21st Century Wire says…
Certainly, Russia has withstood over two years of sustained PR and diplomatic attacks from the US, Britain and Brussels. Every step, every move has been scrutinized, and attacked.
It has been nothing short of relentless – the endless demonization and character assassinations against its president Vladimir Putin – in order to isolate Russia in the eyes of the ‘international community.’
Now the same western media who dutifully worked to undermine ‘Everything Russia’ is now starting to buckle under the pressure of facts and reality…
Thinking the Unthinkable: Russia Has Re-Emerged As a Great Power
Jonathan Adelman
Huff Post
The Western image of Russia and Putin in recent years has been very negative. President Obama has publicly called Vladimir Putin a “schoolboy who slouches in his chair in the back of the room“ and derided his country as a mere “regional power.”
This begs the question: how Russia could again become a major power after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991? How could Putin do this without an agrarian or consumer revolution and with the massive drop in the price of oil? If Putin is a terrible leader, then how can you explain successful interventions in Georgia (2008), Crimea (2014), Ukraine (2014-2016) and Syria (2015-2016)?
Putin, however, is actually a very shrewd leader with a brilliant Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, who relies on a capable Foreign Ministry. Putin has rebuilt Russia’s military capability by spending $49B a year on security. Russia retains 1,790 strategic nuclear weapons. With over 140 million people and 13 million college graduates, Russia has nearly a million first-class scientists, engineers and technicians, most of whom work for the military.
Many former great powers are now no longer major powers. Japan, which smashed the Russian army in the 1904 Sino-Japanese War, occupied much of China from 1937-1945 and has a four trillion dollar economy is no longer a great power. After its defeat in World War II capped by the American dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and American post-war occupation, Japan has sworn off further intervention in the world and refused to acquire nuclear weapons…
Continue this story at Huff Post
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