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It’s hard to win these days. Not only do we have worries about war, we’ve got worries over worries about war. Is the Biden administration’s foreign policy dangerously cautious? That’s what Peter and James discuss – and argue about – with our guest, AEI’s Kori Schake.
The hosts (minus Rob, who was off podcasting elsewhere…) also chat about Italy’s Giorgia Meloni; James gets peeved, and it’a lots of fun; they do some speculating of their own about the bubbles in the Baltic; and Peter recalls the time he had dinner with a mega-celeb and had no idea who said mega-celeb was.
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I was against “supporting” Ukraine from the beginning. How many billions have we dumped into Ukraine in this Biden money laundering scheme? Does anyone have a clue where the money and arms have gone.
Malleable is correct. We fell for the line that an experimental gene therapy is a vaccine. We fell for the line that they are safe and effective. We fell for the line that the play-acting corrupt-o-crat in the green t-shirt is a modern day Churchill. We fell for the line that gays can get married. We fell for the line that our elections are fair and secure. We fell for climate change. We fell for all the lies about Trump. I could go on and on.
I think most people in this country live in a different universe than I do.
If you go over to the cold war conversations podcast, the most recent one is about the Cuban missile crisis and he talks about the parallels with Ukraine. He’s not enthused about turning up the dials over there. It’s one hour. That show is almost always riveting.
No, not really. There was one report on CBS about how they have no clue whether any of it gets to where it’s supposed to be going, but that one was walked back. (Read: shut down for being too truthful.) But there have been other reports that were not walked back, and all say the same thing: there’s no tracking of any of it.
Attempts by Republicans in Congress to make sure it’s tracked have been shot down by Democrats. Even the Ukrainian in Congress has been called a Putin-stooge by the warmonger caucus.
I know of her from John Batchelor’s radio show, and she is quite adamantly sure of herself. That said, “everything but boots on the ground” telegraphs indecision, which suggests weakness, no matter how many weapons you send. It’s like when Obama would say we wouldn’t be staying long immediately after announcing he was sending more troops to Afghanistan. I’ve come to firmly believe that the US should not assist in any foreign conflict for which it is unwilling to commit American troops. Otherwise, we just end up playing chicken.
That works, too.
My personal fav of @jameslileks ‘s responses occurred during the interview when he flipped the metaphor on her by rephrasing her (rather dramatic) “you don’t support Ukraine if you don’t support troops” moment as, “you don’t support Ukraine if you don’t support nuking Moscow” – which aptly demonstrated the overly dramatic and woefully simplified attempt at Real Politick.
I don’t like the repeated funding of Ukraine with American debt because I know that when this is all done and over there will not be a recouping of these funds. I don’t mean from a future Ukraine, but from all the European countries that verbally support this effort but deliver no cash. If I knew that after all this the US would be extracting from those countries the funds to match what they “should have given,” then my feelings may be swayed.
The Biden administration is deliberately impoverishing America. Ukraine just gave them another opportunity.
The Keynesian Endpoint is going to be glorious.
Nobody has any foresight on anything, so we just print money and steal from each other.
More like a Cloward-Piven endpoint.
Um, yeah, sure. As long as you don’t define Vietnam and Afganistan as “conventional wars.” And this sure doesn’t sound like a “conventional war” either.
The other thing is, all of this ESG and Green New Deal is the same thing. Negative productivity that we can’t afford.
If you aren’t listening to Doomberg interviews, you are making a huge mistake.
I think I’ll sleep better if I skip it. I honestly don’t know how you can listen to (let alone keep up with) all that gloom and doom.
That woman does not represent the voters in this country. We, I believe (think, hope?) are tired of the war in Ukraine and don’t like all the money we’ve poured into the Zelensky coffers. Ukraine was once a part of Poland/Lithuania until Catherine the Great and her former lover whom she had placed on the Polish throne decided otherwise. More than 100 years later, Ukraine was a founding member of the Soviet Union after World War l. To say it was a Russian satellite for a long, long time is to deny some 1/3 of Ukrainians who speak Russian as their first language and those who speak a close relative of Russian. Putin feels threatened by our not very subtle pushing Ukraine toward NATO and Europe. How can we blame him when NATO was created to deter Russia’s expansion? Is there any possibility that Zelensky is a smart conman who loves standing before the cameras of the world press with his sad tales of the big bad wolf while we send him billions to do with as he chooses?
“I’ll give you my kettle when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
Oi! T’r coomin f’r me ke-‘l!
Really, the last 30 minutes of this is the best, with the appalling interview being a prereq.
We are not dealing with this properly.
Yup.
Disagree with the rest though.
Does Russia have some kind of Divine Right of Expansion that I’ve never heard of?
With a son who is an Army officer, I most definitely do not want American soldiers involved. I do want Ukrainians supported fully so that we have the best chance of keeping American soldiers from fighting Russians. I also believe it is in everyone’s best interests that the world understands that there are circumstances under which the United States MUST send American soldiers. I think it is imperative that Putin understands that. I very much hope that if our soldiers must fight it is not with Biden, Harris or the rest of the Democrat clown show in power.
Very high possibility.
NATO was formed on that basis. He feels threatened by NATO.
Countries with a lot of nuclear weapons have a lot of latitude to behave anyway they want.
Your move.
If my neighbors feel threatened that I’ll shoot them if they try to invade my house, that’s on them.
That’s a very nice theory. Putin shouldn’t think like that, should he?
The alternative is what, give him whatever he wants, Or Else Nukes?
The question was the encroachment of NATO. It didn’t net out. You can say it should have all you want.
It’s not really encroaching unless NATO crossed the border INTO Russia, which never happened. Russia DID cross the border into Ukraine, though.
Shake comes across, to me, as Cleopatra. The queen of denial.
The characterization of the nuclear dilemma as a game of chicken seems like a good analogy. But her plan seems to be to ignore the signs that the other guy won’t swerve, and claim that a crash won’t necessarily happen if we stay the course. This just seems like pretending that the problem doesn’t exist.
Her idea to threaten NATO entry into the war, in the event of a Russian use of nukes, is a very dangerous bluff. If called, it would leave us committed to entering a nuclear war.
Using her analogy, this seems like signaling that we won’t swerve in that game of chicken. Something like throwing the steering wheel out of the window, using her analogy.
This seems very reckless, to me.
The underlying fact, I think, is that Russia’s interest in this conflict is much stronger than ours. This is even more true, I think, if the Russians are faced with defeat.
This has been the problem in Ukraine from the beginning. We lose almost nothing if Russia wins, so we’re the one likely to swerve. The situation might well look like life and death to Putin. Not to us.
She closed by saying that we don’t deter our adversaries by being afraid of paying some slight marginal cost. The war between NATO and Russia that she wants to threaten would not be a slight or marginal cost. It would be the nuclear war that we’ve feared all our lives.
That’s a nice theory that Putin doesn’t have to believe in because he has nuclear weapons. He should behave better.
What’s the difference between that and the Monroe Doctrine? I’m seriously asking because I’m not an expert.
#mefirst
For all the Putin sympathy, he’s the one invading other countries. Either the system of nation-states will be reinforced, or it will collapse. NATO and even the hated EU have expanded only through accession, not invasion. Putin’s “threatened by NATO” excuse is a pitifully thin ruse.
https://ricochet.com/1201159/nato-and-russia-a-false-equivalence/
Putin wants the energy resources in the east, south (Black Sea) and west of Ukraine, and he’s willing to kill to get them. He also wants Sevastopol, and frankly, Nikolaev (old Russian name).