Via the Saker. The Saker is right. If Strobe Talbott says it looks like there is going to be a major Wahhabi offensive in Chechnya next year, what he means by that is he is going to try to get one started. The role of the US in the Chechen insurgency is hard to figure, but it has been well known for a long time that the neocons have always supported the Chechens against Russia because there is almost nothing the neocons hate more than Russia. Nevertheless, the precise role of the US, particularly the CIA, in the Chechen insurgency is very much clouded in doubt.
Oh how much they hate and fear Russia and Putin
A (well anonymized) anonymous reader sent me a very interesting link today. It is an opinion piece by Strobe Talbott for Reuters entitled “In 2015, Vladimir Putin may witness his empire’s death knell” in which Talbott predicts that:
The year ahead could see the outbreak of the third Chechen war, which, in turn, could be the death knell of the Russian Federation in its current borders. (…) For the past five years, the situation has been more or less quiescent, though neighboring republics have been rocked by violence. The lull in Chechnya, however, ended in early December with a series of bloody incidents in the Chechen capital of Grozny.
The group behind the resurgence of unrest is advocating a “Caucasus Caliphate,” with ties to al Qaeda and, more recently, Islamic State. There is at least an indirect tie between outside support for Islamic radicalism in the Caucasus and Putin’s sponsorship of Russian secessionism in eastern Ukraine. By proclaiming ethnicity and religion as the basis for Russian statehood and aggression against its neighbors, Putin is inadvertently stoking the forces of secessionism in those parts of Russia that are historically and culturally Islamic.
Needless to say, Talbott, himself a former Deputy Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral, married to Brooke Shearer, also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior aide to Hillary Clinton with links to banks Commission, is the archetypal US “Deep-Stater”. He is also considered a “Russia specialist” which, in Foggy Bottom parlance means a rabid Russophobe. A person like Talbott is very much “plugging in” the US Deep State and if he says that next year there will be an insurgency in Chechnya, we can be darn sure that the US will try to create one.
Of course, this does not at all mean that they will succeed.
In fact, I am quite sure that there is zero chance of overthrowing Kadyrov, never mind of Chechnya breaking away from Russia. If only because there is overwhelming evidence that the Chechen people want nothing to do with Wahhabi terrorists and that they in fact form a very strong power base for Putin.
Not only that, but Russia truly has formidable military capabilities in and around Chechnya. They keep a low profile and do not get involved in law enforcement or counter-insurgency operations, but only because the Chechens handle these tasks superbly. But make no mistake, Russia can flush at least 100’000 highly trained, motivated and superbly equipped men into Chechnya drawn from the 58th Army of course, but also from various special forces, Internal Ministry and State Security troops.
The weak link in the Russian Caucasus is in Dagestan and the border with nearby Georgia from which attacks could come. Could the US at the very least rekindle the Wahhabi insurgency (possibly supported by Nazi units from the Ukraine)? Yes, of course. But their chances to succeed in anything more than one or several truly ugly terrorist attacks are very, very slim.
I think that Talbott probably understands that, but he just cannot help by daydream out loud being, as he no doubt is, aware that if Russia prevails in her defense against the AngloZionist Empire this will mean the end for the latter.
The US deep state is simply saturated with Russophobia, phobia in both the sense of “hate” and “fear”, and so it should. Just like all the other western invaders of Russia in the past, the AngloZionist Empire has completely cornered the Russian Bear which now has to fight for its very survival. Neither side will back down and only one will prevail. And my money is not on the US, neither is Talbott’s, at least now deep down. He must realize that the writing is on the wall. Hence the hate and the fear.
