... in the Ukraine has become as hot as the scorching weather the country has been experiencing of late. Discussions about the latest trends at home and around the world and what it all means for the future of Ukraine have reached fever pitch. The recent NATO Summit in Warsaw, the attempted coup in Turkey, the complicated dynamics of the development of Ukraine’s relations with important regional partner (Poland) and the threat of the situation in Donbass escalating – all this has sent shockwaves ...
... Advisory Board, written in 1990 following a thorough investigation into the resulting ‘war scare’, brings to light deeply worrying misinterpretations of the other’s actions. Many of these same failures are all too apparent in the ongoing NATO-Russia confrontation, in particular the lack of empathy and critical self-assessment.
Taking place as it did in a period of particular hostility between the USA and USSR, effective strategic communication relaying the scope and explicit purpose of Able Archer should have been paramount. Instead the report reveals that the US intelligence community routinely dismissed the concerns raised by the Soviet leadership ...
... a press conference that he is considering lifting sanctions on Russia and recognizing its annexation of Crimea.
Trump also doesn’t think that there is enough evidence to blame Russia for the downing of MH17.
Trump defended Putin against accusations that he was behind the murders of numerous Russian journalists critical of Putin.
Most recently, Trump signaled less-than-enthusiastic, vague, and conditional support for NATO and has calling it “obsolete,” while the weakening of NATO is a chief aim of Putin.
*****
But ties to Russia in the Trump campaign don’t end with Trump and his family.
How Paul Manafort, Agent of Despots, Gave Ukraine ...
... still exist a window of opportunity for Russia before those states would be able to modify their policies and meet the requirements.
What are these requirements, or what will they be in the future? Commonly quoted are the goals reiterated at the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales.[2] At the summit, NATO leaders agreed that all member states should meet a “guideline” of spending a minimum of two percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, a goal originally conceived in 2006.[3] Of ...
... more an internal than an external problem for Ukraine.
The external parties to the crisis around Ukraine have so far decided to confine themselves to the “zero option” of holding back the escalation. Therefore the
stationing
of several thousand NATO troops on the Alliance’s eastern borders while Warsaw and Vilnius
demanded
permanent bases is largely a symbolic act which, however, provides grounds for a Russian response which need not be symmetric. Anyway, moving battalions of several ...
To What Extent Does the U.S. Aegis BMD in Europe Threaten Russia?
In May 2016, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency announced that its ballistic missile defence (BMD) base at Deveselu, Romania, had been put into operation. This marked the second phase of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) announced by Barack Obama in 2009. Immediately thereafter, construction of a similar base in Redzikowo, Poland began
as part of the third EPAA phase
. These events force us once again to...
... establishment may find this analysis helpful, among them:
— The July 8-9 NATO summit in Warsaw that should make a decision on the deployment of rotational multinational battalions in Poland and the Baltic
[3]
.
— The resumption of the Russia-NATO Council sessions.
— Continued mutual accusations about planned and surprise exercises by both sides.
The End of the Long Peace
CEPA report «Frontline Allies: War and Change
in Central Europe»
Rhythmical changes between war and peace have been quite normal for the greater part of ...
... China was
signed
back in April 2015). The European Union issued a condemnation of Chinese and Japanese recalcitrance in roughly equal measure. Moreover, Europeans did not back the US in its endeavor to increase its military presence in the crisis area. NATO held consultations to determine whether the cyber attack would justify the invocation of its collective-defense obligations, but came to no firm conclusions. The simulation comes to an end here.
<р3>Europe’s not eager to go into action
...
... — Roughly a quarter-century ago, the world seemed poised for a triumph of democracy and human rights unprecedented in human history. As Francis Fukuyama famously noted in “The End of History,” the end of the Cold War marked the end of thousands of years of ideological struggle, and the spread of Western Democratic capitalist ideals all around the world was inevitable with the demise of the Soviet Union. It was the end of history as we knew it: nothing could stand anymore in the way of ...
... is bigger than it was, say, three years ago,” Kortunov warns in an interview to Russia Direct. Without the solid policy toward Turkey, Washington seems to straddle between increasing cooperation with Russia over Syria and supporting Turkey as a NATO member in its hypothetical military confrontation with Moscow. This leads to another catch-22 problem: The less certain Washington is toward Turkey, the more unpredictable and explosive the situation becomes. The prospects of a confrontation between ...
