Sunday Morning Talk Show Thread 21 April 2024

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Margaret Brennan anchors: Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.); Rep. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska); and New York Times national security and White House correspondent David Sanger, author of "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West."

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Anchor Shannon Bream: Sens. Linda Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard “Da Nang Dick” Blumenthal (D-Conn.); Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.); and a legal discussion with George Washington University law school professor Jonathan Turley; and Tom Dupree, former principal deputy assistant attorney general. Panel: Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation; former DNC delegate Richard Fowler; Guy Benson, political editor at Guy Benson is Townhall.com; and USA Today Francesca Chambers.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Hosted by Kristen Welker: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy; Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s (or “How I serviced LBJ”)."; NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki discusses the results of a new NBC News political poll. Panel: Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher; Matt Gorman, former senior communications adviser of the Tim Scott presidential campaign and former communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee; and NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Angrea Mitchell—Same old Chuck Toad-level, easily forgotten group of angry Leftists slinging anti-American balderdash!

THIS WEEK (ABC): Hosted by Little Georgie Steponallofus (or is it Martha Raddish?): Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.); retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, author of "Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism."; and a report on "efforts to mobilize environmentally conscious voters in battleground Pennsylvania ahead of the 2024 election." Panel: former Democratic National Committee chair Donna BrazileNut; former RNC chairman Reince Priebus, former White House chief of staff; Politico senior Washington correspondent Rachael Bade; and Politico senior political correspondent Jonathan Martin—same Ugly, shameless, Left-wing Propagandists and RINOs!

STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Anchored by Jake Toe-Tapper (or is it Dana Bash?): Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) and Gov. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.). Panel: Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas); Kate Bedingfield, former Biden White House communications director; Scott Jennings, former special assistant to President George W. Bush; and Jamal Simmons, former communications director for Vice President Harris—Tapper’s totally and toxically biased group of parrots!

SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES (FNC): The Show to watch Hosted by Maria Bartiromo: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas); Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah); Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.); and Poland's President Andrzej Duda.

I'm pro-negotiation to end the war. I think no matter for how long or how hard the Ukrainians fight, they'll never get Donbas and Crimea back. That has to happen on the Russia side, perhaps a coup against Putin, or a real democratic state, but very unlikely.

So Putin and Russia who hold the stronger hand and gaining in strength every day must make concessions for negotiations to begin? Fantasy world stuff. More than "very unlikely." So in the interim, the war goes on with more senseless death and destruction. And the US taxpayer must bear the burden of the costs borrowing more and more money to fund an endless, unwinnable proxy war. When does America First kick-in? What's the end game?

Selling weapons to Europeans at war is an old and long US tradition. We sold weapons in WWI--the Lusitania where filled with them. Selling weapons is what we do. But selling to Ukraine is only part of it, not the raison d'etre. We do have to have an arms industry.

Is that what this about? Selling weapons? Maintaining an arms industry despite an almost trillion dollar defense budget. And we are giving the weapons to Ukraine, not selling them.

DOD is using Ukraine as a cash cow to supplement its budget. It is a tactic that I have seen firsthand over 36 years in the federal government, which is not unique to DOD. Biden has proposed only a 1% increase in DOD's budget, which doesn't keep up with inflation. Hence the need for these supplementals. Most of the $60 billion for Ukraine goes to replenishing our war stocks.

So what? In the past 20 years ago, we have abandoned Venezuela and Nicaragua to communist tyrants. Brazil might be next. But whatever they declare themselves to be, whether communist, socialists, whatever, is just a fig leaf to rule the people as dictators. We should be opposed to such regimes, whether in our own so-called backyard or anywhere on the planet.

We have "abandoned" them because our decades long interventionist foreign policy has proven to be a disaster and a tremendous waste of blood and treasure contributing to our decline. We can't afford these endless wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, which weaken our national security. It reminds me of the alleged Kissinger statement, "It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."

Again, so what? So does Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland--also Georgia. The countries not *yet* invaded by Russia have every right to be afraid when Russia proves its aggression by asserting itself militarily against any of them, as happened in Georgia and Ukraine.

Russia isn't the Soviet Union. It is an aging nation of 143 million people. Russia doesn't have the conventional military power to invade, conquer, and occupy Europe, which has a population of 500 million and a combined GDP about the same as the US. And invading a NATO country triggers Article 5 leading to a direct confrontation with the US. Not going to happen.

Far more concerning is the sending of troops from Europe into Ukraine to bolster a dispirited and losing Ukrainian military that lacks numbers and the willingness of the population to enlist. The demographics of Ukraine are bracing. With 14 million leaving the country as refugees and young people trying to evade the draft with the age now reduced to 25, where are the additional troops going to come from? Europe—but Not NATO—Should Send Troops to Ukraine To Halt Russia’s Advance, Kyiv Needs More Boots on the Ground

"A taboo has been broken in Europe. Only a few months ago, it would have been inconceivable for European leaders to propose sending European troops to Ukraine. But on February 26, French President Emmanuel Macron said the deployment of European forces to Ukraine could not be “ruled out.” Since then, other European officials have joined the chorus; the Finnish defense minister and Polish foreign minister have both suggested that their countries’ forces could end up in Ukraine. These comments, combined with existing support for such measures in the Baltic states, show that there is a growing bloc of countries open to direct European intervention in the war."

Ukraine Population Pyramid 2023

Median age

total: 45.3 years (2023 est.)

male: 41.3 years

female: 50 years

15th oldest country in the world

The largest male cohort was born in 1974 (turning 40). Births were declining towards end of Soviet Union, but then fell precipitously during chaos of 1990s during Yeltsin regime in Russia. Current male population born in 2000 is less than 100,000.

The war in Georgia was related to NATO expansion. After Russia called a halt to its advance into Georgia, a cease-fire on August 12 ended the Russia-Georgia War. According to an official EU fact-finding report in 2009, nearly 850 people were killed during the five-day conflict, while some 35,000 Georgians were left homeless. That same fact-finding report concluded that though Georgia had initiated the war, Russia had provoked its neighbor over a long period and overreacted to that initial artillery attack.

Perhaps the most lasting consequence of the Russia-Georgia War can be seen in what happened six years later, in Ukraine. With Putin back as president (and Medvedev as prime minister), Kremlin-backed forces seized control of the Crimean peninsula and parts of the Donbass region in 2014. Russia had undertaken a “much more serious military reform program,” in the wake of the Georgia war, Galeotti explains, “which led to the far more competent forces that we saw in the annexation of Crimea.”

Moreover, by not coming to Georgia’s defense in the lopsided 2008 conflict, the international community had proved to the Russians that it was “essentially lacking in the will to back up its fine words,” Galeotti says. “In hindsight, one wonders, would Crimea and the Donbass wars have happened if the West had been more robust in its response to Georgia?”

They didn't. There is no equivalency between such a hypothetical and what happened in Ukraine in 2012. Russia started meddling in Ukraine long before this in 2004 when they poisoned the President of Ukraine because he wouldn't bend to them. It seems Yeltsin didn't have a problem with Soviet Republics being free. The idea to wrangle them up was Putin's.

Disagree. There is an equivalency. It has to do with sphere of influence and NATO expansion. We have meddled for over a 100 years in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine was part of our foreign policy.

"Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood. (My note:neither did Finland, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia, or North Macedonia, Estonia, and Latvia. Nevertheless, they are states now.)"

So what? Ukraine is a sovereign nation universally recognized including by Russia, which had an embassy in Kyvv. The Minsk Accords promoted by Germany and France were signed by Russia and Ukraine. The March 2022 negotiations in Istanbul were between Russia and Ukraine.

That's still not a reason to abandon Eastern Europeans. We have far little resources to help against Chinese oppression. There was and is no Asian NATO for Tibet, Hong Kong or Taiwan to join. Their repression is similar to the Turkic, Siberian and Tatar people inside Russia.

There are limits to what we can and cannot do. We have not "abandoned" Eastern Europe. Europe must take on the burden of defending itself. We are not living in post WWII Europe in the 1940s. NATO is an anachronism as is the UN. They need to be reformed to reflect current reality.

The biggest thing wrong with your response here is the implication that NATO in any way wrongly “allowed”, forced or made other countries to join it. You know damn well that countries join NATO because they want to. There is no such thing as NATO expansion by NATO gobbling up territory.

Why they want to join is up to them. Some might think it gives them an economic leg up, but this treaty is about protection and alliance against aggression, not economies.

Countries join NATO, and even then, they must get ALL the other existing NATO countries to agree to let them join, and must also meet a bunch of economic, political and military conditions before doing so.

As far as our “decades long interventionist foreign policy” goes, there is nothing wrong with opposing tyranny. Was opposing the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe wrong? What exactly would American foreign policy look like in your world? Isolationism?

I suppose I’ll always disagree with you on this. The world is a violent place with us or without us. The big oceans on both sides of our nation are not enough to keep us safe.

I do support less war and constant military action. The initial beatdown of Afghanistan was right, but not the nation building. The attack on Iraq over WMD proved to be wrong. Was it a lie, or a screwup? I don’t know. In the long run, S. Hussein kept the lid on worse things: ISIS, terror, murder—by using murder. It really is a dilemma for us but probably not our job to go in and destroy it.

Same applies to Russia and Putin via Ukraine.

I believe in popular sovereignty and suffrage. The “Spheres of Influence” are 19th Century colonialism just as the carving up of Africa. Russia has no right to dictate policy to their neighbors anymore than we do. Just as importantly, we need to be seen as against tyranny, even inside a nation. Our own nation is teetering on this brink right now.

NATO had a choice on expansion. I in no way implied that they forced anyone to join it. There was a major battle on NATO expansion in 1997 after the fall of the Soviet Union. George Kennan, our WWII Deputy Chief of Mission to the Soviet Union and author of the "Long Telegram" that was the foundation of our containment policy following WWII, spoke of the dangers of NATO expansion

Kennan in 1997 declared that expanding NATO to the east “ would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”

“Such a decision,” he went on, “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.”

From other articles in 1997

"I read your article [Owen Harries, ``The Dangers of Expansive Realism'', Winter 1997/98] with strong approval. It was in some respects a surprise because certain of your major arguments were ones I myself had made, or had wanted to make, but had not expected to see them so well expressed by the pen of anyone else. I can perhaps make this clear by commenting specifically on certain of your points.

"First, your reference to the implicit understanding that the West would not take advantage of the Russian strategic and political withdrawal from Eastern Europe is not only warranted, but could have been strengthened. It is my understanding that Gorbachev on more than one occasion was given to understand, in informal talks with senior American and other Western personalities, that if the USSR would accept a united Germany remaining in NATO, the jurisdiction of that alliance would not be moved further eastward. We did not, I am sure, intend to trick the Russians; but the actual determinants of our later behavior--lack of coordination of political with military policy, and the amateurism of later White House diplomacy--would scarcely have been more creditable on our part than a real intention to deceive.

Secondly, I could not associate myself more strongly with what you write about the realist case that sees Russia as an inherently and incorrigibly expansionist country, and suggest that this tendency marks the present Russian regime no less than it did the Russian regimes of the past. We have seen this view reflected time and again, occasionally in even more violent forms, in efforts to justify the recent expansion of NATO's boundaries and further possible expansions of that name. So numerous and extensive have the distortions and misunderstandings on which this view is based been that it would be hard even to list them in a letter of this sort. It grossly oversimplifies and misconstrues must of the history of Russian diplomacy of the czarist period. It ignores the whole great complexity of Russia's part in World War II. It allows and encourages one to forget that the Soviet military advances into Western Europe during the last war took place with our enthusiastic approval, and the political ones of the ensuing period at least wit hour initial consent and support. It usually avoids mention of the Communist period, and attributes to ``the Russians'' generally all the excesses of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in the Cold War period.

Worst of all, it tends to equate, at least by implication, the Russian-Communist dictatorship of recent memory with the present Russian republic--a republic, the product of an amazingly bloodless revolution, which has, for all its many faults, succeeded in carrying on for several years with an elected government, a largely free press and media, without concentration camps or executions, and with a minimum of police brutality. This curious present Russia, we are asked to believe, is obsessed by the same dreams of conquest and oppression of others as were the worst examples, real or imaginative, of its predecessors.

Why they want to join is up to them. Some might think it gives them an economic leg up, but this treaty is about protection and alliance against aggression, not economies. Countries join NATO, and even then, they must get ALL the other existing NATO countries to agree to let them join, and must also meet a bunch of economic, political and military conditions before doing so.

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.

Tyranny is rampant throughout the world. Democracy and freedom are outliers. We can oppose tyranny, but our blood and treasure must be used judiciously. We didn't send troops or arms to Hungary in 1956 or Prague in 1968 or Warsaw in 1982. What did 18 years in Afghanistan or 8 years in Vietnam achieve? This is not isolationism. It is prudence and common sense.

U.S. Foreign Policy Increasingly Relies on Military Interventions --When confronted with hot spots around the world, the U.S. has been moving away from diplomatic approaches and toward showing force more often, says new book

According to the project’s data, the U.S. has been involved in 393 military interventions in other nations since 1776. More than 200 of those have been since 1945, and 114 in the post-Cold War era (after 1989).

Just since the year 2000, the project documents 72 interventions. And in one region of the world, the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. has been involved in 77 military interventions, mostly since the 1940s.

Over-reliance on force rather than diplomacy, intelligence gathering, economic statecraft, and the powers of persuasion can also harm the U.S. reputation abroad, causing it to be seen as a threat and to lose its influence, Toft says. “The book is basically a battle cry for strengthening the Department of State.”

“Americans think that the United States should be engaged. I’m not calling for an isolationist position,” she says. “I’m calling for more restraint, particularly when it comes to the use of force.”

I suppose I’ll always disagree with you on this. The world is a violent place with us or without us. The big oceans on both sides of our nation are not enough to keep us safe.

What's the disagreement? I have experienced firsthand Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, the Iranian Revolution, the Solidarnosc' movement and martial law in Poland, Desert Shield/Storm, Berlin before the Wall came down, etc. I know the world is a violent place with or without the US. But we can't afford to be the world's policeman. We are the world's biggest debtor nation.

Our government lied to us about Vietnam, Iraq, Covid, the Russia hoax, JFK's assassination, election fraud, the invasion at our Southern border, Libya, and Ukraine just to name a few. We are being manipulated.

Au contraire. Spheres of Influence remain a reality and nations act on that reality. Russia in Ukraine and Georgia. NATO in Bosnia. The so-called Stan countries that were part of the USSR remain in Russia's orbit. China and Taiwan.

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.

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