In hoping to play the “lesser evil” of the “federalist” Kurds off against the “greater evil” of the invading Turks, Damascus might have inadvertently committed a grave mistake by opening the Afrin gates to the most radical members of the YPG who stand to reverse any “pragmatic” agreements that the government thought they had achieved…
`We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, but great-power competition – not terrorism – is now the primary focus of US national security.’ Henceforth Russia and China will be America’s main enemies, with Iran and North Korea thrown in for good measure. So declared US Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, last week in…
War in Syria has entered its 7th year. The economic losses are estimated to be 226$ billion. According to a World Bank report published in 2017, about 530, 000 jobs have been lost and the refugee wave exceeded 5 million people. Petroleum industry has always been the backbone of Middle Eastern economies. The reason behind…
Guardian columnist and leader writer Natalie Nougayrede wrote an op-ed last month examining propaganda in our supposed age of “lies and distortion.” Focusing on “Russian propaganda” and “Russian meddling” in the West’s political systems, Nougayrede argued “citizens who live in an authoritarian, disinformation-filled environment deal daily with the reality of propaganda in ways we can’t…
As the Presidential elections in Russia are drawing near I am amazed to see how much interest this event is generating in spite of the fact that it sure seems to me that this will be an incredibly boring and, frankly, totally useless event. But first, full disclosure: I don’t have much faith in the…
“The compulsive hatred of Putin by many who have almost zero idea about Putin or Russian history is disproportionate to any rational analysis, but not surprising. Trump and Putin are like weird doppelgangers in the liberal imagination.” – John Steppling, “Trump, Putin, and Nikolas Cruz Walk into a Bar” The Trump and Netanyahu governments have…
