Tag: NATO

It’s Time to Get Out of NATO

 

I remember during the 2016 campaign, when Donald Trump hinted that he might be willing to bring an end to NATO.  I confess that I was still a Neocon at the time, and I was simply shocked.  I viewed NATO as absolutely essential to our defense.

Looking back, I had no good reason to believe it.  My only explanation for the view that I held at the time was that I had been careless, and had accepted the propaganda that I had been told my entire life.  Ironically, I wasn’t exactly ignorant.  I was a diligent student of history.  The problem was that I knew so many things that weren’t so.

“Warszawo, walcz”

 

“Warsaw, Fight!” The call to fight that was heard in Warsaw on August 1, 1944. Poland did not have a collaborationist government when Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany.

The Warsaw Uprising was the largest single battle by resistance fighters against the German occupiers in Europe. There were two battles in Warsaw. The Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19, 1943. This was the single largest revolt by Jews during WWII.

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Russia now has five reasons for suspending their compliance with the New START Treaty. Chief appears to be a complaint taken out of the Iran playbook and that is Iran’s refrain that the US ‘rules’ re the international system are an example of the “great arrogance.” As in who gave the US the right to […]

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From a Radio Free Europe report: The blast in NATO-member Poland that killed two people was likely caused by a Ukrainian air-defense missile but it was Russia that was ultimately responsible because it started the war, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg has told a news conference in Brussels. Preview Open

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Join Jim and Greg as they assess Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement. They also applaud how Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to Trump’s criticisms of him last week. And they breathe a sigh of relief that the deadly missile strike in Poland was not a deliberate Russian strike – or even a Russian missile at all.

 

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From a Reuters news report: WARSAW, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Two people were killed in an explosion in Przewodow, a village in eastern Poland near the border with Ukraine, firefighters said on Tuesday as NATO allies investigated reports that the blast resulted from Russian missiles. Preview Open

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Join Jim and Greg as they welcome a new congressional map in New York that should give Republicans better chances to win more seats than the heavily gerrymandered version from Democrats that multiple courts have struck down. They’re also pleasantly surprised to see Russian President Vladimir Putin say Sweden and Finland joining NATO will not be seen as a direct threat to Russia. And Jim takes a deep dive into the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel, what’s behind it, and what the consequences will be.

Join Jim and Chad as they analyze how China’s ‘zero-COVID’ strategy is having a tumultuous effect on it’s cities and economy. They also shake their heads at a new report that found as much as $80 billion was stolen from the Paycheck Protection Program. And in another press conference fumble, President Biden may have admitted that the U.S. is training Ukrainian troops in Poland.

NATO and Russia: A False Equivalence

 

One popular argument about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that Ukraine “had it coming” because of NATO expansion.  This is not a moral justification, and not a reason to consider Russia’s actions excusable or even reasonable.  This argument and its antecedents rest on a flawed equivalence between NATO and Russia, the “neo-USSR”.

The specifics of “not one inch eastward” are from a phone call between then-Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, and in a different context.  Even Gorbachev has said that this was not a binding agreement.  Naturally, Putin rejects this fact, as it is inconvenient to him.  So let us dispense with this “broken promise” rhetoric and focus on the qualitative difference between NATO, a voluntary defensive alliance against Russian expansion, and Russia, the expansive inheritor of the Soviet coercive prison-state.  There is no moral equivalence between the two systems, and forgetting that fact will lead to moral failures.

The Devil Made Him Do It?

 

Putin apologists and propagandists are channeling the late Flip Wilson, blaming NATO for Putin’s war against Ukraine. They’re ignoring a few things.

Those of a certain age may remember the late comedian Flip Wilson, who tragically died in 1998 at age 64 from cancer. He was the first successful black host of a television variety show in the early 1970s.

“Geraldine (Jones), with Wilson in wig, high heels and a colorful minidress, was perhaps his most famous character. Her spunky catchphrases “The devil made me do it” and “What you see is what you get!” became part of the national language,” CBS News described in announcing Wilson’s death.

Time for the West to Start Building Russia a ‘Golden Bridge’

 

As sanctions cripple the Russian economy and Ukraine bravely holds its own against Putin’s onslaught, it’s time for the West to prepare for a pivot. And they should do so by taking the advice of a 19th-century Russian general.

In 1812, Napoleon launched a full-scale invasion of the Russian empire, expecting a few big wins would force Czar Alexander I to capitulate. It had worked with other European leaders; should be wrapped up in a couple of months. But the old, obese, one-eyed General Mikhail Kutuzov had another idea.

As the invasion began, Napoleon took Smolensk, along with significant casualties. A victory nonetheless. He marched toward Moscow, adding far more French casualties (especially from disease). But he was still on the move. Kutusov and his generals heroically fought him at Borodino, about a day’s march from Russia’s old capital. They essentially fought the French to a draw in the bloodiest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, but surrendered the field and moved east of Moscow. A Pyrrhic victory for Napoleon, but technically a win.

Join Jim and Greg as they cover the rapid collapse of the Russian economy in the face of sanctions from the West. Due to the severity and rapid success of these sanctions, they also wonder if elongating them may provoke animosity toward the West within the Russian people. And despite the obvious benefits of American energy independence, White House officials like Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry continue to peddle “green energy”.

 

Join Jim and Chad as they cover the latest news on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They also are frustrated by the utter uselessness of sanctions against the Putin regime up to this point. And despite Russian malfeasance, NATO allies seem unwilling to respond in any substantial way.

Join Jim and Greg as they analyze a new  meta-study that finds COVID lockdowns were futile in preventing deaths. They exhale in relief as intercepted Russian military communications reveal a hesitancy on the part of some officials to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine. And they criticize cowardly Republicans for allowing Democrats to gain an advantage in House of Representatives redistricting across the country.

 

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Remember when Trump offered the opinion that American debtpayers (my new word for taxpayers) shouldn’t be paying for the defense of Western Europe because wealthy countries like Germany weren’t coming close to paying their fair share? And remember how the Deep State and the Bush Republicans freaked out? “NATO is totes critical,  you guys. Of […]

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Vladimir Putin is a Russian leader, in the long line of the czars and their nominally communist successors. Calling him a KGB thug or using “tzar” as an epithet obscures the reality. Czar or tzar, a Russian ruler is a ruler in the context of Russian history and culture. Any czar worth his salt would […]

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Following are a series of links, excerpts, and brief comments relevant to the situation around Ukraine. We are getting a lot of smoke and fun house mirrors from politicians and pundits on all sides of the conflict. I went looking for sources, and here is a partial list. Ukrainian President to Western leaders and media: […]

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Trump’s Disruptive Foreign Policy

 

The following began its brief life as a comment on another recent post, but after reflection I thought maybe it was cogent enough to stand on its own. On the foreign policy front, I suspect I may be the only one here who has served in Embassies, including during the Trump era. This is what I will say about that.

  1. I’m sure I won’t break any news when I say that most of the foreign policy establishment leans left and is distressed when any Republican is elected but was especially so in 2016. This is not only true of our dear State Department friends but across the entire transnational community of foreign policy elites.
  2. Continuing as Captain Obvious, DJT is a norm-breaker, and the foreign policy community seriously loves it some norms–and resents when they are broken.
  3. Of course, some norms badly needed to be broken. In particular, the national and international foreign policy consensus on China urgently needed to move, and this administration succeeded in catalyzing that movement. The 2017 National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy were masterfully done. They met a critical need to generate a global awakening about the failure of the previous consensus on Beijing, probably best summarized by Robert Zoellick’s 2005 “Responsible Stakeholder” speech. Someone had to end the charade, and it’s worth wondering whether a more conventional administration of either party could have overcome the entrenched consensus to have boldly introduced major-power competition as the new normal–so successfully that even the professionals now agree that we can’t go back to the status quo ante on China.
  4. Israel and the Middle East is the other major area where the foreign policy consensus simply had to be sidelined. I recently spoke to a State Department official who–in the context of a discussion about normalization with the UAE and Bahrain–seethed angrily about how this Administration had trashed 70 years of foreign policy consensus on Palestine. Without irony. Sometimes the conventional wisdom must be firmly rejected.
  5. Getting our allies to finally invest in their own defense is also a plus.
  6. Having said that, we are paying a price for appearing capricious and unnecessarily dismissive of our allies. Sure, they can be difficult, but they remain our allies and we do need to keep them on our side. Those same national security documents make it clear that major-power competition is a team sport, and we have to bring the team along if we’re going to win. And we must win.
  7. Also, the incessantly revolving door of senior officials (especially SecDefs and National Security Advisors) has been extremely disruptive to getting important work done in the international space.
  8. Finally, there’s been a dearth of consistently strong and vocal leadership on our American principles (democracy, rule of law, human rights, etc.), particularly since Nikki Haley stepped down as U.N. Ambassador. Foreign policy requires salesmanship, and ours would benefit from some strength, steadiness, and consistency on these themes.

Bottom line, this administration has served as a corrective to some badly flawed policy. Disruption was absolutely necessary, but at some point should start to give way to stability and focused team-building.

Real Leadership, Real Statesmanship: President Trump at NATO

 

Trump and StoltenbergWhile lots of us engage in the guilty pleasure of watching selective clips of our favorite Congressional actors in the latest kabuki theater, we might profit more from considering some of the sights and sounds coming from the NATO 70th anniversary meeting of heads of state. I especially invite your attention to two official videos, one of President Trump meeting before the press with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, and the other of the “2 Percenters” lunch meeting. Relevant excerpts from the transcripts appear below.*

Watch two mature adults have a real discussion before a real press corps. Notice that President Trump is defending NATO as a useful vehicle for the mutual defense of nations’ interests. Consider that Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is the former Prime Minister of Norway, not a career eurocrat. Listen to both men deal carefully with both the nature of threats and the natural disagreements even among friendly nations, where each nation operates from its own interests. President Trump says: “I love that you say that NATO is changing as the world is changing.” See Stoltenberg emphasis that NATO members have (under pressure from President Trump) made over 100 billion dollars worth of increases in military defense spending. Watch both men address the challenges of both China and Islamist terrorism.

Coming from a position of renewed resolve, shown in increased military defense spending, President Trump and the NATO Secretary-General both say that talking with Russia is important. President Trump may have made news at the end of the meeting with his confirmation that there is mutual interest in a new arms control agreement including not only Russia but also China. Secretary-General Stoltenberg affirmed that President Trump was right to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, because Russia violated it and we cannot have meaningful agreements where one party violates the terms. President Trump then coolly laid out the prospect of a new deal that addresses current realities, including the newest ICBM and high speed cruise missile forces in China.