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White House Official Floated Withdrawing U.S. Forces to Please Putin - The Daily Beast today

holbritter said:
Happens when you have inexperienced people in positions like this.
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This guy Harrington worked for Flynn who worked for Trump. And we all know that Trump wants to make Putin happy. The question is 'Why is that?'
 
JacksinPA said:
This guy Harrington worked for Flynn who worked for Trump. And we all know that Trump wants to make Putin happy. The question is 'Why is that?'
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And that guy Harrington thought up a stupid plan to make himself look good to his boss's boss, and it was shot down. Happens often in business. Like I said, that's what happens when you have inexperience people in positions like this. I think you're reading too much into it.

Trump didn't didn't appear to have anything to do with it according to the story, yet you still find a way to make it his fault. :shrug:
 
Mycroft said:
LOL!!

So...someone has an idea...it's dismissed...never seriously considered.

Sounds like a nothingburger to me. Yum, yum...
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Is he qualified to hold that position?
 

Then NATO should position enough troops in the Baltic's to make it a red line- just as West Berlin was. Troops in West Berlin were a sacrificial lamb if the USSR attacked, and a red line that could not be crossed without full scale war.
 
JANFU said:
Is he qualified to hold that position?
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Who? The someone with an idea? I guess that's up to the person who hired him to decide.
 

It DID happen during the Obama Admin. Only instead of it being merely a suggestion, the USA removed anti-missle batteries from Poland and the Czech Republic, part of the famous "re-set" of USA-Russia relations that occured in that government.

Condemn Trump all you want for having a guy on the NSC who doesnt appear to need to be there. But also recognise the proposal went nowhere.
 

Just trying to connect the dots. 'Making Putin happy' is not the sort of idea that just suddenly pops into one's mind in U.S. Government.
 
JANFU said:
Then NATO should position enough troops in the Baltic's to make it a red line- just as West Berlin was. Troops in West Berlin were a sacrificial lamb if the USSR attacked, and a red line that could not be crossed without full scale war.
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How would you feel if the Russians had a few dozen divisions of troops along the Mexican border? A bit paranoid perhaps?
 
JacksinPA said:
How would you feel if the Russians had a few dozen divisions of troops along the Mexican border? A bit paranoid perhaps?
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For fun, just see how quickly the Russians can cut the Baltic's off from the rest of NATO. Then see their past exercises, Zapad was their latest, troop numbers, equipment, then consider how quick Crimea went down.
 

But, but, but, Trump is Putin's bitch and is being blackmailed by Putin for peeing on Russian prostitutes. Why do we need one of Trump's national security team to float this idea? Why hasn't Trump already done this?
 
Moderate Right said:
But, but, but, Trump is Putin's bitch and is being blackmailed by Putin for peeing on Russian prostitutes. Why do we need one of Trump's national security team to float this idea? Why hasn't Trump already done this?
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Seems odd to me but:



These guys don't look like adversaries to me.
 
JacksinPA said:
How would you feel if the Russians had a few dozen divisions of troops along the Mexican border? A bit paranoid perhaps?
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So what exactly is the concern here? That Putin is justified in his angst of NATO troops along his western border?
Would there be a less adversarial relationship if those concerns were removed?
 

The two are not symmetric. The Trump official idea was knee-jerk while the Obama decision, even if you disagree, was well thought out.

 
MTAtech said:
The two are not symmetric. The Trump official idea was knee-jerk while the Obama decision, even if you disagree, was well thought out.
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Well-- to play the devils advocate- if the concern was that a missle system on Russia's borders was a provocation, why wouldnt troops on the border also be seen as a provocation?

The other issue that was raised in this thread was that the suggestion is evidence of colusion.

In any event, its a moot point. The Trump admin made no such decision. Moreover, nothing indicates it was under conideration by the admin. Judging from the actions of the past year, its not going to happen.
 
Athanasius68 said:
So what exactly is the concern here? That Putin is justified in his angst of NATO troops along his western border?
Would there be a less adversarial relationship if those concerns were removed?
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The history suggests that there would be less of an adversarial relationship between the U.S. and Russia/Soviet Union if we practiced a Foreign Policy that placed the U.S. in a world where we actually recognize it for what it is. We used an irrational fear of communism to make poor decisions throughout the Cold War...

- The French, still clinging to empire and wishing to re-establish southeast Asia as their jewel, used our efforts in Europe to pull us into Vietnam. The French argued that they could not support their efforts in southeast Asia and support Truman's "containment" policy in Western Germany. Refusing to leave the colonial business in the past, the U.S. began to financially assist them in southeast Asia, especially when the French began to start arguing about communist aggression (despite Ho Chi Mihn still telling his people that America would help them). In time, we were bank rolling their mission in Vietnam, years and years before that war was Americanized and began arguing the "Domino Theory."

- The British were unable to move Truman in regards to Iran's (Mohammad Mosaddegh) wish to nationalize their oil away from the Brits. However, they began to understand our developing misunderstandings of the world. They began to release ant-Democratic propaganda in Iran among the protesters who were unhappy with their government's economic issues.
So, when Eisenhower entered Office, the Brits through the Dulles Brothers, easily convinced him that Iran's democracy was going to fall to the Soviet Union's communist agents. Hence...the 1953 CIA-led coup that shattered Iran's new democracy, even as Mosaddegh continued to believe that America was own his democratic side, and the Shah's rise, who would oppose the Soviet Union. Shortly after, Eisenhower extended "containment" to the Middle East.

- Of course, then there's the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which followed the U.S. installation of Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey as a means of defense against Soviet "aggression" and the Bay of Pigs invasion to dismantle Castro's communist government. Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles on the island to counter what the U.S. had done all along the Soviet border. After Kennedy established a military blockade around the island, Khrushchev recognized that matters had gone too far. He and Kennedy opened the lines of communication, but both agreed that both would need to back away while saving face. The Soviets removed their missiles and the U.S. got Cuba, which further legitimized the Monroe Doctrine; and the U.S. publicly declared that it would not invade communist Cuba again, and secretly agreed to dismantle Jupiter systems in Turkey (Dismantling Italy followed soon after but there is no revealed evidence that Italy was a part of the deal).

In the end, The U.S. developed arguments to address communism everywhere and to perceive everything the Soviet Union did as a direct attack on our interests. We argued that they were the aggressors, despite so much of what the Soviets did was in reaction to what we did. For anybody who reads this, I recommend The Global Cold War by American Foreign Policy historian Odd Arne Westdad and A Failed Empire by Soviet Foreign Policy historian Vladislav M. Zubok. Both provide a very accurate perspective of the Cold War from each side's perspective and compliment each other very well. So much of our global activity was based on assumptions about Soviet activity that were misunderstood, and so much of the Soviet activity was based failing policies that tried to live up to the competition.

So when a guy like me sees today's Putin/NATO and American Foreign Policy issues, I have to wonder how small our scope of global understanding still remains.
 
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Fanaticism yes, authoritarianism yes, but unless you are using "fascism" as a generic term. People often posit that fascism is ultra right wing, it is not, it was a rise of socialism that brought Mussolini to power.
 
JANFU said:
Then NATO should position enough troops in the Baltic's to make it a red line- just as West Berlin was. Troops in West Berlin were a sacrificial lamb if the USSR attacked, and a red line that could not be crossed without full scale war.
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That is generally what caused russia to become agrressive, maintaining things how they are is one thing, but doubling down on them is a bad idea. As another poster mentioned, how would the us feel if mexico had russian troops stationed there with their cannons and missles pointed their way, with the russians claiming it is just defensive.

Or on the same note would you in canada be fine if the us allied with russia and both mainland us and alaska had troops tanks cannons missles etc aimed at your countries borders, would you view that as simple defense or rather like the russians vs nato who see it as an imminent invasion with the opposition building base before the move. Keep in mind prior to the us the last major power who kept saying we are not going to invade while expanding their territory east ended up invading them, and that was nazi germany.
 

So I take it you can't answer some simple questions?

Par for the course I guess.
 

Nazi Germany you say. Sounds like Trump talking about the FBI.

Nato has 7000 troops deployed along the Russian border from the Baltic to the Black Sea. This includes from USA 600 troops in the Baltic states, 300 in Norway, a battalion in western Poland and a brigade in northwest Poland near the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. This is not an invasion force nor is it an advance invasion force. So get real over there cause you're talking about invading Russia. The sovereign territory of Mother Russia is threatened by no one nor will it be threatened by anyone.

Here meanwhile is more like what the U.S. has in Latvia....


This is it folks. All of 'em. They're our guys on the spot they are. It's more than enough to keep the bear from the door. So now the Russians have their hands full and Putin knows it.








And here again is the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad dropped in between Poland and Lithuania. We see Russia borders Latvia and Estonia. All three were Soviet possessions from 1945 until only recently. Each of 'em joined Nato to keep the bear frozen out for good. They know from experience.




Trump and the Putin-Trump Fanboyz are instead talking about Nazis. The blatant contradiction is that Trump and His Fanboyz don't like WW II Nazis but they say Nazis in Charlottesville are "good people." And that the MSM in the USA "are the enemy of the people."
 
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It is rather hard to reconcile that contradiction. I think it is safe to state that they abide American Nazi wannabes simply because they rallied for their guy. That's how shallow we are to our convictions in this country anymore. From shrugging at a denigration of Vietnam Veterans to abiding the supremacists, some Americans appear to be struggling with their own identities.
 
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