Nikki Haley Comes Alive (No, Not Peter Frampton Related).

Nikky Haley, being now, most likely not a loose cannon, as was thought initially when Donald Trump offered her a Cabinet position, but a herald of Donald Trump's vision, continues to utilize her extensive experience as an accountant of waste management and clothing companies and as Governor of South Carolina—hardly a good pedigree for diplomatic career—in shaping the US foreign policy towards Russia. Speaking to enthusiastic crowd at Duke University Nikki:  

admitted that friendly relations with Russia is an unlikely prospect, adding that the Trump team has done more against Moscow than any other administration since Ronald Reagan’s tenure. “Russia’s never going to be our friend,” Haley told students at a Q&A session, responding to a question about “holding Russia accountable” for alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The diplomat said Washington still works with Moscow “when we need to, and we slap them when we need to. "She then raised the stakes further: “Everybody likes to listen to the words. I’m going to tell you – look at the actions,” Haley urged. “We expelled 60 Russian diplomats/spies, we have armed Ukraine so that they can defend themselves.” According to the UN envoy, the US is doing “two things Russia would never want us to do,” namely enlarging the military and expanding its energy policy. “So, this president has done more against Russia than any president since Reagan,” she asserted. “You haven’t seen the end of what this administration will do to Russia. You will continue to see that play out,” she stressed.

This latest, yesterday's, Nikki's escapade should pretty much sum it up for Trump's own vision of "getting along with Russia"—there will be none. For starters there is no vision, or, rather, it is the same ol' one in which the US tells everyone what to do and how to do it… period. Trump is no different and as Daniel Larison (he is coming around but is still far from accepting the reality of US "elites" being largely ignorant across the board) admits:

Our government’s frequent inability to understand how an adversary thinks and what an adversary wants is usually bound up with our government’s overestimation of its own power and a denial of the other state’s agency.

The inevitable question thus is what was then the Trump's (in reality it was not his, but of people behind him) foreign policy doctrine presented during his campaign in 2016? Well, the answer seems quite obvious now: at best—a wishful thinking, at worst—a normal election campaign BS delivered with the conviction of Orwellian doublethink in which a person holds two mutually exclusive beliefs. In case of Trump, with Nikki being merely a symptom, it is both the belief that the US needs to get along with Russia by insulting and attacking her. That is why Russians, other than reporting the news, do not react seriously anymore to any Trump's propositions on "getting along". Obviously there is a verbal dimension to this situation in which, as William Fulbright correctly noted: “words are deeds and style is substance insofar as they influence men’s mind and behavior."© When hostile words are supported by hostile actions, well, one should know that there will be consequences.

Russians do not live in doublethink paradigm, and as most normal people react to threats and insults not by doubling down on self-humiliation—the outcome evidently, for some anti-empirical reasons, expected among American political class—but by doing exactly opposite. As one prominent Russian "liberal" writer Dmitry Bykov learned to his absolute astonishment, his teenage students didn't share their teacher's belief in a harm of a new Iron Curtain, in fact—many of them called for it (in Russian). The more Nikki Haley will continue to articulate her boss' vision, the more Russians will be mobilizing and if there is one thing Russians know better than anyone else in the world—it is how to mobilize. Well that, and how to fight actual wars. Evidently, what is not understood by either Trump or his cabinet is the fact that Russia is not going to play this remarkably ignorant game of accommodating American "interests" when the US thinks Russia should. As was stated not for once, not there is no any admiration, let alone adulation, to the United States anymore in Russia, the scale of condescension and revulsion towards American State (as opposed to regular Americans who are always welcomed in Russia) would shock any American so called "diplomat" or "spook" should they ever get their head out of narrow and dwindling Russian liberal political "tusovka" and face Russia's realities, as in realities for an overwhelming majority of Russian people. I am afraid that such feat of intellect and professionalism is beyond the capability of current American "expertise". Well, in the end, these are precisely Russian liberal "tusovkas", such as a sewer of Moscow's High School of Economics, where US Russia "experts" hear exactly what they want to hear and crave—primitive flattery.  

    

There is, of course, a very serious military aspect to all that air shaking Nikki produces when speaking on the issues in which she is utterly unqualified, and, accidently, neither is Donald Trump. If he exits, as he promised, Iran's Nuclear Deal, what's in store then? John Bolton, a prominent draft dodger and a lawyer, sure as hell has no clue how the US will prosecute the war against Iran which he is, effectively, calling for. In fact, I don't think anyone in D.C. knows. What they also do not know is what Russia will do if Iran is attacked. As events in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria showed the US military expertise was also grossly exaggerated. No matter what US does against Iran, even if it merely bombs her—consequences will be catastrophic for the US. I am not talking at all about suicidal ground campaign which will turn Vietnam War into a stroll in the park by comparison, but the trend today is obvious—Trump and his Administration are gearing up for war. Whatever the war this might be, it seems that Russian-Chinese dynamics is changing literally by the hour, not by the day. 

Russian-Chinese emerging alliance is not the power NATO is capable to take on. Let alone the United States on its own—the faster this reality dawns on Washington's policy makers, the better it will be for everyone. If summit between Putin and Trump happens, I am 100% positive that Trump will be approaching it from the belief that he does a favor to Vladimir Putin—this is a no starter. If US will unleash yet another war before this possible summit—there will be no need to meet at all. For now, it is the war of sanctions on Russia, especially her Military-Industrial Complex but, again, it will not achieve any substantial objectives. By far, however, more important remains the issue of Ukraine and the way now fully confirmed rabidly Russophobic Trump Administration approaches that rather complex situation. The time is running out both for Ukraine and for any American hope to get at least something back from that black hole of a country. US needs a real war there which she thinks will finally destroy any Russian-European economic and political relations before 2019. The US, however, doesn't have to worry about own relations with Russia—they are finally destroyed by Washington as was the intention from the beginning.