Why Putin Is Winning The New Cold War?

By Rakesh Krishnan Simha

The US wants to bring Russia down but it can’t get past Vladimir Putin

There are 7.2 billion people on this planet but the United States fears only one man — Vladimir Putin. That’s because on virtually every front of the new Cold War, the Russian president is walloping the collective challenge of the West. Fear can make you do strange things — for the second year running, Forbes magazine has named Putin as the world’s most powerful person.

It is said about the Russians that they take a long time to saddle their horses, but they ride awfully fast. After patiently nursing the collapsed Russian economy back to health from 1999 to 2007, Putin started pushing back against the western encirclement of his country. In Syria, Crimea and Ukraine, the West has faced humiliating setbacks and melted away at his approach. In the high-stakes game of energy, it will be Russian — not western — pipelines that will dominate the Eurasian landmass.

But instead of scorekeeping, a more instructive exercise would be to try and understand how Putin has managed to keep Russia ahead in the game.

More than any other leader, the Russian president by virtue of his KGB experience understands how the US operates. The American modus operandi — in sync with the British — is to organise coups, rebellions and counter-revolutions in countries where nationalist leaders come to power. Iran, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama and Ukraine are the classic examples.

Bottoming Out in Europe

By Andrew A. Michta

Europe is mired in deep denial about the historical currents driving Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Europe’s policy towards Ukraine is in disarray, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the growing divergence of priorities among key European players, and of late the deepening polarization within Germany’s coalition government over how to deal with Russia. The deadlock is fundamentally this: a political solution to the Russian-Ukrainian war, short of just conceding Russia a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, has been exhausted. Few among Europe’s leadership elite are inclined to draw the obvious conclusions from the events following the failed Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in 2013. Instead, Europe clings to the notion that somehow there is a fix out there; the reality that it confronts in Russia a revanchist state bent on a revisionist project is too difficult to accept. And thus Europe continues to believe that—notwithstanding the stern denunciations leveled at Putin, most recently in Brisbane—the only path forward is to try harder.

Germany, one country with the ability to take the lead, is deadlocked over intra-governmental differences on policy and continues to cycle through old mantras, as when Chancellor Merkel condemned “spheres of influence” thinking at the last G20 summit. With persistence worthy of a better cause, Europe continues to drift into collective Micawberism, hoping that somehow a political solution that doesn’t amount to all-out surrender on Ukraine will just turn up. The harsh truth is that it won’t; it’s time either to develop a real comprehensive strategy to contain Russia, or to stop pretending there is already such a strategy in place.

The World Order: New Rules or a Game without Rules

just want to have this link for future reference