Unforeseen Contingencies

Early this morning Hamas launched a hot war on Israel, with thousands of rockets targeting civilians and assaults by groups of terrorists.  It's worth remembering that Hamas is a client organization of Iran.  It's also worth remembering that Iran is a client of Russia.  The JPCOA was endorsed by Russia, Russia expressed dismay when President Trump jettisoned it, and in its ongoing efforts to renew the JPCOA, the Biden administration has relied on Russia's Foreign Ministry to negotiate with Iran.  It's also worth recalling that for sometime -- prior to Russia's launch of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 -- the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian navies engaged in three-way joint training maneuvers.

Unforeseen Contingencies has the "guest post" below from Vladimir Putin because it is illustrative and explanatory of what is occurring.  The Russian government convened a congress of sympathetic Latin American legislators and brought them to Moscow.  In the keynote address Putin praises Marxists Salvador Allende, Che Guevara, and especially Fidel Castro as revolutionaries for social justice, pledges that Russia will continue their struggle, and as evidence cites recent Russian investments in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.  He praises Hugo Chavez' socialist Bolivarian Alliance, refers to using the BRIC alliance to end the use of the U.S. dollar as the international currency, and affirms Russia's ongoing interest in Russian and Soviet emigres (one of his excuses for invading Ukraine, as well as threats against the Baltics).

Putin couldn't be clearer that there's no real break between Soviet and current Russian foreign policy.  Three days ago I mentioned Putin's speech to a friend whose wife is Haitian.  His response: "Oh, so now it makes sense what the in-laws were just telling me.  They said members of the Wagner Group have recently surfaced in Haiti, and someone is organizing new groups asking for Russian intervention, similar to what we've seen in Cameroon and the Central African Republic."

The "stupidity of American conservatives" is that today so many of them cannot see what is right in front of their faces.  Under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the foreign policy establishment pursued a policy of "Reset" (or "Overcharge") with Russia.  The American foreign policy establishment negotiated the JPCOA, which empowered Iran and Russia.  Obama accidentally revealed on a hot mic that his tough talk against Russia was for domestic consumption, and that Putin should ignore it. Hillary Clinton's State Department signed off on the Uranium One deal, as coincidentally the Clinton Foundation received hundreds of millions in donations from parties connected to the deal.  Meanwhile, Hunter Biden was receiving millions from Mykola Zlochevsky's Burisma Holdings; Zlochevsky was an official in Victor Yanukovych's Russian puppet government.  Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign paid Russian intelligence for a fake dossier the Russians concocted on Trump.  In the subsequent witch hunts Carter Page, a CIA asset against Russia, was successfully framed as a Russian agent.  One would suppose that having witnessed all this, the "America First" conservatives would put two and two together and understand that Putin is an enemy and is closely connected with the Washington DC establishment and Democrat Party.  

But no, they are incapable of this apparently.  Instead they uncritically absorb Kremlin lines such as that America and NATO staged a coup in Ukraine, that America and NATO forced Putin to invade Ukraine, that Ukraine is traditional Russian land, that Ukrainians are Nazis, that Putin is on a crusade to save Christianity and Western Civilization, and other  idiocies.  Many assert America could not possibly have any legitimate interest in Ukraine, and it makes no difference at all if a dictatorship invades and crushes a country where people are struggling to build a free society.

We are, I fear, going to hear the same idiocy from the pseudo-America-Firsters with respect to Israel.  "Why should we care" if Islamic terrorists connected with Iran, Russia, and China attempt to exterminate Israel?  In essence, the "America-Firster" position holds that it doesn't matter if the entire world is taken over by hostile forces that oppose freedom; we should just ignore it and mind our own domestic business.  At some point their argument becomes so ridiculous one can only conclude they are not simply mistaken, they are both evil and stupid.  It's the same problem that has infected the left and many libertarians: ideology can turn off one's critical capacities and make and otherwise intelligent person stupid and accepting of evil.  We are now seeing waves of it.

I said little about China, but the C's in BRIC are participating in all these international intrigues, including infiltrating America, Latin and North.

// posted by Charles N. Steele @ 08:40