The relevance of this forum in the new era of World War 2.5

[Douglas Caddy]

The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial today is "The President We Have." Its closing paragraph states, "The world is entering the most dangerous period since the Soviet Union collapsed, and perhaps since the 1930s. The Covid crisis obscured the trend, but the dangers have become obvious as adversaries have reacted to what they perceive to be the American decline, division and weakness at the root of the Afghanistan debacle. Mr. Biden needs to back up his Warsaw words with a defense buildup and far more diplomatic realism to confront the great risks ahead."

The world is vastly different than it was a month ago.  Everyone must adjust.

Timely questions for members of the JFK Assassination and Watergate topics in the Education Forum are how do we make these momentous historical events of the 1960s and 1970s  relevant to public opinion in the new era when the world is focused on the survival of democracy? Is there knowledge gleaned from these past crucial events that will help policy makers reach the right decisions in dealing with new challenges?

Your thoughts please.

 

[Douglas Caddy]

knowledge: The principal reason Nixon and Kissinger in early 1972 opened the door to relations with Red China was to drive a wedge between China and Russia. But Watergate occurred immediately thereafter and their strategy was derailed. How feasible today is driving a wedge between China and Russia now that China knows that the Russian Army is mediocre? 

[Paul Brancato]

Thanks for starting this thread. 
I think it’s unlikely the US can drive a wedge between Russia and China. I’m weary of the geopolitical chess game, so even though I could probably think strategically along those lines, I’d prefer to search for ways to achieve Peace, especially now. I don’t think we are deserving of moral high ground. The NYT, yesterday, published an article saying that until Putin invaded Ukraine we had been living in relative peace for several decades. Is the Times rewriting history in real time? 

[David Andrews]

As long as the chief financial organ in the US calls for a defense buildup, no lesson is learned.  A defense buildup call brought on our last "New Pearl Harbor," and it will bring on our next.  Cavete!

Edited March 28, 2022 by David Andrews

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Thanks for starting this thread. 
I think it’s unlikely the US can drive a wedge between Russia and China. I’m weary of the geopolitical chess game, so even though I could probably think strategically along those lines, I’d prefer to search for ways to achieve Peace, especially now. I don’t think we are deserving of moral high ground. The NYT, yesterday, published an article saying that until Putin invaded Ukraine we had been living in relative peace for several decades. Is the Times rewriting history in real time? 

Paul--

So much of what you say is true. And even more, Russia has 1000 times the history and legitimate interests in Ukraine than does the US. 

That said, Putin put an armored column into Ukraine and then turned Mariupol into rubble. Do you make peace with a bayonet at your throat? 

On China, I happen to live in SE Asia. So far, China has bullied only somewhat in this region. Swiping islands from the Philippines and Vietnam, etc. Militarizing some atolls. 

But the trend lines are ugly, most of all for China residents. Beijing has become increasingly oppressive since the 1989 Tiananmen Square murders, even as massively financed by Western multinationals. America's leadership class --the Apples, the BlackRocks, the Goldman Sachs, the GMs, Tesla, WalMart, Disney, Silicon Valley and Wall Street re deep into bed with the CCP (this is also the "Donk Wing" of multinationals). 

If you wish, I could outline for you how the CCP gave Joe Biden $750,000 laundered through the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement (another academic-think tank place, started up by Biden). 

Is peace a true peace if it involves a radical loss of liberties? China is peaceful. 

Stray thought: In the US, there is actually a good case for selfish "isolationism." In the US, you could say, "to hell with the world" and curtail global military outlays and interventionism, and save taxpayers kaboodles of money. No one is going to invade the US, and by becoming self-reliant economically, you would have a better domestic job market. 

The globalists do not want that. 

So, in the end, I have a welter of confusing thoughts. 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

 

I posted this elsewhere in the forum but realize now that this is the more appropriate place for it.

 

Once the smoke clears, what's next for Ukraine and Russia? | TheHill

 

[W. Niederhut]

9 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial today is "The President We Have." Its closing paragraph states, "The world is entering the most dangerous period since the Soviet Union collapsed, and perhaps since the 1930s. The Covid crisis obscured the trend, but the dangers have become obvious as adversaries have reacted to what they perceive to be the American decline, division and weakness at the root of the Afghanistan debacle. Mr. Biden needs to back up his Warsaw words with a defense buildup and far more diplomatic realism to confront the great risks ahead."

Rupert Murdoch has been working overtime lately to impugn Biden's reputation, and, IMO, this Murdoch/WSJ editorial needs to be interpreted in that context.

The incessantly repeated Murdoch propaganda meme-- which Sean Hannity openly acknowledged on Fox last week -- is that Biden is "weak," demented, and inept, etc.  Yet, the reality is that Biden has dramatically united NATO, after four years of Trump trying to de-fund and destroy it.

(We have heard Murdoch's "Biden is weak" meme repeated here on the forum several times daily by Benjamin Cole ever since Putin invaded Ukraine.)

As for the current geopolitical crisis, it's mainly about Putin. 

Putin successfully defeated the Neocon CIA/NATO/Saudi/Mossad proxy war against the Syrian government-- with a major assist from Donald Trump-- and most likely pressured Trump to surrender to the Taliban at Doha in 2020.

Let's recall that Trump also withdrew all but 2,500 U.S. troops from Afghanistan before Biden's inauguration in January of 2021, while refusing to share military intel with Biden's transition team.

So, beyond Ukraine, the major impending geopolitical crisis, IMO, is the partial collapse of U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, and the grim predicament of the U.S./Saudi/UAE/Israeli Axis vs. the Moscow-Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus Axis-- an unintended consequence of the disastrous Bush-Cheney-Neocon "War on Terror." 

Baghdad is now under the control of the Iranian allied Shiites who comprise two-thirds of Iraq's population.  And the Saudi's are entangled in a brutal war with the Houthi Shiites in Yemen.

What happens to Israel and U.S. hegemony if the corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (UAE, Qatar) fall?  .

Meanwhile, what of relevance can we learn from JFK and the history of the past sixty years?

1)  One of our major geopolitical blunders after 11/22/63 is that we alienated the entire Arab world by our unbalanced support for Israel and step-wise abandonment of a viable two-state solution for the Palestinian people-- something which American statesmen like Forrestal and JFK would not have done.

2)  Then the Neocon "War on Terror" worsened the situation by inadvertently creating the Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah Axis.  The Wolfowitz plan failed miserably.

On the positive side, NATO is coming together well in response to Putin's disastrous invasion of Ukraine.  Putin shot himself in the foot.

It's critical to avoid escalating the Ukrainian War into a potential nuclear war between Russia and the U.S.

Ergo, Rupert Murdoch is wrong.  Biden is playing a difficult hand well.

 

Edited March 29, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Steve Thomas]

19 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Timely questions for members of the JFK Assassination and Watergate topics in the Education Forum are how do we make these momentous historical events of the 1960s and 1970s  relevant to public opinion in the new era when the world is focused on the survival of democracy? Is there knowledge gleaned from these past crucial events that will help policy makers reach the right decisions in dealing with new challenges?

Your thoughts please.

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

Steve Thomas

[Paul Brancato]

Great words, great speech, made even more famous by Aaron Copland. It always moves me. But the cynic in me questions whether we really have a government or by and for the people, and even whether we ever did. 

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

 But the cynic in me questions whether we really have a government or by and for the people, and even whether we ever did. 

Paul,

Peter Millett, Ambassador to Libya, Tripoli:

https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/petermillett/2014/03/05/the-worst-form-of-government/

“Winston Churchill once said that: “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.””

Steve Thomas

[Douglas Caddy]

Reading this was a wakeup call for me. Putin is close to achieving his strategic goal. If he succeeds, it truly will be a new era -- for the worse.

 

What if Putin Didn’t Miscalculate? – DNyuz

 

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Putin's Health: Cancer Fears and Baths in Deer Antler Blood, Says Report (businessinsider.com)