Russia and China, spitting in our faces...

This is just a brief note to direct your attention to this important article, a translation taken from here. The gist of it is that Vladimir Putin can gain nothing from direct military intervention in Ukraine, and can gain much from playing the waiting game.

What would happen if Putin invaded?

Against this background, the Americans easily force the signing of their version of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a trade pact, which turns the EU into an appendage of the U.S. economy. Negotiations about the treaty are going on right now and, for the Americans, the entry of Russian troops in Ukraine would be a huge gift. Sanctions against Russia would destroy European business and trade barriers with the U.S. would finish it. What we have at the end: EU in a state as if after a war; the United States, all in white, joyfully absorbing European markets on which they have not and will not have competitors; the Russian Federation - not in the best shape.

Russia would also bear the cost of deNazifying and pacifying Ukraine. Of course, a Russian takeover would make the Nazi faction far more popular. Nightmare City.

But if Russia sits on its hands, it stands to become the leading player in a new gas cartel, which bids fair to become as almost as important as OPEC. Meanwhile, instead of facing Russian troops, Ukrainians will face an even more formidable foe -- "Colonel Hunger."

The Ukrainian economy is finished. Given the disastrous spring sowings, the crops of vegetables destroyed (frozen), lack of credit, problems with gas, the jump in fuel prices, we can safely say that the economy will come as a northern beast, which will be full and fluffy. No one will give money to the junta, not even from the IMF, which promised something around $17 billion (exactly 50% of what Ukraine needs for this year), but built into the contract an "escape clause": if Kiev does not control all the regions, then Kiev is not to receive a cent. Hunger, cold and hyperinflation (caused by the collapse of the hryvnia) will actively work to weaken the junta and correct the minds of the “generous” (shchirykh) Ukrainians: they will surely not come to love Russia, but this is hardly necessary. It is necessary that they begin to remember the Yanukovych period as sweet, unattainable dream.

So time is on Putin's side. He stands a good chance of transforming Russia into the leading member of the new alliances which will reshape the world. China, Iran, India...

All he has to do is sit still, choose his words carefully, and do little. Or nothing.

The neocons, knowing this, will try to tempt him into doing something reckless. A very clever covert operation might do the trick. But what? And where?

Asia. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is trying to talk tough with China -- and the Chinese are treating us with contempt.

And Pentagon supremo Chuck Hagel also blasted Beijing, accusing it of "destabilizing, unilateral actions" in the South China Sea.

But then Lt Gen Wang Guanzhong, the deputy chief of general staff of the PLA, counterpunched in kind, saying Hagel's talk was "full of hegemony, full of words of threat and intimidation" and part of "a provocative challenge against China".

Major General Zhu Chenghu even allowed himself to be condescending (oh, those barbarians ... ); "The Americans are making very, very important strategic mistakes right now ... If you take China as an enemy, China will absolutely become the enemy of the US."

This is from a piece by Pepe Escobar, who sees neocon Robert Kagan (of the Project for a New American Century) as the intellectual architect of Obama's increasingly self-defeating policies (de facto alliances with Nazis! With Al Qaeda!) in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere:

All this is still not enough for the Kagan bunch - the "conceptual" architects of the 9/11 wars, who always wanted Obama to bomb Syria; bomb Iran; start a war with Russia over Crimea; and even, sooner rather than later, bomb China to prevent it from getting back to number one. Hobbesians gone mad - wallowing in their psychotic sense of perennial entitlement - will stop at nothing to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world. It's Exceptionalist Empire with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as global Robocop, or hell.

Moscow and Beijing, to say the least, are not exactly impressed; rather, they detect desperation.

If I had the president's ear, what would I advise? Bow out. Stop playing these bizarre interventionist games. Stop trying to do the Dubya thing in a more efficient way. Instead, try to re-acquire the world's good opinion. Invest in new tech which will recreate our own economy. Nous devons cultiver notre jardin.