Basically this is obvious to all. But it’s so basic we lose sight of it. There’s barely anything to discuss with Russia. There’s no great question or problem for the US for which Russia is the answer. Now this doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. It has a big nuclear stockpile.
2/ It’s also a decent sized land power on the periphery of Europe into Asia. But this isn’t like during the Cold War where we needed to arrange some detente. The real rising economic and eventually military power is China. China is the one using vast wealth to build inroads ...
3/ in Africa, Asia and even the Americas. President Trump’s whole concept of deal making is largely fraudulent and in any case mostly irrelevant to statecraft. But in say China, conceivably you could make a grand bargain about trade regimes and military balance ...
4/ in Indo China and maritime East Asia. Or maybe you can strike a grand bargain over North Korea. Don’t get me wrong. I see these as highly unlikely and Trump is far too lazy and ignorant to stand much of a chance. My point is that the US has very critical and largely ...
5/ unresolved issues in these areas. This is simply not the case with Russia or any areas where Russia is a major power. The exception might be Syria. But Russia is more arsonist than fireman in Syria and in any case the Syrian Civil War looks to be coming to a close.
6/ So to me the question is less whether Trump can make a deal with Russia or whether he is to compromised to do so. It’s why the obsession exists in the first place. Even the Trump crew now seems to recognize the need to explain this. And the answer seems to be to raise ...
7/ the specter of nuclear war. This is silly. As long as the US and Russia have significant stockpiles of nukes this is a danger. That especially so when Russia planes are buzzing us ships and we’re sending lethal aid into their aggressive proxy wars. But this is really just ...
8/ an answer manufacturing a question. Some issue with Russia we need to solve. There really isn’t any such thing. We should strengthen the unity of NATO, not extend NATO any further east, create a climate of intolerance for Russian interference in NATO countries and ...
9/ supporting right/nationalists in those countries. But aside from that we should simply ignore Russia as much as we can. It is a declining, economically backwards power, an economy about the size of Italy’s. Trumps whole obsession with Russia is a product of his corruption.
