CFR Discovers Putin Is Also Flanking Obama in Asia

The establishment is quickly discovering that Vladimir Putin is in the process of outflanking Obama’s war plans in Asia, just as he has in the Mideast. The Council on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs this week released a study warning that the visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Russia last week, and their extensive agreements on joint development projects in Asia, as well as moves to settle the territorial issues which have prevented a formal peace since World War II, has thrown a huge monkey wrench into Obama’s building of an anti-China bloc to militarily challenge China.

Authors Joshua Walker of the German Marshall Fund (and a former State Department officer), and Hidetoshi Azuma of the American Security Project, describe “an emerging geopolitical reality: no Western leader knows quite what to do about Russia as it wields its strategic influence across Eurasia…. Russia, declining as it might be, is yet a serious Eurasian power to be reckoned with. It can still unilaterally shape geopolitical events across the region, including in eastern Ukraine, Syria, and even Northeast Asia, where it has been building almost 2,500 miles of gas pipelines to China. No other Eurasian powers, not even China, have as much sway there.”

They cry out that “the West has essentially treated Russia as a rival European power, largely failing to manage its Eurasian challenges since 2014…. From Serbia to Afghanistan, Russia is using a combination of energy deals, arms supplies, and covert actions to solidify its stakes in Eurasia’s arc of instability.”

Not only is Putin threatening to destroy Washington’s effort to get Japan’s military on the side of the war on China and Russia, but he even has the gall to speak out on Obama’s provocative operations in the South China Sea: “As Beijing’s latest solicitation for Moscow’s support for its South China Sea policies demonstrates, Russia is also emerging as a significant actor in Asian seas, the stability of which is crucial to European economies.”

Europe has been useless, they complain, since “Europe itself is in a severe crisis, and the West’s narrow focus on Ukraine has hindered its efforts to cope with Russia’s Eurasian challenges.”

The CFR duo rather pathetically portray their interest in getting Japan to bring the United States and Russia together — but give it away by claiming that the basis for cooperation is “the rise of China, where Russian and Western interests are aligned.”

As Obama heads to Japan next week, the British Empire is once again running into Putin’s brilliant strategic moves, countering development to Obama’s bloody geopolitics.