How America Lost Vladimir Putin: A Rupture between Russia & West, 14 Years in the Making/TheAtlantic

[KoKo]

How America Lost Vladimir Putin
A rupture between Russia and the West, 14 years in the making
David Rohde and Arshad Mohammed Apr 19 2014, 9:54 AM ET


How America Lost Vladimir Putin

In September 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vladimir Putin supported Washington's imminent invasion of Afghanistan in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War. He agreed that U.S. planes carrying humanitarian aid could fly through Russian air space. He said the U.S. military could use airbases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. And he ordered his generals to brief their U.S. counterparts on their own ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan.

During Putin's visit to President George W. Bush's Texas ranch two months later, the U.S. leader, speaking at a local high school, declared his Russian counterpart "a new style of leader, a reformer … a man who's going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful, by working closely with the United States."
Putin promotes a conservative, ultra-nationalist form of state capitalism as an alternative to Western democracy.

For a moment, it seemed, the distrust and antipathy of the Cold War were fading. Then, just weeks later, Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so that it could build a system in Eastern Europe to protect NATO allies and U.S. bases from Iranian missile attack. In a nationally televised address, Putin warned that the move would undermine arms control and nonproliferation efforts.

"This step has not come as a surprise to us," Putin said. "But we believe this decision to be mistaken." The sequence of events early in Washington's relationship with Putin reflects a dynamic that has persisted through the ensuing 14 years and the current crisis in Ukraine: U.S. actions, some intentional and some not, sparking an overreaction from an aggrieved Putin.

As Russia masses tens of thousands of troops along the Russian-Ukrainian border, Putin is thwarting what the Kremlin says is an American plot to surround Russia with hostile neighbors. Experts said he is also promoting "Putinism"—a conservative, ultra-nationalist form of state capitalism—as a global alternative to Western democracy.

A GOOD READ AT:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/how-america-turned-putin-against-the-west/360921/

[pipoman]

1. American never had Putin...

He has always been KGB

[Benton D Struckcheon]

2. All of it is true,

but unfortunately for Putin, and more so Russia, all of it is irrelevant.
The US didn't pay much attention to Russia because, simply, it really doesn't matter much to us. Our imports to and exports from them are tiny. The only US company that really cares about them is Exxon.
Their real problem is that in about twenty years or so, if they continue to rely on energy exports to finance their economy, no one will care about them anymore. The world is going to have to, as a matter of survival, move away from the fossil fuels they sell. If by 2050 we actually achieve 50% renewables in electricity generation - and don't laugh, because globally the world is already at 23%, so it would only take a doubling and a little bit to get there - who's going to give a flying fart what any Russian leader thinks, if their economy continues to be based on selling fossil fuels?
No one.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Russia, the US, and Argentina were flooding the world with cheap grain from the vast plains that our countries have. Argentina stuck with that and is now a minor power that no one spends more than two minutes thinking about. The US and Russia long ago went on to other things.
Today, Russia and the US are both flooding the world with cheap fossil fuels. The US will, as it always does, move on. If Russia doesn't, it will share the fate of Argentina.

[KoKo]

3. Thanks...and there's this...

Ukraine gives Russia 25% of it's grain production. And, Monsanto and Dow, others want to get into that Market to do their GMO Pesticide ridden seeds.

Ukraine is a breadbasket for Russia...and the Russian East of Ukraine is Manufacturing. They need to hold onto Ukraine in whatever way they can. And Putin well knows Russian Federation has to diversify.

As does the US who has little manufacturing these days but Exporting Military Hardware.

So Russia and USA share much....but, Putin doesn't want the Monsanto, Cargill, Dow and others in there. Neither does India whose farmers are committing suicide.

I have link about Ukraine and Food Supply. I don't have time to dig out and post right now...but that's an underlying, little talked about problem about the Fight over Ukraine.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

4. I don't doubt you on the GMO seed,

and all that.
But the US has huge amounts of manufacturing still. Most of it is capital goods, which is why we don't see it as much, but most people don't realize that in any economy most of the activity is business-to-business and business-to-government. If you look even at a smart phone, there's tons of stuff in there, including the software, that is sold business-to-business. Only the very final stage takes it to the consumer.
The US list of exports is very varied, and is not dependent on any one thing. Not so for Russia; the majority is energy, and a lot of what isn't energy is energy byproducts, like fertilizer and organic chemicals. Their need to diversify is huge and immediate.