The News And Times

  Michael Novakhov's favorite articles   Can Russia Ever Learn To Live Without Its Imperial Ambitions? posted at 11:54:57 UTC   via   worldcrunch.com -Analysis- WARSAW  — For Moscow to finally let go of its imperial ambitions, it must lose the war it has been waging  in Ukraine . As the history of the last few hundred years shows, this is the only way Russia will change. The idealogue at the head of Putinist Russia, Vladislav Surkov, has made his vision of an ideal Russia very clear. In his view, Russia is a country that “having stopped falling, has begun to rebuild itself and returned to the natural and only possible state of a great, growing and land-collecting community of nations." Surkov says that Russia makes "no promise" of peace. “The immodest role given to our country by  universal history  does not allow us to leave the stage or remain silent in the crowd," he declared. This feeling of Russia having a historical destiny, and an imperative to expand its

Michael Novakhov's favorite articles   Intelligence Failures - Again posted on Oct 28 2023 21:00:29 UTC   via   gatestoneinstitute.org The failure of the U.S. intelligence community has three components: 1) It has become politically charged and lost focus on its mission protecting Americans, instead engaging in partisan politics. 2) It continues to focus on technological intelligence collection rather than the difficult and risky world of human intelligence collection. 3) It continues to suffer from a lack of creativity in anticipating and understanding the new threats being developed by our enemies. There is little doubt that the Intelligence Community has become seriously politicized. In 2016-2017, its leaders and the FBI undermined the incoming President Donald Trump by raising the specter of Russian influence over Trump. The disproven Russia hoax would go on to shadow and undermine Trump's entire time in office. Despite warnings from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Bid