{"id":204,"date":"2014-02-05T15:47:43","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T15:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=204"},"modified":"2014-02-05T15:47:43","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T15:47:43","slug":"olympic-sport-cw-racing-and-snowden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"Olympic Sport &#8211; CW Racing?  And Snowden?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Snowden Lighting the Olympic Flame?\u00a0 I bet someone in Moscow has considered it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Olympics in Sochi are getting to be a test of political skill as well as athletic skill.<\/strong>\u00a0 President Vladimir Putin clearly has Russia\u2019s reputation, and more importantly his own reputation, on the line.\u00a0 This presents the opportunity to promote a wide range of issues on Moscow at a time when Putin is forced to care about his international appearance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The United States seized this moment with respect to re-motivating Bashar al-Assad to get his CW materials out of country. <\/strong>\u00a0Bashar al-Assad, seems to have began thinking he could derive another bit of political benefit by slowing compliance with this last stage of the UN mandated process in the context of the Geneva talks.\u00a0 (It is worth remembering that Syria has already destroyed its capabilities to use and manufacture CW so Syria has already lost any military utility of its CW.)\u00a0 He missed the two deadlines to get the chemicals out of country\u2014while the international flotilla gathered to move them steams around in circles.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Washington raised this in a public way saying (correctly) that this was a problem Russia could solve.\u00a0 With the Olympics coming up, I can just imagine the message from the Russians to Damascus\u2026\u201dmove it\u2026.now!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Damascus now says (according to Russian media) that it will be getting the chemicals out by the end of the month.<\/p>\n<p><strong>After the Olympics, my guess is Putin will be looking for opportunities to repay the favor.\u00a0 In fact during the Olympics, I could see Putin offering a prominent seat to Edward Snowden (lighting the Olympic flame would be too much).\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Watch AT&amp;T.\u00a0 AT&amp;T is making a prominent point about the LGBT issue, condemning the position of Russia.\u00a0 This is quite brave.\u00a0 <strong>AT&amp;T is very vulnerable to international business damage rippling out from Snowden.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 I cannot help but imagine Russia publicly and quietly spreading the image that US firms are dangerous business partners with substantial financial consequences.\u00a0 Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Snowden Lighting the Olympic Flame?\u00a0 I bet someone in Moscow has considered it. The Olympics in Sochi are getting to be a test of political skill as well as athletic skill.\u00a0 President Vladimir Putin clearly has Russia\u2019s reputation, and more &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=204\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,19,74],"tags":[47,24,45,46],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}