DOOMED. Kasparov, a famous chess player, says Russia's on the way down thanks to Putin. Said the same thing 13 years ago. Why does the Western media keep printing this rubbish? Silly question.
PUTIN PALACE. Here's a palace actually built on his orders. And here's how the richest man in the world spends his time. (But it's gotta be Putin's: here's a photoshop of him in the pool). More rubbish.
COVID. A WHO representative thinks Russia's getting it under control. Moscow is opening up.
VACCINE. It is reported that the EU is considering approving the Sputnik vaccine because of delays in US ones. Merkel says she will help. Only a few months ago, this was out of the question.
INTERESTING. Zakharova: "The most popular comment I receive from Americans on my personal social media accounts is how to get Russian citizenship". I doubt much will come of this – but... Russia, land of the free and home of the brave. Has a ring to it, hasn't it? There are some Americans there.
OPEN SKIES. Moscow is preparing to leave after failing to get assurances that US allies won't share information with Washington. But, if Washington changes its mind, it will too.
NAVALNIY. Navalniy returns on plane filled with Western reporters and supporters, arrested and, after bail hearing, jailed for 30 days. (Broke probation terms on fraud conviction). Great excuse to sanction Nord Stream! Demos around Russia on Sunday – see video of 14-year old. Usual stuff, usual coverage. Meanwhile both Sweden and Germany keep information about his so-called poisoning from Russia.
NAVALNIY, COCKROACHES AND PISTOLS. I'd heard he'd called Muslims cockroaches but I didn't know there was a video. Here it is with English subtitles. Definitely Nobel Prize material. Did Washington really want to suggest that he is an "ally"?
DOESN'T MAKE ANYTHING. This week's "Made in Russia" video: aircraft, vaccine, buses, robot weapons, pigs, medical facilities and a new airport. All very new, shiny and high-tech, too.
PUTIN-BIDEN. They had their first phonecall. Interesting to compare the Kremlin's record with the White House's: but Biden has to talk tough, Putin doesn't. But "interference in the 2020 United States election"? Really? Wasn't it the most secure ever? Does Biden really want to raise that subject?
RUSSIA-EU. This seems to me to be much harder language than we've seen before. More suggestion that Moscow is going to dump the EU qua EU.
SAUCE, GOOSE, GANDER. RFE/RL has been fined for not admitting it's a foreign agent.
SOLARWINDS HACK. Not Russia but Israel? And another so-called Russian hack blows up.
AMERICA-HYSTERICA. While START will likely be extended for another five years which is good, we can otherwise expect more of the same: Clinton and Pelosi suggest Trump was following Putin's orders and Biden mentioned bounties, Solarwinds and Navalniy.
FAKE NEWS. The NYT printed over 3000 items on the bogus Trump/Russia story. That's two a day!
NEW NWO. European poll. Everything has changed: "Most Europeans rejoiced at Joe Biden’s victory in the November US presidential election, but they do not think he can help America make a comeback as the pre-eminent global leader... Majorities in key member states now think the US political system is broken, and that Europe cannot just rely on the US to defend it... look to Berlin rather than Washington as the most important partner... A majority believe that China will be more powerful than the US within a decade and would want their country to stay neutral in a conflict between the two superpowers. Two-thirds of respondents thought the EU should develop its defence capacities... Washington cannot take European alignment against China for granted. Public opinion will have a bigger effect on the relationship than it once did, and needs to be taken into account." Another time when Trump exposed the emptiness behind the curtain. Note the reference to having to pay attention to "public opinion" – the dreaded populism appears.
EUROPEANS ARE REVOLTING. One of the Trump Administration's last actions was to impose more sanctions on Nord Stream 2. The chair of the relevant German parliament committee said the sanctions were "unacceptable" and suggested penal duties on US gas. I doubt Biden will change the policy.
UKRAINE. Only 10% of Ukrainians think things are going in the right direction. In a curious parallel, given the US involvement in destroying Ukraine, only 14% of Americans think their country is.
TURKEY. Erdoğan says Ankara will not ask Washington for permission to buy more S-400 SAMs.
© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer
How will China's future control of the high seas affect US trade and economy, when China becomes the "global policeman"? Will this in fact lead to a net US savings, being relieved of this current role.
Posted by: Deap | 28 January 2021 at 12:57 PM
@Deap I don't think China has the slightest interest in being the "global policeman". Don't forget it has two awful examples of the fate of countries who thought that everything, everywhere was always their business.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 28 January 2021 at 03:32 PM
If the US does not provide global maritime security, how will China protect transit of their fishery exploitation, their African mineral exploitation and cheap product transits into global markets, once the US stops acting as the "global policeman". Will the UN step in and take over this role?
Or is everyone now on their own good behavior - do unto others sort of self-governance? Not sure the world is really ready for the total collapse of the pushy de facto American Empire where everything has been our business - for the benefit of everyone else too.
I would rather we pay the price and continue running the high seas than defaulting any other close contender. Which would be as you claim China, who shall decline the honor and suck off of us?
Or will the Russian polar route become the new grand global highway for all maritime trade in the near future. Just read polar ice cap melting is a 60 year cyclical phenomenon, and not a new global warming trade route, only a temporary one.
But if had my druthers, i would rather see American self-sufficiency and reversion to global isolationism. Let someone else manage or neglect the rest of the globe - one advantage of being a quasi-island nation. Always felt global "domination" was thrust upon us; not something actively sought. This being the voice of a WWII War Baby, who still remembers simpler times in the neophyte global hegemonist US of A.
Posted by: Deap | 28 January 2021 at 06:09 PM
@ Deap. If there's a problem, there's an international, cooperative solution.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 28 January 2021 at 06:23 PM
How do you see the first steps to take for America to get out of the global policeman role?
Does this happen in the open or behind the scenes. Does the shift in global security transcend changes in US administration? What back room forces control this type of major decision making. Who else wants the role, in the spirit of global cooperation.
Recent guide in Japan when asked whether Japan felt it needed to maintain its own military - in light of both NK and Chinese sabre rattling at the time. Guide said he was happy with their "internal security forces" but assumed the US would come to their defense if there were any international threats of Japan.
(I did not share his expectations- not sure anyone in the US has sufficient emotions invested in fighting for other countries sovereignty these days. Or perhaps any NK or Chinese threats are over-rated in this electronically connected world - a hot war over Taiwan - how many global players bank on this never happening, even if Taiwan turns into another Hong Kong.)
Posted by: Deap | 28 January 2021 at 08:15 PM
@Deap. It's happening. Nobody is planning it. It's reality. Things will adjust, messily or not.
And, in simple terms, the USN fooling around in the Black Sea or South China Sea is not exactly the same as the RN eradicating the slave trade or Rajah Brooke cleaning out the Borneo pirates.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 28 January 2021 at 08:23 PM
Deap,
You have made the case for the Belt Road Initiative - no seas needed for a World-Island superpower
Posted by: ISL | 29 January 2021 at 04:48 PM
ISL,
The continental system worked great for Napoleon too.
Posted by: Fred | 29 January 2021 at 08:04 PM
Fred, le militaire francais... mon dieu, cest tres apropos afterall I guess you are advising Xi not to roll a million tanks down the BRI - was that his plan? I must have missed it. For some reason I thought the plan was a trading block, like RCEP (unlike the horrid TTP corporate giveaway.
Posted by: ISL | 29 January 2021 at 09:04 PM
ISL:Good reminder about the Belt and Road project. Do you know how the Chinese effort is going to make the Karakorum Highway all-weather? I traversed that road several times - 10 years apart, first one in 1998.
2008 was the last trip, and huge progress had been made on the China side, but ever larger efforts would be needed to make this an all weather passable on the Pakistan side--plus irreversible changes to the small village life plowed down along the way.
(Most gorgeous place I ever visited was the Hunza Valley, who counted on being totally cut off from the outside world once winter sealed the KKH.)
I should Google-Earth this area to see what I can learn. Terrain was impossible, narrow, steep cliffs, winding and geologically unstable. The first fair weather KKH pass, completed only with massive Chinese (slave?) labor was heroic enough. Will man and machine make it easier this time?
There were spots that were less than a mile apart as the crow flies, that took 20-30 miles to traverse along the winding mountain sides to reach the same point to point. Even more time if you had to dig through the latest landslide rocks to make the way clear again. AAA was not going to bail anyone out up there.
Though Italian highway teams faced similar challenges in their mountainous areas and just bridged over the ravines which basically flattened and straightened the highways to meet their demands; not Mother Earth's natural roadblocks.
On to Karachi ports and the Suez chokepoint. Or the infamous Khyber. To open the back land door of China to commercial land traffic will be a monumental accomplishment - and a credit to their strategic planning if/when they pull this off. I assume failure was not an option, when they embarked on this Belt and Road.
The two far western Chinas I saw in 1998 and then 10 years later in 2008 provided a contrast in sheer will, determination and money to spend. Later visits to Eastern also demonstrated they too were suffering from rapid development excess. Love to go back there again and see what 2028 did for them.
Posted by: Deap | 30 January 2021 at 01:39 AM
ISL,
That was the whole point of the 'continental system' I referenced. "no seas needed", especially since L'emporer didn't control any.
Posted by: Fred | 30 January 2021 at 08:43 AM
Re BRI and all that. Don't forget the Northern Sea Route -- only Russia has the icebreakers to make it possible and it bypasses areas controlled by NATO navies.
They're not just a bunch of complacent nincompoops living off their fat in Moscow and Beijing.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 30 January 2021 at 10:37 AM
Every country has laws for illegal demonstrations, and the Russian Federation is no different. In many countries if you illegally demonstrate you may wind up in a prison hole for many many years never to see the light of day again.
Russia has a Constitution, a Constitution that specifies that peaceful demonstrations is a Russian citizen's right. The Western press has been spreading misinformation/lies regarding the Nalvalny demonstrations. True, Russia arrested those who were illegally demonstrating, but they were quickly released with minimal fines as specified by the Russian Constitution.
Now to the flip side of the coin, a Trump supporter New Mexico Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, the founder of Cowboys for Trump Organization who never set foot in the U.S. Capitol building when it was breached, was arrested by the FBI for an internet posting. Federal Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui refused him bail and threw him in an isolation cell. This Magistrate Judge is an unelected official appeared to be angry that Griffin refused to accept the results of the Presidential election. Magistrate Judge Faruqui told Griffin "Refusing to accept the outcome of the 2020 election is like not believing facts or science". The Judge's insane behavior was rectified when Chief Judge Beryl Howell of US District Court for Washington D.C. ordered Griffin immediately released from his solitary confinement. Judge Howell's order stated " The defendant's charged conduct was largely peaceful, his contemporaneous and subsequent statements, while provocative, do not suggest that there are no combination of conditions that could assure his appearance in court".
The world see's a picture where the Russian Federation is becoming more like what the United States used to be, while the United States is becoming more like the old Bolsheviks.
http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-03.htm
https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/04/americas-political-prisoners-first/
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/537594-judge-allows-cowboys-for-trump-leader-to-be-released-from-jail
Posted by: J | 07 February 2021 at 01:32 AM