The lethal aid we gave to Ukraine was limited with the armament a few hundred miles from the actual tanks.
I haven't heard any of this. However, it's an improvement over the previous policy. It's a movement away from Russia's preference. Armament can be moved.
The sanctions are a smoke screen AFTER the Ukraine dumpster fire.
That's really weak. We've imposed sanctions multiple times since Trump took office - long before the Ukraine issue came up.
NATO has been attacked by this Administration, in sync with Russia.
Attacked verbally for freeloading, which objectively many of the nations in NATO are. I wouldn't have done it like he did it, and I disapprove of some of his comments. However, we've supported NATO by bolstering it militarily and financially. What we actually did was very much not in sync with Russia.
Brexit has been hailed, in sync with Russia.
You can be pro-Brexit without being pro-Russia. People support Brexit because they're tired of the EU's ********, not because they like Russia.
Russia is against the EU. Trump is as well.
You don't understand why people don't like the EU. It's got nothing to do with Russia. And is he really that strongly against the EU? Because there's a lot he could do to the EU that would actually be favorable to Russia. He hasn't done any of it.
We inexplicably turned on a dime and sold out the Kurds, giving away Syria to the point that we were bombing our own bases and then the Russians moved into them.
I've ripped him in Syria many times. It was bad policy. (Of course, his predecessor's policy was also bad - and Russia-friendly.)
Other than Syria, this is petty, agenda-driven ****. It's "he said bad stuff" or "he didn't criticize X fast enough." And it ignores actions. It also disregards context. Should we be tougher on Russia than we are? Personally, I think we should be. However, the idea that we're being relatively soft on them is nonsense.
What would a "soft" policy actually look like? (Or to put it another way, what did I fear that Trump would do?) A soft policy would lift sanctions and might even withdraw from NATO. At a minimum, it would diminish the US strength in Europe and weaken the US commitment to NATO. Specifically, it would reduce our troop levels, weaken our commitment to missile defense, and close US military assets in Europe. It would undermine our relationship with countries likely to be in Putin targets (meaning Eastern Europe). Well, that actually sounds a bit like Obama's policy.
Barry, there is a phony narrative that the political media puts out which is that the Democrats are and have been big Russia hawks. In rhetoric (since 2016), that might be true, but in practice, it is nonsense. That's why you all don't have any credibility when you attack Trump on the issue. When Putin invaded Crimea, we were in the midst of a massive drawdown in Europe. That was the Obama policy. It was very real. I saw it with my own eyes. We were abandoning large Army facilities in places like Schweinfurt, Heidelberg, and Mannheim (in Germany) that had been backbones of the US deterrent to Russian aggression for 60 years. We didn't have a single tank in Europe -
literally not one. Yes, we had a nuclear deterrent, but nobody expected us to engage a nuclear war over Crimea, so effectively, we had no deterrent to Russia. They could do whatever they wanted to, and sure enough, they did.
In addition, our response was pathetic. Yeah, we talked some **** and imposed sanctions, but we left the Ukraine defenseless. We slowly reversed the drawdown, but it was pretty tame. We deployed some troops to Poland on a rotational basis, but we didn't increase our permanent presence in Europe and didn't really rebuild our deterrent. Furthermore, we were stand-offish with the Eastern Europeans, whom Obama viewed as retrograde (because they're socially conservative).
In the last few years, we have changed the game. We're increasing troop levels in Europe for the first time in a long time. We haven't reopened everything that closed (and shouldn't), but that installation in Mannheim? It's visible from the Autobahn (A6), and I drove past it today. It is loaded with armored personnel vehicles, tanks, and other equipment. We're deploying large numbers of troops to places like Poland and Bulgaria, and plans are being laid to permanently station troops in Poland. I don't need CNN to tell me what's happening and what to think. They can **** off. I'm here, and I am seeing this with my own eyes. Are you enough of a partisan dumbass to think that Putin likes this? He doesn't. We're not whoring for Vladimir Putin. Wake the hell up. He would happily trade Trump for Hillary Clinton.
