HIGHLIGHTS OF LAVROV-RUBIO CONVERSATION

Russian and US foreign ministers have held a phone conversation at the initiative of Washington, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik.

Agreed to maintain communication to tackle issues in Russian-American relations and remove unilateral barriers built by Biden's administration that hinder trade and investment cooperation.

Expressed a mutual commitment to engage on pressing international issues, including the settlement of the situation around Ukraine, developments concerning Palestine, and broader issues in the Middle East and other regional matters.

“Arms Reduction on the horizon”

That’s impossible and dumb. China would have to be included in any such arms reduction deal, and verifying it would be next to impossible.

The world will be more stable with Trump at the helm, and I think the Ruskies believe it, but the wild card will be China for everyone. Would the Russians want to reduce their arms knowing full well China will not?

They aren’t that stupid.

I’ve been saying for years that Bush 41 and Clinton missed an ideal opportunity when the Soviet Union fell to completely remake the world for the better.

Why? Because we and the Russians are natural allies. No, of course, we weren’t during a lifespan of communism in Russia, because that system sought to overthrow our form of government and our way of life. However, if you go back to the 19th century, we bought Alaska from the Russians. Would they have sold it to a nation that they thought was hostile to them? No, not a chance. Similarly, we leased land in central New Jersey (which is now the triangle of territory encompassing Lakehurst NAS, Fort Dix, and McGuire, Air Force Base) to the Russian Army so that they could test artillery shells with powder from the Dupont factories in Delaware. Would we have leased land to a foreign army on our own territory, if we thought that power was hostile to us? No, of course not. The simple fact is that we are both continent-sized powers with immense resources. Our populations are generally quite well educated and have a reasonably similar set of values, and we are both on the leading edge of a lot of technologies. We are so far apart, except where Siberia and Alaska meet, that we truly don’t have any territory that could possibly be in dispute with each other. We also share two common enemies that are extremely dangerous: Red China, and radical Islam.

Bush and Clinton could have started us and the Russians down the road from cooperation on certain areas of common interest, to some kind of a Marshall Plan to help Russia recover from 75 years of Communism, and gradually get to the point of being quite friendly with each other. If we could become allies with the Germans and Japanese after what we went through in WW2, we certainly could have become allies with the Russians when we never exchanged gunfire with each other. But these guys absolutely blew it. I don’t know if it’s because they were stupid, because they were told what to do, or because they were lining their own pockets, or some combination of those things, but they really screwed the pooch. I am hoping that Trump and Putin, both very practical men, can set aside past differences (most of which have nothing to do with each other) and begin this process. We wasted 30 years that could’ve been used to make the world a much more peaceful and prosperous place, but I suppose it’s never too late to try to fix what was screwed up previously.

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