The Fox News watchers are being fed a steady diet of, Ukraine isn’t any of our business. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is sounding the alarm on that Putin-friendly notion.
“What I am terrified of is the fact that a Ukraine that is controlled by Putin puts them even further, Russian troops right up against NATO nations, and the ultimate fear I have is that within six or nine months of Putin being successful in Ukraine, the fact that we might have a American soldiers having to honor our commitment to NATO,” Warner told reporters on a conference call on Wednesday.
This is basic Kremlinology. Allow a bad actor like Vladimir Putin to bully his way to winning his territorial war in Ukraine, and you’re emboldening him to try to further expand his influence.
It’s an easy guess that the former Soviet-era KGB agent would next target former Soviet satellite states in what used to be the Eastern bloc, for instance.
“There’s no indication that if the world wouldn’t stand up and hold the line with Ukraine, that Putin won’t think that he can pick off a small, small NATO country, like Estonia or Latvia, or, or potentially go into Poland, and then we would have American and NATO soldiers in full armed conflict with Russia. That is, that would be a disaster. It would be a cost 100 times greater than what we have borne to date, and would also put American lives in jeopardy,” Warner said.
But this is just basic international politics common sense.
Unfortunately, in our media and political environment today, basic common sense is sorely lacking. The far right media ecosystem mindlessly parrots the Putin regime’s talking points, and Republicans in Congress do the bidding of the nation-state that still has thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at us.
Whatever is left of Harry S Truman is rolling over in his grave.
“Even though President Biden called for the $60 billion of additional military and economic aid to Ukraine in September, we’re now at late January, and that aid hasn’t arrived,” Warner said.
Republicans have balked at the Ukraine aid package because they claim to want to do more to improve U.S. security at the southern border first, even though they’ve also balked at several efforts to provide more funding for border security as well.
What they’re really worried about with all of this is giving President Biden a policy victory that could make him look good with the 2024 elections looming.
In effect, they’re blocking things from being done because they want political power back.
“My hope and prayer is this combined border-Ukraine deal, it needs to get done, it needs to get on the floor of the Senate,” Warner said. “I know my Republican colleagues are redebating part of this assistance for Ukraine today. Most of that driven by an isolationist wing that’s been fomented by the former President Trump, who talks about America first. But America cannot be first if we don’t keep our commitments to our friends around the world, and, frankly, if we’re not willing to stand up against aggression, in the form that Putin is portrayed against Ukraine.”
The ball is in our court, which is the scary part of this.
“I point back to the remarkable job the Ukrainians have done at decimating 80 percent of Russia’s ground forces that existed pre-war. Russians have paid a high, high price, and that’s without the single loss of an American or NATO soldier. We wouldn’t be able to say that if Putin is successful, and we don’t honor our commitment,” Warner said.
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Chris Graham
