The Washington Post does a piece on the Biden Admin and Europe’s worry that Putin will NOT stop with eating up part of the Ukraine and looking for snack ‘s in Africa…..
Would a Trump Presidency actually help Putin?
Has Biden’s worries about Putin actually helped the Russian get away with things taht should be confronted…
NATO has expanded ….(Trump wants out of it)
Is THAT enough?
Is the planet marching towards another World War?
Or?
Just another ‘Cold’ war…..
On each side of the Atlantic, there is uncertainty about how to counter Putin’s aggression without stoking a direct conflict with the man who controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
That fear — and the inability, even of Western diplomats with decades of experience dealing with the Kremlin, to see a viable path forward — has revived calls for Cold War-style containment: restricting contacts with Moscow to essential issues and bracing for conflict by boosting Europe and Ukraine’s military capacity.
Current U.S. policy is “more of a reaction and an outgrowth to events,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has advised multiple administrations on Russia policy and was President Donald Trump’s top Russia adviser at the National Security Council. “We haven’t had a holistic approach,” Hill said.
As Putin builds a militarized Russian society geared to confront the West for decades — revamping the education system, monopolizing culture, reshaping women’s roles and indoctrinating youth — he regularly boasts of a victory in Ukraine that would signal the defeat of American global power.
Washington, while arming and financing Ukraine, has yet to define a longer-term strategy to deal with a resurgent Russia, which, for more than 20 years, a succession of presidents hoped to befriend or to write off as irrelevant….
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Some warned that the West must be prepared for a direct military confrontation….
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Even as Putin faces Western efforts to isolate him, he seems increasingly invincible at home. Putin’s most formidable challenger, Alexei Navalny, died in prison in February. Any sign of political dissent is quickly crushed. What is left of the Russian opposition is now largely in exile. And even embarrassing military setbacks, such as Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, have not weakened Putin’s grip on power.
Some officials and analysts say containment is a wrongheaded approach that increases the risk of global conflict. Some politicians in the United States and Europe, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, say the West should respect Moscow’s view of Ukraine as part of its core security interests and push for an immediate cease-fire. Still others say the West should end Ukraine’s hope of joining NATO, persuade Kyiv to surrender territory and potentially offer Russia sanctions relief.
But even those who have long advocated engagement with the Kremlin to end the Ukraine war, say a long period of hostility — a new cold war — is inevitable, and argue against giving way to Moscow’s demands….
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Today’s conflicts echo what George Kennan, an American diplomat in Moscow, observed on the eve of the Cold War. In a February 1946 cable known as “The Long Telegram,” he wrote that Soviet leaders viewed the West as “evil, hostile and menacing,” and aimed to weaken and divide it. In the cable, he coined the concept of containment.
Many are again calling for such an approach, convinced that no amount of Western pressure or diplomacy will alter Russia’s course.
Some officials and former policymakers argue that the Biden administration should do more to anticipate Putin’s larger goals and seek to contain Russia so it is a less dangerous global player….
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Trump, meanwhile, has stirred uncertainty. He has boasted that his rapport with Putin, Xi and Kim would allow him to swiftly sort the world out on American terms. But the deepening ties between Moscow, Beijing and other adversaries complicate the picture.
Note…
The above long, extensive , Putin/Russia piece IS REALLY more about NOT electing a Donald Trump Foreign Policy……
image….Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with the media in Moscow in March, two years after the invasion of Ukraine. ..Natalia Kolesnikova/Pool/AFP/Getty
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