Posted on 12/21/2025 6:30:29 AM PST by JoeVortex
"Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard left nothing off the table when she gave remarks to the audience at Turning Point USA. In a remarkable and very well delivered speech, Director Gabbard outlines in detail the biggest domestic and geopolitical challenges currently being faced by President Trump and his administration."
EU and NATO are absolutely the proximate cause of the Ukraine war.
What idiotic lies on your part!
Short term, no. Long term, yes.
The key part of Gabbard’s speech was not opinion.
She attacked a Dem congressman who announced that “intelligence has told us repeatedly that Putin’s overarching goal is to restore the Soviet Union”.
She said NO. Intelligence briefings have not said that and may never have said this. This is an outright lie. Intelligence says Putin has no capacity to conquer and occupy Europe and his internal discussions (a mole in the Kremlin?) have similarly never said this to the leadership.
Whether or not you like what the intel says matters maybe less that a Dem Congressman went public lying about it. It never said that to him. This is much worse than misquoting.
He’s a tds troll.
“Most pols at that level are controlled actors in their roles anyway.”
You seem unaware of your two most significant points:
1. that there are some high level politicians who are not controlled
2. that we should act as though they are controlled
But never fear—what I’ve demonstrated here absolves you of any credibility whatsoever.
“Reasons for opposition”
True pandemic, ironically preceding the plandemic.
If the public really knew what Venezuela was about...
And the way NATO made it look like Russian tanks crossed the border ... priceless.
Those devious westerners. Making it look like Russia invaded Hungary in 1956. Making it look like Russia invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Making it look like Russia invaded Poland in 1920.
Re-writing history so as to make it look like Russia and Germany divided up Eastern Europe in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.
Every peace-loving person knows that Russia is a country of peace and that democracies are countries of war.
Europe beware! Putin has spoken and Putin has acted. You cannot depend on Trump, Gabbard, Tucker or anybody else coming to your rescue. You either stand up to Putin or else accept your fate.
Meanwhile, the MinnieSomalians were out “marching” for their new colony of African and MinnieSamolian criminals and thieves who have stolen billions of American dollars from AMERICAN MEATHEADS who are afraid that an African will pull their racecard on them.
Putin should fear us. Not the other way around.
Thanks, Minority.
One of Trump’s strengths is in bringing people together to expand our movement. Necessarily, this includes people who don’t agree with each other on all issues.
With regard to Russia, Trump has both criticized the Europeans for not owning up to their responsibilities under NATO, and has attempted to bring about a negotiated end of the war in Ukraine. I don’t think Putin realizes that his window for a negotiated settlement won’t last forever. With Europe re-arming, and with the loses he is suffering, Putin risks catastrophic failure.
Russia is fast becoming a bigger version of North Korea, and there are indeed associated risks. We will see how reckless Russia becomes; but, as long as Europe is strong, Putin won’t have a military option.
The only important question in European geopolitics is where the border between Germany and Russia lies.
Torgau was too far West. Stalingrad was too far East.
The rest remains TBD.
The zips are in the wire.
True. Poor Ukraine (which means “at the frontier/borderlands”) was never its very own country until 1991 for a reason.
It’s especially sad because, as a neutral country (as neutrality was wisely enshrined in its original constitution), it could have prospered serving a buffer zone and trade bridge between East and West. This would have been a wise state of affairs for Western Europe and Russia, too. Win/win on both the economic and security fronts.
But no, the neocons/neolibs in Washington couldn’t have that! So here we are.
Yes, as you wrote in an earlier post, “EU and NATO are absolutely the proximate cause of the Ukraine war”.
I usually stay off the Ukraine threads, as they quickly devolve into mindless slugfests, but some intelligent comments on this one.
” even Donald Trump is a “controlled actor”
No doubt he is. But he’s the one controlling everything he does and he’s not much of an “actor”.
bump
Austria successfully stayed neutral throughout the entire Cold War. That was a model appropriate for the independent Ukraine.
But there was, and is, a bipartisan faction in America’s political elite that openly wants to do to Russia what was done to Yugoslavia. Break it up into multiple little nations. A proxy war ought to be a great way to achieve this, and Ukraine is our obedient puppet.
“RFK Jr., Elon Musk and even Donald Trump are all former Democrats.”
So was FDR fan Ronald Reagan. His explanation for change was “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Party left me.”
Bingo. Exactly. Ukraine initially wisely adopted “the Austrian model” and initially enshrined neutrality in its constitution. Neutrality has its place, certainly when it comes to certain areas of the map, and can be quite beneficial to the neutral country as well as its neighbors. Austria and Switzerland certainly thrived, for example.
Actually, as I’m sure you know, Austria adopted neutrality before the Cold War began in earnest. At the time, Austria was divided into sectors occupied by the victors of WWII, one sector being the USSR’s. Stalin was happy with their neutrality, and the Soviets said “do svidaniya” and marched back home.
Germany was offered the same deal by Stalin, but we preferred a re-militarized Germany under our big NATO thumb, and so NATO came into being and Germany remained divided between USSR and USA/NATO for the duration.
Some historians think the Soviets would have said “do svidaniya” and marched out of Germany, same as Austria, had Germany declared neutrality like Austria, and furthermore might (even would) have extended to same deal to other countries that wound up in the Warsaw Pact. They believe Stalin was showing his seriousness about honoring such deals to other countries partially occupied by Soviet forces (Germany) or even wholly occupied by them when the Soviets left Austria.
Others think Stalin was trying to trick us into letting Germany (and others) go neutral and would not have honored such a deal. This seems to be the prevailing attitude.
While it’s true that NATO came first (inception 1949}, and the Warsaw Pact thing was in response to NATO (inception 1955), who knows for sure who is right? Life (and history) isn’t like a computer game where you can go back and play that level again, doing something differently, and seeing if it would have turned out differently.
Who knows? Would Stalin have truly allowed Germany to reunite and remain whole like Austria in exchange for its neutrality and demilitarization? Czechoslovakia and other Soviet occupied countries, too?
Well, Stalin was an evil psychopath, a monster responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of his own people (okay, he was a Georgian, so not exactly his own, but ...). Given the shocking inroads the stinky commies had made into Western Europe and even the US in the 1930s, we had good reason to want to counter and contain International Communism, which I consider pure poison. So...
Anyway, it would be cool if we could run a reliable computer simulation of “playing that level again” and see what would have happened, but we can’t.
Sorry for the digression. It’s just a question I find intriguing even though the answer is unknowable.
Yes, anyone who has been reading our establishment foreign policy journals knows our neocons/neocons have been dreaming of breaking Russia into pieces (five pieces being the usual number) and scheming toward that end for decades.
Re former Yugoslavia: The Germans were ahead of us in wanting to break it up into easily digestible pieces once they got their EU (the kinder, gentler version of German Empire where the other European countries get to keep their flags and even a picturesque but powerless “monarch” here and there, but actually ruled by Brussels bureaucrats in the service of Germany — but still under the thumb of the Americans who got the King Arthur Seat at the NATO HQ round table across the street, presiding over European vassals wearing today’s equivalent of shiny knight armor — that would have been Hermes ties and Armani suits at the time, and weilding Mont Blanc fountain pens, of course). Yes, they had it all planned out in advance. Croatia and Slovenia were “tier two” in both Germany’s “labor pool” and “market for German goods” departments. Checked those boxes!
Germany had already been clandestinely shipping arms to Croatia via Hungary back in the late 1980s in anticipation of the happy day.
We then outflanked the Germans and showed them who their Daddy is, while at the same time supporting their aim of breaking up the unwieldy and ultimately indigestible Yugoslavia.
Admittedly, Yugoslavia was a Frankensteinish creation thrown together by outside pressures after the dissolution of powerful empires (twice!), destined to eventually break apart, but it could have happened with less bloodshed had we wished it. Note I said “could” not “would”. James Baker seemed to have shared my view on this, so I suppose — though I do wonder whether — that puts me in good company.
There are a number of striking parallels between Croatia and the part it played in the early to mid 1990s and Ukraine and the part it’s been playing, with a few important differences. Our playbook and the way we used them was pretty much the same, though.
I may be boring you, so I’ll stop here. I’ll continue if you’re interested and when I have time.
Again, astute observation on your part! Well done, and thanks for prompting me to consider more deeply. That’s what smart productive dialogue should be all about,.and I thank you for it. It’s become rarer and rarer on FR, and therefore doubly precious to me.
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