no indications that Russia is losing.<\/em>\u201d Nope. Just the opposite. Plenty of indications Russia is winning. Moscow\u2019s air defense system has thwarted Ukraine\u2019s multiple, feckless attempts to inflict serious damage on Russian military assets and the Russian Army is in the process of carving up Ukrainian defenders trying to hang on to Avdeeka.<\/p>\nRumer does enjoy a moment of clarity in this paragraph:<\/p>\n
Putin can also look at his foreign-policy record with satisfaction. His investments in key relationships have paid off. China and India have provided an important backstop for the Russian economy by ramping up imports of Russian oil and other commodities. Instead of fretting about lost markets in Western Europe or Beijing\u2019s reluctance to flout U.S. and EU sanctions, Putin has decided that it\u2019s more advantageous in the short term simply to become China\u2019s junior partner in the economic realm. Goods from China account for nearly 50% of Russian imports, and Russia\u2019s top energy companies are now hooked on selling to China.<\/p>\n
The West\u2019s plan to topple Putin and carve up Russia is in tatters. And Rumer grudgingly admits that:<\/p>\n
Putin does not feel any pressure to end the war or worry about his ability to sustain it more or less indefinitely. As winter approaches, the Russian army has mounted a limited ground offensive of its own and surely will expand missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, power plants, industrial sites and other critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Just like Wylie Coyote, licking his wounds after another failed attempt to trap the Road Runner, Rumer frantically pages through his ACME plans book for a solution to deal with that dastardly Putin. His solution? Containment!!<\/p>\n
But now is the time to transition to a long-term strategy that increases and sustains the pressure on the rogue regime in the Kremlin. There should be no illusions that any possible combination of short-term steps will be sufficient to force Putin to abandon his war.<\/p>\n
What Western leaders conspicuously haven\u2019t done is level with their publics about the enduring nature of the threat from an emboldened, revisionist Russia. They have indulged all too often in magical thinking\u2014betting on sanctions, a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive or the transfer of new types of weapons to force the Kremlin to come to the negotiating table. Or they have hoped to see Putin overthrown in a palace coup.<\/p>\n
Poor Eugene. He certainly is not an original nor deep thinker. He recommends the following course of action:<\/p>\n
A policy of containment today would mean continuing Western sanctions, isolating Russia diplomatically, preventing the Kremlin from interfering in our own domestic politics, and strengthening NATO deterrence and defense capabilities, including sustained U.S.-European reinvestment in our defense-industrial base. It would also mean mitigating all of the damage\u2014diplomatic, informational, military and economic\u2014caused by Putin\u2019s war.<\/p>\n
This article is example of schizophrenia by a member of the foreign policy brahmin class. Even though he admitted earlier in his article that Putin\u2019s foreign policy is winning many friends, not only with China, but with the Global South countries, Rumer still clings to the fantasy that the West can \u201cisolate\u201d Russia. I suppose he is manifesting the definition of insanity \u2014 doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome.<\/p>\n
Rumer is a prime example of the bullshit that infects the foreign policy gurus of Washington when he writes:<\/p>\n
Putin\u2019s Russia has little of the hard power or ideological appeal that made the Soviet Union so influential in various parts of the world.<\/p>\n
What? Russia has deployed more capable, advanced nuclear submarines than the Soviet Union ever had. Russia has fielded two hypersonic missiles while the United States is still floundering trying to produce one. Russia\u2019s air defense systems surpass anything the West can offer. Russia is the only major industrial nation that is self-sufficient with energy and rare earth minerals. And Russia is now producing its own fleets of commercial air liners. Oh yeah, almost forgot. Russia\u2019s space program is better and more robust than that of the United States.<\/p>\n
I would love to see a survey of foreign dignitaries that asks them, which subway systems would you ride on after 10pm \u2014 New York\u2019s or Moscow\u2019s? There was a time when Western economic achievements towered over those of the Soviets, but Russia ain\u2019t the Soviet Union. Also worth noting that the Chinese did not have to ask Putin to clean up human feces from the streets of Moscow before they sent Xi for a sit down with Vladimir. Nope. That was San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Rumer and his ilk are still locked into a Kissinger doctrine that asserts the only way the United States can be the top dog is to play off Russia against China. Good luck with that. These guys still refuse to recognize the the U.S. controlled \u201cRules Based Order,\u201d created in the aftermath of World War II is dying. A new geo-political reality is emerging and there is no guarantee that the United States will be able to pretend to be the Colossus it thinks it is.<\/p>\n
The United States political class is locked into a self-defeating delusion that Russia is still a communist state bent on World Domination. Any politician who suggests the alternative, i.e. that we need to deal with Russia as an equal and that we should stop treating Putin and his government as an enemy, will be tarred immediately as a Putin apologist and ostracized. Here is the hard truth \u2014 the political elite in both parties are using Russia as an excuse to engage in the same practices that were the cornerstone of Soviet policies during the Cold War. It is the United States that is locking up political dissidents. It is the United States Government that is collaborating with social media companies to quash dissent against the ruling class.<\/p>\n
It is not the fault of Russia that black kids in inner city schools are \u201cgraduating\u201d from high school without being able to read or do algebra. It is not Russia\u2019s fault that America\u2019s southern border is wide open and being swarmed by millions of illegal migrants. It is not Russia\u2019s fault that many of America\u2019s largest cities are ravaged with narcotics addiction, violence and criminal activity. Look in the mirror America. Clean up your act. Then, maybe, you will have the moral authority to lecture other nations on human rights and freedom. But America, as it stands now, is a fractured country and shows no sign of righting itself.<\/p>\n
Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Washington\u2019s warmongers are coming to terms with the fact that there proxy is facing the prospect of defeat, America, as it stands now, is a fractured country that shows no sign of righting itself. Larry Johnson explains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":270047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=275858"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275861,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275858\/revisions\/275861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/270047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=275858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=275858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=275858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}