Posted on 01/19/2022 4:47:29 AM PST by Kaslin
Fail to study the past (history), from energizing grand aspirations to how-it's-done tactics, and you will fail the present.
Failure to study the basics definitely occurred when the Biden administration clan committed its disastrous 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. The relevant history Biden administration bigwigs failed to study was how to safely and professionally conduct a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation from a combat zone.
The Biden bunch has no excuse. All the essential operational details (based on hard lessons learned) are laid out in a Joint Chiefs of Staff pamphlet titled Joint Publication 3-68.
Anyone literate may read the "Joint Pub" on the internet, all seven chapters. The pamphlet provides sound planning guidance based on operational history, as lived and executed by outfits like the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy.
Unfortunately, Biden's fake smart kids, like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, can't bother with nitty-gritty history. In the media perception world of Blinken-Sullivan con men, a foreign policy success is a snotty sound bite CNN and Facebook applaud.
These poseurs really do care more about the opinions of their self-crowned "elite" social and political fellow travelers than what actually happens in a world of blood, sweat, tears and -- once again -- freedom under calculated tyrannical assault by bad actors like Xi Jinping's national-communist China and Vladimir Putin's national-socialist Russia.
Relevant History Lesson: I pinch a quote from a column I wrote in 2004: "Super-power status takes money, and a large number of people (how large is arguable, but 200 million is a plausible figure). The common economic interests linking Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan were a potential post-Cold War positive. Russia needed Ukraine's immense agricultural productivity."
RUBK explained: "Rubik" as in the puzzle Rubik's Cube. RUBK is Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan. The demographics, natural resources and economic capacities these four nations possess is a geostrategic formula for a global power.
The 2004 column relied on a 1991 analysis James F. Dunnigan and I conducted as we prepared the second edition of "A Quick and Dirty Guide To War." Dunnigan and I concluded (and note we were writing before the USSR officially collapsed in December 1991) that at some point Russians (individual names then unknown) would try to keep or revive their empire, with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan the super-empowering core.
We now have a name: Vladimir Putin. The KGB colonel has announced his energizing grand aspiration (fancy term for Blinken and Sullivan types: his strategic goal).
A dispute rages over the precise translation of Putin's April 25, 2005, lamentation. Did he say the Soviet Union's demise was "a major geopolitical disaster of the (20th) century" or that it was the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century"? The BBC and NBC News chose the "catastrophe" translation. Both translations confirm the USSR's collapse appalled Putin.
The R Reality: For the last six months we've heard about the Russian Army's buildup on Ukraine's border. That's a serious threat.
The U Reality: Since February 2014 Russia has waged a slow war inside Ukraine. In March 2014, Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Kremlin-backed separatists occupy most of Ukraine's Donbas region.
The B Reality: the Biden administration says little about Russian finagling in Belarus ("White Russia"). Belarus remains a dictatorial basket case increasingly controlled by Moscow.
And for K, Kazakhstan: scant coverage of Russian troops entering Kazakhstan to help its pro-Kremlin authoritarian leadership crush protests against their regime. Moscow covered the intervention by invoking the Collective Security Treaty Organization -- which is a Kremlin scam.
RUBK. Big letters, big problem. Yet the Biden administration supported the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Oil and gas revenues give the Kremlin the cash to wage war and rebuild the Russian empire.
Another charge of treason for braindead. The list goes on.
Zbigniew Brzezinski has famously observed that “without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”
MacGuffin
In fiction, a MacGuffin is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. The term was originated by Angus MacPhail for film, adopted by Alfred Hitchcock, and later extended to a similar device in other fiction.Wikipedia
” For the last six months we’ve heard about the Russian Army’s buildup on Ukraine’s border. That’s a serious threat. “
Its a serious threat to whom?
Ukraine? Yeah, probably really serious to them.
To anyone in Europe. I guess they should be concerned.
To anyone in the US? I’ve been reading about this threat for years. And I still haven’t discovered a US National Interest—other than corrupt politicians.
Not our circus, not our monkeys.
Exactly. We need to be looking not just at Russia, but looking in a mirror. We have a large number of former "statesmen" who want to go back to fighting the cold war because it gives them relevance [Conde Rice and her mentors, colleagues and followers]. Russia's "grand[eose?] aspiration in their view is to reestablish an empire. We, our cold warriors, spent decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, trying to pick their bones clean, and did everything in our power to create a world that the Russians cannot live with. Russia did not seize the Crimea. It was theirs all along, assigned to the Ukraine by Stalin to administer, never figuring the argument it would start when the SU collapsed of its own weight.
we can turn Zbig's quote on it's head and point it at ourselves. Zbigniew Brzezinski has famously observed that “without Ukraine its breadbasket heartland, Russia America ceases to be an empire, but with Ukrainethe heartland suborned and then subordinated, Russia America automatically becomes an empire. .
First, define empire. As always it seems to be preceded by a silent "evil." It's one thing to seek a viable sustainable geopolitical entity. It's the aspiration to rule the world that makes such an "empire" evil, and that sounds and awful lot like the clarion call we got from the Bushes for their new global order after the collapse of Russia.
We have already extended NATO to Putin's front door and now we want to take his back yard.
Oh, and then there is this thing about our Atlantic and Pacific alliances and protecting it from this thing called Chayna. So who are the evil empires here?
I don't trust the Russians and I would watch them carefully. But to avoid starting WWIII over it we need to give them some space.
The author of this article gets it.
“I don’t trust the Russians and I would watch them carefully.”
Yup.
Agreed.
Please elaborate.
We sure didn’t seem to mind the Russian Empire before the Bolshevik Revolution.
Or people in Crimea and Donbass were pro-Russian and were alienated by 2014 Ukraine revolution, no longer wanted to associate with the Ukrainian government that seized power and sought out Russian help.
We stop pretending we didn't foment the revolution, push to install our own puppet leaders with the intent of pestering Russia.
You cannot make an international crisis every time one side pursues his own interest.
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