First Reactions.

Saker today posted on UNZ Review a thorough and excellent analysis of political implications of Putin's March 1st speech. There are already first meaningful, unlike Western media incompetent BS, reactions from US establishment which begin to pour in. They are exactly what Putin and Russia were aiming at. Consider this yesterday's letter from US senators. 

Amid Heightened Tension, Markey, Merkley, Feinstein, and Sanders Press Trump Administration to Jumpstart New Strategic Talks with Russia

While this letter is still full of BS and lies, it is, however, very instructive in terms of revealing a deep rooted, even on the highest levels of American political power, misconception of Russia's intentions. The whole thing is not just about START, albeit this too, it is about much larger global strategic framework which seeks more than just nuclear arms control, however important--it is about, indeed, as I stated a week ago, coercing the United States into the discussion of the whole spectrum of international problems, most important of which is immediate necessity to stop military conflicts in the ME and making sure the United States takes realistic position on that. 

For the last 20 years the United States was going around the world, from Yugoslavia, to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria, to Ukraine, inciting conflicts, murder, atrocities all in the name of fictitious "values" of which the world just about had enough. This stops now. As the US senators letter states:

There is no guarantee that we can make progress with Russia on these issues.  However, even at the height of Cold War tensions, the United States and the Soviet Union were able to engage on matters of strategic stability.  Leaders from both countries believed, as we should today, that the incredible destructive force of nuclear weapons is reason enough to make any and all efforts to lessen the chance that they can never be used again.  

I have some news for them--there is a guarantee, because the world changed and US policy-makers are about to learn how much. It is, obviously, not a very pleasant process for many "exceptional" people but it is about time they started learning how to behave responsibly. Paradoxically, this may be the only way to preserve the United States and turn it into normal country behaving like equal among equals. This letter might be (???) the first step. After all, and I quote myself: 

American self-proclaimed hegemony is over where it really matters for any real and perceived hegemon—the military field. It was over for some time now, it just took Putin’s speech to demonstrate the good old Al Capone truism that one can get much further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. After all, Russia did try a kind word alone, it didn’t work and the United States has only itself to blame.