The print edition is now available for purchase at Bookshop. Due to the pandemic, Amazon is not making new book titles available in print until further notice.
Here is the book description:
Russia is the world’s other nuclear superpower – the only country that has the ability to wipe the United States off the map within 30 minutes.
With Russia and the U.S. currently having 1,700 nuclear weapons pointed at each other on hair trigger alert, our relationship with Russia is one of the most critical, requiring a rational policy.
In order to conduct a rational foreign policy, we must understand the other country’s point of view. That doesn’t mean one must agree with it, but we must know how Russia perceives its own interests so we can determine what they may be willing to risk or sacrifice on behalf of those perceived interests. It’s also essential to determine areas of common cause and cooperation. Understanding the Russian viewpoint means understanding Russia’s history, geography and culture. The western corporate media – and even some of our alternative media – has a very poor track record in providing this crucial service with respect to many of the nations with whom we’ve already gone to war. The so-called experts they consult often have conflicts of interest, nefarious agendas, and lack an objective understanding of the nation they are speaking about. This has certainly been the case when it comes to reporting on Russia, a country with which the stakes are potentially much higher for the entire world.
This book fills the void left by much of our media in understanding the Russian point of view, which can help us formulate a reasoned policy toward the world’s other nuclear superpower.
Pedestrian thoroughfare in Krasnodar. Photo by Natylie Baldwin, Oct. 2015
As I reported in a previous post, Putin’s announcement in April of quarantines and “work holidays” throughout Russia in response to Covid-19 included promises of these work holidays being paid, along with a package of measures to provide some economic support to Russian households. The economic support included faster and additional payments to families with young children as well as unemployment benefits.
On the May 7th edition of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman and her team interviewed the New Yorker‘s Moscow correspondent, Joshua Yaffa, who stated that “there frankly haven’t been many [economic safety net] measures at all.” Before I dissect how that statement is misleading, I will acknowledge here that Yaffa’s report on Russia was overall not bad in comparison to a lot of the trash that passes for such in the US/UK media. He did not jump to sensationalist conclusions when asked about the deaths of 3 doctors recently in the country. Additionally, it has been well-established for several years that Russia’s attempted “reforms” of the health care system have often created more problems than they solved in the regions farther out, particularly in terms of access. The results of Russia’s modernization of its health facilities have been uneven. These conditions are, of course, as Yaffa explains, going to make things more difficult during a public health crisis like Covid-19.
But in terms of Yaffa’s claims about economic support, this obviously didn’t line up with my earlier posting, so I checked with a couple of sources in Krasnodar and Crimea as well as another source who is well-informed about Moscow to find out if Russians were still being paid during quarantine, if businesses were getting any assistance from the government to meet payroll, and if unemployment was easily available to those who may have lost their job during this crisis.
I received general confirmation that state workers are being paid their salaries during the quarantine. Private sector workers are in a more complicated situation. There is government assistance for private businesses if they apply, but it has been noted that the demand is heavy. Unemployment is available to those who have lost their jobs at a rate of 19,000 rubles per month in Moscow and 12,000 rubles per month outside of Moscow. In terms of the purchasing power parity breakdown, this comes out to around $758 per month.
There are a few things to keep in mind when looking at these figures. The first is that, according to Jon Hellevig at Awara Group, around 70% of Russians report having enough savings to get them through 1-2 months of a loss of income. Russians also tend to have less personal debt compared to Americans.
Second, the national monthly average salary for Russia in 2018 was $800 per month. That may not sound like much to the average American but the relative cost of living is much cheaper in Russia, with a $1600 monthly salary in Moscow being calculated as equivalent in purchasing power to $6,000 a month in Chicago.
One of my sources in Krasnodar who knows people who have small businesses provided me a description of what he government is offering in terms of asssistance:
They are supposed to get the assistance from the state – that is – get deferred tax payments, postponement of land tax, transport tax, tax on the company property, deferred lease of real estate and land plots in state ownership.
Businesses that are among the industries affected by coronavirus can receive preferential loans. Business owners are supposed to pay monthly salaries to their employees, at least minimum salaries which amount to 12134 (Ru) –equals 150 US dollars). Those business owners who haven’t reduced their personnel may apply to the bank for free loan in order to be able to pay money to the workers. Employees who lost their jobs may apply for the minimum wages as well.
I was further told that small business owners they know do not want to take on loans – even on preferential terms – in the midst of such uncertainty. Many private small business owners are, thus, finding that it makes more sense for them to lay off employees and let those people file for unemployment. The process for filing for unemployment benefits is described as frustrating due to the red tape of having to provide paperwork to prove one has lost their job due to the pandemic. Another obstacle is the fact that many people were employed in the gray economy – in other words, in businesses that aren’t officially registered – or are freelancers. These people are not eligible for unemployment.
My source in Crimea has told me that there are some variations by region, with some state employees there working part-time or being paid partial wages. Certain private sector employees who’ve been affected by the pandemic – such as tourism – are receiving compensation from the government.
Overall, I get the sense that – like in other countries – there is frustration in dealing with the government to access what assistance is available and a sense of insecurity from not knowing how long exactly this unusual situation will last.
In a revelation that surprised even me, the IMF has projected that Russia will now surpass Germany as the largest economy in Europe in terms of purchasing power parity and will be number 5 in the world this year. Something to keep in mind when you encounter the next predictable round – using the Covid-19 crisis – of “Russia is collapsing’ stories from the US/UK media.
Thousands of new coronavirus cases were diagnosed in Russia by this past weekend – as many as 10,000 according to some reports. It went up another 10,000 this past Tuesday and another 11,000 yesterday. The totals as reported by The Moscow Times on May 7th was 177,160 confirmed cases and 1,625 deaths, with the vast majority occurring in the western part of the country which also has the majority of Russia’s population.
Russia-based journalist Bryan MacDonald offered the following analysis on May 4th to provide perspective on how Russia’s numbers compare to other parts of the world:
If you measure official cases by capita (countries over one million people): Qatar, Spain & Ireland are the worst, and Russia is outside the top 25. In terms of deaths, per capita, Belgium, Spain & Italy are the top 3, and Russia isn’t even in the top 50.
Anna Popova, Russia’s chief public health doctor, said earlier this week that the virus will continue to spread, despite the public measures that have been put in place. Russian news agency TASSreported Popova’s comments:
“Today it’s impossible to completely stop the circulation of the virus, no matter how closed the country is. Anyway, there is some kind of communication, and there are risks of renewal even if there are no viruses left in the country,” Popova said in an interview with Pavel Zarubin on Russia-24 TV channel on Monday.
The head of Russia’s Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing noted that the restrictions will remain in place in Russia until there is a vaccine or treatment for the coronavirus. “We learn to live in a new way, we learn to live in the environment where there is a virus. By developing certain algorithms, we say that yes, we are removing restrictions here, but at the same time, older people remain at home anyway, people with chronic pathology will still [stay at home],” Popova said.
“The main thing today, what is very important, is that these two weeks and later when restrictions will be lifted after a certain time anyway, people will have to observe all the necessary rules to make this regime milder and milder,” she said.
Expectations are that the virus will peak in the middle of this month.
Yesterday, Putin participated in a video conference in which it was discussed how a gradual reopening of the economy would look. It would happen in 3 stages but there was no date given for when it would be implemented or how long each stage would last. There is a 3-minute video about it below:
Amid continued sensationalist media reporting on Covid-19 and China, tensions mounted as the US flew sorties over the South China Sea late last week. According to reporting from Air Force Technology.com:
US Indo-Pacific Command has confirmed that two airforce bombers have conducted a 32- hour round-trip sortie over the South China Sea.
The operation included two US Air Force B-1B Lancers from the 28th Bomb Wing, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.
The sortie was undertaken as part of a joint US Indo-Pacific Command and US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) Bomber Task Force (BTF) mission, to reaffirm US Air Force presence in this contested region and reassure its allies.
In a statement, US Indo-Pacific Command said: “This operation demonstrates the US Air Force’s dynamic force employment model in line with the National Defense Strategy’s objectives of strategic predictability with persistent bomber presence, assuring allies and partners.”
This exercise followed a similar bomber run conducted jointly the week before with Japan. Antiwar.comnoted that provocative US military actions in the South China Sea have tended to come from the Navy and that the use of air bombers appears to represent an escalation:
With the US Navy constantly strained, the use of planes might be a more convenient option for the US. At the same time, US planes flying deep into Chinese territory to challenge China creates an even bigger risk of a confrontation in the area.
Officials are presenting these as “deterrence missions” as a way to justify them. The US military almost certainly wouldn’t consider comparable operations from China over US territory a “deterrence,” however, and if anything these are deliberately provocative.
These escalations are occurring a month after Chinese president Xi Jinping was reportedly presented with a report from his security minister warning that, amid the barrage of anti-China rhetoric coming from the US media and political class regarding the coronavirus – now including calls for an international commission to investigate China and WHO, the risk of conflict between the two countries was higher than at any time since the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. According to Reuters, which originally reported on the existence of the warning to Xi:
BEIJING (Reuters) – An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation, people familiar with the paper told Reuters.
The report, presented early last month by the Ministry of State Security to top Beijing leaders including President Xi Jinping, concluded that global anti-China sentiment is at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the sources said.
As a result, Beijing faces a wave of anti-China sentiment led by the United States in the aftermath of the pandemic and needs to be prepared in a worst-case scenario for armed confrontation between the two global powers, according to people familiar with the report’s content, who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.
Reporting yesterday in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post confirmed that the Chinese political class has now accepted that both countries are in the midst of a new Cold War.
“The United States and China are actually in the era of a new Cold War,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University and an adviser to China’s State Council, effectively the country’s cabinet.
“Different from the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the new Cold War between the US and China features full competition and a rapid decoupling. The US-China relationship is no longer the same as that of a few years ago, not even the same as that of a few months ago.”
….Yu Wanli, deputy director at the Lian An Academy think tank in Beijing, agreed that US-China relations were at their lowest point since the Tiananmen crackdown.
“I had always been optimistic about the US-China relationship until recently. In the past, you could always find pro-China voices on the US political spectrum, but there is no such voice in the Trump administration,” Yu said, pointing to a recent Pew poll of 1,000 Americans which found that 66 per cent of respondents held an unfavourable view of China.
Now available for purchase at Amazon Kindle. The soft cover print edition will be available in the coming weeks. At that time, I will send out another post and an official press release Here is the book description:
Russia is the world’s other nuclear superpower – the only country that has the ability to wipe the United States off the map within 30 minutes.
With Russia and the U.S. currently having 1,700 nuclear weapons pointed at each other on hair trigger alert, our relationship with Russia is one of the most critical, requiring a rational policy.
In order to conduct a rational foreign policy, we must understand the other country’s point of view. That doesn’t mean one must agree with it, but we must know how Russia perceives its own interests so we can determine what they may be willing to risk or sacrifice on behalf of those perceived interests. It’s also essential to determine areas of common cause and cooperation. Understanding the Russian viewpoint means understanding Russia’s history, geography and culture. The western corporate media – and even some of our alternative media – has a very poor track record in providing this crucial service with respect to many of the nations with whom we’ve already gone to war. The so-called experts they consult often have conflicts of interest, nefarious agendas, and lack an objective understanding of the nation they are speaking about. This has certainly been the case when it comes to reporting on Russia, a country with which the stakes are potentially much higher for the entire world.
This book fills the void left by much of our media in understanding the Russian point of view, which can help us formulate a reasoned policy toward the world’s other nuclear superpower.
