"Strategic insanity has taken over the last remaining superpower."

Via Daily Timewaster

 

I’m skeptical that anyone outside of the Kremlin could diagnose its view of American foreign policy with real certainty, but Fyodor Lukyanov is probably about as close as an outside observer can get.

He’s the editor of a journal called Russia in Global Affairs, which is published in partnership with Foreign Affairs, and he sits on all sorts of foreign policy councils in Russia. So, while his estimation of Moscow’s viewpoint is drawn in part from imperfect inference, it’s probably still got some truth so it.

According to Lukyanov’s latest article in Al-Monitor, an assessment of the lessons that he believes Russia drew from the Iraq war that began 10 years ago, President Vladimir Putin and his government are convinced that U.S. foreign policy is basically running on madness at this point. Here’s a snip, with my emphasis added, from Lukyanov’s article:

The conclusions drawn by Putin from the situation surrounding Iraq were concerned less with Russian-American relations, and more with general idea of how the world works in the twenty-first century. The strong do what they want: they don’t contemplate international law, global reality or the costs incurred by themselves and others. …

In the 10 years since the Iraq war, Putin’s worldview has only strengthened and expanded. Now he believes that the strong not only do what they want, but also fail to understand what they do. From Russian leadership’s point of view, the Iraq War now looks like the beginning of the accelerated destruction of regional and global stability, undermining the last principles of sustainable world order.

More @ Washington Post 

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Nigel Farage To Europeans: “Get Your Money Out While You Can” 

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Russian Leader Warns, “Get All Money Out Of Western Banks Now!”

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) “urgent bulletin” being sent to Embassies around the world today is advising both Russian citizens and companies to begin divesting their assets from Western banking and financial institutions “immediately” as Kremlin fears grow that both the European Union and United States are preparing for the largest theft of private wealth in modern history.

According to this “urgent bulletin,” this warning is being made at the behest of Prime Minister Medvedev who earlier today warned against the Western banking systems actions against EU Member Cyprus by stating:

“All possible mistakes that could be made have been made by them, the measure that was proposed is of a confiscation nature, and unprecedented in its character. I can’t compare it with anything but … decisions made by Soviet authorities … when they didn’t think much about the savings of their population. But we are living in the 21st century, under market economic conditions. Everybody has been insisting that ownership rights should be respected.”

Medvedev’s statements echo those of President Putin who, likewise, warned about the EU’s unprecedented private asset grab in Cyprus calling it “unjust, unprofessional, and dangerous.”

More @ The European Union Times