In what seems a very innocuous statement, the US and Russia issued a joint commemoration this weekend of the 1945 meeting of US and Russian troops on the Elbe River, saying it showed the nations “overcoming their differences in pursuit of a greater cause.”
The intention is to liken the common enemy, Nazi Germany in 1945, to the current foe of the coronavirus pandemic, and suggest that the US and Russia could once again put aside differences to work together in this new crisis.
But because this is 2020, and the statement involves Russia, it necessarily became a political row almost immediately, with the statement panned both by President Trump’s political rivals as a sign of his being too close to Russia, and by anti-Russia hawks who see this as Vladimir Putin trying to trick the US in some way into being less hostile.
“I am sure this was a Russian initiative,” said former official Angela Stent, while Rep. Eliott Engel (D-NY) chalked it up to Trump’s “bizarre infatuation with Russia’s autocratic leader” and said he was “playing into Putin’s hands.”
Yet the coronavirus really is an opportunity for nations to put differences aside to address mutual threats. Everywhere else in the world such initiatives are being put forward, with the UN even calling for a global ceasefire to address the pandemic. It’s only natural for the US and Russia to also address that possibility.
And typical grousing about that notwithstanding, a rapprochement between the US and Russia to focus on coronavirus would only be a good thing, bringing the world’s two biggest nuclear powers away from tensions and seeing if there are ways to cooperate.
It is also noteworthy that the US and Russia are the two major parties to resist the UN call for a global ceasefire for the pandemic, but may still find some common ground with one another. This may suggest that the entire call for unity may not be lost on them, even if it takes some outside their comfort zone.
States put aside fundamental differences in a common purpose, as did the West and the USSR in world war two, because it serves their core interests to do so. Today governments can find reason for unity against the Coronavirus. But this pandemic, like all of them, will pass. Afterwards: Washington and Moscow will still have the dangerous challenge of preventing their core interests clashing. History tells us interests lead nations into war, too often the wars they need to avoid.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Yeas interests lead nations into war but only when they believe that thy can win.
and they convince themselves they can, when they can’t
You have a real valid point here, Peter. Indeed, states put aside fundamental differences in a common purpose, as did the West and the USSR during WWII, because it served their core interests to do it. Today states can find reason for unity against the Coronavirus. However – as you rightly said – this pandemic, like all of them, will pass. Afterwards: Washington and Moscow will still have the dangerous challenge of preventing their core interests clashing. I fully agree here .. History does tell us interests lead nations into war – too often the wars they truly need to avoid.
The “core interest” of the US is to be able to tell every other country what it can and can’t do, and if they refuse to bow down to the US they get sanctioned, bombed or their leaders assassinated. I don’t see Russia doing that. So how could their “core interests” be clashing?
The core interests of imperial states, as in the First World War and throughout history, clash: that is why they eventually go to war.
Obviously you are too illiterate to understand disinformation…
Even without the virus pandemic that meeting still symbolizes the saving of my life by allied soldiers including Soviet soldiers. I rarely write the following. To h*ll with the anti’s.
The Dems stand for NeoLiberalism and McCarthy style Russophobia.
And so do the Republicans.
The Dems startet the Russia/Putin did it hoax, Russiagate and the Russophobia, to cover their defeat.
The Dems are as corrupt and warmongers as the Republicans.
A 2 headed snake.
Russia is the Washington establishment’s default boogie-man.
They prefer heightened tensions over common sense,
hoping to damage OrangManBad.
And their cheerleading MSM sycophants
enthusiastically promote it.
Russia is just a convenient distraction,
taking the focus off their financial benefactors and valid existential threat, the ChiComs.
The ChiComs don’t have a large amphibious Navy to invade us!
With their virus technology and
the willing assistance of Wall St. sellouts
that’s more than enough for the task.
An amphibious Navy is so last century.
Well by that standard, we are a bigger threat to the world.
The Wuhan virus is from China,
they released it;
Wall St. not “we”, didn’t care because their profits are just too damned big,
to care.
So if you think “we” are the bigger threat “by that standard” only,
please explain.
You said China was an existential threat to the United States. Explain that one. We are far more of a threat to China than they are to us, seeing we have the military forces in that part of the world; they don’t have military forces arrayed against us.
If viruses, are their weapon of choice,
military forces don’t matter all that much.
but they are still not an existential threat to us, because we have bio weapons too.
They used their bio-weapon and
Wall St. is on their team.
So if you are OK with submitting to their absolute rule,
I guess it’s no big deal, to you.
Most of the rest of us oppose slavery.
There is absolutely no proof they used your “bio weapon”, and even the official US government doesn’t say that, so where are you coming up with that. I would be just as easily correct, if I said, the Swine Flu and the Avian flu were biological weapons that somehow only seemed to make China kill of their chickens and pigs. I would be just as correct as you in your theories as saying the Wuhan Military Games that saw 130 countries participate and over 300 US military personnel going there, just might have had something to do with the virus.
Knowing you have a bio-weapon on the loose,
sealing it off to protect your country and
allowing it to spread internationally, is a crime.
Lawsuits will follow.
You mean the bio weapon that was unleashed on China by someone in our 300 strong military team, or some patsy military personnel from a 3rd country of the 130 countries that participated in the Wuhan Military Games, in Oct 2019? That bio weapon? Quite the pattern isn’t it? Avian flu – China forced to kill all their chickens. Swine flu – China forced to kill all their hogs.
LOL, WHOA!
I don’t attempt conversation or debate with the insane, adios Wells.
Just using your same type of idiocy as a counter to your idiotic musings.
You are either crazy or
work for the ChiCom’s, either way this is a waste of time.
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-our-coronavirus-catastrophe-as-biowarfare-blowback/
Is the world going to sue the US?
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/04/07/g7-nations-should-sue-communist-china-for-4-trillion-over-coronavirus-malfeasance-report-says-n384768
The”world” wants to sue China,
if the”world” wanted to sue the US,
then yes they should.
Sure – “the world”, just like, “It’s not us, it’s the ‘world’ against Saddam Hussein
As if we’d pay anything
You work for the Empire Builders, Inc?
You work for Uygur persecutors?
Uygur? What is that? You work for the Palestinian Persecutors.
You don’t know, fvcking amazing!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/China_hidden_camps
Oh sure, everyone I know of who ever visited China was amazed at their prosperity where the cities “work”, without human feces and needles, and homeless on the streets. Just because YOU don’t like their challenge to our hegemony doesn’t make them an existential threat, and what happened to all the other existential threat(s) we always have to have to excuse the vast military spending we put up with, like Noriega, Saddam, Kim, Milosevic (the new Hitler), and Putin etc., ad nauseum. Pathetic that we have military forces all over the globe and bomb countries at will, while you throw stones at every other phony reason to keep the MIC humming, while our infrastructure rots. We bomb, China builds in other nations. We rebuild in other nations what we bombed and the contractors and the supporters of the warfare state keep raking in the profits. Furthermore, President Trump was referring to Asian countries and China when he said their infrastructure makes ours look Third World.
Off topic, China is libel, there will be an accounting.
If they have absolute rule, have you began your Mandarin lessons so you’re not left behind?
In China they do, unlike you, I would resist it coming here.
Sure and we used our nuclear-weapon and bombed NY just before or after we hit Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Off topic, your contrived historical rants are irrelevant.
Not off topic, at all. China was as much a victim of your idiotic thesis as any other nation.
Actually the US is an existential threat to the entire world, not just to China. But they’ve got to keep those dollars rolling in to the military-industrial complex no matter how much death and misery they cause around the world.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/00796a3d89789bfafee2f8ce4379b12ff90f71983dfa55eeb5b8eb7fe12ca1e6.png
I voted for Perot.
“please explain”
Sure: You’re one of the plurality or majority of Americans who can be easily panicked/deranged simply by being told a threat exists, whether there’s any credible reason to believe one actually does or not.
Glad to be of help.
Well thank you for your opinion. China is legally liable and their will be legal action taken by a group of nations harmed by their maleficence.
Then will will know whether “there’s a credible reason to believe one actually does or not”. Stay tuned, it’s only the beginning.
As a legal expert, you’re on par with Saddam Hussein as a military expert.
Countries will sue, not war, it’s the civilized dispute resolution vehicle.
Count on it.
Oh, there will certainly be lawsuits.
And, just as the US regime does, the Chinese regime will blow them off as bullshit and warn that any attempts to enforce verdicts will result in sanctions.
And that will be the end of that.
Ridiculous,
a majority of nations will file in world court for compensation,
China standing alone,
with assets all over the globe,
hanging out there, that Belt and Road Initiative indebted nations BS, and over a $ trillions in US securities
all sitting there for the judgement award to be—-just taken.
It will happen.
Maybe the “nations of the world” should seek reparations for the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that began in the US and was transported to Europe by our Expeditionary Forces?
And if that happens, China will, at a bare minimum, reciprocally seize assets.
Which is why it won’t happen.
Yes, several regimes are throwing “blame China” temper tantrums right now because they know “Rile Up the Rubes” is a great way to distract attention from their own failures. But not many regimes are stupid enough to push it to a real confrontation.
China has worldwide assets, more than most other countries.
A class action suit by a number of countries would legally support a demand for restitution and in lieu of that, seizure of assets.
China would be standing alone.
Supply chain dominance ending,
manufacturing moving out to other cheaper labor locations
(Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia etc.)
and domestic unrest boiling over at the regimes lose of capital, investments and profits.
China is not in a strong position here, and injured nations are pizzed.
Earlier you mention “sanctions” imposed by China?
China needs the world,
the world does not need China.
If they lose the US, EU, Pacific markets,
they will pay the price of numerous “Hong Kongs” erupting over the regimes failures.
China can’t produce it’s own food or energy.
They are short on “friends”.
So that’s the reason for us sticking our nose into the South China Sea? To be able to stop China’s oil lifeline? Of course that was obvious all along.
International waters means “international”, get real.
Exactly – it doesn’t mean we police the world.
One man’s sailing, another man’s policing.
Nobody was arrested, everybody can sail in international waters.
Does China have any standing to deny sailing in international waters?
China is in an incredibly strong position here, starting with the fact that no, the pandemic is not their fault, proceeding through the fact that the World Court gives “advisory opinions” that can only be appealed to the Security Council — a body China has veto power on — for actual enforcement, and ending with the fact that while they have assets all over the world, the world also has assets in China.
How many times have you fallen for the old “the word gullible is written on the ceiling” scam?
The majority of countries on the planet have suffered sever economic, health and death damages because China purposely choose to hide the facts (still do) about the virus and purposely facilitated it’s spread globally.
They are clearly liable.
Further they hold a majority of world debt, with their Belt and Road Initiative and US Bonds. A judgement against them would leave them
absolutely ALONE re restitution.
A duly constituted international tribunal could (should) award damage payments cancelling debts, nullifying bond payments and
forfeiture of some industrial sites. Whatever assets China would seize inside their country could be added to compensations of injured parties.
China—more than anybody else, needs markets for their goods.
If the world doesn’t hold China accountable, the same kind of thing will happen again.
The decision to sue isn’t elective, it is required.
Welcome to the new Cold War.
A New Cold War is certainly possible.
It’s also elective, not required.
And idiotic beyond belief.
Does China bear any responsibility
for the damage done by this pandemic?
“China” is a polygon on a map.
The regime that rules that polygon, aka the Chinese Communist Party, presumably bears a little bit of responsibility.
To wit, the Chinese regime lied about the extent and severity of the pandemic within the polygon.
And other regimes — regimes which have known for 70 years that Chicom leaders are lying sacks of shit, and which have had decades to prepare for such a pandemic and have only themselves to blame for not doing so — find it convenient to be lying sacks of shit too, so as to maximize that blame and minimize their own.
All of which is neither here nor there, because we’re talking about realpolitik. Which is:
No, the Chinese regime isn’t going to pay “damages” to those other regimes. And those other regimes know it. But the US regime knows it can use the matter to whip rubes like you into a lather so that you aren’t paying attention to ITS defects.
We will see,
I believe an attempt will be made, which will be rebuffed by China.
Then judgements against China will take place in the form of renouncing repayments of debts.
Which will precipitate the next Cold War.
Which is fine with me.
The ChiComs have been responsible for SARS, H1N1 and now this.
If the world does not hold them accountable, we will get much more of the same.
Which is considerably more realpolitik than
sheepishly looking the other way,
knowing full well, you’re going to once again,
get your teeth knocked in.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/china-should-be-sued-for-6-5-trillion-for-coronavirus-damages-says-top-uk-think-tank-20200405-p54h5b.html
If China surpasses us economically, that is not an “existential threat”.
Combined with their biological warfare and resulting collapse of free markets here and elsewhere,
common sense would conclude that they are.
First it has to be proven that they have a biological warfare capability. I doubt we would have funded their Wuhan Research Lab to unleash bio weapons not only on us, but on the world. There’s no proof whatsoever that this isn’t just a natural mutation of a virus. Furthermore, their economic system is capitalist and if they are doing a better job at capitalism, that isn’t an existential threat to us, anymore than our near dominance until recently of the world’s economy was a threat to any other country.
Anyway nice having a good civil discussion with you stokr. Have a good evening.
Their economic system is capitalist,
their political system is authoritarian.
There social compact is:
they allow business and profits,
if the people submit to authoritarian rule.
It’s not like the folks can just vote the Commie Party out, Wells.
This pretty basic stuff Wells, have you been paying attention, at all?
But China is still not an existential threat to us, even though now you appear to indicate their authoritarian system is. What does their internal form of governance have to do with you or us, Stokr?
They just took down the world economy.
They sealed off Wuhan when the virus broke out, at the same time, facilitated international travel from Wuhan.
They knew what they were doing.
And there would have been the usual suspects in the liberal interventionist/neocon warmonger ranks stating “That’s an Act of War, they are stopping all international flights and holding our citizens hostage.” Furthermore, I don’t know of any of our airline carriers that fly into or out of Wuhan.
When has Russia ever indicated that it wanted to invade the US with a large amphibious navy? Never. That’s just a story told the the American people so they’ll put up with their government spending almost a trillion dollars a year on “defense”.
Probably the ignorant US public did not realize that the USSR was actually their ally in WW2 and the country that actually did the most to defeat Nazism.
The military-industrial complex has to have an enemy, otherwise the profits wouldn’t keep rolling in. Would Americans put up with eating from food banks and going without healthcare so their government can spend $732 billion on “defense” if there wasn’t a trumped-up enemy lurking around every corner? No, I don’t think they would so they have to keep convincing them.
Time for the US to grow up and act like a country that cares for it’s people and respects other countries and their citizens even if they aren’t in the Wall St neo-libral crap style of living.
There are not words sufficient to describe such moronic hate and fear mongering.
Maybe they just agree on blowing up poor people. I know that was the case with Stalin, Churchill, and FDR.