After listening patiently to the inevitable snide remarks about Kremlin positions, I followed the American folk wisdom for getting the attention of a mule: you first whack him with a 2 by 4 beam. The beam at my disposal was the remark: “Gentlemen if we continue in this tone with the Russians, we will all be dead.”
Continue reading “2015 Schlangenbad Dialogue: the East-West Confrontation in Microcosm”
The impact of the ‘regiment of immortals’ procession was such that even the normally dry-eyed UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon congratulated Vladimir Putin for earning the high regard of his people. No wonder the Obama administration took such pains to keep its allies from coming to the ceremony
“I made the mistake of trying to insert my own view into Clinton’s stream of consciousness…The president gave me a look that combined amusement and impatience. I’d just reminded him, he said, of why I was a journalist and not a politician.” Read on…
I rather doubt that an ideology has been developed in Germany to drive its actions in the East. But these actions incrementally have put it on a collision course with Russian geopolitical interests that rival NATO expansion as a causal factor in the Ukraine crisis.
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Now that UK and US trainers are being dispatched to Ukraine, now that joint military exercises with NATO are being prepared, there are in place all the preconditions for yet another ‘false flag’ provocation such as have marked turning points in the Russia-West relationship over the past year.Read on…
Solutions to the perceived Russian threat to European security must not be left to military experts alone, as this report demonstrates. Europe must tap into the relevant multi-disciplinary expertise coming from area studies if it is to do better. Read on…
Continue reading “A Push-back to the CEPS Task Force Report on “More Union in European Defence””
On 2 March, a Round Table discussion of unusual importance dealing with European security and the ongoing confrontation with Russia over Ukraine was held in the Press Club Brussels Europe, where the proceedings were fully recorded.Read on…
Continue reading “A youtube.com documentary worth viewing: Round Table in Brussels 2 March 2015”
The slaying of Boris Nemtsov yesterday was a contract killing of great political moment carried out by professionals who had done their research of the location very thoroughly to ensure their own invisibility to surveillance cameras and a magnificent background of the Kremlin for suggestive journalism. And so the notion of a provocation remains uppermost. Read on…
Merkel’s name is being publicly nominated for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in the Minsk accords. Certainly her claims for such distinction are vastly greater than Barack Obama’s were in 2009 . Read on….
A deep rift opened between the United States and Europe over how to proceed in relations with Russia once the conflict in Ukraine appeared to be spinning out of control. Read on…
Continue reading “Why the Minsk-2 Settlement of the Ukrainian Crisis Will Hold”
Gilbert Doctorow 