Reply With QuoteOf course, one would figure that Bush 2 would be right on top of this seeing his former NSA and current Secretary of State is a Sovietologist, but..............
It just wasn't George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, this fiasco began once George H. Bush took office in 1988! Personally, I think the year 1988 is the high watermark of Reaganism and it has been going down hill ever since. Looking at the current crop of candidates for the 2008 Presidential Election, the only two in either party I would vote for are Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter. The only way the Democrats could every get my vote would be to run retired Georgia Senator Zell Miller. Now, if the Constitution Party nominates a Paul/Hunter tandem, it will get my vote! You are going to see the emergence of Third Parties in 2008 if the Republicans run Giuliani, Romney or McCain and the Democrats run Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or Al Gore.
Who Lost Russia?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
By 1988, Ronald Reagan, who had famously branded the Soviet Union "an evil empire," was striding through Red Square arm-in-arm with Mikhail Gorbachev. Russians were pounding both men on the back.
They had just signed the greatest arms reduction agreement in history -- eliminating all Soviet SS-20s targeted on Europe, in return for removal of the Pershing and cruise missiles Reagan had deployed in Europe.
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" wrote Wordsworth about his first hearing the news of the fall of the Bastille.
Many of us felt that way then.
Within three years, the Berlin Wall had come down, the puppet regimes of Eastern Europe had been swept away, Germany was reunited, the Red Army had gone home, the Soviet Empire had vanished and the Soviet Union had broken up into 15 nations. The Baltic republics were free. Ukraine was free.
Yet, on the eve of the G-8 summit, Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia would re-target missiles on NATO. We must, he said, counter Bush's decision to put anti-missile missiles in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic. Why are we doing this?
The United States says the ABM system in Europe is to defend against an Iranian attack. But Tehran has no atom bomb and no ICBM.
We appear to be headed for a second Cold War -- and, if we are, responsibility will not fully rest with the Kremlin. For among those who have mismanaged the relationship are presidents Clinton and Bush II, the baby boomers who appear to have kicked away the fruits of a Cold War victory won by their Greatest Generation predecessors.
How did they do it?
-- When the Red Army went home from Eastern Europe, the United States, in violation of an understanding with Moscow, began to move NATO east. We have since brought into our military alliance six former members of the Warsaw Pact and three former provinces of the Soviet Union: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
-- Anti-Russia hawks are now pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. If they succeed, we could be dragged into future confrontations with a nuclear-armed Russia about who has sovereignty over the Crimea and whether South Ossetia should be part of Georgia.
Are these vital U.S. interests worth risking a war? Why are we moving a U.S.-led military alliance into the front yard and onto the side porch of a country with thousands of nuclear weapons? Would we accept any commensurate Chinese or Russian move in the Caribbean?
-- After Moscow gave us a green light to use the former Soviet republics of Central Asia to base U.S. forces for the Afghan war, the United States has sought permanent bases there. Russia and China have now united to throw us out of their back yard.
-- America colluded with Azerbaijan and Georgia to build a Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline to transmit Caspian Sea oil across the Caucasus to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.
-- In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia 78 days to punish her for fighting to hold her cradle province of Kosovo, which Muslim Albanians were tearing away. Orthodox Russia had long seen herself as protectress of the Balkan Slavs. That Clinton ignored Russia in launching this unprovoked war on Serbia was seen in Moscow as proof that Russian concerns had become irrelevant in Washington.
-- After helping dump over the government in Belgrade, our Neocomintern -- the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other fronts -- interfered in Ukraine and Georgia, helping oust pro-Moscow regimes and install pro-American ones. Since then, NED has been run out of Belarus and its subsidiaries are about to get the boot from Moscow.
Can we blame the Russians for being angry? How would we react to left-wing NGOs in Washington, flush with Moscow oil money, aiding elements hostile to the Bush administration?
-- The United States has been constantly hectoring Russia on backsliding from democracy. But compared to Beijing, Moscow is Montpelier, Vt. And why, if the Cold War is over, are Russia's political arrangements any of our business?
If we don't like the way Putin treats Mikhail Khorokovsky, Boris Berezovksy and the other "oligarchs" who robbed Russia blind in the 1990s, maybe Putin doesn't like how we treated Martha Stewart.
Harry Truman is often blamed for having started the Cold War. He didn't. Stalin did. But Clinton, George W. and the neocons have a strong claim to having started the second. A first order of business of the next president should be to repair the damage this crowd has done -- and to get out of Russia's face.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of "The Death of the West," "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
Of course, one would figure that Bush 2 would be right on top of this seeing his former NSA and current Secretary of State is a Sovietologist, but..............
I made a lot of money and spent most of it on booze, fast cars and loose women. I blew the rest.
Hmmm... "Are these vital U.S. interests worth risking a war?" Paddy Buchanan embracing appeasement??? ROFLMAO!
Your right to buy a military weapon without hindrance, delay or training cannot trump Daniel Barden’s right to see his eighth birthday. -- Jim Himes
Once again you read things from a liberal Democrat Party viewpoint. It isn't appeasement but what our founding fathers meant regarding entangling alliances. I guess you never read Washington's Farewell address?Originally Posted by Linda_D
Buchanan knows that entangling alliances such as NATO and the UN serve no major purpose outside of enraging nations that have different opinions on how to rule. Look what your friend George W Bush did in Iraq for starters and you will understand Buchanan viewpoint. (Happens to be the same as Rep. Ron Paul's).
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