Alexander Golts: “The world is becoming pre-war”

“Of course, we can still argue for several months about whether it would be correct to call the current confrontation between Moscow and the West a new Cold War. We can generally hope for a miracle that will suddenly happen in a week at the G20 summit in Hamburg. But how will Putin manage to charm another master The White House! And Donald Trump, like George Bush, will see the soul of Vladimir Putin,” writes the editor-in-chief of the Daily Journal .

“However, if you do not hide behind the need to search for new terms and do not engage in theorizing about the prospects for cooperation, it becomes obvious: with each new week our world is becoming more and more pre-war. And the outgoing week, alas, is no exception. It began with the White House saying , which has information about a new chemical attack being prepared by the Assad regime, and warned that if the Syrian president decides on another “mass murder using chemical weapons,” he will pay a “heavy price” for it. Then came the CNN news that the Navy group. led by the aircraft carrier George W. Bush prepared for a new strike on the Shayrat air base.

"U.S. and Russian forces may increasingly clash with each other around the world." These are the words from the foreword by the head of American military intelligence, Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, to his department's report released this week entitled "Russian Military Power. An Army to Support Great Power Aspirations."

“Two points are important in this document. First of all, the fact that its authors do not hide the genetic connection of the report with those yearbooks that have been published since 1981 under the title “Soviet Military Power” (in response, the USSR published colorful brochures “Where does the threat to peace come from? "). Yes, the current American report does not say that Russia is a threat. It talks about the “challenge” that it poses. But the head of military intelligence, and this is the second important point, is quite frank in describing this very “challenge”: “The seizure of the Crimean peninsula, destabilizing actions in Eastern Ukraine, intervention on the side of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the formation of an information environment to serve its interests all pose a serious challenge to the United States.”

“It’s time to talk about resuming cooperation, isn’t it? Especially if we keep in mind the main sensation of the week - the investigation published in the Washington Post. According to information collected by journalists, back in the summer of 2016, Barack Obama received reliable intelligence information that Putin personally ordered interference in the US presidential election. The main response was the introduction of some special code into Russian computer networks in order to send a clear signal to domestic intelligence agencies: “we can cause damage.”

The warning had an effect - attempts to intervene stopped. But Obama ordered the introduction of "cyber bombs" into Russian networks on a permanent basis in order to strike "where and when we deem it necessary." If all this is true, the meeting with Trump is unlikely to be a triumph for Putin..."