EXPIRED DefendingHillary’sPutinAttack&Bill’sUkraineGuarantee

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Click here to view possible topics for future meetings. Participants of each monthly meeting vote for the topic of the next monthly meeting.

If you would like to suggest a topic, it is requested as a courtesy that your suggestion be posted here at least 24 hours in advance so that others will have time to give it proper consideration.

EXPIRATION. We have always had a rule that a Possible Topic remains active so long as it receives at least one vote every six meetings. However, if a possible-topic proposal contains a wealth of information that is worth preserving but has not received a vote for six consecutive meetings, it is retained but listed as “Expired."

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SHORT-FUSE NOTICE

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EXPLANATION

Occasionally, a Proposed Topic for Future Meetings has a SHORT-TIME FUSE because a governmental unit is soliciting PUBLIC COMMENTS for a limited time period with a SPECIFIED DEADLINE.

Exhibit A would be the 8/5/2016 Proposed Topic entitled “Clone Rights -- Involuntary Soldiers, Sex Slaves, Human Lab Rats, Etc.”

We had already focused on this topic for our 4/9/2008 meeting more than 8 years ago when the PBS Newshour interviewed a Yale U. Biology Professor who had already created a “Chimaera” with 25% Human DNA and 75% Chimp DNA (Chimps are the animals that share the most DNA with humans).

The Yale U. Biology Professor stated that he was then (2008) in the process of creating a “Chimaera” with 50% Human DNA and 50% Chimp DNA, and that he planned to create in the near future (2008 et seq.) a “Chimaera” with 75% Human DNA and 25% Chimp DNA.

As our 4/9/2008 meeting materials posted on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org disclose, Gwen Ifill who conducted the interview, was oblivious to the issue of the Nazi’s definition of a Jew based on the percentage of Jewish heritage and the Ante-Bellum American South’s definition of African-American based on the percentage of Sub-Saharan-African heritage.

But, even more appallingly, Gwen Ifill failed to ask the obvious question = What happens if the 50%-50% “Chimaera” then already being created happens to exhibit as DOMINANT TRAITS 100% Human DNA and as RECESSIVE TRAITS 100% Chimp DNA!!! Which, of course, would mean that Yale U. was treating as a lab rat a “Chimaera” that is 100% Human!!!

Unfortunately, the 8/5/2016 Proposed Topic was prompted by a Proposal from the National Institute of Health (NIH) which appeared in The Federal Register of 8/5/2016 and which had a 9/6/2016 deadline for public comments!!!

So our 9/14/2016 meeting, which was the first for which our focus had not already been determined as of 8/5/2016 under our normal rules, was too late.

So the reason for inaugurating this Short-Fuse Notice Section is to provide a Special Heads Up that a Proposed Topic has a Public-Comment Deadline that will occur before the first regular meeting date at which the topic can be discussed -- so that any of our readers who want to comply with the Public-Comment Deadline can contact the Proposer of the Topic in order to confer with anyone else who may be considering comments by the deadline.

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PENDING SHORT-FUSE PROPOSALS

1. Re “Clone Rights -- Involuntary Soldiers, Sex Slaves, Human Lab Rats, Etc.” (proposed 8/5/2016), although the 9/6/2016 public-comment deadline of the National Institute of Health (NIH) has passed, this Topic Proposal is still active. PLEASE NOTE ATTACHED TO THIS PROPOSAL THE 1/29/2017 UPDATE ENTITLED0 “HUMAN-PIG CHIMERAS -- DECENT BEHAVIOR DESPITE OPEN BARN DOOR.”

2. Re “Destroying Great Salt Lake To Grow Low-Profit Hay For China” (proposed 9/27/2016), there is a 10/24/2016 public-comment deadline that will occur before our first possible regular meeting (11/16/2016) at which this Proposed Topic could be considered.
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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

EXPIRED DefendingHillary’sPutinAttack&Bill’sUkraineGuarantee

Post by johnkarls »

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Our regular participants and 150 recipients of our weekly e-mail have probably heard me say more times than they would care to remember that during my 33-year marriage (1967-2000) to the co-author of the nation’s best selling H.S. world history textbook (McGrawHill with National Geographic illustrations now in its 6th edition and counting), my duty (in addition to my own unrelated career) was to read each year 12-15 biographies and historical tomes in order to present interesting facts/vignettes to my wife for possible inclusion in the next edition of her textbook.

And after reading more than 700 biographies and tomes, one probably knows more about world history than the co-author herself.

The reason for saying all this once more is that I have been shocked and appalled by the comments of the media “talking heads” about the Ukraine crisis!!!

They immediately began telling each other that the U.S. and its allies have no military option vis-à-vis Ukraine!!!

By way of background, after the old Soviet Union imploded in 1989, Ukraine was left with 1900 multiple-warhead nuclear missiles that were “state of the art”!!! They were persuaded to surrender them by BILL CLINTON (AS U.S. PRESIDENT), John Major (as U.K. Prime Minister) and Boris Yeltsin (as President of the Russian Federation) who signed on 12/5/1994 the Budapest Memorandum WHICH GUARANTEED the independence and integrity of Ukraine!!!

Even more shamefully in the light of recent events, BARACK OBAMA (AS U.S. PRESIDENT), signed a Joint Declaration with the Russian Federation on 12/4/2009 "confirming their commitment" under the 12/5/1994 Budapest Memorandum to guarantee the independence and integrity of Ukraine!!!

Our “talking heads” turned a blind eye to the guarantee of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

And when on those rare occasions they were forced to confront the guarantee, they in effect said that if Ukraine was stupid enough to accept a guarantee from Bill Clinton in return for giving up their nukes, rather than insisting on U.S. Senate ratification so that the guarantee would have the same effect as any other treaty such as our NATO treaty, then the stupid Ukrainians deserve to be gobbled up by Russia!!! Because there is no place in this world for proverbial “Babes in the Woods”!!!

And when Hillary Clinton recently compared Putin to Hitler, the media “talking heads” immediately savaged her for apparently not knowing that we must kowtow to Putin in order to achieve “peace in our time”!!!

So I propose that we study several questions =

1. Why should the solemn GUARANTEE of a U.S. President using “his pen and his cell phone” be worth any less than a NATO guarantee???

2. The flip side of which is whether our NATO guarantee is worth anything more than our guarantee to Ukraine!!!

3. Isn’t Hillary Clinton right when she stated almost immediately that Putin is a modern-day Hitler??? And that if he isn’t stopped dead in his tracks, then there will be proved correct once more the old proverb that “talking heads who ignore history are doomed to repeat it”!!!

4. And isn’t it obvious that just like Hitler would have committed suicide if allied armies had marched immediately after his first aggressive step (occupying the Rheinland), Putin would have backed down in Crimea if American troops (with or without accompaniment from European NATO troops) had marched into Crimea at the request of the Ukraine Government (an invitation that presumably would have been forthcoming after the Russian invasion) -- accompanied by an open-letter “call to arms” addressed to Putin to honor the 1994 Joint Russian-American-British Guarantee to Ukraine (and re-confirmed by Russia and the U.S. in 2009 when Putin himself was in power) by helping to evict the invading troops who, tellingly, wore no identifying insignia on their uniforms and, like common criminals, wore face masks??? After all, Putin's only possible reason for having his troops wear face masks and no identifying insignia was deniability!!! Wouldn't it have been delicious to witness, if Putin did join America in honoring the guarantee to Ukraine, Russian troops with proper insignia participating with American troops to usher out of Ukraine their colleagues who had taken off their insignia before invading???

5. And what does it do to the world’s non-proliferation policy to demonstrate to any country stupid enough to give up their nuclear weapons that we will “cut them off at the knees” when they run into trouble because they gave up their nukes??? After all, it was bad enough that we overthrew Libya’s Qadaffi because he was stupid enough to give up his nuclear weapons program 10 years ago and it was bad enough that we treat North Korea with kid gloves because they were NOT stupid enough to give up their nuclear weapons program!!!

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As a history buff, my all-time favorite idol (notwithstanding a number of “blind spots” such as his all-out support for Britain maintaining its empire, etc.) was Winston Churchill because of his early opposition to Hitler and his willingness to stand alone in the world against Hitler when the rest of Europe had been over-run or were busy kowtowing to him (Hitler’s infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union).

[Indeed, I have probably read everything ever written by Winnie or about him.]

Accordingly, to appreciate how prescient Hillary Clinton is, I propose we read the first volume of Churchill’s 6-volume history entitled “The Second World War” of which the sub-title of the first volume = “The Gathering Storm.” [$15.83 + shipping or $9.99 Kindle from Amazon.com – 667 pages sans appendices & index]

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All Churchill Fans know that he was more prolific as an author than virtually all of history's renowned authors -- having written extensively, for example: (1) about all of his military campaigns into the semi-autonomous mountainous tribal areas of what is now Pakistan while serving in colonial India, into Sudan with Lord Kitchener to fight The Mahdi, and in the Second Boer War in South Africa; (2) his widely-admired 4-volume History of the English Speaking Peoples; and (3) his aforementioned 6-volume "The Second World War."

And that in 1953 Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature for the 6-volume "The Second World War"!!!

And all this was before "ghost writers" were invented!!!

But then, Churchill had to work for a living as, simultaneously, a politician, newspaper columnist, author and quite-accomplished artist (most of whose works are priceless and occupy a sizable building at Chartwell, his beloved country retreat) -- because he was always at least "one heart beat away" from being the Duke of Marlborough (a title and fortune he never inherited).

[Upon the death on 1/24/1895 of Sir Winston’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill who was the third son of the 7th Duke, Sir Winston at age 20 was literally “one heart beat away” from being the 10th Duke if anything had happened to the then-current 9th Duke, Sir Winston’s cousin and close friend “Sunny” -- Sunny’s first son, who did become the 10th Duke, was not born until 9/18/1897 which meant that Sir Winson, after 32 months of being “one heart beat away” was thereafter at least “two heart beats away.”]

[For skeptics who are aware that many English nobility are/were notoriously penniless during the last century and married American heiresses, the famous university town of Oxford was where the servants lived who worked at Blenheim Palace, the huge and magnificent home of the Dukes of Marlborough, and the London Times has ranked the current Duke of Marlborough among the top 250 of the wealthiest people in the U.K.]

Pat
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Kevin Spacey As Churchill Opposing Hitler & Chamberlain

Post by Pat »

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It is ironic that just when the U.S. media’s “talking heads” have been savaging Hillary Clinton for comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, word has leaked out that Kevin Spacey is set to play Winston Churchill in “Captain of the Gate” about Winnie opposing Adolf Hitler & Neville Chamberlain during Winnie’s rise to power on the Eve of World War II.

It would appear that the obvious “first choice” to play Winston Churchill should have been Hillary Clinton. But perhaps it is asking too much of movie audiences to imagine Hillary as Winnie who was bald and chubby.

The third paragraph of the following article from The London Guardian makes what might be interpreted as a snide remark = “The double Oscar winner is experiencing something of a career renaissance …..”

Actually, Kevin Spacey has been the Artistic Director since 2003 of the world’s most famous theater = London’s Old Vic where so many famous English actors (including numerous Oscar winners) got their start.

Accordingly, true West End/Broadway devotees will agree that Kevin’s agreeing to do a movie is an obvious (and thankfully only temporary) “step down” from his preeminent WE/B pinnacle!!!

Rather than the “renaissance” that the Philistine at the London Guardian seems to think!!!


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The London Guardian – 3/26/2014

Kevin Spacey to play Winston Churchill in biopic --
House of Cards star to take role of wartime leader in Captain of the Gate, focusing on Churchill's rise to power in 1940
By Ben Child

Kevin Spacey looks set to play Winston Churchill in a new biopic of the British wartime leader, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Captain of the Gate will centre on Churchill's rise to power in the second world war, when he led his country against Hitler's regime. The screenplay is by Ben Kaplan, who has written about US president Ronald Reagan for a History Channel film and worked on documentaries about Vietnam and the second world war.

Spacey is reportedly attached to the project, which is seeking a director. The double Oscar winner is experiencing something of a career renaissance, with Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for his role as a less well-respected politician: Francis Underwood in the Netflix drama House of Cards.

Churchill was named the greatest Briton of all time in a 2002 poll for the BBC. He took the lead in warning about Nazi Germany and led a national unity government against Hitler between 1940 and 1945 following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain. Churchill lost the postwar election to a resurgent Labour party, but was again prime minister between 1951 and 1955 for the Conservatives. He is the only figure in history to have served as first lord of the Admiralty in two world wars and the only prime minister to have won the Nobel prize for literature.

He has most recently been played on screen by Timothy Spall (in The King's Speech), Andy Nyman (in Peaky Blinders) and Brendan Gleeson (in Into the Storm).

Captain of the Gate is being put together at production company Sierra/Affinity and looks likely to be financed by France's StudioCanal.

solutions
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John Karls' Last Paragraph Re The Wealth of the Marlboroughs

Post by solutions »

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The last paragraph of John Karls' proposal remarked about the wealth of the Dukes of Marlborough.

And dismissed as being inapplicable to the Dukes of Marlborough reports of penniless English nobility marrying American heiresses in order to remain solvent -- of which the marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the 9th Duke of Marlborough is often cited as Exhibit A.

I was amused to read the Wikipedia article entitled "Blenheim Palace" to see that it included two sections that contained numerous allegations about the wealth (or lack thereof) of the Dukes of Marlborough.

They were entitled "Failing Fortunes" and "9th Duke of Marlborough" who, per the Wikipedia article, “nheriting the near-bankrupt dukedom in 1892 … n 1896 he coldly and without love married the American railroad heiress (sic)* Consuelo Vanderbilt.”

The Wikipedia article is laughable for at least three reasons.

First, although those two sections contain 1,363 words (more than 3 Microsoft Word pages), they do not have a single footnote despite zillions of "citation needed" exhortations from the Wikipedia editors.

[Wikipedia articles are only as good as their footnotes and the quality of the sources cited.]

Second, the unsupported Wikipedia gossip claims that William Vanderbilt paid the 9th Duke of Marlborough "$2.5 million (worth about $62 million in 2007)" to marry his daughter. But in listing the Dukes of Marlborough among the 250 wealthiest people in the U.K., the London Times estimated the wealth of the 11th Duke in 2004 at £185 million -- or $339 million. And since it has been almost a century since any European palace, chateau, country house, etc., could be sold for anything more than a proverbial “song” (vs. abandoned because of the upkeep expenses), the $339 million must have represented solely income-producing assets that did NOT include Blenheim Palace.

Accordingly, it would appear that the wealth that William Vanderbilt's daughter brought to the Dukedom was only a fraction of its wealth -- and that John was correct that the 9th Duke of Marlborough was not "penniless" and did not need to marry a wealthy American in order to avoid "insolvency."

Third and most tellingly though seemingly unimportant, anyone who has ever taken a tour of Blenheim Palace is asked by the tour guide whether they have ever toured the Palace of Versailles.

Most tour groups have a majority that respond affirmatively.

Whereupon the tour guide inquires what they thought of the furniture in the Palace of Versailles.

Typically, those who responded affirmatively simply say they can't remember.

Whereupon the tour guide informs them there was NO FURNITURE at the Palace of Versailles.

The reason???

Revolutions are difficult to finance and the French Revolution was no exception.

So as the revolution wore on and there would otherwise have been nothing for its participants to eat (much less to burn in order to keep warm during the winters), they sold everything they could lay their hands on!!!

All of the furniture of the Palace of Versailles was sold by the revolutionaries to the Duke of Marlborough.

And all of it remains in Blenheim Palace to this day -- some 225 years later and some 100 years after the 9th Duke “nheriting the near-bankrupt dukedom in 1892 … n 1896 he coldly and without love married the American railroad heiress (sic)* Consuelo Vanderbilt.”

So if the wild accusations in the Wikipedia article* were true, one might wonder why some of the most readily saleable assets at Blenheim Palace were not sold.

Enough already of trivia. [Though perhaps John's reputation for accuracy is not really so trivial.]

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* RL footnote =

The 9th Duke (Winnie’s close friend and first cousin vis-à-vis whom Sir Winston was only “one heart beat away” from being the 10th Duke for 32 months) was actually married to Consuelo Vanderbilt for a quarter century until 1921 (though it appears they may have separated in 1906). They had two sons, the older of whom became the 10th Duke.

Consuelo Vanderbilt does not appear to have been an “American railroad heiress” though her great-grandfather was Cornelius Vanderbilt, the legendary railroad magnate who built, inter alia, NYC's original Grand Central Terminal (NB: Grand Central, as the huge title chiseled over its 42nd Street entrance proudly announces, is a Terminal and NOT a Station).

Old Cornelius had four sons (among 13 children), one of whom (Consuelo’s grandfather, William Henry Vanderbilt who also ran the railroad empire and inherited a large percentage of it) had eight (count them eight) children among whom was William Kissam Vanderbilt I, Consuelo’s father.

William Kissam Vanderbilt I, in turn, had three children = one daughter (Consuelo) and two sons (William Kissam Vanderbilt II and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt).

There appears to be no evidence that Consuelo ever received anything from the Vanderbilt family other than the customary “dowry” that her father paid to the 9th Duke of Marlborough when she married him. In other words, there appears to be no evidence that she “inherited” anything and that the “heiress” label was typical tabloid hype.

solutions
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OpEd by Sen Armed Services Com Chair Carl Levin

Post by solutions »

The Washington Post – 10/20/2014

Give Ukraine The Weapons It Needs For Self-Defense
By Senators Carl Levin and James Inhofe

[Reading Liberally Editorial Note = Carl Levin is Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and James Inhofe is its ranking Republican member.]

When Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke to a joint session of Congress last month, he thanked the United States for its assistance in confronting Russian aggression, and indeed, our country, along with our NATO allies, has done much. But Poroshenko asked us for more. “Blankets, night-vision goggles are also important,” he said, “but one cannot win the war with blankets.”

We believe now is the time to add defensive military aid, including weapons, to our support of Ukraine.

This is a cause worth supporting. The Ukrainian people face a heavily armed insurgent force — equipped , trained and supported by Russia — and, more recently, Russia’s own military forces, seeking to establish by force the political and economic dominance Vladimir Putin desires. This aggression undermines peace and stability not just for Ukraine but also in all of Europe, and it sets the wrong precedent for international relations. That is a threat to U.S. interests. As we saw with the tragic downing of a Malaysian jetliner reportedly by Russian-supported forces, the impact of Putin’s reckless aggression is global.

It’s important to remember what sparked Russia’s intervention: the peaceful, democratic protests of the Ukrainian people that unseated a corrupt, Putin-friendly regime. Supporting Ukraine’s desire for peace, freedom, territorial integrity and democracy supports values Americans hold dear.

We and our NATO partners have taken significant steps to support Ukraine by providing more than $100 million in military assistance (including an additional $46 million of assistance announced during Poroshenko’s visit), deployments to Eastern Europe and increased military cooperation. And most important, we and our European partners have imposed biting economic sanctions that have damaged the Russian economy, plunging it toward recession and signaling to Putin that he cannot benefit from European economic strength on one hand while endangering it on the other.

But this aid so far has not included the weapons the Ukrainian military needs to defend itself. Ukrainian forces are suffering significant casualties from artillery fire, a result of the heavy weapons provided, and probably operated, by Russia on behalf of the rebels. At the same time, Poroshenko and the Ukrainian military have shown great restraint in resisting Russian provocations, declining to fire back at artillery coming from Russian territory and making it clear their only objective is to defend their own territory.

Ukrainian forces have demonstrated the will to defend their nation against superior rebel and Russian forces; what they lack is not will but means. Ukraine has taken significant risk in pushing back against the aggression of its much larger neighbor and done so with no expectation that U.S. or NATO forces will come to their aid. Ukrainians also understand that receiving additional weapons to defend themselves involves risk. They are not asking us to fight their battles; they are asking merely for the capability to fight for themselves for the same principles America values.

We believe the United States should begin providing defensive weapons that would help Ukraine defend its territory. Such weapons could include anti-tank weapons to defend against Russian-provided armored personnel carriers, ammunition, vehicles and secure communications equipment. This would present no threat to Russia unless its forces launch further aggression against Ukraine. In other words, these weapons are lethal but not provocative because they are defensive.

This support would help promote the solution we and the Ukrainians seek: a durable cease-fire leading to a longer-term solution that respects Ukraine’s sovereignty, its future and its freedom to determine its own democratic path, including through parliamentary elections later this month. While there is no purely military solution to what is a political problem, additional U.S. military assistance can help promote a political solution by raising the costs of further aggression by Russia. Raising the costs will give Putin pause to allow political and economic pressure from outside and within Russia to force a political accommodation.

Additional weaponry should be only one part of our strategy, combined with support for Ukraine’s efforts to reform its political and economic institutions and reduce its energy dependence, continued diplomacy and relentless pressure on the Russian economy. But that strategy should include the weapons to help Ukraine’s troops defend their nation.

Read more about this topic in The Washington Post:

The Post’s View: Provide Ukraine with the military aid it needs to deter Russia’s aggression
Jackson Diehl: Eastern Europeans are bowing to Putin’s power
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Time to end the bloody Ukraine conflict
Charles Krauthammer: Ukraine abandoned
Petro Poroshenko: Ukraine needs the U.S. to respond to Russia

solutions
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Washington Post OpEd – The Myth of Russian Humiliation

Post by solutions »

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The Washington Post – 10/20/2014

The Myth of Russian Humiliation
By Anne Applebaum (Pulitzer-Prize Winning Bi-Weekly OpEd Author for the Washington Post on Central and Eastern Europe)

Looking back over the past quarter-century, it isn’t easy to name a Western policy that can truly be described as a success. The impact of Western development aid is debatable. Western interventions in the Middle East have been disastrous.

But one Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations with which it began: the integration of Central Europe and the Baltic States into the European Union and NATO. Thanks to this double project, more than 90 million people have enjoyed relative safety and relative prosperity for more than two decades in a region whose historic instability helped launch two world wars.

These two “expansions,” which were parallel but not identical (some countries are members of one organization but not the other), were transformative because they were not direct leaps, as the word “expansion” implies, but slow negotiations. Before joining NATO, each country had to establish civilian control of its army. Before joining the European Union, each adopted laws on trade, judiciary, human rights. As a result, they became democracies. This was “democracy promotion” working as it never has before or since.

But times change, and the miraculous transformation of a historically unstable region became a humdrum reality. Instead of celebrating this achievement on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is now fashionable to opine that this expansion, and of NATO in particular, was mistaken. This project is incorrectly “remembered” as the result of American “triumphalism” that somehow humiliated Russia by bringing Western institutions into its rickety neighborhood. This thesis is usually based on revisionist history promoted by the current Russian regime — and it is wrong.

For the record: No treaties prohibiting NATO expansion were ever signed with Russia. No promises were broken. Nor did the impetus for NATO expansion come from a “triumphalist” Washington. On the contrary, Poland’s first efforts to apply in 1992 were rebuffed. I well remember the angry reaction of the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw at the time. But Poland and others persisted, precisely because they were already seeing signs of the Russian revanchism to come.

When the slow, cautious expansion eventually took place, constant efforts were made to reassure Russia. No NATO bases were placed in the new member states, and until 2013 no exercises were conducted there. A Russia-NATO agreement in 1997 promised no movement of nuclear installations. A NATO-Russia Council was set up in 2002. In response to Russian objections, Ukraine and Georgia were, in fact, denied NATO membership plans in 2008.

Meanwhile, not only was Russia not “humiliated” during this era, it was given de facto “great power” status, along with the Soviet seat on the U.N. Security Council and Soviet embassies. Russia also received Soviet nuclear weapons, some transferred from Ukraine in 1994 in exchange for Russian recognition of Ukraine’s borders. Presidents Clinton and Bush both treated their Russian counterparts as fellow “great power” leaders and invited them to join the Group of Eight — although Russia, neither a large economy nor a democracy, did not qualify.

During this period, Russia, unlike Central Europe, never sought to transform itself along European lines. Instead, former KGB officers with a clearly expressed allegiance to the Soviet system took over the state in league with organized crime, seeking to prevent the formation of democratic institutions at home and to undermine them abroad. For the past decade, this kleptocratic clique has also sought to re-create an empire, using everything from cyberattacks on Estonia to military invasions of Georgia and now Ukraine, in open violation of that 1994 agreement — exactly as the Central Europeans feared.

Once we remember what actually happened over the past two decades, as opposed to accepting the Russian regime’s version, our own mistakes look different. In 1991, Russia was no longer a great power in either population or economic terms. So why didn’t we recognize reality, reform the United Nations and give a Security Council seat to India, Japan or others? Russia did not transform itself along European lines. Why did we keep pretending that it had? Eventually, our use of the word “democracy” to describe the Russian political system discredited the word in Russia itself.

The crisis in Ukraine, and the prospect of a further crisis in NATO itself, is not the result of our triumphalism but of our failure to react to Russia’s aggressive rhetoric and its military spending. Why didn’t we move NATO bases eastward a decade ago? Our failure to do so has now led to a terrifying plunge of confidence in Central Europe. Countries once eager to contribute to the alliance are now afraid. A string of Russian provocations unnerve the Baltic region: the buzzing of Swedish airspace, the kidnapping of an Estonian security officer.

Our mistake was not to humiliate Russia but to underrate Russia’s revanchist, revisionist, disruptive potential. If the only real Western achievement of the past quarter-century is now under threat, that’s because we have failed to ensure that NATO continues to do in Europe what it was always meant to do: deter. Deterrence is not an aggressive policy; it is a defensive policy. But in order to work, deterrence has to be real. It requires investment, consolidation and support from all of the West, and especially the United States. I’m happy to blame American triumphalism for many things, but in Europe I wish there had been more of it.

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