with the general idea – while Harris is doing her best to be a policy cypher at the moment, no-one “serious” in Washington is advocating any sort of step-back from its imperial objectives, the only difference between the various tribes being tactics. However, there are a few things I would like to add.
1. A brief historical quibble.
It seems that until roughly the back end of World War II, US economic and policy elites generally viewed then-Soviet Union, now-Russia as a sort of a blank spot on the map populated by savages cohabitating with bears. For example, I am at present re-reading Wertheim’s “Tomorrow, the World”, which explicitly focuses on how, beginning in 1940, American strategic thought and objectives shifted to being and running a global empire, de facto replacing the British and French empires. And through all the internal discussions of where to draw the line on American influence – Western “quarter-sphere”, Western hemisphere, Asia, etc. – the Soviet Union is at no point seriously considered, even as a potential enemy or rival. In similar vein, circa-1939 military analyses had the top three militaries in the world being France, Poland (!) and Germany, pretty much in that order, with Britain getting a mention largely thanks to its navy. A 3-5 million strong Soviet army? Savages, bears, blank spot on the map. Even in the early stages of the Cold War, before the USSR heavily developed its Siberian resources, the US position is framed a lot more in terms of security than wealth acquisition.
This is not to say that individual plutocrats did not want to loot Russia as far back as the 1920s, though the British were a lot further along in this line of thinking than the Americans (having actually tried to loot the place during the Russian Civil War). However, I suspect that only after the Soviet Union went away and the US advisors moved in to pull on Yeltsin’s strings did anyone in the US realize just how much there could be looted. Which is how we ultimately get to, I think it was Condi Rice who said – it isn’t fair for a country with 2% of the world’s population to have 40% of the world’s resources, or something to that effect.
2. The China angle.
Remember, one objective of Project Ukraine was, of course, to get back to the Gay Nineties, make Russia a puppet (or a dozen puppets), and loot the place while wrecking its nuclear arsenal and military capacity (security and wealth acquisition in one convenient package). Incidentally, I think it was Brookings that, back in 2020-2021, literally published a report calling to break Russia up into 10 “federated regions” while abolishing the FSB and the other security services. But the other objective was to separate the Russians and the Chinese. In part because a key part of the anti-China strategy was and is control over the South China Sea, or at least the entrances and exits to and from said. If you can do that, then you can shut off China’s maritime imports and exports at will, basically strangling the place, since its economy depends on a steady stream of both. A China-friendly Russia, on the other hand, throws a major monkey wrench into the works; China’s Belt and Road Initiative does as well, and note how many of those land routes run through Russia-adjacent regions. I won’t even mention the Arctic Passage, which Russia plans to make major investments in, and the route for which would start from, drum roll, China-adjacent North Korea. [North Korea having the northern-most ice free year-round port on the eastern Asian coastline, with convenient road and railroad links to both China and Russia already in development, at least per Russian TV news.]
Rationally, the US could have caught vastly more flies with honey than with vinegar, especially given how Western-oriented the Russian economic elites were pre-sanctions. Of course, rationally, the US could have come to an accommodation with China a long time ago, I even recall Kerry briefly suggesting (after speaking with the Chinese) that the US go halfsies on the Belt and Road Initiative, before that idea was shut down. Instead we have what we have, and so long as we insist, for the sake of empire, on making an enemy out of China, we must also insist on destroying Russia as “China’s resource colony” (who actually needs whom more in that relationship, of course, is a much more complex question). That’s on top of simply wanting to loot the place (and extinguish the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet), of course.
3. It strikes me that, in the post-World War II world, once the US sets on a policy course of regime change in a particular place, it never wavers from it, even after decades of not having much success. Cuba and North Korea are notable examples – both, especially Cuba, could have been coopted diplomatically, especially after 1991, and yet we just keep trying to strangle them. Maybe it’s the way Washington institutions have evolved, maybe it’s the fact that we have people sit in Congress for 40 years at a time, whatever the cause. It seems to me that barring a truly capable President – “good” or “evil” – the anti-Russian stance the US have committed itself to now will just go on perpetually until Carthago delenda est, whether it makes actual policy sense or not. Which, I suppose, also makes sense from a purely imperial perspective, since I stress again that in addition to having vast resources to plunder, Russia is the “only” nation in the world that can reliably nuke the US out of existence no matter what the latter does. [I would argue, so can China, but I suspect in Washington China is still viewed with a very racist bent, not unlike Russia, so the realization might not have sunk in yet.]
Anyhow, there we are. I guess the next two break points will be the end of the Ukraine conflict (however that happens), and then 2030, when, presumably, Putin anoints a successor of some description.
Putin won’t be appointing any successor in 2030. Read John Helmer’s latest. Putin will not be there in 2027 simply because the General Staff wants to eradicate US satellites and spy planes and deal with Israeli attacks on Syria.
They know they have the weaponry to destroy NATO and believe Putin is making the West overconfident
The handover from Putin to his successor will be the ultimate test of his legacy. Too often charismatic leaders make the country too dependent on them and then things fall apart when they leave, usually through death.
Paul, think of it this way: it is good to have an overconfident, socially and economically extremely stratified enemy in economic decline with 800 military bases strung out all over the world as ideal targets and with allies who find it difficult to clothe, feed, heat, house and educate all their people to an acceptable level and who are much given to genocide, either as active participants or passive onlookers.
Thanks for the well thought out post. It makes a lot of sense.
Re point 1, see:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/11/covert-operation-ukrainian-independence-haunts-cia-00029968
American plutocrats would love to find themselves another Yeltsin, albeit, one who does not choose a Putin as his successor.
Plan A isn’t going so well for our plutocrats, and eventually they’re going to realize that this Russian state isn’t going to fold and sell-off (or give-away) the motherland’s assets, and China…
But there’s always Plan B: maintain enemies who pose an existential threat to freedom, our way of life, and whatnot, collecting dividends and fees from the carnage as MIC never loses.
Russia possesses a massive share of the world’s natural resources, but we in the west still don’t hear much about Russian technology, although it is the Russians who are fielding actual “wonder-weapons” on the battlefield and not us. This disparity seems unrecognized in western media, let alone explained and accounted for. If this were corrected, our plutocrats might find less enthusiasm for their designs.
You really should learn how Russia works. Yeltsin did NOT select Putin, Berezhovsky did. Yeltsin Family was rather similar to the Biden Family in terms of corruption. Berezhovsky ran the Family – which included advisors such as Valentin Yumashev whose 2nd wife was Yeltsin’s daughter (both now Austrian Citizens) and whose 1st marriage produced a daughter, Polina, married to Oleg Deripaska.
Berezhovsky needed protection – “a roof” for when Yeltsin died of alcoholism. The Siloviki wanted to put him on trial for treason and to protect themselves “the Family” needed an FSB insurance and the option was Putin and the St Petersburg Crew.
Putin as Prime Minister was to ensure Yeltsin and his Family were not tried for treason – that is why Naina Yeltsina is still alive. Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader not to die in office, and Yeltsin had no idea what the rules were in Post-Soviet space until Berezhovsky helped define them with Putin.
Why you know so little of Soviet technology is a tribute to the Veil of Ignorance in your society. The most advanced product technologically is a nuclear SSBN and Russia builds them……..they have semiconductor plants, engineering plants and as much manufacturing as Germany at its peak. Soviet Union always had high-quality manufacturing at Mil-Spec but not at consumer product levels.
It was USA that bought Russian rocket engines to keep its space program going.
Even in WW2 USSR produced as many if not more tanks than USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II
Berezovsky without the ‘h’, not Berezhovsky.
I don’t know a single RU citizen who believes that Berezovsky committed suicide in 2013 (as per the UK’s official findings). Boris lives!
My tennis trainer in Moscow gave several lessons to Berezovsky back in the 90s (when tennis was the sport of choice among RU elites, even Yeltsin played a lot when sober). He told me that before their first lesson, Berezovsky’s bodyguards took him aside and warned him that, if he made even the very slightest suspicious move that looked vaguely threatening, they would not hesitate to shoot him dead right there on the court. He also had the impression, based on their sideline chats during practice breaks, that Berezovsky was exceptionally intelligent. In his view, the notion that the brilliant and energetic Berezovsky would off himself was totally absurd.
In fairness, a cornered Berezovsky who lost nearly everything might be a different story from Berezovsky at the height of his power. How well would someone like him weather such a fall? I can just about accept a suicide as possible, though I guess I wouldn’t bet on it either.
The Berezovsky version is what I’ve heard from people I trust here as well, though the inner workings of the Family are inevitably somewhat obscure. It does seem like Berezovsky picked and promoted Putin, but as you say, it served a collective interest for the entire Family. Not sure if Yeltsin could’ve resisted it, or if he would’ve resisted it if he could; it almost certainly wasn’t his idea, but neither did he seem to fight it.
Paul Greenwood,
Godfather of the Kremlin by Paul Klebnikov is a terrific book about Berezovsky. It is the most informative book I have ever read about Russia. It describes the Berezovsky/Yeltsin partnership in detail – with a drunken Yeltsin leaving Berezovsky to pretty much do as he pleased.
The author was murdered six months after the book was published.
Betezhovsky had a sidekick inside police – Litvinenko – that he tried to put in charge of FSB
Strange background – academic Mathematician turned car dealer with Chechen protection ends up running Russia in Yeltsin‘s name
Obama: “Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp. And he improvised in a way to hang on to his control there,” he said. “He’s done the exact same thing in Syria, at enormous cost to the well-being of his own country.” That’s mighty projectionist of you, Saint Obama. Syrian intervention by Russia tome looked minimal and restrained, and Russia already had a military base in Syria for quite some time. Had Syria fallen, wasn’t there a pipeline that the West could have built to replace Russian energy? The US expended far more that Russia in Syria and still mostly failed. And didnt Ukraine “slip out of Putin’s control” already in 2014? Russia was ok losing Ukraine as a client state then in fact didn’t Ukraine mostly severe trade with Russia shortly after 2014? So again, Ukraine is not an example of Russia overextending herself.
“Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp. And he improvised in a way to hang on to his control there,” he said. “He’s done the exact same thing in Syria, at enormous cost to the well-being of his own country.”
Paul Greenwood: Even earlier. The U.S. of A. and U.K. were already horsing around in Syria as early as 1947, a mere two years after independence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1949_Syrian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
The U.S. of A. and U.K. just can’t stop themselves, now can they? ‘Tis a mystery~!
One of the reasons the Syrian governments are so bad is in reaction to the constant interference by Anglosphere geniuses.
France created what is now known as Syria and Lebanon even trading Hatar Christians to Turkey in 1936 when Leon Blum was PM
I agree that many regimes including USSR became more repressive BECAUSE of U.K. or U.S. or France threats
Germany didn’t create a client state in Ukraine in WWII. All of Ukraine was administered by the German state, either its civilian or military branches, with the exception of Odessa, which was occupied by Romania.
This is the strongest proof of the anti-national character of the OUN. During the Second World War, there could be no question in anybody’s mind that they were fighting for the side that gave Ukraine the least autonomy.
I think the idea was that we controlled all of Ukraine through Yanukovych and then controlled only a much smaller part of it directly (in Crimea) or through other proxies. That is nonsense because Yanukovych was an independent angler, like a less competent Lukashenko. He tried to balance between Russia and the West and failed. Also, his constituency was relatively more leftwards and pro-Russian, and he made some bows in that direction. But that’s not what I’d call “Russian control”.
As for trade, it’s interesting. IIRC trade wasn’t abruptly cut off, it was very gradually cut down, so there was still a lot of Russian-Ukrainian trade even in 2016.
I am a bit puzzled by the Statista chart that presents the major natural resources of Saudi Arabia as oil and timber. Timber?? I did not realize Saudi Arabia had such vast forests.
According to World Forestry there are about 700 000 hectares of forest in Saudi Arabia. Apparently the Saudis are clearcutting them as fast as they can. Helping save the world, you know . . .
5x that amount has burnt in Canada alone this year. Saudi’s clear-cutting is a drop in the bucket in terms of ecocide
This is assuming a linear quantitative relationship with the surface of forest destroyed.
Perhaps cutting down whatever forested area there is on the Arabian peninsula will have disproportionate effects on a fragile regional ecosystem and on the local climate (evaporation and rain patterns).
Bill Moyers, who most of us think of as a good guy and who once interviewed Yves, was a member of CFR and revealed himself to be a Russia hawk back in 2014. Mainstream Dems have always had this Jekyll and Hyde quality in their domestic versus foreign policy views. Of course Obama’s “moderation” was a complete fake given that he destroyed Libya and tried to do the same to Syria. But then Obama was about as unserious a president as Kamala no doubt will be should she win.
What the above doesn’t talk about is who would be on Trump’s FP team. Trump certainly did toe the deep state line on Venezuela (and then some) and the neocon line on Iran. But he doesn’t appear to have the visceral hatred of Putin represented by the Dem camp. Some of us believe that if he had been president the Ukraine war wouldn’t have happened.
And btw Biden was clearly all in for all of his misguided politices.Those who say he was led by the nose (not the above) are blowing smoke.
“And btw Biden was clearly all in for all of his misguided politices.Those who say he was led by the nose (not the above) are blowing smoke.”
Bingo!
As for Moyers, I too was disappointed when BillMoyers.com published essays, written by others, in support of the Russiagate crazies but I never saw or read any comment directly from him that reflected the same credulity. Then again, I stopped looking for fear he may indeed have chimed in on the subject, so I could be wrong.
Q.E.D. …The Ukraine Project will continue as terrorism and guerilla war after more organized conflict peters out. Why? The oligarchy wants it that way. We need not a different president or a different party in power in the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber. Recent history demonstrates that whoever is fronting for the oligarchy or big money or big this and that is irrelevant. “Nothing will fundamentally change” as long as money calls the tune.
I don’t doubt much that Harris would be Biden 2.0 in her Russia policy. I think Trump also wouldn’t change much, though he’s more of a wildcard and I expected this post to be more about him, judging by the headline. Both Vance and now Kennedy are fairly far on the spectrum of the Ukraine war, so it’s interesting that they are being given so much prominence now. Still, after the letdown of his first term in this respect (and the most important for me personally) I have low expectations. Part of me thinks a more confrontational US is actually to Russia’s advantage, though it also increases the chances of a catastrophic escalation.
Thank you for this. While Gaza has crammed the bandwidth in my antennas for much ongoing consideration of Ukraine, I recall Taibbi’s remark some years ago that the Blob thought that with Putin they were getting a sober Yeltsin. They have never forgotten or forgiven, nor will they.
I thought it was a Russian Pinochet; that was a popular analogy among Russian liberals of a certain more blatant sort, and I’m sure I’ve seen rightwards Western journalists make that connection too.
While US foreign policy is a big part of the problem with Russia, it’s not the only thing.
Countries in Europe have to find a way to get over centuries of animosities and fears.
I think the US machinations continue because they are opportunistic operations that only work due to long standing divisions that Europe/Russia must find a way to overcome.
They made decent progress in that regard. Until they invited the Belt of Butthurt (Balto-Poland) into their union and got reinfected with that virus. Quite frankely, I think those regions need to be thrown out and the malign meddling of their enabler, the UK, needs to get curtailed drastically.
And the beat goes on…
Europe has a longer history of functional security arrangements than animosities and fears. The Westphalian System was named after an European city where European rulers figured out principles of multipolar world.
Of course, Europe is still trying to recover from the birth of Germany, but obviously there are forces in the world that prefer Germany and Russia not to form an alliance. And they will exploit any real or perceived animosity and fear to prevent that.
“…opportunistic operations that only work due to long standing divisions that Europe/Russia must find a way to overcome.”
Treaty of Westphalia 1648 was in Münster in Westphalia between Catholic States and Protestant States which is known as Thirty Years War
Europe has had 5 Years War, Seven Years War, Thirty Years War and Hundred Years War
Berthold Brecht wrote Mutter Courage to show how war contractors pay a price
It must really kill our oligarchs to think that there is a $75 trillion jackpot just sitting there waiting to be taken. What is worse, they had a taste of this jackpot back in the 90s and I think that Putin said that they took over a trillion dollars out of the country in a systematic looting spree. It’s not fair! They want that money. They deserve that money. It should belong to them. Sure they have all these plans to ‘decolonize’ Russia into dozens of smaller countries. The Pentagon even has plans to send in teams to seize their nukes after Russia falls. Navalny would have made an ideal President for Russia. He would have gotten the country into a civil war with it’s Muslim States which would have led to the country breaking up.
Well as seen in the elections in the US, it is the oligarchs that run the place and select who the President is. So of course they are using the US, and the EU to be the tools to make this happen. Only it isn’t working. In fact, Russia has only gotten stronger and is in a iron-tight partnership with China now which represents another great looting opportunity lost. So of course it does not matter who is in power in the US as they really do not have ultimate power. It is the oligarchs that really have that power and they are getting frustrated how their plans of the past coupla years in respect of Russia have totally failed. Remember, these are people who are not used to being told no for an answer. So they will double down as they have invested billions in Project Ukraine which was really Project Russia and somebody is going to have to pay them back their money. That is how the system works after all.
As heroin addicts can attest, the ridingof the dragon is an ever elusive dream and I am looking with glee how the US will be sinking lower and lower on chasing this “unipolar moment”.
I am positive that Ukraine will not fight Russia to the last Ukrainians, nor other Europeans, nor Taiwan or Phillipines. Maybe Australia…?
No matter who wins the November election, I think USA policy towards RU will become less bellicose (and its policy towards China more so); not due to ideology, but due to resource limitations. A change in administration is a chance to shift gears, and as it’s becoming increasingly clear that Project UKR is not working out as planned (no RU economic collapse and regime change in the offing, most likely outcome an impoverished and demilitarized rump UKR with millions of UKR citizens permanently living in the EU), early 2025 will provide a fine opportunity to declare victory (brave UKR saved the West from the RU bear, and now NATO is bigger than ever) and re-focus attention on China. At a certain point, the USA has to choose where to allocate its resources, and the ongoing Israeli war is already hogging a lot of them. Even the USA has its limits.
Whatever intentions and strategies the new administration has, it will inevitably end up reacting to exogenous variables (and black swans) that nobody expected. As Harold Macmillan allegedly said: “Events, dear boy, events.”
This came in the morning feed https://theconversation.com/how-us-military-planning-has-shifted-away-from-fighting-terrorism-to-readying-for-tensions-and-conflict-with-china-and-russia-228336 I haven’t read it yet, which is probably a mistake.
The CFR: other than being a haven for rich and wanna-be imperialists, it has always been unclear to me how this holiest of holy institutions functions. Anybody with a bit of dis-information on this subject, I would appreciate a link.
In addition to the points raised in this excellent article, and great comments: !. Vladimir Putin himself has said, apparently more than once, that it won’t make any difference who “wins” the election. 2. Despite the drama and BS from the MassMedia and loyal opposition, the first DT regime was very hostile to Russia, but most would rather believe in a contrived fantasy that fits with their political/religious beliefs. 3. The US is an oligarchy, the “Blob” (or what Ray McGovern calls the MICIMATT) represent the interests of the oligarchy. The “national interest” is what the oligarchy wants, not what is best for the nation as a whole.
And the elephant in the room no one wants to see: no matter who “wins” the intelligence-insulting election, the Genocide of Palestine and the Washington Consensus will continue; the likelihood of nuclear war with Russia/China will continue and likely increase, and living conditions for the average US dweller will worsen.
Remember, he’d just had Mrs Chief Justice Gloster call him a flagrant liar to his face & in front of the whole world, and had to bear both his own & Abramovich’s legal costs in the lawsuit he brought against Abramovich. Plus his gf had dumped him.
So with his reputation in ruins & his bankroll much diminished, I expect Boris Abramovich was in a pretty dark place emotionally.
Nice summary. The Statista chart says it all, doesn’t it? Follow the money. Whichever regime occupies Washington DC, they only serve Our Billionaire Overlords rapacious greed. This is how Inverted Totalitarianism works.
Looking at the resources of the top countries, it shows the US and Canada combined to be a slightly greater store of essential resources and combined with Venezuela’s oil considerably more than Russia has. So there’s something beyond access to essential resources pushing the rivalry. The best explanation is that we have ideological and more recently civilizational differences. But so what? I agree with John Bellamy Foster – we need to step outside of our political structures and form an ecological framework. Especially now that we have floated all the boats. Because we still need effective rudders n stuff. Lambert’s graphic of the Evergrand stuck sideways in Suez canal is iconic. The place to start asap is with diplomacy. Hey, we can learn.
One consideration that the think tankers may be missing is that as BRICS grows and prospers, what the U.S. and Europe do will become of decreasing relevance to Russia. Despite all the trouble-making efforts in Eastern Europe, most countries in the region will choose to float their boats with the rising tide rather than sink with the falling one.
More broadly, the blob’s schemes have mostly been failures in recent decades. All the neocon fever dreams have flopped miserably, though the dreamers themselves might claim the opposite. Nevertheless, facts are stubborn things, and failures have a way of exacting a price.
A bit late into the debate (time zone issues), but this may add detail to it:
https://www.uts.edu.au/acri/research-and-opinion/briefs-and-working-papers/kamala-harris-and-prc
Murica are a Masonic-Zionist founded Nation-State; and are now the “Leading Bull” Muscle of the Atlantic Masonic-Zionist Hegemony.
The Hegemony aren’t being led by a Hegemon Nation-State; but by a Hegemon of Plutocrats, or a Hegemon-Plutarchy of Plutocrats (including WEF) and their Vassal-Oligarchs entrenched in Govts, Rentier-Bankers, Corporations, and Sociopolitical Organizations(NGOs, Political Parties).
The Hegemon-Plutarchy “pwn” the West – especially the Assets and control National Currencies – so while Nation-States rise, fall, reform, revolutionize, or merge – the Plutarchy will be kept safe or relocate during “most” Man-made turmoils to live out Generations as they’ve done for Centuries.
And the Masonic-Zionist wish to control the World. They did it through Colonialism and Revolutions; and RUS, CHN, and IND have been on the Business end of such misfortunes.
IIRC, the Khazar-Ashkenazi Jewish Diaspora (Black Sea Region) had a Khazar Kingdom/Khagnate (overlaps modern Ukraine) of Jewish Aristocracy (Jewish Named Rulers) for Centuries until they were destroyed by Russia of the 11th(?)CE. The Diaspora were in conflicts with Russia and their Aristocracy for Centuries.
Which explains the “Bad Blood” btwn the Jewish+Russia, Soros(who funded the UKRoNazi Grammar School Paedogogy), Blinken(Soros Family Vassal and his lame Student WhitePaper advocating the bombing of Soviet Hydrocarbon Pipelines), Nuland-Khagan(Cookies+NordStreams), Kolomoiskyy-Zelenskyy(patron of UKRoNazi as Security early on), ISW(crap Military analysis – see the roster), and RAND Corporate Schemes encouraging the splitting of Russia into Resource Colonies.
Sidebar Opinion – Can’t your People just “bury the Hatchet”? Putin is kind to the Jewish as he was looked after as a Child by Jewish Neighbors while his Parents worked. smh…
Sadly, for most Demagogues, Pathological State Actor Hoarders, and World Conquest hopefuls like the Atlantic Masonic-Zionist Hegemon-Plutarchy – the World, simply, is Not Enough…
However – RUS and CHN have managed to outgrow such endeavors; and are now beyond the capabilities of the Hegemony to contain, subjugate, or fell them.
Thankfully…
It’s absurd to argue that US policy toward Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution and before has not been guided by a desire to rape and pillage the country. The early 1990s transition to a market-economy was instigated by the well-meaning but ineffective Jeffrey Sachs, and the people who got rich off the shock therapy were Russian oligarchs not Americans.