A couple of days ago, Ray was asked by German officials, whom he recently briefed, whether he could put together an informal chronology of the main events in U.S. – Russian relations since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Here’s the timeline that took shape:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jzz-yabLl-F36aMqdmbNhOF0ACCeSGkcFmaoSR7UXBo/edit?usp=sharing
Ray made no attempt to be all-inclusive. When it came to key events — like the Western-orchestrated coup in Ukraine on February 22, 2014 — Ray includes some supplementary detail and an occasional link to help provide context.
We thought we would go ahead and post the DRAFT “Timeline” now: (1) to provide an aid to memory/research tool for those wishing to review and interpret key events of this period; and (2) to offer an opportunity to those of you who might be interested in helping add significant events to the timeline to go ahead and do so. Suggestions can be sent to raylmcgovern@gmail.com.
When we are pretty sure we have not missed any important event(s), we might even wish to do a little graph showing the ups and downs. Could be very revealing. Please get in touch at the above email address, if you would like to volunteer to do that.
In Summary: As far as recent years are concerned, the Obama-Putin relationship reached its zenith in September 2013, after Putin persuaded Syria to give up its chemical weapons for verified destruction, enabling Mr. Obama at the last minute to call off, with some grace, the neocon-pushed plan to attack Syria in late summer 2013. But the neocons got even with Obama for his having cheated them out of the war they fully expected – the shock and awe on Syria. They had come within a hair’s breadth of mousetrapping the President only to be thwarted by Putin!
To an appreciable degree, that accounted for the Nuland-led neocon boldness in carrying out the coup in Kiev a half-year later, and in their artificial exploitation of the terrible loss of 298 lives on MH17, blaming the Russians sans any convincing proof. John Kerry also said that “social media” are an “extraordinary tool.” Right. But equally useful for deception as for truth. The lame attempts of various imaginative (but not imaginative enough) folks, many of whom seem to be employed by Western intelligence services to use their imaginations in applying “social media” to the MH17 affair, are transparent to any discerning observer.
The election of Donald Trump will, in my view, introduce more opportunities for progress in U.S.-Russia relations than would have been the case under Hillary Clinton.
For additional detail on these key events, I encourage you to include my website, raymcgovern.com, which is easily searchable.