... government, ever since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, but in order to understand why that is – one only has to look at the deep historical ties, between Russia and Syria: going back many years to 1893, when a consular office, of the Russian Empire was first established there. During the Cold War, Syria served as an ally to the Soviet Union, against the will of the Western powers and their bonds became strong.
That aside – it is clear that Isil could not be allowed to go on – unchecked and unfettered, killing and butchering ...
... agreement on how to react to this latest development, facing Europe. The concept of freedom of unfettered movement between Schengen member states and the principles of granting political refugees, refugee status is now in tatters. Why the world needs Russia With the ending of the Cold War, there was a wave of euphoria descending over Europe and Russia was quick to embrace the changes, from a centralized economic, control system – to that of the free market economy. Businesses were springing up like mushrooms, as were nightclubs ...
... Russian-Chinese cooperation is gaining more ground, growing from mostly economic areas to political and security domains. The Chinese-Russian axis creates opportunities and temptations for neighboring and more distant states, resulting in the rapid institutional ... ... “us” and “them”, global “good” and global “evil”, reminiscent of the decades of the Cold War. Needless to say, the United States and China appear to be the centers of gravity for this new polarization of global ...
... was unarmed but was operated by agents elsewhere and was attempting to relay images back to a home base. Israelis did not disclose whether or not that enemy objective was successful but they were certain that the drone was not American, Chinese, or Russian: IDF claimed it to be an Iranian drone assembled in Lebanon and flown by Hezbollah. I have loosely called this in the past the world’s first ‘Islamic Crescent drone’ and emphasized how much it signaled the transnational nature ...
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 ...
... Derzhava (powerful state) and will not recognize its culpability in creating its own future political cataclysm.
This perfectly matches what Stephen Cohen astutely called several years back as ‘Cold War Triumphalism.’ In basic terms, since Russia lost the Cold War it was and should be treated as a de facto defeated nation. This triumphalism has arguably never left American decision-making power, given that the advent of this attitude began with President Bill Clinton and has lasted through three presidencies ...
America seems reluctant in accepting the fairly benign fact that countries do not like to be dictated to and thus misses opportunities for creating new dialogues. This is especially prominent in explaining the poor relationship at the moment with Russia. There seems to be an element of purposeful animosity in the way Russia is viewed, analyzed, and engaged, especially at the so-called expert level and most prominently within the now Republican-controlled United States Congress. Perhaps one of ...
There are numerous think tanks, both in the United States and Russia, which are deeply concerned about the state of Russian-American relations. Places like the Moscow Carnegie Centre or the Brookings Institution in Washington DC are regular go-to places for the media when seeking expert opinion and analysis. However,...
... of the United States. If Russia truly does make inroads to enact measures that might achieve this goal long-term, then the entire nature of the Russian-American global relationship could change fundamentally.
So here we sit, once again looking at a Cold War-like detente between Russia and America with the latter side utterly confident that its maneuvers and actions will have the desired deterrent effect on the former, bringing it to heel and making it more compliant with Western interests. But what we might be seeing instead ...
Anyone who has worked through post-mortems on the Iraq war is familiar with the pitfalls associated with ‘groupthink’ and preconceptions. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the few modern examples of consensus across American partisanship. Some have argued such assumptions emerged from an administration not interested in counter-arguments and alternative information. Others pointed to embedded preconceptions within the Intelligence Community itself, making it impossible to jump off the analytical...
