(02-22-2020, 12:01 AM)MalabarJag Wrote:

(02-21-2020, 11:14 PM)mikesez Wrote: Can't stop Russia from liking who they like. Now, is there any reason to believe Sanders is working with Russia? Did he hire a campaign manager who owes debts to any Russian oligarchs? Or a security advisor who likes to attend banquets with Putin? Or a foreign relations advisor that accepted a medal from Putin? Anything like that? No?  Probably no need to worry, then.

Walter Russell Meade nailed it:

Quote:If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.

Russia's national interest is not necessarily the same thing as Putin's interest.
It might not be in Russia's national interest to get into another arms race with the US, but some of Putin's oligarch allies could stand to make some serious rubles off of it.
And the energy market is more complicated than you might think.
If China and Japan feel like they shouldn't buy Iranian oil, they buy Russian oil instead as an example.
With fracking, American natural gas still hasn't made a dent in Russia's sales. Transporting natural gas by boat does not work as well as pipelines, and even if they wanted to boycott Russian gas, Europe would have an easier time getting LNG from Qatar rather than us.

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