Thread by @akoz33

Because I believe that Andrey Piontkovsky’s article for @SvobodaRadio is of great importance, especially in view of the possible election of Sanders as POTUS, I have decided to try to translate it here, in two parts.
The whole article in Russian is here
svoboda.org/a/30436948.html

On February 20, 2014 (the date was put on the medals "For the Conquest of Crimea") the Russian President unleashed a world hybrid war against the West. Its purpose is to avenge the Soviet defeat in the Cold War, namely:

1. by establishing military-political control by Russia over at least the entire post-Soviet space, and, if possible, over Central Europe;
2. by discrediting and destroying NATO as a helpless organisation incapable of protecting its members

3. consolidation and legitimization of the war’s results, at its end, by a new "Yalta deal" with an isolated and humiliated United States.

The ideological banner of this war ("Russian World") was borrowed from Hitler’s concept of a separated people, defense of compatriots, and "restoration of historical justice". The military strategy of defeating an enemy superior in all military respects was based on

was based on three elements:
1. the concept of General Valery Gerasimov of non-linear hybrid warfare, that is, a bet on information terror, cyber terror and physical terror accomplished by irregular units ("green men")

2. the doctrine of Nikolai Patrushev: Russia as a nuclear power, oriented toward changing the status quo and possessing the political will to such a change, can and should achieve radical foreign policy results by the threat of use or, if necessary, by limited use of

nuclear weapons;

3” traditional, for rulers of Russia, contempt for the lives of their subjects: as Vladimir Putin noted, for Russians “на миру и смерть красна". (A hard to translate Russian proverb which literally sounds like “in peace even death is beautiful”

but actually means “together with others one can withstand anything”).

In 2016, Putin launched a daring transatlantic operation to introduce a "partner" into the White House, who was ideologically and personally ripe for the "big Yalta deal."

A group of Russian agents of influence formed in Washington, plus the small pro-Kremlin crooks directly introduced into the leadership of the headquarters of the presidential candidate, energetically engaged in feeding the businessman who was ignorant of foreign policy issues.

He was inspired with standard Kremlin memes — NATO’s obsolescence as a relic of the Cold War; the need to discard any minor disagreements with the Kremlin (Ukraine, the Baltic states) and focus on a joint fight against Islamic terrorism.

Putin was portrayed as a significant potential US ally in their confrontation with China. „We need the Russians, we can’t get anywhere without the Russians” they repeated constantly.

As David Ignatius, rightly remarked, "Trump ... was fairly consistent in his isolationist concept of America first, rejecting all the basic tenets that American diplomacy followed for decades, and, interestingly, repeated in his criticism almost word for word Vladimir Putin. "

November 9, 2016 in Moscow did not hide their triumph. But the Kremlin did not completely understand one very important circumstance: to litter the brains of an inexperienced person in international relations and put him in a chair in the Oval Office is absolutely not enough

to radically change American foreign policy. Because the United States is a developed political system with a multi-level system of checks and balances.

Resistance to Trump’s pro-Putin sentiments was evident from the very beginning, and his behavior towards Putin at their first meeting in Hamburg was the last straw for the US military and political establishment.

The turning point for history was the annual security conference in Aspen on July 19–22, 2017. Almost all the leaders of the American power structures of both the former and Trump administrations traditionally took part in it in an informal personal capacity.

The tone of this conference was set by a speech by the newly appointed CIA Director Mike Pompeo. For the first time in three and a half years of the Kremlin’s hybrid military operations, two fundamental points were clearly heard:

a clear understanding of the goals, methods and tools of the war being waged by Putin and a firm determination to disrupt his far-reaching plans, a remake of Winston Churchill’s historical Fulton speech.

After some time, Pompeo took over the key position of Secretary of State in Trump's office. Pompeo took on the meaningful and multifaceted mission of “watching” Trump from the deep state, the role of a wise uncle who approves of loyal foreign policy impulses

(China, Israel, Iran), and a caring nanny who cleans up diplomatic misses. Pompeo painstakingly integrated the off-system president into the new doctrine of US national security being developed by the Pentagon and the Department of State, designed to adequately respond to two

simultaneous challenges: the ambitions of the economic giant of China and the revanchistically complex Russia.

For the United States, indeed, it would be a great success to see Russia as a partner and ally in the inevitable confrontation with China. Repeat, if you want, in the opposite direction, the brilliant Nixon-Kissinger maneuver of the 1970s, when the United States made China

its ally in confrontation with the USSR. Even more, such a turn of events would meet the interests of Russia. Without cooperation and an alliance with the United States, with the West as a whole, and even more so in confrontation with them, Russia is doomed to economic,

demographic and, as a result, political takeover by China.

(Here is the end of Part I, Part II will come a bit later).