Tag: Vladimir Putin

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Russia’s behavior follows no rules

Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia has not played by western rules, morals, or concepts, but Washington has been slow to catch on to this reality.  That is the reason the Obama/Clinton “reset” has been a total failure, and why, in this second iteration of the Cold War, Moscow appears to be gaining the upper hand.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, most policy-setters in the U.S. adopted the belief that large scale, superpower vs. superpower warfare was a thing of the past, and that countries across the globe would mostly be guided by economic interests. They did not acknowledge that Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB agent who publicly mourned the breakup of the USSR, didn’t concur, and ignored obvious warning signs.

While the U.S. and its allies scaled down their military spending, the Kremlin ramped up its arms budget. While the Obama Administration kept key allies such as the United Kingdom and Israel at arms-length, Putin re-engaged with the USSR’s Cold War contacts, and formulated a new axis consisting of Russia, China, and Iran.

The Obama Administration’s confusion and naiveté became almost humorously apparent following Moscow’s invasion of the Ukraine. As the Putin government ginned up national pride by highlighting the success of its armed forces, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry could only sputter, “This is not 21st century behavior.”

The contrast between the Kremlin’s idea of 21st century behavior and that of western nations is stark. While the population of NATO nations have sought to keep Cold War memories of feared nuclear exchanges in the past, Russia, the BBC reports  will be celebrating its 1961 explosion of the world’s most powerful hydrogen bomb in a special exhibition in Moscow.

While the Obama Administration moves to surrender control of the internet to a United Nations controlled organization, Russia has cleverly moved to build a unique organization of “trolls” who, pretending to be everyday people, actually use clever techniques to sway online postings and conversations in Moscow’s favor, reports The Guardian.

Putin’s government—essentially, just Putin himself and his cronies- is an odd arrangement of a third-world style kleptocracy grafted onto the world’s largest single-nation landmass possessing the planet’s most formidable nuclear arsenal.

Hence, good knowledge about how to make it pump, viagra canada deliver click here better. Love maintains all tensions cipla cialis generika and hard times, and keeps trouble at bay. You buy cialis australia have to mention the name and communication address with phone number. If you are still in a dilemma, then read on to find out more. buy levitra wholesale Stephen Kotkin, writing in Foreign Affairs  asks:

“How did twenty-first-century Russia end up, yet again, in personal rule? An advanced industrial country of 142 million people, it has no enduring political parties that organize and respond to voter preferences. The military is sprawling yet tame; the immense secret police are effectively in one man’s pocket. The hydrocarbon sector is a personal bank, and indeed much of the economy is increasingly treated as an individual fiefdom. Mass media move more or less in lockstep with the commands of the presidential administration. Competing interest groups abound, but there is no rival center of power. …

“… Putin has been in power for 15 years, and there is no end in sight. Stalin ruled for some three decades; Brezhnev for almost two. Putin, still relatively young and healthy, looks set to top the latter and might even outdo the former…Bit by bit, however, using stealth and dirty tricks, Putin reasserted central control over the levers of power within the country—the TV stations, the gas industry, the oil industry, the regions…

“Putin’s machismo posturing, additionally, is undergirded by a view of Russia as a country of real men opposing a pampered, gutless, and decadent West. Resentment toward U.S. power resonates far beyond Russia, and with his ramped-up social conservatism, Putin has expanded a perennial sense of Russian exceptionalism to include an alternative social model as well.”

Putin’s position appears secure. The Jamestown Foundation reports:

“This growing irrelevance of domestic politics is aggravated by the Russian government’s aggressive and poisonous propaganda, which has become a political force in its own right. … One figure stands in splendid isolation at the head of this course—President Vladimir Putin, whose approval ratings have reached the level typical for mature authoritarian leaders. After 15 years at the summit of power, and at just 62 years of age, he has established such dominance over other

“Russian elites that all speculations about a possible successor…have now entirely ceased …Putin’s mood swings and idiosyncrasies…overrule every bureaucratic preference for stability and quiet self-enrichment. … Alexei Kudrin, the only person who was able to insist on common economic sense, has been expelled from the Kremlin; German Gref, the designer of the first set of reforms at the dawn of the Putin “era,” has been reduced to an eccentric contrarian; and court aides like Sergei Glazyev have learned to deliver only the advice that the boss likes to hear…”

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Can NATO Survive?

After a successful conclusion to the Cold War, can the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) regroup to respond to the new threat from Moscow?

Vladimir Putin’s intentions were made clear in a telling comment by Andranik Migranyan, head of the Kremlin-controlled “Institute for Democracy and Cooperation” reported in the Fiscal Times in response to analogies between Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and Germany’s in the 1930’s:

“One must distinguish between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939…the thing is that Hitler collected [German] lands.  If he had become famous only for uniting  without a drop of blood Germany with Austria, Sudetenland and Memel, in fact completing  what Bismarck failed to do, and if he had stopped there, then he would have remained a politician of the highest class.”

Moscow’s worrisome military moves are not restricted to former Soviet satellites.  In December, the Kremlin confirmed  that it had deployed ISKANDER tactical nuclear missiles on NATO’s border. The move was not in response to any western action.

There have also been a number of incidents in which Moscow’s nuclear-capable bombers and submarines have come threateningly close to the airspace and coasts of NATO nations both in Europe and the United States.

Richard Perle, former chair of the Defense Policy Board for President George W. Bush and current fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently stated in a Newsmax interview that Putin is attempting to “put Humpty Dumpty back together again and re-create something that looks like the old Soviet Empire.”

NATO’s forces have shrunk considerably since the end of the Cold War, symbolized by the diminishing military budgets of both European nations and the United States.  The United States has also unilaterally withdrawn all of its most vital land weapons, tanks, from the European continent.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in early 2014, which the United States and the European Union say violated international law, will likely poison relations with NATO for the foreseeable future. “We clearly face the gravest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” said Secretary-General Rasmussen of Russia’s intervention.

Russia’s invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, as well as its deployment of ISKANDER tactical nuclear weapons to its European border, have brought back the threat most had thought vanished with the fall of the Soviet Union.  But NATO’s individual governments, including most importantly the United States, have slashed military budgets.

NATO’s sharp reduction in forces, even in the face of increasing threats, has brought into question the viability of the alliance.  A 2012 Brookings Institute study

“There have long been debates about the sustainability of the transatlantic alliance and accusations amongst allies of unequal contributions to burden-sharing. But since countries on both sides of the Atlantic have begun introducing new – and often major – military spending cuts in response to the economic crisis, concerns about the future of transatlantic defense cooperation have become more pronounced.

Erectile dysfunction is termed as a sexual disorder which needs cheap 25mg viagra to be cured on time to avoid any kind of complication, it is advisable to avoid heavy meals before taking the tablet. It may take you away from your favorite sport, hobby levitra tab 20mg check out for more info or going out with family or friends. Vaginal or menopause boredom can accomplish acute sex acutely aching and this can accomplish women abstain accepting sex. cipla viagra online And, once again, this man took on the role of excess sugar and salt in triggering breast cancer causes. generic levitra online appalachianmagazine.com “A growing number of senior officials are now publicly questioning the future of NATO. In June 2011, in the midst of NATO’s operation in Libya, Robert Gates, then US Defense Secretary, stated that Europe faced the prospect of “collective military irrelevance” and that unless the continent stemmed the deterioration of its armed forces, NATO faced a “dim, if not dismal Future.” Ivo Daalder, the US Permanent  Representative to NATO, and James Stavridis, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, have argued that “if defense spending continues to decline, NATO may not be able to replicate its success in Libya in another decade.”

“The alliance’s Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has warned that “if European defense spending cuts continue, Europe’s ability to be a stabilizing force even in its neighborhood will rapidly disappear.” While Norwegian Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide has claimed that “exercises have shown that NATO’s ability to conduct conventional military operations has markedly declined. […] Not only is NATO’s ability to defend its member states questionable, it might actually deteriorate further as financial pressures in Europe and the US force cuts in military spending”

Russia’s aggression represents a disappointing end result for NATO’s numerous attempts to establish a relationship with Moscow based on a post-Cold War (or “Cold War 1” as it is becoming known) era of cooperation rather than confrontation.  According to a recent NATO document, 

“Over the past twenty years, NATO has consistently worked for closer cooperation and trust with Russia.  However, Russia has violated international law and acted in contradiction with the principles and commitments in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council Basic Document,   the NATO-Russia Founding Act,  and the Rome Declaration.   It has gravely breached the trust upon which NATO-Russia cooperation must be based.”

Russia’s NATO envoy, Aleksandr Grushko, responded in a statement reported in the Russian publication RT that “…NATO still has a double standard policy. And Cold War stereotypes are still applied towards Russia…”

NATO turned 65 in 2014, a year that also marks the 15th, 10th, and 5th anniversary of members who joined since the end of the Cold War, enlarging the alliance to a total of 28 member states. It is, arguably, the most successful military alliance in history, winning its original goal of preventing a Soviet invasion, without having to actually go to war.

NATO currently conducts 5 active missions: peacekeeping in Kosovo, anti-terrorism patrols in the Mediterranean, anti-piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa, assistance to the African Union in Somalia, and fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. But it is the Russian threat that looms largest.  NATO seems unprepared to deal with.

Particularly under Vladimir Putin, Russia, despite numerous NATO overtures for peace and cooperation, has viewed NATO’s growth with anger.  Moscow, which spends a greater percentage of its GDP   (4.1%) on defense than either the U.S. (2.4%) or NATO nations (averaging about 2%)  maintains that it opposes NATO growth because it views it as a threat to its nation, despite all evidence to the contrary. A more accurate analysis indicates that the alliance prevents the Kremlin from re-forming the Soviet Empire in a different format.

The Council of Foreign Relations  notes that NATO’s Bucharest summit in the spring of 2008 sharply deepened the distrust. The alliance delayed “Membership Action Plans” for Ukraine and Georgia but declared its support for eventual full membership for both, despite repeated warnings from Russia of political and military consequences. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in the summer, following Georgian shelling of South Ossetia after what it termed an occupation by Russian forces, was a clear signal of Moscow’s intentions to protect and enlarge what it sees as its sphere of influence.

Many had hope that Moscow’s opposition to NATO’s growth had been resolved in 1997, when the alliance and Russia adopted a security agreement in which Moscow consented to NATO’s growth in return for a promise that masses of troops, equipment or nuclear missiles would not be placed on Russia border. The hope was not realized.

The Report continues next week.

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What the Cook Incident Reveals

What is the practical meaning of yesterday’s revelation that a Russian FENCER jet fighter made twelve low level passes over the U.S.S. Donald Cook, a destroyer, in international waters on the Black Sea?

The incident takes place as Russian military forces are positioned to illegally seize more Ukrainian territory, and Moscow-supported agent provocateurs foment chaos in the eastern portion of that nation. These factors represent the immediate background leading to the increasingly tense relations between U.S. forces in Europe and Russia’s military. However, larger issues play a key and perhaps even larger role than Moscow’s Crimean anschluss.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, both western and Russian military forces were significantly reduced.  NATO, of course, grew in membership and geography as the Kremlin’s Warsaw Pact disintegrated, and the vast Red Army returned home to Russia.

But while the west gained significantly, it also slashed its own defense structure. American military cuts were dramatic.  The navy has reached its smallest size since before World War I, and the Air Force is smaller than at any time in its history, flying aircraft that are exceptionally old. The American nuclear arsenal is dangerously antiquated and inadequately tested.

Since the Obama Administration took office, this situation has become significantly worse. A further $1.3 trillion has been slashed from the ten-year defense budget. Geopolitically, the rise of China has made America’s national security posture far more challenged and vulnerable.
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NATO has followed a similar course of disinvestment in armed strength.

The picture from Moscow is significantly different. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s conventional and strategic armed forces have undergone a renaissance.  A comprehensive modernization program fueled by extraordinary amounts of cash has produced an exceptionally well-equipped and capable military.

That rejuvenated armed force has flexed its muscles through invasions into Georgia and Crimea, and a return to military cooperation with Cuba and other Latin American nations.

The harassment of the U.S.S. Donald Cook was an indication of the changing positions of the military positions of the America and Russia, Moscow’s improved geopolitical fortunes, and the Kremlins’ growing confidence in its newly developed strength.

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Obama’s Odd View on Russian Power

The President recently stated that Russia was only a “regional power.”  We recently reviewed the facts to determine whether there is any realistic basis for Mr. Obama’s unexpected contention.

Of course, the first question to arise is, which region is the Comander-in-Chief referring to. Moscow’s vast domain  stretches from Europe to the borders of Iran in the Middle East to the farthest shores of Asia and the Pacific Ocean, and of course the Arctic as well.  Geographically, it is almost impossible to proclaim Russia as a regional power when its territory, the largest on Earth, is so vast.

In terms of strategic power, it is quite difficult to understand how the Russian nuclear arsenal could be remotely considered as regional. Certainly, it’s triad of ICBMs, many with multiple warheads, nuclear bombers and nuclear capable submarines both of which currently patrol the U.S. coasts,  are the equal of America’s.  Additionally, its mobile launchers provide the Kremlin with perhaps the most survivable land-based strategic nuclear weapons system on the planet.

In terms of land power, Russia vastly outstrips the US in the numbers of tanks, mobile artillery, and rocket projectors

Nor can it be said that the Kremlin’s weapons systems are second rate.  Its nuclear arsenal is more up to date than Americas, and much of its conventional arsenal is first rate. Mr. Putin has pledged to spend over $770 billion in further upgrades, including a sizeable sum for its navy.

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Putin also is militarizing the Arctic as well.

In a new wrinkle, Russia’s growing alliance with China gives the Kremlin a global reach in excess of that it enjoying during the Cold War.

All this is being done as the U.S. slashes its military fuding and Europe continues  starve their armed forces of necessary financial support.

We find no basis for President Obama’s contention.