Just when the left intelligencia thought they had found a Manichean struggle they could really get their teeth into Kerry goes swanning into Moscow to exchange high fives with Lavrov, metaphorically speaking, and in the blink of an eye the much-vaunted New Cold War is dead. The conflict with Russia was invaluable in covering the retreat in Syria and Iran: now a bit more rough wooing of China with some gratuitous and utterly vacuous threats thrown in is covering the retreat from Moscow. Obama really wants a close engagement with both Russia and China and the capital inflows and the easing of the military budget which will flow from it, buts wants to make it clear that there will be “consequences” if his overtures are rejected. He also has one eye for the various dead-enders and nostalgics at home, in Wall Street, in the military-industrial complex, the lobbies and, above all ,the media who still haven’t grasped that the unipolar moment has passed. All in all, Obama is playing a masterful game in steering the good ship America and, consequently, the whole of humanity to safer waters, a journey which could culminate in new beginnings and much needed national and global reconstruction.

M.K.Bhadrakumar

Asia Times

14th May, 2015

There is no need to second guess the identity of the third party present in the room in Sochi on Tuesday when the U.S. secretary of state John Kerry met the Russian leaders. Most certainly, if a strong stimulus is to be accounted for as working on the U.S. president Barack Obama’s cerebral mind prompting him to break the ice in the relations with Russia, it is the Sino-Russian entente that has emerged in global politics. See my blog Obama’s overture to Putin has paid off.)

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