Deployment of warships to assist Assad regime lays bare weaknesses in Russian military’s naval aviation and carrier operations
The Russian military hasn’t said that the Kuznetsov is taking part in the assault on Aleppo, though top NATO officials say that is the primary purpose of the deployment... “They are trying to play it both ways,” a Western official said. “On one hand, at the Putin level they have these messages of openness to rapprochement and dialogue and discussion. But…they are in effect taking out insurance in the case the Trump administration continues the course the West has been on vis-à-vis Russian misbehavior.”.. The Russian navy has a chance to “shake the rust out of their experience and equipment, both figuratively and literally,” in the Syria operation, said Mr. Wertheim.There are other benefits for Moscow. “The navy has been showing the flag and getting headlines,” said Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and author who has studied the Russian and Soviet navies. “Deploying the Kuznetsov has increased the navy’s prestige.”.. He added that Russian aviators would maintain combat skills “with great, great difficulty” after the Kuznetsov goes in for an anticipated major overhaul and refurbishment following the Syria operation.
A confrontation with China, and other foreign-policy complications, might force Washington to seek a rapprochement with Russia
Mr. Trump will have to find an accommodation with the Republican Party establishment. His administration’s foreign-policy and defense appointments may well become a bargaining chip in that difficult process. As a result, some very unexpected figures, including outspoken hawks, may be put at the helm of the State Department and the Pentagon.
.. On foreign policy, both Mr. Trump’s campaign and Bernie Sanders’s Democratic primary bid highlighted a renewed American proclivity toward isolationism. Large segments of the American public are tired of endless military campaigns in the Middle East, and weary of the burden of America’s foreign commitments.
.. The American political elite remains almost universally interventionist and supportive of globalization.
.. And Moscow has very little to offer to Washington at the moment. There are few areas for possible cooperation. Even if Mr. Trump does want to improve relations with Russia, he will find out when he moves into the Oval Office that the United States has little to gain from such an improvement.
.. The new president is unlikely to be willing to pay the steep domestic political price, especially since improving relations offers no tangible benefits to America.
.. The basic problems in Russian-American relations stem from Moscow’s fundamental aspiration to return to the global arena as a great power, and even to contemplate integration into the American-led, pro-Western world order only on the condition of being recognized as a great power that dominates most of its former Soviet neighbors.
.. A confrontation with China, and other foreign-policy complications, might force Washington to seek a rapprochement with Russia
How Russia’s lone aircraft carrier will change the fight in Syria
The Kuznetsov, with its ramped flight deck and lack of a catapult system, can’t launch its jet aircraft — a mixture of MiG 29Ks and Su-33s — fully loaded with weapons and fuel, Gorenburg said. But for the Russians, that isn’t nearly as important as their military being able to field carrier-capable aircraft and training pilots in the extremely difficult task of taking off and landing from a floating runway in the middle of the ocean.
.. “This show of force, and great power status, is largely for a domestic audience,”
The Dangers of Donald Trump
In reality, Trump’s election would be a gift to bad cops and riot-ready radicals in equal measure, and his every intervention would pour gasoline on campuses and cities — not least because as soon as any protest movement had a face or leader, Trump would be on cable bellowing ad hominems at them.
.. Putin is more likely to pocket concessions and keep pushing, testing the orange-haired dealmaker at every opportunity and leaving Trump poised, very dangerously, between overreaction and his least-favorite position — looking weak.
.. From the Pacific Rim to the Middle East, revisionist powers will set out to test Trump’s capacity to handle surprise, hostile actors will seek to exploit the undoubted chaos of his White House, and our allies will build American fecklessness into their strategic plans. And again, all of this is likely to happen without Trump doing the wilder things he’s kind-of sort-of pledged to do — demanding tribute from allies, trying to “take the oil,” etc. He need only be himself in order to bring an extended period of risk upon the world.
.. Trump’s foreign policy hazing, his rough introduction to machtpolitik, promises more danger for global stability — still a real and valuable thing, recent crises notwithstanding — than the risks incurred by George W. Bush’s interventionism, Barack Obama’s attempt at offshore balancing, or (yes) Hillary Clinton’s possible exposure of classified material to the Chinese, the Russians and Anthony Weiner’s sexting partners.
.. No mathematical proof can demonstrate that the chance of a solidly-conservative Supreme Court justice isn’t worth a scaled-up risk of great power conflict.
.. But I think that reluctant Trump supporters are overestimating the systemic durability of the American-led order, and underestimating the extent to which a basic level of presidential competence and self-control is itself a matter of life and death — for Americans, and for human beings the world over.