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While one cannot blame all of the world’s problems on the former first lady and senator, much of the trouble in Ukraine is related to her actions.
Volodymyr Zelensky was once a comedian. One of the hallmarks of great comedians is their ability to read the room. When my high school had a very ugly and contentious merger with its sister school (New Trier East and West), a traveling group from Second City came to perform. One of the comedians was asked about the merger, which had made its way into the local papers. He whipped out his Kipling and, without losing a beat, stated, “East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet!” He was met with wild applause by the crowd.
The president of Ukraine did not know how to read the Oval Office on Friday. Zelensky supposedly was coached by Obama retreads Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland, Tony Blinken and others. If the story is true and they told Ukraine’s president to be tough with Trump, he got some bad advice. One of the strangest features of American governance is the potential for whiplash changes in policy. In dictatorships or even European-style coalition rule, things either remain unchanged or change at a glacial pace. The winner of Germany’s recent elections promised to deal with the problems of large-scale immigration. Once he saw that he could form a coalition without AfD, he said the status quo wasn’t so bad. But not in America. When you change parties, policies can spin around 180 degrees in a second. Somehow, the Obama brain trust tried to convince Zelensky that it was just like the days of Biden, though it was not.
If one wanted to trace a useful starting point for the destruction of Russian and Ukrainian armies, I would suggest the day after the 2016 election. Without evidence, Hilary Clinton and John Podesta claimed that Donald Trump was a Putin stooge and that through Russian interference in the US election, he was elected president. If you could get the ex-secretary of state away from her glass of Chardonnay for a few minutes, she would no doubt repeat the same: the election was stolen from her, and Vladimir Putin was the culprit. These claims had profoundly negative repercussions in the world. The first was the “Russian Collusion” investigation that wasted two and a half years of the Trump administration. Nothing was found, and the millions spent on Robert Mueller’s dream team were wasted, other than it hamstrung the president and supercharged the support, often bipartisan, for Ukraine, a country known for widespread corruption.
During the first Trump presidency, there should have been a series of photo ops of Trump and Putin at Camp David and at Putin’s lair in Sochi. Like Gorbachev with Reagan and Thatcher, Putin and Trump should have started a new era of respect and cooperation. China was emerging as the major economic and military threat to the world. Pulling a reverse Nixon and bringing Russia closer and away from China would have been a big win for the United States. China would have had to rethink its aggressive moves in Asia and its world-conquering “belt and road” initiative, with Russia being out of the picture. But with Clinton’s accusations and the snowball effect of media and investigations, Putin was radioactive for Trump. They could not meet regularly, and any approach to Russia would be labeled a quid pro quo for helping Trump get elected. A strong US-Russian alliance could have prevented the present Ukraine war and allowed for some type of settlement between the countries on the issues of Crimea and the Donbas. One has to recall that it was Nuland who said that she paid $5 billion to “rent a mob” to get rid of the democratically elected Ukrainian leader, who was leaning towards Moscow. Zelensky’s rise was not organic; whereas Trump honestly owed Putin nothing, Zelensky owed his rise to the USAID crowd who helped get him into office.
It was said at the time that the American ambassador to Iraq may have signaled to Saddam that the US would not mind his grabbing Kuwait; what followed was a great deal of destruction and bloodshed. Vladimir Putin cited Clinton’s rolling him on Libya as a reason not to trust the US. The US, under Obama, got Putin to vote in favor of the UN plan to deal with Libya. After Clinton received permission from the Security Council, she went in and eventually brought about the then-Western-leaning Qaddafi’s demise. She thought herself so pithy when she commented, “We came. We saw. He died.” Her ambassador to Libya later died because Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton did not want to admit that Al-Qaeda was behind the consular attack so close to the 2012 election. Those who died in Benghazi were collateral damage to their political ambitions. No military rescue was undertaken during the hours-long siege, though planes in Italy were waiting for instructions that never came.
One must always be careful attributing major historical trends to one person or a single event. Still, the debacle in Ukraine might have been avoidable if Hilary Clinton had not fabricated a case of Donald Trump being a Russian asset. Trump himself has written that the current war would not have started had he continued as president in 2020; Vladimir Putin seemed to suggest the same in comments he made recently. President Zelensky was playing from an old playbook to a new administration that wants the war to end and wants mineral sales to cover the huge outlays made by the US. Joe Biden never suggested trying to recoup America’s outlays. Donald Trump and JD Vance read Zelensky the Riot Act, and he was caught off-guard. His options are either to crawl back to Trump and head towards a ceasefire preceding a settlement he will not fully like or try his hands with the Europeans. I saw a quote from him Sunday morning that if the US is out of the arms-providing business, he will “demand” $250 billion from Europe. Apparently, the flight from Washington to London was not long enough for him to rethink his tactics. He may be able to scare the Europeans into ponying up this massive sum with the threat that if Kyiv falls, Berlin, Paris, and London are next. Trump wasn’t buying it, and unlike a good quarterback, Zelensky had no audible to call when cornered by the president and his bulldog vice president. The Europeans are now talking boots on the ground. I guess they, too, need a Vietnam of their own.
It has been suggested that Putin attacked Ukraine 3 years ago because Nuland and others in the Biden administration wanted to get Ukraine into NATO—as one more punishment for the man so detested by Democrats. Putin did not wait for his neighbor’s ascension and sent the tanks rolling towards Kyiv. After 1.5 million dead, wounded, and captured, the time has come to end this war. Ukraine cannot win it, and Trump’s offer to facilitate an end is the best deal that Zelensky will get—even if he does not realize it. The Europeans were too weak to win and would only prolong the death and destruction. I don’t think Zelensky’s pride will let him return to Trump and ask for negotiations in exchange for the still unsigned minerals agreement. And that truly is a shame.
Putin had himself wanted Russia.to join NATO but they – the US – did not want to the balance of power within NATO by Russias membership so Putins advance was rejected. A mistake by NATO which IMO should have been disbanded after the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. Further there was never a “peace”:deal between the NATO member states and the Russian Federation to end the Cold War just NATO outpouring of triumphalism. However NATO was not the reason for the Russian invasion in Feb. 2022.
In repetition: Nowhere in Russia’s “invasion” story is mention of the fact it was an imperative for Putin to invade in 2022 because European and US energy exploration companies were close to signing a negotiated deal with Ukraine to develop the huge untapped offshore oil/gas reserves in the waters off Eastern Ukraine. (Not withstanding the un-mined Lithium deposits in the Donbas region).
This deal if it had gone through would have meant European energy coming from Ukraine and bypassing the existing supply from Russia. This would have been catastrophic -if not an existential threat – to the Russian economy. Russia simply had to invade when it did to consolidate Russian control of these untapped energy supplies and keep Europe dependent on Russian supplied energy.
If the Russian-Ukrainian frontlines remain as they are now in any peace deal proposed by the US administration then Russia will have achieved it objective – to stop Europe from future access Ukrainian energy supplies.
A peace deal based on the existing frontlines remaining in place is also good news for the US, because under Trump’s “drill baby, drill” policy then the US will be able to export greater energy supplies into Europe assuming Europe does not get its energy supply from Russia again.
“Putin had himself wanted Russia.to join NATO but they – the US – did not want to the balance of power within NATO by Russias membership so Putins advance was rejected. A mistake by NATO-”
The US never rejected Russia’s membership in NATO, and it never was. Putin was told he could join, but that this was an alliance of equals and that Russia would have to undergo reforms to apply just like everyone else. For armament I think this was always somewhat ludicrous given Russian military traditions and manufacturing, but I imagine Putin was more concerned about the political and administrative reforms that would require loosening power and breaking the iron rice bowls of his constituency in the corrupt post-Soviet Deep State, and in any case was rankled by the audacity of obeying the same rules as Poland or Luxembourg and not skipping to the head of the line.
In any case Putin was the one to walk away,
“Further there was never a “peace”:deal between the NATO member states and the Russian Federation to end the Cold War just NATO outpouring of triumphalism. ”
More dubious. There were a bunch of final treaties and whatnot to wrap up the Pan-Allied missions in Germany after WWII like the 1991 Unification Treaty. In any case the Soviet Union destroyed itself in a series of coups with the US opposing the hardliners
“Because they thought that they had won the Cold War and could dictate all the terms as Russia was ‘beaten’. They were high on the euphoria of a perceived victory rather than a massive opportunity for peace and security,” says Gregory Simons, an associate professor at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University.
“They did not regard Russia as an equal and probably thought to use the idea of membership as a means of compliance. Like the EU has done to Turkey for years,” Simons tells TRT World.
““Because they thought that they had won the Cold War and could dictate all the terms as Russia was ‘beaten’.”
Doesn’t make sense. NATO applied the same metrics to Russia’s entry as it did to Slovenia (which was the most pro-Western of the Yugoslav states and started its breakup), Poland (home of Solidnarosc), and so on. And indeed it’s worth noting that in much of the rest of the former Pact Countries or Yugoslavia, you generally saw enthusiasm for NATO standards due to helping weed out the Soviet chaff and preventing backsliding into the kind of anarcho-tyranny they saw.
“They were high on the euphoria of a perceived victory rather than a massive opportunity for peace and security,” says Gregory Simons, an associate professor at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University.”
Ah yes, this absolute scumbag. There’s a reason he’s on the FakeObservers list, because he was willing to mortgage his academic credibility to justify and defend violent, blatantly rigged elections, and who was engaged in propagandizing to his captive student audience to such a degree Uppsala U was forced to issue a public apology.
As for “massive opportunity for peace and security”, it’s worth understating that during the time Putin attempted to get into NATO his troops were already occupying large chunks of Moldova and Georgia and engaging in territorial disputes with Ukraine (albeit those were diplomatic). Meaning that if NATO ignored its own rules to let Russia in, it would have run the risk of being dragged into his wars on his side, in a similar fashion to how letting Ukraine in would have gotten us involved in this war if Putin was willing to fight.
““They did not regard Russia as an equal and probably thought to use the idea of membership as a means of compliance. Like the EU has done to Turkey for years,” Simons tells TRT World.”
Again, this has it the exact opposite. Putin was expressly told NATO was an alliance of equals, which is why it is so hard to get in. But also why once in there is no mechanism to kick anyone out for better or worse (like with Erdogan’s Turkey).
And again, coming from a man who justified Hezbollah bombings in Lebanon and Israel and the rigged elections there and in Crimea, the bias is obvious. It’s a bit like trusting Xinhua about the South China Sea.
may i ask u the source of this information which contradicts anything i have read none from any MSM source nor leftist think tanks. if u are correct and putin demurred due to concerns about reforms all i can say is putin was in an unimaginably fragile position relative to the forces in russia who were not pleased at the dissolution of the federation. I think he has handled the situation quite well to date. He has sat down for all the former federation countries joining NATO although not happy. He has reigned in the oligarchs to a large extent I wish an american president could do this with soros et al.. He has said there were lines which could not be passed and in view of the fact that reagan and bush sr. promised gorbachev they would not i feel he has acted with constraint against the provocations of NATO and US. a NATO membership for ukraine and georgia was never going to be allowed but georgia today has cordial relations with the west and the drama there could have played out much more unfavorably.
“may i ask u the source of this information which contradicts anything i have read none from any MSM source nor leftist think tanks. ”
I didn’t really grab it from any one source, and it was made more precarious because of my dependence on either English language sources or translations into Latin Script languages, but it is a remarkably consistent story across many different sources. And to hear from the bear’s a$$, Kremlin site Sputnik has “‘Hostile Reactions From the West’: Why Didn’t Russia Join NATO?”
Of course this has exactly the bent you’d expect, complaining about why NATO didn’t allow the USSR into NATO during the 1950s (in spite of the obvious security problems and how we now know it was an attempt to try and dominate and/or destroy NATO security from the inside for revolutionary war), and tries to frame Russia’s refusal to get on a NATO membership path as the West “Rejecting” it (which’d surprise Turkey and Serbia), but confirms Putin was the one that walked away. Also, Putin’s declaration ruling out joining NATO “forever” would be redundant if NATO had already said Russia would never join.
On the other side Lord Robertson provided probably the best overview of the thing from the NATO side, which showed Putin trying to court NATO’s leadership in an attempt to marginalize “countries that don’t matter” (while ignoring how this would defeat the entire purpose of NATO) and details how Russia wasn’t denied to the paths to NATO membership, it refused to get on them. Which fits with he rest of the information we have and unlike Putin and his altering statements is at least consistent (ie no “Clinton was open but was overruled by his staff” BS). Robertson is a Labour lackey, but he was in the room and even if his narrative were a lie it is at least one more consistent with itself and known facts.
AS for reigning in the oligarchs, it’s more that he crushed those that rivaled him and integrated the rest into the regime. We also know he was told by Gorbachev that NATO had made no such guarantees against expansion, even if several NATO Old Guard were opposed to it they failed to sway the mostly smaller members, and public sentiment from the former Pact countries for joining was decisive and infectious. Putin was in a tricky position, but he could have done what the Pact countries had but failed.
Hillary Clinton is a wretched, evil person who is in a lot of ways one of the chief architects of the misery we have suffered for the past quarter century, but she played at best a supporting role here. Fighting in Ukraine was a year old by the time of Trump’s escalator announcement.
Before Ukraine turned from political mosh pit to open war, there was Georgia. Georgians have faced ethnic cleansing and terrorism from the Kremlin and its proxies for decades and wanted out. So they worked with us, including sending their best troops – the 1st Infantry Brigade – to fight in Iraq. While they were distracted fighting in the surge, Putin began massing troops and walked out of the Abkhaz Peace Deal in reaction to Kosovo. Then his proxies ramped up border attacks, doing things like shooting at Georgian voters during election time and launching various mortar and gun attacks. Eventually the Georgian troops returned fire on South Ossetian mortar and artillery posts around separatist held Tshkinvali. President Saakashvilli ordered for his troops to ceasefire and not fire back regardless of what happens, but it was probably doomed to fail.
So soon after Tshkinvali was hit, the Kremlin launched a major attack of Georgia with the troops it “just happened” to have in position. The US had to pull the Georgians out of Iraq and airlift them home to defend their country and put a cordon of troops around the Georgian capitol, but it was too late. And for all of this Obama blamed Bush, mocked Romney, and vowed to appease Russia, helped by Clinton’s State Department loyalists and an EU-Commissioned report that peddled both-sideism but falsely claimed Georgia started the war., giving cover for Obama’s “Reset” justifying abandoning Georgia to its fate.
The Georgians learned. Saakashvili lost the following election to a more pro-Kremlin, appeasing government and then fled the country as he was hit with corruption charges that may or may not have been true but which were definitely political as the “Georgian Dream Party” binned the Georgian Dream of Western integration and an end to the terror.
Putin learned his lesson too: That in a decadent, corrupt, troubled West, the Western left were particularly corrupt appeasers who talked a game but would not meaningfully stop shooting. 2014 proved he was correct, as Minsk showed.
Don’t forget about bill. He’s more responsible than any one. How much was dropped into the clinton charity by the Russians or some other means? slick willie knew exactly what the result would be and would have taken 10 dollars if that was all he could get.
NY Post 2023 -“Former President bill clinton has expressed remorse over his role in negotiating a 1994 deal that resulted in Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal, suggesting that Russia never would have invaded its smaller neighbor if it still had nukes.
“I feel a personal stake because I got them [Ukraine] to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons,” Clinton told Irish broadcaster RTE in an interview that aired Tuesday.
The 42nd president was referencing a landmark post-Cold War deal in which then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk agreed to surrender roughly 1,900 nuclear warheads in exchange for security assurances from the US and United Kingdom, as well as a commitment from Russia to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
The 1994 deal forced Ukraine to give up some 1,900 nuclear warheads left in the country after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The pact, known as the Budapest Memorandum, was violated in 2014 when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea. “
This is a nice piece with interesting comments so far. (Turtler and Skam). It does not address the true problem which is the low moral quality of our government employees of all levels. Hillary, the obama, McCain and Bush? Would you want to bring them to Sunday dinner at your grandmothers home? That says nothing of Nuland , Blinken, Panetta, Shumer and Biden. You would need to have security at the door to keep from losing the silver.
These people are low intellect low quality lawyers. They will always continue to cut themselves in on all of the action. The clinton foundation “lost” a lot of the money for Haiti earthquake victims in 2010 for example. Embezzlements of this kind are common across our rulers as DOGE has shown. That is the reason for the hatred of Trump. Money! While he is a crass yankee, he is financially honest. It may be too late but it is a start towards rebuilding our government.
My comment is somewhat off topic in that it goes back to 2017 and Clinton’s involvement in the Abbott Labs acquisition of Russia Veropharms. The WSJ reporter, Joseph Rago, who was investigating that story died suddenly the night before he was to interview a Russian official at the consulate in NYC. Rago, 34 years old, was the journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting on Obamacare exposing it for what it was. He cause of death was reported as some rare (cannot even recall the name) condition that no one knew Rago had (did he even know he had it?). I first read of Rago’s death in a tribute to him in the New Criterion, which included a very bland quote of condolence from Paul Gigot at WSJ. As far as I know Rago’s death got very little coverage in the media. What’s interesting is that Hillary Clinton’s name is associated with it. She was part of the Abbott Labs deal with Veropharms.
NEVER LEAVE OUT BILL CLINTON!
He hates Trump more than anyone on Earth. He desperately wanted by in the White House, and the Power. He knew Hillary was incompetent, so he used her email, and devices, to contact and negotiate with her counterparts with them thinking they were dealing with her. He had to make her look good on the International Stage which helped domestically.
BILL PLOTTED THE COUP AGAINST TRUMP, the Russian Collusion, and using his contacts in all departments who were also against Trump.
WHEN SHE WAS CAUGHT, she had to delete 33,000 emails, smash her devices, Bleach, erase her history BECAUSE IT WOULD HAVE SHOWED BILL CLINTON’S FINGERPRINTS! How then can you attack… NOTHING!
Hillary was ready to Save our Democracy when Biden decided to run, then dropped out, but Kamala’s rise was quick, maybe to stop Hillary. Biden was bitter, but more so was Dr. Jill. She wanted the perks even if she, and others, were propping up Weekend at Joe’s.
He was interviewed and said, “I’ve only used two emails.” He laughed; they laughed. When a Clinton laughs, a sure thing that they are lying.
WHAT’S BILL UP TO NOW TO GET TRUMP…. AND HE’S NOT ALONE!
Trump should beat them to the punch and expose THE CLINTON FOUNDATION and reopen The Russian Collusion as a conspiracy in a coup-attempt against a sitting President, then Lawfare against a former President, the ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS, and using FISA warrants to spy on the Clinton’s and Obama’s/Valerie Jarrett/Susan Rice/Eric Holder!
“The Europeans are now talking boots on the ground. I guess they, too, need a Vietnam of their own.”
We do not need more death among westernkind. Let Europe send the non-western migrants and their children to die in foreign wars.
Europe is never going to put boots on the ground, it is just empty rhetoric.
When Russian forces were being massed in the borderlands before the “little green men”: invaded Ukraine the Baltic states requested their neighbouring European NATO members strengthen border security in the Baltics. NOT ONE responded with additional support only the US did so by sending US war planes to patrol the border skies.
Hillary on her Broom escorted by her Flying Monkeys
or dancing around the bonfire naked celebrating with the other witches on the holy days, neither of which she has to hide anymore
Her first of two “coming outs”
Sorry but The Wicked Bitch of the West is reserved for PELOSI. Hillary, just A BITCH works.
True. Hillary was merely the nation’s worst First Lady, Senator and Presidential Candidate, but Pelosi was the most evil and destructive non-presidential politician in modern American history–far more disastrous.
I don’t know why America is so corrupt.
Like a teenager you have bullied your way around the World
for decades using your policeman’s badge to aid your businesses and politicians.
now you’ve got one who appears to have your interests at heart
but 50% of your population is visceral towards him.
their preferred political party deserves to be put against the wall and shot to a man (and woman)
with their voting rights rescinded for a decade.
with your media given their own wall for being enemy combatants against America.
It is a conundrum
Mike NZ