Alastaire Crooke’s commentary on developing tensions between Putin and Russia’s top military brass provides a relevant backdrop to the US election season. Key paragraph:
“Putin carries, at one end of his balancing pole, the various elites more oriented toward the West and the “Washington Consensus“ and, at the pole’s other end, those concerned that Russia faces both a real military threat from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a hybrid geo-financial war as well. He is being pressed to come down on the side of the latter, and to pry the grip of the former from the levers of economic power that they still tightly hold”
Americans in general know little and care less about the internal dynamics of Russian politics. This seems a particularly dangerous sort of ignorance to me. Other than making a crude caricature of him, little attention is paid to Putin, or to the way the Russian public perceives him, or to how Russia’s various factions perceive him.
If Russia is indeed to become a US “enemy” in the coming years, the very least we could do is try to understand her a little better. Crooke’s analysis here is valuable and well informed -- definitely worth a read.