⏯ Repost of my diary ... unfortunately hit the wrong button and deleted it. My apology to Cat who had just posted a fine comment. 🥲
Biden Knows What He's Doing With Putin | @ProgressPond on Mar 26, 2022 |
Look how ridiculous Michael O'Hanlon's criticism appears in the context of reasonable end games to this conflict.
"What it tells me, and worries me, is that the top team is not thinking about plausible war termination," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book "The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint."
"If they were, Biden's head wouldn't be in a place where he's saying, `Putin must go.' The only way to get to war termination is to negotiate with this guy," O'Hanlon said.
This is precisely wrong. The goal here is not to negotiate an end to the war. If Ukraine wants to make concessions to Putin which allow him to keep huge chunks of their country, pay no price for the damage he's done, do nothing to rebuild Ukraine's flattened cities, and sit back while the sanctions are lifted, then they can make that call themselves. No outsider, and certainly no allies, should press that kind of decision on them.
The goal here is for Russia to leave Ukraine entirely, including Crimea and Dombas, and pay serious reparations. The second goal is for Russia to rejoin the community of nations, which means normal diplomatic and economic relationships, and this is simply never going to be possible with Putin in charge.
Russian business leaders probably understand this. Russian military leadership probably understands this. And they are the ones who will have to remove Putin from power and negotiate the peace.
Unfortunately not what historians of East European and Slavic studies advise ...
Found an article in New York Times Magazine of 2008 where Republican doctrine and Democratic progressive values appear to merge into a single glob of nothingness. The worst of both parties: not idealism, nor realism in setting foreign policy. McCains 'freedom fighters' are kidnappers, throat slashers and simple worst terrorists used to overthrow a leader in a sovereign state prohibited by the UN Charter.
The McCain Doctrines and Iraq War / Syria intervention
Lorne Craner, a foreign-policy thinker who worked for McCain in the House and Senate in the 1980s, told me that McCain had a standing rule in his office then. All meetings were to be limited to half an hour, unless they were with either of two advisers: Jeane Kirkpatrick, the Reaganite idealist, or Brent Scowcroft, the former general who was a leader in the realist wing. McCain loved to hear from both of them at length.
It's clear, though, that on the continuum that separates realists from idealists, McCain sits much closer to the idealist perspective. McCain has long been chairman of the International Republican Institute, run by Craner, which exists to promote democratic reforms in closed societies. He makes a point of meeting with dissidents when he visits countries like Georgia and Uzbekistan and has championed the cause of Aung San Suu Kyi, the imprisoned leader of the Burmese resistance.
Most important, as he made clear in his preamble to our interview, McCain considers national values, and not strategic interests, to be the guiding force in foreign policy. America exists, in McCain's view, not simply to safeguard the prosperity and safety of those who live in it but also to spread democratic values and human rights to other parts of the planet.
McCain argues that his brand of idealism is actually more pragmatic in a post-9/11 world than the hard realism of the cold war. He rejects as outdated, for instance, a basic proposition of cold-war realists like Henry Kissinger and James Baker: that stability is always found in the relationship between states. Realists have long presumed that the country's security is defined by the stability of its alliances with the governments of other countries, even if those governments are odious; by this thinking, your interests can sometimes be served by befriending leaders who share none of your democratic values.
McCain, by contrast, maintains that in a world where oppressive governments can produce fertile ground for rogue groups like Al Qaeda to recruit and prosper, forging bonds with tyrannical regimes is often more likely to harm American interests than to help them.
McCains enduring War on Terror on Islamists according to the Neocon doctrine led to Islamophobia, xenophobia and Russophobia and a thousandfold in deaths of both militants and especially innocent civilians. Creating chaos, uprooting all of society in a state and leading to millions of displaced persons, hunger and starvation.
Interview took place a month after NATO's biggest act of aggression, expansion decision during the Bucharest Summit ... crossing Russia's red line.
Randy Scheunemann on Georgia: 'Most Important To Have Western Unity' In Face Of Russian Moves | RFE/RL - April 29, 2008 |
Just a few days ago, Senator John McCain issued a statement in which he strongly condemned Moscow's decision to establish direct governmental links with the breakaway regions of Georgia -- Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In his statement, Senator McCain calls the latest Russian move "de facto annexation" of those territories -- an accusation that Moscow flatly denies. What's next? What are the tools that the West, and the United States in particular, could use to make Russia cooperate?
McCain's Ties with Lobbyist Scheunemann and Georgia
The Falsehoods In American Foreign Policy
Exact blueprint of Biden's reset to Europe in a very morbid execution in 2022.
The Dominance Dilemma: The American Approach to NATO and its Future | Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft - Jan. 2021 |
- Despite the Biden administration's push to revitalize U.S. alliances, U.S. relations with NATO are due for a reset. The United States should incentivize European members of NATO to take on additional responsibilities for their defense.
- Encouraging the European allies to take initiative will help the United States focus on its other domestic and international priorities and may facilitate improving relations with Russia. This approach will also prove attractive to European states concerned about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy.
- Recalibrating the U.S. role in Europe would conform with the United States' post-World War II efforts to stabilize European security -- and stand as the fruit of Washington's success in this regard.
Introduction
Since its creation in the early days of the Cold War, American policymakers have been of two minds about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Seeking to project American power and influence in Europe and gain legitimacy for U.S. ambitions, policy planners have seen NATO as a useful vehicle for organizing Europe in ways conducive to broader American interests. At the same time, the United States has proven reluctant to pay or risk too much to achieve this result. For a country that is secure at home, influence in Europe is desirable for some but of dubious necessity.
These contradictory impulses have been reflected not only in the variety of America's approaches to the alliance over time, but also in the attitudes of different policymakers. Now, having successfully helped to foster an unprecedented level of European stability and security, and facing growing pressure to reduce America's strategic burdens, American strategists in the years ahead must be prepared to revisit the fundamentals of the U.S. presence in Europe and devolve authority to local actors.
The Cold War era: Defending, dominating, and dodging Europe
Among American policymakers, both of the tendencies just outlined were on display during the Cold War. Despite later claims that NATO emerged almost naturally from a sense of trans-Atlantic solidarity, the reality is that the United States was divided over its commitment to NATO during much of its contest with Moscow. American leaders did not want the Soviet Union to dominate Europe, of course, but the path that would be taken to obtain this result, and the risks this entailed, were never clear.
In the late 1940s, this tension was reflected in vocal debates among officials skeptical of the need for a multilateral security commitment to Europe, including George Kennan, and advocates of a more robust U.S. overseas presence, such as John Hickerson. Even with Communist parties on the march in Western Europe and much of the region vulnerable to military assault, officials -- alongside influential senators such as Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg -- feared that a permanent U.S. commitment would foul relations with the USSR, entangle the United States in foreign disputes and conflicts, and impose unsustainable burdens on the U.S. public.
McCarthyism in the early 1950s, the John Birch society and later the imposition of the Barry Goldwater doctrine in Republican rightwing strategy has positioned the United States in a very awkward position it is in today. Losing friends and allies while the Pentagon, US military and policymakers in the National Security establishment are on a war footing and further aggression towards Russia and China. The failure of a hegemon dithering between extended globalization and isolationism with FOBs across the globe. Worse to happen ...
Carl Bildt: Neocon lobbyist? | by NordicStorm on Feb 21st, 2007 |
Swedish tabloid Expressen is apparently intent on setting some sort of world record in reporting on potential scandals involving Carl Bildt, former prime minister and current foreign minister of Sweden. (See also my previous diary on Bildt and Sudan). Expressen is now reporting that Bildt was recruited in 2002 (between Bildt's tenures in the Swedish government) by the (now defunct?) Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), which Wikipedia claims had "close links to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), important shapers of the Bush administration's foreign policy." [CLI was headed by Randy Scheunemann - Oui]
....
But it does seems rather troubling that one minister would be able to generate so much article fodder. Bildt wasn't the only smart person suckered into believing intervention in Iraq would not be a tremendously bad idea. But to actually be working with allies of PNAC to promote this insanity? At a certain point you have to ask yourself where exactly the loyalties of the Swedish foreign minister lie.
On PNAC and RAND ...
Jochen Blsche closes his article in Der Spiegel with British Labour Member of Parliament Tam Dalyell's statement that the PNAC report is "garbage from right-wing think tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks - men who have never seen the horror of war [at home] but are in love with the idea of war [near abroad]".
The SIPRI Frösunda Report on the New Security Dimensions | April 2001 |
(The New Security Dimensions: Europe after the NATO and EU Enlargements)
"Whiskey on the Rocks" and the rise of rightwing politicus Carl Bildt ...
Alien Submarines in Swedish Waters: The Method of Counting as a Political Instrument - 1987
20 Years of Failed Middle-East Peace Policy | July 12, 2012 |
My observation, but the last time I admired US policy in the Middle East was under Bush #41 and James Baker III after the First Gulf War.
Secretary of State James Baker banned Benjamin Netanyahu from the State Department in the early 1990s when Netanyahu had publicly trashed U.S. policy in the Middle East, saying it was based on "lies and distortions."
Contradictio in terminis
[Update-1] CGTN Documentary
A brief history of U.S. military power used in wars across the globe with little or no legality nor in accordance with the U.N. Charter or International Law.
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Recent diary …
United In Rightwing US Heritage Sort of Warmongers
END OF UPDATE
