A New Global Strategy By Srdja Trifkovic.

I do read Chronicles Magazine periodically and want to point out an interesting piece by Srdja Trifkovic. The reason for this is that I do lean (still) towards Northern Belt civilization idea. That is why I also do not take Dugin, a devout Eurasianist ideologue, too seriously.     

                                                 A New Global Strategy     

And while I agree with fundamental message of this article, I, honestly, can not see the emergence of this "new thinking" from US "elites". Yes, Trump Presidency, even if impeded by US neocon-neoliberal cabal, leaves some "wiggling room" for rationalizing such a possibility. But, I don't see anything of like emerging until US (I dismiss NATO and Europe here--those are not subjects of history anymore) begins to actually formulate her national interests, not to be mistaken with the interests of Wall Street and Military-Industrial-Media Complex. In general, no serious consideration could be given to such an idea in the nation whose legislative body swears its allegiance to Israel first and own nation second. Pan-European Entente' is NOT possible whilst US foreign policy is formulated by ethnic and religious mafias. Plus, it is too late anyway. And while emotionally I share Trifkovic's sentiment to a degree:

"In an uncertain and constantly brutal world, the Northerners must find the way of banding together, lest they be defeated in detail. This historic opportunity has been open to us since the end of the Cold War, but no U.S. leader has recognized it or acted upon its geopolitical imperative. Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama have all opted to pursue global hegemony, ideologically construed, and devoid of any tangible relation to our country’s rationally defined interests. Trump can and should reintroduce grand-strategic sanity, and help prolong the life of a civilization in mortal peril. Whether it will survive is an open question. That it is utterly doomed in its current form is beyond doubt."

It has to be openly stated--salvation of the United States and of the European Civilization will not come from within the economic and ideological framework (Уклад--Formation, Lay-Up) of globalist, transnational financial capitalism--the system which is itself in a death throes and still can light the world on the fire of WW III. I can only refer Trifkofic to the obvious conclusion by Edik Limonov who largely correctly stated recently about Russia: "We are the West now". Until this geopolitical fact is understood and internalized, that Marseilles, London or Brussels are not Europe anymore, no serious discussion on Pan-European Entente is possible. This is not to mention European limitrophes such as Poland, Baltic States or even Sweden who in their Russo-phobic insanity will do their utmost to impede such a discussion. But then again, if history is any indication, United States seems to have a very vague idea about exchange rate in geopolitical currency. 

           

Why Hysteria?

I know I am repeating myself non-stop and at some point it may even look like an obsession, but, as events of the last several years have shown, it is better to be obsessed and hammer the point home, than continue on the previous, very dangerous trajectory. So, here it is: most of the US "Russian Studies" field is a wasteland of ignorant hacks and shysters. It is especially true in the fields related to the evolution of Russia's geopolitical views but even more so in military-political field. While many in US still continue to write a truck load of all kinds of speculations on what and how Russia's military evolves, it becomes absolutely clear that most of those people, using Russian proverb, open the book and see a middle finger extended from there (Smotryat v knigu--vidyat figu). Figa, a combination of five fingers, a physical expression of fuck you, obviously, in today's global informational world, lost out to a more universal extended middle finger but, I assume, you get the picture--this is what US Russia "experts" see when they deal with Russian military and that is why coherent and reasonable assessments of Russia's military are such a rare commodity in the US. More importantly, most of those "experts" can not even interpret a real open book of Russia's modern military doctrine, which openly emphasizes conventional High Precision Weapons (HPW) as preferred weapons when defending Russia:

26. В рамках выполнения мероприятий стратегического сдерживания силового характера Российской Федерацией предусматривается применение высокоточного оружия.

Translation: Within the framework of the measures of power character (kinetic, combat)  for strategic containment by Russian Federation the use of High Precision Weapons is suggested. 

What's not to understand here? It is in the open, it is clear, however formal, Russian language which is easily translated to any language. The pp.26 precedes pp.27 (the use of nuclear weapons), thus denoting the precedence, priority of conventional weapons over nuclear when dealing with the strategic threat. I write about the tectonic military paradigm shift constantly, such as here: 

It was none other than general designer of Bulava SLBM Yuri Solomonov who in 2008 predicted that US will offer in some form to get rid of nuclear weapons based on perception of own advantage in high precision weapons. Solomonov made a mistake in only one sense--that the offer will be made openly. In reality the US was moving into conventional paradigm for quite a while now, enough to take a look at really rundown state of US nuclear deterrent. 

Wars can not be fought with strategic nuclear weapons--everyone understands that. Those weapons are deterrents, not actual weapons of war. United States wanted the shift away from nuclear to conventional for a simple reason--it thought that it possesses a vast superiority in those weapons, both qualitative and quantitative. Well, it is not the case anymore and it has not been the case for some time. Russia's military doctrine practically spells out the "preference" for the conventional option. Isn't it very much following in the wake of what the United States was doing for the last couple decades militarily? I write about possible conflict between Russia and US escalating into nuclear exchange not because Russia will initiate it but because of the United States, approaching possible conflict with Russia conventionally, will encounter military realities it never encountered before. The scale of losses and, with it, of operational and strategic failures, knowing the "character" of many "exceptionalists" in the US military-political top, will force them to commit unthinkable. This is the main idea behind my warnings about dangers of possible conventional conflict between Russia and US which, and I hope the use of Past Tense is justified here, existed in the Ukraine and Syria. 

The paradigm shifted sometime ago, and apart from Military Doctrine, more, down to earth, elaborations on the status of Russia's military views started to appear in main stream media interpretations. One of them (in Russian) is today's interview of former Russian Air Force Deputy Commander Lieutenant-General Aitech Bizhev to a very popular Russian media outlet "Vzglyad".  There, Bizhev reiterates an old point of many High Precision Weapons having operational and strategic impact properties of nuclear ones, without destruction of civilian infrastructure and vast civilian casualties. Rabidly pro-Western (that is Russo-phobic) Moscow Times didn't hesitate to find a conflict where there is none (nothing else is expected from ignorant hacks) but they also carried the news of Sergei Shoigu merely articulating a new military technological reality of High Precision Weapons (HPW) paradigm. For any observer of Soviet/Russian military with even rudimentary knowledge of evolution of Soviet and Russian military thinking it was clear that such a shift, which already started in the late 1970s but was temporarily arrested by the economic and political collapse of the 1990s, was inevitable. Now the obvious was stated. 

Make no mistake, there will be (actually, there is already) hysteria coming from all kinds of US lap dogs such as Poland or Baltic States, who, eventually, will become completely irrational (not that they are much rational now) who would interpret (for a number of bad reasons) any Russia's conventional move as a direct threat to them. And it is, if one considers NATO's troops being deployed there for the attack on Russia. Russian military has such a "thing" called "ugrozhaemyi period", that is "threatening period", which is a time, speaking in layman's lingo, when the attack on Russia is imminent: the necessary enemy forces are assembled and pre-deployed, political and military intelligence identify signs and patterns of preparation for the war, etc. Just an example, if deployment of the US 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team in Poland and Baltics is hardly a sign of the impending strike, a pre-deployment of several US and NATO divisions and Air Force operational units at Russian or Ukrainian border combined with militant Russo-phobic propaganda in Western media and calls from high tribunes to "punish" Russia--well, then it is a totally different matter and this is precisely where Russian HPWs come into play. Most of the assembly areas of the enemy troops, including their C4ISR centers, will be identified, airfields too, and the sequence of the events is pretty predictable after that. NATO will have to face what it never faced before in its history--a massive salvo of cruise missiles, which are HPWs, at their military infrastructure in staging areas. Of course, some missiles will be shot down, but dealing with massive first strike which will contain huge numbers of Iskanders, Kalibrs and X-101s, is not something NATO or US are capable of dealing with, especially when many of sensors and communications will be suppressed. 

This is containment in a nutshell: degrading enemy's capabilities in order to compel it to refuse from attacking Russia. If not, well--conventional war starts and NATO will have to deal with the first-class military. Such a war will be fought on the territory of Poland, Ukraine and Baltic States but it will not be fought on Russia's territory. If, after that, NATO forces will still be willing, let alone capable, to mount an attack on Russia, London, Paris, Brussels among many will have to face conventional attack on their military-industrial and political infrastructure. But what about the United States, who will be in charge of all this mayhem? It is not immune anymore to conventional strike and resumption of production of TU-160  (in reality a completely new bomber bearing superficial similarity to old Blackjacks) is a first indication that having  about 600 long range stand off HPWs in first salvo from 50 new TU-160s, which will be reliably protected by Air Defense inside Russia's airspace is really a very unpleasant perspective.  Once one considers another around 50 old timers such as TU-95 Bears, who are capable to launch 8 (eight) X-101 weapons, without leaving Russia's airspace, one may begin to grasp the "weight" of such salvo from Russia's strategic aviation. And that is without considering other old-timers such as TU-22M3s capable of launching X-32 Mach=5, 1000 km range, missiles.  Those are not interceptable by anything in NATO's arsenal and with the range of 1000 km are exactly the weapons to be launched at the staging areas, without leaving own air-space. If to consider that, by different estimates, there are already and will be about 50 of such machines in service soon, each capable of carrying 6 such missiles, we may finally speculate on the weight of this salvo, say, by 2025.  From Russia's Strategic (Dalnyaya) Long Range Aviation we can count about 1100 to 1300 standoff HPWs ready to be launched. Add to the mix land-based launchers, a naval component, capable of launching just about anything and the grim picture for any aggressor emerges. Hence this:

        

What Ralph Peters, who passes in US as Russian "military expert", does not understand is that Russian Armed Forces are not in the business of "humiliating" anyone. In fact, be that in Soviet or present times, there was always a great deal of a professional respect to the US military in Russia. Russians, however, do not celebrate victories over pathetically inept enemies. Russian military is in a business of defending own nation and its closest allies. Russia is also in a business of fighting real wars and for that Russia has all necessary tools. Now (or rather since around 2008) she has all necessary conventional high precision stand off weapons which can deal a massive conventional blow to any enemy before it even contemplates doing a stupid thing. The gap in stand off weapons will continue to grow with some really bizarre and cutting edge technologies coming online shortly: from the whole spectrum of hyper-sonic weapons to something akin to Sarmat ICBM, capable of carrying hyper-sonic, maneuverable conventional "gliders". But Russia is not going to use them, unless attacked first or is about to be attacked. Russia's military doctrine is explicit on that but more than that--Russia's history, a real one, not the one narrated in US by hysterical (and incompetent) Russophobes, especially the history of invasions into Russia and massive losses and devastation she sustained because of that--this is the only true indicator of Russia's intentions in 21st century. To be left alone. No nation in the history knows better what war is and what tragedy and suffering can it bring. That is why, with Trump's victory, any chance should be used to rearrange the world in such a way that no conventional, let alone nuclear, weapon should ever be used between major powers. It is possible, especially now, when the world is really becoming multi-polar and diplomacy must take precedence. Russia was calling for that always, sadly, American warmongers interpreted it as a sign of weakness, well.... Times change, and the tables turn, don't they? 

The Verdict Is In.

After US "intelligence" report on Russian "hacking" which exhibited a complete rot of US establishment, I thought that there is nowhere lower to go, when even CIA professionals (real ones) started questioning intentions behind this report. The "report" itself is a pathetic exhibition of intellectual impotence and rumor-mongering. Boy, was I mistaken. I stated not for once that US "main-stream" media are a sewer, including most of their "iconic" figures, who are nothing more than paid shills with egos larger than cathedrals and with no applicable life skills. But this morning proved that United States Of America is in deep systemic crisis which is much more serious than mere economic decline, covered up with preposterous indices and cooking of books. No, the crisis in metaphysical--the whole notion of an American idea is being destroyed in a front of our eyes. Most important US institutions are either discrediting themselves or are being discredited.

Forget the legitimacy and prestige of the institute of US Presidency being in decline since Bill "wondering willy" Clinton or a disastrous W or, even more disastrous, Obama. Today, by attacking US President (elect) Donald Trump in the most despicable way, US political class and its coterie of media figures, pundits and "analysts" has shown how deep their depravity is and... how impotent they are. 

The Deep State Versus Donald Trump - New Smears And A Ukrainian Connection

I have Moon Of Alabama blog in the list of my favorite blogs but above is a direct link to B's great analysis. I want, however, to support and... refute Donald Trump when in his tweet he asks: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" My answer to that is: no, Mr. President, we live in the United States of America in the age of pathetic mediocrities and establishment a-holes who, like those proverbial monkeys, can only throw shit at others. Doing so, they are destroying, including by making it a laughing stock of the world, their own (??) country. History, using a beaten to death Marx' cliche, repeats itself first as a tragedy, then as a farce. For all evil of Nazi Regime, it had some of the most outstanding political, military, economic and intelligence professionals, who created a machine whose efficiency is beyond the grasp of Beltway operators, who are capable of producing only a farce and are, as, yet again, that proverbial monkey, playing with a grenade, a nuclear one. United States today is a panopticon, not a Nazi Germany.

Never again will any American claims on "democracy" and "republic" which are being destroyed from within, be seriously viewed in the world. Any claim to "free press" will be laughed at. Yet, there is a silver lining to all that. The hysteria of neocon-neoliberal mafia in US is a good sign, it means they know they are defeated and I don't mean just Trump's victory. The trend is global and it is unmistakable:

1. New "left's" (in reality neoliberal) ideology, which was in the foundation of US foreign policy for decades, is done. Globalization, under the aegis of "liberal democracy" and "human rights" is being turned back as I type this. Weakening of the United States is not just the function of some bad personalities who were hellbent to do bad things to the US--the system is flawed, it bore the seeds of its own destruction. Massive  de-industrialization, the reign of the financial parasites, decline of the living standard, institutional crisis, moral and cultural decay, de facto racial war--those are just some signs of the crisis of the "formation" in the US and elsewhere. In effect, American (economic) future was sacrificed at the altar of free trade fundamentalism, military adventurism and utopian social experiments. 

2. Nation-state won the battle, or, rather, after brief tactical retreat, came back with a vengeance. Nation-state, not some globalist dystopia,  remains and will remain a decisive player in the world affairs. The rise of China, Russia, of populist and nationalistic movements in Europe, Brexit, in the end--Trump's victory, are just some indicators of a collapse of the globalist "world order".  Davos ideas are just that--rubbish. We are, after 25 years of self-proclaimed Pax Americana, back to power balance politics. We are also back to re-emerging understanding of productive forces, with the emphasis on productive. Manufacturing, building things has much bigger meaning than mere numbers--it is a crucial human function, without it--cultural, intellectual and moral decay. More tattoo parlors, more marijuana dispensaries, more transgender bathrooms and more crime and drugs ridden hoods. Globalization=national lumpenization, and that's what happened to the United States, that is also why Trump won.   

That is why people who almost destroyed the United States and wreaked havoc on the world are so desperate and so hysterical in their attempts to delegitimize Donald Trump and the modicum of common foreign policy and economic sense he and his team are trying to bring back to the US. So, what is prognosis? This one is very simple:

1. US Congress, which does not work in the interest of the majority of the Americans will continue to impede Trump in any of his attempt to normalize relations with Russia. Every tool will be used to maintain hostile relations with Russia until the real war happens or until new generation of thinking American politicians will emerge. Unlike former, which is still probable, the latter...well, I don't know. Judging by what Ivy League madrasas produce as foreign policy "experts", one has to admit that the quality of the "product" is at best shoddy, at worst--American "exceptionalists" who live in parallel universe. 

2. US main-stream media will continue to throw shit at Trump and any of his initiative until, hopefully, they will cease to exist as "free" media institutions. Basically, CNN, NYT, WaPo, NBC etc. are nothing more than the elements of MiniTrue, who still think that 1984 was written NOT about them, while in reality it was about them exactly. 

3. The split between US "elites" is evident today and the house divided against itself can not stand. Will there be some new consensus down the road? I don't know, but it has to be understood that US globalist "elites" are anti-American to the core. They have no loyalty to American people. Are their loyalties to transnational capital? Yes. To anti-white racism? Absolutely. To sexual-deviancy and degeneracy in culture? You bet! To global uniform "world" with "deplorables", that is overwhelming majority, reduced to the slaves of sexual, cultural, racial and other fringes? That is their quintessential idea, raison d'etre. Are they in the pockets of the Military-Industrial Complex? Hell, yeah. Do they care about lives of people they bomb to smithereens or do they care about American soldiers coming home in coffins or with horrible wounds? Nope. But that are the people who, waving American flag, continue their (self) destructing campaign against Donald Trump and doing so, they lost even residual sense of decency. 

There could be no compromise with this crowd. Otherwise, constant US decline and eventual disintegration with high probability of a global war.  Avoiding this scenario is a worthy goal to pursue and it will require an effort. The Augeas Stables must be cleaned. Is Donald and his team are capable of Heracles' Fifth Labor? We may learn the answer soon and, after all, do we have any other option? The verdict is in--this can not continue as it is and it will not, one way or another.

    

F-35 In National Review. The STOVL Issue-I

I never was a fan of National Review, a rather neocon leaning rag, but when even National Review has had enough with F-35 program it is time to see it for what it is--it is a corporate welfare.

The F-35: Throwing Good Money After Bad. 

I will abstain here from "analyzing" this bird as a weapon system. First, I am neither a military aerospace analysts with the intimate knowledge of aircraft design, nor a military pilot, but it is kinda self-evident by now that F-35 program is becoming increasingly an embarrassment, despite the stream of opposite views (by hacks and biased observers mostly) praising F-35 for what it certainly is not. I am not even talking here about this stupid obsession of many with the so called "stealth" whose real utility was blown out of proportion, until it was blown out of the skies, especially against modern signal processing and power of radar capable of seeing it just fine. My thing with F-35, since I pretend to be a sort of "analysts" (in reality a free-time dispenser of my, not always precise, thoughts) was not in the fact that it is a "fifth generation" flop, after all, United States has an impressive history of producing a world-class cutting edge weapon systems, in general, and combat aircraft in particular. My spiritual doctrinal connection, as a former Soviet naval professional, was with namely F-35B STOVL. On paper, this Short Take Off Vertical Landing bird looked very promising. Yes, it is not SU-35 but as a carrier aviation this looked extremely attractive. Forget my personal bias towards STOVL carriers--it is understandable since Project 1143 "Krechet" Kiev-class aircraft carrying cruisers were just that  and, despite initially having a mediocre Yak-38 as the backbone of their air wings, they had a really monster of a fighter, V/STOVL Yak-141 Freestyle, coming to them instead of Yak-38s. That is until Soviet Union collapsed. Later, some Yakovlev Design Bureau's technologies, including nozzles' design, were used in F-35B.   

But the issue with Yak-141 and, now, with F-35B were not just some advanced technologies. It was in the fact, that after rather clumsy and fairly limited in their performance, however legendary and rightly so, Harriers, Yak-141 (and later F-35B) offered performance comparable (range, speed) to a regular carrier-borne aircraft. That had a major strategic implications, this time for ships or, rather, aircraft carriers. In the end, since the end of WW II the only carriers which saw an actual combat, not being parked outside some third world hellhole's shore blowing this hellhole's shit with impunity, were Royal Navy's small STOVL carriers of the Invincible-class. They actually fought a battle with more or less competent adversary who had a viable Air Force and, actually, bloodied Royal Navy pretty badly. Yet, British jump-jets came away from their Falkland battlefield bathed in totally deserved glory. They also left a lesson which today remains as relevant as ever. This lesson I would like to ponder in coming weeks, especially against the background of old-timer Admiral Kuznetsov leaving her Syria station and setting sail back home to Severomorsk. She did her job, earned awards but raised the issue of CATOBAR against STOVL carriers yet again and that issue is survivability--Kuznetsov's arresting wires performed dismally and, at some point, forced the whole wing of  her Su-33s and MiG-29Ks to redeploy to the Khmeimim Air Base. The pondering starts with this question: whatcha gonna do when your arresting wires are gone and the deck is partially damaged in real combat, with real opponent?   

    

In the end, Royal Navy decided to go with STOVL F-35Bs for its brand new carriers. Hm, I wonder, why the devil, those bloody Britons went with STOVL option. What do they even know about naval combat. I am being facetious, of course. Royal Navy can tell us a lot about carrier operations...I wouldn't disregard the lessons they can teach. 

To Be Continued....

   

Barnsey And Joe Doing Deep Purple.

Being Russian from Soviet times it is only natural that my life was spent, apart from British Glam and Uriah Heep, with the music of Deep Purple. But since Joe Bonamassa did his Blues Deluxe (I have Joe's all albums) and being always a fan of Barnsey--how good this could be? It is damn good. It is so damn good, it is so unbelievably good, it so out there (yes, I had a tear in my eye for John Lord during Hammond-organ's solo) that once you start listening to it your day turns into the evening listening to originals and truly great covers. 

      

Facepalm Of The Year.

No, it is not about a complete disgrace of Russia's "hacking" of US elections story, which firmly identified CIA and US "intelligence" in general as political organizations which are in business of promoting preposterous agendas, not an intelligence outfits. There is very little of intelligence, in direct and figurative senses, left there. The facepalm of the year (let's attribute it to 2016) goes to Pentagon's chief Ash Carter. In his "confession" to Wall Street Journal he stated that: Russia has done nothing to help defeat Islamic State forces in Syria and has adopted a strategy of “explicitly thwarting the U.S.”

OK, I get it, the Beltway is a sore loser which lives in parallel universe and has loyalty only to its, often explicitly anti-American, interests, but the issue is simple: if you do not respect us all, which is fine, at least respect yourself. You have to live the rest of your life knowing (???) that most of what you say is a complete pile of steaming shit, which has been debunked time after time by the overwhelming empirical evidence. Or maybe, maybe I am too naive to assume that there is still a modicum of integrity and human decency left in Obama's Administration? Yes, I think so--I am being naive. What a stupid thought to even assume so. In the end, Administration which thinks about mountain resorts in Rostov-On-Don region is as viable as Zimbabwe's space program. Nothing personal against Zimbabwe.

About US Sanctions On Russia (Again)

Since the inception of this blog (in reality much earlier) I preach the "know thy enemy" and "know thyself" gospel since without it the instability in a complex global military-political system grows exponentially. Being aware and being knowledgeable allows to avoid stupid and down right dangerous decisions. But this important lesson is completely lost on many in US Congress and the new 2017 year starts with some "ranking member" of House Intelligence Committee (US "intelligence" by now is a laughing stock of the rest of the world) stating that Congress will have a "vigorous" response to Trump's attempt to reverse US sanctions on Russia. Many times I stated that most of US establishment decision-makers have no clue on how those sanctions affect Russia and, as I stated not for once, it would cause a real shock if they will learn that huge segments of Russian society are... against lifting of the sanctions on Russia. In fact, majority of Russians are against lifting those "Western" sanctions, because they are good for Russia. 

1. For people whose formative years were spent in law and Wall Street economic faux-reality it is beyond their grasp that "sanctions" do not work and, in fact, discredit those who impose them. Consider Iran who under severe economic decades-long sanctions did not only OK, but fairly well. Well, Russia is not Iran and by a very very long shot. Thanks to Western sanctions on Russia the structure of Russia's GDP finally received a very needed impetus for a change. You may have guessed it already that this change had everything to do with manufacturing sector. Russia simply started to produce more, much more. Even globalists' shill Kudrin had to admit that the outlook for Russia is very good. Well, the growth, of course, is mostly in manufacturing. Even the brief review of Russia's new manufacturing gives a startling picture of impressive, often double-digit, growth especially in machine-building sectors. And here is the question:

2. Why would Donald Trump want to reverse Russia's sanctions? Is Donald Trump Russia's friend? No. Not even close. In fact, large number of contradictions between US and Russia remain and they may yet factor into serious Russian-American geopolitical dance. But Trump, certainly, knows the real state of the affairs inside the US and he (and his team) they know that in order for the United States to have a chance and a time for the recovery, it needs a new geopolitical arrangement with the player who within last 36 months changed geopolitical dynamics in the most dramatic fashion is an absolute must. This player is Russia and it will be really stupid, not to say embarrassing, to start the negotiations with the counterpart while having it under laughable sanctions. Make no mistake, there are still those who think that US could have imposed much heavier sanctions which could have "hurt" Russia. One of them is Dmitry Simes who passes in US as "Russia expert", because he can speak Russian and can communicate with Russia's uber-liberal "intelligentsia", who is as clueless about its own country as most of US "Russian studies" field. Yes, Simes thinks still that: What President Obama has actually done is to try to use excessively dramatic rhetoric to camouflage a remarkably weak response. For two years, his administration has carefully avoided sanctions that might actually affect Russian behavior, such as sanctions on the Russian Central Bank and other pillars of Russia’s financial system. Steps like this could impose serious costs on the Russian economy and on Mr. Putin’s ability to govern. (c)

Obviously, Simes is not capable (granted his closeness to late Richard Nixon, a man, together with Kissinger, responsible for growing US real serious opponent and rival--China) to even understand that attack on Russia's Central bank would have had a dramatically disastrous for US reaction which would have resulted, first, in a catastrophic reputational damage and, second, in the emergence of  the alternative, not US Dollar-driven, financial system--the process which is ongoing now anyway, but at much slower pace. But calculating consequences of own actions is not a strength of US Russia's "expertdom", infested with a lot of Soviet Jewish ex-pats who have about the same understanding of Russia as I have of Planet Zoltar.  In the end, the stupidity of the above excerpt is simply incomprehensible.  It is also indicative of a desperation within US "political class" of which Trump is keenly aware. Will he go for reversal of US sanctions on Russia? He probably will and this will create a shitstorm in US media and Congress.

3. Reality, however, is such that US "sanctions" on Russia are merely some, at the most, inconvenience and, for the most part, are of very little consequence. So, the reversal of sanctions in this case could merely be a good will gesture and a sign to negotiations' counterpart. Yes, this gesture is important: "The forms must be obeyed"(c). Trump knows this and he, being real American patriot, needs at least a pause in US decline and, if being smart enough, a reversal of it. This means only one thing--changing of geopolitical posture away from unsustainable (and greatly overrated) unipolarity (aka Pax Americana) which is being demolished as I type this. This means the change of the global order. This change, however, may come only with clear formulation of the American national interests. I can formulate one right now, right here--avoid any escalations which may lead to global war. We, actually, barely escaped one (and still not out of the woods with loonies in CIA, Pentagon and State Dept. still in place) recently. 

And here comes this very interesting question: does US have legitimate national interests (apart from obvious defense of Homeland) which may require (and justify) a war? I think US does have such interests, and being still a global power, and "World's Island", as Elmo Zumwalt used to say, she has a claim to control of a significant real estate, aka sphere of influence. How large is this sphere (it is going to be large) will be one of the major discussion points in what seems to be, as some already named it, a "new Yalta". Better late than never. As Pat Buchanan noted: The Russian people, having extended a hand in friendship and seen it slapped away, cheered the ouster of the accommodating Boris Yeltsin and the arrival of an autocratic strong man who would make Russia respected again. We ourselves prepared the path for Vladimir Putin.(c)

Will this "new Yalta" be the meeting of players trying to give it another, second chance for what could be a magnificent play, or will it be a meeting of once high school sweethearts, now married to a different people, having own families and life, getting to the bar to have a drink or two and then part ways never to see each-other again? I don't know, but the world surely has changed and continues to change and that is why I usually do not give any predictions. After all, a life, same as a war, is probabilistic and stochastic and we may only hope for the better, not count on it.