Moscow Far More Worried about Trump than Many in the West Think

Window on Eurasia ^ | February 12, 2018 | Liliya Shevtsova

[GoldenState_Rose]

Many analysts dismissed “the Kremlin list” the Trump Administration released two weeks ago as a bad joke or worse and thus failed to recognize the extent to which its contents in fact have made Moscow far more afraid of the US president than they were before, according to Liliya Shevtsova.

First of all, “by publishing practically the entire list of members of the Russian government and Presidential Administration, the White House shifted from the traditional Western effort of trying to divide the Russian elite into pro-Western and anti-Western factions..."

Instead, it properly treated the entire kleptocratic elite as being linked to Putin and that represents “a very serious blow to the entire Russian political class.”

Second, she continues, the list wasn’t about sanctions but rather about those against whom sanctions could be imposed. “As the practice of introducing sanction regimes has shown, the threat of sanctions is much more dangerous than the sanctions themselves.”

Third, by approaching the problem of the Putin regime in this way, Washington avoided a confrontation with European powers who don’t want to extend sanctions now but who also don’t want to break with the US either.

Fourth, by its actions, “the Administration agreed with the principle of secondary sanctions which strike at the interests of those corporations, physical persons and structures [in Western countries] which somehow are connected with the economic interests of the Russian political elite.”

“This is very serious,” because it creates a mechanism “that undermines the personal integration of the Russian political class into Western society and begins to gradually prepare a platform for the destruction of what has been a powerful Western lobbyist structure which over 20 years has secured the legalization of the kleptocratic interests of Russia, China...and other states in the European and American space.”

[GoldenState_Rose]

“More Russian sanctions are coming” says Steve Mnuchin

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/14/politics/mnuchin-russia-sanctions-coming/index.html

[NetAddicted]

Bookmark.

[GoldenState_Rose]

Texas Eagle, I just saw your profile. And Psalm 37. So apt and applicable to many situations and examples, but for this very topic as well. Thank you.

[Krosan]

Russians thought Hillary is going to win anyway and did what they did just to stir up trouble. That is why they did things like support Black Lives Matter and guiding them toward radicalization ... just to create conflicts between Americans.

[Krosan]

There is another huge advantage with natural gas and I think it is the main advantage. You can turn the amount of electricity generated up and down very easily by just regulating how much gas you burn. This is important for stabilizing the electric grid. Other power sources can’t be adjusted so quickly.

[equaviator]

I'm all for reviving, if not expanding by 3-fold, our capability for producing another Arsenal of Democracy, and to do it just because we can. However, the world should not know how highly capable we really are. Not everything should be knowable just by following any money trail(s). Anti-American globalists believe that anything classified as being "Top Secret" should be known to the press, the American people and therefore, the entire world. We even have people in Congress who also believe this, however mistakenly.

[spokeshave]

And all that surplus natural gas explains why coal is falling out of favor for power plant fuel.

Meanwhile, coal exports are booming. The Coal ETF KOL doing good

[GoldenState_Rose]

Just in: Russia inks huge energy deals w/ Saudi Arabia, challenging US dominance in the gulf region

https://www.rt.com/business/418852-russia-energy-deals-saudi-arabia/

[ealgeone]

Trump may be the first president since Reagan to say something and actually mean it.

[RayChuang88]

If that involves natural gas, why? The Saudis at their oil fields used to burn off petroleum gas all the time, and that gas could easily be converted to natural gas for power plants all over that country.

[Texas Eagle]

Thanks for the confirmation. If Hitlery had stolen the election, that headline would read, “Russia inks deals in Saudi Arabia expanding dominance in the region.”