Posted on 12/10/2016 5:47:52 AM PST by Kaslin
According to a recently published Heritage Foundation report, the 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength, Russia poses a “formidable” and “aggressive” threat to the vital interests of the United States. The report states, “Russia seeks to maximize its strategic position in the world at the expense of the United States. It also seeks to undermine U.S. influence and moral standing, harasses U.S. and NATO forces, and is working to sabotage U.S. and Western policy in Syria.”
The international machinations of the current Russian government are not all that different from domestic strategies pursued within Russia, according to David Satter, former Moscow correspondent for the London Financial Times and longtime observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Author of three previous books on Russia and the Soviet Union and an advisor to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, Satter has written a new, eye-opening account of recent internal, Russian intrigues in his book, The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin (Yale University Press, 2016, pp. 240, $20.07)
He begins with the disturbing revelation that Yeltsin, a man who came to power through peaceful means and popular support, murdered hundreds of his own people to hold onto power. Satter asserts that the so-called “rebirth” of post-Soviet Russia, interpreted as the death of Communism, was a sham with a phony window-dressing of perestroika and a fake overhaul of the Soviet economic and political system.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Okay, this nefarious little cabal expects us to swallow-- feathers and all-- the following. Russia and Putin are expansionist because they come to the defense of the Syrian government, a friend to both Russia and the Christian population in its borders. Or because of actions in their backyard. E.g., they took back the territory of Crimea, which was historically part of Russia and is populated by Russians who wanted to be part of Russia. Or providing support to Russian rebels in Ukraine after a regime-change coup of a democratically-elected leader who was friendly to Russia (the coup and civil war was instigated by neocon Victoria Nuland-Kagan, to weaken Russia's role in Syria).
What does it profit a people to destroy and divide the whole world (the devil's m.o., btw) for a very limited geo-strategic interest? But alas, this is as rhetorical as asking the scorpion the same question in Aesop's fable. But fortunately, I think the frog is wising up to the destructive goals of this scorpion.
And with that statement the author undermined any credibility he might have. I don't trust Putin, but this sounds like more propaganda from the let's return to the cold war and spend all of our money on the DOD crony capitalist acquisition system again. $2B 747-8's anybody? How about some more Littoral Combat Ships for Afghanistan. Are we working on the replacement for the F-35 yet?
We don't have a viable policy in Syria, and whatever we think we are doing should be undermined.
Can we just agree that we actually need to start focusing our resources, time and attention, on issues where we have vital interests at stake and not spend all our capital, actual and political on places that are peripheral, that we can't fix, or that we can't even really get to except with $1000 per gallon fuel delivered by global air-tanker delivery.
Wow! Glad to see you saw that this guy is a scoundrel too.
She lost me at “ undermining America’s moral standing”
Oh, and BTW, it was a small group from Harvard and U.S.— Larry Summers, Stanley Fischer, et al.— who reorganized the Russian economy in the 1990’s and saw to it that kleptocrat oligarchs controlled the economy. This same oligarchs— Boris Berezhovsky, Mikhail Friedman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, et al.— became billionaires and internationalists and is the reason for the rise of both Christianity and nationalism in Russia.
Founded in 1961 by strategist Herman Kahn, Hudson Institute challenges conventional thinking and helps manage strategic transitions to the future through interdisciplinary studies in defense, international relations, economics, health care, technology, culture, and law.
Although the world has moved on from the Cold War, one suspects that Kahn's disciples at the Hudson Institute have not.
Is the author [of the book or this review] one of the author's of Arab Spring? Is he advocating we continue to side with the [freedom-loving democratically inspired] terrorists in Syria and Chechnya?
Russia has lots of issues. The fall in oil prices has not helped them, but we need to stop, as Buchanan said, slapping their hand away and driving our tanks up to their front porch. They have made clear that if we don't back off they will resort to [tactical] nukes in theater. After we loose an aircraft carrier or an air base with planes in some god-foresaken place in the middle east are we going to launch a global nuclear strike. I don't think so? Our alternative is to seek UN letter of condemnation.
Or we could not get ourselves into those situations in the first place - which is what the smart strategist does. We don't have vital interests in these places. Access to the Black Sea and freedom of shipping into the Med and the rest of the world is a vital Russian interest. Freedom from assault by islamic terrorists is a vital Russian interest.
We need to stop playing "Civil War" where you still get milk and cookies if you lose.
You mean, like the the Department of Justice vs the Branch Davidians or even Ted Bundy?
Some folks seem to like Putin but for the common man there, things are rather droll; small businessmen are jailed, organized crime thrives.
Those apartment building bombings are curious. It’s interesting to hear them take it as truth that the government planned those bombings. I have not personally read up on it that much.
But when that Russian jet went down last year, due to that soda pop bomb, it makes one wonder alright.
When Russia conquers and destroys nations, Russia is the devil.
Liberal tyrants, whether they are American or Russian will blow up hundreds of their people to preserve their hold on power.
From the article:
The reality exposed in this riveting book is that despite the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia continues in its long tradition of being a rogue state under yet another autocratic regime determined to hold onto power by any means possible, including murder.
True.
“You mean, like the the Department of Justice vs the Branch Davidians or even Ted Bundy?”
I wasn’t aware the US government blamed those attacks on terrorists, I will reread my history.
Daddy Assad helped bomb the US Marines,
The son Assad allowed Jihadis to operate from Syrian territory and even have camps in Syria while the US was in full force in Iraq; everyone knows Iran is Syria’s puppetmaster. The Bush administration almost expanded the field of operations into Syria. Iran (Soleimani) killed US soldiers in Iraq, up to 500.
Assad is better in that he is not ISIS; but even those kinds of connections have to be wondered about.
“Rußland bleibt Rußland” (Russia remains Russia), old German saying.
Everything Putin does is relative to Russian history. Not just Soviet history, but the Czars before them. Three things in particular explain much about him.
The first is that Russia is a Russian Orthodox Christian kingdom. Putin’s biggest and easiest successes have been when he has advanced Orthodox Christianity in Russia. But it is a faith with its own rules, which are not very clear to western Christians.
The second is that Russia is European, or wants to be European. But this conflicts with the third thing, that Russia is Asian. This gives Russia a split personality.
Russians crave the civility and culture of Paris, but when in Paris they crave the harsh liberty, even license of the Steppes. In truth they find contentment in neither.
Russia was a Czarist empire, a fierce competitor for power in the world. And it became a Soviet empire, with the same aspirations. But the Soviets left Russia so depleted and exhausted that their imperial ambitions will be set aside for a long time.
However, Russia is also profoundly nationalistic. Their grabs of part of Georgia and Crimea come under the heading, in their minds, of “reclaiming” both territory they had lost and many Russians who lived there. Which is very scary to the three Baltic states, who have lots of Russians living there.
I think what you mean to say is something along the lines of “and the Branch Davidians and Ted Bundy, unlike the Chechens, are not even terrorists”
The bombing of the marine barracks in Lebanon was ordered and orchestrated by Iran via its militia in Syria
Admiral James Lyons ( ret) has spoken out about this and the directed orders of US officials to stand down and take no retaliatory action vs the Iranians even though we had targets and forces ready to launch
You can watch and hear Lyons on YouTube or read the extract of his comments here
https://counterjihadreport.com/tag/1983-beirut-barracks-bombing/
Janine R. Wedel, "The Harvard Boys Do Russia", The Nation, May 14, 1998
Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: the Life and Times of Boris Berezovsky
There are Christians in the opposition, leaders in fact, that opposition has talked to the Russians in peace talks as well. Undeniable stuff; for the propagandists.
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