What happens if Trump and Putin do build a sustainable alliance around fighting Syria and ISIS?
I guess the first thing is to just get over ourselves in the west about what a dreadful person Assad is and how bad his human rights record is; the west has supported worse than Assad for decades - Saddam is the obvious example, but add any tinpot South American or MENA leader, as well. For goodness sake look at Wahhabism …
And lets not even go there on the USAs human rights record in this thread: the world has barely been able to stand up straight for laughing since Obama tried to castigate the Chinese last year.
So what happens if the USA and Russia start cooperating, start properly working together … Does the USA stop agitating on or near Russia’s borders, what happens to the defence budget, to the military-industrial complex … is $hundreds of billions freed up for social policies or for the sake of those huge vested interests do we morph straight into China as the new Great Enemy?
Since “properly working together” means both sides accepting they can’t have everything their own way, which neither Trump nor Putin is likely to accept, and in any case, doing everything Putin’s way is unacceptable, then it’s not going to happen. But if Trump, through inattention or inanition, was suckered into following Putin’s agenda around the world in the belief that somehow he’d achieved something, then, yes, it would be China’s turn next. It may be anyway, given their aggressive forward policy in the South China Sea.
So your argument for supporting Assad is that you have made huge idiotic mistakes in the past for the short-term politics, the mistakes that bought the Americans decades of the resentment, the hatred against them?
I am not aware of the world laughing at the Americans under Obama, it is more the opposite actually although maybe you have managed to convince yourselves of all kinds of a strange things.
How the Americans are to blame for the adventurism of Putin I do not understand. It is not surprising to me that an ex KGB acts in this fashion and it is bizarre to think it is ‘because’ of the Americans - it is one of those strange American-centricisms as if the rest of the world only exists in the mind of an American thinking about them…
The US has had a half decent relationship with Russia since 1993. The fact that it has deterioriated is 100% on Putin. Is Putin going to stop committing aggression against his neighbors now? If Trump can talk him out of that, then that would be something.
it was nothing anyone outside of the Russia did that saw the change. It was the mindset of the Ex KGB…
What do I have? I have a knowledge of the Syria and its regional history and its principal language.
An alliance with the regime Assad and the amoral Russians who have no hesitation to engage in the massacre of civilians gets you nothing but putting again yourselves on the side of a brittle corrupt brutal dictator with the false idea of getting a ‘stability.’
It is as stupid an idea as the naïve American intervention in the Lebanon during its long civil-war.
There is the Syrian civil war for one reason - the regime Assad rather than trying to compromise with the first peaceful protests against its corruption and its abuses, took to a wave of the killings and the secret police KGB type violence and then the open firing upon the protesting crowds until there was the mutiny of major portions of the regime’s own army against it.
Now later, like in the Afghanistan after the soviets, in the break down the takfiri extremists have seized some power - and so you want to go back to the regime that could not keep control of its own army becuase it was so corrupt and brutal?
It is even worse than the naïve fantasies that made the American intervention in the Lebanon a disaster.
I have trouble imagining a world where the United States doesn’t object (hopefully vociferously) to the attempt of Russia to take over portions of Ukraina. I have trouble imagining a world where the United States doesn’t object (hopefully more than just vociferously) to an attempt by Russia to re-integrate the Baltic states (treaty partners with the US!). I have trouble imagining a world where the United States doesn’t object (significantly more than vociferously) to an attempt by Russia to re-establish hegemony over Eastern Europe.
All of which Russia has done, or has made threats to do in the last few years.
But, then again, I had trouble imagining a United States with Donald J. Trump as President, so maybe I need to re-tool my imagination.
No. The US relations with all other countries is 100% on the USA. America decides who the rogue nations are, and classifies countries according to its axis-of-evil mentality, and is quick to bomb anyone who disobeys… Which is based largely on the country’s willingness to let the USA access it markets for US corporate adventurism, exploit it for economic gain, and pay l.ip service to the banking cartel… Russia does not exist to stroke America’s ego.
Putin, without a doubt, has the highest approval rating among his own citizenry of any head of state in the world. Putin is doing what the Russian people want him to do, which they see as good for the Russian people – which is what America does for itself without a qualm.
Latest figures I can find show that Russia’s president has an 82% positive approval rating, and it has never been below 60. While the US president-elect would be lucky to get a 20%, before he even takes office. Whatever is “on Putin” is exactly what his free electors have asked him to do. Which is the whole idea of democracy. While Americans are looking under rocks to find a last vestige of democacy.
Indeed. Actually assasinated in the old KGB style… Or having ones business seized or destroyed, being forced out of the job, the judicial attack on the critical press augmented by the official boycott…
funny that coincidentally with Putin it was also the Balkans, the Poles, the Ukraines who all somehow began to have the tension with the Russia… American plot of course?
Putin only cares about Syria because he wants Russia to be seen as a world power with world influence and because it represents an opportunity to keep and expand its naval base there (with the attendant bonus of being a technology demonstrator for countries looking to buy Russian arms). Russia has no interest in fighting Da’esh, except in the instance where they pose a mortal threat to the Assad regime. At present, they don’t, since they barely have any presence in the western, densely populated section of the country. Russia has primarily been bombing the non-Da’esh opposition areas, such as in Aleppo.
Most of the U.S. support for dictators has been during and in the context of the Cold War, when nearly all human rights concerns took a backseat towards checking or checkmating the Soviets. Now, the U.S. has continued to support Saudi Arabia in order to help check and contain Iran and to a lesser extent Sunni Islamic extremists such as Al Qaeda or Da’esh.
The biggest unresolved issues during Obama’s terms have been Gitmo, which he has tried to shut down and which Trump wishes to not only keep open but expand, and more recently the incidents of police shooting unarmed individuals, many of whom have been black. The last issue is not something within Obama’s power since those police shootings have been local/state police.
Russia started making mock bombing runs of Western countries, including the UK, the U.S. and more recently neutral Sweden all in the past 10 years. Even before Obama took office. These aren’t the actions of a power that seeks respect and legitimacy on the world stage. They are the actions of a power that seeks fear and compliance among neighboring democracies. Russia’s excuse for launching their little green men invasion of Crimea to “defend Crimean citizens against a fascist Ukrainian regime” was a laughably transparent land grand. If they were so concerned, why didn’t they openly wear Russian colors and insignia, if their invasion was so legitimate and above-board? There is no cooperation with Russia, just submission or opposition.
I asked you what you’ve got and its a patroning tone and well, nothing; just more of the same liberal mouth frothing and absolute total inaction as millions suffer.
Normally I’d ask again because I’m interested in as many views as possible but you seem lost like a rabid dog waiting for someone to put him out of his political misery - you have no ideas for Syria, never mind a potential solution.
Indeed. The portrayal of Putin as the aggressor in US, and to some extent UK, media is really quite eye-opening. You could think Ukraine was situated where Cuba is rather than on a direct border with Russia.
If unidentified American “militia-men” with U.S. military vehicles, missiles, anti-aircraft weapons like the kind that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and other weapons were suddenly to appear in Baja California during any instability with the Mexican government, took control of Baja California, and the U.S. government only belatedly stated that it sent its forces there to protect American citizens in Baja California from a fascist Mexican government, I don’t think the news as portrayed on Russia Today would be fair, balanced, and in no rush to judgment. Particularly when a plebiscite conducted under the supervision and occupation of the American “militia-men” happened to overwhelmingly support U.S. annexation of Baja California.
