... charge of a relatively weaker Russia taking on the most powerful nation in the world and regardless of the election’s outcome, Putin had already won: he took to heart von Clausewitz’s maxim that “War is the continuation of policy [or politics] by other means,” something that Obama seems to have missed. Putin had essentially “weaponized” WikiLeaks (and, in the process, the unwitting U.S. news media) against Clinton, the Democratic Party, the U.S. electoral process,...
... commercial dispute court in Stockholm, Sweden.
If it seemed the players of Team Putin gave up too easily on having RUE taken out of the game, they had other plans in motion to counter Tymoshenko’s effort to limit Russian influence in Ukrainian politics.
Criminal Scheme #2: Manafort Key Agent in Laundering Dirty Gas Money to U.S. During Crackdown
Even before Putin agreed to let Tymoshenko kill RUE, his agents—including Firtash, Mogilevich, and Yanukovych (the latter with Manafort ...
The worst thing about Trump? Globally, people like him and his supporters are everywhere and their politics maddeningly banal, as the ethno-centric politics of hate in the Caucasian Republic of Georgia demonstrate frightening similarities to the same politics in the Unites States of America.
By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) ...
... and ethnic Russian divide within Ukraine, with Yanukovych allying with the ethnic Russian camp that feels strongly tied to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin in particular has a history of trying to manipulate, strong-arm, and dominate Ukrainian politics, with Yanukovych acting as key agent for advancing Russian interests in Ukraine.
Behind the scenes and unofficially, Manafort worked as a campaign consultant for Yanukovych, already surrounded by a cloud of corruption at this time, who was ...
... parties that border on being fascist; they are often against the European Union and are forcefully hostile to immigrants and refugees.
Leaders like Angela Merkel of Germany, trying to show kindness and compassion to refugees, may be ousted sooner by politics rather than later for her troubles, and other governments balk at attempts to coordinate regional refugee and economic policies. In France, a rising far-right party funded by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government may possibly come ...
People claiming that the withdrawal from Iraq of U.S. forces carried out by the Obama Administration from 2010-2011 explains the rise of the terrorist group ISIS have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. A simple look at the timeline, geography, facts, context, and history concerning the withdrawal and the rise of ISIS makes this abundantly clear and provable beyond any reasonable doubt. Ultimately, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's policies and the dynamics of Syria's raging...
In the wake of Turkey’s downing of a Russian military jet that violated its airspace and Russia’s resulting casualties, tensions are certainly on the rise. Despite the fact that these tensions should not be overblown, important questions about Putin’s aims need to be addressed. Yet in the end, the saddest thing is how avoidable this incident was and how easy it would be to improve this situation dramatically.
By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981), originally...
This was written as the Paris attacks unfolded. I have preserved the unfolding nature of the original piece to connect the reader in a deeper sense to what I was feeling as I wrote this.
As this historic terrorist attack unfolds, France, Europe, the West, and the Middle East need to really think about what they've been doing and what they are about to do before doing it. This is a time to be smart, but it is also a time to marginalize unhelpful, myopic voices, be they those of bigots or those...
By intervening squarely on the side of Shiite Bashar Assad against his own mainly Sunni people and the entire Sunni Middle East, Russia may once again be the center of attention from the global Sunni jihadist movement. But, unlike the 1980s in Afghanistan, these mujahadeen are much more experienced, much more sophisticated, much more capable, have a larger radicalized population from which to draw, and are able to strike anywhere, including Russia itself.
By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook...
... end of Bush’s first term and all of his second (this poisonous political atmosphere only got worse after Obama was elected). Furthermore, if Obama was able to muster Congressional support, it would empower him that much more in the public and politics senses. And yet, Obama’s putting so much power and influence in the hands of Congress on so crucial an action showed that he had learned almost nothing at all from his previous interactions with Congress, whether with insecure Democrats ...