(https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/24/russia-china-tandem-changes-world.html)

As my co-author and I suggested in our book, America’s power is waning. This is consistent with the historical fate of all empires, mainly because empire is not a sustainable system.   As events in Syria over the past two years have shown, Washington’s uni-polar moment is over.  This is not to say that the U.S. isn’t still very powerful in many respects or that its demise is complete.  The collapse or disintegration of an empire is a process and exactly how long it takes and the details of how it plays out are difficult to predict.

As the disintegration of the U.S.’s unipolar power occurs, a void will develop (indeed is developing) and some other power or combination of powers will inevitably move to fill the void.  As it stands, it appears that the void will likely be filled by something that resembles a multi-polar world with Eurasia taking the lead role.  China, set to be the leading economy within the next 10 years – indeed is already the leading economy with respect to some measures – has developed an alliance with Russia and is taking steps to implement its One Belt One Road initiative, also known as the New Silk Road, that envisions a cooperative economic network throughout Eurasia that covers at least all of the territory of the old Silk Road.

The success of this project requires the ability to defend oneself from aggressive competitors who are stuck in a zero-sum mentality of geopolitics (i.e. Washington and allies/client states that it can continue to coerce into doing its bidding).  It also requires the finesse to prevent and/or subdue any ethnic, cultural or religious divisions within various states or potential conflicts between states that could be stirred up or exploited by aggressive (and desperate) outside powers.   Russia’s military technology and diplomatic skill complement China’s economic power in terms of helping the Eurasian project to succeed, which will in turn, benefit Russia’s economy and security.

In this post I want to take a closer look at some aspects of China that will hopefully give the reader some more insight into the mindset and governance of that country and its role in shaping Eurasia, as well as how Washington is likely to respond to its own decline and Eurasia’s rise.  The first source of insight is a Ted Talk by political science and businessman Eric X. Li.  Li demystifies some of the inner workings of how China governs its people which will cause many to rethink what they’ve been taught about political democracy, particularly how it is practiced by the West and whether it is the only legitimate or the most effective system of governance.   Here are some excerpts from Li’s talk:

In the last 20 years, Western elites tirelessly trotted around the globe selling this prospectus: Multiple parties fight for political power and everyone voting on them is the only path to salvation to the long-suffering developing world. Those who buy the prospectus are destined for success. Those who do not are doomed to fail. But this time, the Chinese didn’t buy it. Fool me once… (Laughter) The rest is history. In just 30 years, China went from one of the poorest agricultural countries in the world to its second-largest economy. Six hundred fifty million people were lifted out of poverty. Eighty percent of the entire world’s poverty alleviation during that period happened in China.In other words, all the new and old democracies put together amounted to a mere fraction of what a single, one-party state did without voting…..

….Yes, China is a one-party state run by the Chinese Communist Party, the Party, and they don’t hold elections. Three assumptions are made by the dominant political theories of our time. Such a system is operationally rigid, politically closed, and morally illegitimate. Well, the assumptions are wrong. The opposites are true. Adaptability, meritocracy, and legitimacy are the three defining characteristics of China’s one-party system. Now, most political scientists will tell us that a one-party system is inherently incapable of self-correction. It won’t last long because it cannot adapt. Now here are the facts…..

…Now, Westerners always assume that multi-party election with universal suffrage is the only source of political legitimacy. I was asked once, “The Party wasn’t voted in by election. Where is the source of legitimacy?” I said, “How about competency?” We all know the facts.In 1949, when the Party took power, China was mired in civil wars, dismembered by foreign aggression, average life expectancy at that time, 41 years old. Today, it’s the second largest economy in the world, an industrial powerhouse, and its people live in increasing prosperity. Pew Research polls Chinese public attitudes, and here are the numbers in recent years. Satisfaction with the direction of the country: 85 percent. Those who think they’re better off than five years ago: 70 percent. Those who expect the future to be better: a whopping 82 percent. Financial Times polls global youth attitudes, and these numbers, brand new, just came from last week. Ninety-three percent of China’s Generation Y are optimistic about their country’s future. Now, if this is not legitimacy, I’m not sure what is. In contrast, most electoral democracies around the world are suffering from dismal performance. I don’t need to elaborate for this audience how dysfunctional it is, from Washington to European capitals. With a few exceptions, the vast number of developing countries that have adopted electoral regimes are still suffering from poverty and civil strife.Governments get elected, and then they fall below 50 percent approval in a few months and stay there and get worse until the next election…..

….There’s a vibrant civil society in China, whether it’s environment or what-have-you. But it’s different. You wouldn’t recognize it. Because, by Western definitions, a so-called civil society has to be separate or even in opposition to the political system, but that concept is alien for Chinese culture. For thousands of years, you have civil society, yet they are consistent and coherent part of a political order, and I think it’s a big cultural difference.

A point made by Li in that last paragraph reminded me of a point made by Vladimir Putin during his first address to the Federal Assembly in which he cited the need for a meaningful civil society to help develop Russia and address the many problems it faced at the time, including massive poverty and crime, the need for reform of the economy and the armed forces, and the worst mortality crisis since World War II.  But Putin implied that the best chance for success was for the state and civil society to work together, stating that there was a “false conflict” between the two.

This shows that not only do Russia and China have many views in terms of geopolitics that are simpatico but also attitudes on the relationship between the state and civil society.   These views, of course, are anathema to the average westerner who has internalized that political democracy as it is practiced – particularly in the U.S. with its strong libertarian streak – is the best and only legitimate way for human beings to govern themselves.  Any other approaches are dismissed as inferior and in need of eventually being destroyed and replaced by the western model.   If the people living in another country don’t agree with this, then it is believed that they are the equivalent of ignorant children who must be forced to grow up and eat their broccoli.

Li also mentions that China has achieved the impressive and unprecedented feat of lifting hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty within the last 30 years.  Progressive economist Mark Weisbrot, who works for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, reiterated this success in a recent interview with the Real News Network and compared what China did to what other developing countries did that was less successful:

We looked at this recently in one of our papers and you have these statements from politicians as well, President Obama in his last speech at the United Nations said that over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40% of the world to under 10%. Now that’s World Bank statistic and there’s a lot of dispute over that. But even taking it at face value, if you actually look at what happened since 1990, two-thirds of that extreme poverty reduction was in China. And if you go back a little further from 1981 to 2010, 94% of that net reduction in people living below the extreme poverty line was in China. And even the part that wasn’t in China, a lot of that was the result of China’s growth and importing. Increased imports from developing countries and increased investment as China became the largest economy in the world.

Chinese globalization’s done very well. China’s income per person has multiplied 21 times since 1980. The fastest economic growth in history. But if you look at what they did, most of it’s the opposite of what these Washington institutions and what even President Obama was describing as globalization in his speech. They had foreign investment, but they controlled it. And they still have it. They control it to fit with their own development plans. They have technology transfer as much as they can get. They have performance requirement. Require foreign investing firms to do certain things that promote local management skills and things like that. Export promotion. They have a mostly state controlled financial system for most of this period, and still quite a bit today. Their central bank isn’t independent, which is one of the main thing Washington pushes.

This is the kind of globalization they had, and the rest of the developing world is very different. You have this indiscriminate opening to international trade and capital flows. You have the central bank being independent of the government so it’s not really a subject of public control. It’s more the response of the financial sector. They got rid of these industrial and developing policies that used to be successful, and were successful in China. And all this other financial deregulation and other deregulation. And if you look at what happened in these last 25 years in the vast majority of developing countries outside of China, the ones that did the kind of globalization that President Obama and all these officials at the IMF and the World Bank are talking about and calling a success, and the media usually calls a success, they did very badly overall.

This is not to say that China is invincible or that it will continue at the breakneck speed it has in past years.  As economist Jack Rasmus reports, the Chinese government recognizes that another global financial crisis is on the horizon, which will slow China’s growth and force it to continue addressing internal problems it still has with speculation, among other things:

The past year the US and global ‘real’ economies have enjoyed a moderate recovery. Much of that has been due to China stimulating its economy to ensure real growth in anticipation of the Communist Party’s convention, which has just ended. China’s president Xi and central bank (Peoples Bank of China) chair, Zhou, have announced, post-convention, that China’s real growth will slow and have warned a global ‘Minsky Moment’ (i.e. financial crisis) may be brewing. China will now try, once again, to tame its shadow bankers and speculators who have been feeding China’s debt and bubbles, and prepare for the global financial instability that is brewing.

Moving back to the arena of geopolitics, journalist Finian Cunningham in a recent article contrasted the visions expressed recently by Chinese president Xi and U.S. president Donald Trump and pointed out the obvious about who Putin is more closely aligned with:

Two very different faces of world leadership were on display this week. In Beijing, President Xi Jinping delivered a bold, outward-looking vision of Chinese global leadership. Meanwhile, in Washington President Donald Trump was embroiled in yet more egotistical infighting and tawdry claims of media lies.

Addressing the 19^th congress of China’s Communist Party, 64-year-old Xi was reelected for a second five-year term. He is being talked about as the greatest Chinese leader since Mao Zedong who led the country’s founding revolution in 1949. With dignified composure, Xi spoke to the Great Hall of the People about “a new era of modern socialism… open to the world.”

….“No country can alone address the many challenges facing mankind; no country can afford to retreat into self-isolation,” Xi told delegates during a three-and-half-hour address.

Reuters again: “Xi set bold long-term goals for China’s development, envisioning it as a modernized socialist country by 2035, and a modern socialist strong power with leading influence on the world stage by 2050.”

….Contrary to American leadership and Trump in particular, Chinese characteristics of global leadership are not marked by knuckle-dragging domination, militarism and aggression. The emphasis from the Chinese leader is on global cooperation and multilateralism. In short, a peaceful and prosperous world.

Contrast that to Trump’s tirade before the UN General Assembly last month when he rhetorically swaggered and threatened nations with “total destruction”.

In that regard, Russian President Vladimir Putin shares the same leadership qualities as China’s Xi. No wonder the two leaders are visibly comfortable when they meet publicly, as they have done more frequently than any other two current heads of state. Quietly, with dignity, the two men seem driven to create a more progressive, peaceful world of co-development and co-existence – in spite of American proclivities to create a world of chaos, conflict and hegemony.

Sadly, it seems safe to say at this point that the American elites have no meaningful or constructive solutions for the U.S.’s myriad domestic problems or its diminishing geopolitical fortunes.   As mentioned earlier in this post, Washington seems stuck in a zero-sum mentality, tilting at the windmills of its former glory days.  It is therefore likely that Washington will continue to see the potentially constructive moves of China and Russia in Eurasia as a threat to be conquered or sabotaged rather than an opportunity to participate to the degree it can in a win-win arrangement that does not rely on full-spectrum dominance of the world and the narcissistic imposition of its “values” and mores on everyone else.

Foreign affairs writer and Russia expert Gilbert Doctorow has penned an analysis of the “Russia-China tandem” explaining how the Eurasian project need not be a threat in any objective sense of the term for Washington, but that the chance of Washington’s recognition of this fact is slim:

Much of what Western “experts” assert about Russia – especially its supposed economic and political fragility and its allegedly unsustainable partnership with China – is wrong, resulting not only from the limited knowledge of the real situation on the ground but from a prejudicial mindset that does not want to get at the facts, i.e. from wishful thinking.

….The chief reason for the many wrongheaded observations is not so hard to discover. The ongoing rampant conformism in American and Western thinking about Russia has taken control not only of our journalists and commentators but also of our academic specialists who serve up to their students and to the general public what is expected and demanded: proof of the viciousness of the “Putin regime” and celebration of the brave souls in Russia who go up against this regime, such as the blogger-turned-politician Alexander Navalny or Russia’s own Paris Hilton, the socialite-turned-political-activist Ksenia Sochak.

Although vast amounts of information are available about Russia in open sources, meaning the Russian press and commercial as well as state television, these are largely ignored. The sour grapes Russian opposition personalities who have settled in the United States are instead given the microphone to sound off about their former homeland. Meanwhile, anyone taking care to read, hear and analyze the words of Vladimir Putin becomes in these circles a “stooge.” All of this limits greatly the accuracy and usefulness of what passes for expertise about Russia.

….By contrast, today’s international relations “experts” lack the in-depth knowledge of Russia to say something serious and valuable for policy formulation. The whole field of area studies has atrophied in the United States over the past 20 years, with actual knowledge of history, languages, cultures being largely scuttled in favor of numerical skills that will provide sure employment in banks and NGOs upon graduation. The diplomas have been systematically depreciated.

The result of the foregoing is that there are very few academics who can put the emerging Russian-Chinese alliance into a comparative context. And those who do exist are systematically excluded from establishment publications and roundtable public discussions in the United States for not being sufficiently hostile to Russia.

….What we find in Kissinger’s description of his accomplishments in the 1970s is that the American-Chinese partnership was all done at arm’s length. There was no alliance properly speaking, no treaty, in keeping with China’s firm commitment not to accept entanglement in mutual obligations with other powers. The relationship was two sovereign states conferring regularly on international developments of mutual interest and pursuing policies that in practice proceeded in parallel to influence global affairs in a coherent manner.

This bare minimum of a relationship was overtaken and surpassed by Russia and China some time ago. The relationship has moved on to ever larger joint investments in major infrastructure projects having great importance to both parties, none more so than the gas pipelines that will bring very large volumes of Siberian gas to Chinese markets in a deal valued at $400 billion.

Meanwhile, in parallel, Russia has displaced Saudi Arabia as China’s biggest supplier of crude oil, and trading is now being done in yuan rather than petrodollars. There is also a good deal of joint investment in high technology civilian and military projects. And there are joint military exercises in areas ever farther from the home bases of both countries.

Doctorow goes on to reiterate what I stated in a blog post months back – that any ideas by Kissinger or the late Brzezinski to try to break up the Russia-China partnership with the promise of better relations with Washington were delusional due to the economic, military and diplomatic ties that had developed in the recent past between the two countries, as well as the recognition by the leadership of both countries that any promises made by Washington were unreliable to put it magnanimously.

But unlike me and some other analysts, Doctorow believes that we are seeing the emergence, not of a multi-polar world, but another bipolar world with the U.S. and its western allies on one side and the Eurasian powers of Russia and China on the other.   He believes that this bipolar world will be the geopolitical paradigm of the foreseeable future and that it may not be such a bad thing as it will at least provide some kind of balance in place of the uni-polar world that saw one nation running through the world like a bull in a china shop.

However, a bipolar world with the U.S. remaining as the main power on one side presupposes that the U.S. will continue to have a stable enough political system to carry out a coherent foreign policy and an economic system robust enough to continue to underpin its military domination and serve as a coercive instrument to keep other “allies” in line.   No one knows how long that will be the case.

The U.S. Congress moved closer to sending more “defensive” arms to Ukraine with the passage of the latest National Defense Authorization Act passed last month.  James Carden provided more details at Consortium News:

Indeed, last month’s National Defense Authorization Act shows that – if nothing else – McCain and Graham are as good as their word: the recently passed defense appropriations bill provides for $500 million, including “defensive lethal assistance” to Kiev, as part of a $640 billion overall spending package.

The aid comes at a good time for the embattled Ukrainian President Poroshenko, whose approval rating hovers around 16 percent. In a bid to stave off the possibility of a far-right coup d’etat, Poroshenko is back to banging the war drums, promising, well, more blood.

In a little covered speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Sept. 19, Poroshenko promised that “American weapons will help us liberate the Donbas and return Ukrainian territories.” He also noted that Ukraine spends roughly 6 percent of its GDP on defense, “a figure,” he observed, “much bigger than the obligation for the NATO members.”

Clearly Washington’s condemnation of governments that wage war “against their own people” remains selective, contingent upon who is doing the killing and who is doing the dying. In this case, it would seem that Russian-speaking Ukrainians simply don’t rate.

Meanwhile, a new report by Sergiy Kudelia of Baylor University outlines the extrajudicial violence, including torture and murder, occurring on both sides with respect to the conflict in Donbass.   These brutal activities are often carried out by ultra-right and Neo-Nazi proxies (Azov Battalion and Right Sector) on the Kiev side:

For most of its twenty-five years of independence, Ukraine has been classified as a “partly free” state with a medium level of restrictions on civil liberties.[2] However, since 2014, its score on the “political terror scale” has increased from medium to high, indicating that “murders, disappearances, and torture are a common part of life.” While this deterioration can be partially attributed to widespread human rights abuses on rebel-held territories, the application of physical coercion has also become a standard element of Ukraine’s counterinsurgency tactics.

As an index created by V-Dem project shows, violence committed by government agents in Ukraine for the last three years has been at the highest level since the country’s independence (see Figure 1). Reports by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) remain the single most extensive source of information on physical integrity rights violations in Ukraine committed by government agents and their affiliates. The first evidence of enforced disappearances in Donbas by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was reported in August 2014 with new episodes cited in every report since then. By August 2016, OHCHR concluded that the “Ukrainian authorities have allowed the deprivation of liberty of individuals in secret for prolonged periods of time.” Human rights monitors established that there is “a network of unofficial places of detention, often located in the basements of regional SBU buildings” not only in towns of Donbas, but also in Kharkiv, Odesa, Zaporizzhia, Poltava, and other cities. The authorities relied on volunteer battalions, particularly Azov and DUK Right Sector, to capture separatist suspects and interrogate them at their military bases before transferring them into government custody. Incommunicado detention has become an ordinary practice before suspects are officially registered in the criminal justice system. Some of the victims were taken into custody again immediately after their official release from prison and held in secret locations without charge, often for prisoner exchanges.

Continue reading the report, including graphs and charts here

Those same Neo-Nazis were freely marching through cities of Ukraine by the thousands recently to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which colluded with Nazi Germany in the massacre of tens of thousands of Poles and Jews during WWII.   Canadian Russia expert, Patrick Armstrong, summed up events for Ukraine in a recent post on his blog:

UKRAINE. Another coup in the making? Demonstrations kicked off by a torchlight parade. Demands (at the moment) are a new election law for parliamentarians, an anti-corruption court, ending parliamentary immunity. Signed by Tymoshenko and Saakashvili among many others including some of the nazi battalions. Perhaps not coincidentally, an investigation into fraud committed by President Poroshenko has been opened. Did the coal from Pennsylvania actually come from Russia? Nuclear fears. Another huge ammunition dump fire. The collapse continues.

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The U.S. continued its provocative behavior this past week with more military drills near South Korea as a North Korean official publicly stated how close to war the U.S. and North Korea are:

As the U.S. completes military drills off of South Korea’s eastern coast, a top North Korean official warned on Monday that “nuclear war can break out at any moment” and that the tensions that have escalated amid President Donald Trump’s threats have propelled the two countries to “the touch-and-go point.”

North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations said in his address to the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee that the U.S. has not subjected any other country to “such an extreme and direct nuclear threat” in several decades.

It has also been revealed that the North Korean government made an attempt through a letter sent via diplomatic channels to Australia to get assistance in de-escalating tensions with Washington. The Australian government was apparently dismissive of the letter. Alexander Mercouris provided the following analysis (along with the full text of the letter at this link):

Australia seems to have entirely misread the letter as well as totally misunderstanding its context. The letter represented the DPRK’s attempt to create a bridge of dialogue between Pyongyang and one of America’s closet allies in the Pacific. For all of the speculation about whether North Korea is prepared to engage in dialogue, this letter proves once and for all that not only is North Korea willing to speak with traditional partners like Russia, but that Pyongyang is also capable of reaching out to US allies in an attempt to foment the same. The fact that Australia refused to read behind North Korea’s typically robust rhetoric to understand the wider context of the letter, represents a clear failure of basic human intelligence.

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the name of Eva Bartlett who has done fearless independent reporting from Syria, exposing much of the propaganda and misinformation that western corporate media and politicians have fed us for years.  Ms. Bartlett participated in a recent fact-finding trip to North Korea and has published a wonderful photo-essay on her visit, including some of the country’s successful infrastructure, education, culture and entertainment, and a health care system so well-functioning that it is “the envy of the developing wold”.  She also has quotes and photos from everyday North Koreans who are proud and resourceful, turning the average American’s view of North Korea as a gray dungeon where everyone is miserable and suffering on its head.

Propaganda and history aside, what we hardly ever see in articles on North Korea is the human side, some of the faces among the 25 million people at risk of being murdered or maimed by an American-led attack.

From August 24 to 31, 2017, I was part of a three-person delegation that independently visited the DPRK, with the intent of hearing from Koreans themselves about their country and history.

As it turned out, we heard also about their wishes for reunification with the South, their past efforts towards that goal, their desire for peace, but their refusal to be destroyed again. Following are snapshots and videos from my week in the country, with an effort to show the people and some of the impressive infrastructure and developments that corporate media almost certainly will never show.

Some sample photos:

Pyongyang’s Science and Technology Center, completed in 2015, is an expansive structure heated by geothermal energy, and with drip irrigation-watered live grass on inside walls. Its more than 3,000 computers are solar powered, the library has books in 12 foreign languages, and a long-distance learning program enables people from around the country to study and earn a degree equivalent to that of in-university studies.

See full photo-essay here

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“There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion?  The committee continues to look into all the evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion.  Now, I’m not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven’t any. ” -Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr

This statement after going down the laundry list of all the thousands of pages of documents that have been reviewed, the hours of testimony heard, etc. over the course of an investigation that has gone on for a year or more, kind of says it all, don’t you think?

Mike Whitney has a full write-up over the Unz Review on just how absurd this has all become.

With the recent exposure of the Pentagon scheme in which weapons are being funneled from Eastern Europe to Syria, using a falsified paper trail, it is obvious that Washington is still keen on trying to achieve a partition of Syria as a Plan B to its failed regime change policy by backing various opponents of the Syrian government, namely the Kurds.   It is therefore unsurprising, although still disturbing, that the Russian Foreign Ministry has released satellite footage from Eastern Syria that appears to show the U.S. military cooperating with jihadist groups like ISIS.  A transcript from the Ministry of Defense, which was released along with the video, reads:

#US Special Operations Forces (#SOF) units enable US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (#SDF) units to smoothly advance through the ISIS formations.

Facing no resistance of the ISIS militants, the #SDF units are advancing along the left shore of the #Euphrates towards #Deir_ez_Zor.

The aerial photos made on September 8-12 over the ISIS locations recorded a large number of American #Hummer vehicles, which are in service with the #America‘s #SOF.

Go to Russia Insider’s write-up to view the video and images.   An excerpt from their article follows:

The shots clearly show the US SOF units located at strongholds that had been equipped by the ISIS terrorists. Though there is no evidence of assault, struggle or any US-led coalition airstrikes to drive out the militants.

Despite that the US strongholds being located in the ISIS areas, no screening patrol has been organized at them. This suggests that the#US_troops feel safe in terrorist controlled regions.

Analyst Tom Luongo discusses other disturbing events in Syria that seem to portend Washington continuing its failed strategy of backing nefarious elements in Syria to achieve a partition – to which Putin will continue to successfully counter in his Judo-esque manner:

The sides are now very clear.  They were always clear to the astute.  They are now fully out in the open with this week’s events.

It is the U.S./Israel/Saudi Arabia versus Russia/China/Iran with the EU and Turkey trying to change sides while still receiving NATO money.

On Tuesday, an attack on a Russian military police position by Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) was repulsed by Russian Spetznaz and close air support forces.

….What’s important here is that the Russians believe the U.S. was behind the attack, which was no small thing.  It was designed to sow chaos in Idlib and stop the advance of the Syrian Army and its allies (Russia, Iran and Hezbollah) from crossing the Euphrates River.

….Now that there is clarity of the U.S.’s position through the re-consolidation of power by the Deep State, Putin will not hesitate to make bolder and bolder moves to cripple U.S. ambitions in the region.  It means that clashes like these are going to continue to happen with increasing frequency and severity.

Read his full analysis here

Mike Whitney also has a compelling analysis out about how this is potentially the most dangerous moment of the Syrian war as Putin will be forced to consider how much he will concede in order to placate Washington and avoid a serious confrontation as the two nuclear superpowers find themselves “cheek to jowl” in the same area of Syria.  Washington seeks to keep a foothold through an oil-backed Kurdistan and Russia supports the SAA in re-taking the most critical parts of the nation.

This blog will, of course, continue to follow events in Syria.

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Russia is still on a gradual but positive trajectory out of its recession. First, it was just announced that Russia’s grain harvest will again break records and will likely keep the country in its position as the number one exporter of grains.  Of course, this is also good for Russia’s domestic food security.

Second, BNE Intellinews has reported that retail sales are up, along with wages, and unemployment has fallen below 5% for the first time since 2014 – although it never reached over 6% through the recession.

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PBS has been broadcasting a much ballyhooed multi-part special by Ken Burns called “The Vietnam War.”  I have not had a chance to watch the series yet, but based on what I do know about the war and the critiques of trusted journalists and analysts, it sounds like it’s a whitewash that will likely not encourage Americans to meaningfully ponder its imperialist militarism or the profound consequences of its actions in Vietnam on several million Vietnamese in addition to the scarring of the land and continual suffering from illicit weapons used on that nation.

Chuck O’Connell, professor of sociology at UCI, has  great critique up at Counterpunch:

After watching Episodes One and Two of the Burns and Novick Vietnam War series, I am reminded of the old adage asserting a valuable point for students of history: the class that controls the means of material production controls also the means of mental production.  Listening to the narrator scroll through the list of financial sponsors cautioned me to lower my expectations that the series would break away from the predictable liberal narrative that has been dominant in discussions about the Vietnam War.

What is that liberal narrative? It is a bundle of intertwined claims: Vietnamese opposition to the French and then the Americans was motivated by a nationalist desire for independence, the Saigon government of the South was a legitimate government, the rebellion of the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam against the U.S. supported Saigon regime was directed by the communist Hanoi government of the north, the military conflict in Vietnam was thus a civil war, and U.S. military involvement in support of the South was the result of a series of mistakes by American political leaders. It’s a narrative that has a certain plausibility not least because it has been repeated over and over for fifty years.

A more comprehensive scholarly reading of history produces a more accurate narrative: First, without discounting the significance of nationalism in Vietnamese society, a more important factor in the war was the goal of land reform offered by the communists to the peasants who comprised the majority of the population. The military struggle was in large part a social revolution against the landlord class and its foreign backers. Second, the Saigon regime that emerged after the failed French war of re-conquest was a U.S. creation financed and managed by the Americans who built its military and prodded it into fighting against the Vietnamese revolutionary forces. When an army such as the South Vietnamese Army is funded and trained by a foreign power to maintain the foreigner’s domination of that same country, that army is not fighting a civil war – it is fighting a war of counterinsurgency and is essentially an army of collaborators.  Third, the National Liberation Front was an autonomous Southern political entity that emerged from the failure of the Hanoi government to press a fight against the southern regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. Dominated by communists it was in liaison with Hanoi as the North gradually gave greater assistance to the rebels’ efforts. Fourth, the U.S. involvement was not the result of a series of mistakes but was the result of a series of deceptions and provocations made by every U.S. administration running from Harry Truman all the way to Richard Nixon on the basis of the perceived political-economic imperatives of advanced capitalism in Southeast Asia. Let me amplify these points.

Read the full article here

Next is John Pilger’s critique.  As regular readers of this blog may recall, Pilger is one of my journalistic heroes.  He was an on-the-ground journalist (and truth-teller) in Vietnam and, along with his photographer, was the first western journalist to report on the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia.   He has been reporting on the ground in various conflicts and speaking truth to power for decades, from Southeast Asia to the Middle East and elsewhere.

Pilger’s critique can be found at Consortium News.  An excerpt follows:

In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the propaganda of its “exceptionalism,” Burns’s “entirely new” Vietnam War is presented as an “epic, historic work.” Its lavish advertising campaign promotes its biggest backer, Bank of America, which in 1971 was burned down by students in Santa Barbara, California, as a symbol of the hated war in Vietnam.

Burns says he is grateful to “the entire Bank of America family” which “has long supported our country’s veterans.” Bank of America was a corporate prop to an invasion that killed perhaps as many as four million Vietnamese and ravaged and poisoned a once bountiful land. More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed, and around the same number are estimated to have taken their own lives.

I watched the first episode in New York. It leaves you in no doubt of its intentions right from the start. The narrator says the war “was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings.”

The dishonesty of this statement is not surprising. The cynical fabrication of “false flags” that led to the invasion of Vietnam is a matter of record – the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964, which Burns promotes as true, was just one. The lies litter a multitude of official documents, notably the Pentagon Papers, which the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971.

There was no good faith. The faith was rotten and cancerous. For me – as it must be for many Americans – it is difficult to watch the film’s jumble of “red peril” maps, unexplained interviewees, ineptly cut archive and maudlin American battlefield sequences. In the series’ press release in Britain — the BBC will show it — there is no mention of Vietnamese dead, only Americans.

Read Pilger’s full article here

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It’s always nice to end a blog post on a positive note.  According to Sputnik News, a delegation of state senators from New York recently visited Moscow and found much to admire and even emulate in the Russian capital:

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The delegation of New York state senators, which is currently visiting Moscow, is impressed by the city’s way of governance and wants to implement some of its innovative decisions for running of New York City, member of delegation Diane Savino told Sputnik on Thursday ahead of a meeting at the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation in Moscow.

“We were really quite surprised to see how well the city of Moscow is run … So we are hoping that we can learn some stuff and bring it back to NYC and maybe implement some of really smart stuff that they have done here in the past few years,” Savino said.

….Last year, Moscow was included on the list of the world’s best cities, according to a survey by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and BAV Consulting companies. The key metrics for the survey comprised the levels of influence in terms of politics, economics, infrastructure, innovation, culture, entertainment, as well as the access to public education, public health and other points.

In mid-September CNN reported that Russia had proposed a full restoration of diplomatic ties and a path toward normalization of relations with Washington in the early days of the Trump administration:

Russia offered a plan to the United States for a full and immediate move toward normalization — or a restoration of diplomatic ties — in the opening weeks of President Donald Trump’s administration, the Kremlin confirmed Wednesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that “of course” Russia floated proposals such as this one to the US.

“Moscow systematically advocated for a resumption of the dialogue, for an exchange of opinion and for attempts at finding joint solutions,” Peskov said. “But, unfortunately, it saw no reciprocity.”

As we all know, these proposals went nowhere as Putin’s spokesman said.  So much for Trump being in Putin’s pocket.   The article went on to state that the proposals were submitted through various diplomatic channels at various points.

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Sputnik News has reported that, according to the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM),  68 civilians have been killed and over 300 injured since the beginning of this year in the Donbas region.

Recently, Russia proposed to the UN Security Council a plan for UN Peacekeepers to accompany and protect the OSCE SMM, a proposal that was supported by Germany, Austria, and the Donetsk People’s Republic.    According to The Duran:

Russia has formally submitted a draft resolution to the United Nations which calls for the deployment of UN peacekeepers to Donbass in order to shield officials from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from violence.

Austria which currently chairs the OSCE welcomed the Russian proposals, according to an official cited by TASS.

Germany’s Foreign Minister also welcomed the move saying that if implemented, it could lead to a detente between Europe and Russia, paving the way for the eventually lifting of anti-Russian sanctions which the EU has enforced since 2014.

The move which calls for UN peacekeepers to engage in direct dialogue between the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as well as the Ukrainian regime in Kiev was met with a generally positive attitude by the leaders of the Donbass Republics who have pledged to carefully review the final proposals in a spirit of cooperation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin who first discussed the proposals at the 9th annual BRICS summit in Xiamen, described Russia’s aims in the following way,

“I consider the presence of peacekeepers, or rather people who would provide security for the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) mission, absolutely appropriate, and see nothing wrong with it”.

Unsurprisingly, the proposal is facing opposition from Kiev.  As international law expert, Alexander Mercouris, explains:

However for the same reasons that Putin made the proposal Ukraine opposes it.  Just as the Russians want to secure a ceasefire in the Donbass, so Ukraine adamantly opposes a ceasefire since that might increase pressure on Ukraine to fulfil the political provisions of the February 2015 Minsk Agreement, which are totally unacceptable to Ukraine.

Beyond this there are two points about Putin’s proposal which the Ukrainians must find especially infuriating.

The first is the demand in Putin’s proposal that the remit of the UN peacekeepers be agreed through direct negotiations between the Ukrainian government and the authorities of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

Direct talks between the Ukrainian government and the authorities of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics were in fact envisaged by the February 2015 Minsk Agreement, which Ukraine has signed.  Such direct talks have however never happened.  The Ukrainian government adamantly opposes them since it correctly sees such talks as conferring legal recognition on the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as parties to the conflict, thereby admitting that it is an internal Ukrainian conflict (as the Russians say) and not a case of aggression against Ukraine by Russia (as the Ukrainians say).

It is, therefore, unlikely that this plan will be implemented unless enough pressure can be placed by the rest of Europe on Kiev.  I’m uncertain of what kinds of pressure that Europe will realistically impose on the Ukrainian government.  It depends on how truly tired of the Ukrainian mess and the attendant sanctions that Germany and other major players are.  I don’t see them having reached their breaking point yet, however, so this situation will probably continue to limp along as it is – unfortunately for the people of the Donbas who will continue to suffer.

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According to Russian media, Putin has ordered legislation to mandate Russian seaports to stop accepting the U.S. dollar as payment for goods, instead requiring that the ruble be the main currency of trade.   RT reports:

The proposal to switch port tariffs to rubles was first proposed by the president a year and a half ago. The idea was not embraced by large transport companies, which would like to keep revenues in dollars and other foreign currencies because of fluctuations in the ruble.

Artemyev said the decision will force foreigners to buy Russian currency, which is good for the ruble. 

Zerohedge had the following comment on the announcement:

While Russia’s stated motive for the unexpected redenomination of trade at some of its largest trading hubs has to do with domestic economic policies, there is speculation that the timing of this decision has been influenced by the recent diplomatic fallout between the US and Russia, the result of which would be an heightened demand for the ruble, especially since it is rather complicated to find alternative sources for Russia’s largest export by a wide margin: crude.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government has announced that it has dropped the petrodollar and will now trade its oil in yuan:

In response to sanctions from Washington, Venezuela has started reporting its oil prices in Chinese yuan, going against the international trend of listing prices in US dollars.

China, for its part, is making time with a lot of countries who are tired of Washington’s shenanigans.  Beijing has recently bought out Qatar’s stake in the Russian state-owned oil company, Rosneft. Qatar purchased the share just last year and now, due to its rivalry with Saudi Arabia, which is trying to economically squeeze Qatar, the country is looking for a quick cash infusion.  Enter China which has its own reasons for the purchase (or bailout, depending on one’s perspective) as explained by financial blogger, Tom Luongo:

Fast forward to today, and Qatar is suffering under heavy pressure from the Saudis blockading their business, the U.S. put stringent sanctions on European banks doing business with the Russian oil and gas sector, and China is being targeted by the Trump administration on multiple fronts. So, while the economics of this deal vis-à-vis Rosneft’s current share price do not make much sense, as Mr. Pirro pointed out, there is a lot more at stake for all involved then simply a few hundred million in share arbitrage that could change in a few days.

China is stepping in here to save not only Intesa, the Italian bank that floated most of the financing for the deal, but also Qatar which gets a major cash infusion in much-needed dollars. Russia further integrates into China’s oil trading system in Shanghai, including the much-discussed futures contract convertible to gold. This disentangles the deal with respect to the new round of US sanctions. In fact, this is a perfect pivot away from those sanctions. Remember, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin made a not-so-veiled threat the other day towards China’s banks and expulsion from the SWIFT system.

Noted geopolitical and financial writer, F. William Engdahl, writes over at New Eastern Outlook, that Russia and China – with their steady purchases of gold – appear to be slowly putting in place the foundation of an alternative international trade currency based in Eurasia:

For several years it’s been known in gold markets that the largest buyers of physical gold were the central banks of China and of Russia. What was not so clear was how deep a strategy they had beyond simply creating trust in the currencies amid increasing economic sanctions and bellicose words of trade war out of Washington.

Now it’s clear why.

China and Russia, joined most likely by their major trading partner countries in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), as well as by their Eurasian partner countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are about to complete the working architecture of a new monetary alternative to a dollar world.

Read the full article here

Journalist Pepe Escobar’s report from the BRICS conference supports this theory.   Escobar writes for the Asia Times that it was Putin’s speech that evidenced that Russia and China are getting serious on providing an alternative to the petrodollar:

And then, Putin delivers the clincher; “Russia shares the BRICS countries’ concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies. We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies.”

“To overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies” is the politest way of stating what the BRICS have been discussing for years now; how to bypass the US dollar, as well as the petrodollar.

Beijing is ready to step up the game. Soon China will launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold.

This means that Russia – as well as Iran, the other key node of Eurasia integration – may bypass US sanctions by trading energy in their own currencies, or in yuan. Inbuilt in the move is a true Chinese win-win; the yuan will be fully convertible into gold on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.

The new triad of oil, yuan and gold is actually a win-win-win. No problem at all if energy providers prefer to be paid in physical gold instead of yuan. The key message is the US dollar being bypassed.

Read his full report here

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Washington now plans to “massively” expand the Green Zone in Kabul, Afghanistan, another sign, along with the planned deployment of thousands more soldiers there, that the U.S. intends to stay in the country indefinitely.

Not only does Washington plan to further extend what’s already the longest-running American war in history in Afghanistan, but a new investigative report shows that it’s not giving up on continuing to destabilize Syria with sneaky schemes to transfer weapons to the east of the country.  As Zerohedge reports:

A new bombshell joint report issued by two international weapons monitoring groups Tuesday confirms that the Pentagon continues to ship record breaking amounts of weaponry into Syria and that the Department of Defense is scrubbing its own paper trail. On Tuesday the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) produced conclusive evidence that not only is the Pentagon currently involved in shipping up to $2.2 billion worth of weapons from a shady network of private dealers to allied partners in Syria – mostly old Soviet weaponry – but is actually manipulating paperwork such as end-user certificates, presumably in order to hide US involvement.

The OCCRP and BIRN published internal US defense procurement files after an extensive investigation which found that the Pentagon is running a massive weapons trafficking pipeline which originates in the Balkans and Caucuses, and ends in Syria and Iraq. The program is ostensibly part of the US train, equip, and assist campaign for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, a coalition of YPG/J and Arab FSA groups operating primarily in Syria’s east). The arms transfers are massive and the program looks to continue for years.

Iran’s Press TV has reported that, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is now in control of 85% of the country and operations are underway to liberate the remaining 15% from jihadist terrorists.  With respect to the ongoing battle to free the eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr (aka Deir ez-Zor), the Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman, Lieutenant General Aleksandr Lapin stated:

“Currently the operation to free the city is ongoing. The Syrian military will soon finish off” Daesh terrorists, who “used to occupy the city’s neighborhoods,” he added.

Lapin stated that Kalibr cruise missiles, launched from the Black Sea escort vessel, Admiral Essen, had destroyed Daesh’s command posts and communication networks; an effective move that disrupted control of the terror group’s units in Dayr al-Zawr province.

“Over 450 terrorists, five tanks and 42 pickups, with heavy machine guns, were liquidated during the operation,” he said.

The province in which Deir ez-Zor is located happens to be oil-rich and RT reports that there is a race between the SAA and US-backed forces of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to liberate the area:

Last Tuesday, the Syrian military backed by the Russian air force finally broke the IS (Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL) siege of Deir ez-Zor from the west following a cruise missile strike on terrorist positions.

The advance to clear the remaining terrorists progressed at a steady pace, and by Saturday, Syrian government forces smashed the IS blockade of the military airport which for three years had served as the only lifeline to the city.

Following Damascus’ strategic victory, and while its forces continue to squash pockets of IS resistance in the west of the city, the US backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) swiftly announced on Saturday a separate offensive east of Deir ez-Zor. SDF forces raced to Deir ez-Zor which lies only 140 km south-east of Raqqa, where the US-led coalition is conducting its main offensive against ISIS.

Elaborating on the competitive nature of the two groups in capturing the city near the Iraqi border, the RT report continues:

According to Almasdar, both forces are apparently aiming to block each other’s path to the city of Albukamal on the Euphrates river which lies near the border with Iraq.

“As we get closer to Deir ez-Zor and you have these forces converge upon one another, the importance of [communication] between the Russians and the coalition, SDF and the regime becomes more important,” [Army Colonel Ryan] Dillon was quoted as saying by Foreign Policy magazine.

….The SDF has meanwhile promised not to attack Syrian government forces.

“We have clear instructions that after Daesh is eliminated, we should not act against the forces of the [Bashar Assad] regime or against the Russian, Iranian forces or the Hezbollah movement, which are allied with it,” SDF spokesman Talal Silo told Sputnik Monday.

As the SDF military offensive to expel IS and secure parts oil rich province continues, tribal figures aligned with SDF have already proposed measures to form their own form of government. Tribal figures on Monday called for “establishing a preparatory committee that will discuss the basis and starting points for a Civil Council for Deir ez-Zor.”

This sounds like it could serve as a staging ground for a future attempt at a partition of the country, which would be the next best thing for Washington in light of the fact that its attempt at regime change has failed.  As discussed further down in this post, control of the oil fields would provide a carved out autonomous region (most likely a Kurdish one) with economic viability.

However, much of the armed opposition seems to begrudgingly acknowledge that they have lost the war as they have agreed to participate in the next round of peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran.

A recent article in Asia Times explains how Washington has also been forced to yield to Russia on the issue of southern Syria, which is sensitive for Jordan and Israel:

Southern Syria is a sensitive topic for all players in the Syrian conflict, in part because it impacts directly on Israeli national security. This explains why none of them has been willing to grasp it at either the Astana or Geneva talks, leaving Trump and Putin do the high politics.

At the G20, they agreed on the principle of the new zone, and that it would encompass the border city of Daraa, along with al-Quneitra, the principle town in the occupied Golan Heights, and extend all the way up to al-Suwaida in the Druze Mountains, 100 kilometers south of Damascus.

The zone’s objective is multi-faceted. First and foremost, it would free the Syrian-Jordanian border from all “non-state players” – in other words Hezbollah troops and southern Syria branch of ISIS, known as the Khalid Ibn Al Waleed Army.

Secondly, it would provide ample space to relocate millions of Syrian refugees who have been living in Jordan since 2011. And thirdly, it would satisfy the demands of President Trump, who has insisted on a safe zone to protect civilians, even if it is not named as such.

The de-conflict zone would also be off-limits to the Syrian Army. No tanks, warplanes, or soldiers will be allowed to enter.

The zone’s sovereignty would still be in the hands of the Syrian state, but it would be under the supervision of a civilian authority, rather than a military one. Members of the armed opposition would, in theory, be pardoned, and allowed to keep their light arms for use against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda branch in Syria.

Damascus would, meanwhile, be entitled to hoist its official flag, and to re-open state-run schools and police stations. It would also get full control of Syria’s borders with Jordan, which will be vital for bilateral trade.

Read the full article here.

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If one were to have tried to predict the future of Russia-Turkey relations a year ago, one would have been hard-pressed to come up with the present state of affairs between the two nations.   Diplomatic and economic cooperation are going in a positive direction as both nations, along with Iran, are acting as guarantors of the peace being hammered out in Astana (one of several channels of talks but the most publicly prominent one).  As retired diplomat MK Bhadrakumar has written on his website, Indian Punchline:

The geopolitics of the Middle East is witnessing a tectonic shift with the emergence of a Turkish-Iranian axis that would have seemed unbelievable until recently. The 3-day visit by Iran’s chief of general staff General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri to Turkey last week was the first such event in Iran-Turkey relations since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. During Bagheri’s visit, the two countries signed a military agreement on August 17. Turkish President Recep Erdogan disclosed on Monday that he held discussions with Bagheri on possible joint Turkish-Iranian military actions against Kurdish militants.

“Joint action against terrorist groups that have become a threat is always on the agenda. This issue has been discussed between the two military chiefs, and I discussed (with Bagheri) more broadly how this should be carried out,” Erdogan said. Turkey and Iran have strong convergence in preventing the emergence of an independent Kurdish entity in the region in Iraq or Syria. Both countries are battling Kurdish separatist groups within their own borders.

What lends urgency for the two countries to cooperate is their shared suspicion that the US and Israel are possibly stepping up their longstanding project to establish an independent Kurdistan in the region, with an ulterior agenda to create for the long-term an exclusive preserve for pushing their interests on the regional map. The US has refused to pay heed to Turkey’s concerns and has armed and equipped the Kurdish militants in northern Syria. The US Special Forces and Kurdish militia are jointly conducting the on-going offensive on Raqqa, which used to be the capital of the ISIS. Washington spurned a Turkish offer to undertake the operations on Raqqa, an Arab Sunni region, and instead preferred the non-Arab Kurdish militia as its ally.

The US objective seems to be to seize control of the oil fields in the region adjacent to Raqqa, which would ensure the economic viability of a Kurdistan entity in northern Syria. Turkey fears that the next step by the US would be to launch operations in northern Syria along Turkey’s borders with a view to carve out a contiguous Kurdistan, which would have access to the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey rightly apprehends that a Kurdistan as next-door neighbour would put intolerable strain on its integrity and stability.

….However, the emergent Turkish-Iranian axis has a much bigger backdrop. For a start, implicit in it is a hint by Turkey that it is conclusively ending its support for the Syrian rebel groups. Turkey and Iran have been working together on the Russian initiative to create de-escalation zones in Syria. Again, Russia has been steadily strengthening its bilateral cooperation with Turkey and Iran respectively in the recent years. Thus, the Turkish-Iranian military cooperation is crystallising under an overarching Russian umbrella, so to speak, that aims at the stabilization of the Syrian situation. In effect, therefore, one could say that a Russian-Turkish-Iranian triangle is in the making to end the Syrian conflict and bring about a Syrian settlement.

This has far-reaching implications because the Russian-Turkish-Iranian triangle is also showing signs of spreading its wings beyond the Syrian problem to encompass a broad-based regional cooperation that has potential to impact the power dynamic in the Middle East as a whole. Thus, a week ago, Russian, Turkish and Iranian companies signed a $7 billion deal to drill for oil in Iran. Similarly, after much delay, Iran and Russia are moving toward the implementation of their swap arrangement whereby Iran is expected to supply from next month 100000 barrels of oil per day to Russia and in return Russia will be exporting to Iran goods worth $45 billion annually. On the other hand, Russian-Turkish economic cooperation is expanding rapidly. Indeed, the finalization of the $2 billion deal last month for acquiring the S-400 Triumf anti-ballistic missile system from Russia signifies a strategic shift in Turkish foreign policy, Turkey being a NATO power and an ally of the US.

Bhadrakumar goes on to discuss the unpredictable and often thorny history of relations among the three countries.  Continue reading here.

In late August Sputnik published two articles on the progress of negotiations on the Turkstream natural gas pipeline project.  Russia is discussing overland passage with Bulgaria, Greece and Italy to connect the pipeline from Russia to Turkey.  Additionally, Russia’s state-owned gas giant, Gazprom, is in negotiations with the Turkish government to finalize plans for the Turkish portion of the pipeline.

And last but not least, Russia and Turkey seem close to finalizing a deal for Turkey to purchase the S-400 anti-missile system.   As Nikolai Pakhomov writes over at the Lobelog:

If any single arms deal can capture the shifting nature of Russian cooperation in the post-Cold War era, it is the pending sale of S-400 air defense systems to Turkey that now looks increasingly likely to happen.

The S-400 is an advanced integrated system capable of simultaneously tracking 300 targets and striking them from up to 250 miles away. The fact that Russia would consider shipping them to Turkey—a longtime member of NATO, and once considered to be the alliance’s southeastern bulwark against the Soviet Union—would have been unthinkable even two decades ago.

Yet today the two countries are on the verge of completing a $2.5 billion deal that would pass two Russian-made S-400 systems to Turkey, along with Moscow’s promise to help Ankara build two more at home using Russian technology. On August 25, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News that the last hurdle to finalizing the deal was approval by the executive committee of Turkey’s defense industry.

If indeed finalized, the sale would signal new realities for Russia, Turkey, and Europe in several crucial ways. For one, it would confirm Turkey’s drift away from the West, which Russia has deftly used for its benefit. More broadly, it would underscore just how much the essence of Russian strategic partnerships has evolved from the Cold War period, changing the very nature of its confrontation with the West.

Full article here.

I’m pretty sure it’s safe to assume that Russia will be providing a modified version that cannot be reverse-engineered or otherwise endanger their own security interests with the S-400 system.

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Readers are probably all too familiar with the claims repeatedly made that Putin is an aspiring Stalin or, at the very least, is rehabilitating the image of Stalin in Russia.  I myself saw no indication of this on either of my visits to Russia, which included Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, and three cities in Crimea.  In that time, I saw one hand-painted plate with Stalin’s image in the gift shop of the lobby of the Cosmos hotel.  And one lone Stalin impersonator on a street corner in Krasnodar.  No one was flocking to him.

During my recent trip to Russia, as part of my research on the centennial of the Russian Revolution, I asked a cross-section of Russians I encountered what their views of Stalin were.  A few condemned him unequivocally, a couple thought his contribution to the Soviet Union was largely positive, but most gave him kudos for leading the country to victory over the Nazis in WWII (known in Russia as The Great Patriotic War) while acknowledging and disliking his excessive political repression.   I also have written about how Putin played a major role in getting the Monument to the Victims of Repression approved, which will be unveiled later this year in Moscow.

On a recent trip to Moscow, British Russia expert, Paul Robinson, discussed his conclusions about this myth of Putin rehabilitating Stalin:

Last week, a few colleagues and I had the opportunity to assess how true this may be. On Sunday morning we visited the Sretenskii Monastery in downtown Moscow. Like many other institutions of the Orthodox Church, it was destroyed during the Soviet era. In November 2013, a decision was made to rebuild it, and just a little over three years later, in May 2017, the new church in the centre of the monastery was consecrated.

When we tried to go into the main church building, we found that only the basement chapel was open; the bulk of the church was closed as they were still working on the marble and one of the staircases. Fortunately, one of my colleagues was able to persuade somebody to let us in anyway and give us a guided tour. What we heard was quite remarkable.

The land on which the Sretenskii monastery stands used to belong to the Soviet secret services (known successively as the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, MGB, and KGB), whose headquarters, the Lubyanka, is not far away. During the Great Terror, executions took place on the monastery grounds, our guide told us. Even today, all the buildings around the monastery remain in the possession of the post-Soviet security service, the FSB. The monastery is, therefore, surrounded by the organization which in a previous guise once tried to destroy Christianity in Russia.

The resurrected Sretenskii monastery is devoted to the New Martyrs – those thousands of Christians murdered by communists following the 1917 revolution. The new church’s decoration reflects this. Around the dome, for instance, are depictions of key saints of the Russian Orthodox Church, among whom are Emperor Nicholas II and his family, symbols of suffering at the hands of Bolshevism.

….In May of this year, Vladimir Putin attended the service at which the church was consecrated. Our guide spoke of Putin as the former head of the FSB, the successor organization to the Soviet secret services who executed the New Martyrs. Our guide implied that by coming to the service, Putin in effect repented on behalf of those secret services and asked for forgiveness. There is little doubt in my mind that Putin understood perfectly what his presence symbolized and what message he was sending.

Read the full post and see the beautiful accompanying photos of the monastery here.

Russia expert Gordon Hahn further discusses the conflict between the positions (often taken by the same pundits who decry both Stalin and the influence of the conservative Russian Orthodox Church) that Putin wants to revive Stalinism and is also a supporter of the Church:

The Russian Orthodox Church, which the same sources who charge the Putin administration with supporting and privileging in relation to other of Russia’s religions, carries out a permanent campaign against Stalin.

….The above demonstrates that a political battle between various forces is ongoing in Russia, as in other countries, over the country’s past and present. This is not just a battle that the soft authoritarian Putin allows to rage, it is a reflection of political pluralism and free, limited albeit, speech. Just as the Putin administration lets communists rehabilitate Stalin, so too he allows both the Church as well as liberals to criticize the dictator and engage in the country’s politics within limits that protect his own rule. At the same time, the Putin regime has undertaken a campaign of de-Stalinization itself, while avoiding the extremes of historical revisionism and political whitewashing. Part of the policy is informed by foreign states, including Western states, use of Stalinism to demean Russia and Russians.

Full article here.