... Clinton and Donald Trump, questions remain as to which candidate is favored by which foreign leaders. While mainstream American media is still basically covering the race with horrified fascination at the popularity and perseverance of the Trump campaign,... ... domestic affairs and are unfit or inexperienced to handle world affairs. In essence, Democrats always have to defend against the accusation of being foreign policy weaklings. This accusation is never leveled against Republican candidates (even when a particular ...
Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners ... ... and immolation, understanding this process (and more importantly the failure of the intelligence community and state department to make inroads against it) requires one... ... beyond anything the West could ever think plausible.
Against this backdrop, it is inexcusable that American agents find themselves at a loss to understand the appeal of that...
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 ...
... becoming a de facto ‘fascist’ state. In reality no such explicit initiatives can be found backing up such radical accusations. More calm analyses find Russia simply not accepting being told what to do on the world stage and that general position ... ... influence on America, it would be naïve to think that open American support and encouragement, at least through formal media declarations and diplomatic speeches, did not have an impact on increasing the intensity and duration of domestic protest....
... Russian Institute for Strategic Research is a prime example of this problem. Upon his exit early in 2015, Reshetnikov unleashed a torrent of information that, while interesting, really does not amount to more than just gossip and hearsay. Worse, American media and political analysts adopted it almost wholly as fact rather than as one perspective from a motivated source to talk badly about Russia:
“The Russian analyst’s scathing remarks about the country’s leadership and about the community ...
Western media members are currently basking in what to them seems to be a story of economic ‘come-uppance.’ Saudi Arabia announced ... ... this ceiling, thus guaranteeing its 2015 economic ‘problem.’ When you look deeper into the multiple foreign-policy, intelligence, and global political layers of this decision, however, you don’t find a country in trouble or even incompetent....
... notion that the sanctions are causing a precipitous decline in the popularity of Putin. It is not uncommon today to find numerous media accounts in the West testifying to this very issue, with many supposedly Western experts on Russian politics declaring predictions ... ... next two years.
Perhaps most intriguing of all was the fact that Putin actually claimed that sanctions had only a 25 to 30% causal value in the fall of the ruble. Much more important was Russia’s continued dependence on oil and natural gas, thereby ...
... border.’ Of course, for those of us who have followed this conflict for the past half year, we have had heard this accusation at least half a dozen times. Sometimes there has been evidence to partially support the claim. Sometimes the claim has ... ... single thing: NO RUSSIAN TROOPS HAVE MOVED INTO UKRAINE OR LAUNCHED ANY OFFENSIVES. Given this indisputable evidence that even intelligence and diplomatic agencies in the West admit, it seems that Russia was punished today for, well, for having its soldiers ...
The interplay between Ukraine and Russia when it comes to gas geopolitics goes far beyond economic negotiations and development. It lies at the heart of what has been fairly inaccurate or uninformed media reporting in the West. This aspect of the conflict has been so poorly documented in the West, while being exhaustively reported in Russia, that it is time to provide some English language background to this underappreciated aspect still powering ...
The Intelligence Community, regardless of regime type, has famously always tried to co-opt and ultimately adopt advancements and evolutions in technology, especially in terms of media. Newspapers, radio, and television have long been appropriated in order to influence, massage, and outright manipulate messages and events important to the national interest. Often the question is not so much whether a country’s intelligence ...
