BUCHANAN ON PARANOIA ABOUT PUTIN

Pat Buchanan again disagrees with many of the elite American foreign policy experts, in both Democratic and Republican Parties.  Buchanan's analysis is certainly worth a read.---Hugh Murray

Putin Paranoia–The Soviet Union Is NOT Coming Back From The Dead

By Patrick J. Buchanan on February 16, 2015, 8:31 pm

Hopefully, the shaky truce between Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko, brokered in Minsk by Angela Merkel, will hold.

For nothing good, but much evil, could come of broadening and lengthening this war that has cost the lives of 5,400 Ukrainians.

The longer it goes on, the greater the casualties, the more land Ukraine will lose, and the greater the likelihood Kiev will end up an amputated and bankrupt republic, a dependency the size of France on the doorstep of Europe.

Had no truce been achieved, 8,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in the Debaltseve pocket could have been forced to surrender or wiped out, causing a regime crisis in Kiev. U.S. weapons could have begun flowing in, setting the stage for a collision between Russia and the United States.

One understands Russia’s vital interest in retaining its Black Sea naval base in Crimea, and keeping Ukraine out of NATO. And one sees the vital interest of Ukraine in not losing the Donbas.

But what is America’s vital interest here?

Merkel says a great principle is at stake, that in post-Cold War Europe, borders are not to be changed by force.

That is idealistic, but is it realistic?

At the Cold War’s end, Yugoslavia split into seven nations, the USSR into 15. Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, even Slovenia briefly, had to fight to break free. So, too, did the statelets of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in breaking from Georgia, and Transnistria from Moldova.

Inside Russia there are still minorities such as the Chechens who wish to break free. And in many of the new nations like Ukraine, there are ethnic Russians who want to go home.

Indeed, a spirit of secessionism pervades the continent of Europe.

But while London permitted the Scottish secessionists a vote, Madrid refuses to concede that right to the Basques or Catalans. And some of these ethnic minorities may one day fight to break free, as the Irish did a century ago.

Yet of all of the secessionist movements from the Atlantic to the Urals, none imperils a vital interest of the United States. None is really our business. And none justifies a war with Russia.

Indeed, what is it about this generation of Americans that makes us such compulsive meddlers in the affairs of nations we could not find on a map? Consider if you will our particular affliction: Putin paranoia.

Forty years ago, this writer was in Moscow with Richard Nixon on his last summit with Leonid Brezhnev. It was not a contentious affair, though the USSR was then the command center of an immense empire that stretched from Berlin to the Bering Sea.

And when we are warned that Putin wishes to restore that USSR of 1974, and to reassemble that Soviet Empire of yesterday, have we really considered what that would require of him?

To restore the USSR, Putin would have to recapture Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, an area the size of the United States.

To resurrect the Soviet Empire, Putin would have to invade and occupy Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and then overrun Germany to the Elbe River.

How far along is Putin in re-establishing the empire of the czars and commissars? He has reannexed Crimea, which is roughly the size of Vermont, and which the Romanovs acquired in the 18th century.

Yet almost daily we hear the din from Capitol Hill, “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!”

That there is bad blood between America and Putin is undeniable. And, indeed, Putin has his quarrels with us as well.

In his eyes, we took advantage of the dissolution of the USSR to move NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic republics. We used our color-coded revolutions to dump over pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.

Yet beyond our mutual distrust, or even contempt, is there not common ground between us?

As the century unfolds, two clear and present dangers threaten U.S. strategic interests: the rising power of a covetous China and the spread of Islamic terrorism.

In dealing with both, Russia is a natural ally. China sees Siberia and the Russian Far East, with its shrinking population, as a storehouse of the resources Beijing needs.

And against the Taliban in Afghanistan, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and al-Qaida, Russia, which suffered in Beslan and Moscow what New York, London, Madrid, Paris and Copenhagen have suffered, is on our side.

During the Cold War, Russia was in thrall to an ideology hostile to all we believed in. She had rulers who commanded a world empire.

Yet we had presidents who could do business with Moscow.

If we could negotiate with neo-Stalinists issues as grave as the the Berlin Wall, and ballistic missiles in Cuba, why cannot we sit down with Vladimir Putin and discuss less earthshaking matters, such as whose flag should fly over Luhansk and Donetsk?

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his books State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, and Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? are available from Amazon.com. Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.

WAR IN 2015?

Pat Buchanan is a columnist and has run for President of the US.  He ran for the Republican nomination, and lost, and in 2000 ran on a third party Reform Party ticket.  Al Gore and the Democrats won the popular vote that year, but Republican George W. Bush wan the electoral vote and became President, despite the loss of votes to Buchanan.  I should say that in 2000 I voted for Buchanan.  Here is his New Year's Greeting.
Hugh Murray

Is War in the Cards for 2015?

By Patrick J. Buchanan on December 31, 2014, 6:34 pm

“If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you,” said Calvin Coolidge, whose portrait hung in the Cabinet Room of the Reagan White House.

Among the dispositions shared by the two conservatives was a determination to stay out of other people’s wars.

Peering into 2015, there are wars into which our interventionists are eager to plunge that represent no immediate or grave threat to us.

One is the war the Islamic State group is waging in Syria and Iraq, a menace so great, we are told, it may require U.S. ground troops.

But why? Syria and Iraq are 5,000 miles away. And because of itsbarbarism and incompetence, the Islamic State is losing support in the Sunni lands it now occupies.

The Kurds have halted the group’s advance toward Irbil, Iraq. Shiite militias, no friends of ours, have halted its advance toward Baghdad. The Islamic State is under steady drone and air attack by the U.S. and Arab allies. Iran is providing men and materiel to Damascus and Baghdad in their battle against the group.

Now the Turks and Gulf Arabs, including the Saudis, appear to have awakened to the threat and are weighing in against the Islamic State.

Why not let them do the fighting?

By staying out of the two world wars of the 20th century until the other great powers were fully engaged and horribly bled, America emerged triumphant with the fewest casualties and least damage.

That used to be called statesmanship.

Moreover, compared with Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China, the Islamic State doesn’t even make the “JV,” to use Barack Obama’s term.

Last month, the drums were beating for an attack on North Korea for what Sen. John McCain called a “new form of warfare” and what Sen. Lindsey Graham called “cyberterrorism” aided by China.

In “A Reply to Kim’s Cyberterrorism,” The Wall Street Journal urged a “forceful response” to deter “future attacks.” Swiftly, there followed the crashing of North Korea’s Internet system.

Query: If reports are true that Sony Pictures was hacked by ticked-off ex-employees yet North Korea’s Internet was brought down by a U.S. cyberattack, who is the cyberterrorist now?

Perhaps some of those Iranian technicians in Natanz who watched their centrifuges breaking down and blowing up from the Stuxnet virus have some thoughts on this.

But the most determined push for war in 2015 will come from neocons and interventionists who want a U.S.-Putin confrontation and regime change in Russia. And as Russia has a nuclear arsenal to match our own, this is a matter of real gravity.

Because of U.S.-EU sanctions on Russia for its role in Ukraine and the collapse in the price of oil, Russia’s principal export, the ruble has lost half its value, and the economy faces a contraction of 5 percent in 2015.

Real hardships lie ahead for the Russian people. But it seems they are not blaming Vladimir Putin for their troubles. They are blaming us.

“According to the respected Moscow ‘Levada Center,’ which measures political sentiment in Russian society,” the New York Observerreports, “74 percent of Russians have negative feelings towards the USA. … In the 1990s, 80 percent had positive attitude toward America.

“Currently, 76 percent of Russians hate Obama personally and only a meager 2 percent like him. … These are the maximum peaks of anti-American feelings in Russia in years. … Just last week Visa and MasterCard completely stopped their operations in Crimea, leaving more than 2 million people there without access to their money.”

One Moscow supermarket is using American flags as doormats, andcustomers are wiping their feet on them.

Before going home, Congress voted to levy new sanctions on Russia and authorized U.S. lethal weapons to be sent to Kiev to enable Ukraine to retake Luhansk and Donetsk and perhaps Crimea.

Obama signed the bill.

With Republican hawks taking over all congressional committees dealing with foreign and defense policy, peace and war, in the new year, there will be a competitive clamor that Obama send the guns to Kiev.

And what happens then?

Will Putin abandon the rebels and face the rage of the Russian people for backing down? Will Putin wait for the U.S. anti-tank weapons and ammunition to arrive and be sent to eastern Ukraine?

Or will Putin, a decisive sort, send in the Russian army before the U.S. weapons arrive, hive off a land bridge to Crimea–and maybe more for bartering purposes–and call Obama’s bluff?

In his New Year’s message to the Russian people, Putin hailed the annexation of Crimea as an achievement that will “forever remain a landmark in the national history.”

Doesn’t sound as if he’ll be giving Crimea up any time soon.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” said the wise Yogi Berra. But one prediction seems not too risky.

Either Obama and Putin enter negotiations over Ukraine or the war in Ukraine, with 4,700 dead since April, gets bigger and wider.

Pat Buchanan, Crimea, and America's OverCommitment

I copied this column from vdare.com.   Pat Buchanan discusses how American policy has us over-commited and may lead us into disaster.---Hugh Murray

"All Options Are On The Table" For Obama—How About Taking The One Marked “War” OFF The Table?

By Patrick J. Buchanan on March 21, 2014 at 3:29pm

Sweeping through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania this week, Joe Biden reassured all three that the United States' commitment to Article Five of the NATO treaty remains "solemn" and "iron clad."

Article Five commits us to war if the territory of any of these tiny Baltic nations is violated by Russia.

From World War II to the end of the Cold War, all three were Soviet republics. All three were on the other side of the Yalta line agreed to by FDR, and on the other side of the NATO red line, the Elbe River in Germany.

No president would have dreamed of waging war with Russia over them. Now, under the new NATO, we must. Joe Biden was affirming war guarantees General Eisenhower would have regarded as insane.

Secretary of State John Kerry says that in the Ukraine crisis, "All options are on the table." John McCain wants to begin moving Ukraine into NATO, guaranteeing that any Russian move on the Russified east of Ukraine would mean war with the United States.

Forty members of Congress have written Kerry urging that Georgia, routed in a war it started with Russia over South Ossetia in 2008, be put on a path to membership in NATO.

Following Russia's annexation of Crimea, other voices are calling for expanding NATO to bring in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, and for moving U.S. troops and warplanes into Poland and the Baltic republics.

President Obama says, "All options are on the table" if Iran does not give us solid assurances she is not building a bomb. Members of Congress support U.S. military action against Iran, if Tehran does not surrender even the "capability" to build a bomb.

End all enrichment of uranium, or America attacks, they warn.

In the Far East we are committed to defend Japan if China seizes the Senkakus that Beijing claims as Chinese territory, a collection of rocks in the East China Sea. If Kim Jong-Un starts a war with South Korea, we are committed by treaty to fight a second Korean War.

We are committed by treaty to defend the Philippines. And if China acts on its claim to the southern islands of the South China Sea, and starts a shooting war with Manila's navy, we are likely in it.

Is this not an awful lot on Uncle Sam's plate?

Is America really prepared to fight all of these wars that we are obligated by treaty to fight?

The national recoil at attacking Syria, for crossing Obama's "red line"last summer and using poison gas, suggests that there is a vast gulf between what America is obligated by treaty to do, and what the American people are willing to do in sending their soldier sons into a new war.

Indeed, the latest mantra of the war hawks, "no boots on the ground," is meant to reassure the nation that in our next war, unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, there will be no more planeloads of dead coming into Dover, no new generation of Wounded Warriors arriving at Walter Reed.

Soon, the United States is going to have to come to terms with this reality -- the unwillingness of the American people to fight the wars they are committed to fight by the American government.

Yet, the immediate problem is how to avoid a military confrontation or clash with Vladimir Putin's Russia over Crimea, which almost no American wants.

Apparently, the West has decided to start down the sanctions road.

But where does that road lead?

While sanctions may cripple the Russian economy, will they break Putin? Did they break Castro? Did they break Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il? Did they break the Ayatollah? Does Putin look like someonewho will respond to an economic squeeze by crying uncle?

Moreover, in this age of interdependence that America did so much to launch, sanctions are a two-edged sword.

If Ukraine cuts off oil, gas, water and electricity into a seceded Crimea, whose tourist trade is drying up, this could provoke Putin into invading Eastern Ukraine and seizing the lone land bridge onto the peninsula.

It could provoke Russia into cutting off imports from Ukraine, turning off the oil and gas, and calling in Ukraine's debts. This would precipitate a default by Ukraine, without more Western aid than the $35 billion it is now estimated Kiev will need by 2016.

Are House Republicans willing to vote America's share of that vast sum and make Ukraine a recipient of U.S. foreign aid roughly equal to what we provide annually to Israel and Egypt?

And if we severely sanction Russia, she could cut off oil and gas to Europe, cause a recession in the eurozone, and move closer to China.

Nixon's great achievement was to split China off from Moscow.President Reagan's great achievement was to preside over the conversion of the "evil empire" into a country where he was cheered in Red Square.

What our Greatest Generation presidents accomplished, our Baby Boomer presidents appear to have booted away.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his books State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America,  and  Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?  are available from Amazon.com