On Monday, President Biden was caught on a hot mic calling the White House correspondent for Fox News a “stupid son of a bitch.” Within hours, in a very un-Trumpian manner, he called that correspondent and offered a personal apology. But it seems he was still apologizing on Tuesday. Because only that explains the way he went out of his way to direct his latest remarks on developments in Ukraine to the Fox News camera.
Here is what he said would be the fallout if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine – as Biden said just last week he thinks Putin will do:
There will be enormous consequences if he were to go and invade, as he could … for Russia. Not only in terms of economic consequences and political consequences, but there would [also] be enormous consequences worldwide.
If he were to move in with all those forces, it would be the largest invasion since World War II. It would change the world.
(Fox News, January 25, 2022)
Ominously, key European leaders seem as willing to appease Vladimir Putin as their predecessors were to appease Adolf Hitler. This caused a duly worried Poland to denounce the new German Chancellor for denying NATO the right to use German air space and territory to supply defensive arms to Ukraine.
After all, Poland did so in the context of a German navy chief telling a world forum not only that Putin is entitled to keep Crimea, but that he’s now threatening to take Ukraine only because he wants the respect he deserves. Well, at least Germany had the good sense to demand his immediate resignation. Because the last thing NATO needs is any suspicion that there might be a Marshal Philippe Pétain of Vichy France in the ranks …
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine is accusing Germany of betraying the NATO alliance. Germany would have Germans believe it’s all about Russian gas to keep them warm this winter. None dare say it, but perhaps it’s all because Germany simply identifies more with Putin’s Russia; this, given how it is mirroring Hitler’s Germany so much …
Meanwhile, China wants the world to think of it as a worthy alternative to the US as a sole superpower. Yet, as Russia seems hell-bent on triggering another world war, China is acting like just another bystander nation. This, despite the real prospect of Russia using its Olympic Games as cover to invade Ukraine. In other words, if it were up to Xi’s China, instead of Roosevelt’s America, all of Europe would be under Nazi rule to this day…
But you’d think the way wannabe isolationist America was drawn into WWI and WWII would be instructive. As things stand, if Russia invades and the inevitable unfolds, chances are very good that China will find itself playing for Russia the Axis role Japan played for Germany during WWII. And, even though too cataclysmic to contemplate, the Western allies will triumph … again.
For now, though, I suggest this pincer move:
Besides ordering diplomats home from Ukraine and deploying troops to Eastern Europe, Biden should have the US lead NATO members in threatening to order all members of their respective Olympic teams home from Beijing, and warn that none will participate in the Beijing 2022 Olympics, unless Putin withdraws his troops from the Ukraine border. The Olympics begin on Feb 4. So they should give Russia 5 days to show substantial progress.
After all, if war breaks out, the last thing NATO members need is their respective athletes exposed in a hostile country like China that is so clearly allied with Russia. But what better way to create friction in that uneasy alliance than to blame Russia for torpedoing China’s Olympics.
And let’s face it, Western nations should have boycotted these Olympics in the first place based on China’s genocide against the Uighurs. So this could be the proverbial killing two birds with one stone …
Related commentaries:
Ukraine… #boycott re Peng Shaui…