Ralph Peters explains the strategic benefits for Putin of such actions:
- He sends a message to NATO (especially, to its new, easternmost members) that, “Hey, the Americans won’t even defend themselves. You really think they’ll defend you?”
- He sends a message to Russians that it’s the American military, not Russia’s, that’s hollow and rotten. It’s great propaganda that titillates Ivan and Olga (the latter almost as much as his bare-chested selfies).
- His intelligence collectors study our electronic systems as they track the older jets that he sends out (he won’t reveal the signatures of his latest aircraft).
- He accustoms us to aggressive behavior, conditioning us not to “overreact.” Were it to come to a sudden war in the 21st century, the side that pulled the trigger first would win. He’s training us to hesitate.
- The Russians are well aware of the low morale in our scandal-plagued Navy. On top of that, they watched, enthralled, as the Iranians grabbed and tormented our sailors — only to be thanked by our secretary of state for resolving the crisis they created. Now the Russians believe that they can get away with anything, as long as Obama’s in office.
- And in those famous words from the 1968 Democratic convention, “The whole world’s watching!” Putin doesn’t care what our elites think of him. He plays to a global audience. And that audience sees him as bold and successful, while it sees us as afraid and ineffective.
Of course, the Most Equal Comrade doesn't give a flying diddly. He's the architect of the Great Leveling Project, the goal of which is to take post-America down a peg and bring it into some kind of "international community."
Just how would your "man," not that it's gonna happen this time, again, do diddly? Stoop to Putin's childish and desperate behavior? Putin is a dick, that's for sure, but I think you secretly admire him for making your detested MEC look bad. Our military could annihilate his and you damned well know it.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course it could, but, as Peters points out, he knows post-America has lost its interest in leading the forces of order, stability and freedom against the likes of the Putin regime. Indeed, love st it's self-respect
ReplyDeleteDo you think there's any serious disputing the foreign-policy benefits Putin knows he's getting from his recent actions, as enumerated by Peters?
ReplyDeleteDon't care. We know the truth that we can quash Putin like a little bug. That is not a denial of reality. It is reality.
ReplyDeleteWhy you like living in mortal danger and humiliation is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteHearing the Russian Perspective
ReplyDeleteJanuary 2, 2016
The neocons and liberal hawks who dominate the U.S. foreign policy and media establishment are pushing the world toward a nuclear showdown with Russia as few people hear a comprehensive response from the other side, an imbalance that a new Russian documentary addresses, writes Gilbert Doctorow.
By Gilbert Doctorow
Without mincing words, the new Russian documentary World Order is a devastating critique of U.S. global hegemony justified in the name of “democracy promotion” and “human rights” ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992.
It is directly in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first repudiation of the American unipolar world issued in his speech to the Munich Security Conference in February 2007 and his further, ever more explicit exposés in a succession of speeches that challenged specific manifestations of “American exceptionalism.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin taking the presidential oath at his third inauguration ceremony on May 7, 2012. (Russian government photo)
World Order, which is now posted on YouTube (in Russian) and at another site (with English subtitles), illustrates through graphic footage and the testimony of independent world authorities the tragic consequences, the spread of chaos and misery, resulting from U.S.-engineered “regime change” and “color revolutions,” of which the violent overthrow of the Yanukovich regime in Ukraine in February 2014 is only the latest example. (Some of the highlights from Putin’s interview are translated into English here and here.)
The title of the film follows on Putin’s address to the 70th anniversary gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015 which had as its central message that world order rests on international law, which in turn has as its foundation the UN Charter.
By flouting the Charter and waging war without the sanction of the UN Security Council, starting with the NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 and continuing with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 up to its illegal bombings in Syria today, the United States and its NATO allies have shaken the foundations of international law.
This only demonstrates we Americans in our isolationist position have a lot to learn. We certainly do not wish to become Russia. As we now nominate in the Republican Party Mr. Trump, we begin to look a lot like Russia. This documentary without question is propaganda, can we say better of our “weapons of mass destruction”? It is a world of Business and we sound like a Fire Sale.