Absent a deal with Trump, which Putin could be further induced to agree to if Trump promises to reduce US pressure on some – but not all – of these countries, Russia might lose all 15 of these partners (and possibly even more) with time.
With 145 million inhabitants, Russia cannot in any way claim to be a superpower. India neither. At least not for 50 years at best. The USA are already there, and China is on its way and already #1 in an impressive number of areas.
Logic would have dictated that Russia integrate a sovereign EU. The Anglo-Saxons succeeded in 1998 in derailing that old dream of a Europe from Brest to Vladivostok. A bloc of over 600 million could have risen to the top.
So: China, 1.5 billion people with colossal GDP and industrial production. The USA/Anglosphere, 500 million on five continents, enormous GDP and overwhelming financial power. But technological power in noticeable decline and industrial power reduced to very little.
The EU, a nonexistent entity with no hope of existence, reduced to the status of Greek city‑states – 100 BC.
So Russia, along with India and Brazil, shares the same dream of multipolarity, a chimera about as realistic as that of a sovereign EU power.
Worse than that, a care‑bear multipolarity based on partnerships and definitely not on alliances. Yet history is ruthless. The only international system that works is based on force and the balance of force. Either an overwhelming empire, or a dominant power balanced by alliances, or very rare confederal unions.
I don't know what Putin thinks. But either Russia integrates into a very solid network of alliances with countries like India, Iran, North Korea, and other Asian nations. If that is impossible, it will have to choose which power it will accept as a junior partner: USA or China. Satan or Lucifer.
Last point, regarding the technological gap: for the record, Russia produces more engineers and scientists than the USA and is ahead in several fields. The technological gap of Europe and even the USA relative to Asia is becoming dramatic.
"Worse than that, a care‑bear multipolarity based on partnerships and definitely not on alliances. Yet history is ruthless. The only international system that works is based on force and the balance of force. Either an overwhelming empire, or a dominant power balanced by alliances, or very rare confederal unions." -- fully agreed!
Regarding Russian tech, it has a wide range of indigenous industries, which is very impressive, but I was referring to cutting-edge tech like chips, AI, etc., where Russia is increasingly lagging behind. The large-scale outflow of young tech experts at the start of the SMO (most were liberal and afraid of being drafted) hit it pretty hard in this sphere too.
Thanks, Herman, and you're right, unfortunately. Most folks who matter here, such as the top experts and most diplomats, don't want to hear this. They'd rather pretend that "everything is going according to plan" even if they themselves now that's not the case.
After all, some powerful person or more likely group thereof here has been parading top "Non-Russian Pro-Russians" (NRPRs) around VIP officials, experts, and diplomats for years already who all parrot the same low-IQ talking points.
Russian "strategic culture's" hierarchical nature means that mostly everyone self-censors and instead prioritizes telling their superiors whatever they want to hear for career-preservation reasons, so they took the signal sent by these powerful people via the NRPRs and ran with it.
Add already broken feedback loops to the mix and it's easy to see how everything spiraled out of control and why everyone played dumb this entire time, seeking to pass the buck instead of taking responsibility. It's a vicious cycle of false feedback and poor planning.
Despite Trenin and then Timofeev recently calling for reforms to avert more crises, I very much doubt that any significant changes will happen since the problem is systemic and I believe that parallel institutions created by the security services are required to fix this.
There's no way that the state can supervise every level of its broken feedback loops to ensure compliance with conveying objective reality, nor are there enough people ready to replace diplomats, etc., who might have to be let go since they're irredeemable.
So more or less the same people responsible for this epic setbacks will likely remain in place with very little supervision, if any (let alone for a sustained period of time), with the most that might happen is a brief presentation or email about improving feedback loops.
Only through the creation of parallel expert and foreign policy institutions by the security services, whose assessments are considered side-by-side by decisionmakers with the aforesaid's, can there be any hope of positive change.
These parallel institutions will either corroborate, challenge, or outright contradict the MFA and other institutions' assessments to give decisionmakers pause to consider their options instead of assuming that the MFA, etc. is "always right due to their authority".
The expansion of the security state has been a controversial issue since the end of communism, and I understand the hesitation among some, but in this regard, it's the only realistic solution that I could think of (and I've dwelled on this for several years already).
That guy is pretty suspicious. He's had this bizarre focus on Iran for so long and always, without exception, criticizing every single thing that the US does, especially in West Asia, even flip-flopping narratives on the fly from fearmongering that its blockade will lead to the destruction of so many of its ships to talking about how bad, illegal, and disastrous it'll be for Iran's humanitarian situation.
I only casually skim his content nowadays since I realized long ago that he's a "Potemkinist" but more closely aligned with Iran and its global media ecosystem than Russia's for some weird reason (though that's not to downplay his role in Russia's aforesaid ecosystem since he was somehow allowed to interview Lavrov last year!). The whole thing is a shit show to be totally frank.
Imagine a former KGB agent who criticizes Russia all the time but is close to Turkiye, let's say (a very imperfect equivalent to Russia of what Iran was to the US before Trump 2.0), interviewing Rubio. It's very unlikely that the CIA would let anybody like that close to the US' top diplomat for simple counter-intel purposes (Israelis being the notable exception beyond the scope of my comment).
And if he was allowed to get close to him, it'd probably be a major scandal, people would have to resign, the world would speculate about what's really going on, etc., but in Russia, nobody cares, everything's fine -- in fact, the more foreign intel assets (whether past or present) that meet with Lavrov and company, the better, it seems. It's surreal.
I do believe that Larry is intelligent, possibly highly intelligent, and picked up early on that telling Russians what they want to do -- and especially doing so as a former CIA agent whose past professional label makes whatever he says more authoritative to his targeted audience as Russia's "soft power supervisors" here believe (I worked for Sputnik from 2014-2019 so I know) -- can get them to drop their guard, roll out the red carpet, and give him access to pretty much any VIP that he wants to engage with.
G'day Andrew, is this charade because they are blightely ignorant or they believe it is beneficial?? The whole show with Dmitriev being head negotiator also is a completely treacherous sellout of Russia her people etc for no ones benefit except a handful of wealthy individuals it seems. I truly can't get my head around these strange situations and the more I try and reason it somehow the less respect I can muster. Sad sad sad and only more retrograde steps to come it seems.
The way I see it is that they're either truly naive or they cynically think that they can use these spook-affiliated "NRPRs" (NRPR being in quotation marks since these people are much more closely affiliated with Leftism, Islamism, and/or "Third Worldism" than with Russia's causes and most aren't Russophiles in the sense of speaking the language, knowing the culture and history, reading the literature, etc.) to "influence" their suspected "handlers".
As for Dmitriev, I see things differently: I wish that the situation didn't turn into what it ultimately did, but given the state of affairs by early 2025 and the self-imposed limitations on the Russian Armed Forces by Putin himself due to him being typically cautious and fearing an escalation that could spiral into WWIII -- I think he's the best man for the job of trying to negotiate compromises with the US.
That said, the problem is that the US doesn't want to compromise, and it won't coerce Ukraine and NATO into compromising either. While there seemed to be signals that it might seriously consider this, it didn't do anything in this direction at the end of the day, instead shifting from donating arms to Ukraine to selling them to NATO at full price for transfer to Ukraine, therefore profiting from the conflict's continuation.
What Dmitriev essentially negotiated, however, were at minimum the broad terms of a resource-centric strategic partnership between Russia and the US once the Ukrainian Conflict ends, but neither side wanted to compromise on their respective positions that the other considers unacceptable despite that tempting reward. This led to the present diplomatic stalemate that continues to this day.
Again, if everything unfolded differently, then the SMO might not have even lasted this long, but NATO's decisive military logistical and intelligence intervention coupled with Russia's self-restraint as touched upon combined to result in the reality that we're presently observing in which Russia decided to explore Trump 2.0's interest in compromising but discovered that all it'll accept is freezing the conflict, not giving Putin what he wants.
Dmitriev, I must stress, is the logical outcome of the situation in which Russia found itself during Trump 2.0's early days. Not reaching out to the US and rebuffing its own outreaches would have guaranteed a major intensification of the conflict that might have resulted in on-the-ground setbacks if Trump redoubled US support for Ukraine in an effort to "escalate to de-escalate" like he earlier signaled interest in possibly doing.
I wish that Russia didn't have to negotiate anything and could have already by now achieved its maximalist goals in full long ago, but it hasn't and that's why it decided to negotiate with the US, which only under Trump 2.0 accepted its prior outreaches that Biden rebuffed. That's how we ended up with Dmitriev, and nothing that the hawks do to try to convince Putin to "toughen up" seems to have worked; to the contrary, it made him double down, it seems.
Ronald Reagan was well known to come up with and use clever tactics, political and military as well. He famously armed his ‘Afghan Freedom Fighters’ with stinger missiles turning the war against the Soviets by pushing them toward unacceptable losses. Reagan’s two terms from 1981 to 1989 covered the last decade of the Soviet Empire when it was increasingly clear that the end was near.
In general Reagan’s major issue with the Soviets was that he believed communism should not be allowed to exist on this planet. Therefore he crossed the Soviets wherever he had a chance. Considering that the Russian Federation today is a Christian Nation State Reagan most likely would have never engaged in the design of a US strategy moving on the edge of a nuclear confrontation.
Also, I can hardly see him in Trump’s role concerning the Iran war. If Bibi went to the White House and told Reagan to attack Iran, Reagan would have ordered his security to throw him on the street and make sure he hurts himself on the concrete. I consider Reagan the last modern US President who held his values, sometimes in an uncompromising manner.
In my opinion Putin is in a zugzwang. Either forever war in Ukraine and geopolitical retreat or escalate and achieve the objectives. The first alternative means possible destruction of RF, the second does not necessarily mean Third world war,
He can also cut a deal with Trump, but the terms will probably continue worsening the longer that he waits. I agree though that Putin is now the one in the zugzwang and time is no longer on Russia's side.
Depends substantially on the extent China and Russia are willing to cooperate. Hang apart or hang together and all that. With Biden, China thought that they may escape the US wrath under Democrat governance. That is no longer the case, I think. Maybe even if Democrats return to power in 2028.
Sino-Russo cooperation is economic-centric and only concerns the coordinated promotion of pro-UN talking points when it comes to foreign affairs. There is no substantive cooperation between them in helping third countries. I mistakenly assumed that there was in the past but have since realized that I was wrong.
It is often said, countries only have interests, not friends. That being said, such a view can be a bit short sighted. For example, Prussia and USA stayed benevolently neutral during the Crimean war of 1856, and the Russians returned the favor in the American Civil war and in the 1870 war of Germany vs France.
In the current situation, China would have benefited greatly if there were more pipelines connecting Russia and China. But no, they had to squabble about a particularly low carbohydron price. The same applies to if China had supported a pipeline through Caspian to Iran. After all, most of the Belt-and-Road-Initiative is about creating a land alternative to the sea-ways.
For sure, China's obsession with getting the absolute best deal possible played a role in undermining BRI, the other factors being its partners' corruption and US infowar operations turning some of the population against these projects.
USA,s attitude towards most of these counries is I want to control you or I will make war with you. Russia,s atttude is PEACE. We need to remember that Russia has the most nuclear weapons of any country in the wworld. Time for America to make friends with Russia. The USA has had wars with 10 different countries . NEVER with Russia. A nuclear war between thes 2 countries would wipe out North America & Europe. WHO are the people who foster this annimosity rather then try for PEACE ??? These people shuld be identified and SHIPPED out ofMERICA the sooner the BETTER.
Trump may attempt a "Reagan-like" doctrine with Russia, but Trump does not have anyone close to a Jack Matlock guiding him along. Reagan understood where his own weaknesses and points of ignorance lay. He knew that he needed the wisdom of Matlock and others. Trump seems sincerely convinced that he has no points of ignorance. Nor does Pete Hegseth.
Actually, it does seem that Trump understands both geopolitics and military-industrial policy quite well. Large part of that is intuitive. If you are in charge of the US policy, taking out Maduro, securing TRIPP, clamping down on DEI and making Europeans pay for US war production, oil and gas are masterstrokes.
Obviously, he is not that popular - but that is simply a reflection of MSM and universities (the so called Cathedral) being the backbone of the Democrat party.
that is confusing rape with seduction, racketeering with transaction. Behaving like a thug only brings short‑lived advantages. The entire global system is based on trust. A Yankee businessman like Trump, obsessed with lawyerly trickery, has not understood that. A state does not make a deal and then move on to something else. It doesn't work that way. Through his Homeric stupidity, Trump is destroying (has destroyed) a network patiently built by more than a century of intelligence, firmness, and finesse.
Whenever I read about a deal with Trump, my blood pressure rises. 500,000 Russian men dead or maimed for life for a deal that would ensure forever Russia's junior position in her garden? And the possibility of restarting the same war at any time Washington needs to? When I look back at recent times, Gorbachev looks too naïve, but Putin, if he goes that way, will look a lot worse.
The premise of this analysis is a bit tupsy turvy and denise any part of the involved countries. none of these countries necessarily sought an "alliance" with Russia, and with the exception of Belarus, Russia hasn't really pushed for much. What US and Trump are doing is the good old denial of sovereignity making anyone on the face of the earth a vassal to its plutocratic interests.
It is the similar stick as done in the 50s, and 60s, and 70s, with any country gaining independence attacked or subverted on the scare of "communism" when those polities just wanted a deeper independence, away from the clutches of the western capital and its debt bondages.
Also, I don't see any evidence of Iran being rolled back, or that Venezuela truly capitulated, or that Kazakhstan is truly in the pocket of the US, with both Russia and China breathing heavily from west, north and east... Also Belarus...
...but a bit too much, I think. Like any "18-dimensional chess" explanation. It's gotta be less deliberate, more fluid, spontaneous, opportunistic, imo...
And btw, has Iran really been weakened? Was Venezuela under Maduro really a "Russian partner" (I seem to remember you recently arguing that it wasn't) and, if so, is Venezuela under his VP not a "Russian partner"?
This isn't "5-D chess master plan" conspiracy theory, but a reflection of geopolitical reality. In the order that they were all mentioned:
1. Venezuela's president was captured and his replacement is now purging the former admin, and yes, Maduro was most definitely a partner but not an "ally" in the sense of mutual defense obligations like the public at large imagines that word to mean (I never argued that he wasn't a partner since they formalized their partnership some years ago):
2. Iran is indeed weakened: its air force an navy have been destroyed and its missile stockpile depleted to an unclear extent. The damage to civilian and other infrastructure has been so severe that Iran and its media surrogates quickly shifted from threats and triumphalism to talking about war crimes, etc. The economy is also rapidly collapsing. These aren't the characteristics of a country that hasn't been weakened.
3. Armenia completed its pro-Western pivot by agreeing to TRIPP, which has a dual function as NATO's military logistics corridor to Central Asia.
4. Ditto Azerbaijan, which recently agreed to co-produce defense equipment for Ukraine (I'll have an analysis about that next week probably).
5. Kazakhstan plans to produce NATO-standard shells, something that would have been totally unthinkable pre-SMO.
6. Belarus is drifting further westward as Poczobut's release in the recent swap attests and there's now talk even in Polish media, typically Russophobic as everyone knows, of repairing ties with Lukashenko.
7. Serbia is already de facto a NATO member and arms Ukraine to kill Russians:
9. Syria now wants to play Russia and Ukraine off against one another and could kick Russia out at any time, thus further complicating its air bridge to the AES:
10. Libya's being actively courted by the US and Turkiye, which want Haftar to defect from Russia, and I assess that the chances of him doing so are moderately high:
11. Mali is being ravaged by an intense Hybrid War right now.
12. Burkina Faso is already around half-controlled by JNIM.
13. Niger is the weak link of the AES, its capital is in proximity to JNIM and ISSP (IS-Sahel Province) as well as a potentially revived Tuareg rebel movement.
14. Myanmar is the scene of a fierce Sino-US New Cold War struggle in which Trump 2.0 is reportedly considering pragmatic outreaches to the junta for critical minerals or could back Kachin separatism to sever China's aforesaid supply, with these dynamics further weakening a key Russian partner in ASEAN:
None of this means that there was some "master plan" from Day One for Trump 2.0 to exploit all of these, rather, the actual fragility of Russia's partners this entire time (the extent of which varies depending on the country) was opportunistically exploited by his team from spring onward once they realized that Putin wasn't going to freeze the SMO in exchange for phased sanctions relief, a resource-centric strategic partnership, and the "honor" of Putin being Trump's "sidekick" as he revolutionizes the global chessboard.
What I described above is the objectively existing and easily verifiable reality: Russia's partners are under pressure from the US like never before, Russia's ability to help them is limited like never before, and this has therefore led to a series of geopolitical shifts unseen since the end of the Reagan era during the fall of communism across the world, especially in the Global South. In fact, everything is proceeding even faster in my assessment from my studies of that period. This is the dark reality of today's geopolitics.
Your innuendo that it's not happening isn't surprising since many "Non-Russian Pro-Russians" and even Russian officials are in denial, which is why I wanted to finally wake everyone up because enough is enough, and I hope that maybe just maybe Russia will try to fix its broken feedback loops and finally end its utterly disastrous "Potemkinist" experiment that made these setbacks inevitable in hindsight once related false claims -- outright propaganda -- was recycled into these already broken feedback loops:
Your arguments are ice-cold realpolitik facts, thank you, Andrew! (You should have added India which aligned with the U.S. aggression against Iran.) The possible remedy you mention—reform of the Russian hierarchical relations—will take years (or never be implemented) and certainly not help against the clever American strategy you described. The China visit of the U.S. president will shed more unfavorable light on the situation Russia is in. The pro-American faction there is even stronger than that in the Russian power elite, I assume after fourty plus years working with ›things Chinese‹. A special thank you for your intense discussion with the readers, which is unusual and most welcome!
I don’t disagree that China is only an economic partner of Russia though, but it’s undeniable that they see what’s happening against them and would not provide countermeasures?
Although I’m hopeful, or hopelessly naive, you provide an excellent analysis of Russia’s hard power and USA’s softer geo-power. Both sides have their immense pros and cons.
China, much more so than Russia, is dependent on continued access to the global economy without any restrictions/sanctions. It doesn't want to risk having that obstructed at the cost of its continued growth, and therefore continued political stability, by making any "rash" moves. This accounts for why it didn't make a move on Taiwan during the early stages of the SMO, which would have been the best time in decades to do so if it truly wanted to.
China prefers so-called "economic diplomacy" and "elite diplomacy" (the latter criticized as corruption) to hard power and will likely continue with this approach, which nevertheless emboldens the US to continue chipping away at China's partnerships through sanctions pressure, coups, insurgencies, and even its own "elite diplomacy" (corruption). Even Valdai's Bordachev is somewhat critical of China and RT importantly republished his take:
So what's China's countermeasure? As of now, nothing, just more of the same, and it'll likely lead to the same rollback of influence as Russia is experience, possibly even more so and quicker at that since has no interest -- let alone means like battle-hardened PMCs -- for even attempting to forcefully push back against this trend. Just look at Trump's "economic diplomacy" in DR Congo where he's trying to poach China's cobalt and coltan mines right under Xi's nose, who does nothing.
Without reliable access to these minerals, China's whole "green revolution" -- driven to an extent by the need to reduce dependence on US Navy-controlled maritime oil and gas chokepoints -- ends, but China is still the world's largest critical minerals processor by far, so this complex interdependence could figure into a Sino-US deal of some sort for not completely cutting China off. But, if push came to shove, I believe that Trump 2.0 at least would rather freeze the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" indefinitely than cede leadership of it to China.
So it's very possible that a "standoff" develops whereby the US cuts China off from critical minerals in DR Congo and elsewhere while China responds by cutting the US off from its processing services, but time would be on the US' side since it could just build its own facilities at home or in allied countries, thus eventually replacing China's role while continuing to isolate it at the strategic cost that was earlier touched upon.
At all costs, however, Trump 2.0 wants to avoid the Imperial Japanese precedent of pushing its Asian adversary too far and thus forcing it into lashing out with overwhelming military force, which cynics claim the US wanted at the time (and their arguments are reasonable in my opinion) but which it doesn't want nowadays due to the nuclear factor and complex economic interdependence. That's why it's moving gradually, slowly but surely achieving its goals, all in the hopes of "gently" pressuring China into a lopsided trade deal for institutionalizing its junior status vis-a-vis the US for the indefinite future.
The crucial flaws in the contemporary construction of the multipolar world order are Putin's and Xi's typical cautiousness and continued Russian concern (which isn't unreasonable) of becoming a Chinese vassal or sold out to the US if it subordinated itself to the People's Republic "out of solidarity".
As China's voluntary compliance with many US sanctions prove, from banking to investments in Russia's Arctic LNG 2 gas megaproject among others, Russia would have made an epic mistake had it subordinated itself to China. Quite clearly, China chose not to walk the multipolar walk after talking the talk.
There were very high expectations of China here early on due to officials, experts, and the media taking the "wolf warriors'" rhetoric at face value as supposedly representing how the Chinese elite as a whole view the US, but that was all for show as is now seen, similar in spirit to the "Potemkinists".
"The first made peace in DC and agreed to a US-controlled trade corridor that’ll function as a dual military logistics route for injecting Western, including NATO, influence along Russia’s entire southern periphery."
Andrew you are right, but I don't remember (and I may be totally wrong, hope that I am!) you saying the same about China's Belt and Road is really equally about having force projection capability given that they know they won't foreseeably be able to do so with Naval power/projection.
That said, I don't think this is a huge loss for Russia, and they are probably more than willing to allow US/China competition as it is better than China in that space alone. Realistically the US will soon lose interest in Central Asia, where as China finds it much more important.
Also, I suspect there's some degree of good cop, bad cop here -- which means that Russia's international influence in these countries isn't going away anytime soon. For example in Venezuela the Russians sold weapons that could be selectively turned off, if the US needed it. That's an incredibly powerful ace for Russia to hold. Will China do the same? Doubtful. Hence I expect Russia's place in some of these countries to be a low point, long term it is going to ebb and flow, because Russia's role in this game is simply irreplicable.
With 145 million inhabitants, Russia cannot in any way claim to be a superpower. India neither. At least not for 50 years at best. The USA are already there, and China is on its way and already #1 in an impressive number of areas.
Logic would have dictated that Russia integrate a sovereign EU. The Anglo-Saxons succeeded in 1998 in derailing that old dream of a Europe from Brest to Vladivostok. A bloc of over 600 million could have risen to the top.
So: China, 1.5 billion people with colossal GDP and industrial production. The USA/Anglosphere, 500 million on five continents, enormous GDP and overwhelming financial power. But technological power in noticeable decline and industrial power reduced to very little.
The EU, a nonexistent entity with no hope of existence, reduced to the status of Greek city‑states – 100 BC.
So Russia, along with India and Brazil, shares the same dream of multipolarity, a chimera about as realistic as that of a sovereign EU power.
Worse than that, a care‑bear multipolarity based on partnerships and definitely not on alliances. Yet history is ruthless. The only international system that works is based on force and the balance of force. Either an overwhelming empire, or a dominant power balanced by alliances, or very rare confederal unions.
I don't know what Putin thinks. But either Russia integrates into a very solid network of alliances with countries like India, Iran, North Korea, and other Asian nations. If that is impossible, it will have to choose which power it will accept as a junior partner: USA or China. Satan or Lucifer.
Last point, regarding the technological gap: for the record, Russia produces more engineers and scientists than the USA and is ahead in several fields. The technological gap of Europe and even the USA relative to Asia is becoming dramatic.
"Worse than that, a care‑bear multipolarity based on partnerships and definitely not on alliances. Yet history is ruthless. The only international system that works is based on force and the balance of force. Either an overwhelming empire, or a dominant power balanced by alliances, or very rare confederal unions." -- fully agreed!
Regarding Russian tech, it has a wide range of indigenous industries, which is very impressive, but I was referring to cutting-edge tech like chips, AI, etc., where Russia is increasingly lagging behind. The large-scale outflow of young tech experts at the start of the SMO (most were liberal and afraid of being drafted) hit it pretty hard in this sphere too.
The level of EU is pathetic.
The harsh truth... That must be why you are not welcome everywhere, Andrew.
Thanks, Herman, and you're right, unfortunately. Most folks who matter here, such as the top experts and most diplomats, don't want to hear this. They'd rather pretend that "everything is going according to plan" even if they themselves now that's not the case.
After all, some powerful person or more likely group thereof here has been parading top "Non-Russian Pro-Russians" (NRPRs) around VIP officials, experts, and diplomats for years already who all parrot the same low-IQ talking points.
Russian "strategic culture's" hierarchical nature means that mostly everyone self-censors and instead prioritizes telling their superiors whatever they want to hear for career-preservation reasons, so they took the signal sent by these powerful people via the NRPRs and ran with it.
Add already broken feedback loops to the mix and it's easy to see how everything spiraled out of control and why everyone played dumb this entire time, seeking to pass the buck instead of taking responsibility. It's a vicious cycle of false feedback and poor planning.
Despite Trenin and then Timofeev recently calling for reforms to avert more crises, I very much doubt that any significant changes will happen since the problem is systemic and I believe that parallel institutions created by the security services are required to fix this.
There's no way that the state can supervise every level of its broken feedback loops to ensure compliance with conveying objective reality, nor are there enough people ready to replace diplomats, etc., who might have to be let go since they're irredeemable.
So more or less the same people responsible for this epic setbacks will likely remain in place with very little supervision, if any (let alone for a sustained period of time), with the most that might happen is a brief presentation or email about improving feedback loops.
Only through the creation of parallel expert and foreign policy institutions by the security services, whose assessments are considered side-by-side by decisionmakers with the aforesaid's, can there be any hope of positive change.
These parallel institutions will either corroborate, challenge, or outright contradict the MFA and other institutions' assessments to give decisionmakers pause to consider their options instead of assuming that the MFA, etc. is "always right due to their authority".
The expansion of the security state has been a controversial issue since the end of communism, and I understand the hesitation among some, but in this regard, it's the only realistic solution that I could think of (and I've dwelled on this for several years already).
Former CIA agent Larry C. Johnson is telling basically the same story as far as the USA is concerned.
That guy is pretty suspicious. He's had this bizarre focus on Iran for so long and always, without exception, criticizing every single thing that the US does, especially in West Asia, even flip-flopping narratives on the fly from fearmongering that its blockade will lead to the destruction of so many of its ships to talking about how bad, illegal, and disastrous it'll be for Iran's humanitarian situation.
I only casually skim his content nowadays since I realized long ago that he's a "Potemkinist" but more closely aligned with Iran and its global media ecosystem than Russia's for some weird reason (though that's not to downplay his role in Russia's aforesaid ecosystem since he was somehow allowed to interview Lavrov last year!). The whole thing is a shit show to be totally frank.
Imagine a former KGB agent who criticizes Russia all the time but is close to Turkiye, let's say (a very imperfect equivalent to Russia of what Iran was to the US before Trump 2.0), interviewing Rubio. It's very unlikely that the CIA would let anybody like that close to the US' top diplomat for simple counter-intel purposes (Israelis being the notable exception beyond the scope of my comment).
And if he was allowed to get close to him, it'd probably be a major scandal, people would have to resign, the world would speculate about what's really going on, etc., but in Russia, nobody cares, everything's fine -- in fact, the more foreign intel assets (whether past or present) that meet with Lavrov and company, the better, it seems. It's surreal.
I do believe that Larry is intelligent, possibly highly intelligent, and picked up early on that telling Russians what they want to do -- and especially doing so as a former CIA agent whose past professional label makes whatever he says more authoritative to his targeted audience as Russia's "soft power supervisors" here believe (I worked for Sputnik from 2014-2019 so I know) -- can get them to drop their guard, roll out the red carpet, and give him access to pretty much any VIP that he wants to engage with.
G'day Andrew, is this charade because they are blightely ignorant or they believe it is beneficial?? The whole show with Dmitriev being head negotiator also is a completely treacherous sellout of Russia her people etc for no ones benefit except a handful of wealthy individuals it seems. I truly can't get my head around these strange situations and the more I try and reason it somehow the less respect I can muster. Sad sad sad and only more retrograde steps to come it seems.
The way I see it is that they're either truly naive or they cynically think that they can use these spook-affiliated "NRPRs" (NRPR being in quotation marks since these people are much more closely affiliated with Leftism, Islamism, and/or "Third Worldism" than with Russia's causes and most aren't Russophiles in the sense of speaking the language, knowing the culture and history, reading the literature, etc.) to "influence" their suspected "handlers".
As for Dmitriev, I see things differently: I wish that the situation didn't turn into what it ultimately did, but given the state of affairs by early 2025 and the self-imposed limitations on the Russian Armed Forces by Putin himself due to him being typically cautious and fearing an escalation that could spiral into WWIII -- I think he's the best man for the job of trying to negotiate compromises with the US.
That said, the problem is that the US doesn't want to compromise, and it won't coerce Ukraine and NATO into compromising either. While there seemed to be signals that it might seriously consider this, it didn't do anything in this direction at the end of the day, instead shifting from donating arms to Ukraine to selling them to NATO at full price for transfer to Ukraine, therefore profiting from the conflict's continuation.
What Dmitriev essentially negotiated, however, were at minimum the broad terms of a resource-centric strategic partnership between Russia and the US once the Ukrainian Conflict ends, but neither side wanted to compromise on their respective positions that the other considers unacceptable despite that tempting reward. This led to the present diplomatic stalemate that continues to this day.
Again, if everything unfolded differently, then the SMO might not have even lasted this long, but NATO's decisive military logistical and intelligence intervention coupled with Russia's self-restraint as touched upon combined to result in the reality that we're presently observing in which Russia decided to explore Trump 2.0's interest in compromising but discovered that all it'll accept is freezing the conflict, not giving Putin what he wants.
Dmitriev, I must stress, is the logical outcome of the situation in which Russia found itself during Trump 2.0's early days. Not reaching out to the US and rebuffing its own outreaches would have guaranteed a major intensification of the conflict that might have resulted in on-the-ground setbacks if Trump redoubled US support for Ukraine in an effort to "escalate to de-escalate" like he earlier signaled interest in possibly doing.
I wish that Russia didn't have to negotiate anything and could have already by now achieved its maximalist goals in full long ago, but it hasn't and that's why it decided to negotiate with the US, which only under Trump 2.0 accepted its prior outreaches that Biden rebuffed. That's how we ended up with Dmitriev, and nothing that the hawks do to try to convince Putin to "toughen up" seems to have worked; to the contrary, it made him double down, it seems.
Ronald Reagan was well known to come up with and use clever tactics, political and military as well. He famously armed his ‘Afghan Freedom Fighters’ with stinger missiles turning the war against the Soviets by pushing them toward unacceptable losses. Reagan’s two terms from 1981 to 1989 covered the last decade of the Soviet Empire when it was increasingly clear that the end was near.
In general Reagan’s major issue with the Soviets was that he believed communism should not be allowed to exist on this planet. Therefore he crossed the Soviets wherever he had a chance. Considering that the Russian Federation today is a Christian Nation State Reagan most likely would have never engaged in the design of a US strategy moving on the edge of a nuclear confrontation.
Also, I can hardly see him in Trump’s role concerning the Iran war. If Bibi went to the White House and told Reagan to attack Iran, Reagan would have ordered his security to throw him on the street and make sure he hurts himself on the concrete. I consider Reagan the last modern US President who held his values, sometimes in an uncompromising manner.
In my opinion Putin is in a zugzwang. Either forever war in Ukraine and geopolitical retreat or escalate and achieve the objectives. The first alternative means possible destruction of RF, the second does not necessarily mean Third world war,
He can also cut a deal with Trump, but the terms will probably continue worsening the longer that he waits. I agree though that Putin is now the one in the zugzwang and time is no longer on Russia's side.
Depends substantially on the extent China and Russia are willing to cooperate. Hang apart or hang together and all that. With Biden, China thought that they may escape the US wrath under Democrat governance. That is no longer the case, I think. Maybe even if Democrats return to power in 2028.
Sino-Russo cooperation is economic-centric and only concerns the coordinated promotion of pro-UN talking points when it comes to foreign affairs. There is no substantive cooperation between them in helping third countries. I mistakenly assumed that there was in the past but have since realized that I was wrong.
It is often said, countries only have interests, not friends. That being said, such a view can be a bit short sighted. For example, Prussia and USA stayed benevolently neutral during the Crimean war of 1856, and the Russians returned the favor in the American Civil war and in the 1870 war of Germany vs France.
In the current situation, China would have benefited greatly if there were more pipelines connecting Russia and China. But no, they had to squabble about a particularly low carbohydron price. The same applies to if China had supported a pipeline through Caspian to Iran. After all, most of the Belt-and-Road-Initiative is about creating a land alternative to the sea-ways.
For sure, China's obsession with getting the absolute best deal possible played a role in undermining BRI, the other factors being its partners' corruption and US infowar operations turning some of the population against these projects.
China does not want to upset the Americans, especially since Chinese foreign trade is at the mercy of the American navy.
USA,s attitude towards most of these counries is I want to control you or I will make war with you. Russia,s atttude is PEACE. We need to remember that Russia has the most nuclear weapons of any country in the wworld. Time for America to make friends with Russia. The USA has had wars with 10 different countries . NEVER with Russia. A nuclear war between thes 2 countries would wipe out North America & Europe. WHO are the people who foster this annimosity rather then try for PEACE ??? These people shuld be identified and SHIPPED out ofMERICA the sooner the BETTER.
Trump may attempt a "Reagan-like" doctrine with Russia, but Trump does not have anyone close to a Jack Matlock guiding him along. Reagan understood where his own weaknesses and points of ignorance lay. He knew that he needed the wisdom of Matlock and others. Trump seems sincerely convinced that he has no points of ignorance. Nor does Pete Hegseth.
Actually, it does seem that Trump understands both geopolitics and military-industrial policy quite well. Large part of that is intuitive. If you are in charge of the US policy, taking out Maduro, securing TRIPP, clamping down on DEI and making Europeans pay for US war production, oil and gas are masterstrokes.
Obviously, he is not that popular - but that is simply a reflection of MSM and universities (the so called Cathedral) being the backbone of the Democrat party.
that is confusing rape with seduction, racketeering with transaction. Behaving like a thug only brings short‑lived advantages. The entire global system is based on trust. A Yankee businessman like Trump, obsessed with lawyerly trickery, has not understood that. A state does not make a deal and then move on to something else. It doesn't work that way. Through his Homeric stupidity, Trump is destroying (has destroyed) a network patiently built by more than a century of intelligence, firmness, and finesse.
Whenever I read about a deal with Trump, my blood pressure rises. 500,000 Russian men dead or maimed for life for a deal that would ensure forever Russia's junior position in her garden? And the possibility of restarting the same war at any time Washington needs to? When I look back at recent times, Gorbachev looks too naïve, but Putin, if he goes that way, will look a lot worse.
The premise of this analysis is a bit tupsy turvy and denise any part of the involved countries. none of these countries necessarily sought an "alliance" with Russia, and with the exception of Belarus, Russia hasn't really pushed for much. What US and Trump are doing is the good old denial of sovereignity making anyone on the face of the earth a vassal to its plutocratic interests.
It is the similar stick as done in the 50s, and 60s, and 70s, with any country gaining independence attacked or subverted on the scare of "communism" when those polities just wanted a deeper independence, away from the clutches of the western capital and its debt bondages.
Also, I don't see any evidence of Iran being rolled back, or that Venezuela truly capitulated, or that Kazakhstan is truly in the pocket of the US, with both Russia and China breathing heavily from west, north and east... Also Belarus...
The United States will never keep any agreement. Force is the only language that they understand.
Interesting, thank you.
...but a bit too much, I think. Like any "18-dimensional chess" explanation. It's gotta be less deliberate, more fluid, spontaneous, opportunistic, imo...
And btw, has Iran really been weakened? Was Venezuela under Maduro really a "Russian partner" (I seem to remember you recently arguing that it wasn't) and, if so, is Venezuela under his VP not a "Russian partner"?
This isn't "5-D chess master plan" conspiracy theory, but a reflection of geopolitical reality. In the order that they were all mentioned:
1. Venezuela's president was captured and his replacement is now purging the former admin, and yes, Maduro was most definitely a partner but not an "ally" in the sense of mutual defense obligations like the public at large imagines that word to mean (I never argued that he wasn't a partner since they formalized their partnership some years ago):
https://archive.is/lXglf
2. Iran is indeed weakened: its air force an navy have been destroyed and its missile stockpile depleted to an unclear extent. The damage to civilian and other infrastructure has been so severe that Iran and its media surrogates quickly shifted from threats and triumphalism to talking about war crimes, etc. The economy is also rapidly collapsing. These aren't the characteristics of a country that hasn't been weakened.
3. Armenia completed its pro-Western pivot by agreeing to TRIPP, which has a dual function as NATO's military logistics corridor to Central Asia.
4. Ditto Azerbaijan, which recently agreed to co-produce defense equipment for Ukraine (I'll have an analysis about that next week probably).
5. Kazakhstan plans to produce NATO-standard shells, something that would have been totally unthinkable pre-SMO.
6. Belarus is drifting further westward as Poczobut's release in the recent swap attests and there's now talk even in Polish media, typically Russophobic as everyone knows, of repairing ties with Lukashenko.
7. Serbia is already de facto a NATO member and arms Ukraine to kill Russians:
https://korybko.substack.com/p/it-really-doesnt-matter-anymore-whether
8. Cuba is on the brink of reaching a lopsided deal with the US that would amount to strategic capitulation as any objective observer would assess:
https://korybko.substack.com/p/regime-tweaking-in-cuba-is-the-most
9. Syria now wants to play Russia and Ukraine off against one another and could kick Russia out at any time, thus further complicating its air bridge to the AES:
https://korybko.substack.com/p/syria-wants-russia-to-compete-with
10. Libya's being actively courted by the US and Turkiye, which want Haftar to defect from Russia, and I assess that the chances of him doing so are moderately high:
https://korybko.substack.com/p/american-moves-in-libya-aim-to-sever
11. Mali is being ravaged by an intense Hybrid War right now.
12. Burkina Faso is already around half-controlled by JNIM.
13. Niger is the weak link of the AES, its capital is in proximity to JNIM and ISSP (IS-Sahel Province) as well as a potentially revived Tuareg rebel movement.
14. Myanmar is the scene of a fierce Sino-US New Cold War struggle in which Trump 2.0 is reportedly considering pragmatic outreaches to the junta for critical minerals or could back Kachin separatism to sever China's aforesaid supply, with these dynamics further weakening a key Russian partner in ASEAN:
https://korybko.substack.com/p/myanmar-is-shaping-up-to-be-the-next
15. And Nicaragua is a close Russian military partner (NOT an "ally" though!) that's also now coming under lots of US pressure:
https://united24media.com/world/exclusive-russia-is-upgrading-nicaraguas-military-bases-paying-the-full-bill-13259
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-imposes-sanctions-nicaragua-government-officials-others-alleged-seizure-us-2026-04-16/
None of this means that there was some "master plan" from Day One for Trump 2.0 to exploit all of these, rather, the actual fragility of Russia's partners this entire time (the extent of which varies depending on the country) was opportunistically exploited by his team from spring onward once they realized that Putin wasn't going to freeze the SMO in exchange for phased sanctions relief, a resource-centric strategic partnership, and the "honor" of Putin being Trump's "sidekick" as he revolutionizes the global chessboard.
What I described above is the objectively existing and easily verifiable reality: Russia's partners are under pressure from the US like never before, Russia's ability to help them is limited like never before, and this has therefore led to a series of geopolitical shifts unseen since the end of the Reagan era during the fall of communism across the world, especially in the Global South. In fact, everything is proceeding even faster in my assessment from my studies of that period. This is the dark reality of today's geopolitics.
Your innuendo that it's not happening isn't surprising since many "Non-Russian Pro-Russians" and even Russian officials are in denial, which is why I wanted to finally wake everyone up because enough is enough, and I hope that maybe just maybe Russia will try to fix its broken feedback loops and finally end its utterly disastrous "Potemkinist" experiment that made these setbacks inevitable in hindsight once related false claims -- outright propaganda -- was recycled into these already broken feedback loops:
https://korybko.substack.com/p/potemkinism-is-responsible-for-false
Your arguments are ice-cold realpolitik facts, thank you, Andrew! (You should have added India which aligned with the U.S. aggression against Iran.) The possible remedy you mention—reform of the Russian hierarchical relations—will take years (or never be implemented) and certainly not help against the clever American strategy you described. The China visit of the U.S. president will shed more unfavorable light on the situation Russia is in. The pro-American faction there is even stronger than that in the Russian power elite, I assume after fourty plus years working with ›things Chinese‹. A special thank you for your intense discussion with the readers, which is unusual and most welcome!
Thank you so much, Jorg, it means a lot! Have a wonderful weekend!
I don’t disagree that China is only an economic partner of Russia though, but it’s undeniable that they see what’s happening against them and would not provide countermeasures?
Although I’m hopeful, or hopelessly naive, you provide an excellent analysis of Russia’s hard power and USA’s softer geo-power. Both sides have their immense pros and cons.
The only thing I’m missing is China’s play here
China, much more so than Russia, is dependent on continued access to the global economy without any restrictions/sanctions. It doesn't want to risk having that obstructed at the cost of its continued growth, and therefore continued political stability, by making any "rash" moves. This accounts for why it didn't make a move on Taiwan during the early stages of the SMO, which would have been the best time in decades to do so if it truly wanted to.
China prefers so-called "economic diplomacy" and "elite diplomacy" (the latter criticized as corruption) to hard power and will likely continue with this approach, which nevertheless emboldens the US to continue chipping away at China's partnerships through sanctions pressure, coups, insurgencies, and even its own "elite diplomacy" (corruption). Even Valdai's Bordachev is somewhat critical of China and RT importantly republished his take:
https://www.rt.com/news/639271-china-wont-fight-us/
So what's China's countermeasure? As of now, nothing, just more of the same, and it'll likely lead to the same rollback of influence as Russia is experience, possibly even more so and quicker at that since has no interest -- let alone means like battle-hardened PMCs -- for even attempting to forcefully push back against this trend. Just look at Trump's "economic diplomacy" in DR Congo where he's trying to poach China's cobalt and coltan mines right under Xi's nose, who does nothing.
Without reliable access to these minerals, China's whole "green revolution" -- driven to an extent by the need to reduce dependence on US Navy-controlled maritime oil and gas chokepoints -- ends, but China is still the world's largest critical minerals processor by far, so this complex interdependence could figure into a Sino-US deal of some sort for not completely cutting China off. But, if push came to shove, I believe that Trump 2.0 at least would rather freeze the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" indefinitely than cede leadership of it to China.
So it's very possible that a "standoff" develops whereby the US cuts China off from critical minerals in DR Congo and elsewhere while China responds by cutting the US off from its processing services, but time would be on the US' side since it could just build its own facilities at home or in allied countries, thus eventually replacing China's role while continuing to isolate it at the strategic cost that was earlier touched upon.
At all costs, however, Trump 2.0 wants to avoid the Imperial Japanese precedent of pushing its Asian adversary too far and thus forcing it into lashing out with overwhelming military force, which cynics claim the US wanted at the time (and their arguments are reasonable in my opinion) but which it doesn't want nowadays due to the nuclear factor and complex economic interdependence. That's why it's moving gradually, slowly but surely achieving its goals, all in the hopes of "gently" pressuring China into a lopsided trade deal for institutionalizing its junior status vis-a-vis the US for the indefinite future.
The crucial flaws in the contemporary construction of the multipolar world order are Putin's and Xi's typical cautiousness and continued Russian concern (which isn't unreasonable) of becoming a Chinese vassal or sold out to the US if it subordinated itself to the People's Republic "out of solidarity".
As China's voluntary compliance with many US sanctions prove, from banking to investments in Russia's Arctic LNG 2 gas megaproject among others, Russia would have made an epic mistake had it subordinated itself to China. Quite clearly, China chose not to walk the multipolar walk after talking the talk.
There were very high expectations of China here early on due to officials, experts, and the media taking the "wolf warriors'" rhetoric at face value as supposedly representing how the Chinese elite as a whole view the US, but that was all for show as is now seen, similar in spirit to the "Potemkinists".
"The first made peace in DC and agreed to a US-controlled trade corridor that’ll function as a dual military logistics route for injecting Western, including NATO, influence along Russia’s entire southern periphery."
Andrew you are right, but I don't remember (and I may be totally wrong, hope that I am!) you saying the same about China's Belt and Road is really equally about having force projection capability given that they know they won't foreseeably be able to do so with Naval power/projection.
That said, I don't think this is a huge loss for Russia, and they are probably more than willing to allow US/China competition as it is better than China in that space alone. Realistically the US will soon lose interest in Central Asia, where as China finds it much more important.
Also, I suspect there's some degree of good cop, bad cop here -- which means that Russia's international influence in these countries isn't going away anytime soon. For example in Venezuela the Russians sold weapons that could be selectively turned off, if the US needed it. That's an incredibly powerful ace for Russia to hold. Will China do the same? Doubtful. Hence I expect Russia's place in some of these countries to be a low point, long term it is going to ebb and flow, because Russia's role in this game is simply irreplicable.