JOHN WIGHT—The defiance with which Putin revealed the country’s new and enhanced missile technology was unmistakable. It was perhaps illustrative of the years of broken promises, bad faith, duplicity and encroaching and enveloping military pressure exerted by the US and its allies against the Russian Federation. Returning to Cohen: “The most fundamental [error by Washington upon the demise of the Soviet Union] was to treat post-communist Russia not as a strategic partner but as a defeated nation, analogous to Germany and Japan after World War II.”
RUSSIAN MIGHT
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GILBERT DOCTOROW—In a sense, the commonality of all these changes in supply of intelligence, equipment and military force has been a quick-fix mentality and direct political intervention into processes that had been insulated in the civil service with its bureaucratic procedures. Political intervention means ultimately politicizing methods and outcomes. Outsourced intelligence is more likely to meet the demands of the paymaster than to have some intellectual integrity and broad perspective of its own.
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Making sense of the Russian 5th generation fighters in Syria
25 minutes readTHE SAKER—The biggest problem for the Russians is that they already have an array of extremely successful combat aircraft, especially the Su-35S and the formidable Su-34. Should Russia deploy more of these or should she place huge resources into a new very complex and advanced aircraft? Most Russian analysts would probably agree that Russia needs to be able to deploy some minimal number of real 5th generation combat aircraft, but they would probably disagree on what exactly that minimal number ought to be.
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GHASSAN KADI—The 1st of March 2018 Putin speech will in the future be seen as a turning point. Even though President Putin did not mention electronic jamming devices and other Russian military technology that America is well and truly behind in, he will be seen in history as the first ever non-American leader to put American military on notice by saying to American policy makers that Russia is militarily more advanced than America in both defense and attack.
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PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS—There is little doubt in my mind that if the crazed neoconservatives and military/security complex in Washington had these weapons and Russia did not, Washington would launch an attack on Russia. Putin, however, declared that Russia has no territorial ambitions, no hegemonic ambitions, and no intention to attack any other country. Putin described the weapons as the necessary response to the West’s firm refusal year after year to accept peace and cooperation with Russia, instead surrounding Russia with military bases and ABM systems.