Category: Foreign Policy

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Donald Trump Foreign Policy WTF?!

Minutes After Zelensky’s Address To Congress, Trump Brags That He Nearly Destroyed NATO

Shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of Congress via satellite link on Wednesday morning, failed, one-term former President Donald Trump issued a statement in which he proudly bragged that he had threatened NATO with “no protection” while he was still in office.

The statement, which was posted to Twitter by the ex-president’s spokesperson, Liz Harrington (because he remains banned from the social media platform), reads:

“People forget so quickly with the help of Fake News that it was me that got the 20 out of 28 delinquent NATO countries to start paying the money that they owed in order to rebuild a floundering NATO. Nobody knew things would happen so rapidly but NATO was poor and now it is rich and all of the Fake News commentators that said Trump was tearing down NATO should be ashamed of themselves for telling lies.

“Bush and Obama did nothing but make speeches and talk. I acted, and acted strongly. I said to them, ‘if you don’t pay up, no protection.’ They all paid up, and quickly. It’s a story that’s never reported but only because we have a corrupt press in our Country!”

In other words, Trump is admitting that he extorted NATO the same way he did Ukraine when he said he would release military aid to the Ukrainians if they would agree to look for dirt on his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden.

Zelensky, it should be noted, was incredibly powerful and poignant in his speech to Congress, evoking the memory of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as he pleaded for a no-fly zone over Ukraine:

“Remember Pearl Harbor, terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you. Just remember it, remember, September the 11th, a terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn US cities into battlefields, when innocent people were attacked from air, just like nobody else expected it and you could not stop it. Our country experiences the same, every day, right now at this moment.”

 

Categories
Foreign Policy Russia Vladimir Putin

Hillary Clinton Claps Back At Putin After Russia Sanctions Her And Other Prominent Americans

Earlier today, Russia retaliated against the United States for its imposition of sanctions for their invasion of Ukraine three weeks ago.

Mediaite notes that there were some familiar names on the list of Americans the Kremlin decided to ban from Russia:

“In response to a series of unprecedented sanctions prohibiting, among other things, entry into the United States for top officials of the Russian Federation, from March 15 of this year, the Russian ‘stop list’ includes on the basis of reciprocity President J. Biden, Secretary of State A. Blinken, Secretary of Defense L. Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff M. Milley, as well as a number of department heads and prominent US figures,” the statement said.

Also on the list is former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton, who took the announcement in good humor with this Twitter posting:

Be sure and note there are no Republicans on the sanctioned list from Russia. Twitter users certainly did.

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Donald Trump Foreign Policy Russia Vladimir Putin

Historian Says Putin Misjudged The Resolve Of NATO On Ukraine Because ‘He Was Listening To Trump’

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t going well, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian says that’s because he listened to Trump and thought NATO didn’t have the resolve to stand up to him.

Historian Anne Applebaum said Wednesday on CNN that Putin has long wanted to weaken the NATO alliance, and Trump’s feckless actions and policies led him to believe the Western powers wouldn’t be willing to defend Ukraine:

“Yes, I think Putin was listening to Trump’s denunciations of NATO and he imagined NATO was permanently divided and wouldn’t be able to unite again. I think he didn’t count on what the sight of tanks rolling across a European country would do to people in Germany, people in Italy, people in France, people in Europe, and of course people in the United States.”

However, NATO is now being tested, Applebaum noted, and the alliance is proving to be more than equal to the task:

“It reminds everybody of a part of the European past that we hoped would never come back and NATO was encouraged to prevent. You have seen a really remarkable shift all across Europe as Europeans do now what should have been done some months ago, which is to reinforce and rearm Ukraine.”

Putin has overplayed his hand. And that could well cost him the war in Ukraine, as well as his position of power and his life.

 

Categories
Foreign Policy Fox News Lies Russia WTF?!

Tucker Carlson Is Now Trying To Blame The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine On…The United States?!

When Russia first invaded Ukraine a couple of weeks ago, Fox News host Tucker Carlson tried desperately to make excuses for the naked aggression of Russian mass murderer Vladimir Putin.

But when polling revealed that Americans universally despised Putin and his attack on Ukraine, Carlson began looking for other ways to frame the issue, suggesting that it was the fault of the Biden administration’s energy policy, which was also met with skepticism by the public.

So Carlson has now shifted his ranting points yet again, and come across this conclusion: The United States itself is to blame because politicians want to go to war with Russia.

HuffPost notes that Carlson was pushing that asinine theory on his show Monday evening:

“Kamala Harris encouraged Ukraine to become a member of NATO. Quote, ‘I appreciate and admire President Zelenskyy’s desire to join NATO.’

“Message: Up yours, Vladimir Putin, go ahead and invade Ukraine. And, of course, Vladimir Putin did that just days later. So the invasion was no surprise to the Biden administration. They knew that would happen. That was the point of the exercise.

“We watched all this happen, we missed it. How? Honestly because it was insane and therefore very hard to take seriously. Why in the world would the United States intentionally seek war with Russia? How could we possibly benefit from that war? We still don’t know the answer to that question.”

They knew that would happen. Really, Tucker? That’s what your going with? Because it sounds more like something you’d hear from a tinfoil hat wearing loon standing in Times Square and clutching a tattered Bible as he proclaims the end of the world is nigh.

Ukraine should have the right to join NATO. If Putin doesn’t like that, too damn bad. He doesn’t set policy for the NATO alliance. Or at least he doesn’t now that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House and doing whatever his “genius” buddy Vlad orders.

By extension, it can be implied that Carlson (and Fox News) thinks that you and I are also culpable for the invasion of Ukraine. If we support NATO and Ukraine, then we triggered Putin to do what he did.

You’d think it’d be difficult for Tucker Carlson to speak with so much bullshit in his mouth. But he’s so used to lying that it comes naturally for him.

Categories
Foreign Policy Russia

Expert On Russia: Putin’s Ukraine Invasion Is About To Become ‘Unsustainable’

Even though the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been going on for less than two weeks now, there are multiple reports that the Russian military is suffering staggering troop losses and morale is low among the soldiers who have been sent to fight.

Has Russian President Vladimir Putin overplayed his hand? And what can we expect next in the conflict?

Ed Arnold, a research fellow for European security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) told Reuters that Putin’s military excursion is about to become “unsustainable,” noting:

“At the current rate of Russian losses, which are not confirmed, but we do have indications that this operation would be unsustainable within about three weeks from the Russian perspective.

“In which case that they would have to consolidate the gains already made and look to see a way of trying to freeze the conflict on the current lines of advance while they [mobilize] more forces from Russia.”

Arnold then spelled out exactly how Russian forces are starting to bog down as they attempt to take control of Ukraine:

“In the north,” Russian forces are “still looking to fully encircle Kyiv.

“In the south, the Russian advance is continued to be slow but they’re seeing a lot more successes in the south, taking Kherson and consolidating and pushing further west, and then also focusing now on Mariupol. However, at the moment, the Russian operation is going so badly, especially from logistics point of view that really Russia might just not have the numbers to make another conflict that is cold be hot again.”

Massive amounts of military and humanitarian aid are being poured into Ukraine by the world, and that means the Russians will face more resistance everywhere they go. That will lead to an already overburdened Russian military force becoming more vulnerable, which will result in more casualties. Those deaths are causing protests in Russia, which is bad news for Putin, who is already on shaky footing. He may not survive this massive miscalculation.