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In an ideal world, I prefer a sort of benign isolationism with regard to foreign policy. Let the US do US things and let everyone else keep to themselves too with trade and tourism being where things intersect.
We don’t live in an ideal world. We live in this one.
In an ideal world, everyone would mind their own damn business, be they individuals or countries, and we know that’s never going to happen.
Especially since I grew up during the Cold War.
We were constantly warned about the Russian threat. Sure, the proper name was USSR and it was a union of other communist regimes, but it was driven by Russia and everyone knew it.
But the Cold War ended. Russian President Boris Yeltsin instituted massive reforms that reshaped Russia and ended the Soviet Union forever.
Peace at last.
Today, though, Russia is still an issue. Sure, they might not be the USSR anymore, but that doesn’t exactly mean they’re one of the good guys, either. Look at their invasion of Ukraine.
“But they were provoked,” some of the Broshoviks claim, citing NATO’s actions in Europe.
However, a friend sent me this piece from American Greatness regarding how Europe needs to step up and take its own defense seriously. She pointed out one section to me that was incredibly important.
O’Sullivan writes: “At their last summit meeting in Istanbul in November 1999, President Bill Clinton was surprised to be asked by Russian president Boris Yeltsin: Why don’t we agree that Russia can have Europe while the U.S. gets the rest of the world? His exact words were, ‘I ask you one thing. Just give Europe to Russia. The U.S. is not in Europe. Europe should be the business of Europeans. Russia is half European and half Asian.’”
Now, Yeltsin has long been held up here in the West as sort of a good guy, the man who dismantled the Soviet Union. My friend wasn’t sure if the quote was legit or not, in part because it sounded way too much like what we’d want Russia to say in this day and age.
Of course, there are issues with even that.
For one thing, Yeltsin is dead. He’s not calling the shots without someone conducting a seance.
Yet the thing to remember is that Yeltsin had a successor by the name of Vladimir Putin. Putin, a former KGB agent, had worked his way up and was likely familiar with Yeltsin’s thinking on the topic of Europe, namely that it should be left to Russia. He worked for Yeltsin and was eventually chosen as his successor.
So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Putin not only knew about this but agreed with it…if the quote is true.
The thing is, it sure looks like it is, at least according to the Clinton archives. It also goes further than just that:
“I ask you one thing. Just give Europe to Russia. The US is not in Europe. Europe should be the business of Europeans. Russia is half European and half Asian.” To this Clinton responded: “So you want Asia too?” and Yeltsin answered: “Sure, sure, Bill. Eventually, we will have to agree on all of this.”
Clinton suggested that the Europeans would not like this very much. Yeltsin, on the other hand, said:
I am a European. I live in Moscow, Moscow is in Europe and I like it. You can take all the other states and provide security to them. I will take Europe and provide them security. Well, not I. Russia will. … Bill, I’m serious. Give Europe to Europe itself. Europe never felt as close to Russia as it does now. We have no difference of opinion with Europe, except maybe on Afghanistan and Pakistan—which, by the way, is training Chechens. … Russia has the power and intellect to know what to do with Europe.
Couple this with a startling attitude among many Russians that anything that used to be Soviet territory now rightly belongs to the Russian Republic and you’ve got a recipe for expansionism.
They’re not stopping with Ukraine. They didn’t stop with the portions they illegally annexed and they’re not going to stop with the totality of Ukraine, which wants no part of a renewed Soviet empire.
But contrary to what some would like for us to believe, Russia has always had its eye on Europe and wanted it exclusively under its own sphere of influence. They wanted to rule the entire continent, as well as Asia and NATO expansion didn’t somehow cause that.
It was already part of the long-term goals for Russia well before NATO started accepting new members at its current rate.
Yet it also means that Europe needs to step up. The nations of Europe need to stop trusting that the United States will be the shield that keeps them safe and recognize that we have our own stuff going on and that they need to be able to defend themselves without us doing it for them.
Sure, Russia has been embarrassed in Ukraine and has their war machine so depleted they’re begging criminals to hook them up, but it would be foolish to assume they’re not learning as they go.
Dig in, because no matter how Ukraine wraps up, we’re going to have to keep an eye on Russia going forward.
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Politics, culture, a dose of snark, and a profound love of personal and economic freedom.
It is both interesting and typical of the Clintons that this statement was not publicized at the time or at any time since.
One presumes the foreign policy establishment, the intelligence community, and the upper echelons of the military were aware of the statement, and I would be shocked if his successor GW Bush was not aware of it. I’m also guessing our allies in Europe - at the very least the 5 Eyes - were told about it.
Apparently, no one took Yeltsin seriously. Nor Putin.
For those of us cursed to have studied history, Russia’s self-identification as a European, and world, great power, are clear and go back to Peter the Great.
The ultimate European question is the extent to which a Russia which does not really share Western values can be part of Europe, with the corollary issue of which dog is big enough to enforce Europe’s revulsion of authoritarian Russia.
The US simply replaced first Lithuania/Poland, then Prussia and Austria-Hungary as the bulwarks of the West.
I generally supported NATO expansion into Central Europe - eastern Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czech, Slovak, etc., but have always been concerned about the Balkans…
Ukraine is a special case, despite the Western orientation of parts of Ukraine, its geography makes it problematic, especially if one considers Crimea to be Ukrainian (I don’t).
US meddling in Ukraine has been a problem and forcing Ukraine to give up its deterrent nukes in 1994 was an unforced blunder of world historical proportions. Compounded by the color revolution and hints of NATO.
The best possible outcome is an essentially neutral Ukraine with economic ties to the West. Some Eastern territory lost, Crimea back to Russia where it was until Khrushchev gave away. Painful, but better than a nuclear war the Europeans can’t fight.
The fecklessness of the Europeans about defense may be understandable, given their devastation in the two world wars in the 20th century, but if the Ukraine-Russia war doesn’t wake them up nothing will.
I note the others with Russian borders are all in for defense: Finland and Sweden now in NATO and with formidable forces, the Baltics, Norway, and Poland are all very serious about defense. It’s the Germans, French, Italians and the rest who aren’t even willing to think about it. And, the poor UK, once the only remaining European power of even the second class, has good manpower but not nearly enough of it, and little modern equipment.
Sigh. Fortress America is looking more and more likely….
Unfortunately, I think Europe has gotten too comfortable with being under the US shield and won't step up to the plate.