| NATO member countries by year of accession. Author: MK-CH1. Public domain. |
Reuters reported that Biden at the urging of the French president Emmanuel Macron, is “basically” ready to hold a summit with Putin. “We are always ready for diplomacy,” says the White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
Unfortunately, U.S. “diplomacy” brought the U.S., Russia, Ukraine and NATO into a current stalemate.
When the Warsaw Pact disintegrated and the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S. encouraged those events that included promises that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not take advantage of the situation to expand eastward. Since then, NATO has inevitably moved in this direction, almost doubling the number of members. Thank you, US “diplomacy.”
Things began to escalate with the US-backed coup in Ukraine, which replaced its “pro-Russia” regime with a “U.S. / Europe-friendly” regime in 2014. Barack Obama. Thank you, US “diplomacy.”
Then, in 2019, the United States withdrew from a medium-range nuclear power deal that prohibited the United States from deploying missiles at a surprise range from Russia and Russia from deploying similar missiles at a surprise range from NATO. The United States then deployed just such missiles in Poland Donald Trump. Something “diplomacy.”
The United States then went into excess (with the permission of Trump and Biden) against opening a pipeline (Nord Stream 2) that would have supplied Russian natural gas to Germany. The pipeline would have been a force for peace insofar as Russia wants to sell natural gas (at a fraction of the price offered by the United States) and the Germans do not want to freeze to death. To translate an old sentence, when goods cross borders, armies don’t usually cross borders.
Putin finally drew a red line on NATO membership, especially for Ukraine, and contrary to the US definition of “diplomacy” – “to do exactly what we demand, without question or objection, and we may consider it honorable to let you kiss our feet for a short time before kicking you in the face again” – – specially.
The bullies really, really, really hate being told “no,” and they tend to move into a state of complete confusion and posture about what happened right at the first hint, which explains the “crisis” in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, because of THIS bully, Putin doesn’t seem scared. Although the United States and its poodle met in Munich to make further threats, he refused to act Neville Chamberlain.
So now Joe says he’s ready to talk. It remains to be seen whether the willingness is real or just one exercise in fake “diplomacy.” As well as whether Putin is giving Biden a Siron / undisputed way out of this mess or whether he wants to rub his nose into the thick layer of dirt that U.S. “diplomacy” has previously spread to the country.
When the two nuclear powers are in dispute, the stakes are far too high to try to disguise US arrogance and megalomania as “diplomacy.”
Factor: Thomas L. Knapp
 | (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is a director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in northern Central Florida. |
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Source: The Nordic Page