Dear CCI Friends,
We end 2020 with a bleak warning from India’s most seasoned diplomat and journalist, M.K. Bhadrakumar. I have followed his insightful articles on U.S.-Russia issues for over two decades. He covers many countries, but not often about the U.S. and its relations with Russia. When he does, he’s known for accurate assessments.
His alarming piece below comes in the wake of circumstances that could ignite the “Last War on Planet Earth”. Our U.S. leaders, particularly Joe Biden and his new appointees, encourage unthinking Americans toward “us vs. them” mentality instead of building constructive interactions and diplomacy. This is dangerous between any two nations, particularly the two with the most nuclear weapons on our planet.
President Putin threw down the gauntlet this past week! He is through “playing nice”. With NATO missiles intentionally landing near Russia’s borders, followed by the United States’ John McCain battleship being sent into Russian waters, we can expect that Russia won’t tolerate more such actions without responding in kind.
Without treaties and with no diplomacy, Putin is naturally concerned about a first strike on Russia. He warned days ago that any such encounter would bring about the full wrath of nuclear weapons on America, saying, “Why would we be interested in a world without Russia?” We had better pray that no accidents happen. Russian missiles at Mach 20 speeds couldn’t be called back.
Why in God’s name (as my Kentucky father would say) would our country play Russian roulette with this nation when we know how they have obliterated intruders on Russia’s soil in the past? Ask Napoleon and Hitler.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
US risks confrontation with Russia
December 27, 2020
By M. K. Bhadrakumar
The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov remarked last week that Moscow expects nothing good in relations with a “deeply hostile” US under the incoming administration of Joe Biden. He further said in an interview with the Interfax published Wednesday, “We are heading from bad to worse. The next US president has been left with a bad legacy and it will take a long time for him to sort this out.”
Ryabkov disclosed that Moscow hasn’t had any contacts with Biden’s transition team “and we are not going to do this. In the end, it’s up to the Americans to decide what, when and how to make our bilateral relations.” He didn’t rule out a “selective dialogue” with the new administration, but estimated that “We definitely don’t expect anything good.”
For, Ryabkov concluded, it would be strange to expect better ties “from people who, many of them, have spent their careers engaging in Russophobia and throwing mud at my country.” Ryabkov oversees Russia-US relations in the Foreign Ministry and the plain-speaking was intended to convey to the incoming Biden administration that Moscow is in no mood to surrender and has the capability to take actions that adversely affected US security.