Kathianne
04-14-2017, 05:48 PM
There are some striking similarities thanks to our little commie friend, especially regarding frustration and condescension:
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/522942/
How the Syria Strike Flipped the U.S.-Russia Power Dynamic
If Moscow had grown accustomed to being the unpredictable partner in the relationship, it will have to make adjustments.
JULIA IOFFE (https://www.theatlantic.com/author/julia-ioffe/)
<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2017-04-13T16:09:14">APR 13, 2017</time>
MOSCOW—The American airstrike on the Shayrat air base in Syria didn’t do all that much. A day and 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles later, Bashar al-Assad was still in power, his planes were still taking off from Shayrat (http://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-crisis-syria-airport-idUSL8N1HF5PT), still flying and still dropping bombs and killing people in the same areas of Idlib Province where a sarin gas attack killed more than 80 people last week.
What the strike did do, though, was radically alter the power dynamic between Moscow and Washington that Vladimir Putin had spent the last three years establishing: one in which Putin acts and Washington, gobsmacked, scrambles to react.
<aside class="callout-placeholder" data-source="curated" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Lyon Text", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"></aside>By the time Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed here on Tuesday night, it was Moscow that was trying to find the right response to an American president who, in 63 hours (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/politics/syria-strike-trump-timeline.html?_r=0), completely inverted an isolationist message he had stuck to for nearly two years, a message his administration had been trumpeting just days prior (https://www.rt.com/usa/382839-tillerson-assad-syrian-people/). And by the time Tillerson wrapped up his meetings in Moscow, Trump was singing hosannas to Xi Jinping, leader of a country he had previously vowed to label a currency manipulator, while taking the stage with NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg and declaring that, suddenly, NATO was “no longer obsolete,” as Trump had maintained during the campaign.
“We have to figure out what this country’s strategy is,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said (https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/harddaysnight/zakharova-432097/) on a political talk show on TVRain, an independent Russian channel, just hours after Tillerson touched down in Moscow, and hours before meetings were set to begin. “No one understands it right now. If you do, share your appraisal with us,” she said, flustered, to us journalists interviewing her. “We don’t understand what they’re going to do in Syria, and not only there. No one understands what they’re going to do in the Middle East, which is a very complicated region. … No one understands what they’re going to do with Iran, no one understands what they’re going to do with Afghanistan. Excuse me, and I still haven’t said anything about Iraq.”
...
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/522942/
How the Syria Strike Flipped the U.S.-Russia Power Dynamic
If Moscow had grown accustomed to being the unpredictable partner in the relationship, it will have to make adjustments.
JULIA IOFFE (https://www.theatlantic.com/author/julia-ioffe/)
<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2017-04-13T16:09:14">APR 13, 2017</time>
MOSCOW—The American airstrike on the Shayrat air base in Syria didn’t do all that much. A day and 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles later, Bashar al-Assad was still in power, his planes were still taking off from Shayrat (http://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-crisis-syria-airport-idUSL8N1HF5PT), still flying and still dropping bombs and killing people in the same areas of Idlib Province where a sarin gas attack killed more than 80 people last week.
What the strike did do, though, was radically alter the power dynamic between Moscow and Washington that Vladimir Putin had spent the last three years establishing: one in which Putin acts and Washington, gobsmacked, scrambles to react.
<aside class="callout-placeholder" data-source="curated" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Lyon Text", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"></aside>By the time Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed here on Tuesday night, it was Moscow that was trying to find the right response to an American president who, in 63 hours (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/politics/syria-strike-trump-timeline.html?_r=0), completely inverted an isolationist message he had stuck to for nearly two years, a message his administration had been trumpeting just days prior (https://www.rt.com/usa/382839-tillerson-assad-syrian-people/). And by the time Tillerson wrapped up his meetings in Moscow, Trump was singing hosannas to Xi Jinping, leader of a country he had previously vowed to label a currency manipulator, while taking the stage with NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg and declaring that, suddenly, NATO was “no longer obsolete,” as Trump had maintained during the campaign.
“We have to figure out what this country’s strategy is,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said (https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/harddaysnight/zakharova-432097/) on a political talk show on TVRain, an independent Russian channel, just hours after Tillerson touched down in Moscow, and hours before meetings were set to begin. “No one understands it right now. If you do, share your appraisal with us,” she said, flustered, to us journalists interviewing her. “We don’t understand what they’re going to do in Syria, and not only there. No one understands what they’re going to do in the Middle East, which is a very complicated region. … No one understands what they’re going to do with Iran, no one understands what they’re going to do with Afghanistan. Excuse me, and I still haven’t said anything about Iraq.”
...