George Rebane
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As of tonight, our weak and incompetent president has done nothing to deter Putin from re-establishing dominion over Russia’s “near abroad”. The Biden administration’s much-touted ‘prompt and severe’ sanctions are clearly neither, as they are revealed to be low-grade-ore that even now hang fire. Contrary to the administration’s abysmally ignorant and hesitant assessment of Putin’s strategy, the Russian president’s image as the post-Stalinist incarnation of Russia’s next strong-man leader continues to grow in the eyes of his adoring people, and also in the calculations of the growing cohort of our geo-strategic enemies led by China and Iran. We are still looking for that single thing that President Biden has accomplished for the benefit of the United States and its citizens. Unchallenged, he solidly occupies one of the historical performance bookends of our presidency.
[23feb22 update] Many in the West saw the end of the Cold War as proof that free markets and the rule of law were universal values. When the EU began admitting eastern European and Baltic states, a few of its officials thought this was not a geopolitical ploy aimed at Russia but the product of “inevitable globalization,” said Adam Tooze, a historian at Columbia University. Eastern Europeans didn’t share that view. Mr. Tooze said accession to the EU, like NATO, was “a way of securing themselves against Russia, full stop,” while Russia similarly “refused to see NATO and the EU as separate entities.” He said the EU may be a bigger threat because while Russia can compete militarily with NATO, it can’t compete with the social, cultural and economic appeal of Europe. … Economic integration didn’t make Russia or China more liberal; they doubled down on autocracy and state capitalism. (more here)
[24feb22 update] It appears that the west’s day-late and dollar-short sanctions, advertised for weeks by Team Biden as a “deterrent” to Russian invasion, have gone over like a warm bucket of spit. Today even Bumblebrain was forced to admit to the world that his invasion deterrent won’t kick in until about four weeks after the Russian invasion started. That is an excellent example of this idiot’s ‘foreign policy expertise’, much vaunted by Democrats during the 2020 election campaign. Every day continues to pour in more evidence that this administration, in its entirety, has no idea what are America’s interests and how to marshal the west to resist Putin, and Xi waiting in the wings. Our front line offense seems to consist of cancelling the credit cards belonging to the kids of Russian oligarchs, and then threatening to really get tough and cancel their debit cards. That should get Putin to order his armor out of the Ukraine and send in Russian contractors to fix the Ukrainian buildings that got damaged in the last 48 hours. Then again, maybe not.
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