- Joined
- May 29, 2021
I knew Hillary was basically guaranteeing a war with Russia, but how do you explain in 2012 when Mitt Romney said Russia was the biggest threat to the US, and Obama, the media, and the entirety of the left constantly mocked him about it. I suppose it was too early to show their hand, and any chance to shit on Romney was exploited. Then again, Obama had his hot mic moment with Putin around that time where he told Pootie to be patient and that he could be more flexible with Russia once the election was over. I seriously doubt Obama and Hillary are on opposite ends of that issue.
US policy in 2012 was to pressure the Ukrainian government into signing an association agreement with the EU. The pressure was brought in a number of different ways including heavy involvement in Ukrainian domestic politics. The Ukrainian government was playing the US and Russia off against each other to get more money and concessions.
Ukraine eventually turned down the US deal because it was worse than the Russian deal financially and demanded that Ukraine make political concessions to strengthen the opposition parties to the government.
When Ukraine turned down the EU association agreement, US policy shifted to encouraging an uprising and violent overthrow of the government in Ukraine through their surrogates.
At every step, they expected the Russians to back down. That the Russians would eventually accept Ukraine being in the EU and being in NATO. That the Russians would accept the violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government. Obama just wanted "peace" Surely the Russians could not get in the way of any of this. The Obama policy toward Russia was as hostile as the Clinton policy. But the Obama policy assumed that the Russians could be convinced to give the US what it wanted in Ukraine through peaceful means.
What Romney did was considered wrong because what he said should only have been said in private. US policy since the 1990s has been to bring Ukraine and Georgia into the EU and NATO at any price. Then to use Ukraine and Georgia as a weapons against Russia. They would gain what they wanted either through cooperation with Russia or hostility with Russia.
Once the government of Ukraine had been overthrown, they moved to the next step in their plans. They could at that point afford to be completely hostile to Russia on the subject of Ukraine. That was the heart of Clinton's public attitude in 2016. But the plan was always to arm Ukraine, get it into NATO and then use it as a weapon against Russia.
The policy and its long-term goals never change. Only the public face and the style of public arguments made by the US ruling class changes.