There’s a better-than-even chance that the developments in Kazakhstan will have repercussions well beyond any that are currently imagined – and probably beyond the intentions of any outside actors who have been involved, as some evidence indicates.
This is not primarily because of Kazakhstan as a security issue for Russia, though that’s a factor. It’s because there is no Pax Americana anymore; there’s been none since about 2011; the U.S. under Biden is not and will not be the guardian of stability that we’ve been since 1945; and actors like Russia, China, and Iran see now as the time to take maximum advantage of that.
The short version is that they perceive they can get away with things, and they’re going to do them.
Starting with Kazakhstan – and we’re going to take this for the purposes of this article in very broad strokes – there has been considerable speculation that the unrest there will preoccupy Russia in such a way that Putin will have to delay any plans to move on Ukraine.
I perceive the opposite. In my view, the crisis in Kazakhstan makes it more likely Putin will move on both fronts.
Nothing in the scenarios suggested in this article is guaranteed; that’s not my point. The point is rather that a window of opportunity has opened for Putin, and for Xi Jinping as well, and if I can see it, so can they. Disregarding the obviousness of such opportunities would be poor analysis at this point.
Others have laid out recently the case that Putin sees much of the unrest on Russia’s Asian and southwestern perimeter as fomented by outside actors, of whom the United States (especially under Democrats and the influence of their principal “civil society” ally, George Soros) is the chief. It’s well known that Putin believes this about Ukraine. He has this perception as well about events in the Central Asian nations, including Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
As Claremont analyst Clint Ehrlich has laid out in a pair of essential tweet threads this weekend, Putin perceives in Kazakhstan the profile of a “color revolution.” And Putin isn’t going to let it prevail there. (See link in my retweet for more discussion of local and Russian perceptions about U.S., Soros, and “color revolutions.”)
That’s why he’s making a show in Kazakhstan with military command and control assets. Here’s what I want to provide as value added.
Russia does not need to “get bogged down” in a civil war in Kazakhstan in order to sufficiently pacify the situation there. It’s inaccurate to think in those terms. Kazakhstan is a big slice, but it can be held in check through cooperation with and selective Russian support for a Russia-friendly government in Nur-Sultan.
Kazakhstan is huge in territorial terms, but its national population, at under 19 million, is only half that of the Tokyo metro area (37.4 million). The population has a significant number of ethnic Russians in it too, although without the long history of common cultural identity shared by Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine, by contrast, is territorially large by European standards, but significantly smaller than Kazakhstan, much more densely populated with its 44 million people, and crisscrossed with urban areas, industry, and transport in a way Kazakhstan is not. Ukraine is a harder fight, characterized by urban patterns and big chunks of territory not easily subdued by small forces. Kazakhstan is mostly hinterland, and it hosts a number of high-value Russian facilities which few in Kazakhstan have the slightest interest in menacing.
Kazakhstan isn’t a headache for Russia as much as it’s an opportunity. From Putin’s perspective, putting the lid on “color revolution” unrest there would constitute perhaps the lowest-cost victory he could achieve over the “color revolution” campaign, which he perceives as having been underway since at least the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004.
Ukraine: Sooner than later
But in the context of a U.S. administration that leads – or seems to lead – with appeasement on almost every front in foreign policy, the pretext for a cheap Russian victory in Kazakhstan is the same one that justifies acting now on that pretext in Ukraine. The cost would be higher in Ukraine, and Moscow would have to limit its aims there for time being. But the conditions are propitious for a high payoff.
The chief condition is that Joe Biden is occasionally photographed in the Oval Office, but no one in a foreign capital is fool enough to think Biden is actually working there and making decisions for the United States – and whoever is filling that role will probably remain reluctant to show his hand, even with the provocation of a Russian move on Donbas.
Clint Ehrlich’s tweet threads give us indispensable insight into how Putin would see this. Putin is already disposed to assume U.S. agencies and Soros NGOs are behind the color revolutions that dog Russian influence strategies in Russia’s near-abroad. Ehrlich’s discovery of Hunter Biden’s links to Kazakhstan, coupled with the known connections of the Clintons and their cronies in the minerals and mining industries, going back years, highlights a good reason, from Putin’s point of view, to believe that the unrest in Kazakhstan is an attack by the same actors on Russian interests.
The Bidens’ involvement in Ukraine, after all, has been attended by extensive, incessant anti-Russian media campaigning from at least as early as 2014 up to today. It may not look like it to American eyes, but to Putin it looks obvious: the Bidens have been deployed in Ukraine (to a large extent haplessly, to be sure) as a way of sabotaging Russian interests.
The current situation involves more than that, however. Too little appreciated is the impact on other nations’ calculations of the apparent reality that the United States is actually being governed by the “cabal” (Time’s word, not mine) that labored to get Joe Biden elected as a figurehead.
It is a game-changer to realize that Putin would assume it’s that cabal, not an impaired Joe Biden, that’s making the moves against him.
The cabal is effectively unaccountable. Nothing Biden blurts out is binding on it. And it’s an advantage for the cabal that no one takes Biden himself seriously. The cabal can make sudden moves in these circumstances; it can act from the shadows without falling under inspection or having to answer questions, while its front-man is blinked at in varying mixtures of pity and disbelief.
In such conditions, the first thing a Putin, a Xi, or the Iranian mullahs will think of is what they can get done for their own agendas while the U.S. is under unaccountable – in fact, invisible – governance. That is almost certainly the mindset Putin is operating from.
The impact of rule by anonymous cabal
And from his perspective, I suspect the last year looks different from its appearance to eyes conditioned by the fatuous themes of the U.S. media. You may not see that America’s inexplicably precipitate flight from Afghanistan was likely preparation for a vigorous “color revolution” move against Russia in Central Asia – but Putin does.
Consider that with our official presence evacuated from Afghanistan, there are no concentrations of Americans left in the neighborhood for Russia to threaten with lethal force.
Oh, Russia wouldn’t have attacked us directly using uniformed Russian assets. But if Moscow wanted to retaliate against an attack on Russia’s security perimeter, like fomenting a color revolution in Kazakhstan, the ready targets would have been the highly visible Americans in Afghanistan, and Russia would have little trouble finding proxies to attack us (starting with the Taliban, if the previous Afghan government were still in power, propped up by U.S. troops).
A color revolution, if that’s what we’re seeing in Kazakhstan, would have been in planning for several years; not by the Trump administration but by the revolving-door activists who go to and fro between the State Department and think tanks, and walk up and down in them, funded by the dark money of the radical Left. That timeline is long enough to adapt its campaign concept, once Biden was in office, to include the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan as a precautionary move.
Recall that our NATO allies were angry and caught by surprise at the abrupt way it was handled – recall that we fled Bagram in the night, reportedly without even notifying the Afghan military hosts – and I think you’ll see that this is not a far-fetched analysis. Something drove the decision to handle our departure in this manner. It’s more likely that it was a material consideration in a larger plan than that it was just a crazy whim, untethered to anything else.
No one out here in the nosebleed section can be sure the scope of any geopolitical campaign plans the “cabal” may have. Putin and Xi, in fact, with their massive intelligence services, probably have a better idea than the American public does how the Biden cabal intends to use our national power and assets in the coming days.
But if Putin perceives that a faceless cabal is using President Biden as a blind from which to wage a campaign against him, he has the motive to execute a full-blown campaign of his own to make what he can of countering such an already-launched initiative.
What I want readers to see is that Putin probably isn’t in dog-paddling reaction mode now. He’s been given all the pretext he needs for launching his own campaign in his own interests.
And it’s not at all infeasible for him to – as he sees it – gain a win-win by triumphing over the momentum of two major color revolutions, in Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
The “Maidan” revolution was countered in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea and held in suspended animation in the eight years since; it won’t take nearly so much effort to neutralize and de-fang the “revolt” in Kazakhstan.
Just that outcome would leave things in an uneasy tie game. But moving on Donbas and putting a reconstitution of Ukraine wholly out of reach, absent a major war, would be an achievable win and leave Putin up by at least a touchdown.
One reason it’s achievable is that Russia has supporters in Donbas and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine who probably already have a campaign plan for a proxy move, fronted by them and involving Russian forces that, whatever their actual status (as regular troops or mercenaries) wouldn’t be flying a Russian flag. The massed Russian forces over the border are there to pose a threat to any Ukrainian response run from Kyiv. They’re not there to execute an overt, truce-breaching invasion.
Putin knows, if the American public does not, that there is nothing we are in a position to do about Russia pacifying Kazakhstan. My own assessment is that it won’t even be very difficult, especially if Russia – which knows the local politics there very well – backs the right successor as a new president, and seems to have a hand in addressing the corruption problems resented by the Kazakhs. (See the Twitter stream of tweep Gene Douglass, who forwarded this thread to me, for additional commentary on Kazakhstan.)
A proxy move on Donbas might be a smaller exploit than Putin would like to take in Ukraine, but it’s feasible and sustainable for establishing a “fact on the ground.” And by perception and implication, it would break the back of the “color revolution” idea in the country for the foreseeable future.
Make no mistake: I do not favor this course or outcome. I don’t want to see Ukraine further partitioned by force. This is analysis of the opportunity I think Putin sees.
He recognizes that NATO is divided and somewhat directionless at the moment, and he has reason to expect no military pushback if he makes such a move. He has little to lose, because every choice that would then face NATO would involve escalation and/or sacrifice.
The talks
Retired Admiral James Stavridis, former commander of U.S. European Command (EUCOM), had an article in Time Monday on Putin’s posture vis-à-vis Ukraine and the NATO-Russia talks set to open this week, and in it he makes the point that Putin “is hoping he can achieve what he wants via the talks which will unfold this week.”
Stavridis lists key Russian demands, including “assurances that Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO; that NATO nations along the long Russian / NATO border will never be permitted to host significant NATO military forces; and that sanctions imposed on [Putin] over the 2014 invasion, the Skirpal nerve attacks in the U.K., and the attempted assassination of his political opponent Alexander Navalny will be lifted.”
Stavridis continues: “While the chances of achieving those sweeping objectives at the negotiating table appear low-to-impossible, he might be willing to settle for something less than everything he is demanding.”
Putin might, but at this point I think the game has changed for him. But let us hear the rest of Stavridis’s case: “[Putin’s] minimum is probably a federalist structure in Ukraine that gives real autonomy to the Russian speaking southeast of the country; at least a tacit acceptance of the annexation of Crimea; an under-the-table recognition that Ukraine (and Georgia) will not join NATO; and some sanctions relief that would increase over time.”
Even the minimum is quite a lot to shoot for, if Putin is perceived as being under an ongoing two-front security concession; i.e., in both Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The backbone of that perception is what he needs to break.
If he had no way to do it, he might indeed angle for a few demands in the impending talks, as a negotiate-and-delay maneuver. But I suspect he has a different view: that the Biden cabal has miscalculated with an attempt to present him with a two-front problem, and that he can win big by demonstrating he can turn the table, to greater effect.
It wouldn’t do Putin a great deal of good to merely survive the attempt he perceives. Events are moving fast now, many of them not instigated by him. Besides China – a partner of convenience for many things but by no means a reliable friend – there is the Biden cabal to expect major moves from, under cover of its unaccountable anonymity.
Now, and not some hazy day in the future, is the time to present the Atlantic alliance structure with the pressure of decisions it probably can’t withstand (at least in Putin’s view). Putin has been aiming to destabilize and transform the “Atlantic” security structure (Russia’s language for referring to it) for nearly two decades, and the obvious move now is to counter the Kazakhstan gambit with a concerted effort to do just that.
The dazzling scope of potential for a Putin initiative
Putin won’t want to negotiate on NATO’s terms, but on his. On his terms, he can use negotiations not so much to gain concessions for Russia as to divide NATO. If Russia has put Kazakhstan back in its box and makes an uncounterable demonstration with Donbas in Ukraine, are we really so sure Germany would agree to forgo a gas flow from Nord Stream 2 over that? Biden has already signed on that dotted line; the U.S., without the enthusiastic assent of Europe, has no real leverage in the matter anymore.
I am confident NATO is not itching for an armed confrontation in Ukraine. The risk is not that there would be one, but that there would spectacularly not be an effective reaction to another Russian move there.
Rather, it’s at least 50-50 that we would start to see the NATO consensus fall apart, on exactly the matters Putin seeks concessions on. NATO forces in Eastern Europe? Poland and the Baltic States certainly want to have them there, but I can foresee Germany preferring to effectively decide the matter by hosting such forces instead, on German terms, and controlling how much they get – so to speak – in Russia’s face.
A similar set of conditions could be expected in Southern Europe between Greece and Italy, and Romania and Bulgaria. Rome and Athens may not have the economic and political prominence of Berlin, but their preference for not having Southeastern Europe’s alarms about Russia shape their relations with Moscow would still matter. Spain is further away, but has a similar perspective. Between them, these three nations account for most of the NATO coastline on its southern flank.
The other big southern NATO coastal nation is Turkey, which has unique concerns about Russia, but also some unique levers against Russia. Geographically, Turkey is somewhat like Germany in having particular motives for steering an independent course with Moscow.
The more Putin can destabilize the neighborhood, the less likely NATO members are to see making sacrifices for alliance unity as a good idea.
There’s a much longer list of specific matters to consider on this head, and in the interest of time I’ll defer them here. An important point about NATO remains to be made, and it’s this: I don’t believe NATO, per se, is something the Biden cabal actually wants to hang onto. The Biden cabal is invested in the EU, which is more constrained by NATO than otherwise. NATO is an armed alliance of nations, a Westphalian-era project. The EU is a supranational body, one in which the ongoing project is supervening national sovereignty and the perks of armament on that model.
The EU aspires to be armed, to be sure. But that aspiration is in philosophical (as well as material) competition with NATO. The EU has no intention of holding its armed force accountable to the citizens of its member nations. NATO, by contrast, operates on that accountable national-army model, the one that has been standard since the pinnacle of the British Empire and the Napoleonic period.
The structural base of the European and American West has some very big premises that Russia (and China) are in a position to attack today.
NATO’s real choice as 2022 opens is not between the status quo and a break-up. It’s between consciously reforming itself – reaffirming what is still relevant, navigating beyond what is not – and seeing itself broken up by the influences arrayed against it. This is just one of the inevitable dynamics Putin could accelerate with a limited but initiative-seizing move on Ukraine.
A like-minded great power in China
Three more brief topics illustrate the very broad repercussions from Putin seizing foreseeable initiative in his situation with NATO. One naturally involves China, which would benefit from a distracted West in any Chinese initiative to take advantage of the world’s current leaderless condition.
Analyst Gordon Chang is gravely concerned that Xi Jinping is looking for an armed adventure to deflect the CCP’s domestic problems, and that such a project could emerge quickly.
As readers will see from my response, I would envision Xi wanting to time that to increase the activity level and pressure for the U.S. and our allies while we’re trying to deal with a Russian disturbance. Xi may be willing to gamble for more than he might otherwise. Any move he makes will permanently alter China’s situation in relation to Japan, Australia, and the other U.S. allies in the Far East; I believe he will want to bite off as much as is feasible at one time, rather than approaching his aspirations piecemeal.
That would entail the likely pairing of an effective takeover of the South China Sea and an investment of Taiwan. Xi and his military advisors may not see that as feasible at the moment. But no competent strategist could fail to see that from his perspective it’s desirable, and is the most cost-justifying move he could make.
Iran’s options for attacking the U.S. in Southwest Asia
The second topic is Iran’s potential moves. There’s been something of a hiatus in Qods Force activity in Iraq and Syria since Trump took out Qassem Soleimani, but interestingly, just this past week, Esmail Ghaani – Soleimani’s successor as Qods Force commander – showed up on a semi-furtive mission to Baghdad.
Perhaps the visit is unrelated to anything Russia and China are planning. If it were related, Iran would not be acting as the agent of either Putin or Xi. Khamenei and the mullahs, who control the Qods Force and the use of armed force abroad, have their own priorities and intentions. But the timing would nevertheless enable the same maximum-pressure, maximum-complication environment for moving against the vestiges of the U.S.-backed status quo.
The Asian powers may not have an organized, visible contingent of Americans to threaten in Afghanistan now. But as I pointed out a few weeks ago, the posture of U.S. troops in Iraq, of whom there remain several thousand, has just become much more vulnerable. They’re split into small contingents and mostly ill-equipped for their own defense. From a double perspective, the opportunity window is wide open to threaten and punish the U.S. It can be done not only to advance radical Iran’s interest in dominating Iraq, but to hold Americans at risk as Russia makes her own, separate moves.
A disturbance in the global financial Force
The final topic is related to sanctions as a punishment for the three regimes in question. China and Russia have already previewed their planned alternative to the U.S.-managed SWIFT financial network (governed by a multinational board, but long a U.S. fiefdom), which gives America a hammer against patterns of sanctions violation. Their target period for implementing the SWIFT alternative is sometime in 2022, and their latest signals seem to indicate they are ready, or near-ready, to make the move.
It’s an error to imagine that either nation plans to simply do without access to SWIFT. It’s equally an error to imagine that there’s much the U.S. can now do to prevent other nations, like Germany, India, South Korea, South Africa, and Brazil, from simply subscribing to both networks. (I assume Moscow and Beijing not only know that, but are counting on it.)
Perhaps the U.S. would cut China or Russia off from SWIFT, as threatened by the Biden administration. It seems doubtful. But if we did, and the two nations got someone else to handle SWIFT transactions on their behalf, what would we really do to counter that?
A hybrid situation with multiple nations participating in both networks is the most likely scenario – and many of the nations in question wouldn’t be small, economically powerless ones. They’d be emboldened to engage in dual participation precisely because they’re major economies with global impact, and they can get away with it. Their choice would give cover to the smaller nations.
A weak United States will find that trying to leverage our existing tools of power merely exposes them to the threat of collapse from the counter-pressure mounted by a Russia and/or China on the move. Only a super-strong, largely self-sufficient U.S. can truly punish and deter with tools like sanctions (and the backing of foreign anti-regime movements). We aren’t that super-strong U.S. in 2022: not because we’ve lost all our mojo, but because our leadership is weak, unaccountable, bent on attacking domestic constituencies, and stranger than a three-dollar bill.
Feature image: Biden and Putin arriving at their summit meeting in Geneva, June 2021. NBC News video, YouTube
The Optimistic Conservative 
Interesting post, but, Russia starts withdrawing their troops from KAZ on Thursday, Jan. 13, complete before end of Jan. Clint Ehrlich’s threads were very good, but, he missed some suspects for the violent ‘bandits’. I’ve been posting every night since Jan 6 at
https://libertyunyielding.com/2022/01/04/biden-administration-allocates-1-billion-for-meat-and-poultry-industry-amid-soaring-consumer-prices/, about to add a bit more about Turkey’s linkage to the Nazarbayev regime, by Amberin Zaman Jan 10: Turkey caught off guard in Kazakhstan as Russia emerges on top.https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/01/turkey-caught-guard-kazakhstan-russia-emerges-topTurkey was #1 on my ‘foreign interference’ in the KAZ protests, but, I needed more info.And, just when you thought it was a simple color revolution:
eurasianet.orghas had the least biased news reports.Only thing worse is reading dailycaller posts on KAZ at LU. Same guy managed to requote AP one day and BBC the next. AP has been the worst Putin-centric on KAZ.
But, if you’re going to cite Pepe, I might as well give up here. You’ve never given me credit for knowing how to wade through news (and thinktankers) to connect some dots, that are not always about the USA.
I’ve been following KAZ since learning they export >2 million/tpy of wheat and flour to AFG.
Thanks, D4x. I don’t cite Pepe because I “believe” his take on things, but because he’s had some prominent reporting on the topic recently. (I think he’s shortsighted — bore-sighted might be a better characterization — about the China/Russia network, and sees it as more abruptly divisive than it would be, assuming the implementation is realistic. If it does get implemented and comes into relatively common use, most Tier 2 users will want to keep SWIFT around and plug into both. China, Russia, and the US will all have to live with that. The effects of divisiveness would develop over time.)
The Russian withdrawal from Kazakhstan proves my point that victory there would be relatively quick and easy, and would not entail Russia getting bogged down in anything.
I do give you credit for being able to distinguish between the Kazakhstan event actually being a “simple” color revolution, and Putin perceiving it as mainly (or most significantly) a color revolution, and being motivated accordingly. FWIW, I think there’s an element of both.
When I write about these topics, it is never my intention to cover all the potential details, but to outline the trend of major movements and discern strategy and influences at work in broad strokes. I don’t need to rewrite what others have written, or cover all the details others have covered perfectly well. My voice is a different one. In this case, my purpose was to write what hadn’t been said: that the turning-point passage we’re going through is about Putin going for a break-up of NATO, and he’s given himself the green light to kick it into high gear.
Thanks JeD. Yes, I understood your focus, colored by my dis-interest in Russian intent with Ukraine, and, my point of view that NATO unity has suffered far more from the Biden Afghanistan Debacle™
One would hope someone at NATO still knows that Turkey is NATO’s genuine Achilles heel.
Zaman’s report on Turkey linkage to the Nazarbayev regime still the most interesting aspect. She always finds better thinktankers than most, though admit her citation of Istanbul-based independent analyst Yoruk Isik was a surprise in that I had not been aware that Yoruk Isik had evolved as more than the Bosporous-watcher. Interesting report Jan. 12, in that OTS has been dealt a near fatal blow:
My conclusion late last night is that Putin has gone ice-fishing, but has a stack of turkey sandwiches, with bacon, at his side. 🙂
I never thought Russian propaganda actually believed their “KAZ Color Revolution”, but, used that, because Ukraine and Belarus were, and, the Russians also know USA, 2015?6- present, is too.
Jan 6 2022 in Almaty was a stunning counter to Jan 6 narrative in DC.
This proves a few things all at once, and pretty emphatically:
1) NATO still has a purpose, it’s a solid purpose, and what it needs is a revitalization, refocus, and an upgraded “mission statement”. Russia is, and always has been dangerous. This is because for the most part, its leadership, for centuries- btw, is basically psychopathic, brutally paranoid, and socially crippling. NATO does not threaten Tsar Vladimir. Not one NATO nation, nor the alliance as a whole is interested in one square inch of that blighted expanse of taiga, tundra, pine forest, and frigid cold winter. The Krauts are fundamentally in a self-choking (guilt ridden) bag, and the Froggies haven’t been Napoleonic for 210 years. Putin is threatened by his own ambitions, paranoia, narcissism (sociopathy, really), and grandiosity. He is the Tsar of all the Russias and wants “his empire” back, it’s that simple. NATO with former Warsaw Pact slave states as full participating NATO members is not a threat to Russia, it’s a threat to Russia’s dream (nightmare to Eastern Europe) of reconquest.
2) The US, as the titular leader of NATO is currently leaderless, with an illegitimate regime installed, due to a limp Soros-esque Color Revolution – call ours Pink, that is still going on as a slow burn event that is gradually turning into a smoldering dung heap. The NATO treaty, footprint, and focus needs, desperately, to be renegotiated. Cooperative deployments of significant but still defensive troop formations arranged to deter neoSoviet aggression and add a specific focus on providing unified stability in response to China. Germany also needs to be dealt with. It’s backsliding into a bad actor on the stage, and needs to be reined in, again. NATO is the only organization that is capable of doing that particular function. Of course, not an ounce of this will happen with the current illegitimate, weak, feckless and leaderless regime in place. Time is not on our side.
3) Neo-Isolationism married with Leftist Pacifism – the same poisonous brew that guaranteed World War II, is not the answer. The world is too small, and too many small nations have too much in the way of long-range force projection to play the Mote and Baily game again. Those small actors require forward deployment of allied forces, with a unified self-defense purpose, to prevent independent imprudent action, and also proxy activities by Pootie-Poot’s operatives aggressive and expert agitation. The Russians are nothing if not the expert originators of Secret Police, subversive manipulation, and terror. The black horses, black riders, and gold broom symbols have been there since Ivan Groznyy (Ivan the Terrible for the unaware). A flight from Inchon to Hartsfield takes off and lands on the same day, non-stop and unrefueled. It’s prudent to remember that reality and neo-isolationists don’t.
This is a bad situation made worse by American fecklessness and corruption. He say’s wincing and praying.
-OAB
Only Kiev’s immediate renunciation on joining NATO — now and forever, in conjunction with a commitment to fully implement the Minsk Accords — yesterday, can save the Nazi Ukies now. . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viUnzgXPrDg
As for us, time to withdraw our in-country innocent boys and girls, before they get hurt. The Soros mob, the neocons, and the rest of the assorted other fanatics of various motivation and political persuasions can stay and be blown to bits as far as I’m concerned. –jg
These two weeks has been fascinating to watch a puppet regime wrest control from its master shadow government to form a perfect independent financial union between Russia and China and signaling the end of US petro-dollar hegemony.
http://thesaker.is/after-kazakhstan-the-color-revolution-era-is-over/