Joe Biden Flashcards
“Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel later told Der Spiegel that she also considered Minsk to have been a ruse all along to buy time and prevent Ukraine from being overrun.(62) She repeated this to Die Zeit, saying, ‘the 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. She also used this time to get stronger. …The Ukraine of 2014–15 is not the Ukraine of today.’(63)
Former French President François Hollande confirmed it, saying, ‘Merkel is right on this point. The Minsk agreements stopped the Russian offensive for a while. What was very important was to know how the West would use this respite to prevent any further Russian attempts.’”
p.501, footnotes 62 & 63
- Alexander Osang, “A Year with Ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Der Spiegel, January 12, 2022
(Note that this was before the invasion) - Tina Hildebrandt and Giovanni de Lorenzo, “Did you think I’d come with a ponytail?” Die Zeit, December 7, 2022
This demonstrates that some of the EU countries claim not even to have been negotiating in good faith in Minsk.
“The ‘narrative’ that ‘NATO is threatening Russia’ is ‘false.’ Simple as that. They are not mistaking our massive defensive build up as an offensive one. No, they are simply lying when they pretend to be concerned. ‘That’s like the fox saying it had to attack the henhouse because it’s occupants somehow pose a threat. We’ve seen this gaslighting before.’”
Quote from Anthony Blinken
Paul Sonne, et al., “US plans to discuss missile deployment with Russia as part of effort to defuse Ukraine crisis,” Washington Post, January 8, 2022
pp.508-509, footnote 141
This demonstrates well the rank stupidity and/or astonishing bad faith of Biden’s diplomatic corps. Or his chief “diplomat” at any rate.
During this time, Zelensky was told Ukraine of course could not join NATO, but that he should never say so publicly. He explained, “I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no.” He added, “and the response was very clear, ‘you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.’” He then quite fairly complained that “you cannot place us in this situation.”
Quote from Volodymyr Zelensky
Chandelis Duster, “Zelensky: ‘If we were a NATO member, a war wouldn’t have started,” CNN, March 20, 2022
p509, footnote 142
“The background was that President Putin declared in the [winter] of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they want NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. …That was what he sent to us. And was a precondition for not invading Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that. …We rejected that. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”
Jens Stoltenberg, “Opening remarks,” joint meeting of the European Parliament committee on foreign affairs and the sub committee on security and defense, September 7, 2023
Stoltenberg is NATO Secretary-General
Warfare is getting sneakier, and we need to get sneaky with it, as our adversaries have already done. If Putin wants to make Russia a pariah state, let’s help him by covertly engineering “color revolutions” across the Russian empire, propping up neighboring countries with a long history of enmity against Russia, and ridiculing Putin’s fragile ego on the world stage. (The man rides half-naked on a bear, after all — can’t we do something with that?) There’s more, too: cyber, false flag operations, political warfare.
Some will blanch at the thought of the U.S. dabbling in the dark arts, but is it somehow better to lose honorably than to win dishonorably? History does not think so. Warfare has changed and so must we. We still operate under the “old rules” — conventional military firepower, economic sanctions, formal diplomacy and international law. But none of it deters Russia, China, Iran, or won in Iraq or Afghanistan. We need to embrace the “new rules” of war that stress cunning over brute strength.
Sean McFate, “How to keep Russia from winning in Ukraine: Get sneaky,” The Hill, February 7, 2022
Note his insistence that this form of clandestine semi-warfare is natural to our enemies, but foreign to us, when he’s actually arguing that we should begin doing the sort of things we had already been doing for decades.
After about two years of fighting, what had happened to Russia’s army? What about their rate of arms manufacture?
It was approximately 15% larger than at the start of the war (360k to 470k men).
Kwan Wei Kevin Tan, “Russia’s Army is now 15% bigger than when it invaded Ukraine, says US general,” Business Insider, April 11, 2024
“They have increased their production of artillery shells by 150%, and tanks by 100%. They were scheduled to spend over $100 billion on their military budget in 2024.”
p. 625
