Mr. Pompeo Doesn't Go to Sochi and Moscow.

Alrighty, then. So Pompeo cancels his visit to Russia and rushes to Brussles to convince, to twist hands and threaten that is, US European "allies" that quitting the Iran Deal is a good thing. 

(CNN) - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has canceled his planned visit to Moscow and is heading instead to Brussels to discuss "recent threatening actions and statements" by Iran, the State Department said Monday. The visit comes as the US has said Iran and its proxies could be planning to threaten US forces and interests in the Middle East.While in Brussels, Pompeo -- who was seen boarding a plane at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, late Sunday night -- will discuss a range of pressing issues, including Iran, with representatives from the UK, Germany and France, a State Department official said.

Obviously, Iran's "threats" are a normal reaction to very real threats and unilateral destruction of practical and working arrangements by the United States, but all this is merely a confirmation of a pattern of the US breaking her treaties' obligations and then blaming it on someone else. There is, of course, a personal issue here, with Trump destroying probably the only foreign policy success Obama Administration achieved in controlling Iran's nuclear program. Well, what do ya know--this one is dead. Per Europeans, they will be lined up and will do as ordered. 

Pompeo still will get to Sochi on Tuesday but Moscow is, actually, smiling (sarcastically, I may add) at these busy-body moves, especially when one considers a huge "success" Trump's trade wars are. 

WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the United States is "right where we want to be with China," adding that Beijing "broke the deal with us" and then sought to renegotiate."We will be taking in Tens of Billions of Dollars in Tariffs from China. Buyers of product can make it themselves in the USA (ideal), or buy it from non-Tariffed countries," Trump said on Twitter. Trump added: "We will then spend (match or better) the money that China may no longer be spending with our Great Patriot Farmers (Agriculture), which is a small percentage of total Tariffs received, and distribute the food to starving people in nations around the world!"

I, honestly, do not even know how to comment on that. The only thing which comes to mind is the scene of "secret" meeting from 12 Chairs in Elena Stanislavovna's house, where Ostap Bender delivered one of the most important speeches in history of fraud:

“Citizens," said Ostap, opening the meeting, "life dictates its own laws, 

its own cruel laws. I am not going to talk about the aim of our gathering-you 

all know it. Our aim is sacred. From everywhere we hear cries. From every 

corner of our huge country people are calling for help. We must extend a 

helping hand and we will do so. Some of you have work and eat bread and 

butter; others earn on the side and eat caviar sandwiches. All of you sleep in

 your own beds and wrap yourselves in warm blankets. It is only the young 

children, the waifs and strays, who are not looked after. These flowers of the 

street, or, as the white-collar proletarians call them, 'flowers in asphalt', 

deserve a better lot. We must help them, gentlemen of the jury, and, gentlemen

of the jury, we will do so."  

   The smooth operator's speech caused different reactions among the 

audience. 

Polesov could not understand his young friend, the guards officer. 

"What children?" he wondered. "Why children?"

The similarity is uncanny, to put it mildly. Especially when one considers what is not really reported in US media--the fact that China is not really backing down. She still may, of course, at some point of time but so far--no cigar.

Beijing has retaliated against Washington’s recent tariffs by imposing export levies targeting $60 billion worth of US goods, effective June 1, China’s Ministry of Finance announced on Monday.The tariff hike of up to 25 percent will affect more than 5,000 items imported from the US to China.The step comes in response to the latest hike of export duties the Trump administration implemented on billions of dollars worth of Chinese products. Last week, the White House increased American tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent from 10 percent, previously.

I am damn sure Kremlin is enjoying the show. While Daniel Larison reformulated the Newton's Third Law: ‘Maximum Pressure’ Provokes Unyielding Resistance. As Larison writes about Iran specifically, it applies equally to everyone.

A new generation that experienced neither revolution nor war is forced to endure an economic war being waged upon them for no good reason. That cannot help but inspire feelings of resentment against the foreign government doing these things to them and greater willingness to support their own government. Any nation would react to unwarranted bullying with resistance, and the same goes for Iranians in spades. Vaez refers to a famous 16th century defeat of the Safavids by the Ottomans at Chaldiran (1514) as an example of how Iranians have remembered a crushing defeat as proof of courageous defiance. Many nations have similar interpretations of their great military losses. The point of reimagining these defeats as something more than a loss is to emphasize the survival and defiance in the face of greater power. To survive in the face of the determined animosity of the world’s sole superpower is itself a kind of victory, and that is why the Iranian government won’t give in.

There is, of course, one teeny-weeny issue with Larison's statement--the United States is long ago not "world's sole superpower", but here Larison exhibits symptoms of strictly American ailment, of which I wrote two books and continue to write for years--lack of knowledge of the outside world and lack of self-awareness. Other than that, he is correct.    

UPDATE: Now, suddenly, Washington requests a summit--in accordance to Russia's very own uber-liberal Kommersant (in Russian) with high positioned people in State Dept. confirming such a request. So, Pompeo, most likely will focus on details of this summit while in Sochi on Tuesday. At issue--to discuss what? Trump needs Russia to deal with China, Russia is no go on that, period. Nobody in Russia, with the exception of mindless "liberals" believes in any Grand Bargain with the US, not to mention the fact that the moment for such a bargain is long in the past and is not worth even discussing. Exchange of pleasantries? Sure. This will do for an agenda. Russia is always open to talks, Russians hate confrontation, not to speak of war. But what will Trump do when Russia asks for this proverbial move: "Show me the money!" I reiterate, the United States doesn't have anymore a geopolitical currency to "buy" Russia--she is out of a price range for the US. If one thinks otherwise--take a look at Ukraine and Russia's dramatic change of posture, including her lack of any desire to pay for Ukrainian mess and being content with Donbass coming home. This is a geopolitical master stroke by Moscow by refusing to take on balance a hostile economic black hole which would drain Russia's resources. US and EU wanted Ukraine? They can have her with one caveat--no military bases, other than that let EU and the US pay for this mad house.   

UPDATE 2: Well, looks like Kommersant, yet again, soiled itself. Kremlin debunked their info about summit (in Russian) and stated that it didn't receive any request yet (in Russian). Ghee-whiz, dealing with Russian liberal news outlets is akin to dealing with US MSM--a lot of BS and fake news. As I said, I also cannot see what, other than some arms limitations issues, can Russia and US possibly substantively talk about?  

UPDATE 3: LOL!

President Donald Trump has said he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at next month’s G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.Trump announced the pair of meetings to reporters in the Oval office on Monday afternoon.“I’ll be meeting with him directly, President Xi. Yes, I will be meeting with President Putin also,” he said. Earlier that morning, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Washington had requested a meeting with Putin, and was awaiting the Kremlin’s response. A Kremlin spokesman responded to Trump’s statement on Monday by saying no preparations were underway for such a meeting.

OK then. There are still 12 hours left per PST in this day.    

He Still Thinks That It Is A TV Show.

Reality and (pseudo)reality TV shows are not the same. But POTUS thinks that they are.  

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he may cancel his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Argentina because of Russia's maritime clash with Ukraine. In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said he was awaiting a "full report" from his national security team Tuesday evening about Russia’s capture of three Ukrainian naval ships and their crews on Sunday."That will be very determinative," Trump told the Post. "Maybe I won't have the meeting. Maybe I won't even have the meeting ... I don't like that aggression. I don't want that aggression at all," he said.

By now it all became so redundant, if not nauseating, that no one in Moscow really pays attention to it other than in a "here we go again" manner. Kremlin is keenly aware that there could be no sensible dialogue with the United States anymore. Ron Unz already summarized Trump's presidency really well.

For foreign policy reasons, I had strongly favored Trump both in the primary and in the general election, but I hardly regarded him as a thoughtful vessel for the positions he claimed to espouse. To put it bluntly, he struck me much like a highly-opinionated construction worker, angrily spouting off on politics in his local neighborhood bar, being right on some matters and wrong on others, but with none of his views based upon any deep understanding of the issues. I suspect that even many of Trump’s strongest supporters have gradually come around to a similar appraisal of their idol.  

Putin, certainly, is well aware of that. At this stage the only subject which could and must be discussed, if the meeting goes ahead, is how to avoid sliding into direct military conflict between Russia and the US, because American side continues to be consistently unaware of the consequences of its actions. Trump doesn't control his own foreign policy or, as Phil Giraldi succinctly observed yesterday: 

U.S. Foreign Policy Has No Policy. Why can't we just leave everyone alone?

This is one of those key points that Trump and people around him fail to understand--Russia neither admires the United States nor wants to benefit from the Russian-American relations anymore. Those times are long gone. As I commented year and a half ago:

Russians long ago stopped viewing the United States as possible ally and after West's committing a cultural suicide in Russia with West's inspired coup in Kiev, the only thing Russians do want is for West to just go away. That is what this neutrality means. 

Trump is not aware of this. He still thinks that he and the US are admired, worshiped, and are used as a model. This is not the case with Russia at all. I will omit here commenting on China but it seems at least Chinese are trying to fashion themselves into US 2.0 in the post-American world. But in the end, it all comes down to the United States not being a treaty-worthy party. American geopolitical "strategies" are as primitive as people who devise and implement them and Putin is also keenly aware of that--he knows that the US is at war with Russia. So, for Russians it really doesn't mean that much if there will be the meeting or not--it is absolutely meaningless to negotiate with the country which has long ago became a bad parody of itself and lives in the virtual world of a reality show. Oxymoron is intentional.

UPDATE: Colonel Lang just wrote an excellent piece on Trump. And I agree with a lot what he writes. 

As I wrote earlier he sees the world through an entrepreneurial hustler's lens, crudely assigning absolute dollar values to ongoing policy outcomes and actions which have little to do with the actual world as opposed to the arena of contract negotiations.  He evidently learned about balance sheets at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and wishes to apply the principle of the bottom line to everything.

I also agree on humanities issue. To clarify: if someone gets an impression that I am against humanities--they are wrong. My quarrel is not with humanities field, which is essential for any cultured person, my quarrel with products of ONLY humanities studies trying to pass judgements on (military) issues which require years and years of rigorous study and experience.