Thursday, March 30, 2017

604 Het Moslim terrorisme. Beperkte Impact. Externe oorzaak. The usual suspects.


Vanavond zag ik Edwin Bakker bij Pauw.

Hij is professor 'terrorisme' in Leiden en maakt zich zorgen over de jonge moslims die naar Syrië en Irak gingen en straks mogelijk terug naar Nederland komen.

In zijn nieuwe boek 'Nederlandse Jihadisten' onderzoekt hij de drijfveren en achtergronden van deze jongeren.
Zijn ze kansarm?  Nee.
Slecht opgeleid? Nee.
Slecht geïntegreerd? Nee.
Streng gelovig? Nee.

Wat beweegt hen dan om deze stap te zetten?
Dat gaan we van Bakker horen als zijn boek uitkomt.

Maar er is iets heel vreemds aan de hand.

Deze 'deskundigen' op het gebied van Terreur ( er zijn er meer: Beatrice de Graaf, Quirine Eijkman, Jelle van Buuren, Rob de Wijk, Glenn Schoen. ) schijnen er nooit bij stil te staan dat er vóór het jaar 2000 nauwelijks moslimterreur was in deze wereld.

Ik herinner me van geen van hen een analyse die uitlegt waardoor die moslims nu plotseling zoveel zin hebben in terrorist te worden.
Je hoort af en toe wat losse suggesties langskomen:
1. George Bush kwam niet verder dan : 'Ze zijn jaloers op onze vrijheden."
2. Osama zou boos zijn geweest omdat de VS zo'n grote vinger in de Saudische pap heeft. Daar heeft Osama natuurlijk gelijk in, maar zijn hele familie kan het heel goed vinden met die Amerikanen. De Saudi's kunnen het allemaal goed vinden met Amerika,  en toch zijn  juist zij  de grootste producenten van terroristen.....
Toen de oude koning overleed zei Obama dat het een geweldig aardige man was geweest, terwijl hij toch al die madrassa's had gebouwd waar de jihad wordt onderwezen...
3. Het zou wel eens aan de islam kunnen liggen. Die religie zou de religie van  de haat zijn.

         --------------
Hoe dan ook:  Al zeker 10 jaar beheeerst het item van de moslim-terreur een groot deel van onze 'kijk op de wereld.
Veel meer dan de IRA terreur of de ETA ( Basken) terreur ooit deden. En toch maakte die terreur 10 maal zoveel slachtoffers in Europa !
En dat is nog verbazingwekkender als je beseft dat er 1,6 miljard moslims zijn en slecht 8 miljoen Basken en Ieren. (*)
Nu wonen die 1,6 miljard moslims natuurlijk niet in Europa, maar er wonen in elk geval minstens 8 miljoen moslims in Europa. En dus kun je zeggen dat die 8 miljoen moslims in 20 jaar tijd slechts één tiende van het aantal slachtoffers maakten van wat de IRA en ETA maakten.

Natuurlijk zijn  er elders in de wereld ook veel doden zijn gevallen door moslim-terreur, maar daarover het volgende:
1. Die terreur werd pas mogelijk doordat WIJ in die landen de seculiere leiders hebben verdreven:
   a. Amerika wilde het communistische regering in Afghanistan verdrijven in 1979, en steunde de mujaheddin.
b. Amerika besloot om Saddam te verdrijven.
c. Amerika besloot dat Ghadaffi moest verdwijnen.
d. Amerika besloot dat Assad moest verdwijnen.
e. Amerika besloot dat Sudan in twee gesplitst moest worden.
f. Amerika steun de vernietiging van Yemen.
g. Amerika bedacht en steunde de Tsjetsteense opstand. ( Graham Fuller,  CIA. Zie Engdahl, 2016.)
h. Amerika steunde Naser Oric in Yugoslavie.
i  Amerika stookt al jaren in Pakistan. Zorgt daar voor grote verdeeldheid.

2. Volgens onderzoeker R. J. Rummel, die 'democide' onderazoecht, dus het doden door de staat van zijn eigen mensen,  zijn de moslimlanden opvallend omdat er zo weinig mensen worden gedood door de staat. Communistische landen zijn extreem in dit opzicht:  609 miljoen Russen en 80 miljoen Chinezen werden door hun eigen regering om zeep geholpen.
De Turken hebben een genoicide op de Armenen gepleegd, maar dat was nu juist nadat het land seculier was geworden.

DIT IS VOLGENS MIJ DE OORZAAK VAN DE MOSLIM-TERREUR.

Amerika heeft op allerlei manieren het ontstaan van moslim-extremisten gestimuleerd:
1. Ze steunden de Muslim broederschap om Nasser in Egypte te blokkeren. ( jaren 50)
2. Ze ondermijnden de Shah in 1979 en hielpen Khomeini aan de macht. Het streven was: he Midden Oosten moet een pallendeken worden van kleine religieuze staatjes. ( Bernard Lewis)
3. Ze steunden de mujaheddin in Afghanistan, om het seculiere communistische regering te verdrijven. ( 1979)
4. Richard Perle steunde al de bouw van madrassa's in de jaren 80. Toen dat verboden werd richtte hij het American-Turkish Council op, en er gingen m,iljoenen steun naar Centraal Aziatische landen. Daarvan werd 30% gebruikt voor madrassa's.  ( Verklaart Sibel Edmonds.)
5. Fetullah Gülen heeft 20 miljard $ besteed aan de bouw van madrassa's en woont al 20 jaar in Pensylvania.  Niemand weet waar hij die 20 miljard vandaan heeft.  Maar het Pentagon heeft af en toe 6 trillion $ te weinig in kas...
6. Saudi Arabië besteed vele miljoenen om in allerlei westerse landen de meest fundamentalistische vorm van de islam te verbreiden.  Niemand legt hen een strobreed in de weg.  De Saudi's zijn al decennia de grote vriend van Amerika.

Nu doemt de vraag op: Wat voor nut heeft dit moslimterrorisme voor Amerika?

Wel, die moslimstrijders worden duidelijk als een soort proxy leger gebruikt om de vijanden van de VS te beschadigen:  Nasser, de communisten in Afghanistan.
Maar de Shah was toch een vriend van de VS?
Jawel, maar Bernard Lewis zei ( op de Bilderberg in 1978)  dat men die olielanden zwakker zou kunnen makendoor ze in interne strijd ten onder te laten gaan.  De Shah was aan de macht gekomen omdat Mossadecq meer geld voor zijn olie wilde.
Maar 25 jaar later was het de Shah die een hogere olieprijs wenste.
Dus vond de VS het tijd voor een verandering....

Even een zijstap: Yinon en de Neocons.
In 1982 schreef de Israelische Oded Yinon een boekje met de vraag: "Hoe kan Israel overleven?"
Zijn antwoord was als volgt: 'We moeten zorgen dat er in de ons omringende arabische landen een tweestrijd ontstaat tussen diverse groepen: religieuze groepenm, etnische groepen, maakt niet uit.
Zo zullen die landen zichself verzwakken, endat is gunstig voor Israel. "
Toen 10 jaar later de Soviet Unie in stortte was Amerika de hegemon. En binnen Amerika waren de joodse Neoconservatieven steeds sterker geworden.  Onder de democraat Clinton hadden ze veel invloed, maar onder Bush jr. deelden ze compleet de lakens uit. 
Ze konden al hun plannen realiseren. 
Wat die plannen zijnb schreven ze in 1997 in 'A Clean Break'  en in 1999 in het 'PNAC Rapport'  dfat eigenlijk 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' heette. 

Daar zeggen ze:  Amerika moet nog 100 jaar de baas blijven in de wereld, en we moeten minstens 2 oorlogen tegelijk kunnen vechten.  Natuurlijk wil een volk nooit ten oorlog trekken, maar als er weer een flinke aanval op ons zou worden uitgevoerd, zoals toen in Pearl Harbor,  dan zal het volk woedend worden en kunnen we die oorlogen wèl  voeren. 

Zo gezegd zo gedaan.  
In juni 2001 werd nog snel  een wet veranderd ( vliegtuig scramblen alleen mogelijk als minister toestemming geeft)  want anders zou de aanslag op de Twin Towers nooit kunnen lukken, en op 11 september 2001 was het zover. 
De Neocons hadden hun casus belli. 
Al binnen enkele weken werd bekend dat men 7 moslimlanden zou gaan verniertigen ( Generaal Wesley Clark zei dit in 2007, toen hij als presidentskandidaad campagne voerde.) 

De rest is bekend: Afghanistan en  Irak werden door de VS zelf onder handen genomen. Men ontsloeg alle militairen en alle politieagenten, en Colonel Steele leerde de Shiiten hoe ze Sunnieten moesten martelen. Kortom:  de VS deeed er alles aan om een vreselijke burgeroorlog te initieren.

De oorlog in Libië werd door Amerika's vrienden begonnen, Frankrijk en Engeland. Valse geruchten over genocide waren voldoende om te beginnen .  Toen werd Ghadaffi vermoord door de VS en liet men de extremisten het land verder vernietigen. Alles verliep volgens plan.

De opstand in Syrie was voorbereid door de VS ( Gene Sharp, Otpor, NGO's, scherpschutters in Daraa) en afgemaakt door jihad strijders die ferm werden gesteund door de Saudi's en de Qatari, maar zeker ook door de VS.

Binnen 15 jaar werd de helft van de arabische wereld vernetigd.  Een hele opluchting voor Israel, volgens mij. Alle sterke mannen dood of zeer verzwakt.  Alleen nog marionetten van Het Westen aan de macht.

De Moslim-bashing Campagne. 
Om de vernietiging van de moslimlanden 'acceptabel' te maken, moest men de islam demoniseren.
Er verschenen vele boeken die de religie en de profeet zwart maakten. Het liefst natuurlijk door Christenen geschreven ( Robert Spencer) , maar het meeste werk moesten onze joodse vrienden toch zelf doen.
Gelukkig hadden ze de media goed onder controle.
Daar was wel één probleempje: 30 jaar lang had men 'Gelijkheid' en 'multi-culti' gepropageerd, en al die talking heads waren nog grotendeels actief.
We kregen dus een heel gemengd beeld: een strijd tussen linkse gutmenschen en 'fascisten'.

Maar door her en der een terreuraanslag te organiseren of niet te willen zien,  keerde  de publieke opinie behoorliojk in het Westen.

Natuurlijk werd dat ook heel erg geholpen doordat er zoveel moslims naar het Westebn watren geimmigreerd in de laatste 50 jaar. Eerst de gastarbeiders, toen hun vrouw en kinderen, toen de partners van die kinderen en later nog vele asielzoekers.
Massa-immigratie veroorzxaakt àltijd grote problemen.
Maar dat weten wij   niet, want massa-immigratie komt weinig voor 'in de natuur'.  Die is eigelijk alleen een gevolg van militaire verovering.
Maar in de jaren 70  hadden 'onze vrienden' ons wijs gemaakt dat je een fascist was als je tegen massa-immigratie was.
En als fascist was je 'dood'.  Geen carriere, geen vriendenm, geen aanzien meer te verwerven.
Men wist de massa-immigratie tot grote hoogte te brengen.

En door de wrijvingen tussen moslims en autochtonen viel het moslimbashen al op een in zekere mate vruchtbare bodem.
Maar zelfs in de VS waar slechts 1% vande mensen moslim ios ( de meesten zijn zwarten) wist men angst voor de moslims te genereren !
10 jaar geleden verscheen een rapport waaruit bleek dat er toen al 42 miljoen $aan moslim-bashen was uitgegeven.
Twee joodse auteurs, Max Blumenthal en Jeff Cohen beschreven elk apart wie de motor waren achter het moslimbashen:  het waren joodse mensen en joodse organisaties.

WAT NU? 
Ik heb geen idee.
Der moslimlanden zijn kapot.
Maar onze landen bestaan nog.
Zullen de 'Grote Vernietigers'  doorgaan en de moslims en Chriostenen tegen elkaar opzxetten, zodat ook onze landen kapot gaan?
Of zullen ze hun macht verliezen doordat de VS in stort bij een volgende crisis?

Zullen ze zo gek zijn dat ze een oorlog met Rusland en China beginnen?

Hoe het ook zij: al die 'terreur-deskundigen' hebben wellicht geen enkel ideed van alle zaken die ik hierboven beschreef.
Het zijn nuttige idioten, als U het mij vraagt....

Ze werken hard mee aan hun eigen ondergang, door nietop zoiek te gaan naar de oorzaak van het fenomeen dat ze zeggen te bestuderen.

    Tot zover voor vandaag.


    ---------------------------------------------------



(*)  En als je getalsmatig kijkt, dan is er nog nauwelijks moslimterreur:
In Europa vielen tussen 1970 en 1990 maar liefts 5000 terreurslachtoffers door de IRA en door de spaanse Basken.
Ierland heeft ongeveer 5 miljoen inwoners en er zijn een kleine 3 miljoen spaanse Basken.
Deze 8 Miljoen mensen zorgden voor 5000 doden.
Er waren dus 1600 mensen aan de kant van de daders voor elke terreur-dode die te betreuren viel.

Als de Islam even gewelddadig was geweest in de laatste 20 jaar als de IRA en de Basken, daqn zouden die 1.600.000.000  moslims wereldwijd al 1 miljoen doden hebben veroorzaakt.
Maar er zijn in Europa in die 20 jaar ongeveer 500 doden gevallen.
Voor Europa is de Ierse en Baskische terreur dus 2000  maal dodelijker dan de moslim-terreur.










Sunday, March 26, 2017

603. Enige aantekeningen over China en de VS.

Trump was niet mals voor China tot nu toe.
Anderzijds kwam Tillerson geheel afgekoeld en positief terug na een gesprek met Xi. Hij sprak over een win-win toekomst.

Op 6 en 7 april , over 10 dagen dus, ontvangt  Trump de baas van China in zijn buitenverblijf  Mar a Lago.

-------------------------
Even kort de situatie:  China heeft nu al een BNP dat 3 trillion$  groter is dan dat van de VS.
Over 13 jaar zal het tweemaal zo groot zijn en over 35 jaar drie keer zo groot.

De Theucides Trap is een 'concept' uit het oude Griekenland: Als een grootmacht ziet dat er een concurrent opkomt,  is het wellicht zinvol om die 'in de knop te smoren': dus een oorlog starten nu je die nog kunt winnen.  Voorbeeld:  Engdahl:  WO1 werd bedacht door Engeland omdat ze wisten dat anders Duitsland de baas zou worden.

Hier dreigt dus oorlog tussen China en Amerika.

Het lijkt er op dat Amerika die oorlog zoekt. De Pivot to the East, van Obama en Hillary.

Maar Amerika wilde tegelijk ook dat het militair sterke Rusland niet meer sterk zou worden, en probeert nu al enkele jaren om Rusland te destabiliseren.
Door zowel Rusland als China tegelijk aan te vallen heeft de VS ze in elkaars armen gedreven.
Dat kan nooit de bedoeling zijn geweest van Washington.

    ==============================

Hoe denkt China?
Wat zijn hun aspiraties?

Op RT was een kort en informatief interview.
Eerst een samenvatting.
Onder de gele streep de  integrale tekst van dat interview. .

------------------------------

Michal Pillsbury.  China kenner. Adviseur van Trump, en Pentagon.   CFR lid.     ( Boek)  


Sophie & Co, 24 maart 2017, 30 min

In 2009 organiseerden de Chinezen een BRICS oppositie tegen het VS klimaatplan. Obama boos.
China heeft nu een plan om oorlog tussen VS en China te voorkomen.
Oplossing: als China meer koopt van de VS.  Samenwerking mbt terreur.
De 'Freedom of Navigation' wet speelt een rol.  ( Eilanden die China ophoogt.)
China wil de VS niet kwaad maken. Ze willen zeker geen oorlog. Ze willen  hun macht verwerven door het te verdienen.  China heeft het streven om de grootste te worden.
VS is al de grootste macht sinds 1898.  De VS is er van overtuigd dat niemand  rol van 'de grootste' kan overnemen.
( 9.30) Pillsbury:  er is geen 'Chinees gevaar'. Geen Chinese dreiging.  Ik zeg: Wij onderschatten de aspiraties van China om de grootste te worden.
De Chinezen vinden het streven naar Hegemonie middels een militaire overmacht afkeurenswaardig.
Wat de VS en Rusland deden  keuren ze af: 'bah' is hun  term voor dit soort  superman gedrag.
China wil op haar  'natuurlijke deugd' een geliefde supermacht zijn.
Sophie:  Is er iets fout aan als China zo de wereld zou leiden?
Pillsbury: Als ze zich beschaafd gaan gedragen is het niet zo slecht. ( Mensenrechten, goed climaat-beleid etc.)  Dan is het niet zo erg, hoewel ik en ook Trump  het niet leuk vinden.


( 16.30) Sophie: "U beweert dat China stiekem het plan heeft om de wereld over te nemen, maar U werd zelf uitgenodigd in Bejing om hun plannen aan te horen.?'
Pillsbury: "De havikken, de yingpai, willen mij gebruiken om hun positie aan de VS kenbaar te maken. De yingpai zijn bang dat er per ongeluk een oorlog zou kunnen uitbreken.

De Chinezen zeggen : VS is op haar retour, enzou zich dus meer bescheiden moeten opstellen. Ze willen de VS niet vernederen, maar zeggen wel: 'don't mess with China' ( want anders...)
Ze willen dat ik dit overbreng aan de VS.
Sophie: "Maar het optreden van het Amerikaanse leger daar in de Chinesse zee zal de havikken juist machtiger maken ! " Pillsbury: "Ja, dat is het gevaar. "

Pillsbury geeft een voorbeeld uit het verleden, toen de VS ook niet wilde zien wat China zag:
"In 1950 dachten wij dat we een mandaat haden van de UN om Noord en ZuidKorea te verenigen. Ebn we trokken er heen met ons leger. Maar China zag het als een bedreiging voor haar veiligheid en zond 200.000 soldaten naar Noord Korea. We schrokken on s te pletter en verloren heel veel van onze soldaten.  "

(19.15) Sophie: "Zijn er Amerikaanse havikken die een oorlog met China wensen?  Kunnen die worden gecontroleerd?"
Pillsbury: "Ik denk niet dat ze oorlog willen, maar ze willen de Chinezen wel een lesje leren, op het matje roepen. Ze vinden dat China zich niet aan de regels houd ( spionage , tech diefstal, etc. )  En onze havikken willen niet inzien dat onze macht kleiner wordt. Ze denken nog steeds dat onze beste dagen nog moeten komen. 
Velen denken dat China een papieren tijger is, en dat pressie op China haar juist zal doen instorten.
( JV:  een tactiek die tav Rusland wel is gelukt)
( 20.30)  Pillsbury bepleit dat er meer boeken over Strategie uit het chinees worden vertaald.  Wijze lessen over hoe je oorlog voert.
( JV: Een lang commentaar op Amazon toont aan dat die boeken al lang bekend zijn in de engelse taal.  Pillsbury werpt zich op als 'belangrijke bron'  terwijl anderen nog onwetend zijn,. Maar dat is onjuist, zegt de commenter. Pillsbury maakt zich groter dan hijis.  Dat is verder niet zo belangrijk.)

(21) In Zuyid Korea hebben we afweer raketten staan die tegen Noord Korea gericht zijn. Maar de Chinezen hebben op de website van Raytheon gelezen dat diezelfde afweer-raketten met een sachakelaar om te draaien tot 3000 km kunnen functioneren en dus  ook in China hun werk kunnen doen. De Yingpai hebben nu gepleit om veel meer kernwapens in China.

Trump gaat wapens leveren aan Taiwan. Hoe reageert China?
"Ze zijn boos, maar dat is meer voor de buhne. De VS heeft een wet die zegt dat Taiwan er van op aan kan dat ze tegen een aanvan van China verdedigd zal worden. China weet dat."
"Ik vind het veel gevaarlijker dat onze legers nu zo dicht bij elkaar zijn,. Ik ben bang voor een oorlog als gevolg van een misverstand."
De Amerikanen zeggen zelf dat er maar 1 China is en doen verder zaken met beide China's. Ze doen of hun neus bloedt. Dat noemen ze 'OUR 1 Chiuna policy", en daar kan Bejing mee leven.

(25) "Uit de jaren 70, toen de Chinese economie nog maar 10% van de onze was, hebben we allerlei gunstige afspraken met China, zoals het gratis doorgeven van wetenschappelijke informatie.  Ik denk dat we daar nu mee moeten stoppen."
"Alle Amerikaanse ministeries hebben wel afspraken met China.  Maar nu ze ons een beetje demoniseren, moet n we daar mee stoppen vind ik. "
Trump schreef drie boeken waarin hij zijn bewondering voor de Chinezen als onderhandelaren niet verbergt. Het 5 jarig dochtertje van Ivanka leert al Chinees.

            ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Extra info:

Het Chinese denken is een mix van Taoisme, Conficianisme en buddhisme.
Ze hebben vele boeken geschreven over de kunst van het oorlogvoeren.  ( Die worden nu ook gebruikt in handboeken over: zaken doen, concurreren, omgaan met een vijand etc. )

Wijsheden over oorlog voeren:


======================================
(*)
Hier het volledige interview met Pillsbury uitgeschreven:


American hawks want showdown with China – Pentagon adviser
Published time: 24 Mar, 2017 08:38Edited time: 24 Mar, 2017 10:20


This century may see the greatest shift in the balance of power in history. Plagued with economic and infrastructure troubles, and internal divisions, the US risks losing its role as global leader. China is preparing to take over the lead role, while not everyone is taking its plans seriously. With Trump in power – how far will the US-China rivalry go? Will the new administration play the containment card once again? Or will the two great powers find a way forward? We ask Pentagon consultant, adviser to the Trump campaign, and author of The Hundred-Year Marathon – Michael Pillsbury.
Follow @SophieCo_RT


Sophie Shevardnadze: Pentagon consultant, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, author of the “Hundred Year Marathon” - Dr. Michael Pillsbury, welcome to the show, great to have you with us, sir. On his first visit to China as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that China and America are at ‘a historic moment in their relationship’. Could Beijing and Washington be preparing ground for some new deal, a new phase in the US-China relationship?
Michael Pillsbury: Yes, I  think the both sides are preparing for  the Mar-a-Lago summit where there’ll be extensive exchanges, many hours of talks between President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. This will be their first meeting, so it’s quite important. I agree with Secretary of State Tillerson that this is a kind of historic moment in U.S.-China relations. The Trump campaign had a lot of very negative rhetoric against China, kind of scared the Chinese government, so I think there’s a relief in China, which I last visited a month ago, on this new phase of the Trump administration to seek cooperation and what Secretary Tillerson called “Win-win” outcome.
SS: So, what’s so historic about this visit? Far from the hostile rhetoric we’ve heard from both sides in previous months, relations are quite amicable - what’s the catch here?
MP: The issue is going to be how much President Trump changes President Obama’s approach to China. President Obama, as you know, got quite offended in 2009, at the Copenhagen Climate Change summit, when he sort of stumbled into a room with Hillary Clinton with him and found that Chinese were organising a meeting of the heads of state, of Russia, India, Brazil, to oppose the American climate change plan. It was quite a hostile meeting and things never really improved from 2009. President Obama refused a Chinese request to agree to a new concept of a World Order that the Chinese call [speaks chinese] It’s translated, roughly, as “new model” of the Great Power relations. It’s supposed to be to avoid war between the U.S. and China. So, Obama administration wanted to explore it, but never quite accepted it. Secretary Tillerson has said some of the keywords in this new formulation when he was in Beijing - so it’s already a step towards U.S.-China cooperation, greater than with President Obama. There are a number of other areas of friction between the two.
SS: Yeah, he’s called  for ‘win-win cooperation’ - so where exactly can China and the US agree to cooperate?
MP: There are quite a few areas, the most important are economics and trade. There’s a series of things, that I written in an article called “The Road to Make America Great Again Runs Through Beijing” - it means if that we have good trade ties with China and China buys a great deal more American products, this will help the Trump administration to meet its pledge of 4% annual growth. Terrorism is another… there’s other areas of cooperation. China doesn’t help us on the ground, militarily, against ISIS, but they have provided cooperation on terrorism in exchange for us taking into account  their own concerns with Eastern Turkestan independence movement and terrorism inside China. So, this is another area of cooperation. Sophie, you can imagine the nightmare it would be if China were a pro-terrorist state, and actively supporting ISIS and Al-Qaeda. China used to be in favor of armed revolution back in the 1960s - so this is a great area of cooperation that we need to expand.
SS: Okay, but amicable  statements coming from top officials - it’s great, but they won’t just take the stumbling blocks away in a relationship, right? What is the Trump administration going to do about the issues standing in the way - like the South China Sea dispute? For example, will it continue the freedom of navigation patrols through what China claims as its territorial waters?
MP: In terms of freedom of navigation operation, that’s a tradition that goes back more than a 100 years, began with the British, actually. What Obama has done is not good - he had the American destroyers  to go through the territorial claims of China, turn off their weapons radar, not launch helicopters, going in the straight line and pretty much let the Chinese know where they are going. A more aggressive approach has been proposed that the U.S. and other countries - including France, England, Japan - would not respect these territorial claims of China, and they would not seek so called “innocent passage”. I don’t know, if mr. Trump is going to do that or not - it’s one option that he has, obviously.
SS: Now, in your book ‘the Hundred Year Marathon’ you say the Chinese hawks are following a multi generation plan to attain global dominance. Why don’t you think the Chinese leadership will ever agree to the role of one of the world’s superpowers alongside the United States?
MP: Well, the way the Chinese express it is that they want to avoid Hitler and Stalin, and Tojo and this kind of model that sought through aggressive, armed forces to expand territory. Their view is that China’s, I hate to say “domination”, but China’s role as a #1 power will come by earning it - they expect to be double of the American economy by 2030 - a couple of their most famous economists have already written this. They expect to be the triple of the American GDP by 2049 - that’s what I call “A hundred year marathon”, from a book by Chinese hawk. So, when they’re triple of our economy, they have options. They can build up their armed forces, if they wish, to double or triple our size, but their idea is to get through the next 20 or 30 years peacefully. They’re quite afraid of alerting the American public to their long-term prospects, of being double or triple us. America, as you know, Sophie, has been the #1 economy in the world since about 1898. So we’re quite complacent that God gave us this role and no one can take it away, but already the IMF and the World Bank have announced that the Chinese economy has surpassed us. They are two, almost three trillion dollars bigger than us. So, the size of the entire Russia GDP - that’s how much larger the Chinese GDP is bigger than America already. This is quite significant.
SS: But, you know, long-term planning is great, but a hundred years? That’s so far away! You can be as hawkish as you get, but there’s no guarantee your great grandkids will continue doing what you want them to do, a hundred year plan is still quite a bit of a stretch, no?
MP: Yes. I don’t think it’s a plan in the sense of details,  I think it’s an aspiration - it would be a better word. They first met in public in 1955 when the Great Chairman Mao himself said that China’s goal is to first surpass America and then pull way ahead. At that point he estimated it would take 75 years. So, it’s not a plan that worked out. That’s an aspiration, and they’ve gone quite far in succeeding. They were 10% of our economy back in the 70s.
SS: Tell me something - is the current administration listening to your arguments about the Chinese threat?
MP: I don’t argue that there’s a Chinese threat. I argue that we’ve underestimated China’s aspiration and Chinese capability. So part of of the Administration agrees with me, yes.
SS: Okay, maybe “threat” is a bad word, but are they listening to your advice? Are they listening to your analysis? Are they also seeing China in 100 years being the #1 World Power?
MP: I think you saw in three of Mr. Trump’s books. It’s very similar to my argument. In fact, you could almost say, Trump came before me - I’m not claiming that I’ve instructed him. It’s in his books going back at least 15-18 years.
SS: But here’s what I’m thinking - China has never in its history been aiming at global domination, it was always content to stay the dominant power in its region - why would the traditions break all of a sudden?
MP: Again, this word “world domination” - that’s not the word Chinese use. They claim that the Soviet Union and the U.S. sought what they call “hegemony” - they’ve got a wonderful word for it, “Ba”. “Ba” is a ruthless hegemon from the Warring States period, 25 hundred years ago. He used force and deception to maintain domination. China’s view is they are going to earn their way with virtue, economic power. Everyone is eventually going to welcome them to be the leading economic power. So, “domination” is the wrong word, they would never use that. They might use a term like “natural virtue” of China, that will cause a new world order. There’s often speak of a more just world order, that they are going to to work toward as they become stronger and stronger economically. The new world order will be more just, they say, because the Southern half of the Globe will have more power in the UN specialised agencies, in the World Bank and the IMF, in this global structure created in 1944-1945.
SS: So the key point of China’s version of the global order is removing American dominance - and I mean, me and you can use this word, “dominance”, because neither of us are Chinese. So, the way you described it: it’s about removing pressure groups and basing decisions on consensus.
MP: That’s right.
SS: Here’s what I’m asking, is there anything wrong with the Сhinese world order other than the US is no longer the world’s leader?
MP: Well, it depends on what kind of reforms China puts in place. If the new China-led world order, let’s call it, has policies on climate change and reduction of pollution, and the human rights violations, support for responsibility to protect, of the UN, the whole series of rules based on the global order approaches that the U.S. has been advocating - then that kind of China-led world is not so bad. I wouldn’t like it, I mean, I’m an American patriot who wants America First - I agree with mr. Trump very strongly. But if it’s an unreformed China, that has got some really, unfortunately, almost wicked policy features or it gets worse than it is today… Then we will all regret letting China assume the #1 post in the world.
SS:  In the title of your book, you call China’s quest for domination a ‘secret’ strategy - but the way you’ve learned all about it is actually by being invited to China’s armed forces conference in Beijing. Now why would Chinese hawks invite an American policy-maker like you to their gathering - perhaps they want to get their position across to the US leaders?
MP: I think that’s the reason. I think the Chinese hawks who are known as “eagles” to some degree in Chinese language, “ying pai”, “ying” can be a “hawk” or an “eagle” - they’ve felt frustrated that the American government has not understood their views. Their books have not been translated into English, and so a lot of what I do in the “Hundred Year Marathon” is to give a voice to China's hawks. They are not all military and they seek to avoid war, but they are quite a bit more concerned that an accidental war could break out between U.S. and China due to misperceptions. That’s why they sometimes go into  detail with me with me about military scenarios. China’s view, especially the hawks, is that America is in decline, actually, in a very sharp decline, and needs to be more modest in the world and accept its role of what in Chinese history is very common - an old haegeman, an old emperor in decline, and replaced by new powers. So that doesn’t mean they want to humiliate America, but it means they expect more modesty from us and they’re very concerned to use me as a channel to convey these… sometimes, the warnings of war to the U.S. - “Don’t mess with China!”.
SS: Don’t you think that surrounding China will only empower the hawks in Beijing and make it more confrontational?
MP: That’s the most dangerous thing we’re facing now. The U.S. Air Force and Navy operate closer and closer to Chinese Air Force and Navy units. As happened in 2001, there could be an encounter, an accident, in which both sides have their own view on what happened. In some ways, that’s how 1950 and the Korean War broke out. U.S. thought it had a UN mandate to unify North Korea and South Korea, but as our forces came closer and closer to the Chinese border, they interpreted it as potential invasion, secretly sent more than 200,000 troops, many wore white snow suits, who surprised the heck out of U.S. in North Korea, and, ultimately, 30,000 American soldiers were killed because of this failure to analyse on both sides the dangers of our units getting closer and closer together. I am also afraid of this scenario.
SS: What about American hawks? Are there forces in Washington that desire a confrontation with China? Can they be tamed?
MP: I wouldn’t say they desire a war, but there are American hawks, they sometimes want to have a showdown to teach China a lesson, because they feel China doesn’t respect the American power, or China has broken so many rules: technology theft, espionage against our companies, there’s quite a long list of what our hawks see as bad behaviour by China. Our hawks tend to not accept that we’re a declining power. They think America’s best days are still ahead, as Ronald Reagan would say, so you have this difference in our balance of power assessments on the American side. The China, they believe, is quite weak. There’s a famous book called “The Coming Collapse of China” that came out about 10 years ago. Very widespread view that China is a paper tiger itself and could easily collapse, and therefore American pressure will cause Chinese concessions. That’s quite a strong view here in Washington.
SS: In your book, you mention that ‘unfortunately the vast majority of China experts in the US don’t speak Chinese beyond a few words’ - so how informed is Washington’s China policy then?
MP: In many ways, it’s very well informed. I have only praise for CIA and DIA. On the other hand, on the strategic thinking level, I’ve been advocating that we need to publish in English some of China’s best books on strategy. The hawks and others have written series of lessons they’ve learned from the Warring States period that they apply today and to the future. Seems to me, we can’t go wrong by reading Chinese authors in English, in translation, to get an idea of how different their thinking is from our own. They do that with us. Almost every major book by anybody in the U.S. - dr. Kissinger and others - you can find in Chinese bookstores, fairly quickly after publication, in Chinese.
SS: The US is deploying a missile defence system in South Korea - officially it’s aimed against the North Korean threat, but China sees it as a threat to its own security. Do you expect China to retaliate? What can it do?
MP: Yes. They’ve already had some threatening articles. This was the main topic when I was in Beijing. They have gone to Raytheon company website and learned that this missile defence system has a kind of switch that can convert it from a short-range, a 300 mile range, to a long range, as much as between 1500 to 2000 miles, and therefore covering the Chinese ICBM fields, and in some sense, be able to give an excuse to China’s hawks to greatly increase the number of nuclear weapons, ICBM force that they have. I don’t want this to happen myself, but we’ve got to try  to persuade them that THAAD as it’s called, isn’t really designed to do that, it’s a defence against North Korea, and we need to enlist China’s cooperation in much stronger pressure against North Korea. Otherwise,  they’re putting at risk their own strategic ICBM fields. So, I think, China is probably going to cooperate more on North Korea, at least in the area of sanctions and pressure. That could be just my wishful thinking which I had before.
SS: Washington says the One China policy towards Taiwan isn’t going to be challenged for now - however, the US is preparing to sell a large arms package to Taiwan, how’s that going to sit with the Chinese?
MP: They object to even selling one bullet or one spare tire to the Taiwan military, but a lot of that is just bluff to let us know that they don’t appreciate it. We have a law that requires the President to provide enough weapons so that Taiwan can defend itself and to keep our own forces in good shape in case there’s a crisis in the area. The Chinese know this very well, it dates back to Jimmy Carter administration. So I don’t expect some huge out-of-the-proportion reaction by the Chinese. What I’m more worried about is, I’ve mentioned this to you, the accidental war with patrols so close to each other, including in the Taiwan Strait. It’s only a 100 miles wide and often  their jet fighters in mainland China and  Taiwan’s jet fighters, in my view, come too close to each other. So, the issue of Taiwan is not going to go away, but so far, it’s been managed and obviously the Chinese were very relieved when mr. Trump in his phone call to President Xi said that he intends to maintain “our China policy” - now, I want to underline the word “Our” - he didn’t accept the Chinese principle that Taiwan belongs to China, he agree with what Nixon and Jimmy Carter and other American presidents since 1972 have done - that we just won’t discuss whom Taiwan belongs to. It’s our “one China” policy, which is what Mr. Trump said according to the press, and I’m very strongly supporting his approach.
SS:You say the US needs to stop helping China ‘increase its productivity’ - but is it too late for that now?  Not like you can get General Electric, Microsoft, General Motors to stop investing in China? Where will iPhone's be put together?
MP: My books talks about U.S. government programs to help China’s economic growth. They were put in place by Jimmy Carter in 1979 when China was really only 10% of our economic size, and they’re all still there. We cooperate far more with China, we help China far more, for example the National Science Foundation, than we do with Russia. We have almost a hundred agreements, we have a large National Science Foundation office in Beijing. When we make a discovery like prairie grass roots that can go deeper, helping Chinese agricultural productivity, we transfer it immediately to China, for free. All U.S. government departments have some sort of assistance program with China. It made a lot of sense in 1979, but it needs to be re-evaluated, it seems to me, especially, if China’s going to demonize us in their books and articles as a declining hegemon who’s seeking war. I think China should not say that about America.
SS: You believe Trump succeeded in staying unpredictable in the eyes of the Chinese - why do you think that’s an effective strategy?
MP: Mr. Trump thinks it’s an effective strategy, because he has so much praise for how clever the Chinese are. This is in all three of his books, where he mentions China. It’s actually a very witty observation  that he makes about how Chinese are the best negotiators he personally has ever encountered and he explains in his most recent book that that’s why he wants to be unpredictable to give him a kind of advantage or an edge in negotiating with the Chinese. It’s really a kind of flattery or admiration for the Chinese. I think, as you know, Ivanka, Trump’s daughter, only 5 years old, has been studying Mandarin for more than three years. She goes on Instagram reciting Tang dynasty poetry - so the Trump family has been involved with China. China - after the election, actually - has approved that the Trump brand can be registered in China, the case that has been going on for almost 30 years and it has not been the one in favor of Mr. Trump. So he seems to have a kind of admiration for their negotiating skills and the Chinese art of the deal.
SS: Alright. Thank you so much for this wonderful interview. We were talking to Michael Pillsbury, author of the “Hundred Year Marathon”. Dr. Pillsbury, can you hold up your book for us, please, so that the viewers can see what the cover looks like? There you go, a “Hundred Year Marathon” by Michael Pillsbury. We were discussing the challenges of the looming global rivalry of the U.S. and China. That’s it for this edition of SophieCo, I will see you next time.


Thursday, March 23, 2017

602 Amerikaanse Elite bekritiseert zichzelf. Artikel in Foreign Affairs.



Enige achtergrondkennis voor nieuwkomers.



Het blad Foreign Affairs is de spreekbuis van De Macht in Amerika.
Het wordt gepubliceerd door de Council on Foreign Relations. ( CFR)

Dit is een Instituut en denktank met heel veel invloed op het beleid..
Veel top-politici zijn waren vòòr ze bijv. minister werden lid van deze CFR.
Veel kritische denkers beweren dat de ware macht in de VS bij deze CFR ligt.

In Foreign Affairs vind je artikelen die op het beleid vooruit lopen, verdedigen en verklaren.
Maar een heel enkele keer is er ruimte voor kritiek, voor een andere kijk op de zaak.
Waarom doen ze dat?
We weten het niet.
Maar we weten wel dat 'een leugenachtige voorstelling van zaken'  niets te duchten heeft van een kritiek die de waarheid vertyelt, tenzij die kritici meer dan 10 % van de berichten mogen plaatsen in de MSM.  Pas dàn zullen de mensen er geloof aan hechten. ( Dit is in psycholgisch onderzoek bewezen.)
Het wereldbeeld dat 'Putin de nieuwe Hitler' is, loopt dus geen enkel gevaar door deze ene publicatie.

Het betekent dus geen wending van de policy.

Volgens Gilbert Doctorow , die een heel goede inleiding op het onderstaande artikel gaf, kan het ook zo zijn dat Foreign Affairs zich indekt tegen mogelijke kritiek oplater tijdstip. Nu kan men altijd beweren dat men àlle meningen aan het woord liet. Dat men de persvrijheid in acht nam.


Doctorow's  artikel bevat een video die ik hier als eerste wil plaatsen:
( Mike Maloney,  7 min)

WAAROM RUSLAND ( terecht) BANG IS VOOR (een oorlog met) AMERIKA:




Russia, Trump, and a New Détente
Fixing U.S.-Russian Relations

In his first press conference as president of the United States, Donald Trump said no fewer than seven times that it would be “positive,” “good,” even “great” if “we could get along with Russia.” In fact, for all the confusion of his policies toward China, Europe, and the Middle East, Trump has enunciated a clear three-part position on Russia, which contrasts strongly with that of most of the U.S. political elite. First, Trump seeks Moscow’s cooperation on global issues; second, he believes that Washington shares the blame for soured relations; and third, he acknowledges “the right of all nations to put their own interests first,” adding that the United States does “not seek to impose our way of life on anyone.”
The last of these is an essentially realist position, and if coherently implemented could prove a tonic. For 25 years, Republicans and Democrats have acted in ways that look much the same to Moscow. Washington has pursued policies that have ignored Russian interests (and sometimes international law as well) in order to encircle Moscow with military alliances and trade blocs conducive to U.S. interests. It is no wonder that Russia pushes back. The wonder is that the U.S. policy elite doesn’t get this, even as foreign-affairs neophyte Trump apparently does. 
MEMORY LOSS
Most Americans appreciate the weight of past grievances upon present-day politics, including that of the United States’ own interference in Iran in the 1950s, or in Latin America repeatedly from the 1960s through the 1980s. Yet there is a blind spot when it comes to U.S. interference in Russian politics in the 1990s. Many Americans remember former President Bill Clinton as a great benefactor to Russia as the country attempted to build a market democracy under then President Boris Yeltsin. But most Russians see the United States as having abetted a decade of degradation under Yeltsin’s scandal-ridden bumbling. Washington, they believe, not only took advantage of Moscow’s weakness for geopolitical gain but also repeatedly interfered in Russia’s domestic politics to back the person—Yeltsin—who best suited U.S. interests. Americans’ ignorance of this perception creates a highly distorted picture of Russia’s first postcommunist decade. 
Russia’s misery during the 1990s is difficult for outsiders to comprehend. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia’s economy entered a sharp slide that would continue for over eight years. Although this decline is rarely referred to as a depression in Western media, in fact it was much worse than the Great Depression in the United States—between 1929 and 1932, U.S. GDP fell by some 25 percent, whereas Russia’s fell by over 40 percent between 1990 and 1998. Compared with the Great Depression, Russia’s collapse of the 1990s was nearly twice as sharp, lasted three times as long, and caused far more severe health and mortality crises. The public health disaster reflected Russia’s prolonged agony: stress-aggravated pathologies (suicide, disease caused by increased alcohol and tobacco use) and economically induced woes (poor nutrition, violent crime, a crumbling public health system) combined to cause at least three million “excess deaths” in the 1990s.
Faith in free markets, and admiration for the United States, fell sharply in Russia in the 1990s. The failures of “shock therapy,” or the rapid transition to a market economy, made such alienation inevitable, as the rush toward privatization and slashing of the state led not to self-regulating growth and broad prosperity but to a pillaging of national wealth by rapacious oligarchs, who flourished under Yeltsin. Worse, American talk of a Marshall Plan for Russia proved empty, and U.S. aid—particularly in the critical first years of transition—was a paltry $ 7 billion. Much of that was in the form of credits that came attached with strings requiring the purchase of U.S. goods or the hiring of U.S. consultants. Also hurting America’s image were much-publicized cases of corruption on the part of some Americans, involving insider trading, money laundering, and similar scandals.
In 1993, hyperinflation and poverty led to protests, and the Russian parliament passed legislation attempting to block Yeltsin’s reforms. Yeltsin responded by deciding to close the legislature and redesign the political system to concentrate power in his hands. This, however, was blatantly unconstitutional, and many deputies refused to disband. Some turned to violent resistance and were crushed by the army. The Clinton administration regretted the bloodshed but blamed it on the opposition, while ignoring the illegality of Yeltsin’s power grab. And the United States supported Yeltsin again two months later, when a referendum on a “super-presidential” constitution passed in a rigged vote.
In 1996, there was more U.S.-assisted mischief on the part of Yeltsin. The worst incident was the “loans for shares” scandal, a crooked privatization scheme in which Yeltsin sold Russia’s most valuable natural-resource firms to oligarchs by way of fraudulent auctions—a fraud that was matched by that of the 1996 election, when Yeltsin won his second term. The United States was again tarred by complicity, by winking at such electoral violations as state media working to elect Yeltsin or the gross violations of campaign spending limits, and even by sending U.S. advisers to help Yeltsin’s stumbling campaign. 
The Clinton administration tolerated Yeltsin’s regime in part to gain Russia’s compliance on global issues, including NATO expansion. But even this was shortsighted as well as hypocritical. George Kennan, author of the Cold War containment policy, warned that pushing NATO toward Russia’s borders was “a strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions,” which was likely to provoke an anti-Western backlash. Other experts, such as intelligence veteran Fritz Ermarth, issued warnings at the time over the United States’ complicity in Russia’s domestic corruption. “We have largely lost the admiration and respect of the Russian people,” Ermarth wrote. “Think how [U.S. policy] must look to Russians: you support the regime’s corruption of our country on the inside so it supports you in your humiliation of our country on the outside. One could not concoct a better propaganda line for Russia’s extreme nationalists.”
ALTERNATIVE REALITY ABOUT RUSSIA
Few Russians who endured this corruption and humiliation have much sympathy with U.S. anger over Russian meddling in the 2016 election. And with any perspective on the 1990s, it is hard to fault them. Yet such perspective among Americans is rare, in part because the Western media often adopted the Clinton administration’s cheery narrative, downplaying negative phenomena as bumps in the road toward a democratic Russia. And despite subsequent revelation of so many scandals from the 1990s, Putin’s “autocracy” is still contrasted with Yeltsin’s “golden era of democracy,” ignoring the fact that it was Yeltsin’s team who perfected such tactics as 110 percent turnout in remote precincts, and whose oligarchs used their media empires as lobbying firms while brazenly buying parliamentary votes (to create personal tax loopholes). Many myths about the Yeltsin years persist. A recent National Geographic article by Julia Ioffe, for instance, attributes Russian growth under Putin to “tough economic reforms adopted by Boris Yeltsin” and describes Putin as “coasting on historically high oil prices and economic reforms implemented in the Nineties.”
High oil prices, yes. But had Putin merely coasted on the policies of Yeltsin, there would have been little tax collected on the oligarchs’ profits to pay for pensions, rebuild infrastructure, and create reserve funds. And there would have been no agricultural revival, because private land tenure would have remained illegal. In his first few years in office, Putin passed tax and banking reform, bankruptcy laws, and other pro-market policies that Yeltsin hadn’t managed in a decade. Denying Putin credit in this way is typical. Paul Krugman recently argued in The New York Times, for instance, that growth under Putin “can be explained with just one word: oil.” But note that in 2000, when Putin became president, oil stood at $30 per barrel and petroleum accounted for 20 percent of Russia’s GDP. But in 2010, after a decade’s rise pushed oil over $100 per barrel, petroleum had nevertheless fallen to just 11 percent of GDP, according to the World Bank. Thus as oil boomed, Russian agriculture, manufacturing, and services grew even faster.
Krugman’s fellow columnist Thomas Friedman similarly decried Russia’s low life expectancy over a period “that coincides almost exactly with Putin’s leadership of the country … the period of 1990–2013,” while blaming Putin for “slow gains in the life expectancy of an entire nation.” In fact, the first half of this period coincides almost exactly with Yeltsin’s leadership, when male life expectancy fell by over six years—unprecedented for a modern country in peacetime. Under Putin, both male and female life expectancy have made rapid gains, and their combined average recently reached 70 years for the first time in Russian history.

VLADIMIR THE TERRIBLE
Distaste for many aspects of Putin’s harsh rule is understandable. But demonization that veers into delusion by denying him credit for major progress (and blaming him for all problems) is foolish. Foolish because it widens the gulf between U.S. and Russian perceptions of what is going on in their country, with Russians rating Putin highly because they value the stability and pride he has revived. Foolish because it encourages the illusion that everything bad in Russia flows from Putin, so that if only Putin were removed then Russians would elect another liberal like Yeltsin. And foolish simply because that is how American leaders look when they mock Russia’s prospects, as former U.S. President Barack Obama did when he said, “Russia doesn’t make anything. Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The population is shrinking.”
In fact, Russia’s population has been growingsince 2010, and the country has one of the higher birth rates in Europe. Russia is the world’s third-largest immigrant destination in the world, behind only America and Germany. And Russian products include the rockets that ferry U.S. astronauts into space. Both Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were given to careless quips about Russia. Both mocked Putin, and Clinton compared him to Adolf Hitler—a comparison that would be laughable were they not so offensive to Russians, who lost 26 million countrymen in World War II. It was also reckless, given Putin’s broad popularity in Russia. But when confronted with this popularity, Obama replied, “Saddam Hussein had a 90 percent poll rating.” He explained, “If you control the media and you’ve taken away everybody’s civil liberties, and you jail dissidents, that’s what happens.” This view is deeply mistaken. 
There is, of course, much to fault in Putin’s Russia, and both Obama and Clinton were subject to nastiness from Moscow. But it is undignified and unwise for a U.S. president to disparage not just a foreign leader but his entire country in the way that Obama did. The urge to answer taunts in kind cannot overpower regard for Russian public opinion, and so confirm the Russian media’s portrayal of America as ignorant and arrogant. It seemed clever when Hillary Clinton pounced on Trump as “Putin’s puppet.” But apparently it didn’t resonate much with ordinary Americans, who elected Trump, and neither does the pettiness and demonization of Putin resonate with ordinary Russians.
These ordinary Russians are the forgotten people—the hard-working teachers, doctors, and mechanics whose savings, careers, even health were destroyed by the catastrophe of the 1990s. They are the fledgling voters who saw their new democracy bought and sold by Yeltsin and his cronies, and the onetime admirers of the United States who longed for a leader to restore their pride in Russia after a decade of humiliation. Under Clinton, the United States treated Russia like a defeated enemy and capitalized on its weakness to expand NATO. Claims that this was merely a defensive expansion were belied by NATO’s bombing of Serbia, a Russian ally, in 1999. Under President George W. Bush, the United States further intimidated Russia by abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, imposing punitive tariffs, launching a reckless invasion of Iraq, continuing to expand NATO, and further encircling Russia by cozying up to Georgia and Ukraine. 
It is thus unsurprising that in 2008, Russia hit back, answering a Georgian strike in the disputed region of South Ossetia (which killed some Russian peacekeepers) with a crushing counterblow. For finally pushing back, Putin’s approval rating soared to nearly 85 percent—the highest it would reach until Crimea’s annexation in 2014.
HOW NOT TO PROMOTE DEMOCRACY
This is the Russia that Obama inherited in 2009: prideful, angry, and in no mood for the sanctimony that came with the new administration’s stress on democracy promotion. They had seen Bill Clinton ally with a corrupt Yeltsin to make a mockery of their new democracy. They had fumed as Vice President Dick Cheney faulted Russian democracy while praising that of Kazakhstan. And they heard their country criticized for interfering in the affairs of weaker neighbors, even as NATO was expanding right up to Russia’s borders, and the United States was launching an invasion of Iraq in the name of democracy promotion that would set the Middle East aflame. Not surprisingly, the Russian media ever more frequently paired the term “double standard” with America.
Thus it may have been unwise for the Obama administration to pursue democracy promotion as brashly as it did, criticizing Russian elections and encouraging Putin’s opposition. This carried a whiff not only of hypocrisy but of danger, too, appearing, as it did to many within Russia, as a threat to destabilize Putin’s rule. Democracy promoters may draw a distinction between policies aimed at advancing NATO and those aimed at advancing political liberalization in Russia and other former Soviet states—emphasizing that Obama enacted the latter but not the former. But Putin’s skepticism was easy to understand given the West’s record of undermining Moscow’s allies, as in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine, and then seeking to anchor their new regimes in the Western political and military blocs. As a senator, too, Obama was an early supporter of Ukraine joining NATO, and preparations for Ukraine’s integration with NATO continued throughout his presidency. Hillary Clinton also advocated a NATO "open door" for Ukraine, and then incurred Putin’s wrath by pushing humanitarian intervention (which soon turned into regime change) in Libya. So her demand for “a full investigation of all reports of fraud and intimidation” in Russia’s 2011 elections was most unwelcome. Michael McFaul, an expert on democracy promotion and longtime critic of Putin, was a particularly provocative choice for new Obama’s ambassador to Russia in 2012.
Neither should righteous indignation at Putin’s post-election crackdown prevent rethinking of the targets as well as the tools of American public diplomacy. Some fault the focus on Russia’s liberal opposition, a small number of Moscow-centered activists who best reflect U.S. values. Many of them are discredited in the eyes of the Russian majority: for their earlier support of Yeltsin’s regime, for their disparaging of the widely admired Putin, and for their reflexive backing of U.S. policies—such as NATO expansion—even when they clash with Russian interests. They appear, in a word, unpatriotic. They are earnest, articulate, and highly admirable. But even if they weren’t stigmatized by Putin—or tarred by identification with the 1990s—they embody liberal-cosmopolitan values alien to most conservative-national Russians. And while this makes them appealing to the West, it also makes them a poor bet as the focus of democracy-promotion.
Consider the case of Pussy Riot, the feminist-protest rock group, some of whose members were convicted of hooliganism in 2012 for staging a protest in Moscow’s Church of Christ the Savior—profanely mocking not only Putin but also the Russian Orthodox Church and its believers. Both activists and state officials in the United States praised Pussy Riot and demanded their release. Yet basic decency—and regard for the values and traditions of others—would suggest that hailing Pussy Riot as champions of free speech was disrespectful of Russia. It was also insensible if the United States is interested in cultivating sympathy among Russians, some 70 percent of whom identify as Orthodox believers. Russia is a conservative society that viewed the years of Yeltsin’s rule, and its onslaught of pornography and promiscuity, with horror. In polls, only seven percent of Russians said that political protest was permissible in a church, and only five percent agreed that Pussy Riot should be released without serious punishment. Surely the sensibilities of ordinary Russians deserve as much regard as those of a minority of cosmopolitan liberals. And hectoring by the West will hardly ease traditional Russian homophobia. Indeed, the outcry on behalf of Pussy Riot likely strengthened popular support for the notorious 2013 law against “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations.”
Russians see a double standard in U.S. judgments about their country—a prosecutorial stance that criticizes Russia for behaviors that go unnoticed in other countries. For example, The Washington Post has closely covered Russia’s anti-LGBT policies but has paid scant attention to the same in countries such as Lithuania, Georgia, and Ukraine, and when it has it has suggested that Russia is to blame for exporting its anti-gay beliefs. Since 2014, the Western media has similarly reported on Moscow’s alleged propaganda onslaught, while largely ignoring the brazen purchase of positive publicity by countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. This is not the usual lobbying or public relations but the funding of ostensibly independent research on a country by that country itself—paying for upbeat election reports and other assessments by such groups as the Parliamentary Association of the Council of Europe.
Americans rarely hear of such activity, even as alarm over Moscow’s subversion nears hysteria. A recent U.S. intelligence report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election warned of “a Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the U.S. government and fuel political protest.” Yet a key culprit is the news channel RT (which has a miniscule share of the U.S. audience), on the grounds that it runs “anti-fracking programming highlighting environmental issues” and “a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement [that] described the current U.S. political system as corrupt.” In fact, unlike the 2014 Maidan occupation in Ukraine, which was actively supported by some U.S. and EU officials, Russian diplomats carefully kept their distance from the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests.
WILL THE REAL VLADIMIR PUTIN PLEASE STAND UP?
A diplomatic breakthrough between Russia and the West on Ukraine—or on Syria, or other major issues—will also require firm agreement on non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs. Such diplomacy would test the mettle of the Trump administration’s foreign-affairs neophytes, but the greater unknown is Putin. A majority of the U.S. political elite believes that no deals are possible because Putin is irremediably hostile. Whether they attribute that hostility to ideology (an ingrained KGB worldview) or corruption (an illegitimate regime that needs a foreign enemy to distract its people from domestic woes), many American policymakers believe that Putin simply has no interest in peace with the West. In their view, he is bent on expansion and will gladly endure sanctions as the price of fomenting discord in the West.
Another group of policymakers is also skeptical of Putin, but do not blame him alone for the deterioration of relations. Many of these analysts opposed NATO expansion from the outset, for the same reasons that Kennan did—because it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. These experts also criticize the United States’ misadventures in Iraq and Libya, failure to respect Russia’s red lines on expansion into Georgia and Ukraine, and petty demonization of Putin. Yet they mainly stand with the first group now in believing that containment, not cooperation, is what the West must practice, because Putin’s recent actions threaten the postwar liberal order. 
A third group of analysts—the realists, who make up a minority of the foreign-policy establishment—reply that Putin does not threaten the entire postwar liberal order but only challenges the post-Cold War U.S.-dominated order that consistently ignores Russia’s interests. They wonder how some can admit the folly of NATO’s continual expansion and fault the many double standards in U.S. policy but not agree that America must meet Russia halfway. Like realists such as Kennan or Hans Morgenthau, who early warned against the folly of Vietnam, they are sometimes derided as weak (or Putin apologists) for cautioning against inflating foreign threats while ignoring the United States’ domestic weaknesses.
These realists argue that the early Putin prioritized market economic reforms and good relations with the West, yet saw his open hand met by the clenched fist of the George W. Bush–era neoconservatives. And Obama, reset or no, continued efforts to expand the Western economic and military blocs that had started under Clinton in the 1990s. In other words, for over two decades, whether motivated by residual Cold War mistrust or post–Cold War liberal hegemonism, America has steadily pushed Western military and political-economic power deeper into Russia’s backyard. If history teaches anything it is that any great power will, when facing the continued advance of a rival, eventually push back. And much as Obama-Clinton defenders dislike being reminded of it, any chance of America’s post–Cold War power being seen as uniquely benign ended in Serbia, Iraq, and Libya. 
It may be that both sides are correct—that two decades of ignoring Russia’s interests have abetted Putin’s embrace of a deep-seated anti-Americanism and that a new détente is impossible. Or it may be that Putin is not innately hostile, but rather a typical strongman: proud and spiteful, but not uniquely corrupt or cruel, and capable of embracing a cooperative position if he finds a partner skilled enough to forge a deal respecting both U.S. and Russian vital interests. The only thing not in doubt is that both America and Russia—indeed, Europe and the wider world—badly need that détente.