Originally posted July 13, 2016.
The American Conservative’s Philip P. Giraldi has penned the indispensable explanation of today’s Russia and it’s leader Vladimir Putin. Philip concludes that only Trump seems to understand Putin.
Truly, the unwillingness to takes steps after 1991 to assist Russia in its post-communism transformation into a stable, prosperous, and secure state modeled on the West is the most significant foreign-policy failure by both Democratic and Republican administrations over the past 30 years. The spoliation of Russia’s natural resources carried out by Western carpetbaggers working with local grifters-turned-oligarchs under Boris Yeltsin, the expansion of NATO to Russia’s doorstep initiated by Bill Clinton, and the interference in Russia’s internal affairs by the U.S. government (including the Magnitsky Act) have exploited Russian vulnerability.
Nearly everything Russia does is considered wrong or even threatening by the White House, Congress, and the U.S. media.
The point here is that the Russians are not exactly failing to notice what is going on and are drawing their own conclusions about what they must do to defend themselves.
Russia’s generals are not optimistic about what is coming their way. They are insecure because they are aware of their own military inferiority and see nothing but hostility from the West,
NATO has now decided to base four multinational battalions of combat soldiers in Eastern Europe, along the Russian border, the first troop deployment aimed at Moscow since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Washington’s misguided policy toward Russia under both Republican and Democratic presidents has the potential to become the greatest international catastrophe of all time, with the risk of ending human life on this planet as we know it. NATO expansionism and the regular promotion of a false narrative that Russia is seeking to recreate the Soviet Union together suggest to that country’s leaders that Washington is an implacable foe.
Only the much-maligned Donald Trump sees the situation with some clarity. Speaking in Moscow last week, his foreign-policy adviser Carter Page stated (in the words of ABC News) that “the U.S. had been overly hostile toward Russia and … the blame for the current tensions lay largely with the American government.
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