{"id":205123,"date":"2022-02-14T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=205123"},"modified":"2022-02-14T11:08:32","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T11:08:32","slug":"this-ukraine-crisis-was-a-george-w-bush-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/02\/this-ukraine-crisis-was-a-george-w-bush-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"This Ukraine Crisis Was a George W. Bush Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

George W. Bush and his neo-con administration made an awful lot of foreign policy blunders. This Ukrainian crisis is just the latest of many mistakes.<\/p>\n

Robert Wright, in his Non-Zero Newsletter (which I recommend) tells us that William Burns, then director of the CIA, warned the USA nearly 15 years ago that bringing Ukraine into NATO would NEVER be accepted by Russia.<\/p>\n

He writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in 2008, when George W. Bush fatefully strong-armed European members of NATO into promising future membership for Ukraine and Georgia, Burns was warning that the consequences would be dire<\/em>\u2014but not because of Putin\u2019s distinctive psychology.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Burns wrote, \u201cUkrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin\u2019s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine<\/em> in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBurns added that it was \u201chard to overstate the strategic consequences\u201d of\u00a0offering Ukraine NATO membership<\/strong>, which, he predicted,\u00a0would \u201ccreate fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Condeleezza Rice talking to Vladimir Putin in fluent Russian. She is very smart, but totally misguided in her opinions and strategies.\u00a0 Condi Rice could have stopped the stupidity of offering NATO membership to buffer state Ukraine.<\/p><\/div>\n

Paths to Peace <\/strong><\/p>\n

The ratcheting up of American war rhetoric over Ukraine is renlentless. Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken and their team of neocon Cold War holdovers, are creating havoc \u2026 and why?\u00a0 Is it because American leaders MUST have an enemy? Are they psychotic?<\/p>\n

Is PEACE anathema to America? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I am appalled by the not-stop, one-sided anti-Putin propaganda that the American and British media are throwing at us. These are the same people who pushed us to massacre tens of thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. They created civil war in Libya and have destabilized the countries of the Sahara.<\/p>\n

They are American and British war criminals.<\/p>\n

PEACEFUL SOLUTIONS are available, by refusing NATO expansion.<\/p>\n

The Monroe Doctrine<\/strong><\/p>\n

U.S. President James Monroe\u2019s 1823 annual message to Congress contained the Monroe Doctrine, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. The United States considers its close neighbors as a part of a U.S. \u201csphere of influence\u201d and \u201csecurity zone\u201d protecting U.S. frontiers.<\/p>\n

Understandably.<\/p>\n

Other nations have similar security concerns. U.S. leaders are obtuse not to accept this. Russia sees a threat in the idea that Ukraine might join NATO.<\/p>\n

Understandably.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The NATO record of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and western aggression in Libya and Iran show that NATO is far from \u201cpeaceful.\u201d<\/p>\n

NATO leaders and the president of the U.S.A. should declare that Ukraine will never join NATO.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ukraine is a BUFFER STATE separating Russian frontiers from German and European frontiers<\/em>.<\/strong> That is a good thing. Living in a Buffer State is not ideal, but it is geographical reality. Ukraine, Finland, Syria, Afghanistan, Mongolia \u2026. There are many Buffer States and they are valuable for peace.<\/p>\n

Buffer States Are Good For Peace. And Peace Is Good.<\/strong><\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \u00a0 Robin Poulton, <\/em>Chevalier de l\u2019Ordre Royal du Sahametrei (Cambodia), Chevalier de l’Ordre National (Mali),<\/em> is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> who has been working in West African peace and development since 1980. <\/em>An International Peace Consultant and founder of EPES Mandala Consulting Ltd., former Weapons-for-Development advisor to EU-ASAC, <\/em>researcher with UNIDIR Geneva <\/em>(United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research)<\/em>, <\/em>School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, West Africa Research Association and elsewhere, he is author most recently of <\/em>Peace Is Possible about peace building and disarmament in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge. <\/em>Website<\/em>: <\/em>https:\/\/robinpoulton.com\/<\/a><\/em>. Email: <\/em>poultonrobin@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George W. Bush and his neo-con administration made an awful lot of foreign policy blunders. This Ukrainian crisis is just the latest of many mistakes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":121262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2197,1035,1268,1284,818,253,278,961,70,92],"class_list":["post-205123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-biden","tag-eastern-europe","tag-european-union","tag-false-flag","tag-proxy-war","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","tag-violent-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}