Timothy Birdnow

Leftwing Newsweek bemoans the deteriorization of relations between the U.S. and Russia and intimate it's Trump's fault.

From the article:

The Warsaw Pact may have disintegrated along with the communist empire in the 1990s, but NATO has begun to once again focus on deterring Russia, which is resurging into a modern geopolitical giantunder Putin. Among the most consistent talking points in his two decades of power has been the warning that Russia would not tolerate being besieged by foes.

And yet NATO, under the leadership of Washington, has done just that. Since former President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, the U.S. has steadily established a global missile shield involving launchers positioned off both Russia's western and eastern flanks in Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions, respectively.

Please note the blame is first laid on Bush, but where was the "reset" of relations under Obama and Hillary? The real degeneration happened while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, even while they were bribing her with donations to the Clinton Foundation, with million dollar speeches by her husband, and with her quid-pro-quo by giving the Russians vast quantities of uranium.

But let us continue:

Trump and Putin both initially set out to reverse the course of deteriorating U.S.-Russia relations, avoiding another costly bout for global supremacy. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated Wednesday in his latest speech to NATO, however, the Cold War was still very much alive in U.S. memory as he offered allies $100 billion in defense spending credit.

Notice how no mention of Obama - who presided over the critical period when American and Russian relations tanked - is conspicuously absent in their criticisms.

The fact is  the Bush family and Bill Clinton and Obama all hopelessly mishandled Russia. We should never have expanded NATO. We should not have offered to defend the Ukraine in return for their getting rid of their share of the old Soviet nuclear arsenal. We should have taken a more proactive approach to fostering private enterprise in Russia. We should have tried to minimize our footprint in the Middle East. I supported our war with Iraq but it made the Russians very nervous. We had troops in Afghanistan, in Alaska, in Europe and then in Iraq. The Russians were encircled, and that made them feel threatened.

Syria was the last straw, and anyone who knew anything about the Russians should have known that.

But I am always amazed at how little our intelligence people and leaders understand. I remember when Russia invaded Georgia; Condoleeza Rice, Bush's Secretary of State, looked like a deer in the headlights. Clearly she was caught completely by surprise. I wasn't; Pravda had been railing against Georgia for months leading up to the invasion. It had reached a fever pitch. But Condi Rice probably just read intelligence reports, and the CIA was probably telling her it wasn't going to happen. She needed to just read a few Russian papers.

I think Trump's troop reduction in Syria was the right move, but we're going to have to offer a few more things to the Russians while at the same time continuing to deploy nuclear defense systems. The carrot and the stick. Putin is not Stalin, but he's not a whole lot better than Brezhnev.

There is another article in Newsweek about how Russian scientists were killed in a nuclear test. The Russians are moving ahead with nuclear innovation. They were able to do this because Bill Clinton a. continued to fund the nuclear cities where uranium was enriched, ostensibly to avoid Russian scientists going rogue and working with terrorists and b.because Bill Clinton paid for the destruction of the old Soviet arsenal and freed Putin to build a new, better arsenal. Bad American policy all around. 

At any rate, it amazes me that Newsweek fails to make the obvious connection; the Hillary Clinton-funded campaign against Donald Trump started with  "Russian collusion" accusations - and launched an aggressive attack on Russia for "meddling in our elections" as though we didn't do the exact same thing. This more than anything has led to the current cold war with Russia. There has been enormous pressure on Donald Trump to not appear to be soft on Putin, and our whole national policy is being driven by Hillary Clinton's refusal to accept defeat in the election of 2016. My friend 7lb. Dave used to say America was going to be punished for re-electing the Clintons in 1996. He was so right! The Clintons are the scourge that keeps on giving.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 769 words, total size 5 kb.