Andrei Martyanov — A Rather Expected Response

American foreign policy realists and idealists both clueless about reality? Military analyst and former Soviet military officer Andrei Martyanov thinks so and gives reasons, the principal one being failure of academicians to understand the material systems involved in military science because they are not qualified to do so. So it is a matter of incompetent academics advising clueless politicians.

This is especially poignant now that the US is trying to disengage from Afghanistan and Syria without admitting defeat and also preserving a position of dominant influence. The choice is to go all in, which is not politically viable in the US and also risks wider war in the region and beyond, or else continuing the pretense of being in control of the situation while losing to locals that are apparently too "stupid" to understand who they are contending with (snark).

Moreover, defeat in Vietnam, following the French, is a stark reminder of imperial overreach. And Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires. And no one since Genghis Khan as successfully taken on the land of the Russ.

At least the foreign policy realists realize that a hot war with Russia would not be in the US national interest, let alone the US being in a position to meet its objectives militarily, including an exit plan.

Reminiscence of the Future
A Rather Expected Response
Andrei Martyanov

See also

Fort Russ News
Syrian and North Korean Resistance Will Change Balance of Power in the World, says Assad

Three Reasons That Would Lead to Military Conflict Between Russia and the US

NATO Claims It Has Found Key to DEFEATING Russia’s Defense
Paul Antonopoulos

Eldar Mamedov — Kissinger’s Dangerously Flawed Views on Iran

How can a person who was so wrong so much still be considered an authority?

LobeLog
Kissinger’s Dangerously Flawed Views on Iran
Eldar Mamedov

Federico Pieraccini — Major Developments Strongly Suggest the End of Unipolar World Order

Recent years have seen a mounting showdown between the old world order configuration based on chaos and destruction and led by Washington, and the new multipolar order that focuses on win-win opportunities, dialogue and sincere cooperation. If Washington decides not to accept the new rules of the game, where it can no longer dictate the law, it will end up producing more damage against itself than any foreign country could actually do, in actual fact accelerating the formation of the multipolar world and putting to bed the unipolar world order for good....

Strategic Culture Foundation
Major Developments Strongly Suggest the End of Unipolar World Order

Federico Pieraccini

Don Quijones — The Not-Quite-Secret Government: The CFR is “the Most Powerful Private Organization in the United States…”

German financial journalist Lars Schall talked with U.S. historian Laurence Shoup about the history of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and his latest book, “Wall Street’s Think Tank”. Shoup makes clear that the CFR is still calling the shots when it comes to the focus and the goals of U.S. foreign policy.

Rigged Game
The Not-Quite-Secret Government: The CFR is “the Most Powerful Private Organization in the United States…”
Don Quijones
Cross-posted from Lars Schall’s blog.

Robert David English — Russia, Trump, and a New Détente

This was originally published at Foreign Affairs, an organ of the Council on Foreign Relations. Foreign Affairs is behind a paywall, so the venue here is US-Russia.org.

Foreign Affairs has generally taken the idealistic approach to foreign policy and suppressed the realistic. The publication of this article is counter to trend. Observers wonder if it signals a reversal, or at least a modification.

US-RUSSIA.ORG
Russia, Trump, and a New Détente

Robert David English | Associate Professor of International Relations, Slavic Languages & Literature, and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California

Originally published at Foreign Affairs

Fabius Maximus — America has the victory disease. It won’t end well for us.

In Patterns of Conflict, slide 139 the late American strategist Col. John Boyd (USAF) said that a grand strategy focused our nation’s actions — political, economic, and military — so as to: 

• Increase our solidarity, our internal cohesion.
• Weaken our opponents’ resolve and internal cohesion.
• Strengthen our allies’ relationships to us.
• Attract uncommitted states to our cause.
• End conflicts on favorable terms, without sowing the seeds for future conflicts.

We are doing the exact opposite of what Boyd recommended. It is quite mad, an accelerating race to ever-larger conflicts. Only a nation deep into the Victory Disease could believe that this is a rational strategy, worth the risks and likely to end well for us.

I am getting the same sense as during the Vietnam period. It didn't end well then, and it likely won't end well this time around either. Trump ran in part to put an end this, but it is looking like he is being stymied by TPTB. Moreover, neither he nor his advisers seem to be up to the job. The US in not careening forward as it would have been had HRC prevailed, but the course has not changed substantially, only the pace.

Fabius Maximus
America has the victory disease. It won’t end well for us.

Editor

Adam Garrie — After Flynn’s resignation, White House says Crimea should be ‘returned’ to Ukraine

Trump looks to be caving heavily. Was he a paper tiger?

Under enormous pressure from the Deep State, on his third week in office, Trump is being forced to cave on Russia in order to avoid further setbacks on domestic policies.

The Duran
After Flynn’s resignation, White House says Crimea should be ‘returned’ to Ukraine
Adam Garrie

Andrey Afanasyev — The White House Investigates Persistent Leaks Of Trump’s Conversations With Foreign Leaders

Even classified information regarding national security is disclosed to the public in short time. This raises doubts among the US’ partners. Who wants to do business with a country with no secrets? This scares the US administration for the same reasons. Its great goals - first and foremost establishing better relations with Russia and making America great again – become unachievable. The country is under the shadow of those forces who do not want these plans to reach fruition. Stolen secrets are thus rapidly disseminated by Trump-unfriendly mainstream media, which are the main tool used by the globalists seeking world domination.

Of course, Trump isn’t going to put up with this....

Katehon

The White House Investigates Persistent Leaks Of Trump’s Conversations With Foreign Leaders

Andrey Afanasyev

Robert Parry — Trump Caves on Flynn’s Resignation

Robert Parry summarizes the script to date.

Consortium News
Trump Caves on Flynn’s Resignation
Robert Parry

Moon of Alabama — Organized Campaigns Hit At Trump's Foreign Policy Plans

The anti-Flynn campaign as well as the bad-Assad campaign are aimed at Trump policy changes. These changes move away from the course the borg implemented throughout the Obama reign.

Meanwhile the Trump administration implements regressive economic and social policies without any noticeable resistance in the media, in Congress or from so called Non-Government-Organizations:

The borg or deep state is way more concerned with keeping up its plans of uncontested global dominance than with the welfare of the citizens within the empire.

President Trump has embarked on the most aggressive campaign against government regulation in a generation, joining with Republican lawmakers to roll back rules already on the books and limit the ability of federal regulators to impose new ones.

And that mis-prioritization cost them the election, at least in part.

Moon of Alabama
Organized Campaigns Hit At Trump's Foreign Policy Plans

b

Gordon M. Hahn — REPORT: Towards a Realist American Russia Policy (Revised Final Edition, Parts 1 and 2)

American foreign policy, especially its Russia policy, is a runaway train without rails, driven by a troubling confluence of hubristic ideological influences and bureaucratized sectoral interests networked through Washington. These two kinds of influence too often are neither disinterested, nor in the American interest, and deprive U.S. foreign policy of a strategic imperative. The former influence consists of American democratic messianism and revolutionism that push for regime change on a far too broad basis, weakening our foreign policy’s realist component while simultaneously discrediting its idealist component. Bureaucractic influences is made up of out-of-control bureaucratic, military, military-industrial, think tank, and ideological interests that manipulate or sincerely foster American messianism and revolutionism. The combination of uncontrolled messianism and sectoral interests and imperatives have resulted in an ‘imperial overstretch’ that far outstrips America’s declining capacity and power in the world. This growing gap between American ambitions and capacity is compounded by China’s rise, Russia’s resurgence, and the Sino-Russian strategic partnership. This paper focuses on problems in U.S.-Russian relations and their possible solutions....

Russian and Eurasian Politics
REPORT: Towards a Realist American Russia Policy (Revised Final Edition, Parts 1 and 2)
Gordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Akribis Group, and; and an analyst and consultant for Russia – Other Points of View

Mike Whitney — The Trump Speech That No One Heard

Contrasting visions of US foreign policy. Will Trump's foreign policy realism and a focus on US national interests prevail in the coming years, or will it be more of the same foreign policy idealism based on liberal interventionism and attempted global Americanization — because American exceptionalism? The battle is joined, with the US deep state on the attack even before the inauguration.

Counterpunch
The Trump Speech That No One Heard

Mike Whitney

See also

It is an extraordinary situation. The ruling class seems by and large quite shocked by the election result. Donald Trump is surely a representative of the class—in that he’s a billionaire for god sake—but, for the majority of the richest and most powerful, not their preferred choice as chief executive of the USA. This is apparent by Trump’s treatment at the hands of the corporate media (that he continues to insult), by the foreign policy establishment, by the intelligence agencies (which he sometimes disparages), by Congressional leaders of both parties who generally regret that he won. The Deep State seems to have its knives drawn for him.

The Extraordinary Array of Those Questioning Trump’s Legitimacy (and Their Various Reasons)

Gary Leupp | Professor of History at Tufts University, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion

Gilbert Doctorow — Trump’s Remaking of US Foreign Policy

President-elect Trump is outlining a foreign policy that rejects the interventionist tenets of Washington’s neocon/liberal-hawk establishment and puts U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control at the top of his agenda, writes Gilbert Doctorow.

Positive assessment. Liberal interventionism and neocon democracy-spreading is over.

Consortium News
Trump’s Remaking of US Foreign Policy

Gilbert Doctorow | European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd.

See also

So who are the opponents ranged behind the CIA, yelling encouragement through the ropes? The obvious culprits include the U.S. military-industrial complex, whose corporate bottom line relies on an era of unending war. As justification for extracting billions – even trillions – of dollars from American taxpayers, there was a need for frightening villains, such as Al Qaeda and even more so, the head choppers of ISIS. However, since the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015, those villains no longer packed as scary a punch, so a more enduring villain, like Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy of the state in George Orwell’s 1984, was required. Russia was the obvious new choice, the old favorite from the Cold War playbook.

The Western intelligence agencies have a vested interest in eternal enemies to ensure both eternal funding and eternal power, hence the CIA’s entry into the fight. As former British MP and long-time peace activist George Galloway so eloquently said in a recent interview, an unholy alliance is now being formed between the “war party” in the U.S., the military-industrial-intelligence complex and those who would have previously publicly spurned such accomplices: American progressives and their traditional host, the Democratic Party.

Yet, if the Democratic National Committee had not done its best to rig the primariesin favor of Hillary Clinton, then perhaps we would not be in this position. Bernie Sanders would be the President-elect....

Another positive assessment.

Donald Trump v. the Spooks

Annie Machon | former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service (the U.S. counterpart is the FBI)

The head of MI6 endorses Christopher Steele, the compiler of the Trump dossier, complicating Teresa May's initially promising relationship with Donald Trump.

The Independent
Head of MI6 used information from Trump dossier in first public speech

Kim Sengupta

“NATO is a war-making machine, it’s an American operation. Why is it doing this? I think there is a real strategic extremism in the US.” And the “prize in this operation” is Russia, he concluded, adding that such a prize was almost won in the times of Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999), the first Russian president to serve after the fall of the Soviet Union.

“And what really has been upsetting in the US is that Russia is again independent, and that’s intolerable.”

Pilger called outgoing US leader Barack Obama “one of the most violent presidents.”...

RT
Trump faces American ‘war-making machine’ if he tries to strike deal with Russia

John Pilger

CNN — Brennan says Trump ignores intel community at nation's 'peril'

[CIA chief John] Brennan, who spent years stationed in the Middle East, offered a sober assessment about the prospect of Western-style democracies taking root in that arid terrain.

"I think there were very, very unrealistic expectations in Washington, including in some parts of the administration, that the Arab Spring was going to push out these authoritarian regimes and democracy is going to flourish because that's what people want," he said.

It turns out that what they actually want, he countered, was freedom "for themselves, or their group, or their tribe. But the concept of democracy is something that really is not engrained in a lot of the people and the cultures and the countries out there."

Nincompoopery rising to the level of malfeasance. More moronism at the highest levels of US government.

In addition, they are technocrats that hate democracy as governance of, by and for the people, whom they view as needing to be led rather than leading. They see "populism" as rabble-rousing and Donald Trump as a rabble-rouser. So, of course, they want to sew fear that if President Trump is not guided by technocrats (them), then Americans are doomed.

CNN Politics
Brennan says Trump ignores intel community at nation's 'peril'
Tim Skoczek, The Axe Files

US geostrategy under Obama and Trump

How the US is setting up at the beginning of the Trump administration.

The major difference is that the foreign policy establishment apparently wants to take on Russia first and then China, and Trump wants to take on China first which would isolate Russia.

Both are dangerous games for high stakes, no less than world domination, and the people in charge of US policy are high rollers. Apparently their only disagreement is over strategy. Brzezinski/Rubin versus Kissinger/David Rockefeller.

Fort Russ

US tanks pour into Eastern Europe: What can Putin and Trump do?

SvPressa - translated by J. Arnoldski

Can Russia stand by as Trump goes after China?

Rostislav Ishchenko, RIA Analytics - translated by J. Arnoldski

NEO

Is Trump the Back Door Man for Henry A. Kissinger & Co?
William Engdahl

Reuters
U.S. intelligence study warns of growing conflict risk
 Jonathan Landay

Oliver Stone — The Russians Are Coming

Summary of the crazy. 

Stone doesn't mention the method in the madness though, which is at least in part feeding the military-industrial complex. 

Another part is promoting the power structure, which is under populist attack and wobbling on its feet after the electoral blow struck by Donald Trump. 

A third is maintaining global hegemony in accordance Wolfowitz Doctrine. 

A fourth is imposing liberal globalization in accordance with the Washington Consensus. 

The Very Serious People are struggling to look serious.

Includes links to supporting material.

Oliver Stone at Medium
The Russians Are Coming
Oliver Stone

Gilbert Doctorow — Letter from India: Local and global speculation about Henry Kissinger

While these two posts are not must-reads, they are important for understanding the subtext rather in order to avoid being taken in by flawed analysis and propaganda. Most Westerners don't understand the Russian world view, which is called Russkiy mir (Русский мир) in Russia. Failure to get this difference in understanding, based on cultural bias, results in the US foreign policy establishment, the US government, and US media in taking a confrontational attitude toward Russia that is based more on imagination than reality.

And this lack of understanding of other cultures doesn't apply only to Russia. Americans generally project themselves on the world and wonder why their analysis doesn't work out as planned, as in Iraqis greeting their liberators with flowers, instituting a Western-style democracy and everyone living happily ever after. Even the American cultural myth of falling in love, marrying a person of one's own choice and "living happily ever after" is fiction instead of reality, judging from divorce statistics and domestic violence.

The first post is a backgrounder on history, international relations, Henry Kissinger and the Realist School (Realpolitik) by an expert and scholar in foreign affairs. Detailed.

The second is a backgrounder on Russia and Russkiy mir (Русский мир) by the Saker, who is from a White Russian emigre family. Detailed.

Une parole franche
Letter from India: Local and global speculation about Henry Kissinger
Gilbert Doctorow | European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Could there be a grain of truth in the Ukrainian propaganda? (repost with new introduction)
The Saker

Sputnik — Trump Faces Many Obstacles to Enhancing US-Russian Relations

Good summary of the issues today.

I suspect that the decisive factor in the outcome will be Henry Kissinger and he seems to be pro-detente and setting up an understanding among the US, Russia and China that avoids conflict, which is the opposite of what the bipartisan war party and MIC (military-industrial complex) want. Kissinger is likely Trump's ace in the hole.

Sputnik International
Trump Faces Many Obstacles to Enhancing US-Russian Relations

Two calls for US foreign policy realism

The National Interest
Three Steps to Set the Tone on Russia

Thomas Graham | Managing Director at Kissinger Associates, Inc. and Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs of Yale University

Russia Is Neither Friend Nor Foe

Nikolas K. Gvosdev |contributing editor at the National Interest and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute

William Cummings — Trump bashes CIA, dismisses Russian hacking report

No worries that the deep state is going to tether Donald Trump. Notice served.

USA Today
Trump bashes CIA, dismisses Russian hacking report

William Cummings