The Biden White House has presided over a disastrous failure to deter hostile powers including Russia and China, according to former former National Security Advisor H.R McMaster and other officials with the Trump Administration.
If war does break out between Russia and the United States, "Americans should not be surprised," a former advisor to the Secretary of Defense said.
Team Biden and its group of bipartisan supporters in Washington, D.C. "are doing all they possibly can to make it happen," (Ret.) Col. Douglas Macgregor wrote for The American Conservative on Jan. 26.
McMaster, in a Jan. 23 report for the Hoover Institution summarized the deterrence failure in an article, "Too-soft power" co-authored with Gabriel Scheinmann:
[Joe Biden] unilaterally extended US adherence to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty without reciprocation by Russia, and honored Putin with a bilateral summit during his first overseas trip. As Putin amassed his troops on Ukraine’s borders, Biden pulled US naval forces out of the Black Sea, refused to send additional weapons to Ukraine, enumerated everything the United States would not do to help Ukraine defend itself,and evacuated US embassy staff and military advisors. More broadly, the administration proposed a real cut to the defense budget; sought to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US defense strategy; restricted US production capacity for oil, gas, and refined products that might have displaced Russian supplies; and signaled its willingness to overlook Russian and Chinese aggression in exchange for hollow pledges of cooperation on global issues such as climate change.If war does happen, Macgregor said, "neither we nor our allies are prepared to fight all-out war with Russia, regionally or globally."
The Pentagon had been content to use American military power in conflicts the U.S. "could afford to lose, wars with weak opponents in the developing world from Saigon to Baghdad that did not present an existential threat to U.S. forces or American territory," Macgregor wrote.
Then, Team Biden decided to poke the Kremlin "with an existential military threat in Ukraine."
Joe Biden and all of those gleefully supporting his open cash trough to Ukraine and overt escalation with Vladimir Putin are quite taken aback that Russia has "neither collapsed internally nor capitulated to the collective West’s demands for regime change in Moscow. Washington underestimated Russia’s societal cohesion, its latent military potential, and its relative immunity to Western economic sanctions," Macgregor wrote.
Alexei Arestovich, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky’s recently fired advisor and unofficial “Spinmeister,” expressed doubts that Ukraine can win and even questions whether Ukraine will survive the war.
Ukrainian losses — at least 150,000 dead including 35,000 missing in action and presumed dead — "have fatally weakened Ukrainian forces resulting in a fragile Ukrainian defensive posture that will likely shatter under the crushing weight of attacking Russian forces in the next few weeks," Macgregor wrote.
Michael Rubin, a George W. Bush appointee unleashed the following pronouncement in recent article: “[I]f the world allows Russia to remain a unitary state, and if it allows Putinism to survive Putin, then, Ukraine should be allowed to maintain its own nuclear deterrence, whether it joins NATO or not.”
Macgregor noted: "On its face, the suggestion is reckless, but the statement does accurately reflect the anxiety in Washington circles that Ukrainian defeat is inevitable." He also noted that Europe's tacit support for war was less than enthusiastic.
In World War II, Washington had allies and time was on its side. "This time it’s different. Washington and its NATO allies are advocating a full-blown war against Russia, the devastation and breakup of the Russian Federation, as well as the destruction of millions of lives in Russia and Ukraine," Macgregor wrote.
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