A New Cold War? Russia’s Confrontation with the West

Michael A. McFaul, Stanford University professor of political science; director and senior fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; Stanford University, former ambassador to Russia (2012 – 2014).

Colin’s Comment:
Here is what I see as the big picture:

  • The current confrontation is more about the actors than about long-term strategy or geopolitical conflict
  • Russia is part of Europe, culturally and economically, and its destiny lies in the West
  • A strong Russia is in the West’s interest — a weak Russia invites encroachment from China in the East
  • The West has to build a strong deterrent to aggression from the current regime
  • While leaving the door open to long-term participation in European democratic structures, scientific cooperation and trade.

Niall Ferguson: The Real Obama Doctrine – Real Daily Buzz

Niall Ferguson on US strategy in the Middle East:

Henry Kissinger long ago recognized the problem: a talented vote-getter, surrounded by lawyers, who is overly risk-averse. Even before becoming Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger understood how hard it was to make foreign policy in Washington. There “is no such thing as an American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger wrote in 1968. There is only “a series of moves that have produced a certain result” that they “may not have been planned to produce.” It is “research and intelligence organizations,” he added, that “attempt to give a rationality and consistency” which “it simply does not have.”

Two distinctively American pathologies explained the fundamental absence of coherent strategic thinking. First, the person at the top was selected for other skills. “The typical political leader of the contemporary managerial society,” noted Mr. Kissinger, “is a man with a strong will, a high capacity to get himself elected, but no very great conception of what he is going to do when he gets into office.”

Second, the government was full of people trained as lawyers. In making foreign policy, Mr. Kissinger once remarked, “you have to know what history is relevant.” But lawyers were “the single most important group in Government,” he said, and their principal drawback was “a deficiency in history.” ……..

It is clear that [Barack Obama’s] strategy is failing disastrously. Since 2010, total fatalities from armed conflict in the world have increased by a factor of close to four, according to data from the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Total fatalities due to terrorism have risen nearly sixfold, based on the University of Maryland’s Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism database. Nearly all this violence is concentrated in a swath of territory stretching from North Africa through the Middle East to Afghanistan and Pakistan. And there is every reason to expect the violence to escalate as the Sunni powers of the region seek to prevent Iran from establishing itself as the post-American hegemon.

Today the U.S. faces three strategic challenges: the maelstrom in the Muslim world, the machinations of a weak but ruthless Russia, and the ambition of a still-growing China. The president’s responses to all three look woefully inadequate……

Some things you can learn on the job, like tending bar or being a community organizer. National-security strategy is different. “High office teaches decision making, not substance,” Mr. Kissinger once wrote. “It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it.” The next president may have cause to regret that Barack Obama didn’t heed those words. In making up his strategy as he has gone along, this president has sown the wind. His successor will reap the whirlwind. He or she had better bring some serious intellectual capital to the White House.

Source: Niall Ferguson: The Real Obama Doctrine – Real Daily Buzz

Barack Obama: Foreign policy realist?

Harvard professor, Stephen M Walt says Barack Obama isn’t weak and waffling — he’s calculating, coldhearted, and decisive when it counts:

….One can even see elements of this approach in Obama’s handling of China. He has repeatedly emphasized Asia’s importance to the United States, and the much-publicized “rebalancing” was obviously intended to signal to America’s Asian partners that it wasn’t abandoning the region. Obama reinforced these themes during his visit to Asia in April, but the administration has implemented this policy at a measured pace, content to let China’s growing assertiveness do the work for us. Overreacting would alarm the local powers and let them continue to free-ride, while speaking softly makes present and future allies more eager for help and more willing to do what America wants to get it.

The common thread to these various responses is an appreciation not just of the limits of U.S. power, but also of the limited need to exercise it. “Limited” does not mean zero, which is why sensible people oppose a return to 19th-century-style isolationism. But this approach recognizes that the overwhelming majority of problems in the world do not threaten the United States directly and therefore do not require an immediate, forceful, and potentially costly U.S. response.

As Andrew Sullivan likes to say, Obama’s greatest political genius has been his Road Runner-like ability to let enemies beat themselves.

Read more at Is Barack Obama More of a Realist Than I Am?.

Falling crude prices are good news

Crude oil prices are falling sharply. Nymex Light Crude broke support at $98/barrel and Brent Crude is testing support at $104. Breach of that support level would confirm a primary down-trend.

Nymex WTI Crude

The theory has been bandied about that lower crude prices are a Barack Obama strategy to deter Vladimir Putin in East Ukraine. But there are signs of an economic slow-down in Europe, especially Italy, that would hurt demand for Brent Crude. And the Baltic Dry Index, which reflects bulk commodity shipping rates, indicates global trade is at a low ebb. Whichever is correct, low crude prices are welcome — good for the medium-term outlook of the global economy.

Baltic Dry Index

Clinton’s Spending Cuts—Not His Tax Hikes—Worked

EDWARD MORRISSEY writes about Clinton-era nostalgia:

In his eight years as President, Clinton reduced federal spending to 18.2 percent of GDP from 22.1 percent, thanks in large part to a Republican-controlled Congress that forced the issue……. Barack Obama managed to hike it 3.5 points in just one term, with 3.2 points going to non-defense spending. Under Obama, federal spending now exceeds 25 percent of GDP, and his has been the biggest increase of any of his predecessors over the last 60 years – even for two-term Presidents.The real debate over deficits isn’t over whether to go back to Clinton-era tax rates. It’s how to get back to Clinton-era spending levels, and then create a tax system that will adequately fund it. The 18.2 percent level of federal spending is one piece of Clinton-era nostalgia worth recalling – as well as the bipartisanship that eventually produced it.

Nostalgists should also remember that the housing bubble started in this era — as did the internet boom — followed by the dot-com bust just as Clinton left office. This article is definitely worth reading.

via Clinton’s Spending Cuts—Not His Tax Hikes—Worked.