Posted on 11/30/2007 12:25:11 PM PST by OldCorps
Our next president will likely face a Russia led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, determined to stand up to a West Russians believe played them for fools when they sought to be friends.
We pushed NATO into Moscow's face, bringing six ex-Warsaw Pact nations and three ex-Soviet republics – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – into our Cold War alliance and plotted to bring in Ukraine and Georgia.
We pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty over Moscow's objection, then announced plans to plant ABM radars in the Czech Republic and anti-missile missiles in Poland.
Putin has now responded in kind, and who can blame him?
As we abandoned the ABM Treaty, the Duma, in November, voted 418 to 0 to suspend participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which restricts the size of the Russian army west of the Urals.
If we recognize Kosovo as independent, at the expense of Serbia, Putin is now threatening to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the breakaway republics of Georgia and Transneistria, claimed by Moldova.
It was not NATO that liberated Eastern Europe. Moscow did – by pulling out the Red Army after half a century. Why, then, did we think moving NATO into Eastern Europe was a surer guarantee of their continued independence than the goodwill of Russia?
Many among our foreign policy elite now talk of a Second Cold War. John McCain wants Russia kicked out of the G-8. But do we not have enough enemies already that we should add the largest nation on earth?
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
I guarantee, even if we’d followed Pat’s formula, Putin would still be moving towards an autocracy.
Oh my, if only we had been more sensitive!
Vlad is Pat’s kind of guy. All he needs is a toothbrush mustache and a swastika armband.
Is it me or does this sound like Ron Paul? Change Russia to Islamic radicals and the story line is the same. We did things they didn’t like, we’re wrong, and “who can blame them?”
I don’t really see being held hostage to Russian psycho pathologies is the best way to compartmentalize Europe's crazy man.
Let’m rant and rave about imaginary slights, we’ve got the future to meet.
I agree. We have not treated Russia with due respect after the break up of the USSR. Imagine if Russia had annexed Canada and Mexico into the WARSAW pact. We wouldn’t be very upset about it now would we?
The one that really gets my crawl, is us supporting the Muslim killers in Kosovo. This is certainly not in our national interests nor is it worth pissing Russia off.
This may not be a popular sentiment here, but its a realistic view. I don’t always agree with Pat, but on this one i do.
“It was not NATO that liberated Eastern Europe. Moscow did – by pulling out the Red Army after half a century.”
It was neither, you old fool. It was Ronald Reagan, Maggie Thatcher and Pope John Paul II and a supporting cast of millions of people demanding freedom.
“I guarantee, even if we’d followed Pat’s formula, Putin would still be moving towards an autocracy.”
His internal domestic consolidation of power would certain continue I think, including state takeover of major natural resources, as well as domestic political control He is certainly an autocrat, apparently reviving the RSFSR without the communist ideology but rather a robber-baron state.
How would his posture towards the west be impacted? I think it is unrealistic to say it would make no difference - encirclement and attempted corporate looting of natural resources never makes friends.
Bravo and well said.
Yep, its all our fault, probably because of our jews..
“Why, then, did we think moving NATO into Eastern Europe was a surer guarantee of their continued independence than the goodwill of Russia?”
Umm, maybe the entirety of Russian history suggests otherwise. These new NATO countries had their fill of Russian “goodwill” and bolted when they could. That the west stood for their freedon ia a good thing. Russia is going to be Russia regardless of what “formula” we follow - and that means autocratic.
The Russians have legitimate points about Serbia and drilling in the Arctic.
But they are smoking tainted hash when they whine about ABM systems.
The Russians are also cozy with the same Iranians who are funding the murdering of Russians in Chechnya and Moscow.
As for NATO, the Russians could have been admitted into NATO if only they’d followed Poland’s path instead of swinging their weight around.
The only thing I agree with Pat on here is Kosovo. That was a blunder on our part. We went in on the side of the muzzies, pissed off the Ruskies for no gain of our own, and ended helping to establish an extremist ethnic-cleansing muzzie theocracy.
Good work there, BillyBubba, and good job staying the course there, President Bush.
Russia is not to be trusted, and our policy towards them is DISTRUST. It is a CORRECT POLICY.
Do NOT trust the Russians. They are doing a LOT more in the background that you people know, or understand, and you won’t take the damned time to research it. Buchanan is WRONG
And if you believe that, I got a nice plot of land in Gaza for sale.
....then again Pat probably already has one.
That’s why (some) Russians suffer from the greatest case of geopolitical penis-envy on the face of the planet . . . their vaunted military was chased out of E. Europe by protestors armed with candles.
This could have all been solved in 1945 if we had let Patton do his thing.
I think it's just you. You picked the short straw to post the first knee-jerk Paul reference.
Yes, that pretty much sums up Pat’s worldview. Those Jews are the cause of every problem. If they would just go away!
Don’t forget Lech Walesa too. He and the Polish workers exposed the folly of the communist system. Unfortunately, Pat has glommed on to Putin as a hero and he ignores the real heroes. Pat’s a blow hard for dictators. It’s a sad fact of phenomena that Pat’s decided to waste his aging years puffing up and apologizing for every brutal dictator who hates America, especially if they share his animus for Jews.
That's funny! Has Pat caught whatever Paul Craig Roberts has?
Let’s make a free trade deal with them and export them some money. Our presses are at full production and we need the oil.
“I guarantee, even if we’d followed Pat’s formula, Putin would still be moving towards an autocracy.”
What is or would be prevailing in Russia should not be the point. No matter what Russia is or would be under Putin, there is nothing in the entire Chinese government or its structure that makes them any better, or shows any promise of every making them “liberalize” politically and particularly in that area Russia and China are on an equal plane.
So why do we cow-tow to every slight in the eyes of the Chinese dictators, give them a seat at the table over North Korea - a place, regarding any “former” Russian satellite we would not even think of giving Russia an “observer” position to; refuse to use any supposed leverage our supposed “friendly relationship” with China should have on issues like Burma and the Sudan; arrest and try a U.S. diplomat for supposedly transferring “secrets” to a Taiwanese girlfriend who was employed by Taiwan’s defense agency, while thousands of Chinese spies rome our country on “commercial business”, while we even entertain the idea of a merger between 3Com and Chinese company take place, while Intel plans to expand chip production in China, while GM sets Shanghi as where it will build its new design center - and nearly EVERYTHING WE DO AND SAY REGARDING RUSSIA is as if Russia is a devil compared to China’s saints.
The total disconnect, in American policy, between the total similarities of the political realities in Russia and China and a foreign policy that ignores those similarities has one single crass dimension and in its crassness it is divorced from our security interests - money.
I am not a Buchanan fan, or a Putin fan. Nor am I a fan of the Chinese dictators and it is not strange for Putin to observe that our statements about “rights”, democracy and democratic norms, and our claims that those things regarding Russia are in the mix of things disturbing our relationship, while he sees that in reality they extend no further than the latest imported toy from China. Why shouldn’t he feel we are insincere regarding our objections? He has a right to.
Again, I am not in his fan club and many of his actions deserve some of our criticism. But, he has a lot from which to believe he should question our motives, because there is too much for which we are hypocrites.
Had we not incorporated the newly free nations into Nato, they would have had to drift back into the Soviet orbit as Putin blackmailed them with gas supplies, electricity, food and troops on their borders. Today, they can become modern prosperous countries. That is not possible as a Russian vassal state. Today, their resources and land are not available for Russia to threaten Western Europe and the rest of the world. They would be if Pat had his way.
In fact, we would have had to actively interfere with the integration of Eastern Europe into Europe to prevent it happening. None of these countries wanted to remain in the Russian's jackboot orbit. So what Pat is really suggesting is that we should have actively interfered to prevent the Russians from losing their empire because they "extended the hand of friendship" to us. In foreign policy, Pat is as stupid as Noam Chomsky.
As to the missile defense argument, the Russians have orders of magnitude more missile capabilities than are necessary to overwhelm any defense we can construct. What upsets them is that they want to be able to hold the threat of nuclear attack by their proxies in the middle east over Europe and and America's interests in Europe. The missile shield blunts that strategy and they don't like not being able to play the "insane little brother" game in the middle east.
I guess I just don't care that much if the Russians don't like us. Eventually they will be driven back into an uneasy alliance with us as China starts looking north for resources. In the meantime, it's better that they do not control all of Eastern Europe. They are, as a result, weaker and less able to threaten our interests.
He’s right.
We hsould have brought Russia into NATO. We hsould have helped stabilize the Russian ecomony with expert advice and aid vis-a-vis a Marshall plan after they kicked out the Commies. We should have worked towards a new political, economic and military union with Russia and Eastern Europe and given the shaft to the ingrates in Western Europe.
We didn’t and we got Putin. And I blame Bush I, Clinton and Bush II.
As a start to mend fences, we should be supporting the Serbs against the Muslim Kosovars.
Does Pat really think the despots ever lost power in Russia? Who does he think controls the country? Only a wacko would think we could be friends with the same people who gave us the cold war to begin with. I wonder if PCR is also a proponent of Putin's managed capitalism?
Let’s just hand them all of our technology like we handed to China
Blame America First.
Russia would have STILL done their deals with Iran, would have still trucked out all those WMD’s to Syria, and Putin would have still rolled back the reforms no matter what we did.
I think W was smart to roll the borders back on Russia to the extent that he did.
With both Georgia and the Ukraine, there is enough hatred of Russia remaining in those two places that NATO membership was moot. Putin is attempting to push the US around because he thinks he can.
His real problem is a wealthy Chinese adversary. It’s why he nationalized his oil.
No doubt.
So the similar, we brought this upon ourselves line doesn’t sound like RP? Ok. Sure.
As someone who grew up in Eastern Europe, I thank you for expressing my own thoughts so well. I could not have said it better myself.
Modern Russia is quite different than the Soviet Union.
They are a lot more free market and have a flat tax:
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed032403.cfm
Thanks. Pat is so far out on these issues, it's hard to understand how he gets there. At one time, he understood the dangerous world we live in and that you assess other countries by capabilities and historic behavior, not by "expressions of friendship." He's become a sucker just like the rest of the "retreat to our borders" crowd.
The only place I agree with him is Kosovo. That was a significant strategic blunder that poked Russia in the eye in order to preserve a radical muslim enclave in the heart of Europe. But, I'll admit, at the time, I was not so concerned with the muslim problem in Europe as I am today and much more concerned about ethnic cleansing.
Do you really believe that's what happened?
Eventually he’s going to be quoting Marx and Lenin in his columns. Visiting Chavez and A'manutonajihad. One of the mourners at Castro's funeral.
A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
Well, maybe some exaggeration. In Vilnius, the vaunted Soviet military managed to kill fourteen civilians, in a tactical victory probably still taught as part of the curriculum at Smolensk War Academy in a course titled, “Tank Driving Basics.”
“They are doing a LOT more in the background that you people know, or understand, and you won’t take the damned time to research it.”
Rather than make vague allegations, can you educate us people with specifics?
I read a report prepared by the British in 1945 on the viability of war with the USSR at that time. There was no ‘sure thing’ solution to going to war with the Soviet Union, based on many of the rather detailed projections.
“So why do we cow-tow to every slight in the eyes of the Chinese dictators, give them a seat at the table over North Korea”
I am certain it is because they have tremendous monetary and political influence on the US and US corporations in a way Russia cannot compare.
Did you know that in the 1990s the global Islamists were certain they defeated the American Army and expelled it from Somalia and Lebanon. They had rather more justification for this point of view because they actually did some shooting back. Anyway, later events had shown that such delusions are potentially dangerous for the "defeated" side but they are disastrous for those deluded.
That's funny! Has Pat caught whatever Paul Craig Roberts has?
You didn't pay much attention to this in the 1990s, did you? Pat is an idiot on most issues but he is absolutely right on this one.
I didn’t say you had to like them. With our forces extended in the GWOT,the last thing we need to be doing is agitating a much larger foe who is currently selling oil at $90 a barrel. What purpose does it meet? Especially to prop up muslim fundamentalists. Save your hyperbole for others.
Here is the thing that frustrates me about this invocation of Reagan in connection to our current Russia policy. Yes, in his first term Reagan confronted the Soviet gerontocrats and that was absolutely the right thing to do. But in his second term, after the emergence of Gorbachev, Reagan's policies were quite different. Reagan didn't treat Gorbachev as the enemy. Reagan talked to Gorbachev, he met him many times, he made treaties, he "trusted but verified," he was constantly slammed for that by the hard-line Cold warriors but he was vindicated. He managed to convince Russian leadership, Russian elite, and, most important, Russian people that the West wasn't the enemy.
That is how we should've treated the new Russia. That's the Reagan way. Do you realize that the current policy of constantly poking a stick into Russia's face was designed by CLINTON? Why do Republican feel so attached to it?
You have an odd reading of history. As Reagan ‘talked’ to Gorby, he was making sure we were bankrupting them. And he was constantly adding to their internal pressure with his calls for freedom. He wanted to avoid war, to be sure, but he knew exactly what he was doing. And he was working in concert wit JPII and the Iron Lady to see that their collapse was imminent.
If you look at the post Reykavik summit, where he returned with no deal after getting so close to disaraming large swaths of weapons systems, he walked away with nothing becasue he would not budge on missile defense systems. The media crucified him, the dems crucified him, and many republicans did too. But the game to Reagan was not some arms deal to give the USSR life support, it was the death of communism. After that summit, it was only a matter of time. While most hardliners could not see what was going on, one guy, Duncan Hunter sure did, and there is no more right wing than that.
Excerpt:
A perfect illustration of Hunter’s leadership and vision on these matters occurred in 1987. President Reagan walked away from the summit in Reykjavik, Iceland without any agreements with Soviet Premier Gorbachev, a summit that had very high expectations worldwide. When the media found out it was Reagan’s ‘fault’ – he refused to put SDI on the table – they went ballistic. The press in the US and around the globe heaped scornful article after scornful article on the President. The Democrats in congress were equally apoplectic, accusing Reagan of setting back US-Soviet relations by decades. The hysteria carried over into the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), of which Hunter was a member. Though nearly equal in numbers of Democrats and Republicans, a 13 member HASC subcommittee released a scathing assessment of the Reykjavik negotiations. “The result has been ‘the appearance of confusion and frustration’, a worried NATO alliance, and the retrospective possibility that ‘the United States was `snookered’ by a clever Soviet scheme’ to gain unbalanced U.S. concessions or to fix the blame on Reagan for failure of the negotiations”, reported the Chicago Sun Times. Les Aspin, Chairman of the committee, added that the summit meeting became “the textbook case on how the superpowers should NOT negotiate.”
Also, according to the Sun Times, “One member of the 13-member panel, conservative Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), filed a sharply worded six-page dissent, calling the report ‘unprofessional’ and a ‘celebration of form over substance’ dominated by ‘political sniping.’” In other words, Hunter knew what Reagan did in Iceland: He put the Soviet Union in a very tight corner. With hindsight, most everyone has since agreed that it was Gorbachev, not Reagan, who got snookered. The Berlin wall came crashing down 2 years later. But only Hunter, amongst the supposed hawks (democrat and republican) on the HASC, had the vision to see clearly what was happening at the time. Hunter went to the mat for Reagan when even his own party was in despair. And Hunter was right.
Buchanan is a Paleocon that does not yet know the era of capitulation and turn the other cheek is over, as is Ron Paul.
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