Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
“We will never accept Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea,” declaimed Rex Tillerson last week in Vienna.
“Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine.”
Tillerson’s principled rejection of the seizure of land by military force — “never accept” — came just one day after President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and pledged to move our embassy there.
How did Israel gain title to East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights? Invasion, occupation, colonization, annexation.
Those lands are the spoils of victory from Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War.
Is Israel being severely sanctioned like Russia? Not quite.
Her yearly U.S. stipend is almost $4 billion, as she builds settlement after settlement on occupied land despite America’s feeble protests.
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What Bibi Netanyahu just demonstrated is that, when dealing with the Americans and defending what is vital to Israel, perseverance pays off. Given time, the Americans will accept the new reality.
Like Bibi, Vladimir Putin is a nationalist. For him, the recapture of Crimea was the achievement of his presidency. For two centuries that peninsula had been home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and critical to her security.
Putin is not going to return Crimea to Kiev, and, eventually, we will accept this new reality as well.
For while whose flag flies over Crimea has never been crucial to us, it is to Putin. And like Israelis, Russians are resolute when it comes to taking and holding what they see as rightly theirs.
Both these conflicts reveal underlying realities that help explain America’s 21st-century long retreat. We face allies and antagonists who are more willing than are we to take risks, endure pain, persevere and fight to prevail.
This month, just days after North Korea tested a new ICBM, national security adviser H. R. McMaster declared that Trump “is committed to the total denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
If so, we are committed to a goal we almost surely are not going to achieve. For, short of a war that could go nuclear, Kim Jong Un is not going to yield to our demands.
For Kim, nuclear weapons are not an option.
He knows that Saddam Hussein, who had given up his WMD, was hanged after the Americans attacked. He knows the grisly fate of Moammar Gadhafi, after he invited the West into Libya to dismantle his nuclear program and disarm him of any WMD.
Kim knows that if he surrenders his nuclear weapons, he has nothing to deter the Americans should they choose to use their arsenal on his armed forces, his regime, and him.
North Korea may enter talks, but Kim will never surrender the missiles and nukes that guarantee his survival. Look for the Americans to find a way to accommodate him.
Consider, too, China’s proclaimed ownership of the South China Sea and her building on reefs and rocks in that sea, of artificial islands that are becoming air, missile and naval bases.
Hawkish voices are being raised that this is intolerable and U.S. air and naval power must be used if necessary to force a rollback of China’s annexation and militarization of the South China Sea.
Why is this not going to happen?
While this area is regarded as vital to China, it is not to us. And while China, a littoral state that controls Hainan Island in that sea, is a legitimate claimant to many of its islets, we are claimants to none.
Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan are the other claimants. But though their interests in the fishing grounds and seabed resources may be as great as China’s, none has seen fit to challenge Beijing’s hegemony.
Why should we risk war with China to validate the claims of Communist Vietnam or Rodrigo Duterte’s ruthless regime in Manila? Why should their fight become our fight?
China’s interests in the sea are as crucial to her as were U.S. interests in the Caribbean when, a rising power in 1823, we declared the Monroe Doctrine. Over time, the world’s powers came to recognize and respect U.S. special interests in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
Given the steady rise of Chinese military power, the proximity of the islets to mainland China, the relative weakness and reluctance to confront of the other claimants, China will likely become the controlling power in the South China Sea, as we came to be the predominant power in the Western Hemisphere.
What we are witnessing in Crimea, across the Middle East, in the South China Sea, on the Korean peninsula, are nations more willing than we to sacrifice and take risks, because their interests there are far greater than ours.
What America needs is a new national consensus on what is vital to us and what is not, what we are willing to fight to defend and what we are not.
For this generation of Americans is not going to risk war, indefinitely, to sustain some Beltway elite’s idea of a “rules-based new world order.” After the Cold War, we entered a new world — and we need new red lines to replace the old.
We need to get out of NATO.
That would make life easier for us, cheaper as well.
Mr. B, as is so often the case, is right again. The US should stop aiding Israel, stop sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong, stop wasting treasure on unwinnable military adventures, concentrate on its own very serious and disheartening domestic issues and limit itself to Western Hemisphere concerns a la the Monroe Doctrine, particularly with respect to China.
Yes, but that is science fiction.
Tillerson is just bloviating , probably to counter Russia for their condemnation of the US to move their Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
Crimea – as differentiated from Israel, Russia did NOT obtain Crimea via Invasion, occupation, colonization, or annexation. Crimeans voted unanimously to return to Russian control.
What we need to do is what we will never do so the only good answer is to secceed from the monster the US has become.
Absolutely. What bothers me about screeds like Pat’s (who I like) is that it suggests that we peons have some say in the matter. We don’t. I don’t give a shit who you vote for, what petitions you endorse and what letters you send to ‘those people’ in d.c. Power is it’s own justification. In that regard articles like this one are deceptive and counterproductive in terms of ever advancing the ball. For all of Pat’s wisdom, he’s deeply seated in the establishment and would lose his platform should he fess up to reality. Same with (sigh) Ron Paul. We’re entirely on our own and acknowledgement of that fact at least gets us off the wrong direction.
That’s right but there are a few things we can do.
1) Speak truth to power. No mincing of words. One can reach a lot of people via the internet and you never know whose mind you reach.
2) Never vote! Voting is what keeps the system in place and provides it legitimacy. Withdraw your consent.
3) Go Galt if you have the stomach for it, or the means.
I could not have said it better.
Just think, if certain millions of us Did NOT Vote, Hillary would be President.
Your actions have results and those results could bite you, your children, and grandchildren in the ass.
Oh thanks for that scintilla of wisdom koko. I’d have never thought of that….
Look back over the last 50 years at the demise of individual freedom, the decimation of the middle class, the outright ownership of ‘those people’ by a foreign power, the loss of privacy, the exploding debt, the power of the monied/bankster class and the constant stream of senseless wars and see if you can tell the repo’s from the dummo’s. You teach your children to support the state all you please and leave mine out of it. I don’t intend to raise any wildebeests.
The hubris of American politicians is an embarrassment.
They act like a short kid with small-man’s-syndrome threatening to kick the asses of everyone in a bar.
We Americans are ruled by arrogant, stupid people because (obviously) most of us are idiots. I sometimes wonder if I’m just as much a moron as the Average American…. (OH. Nooooooooo.)
The problem for Putin is only a few bottom feeder nations like Venezuela and Syria recognize Russian sovereignty in Crimea. That puts it off limits to western airlines and cruise ships which was a major industry before. With the Donbass still in conflict Russia access to this marooned territory is only by sea or a bridge that Putin is trying to build.
The other issue Buchanan ignores, is that Russia ‘guaranteed’ Ukraine’s territorial integrity back in the 1990’s in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal. Israel never ‘guaranteed’ the West Bank or Golan Heights.
Now the ancient gasbag Buchanan seems to think it is a fine for North Korea to have nuclear weapons. I wonder if the senile Russophile would feel the same about Ukraine rebuilding its nuclear arsenal?
How easily people forget that the Arabs invaded Israel in their avowed effort at genocide. Same as Hitler invaded Russia and France. But the Arabs got their butts kicked and have been whining about it, ever since. I still remember Abba Eban’s live-on-TV comment in the UN after that brief war: “There are three million Israelis. There are 200 million Arabs. Is the distinguished delegate from Egypt trying to say that we surrounded them?”
Crimea? Large majority Russian population. Near-unanimous vote to join Russia. I guess democracy is only valid when it’s anti-Russia?
Ukraine? You taxpayers spent $5 billion on the coup d’état there. I’m sure that the families of the dead appreciate that, particularly with the Neo-Nazis now governing from Kiev.
A good article except for the anti-semitic comments on Israel. Plus to compare that democratic nation with Russia is ridiculous. If the musloids never wanted to lose East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights then Egypt should never have tried to close the straits of Tiran for the 2nd time in 11 years. Which is it Pat, the spoils of victory or occupation? Make up your mind.
How did the Israelis gain title to Jerusalem? They kicked the Jordanians asses when they tried to stab Israel in the back while they were kicking the Syrian and Egyptian asses. Arabs are sorry warriors. The only mohammedans that can fight are the Persians and Russians.