Russia's Military Aims Achieved, Putin Switches to Diplomacy

March 17, 2016

American presstitutes, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, expressed surprise at Russia’s support for the Syrian ceasefire, which Russia has been seeking, by Putin’s halt to attacks on the Islamic State and a partial withdrawal of Russian forces.  The American presstitutes are captives of their own propaganda and are now surprised at the failure of their propagandistic predictions.

Having stripped the Islamic State of offensive capability and liberated Syria from the Washington-supported terrorists, Putin has now shifted to diplomacy.  If peace fails in Syria, the failure cannot be blamed on Russia.

It is a big risk for Putin to trust the neocon-infested US government, but if ISIS renews the conflict with support from Washington, Putin’s retention of air and naval bases in Syria will allow Russia to resume military operations.  Astute observers such as Professor Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research, Stephen Cohen, and The Saker have noted that the Russian withdrawal is really a time-out during which Putin’s diplomacy takes the place of Russian military capability.

With ISIS beat down, there is less danger of Washington using a peace-seeking ceasefire to resurrect the Islamic State’s military capability.  Therefore, the risk Putin is taking by trusting Washington is worth the payoff if the result is to enhance Russian diplomacy and elevate it above Washington’s reliance on threats, coercion, and violence.  What Putin is really aiming for is to make Europeans realize that by serving as Washington’s vassals European governments are supporting violence over peace and may themselves be swept by the neoconservatives into a deadly conflict with Russia that would ensure Europe’s destruction.

Putin has also demonstrated that, unlike Washington, Russia is able to achieve decisive military results in a short time without Russian casualties and to withdraw without becoming a permanent occupying force.  This very impressive performance is causing the world to rethink which country is really the superpower.

The appearance of American decline is reinforced by the absence of capable leaders among the candidates for the Republican and Democratic party nominations for president.  America is no longer capable of producing political leadership as successive presidents become progressively worse.  The rest of the world must be puzzled how a country unable to produce a fit candidate for president can be a superpower.

Reprinted from Pravda.com.

Copyright © 2016 Paul Craig Roberts

The Best of Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week’s first outside columnist, columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, contributor to the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and columnist for the main French and Italian newspapers, and for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. He served in numerous academic appointments in US universities and was  appointed to the William E. Simon Chair for Political Economy at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies where his colleagues were Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James R. Schlesinger (one of his former professors), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Thomas Moorer. His article, “How the Law Was Lost,” was published in the January 1999 Cardozo Law Review.