Pat Buchanan: Are Trump and Putin Right?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Monday, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosted a spirited discussion with Donald Trump on whether he was right in asserting that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated as the towers came down on 9/11.

About Muslim celebrations in Berlin, however, there appears to be no doubt. In my chapter “Eurabia,” in “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America,” [2006] is this quote from The New York Times Magazine, exactly 10 years ago.

Pat Buchanan: NATO-Russia Collision Ahead?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“U.S. Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in East Europe: A Message to Russia,” ran the headline in The New York Times.

“In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries,” said the Times. The sources cited were “American and allied officials.”

The Pentagon’s message received a reply June 16. Russian Gen. Yuri Yakubov called the U.S. move “the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War.” When Moscow detects U.S. heavy weapons moving into the Baltic, said Yakubov, Russia will “bolster its forces and resources on the western strategic theater of operations.”

Ditch NATO, Defend the Anglosphere

Magna Carta - a shared foundation for freedom

From The Hill

By Bernie Quigley

Suggested in the days between the Velvet Revolution and the Orange Revolution — which you do not hear much about these days — that "they," meaning those in the unfortunate neverwhere between the old Soviet Union and Greater America, were not really calling for Thomas Jefferson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Abrahama Lincoln for liberation. More like Calvin Klein and Michael Jackson. Even the honored Czech poet and then-President Vaclav Havel, seeking a front-row bench in the "West," would pitch musician Frank Zappa as avatar and inspiration. This has been the odd model of the American conquest since World War II. The French in their imperial day would send the soldiers, then they would send the priests. We send Frank Zappa and Lady Gaga, Starbucks, McDonald's and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bono and Mick Jagger. Possibly what is today causing the stellar decline of American influence in the world is that most under 50 don't know who Frank Zappa was.

NATO Unveils Draft of New Mission Statement

NATO must win the war in Afghanistan, expand ties with Russia, counter the threat posed by Iran's missiles, and assure the security of its 28 members, according to its new mission statement for the next decade.

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What Would de Gaulle Say? Sarkozy to Make France a Full Member of Nato Alliance Once More

I would rather fight alongside a dozen Royal Marines than with whatever France has to offer, but for whatever it's worth...

From The Daily Mail

By Mail Foreign Service

French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to lead his country back into the core of the Nato alliance.

The announcement comes four decades after his predecessor Charles de Gaulle took the country into self-imposed exile.

France is Nato's fourth largest contributor of troops.

But in an effort to mark its difference with the United States it has long snubbed the organisation's integrated military command, which plans, trains and conducts joint operations.

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Why Europe is Secretly Afraid of a Socialist America

From American Thinker
By James Lewis

Suppose you've been living under the protective wings of a benevolent superpower for sixty years. And suppose you've used that big half century to take off on an endless vacation -- spending all your tax money to buy votes for the socialist Ruling Class. It's been one long, grand, drug-infested, sex-drenched, self-indulgent, tabloid party scene. Any time danger threatens you look to Washington for protection. The rest of the time you noisily abuse those Yankee imperialists, merely to boost your fragile ego. Corruption has become pervasive.

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Estonian Spy Scandal Shakes NATO and EU

Western Secrets for Moscow

From Spiegel Online

By Holger Stark

For years an Estonian government official has apparently been collecting the most intimate secrets of NATO and the EU -- and passing them on to the Russians. The case is a disaster for Brussels.

Communications between the suspected top spy and his commanding officer seemed like a throwback to the Cold War. Investigators allege that in order to send messages to his Russian contact, Herman Simm, 61, used a converted radio which looked like a relic from yesteryear's world of consumer electronics. But there was nothing old-fashioned about what Simm, a high-ranking official in the Estonian Defense Ministry in Tallinn, reportedly transmitted to Moscow over the years. It was the very latest intelligence information.

Although Simm was arrested with his wife Heete in the Estonian capital Tallinn on Sept. 21, this spy story -- which has been largely kept under wraps until now -- primarily concerns the European Union and NATO based in faraway Brussels. Since Simm was responsible for dealing with classified information in Tallinn, he had access to nearly all documents exchanged within the EU and NATO. Officials who are familiar with the case assume that "virtually everything" that circulates between EU member states was passed on to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR -- including confidential analyses by NATO on the Kosovo crisis, the war in Georgia and even the missile defense program. Investigators believe that Simm was a "big fish."

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'New Europe' Urges West to Rethink Russian Ties

Seizing on the conflict in Georgia, East European countries are pushing for strong measures against an aggressive Moscow they say they know all too well.

From The Christian Science Monitor
By Robert Marquand

 

Warsaw - They live in a historically battered region between West and East, the Rhine and the Volga, Berlin and Moscow. Now, as Russian tanks rumble in Georgia, the states of "new Europe" are urging the West to rethink its relationship with Russia and are pushing for new security and strong measures against an aggressive Moscow they say they know all too well.

From Poland to Ukraine, the Czech Republic to Bulgaria, Russia's invasion of Georgia with tanks, troops, and planes is described as a test of Western resolve. The former Soviet states are vowing to thwart Russian aims – in deals with the European Union, in a missile-defense pact with the US, and in trade and diplomacy.

Polish and Baltic officials, most of whom grew up under Soviet occupation, have long chafed at being described in Western Europe as too "Russia-phobic" in their oft-repeated warnings about Moscow's intentions. But now in this gritty capital, the refrain is, "We told you so."

The strength of Polish feeling against Russia is measured by the quick completion of a US missile defense pact last week, after 18 months of wrangling in Warsaw and Washington. While the US has stoutly argued that the missiles were meant as a shield against rogue attacks from Iran, their strategic value here has apparently shifted. Polish opposition to hosting 10 proposed missile silos dropped by 30 percent in the week after Russia's military move in Georgia, according to polls in Warsaw.

"The events in the Caucasus show clearly that such security guarantees are indispensable," said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Ukrainian officials now say they encourage talks with the US on a similar shield. The suggestion over the weekend came despite Russian deputy military chief Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn's warning that Poland's missile shield would expose it to a Russian attack. "Poland, by deploying ... is exposing itself to a strike – 100 percent," said General Nogovitsyn.

In recent years "new" Europe has tussled with "old," with Germany in particular, over NATO expansion for Georgia – most recently in April at the alliance summit in Bucharest, Romania, where Berlin opposed it. Former Soviet states now in NATO argue that Western ideas about liberal reform in Russia were naive at best and self-serving at worst: They see Vladimir Putin's Russia as disparaging civil society, reverting to brute strength with small nations, seeking empire, and exploiting divisions inside Europe, and between Europe and the US. Russia is not a 'status quo' power under Mr. Putin, they say, but rather willing to change principles in pursuit of greatness.

Most Poles will agree that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili made a serious mistake in trying to enter South Ossetia with force. But they feel it was an error that Russia seized upon in a planned operation to annex Ossetia and Abkhazia, where they say a new millionaire class in Moscow is rapidly buying up coastal property.

"When we woke up and saw Russian tanks in Georgia, we knew very well what this meant," says Bartosz Weglarczyk, foreign editor of Gazeta Wyborcza. "The Russian talk about helping others and bringing peace to Georgia.... We don't buy it. When did Moscow ever enter a country without 'bringing peace?'

"Now it is back to basics," he adds. "For us, it is all about staying out of the Russian sphere. We forgot about Russia for a decade. Now as Frankenstein is being reassembled under a former KGB chief, we remember it again."

But few Poles believe Moscow is ready to use military force as far east as Poland, lacking the discipline required by the grand ideas of Marxism and shown in Soviet days. "The Russians want to keep their money, their property in Monaco and Palm Beach, and have a good life," says one official. Moscow will, however, seek to exploit weakness and divisions in the West, say Polish diplomats, officials, and citizens, in a new type of energy and economic war of which Georgia is an example.

Five presidents from East Europe traveled to Georgia last week to show solidarity and to challenge Russia. East European states are reexamining their policy of allowing dual passports that can be used by Russia as a reason for entering their country, as was done in South Ossetia.

Ukraine wants to limit the Russian Navy's use of its ports. EU members from the East vow to block new Russian efforts for a liberal trade deal. Polish President Lech Kaczynski criticized Germany and France for mollifying Russia in order to protect commercial interests. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves argues vociferously that Georgia should still be admitted to NATO.

E. Europeans saw Georgia coming

The question of NATO membership remains sensitive in East Europe. Many Poles say they understand the aspirations of Georgians to join, and feel sympathy that those aspirations have been dashed. The question for small states in Russia's backyard is not a neutral one – for a small country being eyed by a powerful Russia seeking to expand its influence.

"The Eastern Europeans totally saw this [Russian resurgence] coming," says former US ambassador to Romania, James Rosapepe. "In Romania the attitude was, we have to get into NATO before Russian power returns."

German officials and many European NATO officials argue that it is simply unrealistic to provoke Russia by allowing its immediate neighbors into the alliance. They say Russia's actions in Georgia vindicates this point. Berlin takes a very careful and consistent position on the importance of understanding Moscow, one Western diplomat points out.

Yet Polish officials are quick to point out that Germany was the most powerful and insistent voice throughout the 1990s for getting Poland into NATO – as a way to create a buffer zone between Germany and Russia. Now that Poland is in NATO, Germany has changed its tune, they say, showing indifference to Poland's own interests in a similar buffer zone. They argue it is in Germany's commercial interest to advocate balanced restraint and sensitivity to Moscow.

Poland's view: 'While America slept'

In the immediate years after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decided to release Eastern Europe from the Soviet bloc, US efforts to expand NATO were robust. Yet as Russian power appeared to be waning, and as the US became involved in a war on terror and in Iraq, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus received less and less attention and material support from the US and Western Europe – even as it became clearer in the East that Russia under Putin was gaining strength with every rise in the cost of a barrel of oil.

So popular in Poland was the US after the cold war that Poles joked that their country was the 51st state. Yet the enthusiasm has waned somewhat during the Iraq war; Poles sent troops but has removed them. Here there's a widespread view that Iraq was a mistake for the Americans.

"Poles look at the events transpiring in Georgia from the perspective of 'while America slept,'" says James Hooper, a former senior US diplomat based in Warsaw. "They understand that Russia's mainspring expansionist impulse can be deflected only by a steady US policy in managing European security affairs, and thus pin everything on American power, purpose and resolve."

War in Georgia: It’s the 3 a.m. Call in the White House

A warplane drops bombs near the Georgian city of Gori
on Friday as Russian and Georgian forces battle.

From The Brussels Journal

By Martin Helme

Russians are just superb at timing: whenever they do something dastardly, they time it to Friday afternoon when politicians, diplomats and journalists head to the weekend. The attack on Georgia also came at the time, when all the worlds’ attention is on Beijing. Everyone who has paid close attention, however, to the events in Georgia, is shocked, but not surprised.

South-Ossetia is an ancient Georgian territory, which has seen in the last about 100-150 years immigration from neighboring North-Ossetia. The latter has always been part of Russia. It is possible to draw parallels to the Kosovo region in Serbia. During the Soviet Union, Moscow gave South-Ossetia autonomous status under Georgian administration as a reward for Georgia’s loyalty to Moscow. Tbilisi is offering precisely that same status to them now. In the beginning of 1990s, after the collapse of Soviet Union, several regions of Georgia declared independence. A civil war followed where Moscow systematically and openly supported the separatist. Without the military, economical and political support of Russia, the breakaway republics would have soon put under Tbilisi’s control. Some, by the way, where successfully brought back under Tbilisi control.

For the past 12 or so years, there has been a status quo: Abkhasia and South-Ossetia are nominally under Tbilisi’s rule, practically under Moscow’s rule. The status quo is no longer satisfying Russians, who have in the last years become more and more bellicose and revanchist in their attempt to collect the old empire together again. In the past months the South-Ossetian government has abandoned its quest for independence and started to pursue a policy of officially becoming part of Russia. Tbilisi has repeatedly warned that it would be crossing a red line. In the past few days, South-Ossetian paramilitary units attacked Georgian villages, thereby provoking Georgian response.

What the Georgians only now realize, is that they where playing by the Russian scenario. Russia almost immediately crossed the Georgian border, sent in massive amounts of tanks, artillery and armored carriers and started to attack Georgian targets, including targets around Tbilisi. It is possible to send in planes this fast, but to mount a massive army operation with such a scale is simply impossible without a previous operational plan and months of preparations.

This attack is not some faraway tribes shelling each other nor an “internal matter” like Chechnya. Georgia is a NATO aspirant, a democratic country in otherwise totalitarian region. It is directly attacked by Russia. This is the first Russian invasion of a neighboring country since its invasion of Afghanistan. It is impossible for the world to turn a blind eye. And although we can be certain that Western governments will do their best to pressure Georgia into retreat and capitulation in order to avoid the West having to demand that the Russians behave themselves, it will be impossible for Georgia to back down. The survival of the country is at stake.

Remember the Clinton campaign ad in US Democratic primary about the 3 a.m. call in the White House. What an irony that the Russian attack on Georgia came almost at about that time. Clinton is no longer in the race but an international crisis has erupted that will have far reaching consequences and that will not subside quietly and on its own. What is at stake here is a post cold war world order. At stake is the credibility of NATO as a military alliance, the U.S. as a credible ally and, for better or for worse, the EU’s survival. One has to understand, that most people from Eastern and Central Europe joined the EU not so much because of economic reasons – many of the countries had much freer and open economies then we have now under Brussels – but because it was hoped that the EU offers security against Russia. If NATO, America and the EU can/will not pressure Russia into ending its aggression against Georgia, the EU will lose its ultimate value in the eyes of Eastern Europeans. It will have proved that EU’s major countries are so spineless, willfulness and badly dependant of Russian gas and oil that they will allow Russia impunity against all atrocities and all aggressions. If the West allows Russia to have its way with Georgia, next in line will be Ukraine and third in line will be the Baltic countries. We are once again on the firing line with backstabbers behind us. Allowing Russia to continue will invite untold mayhem into international security and global economy.

As for the US presidential elections, the closer you get to November, the clearer it is, that the “citizen of the world” Obama is incapable of answering seriously to any call about international affairs, no matter what time it is. War in Georgia will help McCain. As an Estonian, I hope that the old school cold war politician McCain will help the Georgians, once in office.