In February 2014, Russian kingpin Vladimir Putin invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula, which had been under Ukrainian jurisdiction. The timing was no accident, coming as it did only a handful of months after then-President Barack Obama reneged upon his own chemical weapons “red line” for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, effectively leaving the resolution of the then-nascent chemical weapons crisis in Putin’s hands. Putin, like a shark smelling blood, sensed weakness and acted accordingly. To this day, Crimea remains under de facto Russian control.
It is not exactly a mystery what motivates Putin’s actions on the geopolitical chessboard. He is a former KGB operative who has publicly bewailed the dissolution of the Soviet Union as one of the greatest tragedies in modern world history. If Putin had his druthers, “Mother Russia” would once again become “Greater Russia” — likely including all the ethnic Slavic portions of Central and Eastern Europe. And as the world saw in Crimea, Putin will act on those druthers when he is emboldened by a seeming lack of deterrence. This shark smells blood — lots of it.
It is thus no great surprise that, just as he did during the reign of the last feckless Democratic president, Putin has once again decided to take chunks of Ukraine and redraw the post-Cold War maps to better reflect his conception of Greater Russia. There was, in the seemingly endless lead-up to Russia’s decision to send tanks into the Donbas (as of this writing, now heading toward Kyiv), remarkably little appetite for firm deterrence from the U.S. or anyone else in NATO. President Joe Biden promised sanctions — an only arguably effective tool, at best, and which largely amounts to performative preening so that State Department lackeys and NGO staffers can sleep better at night. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, deeply unpopular on the home front, penned a condemnatory Wall Street Journal op-ed. Yawn.
It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to overstate the utterly pathetic nature of the Biden presidency thus far. To merely call him feckless or incompetent would be insufficient. Some on the right like to ask if a conservative politician “knows what time it is,” proverbially speaking, but the doddering dolt who is America’s commander in chief likely does not even know what year it is. His presidency is a disgraceful exercise in how to do everything wrong: the highest inflation in decades, out-of-control spending, supply chain crises and mass product shortages, a humiliating and botched Afghanistan withdrawal and the terrorist Iranian regime racing toward a nuclear weapon. Biden’s is the “Murphy’s law” presidency — anything that can go wrong has indeed gone wrong.
One readily imagines Chinese President Xi Jinping fondly looking out over the Taiwan Strait, salivating over the prospect of reunifying the Republic of China with the People’s Republic of China. Who will stop him? Surely not the senile leader of a political party that counts the promotion of transgender rights and the dissemination of the civilizational arson that is critical race theory as its seemingly highest political priorities.
Biden also teamed up last summer with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to give Putin a massive win on Russia’s coveted Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which spans 764 miles across the Baltic Sea. Biden’s capitulation on Nord Stream 2, abetting Germany’s unquenchable desire for more Russian natural gas at the expense of piqued allies such as Poland, presaged the timing of Putin’s most recent Ukrainian blitzkrieg. Biden’s bestowing an American imprimatur to Nord Stream 2 was a legitimizing event for both Putin and for Russia, which in its modern post-Cold War form roughly resembles a Persian Gulf-style petrostate. The way to deter and combat Russian hegemony is through the means of energy policy and energy diplomacy. Unfortunately, as the case may be, Biden last year put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline here in the U.S. The combination of nixing Keystone XL while signing off on Nord Stream 2 was, and remains, indefensible.
The American national interest is not necessarily tremendously affected, one way or the other, by the fate of the Donbas. Our Central and European allies would strongly prefer Ukraine and Belarus (a Russian puppet state, as presently governed) be kept intact as buffer zones. But Ukraine — like Russia, a deeply corrupt and oligarchy-driven society — is not a NATO member. There are crucial legal, strategic, cultural and historical differences between Russian tanks rolling into the Donbas, on the one hand, or rolling into Warsaw or Budapest, on the other hand. What’s more, if one takes seriously the hysterical shrieks of “liberal democracy is on the line!” that have recently become a cable news talking-head staple, it is curious that even our foremost Western European allies seem asleep at the wheel. Where, exactly, are the British and the French?
The oligarchic Russian petrostate is not China, which poses the greatest geopolitical threat to the U.S. by a longshot. But the Russian bear being on the loose in Europe is lamentable nonetheless. Pray for peace — and for a change of U.S. presidential leadership posthaste.
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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Mother Russia is a misnomer, for she indeed is the mother of all human abortions. She should be called the mother of death who first gave birth to a Czar who aborted millions in war as cannon fodder, followed by Stalin who aborted millions in Ukraine starvation programs in the 1930s and then tens of millions in death camps, Gulags and bullets sacrificing millions of his own people used as expendable useful idiots before the German guns, just to protect a corrupt city that bore his name. Now she has blessed the world with Vlad Putin, who is bent on nuclear blackmail that could very soon and very easily lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions in a nuclear exchange, that will please the Chinese to no ends as they see the destruction of two racially predominately white world Continents leaving themselves and their race, the geeks who inherit the earth. How do you depopulate a Continent? Hire a Russian socialist to run your country who now like Hitler would take the rest of the world with him when he goes, rather than submit to the will of his own people for peace. God help us if socialism has done to Putin’s Brain what it has done to Joe’s,, rotting from the head down. When cornered in his Fuhrer Bunker with his finger on the nuke button he will take us all with him when he goes. It is the Russian people themselves who must take him away if the impending Holocaust is to be avoided, and earn the right call themselves “Mother Russia” an entity of birth not death.
I’ve never understood the term “mother russia” either.. Especially since they continually act like a SCHOOL YARD bully, NOT a mother..
The corrupt, immoral, senile Joe Biden, leader of Democrat political party that counts the promotion of transgender rights and the dissemination of the civilizational arson that is critical race theory as its seemingly highest political priorities.
Biden also teamed up last summer with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to give Putin a massive win on Russia’s coveted Nord Stream 2 pipeline,
But the U.S. Keystone pipeline officially canceled after Biden revokes key permit.
Keystone XL was halted by owner TC Energy after U.S. President Joe Biden this year revoked a key permit needed
for a U.S. stretch of the 1,200-mile project.
The Keystone XL pipeline was expected to carry 830,000 barrels per day of Alberta oil sands crude to Nebraska.
This treasonous, dishonest, corrupt, unethical, immoral, socialist Democrat Party has become our country’s most destructive and deadliest ENEMY!
Mr. Hammer did a fairly good job of laying out the demise of the United State, at the hands of slo joe the demented, without even mentioning the invasion at our Southern border.
His former master, Obama, STARTED that demise.. Trump just halted it.
Hammer is half the Soviet emblem of the Hammer and Cycle.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is in large part the direct result of the Biden-Harris Administration’s precipitous, chaotic, costly, and humiliating withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan. Weakness in foreign policy creates a vacuum that draws in opportunistic bullies like Putin and the heroic people of Ukraine are paying a terrible price for Biden’s failure in Afghanistan. The world is facing its greatest threat of world war since Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. It is particularly disturbing to realize that while Putin is playing chess Biden is playing hooky either aimlessly wandering around the White House or hiding in his basement in Delaware. The people responsible for putting Biden in the Oval Office now have much innocent blood on their hands. While the world watches in horror as Russia continues to devastate Ukraine, the most important questions that now need to be answered are what can the west do to aid the Ukranian people in their courageous fight and how can we prevent the war from spreading to other European nations?
OTHER than flat out going to battle, and BLOWING UP their airforce and navy… I fear nothing will stop the ruskies.