... other…who hell was Mr. Putin? No one had ever really heard of him. Not even Russian people had really heard too much about him.
The country, at that time, was an economic mess, heavily in debt and it was still groping its way out of the ruble crisis of August 1998, which saw people’s bank accounts frozen – to try to stem the run on the banks and the ruble had been devalued.
Vladimir Putin set about restoring some faith back into Russia. It was an uphill task. The Russian people ...
... with – from South America and India and to the mightiest of them all…China. However, the West, I suggest, actually needs Russia, far more than Russia needs the West, in many respects. Especially now with the sudden and dramatic rise of ISIS in the Middle East. The sanctions war escalates What was not expected, I suggest, that Russia then carefully and judiciously, as well as selectively hit back and the result is that now Europe’s farmers are suffering heavy losses, which will ...
... Russians feel good about projecting strength as the expense of their main rival
3.) Use this action to rehabilitate and increase Russia’s global power by
a.) framing the intervention as Russia taking a responsible and leading role in combating ISIS and preserving state sovereignty/the world order; this in turn can hopefully
b.) Relieve pressure/sanctions regarding Russian actions in Ukraine
c.) show regional dictators in the Middle East that, unlike the U.S., Russia will not be a fair-weather-friend ...
... maintaining the financial military assistance at practically the same level, which implies the reluctance to have a major brawl. Resumption of deliveries was conditioned by establishment of a democratically elected government. However, successes of the ISIS in Syria and Iraq and jihadists in Libya and the Yemen crisis, propped up by Cairo’s promises to hold parliamentary elections before the end of 2015, have accelerated the reconciliation process.
Washington keeps blasting Cairo for violation ...
... Middle East Strategy (Sensibly): Part I
4.) Dealing with Syria’s Civil War
AMMAN — Amidst a sea of Middle Eastern conflicts, the civil war raging in Syria is currently the largest and deadliest. Here, as in other situations, we have a crisis in which we must be careful not to blame Obama too much but must also note the missed opportunities where his substantive leadership could have made a huge difference, though not without some risk involved. So, right from the start, it must be acknowledged ...
The events that took place on the border between Turkey and Syria in late July 2015 prompted Ankara to join the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). What is the significance of the decision?
On July 20, 2015, a suicide bomber attacked the Kurdish Amara Culture Centre in the city of Suruc, killing 32 people and injuring another 100. Two days later, in Ceylanpinar, Kurdistan Workers’ Party ...
... addition to combat activity, IS, according to Global Terrorism Dataset, conducted more terrorist attacks against non-combatants than any other group in 2014.
There are many ways to explain the IS phenomenon. One approach, suggested here, is that IS/ISIS strikes right at the interface of what may be the two main trends in the evolution of transnational violent jihadism today
[2]
.
The first trend is the “regionalization” of transnational jihadism. While this has been a mainstream trend ...
... are blaming Obama for the imminent collapse of the world order and Pax Americana are the same people who blame him for U.S. economic woes, as if things were great in January 2009 and America was not in the midst of the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. Still even more amusing and amazing are that many of these people are both the people who led America into the Great Recession and into invading Iraq.
Having said this, I will am quite happy to repeat that I find the ...
... itself from the Gulf.
It’s amazing that it’s taken us so long to realize how much our money going into Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states comes back to haunt us: though Joe Biden recently got in trouble for saying so, support for ISIS and other Islamic extremists and terrorists from very wealthy individuals motivated by the Saudi state-sponsored and ever-present-throughout-the-Gulf religious cult of Wahhabism/Salafism streams out of the Gulf like an oil spill, polluting the entire ...
... confronting Obama: one for intervention, one against intervention, with the Administration considering both.
In the for column, the former al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia groups calling themselves first the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/the Levant/al-Sham (ISIS or ISIL) and now just Islamic State (IS) might possibly have been the worst, most brutal, most powerful terrorist organization in the history of the world at that point. The group now controlled huge swaths of Syria and had taken over huge swaths ...
