Our answer to Washington
Pressure on Russia will increase in all possible directions until such time as this tactic finally fails.
The existence in terms of technological and financial sanctions is subject to certain rules, including saving resources, minimizing corruption, improving the efficiency in all areas, reducing the level of bureaucratization of the country. But first of all, it is necessary to optimize the personnel policy and attract people with the highest intellectual potential to the leadership of the country and its defense industry.
As is well known, no state in the world exists forever. A country can be an empire or a democracy, a theocracy or a military dictatorship - it does not matter. A large state is faced with the separatism of the provinces and regional leaders, which, as usual, is supported by competitors. As a rule, it falls apart - for a time or forever, with greater or lesser economic and territorial losses. A big crisis or a little blood will cost another crisis, depending on the specific situation, which is related to the fact that they are the leaders of these states and regions - the national elite.
“What language will the country's army speak if its school system collapses, not a single minister-reformer explained”
A small state survives as a neutral zone, balancing between neighbors, absorbed by them or falls into the sphere of their influence, retaining all the prerogatives of independence and the appearance that its policy does not depend on this influence. All the processes mentioned above can last for a long time, sometimes for decades, after which an explosion occurs like the February or October revolutions, the collapse of the USSR, the Georgian or Ukrainian crisis.
So it was, is, and it seems to be a long time. Since there is no world state about which Karl Marx wrote, there is no so-called world community, about which they talk a lot in Western capitals, opposing Iran, Israel, or Russia, it reminds him very little. Rather, we are talking about a weakening of the Western club, gathered around the US, which its members are trying, as they can, to compensate by real or potential competitors.
With respect to Russia, which, while retaining a significant part of the Soviet technological potential, is such a competitor, the campaign to cut off Western financing and technology, which the EU’s leaders, despite the economic interests of their own countries, joined the EU, began with the administration of the Obama administration, means a new cold war. If the situation develops in Ukraine according to the Yugoslav scenario, this may in the long run provoke a limited armed confrontation on its territory, in which the Armed Forces of the neighboring states will take part.
Whether the United States intentionally engages Russia in a civil war in Ukraine, provoking an intensification of military confrontation there, which is accompanied by shelling of our territory and an increasing flow of refugees, or demonstrate the incompetence that is usual for them in such situations, is not so important. The main thing is that they are not afraid of an adequate response: any reaction from Moscow will affect Kiev or Brussels, but not Washington, which in any case will remain aloof from the war and its results.
European politicians are aware of the implications for the future of our relations with joining anti-Russian sanctions or not, after the adoption of an appropriate decision, it also does not matter. It is clear that Russia is viewed by them not as a member of a single civilizational community and not as a partner, but as a country whose interests should not be taken into account and on which not only it is possible, but also that pressure should be put. Accordingly, agreements, promises and guarantees relating to the Russian Federation, de facto do not have the same force as in the relations of the “Seven” states, which is why the G8 format has exhausted itself.
Search supporters
Judging by the unprecedented verdict of the Arbitration Court in The Hague under the claim of YUKOS, which buried international law as a system no worse than a violation of the agreement on the transfer of power in Ukraine to the opposition signed by Yanukovich under the guarantees of Poland, France and the UK, any possibility of pressure on Russia will be used by the Western community without regard to the consequences. What should be considered, since any war can be won, preferably with minimal losses. Including the war on economic exhaustion declared by Russia.
There are more questions here than answers. With whom and in what directions can Russia cooperate? With whom and for which projects is opposition inevitable? What answer is adequate in relation to the United States, to which countries of the European Union that have joined the anti-Russian campaign, to which countries that are consistently hostile to Russia, such as Qatar or Saudi Arabia, which are not members of the Western community? The presence of the above answer does not imply the need to give it immediately: the war on several fronts is not very meaningful. However, the mere demonstration of the possibility of such a response inevitably becomes a deterrent.
The information war, which was launched during the “Arab Spring” with its inherent falsifications, demonstrated that even the most authoritative world media are no longer an objective source of information. In a situation with events in Ukraine, especially after the death of a Malaysian aircraft over its territory, double standards were fully demonstrated by them. At the same time, the personnel shortage in the US State Department, whose characteristic “face” is currently J. Psaki, indirectly works for Russia: direct fraud and incompetence of officials in the modern information society are instantaneous.
The problem in finding an adequate response to Russia, which could demonstrate the US riskiness of confrontation with it, lies primarily in the fact that the enemies of Washington are not automatic allies or partners of Moscow. Radical Islamists have the most active anti-American position in the modern world, but they cannot be used by Russia without the danger of gaining its own territory. Moreover, representatives of “moderate Islam”, including the Muslim Brotherhood, whose exclusion from the domestic list of extremist organizations was actively lobbied recently, this applies to the same extent as Salafists, supporters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Movement for the Liberation of East Turkestan or Hizb ut-Tahrir.
The penetration of radical Sunni Islamists into the Western European community and the lobbying potential of their patrons and sponsors in the American establishment formed an anti-Russian alliance of Green International with the special services of the United States, Great Britain and France. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with their internal competition and disagreements with the West on private issues in relation to Russia, are equally negative. To use their opposition in the Russian interests is unreal. Thus, having supported the Al Sisi government in Cairo, Riyadh is lobbying for deliveries to the AER of French weapons and military equipment. It is not clear to what extent the military-industrial complex of France will turn out to be a competitor of Russia in the Egyptian market.
At the same time, Turkey, which is a member of NATO, does not speak out directly against Russia, despite disagreements with Moscow on the situation in Syria, and with regard to the Ukrainian-Russian crisis it took the same position of positive neutrality as it did with the Russian-Georgian war of the 2008 year. US aircraft carriers through the Black Sea straits are not allowed through Ankara, which refers to tonnage restrictions. Turkish companies are ready to invest in the economy of Crimea. Russia's principled position on the situation in Ukraine has more supporters in Turkey than opponents. What doesn’t affect Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s relations with President Barack Obama - they are already bad.
The protest sentiment in Russia is currently at a low level - a lesson from Kiev Maidan, which consists in the fact that the revolutionary upheavals supported from the outside can bring down the state, but are unable to correct its shortcomings, the majority of the country's citizens have taken into account. The leadership clearly does not intend to be drawn into the Ukrainian civil war, including because of the unpredictability of possible ways to develop the situation. Problems of the defense industry of the Russian Federation due to the loss of supplies from Ukraine can be resolved in a relatively short time. At the same time, the Ukrainian crisis is just unfolding. He is fraught with all sorts of surprises - and not only on the Ukrainian territory.
Mobilization tasks
So far, in the framework of the confrontation with the West and the Kiev authorities, Russia is acting in advance (in the situation with the Crimean referendum) and with reasonable caution (in the south-east). However, the adequacy of the reaction to what is happening by government officials at the level following the country's top leadership raises questions. This applies to such state corporations as Rosatom, Roskosmos, and several others.
Information about the lobbying of Rosatom by the participation of the French manufacturers of equipment with their American investors, instead of the Russian Power Machines, in case of refusal to supply spare parts to the leaders of Rosatom’s leadership in the most important future project for the domestic atomic industry abroad of the Turkish nuclear power plant Akkuyu the project itself, run on Russian money, but also a critical exacerbation of relations with Turkey. At the same time, the cost of such an operation for the USA and France will be not millions, but only hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The same goes for Roskosmos losing satellites due to rocket crashes. The level of defense capability of Russia directly depends on the state of affairs in this organization. The accidents of the domestic space industry are still growing, and this, in addition to the ideas of developing expensive mega-projects like flights to Mars and the Moon, can leave the country without real space potential that has been accumulated for decades.
The lack of domestic keys to the software of foreign high-precision machine tools - “scripts” makes them hostage to Western manufacturers. More precisely, the political leadership of states that are ready to impose sanctions against Russia. This is a much more real threat than a direct clash between the domestic Armed Forces and NATO forces. What in a situation of this kind can a country do, whose own machine tool industry no longer exists? The answer to this question must be found before the anti-Russian sanctions will work in full.
Russia is still on the verge of sanctions. Boycotts and bans of all sorts not news in world practice. They were introduced in relation to South Africa and Israel, Cuba and Vietnam, China and the USSR, Iran and Iraq. The existence in terms of technological and financial sanctions is subject to certain rules, including saving resources and personnel, minimizing corruption, attracting people with the highest intellectual potential to the government and its defense industry, improving work efficiency in all areas, reducing the level of bureaucratization of the country.
To what extent this, first and foremost, the optimization of personnel policy, on which all of the above-mentioned really depends, will be realized in domestic conditions is a question, the answer to which will be given only by practice. To a great extent, the current situation in relations between Russia and competitors has been provoked by the massive withdrawal from the country over a quarter of a century of capital by representatives of its “establishment” and open corruption, which has reached the highest levels of power.
A special issue on which not only defense, but also the future of the country depends, is the fate of its science and education. Russian institutions (despite the fact that their real modernization is really necessary) are almost completed by reform within the framework of privatization ideas, turning schools and universities into highly profitable business of bureaucratic leadership, hopes for the USE, the “Bologna system” and other innovations blindly copied from the Anglo-Saxon model.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck did not accidentally consider the chief organizer of the German army a schoolteacher. This phrase can be easily applied to Russian reality, if we try to understand how the general closure of pedagogical universities that conducted the Russification of the country during the Soviet era can be combined with the influx of millions of migrants from Central Asia to its territory and the de-Russification of the North Caucasus and a number of national autonomies in other regions. What language the Russian army will speak, if its school system collapses, has not yet been explained by any minister who carried out the education reform.
In the same way, no one has yet explained how to maintain the nuclear potential of a country without basic science. FANO managers, perhaps more creatively than academicians, are incomparably more “effective” and better dispose of the property and buildings of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, even a highly paid accountant scientists will not replace. Like the financier, he will not replace engineers and technicians, and the politician will not replace skilled workers.
We repeat: probably, someone did not notice this, but Russia declared war. For now - cold. The reasons for this are useless to discuss. Good country or around the blame, this war must be won. It is impossible to reverse the situation by changing the leadership and fulfilling all the conditions of the West, which the leaders of the domestic opposition hope for. More precisely, in this case Russia will simply cease to exist. Which is unlikely to please the majority of its population.
Challenge America
For those who are able to extrapolate the situation in Ukraine to Russian conditions, it is clear that in this case we will face a catastrophe, compared with which the collapse of the USSR is a minor annoyance. Moreover, it is the second nuclear power after the United States. Not to mention the saturation of the Russian territory with objects of increased danger - chemical, biological and other industries with a high degree of risk of major industrial accidents.
President Obama’s remark that Vladimir Putin "is not a rational thinking leader" means, among other things, that he and his entourage were convinced: to work with the top Russian authorities with simple methods of bribing, blackmail or nothing to do with them in the post-Soviet space binding offers, like "reloading", is useless. This means increasing pressure on Russia in all possible directions until such time as this tactic finally fails. How she fell everywhere and always.
This does not mean that all countries that are the objects of American pressure now or in the future, be it Iran, China, Israel, Pakistan or Vietnam, automatically become allies of Russia. Any state is guided only by its own interests, among which most countries include minimizing conflict with such a strong adversary as the United States.
Even the most outspoken of those who would be glad to challenge America, if it had weakened to such a state that it would pass with impunity, prefer not to speak out against it openly, and not to support the position of the United States during the voting at the UN General Assembly in Ukraine. abstaining or not participating in the vote. And this test shows the extent to which Russia can count on countries that are really important to her in her confrontation with the United States.
The consistent support by the Russian leadership of many world leaders from among those who are trying to act on the international arena independently, has interested and greatly strengthened the authority of the country and its president. Few people in the world who wanted to ignore the American point of view could decide on this to the extent that Vladimir Putin did. However, expressing sympathy for Russia, maintaining it and interacting with it most of the “American skeptics” will not be at the expense of relations with the United States.
Moreover, to develop their relations with Russia, as Iran and China do, they will take into account the fact that in the current historical the moment cooperation with them is more important for Moscow than in the past, precisely because of the cooling of relations with the West, from which they will try to extract the maximum possible profit for themselves. It is pointless to expect that they will automatically side with Russia in any situation that arises in the future, as the proponents of Iran’s immediate involvement in the SCO do.
In any case, the SCO is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In the event of the collapse of the current system of checks and balances in Central Asia, it can become a barrier to turning the post-Soviet republics located on this territory into an outpost of radical Islamism, equally dangerous for Russia and China. But it will not be a full-fledged military-political alliance. If this happens all the same, this alliance will not focus on Russia, but on China, which is unlikely to suit Moscow.
However, from a tactical point of view, the pressure exerted by the Barack Obama administration on Israel during the military operation in Gaza, cooling American relations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt by strengthening them with Qatar, the failure of American policy in Syria and Iraq, problems with the presidential elections in Afghanistan The “cold world” of the United States with Pakistan and everything that builds up the conflict potential between them and China, weakening the positions of the States in Asia and in the FAS, can be somehow used by Russia. Directly or indirectly, but if Washington proved that it is not ready to be an ally or partner of Moscow, you need to understand that it makes it its adversary.
As long as the domestic leadership refrains from careless steps like those that led to the Soviet army entering Afghanistan at the turn of 80, external risks for Russia are limited to trying to weaken the non-systemic opposition (with minimal chances for any success), Islamist terrorists ( in both capitals, in the North Caucasus or in the Volga region) or to develop separatist sentiments in the autonomies.
The latter, from the point of view of planning the organization of a “color revolution” in the country, is most likely after the current president leaves the political arena, whose support in the electorate is extremely high. However, the stake on the conflict of rival groups of the Russian elite can be realized by the United States not earlier than the 30s of the current century, when the active phase of the crisis in Ukraine will be over long ago, which gives Russia cause for optimism.
The existence in terms of technological and financial sanctions is subject to certain rules, including saving resources, minimizing corruption, improving the efficiency in all areas, reducing the level of bureaucratization of the country. But first of all, it is necessary to optimize the personnel policy and attract people with the highest intellectual potential to the leadership of the country and its defense industry.
As is well known, no state in the world exists forever. A country can be an empire or a democracy, a theocracy or a military dictatorship - it does not matter. A large state is faced with the separatism of the provinces and regional leaders, which, as usual, is supported by competitors. As a rule, it falls apart - for a time or forever, with greater or lesser economic and territorial losses. A big crisis or a little blood will cost another crisis, depending on the specific situation, which is related to the fact that they are the leaders of these states and regions - the national elite.
“What language will the country's army speak if its school system collapses, not a single minister-reformer explained”
A small state survives as a neutral zone, balancing between neighbors, absorbed by them or falls into the sphere of their influence, retaining all the prerogatives of independence and the appearance that its policy does not depend on this influence. All the processes mentioned above can last for a long time, sometimes for decades, after which an explosion occurs like the February or October revolutions, the collapse of the USSR, the Georgian or Ukrainian crisis.
So it was, is, and it seems to be a long time. Since there is no world state about which Karl Marx wrote, there is no so-called world community, about which they talk a lot in Western capitals, opposing Iran, Israel, or Russia, it reminds him very little. Rather, we are talking about a weakening of the Western club, gathered around the US, which its members are trying, as they can, to compensate by real or potential competitors.
With respect to Russia, which, while retaining a significant part of the Soviet technological potential, is such a competitor, the campaign to cut off Western financing and technology, which the EU’s leaders, despite the economic interests of their own countries, joined the EU, began with the administration of the Obama administration, means a new cold war. If the situation develops in Ukraine according to the Yugoslav scenario, this may in the long run provoke a limited armed confrontation on its territory, in which the Armed Forces of the neighboring states will take part.
Whether the United States intentionally engages Russia in a civil war in Ukraine, provoking an intensification of military confrontation there, which is accompanied by shelling of our territory and an increasing flow of refugees, or demonstrate the incompetence that is usual for them in such situations, is not so important. The main thing is that they are not afraid of an adequate response: any reaction from Moscow will affect Kiev or Brussels, but not Washington, which in any case will remain aloof from the war and its results.
European politicians are aware of the implications for the future of our relations with joining anti-Russian sanctions or not, after the adoption of an appropriate decision, it also does not matter. It is clear that Russia is viewed by them not as a member of a single civilizational community and not as a partner, but as a country whose interests should not be taken into account and on which not only it is possible, but also that pressure should be put. Accordingly, agreements, promises and guarantees relating to the Russian Federation, de facto do not have the same force as in the relations of the “Seven” states, which is why the G8 format has exhausted itself.
Search supporters
Judging by the unprecedented verdict of the Arbitration Court in The Hague under the claim of YUKOS, which buried international law as a system no worse than a violation of the agreement on the transfer of power in Ukraine to the opposition signed by Yanukovich under the guarantees of Poland, France and the UK, any possibility of pressure on Russia will be used by the Western community without regard to the consequences. What should be considered, since any war can be won, preferably with minimal losses. Including the war on economic exhaustion declared by Russia.
There are more questions here than answers. With whom and in what directions can Russia cooperate? With whom and for which projects is opposition inevitable? What answer is adequate in relation to the United States, to which countries of the European Union that have joined the anti-Russian campaign, to which countries that are consistently hostile to Russia, such as Qatar or Saudi Arabia, which are not members of the Western community? The presence of the above answer does not imply the need to give it immediately: the war on several fronts is not very meaningful. However, the mere demonstration of the possibility of such a response inevitably becomes a deterrent.
The information war, which was launched during the “Arab Spring” with its inherent falsifications, demonstrated that even the most authoritative world media are no longer an objective source of information. In a situation with events in Ukraine, especially after the death of a Malaysian aircraft over its territory, double standards were fully demonstrated by them. At the same time, the personnel shortage in the US State Department, whose characteristic “face” is currently J. Psaki, indirectly works for Russia: direct fraud and incompetence of officials in the modern information society are instantaneous.
The problem in finding an adequate response to Russia, which could demonstrate the US riskiness of confrontation with it, lies primarily in the fact that the enemies of Washington are not automatic allies or partners of Moscow. Radical Islamists have the most active anti-American position in the modern world, but they cannot be used by Russia without the danger of gaining its own territory. Moreover, representatives of “moderate Islam”, including the Muslim Brotherhood, whose exclusion from the domestic list of extremist organizations was actively lobbied recently, this applies to the same extent as Salafists, supporters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Movement for the Liberation of East Turkestan or Hizb ut-Tahrir.
The penetration of radical Sunni Islamists into the Western European community and the lobbying potential of their patrons and sponsors in the American establishment formed an anti-Russian alliance of Green International with the special services of the United States, Great Britain and France. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with their internal competition and disagreements with the West on private issues in relation to Russia, are equally negative. To use their opposition in the Russian interests is unreal. Thus, having supported the Al Sisi government in Cairo, Riyadh is lobbying for deliveries to the AER of French weapons and military equipment. It is not clear to what extent the military-industrial complex of France will turn out to be a competitor of Russia in the Egyptian market.
At the same time, Turkey, which is a member of NATO, does not speak out directly against Russia, despite disagreements with Moscow on the situation in Syria, and with regard to the Ukrainian-Russian crisis it took the same position of positive neutrality as it did with the Russian-Georgian war of the 2008 year. US aircraft carriers through the Black Sea straits are not allowed through Ankara, which refers to tonnage restrictions. Turkish companies are ready to invest in the economy of Crimea. Russia's principled position on the situation in Ukraine has more supporters in Turkey than opponents. What doesn’t affect Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s relations with President Barack Obama - they are already bad.
The protest sentiment in Russia is currently at a low level - a lesson from Kiev Maidan, which consists in the fact that the revolutionary upheavals supported from the outside can bring down the state, but are unable to correct its shortcomings, the majority of the country's citizens have taken into account. The leadership clearly does not intend to be drawn into the Ukrainian civil war, including because of the unpredictability of possible ways to develop the situation. Problems of the defense industry of the Russian Federation due to the loss of supplies from Ukraine can be resolved in a relatively short time. At the same time, the Ukrainian crisis is just unfolding. He is fraught with all sorts of surprises - and not only on the Ukrainian territory.
Mobilization tasks
So far, in the framework of the confrontation with the West and the Kiev authorities, Russia is acting in advance (in the situation with the Crimean referendum) and with reasonable caution (in the south-east). However, the adequacy of the reaction to what is happening by government officials at the level following the country's top leadership raises questions. This applies to such state corporations as Rosatom, Roskosmos, and several others.
Information about the lobbying of Rosatom by the participation of the French manufacturers of equipment with their American investors, instead of the Russian Power Machines, in case of refusal to supply spare parts to the leaders of Rosatom’s leadership in the most important future project for the domestic atomic industry abroad of the Turkish nuclear power plant Akkuyu the project itself, run on Russian money, but also a critical exacerbation of relations with Turkey. At the same time, the cost of such an operation for the USA and France will be not millions, but only hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The same goes for Roskosmos losing satellites due to rocket crashes. The level of defense capability of Russia directly depends on the state of affairs in this organization. The accidents of the domestic space industry are still growing, and this, in addition to the ideas of developing expensive mega-projects like flights to Mars and the Moon, can leave the country without real space potential that has been accumulated for decades.
The lack of domestic keys to the software of foreign high-precision machine tools - “scripts” makes them hostage to Western manufacturers. More precisely, the political leadership of states that are ready to impose sanctions against Russia. This is a much more real threat than a direct clash between the domestic Armed Forces and NATO forces. What in a situation of this kind can a country do, whose own machine tool industry no longer exists? The answer to this question must be found before the anti-Russian sanctions will work in full.
Russia is still on the verge of sanctions. Boycotts and bans of all sorts not news in world practice. They were introduced in relation to South Africa and Israel, Cuba and Vietnam, China and the USSR, Iran and Iraq. The existence in terms of technological and financial sanctions is subject to certain rules, including saving resources and personnel, minimizing corruption, attracting people with the highest intellectual potential to the government and its defense industry, improving work efficiency in all areas, reducing the level of bureaucratization of the country.
To what extent this, first and foremost, the optimization of personnel policy, on which all of the above-mentioned really depends, will be realized in domestic conditions is a question, the answer to which will be given only by practice. To a great extent, the current situation in relations between Russia and competitors has been provoked by the massive withdrawal from the country over a quarter of a century of capital by representatives of its “establishment” and open corruption, which has reached the highest levels of power.
A special issue on which not only defense, but also the future of the country depends, is the fate of its science and education. Russian institutions (despite the fact that their real modernization is really necessary) are almost completed by reform within the framework of privatization ideas, turning schools and universities into highly profitable business of bureaucratic leadership, hopes for the USE, the “Bologna system” and other innovations blindly copied from the Anglo-Saxon model.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck did not accidentally consider the chief organizer of the German army a schoolteacher. This phrase can be easily applied to Russian reality, if we try to understand how the general closure of pedagogical universities that conducted the Russification of the country during the Soviet era can be combined with the influx of millions of migrants from Central Asia to its territory and the de-Russification of the North Caucasus and a number of national autonomies in other regions. What language the Russian army will speak, if its school system collapses, has not yet been explained by any minister who carried out the education reform.
In the same way, no one has yet explained how to maintain the nuclear potential of a country without basic science. FANO managers, perhaps more creatively than academicians, are incomparably more “effective” and better dispose of the property and buildings of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, even a highly paid accountant scientists will not replace. Like the financier, he will not replace engineers and technicians, and the politician will not replace skilled workers.
We repeat: probably, someone did not notice this, but Russia declared war. For now - cold. The reasons for this are useless to discuss. Good country or around the blame, this war must be won. It is impossible to reverse the situation by changing the leadership and fulfilling all the conditions of the West, which the leaders of the domestic opposition hope for. More precisely, in this case Russia will simply cease to exist. Which is unlikely to please the majority of its population.
Challenge America
For those who are able to extrapolate the situation in Ukraine to Russian conditions, it is clear that in this case we will face a catastrophe, compared with which the collapse of the USSR is a minor annoyance. Moreover, it is the second nuclear power after the United States. Not to mention the saturation of the Russian territory with objects of increased danger - chemical, biological and other industries with a high degree of risk of major industrial accidents.
President Obama’s remark that Vladimir Putin "is not a rational thinking leader" means, among other things, that he and his entourage were convinced: to work with the top Russian authorities with simple methods of bribing, blackmail or nothing to do with them in the post-Soviet space binding offers, like "reloading", is useless. This means increasing pressure on Russia in all possible directions until such time as this tactic finally fails. How she fell everywhere and always.
This does not mean that all countries that are the objects of American pressure now or in the future, be it Iran, China, Israel, Pakistan or Vietnam, automatically become allies of Russia. Any state is guided only by its own interests, among which most countries include minimizing conflict with such a strong adversary as the United States.
Even the most outspoken of those who would be glad to challenge America, if it had weakened to such a state that it would pass with impunity, prefer not to speak out against it openly, and not to support the position of the United States during the voting at the UN General Assembly in Ukraine. abstaining or not participating in the vote. And this test shows the extent to which Russia can count on countries that are really important to her in her confrontation with the United States.
The consistent support by the Russian leadership of many world leaders from among those who are trying to act on the international arena independently, has interested and greatly strengthened the authority of the country and its president. Few people in the world who wanted to ignore the American point of view could decide on this to the extent that Vladimir Putin did. However, expressing sympathy for Russia, maintaining it and interacting with it most of the “American skeptics” will not be at the expense of relations with the United States.
Moreover, to develop their relations with Russia, as Iran and China do, they will take into account the fact that in the current historical the moment cooperation with them is more important for Moscow than in the past, precisely because of the cooling of relations with the West, from which they will try to extract the maximum possible profit for themselves. It is pointless to expect that they will automatically side with Russia in any situation that arises in the future, as the proponents of Iran’s immediate involvement in the SCO do.
In any case, the SCO is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In the event of the collapse of the current system of checks and balances in Central Asia, it can become a barrier to turning the post-Soviet republics located on this territory into an outpost of radical Islamism, equally dangerous for Russia and China. But it will not be a full-fledged military-political alliance. If this happens all the same, this alliance will not focus on Russia, but on China, which is unlikely to suit Moscow.
However, from a tactical point of view, the pressure exerted by the Barack Obama administration on Israel during the military operation in Gaza, cooling American relations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt by strengthening them with Qatar, the failure of American policy in Syria and Iraq, problems with the presidential elections in Afghanistan The “cold world” of the United States with Pakistan and everything that builds up the conflict potential between them and China, weakening the positions of the States in Asia and in the FAS, can be somehow used by Russia. Directly or indirectly, but if Washington proved that it is not ready to be an ally or partner of Moscow, you need to understand that it makes it its adversary.
As long as the domestic leadership refrains from careless steps like those that led to the Soviet army entering Afghanistan at the turn of 80, external risks for Russia are limited to trying to weaken the non-systemic opposition (with minimal chances for any success), Islamist terrorists ( in both capitals, in the North Caucasus or in the Volga region) or to develop separatist sentiments in the autonomies.
The latter, from the point of view of planning the organization of a “color revolution” in the country, is most likely after the current president leaves the political arena, whose support in the electorate is extremely high. However, the stake on the conflict of rival groups of the Russian elite can be realized by the United States not earlier than the 30s of the current century, when the active phase of the crisis in Ukraine will be over long ago, which gives Russia cause for optimism.
Information