putin obama weakness
You might have noticed that immediately following a speech Obama made at the G7 meeting yesterday, virtually every single mainstream news outlet faithfully parroted out the same handpicked one liner: "Obama says Russia 'acting out of weakness'" and Russia is a "regional power". This is revealing on a number of levels.

Any time you see a choreographed media blitz like this you should pay attention. They are attempting to redefine the narrative.

Controlling the narrative is key. In the world of media, politics and public relations, the facts are not nearly as important as the way those facts are interpreted.

The first thing we can gather from Obama's statement, and the way it was promoted by the corporate media, is that they are not at all happy with the fact that Washington's so called "sanctions" on a handful of Russian politicians are being widely interpreted as toothless, or that Putin is being depicted as having outmaneuvered the Obama administration yet again (the first time of course being in the Syrian crisis of 2013). They are attempting to distract the public from their own weakness by projecting it onto Putin.

The second thing we can gather here, is that the corporate media is losing its ability to control the narrative. The media campaign to demonize Putin and to imbue Obama's new threats with gravity over the past week has been frenetic, and yet it utterly failed. Putin's approval rating skyrocketed to its all time high, while Obama's approval rating hit a new all time low. More importantly, they utterly failed to alter the perception that Putin is fundamentally stronger and better at diplomacy than anyone in the Obama administration.

That perception of weakness is dangerous. Especially for an empire that is less and less capable of projecting physical power. Though the United States has used its military and covert operations to bring down non-cooperative governments many times since World War II, most of the time this hasn't been necessary. The U.S. government and its NATO satellites have been running the world like a mafia runs a neighborhood: with a little bit of force and a lot of intimidation. Most of the time just a threat is enough to bend a nation to their will, but that's changing.

What Putin did in the Syrian crisis and again in the Ukrainian crisis was historic; not because of the specifics of either situation, but because for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union a nation has stood up to the U.S. and won. Not once, but twice. Russia set an example that others might copy.


Since their attempts at bringing Russia to heal with threats and petty punishments has failed, they are now in damage control mode. They are attempting to downplay the importance of this showdown in a desperate attempt to save face.

The jab about Russia being a "regional power" is significant as well. This is the precise wording used by Obama's mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski in his analysis of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However Zbigniew himself was the first to say that this "regional power" status hinges directly on Russia's relationship with Ukraine:
"Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state, more likely to be drawn into debilitating conflicts with aroused Central Asians, who would then be resentful of the loss of their recent independence and would be supported by their fellow Islamic states to the south. China would also be likely to oppose any restoration of Russian domination over Central Asia, given its increasing interest in the newly independent states there. However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as its access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia." From "The Grand Chess Board" by Zbigniew Brzezinski


So again, Obama's statement is trying to convince to persuade the rest of the world (or at least the political figureheads) that the game hasn't changed at all, and that the balance of power is still the same as it was back in 1991.

I'm curious as to whether anyone at that summit was actually fooled or whether they just pretended to be for the sake of politeness.