CCI Friends,
I was shocked on April 13 when ominous U.S. “Defender-Europe 2021 ‘War Games’” were announced on Ukraine/Russia’s border … using 30,000 NATO troops, miles of new tanks and battleships headed for the Black Sea. Stunned also, Russians quickly fielded a similar number of soldiers, miles of trucks near their borders and ordered the ships out of their waters!
The U.S. side, hyped the news channels about Russians mounting for war (while totally ignoring the U.S. Defender-Europe 21 War Games). For those who don’t follow news carefully, Russia looked like the big bad bear … there was no mention of the U.S. War Games (which preemped Russia’s response)!
We Americans believe in fair play … don’t we? We teach our children to treat others kindly on their playgrounds … don’t we? We expect fair play on basketball courts and golf greens … don’t we? It’s a matter of personal pride … isn’t it? Only unsavory characters do otherwise … right?
Then why do we tolerate our government, president and military to stoop to such dangerous antics? They provoked fear in another heavily nuclearized nation, spent enormous amounts of our tax dollars for troops, tanks, weapons and battleships, … and then blamed Russia for having troops on their own borders?
Below Natylie Baldwin points out other dangerous idiocies. Please read and determine if this is acceptable behavior for people in U.S. leadership.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Natylie’s Place:Understanding Russia
Crisis in American expertise: Washington has a dangerous & destructive pattern of willful ignorance on Russia in post-Soviet era
April 29, 2021
By Natylie Baldwin
Natylie Baldwin is author of “The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations,” available at Amazon. She blogs at http://natyliesbaldwin.com/.
The rejection of Matthew Rojansky’s candidacy as a Russia adviser to Joe Biden represents an escalation, and not a departure, from a pervasive bipartisan American pattern of dangerous ignorance about Russia in the post-Soviet era.
It was reported last week that Joe Biden’s government would not be hiring Rojansky, of the Kennan Institute think tank, to help form policy towards Russia. Though the analyst is known as a moderate realist regarding Russia issues – in other words, he is not a virulent anti-Moscow ideologue – he was considered too controversial to be allowed a hearing during White House deliberations on policy regarding the world’s largest country.
Rojansky’s sin? Unlike many of the current crop of foreign policy officials, he actually has some expertise and experience on the subject.
While the scholar’s fate may be a glaring and extreme example of an anti-Russia mindset in Washington that is counterproductive, it represents only a new low, and not a change from a pervasive bipartisan pattern in the post-Soviet era.