Pat Buchanan had it right this time.

[techs]

I vehemently disagree with Pat Buchanan on many things, but he was right on the money when he talked out Russia for the last 15 years.

He warned the us that there were 'cold warriors' in the US who could not get over the fall of communism and they were pushing an agenda that would turn Russia back into a dictatorship and reignite Russian nationalism. Their goal was crush Russia and grind it into the ground.

Bush Sr. actually started out with a good policy, help Russia to become capitalist and democratic.

Then when Clinton became President, as is often the case with Democratic Presidents, he had to show he was tough on communism, oops, Russia. And the cold warriors actually stopped US money going to Russia to disamantle her nukes!

Buchanan warned us that if we expanded NATO to the doorstep of Russia, that would bring back a dictator. He said the Russian experience in WW2 is still overwhelming in Russia today, and they would freak out. And turn to some sort of modern day Stalin.
So with the Russian economy crashing, the US still not even allowing trade in many areas with Russia, and NATO advancing, as the Russians saw it, to the gates of Moscow, now we have Putin.

Hopefully Buchanans gravest warnings won't come true.
He says that a capitalist Russia, joined with the greatest natural resources on earth, and a paranoia in its citizens and dictator will become as great a threat as the cold war Russia, maybe even more so.
And Pat said he could see a time when one of the new, "pseudo" democracies we let into NATO engage in some form of provacative behaviour, believing they have the military of NATO behind them, and tweak Russias nose. And it would eventually be the US who pays the price.

 

[Perknose]

Blaming Putin on the West is ridiculous.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: techs
Then when Clinton became President, as is often the case with Democratic Presidents, he had to show he was tough on communism, oops, Russia.

What? You already stated that you thought Bush Sr.'s policies regarding Russia were good. And Perot campaigned that we needed to continue helping Russia. Soooo, uhhh, what? Care to clarify here?

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: techs
Then when Clinton became President, as is often the case with Democratic Presidents, he had to show he was tough on communism, oops, Russia.

What? You already stated that you thought Bush Sr.'s policies regarding Russia were good. And Perot campaigned that we needed to continue helping Russia. Soooo, uhhh, what? Care to clarify here?

I don't know the history of this, I'm just reiterating what techs said. George Bush sent aid to Russia to help install a democratic government and capitalist economy. Clinton cut that aid to appear tough on communism (even though Russia was not a communist country at that point everyone in our country had grown up with Russia as "the enemy"). The two had different policies on Russia and techs preferred the former. That was not difficult to grasp from what he wrote; where are you getting confused?

 

[gevorg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Russian_sentiment

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy
I don't know the history of this, I'm just reiterating what techs said. George Bush sent aid to Russia to help install a democratic government and capitalist economy. Clinton cut that aid to appear tough on communism (even though Russia was not a communist country at that point everyone in our country had grown up with Russia as "the enemy").

You should have stopped at the bolded, instead of repeating techs factually unsupported BS. I suggest you educate yourself on a topic before opening your mouth about it.

Here's the Republicans ATTACKING Clinton's efforts to help the Russians. It was the REPUBLICANS who wanted to cut our aid to Russia NOT Clinton:

''I'm sure there have been some mistakes made,'' said Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House Democratic leader. ''But we've been trying to help Russia get through the extremely difficult transition from communism to capitalism. If the alternative is to stand to one side, do nothing and hope Russia figures it out on its own, then that is a mistake.''

A spokesman for the National Security Council, David C. Leavy, defended the Administration's Russia policy, citing advances in individual liberties for Russians, nuclear arms reductions and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Central and Eastern Europe.

This is just one article. Please go read the history of this time. It is complex, but one thing stands out, Clinton made a ton of mistakes, but NEVER shirked from trying mightily to aid the Russian transition to a truly functioning democracy, against stiff Republican partisan/isolationist opposition.

In the 1990s, the U.S.-Russia portfolio, a jumble of conflicting and unresolved questions, fell to Talbott to manage. These items ranged from traditional security issues such as arms control to aid for Russia's economic, political, and social transition. Defense specialists and security analysts will find in the book much about the politics behind NATO enlargement, discussions of arms control, missile defense, Russia's friendliness toward Iran and Iraq, and other critical issues. Among the many stories told, however, two successes stand out.

The first was one of the most underappreciated events of the 1990s: getting Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons, a touch-and-go process until the end. In a world of ever-increasing proliferation, this step represented a reversal that simply would not have happened without the focused work of a few senior officials in the Clinton administration. Their success was part of a distinctly new approach to enhancing security known as "defense by other means," which started with the 1991 Cooperative Threat Reduction Act (otherwise known as "Nunn-Lugar") and was greatly expanded during the Clinton years. Still ongoing in the Bush administration, this government program funds private contractors to enlist hundreds of American and Russian scientists and engineers working to dismantle and eliminate weapons of mass destruction in countries of the former Soviet Union. If anyone is looking for a foreign policy legacy from the Clinton administration, they need look no further.

The other triumph got even less attention: the laborious but ultimately groundbreaking work to get Russians and Americans serving together in Bosnia as peacekeepers after the Dayton peace accord was signed in 1995. True, the reality of that deployment today does not read quite like a NATO promotional brochure. (Americans have reported the experience of serving with the Russians as a "drunk fest.") But it is hard to exaggerate the importance of the 1995 agreement between Secretary of Defense William Perry and Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev, which was later operationalized under U.S. General George Joulwan and Russian General Leonty Shevtsov. The work was remarkable, and the relationships that these men developed point to the enormous potential for solving problems on a face-to-face basis.

Mixed with the successes, of course, were more disappointing episodes. Some policies were tried but failed, others remained unfinished, and still others showed the limits of engagement. Each of these dynamics played a role when the United States tried to influence the internal politics of Russia. Clinton, a self-described "tomorrow guy," was gripped by the potential inherent in Russia's transition and convinced that he could make a difference there. But Talbott's assessment, like Russia's current condition, is mixed. Some readers will see enormous hubris in Clinton's thinking that U.S. policy could keep Russia from "going bad," whereas others will admire him for it. Talbott clearly falls into the latter category, but he is critical of the means Clinton chose.

Text

The true story of these attempts is complex. Instead, here in this thread, we get an admitted ignoramus rehashing a shallow ideologue, all based on the musing of Pat Fucking Buchanan. :roll:

 

[sandorski]

Pat Buchanon is right about a lot of things. One of the few Conservatives who actually thinks about issues and uses Logic to arrive at a workable solution. Now he certainly has come to some controversial conclusions at times and these have undermined any hopes of Political success for him, but as far as Conservative Thinkers go he is certainly amongst the very best and one of the few that gives recent Conservatism any hope of survival into the future. Not that I think something like Conservatism/Liberalism can just cease to exist, but they certainly can cease to exist in any recognizable form from 1 generation to the next.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: techs
Then when Clinton became President, as is often the case with Democratic Presidents, he had to show he was tough on communism, oops, Russia.

What? You already stated that you thought Bush Sr.'s policies regarding Russia were good. And Perot campaigned that we needed to continue helping Russia. Soooo, uhhh, what? Care to clarify here?

I don't know the history of this, I'm just reiterating what techs said. George Bush sent aid to Russia to help install a democratic government and capitalist economy. Clinton cut that aid to appear tough on communism (even though Russia was not a communist country at that point everyone in our country had grown up with Russia as "the enemy"). The two had different policies on Russia and techs preferred the former. That was not difficult to grasp from what he wrote; where are you getting confused?

I don't understand the OP's notion that Clinton had "to appear tough on communism."

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: techs
Then when Clinton became President, as is often the case with Democratic Presidents, he had to show he was tough on communism, oops, Russia.

What? You already stated that you thought Bush Sr.'s policies regarding Russia were good. And Perot campaigned that we needed to continue helping Russia. Soooo, uhhh, what? Care to clarify here?

I don't know the history of this, I'm just reiterating what techs said. George Bush sent aid to Russia to help install a democratic government and capitalist economy. Clinton cut that aid to appear tough on communism (even though Russia was not a communist country at that point everyone in our country had grown up with Russia as "the enemy"). The two had different policies on Russia and techs preferred the former. That was not difficult to grasp from what he wrote; where are you getting confused?

I don't understand the OP's notion that Clinton had "to appear tough on communism."

What the post and Buchanan is saying is that the hard core cold warriors never separated the idea of Russia and Communism and equated trying to help Russia, then a struggling democracy, as being soft on communism.
Yes, it doesn't seem to make sense that people would do that, but Pat was right, and quoted many times over the years when people who had been staunch anti-communists would say things that indicated they still equated the two.

 

[CallMeJoe]

Pat Buchanan is a xenophobic homophobic misogynistic anti-Semitic theocratic asswipe.





Who happens to be mostly right about Russia.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: techs
Then when Clinton became President, as is often the case with Democratic Presidents, he had to show he was tough on communism, oops, Russia.

What? You already stated that you thought Bush Sr.'s policies regarding Russia were good. And Perot campaigned that we needed to continue helping Russia. Soooo, uhhh, what? Care to clarify here?

I don't know the history of this, I'm just reiterating what techs said. George Bush sent aid to Russia to help install a democratic government and capitalist economy. Clinton cut that aid to appear tough on communism (even though Russia was not a communist country at that point everyone in our country had grown up with Russia as "the enemy"). The two had different policies on Russia and techs preferred the former. That was not difficult to grasp from what he wrote; where are you getting confused?

I don't understand the OP's notion that Clinton had "to appear tough on communism."

What the post and Buchanan is saying is that the hard core cold warriors never separated the idea of Russia and Communism and equated trying to help Russia, then a struggling democracy, as being soft on communism.
Yes, it doesn't seem to make sense that people would do that, but Pat was right, and quoted many times over the years when people who had been staunch anti-communists would say things that indicated they still equated the two.

So, you are saying that President Clinton had to bow to Congress regarding to his foreign policy?

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: techs
Bush Sr. actually started out with a good policy, help Russia to become capitalist and democratic.

Then when Clinton became President, as is often the case with Democratic Presidents, he had to show he was tough on communism, oops, Russia. And the cold warriors actually stopped US money going to Russia to disamantle her nukes!

This is WHOLE CLOTH BULLSHIT.. Clinton EXPANDED the program, fought many Republican attempts to curtail and/or cancel it, even vetoeing disabling amendments that the isolationist (read BUCHANAN types) put through.

The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program otherwise known as the "Nunn-Lugar" legislation (named for sponsoring Senators Sam Nunn [D-GA] and Richard Lugar [R-IN]) began in 1991 as a piece of US legislation entitled "The Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991" (Public Law 102-228, 12/12/91, Title II Soviet Weapons Destruction),

[...]

For Fiscal Year 1992, [First year of the Clinton presidency] the Act allotted $400 million of transferred Department of Defense funds for this purpose. (For cumulative funding to date see chart below.) In October 1992, an additional $400 million was allocated to establish the Safe and Secure Dismantlement (SSD) Talks under the Former Soviet Union Demilitarization Act.

[...]

95-96 HOUSE MEASURES TO CURB CTR FUNDING FAIL
The amendments sponsored by Rep. Gerald Soloman (R-NY) in 1996 and Rep. Robert Dornan (R-CA) in 1995 requiring a presidential certification that Russia is in compliance with all arms control treaties and is not pursuing biological weapons research, among other things have both failed to become law, and therefore have not affected the funding schedule of the CTR program. Rep. Soloman?s amendment was defeated (220-202) in the House on 5/15/96. While Rep. Dornan?s amendment passed (244-180) in the House on 6/13/95, it was not approved by the President.

[...]

5/15/96: HOUSE CERTIFICATION AMENDMENT TO NDAA FAILS
A House amendment that would have prohibited any CTR funding to Russia and Belarus narrowly failed to pass (220-202). The amendment proposed by Rep. Solomon (R-NY) called for a presidential certification that Russia was among other things, in compliance with the CFE Treaty, had ended the war in Chechnya, and aborted the Ural mountains complex near Beloretsk (Bashkortostan) before any aid would be granted.

 

[NeoV]

"So with the Russian economy crashing, the US still not even allowing trade in many areas with Russia, and NATO advancing, as the Russians saw it, to the gates of Moscow, now we have Putin."

The Russian economy is crashing? You might want to look that one up.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: bamacre
So, you are saying that President Clinton had to bow to Congress regarding to his foreign policy?

Republicans are always saying that Bush had nothing to do with Foriegn Policy, that it was the Democrats in congress that declaered war on Iraq.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: techs
I vehemently disagree with Pat Buchanan on many things, but he was right on the money when he talked out Russia for the last 15 years.

He warned the us that there were 'cold warriors' in the US who could not get over the fall of communism and they were pushing an agenda that would turn Russia back into a dictatorship and reignite Russian nationalism. Their goal was crush Russia and grind it into the ground.

Bush Sr. actually started out with a good policy, help Russia to become capitalist and democratic.

Then when Clinton became President, as is often the case with Democratic Presidents, he had to show he was tough on communism, oops, Russia. And the cold warriors actually stopped US money going to Russia to disamantle her nukes!

Buchanan warned us that if we expanded NATO to the doorstep of Russia, that would bring back a dictator. He said the Russian experience in WW2 is still overwhelming in Russia today, and they would freak out. And turn to some sort of modern day Stalin.
So with the Russian economy crashing, the US still not even allowing trade in many areas with Russia, and NATO advancing, as the Russians saw it, to the gates of Moscow, now we have Putin.

Hopefully Buchanans gravest warnings won't come true.
He says that a capitalist Russia, joined with the greatest natural resources on earth, and a paranoia in its citizens and dictator will become as great a threat as the cold war Russia, maybe even more so.
And Pat said he could see a time when one of the new, "pseudo" democracies we let into NATO engage in some form of provacative behaviour, believing they have the military of NATO behind them, and tweak Russias nose. And it would eventually be the US who pays the price.

Enemies of America and freedom have learned that patience is the key to victory, it worked for Republcians.

Newt started his "contract" for America in the last beginning of the last decade of the 20 th century and they finally took the U.S. out in the beginning of the 21st century.

 

[thepd7]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: bamacre
So, you are saying that President Clinton had to bow to Congress regarding to his foreign policy?

Republicans are always saying that Bush had nothing to do with Foriegn Policy, that it was the Democrats in congress that declaered war on Iraq.

Wow that's flat out wrong. Congress has a lot do to with foreign policy (they do vote) but I have never heard a Republican claim that Democrats are the ones that declared war on Iraq. Many more than will admit supported it, but it was not driven my them.

Thanks for confirming your reputation to me, I never really had a reason for not liking you other than that no one else does until now.

 

[ElFenix]

russians have putin because russians absolutely love a strong man.


neov - the russian economy was tanking before putin got there. oil was cheap.

 

[HomerJS]

Putin would never cause trouble. George Bush the Republican leader looked into his eyes, saw his soul and concluded he is a friend.

 

[Thump553]

Quite a lot of selective recall going on here. The fact of the matter is that the USA should have done an enormous lend-lease type program with Russia and its satellites after USSR collapsed. Instead we congratulated ourselves, instituted a reasonably decent program to dismantle and monitor nuke weapons, and precious little else-except a pat on the back and a good luck, guys.

We blew the opportunity to have a major close capitalistic ally that could have been a major counterweight to China. Russia could have turned out like West Germany. Reagan and the first Bush blew it-probably because of his fear of raising taxes (because Reagan had already blown so much money on a US military buildup). The first Bush, with his CIA background, was an enormous disappointment to me that he didn't take a more proactive course on Russia. By the time of Clinton the opportunity had already passed, most likely but he also just gave lip service.

So what happened to Russia? Lawlessness, the rise of the Russian mafia and transfer of state assets to a privileged few. The great masses were either unemployed, unpaid (most of the military) and facing a bleak future. Is it any wonder that nationalism rose again and they turned to a strong dictator?

We are essentially facing the USSR again, just a smaller empire, more internal division and without the pretense of communism to soften their imperialism.

Buchanan is an interesting commentator, but I think he is wrong here. Given our inaction in the past, it was inevitable that Russia would seek to conquer its neighbors again.

BTW, anyone want to take any bets on a puppet regime being installed in Georgia within the next few months?

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: Thump553
Quite a lot of selective recall going on here. The fact of the matter is that the USA should have done an enormous lend-lease type program with Russia and its satellites after USSR collapsed. Instead we congratulated ourselves, instituted a reasonably decent program to dismantle and monitor nuke weapons, and precious little else-except a pat on the back and a good luck, guys.

We blew the opportunity to have a major close capitalistic ally that could have been a major counterweight to China. Russia could have turned out like West Germany. Reagan and the first Bush blew it-probably because of his fear of raising taxes (because Reagan had already blown so much money on a US military buildup). The first Bush, with his CIA background, was an enormous disappointment to me that he didn't take a more proactive course on Russia. By the time of Clinton the opportunity had already passed, most likely but he also just gave lip service.

So what happened to Russia? Lawlessness, the rise of the Russian mafia and transfer of state assets to a privileged few. The great masses were either unemployed, unpaid (most of the military) and facing a bleak future. Is it any wonder that nationalism rose again and they turned to a strong dictator?

We are essentially facing the USSR again, just a smaller empire, more internal division and without the pretense of communism to soften their imperialism.

Buchanan is an interesting commentator, but I think he is wrong here. Given our inaction in the past, it was inevitable that Russia would seek to conquer its neighbors again.

BTW, anyone want to take any bets on a puppet regime being installed in Georgia within the next few months?

We couldn't do that because everyone was tripping all over themselves trying to figure out ways to spend the "peace dividend" in the 90's and spending it on Russia didn't figure into their utopian ideas.