MORE than a year after America and its allies set out to punish the Kremlin for backing rebels in Ukraine and annexing Crimea, Russia is finding new friends and dealing with the West from a position of growing strength. At any rate, that is the message that Vladimir Putin has been delivering to his own people and anybody else who will listen.
In his latest flexing of muscles, the president set out a naval doctrine on July 26th which aspires to challenge the Atlantic alliance in all its areas of operation, in reply to NATO’s “unacceptable” plans to move some forces close to Russia and expand its global reach. He wants an ocean-going navy, especially active in the Arctic and the Atlantic, to replace a fleet whose aging ships mostly hug the coast.
This capped a month of diplomatic showmanship, in which the Russian city of Ufa, on the boundary between Europe and Asia, hosted summits of two organisations which aspire to challenge America’s global leadership. One is a mainly economic club known as the BRICS (including Brazil, India, China and South Africa); the other is the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), focused on defence…
