Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Russia

  • Lies and Distraction from Trump, Putin’s Dangerous War in Syria

    First the lies:

    Just like they don’t want to solve the DACA problem, why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!

    1. It’s the president who unilaterally ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program last year and who is now blocking a compromise. Democrats and center-right Republicans are ready to do a deal.
    2. Democrats tried to get tougher guns laws under Barack Obama. They were frustrated at every turn by Republicans, who turned the filibuster into standard operating procedure in the Senate, as a result of which it now takes sixty votes to get anything of consequence done. When Democrats could briefly muster sixty votes in the early years of Obama’s presidency, they used that opportunity to reform health care. (more…)

  • Italian Parties Putin-Friendly, But Policy Shift Unlikely

    Italy’s election can’t keep Vladimir Putin up at night. No matter which party comes out on top, the Russian leader can expect a friendly government in Rome.

    • The center-left Democrats may be the least Russophile of the four major parties, but they still have a soft spot for Russia. Their leader, Matteo Renzi, threatened to block the renewal of EU sanctions in 2015. Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign-policy coordinator, has been criticized by Eastern Europeans and NGOs for not taking a hard enough line against Russia.
    • Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister and leader of Forza Italia, is on famously good terms with Putin.
    • His allies in the Northern League — who, in turn, ally with Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France — are openly sympathetic of Putin, whom they see as a defender of traditional, Christian values.
    • The populist Five Star Movement no longer wants to take Italy out of NATO but still calls for a reduced role in the alliance as well as an immediate end to sanctions. (more…)

  • This New Cold War Is Ideological Too

    Moscow Russia
    Moscow, Russia in the early morning (Unsplash/Jean Colet)

    Because Russia promotes an agenda that is native to Europe, few seem to realize this Second Cold War is just as ideological as the first.

    If anything, the fact that Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine can tap into a homegrown Western reactionary movement that shares its beliefs makes the ideological challenge he poses more insidious. (more…)

  • China and Russia: True Love or Marriage of Convenience?

    Vladimir Putin Xi Jinping
    Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China meet in Benaulim, India, October 15, 2016 (Kremlin)

    China and Russia are making common cause at a time when Donald Trump’s America is turning its back on the world. Are we seeing the beginning of a global partnership? Or is this only a marriage of convenience? Experts disagree. (more…)

  • Russians Were All Over Trump’s Campaign

    Back in March, I wondered if anybody in Donald Trump’s inner circle wasn’t in touch with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.

    The answer, we know now, is no. The Russians were all over Trump’s team.

    Whether this was collusion or a case of collective and massive misjudgment is something Robert Mueller, the special counsel, must find out, but clearly the Russians were trying to influence the outcome of the election.

    The fact that none of Trump’s underlings disclosed their Russian contacts, and when first asked about them lied, suggests they knew they were doing something wrong. (more…)

  • Trump Cedes Initiative to China and Russia

    • Edward Luce argues in the Financial Times that Donald Trump is allowing China to take the lead in artificial intelligence and robotics. Whereas Trump is sabotaging his own country’s edge by proposing to cut investment spending, reduce visas for high-skilled migrants and pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, China is spending generously, drawing in foreign talent and developing its “One Belt and One Road” trade initiative.
    • Michael Crowley reports for Politico that Trump is ceding postwar planning in Syria to Vladimir Putin, allowing not only Russia but Iran to maintain a foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean. The effect: Egypt and Turkey, once bulwarks of American influence in the Middle East, are eying an entente with Moscow.

  • Don’t Exaggerate Russian Meddling in the Catalan Independence Crisis

    Plaça de Catalunya Barcelona Spain
    Night falls on Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, September 11 (Sergio Marchi)

    Spanish media exaggerate Russia’s role in the Catalan independence crisis.

    Russian state media, like RT and Sputnik, and Russia-friendly trolls, like WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, have predictably sought to exploit the crisis in a major European Union and NATO country, for three reasons:

    1. To encouraging Catalan separatism.
    2. To provoking an overreaction from the Spanish right.
    3. To legitimizing the self-determination referendum it organized in the Crimea in 2014.

    But there is little evidence Russian propaganda has changed anyone’s mind. (more…)

  • Trump Accepts Putin’s Denials of Election Interference

    America’s spy agencies are unanimous in their assessment that Russia tried to sabotage the 2016 election. Yet Donald Trump puts more faith in the word of Vladimir Putin.

    “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that’,” Trump told reporters after meeting with the Russian president on the sidelines of a summit in Vietnam, “and I really believe that, when he tells me that, he means it.”

    Asked if he accepts Putin’s denials, Trump said, “I can’t stand there and argue with him,” adding he would rather discuss international issues, such as the war in Syria or the nuclear crisis in Korea.

    “If we had a relationship with Russia, that would be a good thing,” he argued.

  • Russia’s Arctic Posture: Defensive or Offensive?

    Russian Arctic tanker
    A United States Coast Guard icebreaker escorts a Russian tanker through the Bering Strait, January 6, 2012 (Coast Guard)

    Westerners tend to interpret Russia’s behavior in the Arctic as offensive, going back to 2007, when the country resumed air and naval patrols in the area and planted its flag under the North Pole.

    Alexander Sergunin, a professor of international relations at Saint Petersburg State University, argues in The Wilson Quarterly that the reality is more nuanced. On balance, he writes, Moscow’s policy is pragmatic. (more…)

  • So Much for Yet Another Russian Reset

    Saint Basil's Cathedral Moscow Russia
    Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, Russia at night (Unsplash/Ivan Lapyrin)

    From Reuters:

    US president Donald Trump grudgingly signed into law on Wednesday new sanctions against Russia that Congress had approved overwhelmingly last week, criticizing the legislation as having “clearly unconstitutional” elements.

    Ever since the United States entered the stage as a world power, it’s brushed up against Russia. From the 1918-20 international intervention that halfheartedly tried to prevent the rise of Soviet communism to this latest American sanctions bill, the US has long hoped to turn Russia into yet another reliable ally, joined together in a liberal order of peace and prosperity.

    That geopolitical naivety is deeply embedded in the American body politic: candidate after candidate has hoped to defang the Russian bear with arms outreached, only to discover that Moscow sees not friendship but subjugation.

    It is a relationship between an idealistic, extremely safe nation state and a cynical, deeply insecure one. One finds every betrayal or turnabout shocking; the other sees them as a natural course of events. (more…)

  • Ukraine Might Be Better Off If “Little Russia” Did Secede

    Kiev Ukraine
    Apartment towers in Kiev, Ukraine (Unsplash/Nik Shuliahin)

    Separatists in the southeast of Ukraine have declared a new country: “Little Russia”.

    The announcement by Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, amounts to little, argues Gwendolyn Sasse of Carnegie Europe.

    She points out that leaders in Luhansk, Ukraine’s other breakaway region, have distanced themselves from it. Russia, which otherwise backs the Donbas uprising, hasn’t voiced support either. And the local population doesn’t want independence. A survey conducted earlier this year found a majority in favor of remaining in Ukraine. Only a third want to join Russia.

    Yet it might be better for Ukraine if the region does secede. (more…)

  • Trump Gives Putin What He Wants, Pulls Support from Syrian Rebels

    Donald Trump Emmanuel Macron
    Presidents Donald Trump of the United States and Emmanuel Macron of France inspect an honor guard in Paris, July 13 (Elysée/Soazig de la Moissonniere)

    Donald Trump has given Vladimir Putin a win in Syria by withdrawing America’s support from the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad.

    The Washington Post reports that Trump made his decision a month ago, before he met Putin at the G20 in Hamburg.

    Russia and the United States seemed on the verge of a confrontation at the time. America had shot down a regime fighter jet that was attacking its allies in Syria. Russia responded by suspending a military hotline with the United States.

    It supports Assad, calling him a bulwark against terrorism. (more…)

  • Putin Has Already Got Most of What He Wanted from Trump

    Collusion or not, Vladimir Putin has already got most of what he wanted from Donald Trump.

    As Rachel Maddow reported on MSNBC last night:

    • Russia wants the West divided, not united.
    • It wants to be recognized as an equal partner to the United States in the war in Syria.
    • It wants to keep Bashar Assad in power.
    • It seeks to defang American diplomacy.
    • And it wants back the “diplomatic” (spy) compounds in Maryland and Upstate New York the Obama Administration seized in retaliation for Russia’s attack on the 2016 election.

    Trump has given Putin all this. (more…)

  • A New Cold War? Yes And No

    Shirley Bassey reminds us that we all come full circle sometimes:

    The word is about, there’s something evolving
    Whatever may come, the world keeps revolving
    They say the next big thing is here
    That the revolution’s near
    But to me it seems quite clear
    That it’s all just a little bit of history repeating

    Tension between the United States and North Korea, Russian involvement in Western elections, talk of a nuclear arms race and the use of phrases like “disinformation” — the present day has an aura of déjà vu. Like we’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again, to paraphrase Ms Bassey.

    Many are referring to our time as another Cold War. As an historian, I can’t help but wonder if this is an appropriate comparison? (more…)

  • What’s the Point in Talking to Putin?

    Vladimir Putin
    Russian president Vladimir Putin listens during a meeting in Voronezh, August 5, 2014 (Kremlin)

    If Donald Trump is hoping a good talk with Vladimir Putin in Hamburg, Germany on Friday will sort out East-West relations, he is probably mistaken.

    David Kramer, who served in the George W. Bush Administration, argues in The American Interest that dialogue means little if your partner is unreliable. (more…)