What if Russia goes Neocon?

What if? 

Well, we talk about the long range highest superpower military. We talk about a Coutry that can make diverse warfare fronts in different ways, to Pacific and to Mediterranean, and over Europe to Atlantic. We talk about a Country that can configure a projection through small units together the total war campaigns, and also, we talk about a Country that can use irregular forces together the regular, the private and public sector together in different directions and with full capability of hackerism, mercenarism, inteligent weapons, stealth technologies and full force military, with mass destruction weapons.

In expectation of the economic blocs, Russia has different connections and is ready for an economic warfare.

The hybrid capability of Russia operate, goes beyond the warfare capability. The high number of mass destruction weapons added to the capability of operation through small units and mercenaries goes from the total war to irregular warfare. The investments in technology goes from the military total capability of operation, from stealth to inteligent weapons, to the hackers cyber warfare. And also they have a political influence and opened to high investments, in Dollar, to world wide.

We have another question that is they promote anti-Globalist politics, and promoted the end of international NGOs that disturbed the government with failed politics of pacifism and internatinalism, destroyng the nationalism and tradition, so with that, Russia could keep it's nationalism by struggle and keep their economy free from international investments that goes against the national politics.

The Neoncoservative current is a theoretic that works with the conservativism and the universalist current, focused in expand the military hegemony, and not focused in individual life and society' demands, in the case of USA, the expansion of the military and politics and geopolitics world wide. The neoconservatives works for any side, democratic or republican, that expect the USA goes beyond the UN interests and works for the USA expansionism and globalism.

The interntional politics is the first worry of the Neocons, and the idea is to maintain the USA as the only superpower and stimulating this NWO as they want, with the USA government and military power, not with the houses of bankers or supranational organisms, but the praesentia of USA itself as the 'hegemon'.

This politico-philosophical current expanded by the rejection of social liberalism, pacifism, moral relativism, Fabianism and against the values of the new leftism. The influence of this current is the expansion of military power, that ended in the War on Iraq and also the War on Terror, proving that USA was the highest power that could reject the UN decision and invaded Iraq in 2013.

The expansion of USA throught Middle East even rejected by world wide decision in a non legitimate conflict, could open a disussion of the American Globalism.

This current also emphasizes the international politics and the military and political intervention in other countries as a responsability of the USA Government as they are the only super power to keep the world peace between the pax americana.

But what if Russia goes Neocon?

This current is opened not only to USA, but the PNAC was a document that proved that USA was able to project its power whereter and whatever they want. And for sure, this is the point and the role play for a super power.

But any country that has the structure and capability of struggle, can and have to do it, but also, Russia has no interest on doing it as USA did it before. The world changed and the scenario was on end of Cold War, and the second time they were previously aproved by the Afghanistan warfare, then promoted the Iraq war that fucked up everything. The costs for maintaining the war on Iraq was higher, and the contracts was too expensive. Russia was always on diplomatic and political programs, not into military operations and was promoting the technologies for this new scenario.

Once Motörhead said in a song: "It's all about the game, and how you play it; It's all about control and if you can take it". So, in the scenario almost two decades, Russia can have the oportunity, but one thing is that the Eurasian politics make Russia with other interests than the global. The Eurasia and the restore of tue "Great Russia", influencing the whole geographic politics is the primal idea. 

Also the promotion of Economic Bloc together the BRICS countries and promotion of the economic influence in different plarts of the globe as South America and South Africa, influencing some countries with diplomacy and politics, demanding this exchange in order to promote a respectable projection.

It's almost impossible a clash between BRICS and NATO, but it's important to point that BRICS has a larger number of military personal than NATO, Brazil and India has a large number of personal and different tactics and operational scenarios, China and Russia don't need to say anything about it. 

Vostok 2018 showed that Russia has a power capability to promote a new pax in world wide, and together its alies that still want to demand their tradition and culture not influenced by international organisms and bankers, like Turkey, Syria, Iran and China, the promotion of the Russian power through World Wide is guaranteed in case they want.

In a case of clash between Russia and China against NATO, the operation could be a little different, because Turkey is a part of NATO, but it's anti-USA politics, and hard to find a decision on how it would operate, but in case of a clash between USA and Russia, Turkey could honor the Putin's and Erdogan's politics.

Russia could open military and diplomatic fronts world wide and use political intervention as USA did, but economicaly, Russia could have a bigger resistance. Dollar keeps influencing the world and than Euro, the strategy would be to value the Russian Ruble, but in this case, as the same of China, it could have an interest on use it as reservation for international economic warfare, and Russia demands it's money not strong as Dollar, nor Euro, to promote the finances turning arount and investing in country's interests, not opening to international investitors.

So Russia could not open total front nowadays and turn itself into a Neocon strategic player, but can use the military projection to use as diplomatic imagery, using the weapons as exchange and use the military security as players on interests in local politics, as it is used in Syria.

The bloc together Mongolia and China made it capable to open a front in Asia-Pacific and promote a hegemony in seas, and also a chaotic imagery on Middle East, promoting the Russian hegemony in South Africa, and North of Africa, whole Middle East and Pacific, remembering also that Russia and Argentina are alied and promoted military cooperation and the South American projection into military and Economic (with BRICS) are a reasonable possibility of influence.

The political Siege of Russia in proxies are a form of promoting the influence in local small conflicts and the capability of operate in different scenarios, from total war to technology, made Russia a problem to USA hegemony.

Putin is a realist, not a Russian neoconservative — there's a difference

by Tom Rogan | July 20, 2018 10:59 AM

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/putin-is-a-realist-not-a-russian-neoconservative-theres-a-difference

If the U.S. recognizes Russian President Vladimir Putin for his foreign policy ideology and interests, it can better counter him.

So who is Putin?

Well, he is highly intelligent and capable of extreme aggression. But he is not a Russian neoconservative dedicated to building a revivalist Russian empire at all costs. Nor is Putin an unstable maniac like the Vodka-sodden leader of the Russian ultranationalist party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Instead, Putin is a bold realist: confident in his conception of priority interests and determined to see them rendered.

But Putin's realism puts basic security concerns first. These concerns include Russia’s preserved territorial integrity, the stability of Russian energy export markets, and the maintenance of credible nuclear strike forces. Were the United States to overtly challenge any of those interests, Putin would likely superescalate against U.S. interests.

Even then, Russia’s territorial integrity and nuclear strike forces do not surpass their U.S. counterparts. And the emergent reality of dominant U.S. global energy supply will gradually dilute Putin’s power regardless of his actions. In large part that's because the cost of shale production is falling in a manner that systemically undercuts Russia's main export, crude oil. It is for that reason that Putin is so determined to see the completion of his Nord Stream II pipeline to Germany. His last gambit for Russian energy-based political influence and foreign capital generation is Europe’s long-term link to the Russian energy industry.

But what of Putin’s other interests?

When it comes to responding to Russian covert action in cyberspace and country towns, or Russian military actions in Ukraine and Syria, U.S. decisions are made with a very careful assessment as to how Putin might respond. And while this is the prudent course of action, Putin knows that U.S. policymakers assess their Russia-related decisions in special consideration of what he might do in response, and he uses that understanding to cultivate a false image of himself as prospectively unstable. That’s why Putin is often so flippant in his threats of nuclear war and in his delivery of specialized brutality.

It has worked: President Barack Obama danced to Putin's waltz, and President Trump ... well, who knows what his Russia game is?

The right U.S. remedy here is clear. It should respect Russian history, culture, and its priority interests (where they do not represent territorial appropriation, as in Ukraine), and pursue shared interests such as in areas of counterterrorism. But equally important, we must accept that Russia (at least under Putin) and the U.S. have very few areas of alignment.

Most crucially of all, the U.S. must recognize that its second-tier interests in relation to Russia (the first tier being the preservation of U.S. security, NATO-European stability, and economic dominance) conflict with Putin's second-tier interests. Putin wants veto control over the Ukrainian government, Bashar Assad's continued power in Syria, an Afghanistan that drains U.S. lives and treasure, and the usurpation of U.S.-led international order by a Chinese-Russian feudal order. We want the opposite outcomes and must push back to attain them.

And because Putin is a realist, U.S. pushback with pragmatic aggression can compel the Russian leader to change his behavior. We've seen it before.

During Russia's summer 2008 invasion of Georgia, President George W. Bush sent U.S. Air Force resupply planes into Tbilisi, Georgia's capital. Bush called Putin on his bluff to endanger those aircraft. That signaled Bush's resolve and forced Putin to the table. Similarly, in Syria, U.S. retention of influence in eastern Syria will ultimately force Putin to more concessions as he struggles to afford his expensive military presence there. High-grade U.S. cyber-strike capabilities could also impose a cost calculation on Putin's conception of the Internet as a launching pad for strikes against the West.

Still, the major takeaway is that Putin can be influenced in each of these cases. He can be influenced, because his critical national interests are not affected by the U.S. influencing. And while he will respond in some fashion, ultimately Putin recognizes that the U.S. has more power than he does. He fears that power and will be corralled by it, but only when it is practiced.

The bottom line?

Assessing the Russian leader for the realist he is and the second-tier interests he holds, the U.S. should use its power to stand up for its second-tier interests. Doing so, the U.S. will restore the balance of power in its favor.

Vladimir Putin, Russian Neocon

How Russia's president resembles the American hawks who hate him most.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/vladimir-putin-russian-neocon/284602/

Ever since Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea, American pundits have strained to understand his view of the world. Putin’s been called a Nazi; a tsar; a man detached from reality. But there’s another, more familiar framework that explains his behavior. In his approach to foreign policy, Vladimir Putin has a lot in common with those very American hawks (or “neocons” in popular parlance) who revile him most.

1. Putin is obsessed with the threat of appeasement

From Irving Kristol’s “The Politics of Appeasement” (Wall Street Journal, 1975) to Norman Podhoretz’s  “Appeasement by Any Other Name” (Commentary, 1983) to William Kristol and Robert Kagan’s “The Appeasement Gamble” (Weekly Standard, 2000) to Charles Krauthammer’s “The Wages of Appeasement” (Washington Post, 2011), hawks have attributed virtually every foreign-policy crisis of the last 40 years to America’s supposed habit of knuckling under to our foes. In 1975, Irving Kristol called America’s withdrawal from South Vietnam an act of “appeasement” that “to those of us who have even the vaguest memories of the 1930s … is all too chillingly reminiscent.” A generation later, his son, William Kristol, chalked up the September 11 attacks to “two decades of American weakness in the face of terror.” Last week, in The New York Times, John McCain explained Putin’s move on Crimea as the result of a global “perception that the United States is weak.” To Kristol, McCain, and their ilk, the United States is a nation perennially bullied by adversaries who are tougher, nastier, and more resolute than we are.

The good news is that, eventually, when the humiliation becomes too much to bear, a Reaganesque or Churchillian leader raises America up off its knees. When George W. Bush attacked Iraq, Kristol declared that the “era of American weakness and doubt in response to terrorism is over,” while Max Boot announced “The End of Appeasement.” This week, in The Washington Post, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said he hoped that for Americans, Putin’s actions in Crimea would mean “the end of illusions.”

It’s a phrase that could easily have been uttered by Putin himself. In his view, it’s Russia that has been perennially bullied by tougher and nastier countries—in particular, America and its NATO allies. “They have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed us before an accomplished fact,” he explained in a speech announcing Russia’s incorporation of Crimea. “They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner.” But now, finally, the era of appeasement is over. “Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from,” Putin said. “If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard.”

For American hawks, appeasement is not merely bad foreign policy. It represents a crisis of values—an aversion to those martial, manly virtues that make nations strong and give life meaning. In his 1977 essay, “The Culture of Appeasement,” Podhoretz argued that “one of the interesting similarities” between Jimmy Carter’s America and Neville Chamberlain’s Britain “was the prominence of homosexuals in the literary worlds” of both eras. Under their influence, Podhoretz suggested, “words such as soldier and fighter, which had previously carried a positive charge, now became so distasteful.” In the 1990s, David Brooks, then at The Weekly Standard, similarly warned that “we have become a nation obsessed with risk avoidance and safety. We allow soft sentimentalism to replace demanding moral principles.” In response, Brooks, Kagan, Kristol, and McCain championed what they called “national greatness conservatism.” Invoking Theodore Roosevelt’s famous 1899 speech, “The Strenuous Life,” Brooks called for making American foreign policy “a more demanding and a more heroic enterprise.”

Today, hawks still link appeasement and effeminacy. Last month, for instance, after comparing the “bare-chested Putin” to “Barack Obama, in his increasingly metrosexual golf get-ups,” National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson suggested that Putin’s aggression might finally rouse Americans to peer “into ourselves—we the hollow men, the stuffed men of dry voices and whispers” and get tough.

For Putin, too, overcoming appeasement requires overcoming the soft, unmanly culture that made Russia unwilling to fight. The fall of the Soviet Union, he argued last year, “was a devastating blow to our nation’s cultural and spiritual codes” that led to “primitive borrowing and attempts to civilize Russia from abroad.” That borrowing was not only economic but “cultural, religious and even sexual.” And now, to reject foreign domination, Russia must also reject Western “policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.”

In the best Teddy Roosevelt tradition, Putin has made his own physical vigor a metaphor for the new vigor of Russian foreign policy. And even as they denounce Putin’s actions, hawks like Hanson can barely restrain their envy at his imperialistic machismo. “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil,” Sarah Palin told Fox News. “They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans.”

2. Putin is principled—so long as those principles enhance national power

In recent days, Putin has talked a lot about “democracy,” “freedom,” “self-determination” and “international law.” And conveniently for him, he insists that Russia’s annexation of Crimea scrupulously adheres to those principles while America’s behavior in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya violated them brazenly.

Sound familiar? In the United States, both hawks and doves like to claim that they’re promoting cherished principles like democracy and freedom. The difference is that doves are more willing to acknowledge that these principles can undermine American interests. For most hawks, by contrast, the fight for democratic ideals must serve American power. If it doesn’t, then what’s being spread isn’t really democracy at all.

That’s long been true in Latin America, where Cold War hawks justified coups against democratically elected presidents like Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz and Chile’s Salvador Allende on the grounds that no pro-Soviet leader could truly enjoy democratic legitimacy. More recently, when opponents of Venezuela’s democratically elected (albeit authoritarian) leader Hugo Chávez tried to oust him in a 2002 coup, the Bush administration blamed Chávez, not the plotters. In 2009, hawks generally applauded the coup that drove Honduras’ democratically elected, pro-Chávez president from power.

In recent years, this willingness to bend universal principles to serve American power has been even clearer in the Middle East. From 2003 to 2005, Bush and his hawkish supporters waxed enthusiastic about the possibility that Saddam Hussein’s overthrow might usher in democratic, pro-Western governments across the Arab world. But when Palestinians voted for Hamas in 2006, the Bush administration encouraged activists from Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party to overthrow the new Hamas government by force. Last year, when Egypt’s military ousted Mohammed Morsi, the first democratically elected Egyptian leader in decades, many (though not all) hawks applauded the move.

For Putin, an anti-Russian government in Kiev is illegitimate regardless of how it takes power. For many American hawks, the same is now true for a pro-Chávez government in Latin America or an Islamist government in the Middle East.

3. Putin doesn’t understand economic power

Last week, Bill Clinton shrewdly noted that Putin is “deeply patriotic in terms of Russia, but he sees it more in terms of the greatness of the state and the country than what happens to ordinary Russians.” The Russian president’s maneuvers abroad have everything to do with the geopolitical glory of Russia and almost nothing to do with the economic welfare of Russians. In the wake of his takeover of Crimea, Standard & Poor’s is threatening to downgrade Russian bonds and Russia’s own deputy economy minister is warning of a growing economic “crisis.” Yet Putin has never looked happier.

Look closely at the way hawks write about American foreign policy, and you see something similar. In the early 1990s, Clinton argued that although America had won the Cold War, ordinary Americans, in their daily lives, were losing. The answer, he declared in 1994, was to “put our economic competitiveness at the heart of our foreign policy.” For large stretches during his presidency, Clinton’s most influential foreign-policy advisor was his treasury secretary.

For Clinton’s hawkish critics, this emphasis on geo-economics rather than geopolitics represented, in Charles Krauthammer’s words, a “holiday from history.” In 2000, William Kristol and Robert Kagan published Present Dangers, an edited volume that outlined the foreign policy they hoped Clinton’s successor would pursue. Of the 15 essays, not one dealt primarily with international economics.

This indifference to the economic aspects of statecraft was a defining feature of the Bush administration, where treasury secretaries played a marginal foreign-policy role, and where Lawrence Lindsey, Bush’s first head of the National Economic Council, was publicly reprimanded for suggesting that the Iraq War might cost $200 billion. (A recent study estimates that, along with the war in Afghanistan, it will cost $4 to $6 trillion.) John McCain, the Senate’s preeminent hawk, has publicly admitted, “I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues.”

Seeing “economics” as separate from “foreign policy issues” is precisely what Clinton decried in the 1990s, and it’s the weakness in Putin’s strategy today. But it’s a weakness that many American hawks share. For decades now, Kristol and McCain have insisted that America relentlessly expand its global military footprint and relentlessly boost its defense budget. I’ve never seen either make a serious effort to explain how this should be paid for. Nor do they acknowledge that when a nation’s overseas obligations exceed its domestic resources, it’s a sign of weakness, not strength.

***

None of this is to suggest that American and Russian actions are morally equivalent. For all its errors and crimes, American foreign policy is restrained by our democratic political system in a way Russia’s is not. In Europe, at least, the United States enjoys more legitimacy than Russia does, in part because via institutions like NATO we have given smaller nations a voice over our decision-making that Moscow has not. And to some degree, these systems of domestic and international restraint have helped the United States avoid the “imperial overstretch” that brought down Putin’s beloved U.S.S.R.

But the more influence hawks wield over American foreign policy, the more similar to Putin’s it will be. Maybe “metrosexuality” and “mom jeans” aren’t so bad after all.