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Vice President Joe Biden has offered his
sage advice for the next president on how to conduct relations with Moscow. In his essay, published by
Foreign Affairs, the vice president suggested that the next president should
combine "deterrence" and "tactical cooperation." Naturally, Russian analysts have something to say about Biden's recommendations.
In his
essay, which offers recommendations on how the Washington might try and maintain its global hegemonic status, the vice president warned that
"in nearly every part of the world, the United States contends with regional powers that have an enormous capacity to contribute to the international order - or to undermine it." Accordingly, he added, "much will rest on how America chooses to lead."
Specifically as far as Russia is concerned, Biden wrote that the US must "continue to pursue a policy that combines the urgent need for deterrence, on the one hand, with the prudent pursuit of cooperation and strategic stability, on the other."
Reconstituting the US claim that Crimea's vote to rejoin Russia was actually an 'illegal annexation' by Moscow, and accusing Russia of "continued aggression in eastern Ukraine," Biden argued that these actions
"violate foundational principles of the post-Cold War order: sovereignty and the inviolability of borders in Europe." Accordingly, he noted, "we have rallied our allies in Europe and elsewhere to impose real costs on Moscow, making clear that this
pressure will continue until Russia upholds its commitments under the agreements reached in Minsk aimed at ending the conflict."
Comment: Copy of letter to Obama from 15 Aleppo doctors go here. Besides the inability to verify some of the undersigned (printed) as actual doctors, note the language and message, the passioned pleas and descriptive passages, the command of statistics. Quite a beautifully written and instructive letter for a bunch of MDs overwhelmed with hundreds of casualties from deadly bombing raids and not enough supplies, equipment or manpower to go around. There are no actual signatures, no letterhead, no email headings -- nothing to indicate where this was written or by whom. And, how would these doctors know what either Russia or the Syrian regime is targeting while performing medical services to the overflow of patients? Given the immediate publicity and propaganda factor, this letter demands a closer look.
See also: Western corporate media 'disappears' over 1.5 million Syrians and 4,000 doctors