Helsinki will mark the first détente in the four-year-old Hybrid War between Russia and the United States. But there will be no major breakthrough. President Putin regards a meeting with the U.S. president not as a reward but as a resumption of normal business.
Ahead of the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki on July 16, many in the United States express deep suspicions about the nature and outcome of the get-together. In Europe, there is near-paranoia that NATO may be about to be dismantled, and U.S...
... work to its advantage and fearing that concessions to the US will only heighten the pressure rather than relieve it. The resulting impasse can be illustrated by a Russian saying: “the scythe has met a stone.”
Whether there is a summit or not, the US-Russia relationship cannot be “normalized” in principle until there is a new normal for that relationship. For now, the US insists that Russia “behave” itself, while Russia hopes that the US is eventually unseated from its position of global ...
At 04:40 Syrian time, on US President Donald Trump’s order, the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross fired a barrage of 59 cruise missiles against the Syrian Al-Shayrat airbase, destroying infrastructure ranging from radar installations to air defences, and resulting in the deaths of several Syrian servicemen.
This marks a radical departure from the Trump administration’s position just last week, where Nikki Haley announced in the UN that removing Assad from power was no longer a priority...
... their dismal electoral performance. While a full analysis of this phenomenon and its associated nuances is beyond the scope of this blog post, attention will be drawn to its background and utility for the American liberals in their anti-Trump effort.
US-Russia relations took a massive hit when Obama announced in 2013 that the Assad government had crossed the red line in the Syrian civil war with its alleged use of chemical weapons. When Russia successfully pulled off its diplomatic coup, brokering ...
Mr. William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and executive director of the RAND Business Leaders Forum, as well as president of the U.S.-Kazakhstan Business Association. He co-chaired the U.S. delegation to the review conference that prepared for the 1999 Summit in Istanbul of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He advised on the reorganization of U.S. foreign affairs agencies, mandated by the Foreign Affairs Reform Act of 1999. Earlier in his career...
