To Outlaw 09 RE: Syria
I suppose that this is the highest compliment that Trump Administration can expect to receive from youOriginally Posted by OUTLAW 09
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.
As for Tillerson, I am not concerned with the MSM’s opinions, as the news cycle depends upon stark binary judgments.
Over time, we have come to learn that Putin was quite anxious about a U.S. response to his occupation of Crimea, not unlike how Hitler was anxious about an Anglo-French response to his re-militarization of the Rhineland. One can only imagine the other outcomes possible had Obama sailed a Carrier Strike Group through the Bosporus to pay a visit to say Constanța in the Spring of 2014.
I largely agree. Moscow gets quite ornery when it doesn’t get its way, but it is all bark and no bite.
The issue here is not necessarily a lack of intelligence, knowledge or experience on the part of the U.S. national security establishment – except where Rhodes, Rice, Clinton and Power are concerned – but of national objectives and constraints.
Examining the landscape from the perspective of the capital markets, America is comparable to an investor who has earned very high returns over a long period of time, who wants to preserve her capital, requires minimal income, and who only needs to keep up with inflation. On the other hand, Russia believes that her portfolio is far too small to meet her needs, she needs income, and she wants to grow her portfolio aggressively. Both investors are rationally averse to risk, but Russia needs to take more risk in order to produce the returns that she wants. Her focus is on performance; America’s focus is on risk-management.
Now, America has new objectives and a higher tolerance for risk. Is it because she needs the money? No. It’s because she now wants it.
[QUOTE=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.
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