Kremlin Apologist or Useful Idiot ? (or maybe I just don't want to die in a nuclear holocaust...)

Never did finish/post piece I intended on Russia & US Elections, but the Russian bear does still loom even larger than usual in Western political discourse, so I should probably say something, even as my suspicion that I may eventually end up regretting defending Russia grows...

I'll start thusly...As a Westerner I don't particularly fear Vladimir Putin...at all.  The man some want to paint as a Siberian candidate, soon to be POTUS Trump, a thin-skinned mentally deranged narcissist bully and confessed sexual predator OTOH...That sumbitch in control of not just the most powerful military of the planet, but also in possession of the codes to the US nuclear arsenal fucking terrifies me.  Why the difference ?  Because one, I judge on his past behaviour to be a rational actor, whilst the other...well, his words and actions rather speak for themselves.

I was vaguely hopeful up until the general election even that Trump, who prides himself on his unpredictability, might surprise us, that the incompetence & recklessness shown during the campaign might turn out to have been an act, but at this point, listening to commentators on the BBC mere days before inauguration still holding out promise that he can change, and insisting that we should give him a chance, give him the benefit of the doubt, I have do ask What are they smoking ?  Will the chattering classes still six months from now, eighteen months from now still be denying the obvious ?  That the man is exactly who he has shown himself to be, the last two years of the campaign...The last seven decades of his life ?  FFS !

Anyways...Putin...Russia...I've written here before on what I think about/how I feel about events in South Ossetia, in Ukraine & Crimea.  How I feel that Russia's geopolitical strategy is, certainly from their point of view, primarily defensive, and an attempt through fostering frozen conflicts, to establish buffer-zones between themselves, and what they see as Western encroachment/encirclement.  And it's a smart strategy.  Russia, despite what the USSR may or may not have been, and despite attempts at modernisation, is likely not as powerful militarily as they would have us believe, and even before falls in the price of oil & natural gas*, hardly an economic powerhouse.

What does it cost Russia to maintain frozen conflicts around Georgia & Ukraine ?  How many military assets does Russia need to sustain a minimal presence in South Ossetia or Abkhazia ?  How much does it cost to fund a simmering uprising in the East of Ukraine, to send over the occasional advisers or armaments ?  The cost of fortifying and rebuilding the infrastructure of Crimea I would imagine are substantial, but of the territories in question, this is the only one of true militarily strategic value to the Russians, so I'd be surprised if they didn't spend there, whether they have the money or not.  It's an investment in the future.

And so long as the unrest simmers in Eastern Ukraine, so long as Ukraine declines to relinquish its claim to Crimea, Ukraine is stuck/frozen.  No EU membership for Ukraine, no invitation to join the NATO umbrella.  Same for Georgia so long as it maintains its claims to Abkhazia & South Ossetia.  (Perhaps another non-European nation will be the first instead to take the EU out of the actual European subcontinent...if the European experiment even survives the next few years...) Cheap & effective.

Know what wouldn't be cheap ?  Rolling tanks into fucking Poland.  Or even Kiev.  This is the fear, right ?  Not that Russia might have slightly more influence in its own backyard, might maintain a buffer holding back western expansion, not even that Russia might have some influence in Europe, but that...the Russkies are coming any moment now to kill us all !

What would it cost the Russians to invade, conquer, and then occupy European countries...or any other hostile territories** ?  To destroy entire armies, to maintain infrastructure, to suppress likely ongoing violent resistance ?  And, in the event of attacking NATO nations (there's the rub in a bit...), risking outright nuclear war ?  For what ?  'Cos evil Vladimir Putin ('Vlad the Impaler' as Russophobic idiot Randi Rhodes has taken to calling him) wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire ?!!  I have no doubt that Putin does want to restore what he sees as Russian pride, as Russian honour, as respect for Russia.  As no doubt, do most ordinary Russians.  But where is the evidence for imperial ambitions ?

I could be wrong, of course, but when has Putin acted irrationally, when has he shown himself to be anything other than the cool calculating pragmatist, acting in what he rationally sees as the best interest of the Russian people ?  Empires are expensive.  (And even the most successful, even the mightiest eventually collapse under their own weight.)  If Putin truly is the psychopath some would make him out to be, maybe he doesn't care, but there's no evidence of this.  Russia, economically, is still largely in a state of  contraction.  Putin can puff his flabby chest out all he want, but Russia is no Rome, no industrial Britain.  Russia, large as it is, doesn't have the resource-constraints of an island Britain or a Japan to drive it on to overseas conquests.  And it doesn't have the ideological motivation of a Nazi Germany or its own predecessor the USSR for empire-building, nor even the putative motivation of US empire in 'spreading democracy.'  Why, unless Putin is a complete maniac, would Russia be so stupid as to roll out the tanks into Europe ?

I meant it, that I don't fear Vladimir Putin.  I don't like the bastard, I don't think he's 'a good person', I despise his treatment of the LGBT community, his record on civil liberties, his targeting of political enemies, and I don't trust him as such, but I do on the basis of his past action see him as a rational actor.  As he moves the various (likely to him, disposable) pieces around on the chessboard, Putin is a ruthless player, but not so far as I can tell, ever a reckless one.

---

Now, for the caveat: Donald Fucking Trump.

I don't know to what degree the Russians may have worked with his campaign, or whether they might have some hold over him via bribery or blackmail.***  The fact that they not so much wanted him as President per se, but far more obviously Did Not Want Fucking Russophobic Warmonger Hillary, I don't blame them for, and the idea that of all the factors in the election, from Hillary's own inappropriateness as a candidate to the GOP suppression of the vote, we would focus on supposed Russian hacking as responsible for Hillary's loss, I find laughable.  And ooh, CIA goons, shock horror, RT is involved in producing state-propaganda, that tends to favour Russian interests over the West ?...No Shit !  But...if only via Paul Manafort, there do seem to be ties between the Donald and the Kremlin; there is reason for suspicion.

And, I have to say this...Trump potentially changes everything.  Trump is the wildest of wild cards, and could destabilise the global order seven ways from Sunday with any given tweet, never mind access to nukes.  And Trump is on the record, questioning the relevance or necessity of NATO.  Personally, I'm not sure myself whether NATO should have continued post Cold War****, but all my past calculations regarding the actions of Russia & other possible hostile powers have been posited at least in part on an assumption that the shared military & nuclear deterrent of NATO would hold.  Disbanding or neutering the NATO deterrent at this point in time would seems to me incredibly reckless (more so or less so than massing NATO forces on Russia's border as idiot Obama & the EU currently doing debatable), let alone in concert w/encouraging nuclear proliferation in the Far East & Middle East, but...idiot Americans decided to elect maniac Trump, and such ill-thought-out policies does he bring.

I still don't particularly fear Putin, but then again, I don't live in Eastern Europe...  I couldn't blame them back in the (well, still technically in for a few more days) relatively safe era of Obama for being wary of Putin & the Kremlin at least.  Back when I assumed the NATO alliance would endure well into the foreseeable future.  If that alliance goes away, or is significantly weakened...if the immediate threat of Mutually Assured Destruction is removed ?...

Well, I still don't think it likely that even then Putin would be stupid enough to invade & occupy the Baltic states, never mind Poland...Germany...  Empire, as I said, is Expensive.  But...some more localised disturbance, on the pretext say of protecting Russian citizens, Russian speakers, some version of the strategy of frozen conflicts ?  Some interference in the political process, an attempt to install political figures friendly to Russian interests...?  If I lived in the Baltics right now, in the soon-to-be Trump era, yeah, I'd be at least a little worried.  Live nowhere near, and I'm fucking terrified, but again, in my case,...of Donald, not Vlad.

The point of all of this ?  Nothing more than to set out where I stand on these issues currently, how I see events possibly playing out.  And, even in the era of the Cheeto King Trump, advising caution, that we treat Putin and the Russians generally as respected adversaries, and as proven rational actors, rather than as cartoon-supervillains.  Putin's hold on power won't last; Nor will Trump's.  One way or another, the earth will dawn on a day neither of said authoritarian arseholes hold sway over their respected peoples.  I'd rather the reason therefor were not the nuclear annihilation of all human civilisation.



* And if you believe that there wasn't a coordinated effort between the US & Saudi in this regard...

** Hint, hint...South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea...not only not hostile territory to Russia, but friendly.

*** If the CIA et al do have any further potentially damaging info. or rumours on Trump, I would suggest they release it post haste, to pre-empt any blackmail, and to let Trump deal with the embarrassment whilst he still lacks actual nukes at his disposal.

**** It could have been maintained as more of a Northern alliance, if we had pursued closer friendlier relations & possible alliance w/a certain large country of similar cultural origins, but neither here nor there now...

Real Commies Embrace Crony Capitalism Silly

The main stated reason for the students’ opposition was their conviction that it would have given the mainland too much economic power within Taiwan, which it could then use to wrest political concessions. But Lin’s participation was motivated more ideologically. She and like-minded “leftists” — her word — were convinced that cross-strait relations in general have benefited the rich on both sides to the detriment of exploited workers on both sides. The irony is that Lin came from a place where the study of Marxism is mandatory, only to find in the deeply anti-communist society of Taiwan what she called “true Marxism.”

“In China,” she said, “we learn about Marxism but nobody believes in it, but on Taiwan they really believe in it.” And, unlike on the mainland, where the last student demonstrations in 1989 took place before most current students were born, the students on Taiwan were able to organize themselves, to publicize their views, and to demonstrate.

From an article in Foreign Policy: Does Time in Taiwan Change Young Mainland Minds?  The article doesn't provide a clear answer to the question, but...here's how it ends:

“We are forced to go back. We need to work. We need to live,” Ting said. “The democratic ideology makes no sense for your daily life.”

Back, back, back we go then...

The NSA's Long War on Encryption

How NSA and GCHQ spied on the Cold War world

American and British intelligence used a secret relationship with the founder of a Swiss encryption company to help them spy during the Cold War, newly released documents analysed by the BBC reveal.

...

Crypto AG sold its machines around the world, offering security.

But what customers did not know was that Hagelin himself had come to a secret agreement with the founding father of American code-breaking, William F Friedman.

...

The relationship, initially referred to as a "gentleman's agreement", included Hagelin keeping the NSA and GCHQ informed about the technical specifications of different machines and which countries were buying which ones.

The provision of technical details "is a revelation of the first order," says Paul Reuvers, an engineer who runs the Crypto Museum website.

"That's extremely valuable. It is something you would not normally do because the integrity and secrecy of your own customer is mandatory in this business."

...

In one document, Hagelin hints to Friedman he is going to be able "to supply certain customers" with a specific machine which, Friedman notes, is of course "easier to solve than the new models".

Previous reports of the deal suggested it may have involved some kind of backdoor in the machines, which would provide the NSA with the keys.

But there is no evidence for this in the documents (although some parts remain redacted).

Rather, it seems the detailed knowledge of the machines and their operations may have allowed code-breakers to cut the time needed to decrypt messages from the impossible to the possible.

The relationship also involved not selling machines such as the CX-52, a more advanced version of the C-52 - to certain countries.

"The reason that CX-52 is so terrifying is because it can be customised," says Prof Richard Aldrich, of the University of Warwick.

"So it's a bit like defeating Enigma and then moving to the next country and then you've got to defeat Enigma again and again and again."

Some countries - including Egypt and India - were not told of the more advanced models and so bought those easier for the US and UK to break.

In some cases, customers appear to have been deceived.

One memo indicates Crypto AG was providing different customers with encryption machines of different strengths at the behest of Nato and that "the different brochures are distinguishable only by 'secret marks' printed thereon".

Historian Stephen Budiansky says: "There was a certain degree of deception going on of the customers who were buying [machines] and thinking they were getting something the same as what Hagelin was selling everywhere when in fact it was a watered-down version."

Among the customers of Hagelin listed are Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, India, Jordan and others in the developing world.

In the summer of 1958, army officers apparently sympathetic to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the regime in Iraq.

Historian David Easter, of King's College, London, says intelligence from decrypted Egyptian communications was vital in Britain being able to rapidly deploy troops to neighbouring Jordan to forestall a potential follow-up coup against a British ally.

The 1955 deal also appears to have involved the NSA itself writing "brochures", instruction manuals for the CX-52, to ensure "proper use".

One interpretation is these were written so certain countries could use the machines securely - but in others, they were set up so the number of possible permutations was small enough for the NSA to crack.

So the NSA was working to undermine encryption as late as the Second World War.  Good to know.

Wishful Thinking at its Best

Report: Russia's right wing is egging on Texas' secessionist movement

By John-Henry Perera | June 23, 2015 | Updated: June 23, 2015 11:46am

A Russian newspaper conducted an interview with Nathan Smith, a representative of the Texas Nationalist Movement, who just happened to be in St. Petersburg for a right-wing convention in Spring 2015.

Google Translate is a little rusty when it comes to the Cyrillic alphabet, but Smith's interview is more or less a repeat of everything we've heard before from pro-secessionists: Why should we be part of a union that takes but never gives back? U.S. policy is bad for Texas. We can do better on our own.

Politico writer Casey Michel notes that Texas' homegrown movement is delicious for Russian right wingers who blame much of the country's ills on the U.S., particularly after the recent sanctions on the country following the Crimean invasion in 2014. It also plays well with the country's long-term strategy of destabilizing the west.

"Cheered primarily by Igor Panarin, a former KGB agent and head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's diplomatic academy, the theory posits that a fractured United States, akin to the Soviet Union's demise, would disintegrate entirely, with nearby nations hoovering the assorted states."

The Russians cannot possibly be this stupid...can they ?


Although I see where the Russian's are coming from in the current tensions with the West, although I understand their point of view regarding maintaining influence in their backyard, and although I agree with much of their criticism of NATO, I think there's one thing they maybe misunderstand: Much as people throughout the world may harbour some distrust of the United States and its motives, including many in the West, and even in the United States itself, they don't necessarily hate the US.  And many of them share that distrust of America with a desire to be American themselves.

Russia, on the other hand, isn't exactly beloved by many of its neighbours, to say the least (never mind how the rest of the world sees the country, fairly or not), and for the many states that left the Warsaw pact and/or the Soviet Union after the latter's collapse it was very explicitly a question of liberation from what they saw as a decades-long* oppressive foreign influence.  An opinion that would be held in many of those countries by a clear majority.


The occasional mutterings of discontent in states like Texas, Alaska, Arizona, or wherever in the US, are little more than a temporal political protest, usually against the particular policies at one point in time of one ruling party.  The Texans aren't going to secede today any more than the so-called 'blue-states' were after the Bush-Gore decision in 2000, however much gnashing of teeth there may have been at the time.


And yet, even if the Russians aren't stupid enough to think that a secession of Texas or any other American state is remotely likely, they sure do put an awful amount of money and effort into their anti-Western  and Western-targeted propaganda outfits, possibly the jewel in the crown of which is RT (formerly Russia Today).  RT is a well-financed, slick media outfit, staffed with many Western presenters, that just so happens to specialise day after day after day in reporting on stories that make the West (The US & UK especially) look bad (some more justifiably, some less)

And there's an audience for the type of thing they cover.  An audience that occasionally includes me for that matter, well aware of the propagandistic agenda as I may be.  And there's a fair number of mid-level media-personalities in the West (usually either of the more slightly radical lefty or the more libertarian political persuasion) that flock to work with RT, eager as they are to get any coverage of opinions that they know are increasingly locked out from the mainstream corporate-media in the West.

But the vast majority of people in the West don't care what those individuals say, don't watch RT, don't read Sputnik or the Moscow Times, and won't be touched by the comments of Putin's keyboard-armies on the pages of the Telegraph or the Indy or on CiF on the Guardian.  The criticism of the West (some of it justified) never quite reaches them, whilst daily they absorb the news & the jokes from the mainstream media that reinforce their inherited view of Russians as inherently evil two-dimensional cartoon-villains.

I suspect that the Russian government just fundamentally hasn't come to terms with how to either successfully manipulate or to interpret public opinion in the age of social media.  And I don't really know why, other to assume that it's that age-old question of no-one wanting to tell the emperor that he may have ever-so slightly imagined his own attire.

Whatever.  We're all be dead soon if we keep the idiotic wargames up at the current rate.


* Or more.

Auntie Hill Gets Burned By Ted

Someone...really, really hates Hillary.  Not complaining, but ouch...http://rall.com/comic/hillary-instagram.  Tell us what you really think, Ted ?...

Shocking Military Provocation in the West Philippine Sea

TENSIONS are set to escalate in the South China Sea as China seeks assurances the United States will not send warships to test its determination to lay claim to a string of remote, strategic islands.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said last night that the US needs to clarify its stance on proposed new patrols around the islands being used to establish a claim on key strategic oil and fish stocks.

China urged “the relevant country” to “refrain from taking risky and provocative actions to maintain the regional peace and stability”, Hua told reporters.

Huh, wonder why the PRC is so concerned about US military patrols in international waters if its own presence there is so peaceful and neighbourly, and not at all militaristic ?  And since when did they even admit using the artificial islands to promote (utterly bogus) claims on oil and fish ?

BEIJING, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday voiced "serious concern" toward a U.S. official's remarks on the Pentagon's plan to send military aircraft and ships to the South China Sea.

Spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a routine press briefing that the U.S. side should clarify relevant remarks.

According to a Reuters report, a U.S. official said on Tuesday the Pentagon is considering sending U.S. military aircraft and ships to "assert freedom of navigation" around Chinese-made artificial islands in the South China Sea.

China has always advocated freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, Hua said. "But freedom of navigation does not give one country's military aircraft and ships free access to another country's territorial waters and airspace."

Yep, he actually said that.

Sure, we could consider those your territorial waters, if we completely ignored the claims of the other countries that happen to be much much closer to the waters in question.

But hey, 固有之疆域, right ?  Wonder what the world might look like if every country declared that any territory they had held at any point in history should be theirs until the end of time ?  Like, gee I don't know, how about...Japan, say ?

The PRC would be totally cool with that, right ?

Tom Cotton's Four Day War against Iran

So, if I'm understanding this right, when our new Ronald ReaganSenator Tom Cotton talks about the military alternative to Obama's treacherous deal with Iran as involving 'several days of air and naval bombing' and Ted Cruz says that 'a military action to take out the nuclear facilities would be a couple of days or...a week', the argument is that we are talking here not about ending Iran's nuclear programme or preventing Iran from developing a bomb, but about 'degrading' Iran's ability to make a bomb, and delaying it by maybe a year or two.

While, meanwhile, a primary criticism of the evil no-good deal that Obama cooked up with Iran, is that it would only delay Iran's breakout time to make a bomb by a mere thirteen years.

So, to gain a negative-eleven year delay in Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States should bomb the shit out of them, causing massive destruction, and probably killing many innocent civilians, inviting a much greater military retaliation than Iraq could muster in 1998, further inflaming the region, while expending insanely expensive military resources, destroying any possibility for the foreseeable future of rapprochement with Iran, and most likely causing the Iranian citizens to unite against the United States and rally in favour of acquiring a nuclear deterrent, and spurring the 'regime' to hasten its development of a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible.

Well, then of course.  We should BOMB THEM NOW !

A US 'Nuclear Umbrella' for Saudi Arabia ?

From the LA Times:

Obama administration officials are promising a major strengthening of U.S. defense commitments to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies, possibly including a nuclear commitment to their security, in an intensifying effort to win their support for the proposed nuclear deal with Iran.

Officials say they hope to reassure nervous gulf Arab states by providing more military aid and training to their defense forces, and by making more explicit commitments to help them repel external attacks.

The administration is studying whether to make any nuclear assurances, though officials emphasize no decision has been made.

...

One challenge for the White House is whether it can expand a defense relationship that already is enormous.

...

It's also not clear that U.S. nuclear security commitments would be useful or welcomed by the gulf states.

The administration would have a hard time trying to get Congress, which has been skeptical about the U.S.-Saudi relationship, to enact a treaty that put a U.S. nuclear "umbrella" over Arab Sunni nations, as the United States has over Japan and South Korea.

Such agreements aim to deter nuclear attack by warning foes that the United States would retaliate with overwhelming force if an ally is attacked with a nuclear weapon.

...

Another possible gesture would be to declare the gulf states "major non-NATO allies," said Thomas Lippman, a Saudi specialist at the nonpartisan Middle East Institute in Washington. The designation, applied to close allies like Japan, Australia and Israel, provides special help in buying weapons and obtaining U.S. weapons.

This, if true, is insane.  Though I do wonder about the article's provenance.  Sure are a lot of unspecified 'officials' mentioned in the article.  And it doesn't appear to actually be a new story at that.  Seems it was being reported in the Israeli media over a month ago:

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Analysis-US-Sunni-states-talk-about-regional-nuclear-umbrella-393131

http://www.haaretz.com/news/1.645573

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/192178

From the latter two, it seems their source was an Arabic paper, al-Hayat.  Huh.


I want to be sceptical.  But this is Barack Obama & John Kerry we're talking about.  Given the completely ham-handed way they've handled Ukraine...I think I could believe it.  And so what happens next ?  Does Russia do a deal with Iran to promise them their own 'nuclear umbrella' ?  What could possibly go wrong with drawing the battlelines of a new Cold War between the West and Russia across the heart of the Middle East and the Sunni/Shia divide ?  Have we learned nothing in the hundred years since, from the Great War of 1914-18 ?

Insane.