The Eye of Sauron: The US Democratic Party in search of an enemy

On December 7, 2021, negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden may take place.

A couple of months before the previous talks between the two leaders in Geneva, in April, material was prepared on the prospects of US-Russian relations. Now it becomes quite obvious that the trends described then are becoming today's reality, but since that moment there have been a number of fundamental changes that change the dynamics of the situation.

Based on the history of the US-Russian relations of the Obama-Clinton team, which stood behind the new US President Joe Biden and the actions of the deep state behind Donald Trump during his reign, the previous article concluded:

"Unlike the Republican Party, the US Democratic Party once again puts the ideological component at the head of international relations. Through Biden, the battle between autocracy and democracy in the world has already been proclaimed. Also, comparing Xi Jinping with Putin, Biden stated their belief that ‘autocracy is capable of what democracy is incapable of in an ever-complicated world’."

Again, the struggle of if not ideological, then political models comes to the fore, because the example of the success of the model draws other states with their resources to it, and such a loss puts an end to the process of globalisation launched by the West.

The competition of models prevents the ruling elite of the United States from observing the conditions of the "Kissinger triangle", where US relations with Russia or China should be better than between them. They put Xi Jinping and Putin on the same scale with their own policies.

Contrary to the logic of the "Truel" from game theory, the United States is going to confront Russia by inertia. This is due to the fact that this topic has long been developed by American elites and in the American media. In addition, the United States does not have geo-economic dependence on Russia, unlike close economic ties with China.

Describing the current situation, of course, it is impossible not to take into account the results of the June summit of Putin and Biden in Geneva, where the parties outlined their main concerns and negotiations began on strategic stability and in the field of cybersecurity, that is, in those areas where the United States does not have an overwhelming advantage.

However, so far we have not seen concrete results of these negotiations. At the same time, the State Duma elections and the "cleansing" of some of the most radical elements of the pro-Western opposition took place without the active information pressure of the Western media that could have been.

Again, we are well aware that the situation with the seized diplomatic property has not changed. Moreover, due to the fact that the American side does not extend visas to Russian diplomats, 27 people will leave the embassy in the United States at the end of January.

"There is no progress in bilateral relations, everything is permeated with Russophobia," said Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov. Visas to the United States are no longer issued to Russian citizens on the territory of the Russian Federation at all.

The Council of Organisations of Russian Compatriots in the United States was forced to suspend its work due to the FBI investigation. The FBI conducts searches and interrogations of members of the organisation. Officially, no one comments on what is happening, but the BBC indicates that the investigation may be related to the storming of the Capitol on January 6.

In the foreign policy field, Joe Biden was clearly upset that the Russian president did not fly to the climate conference in Glasgow, which, in fact, was a concept under which the United States wants to unite the whole world, for the subsequent economic reset within the framework of "green technologies". The conference ended in failure, which partially affected Joe Biden's international credibility, and this is already against the backdrop of the unsuccessful withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and difficulties with France due to the AUKUS alliance.

However, in my opinion, the domestic political situation in the United States is playing an increasingly important role in US-Russian relations. Joe Biden's approval rating has collapsed faster than any other US president since World War II. Americans, accustomed to abundance, face a shortage of some consumer goods. 45% of Americans report financial difficulties due to rising prices due to accelerated inflation, Gallup reports.

In such circumstances, if the situation does not radically change for the better, the US Democratic Party will not see anything in the 2022 congressional elections and in the 2024 presidential election. The mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, Politico, is forced to admit that "the Democratic brand is broken”.

Focus groups in Virginia, where the Republican candidate unexpectedly won the gubernatorial election, "could not clearly articulate what the Democrats stand for. They also could not say what they are doing in Washington, except that they are fighting”. And these were just the people who voted for Biden in 2020.

At the moment, 19 Democratic congressmen (!) have already declared that they will not be re-elected in 2022, among them there are not ordinary parliamentarians, but heads of committees with serious weight. Before the 2010 congressional elections, 17 Democrats refused to be re-elected, then the Republicans won the largest victory, winning 63 seats.

Thus, the preliminary indicator of 2010 has already been beaten, and this figure may increase immediately before the elections themselves in 2022, if the strife in Biden's team does not stop. Biden's lack of his own agenda in both domestic and foreign policy seriously affects the image of the Democrats.

Political strategist and retired Democratic Party member James Carville from the pages of The Atlantic expressed the idea that Joe Biden does not have a good enemy to whom the (rational or irrational) anger of Americans can be transferred. “As of now the White House does not have good story tellers. Good stories need villains,” Carville wrote.

Although Carville is not in business right now, his way of thinking can be applied to the Democratic Party as a whole. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the first hysteria about the movement of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine began to inflate publications close to the Democratic Party – The Washington Post and Politico, which published some photos.

At first, the US military was not ready to confirm Russia's "aggressive intentions", as well as the Ukrainian ones, even the office of the Ukrainian president was not ready to confirm this information. However, then for the Europeans, information went through the State Department about the threat of escalation of the conflict in Donbass.

The flywheel began to unwind, despite the lack of desire of the Ukrainian leadership to escalate the situation. Back on November 26, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine Aleksey Danilov spoke about the absence of a threat of invasion from the Russian Federation, contrary to the statement of the head of military intelligence Budanov.

On December 2, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba, after the OSCE meeting in Stockholm, said that concrete steps have already been developed in NATO countries to counter aggression from Russia.

Pentagon spokesman General Mark Milley said that the concentration of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine and the threat of a new invasion are of great concern to Washington. "Significant national security interests of America and NATO member countries are at stake," Milley said. The head of the State Department, Antony Blinken, threatened unprecedented sanctions against Russia in the event of an invasion of Ukraine.

On December 4, talks were held between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Stockholm. According to Bloomberg, there was a tense dispute during the discussion of "Russian aggression" against Ukraine. The situation could not be resolved.

Summarising these episodes, it is not difficult to conclude that the hype of hysteria about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine came from the depths of the Democratic Party and was not originally a single US information campaign, but went through the stages of coordination already on the move, connecting all new links of the state system, the crown of which is Joe Biden's statement on December 4 that he does not recognise Putin's "red lines" on Ukraine (by the way, the telegram channel "Russian Demiurge" expressed an interesting version of the "red lines" and the situation around Ukraine).

One more conclusion can be drawn from this. Although this information company fills a gap in the positive agenda of the unification of Western countries, the reason to rally in front of the "aggressor's face", having been born outside the White House, is probably in contradiction with the agreements that were reached between the presidents in Geneva.

Worse, it is impossible to exclude the possibility that Joe Biden has so lost the authority of the leader that the state apparatus has begun to divide into independent interest groups, and some of them are already able to promote their ideas in foreign policy, making them official. Signs of Joe Biden's loss of control over domestic political issues in the United States were described in the previous article.

Thus, the negative aspects in US-Russian relations clearly outweighs the positive ones, which means that the situation will continue to deteriorate, despite the personal contact between the two presidents. Therefore, as indicated in the April article, the situation cannot be directly compared with the 1962 Caribbean crisis, since the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba was only a response to the appearance of medium-range missiles in Turkey in 1961.

Russia has not yet made its retaliatory move, but it must do it. After all, modern Russia already did this in 2015, shifting the focus of the Americans' attention to Syria, moving them to the battlefield and forcing them to act more carefully, and then Barack Obama refrained from transferring lethal weapons to Ukraine.

In this regard, Vladimir Putin's instruction to diplomats at the November meeting of the board of the Russian Foreign Ministry to maintain a "certain tension" among Western countries so that they do not arrange some unnecessary conflict for us fits perfectly into this paradigm. Only it is desirable to create tension, following the example of Syria, far beyond our borders, closer to the American ones, so that they more clearly understand and, perhaps, even observe with their own eyes where the "red lines" run.