WHY SELL S-400s TO THE OTHER SIDE’S ALLIES?

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

(First published at https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/16/why-sell-s400-other-sides-allies.html)

Picked up by http://tapnewswire.com/2017/10/why-is-russia-selling-s-400s-to-saudi-arabia-and-turkey/

http://abundanthope.net/pages/Political_Information_43/Why-Sell-S-400s-to-the-Other-Side-s-Allies_printer.shtml

https://therussiajournal.ru/2017/12/22/sell-s-400s-sides-allies/

Moscow is selling S-400 air defence systems to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In the first case, a down payment has apparently been made while in the second the intention has been announced. This immediately presents the question of why Moscow would agree to sell one of its crown jewel weapons systems to countries which are not only not solid allies but are, in fact, American allies.

The “Atlanticist View” answer to the question would run something like this: Putin’s “hold on power” is trembling, the Russian economy is in trouble, Russia is running out of money and because it has only two exports, weapons and energy, it is desperate to sell either to anyone. And, right on cue, from the usual people, we had this a couple of weeks ago:

Putin’s hold on Russia may be more fragile than it appears. One reason is Western economic sanctions, which are biting and causing hardship to Russian businesses and ordinary citizens. Another is the dependence of Russia’s economy on fossil fuels at a time when oil prices are down and not expected to rebound soon. To the extent that Putin’s legitimacy rests on prosperity, Russia’s economic woes are a problem for him.

While no one in the report stated that “Putin’s Russia” might sell weapons, the participants would probably see such sales as another indications of “economic woes”. To them “Russia has effectively declared political war on the West, even if Europe and the United States haven’t quite grasped that yet.” Such people think that, in order to “keep Russians under his autocratic thumb, he needs them to see that the freedoms of Berlin, London and Washington are nothing to be envied”. This is a continuation of the fantasies that have ruled in such circles (and paid the participants generously) for years and makes them always surprised by what Moscow does. A year ago, for example, some of the “best security minds” of the “POLITICO Cabinet” quoted above were rabbitting on about how Russia was in a quagmire in Syria and that “time is not on Russia’s side”. And, a year before, one of them was saying Russia was economically weak and politically “brittle”. Flat learning curves all of them. Syria was not a quagmire, Russia is not isolated, it’s not failing, its leaders are not fools, its economy is not collapsing, support for the Putin team is strong, sanctions are not “biting” and weapons sales are not the last gasp before collapse.

Where these people profess to perceive an innate Russian malevolence and hostility to “freedom”, others see a wholly rational response to years of NATO expansion and Washington’s flouting of international law and custom, regime change operations and invasions wrapped in sanctimonious protestations of virtue. Moscow believes – quite rationally – that it is on Washington’s target list and it is my opinion that it was the destruction of Libya under “human rights” cover that finally convinced the Putin Team that it had better look to Russia’s defences. Subsequent experience of Ukraine and Syria would only have strengthened their resolve. The S-400 sale is better seen as component in a prophylactic policy against further Washington-NATO chaotic wars and to safeguard Russia itself than malicious resistance to counselling from its betters.

The S-400 sales are actually a geostrategic move of some significance.

The first question to be asked is what, exactly, will be sold to NATO member Turkey and US ally Saudi Arabia? I doubt it is the full-capability S-400 system that Russia itself is using. First, Almaz-Antey is already working on the next in the evolving series. Secondly I would be very surprised if there weren’t, buried inside the circuits, an IFF system that would prevent firing at a Russian aircraft and a self-destruct failsafe if anyone should try to tamper with the inside. As for those who think that no one would buy systems with such limitations, the simple response is this: who apart from the makers would know whether there were such limitations, where and what they were and how to nullify them? We have the confirmation of all that here:

“We won’t give them any of the electronic codes or ‘internals.’ Under the agreement, technical servicing will only be done by Russia and they [the Turks] won’t gain entry to the systems,” a Russian military source told Gazeta.ru.

and here:

“All the fears about the leak of technology are greatly exaggerated, especially so far as anti-aircraft missiles are concerned,” Khodarenko said. “Even if they were to disassemble the system down to the last bolt to try to pull out some military secrets, they would still be left with nothing.”

So, as to the question of Moscow’s risking the secrets of the S-400 falling into the wrong hands, I would assess that it is greatly reduced if not altogether eliminated.

The S-400 system is generally considered to be pretty capable even there has been – as far as we know – no combat use of it. Its threat may have reduced US coalition aircraft operations in Syria and a US general said that “the introduction of an A2/AD bubble in Syria would be Russia’s third denial zone around Europe“. It is a complete mobile system involving several different missiles and a full suite of radars, management and command centres. There are a number of variations and combinations of parts possible – it’s not yet public exactly what parts either will be buying – with effective ranges out to 400 kilometres against targets including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and all kinds of aircraft. A large number of targets can be tracked and many missiles controlled at once by the integrated detection and command package. Like most Russian (and Soviet) systems it is the product of years of evolution, testing and learning. So, on paper, it is very formidable. And, since it has a number of customers, one has to assume that they are convinced that it is as good as it is advertised. In conclusion, therefore, it is likely that the systems sold to Turkey and Saudi Arabia will be protected against being used against the Russian Aerospace Forces and protected against prying eyes trying to get its secrets. But they are buying an air defence system effective against non-Russian targets.

And why would they want that? They know that Washington has a history of turning against former associates. Saddam Hussein was useful until he wasn’t, so was Manuel Noriega, bin Laden & Co ditto, Qaddafi had his moment of cooperation, even Bashar Assad had his after 911. It is more dangerous to be Washington’s former friend than to be its permanent enemy. Both Ankara and Riyadh could be contemplating the possibility of becoming Washington’s former friend. One should remember that Erdoğan attributes last year’s coup attempt against him to Washington’s influences and Riyadh may be contemplating another switch of Western patron.

In short, should either Ankara or Riyadh be contemplating a move away from Washington, precedent suggests they should prepare for the worst. And, as Hussein, Noriega, bin Laden, Qaddafi and Assad can all attest, air attacks are the principal expression, in military form, of Washington’s displeasure. If all you have are antiquated and poorly maintained Soviet air defences from the 1980s (or US equipment with hidden IFF settings) you are pretty helpless and US air power will have a free run.

But, with S-400s, you have a chance. Or at least an alternative. And that is the geopolitical significance of the sales.

The possession of S-400 system gives the owner the possibility of a foreign policy independent of Washington.

Therefore it’s not just another weapons sale, it could be a geopolitical game-changer.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 19 OCTOBER 2017

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

SAUDI ARABIA. The visit of Salman bin Abdulaziz was pretty significant I think. The deal on the petrodollar was that Riyadh would insist on USD for payment in return for protection. Because Washington’s wars in the MENA have only made Iran stronger, Riyadh cannot think the deal is working out and it may be looking for a new sponsor: it happened before when Abdulaziz switched from London to Washington. My thoughts here. I believe that the sale of S-400 air defence systems could be a geopolitical gamechanger. Another of Moscow’s strengths is that it talks to everybody: and so it has offered to mediate between Riyadh and Tehran. Because Washington takes sides, it is useless should Riyadh want to negotiate its way out of messes with its neighbours. “The success of the Euro-Asian triptych is based on the essential principle of transforming enemies into neutral players, neutral players into allies, and further improving relations with allied nations.” Slowly, patiently, bit by bit the long game is played.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The world has entered an era of rapid change. Things that were only recently referred to as fantastic or unattainable have become a reality and have become part of our daily lives.” I don’t think Putin’s referring to the latest computer game, do you? History didn’t end, after all.

RUSSIA INC. I expand on something I wrote some time ago. Russia is a “full-service” economy. One of four on the planet. It and China are going up; the USA and the EU are going down.

CW. It was announced that the last of Russia’s chemical weapons inherited from the USSR have been destroyed. The USA, not completed its own program, is now aiming for 2023. Neither country hit the first deadline of 2007, nor the second of 2012. The NYT does its best to blame Russia for finishing early.

PUTINVILLE. Moscow has been named the fourth safest megacity for women and St Petersburg the best tourist destination in Europe. I don’t put a lot of stock in these ratings but they are useful counters to the Russia as hellhole nonsense that clogs the Western MSM.

WESTERN VALUES™. This should be good for a laugh: Petr Pavlenskiy has been arrested for setting a fire at the Bank of France. Paris granted him asylum after he was fined for setting a fire at the FSB headquarters in Moscow. Does “protest art” in Russia become arson in France?

GETTING SCARED. Russia used to be feeble and falling apart and the danger was that some crazy general would get hold of “loose nukes” and do something bad. Now the Russia-as-enemy campaign is starting to frighten the people who created it. Some of the alarm is feigned as part of the campaign for more money but I think they’re really starting to understand that they have woken a sleeping giant and filled him with resolve (as Admiral Yamamoto is said to have said). And they fear that the US military, after a couple of decades of fighting people who can only fight back with car bombs and suicide belts, isn’t ready for Prime Time. Some US military connected outfit has put out a how to fight Russia manual (rather amusingly based on the assumption that Kiev forces were fighting the Russian Armed Forces in Donbass – won’t they be surprised if they were to meet the real thing!). Meanwhile the Heritage Foundation laments that “Our military has undoubtedly grown weaker“. This shouldn’t be unexpected, Washington assumed too much and pushed too much. But, still, nothing much has been learned: Kiev wasn’t fighting the Russian Armed Forces and Heritage’s idea that Congress should “pass a budget that will truly provide for the common defense” is laughable. The problem isn’t money. But here we are: another step towards the new new world order.

AMERICA-HYSTERICA. Latest top hits from the three principal fake news outlets: “Catalonia held a referendum. Russia won” from the WaPo; Pokemon from CNN; cute puppies from the NYT. Meanwhile Senator Burr admits that, after months of hearings, “I’m not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven’t any” and the real Russian scandal emerges from the shadows. (But, Dear Readers, before the usual drivel about corrupt and corrupting Russians starts up, if your government is for sale, can you blame people for buying it?)

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.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer

EXCHANGE RATING RUSSIA DOWN AND OUT

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

(First published at Oriental Review)

Picked up by Duran

“Why Russia — a country with less money than Canada and fewer people than Nigeria — runs the world now” wondered the Canadian newspaper National Post in January. The piece doesn’t give useful answers: nuclear weapons, good diplomacy, yes, but also the usual claptrap about “ruthlessness” and “Abandon[ing] economic worries to double down on efforts to grab geopolitical status”; in short only a brute lashing out in delirium tremens. The editors should better have wondered whether the headline even made sense: the first point is wrong and the second irrelevant. But, like so much of what passes for analysis in the Western media, it’s written backwards: it’s decision-based evidence making.

Talking about the relative insignificance of Russia’s GDP is an old game: Wikipedia says Canada’s GDP is greater than Russia’s and Germany’s is about two and a half times greater. These comparisons all assume that the price of the ruble in US dollars is a measurement of Russia’s production; a mere tweak in the relative exchange therefore knocks Russia from Number 8 down to below Spain according to Business Insider in 2014. Easy to calculate, easy to write, these head nodders are just feel-good junk: Russians don’t actually eat dollars, they don’t buy their necessities with them and they won’t have to eat grass and Putin speeches when a ruble buys fewer USDs.

There’s something deeply misleading and, in fact, quite worthless about these GDP comparisons. Whatever rubles are selling for at the moment, Russia has a full-service space industry which has the only other operating global satellite navigation system, the only taxi service to the ISS, much of which it built, and, apparently, the only rocket motors good enough for US military satellites. Neither Canada nor Germany, let alone Spain, does. It has an across the board sophisticated military industry which may be the world leader in electronic warfare, air defence systems, silent submarines and armoured vehicles. Canada, Germany, Spain do not. It builds and maintains a fleet of SSBNs – some of the most complicated machinery that exists. Ditto. It has a developed nuclear power industry with a wide range of products. Ditto. Its aviation industry makes everything from competitive fighter planes through innovative helicopters to passenger aircraft. Ditto. It has a full automotive industry ranging from some of the world’s most powerful heavy trucks to ordinary passenger cars. It has all the engineering and technical capacity necessary to build complex bridges, dams, roads, railways, subway stations, power stations, hospitals and everything else. It is a major and growing food producer and is probably self-sufficient in food today. Its food export capacity is growing and it has for several years been the leading grain exporter. It has enormous energy reserves and is a leading exporter of oil and gas. Its natural resources are immense. Its pharmaceutical industry is growing rapidly. It is intellectually highly competitive in STEM disciplines – a world leader in some cases. Its computer programmers are widely respected and regularly win the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. (Yes, there is a Russian cell phone too.) Its social networking apps attract users outside Russia (especially with fears that US-based ones may be censored or otherwise controlled). It’s true that many projects involve Western partners – the Sukhoy Superjet for example – but it’s nonetheless the case that the manufacturing and know-how are now in Russia.

Germany or Canada has some of these capabilities but few – very few – countries have all of them. In fact, counting the EU as one, Russia is one of only four. Therefore in Russia’s case, GDP rankings are not only meaningless, but laughably so. While Russians individually are not as wealthy as Canadians, Germans or Spaniards today, the foundations of wealth are being laid and deepened every day in Russia.

And, speaking of oil prices, what these head-scratchers all miss is this simple fact: Russia sells oil in dollars but produces it in rubles. So, whatever the exchange rate, things pretty well balance out. In fact, thanks to the exchange rate, Russia had some of the lowest production costs, measured in USD, in the world in 2015. It also funds its space effort, automobile production and wheat fields in rubles. And sells whatever exports they produce in dollars.

What of the future? Well there’s a simple answer to that question – compare Russia in 2000 with Russia in 2017: all curves are up. Meanwhile sanctions are driving the Russians to create new industries, oilfield services for one, or to boost others: agricultural products are now the second-largest export sector. Understandably, many Russians prefer the long time gain to the immediate (and declining) pain and hope the sanctions continue. For what it’s worth, PwC predicts Russia will be first in Europe in 2050, but, even so, I think it misses the real point: Indonesia and Brazil ahead of Russia? No way: it’s not GDP/PPP that matters, let alone how many USDs your currency buys, it’s full service. (Anyway, by 2050 the renminbi or gold will likely be the measure and how will the USA itself look by that measurement?).

Russia has a full-service economy and it won’t become any less so in the next 30 years. And there’s very few of them. And… in that little group of four autarkies on the planet, which are on the rise and which not?

Simple-minded GDP comparisons by exchange rate cause people to get it wrong over and over again. A more intelligent question would be to wonder whether Russia, hampered in the past by autocracy and Marxism-Leninism, might be about to show its real possibilities.

Why Russia Hasn’t and Won’t Invade Ukraine

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn ACCUSATIONS, REPRINTS, RUSSIA'S NEIGHBOURS, UKRAINE

These pieces are papers that I believe to be still relevant; they were published earlier elsewhere under a pseudonym. They have been very slightly edited and hyperlinks have been checked. NOTE 2017: I originally wrote this in November 2014. Breedlove has come and gone but a new American general is apparently believing that there are thousands of Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine. So this is apposite again.

https://orientalreview.org/2017/09/11/russia-hasnt-wont-invade-ukraine/

Here we go again. NATO is again – how many times does that make it? – echoing Kiev and saying that Russia has invaded Ukraine. Or so says NATO’s General Breedlove. “‘Across the last two days we have seen the same thing that O.S.C.E. is reporting,’ General Breedlove said at a news conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. ‘We have seen columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defence systems and Russian combat troops entering into Ukraine.’” Well, here are the OSCE reports, read then and see whether you think Breedlove is telling the truth: columns moving around in east Ukraine, yes; crossing the border, no. Meanwhile, back at the Pentagon, the official spokesman has no “independent operational reporting that tells me that they have crossed the border”. But NATO has its own reality.

So has Russia invaded Ukraine? Of course, that all depends on your definition of “is” is, or some similar piece of deceptive hair-splitting, doesn’t it? But, for most people, “invasion” means regular troops and equipment crossing the border and staying there. Is Moscow aiding the rebels in the east? Probably. But that’s not what’s being claimed.

The neatest way to respond to these endless frothings is this:

If Russia had invaded, you wouldn’t have to ask; if you have to ask, it hasn’t.

It would have happened quickly and be plain for all to see. A thousand soldiers, a dozen or two tanks is not how it would have happened: it would have been big, it would have been sudden and it would have been over quickly. There would be no need for grainy satellite photos of combine harvesters or whatever they were; no need for reporters who forgot their cell phones saying they saw something: there would be Russian soldiers at the Dnepr certainly and maybe in Kiev or Lviv; Russian soldiers, guns, helicopters, tanks and aircraft all over the place. (Interesting to speculate, as it gets colder and armed thugs throw their weight around, how Russian troops would be received in Kiev today, isn’t it? But we’ll probably never know).

Or at least the first part would have been over quickly. Just like the US invasion of Iraq. Getting to the Dnepr, Kiev or Lviv would have been easy, but once there, the Russians would have found themselves surrounded by people who didn’t want them to be there. And that, as the Americans found out in Iraq, is quite a different thing. If one were to take a horizontal slice of Ukraine from east to west and ask the inhabitants to rate the presence of Russian soldiers in their neighbourhood from one to ten, one would get an answer ranging from ten in the far east to minus ten in the far west: flowers in the east, bullets in the west.

Russian troops in the centre and west would find themselves opposed by people who had had military training in the Soviet or Ukrainian Armed Forces, many of whom had military experience in Afghanistan. In other words, Russian invaders would be met with exactly the same response that western Ukrainian invaders found in the east.

Crimea was different: there it was all flowers, all the way and the borders are clear, distinct and obvious. Not at all the same in the rest of Ukraine. (NOTE 2017: And the Russian troops were already there, a point that Western accounts usually glide over.)

Yes, the Russian Army could get to the western border in a week or two without much difficulty but it wouldn’t be able to stay there.

So that’s why Moscow hasn’t and won’t “invade Ukraine”: it doesn’t want to find itself bogged down in months or years of ambushes, IEDs and all that. And then probably have to leave at the end, anyway. Moscow has watched the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, of course, it remembers its own experience in Afghanistan. Huge cost for a trivial and momentary gain.

The same reason, come to think of it, why Moscow, with its alleged desire to rebuild the empire or whatever, didn’t put Georgia into the bag in 2008. And why it won’t invade Estonia either. It could do it, but it wouldn’t be worth it.

Afterword: All this is predicated on the West confining its support to the discreet provision of training and weapons (something that Breedlove and the others don’t talk about much – the projection in this whole affair is enormous). Should NATO forces enter Ukraine and move east, then all bets are off.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 21 SEPTEMBER 2017

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

WADA YA KNOW? Fake story, fake accusation as I said at the time “My default position nowadays is that it’s all lies.” NYT reports that WADA has cleared 95 of the 96 athletes they looked at. But that propaganda outlet cannot resist suggesting that that Russia may have destroyed the evidence. That’s the information war: smear the unfounded charge all over; when the story collapses and the damage done, move on to the next one. What we did learn however, is that a remarkable number of Western athletes have a doctor’s note that allows them to take banned substances. Interesting eh?

MOSCOW ELECTIONS. While the pedestal party won overall, there was some excitement because, in a very low turnout, “liberals” organised a win in some seats in Moscow. Karlin is not impressed and points out the correlation with bicycle rental stations. Shamir takes it more seriously seeing it as the latest Washington regime change effort. Perhaps he’s right: both The Guardian and Newsweek hail it (BTW: the comment by Germann Arlington absolutely nails the Big Inconsistency of Western reporting: “If the elections are rigged then the result should have been the usual 98% for Putin’s party. If the election is not rigged then why is it always presented as such?”). Russian politics are pretty frowsty: the pedestal party dominates (but the Putin Team is popular) the KPRF and LDPR were led by the same guys when the USSR was still around, even Yavlinskiy (then, now) is still out there (Crimea is part of Ukraine: not a big vote getter). One day things will start to change but I doubt this is the moment.

LISTENING IN. Wikileaks tells us about Russian scanning of electronic communications. Putin often tells us that everything is done legally. Well, it always starts that way, doesn’t it? If they can, they will.

ZAPAD-2017. Well, the exercise is over and Russia didn’t conquer/invade/attack or even threaten anybody. Next overreaction scheduled in four years. (I amuse myself laughing at the excitables.)

SAUDI-RUSSIA VISIT. My take on Salman bin Abdulaziz’ visit to Moscow. I remember that Abdulaziz switched from London to Washington in 1945 and speculate that Riyadh may again be adjusting its place in the developing new power order.

STALIN’S NOT BACK. Robinson describes a visit to a church dedicated to the New Martyrs situated on a Cheka killing ground. The truth is that Russia remembers everything.

NEW PARK. The horrible old Rossiya Hotel is gone and replaced by an interesting park (design idea).

SANCTIONS. According to the UN rapporteur, sanctions and counter-sanctions cost the EU US$3.2 billion a month; the Russian economy has lost US$55 billion in total. He calculates the total cost to both at US$155 billion. In short, he agrees that Europe has been hit much harder than Russia and certainly much more than the USA. Perhaps that was the real point: Washington’s “overriding strategic objective the prevention of a German-Russian alliance“.

RUSSIANS IN SYRIA. The author has sent me a file of photos which are of interest. What is immediately apparent (I can’t help comparing them with what I saw during Chechnya I) is the aura of tough professional competence and lots of sophisticated kit.

S-400. Turkish President Erdoğan says Ankara has already put down a deposit on the S-400 SAM system. I am still rather puzzled: this is a crown jewel weapon system and Turkey is, still, in NATO. We are assured that this is just the export model and that even taking it apart wouldn’t reveal its secrets.

TRUST. Trump announced the closure of the CIA support to Syrian rebels. Or has it ended, or was that just weasel-wording that allowed the Pentagon to continue? Who can say? Foreign Affairs magazine, no less, has just gone public with “The Pentagon Is Spending $2 Billion Running Soviet-Era Guns to Syrian Rebels” and there are persistent reports (denied by Washington of course) that US helicopters lifted people out of Deir ez-Zor after the Syrians broke the siege. (Deir ez Zor was the scene of the US attack on Syrian forces a year ago.) Trump’s constant references to the Iran nuclear deal as “one of the worst” does not give anyone confidence that Washington would keep its word to Pyongyang (or anybody).

AMERICA-HYSTERICA. All the reasons why the Russia-election-interference story is bunkum. Not least of which is the remarkable inactivity of the FBI: for example “The FBI has never questioned Assange [he confirms that] or Murray” and neither has it ever looked at the DNC servers. Nonetheless, every time you think the hysteria has gone as far as it can, it goes a bit farther: Morgan Freeman joins the circus. Bershidsky trashes the latest nonsense. One can hope that it’s finally jumped the shark.

NEW NWO. Beijing shows its teeth.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 6 SEPTEMBER 2017

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

AMERICA-HYSTERICA. “A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack” finally got the VIPS analysis into the mainstream. (Briefly: Guccifer 2.0 documents were locally downloaded and doctored to give a Russian flavour). Has this killed the story? Maybe: the MSM has been shrieking about other things since. (And the interminable US investigations inch closer to the truth.) Normal hysteria returns: “Putin’s Hand Can Clearly Be Seen In the Chaos of a Destabilized West“. Amazing how powerful these people think he is, isn’t it? Nothing is beyond his reach (except Kiev and Vilnius.)

DIPLOMATIC PROPERTY. A complete violation of the Vienna Convention: “Article 22. The premises of a diplomatic mission… are inviolable… The host country must never search the premises…”. Washington has set a precedent that will come back to bite it: what’s to stop any country that thinks it’s on Washington’s target list from doing the same? Incredible. Who’s in charge?

BRIDGE. The Kerch Strait bridge rolls along. Here’s the railway arch being moved into position and the first ship passing under it. Here’s an amusingly one-sided account of things from the Daily Signal.

ZAPAD 2017. NATO is giving itself a major case of the fantods over this exercise “close to its borders”. The website so you can follow yourself: 14-20 September in Russia and Belarus, 13K troops, 70 aircraft, 250 tanks, 200 guns and 10 warships. “Anti-terrorist” of course – aren’t they all these days? – “The exercise stipulates that some extremist groups have penetrated… “. They have them every four years.

QUAGMIRES. Shortly after Moscow began its intervention in Syria, Obama opined “An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work“. Well, yesterday Damascus broke the seige of Deir ez-Zor which probably marks the beginning of the mopping up phase. In short it’s not a quagmire and it did work. The US involvement in Afghanistan, on the other hand, is about to enter year 17, getting on for twice as long as the Soviets were there. That is a quagmire and that hasn‘t worked; the Pentagon isn’t even sure how many soldiers it has there: 8.4K, 11K or more? Russia has had three military actions this century – Chechnya II, Ossetia and Syria – all victories; all US military interventions have been failures. What’s the difference? I would suggest that Russia initiates military violence with a clear plan 1) to do only what violence can do 2) that is integrated with a diplomatic and civil program for the things it can’t and 3) coordinated with reliable allies on the ground. When it has done what it set out to do, it stops. Washington, on the other hand, 1) expands its aims after the initial success far past those that violence can achieve 2) has a negligible diplomatic effort and 3) its allies on the ground turn out to be phantasms of the Washington echo chamber. Added to which, I do not believe that the US military is nearly as competent as its cheerleaders think it is; I suspect it resembles the post-Vietnam mess I saw on exercises in Germany in the 1980s. Maybe even “hardwired for failure“.

ISRAEL. Jerusalem seems to have understood its defeat sooner than Washington. Iran has a much stronger presence in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq thanks to two decades of calamitous interventions. It is argued here and here that a nervous Netanyahu received a dusty answer from Putin in Sochi: Iran is Russia’s “strategic ally in the Middle East”.

BRICS. The summit communiqué is rather blah except for 10 and 11 which deal with finance and currencies. There’s a story that China “is preparing to launch a crude oil futures contract denominated in Chinese yuan and convertible into gold“. This would be a strong blow to the power of the US dollar and, by extension, of Washington itself. When Kennan warned against the “superficial and ill informed” decision to expand NATO I don’t think he foresaw all the downstream consequences. Beijing, famous for long-term thinking, took a warning from it too. Newton’s Third Law of geopolitics.

OOPS! It will be at least 2024 before the US can replace the Russian rocket motors. Carefully excluded from Congress’ sanctions bill of course.

KOREA. Has there been much mention in your local news outlet of the US-South Korea exercises of 21-31 August which, they say, sometimes include practising “decapitation strikes”? (The media often leaves out important synchronicities.) I’ve heard that North and South will meet in St Petersburg. We shall see; there is a solution to the problem: what Beijing calls “double suspension“. And it probably doesn’t require Washington: Seoul could agree to stop the exercises and tell some of the 35K+ US troops to leave. Putin has strongly condemned Pyongyang’s tests: “a flagrant violation“.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer