Tag Archives: Crimea

A Reality Check

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On Monday, The Federalist posted an article about the ongoing negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The article reminds us that neither Russia or Ukraine can actually win the war decisively.

The article reports:

President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday didn’t yield the ceasefire deal Trump was hoping for, but there was apparently enough progress made that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and top European leaders are meeting with Trump in Washington today to discuss the possibility of peace negotiations and a deal to end to the war for good.

What might such a deal look like? Simply put, it would consist of territorial concessions in exchange for security agreements. Ukraine would cede portions of Russian-occupied territory in Crimea and the eastern provinces in exchange for a security alliance with the United States and European powers. Trump himself has alluded to this, mentioning “land swaps” ahead of his meeting with Putin on Friday.

Russia’s main goal has always been a warm-water port. The land Russia has currently seized from Ukraine would provide that port. If Ukrainian President Zelensky would make territorial concessions to give Russia a warm-water port, the war would end. However, the corruption that has provided a lavish lifestyle to the ruling class in Ukraine would also end. That is probably one of the major sticking points in the negotiations.

The article concludes:

And here we come to heart of the difference between Biden and Trump’s view of the war, and of foreign policy broadly speaking. The establishment foreign policy experts that ran things during Biden’s term (and Obama’s) think the world operates according to theories and abstractions rather than solid realities like history and geography. They thought they could simply invoke something like sovereignty, without grappling with the possibility that sovereignty and territorial integrity, given Ukraine’s history and its untenable borders, might be mutually exclusive.

That mindset is representative of an entire class of policymakers in Washington who fail to grasp that the outcome of a war — any war — is far more likely to be decided by something as unmovable as a mountain range or a warm-water port than vague invocations of sovereignty. Likewise, a common language or a shared 1,000-year history between warring peoples are going to be more important factors than the bureaucratic minutiae of a multi-lateral security agreement drafted in Brussels.

After years of attrition warfare between Ukraine and Russia, bankrolled largely by western powers, the underlying factors in the conflict have not changed — and they never will. An adjustment of Ukraine’s borders, together with security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe, is actually in everyone’s best interests, not just Russia’s. Ukraine as it’s currently constituted is indefensible, as events have shown. Lasting peace will require grappling with the history of Ukraine’s borders and adjusting them to reflect solid realities — not some hazy platitudes about democracy and sovereignty. Those kind of abstractions are a big reason we’re in this mess, and rejecting them is the only way we’re going to get out of it.

It’s time that western nations stop funding this carnage.

A Very Honest Picture Of The War In Ukraine

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On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness detailing the current status of the war in Ukraine. The article summarizes where we have been, where we are, and where we are probably going.

The article reports:

Aside from the rhetoric, there is a growing consensus among Western diplomats, military analysts, military officers, heads of state, and even much of the media about how to end the endless Ukrainian war.

A proposed peace will see a DMZ established somewhere along an adjusted 1,200-mile Ukraine-Russia border. Tough negotiations will adjudicate how far east toward its original borders Russian forces will be leveraged to backstep.

Publicly in the U.S. and covertly in Europe, all accept that a depleted Ukraine will not have the military strength to retake Crimea and the Donbas.

In 2014, both were absorbed by Russia during the Obama administration. Neither that administration nor any since has advocated a military effort to reclaim them.

Loudly, the U.S.—and again quietly Europe—concedes that Ukraine will not be in NATO—a confirmation that Russia will use to justify to its people its disastrous invasion, and even many Ukrainians will accept.

How will the West deter Putin from his inevitable agenda of reclaiming lost Soviet territory and Russian-speaking peoples? For now, his army is exhausted, its arsenals depleted, and its reputation shattered.

In the future, a commercial corridor, anchored by concessions to American and international mining concerns, will supposedly serve as a tripwire to deter Putin from attacking in-the-way noncombatant Americans.

The media spin on a ceasefire is predictable:

If Trump can coax even a ceasefire, the oddly bellicose left will still rail about “Munich” and Trump as “Putin’s puppet.”

But after perhaps 1.5 million total Ukrainian and Russian dead, wounded, sick, and missing, transatlantic leftists will quietly admit they never had any realistic plan to win by fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

And they certainly were not willing—despite what they claimed in their spasms of braggadocio—to send U.S., U.K., European, or NATO ground troops into Eastern Ukraine.

The article concludes:

So, Putin knows that India, China, and others who buy his oil will not if he reneges on his willingness for a ceasefire.

If and when peace comes, we can already foresee the misinformation that will follow: Trump deserves no credit. Zelenskyy remains the true hero. A now hollowed-out Russia was the real winner.

The only mystery?

Since when did the anti-war left prefer an endless and horrific war to a difficult, messy peace?

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is one of the best summaries of the situation I have read.

Twisted

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No one ever claimed that the team put together by Robert Mueller to investigate President Trump was politically unbiased, but I at least expected them to report the facts as they uncovered them. Evidently my expectations were too high. On May 8, I posted an article about Joseph Mifsud, claimed by the Mueller Report to be a Russian asset. It turns out that he was training American intelligence officers. His contract with George Papadopoulos had nothing to do with Russia. On June 1st, I posted an article about the editing of a phone message from President Trump’s attorney John Dowd to Michael Flynn. The message was edited in a way that left an impression totally different than what was actually happening. Well, okay, maybe that was just an oversight. That’s two strikes. Now we have another incident where something totally misleading (and false) was stated in the Mueller Report.

John Solomon at The Hill posted an article yesterday with the following headline, “Key figure that Mueller report linked to Russia was a State Department intel source.” The person in questions in Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik.

The article reports:

In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence.

But hundreds of pages of government documents — which special counsel Robert Mueller possessed since 2018 — describe Kilimnik as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters.

Why Mueller’s team omitted that part of the Kilimnik narrative from its report and related court filings is not known. But the revelation of it comes as the accuracy of Mueller’s Russia conclusions face increased scrutiny.

It gets worse:

Three sources with direct knowledge of the inner workings of Mueller’s office confirmed to me that the special prosecutor’s team had all of the FBI interviews with State officials, as well as Kilimnik’s intelligence reports to the U.S. Embassy, well before they portrayed him as a Russian sympathizer tied to Moscow intelligence or charged Kilimnik with participating with Manafort in a scheme to obstruct the Russia investigation.

Kasanof’s and Purcell’s interviews are corroborated by scores of State Department emails I reviewed that contain regular intelligence from Kilimnik on happenings inside the Yanukovych administration, the Crimea conflict and Ukrainian and Russian politics. For example, the memos show Kilimnik provided real-time intelligence on everything from whose star in the administration was rising or falling to efforts at stuffing ballot boxes in Ukrainian elections.

Those emails raise further doubt about the Mueller report’s portrayal of Kilimnik as a Russian agent. They show Kilimnik was allowed to visit the United States twice in 2016 to meet with State officials, a clear sign he wasn’t flagged in visa databases as a foreign intelligence threat.

The emails also show how misleading, by omission, the Mueller report’s public portrayal of Kilimnik turns out to be.

For instance, the report makes a big deal about Kilimnik’s meeting with Manafort in August 2016 at the Trump Tower in New York.

By that time, Manafort had served as Trump’s campaign chairman for several months but was about to resign because of a growing controversy about the millions of dollars Manafort accepted as a foreign lobbyist for Yanukovych’s party.

Specifically, the Mueller report flagged Kilimnik’s delivery of a peace plan to the Trump campaign for settling the two-year-old Crimea conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

“Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel’s Office was a ‘backdoor’ way for Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine,” the Mueller report stated.

But State emails showed Kilimnik first delivered a version of his peace plan in May 2016 to the Obama administration during a visit to Washington. Kasanof, his former handler at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, had been promoted to a top policy position at State, and the two met for dinner on May 5, 2016.

I am grateful for investigative reporters. It is time to acknowledge that the Mueller Report, despite the fact that it found no evidence of collusion on the part of the Trump campaign, is tainted. It is time to put this entire farce to rest and lift the cloud the Democrats have placed over the Trump administration. It is time to allow the President to solve the problems at our southern border, deal with Iran, negotiate trade deals, and generally be President.

Priorities Please

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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.

A Foreign Policy Totally Devoid Of Common Sense

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The Washington Free Beacon is reporting today that as Russia begins moving tactical nuclear weapons into the Crimea, the Obama administration is funding non-official arms control talks with Russia through a Washington think-tank that are aimed at curbing U.S. tactical nuclear arms in Europe.

First of all, I would like to remind everyone that Russia has paid no price for taking over the Crimea–there is no one standing up for the rights of the people in the Ukraine to expel the Russians from the Crimea and re-unite their country. The Russian takeover of the Crimea is considered part of the current baseline, and no one is talking about it as if it were the problem it is.

The article reports:

Regarding the nuclear deployments to Crimea, Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R., Okla.) first disclosed last month that Putin had announced in August his approval of deploying nuclear-capable Iskander-M short-range missiles along with Tu-22 nuclear-capable bombers in Crimea, located on the Black Sea.

“The stationing of new nuclear forces on the Crimean peninsula, Ukrainian territory Russia annexed in March, is both a new and menacing threat to the security of Europe and also a clear message from Putin that he intends to continue to violate the territorial integrity of his neighbors,” Inhofe stated in a Sept. 8 op-ed in Foreign Policy.

In their Sept. 23 letter to the president, McKeon, Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), chairman of the subcommittee on strategic forces, and Rep. Michael Turner (R., Ohio), chairman of the subcommittee on tactical air and land forces, noted Russia’s violation of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty by building a banned cruise missile. The missile has been identified by U.S. officials as the R-500.

The lawmakers said the Russian nuclear deployment in Crimea represents the “clear, and perhaps irrevocable tearing” of the 1997 agreement between NATO and Russia that allowed Russia to maintain a military presence within the alliance.

This is another example of America’s lack of strength making the world less safe–not safer. We need to increase our defense spending to make sure we have the weapons in place if Russia decides to go after a country in Europe next.

Some Perspective On Recent World Events

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It’s been a rough week for many of us. We have watched Russia invade Ukraine (after very little fuss was made about the fact that Russia has already taken over Crimea), we have watched unspeakable acts of terrorism by ISIS, and some of us have wondered exactly what the role of the United States should be in all of this. The Canada Free Press posted an article today that might provide some perspective.

Do you remember the Frank Capra movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life?” The basic premise of the movie is that the main character, George Bailey, experiencing many of the stresses of life, wonders if the world would be a better place if he had never been born. The author of the article in the Canada Free Press applies that concept to America.

The article states:

I wonder if the world is currently having an It’s a Wonderful Life experience.  There have always been challenges on the world stage and it was fashionable to blame the United States for most of them.  We were accused of interventionism, imperialism, brinksmanship and bellicosity among other sins.  Some, even in our own country, stated openly that if the United States would just stay out of the world’s business, we could all coexist happily and peacefully.  The natural conclusion was that the world would be better off if the United States had never been born.

And now, thanks to the hapless, incoherent and inept foreign policy this nation is currently following, the world is able to see exactly what happens without the active engagement of the United States.

The author concludes:

For years, many inside and outside this country complained about America taking on the job of the world’s policeman.  Like a policeman, the United States reminded all that disorder, lawlessness and violence would not be tolerated, that someone was always watching, that there would be consequences for aggressive acts.  This authority made some uncomfortable.  But a world without the United States, like a community without a policeman, is dark, hopeless – sure to be overwhelmed by villainy and consumed by chaos.

The movie has a happy ending.  George Bailey realizes he is indispensable to a community that is happy, orderly and safe.  We can only hope the United States also has a second chance to resume its position as an indispensable member of the free nations of the globe.  In the meantime, the world gets to see what life is like without us.

The election in November will determine whether or not our current state of affairs has a happy ending. It is up to the voters of America to elect people who can counter the haplessness of this President.