Posted on 01/03/2017 7:15:15 AM PST by Kaslin
In retaliation for the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC, Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered closure of their country houses on Long Island and Maryland's Eastern shore.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that 35 U.S. diplomats would be expelled. But Vladimir Putin stepped in, declined to retaliate at all, and invited the U.S. diplomats in Moscow and their children to the Christmas and New Year's party at the Kremlin.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger," reads Proverbs 15:1. "Great move," tweeted President-elect Trump, "I always knew he was very smart!"
Among our Russophobes, one can almost hear the gnashing of teeth.
Clearly, Putin believes the Trump presidency offers Russia the prospect of a better relationship with the United States. He appears to want this, and most Americans seem to want the same. After all, Hillary Clinton, who accused Trump of being "Putin's puppet," lost.
Is then a Cold War II between Russia and the U.S. avoidable?
That question raises several others.
Who is more responsible for both great powers having reached this level of animosity and acrimony, 25 years after Ronald Reagan walked arm-in-arm with Mikhail Gorbachev through Red Square? And what are the causes of the emerging Cold War II?
Comes the retort: Putin has put nuclear-capable missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and Lithuania.
True, but who began this escalation?
George W. Bush was the one who trashed Richard Nixon's ABM Treaty and Obama put anti-missile missiles in Poland. After invading Iraq, George W. Bush moved NATO into the Baltic States in violation of a commitment given to Gorbachev by his father to not move NATO into Eastern Europe if the Red Army withdrew.
Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, says John McCain.
Russia did, after Georgia invaded its breakaway province of South Ossetia and killed Russian peacekeepers. Putin threw the Georgians out, occupied part of Georgia, and then withdrew.
Russia, it is said, has supported Syria's Bashar Assad, bombed U.S.-backed rebels and participated in the Aleppo slaughter.
But who started this horrific civil war in Syria?
Was it not our Gulf allies, Turkey, and ourselves by backing an insurgency against a regime that had been Russia's ally for decades and hosts Russia's only naval base in the Mediterranean?
Did we not exercise the same right of assisting a beleaguered ally when we sent 500,000 troops to aid South Vietnam against a Viet Cong insurgency supported by Hanoi, Beijing and Moscow?
That's what allies do.
The unanswered question: Why did we support the overthrow of Assad when the likely successor regime would have been Islamist and murderously hostile toward Syria's Christians?
Russia, we are told, committed aggression against Ukraine by invading Crimea.
But Russia did not invade Crimea. To secure their Black Sea naval base, Russia executed a bloodless coup, but only after the U.S. backed the overthrow of the pro-Russian elected government in Kiev.
Crimea had belonged to Moscow from the time of Catherine the Great in the 18th century, and the Russia-Ukraine relationship dates back to before the Crusades. When did this become a vital interest of the USA?
As for Putin's backing of secessionists in Donetsk and Luhansk, he is standing by kinfolk left behind when his country broke apart. Russians live in many of the 14 former Soviet republics that are now independent nations.
Has Putin no right to be concerned about his lost countrymen?
Unlike America's elites, Putin is an ethnonationalist in a time when tribalism is shoving aside transnationalism as the force of the future.
Russia, it is said, is supporting right-wing and anti-EU parties. But has not our National Endowment for Democracy backed regime change in the Balkans as well as in former Soviet republics?
We appear to be denouncing Putin for what we did first.
Moreover, the populist, nationalist, anti-EU and secessionist parties in Europe have arisen on their own and are advancing through free elections.
Sovereignty, independence, a restoration of national identity, all appear to be more important to these parties than what they regard as an excessively supervised existence in the soft-dictatorship of the EU.
In the Cold War between Communism and capitalism, the single-party dictatorship and the free society, we prevailed.
But in the new struggle we are in, the ethnonational state seems ascendant over the multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, multilingual "universal nation" whose avatar is Barack Obama.
Putin does not seek to destroy or conquer us or Europe. He wants Russia, and her interests, and her rights as a great power to be respected.
He is not mucking around in our front yard; we are in his.
The worst mistake President Trump could make would be to let the Russophobes grab the wheel and steer us into another Cold War that could be as costly as the first, and might not end as peacefully.
Reagan's outstretched hand to Gorbachev worked. Trump has nothing to lose by extending his to Vladimir Putin, and much perhaps to win.
WHY would we want to “avoid” Cold War II????
The options are a HOT WAR or appeasement!!!!!!
That in tha Photo of Putin, he looks like someon from out of Wizard School awith Harry Potter.
Unless Russia uses decrepit nukes, it is in no position for any kind of real war, hot or cold, with the United States.
There are some serious geopolitical issues between the United States and Russia. The article discusses many of them. The first issue is exactly what kind of relationship we should have with Russia? The current regime has not even addressed that question. Russia may have given us reason to expel diplomats, but “hacking our election” isn’t one of them. We should have expelled a whole bunch of Chinese diplomats if that’s our policy standard.
I can’t wait to get some proper adults in charge of our foreign policy.
“WHY would we want to “avoid” Cold War II????
The options are a HOT WAR or appeasement!!!!!!”
Lindsey Graham was on the ballot and had her chance.
Sorry neocons. You’re out the door with all the other globalist trash.
A very incisive yet positive essay by Buchanan without excessive rhetoric, timely and well done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014
Russia didn't invade Crimea. There were 20,000 troops were based there as they had been for a century. NATO’s promise not to expand and move forces eastward was trashed by Obama's warmongers.
Henry Kissinger on NATO's Kosovo war:
“The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate consideration of its implications … The transformation of the NATO alliance from a defensive military grouping to an institution prepared to impose its values by force … undercut repeated American and allied assurances that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO expansion.”
NATO has not only become costly and not serve U.S. interests (besides giving the perfumed princes an all-expenses-paid European vacation), but it has become very dangerous and destructive. American military for America. Not Davos.
“I can’t wait to get some proper adults in charge of our foreign policy.”
No kidding. It has been many years since we have had foreign policy which was not malignant, incoherent, or both. Those eight years of Reagan stand like an oasis in a wasteland.
Obama will go down in history along with Napoleon and Hitler as suffering from narcissistic overreach. We all know that Russia is in a downward spiral. Their demographics are horrendous and their ability to populate their nation, and secure their borders in the near term is in doubt.
Obama and Hillary thought that they could speed the process along, lean on Russia and it will collapse. But, failing to heed from history, they backed the Russian bear into a corner.
What Trump has to do IMO, is to help Russia, ‘die with dignity’ not unlike the British Empire. That means not provoking them, but at the same time not allow them, in their death spasms, to threaten their neighbors from the Baltics to the Black Sea. It’s a fine balancing act.
Sorry neocons. You’re out the door with all the other globalist trash.
LOL at the juvenile name calling. Lenin had a term for people like you. You sure are living up to it.
Btw, that term “perfumed princes” comes from The late Col. David “Hack” Hackworth, one of the most highly decorated American soldiers in U.S. history. As an aside, and something I mentioned on FR before, I used to correspond with Hack via email. Hack was doing research on McCain, whom Hack thought was a fraud and scumbag. I was trying to get a family friend— a combat pilot who was in the Hanoi Hilton w/ McCain— to go on record with what he had told us about McCain at social get-togethers. He declined. He was a GOP state official and ended up backing McCain/Palin in 2008. Disappointing, but this is an honorable man and I respect his decision. I will never relay what he told us in confidence. But at this point I don’t think anyone needs further proof of what McCain is about.
I rejoice in the collapse of globalism. At home and abroad.
You lost.
Did you ever hear of a president that is so possessed with his legacy, as that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is?
I can see no reason to consider Russia an enemy, though I can’t see them as a real friend either. What do they have that we don’t have or can’t do without; what do we have that they don’t have or can’t do without? If they decide to kick Europe’s @$$ it’s not our problem; we bailed them out twice in the last century. Let ‘em do for themselves for a change!
They need to focus - both of them - on the worldwide threat from islam.
Not to mention China.
And North Korea.
It’d be nice to have Russia allied with the US.
Do you object to globalists being called trash?
Exactly. I love it! That’s what I expect Tillerson to do or any number of similar deals. He can talk to Putin. It would go something like this, “You promise not to invade your neighbors, we’ll pull back a bit, give you some breathing room, remove sanctions, and we can all go on with our lives.”
The damn Cold War is over. The only reason we’re so antagonistic to Russia is Obama and his Saudi overlords, and the Saudis are finished.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.