Originally Posted by
OUTLAW 09
IF Obama and the emphasis is on the IF...if he had truly launched a massive and specific TLAM attack over a few days to effectively destroy the Syrian AF and their helicopters we would not have seen the following…
Are you going to weep and gnash your teeth about the President you didn’t have, or deal with the President you do have?
I disagree. Obama’s diplomatic goal was to return to the status quo and cease all hostilities so that he could get back to hectoring Americans on firearm violence and the 10% of murdered black males whose killers were of another race.
Is it any wonder why the revisionist powers failed to comply? They too want to “move forward into broad, sunlit uplands”, and unfortunately, that meant disturbing Obama’s beauty sleep.
Trump will have to articulate a vision of the future. That future will include new coalitions, new allies, new neutrals, new rivals and new adversaries.
If history rhymes, the U.S. will probably forge a new coalition to contain China, and that coalition will come to include Russia. For its part, China will form its own coalition, which will include much of Central Asia, a few of its neighbors and various African states.
There will be a risk that the European part of the coalition, including Russia, will integrate into a bloc on the order of the Warsaw Pact, but such is life.
Moscow’s angry. They’re allowed to blow off steam. They’re not allowed to arm the Taliban, fortify Iran or shoot down U.S. aircraft over Syria.
Again, Michael Kofman and Mark Galeotti disagree with you. I doubt that Putin is averse to Assad reconquering the entire country, but he is averse to increasing Russia’s commitment. Putin’s objectives in Syria are met.
Russian inflation spiked in 2015, but is now at reasonable levels and below the 10-year annual mean. Russia’s GDP per capita in constant prices and PPP suffered declines, but are again comparatively much better than before 2008 and of course the 1990s.
Like it or not, this is a blip compared to the chaos of the 1990s. This is not to say that Putin is an outstanding steward of the Russian economy, as given his starting point and the commodity super-cycle, a monkey with an abacus could have balanced the budget.
Russia’s experience is actually very similar to that of Brazil’s, although the latter spends relatively little on defense. In fact both Russia and Brazil seem to be moving into a recovery, and they represent two of the best opportunities for fixed income investors.
Unfortunately, you are working on anecdotal evidence. Russia has slipped, but not fallen. Of course, the electorate is fickle and the longer Putin’s reign continues, the dimmer its memories of Yeltsin and the Communist Party will be. As Putin is increasingly judged solely on his own stewardship, the pressure to grow the economy and living standards increases and the less appetite the electorate has for “managed democracy”.
At present, talk of a Russian collapse is about as sensational and inaccurate as talk of a Chinese one. Putin has considerable room for maneuver, but much will depend upon the people that he has appointed to regulate the economy. Putin is not unlike one of those Roman Emperors who spent their careers campaigning with the legions, while surrogates governed the Empire from Rome.
After all, who was it who combined Tomahawks (Sen. Warren was aghast) and a flurry of diplomatic blows. Not once did Obama ever wrong-foot Putin or knock him on his ass.
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