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Russia’s “Isolation”
Wishful thinking:
Kerry warns of Russia 'isolation'
America and its allies are ready to step up measures to "isolate Russia politically, diplomatically and economically" unless Moscow orders its troops in Crimea back to their barracks, US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned.
Obama tries to rally world to isolate Russia
President Barack Obama gathered with world leaders in a day of delicate diplomacy, as he sought to rally the international community Monday around efforts to isolate Russia following its incursion into Ukraine.
Obama will meet Xi Jinping of China in attempt to isolate Russia over Ukraine
The White House has added meetings with the leaders of China and Japan to Barack Obama's visit to Europe and Saudi Arabia next week, as it seeks to use the six-day trip to build an international coalition and isolate Russia over its annexation of Crimea.
Reality:
Russia’s VTB and Bank of China agree on domestic currency settlements
VTB, Russia’s second biggest lender, has signed a deal with Bank of China, which includes an agreement to pay each other in domestic currencies.
“Under the agreement, the banks plan to develop their partnership in a number of areas, including cooperation on ruble and renminbi settlements, investment banking, inter-bank lending, trade finance and capital-markets transactions,” says the official VTB statement.
Russia, Europe eye broader space cooperation – space corporation chief
Europe is an interesting partner for Russia’s United Rocket and Space Corporation (ORKK), its Director General Igor Komarov told a news conference at the International Aerospace Exhibition ILA 2014 in Berlin on Tuesday.
“Intensive work is underway in the sphere of Russia and Europe’s space cooperation,” he said, noting that a number of promising agreements had already been or would be signed at the exhibition and many contracts were under negotiation.
With Ukraine, Russia Drives Wedge Between EU, US
The crisis in Ukraine is giving Russia an opening to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe just as Western powers try to repair a struggling trade deal and decide how to bolster a cash-strapped NATO.
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Germany and France have shunned sectorial sanctions without first trying again to broker a dialogue between Ukraine's government and pro-Russian separatists in the country's east — a step that garnered only lukewarm U.S. support.
Russia and China seal historic multibillion gas deal
Under the long-term deal, Gazprom will begin providing China's growing economy with 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year for the next 30 years, beginning in 2018. The details of the deal were discussed for more than 10 years, with Moscow and Beijing negotiating over gas prices and the pipeline route, as well as possible Chinese stakes in Russian projects.
Russia-India oil, gas pipelines in the works?
India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) plans to invite Russia to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. In addition, the country’s largest gas company, GAIL, has proposed that Russia's future gas pipeline to China be extended to India.
China, Iran and Russia: Restructuring the global order
At the Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) that opens May 20 in Shanghai, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will meet with both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among other things, the summit will underscore how rising non-Western powers are playing ever more prominent roles on the global stage. However, Western elites remain stuck in a time warp, wherein the United States and its European partners are the imperial masters of all they survey.
From the AP story that b cites about Russia driving a wedge between the US and EU:
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is designed to boost trade across the EU, including newer member nations such as Romania and Bulgaria.
I would say that sentence is incoherent. The purpose of the EU, and its predecessor the European Community, was to “boost trade across the EU”. The purpose of TTIP, in contrast, is to continue the dismantlement of EU worker, citizen, and environmental protections so that they are reduced to US levels; that is, to remove what sovereignty EU countries have left.
The Anglophone press now writes as if the US is part of Europe, but Russia isn’t. It’s a bizarro world, to use Justin Raimondo’s term.
lysias #16:
Russia is no longer Communist, so what sense does it make to apply Cold War thinking to it? They are now more Christian than we are.
The argument can be made that Russia was more Christian than the US even during the Soviet period. This is because the dominant Christian sect in the US is evangelicalism, and that evangelicalism has become increasingly fundamentalist. I would say that fundamentalism is a Christian heresy, since it raises the Bible to the same level as Christ, whereas for a Christian, the Bible is nothing more than a means to the end of knowing Christ. Hence, Christian fundamentalists are not really Christians. (Too bad Nora is no longer here, since she also believes that Christian fundamentalists, or dispensationalists at any rate, are heretical.)
VietnamVet #31:
the old America Empire flailing about in its death throes
From Mike Whitney’s article in today’s CounterPunch:
The Ukraine crisis has its roots in a policy that dates back nearly 20 years. The origins of the policy can be traced to a 1997 article in Foreign Policy magazine by Zbigniew Brzezinski, titled “A Geostrategy for Eurasia.” The article makes the case that the United States needs to forcefully establish itself in Central Asia in order to maintain its position as the world’s only superpower.
One can trace the cause of the current crisis even further. Why must the US control Eurasia, as Zbig argues? One would think that being a continental power, with rich natural resources, would be enough to be able to maintain a successful and prosperous society. After all, those are what led the US to become a superpower in the first place.
The problem is that the US has been hoisted by its own petards: neoliberalism, globalization, and empire. It has hollowed out its manufacturing base to such an extent that it can no longer supply its citizens with its own manufactured goods; nor can it feed its own people without borrowing from abroad. The US has put all its eggs into one basket: Empire. The American economic model is now based entirely on leveraging its military power to continue stealing income streams and resources from other countries.
As Putin said, the Wolf knows whom to eat.
Posted by: Demian | May 21 2014 20:44 utc | 40
Demian, your pravoslavic fervour does you credit, no doubt, among the believers. But this is not Saker’s blog. We aren’t believers here. We do not, AFAIK, subscribe to the view that Jewish blood is Satanic. I don’t subscribe to it. And as what you are, you would look pretty silly trying to explain that Jewish revolutionary fervour, and hatred for the Tsar, have socioeconomic roots. So I suggest you leave that line of argument elsewhere.
Rowan Berkeley is predicting a Rand Paul victory. Right now I’d say he is on the money. There will be anarchy in the U.S. — Hopefully. Posted by: Mike Maloney | May 21, 2014 4:08:20 PM | 37
Now it’s my turn to put my head above the parapet of the 57 varieties of anti-semitism. I said, in one of my less felicitous turns of phrase, that I thought ‘the Jews’ would get Rand Paul the nomination. You know who I mean, I hope: I mean Sheldon Adelson. He’s the kingmaker now. And it would be a stroke of genius. The obvious alternative is Jeb Bush, and to nominate him would be a statement on behalf of the Good Old Boys, which would probably lose them the election. We know that Rand (‘little Rand’, as Tarpley calls him with unconcealed sizeist contempt) has been spinning like a top to make Jewish friends, since his original isolationist views earned their vocal displeasure. The Tea Party politicians have always been ready to sell out the whole thing, which was never a genuine grassroots movement anyway, it was an astroturf movement designed to be sold out from above, as are all the Dems’ corresponding efforts.
If ‘the Jews’ (as always, obviously, I mean the elite, not Uncle Gus with the begel shop) were as consistently illuminated as I would like to think, they would not miss this trick. But like all of us, they fumble and drop the ball as often as they get it right. Adelson knows what he wants, but he doesn’t think much about how to get grassroots support for it, in fact he doesn’t give a damn. For Adelson, like for Mitt Romney, the bottom 50% don’t count at all, and he wouldn’t even think about it. He’d be happier with Jeb. Christie is a nonentity, but then again, that doesn’t matter either. Rand would be a masterstroke, anyhow. Maybe they could even stage a convention revolt to bring Rand the nomination: that would be so ‘awesome’ in media land that half the Dems would come straight over and vote for him too. You get the idea, anyway.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | May 22 2014 1:42 utc | 58
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