Iran Regime: Russia’s and China’s Destabilizer Bot
The dictatorial theocracy of Iran has been a quasi-vassal of larger dictatorships since the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. Today Iran acts in the strategic interests of Russia and China as it seeks membership in their regional organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. From 1997-2006, Russia under Putin was the top heavy conventional weapons supplier to Iran…
Tehran’s and Moscow’s Violations of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea
Setup: Article 2(2) of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea holds that “This Convention shall define and regulate the rights and obligations of the Parties in respect of the use of the Caspian Sea, including its waters, seabed, subsoil, natural resources and the airspace over the Sea.” Article 3(2) holds that…
Collective Action: Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station and Nova Kakhovka Dam
Ask: What new, perhaps non-obvious proactive approaches can be taken to try to reverse weaponization of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station and Ukraine’s hemispherically important Nova Kakhovka Dam by Russia? Fact: The Putin regime’s state terrorist activities against the Nova Kakhovka Dam and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station are a threat to world food supply, and specifically…
From Cluster Munitions to Cluster Neutralizers
Setup: Cluster munition shells made the latest round of U.S. military support to help Ukrainian Armed Forces replenish dwindling artillery shell supplies. For that stopgap purpose, it may be the only substitute the U.S. can now give. To date, Russia has aggressed with cluster and incendiary weapons against Ukrainian defenders and civilians, and Ukraine has…
Observations: Prigozhin, Wagner & Russian Forces
Yevgeny Prigozhin reportedly remains in St. Petersburg, Russia rather than in exile in Belarus as expected after his June 24th “march of justice” on Moscow. Belarusian President Lukashenko publicly speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin has softened toward Prigozhin, perhaps discussing a “new” working relationship. Observations, Thoughts, and Informational Uses Shifting words and actions by…
Assessing Russia’s Ruling Convolutions
Perspective: In an insightful 2016 paper, “A Little Masquerade: Russia’s Evolving Employment of Maskirovka,” Major Morgan Maier, United States Army, wrote: “Russians originally employed maskirovka to create a false reality to achieve surprise and battlefield advantage over adversaries. While surprise remains a significant component of maskirovka, it fails to address Russia’s application of deception in…
Tackling a Big History Lie Fueling Putin’s Xi-Jinping-Aided Aggression
Despite Beijing’s global posturing in support of national sovereignty it uses sleight of hand to export “dual use” technology (civilian and military) to supply Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine’s sovereignty. Yet Ukraine’s sovereignty is a matter of widespread international recognition. China’s strategy seems simple: tax Ukraine and the West to the point that it…
Russia’s Gray Warfare in Space Requires Gray Warfare Response
Reportedly, Russia put what was ostensibly a mobile satellite repair vehicle into Earth’s orbit to move among and service Russian satellites. In time, it showed its later purpose as a fragmentation shell with plasma boosters to put U.S. and other satellites in harm’s way of its debris stream. According to a Gizmodo report, shared with commentary…
Designate Wagner Group and Putin Regime as a Transnational Terrorist Joint Venture in Ukraine
Ukraine and similarly situated independent states on Russia’s periphery suffer under the U.N. fiction that international humanitarian law (law of war or IHL) governs to protect them from a U.N.S.C. veto-wielding Russia while it is under the sway of Putin’s expansionist regime. It does not. The buck has never stopped on a despotic Russian veto…
China’s Ukraine Issues
Xi Jinping’s China (PRC) has a problem in Russia’s past recognition of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty under the Yeltsin Administration, and in Russia’s Putin-era abrogation of the Budapest Memorandum. It was the Yeltsin Administration foreign policy that initially joined Russia to the core treaty of the Shanghai Five in 1996, later renamed the Shanghai Cooperation…