US Republican Senator John McCain has conceded Russia is a key player in the Middle East due to efforts of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“He’s played a very weak hand in the most clever fashion,” McCain said in an interview with MSNBC, in reference to Russia now being a major player in the Middle East despite having a smaller economy.
He regretted the US was not leading the new effort to relaunch intra-Syrian talks that will get underway in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana on January 23.
"There’s nothing more significant than the Russians, the Iranians and the Turks inviting the US to come to a peace conference. The US isn’t leading, the US isn’t even part of it but they’re ‘being invited.’ How far we have come," he concluded.
The director of the Roosevelt Fund of Study of the US at Moscow State University, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Yuri Rogulyov, speaking with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that McCain's words were primarily aimed at debunking the foreign policy of the outgoing President Barack Obama, as McCain has always been one of his main critics.
"Indeed, one can agree with McCain that the United States, at least, has lost the initiative and a leading position in the Middle East. But there is the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are US positions in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and the senator's statement that the US has disappeared from the Middle East and does not play any role anymore, is an exaggeration, of course, but a certain loss of initiative is taking place," Yuri Rogulyov said.
Speaking about what might follow this statement from the US authorities, the expert recalled that the president-elect Donald Trump maintains an isolationist stance. "He believes that the US must first pay attention to what is happening in its own country. Of course, the problem is that the US sticks its big nose almost everywhere, this is evidenced by 800 US military bases," the analyst warned.
"Therefore, the President will be forced to somehow coordinate his goals with a reality in US politics. And the reality is the desire for global domination," the director of the Roosevelt Fund of Study of the US at Moscow State University concluded.
