... foreign-policy, intelligence, and global political layers of this decision, however, you don’t find a country in trouble or even incompetent. Rather, you find a cunning sense of strategic analysis that is built more upon long-term economic and national security priorities, which is an approach that woefully few Western countries ever find themselves in a position to emulate.
First, let’s break down the simple economic numbers: the budget for next year sees spending at roughly 230 billion USD ...
... that slow progressive countermeasures would be enacted that would see the return of a healthy ruble over the course of the next two years.
Perhaps most intriguing of all was the fact that Putin actually claimed that sanctions had only a 25 to 30% causal value in the fall of the ruble. Much more important was Russia’s continued dependence on oil and natural gas, thereby making it especially vulnerable to fluctuations in the world market. Again, most in America will laugh this off. Surely this ...
... were valuable necessities that saved lives. Well, ok, maybe they didn’t, but surely they caused the offering of intelligence that otherwise would not have been obtained. Well, alright, maybe I cannot prove that was actually the case, a direct causal link, but I am pretty sure SOME information EVENTUALLY came out because of the atmosphere created by that tor…I mean, EITs.” In another time and place this would most assuredly end up fodder for Monty Python or Saturday Night Live.
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... bend their own research rules in order to justify heavy financial investments and ensure positive tenure decisions. These accusations are not absent foundations in reality, and indeed could be subjects for their own individual research projects, but their ... ... promoting them.
The even bigger danger: as more schools have tried to develop degree programs focused on intelligence and national security, they have followed the military-friendly school model, poaching retired IC professionals to fill their programs with ...
... inevitably be taken down a road of the most interesting and intense historical and cultural impacts, possibly going back thousands of years. Organizational cultural conditions will instead leave you diving into budget concerns, internal turf wars over ... ... fascinating turns down history lane. More importantly, there seems to be a disconnect in our discipline where the more important security/intelligence countries are dominated by grand strategic cultural analyses. Perhaps that is a reason we seem to make so ...
... state with by far the largest, most organizationally micro-managed intelligence community and is almost always victim to the accusation by other nations of having no true definable culture at all NOT dependent upon innate business-corporate concepts.
... ... searching for ‘intrinsic essences’ of a grand strategic culture when all they should rightly focus on is how national security priorities can suddenly or surprisingly change and evolve, forcing intelligence communities to alter and adapt their ...
... farther from Moscow than the current Russian–Ukrainian border, would not provide a radical solution to the problem of global security for Russia. Moreover, such an approach would also substantially restrict Moscow’s opportunities to play an active ... ... subordinate position.
Today it is scarcely possible to hinder the overall movement of Ukraine towards Europe, but clearly neither the USA nor the European Union intends to pay for Ukraine without Russia. Moreover, a whole range of countries in Europe, including ...
... accommodate targeted killing as the best modern solution to this new threat that had become so powerful, unforeseeable, and undefined. The U.S. has a diplomatic habit of positioning its interests as something higher than pure foreign-policy and national security priorities. In so doing, it creates a de facto expectation whereby it has exclusive rights to exceptional behavior on the global stage. The obvious risk with such diplomatic calisthenics is that most other countries do not grant such exclusivity ...
... Worse still is how incredibly infantile and cruel this line of argument is from NATO: there is no chance, NONE, that Ukraine will be invited to join the group. While Obama says officially to the microphones that all options will remain open for global security and peace, France and Germany are both formally opposed to offering membership to Ukraine. As long as that is the case, Obama’s comments are just empty gestures, more cruelty to Ukraine than deterrent to Russia. Does anyone in their right ...
Less than two weeks ago President Obama, sitting for an interview with The Economist magazine, basically went ‘old school’ on President Putin, dismissing his Presidency, his country, and the future of both. While his words were certainly blatant and blunt, what might be even more revealing is the subtle subtext hidden inside his cavalier attitude: apparently even Presidents are not above being petulant.
There can be little debate about President Obama’s intent to insult and offend...
