Posted on 10/22/2022 6:49:53 PM PDT by AndyJackson
Most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path.
No-one listened to them and here we are.
The first one is George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy.
As soon as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia".
Then there's Kissinger, in 2014
He warned that "to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country" and that the West therefore needs a policy that is aimed at "reconciliation".
He was also adamant that "Ukraine should not join NAT0"
[Next] is John Mearsheimer - probably the leading geopolitical scholar in the US today - in 2015:
"The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked [...] What we're doing is in fact encouraging that outcome."
Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"
Clinton's defense secretary William Perry explaining in his memoir that to him NATO enlargement is the cause of "the rupture in relations with Russia" and that in 1996 he was so opposed to it that "in the strength of my conviction, I considered resigning".
Noam Chomsky in 2015, said that "the idea that Ukraine might join a Western military alliance would be quite unacceptable to any Russian leader" and that Ukraine's desire to join NATO "is not protecting Ukraine, it is threatening Ukraine with major war."
Stephen Cohen, a famed scholar of Russian studies, warning in 2014 that "if we move NATO forces toward Russia's borders [...] it's obviously gonna militarize the situation [and] Russia will not back off, this is existential"
.....
Sir Roderic Lyne, former British ambassador to Russia, warned a year ago that "[pushing] Ukraine into NATO [...] is stupid on every level." He adds "if you want to start a war with Russia, that's the best way of doing it."
.........
This is Pat Buchanan, in his 1999 book A Republic, Not an Empire: "By moving NATO onto Russia's front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation."
.......
In 1997, 50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion.
It's a "policy error of historic proportions" they write
.....
The issue is mis-stated. The root of the desire to expand Nato is not on the part of national leadership of Nato, but a “grassroots” desire by the peoples involved, whether in or out of the Russian orbit, for separation and protection from Russia. This is a matter of popular will, both understandable and justified.
The denial of support and protection is an “f___ you” to these millions of people. Your lot should at least pretend to feel bad about it, imho.
The reason NATO expanded was that the newly liberated states of Eastern Europe feared Russia’s aggressive nature Events which have been proven by the attempt to conqueror Ukraine
Sweden and Finland, two long time neutral nations have recently joined NATO because of the Russian invasion
NATO expansion was in reaction to Russian aggression and
expansion
It is sort of a great cartoon, when you realize that the girl that you are annoying the crap out of has more nuclear weapons that your side does.
That is an anachronism - there I get to use that word once in my life.
The finger poke is a matter of interpretation. Russia, collectively, is a “dark triad” narcissist. This very negative type can’t handle rejection. Thats the actual “poke”.
And why it is a strategic blunder is well covered in the thread I posted and the individuals cited therein if you had read it rather than take up the neocon warmongering corrupt crony Ukraine is our money laundromat side.
Hmmm. We are looking at the wreckage of a very large scale attempt at such expansionism just now. Anachronism?
—> Putin is the one who invaded a foreign countr
Oh yeah. My country has done that too.
You see the problem is that Russia wants its own sphere of influence and we have declared that spheres of influence don't exist - because the globe is the sphere of influence of the global elite - and so Russia must be dismembered by the globalists and absorbed into the grand global scheme.
Putin's response is that he will destroy the world before that is going to happen.
Your response is that Putin is a thug. Ok. So we all die.
We have? When, well discounting the last 236 times we did it?
+1
Note bene - Whatever Ukraines state of corruption, the payments to Biden and co came from Russia or Russian proxies (Burisima) in Ukraine. Putin was buying Biden.
The US MSM was deliberately playing that down (for obvious reasons, it would have made Biden look even worse), and you swallowed their line.
Strategy comes from the bottom up also, not just top-down. The plans of the masterminds are oft ruined by uncooperative peoples.
This is frivolous. - Question - if Putin was paying off the corrupt US leadership why did they impeach Trump for interfering with the arming of Ukraine.
I must have missed when Ukraine joined NATO. They didn’t even apply for it until after this war was launched. Other nations who were not in NATO also pushed to join AFTER this war was launched. The fact that Russia didn’t want to consider Ukraine as a sovereign nation is Russia’s fault, not the West’s and certainly not Ukraine which voted overwhelming to leave - in an actual election.
Engaging in revisionist history about past comments is quite extraordinary. Anything to try to justify the unjustifiable. Shameless!
The “global elite” is a fantasy, in part created by the “global elite” itself. They dont have such power, if the people organize and oppose them. Which is what most of Eastern Europe has done. What, do you think the Polish government are lackeys of the “global elite”?
These masters of the universe crash and burn on a regular basis. They were all for Nordstream and playing footsie with Putin, taking his bribes and etc., for decades. Putin financed the bulk of the Euro environmental movement, supported opposition to Keystone, paid off Hillary via the Clinton foundation, etc and etc.
Apparently these people want us to also forget about this:
Ukraine applied to Nato in 2008.
Yup.
“Ukrainian corruption” is one of the most hysterically inverted memes of the year.
Bunch of Putin clowns.
“Just maybe it was coming if RUSSIA continued down the same path.”
People who think like you will be eliminated from this party.
Methinks Arnaud is a one-worlder as he admires Kennan and Kissinger.
Doth he lean toward rasPutin?
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