RAMASWAMY: FUNDING UKRAINE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DEMOCRATS. IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH RONALD REAGAN'S PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.
Vivek is Clueless About American History, Foreign Policy, Reagan's "PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH," The National Interest, and Geopolitics
Foreign policy has been the Republican’s strongest suit, for presidents and voters alike. As the New York Post suggested, it is Vivek Ramaswamy’s weakest.
From the right the WASHINGTON EXAMINER called it correctly:
Vivek Ramaswamy's foreign policy is clueless and dangerous
“…The “people have forgotten one of the most fundamental responsibilities of the president of the United States: defining the nation’s foreign policy. And this is why surging candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is so dangerous.”…
The center-leaning New York Post called it correctly.
“He pretends he can somehow cut a deal with Vladimir Putin that leaves (a rump of?) Ukraine neutral and Russia abandoning its alliance with China.
He’s also vowing to abandon Taiwan after 2028.
That’s all nonsense, however attractive it sounds: Clickbait that dissolves into waste-of-time garbage once you know the facts about Putin, Beijing, Ukraine, geostrategic realities or the needs of US allies in Europe and Asian-Pacific.”
The Post concluded by calling Rama’s approach attractive to the ideological base, but lacking substance.
The left and fomer conservative governor Nikky Haley called it correctly, as CNN reported:
"He wants to hand Ukraine to Russia," she said of Ramaswamy. "He wants to let China eat Taiwan. He wants to...stop funding Israel. You don't do that to friends...”
Haley...served as (Donald Trump’s) US ambassador to the United Nations, criticized the entrepreneur for having "no foreign policy experience."
"It shows," she said.
She added, “cutting off aid would have two possible outcomes. First, lots of dead Jews. Second, Islamic terrorism on our doorstep...”
Using his best hypnotic Swamy stare, Vivek mesmerized Americans into a vision of a world no longer dangerous, were it not for Mexican gardeners and opioids. Rama’s world, a hopelessly naive worldview backed by political opportunism, mind-numbing historical ignorance, and Tucker Carlson’s provincial isolationism that benefits only Russia and China. As Carlson, Vivek has conflated Ukraine/Europe/global security policy with America’s immigration policy.
One has nothing to do with the other. Funding one has nothing to do with funding the other. Mexico is an illogical diversion for the paranoid mindset, a non-sequitur – beside the point.
Ramaswamy has failed the “president test” that answers: Whose interests should an American president promote, Russia’s, or the United States’? Tucker has made his choice clear. To others who’ve traveled a bit, America is far more than the mainland.
Vivek licked his forefinger to test the political winds.
Bill Maher called it correctly when he interviewed Ramaswamy and said (nonverbatim), Vivek you have everything going for you, you’re smart, you can win, especially with the younger set. Your problem is you lack wisdom.
Why are we in Ukraine?
None of the reasons and scare tactics promoted by Carlson, Doug MacGregor (who’s been dead wrong on every prediction he’s been peddling since early 2020), Tulsi Gabbard, and Glenn Greenwald, The Federalist, and MISES.
We are in Ukraine because if Ukraine fell, much of Europe will also fall, along with America’s future prosperity, as well as America’s access to global markets and military movement. These are the very universal freedoms Reagan championed through his “Peace Through Strength” policy.
Military interests exist to promote national security and economic interests.
As a historical fact, America has come to the aid of its allies 200 years ago, during George Washington’s and Thos Jefferson’s time.
THE RONALD REAGAN LIBRARY - PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH
Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to further an agenda to rebuild the Soviet Empire and he said so. Also see HERE. Given what we’ve seen in Mariupol and Bakhmut, whose words would you take seriously, Carlson’s, MacGregor’s, Greenwald’s, Vivek’s, Medvedev’s, Putin’s, or Reagan’s?
No nation under the Russian boot, and certainly not the United States that has spent trillions keeping Russia at bay for two thirds of a century, would consider going back to Berlin Wall-era Europe.
Anon: There are no friends. There are no enemies. There are only common interests.
THE HISTORY OF THE U.S.A. & ITS ALLIANCES!
The United States’ common interests are shared with its trading and military partners and the world’s third largest economy, Europe. Europeans happen to be progenitors and scions of America’s founding fathers and America’s ancestors. In other words, they are us, and we are them.
The United States is obligated under NATO’s strategy to block Russian forces from seizing the trade routes, ports, rails, highways, airports, military bases, and access roads to the entire underbelly of Europe and the seas that serve them, Azov, Aegean, Adriatic, Mediterranean, Black, Marmara, North and Baltic seas - all routes to the Atlantic Ocean that connect them.
Access routes are vital for American trade, American prosperity, global security, and the movement of the American military. Most importantly, these seas encircle the entire continent - which is very much in the American national interest. That is, unless we prefer to be cut off from the rest of the world, from our heritage, and our destiny. The last concstitute the recommondations of the isolationists and libertarians cited.
These waterways also lead to North Africa, Malta, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Libya, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt’s Suez Canal - the mainline for energy resources that power the west’s economies.
“On…1 August 1975, the then Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave was one of the signatories of the Helsinki Final act governing relations between European states. He signed along the United States, all other European countries (except Albania), and the USSR, which at the time encompassed both Russia and Ukraine.
Article one of the Helsinki Final Act said that the signatory states would “respect each other’s sovereign equality, juridical equality and territorial integrity”, and that they would refrain from the “use of force or the threat of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.
“…(post USSR) Russia became a member on 28 February 1996. The Council of Europe is the source of a...comprehensive network of treaties on many topics...and its Treaties only have meaning to the extent that its members are willing to abide by international law...”
“The "Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances" is a diplomatic memorandum that was signed in December 1994 by Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom…
“Under the memorandum, Ukraine promised to remove all Soviet-era nuclear weapons from its territory, send them to disarmament facilities in Russia, and sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Ukraine kept these promises.
In return, Russia and the Western signatory countries...consecrated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine as an independent state…”
They specifically pledged they would refrain from making each other's territory the object of military occupation or engage in other uses of force in violation of international law...All sides agreed that no such occupation or acquisition will be recognized as legal…”
NATO was established to counter imperialist players from unilaterally claiming for themselves the territory of other nations and the access routes cited above. In this case, the trillions worth of Ukraine's natural resources on which the world depends for survival and prosperity: steel, aluminum, oil, gas, cobalt, rare earth minerals (on which the US depends), fisheries and grain (Europe's food supply in fact). The wealth of a very fertile Ukraine.
Accordingly NATO was left with one choice: to block Russia’s historic imperialist agenda to seize those very resources for itself. NATO is complying lawfully with internationally agreed-to pre-existing security guarantees, treaties, and understandings.
The Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, and the rest of Ukraine in 2022, is not a partisan, Democrat or Republican issue. It is an illegal invasion and global security issue. America’s allies represent our own security, not just Ukraine’s.
Ronald Reagan condensed it into four terse words specifically referring to America’s Russia policy: “We win; they lose.”
The energetic Ramaswamy doesn’t understand how government works. He’s literally clueless about the American tradition to back the freedom-liberating movements of allies (from which America also profits), foreign policy, as well as the economic interrelations and geopolitics which insure American security and prosperity. Admittedly he has a fast-mouthpiece.
So do used car salesmen.
That’s it.
Beyond being a successful entrepreneur, and an opportunist, Vivek is the Anti-Reagan-anti-American tradition candidate, not ready for prime time, and not ready to represent the United States on the world stage.
CREDIT
© Andrew G. Benjamin is in finance, real estate and equities, a former advisor to New York City mayor’s office (Subcommittee on Taxation, Finance and the Budget). Benjamin wrote extensively about politics, transnational and domestic, intelligence and military affairs, security and strategy, economic issues, Mideast, terrorism, technology and high end audio.
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FURTHER THOUGHTS
“BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID!” shouts Tucker at his audiences.
According to Tucker: Putin should decide which European nation joins the European Common Market (EU), or NATO. America that leads NATO and Europe should have no voice in the matter.
Putin, and not the United States, should decide in whose sphere of geopolitical influence Ukraine winds up - his, or ours.
Tucker’s reasoning is impeccable.
Can you name anyone better suited to lead the world than the heroic Russian leader sitting bare-chested on his horse, with Russia’s collapsed economy and rusted military as his very saddle?
Ask the conservative nations of Europe, the Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Hungarians, what they think of Tucker's world view!
The US has no business in Europe or in Ukraine, asserts Tucker, even if Europe is our second largest trading partner. Even though NATO is us; and we are the NATO established by Dwight Eisenhower.