Putin’s Speech at Valdai

This is a point-at post. I don’t have all that much to say except that you should set aside about 15 minutes and read the speech Vladimir Putin just gave at the Valdai Conference in Sochi. Vlad drops his gloves and wades into the U.S. like an NHL enforcer. The importance of this speech is not about belligerence, though. It is straight talk about Russia’s attitude towards the pseudo-unipolar world we’ve had since around 1990. The one sentence summary is that a unipolar world doesn’t work, and even if it did, the U.S. has massively screwed up the opportunity, so the rest of the world is going to make other plans.

Of course, Putin glosses over the sins of Russia. This is predictable. Nevertheless, as a critique of U.S. hegemony and a discussion of the consequences, it is valuable.

I should note that it has received almost no attention in the U.S. mainstream news media, despite the huge foreign policy implications.

At Club Orlov, here.