Posted on 05/03/2024 4:28:14 AM PDT by hardspunned
“The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs says that a large-scale European war is not a fantasy, and the Poles are already saying that there is no diplomatic solution to the war,” the Prime Minister noted on the program, adding that “Europe is playing with fire, we are on the frontier between peace and war.”
As Hirado.hu reports, the Prime Minister recalled that once in 1999, our country managed to stay out of war, when an attempt was made to involve us in the southern Slavic conflict against the Serbs, which would have ruined Serbian-Hungarian relations and the fate of the Hungarian community in Vojvodina. He then recalled that twice in the twentieth century the country was forced into wars that sealed the fate of the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at hungarytoday.hu ...
Thanks for posting. Victor Orban BUMP!
A big first step was a crackdown on foreign NGOs, forcing Soros to move his Open Society headquarters from Budapest ti Berlin.
But never fear. USAID has come foward to step into the breach, under the direction of Samantha Powers.
Yet Orban stupidly does not blame Putin. Poor guy.
Orban is well-informed when it comes to the history and context of this ten year proxy war. NATO expansion has played a major role in this conflict.
George Kennan, the author of the Long Telegram that formed the basis of our containment policy after WWII, wrote in 1997, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991,
“Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the Cold War, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?”
“[B]luntly stated…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking … ”
Geroge Kennan did not live into the full blown Putin era.
Had he lived longer he would have seen Putin ruining the possibilty of an end to the West-Rsussia divide. He would have seen the NATO expansion on the part of its newest members was mostly to buy insurance against intimidation by PUTIN, Putin specifically.
Kennan would say that our policies enabled the ascension of Putin as the leader of Russia.
"Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking … ”
He would have seen the NATO expansion on the part of its newest members was mostly to buy insurance against intimidation by PUTIN, Putin specifically.
They want to join because the US becomes the guarantor of their sovereignty up to and including nuclear war. It is an insurance policy where the US pays most of the premiums. Like immigration to the US, joining NATO is a privilege, not a right. The real issue is how it benefits the US. The US has provided the security umbrella over Europe since the end of WWII. Burden sharing has been a neuralgic issue for as long as I can remember back to the days when I was assigned to a NATO command in Naples (1968-70). The Europeans have used this "peace dividend" to construct generous welfare states. Despite establishing an obligatory floor of 2% of GDP on defense, most have not met this commitment. Their militaries have atrophied and fallen generations behind the US technologically. Interoperability is a problem along with standardization and procurement.
Europe has a population of 500 million and a combined GDP roughly equivalent to our own. It is time that they paid for their own defense. We are the world's biggest debtor nation. Debt servicing costs now exceed our defense budget. We can't afford these endless wars that weaken us.
The war in Ukraine remains a product of NATO expansion and the crossing of a red line. Hundreds of thousands are dead because we dismissed Russian signals to stop. We chose war instead of diplomacy. US strategic national interests are not at stake in Ukraine. But the consequences have resulted in a global geopolitical realignment that will remain with us for generations.
“Kennan would say that our policies enabled the ascension of Putin as the leader of Russia.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. The internal politics of post Soviet Russia enabled the ascension of Putin with no help or external impetus needed from anywhere outside of Russia, but the direction Putin wanted to take Russia was and is entirely Putin’s. Those in Russia who have struggled for real democratic alternatives know that and have testified to that constantly over the years, and continuing today.
>>If Russia could, *somehow*, stop doing that, then there would be no more war in Europe, would there?
As long as there are humans,there will be war.
Europe *will* be conquered unless they abandon leftism; either by the Russians or the Mozzies. The Russians, at least, are less likely to rape the children.
“The war in Ukraine remains a product of NATO expansion and the crossing of a red line. Hundreds of thousands are dead because we dismissed Russian signals to stop. We chose war instead of diplomacy. “
That’s pure B.S. Putin chose war because diplomacy would not give him what he wanted. Quit making up excuses for Putin’s unneccessary invasion of another sovereign country.
The people who want wars rarely fight in them.
The American people urgently need to know the true history of the war in Ukraine and its current prospects. Unfortunately, the mainstream media—The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN—have become mere mouthpieces of the government, repeating US President Joe Biden’s lies and hiding history from the public.
Biden is again denigrating Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time accusing Putin of a “craven lust for land and power,” after declaring last year that “For God’s sake, that man [Putin] cannot stay in power.” Yet Biden is the one who is trapping Ukraine in an open-ended war by continuing to push NATO enlargement to Ukraine. He is afraid to tell the truth to the American and Ukrainian people, rejecting diplomacy, and opting instead for perpetual war.
Expanding NATO to Ukraine, which Biden has long promoted, is a U.S. gambit that has failed. The neocons, including Biden, thought from the late 1990s onward that the US could expand NATO to Ukraine (and Georgia) despite Russia’s vociferous and long-standing opposition. They didn’t believe that Putin would actually go to war over NATO expansion.
Yet for Russia, NATO enlargement to Ukraine (and Georgia) is viewed as an existential threat to Russia’s national security, notably given Russia’s 2,000-km border with Ukraine, and Georgia’s strategic position on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. U.S. diplomats have explained this basic reality to U.S. politicians and generals for decades, but the politicians and generals have arrogantly and crudely persisted in pushing NATO enlargement nonetheless.
At this point, Biden knows full well that NATO enlargement to Ukraine would trigger World War III. That’s why behind the scenes Biden put NATO enlargement into low gear at the Vilnius NATO Summit. Yet rather than admit the truth – that Ukraine will not be part of NATO – Biden prevaricates, promising Ukraine’s eventual membership. In reality, he is committing Ukraine to ongoing bloodletting for no reason other than U.S. domestic politics, specifically Biden’s fear of looking weak to his political foes. (A half-century ago, Presidents Johnson and Nixon sustained the Vietnam War for essentially the same pathetic reason, and with the same lying, as the late Daniel Ellsberg brilliantly explained.)
Ukraine can’t win. Russia is more likely than not to prevail on the battlefield, as it seems now to be doing. Yet even if Ukraine were to break through with conventional forces and NATO weaponry, Russia would escalate to nuclear war if necessary to prevent NATO in Ukraine.
Throughout his entire career, Biden has served the military-industrial complex. He has relentlessly promoted NATO enlargement and supported America’s deeply destabilizing wars of choice in Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine. He defers to generals who want more war and more “surges,” and who predict imminent victory just ahead to keep the gullible public onside.
Moreover, Biden and his team (Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland) seem to have believed their own propaganda that Western sanctions would strangle the Russian economy, while miracle weapons such as HIMARS would defeat Russia. And all the while, they have been telling Americans to pay no attention to Russia’s 6,000 nuclear weapons.
Ukrainian leaders have gone along with the US deception for reasons that are hard to fathom. Perhaps they believe the US, or are afraid of the US, or fear their own extremists, or simply are extremists, ready to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to death and injury in the naïve belief that Ukraine can defeat a nuclear superpower that regards the war as existential. Or possibly some of the Ukrainian leaders are making fortunes by skimming from the tens of billions of dollars of Western aid and arms.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The internal politics of post Soviet Russia enabled the ascension of Putin with no help or external impetus needed from anywhere outside of Russia, but the direction Putin wanted to take Russia was and is entirely Putin’s. Those in Russia who have struggled for real democratic alternatives know that and have testified to that constantly over the years, and continuing today.
The "internal politics" were influenced by external events. NATO expansion enabled the hardliners like ex-KGB thug, Putin, to gain power.
Which invasion are you talking about--the one in 2014 or 2022?
If you want a comprehensive chronology of how we got into this mess, check out my link in post #13. You need to get better informed instead of relying on the Biden propaganda machine.
Biden is compromised on Ukraine. Why do you think Trump's first impeachment over Ukraine came about? Ukraine was one of the most corrupt countries in Europe before the war. It has only become worse under Zelensky who has jailed his opponents, postponed the election, and committed other violations of civil liberties. You don't become President of Ukraine without being corrupt.
1. Your post #13 is your opinion and in it you cut and paste the “facts” that fit your narrative, which is by a long shot not all the facts, and in that particularly all the facts about what Putin has and has not done.
2. Biden is the last person I rely on for anything. So quit trying to imply that because I disagree with you that I get my information or opinions from him.
3. Biden could have convinced Putin to not invade Ukraine, with just one warning, that that invasion would insure exactly what you claim Putin did not want - that in time Ukraine would definitely ask and be accepted into NATO. But Biden is no Trump and could not muster the strength to give Putin that warning.
4. We have a 2,000 mile with Canada and that is not a security question because we and Canada do not have such concerns with each other. Putin has security concerns with such a border due to his own actions insuring those on the other side of that border have concerns about him.
Russia had no right to signal a stop
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