1. Our main mistake was in trusting West too much;
2. West's mistake (???) was in viewing Russia's trust as a weakness.
The pp.1 is long ago not an issue--overwhelming majority of Russians doesn't trust the West. The West in general is viewed as not treaty-worthy party, which it is not, indeed. Any agreement with the West today is not worth the paper it is written on. P.p.2, however, is more important since is one of the pillars on which this West's treaty untrustworthiness rests upon. There are still many people in European and, especially so American, elites who think that Russia still resides in 1990s, when the West loved to wipe its feet on her. This is not the case anymore and it is not the case since long ago. This whole blog from the inception is dedicated to this fact. The West has committed a gigantic mistake, but nowhere this mistake is more pronounced than it is in the US. By alienating Russia, the United States lost the ONLY potential geopolitical ally which could ensure the US' remaining relevant in new global configuration and, yes, in balancing out China. Now it is too late, even with Putin still, as usual, offering an equal dialogue with the West. Russian-Chinese economic, hence military-technological and, possibly, military-political alliance is now gaining a steam. This trade will reach $80 billion by the end of this year. But these are long term infrastructural projects which make it remarkable, from the Power of Siberia pipe-line to Russian-Chinese long range wide-body CR-929--all that has massive strategic ramifications and the Europeans are beginning to feel the itch from the outside. Inside European problems can not any longer be described as an itch, they are a major pain. Yet, the most important thing to be taken away from Valdai's revelations are that even Igor Shuvalov, a long perceived liberal pro-western lawyer-turn-economist strategist suddenly started talking about economic planning and massive national projects. Even Alexander Prokhanov was pleasantly startled by that--Russia's Economic Ministry, after moving into one of Moscow-City's skyscrapers will have a Planning Department. A sign of further departure from mindless and inhumane libertarian experiments. There is something huge afoot in Eurasia and it is being felt all over the world. Today it is impossible to deny anymore. Recall my almost three year old conclusion:
I observed for decades now a consistent pattern of the wrong assessments, loony strategies and deliberate misrepresentation (lies?) of facts coming from the top of US establishment, which since 1991 lives in the make-believe world built by the triumphalists. It is difficult to explain to the average Joe that Baseball World Series, or Superbowl "World Champions" have no relation to the World and are purely internal American affairs. That there is a huge wide world outside and that it lives and moves not in accordance to the American narrative. Explaining to American "elite" the fact that US didn't "win" the WW II, that "winning" the Cold War came about because Soviet people simply decided to end it, that Wall Street "economy" has no relation to real economy and that real wars produce misery and destruction on a scale which is incomprehensible for the "populace" of the Washington D.C. "strategists", it is not just difficult--it is next to impossible. So, the events must run the course. But it is already clear that by failing to achieve any sensible political objectives in Ukraine and in Russia, and, by this, starting a massive global re-alignment, the United States sustained a defeat. What will be the consequences of this defeat? I hate to speculate, I just know that they are already big and that the moment of facing the reality is coming. My suggestion to those who are still making decisions--open and start reading War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I don't hold my breath, though. The moment US handlers of their Kiev puppets conceived that Ukrainian Army can "win" in Donbass, the stopwatch started.
I think the moment of facing reality has arrived. Have a nice Friday.
