"We are ready to welcome the constructive role of Russia in the struggle against Islamic State. But so far we have not seen anything like this,’’ the State Department spokesman Mark Toner said yesterday, commenting on Vladimir Putin's statement that Russia is ready to cooperate with the United States in Syria, even despite the fact that Washington's actions in this country violate international law.
Associate Professor of the Department of International Security of the Faculty of World Politics of the Moscow State University, Alexei Fenenko, believes that Russia is the enemy of nature for the United States. In support of its point of view, the expert cited three reasons for this.
The first reason. "we are the only country in the world that can technically destroy them. We are the only country that has nuclear capabilities, which are comparable with their. The fact that there is someone in the world who can destroy you, it is already limiting your leadership, " Fenenko says.
Reason Two: "we are the only country in the world that has military industrial complex, which is comparable with their, and which has the ability to manufacture conventional weapons. Neither China nor India so far can develop or produce weapons of the new quality. They rely on our military-industrial complex. In other words, Americans, no matter how much they repeat mantra about the weakness of Russian economy, are well aware that something alternative can only be crated based on the Russian military-industrial complex and scientific potential", the expert says.
Reason Three: "we are the only country in the world that has range of fundamental sciences, which is alternative to the United States. Hence the ability to modernize our military potential.. In China, India, Japan there is a big problem even in the basic sciences, " Fenenko said.
Talking about the modern Russian-American relations, the expert said that they roll downhill in the last 20 years: "Look at the last three cases: Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. In each of these cases we see a very low level for the use of force in Russian-American relations. In Soviet-American relations, in spite of the Cold War, such thing did not happen since the war in Korea. We tried to demonstrably not to use force before each other's nose. We tried to not carry our demonstrations of power directly under the nose of each other "
Georgia. "You can take for granted or not that the Americans wanted to intervene in the conflict, but nevertheless, when we were at war with Georgia, the Americans demonstratively threw Georgian troops from Iraq almost to the front, and sent military ships to the Black sea within the distance of missile shots of our ships. Nothing like this happened since the war in Korea", Fenenko says.
Ukraine. "Once again, let's remember Crimea. How we set 'Bastion' systems on high alert, our overflights over the US ships, all their ideas to supply weapons and advisers to Ukraine,’’ the expert said
Syria. "Again, in parallel with each other we carry out two military operations in close proximity. The Americans bombed ISIS since August of the last year, now we carry out the operation in the same area, demonstrate our air strength, " Fenenko said.
According to him, "that the level of the use of force in our bilateral relations inreases, and we have not worked out a safety code of behavior, how should we behave in the event of a conflict with third countries. We have not defined and we do not have the safety mechanisms that existed during the Cold War. That was an attempt to develop it on the European security during the restart period. Create some insurances in this area, at least. These insurances collapsed at the Munich Conference in 2012. 5-7 years were spent on nothing. And the main result is that our agenda with the Americans is still negative. This agenda is, roughly speaking, how should we not fight each other. How can we avoid entering into direct military contact, conflict with each othert. We do not have talks on what we can really do together. There were attempts during restarting to talk about integration in the Pacific Ocean, in Asia, but in my opinion they also, in general, have not resulted in anything yet. "
