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Title: Trump’s New Flip Flop on NATO: “It’s No Longer Obsolete; They’ve Made a Change, They DO Fight Terrorism Now”
Source:
The Daily Sheeple
URL Source: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/trum ... -do-fight-terrorism-now_042017
Published: Apr 12, 2017
Author: The Daily Sheeple
Post Date: 2017-04-13 06:53:40 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 861
Comments: 6
Ah the words of Candidate Trump versus those of President Trump. We aren’t even 100 days into his presidency and it’s like listening to two completely different guys speak. President Trump just wrapped up a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg where he completely flipped 180 degrees from his stance on NATO during the 2016 election cycle. Just the complete opposite of everything Trump ever said just happened. First, a refresher. Here’s just one example (of many many available) of candidate Trump on NATO, regarding how the US should withdraw from NATO and that it’s “obsolete”: That is just a total contrast to what he said today. Some highlights from this afternoon include: Trump now believes NATO to be the quote “bulwark of international peace and security” The US is going to help “upgrade” NATO NATO has “made a change” and “now they do fight terrorism” AND NATO is “no longer obsolete” The only thing that remained the same is Trump’s stance on member states paying more… but at the 2% of GDP he requested NATO member states to pay, how is that going to diminish America’s financial burden in relation to NATO in any meaningful way? Watch for yourself. Interesting that the White House made the video of the press conference unlisted and disabled comments. Hmm… Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
Things have gotten more difficult with Russia. Trump talked tough on China and Europe in the election, which encouraged the Chinese and Europeans to be conciliatory when meeting with him. China is now putting pressure on North Korea in unprecedented ways. And started this public cooperation right after meeting with Trump, and right after Trump ordered a missile strike on Syria and made a big display of sending a flotilla to Korea. The Chinese talked turkey with Trump, and came to a rapprochement with him, it appears. So, we can expect, going forward, good relations with China, at least for awhile. That's good. Ditto for Europe. Trump announced his skepticism during the election, making it clear that he was willling to cut off Europe. A lot of European leaders were arrogant trash-talkers of candidate Trump, but then they faced the nightmare reality of Trump in power, capable of hurting them and their countries, badly (just as he could have done to China). In both cases the weaker party decided to end the confrontation with the man and accept his leadership, and in return they got a warm welcome and brought back "on wing". The pecking order of things vis-a-vis Europe has been re-established. Europe pledged things to Trump, and Trump, having gotten what he wanted, accepted, and reinvigorated the alliance with his words and support. That leaves the final major issue the question of Russia. Trump has long wanted good relations with Russia. He campaigned on that, and he wants it. Before, it was CRITICAL to have good relations with Russia because of Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and because of the costs of the buildup in Europe, that Europe was not bearing. But progress on the Russia front has come more slowly, thanks in very large part to the hellbent resistance to it on the part of the American Establishment. Trump has moved cautiously towards Russia. With China and Europe shored up, the best thing that can happen for America AND for Russia is for the USA and Russia to reach a rapprochement, just as Trump just reached with Europe and China. Do that, and the four major regions of the developed world will be in remarkable harmony, and Russia can resume it's focus on Putin's dream of making Russia the functioning commercial route between Europe and China - the new Silk Road. Good US relations with China and Europe do not preclude good relations with Russia, if the Russians want it. There are some fine things set on Russia's table if they are cooperative: demilitarization of their Western frontier, and overland commerce through Russia from the East. The Russians have the same Islamist enemies we do. So, the final piece of the puzzle is the rapprochement with Russia. That can happen. They have declared Syria their client and Assad their man. The first part of that is fine - if they can get the war there over with and stop the refugee flow that imperils the West. The second part is much more problematic. The Assads have been murderous dictators, much worse than, say, the Castros. Can there ever be true peace for the Syrian people if they are in charge? Not really. Of course, letting the place go over to the jihadists is worse. So, either new leaders have to be groomed to replace the Assads, OR (and this is never talked about) Assad has to behave like Raul Castro or Gorbachev and actually STOP the brutality, turn over a new leaf, and back away from murder and torture as casual instruments of government. CAN Assad do that? Is he capable of it? Probably not. But if he wants to survive, he'll have to. And then there's Iran. The Russians are allied with Iran, but Iran exports terror. Once again, the Russians can have Iran, but they need to suppress the export of terrorism. The Ukraine war can be brought to a reasonable close, with the US acquiescence to Russian Crimea (it was always Russian anyway), and the West agreeing that the Ukraine will not be attached to the EU or certainly NATO. Do that, and the trade can flow that will make Russia rich. The pieces are in place, and Trump has shown himself adept at diplomatic deal making. The question is whether the puzzle can be made to fit with Russia. If it is, then the things promised to America by Trump will come to pass, but in a different way. Instead of headlong collision with Europe and China to save money and jobs, we will save a ton of money through a general decrease in militarization of West and East due to peaceful relations. And obviously having relations good enough to NEGOTIATE fair trade with China is better than having a trade war. Trump campaigned on making America great again, and assuming European and Chinese intransigence, and Russian cooperation. Turns out China and Europe were much more eager to make a deal with Trump than expected, so the trade war with China may not be necessary, and cutting off Europe may not be either. If rapprochement is found with Russia, Trump can do BETTER for America than what he proposed in the election. The Trade War with China he talked about in the election would have burnt down the world economy to extract American freedom. But it may well be possible to simply NEGOTIATE terms with the Chinese that allow for American recovery - without the trade war. Trump seems to be well on his way to the most harmonious international system we will have ever seen, and the workers who voted for him will end up benefiting more from that than the trade war discussed in the election. To view Trump finding good relations with China and Europe as a betrayal may well turn out to be obtuse. Circumstances have changed - they are afraid of what Trump might do, and they are being much more cooperative than expected. So WHY NOT cooperate for a better world, that will be better for the American worker? No reason. Trump did not promise a trade war with China and to kill NATO. He promised those things IF the Chinese and Europeans would not deal. But they ARE dealing, so he's going to be able to get with honey what he would have had to extract by vinegar. That's better for EVERYBODY.
Western border of Russia is where every major invasion came through after Genghis Khan. Sankt Petersburg is 100 miles from NATO border in Estonia. What do you mean by demilitarization?
Russia has 9000 nuclear warheads. Nobody can invade Russia from the Western border, or the Eastern border, in any strength. It is only through immigration that Russia could lose the Russian homeland, but there isn't much medieval Islamic immigration INTO Russia - the biggest problem is Muslim natural increase WITHIN Russia. Yes, the Western Border of Russia WAS the threatening border. There were Vikings and there were Teutons and Swedes. Then came the French with the rest of Western Europe in tow. And then came the Germans last centutry, twice! Russia has good historical reasons to be wary of the West, and very good geostrategic reasons to maintain a huge nuclear arsenal. But Russia has to not be stupid like the USSR was. The Soviets prided themselves on being scientific, but their mllitary strategists remained utterly wedded to the events of 1942-1945. Huge Axis armies poured over the Western border, and they were eventually repelled by even bigger Soviet mechanized armies grinding Westward. Soviet thinking never evolved past that. The different nature of an American enemy was never taken into account. Had America WANTED to destroy the USSR and conquer what was left of Russia, they could have done it during the decade and a half of American nuclear supremacy. But we didn't. OF COURSE the Soviets were paranoid about the missile gap, having suffered so much at the hands of invaders. But once that missile gap closed, by the 1970s, Russia was never in real danger again. The Americans were never suicidal. But Soviet thinking never evolved. Massive World-War II armies, with the massive expenditures required to maintain them, were maintained in an Eastern Europe that had come to despise the Russians for oppressing them. Today in Bulgaria, you will be advised to speak English rather than Russian, even though most of the people speak Russian, because they dislike the Russians, thanks to that history of occupation. Russians never forget anything, but neither do Poles, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Rumanians, Czechs, Slovaks, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians or Finns. The history of Eastern Europe is bloody and sad, and everybody thinks he was the good guy. All of this is in the past, but the USSR did not put any of it in the past. It sat atop Eastern Europe like a great mailed beast, maintaining the full-sized, full-strength army that defeated Hitler, for 10, 20, 30, 40 years after Hitler was gone. And they paid for it - lord how they paid. The Western world moved on from the war, rebuilt, became really wealthy. But the USSR and its allies remained trapped in the mindset of 1945. What trapped them was the maintenance of overwhelming conventional armies, armies that could rapidly defeat Hitler's Wehrmacht were it to spill back over the border again. Armies that would have been turned into ashes in five minutes of nuclear war. NATO had big armies too, defensively postured, but they were smaller than the Soviet armies. The West knew all along that their armies, should they move East, would be incinerated in five minutes by the Soviets' nuclear weapons. And they knew that they probably could not stop the Soviet army, conventionally, so they would have to incinerate the Soviets with nuclear weapons if the Soviets came West. The Soviets, for their part, planned on nuclear war. They planned on using nuclear, biological and chemical warfare to make a breakthrough, but this planning was always a joke. Sure, they might achieve a local breakthrough, but meanwhile all of Russia would be annhilated, there would be no home to provide fuel, food, ammunition, supplies. If the Soviets attacked, their tactical nuclear weapons would create a radioactive hole in allied lines, through which their forces would drive 30 or 40 miles, then run out of gas, be hit with tactical nukes and chemicals, and perish from the radiation. Their advance would halt as they would have no supply line behind them - Russia would be gone - and no supplies to take in the nuclear wasteland their own advance had created. There was no possibility of the Americans, or the Soviets, actually winning an all-out nuclear war. Which meant that there was no possibility, not the remotest, of the USA ever invading and conquering Russia, or the USSR ever invading and conquering Western Europe. Nuclear weapons changed the world. The West sort-of got it: Western armies were not kept so large. Also, Western economies were bigger. But the USSR did not get it. 1945 had been a moment of great glory. Nuclear weapons, their sheer numbers, made it impossible to win another war like that in Europe, but the Soviets refused to believe that. They made the nuclear forces, AND maintained the conventional forces, AND tried to build a Navy to challenge Western naval supremacy. And they tried to do all of this on an economy that was a fifth the size of the Western economies. They tried to break the Western economic dominance by creating trouble all over the Third World, provoking endless fights here and there, but ultimately not successful anywhere. Cuba survived, but was a perpetual drain on the Soviet economy. The USSR fell, but Cuba is still there, still ruled by the Castros, because by then the US didn't intend to invade Cuba anyway. So it was all a waste, a giant waste. The Soviets maintained their World War II army, AND they built the world's number 2 navy, AND they built a massive rocket force, AND they gave foreign aid to every disgruntled regime in the world. All as if the USA were Napoleonic France or Nazi Germany or Genghis Khan. But they already knew we weren't - or should have known that. We had the bomb alone from 1945-1949, and an overwhelming Air Force, and we didn't even go to war when Stalin blockaded Berlin. We had nuclear supremacy in the Cuban MIssile Crisis, but we didn't go to war. We were never a threat to the territorial integrity of Russia, and we're still not. But the USSR would not open its eyes, or be practical. So they went bankrupt, the country fell apart, all of Eastern Europe freed itself and made a beeline to ally with the West (because they hated the Russians and the Communists after 45 years of occupation), that vast army mostly dissolved and the fleet rusted. But the West didn't invade. Russia, the largest successor state of the USSR, retained the USSR's nuclear arsenal and still has it. If it was Russian forces that protected Russia during the period of Soviet dissolution, it was Russian nuclear forces. So now, here we are again. The USSR has been gone for 25 years. Russia's bones have knitted somewhat, but the Russian economy is still small, heavily dependent on the oil export industry. Russia faces severe demographic issues (as does all of Europe), and is engaged in a persistent and bloody war against Islamist terrorism with Russia and abroad, as well as a proxy war, through its own local allies, with the Ukrainian government. Now, of course, Russians and Russian apologists will be able to list a litany of reasons why these things are. But what I am writing here is not a question of why, merely an observation that this is the situation, and that Russia is not rich enough, does not have sufficient economic vigor, to engage in a new Cold War. The USSR was a third larger than Russia, with vaster resources, and also had the manpower and tax base of the Warsaw Pact. Today, the West has grown in Europe by half - Eastern Europe is in NATO, and determinedly so: Eastern Europeans will wage war rather than allow the Russians to conquer them again. Russia's strategic position is much worse than the USSR's was, and Russia's economic position is, likewise, much more constrained. The USSR exhausted itself economically and lost the Cold War with a smaller West. Russia has no prospect whatever of winning a new Cold War with the USA and the West. So, it may well be that historically all of the terrible invasions that have come to Russia have come through the Western frontier, but it is nevertheless objectively true that, WITHOUT nuclear weapons, today the United States and its European (and Japanese, and Australian, and Latin American) allies COULD overrun and conquer Russia completely, IF we wanted to, but WITH nuclear weapons it is impossible. And we don't want to anyway. SO, Russia's territorial integrity is, in fact, in truth, guaranteed by its nuclear weapons arsenal, and NOT by maintaining a huge standing army in the West. Russian investment in a huge army or navy oriented westward is NOT, in fact, enhancing the defense of Russia against anything. It merely holds the country back economically, and provides the American defense establishment the fodder to lobby for more and more defense spending. The Russians have to remember that it doesn't really how much conventional force the West sets up in Western Europe. All of that equipment is as useless to invade Russia as the massive Soviet Army was to invade the West. Nuclear weapons in Russian-style quantities make the thought of invading Russia obsolete. Now, if Russia and America can come to an agreement, then neither side has to hamper our respective economies with a pointless conventional arms buildup. That is in both our our interests. So yes, the Western border IS the border across which all invasions since the Mongols have come. And no, it isn't relevant to the present reality. Nuclear weapons render all of that obsolete.
Unless you build a good anti-missile system. Then Russia will end up like Yugoslavia.
#6. To: A Pole (#5)
(Edited)
No, Russia won't end up like Yugoslavia. That already happened - the USSR already broke up into its ethnic pieces. IF we were able to build an effective anti-missile system that really could stop the Russian nuclear force, then we would be back in the circumstance we were from 1946 until about 1970 - capable of annihilated without ourselves being annihilated. We didn't do it then, because we never had any intention of it. We wouldn't do it now. There's no will to do it. Russia will not be able to defend itself with conventional forces either, in such a case. Diplomacy and peace are the way to secure the brightest Russian future, not a hopeless arms race.
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#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
There are some fine things set on Russia's table if they are cooperative: demilitarization of their Western frontier
#4. To: A Pole (#2)
#5. To: Vicomte13 (#4)
So yes, the Western border IS the border across which all invasions since the Mongols have come. And no, it isn't relevant to the present reality. Nuclear weapons render all of that obsolete.
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