Priorities Please

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an article by Senator John McCain about President Obama’s recent visit to Alaska. During that visit, the President focused his attention on the cataclysmic threat of climate change. (For accurate information on climate change, see wattsupwiththat. It is the world’s most viewed website on climate change)

Senator McCain reports:

Some of my Senate colleagues and I recently returned from the Arctic, and while we saw the challenges of melting polar ice, we also saw a greater and more immediate threat. It is a menace that many assumed was relegated to the past: an aggressive, militarily capable Russian state that is ruled by an anti-American autocrat, hostile to our interests, dismissive of our values, and seeking to challenge the international order that U.S. leaders of both parties have maintained for seven decades.

Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions are clear enough in his attempt to dominate Russia’s neighbors, Ukraine most of all. But his ambitions increasingly extend to the Arctic and Europe’s northern flank. That is where I and my colleagues met with leaders and security officials from Norway, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Is President Obama ignoring this threat or is this part of his promise to ‘be more flexible’ in dealing with Russia in his second term?

On Tuesday, CBN News reported:

The president says the science about climate change gets clearer every day and proves it’s no longer a distant threat.

And he’s right that Alaska’s climate is changing. Summer snow is forecast for this Friday amidst a cooling period. Alaska’s climate has been changing for a long time.

The poster child for climate change in Alaska, the Mendenall glacier, which is melting, was already melting in the 1700s and, according to scientists, had retreated one mile by the 1900s.

Some scientists say Alaska has been warming because of a reversal in the Pacific decadal oscillation, a 60-year cycle that sends warmer air to Alaska.

I am the least scientific person I know, but even I know that there are such things are natural climate cycles. Those cycles are what has enabled The Farmer’s Almanac to be one of the most accurate forecasters of weather on the planet. They have been using the same formula to predict weather that was used before computer forecasting came into vogue. Oddly enough, The Farmer’s Almanac predictions have proved to be more accurate than the computer models scientists have created. The climate is changing. The climate is always changing. The question is how much man is responsible for the changes. There was a long period of global warming during the Middle Ages, but somehow I cannot picture it being caused by the Lord of the Manor running around in his SUV.

Global warming is not the greatest threat America faces as a country. The greatest threat we face as a country is the increasing boldness of people who wish to do us harm that are spurred on by the fact that we have a weak President. That is our greatest threat.

At Least Someone Is Standing Up For The Ukraine

Yesterday the U.K. Telegraph reported that there was a very tense exchange between Vladimir Putin and David Cameron at the G20 summit.

The article reports:

The Russian president is reportedly planning to leave the summit early on Sunday and miss its official lunch in response to repeated criticism from western leaders.

The move comes after Tony Abbott, the Australian Prime Minister, threatened to “shirt front” Mr Putin – a form of physical confrontation. Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, told Mr Putin: “I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I’ll only have one thing to say to you – get out of the Ukraine.”

Mr Cameron told Mr Putin that he is at a “crossroads” and could face further sanctions after the pair held “robust” discussions on Ukraine.

During a tense 50 minute meeting Mr Cameron warned that Russia is risking its relations with the West and must end its support for Russian separatists.

Let’s remember how we got here. In March of this year the U.K. Daily Mail reported:

As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama won $48 million in federal funding to help Ukraine destroy thousands of tons of guns and ammunition – weapons which are now unavailable to the Ukrainian army as it faces down Russian President Vladimir Putin during his invasion of Crimea.

In August 2005, just seven months after his swearing-in, Obama traveled to Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine with then-Indiana Republican Senator Dick Lugar, touring a conventional weapons site.

The two met in Kiev with President Victor Yushchenko, making the case that an existing Cooperative Threat Reduction Program covering the destruction of nuclear weapons should be expanded to include artillery, small arms, anti-aircraft weapons, and conventional ammunition of all kinds.

After a stopover in London, the senators returned to Washington and declared that the U.S. should devote funds to speed up the destruction of more than 400,000 small arms, 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles, and more than 15,000 tons of ammunition.

It gets worse. In March of 2014, Newsweek Magazine reminded us:

 A deal was signed on February 5, 1994, by Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, John Major and Leonid Kuchma—the then-leaders of the United States, Russia, United Kingdom and Ukraine—guaranteeing the security of Ukraine in exchange for the return of its ICBMs to Moscow’s control. The last SS-24 missiles moved from Ukrainian territory in June 1996, leaving Kiev defenseless against its nuclear-armed neighbor.

That deal, known as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, was not a formal treaty but a diplomatic memorandum of understanding. Still, the terms couldn’t be clearer: Russia, the U.S. and U.K. agreed “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine…reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine.”

 I am not convinced that any of the countries involved have lived up to that agreement. America has done very little to ensure the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine (we gave up Crimea very easily, and it is very rarely spoken of in the news).

However, there is good news in this–as the price of oil falls, the economy of Russia will also spiral downward. If America begins sending natural gas to Europe, Russia will lose part of the bullying tactics they have employed in the region. Also, just to make it even more interesting, as the price of oil falls, Venezuela will also continue its economic spiral downward. The falling price of oil will also impact some of the despots in the Middle East that have had a strangle hold on American diplomacy for generations.

American energy independence is important as a security matter, but it is also very important as a component of American foreign policy. As the price of oil falls, we will begin to see the impact of that decrease in international politics.

About That Flexibility

America seems to have forgotten who her friends are and who her enemies are. On March 26, 2012, major news sources reported that President Obama had told outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he will have “more flexibility” to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election. That remark was caught by an open mike. Well, it seems as if that flexibility has arrived.

Saturday’s New York Times reported that the United States has effectively canceled the final phase of a Europe-based missile defense system that was fiercely opposed by Russia and cited repeatedly by the Kremlin as a major obstacle to cooperation on nuclear arms reductions and other issues. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the announcement. Those resources will be shifted to America to provide missile interceptors in response to recent threats made by North Korea. It is a good thing that we are protecting America, but I do wonder about the wisdom of leaving allies out in the cold with nothing but our broken promises.

The New York Times couches this as a good thing for our relationship with Russia and states that the Polish government is not all that upset about it. Regardless, we have broken a promise to an ally in order to please a government that does not represent freedom and is not an ally of America. I question the wisdom of that decision.

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Pushing The Reset Button On Russia

We have all read President Obama’s supposedly off-the-record comments to Russian President Medvedev. The mainstream media seems to be avoiding saying much about those comments, but conservative commentators (and Republican candidates) have sounded the appropriate alarm.

Hugh Hewitt posted an interview with Mitt Romney on his blog:

MR: Well, it is revealing, it is alarming, it’s troubling, it suggests that the President has a very different agenda with the Russians than he’s willing to tell the American people. And for that reason alone, we ought to vote him out of office. This is a very disconcerting development.

HH: What do you think he has in mind, Governor, when he says I will be flexible? Is it missile defense? It is the number of our warheads? Is it Iran? What is he talking about?

MR: Well, he says missile defense, but we’re talking about one of those two issues, either missile defense or warheads. What he’s done on warheads, of course, with the new START Treaty, he took warheads down to 1,500 on strategic nuclear weapons. Of course, the Russians were already at 1,500. They didn’t have to have any reductions. We were at 2,200. So the only reduction in his missile defense treaty was a reduction at the U.S. level. And of course, he ignored the tactical nuclear weapons, which are of course the same nukes. They’re just on smaller rockets. He ignored that, where Russia has an advantage of five or ten to one over us. So this is a president who continues to try and appease and accommodate, and believes that the best interests of America are to bow to the interests of Russia. And it’s very, very troubling, and I mean, I’m very disturbed by this. I hope the American people understand that what we heard from the President is revealing about his character in terms of what he tells the American people, and revealing about his direction and sentiment with regards to Russian, which is after all our number one geopolitical foe. They don’t represent a military threat to us at the present, but they oppose us at every turn in the United Nations, and oppose us in every one of our efforts, whether in Iraq or Iran, North Korea. They’re on the other side. And for him to be cozying up with them with regards to missile defense is simply unacceptable.

HH: How do you expect this aside from the President will be understood in Poland and the Czech Republic, and Ukraine, and Georgia, and other front line states facing a newly-expansive Russia?

MR: Well, I think our friends around the world have been reevaluating their relationship with the United States, in part because of this president’s treatment of friends relative to the treatment of enemies. I’ve heard from more than one foreign leader that it seems to be preferable to be an American foe than an American friend to this president.

HH: Now Governor Romney, the press will of course attempt to dismiss this as not a big issue. Will this remain a front line issue? And do you think that the President has got to spell out with great detail what he has in mind here?

MR: You know, I don’t think he can recover from it, to tell you the truth. I mean, I think he will try and spin something. But I don’t know how you spin from an open mic, where you’re talking about having more flexibility after the election, which means quite clearly that you don’t want the American people to hear what you’re really planning on doing, and that you’re going to be able to do more when you no longer are accountable to the American people. You know, the mainstream media may try and put this to bed, but we’re going to keep it alive and awake. And we’re going to keep hammering him with it all the way through November.

It seems to me that there are enough serious questions about the President’s off-the-record statement to persuade Americans to vote against him.

 

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Beware the Open Mike !

Jake Tapper at ABC News posted a story today about some remarks made by President Obama that were not necessarily for public consumption.

The exchange between President Obama and Russian President Medvedev was captured by an open microphone nearby:

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

All I can think of when I read this is that it is the script from a bad gangster movie. I don’t want to think about the plans this President has for us if he wins in November.

If the Republicans do not use this in a campaign ad in the presidential campaign this year, they deserve to lose the election.

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