Direct Translation
by Alexander Zapolskis
[Regnum] The closer the date of June 16, 2021 gets, the sharper the intrigue on the content of the talks between the presidents of Russia and the United States in Geneva becomes. On the one hand, there are a great many topics for discussion and all the key ones. On the other hand, Joe Biden in The Washington Post published an article summarizing his position on fiducials, and it almost completely contradicts ours.
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First, the head of the White House immediately drew a clear line: you can be either "with America" or "whoever is not with them is automatically against them." This applies not only to Russia, China or any other foreign countries, the rule also applies to all American partners and allies.
Since Washington considers Russian energy expansion to Europe unacceptable, it means that Berlin should immediately stop the construction of Nord Stream 2 in its waters, pick it up, stand up, shut up and stand still.
No other opinions, especially the economic consequences for European countries, are not only taken into account, it is forbidden to even stutter about them. Democracy comes first. One cannot ask about the discrepancy between these requirements and the American purchases of energy resources in Russia, this is different.
Second, the Russian threat to Europe is not just voiced, it is rigidly postulated. There is a threat, period. Russia can either make excuses or repent. In any case, she is obliged to pay compensation and provide strong guarantees of "termination".
Third, the Russian military invasion of Ukraine is not being questioned. It exists even despite the format of the Minsk-2 agreements. Crimea is occupied, democratic procedures for secession from Ukraine and further on joining the Russian Federation are not considered. Which and which peoples have or do not have rights, only Washington can decide. He is also the world's only arbitrator, defender and guarantor, as well as a prosecutor and executioner.
Fourth, although the United States does not want war in the least, it is forced to respond appropriately to Russia's aggressive behavior. Including repeated attempts at large-scale interference in internal American affairs, including the democratic process and even the presidential elections.
Fifth, the United States and all other "like-minded democracies" are eager to unwaveringly defend "human rights and dignity." The article is silent about who and how these concepts are defined. But the determination to "hold the lines to the last bullet" is vividly emphasized.
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to this as part of his speech at the international economic forum in St. Petersburg:
"We have no disagreements with the United States. They have only one disagreement - they want to hold back our development, they talk about it publicly. Everything else is derived from this position. And the restrictions in the sphere of the economy, and attempts to influence the internal political processes in our country, relying on the forces that they consider to be their own within Russia, this is the whole story."
How so? Whatever question you take, we and the Americans seem to come from different planets, but there are still no disagreements? Or does the Russian president know something that is invisible to the absolute majority of everyone else?
However, it is not so invisible. The President of Russia directly demonstrates understanding of the essence of what is happening. Russian-American relations have collapsed not because Russia is doing something wrong or somehow wrong, although this also has a certain place. They collapsed solely because of the loss of the integrity, consistency and adequacy of American policy itself.
The last point about adequacy is especially important. The United States broke the mechanisms of its dominance not only with Russia; America has similar problems in Central Asia, the Middle East, China, Africa, and even with its own allies in Europe. The American establishment everywhere demonstrates contempt for interests and views other than their own. Moreover, there is no clear unity even within the American establishment itself.
Putin more than transparently hinted at an understanding of how such a thing could happen in America at all. The Russian leader recently at least twice pointed out the similarity of what is happening in the United States today with the events between February and October 1917 in Russia.
We are somehow accustomed to operating with the concept of "democrats" as a designation of something whole, like a nail and water. Does anyone need to specifically explain what water is? Likewise, everyone who rallied in the fight against the usurper Trump was called indiscriminately "democrats."
However, the victory in the elections for the head of the White House in November 2020 turned out to be "that February", upon reaching which now each of the motley crowd of "winners" wants to get their own crown, but not everyone will receive it.
Moreover, many who, even less than half a year ago, considered themselves almost "holding God by the beard," suddenly found themselves in the role of a packing box from a brand new iPhone, that is, on their way to the trash can. The most obvious example of this is BLM. While the "Trump regime" was required to "reel", this muddy mass was in every possible way brought to the fore.
As soon as the "usurper was overthrown," the revolutionary agenda was intercepted by the "right guys", and its former bearers were "asked to move over." Sleepy Joe now speaks the most about the importance of racial equality, and recent street leaders have drastically cut their airtime. And this is in a country where, if you are not on TV, then you do not exist at all.
In other words, the "American liberal revolution" managed to achieve the immediate goal - to liquidate the integrity of the vertical pyramid of state power, but now suddenly faced with a lack of understanding - what to do next. Who is responsible for what? Who and how formulates the consolidated strategy of the country and in general, who determines even the very initial composition and direction of this strategy? American power has become collective, but they themselves do not understand who exactly is included in this collective of managers. Moreover, no one in the world understands this now.
In America, there is a so-called big figure in the face of the largest "digital corporations" (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, the largest media companies), whose business has long gone far beyond the United States. It needs American domination as a whole in order to maintain its claims to world domination of exclusively American standards and approaches, but it is not interested in the world only in the form of a closed American political and economic cluster.
In America, there are transnational financial corporations, in the understanding of which the United States itself is perceived as the same Papuan as any other country in the world. But if the conventional "Microsoft" does not care who pays the rent for the use of its software products and in what currency, then it is critically important for financiers to preserve precisely the dollar dominance in the world economy. It is worth losing it and the planet will go, say, to the yuan, over which these guys no longer have control.
There are energy corporations in America. So far, they are only oil and gas, but they have failed to become the only energy suppliers in the world as a result of the “shale revolution”. And the preservation of traditional trends threatens to lose influence, as the United States is losing political control over the regions with the main reserves of minerals.
It is no longer possible to prevent this. America is forced to gradually leave the Middle East, Africa, and especially the Asia-Pacific region. Thus, the management of energy TNCs is forced to seek and promote all kinds of "new ideas" in the field of energy. First of all, the "green agenda" and "hydrogen energy".
This requires the "American cluster" as quickly as possible, so that, relying on the existing administrative and media resources, the next energy transition can be launched as quickly as possible. All other questions, including "Russian", "Chinese" and even "Iranian", are deeply secondary.
And in America there is also the so-called old money - an elite that has formed over two and a half centuries, starting with the proclamation of US independence in 1776. She is interested not so much in increasing the size of her own capital, which she can do, thanks to deep penetration into all the power mechanisms of the American state, as in instilling an idealistic conviction in the right to rule the world as such.
In 1937, the American economist and sociologist Ferdinand Landberg published the book "60 Families of America", in which he convincingly showed that America certainly stands for democracy and equality of rights, but in reality the country is ruled by a small number of clans, such as the Bushes, Roosevelts, Kennedy , Rockefellers, Kohi, Cuomo or Daly. These people are convinced of the indisputability of their "God-given" right to rule America and the whole world in general, to defend democracy, and in general to determine "who lives and who dies."
For reference. Working-class-born Richard Daly was mayor of the city from 1955 to 1976. Almost by inheritance, his son, also Richard, became the mayor of Chicago. He ran the metropolis from 1989 to 2011, and before that served as the Illinois District Attorney. His brother John heads the city's Democratic Party committee. The third brother, William, served as US Secretary of Commerce in 1997-2000, led Al Gore's presidential campaign, and in 2011-2012 was chief of staff for President Barack Obama.
And this is just the very tip of the iceberg. In reality, the composition of the "collective US supreme council" is not really known. This gives rise to the inconsistency of American public policy and even leads to the fall of elementary performing discipline in the very system of the mechanism of state power in America.
For example, President Biden two months ago publicly voiced an order to Vice President Kamala Harris to deal with the dismantling of the "wall" on the border with Mexico. So what? And nothing. The Vice-President hasn’t even gone there for informational purposes.
But she suddenly began to bend her own separate political line on international issues in Latin America. Like, it is necessary to make sure that these states stop dumping their surplus population beyond their national borders, then the herds of illegal immigrants will not try to break into America at any cost.
It would seem, what side is Russia on? However, if you think about it, it is simply convenient for all of them as an instrument of internal political struggle. In the end, it was possible to tie Trump's hands by hanging Russophobic labels, thereby greatly facilitating his departure from the White House. Now the same method is used in a new round.
That "something needs to be done with Russia" is obvious. It is also clear that America and Moscow are unable to do this "something". From the autumn of last year to the present moment, the United States has exhausted to the bottom the resource of inflating the radicalism of the existential confrontation "with the Evil Empire." Then just start a classic war. But America has a corny lack of troops, military equipment, other resources, and most importantly, willpower and geopolitical desire.
Not only the nation, if necessary, it can still be mobilized through the media, the ruling elite does not want to get into risks of this level. But you can't retreat either. "Compromisers" "for cowardice in the face of the enemy" will be devoured by their own political competitors.
This is where this most fundamental discrepancy between the Russian and American agendas of the upcoming summit in Geneva arises.
We are practitioners. Russia has no doubts that life will continue in any geopolitical scenario. Unless, of course, the world falls into a global exchange of strategic nuclear strikes. Therefore, we are interested in stable understandings of "how we will live further." Naturally, taking into account our geopolitical interests.
Today's "Americans", on the contrary, are abstract theorists. They think they understand how the "world of Narnia" they like should look like, but how to get into this "Marvell universe" from the current "now", they lack even the most rough idea.
And most importantly, they became convinced that their ideas about the outside world, including China and Russia, do not coincide with reality in a very significant way. Russia, under the sanctions, was supposed to collapse at most by the spring of 2016, and despite the unprecedented pressure, it has already managed to complete the construction of one line of Nord Stream 2 and, at most, by mid-August to complete its second line.
The Russians were seriously entrenched in the Middle East and began a confident expansion into Africa. And even in technology, they are no longer "at the very tail of progress." At least in the area of arms - for sure.
Thus, it is unreasonable to expect any specific agreements from the upcoming talks in Geneva, especially a change in the dynamics of Russian-American interstate relations from the current one to a positive one. For this, there are no positive points of contact between the Russian Federation and the United States.
There is only an understanding of two key points. First, both countries are unwilling to bring matters to a global nuclear war. Secondly, behind the talk about saving freedom and democracy, in reality, there is only the question of further dividing Europe into zones of unconditional influence, in which the parties are only able to mark the very "red lines", the violation of which will inevitably lead to a nuclear war.
However, it remains unclear whether it will be possible to convey even this to the American “unknown fathers”. However, most likely, the world will be presented with some progress in the negotiations, since the negative result of the summit is not beneficial to either Moscow or Washington. For now, it is necessary to conclude a temporary "water truce" in order to get time to resolve other equally important issues.
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