…the document admits that far from the US being some innocently hapless victim of Russian interference, the US has at various times run covert “information, economic and diplomatic” campaigns to either “dethrone Putin”, or at least undermine his rule.

The document goes on to compare NATO policy to co-opt former Soviet
states to an imagined Russian effort to incorporate Mexico or Canada
into the Warsaw Pact, or deploy ballistic missile defences to the
Americas — such actions have never been contemplated by Russia, and
would of course never be acceptable to the United States. But, the
document says, their equivalence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia is
already being carried out by NATO to weaken Russia. This is why the
incorporation of Georgia into NATO “triggered the 2008 Russian invasion
of South Ossetia and the Kremlin’s first use of nuclear coercion.”

…the document also sets out more conciliatory gestures to appease Russia, for instance, in “negotiations on any of the frozen conflicts the US, the West and Russia are involved in… One notion might be a bigger role with Iran, Syria or even Turkey.”

This does, indeed, now appear to be the self-serving policy adopted in Syria, where the US is actively planning for an accommodation with Bashir al-Assad. In the words of the DIA’s Otto, “there must be an understanding that some countries may suffer as a result of our actions. A strategy of partial withdrawal from Syria or the Ukraine may actually allow for better future negotiations. The springtime drawdown of Russia from Syria allowed negotiation space for Putin, and even Assad.”

Army document: US strategy to ‘dethrone’ Putin for oil pipelines might provoke WW3