RUSSIAN MIGHT

PEPE ESCOBAR—The Beijing leadership openly asserts that as “the US has adjusted its national security and defense strategies, and adopted unilateral policies” that essentially “undermined global strategic stability.” Vast sectors of the Global South would concur. The counterpart is the evolution of “the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era,” now playing “a significant role in maintaining global strategic stability.”

JEAN PERIER—Even if Ankara chose to purchase Patriot missiles via NATO, upon delivery its armed forces wouldn’t have come into direct control of those systems, as those could only be manned by NATO crews operating on a rotational basis left up to the Pentagon. Turkey has already had this sort of experience with its previous purchases from Washington, and at some point its leadership realized that this arrangement wasn’t ensuring its national security, as it wasn’t designed for this purpose. Essentially, Ankara couldn’t use any of the weapons that it paid for as they could only be used when the Pentagon said so.

ERIC WALBERG—Just how ‘democratic’ Russia is, is debatable but US meddling in Russian elections has been clipped. It reached its apogee in 2011, when McFaul encouraged Clinton to speak out in support of the Russian opposition and meet high profile dissidents. “We are supportive of the rights and aspirations of the Russian people to be able to make progress and realize a better future for themselves.” And when McFaul came to Moscow as the US ambassador in 2011, one of his first actions was to invite the leaders of the various Russian opposition groups to the US embassy to meet with him.

ANDREW KORYBKO—That said, while the arms trade between the two is excellent, Serbia nevertheless cooperates more closely with NATO than Russia ever since entering into the so-called “Partnership for Peace” framework in 2006. Furthermore, there are obvious limitations to what Russia could do to militarily support Serbia in practically any scenario, but the country’s patriotic masses are easily guided by ruling party-controlled media into exaggerating the importance of the Russian-Serbian Strategic Partnership and imagining that Moscow would directly intervene in the event of worsening clashes in Kosovo despite it remaining on the sidelines during the latest ones when even its own UN official there was attacked by the Albanians.