“One small thing to be thankful for is that DJT is not in the White House as the Ukraine crisis unfolds. He’d side with Russia,” tweeted Francis Fukuyama, author of “The End of History and the Last Man.” The headline on Eugene Robinson’s Washington Post column reads, “With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where’s Trump when I need him?” You could find similar sentiment from foreign-policy experts strewn across social media.
Surely, even former President Donald Trump’s most passionate antagonists must be slightly curious as to why Russian President Vladimir Putin, the real villain of this tale, didn’t move on eastern Ukraine after successfully installing the orange man as an alleged infiltrator in the White House. What better time could there have been for an invasion or annexation? Why now and not then?
Then again, the notion that President Joe Biden has shown firmness or deftness on foreign policy is at odds with not only recent events — most notably the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan — but also 50 years of his history. On the issue of Putin, Biden has been relentlessly wrong.
In 2009, Biden went to Munich and delivered the Obama administration’s first major foreign-policy speech, arguing that it was “time to press the reset button” after eight years of purported American antagonism toward Russia. It was Biden who then spearheaded the effort to reward Moscow by giving Russia access to the World Trade Organization: He told nominal Russian president Dmitri Medvedev that Russia’s access to the WTO was “the most important item on our agenda.” At the time, a Reuters headline announced, “Biden backs Russia WTO bid, praises Medvedev.”
Biden loves to take credit for Obama-era foreign policies. Well, it was the Obama administration that also spent years trying to kill the Magnitsky Act, which listed corrupt Russian officials and barred them from American financial markets, before bipartisan pressure compelled them to flip-flop. In his book “Red Notice,” Bill Browder, the driving force behind the act, wrote that “ever since Barack Obama had become president, the main policy of the U.S. government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.”
Even before Obama was caught on a hot mic telling Putin’s puppet Medvedev that he would have more “flexibility” on missile defense after the 2012 presidential election, he had already canceled long-promised missile-defense systems to our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic. It was the Trump administration that approved the sale of a Patriot missile system to Poland. For that matter, it was Trump who, finally, approved the sale of defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine. And it wasn’t during a potential invasion.
Indeed, Democrats didn’t merely mock Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012 as an out-of-touch amateur for maintaining that Russia was our top geopolitical threat; they sent a smug Biden to appear on the Sunday-morning news shows, where he depicted the Putin kleptocracy as a burgeoning ally and partner. Though “we have disagreements with Russia,” Biden noted, they were “working closely with us” on a slew of issues. “This is not 1956,” he scoffed, a few years before Putin’s special forces dropped into Crimea.
Obama also allowed Russia to operate with impunity in Syria, almost surely to protect the prospects of the Iran deal. Trump, unencumbered by the need to kowtow to the Iranians, killed a few hundred Russian mercenaries in Syria. Perhaps a policy of deterrence and strength, rather than appeasement, works.
“Putin knows that when I am president of the United States, his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over,” Biden warned during the presidential campaign. Outside of empty braggadocio, meant to contrast himself with Trump, Biden has done little to uphold his promise of deterring Russian expansion. In his first year in office, the president who promised to stop “rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions” killed the Keystone pipeline, which would have left us less susceptible to the vagaries of the international energy market. Biden also strengthened Putin’s hand by waiving Trump-era sanctions on a company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany.
Last year, Biden sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Arctic Council for another shot at a “reset,” in which, as Bloomberg explained it, “Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin can reinvigorate U.S.-Russia relations that have been in a deep freeze for years.” Same approach, another bust.
The United States isn’t going to go to war over Donetsk or Luhansk — or even uncontested areas (for lack of a better term) of Ukraine. And perhaps there is little that Biden can do at this point to reverse Putin’s advances. It is also true that Trump’s rhetorical obsequiousness toward Putin was often cringe-worthy and despicable. Yet the fact is that Trump’s foreign policy, in action, was more successful. Biden’s policy appeasement, on the other hand, has been a 15-year project. It’s no surprise that Putin thinks this is the time to strike.
David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and author of “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2022 CREATORS.COM
We presently have no leadership here in the US that commands fear and respect from foreign enemies. We find ourselves being misguided by a band of incompetents who have placed us in a state of weakness and who have stripped us from being a power of deterrence and credibility.
Global players such as Jong Un, Ping, Putin, the Ayatollah—have all been watching and waiting patiently as they have observed the election disasters we have incurred in recent years as weak, anti-America Leftists have succeeded in achieving political power and dominance. They have hungrily anticipated the inevitable day that they could flex their muscle and initiate their aggressive ambitions.
So, here we are—and this thing with Russia and Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg. The rumblings from other aggressors are quite audible.
AND its not just no leadership from the WHITE HOUSE (or senate/house of reps), but NO LEADERSHIP IN the Dept of defeat…
WE heard MANY TIMES where generals and admirals would BALK and undermine TRUMPS ORDERS.
BUT where are those folk now?
Francis Fukuyama, author of “The End of History and the Last Man”,,, Sure knows how to put the Fuk and the spooky in the name Fukuyama, who in order to media cover Joe’s incompetent six MUST out of desperation resort to resurrecting the evil Orange monster created in past media myths to take all of Joe’s well-earned blame. If all these liberal Democrat media fools can do when their incompetent election stolen leader again falls on his face, is to recreate myth over actual history, they need to get out of the business of writing adult books and return to children’s spooky stories like Washington Irving’s “The Headless Horseman” or in this case the Headless President, whose SLEEPY HOLLOW brain leads to the destruction of our Vibrant American economy and military which proves he is no mythical figure, but the headless mindless incompetent leader of a party led by mindless media spooks. Their reset button proved to be located on the very belly of their own media manufactured beast.
One must wonder about the lack of honesty, intellect and sanity of Democrats.
The Democrat Party wins most of their followers because they are ill-informed and/or low intellect.
Democrat’s propaganda or narrative works on an emotional level, not on the intellect level.
To Democrats, Truth, Facts, Reality and History are all irrelevant,
If the Democrats do not WANT to believe them or they disagree with them.
Democrats will just make up their own, Truth, Facts, Reality, History or voter tally to fit what they WANT to believe or fits into the Con or Deception that they are running at the time.
Nancy Pelosi admitted an unfortunate truth about her
Orchestrate and fabricated impeachment “farce”
– It hinges on witness’s “allegations” not “proof”.
It’s Not A Question” Of “Proof”, It’s About “Allegations”
https://youtu.be/7dzhIxeF204
But here again we see these fools praising the corrupt, demented, puppet president
Flock Joe Biden and still trying to blame former President Donald Trump for every destructive event that the Democrats themselves have created.
The corrupt Democrat elite and the Democrat Party never take responsibility or are held accountable for their own unlawful, destructive, dishonorable, immoral actions. Democrats always blame someone or something else for their own actions. Even if the Democrats are caught “red handed”.
There is NO NEED to wonder about their integrity or honesty..
Libtards have neither of them!
Lest the Russian people who have glee watching Kyiv getting bombed and their buildings destroyed, and their people hunkered in bomb shelters reflect that the German people also who thought themselves immune to the bombs they dropped on London, believing the lies of their national SOCIALIST leaders that they themselves were invulnerable, let them watch the films of WWII and their own Berlin holocaust that followed. There is a God, and his Justice can be delayed but never denied. Let the Orthodox Russian Christians awaken and take back that which was stolen from them and their own fall of a Communist state that only was replaced with the same socialist secular criminal leaders who now oppress them every bit as much as the Czars.
WE have given them MILLIONS IN WEAPONRY to fight back.
So where Are the folks DOING that fighting?!?!