Donald Trump has eroded American influence in Europe and prevents him from garnering support to end Russian aggression in Ukraine

Trump Is Still Chasing His Yalta. Here’s What He Doesn’t Get.

By Michael Kimmage, a historian of the Cold War, is an expert on U.S.-Russian relations.

In February 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met at the Crimean city of Yalta to lay out the shape of postwar Europe. Yalta is typically used as a metaphor for appeasement or cynical realpolitik, and it is both. But it is also a metaphor for consequential diplomacy. The agreements made presaged a Europe separated into different zones, a state of affairs that lasted until the Central and Eastern European revolutions of 1989.

Donald Trump has been searching for his Yalta in the war in Ukraine since the start of his second term. It’s easy to see why: It could be an appealingly simple, Trumpian transaction, in which the leaders of great powers sit down and determine a course, while minor powers must take what they are given. Like F.D.R., Trump is willing to compromise on behalf of others. F.D.R. did not insist on full autonomy for Poland and the Baltic republics in 1945, and Trump has made it clear that he would accept truncated Ukrainian autonomy.

Though at times Trump’s nonlinear foreign policy has favored Ukraine, when it comes to negotiating an end to the war, Mr. Trump has done almost nothing to empower or include Ukraine and its European partners. His efforts to lay out the shape of postwar Europe are always directed toward President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who, in Trump’s reading of the world, is understood as the leader of a country with the entitlements of a great power. 

After almost two years of this, Trump has succeeded not in resolving the conflict, but rather in making the United States a sideshow to the actual process of peace.

We are in the throes of another such attempt. Trump has called for a change of presidents in Ukraine.🙄❗💢

According to Kyiv, the White House has also curbed Ukraine’s access to Starlink satellite internet and delayed the delivery of Patriot interceptor missiles. U.S. officials deny any disruptions. Simultaneously, Trump has been upgrading relations with Russia, with a deal to purchase Russian diesel and exempting it from new sanctions. Reports of a great-power conference between the United States, Russia and China on the sidelines of a larger summit scheduled for next month conjure a 21st-century Yalta, with China substituted for Britain.

Any such framework for peace in Ukraine is destined for irrelevance. Russia is not basking in the kind of overwhelming victory that gave the Soviet Union its leverage in 1945; it has experienced something much closer to defeat in Ukraine. Mr. Putin is trying to transform an unwon war into diplomatic concessions that the United States has no authority to give — and no ability to deliver.

Eight decades ago, the United States commanded two assets in Europe. One was an immense military presence augmented by the fact that the United States was about to become the world’s sole nuclear power. Having helped to liberate most of Europe from fascism, the United States also enjoyed widespread trust and moral prestige. 

But, Trump has devastated America’s reputation in Europe. He has imposed aggressive tariffs and made territorial threats to Greenland and plans to significantly decrease the U.S. military presence. In Europe, the United States is a fading power, not an ascendant one.

Then there is America’s role in the war itself. Trump started withholding U.S. military aid to Ukraine almost as soon as he returned to office. He has cut financial support to Ukraine to almost zero and brokered a deal with European countries to purchase matériel for Ukraine from the United States. He has weakened NATO’s Article 5 commitment. He has diminished Europe’s general capacity to deter Russia and, by adding friction to the trans-Atlantic relationship, has made it harder for Ukraine to defend itself.

The subsequent changes in Europe have been gradual, but dramatic. On one level, the transition is to Mr. Trump’s liking. Germany has led the way in expanding European defense budgets, and with its wealth and technological sophistication Europe is on its way to becoming a defense-industrial powerhouse. But this, in turn, is making Europe less deferential to Washington. Europe and Ukraine have an abundance of agency and no desire to be chess pieces on a board. Mr. Trump has done so much to make this war Europe’s war. Now that it is, the most important question is whether Europe — deeply invested in the precedents that the war will set in Ukraine and elsewhere — can maintain a united front. The United States can be a partner, a nullity or an obstacle, but it cannot undo the evolution that it has provoked.

If it chooses to, the United States could further degrade its relations with Europe and Ukraine. It could terminate all support for Ukraine. It could end targeting and intelligence sharing. Mr. Trump might decide to do this after the midterm elections, when he no longer has to face the American electorate, perhaps out of a personal dislike for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or the potential profit in normalizing relations with Russia. But this would probably not be the cause of Ukraine’s defeat.

Trump can hurt Ukraine, and to a degree he can isolate it diplomatically. He alone cannot decide its future.

Michael Kimmage is the director of the Kennan Institute, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author, most recently, of “Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability.”.

Donald Trump appointed incompetent Pete Hegseth who puts American military at risk for serious short-term and long-term harm

 Pete Hegseth Is a Wrecking Ball

New York Times echo opinion by David French

It is difficult to fathom the damage Donald Trump is doing to America’s national security. He is making our nation more vulnerable than it has been at any time since the cloudiest days of the Cold War.

Trump administration scandals come with such speed and frequency that it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. 

One minute you’re reading about potential war crimes in the Caribbean. The next moment there’s a news alert about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s ongoing purge of generals. Then you click over and read a story about depleted stocks of some of America’s most important munitions.

That’s a fraction of the havoc the administration has wrought. In a strange way, the very frequency of the scandals works to the administration’s advantage. Each new story distracts us from the last one, and we don’t have a minute to pause, take a deep breath and look at the whole picture.

Let’s take that deep breath now.

Before I do, I want to be careful not to be too alarmist. Our military is still highly capable, and we have watched it successfully execute some extraordinarily difficult missions during Trump’s second term. The capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and the rescue of two downed American airmen from the heart of Iran were remarkable feats of skill and courage.

There are also signs that the Navy has been slowly, painstakingly making progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz — traffic through the strait is well below prewar averages, but some ships are getting through.

Just as the Trump administration grossly miscalculated when it launched its war on Iran, the Iranian regime may have miscalculated when it refused to cease hostilities after winning what would have been a decisive victory through the memorandum of understanding it negotiated with the United States.

It’s comforting — I guess — to know that Hegseth can’t undo the effects of a generations-long commitment to excellence in just 20 months.

That’s the end of the good news. From the top down, Trump is replacing the highly imperfect meritocracy of American public service with an idiocracy, and his corrupt idiocrats are creating profound short-, medium- and long-term harms to American national security.

At the same time, to maintain the stalemate against Iran, the United States is drawing resources from other, more dangerous theaters of potential conflict. There are now no active carrier battle groups in the Pacific region, for example, exactly when China has ramped up its military activities around Taiwan.

The short-term damage is serious enough. Even just to achieve what is at best a stalemate in the Persian Gulf, the administration has created a critical shortage in interceptors that can shoot down missiles and drones and in other precision munitions, including some of our most advanced offensive weapons.

The lack of interceptors is escalating the crisis in Ukraine. Russia is able to pound Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with ballistic missiles virtually at will, creating a critical vulnerability for the Ukrainian war effort. Last week, for example, Kyiv endured the longest sustained bombing campaign on the Ukrainian capital since the opening days of the war.

The Economist also reported that Putin is planning to throw hundreds of thousands of additional troops into the fight, and he’s provoking NATO with a series of incursions so severe (including, according to the German government, an attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany) that it prompted John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, to visit Russia to reportedly warn Putin against any further aggression.

As long as Iran — a longstanding ally of Russia that’s closely linked to its neighbor through the Caspian Sea — remains in the fight, it can continue to deplete our interceptors to the point where it might take years to bring our stocks back to acceptable levels, even if we ramp up production at immense cost.

All of this is taking place against the backdrop of terrible self-imposed wounds to America’s alliances. There are obvious immediate risks, for example, to withdrawing troops from allied nations or shortening military exercises with South Korea, but the damage done by engaging in trade wars with allies and threatening aggression against Greenland (remember that❓) can’t be repaired by just one administration.

Our allies learned an important lesson from Trump’s second election. It’s not just that Trump is mercurial and unreliable, it’s that the American electorate is mercurial and unreliable.

More than 77 million Americans compared Trump’s first term with Joe Biden’s only term and said, “More Trump, please.”

Even if the next Democratic president tries to reconcile with our allies, every allied government will be asking itself, “How long will this last❓” Every prudent allied government will hedge its geopolitical bets, and that can harm the United States in incalculable ways.

Our allies fear not just that they’ve lost Trump, but even worse, they fear that they’ve lost a substantial portion of the American people.

We’ve already seen the consequences of American faithlessness. The Trump administration has pitched a fit demanding allied aid in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, only to be greeted with stony silence. Why should our allies expend blood and treasure standing with an American government that didn’t even have the decency to consult them before launching its costly, poorly planned Middle Eastern adventure❓

Why should they expend blood and treasure standing with America when America is also threatening the independence and sovereignty of NATO member states❓ They are getting enough of that from Putin.

The end result might be a period of extended Western vulnerability as Europe bears the considerable costs (and takes several years to increase its defense capabilities) to deter Russia even while it can’t count on the United States to fulfill its treaty obligations.

The long-term threat is to the character and competence of the armed forces. They are becoming politicized, and the politicization of a military can both destroy its combat effectiveness and turn it into an instrument of domestic oppression.

If you are under the delusion that Hegseth’s purges are about competence more than loyalty — a welcome corrective to the excesses of D.E.I. programs — well then, as we say in the South, bless your heart.

The sycophancy that pervades Trump’s second term is creating perverse incentives. I was struck by a recent piece in The Dispatch (where I used to write and still contribute to podcasts) by Mike Nelson, a former special forces officer who is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Project.

Nelson focused on Chris LaNeve, a lieutenant general and the commander of the 8th Army in Korea. LaNeve video-conferenced in to Trump’s inaugural ball to praise Trump, and Trump praised him right back. “Is this man central casting or what❓,” Trump said, “If I’m doing a movie, I’d pick him to play my lead.”

Trump did exactly that. “In February 2025,” as Nelson writes, “Hegseth fired Air Force Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short as his senior military adviser and named LaNeve as her replacement.” Months later, Hegseth fired Gen. James Mingus, the Army’s vice chief of staff. And who did the White House name to replace him? You guessed it — General LaNeve.

Army Chief of Staff asked to 'retire immediately' by Donald Trump’s defence sec Pete Hegseth, reported in The Mirror

That’s not the end of LaNeve’s meteoric rise. Again, here’s Nelson, “Six months after that, Hegseth fired the occupant of the Army’s top job, General Randy George,😡💢” who was serving as chief of staff, “and — to quote Gomer Pyle — surprise, surprise, surprise, LaNeve has been serving as the acting chief of staff since and is Hegseth’s pick to permanently fill the job, although he seems to face some pushback from G.O.P. senators.”

Maybe General LaNeve is genuinely gifted enough to merit those promotions — I can’t say — but the chain of events has set a terrible example for future commanders.

Trump’s critics aren’t the only ones alarmed, I’d refer you to the recent resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. As Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan and Michael Scherer reported for The Atlantic, in a recent White House meeting, “Army Secretary Dan Driscoll brought his concerns about the future of the Army under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directly to President Trump.”

Driscoll was reportedly worried that Hegseth’s purges were hampering the ability of the Army to transform itself. And this is just as the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are demonstrating that the world is in the midst of another revolution in military affairs, and we are not prepared.

“Hegseth’s purge of the military has been so dramatic,” they wrote, “that with Driscoll gone, the military’s largest service is left without a top civilian leader, a Senate-confirmed top general, a confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or a confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe.”

If you pay close attention to the news, you know that my list of negative developments is woefully incomplete (for example, granting the Pentagon an ownership stake in a Venezuelan oil venture is more reminiscent of the way that the Chinese or Iranian militaries work than the way the United States military is supposed to), but it should suffice to paint a clear picture.

The combination of corruption, stupidity and sycophancy — the Pentagon was recently caught surreptitiously employing conservative media influencers who reliably defend Hegseth online — that pervades the Trump administration is now infecting the Pentagon at the moment that our most powerful enemies are becoming more aggressive.

I loved my time serving my country. It was one of the great honors of my life. If anything, I’m biased toward viewing the military in general and the Army in particular through rose-colored glasses. But my view is getting darker. Terrible leadership of even the most virtuous institutions can have terrible consequences.

If history teaches us anything, it’s that the battlefield is the most unforgiving place on earth.

Donald Trump and maga Repubicans must give a failing grade to the useless Alaska so called summit with Putin

Echo article published by Associated Press * Trump in Alaska summit' Failed~~~! Left empty-handed after failing to reach a deal to end Ukraine war and Russian aggression.

JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (AP) — Donald Trump failed to secure an agreement from Vladimir Putin on Friday to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, falling short in his most significant move yet to stop the bloodshed, even after rolling out the red carpet for the man who started it.

“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” the U.S. president said, after Putin claimed they had hammered out an “understanding” on Ukraine and warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress.” Trump said he would call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders to brief them on the talks.

Trump, who for years has balked at American support for Ukraine and expressed admiration for Putin, had pledged confidently to bring about an end to the war on his first day back in the White House. Seven months later, after berating Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and stanching the flow of some U.S. military assistance to Kyiv, Trump could not bring Putin even to pause the fighting, as his forces make gains on the battlefield.

The U.S. president had offered Putin both a carrot and a stick, issuing threats of punishing economic sanctions on Russia while also extending a warm welcome at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, but he appeared to walk away without any concrete progress on ending the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

Instead, he handed Putin long-sought recognition on the international stage, after years of Western efforts to make him a pariah over the war and his crackdown on dissent, and forestalled the threat of additional U.S. sanctions.

In a sign that the conversations did not yield Trump’s preferred result, the two leaders ended what was supposed to be a joint news conference without taking questions from reporters.

KGB Putin chumps the Trump  in Alaska

During a subsequent interview with (Fake ❗)Fox News Channel before leaving Alaska, Trump insisted that the onus going forward might be somehow on Zelenskyy “to get it done,” but said there would also be some involvement from European nations. That was notable since Zelenskyy was excluded from Trump and Putin's meeting.

The U.S. president had wanted to show off his deal-making skills, while Putin wanted to negotiate a deal that would cement Russia’s gains, block Kyiv’s bid to join the NATO military alliance and eventually pull Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit.

“We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to,” Trump (lied 🤥) while standing next to Putin. “And there are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

He continued: “We didn’t get there.”

Putin says Trump ‘shows understanding’ that Russia has its own interests

For Putin, just being on U.S. soil for the first time in more than a decade was validation after his ostracization following his invasion of Ukraine.

His meeting with Trump may stall the economic sanctions that the U.S. president had promised unless Moscow worked harder to bring the fighting to a close. It also may simply lead to more meetings, giving his forces more time to make progress on the battlefield.

Putin said Russia and the United States should “turn the page and go back to cooperation.”

He praised Trump as someone who “has a clear idea of what he wants to achieve and sincerely cares about the prosperity of his country, and at the same time shows understanding that Russia has its own national interests.” (Fact check❗  Trump has no idea, only a lust for power.)

“I expect that today’s agreements will become a reference point not only for solving the Ukrainian problem, but will also mark the beginning of the restoration of businesslike, pragmatic relations between Russia and the U.S.,” Putin said.

Despite not reaching any major breakthrough, Trump ended his remarks by thanking Putin and saying, “we'll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon.”

When Putin smiled and offered, “next time in Moscow,” Trump said “that’s an interesting one” and said he might face criticism but “I could see it possibly happening.”

During the interview with Fox News, Trump bragged that Putin echoed many of the U.S. president’s long-standing grievances, including about the 2020 election. This suggests that Putin, a former KGB officer, may have left Trump with the impression that he’d notched a big win even as he left empty handed.

When Trump and Putin arrived in Alaska, they had greeted each other with a warm handshake, chatting almost like old friends, and gripped hands for an extended period on a red carpet rolled out at the military base. As they chatted, Putin grinned and pointed skyward, where B-2s and F-22s — military aircraft designed to oppose Russia during the Cold War — flew overhead. The two then shared the U.S. presidential limo for a short ride to their meeting site, with Putin offering a broad smile as they rolled past the cameras.

It was the kind of reception typically reserved for close U.S. allies and belied the bloodshed and suffering in the war Putin started in Ukraine. Although not altogether surprising considering their longtime friendly relationship, such outward friendliness likely raised concerns from Zelenskyy and European leaders, who fear that Trump is primarily focusing on furthering U.S. interests and not pressing hard enough for Ukraine’s.

Not a one-on-one meeting

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said shortly before Air Force One touched down that the previously planned one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin would be a three-on-three discussion including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff. Putin was joined by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov.

The change seemed to indicate that the White House was taking a more guarded approach than it did during a 2018 meeting in Helsinki, where Trump and Putin met privately with their interpreters and Trump then shocked the world by siding with the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence officials on whether Russia meddled in the 2016 campaign.

Zelenskyy’s (wrong minded) exclusion was also a heavy blow to the West’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

War is still raging

Russia and Ukraine remain far apart in their demands for peace. Putin has long resisted any temporary ceasefire, linking it to a halt in Western arms supplies and a freeze on Ukraine’s mobilization efforts, which are conditions rejected by Kyiv and its Western allies.

The meeting comes as the war has caused heavy losses on both sides and drained resources. Ukraine has held on far longer than some initially expected since the February 2022 invasion, but it is straining to hold off Russia’s much larger army, grappling with bombardments of its cities and fighting for every inch on the over 600-mile (1,000-kilometer) front line.

Alaska is separated from Russia at its closest point by just 3 miles (less than 5 kilometers) and the international date line.

Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was crucial to countering the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It continues to play a role today, as planes from the base still intercept Russian aircraft that regularly fly into U.S. airspace.
___

*Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Jonathan J. Cooper in Washington, Elise Morton in London and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Donald Trump failed in the Alaska meeting with Putin

In my Substacks article, I wrote about Donald Trump's obvious aging disabilities.  Check my article at this site here.

(Left) Winston Churchill, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at Yalta, February , 1945.
President Roosevelt died April 12, 1945

Echoes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, evil Stalin, and Yalta at the failed Trump Anchorage summit with Putin. A letter to the editor published in The Boston Globe reaffirms the aging health assessment I wrote about in my sutstacks article linked above. 

There is perhaps one common point between Donald Trump and FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), but it is a sad and frightening one: 

At the failed Anchorage meeting between Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the eerie capitulation Trump exhibited to Putin bore a striking resemblance to the Yalta conference of 80 years ago, where an ill and weakened President Roosevelt was manipulated by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. 

Nearly 50 years of Cold War ensued.

Like many bullies, apart from his bravado Trump is fundamentally weak.

History is said to repeat itself❓

From Bernard Malfroy-Camine in Arlington, Massachusettes

Doanld Trump and Russia - collusion betrayed

Trump’s hands are now tied in dealing with Moscow, probably for years to come. (Assuming Donald Trump signs the bill- and he did so on Aug 2nd without any ceremony suspect General Kelly put it in front of him with a working ball point pen.)

"...no doubt that the Russians are trying to undermine Western democracy"

Secretary of State Tillerson is cutting costs in the State Department and now Vladimir Putin helped him out

Russians look at the chaos in the White House and see a level of unpredictability there, which makes them nervous. The reaction, was to retreat to old habits — and the expulsion of American diplomats is, of course, one of the oldest. (Putin has driven out millions of talented people to the USA, Europe Australia,,,)

It mkes no sense whatsoever for Republicans to continue enabling the Russia-Trump collusion, because the evidence is irrefutable. There are too many documented Russia-Trump connections to assume they are somehow "ordinary communications"- because they're all unusual, if not downright illegal. 

Nevertheless, whatever kompromat (blackmail) Russia has on Donald Trump, the espionage has evidently backfired. Donald Trump is now powerless to act on any clandestine arrangements he made with Vladimir Putin during several weird meetings where notes were not maintained about the agenda or conversations. Regardless of what Trump and Putin talked about, the facts are, the kompromat has not yet worked.

But it could.

Putin’s Bet on a Trump Presidency Backfires Spectacularly

A little more than a year after the Russian effort to interfere in the American presidential election came to light, the diplomatic fallout — an unraveling of the relationship between Moscow and Washington on a scale not seen in decades — is taking its toll.

President Vladimir V. Putin bet that Donald J. Trump, who had spoken fondly of Russia and its authoritarian leader for years, would treat his nation as Mr. Putin has longed to have it treated by the West. That is, as the superpower it once was, or at least a major force to be reckoned with, from Syria to Europe, and boasting a military revived after two decades of neglect.

That bet has now backfired, spectacularly. If the sanctions overwhelmingly passed by Congress last week sent any message to Moscow, it was that Mr. Trump’s hands are now tied in dealing with Moscow, probably for years to come.

Just weeks after the two leaders spent hours in seemingly friendly conversation in Hamburg, Germany, the prospect of the kinds of deals Mr. Trump once mused about in interviews seems more distant than ever. Congress is not ready to forgive the annexation of Crimea, nor allow extensive reinvestment in Russian energy. The new sanctions were passed by a coalition of Democrats who blame Mr. Putin for contributing to Hillary Clinton’s defeat and Republicans fearful that their president misunderstands who he is dealing with in Moscow.

So with his decision to order that hundreds of American diplomats and Russians working for the American Embassy leave their posts, Vladimir Putin, known as a great tactician but not a great strategist, has changed course again. 

For now, American officials and outside experts said on Sunday, he seems to believe his greater leverage lies in escalating the dispute, Cold War-style, rather than subtly trying to manipulate events with a mix of subterfuge, cyberattacks and information warfare.

But it is unclear how much the announcement will affect day-to-day relations. While the Russian news media said 755 diplomats would be barred from working, and presumably expelled, there do not appear to be anything close to 755 American diplomats working in Russia.

That figure almost certainly includes Russian nationals working at the embassy, usually in nonsensitive jobs. (A 2013 State Department inspector general’s report, the last concrete numbers publicly available, said there were 934 “locally employed” staff members at the Moscow Embassy and three consulates, out of 1,279 total staff members. That would leave roughly 345 Americans, many of whom report regular harassment by Russian officials.) 

And of course there are many nondiplomats working for the United States government in Russia at any given time — experts from departments across the government, from energy to agriculture, and a large station of spies, some working under diplomatic cover.

“One of Putin’s greatest goals is to assure Russia is treated as if it was still the Soviet Union, a nuclear power that has to be respected and feared,” said Angela Stent, the director of Eurasian, Russian and East European studies at Georgetown University. “And he thought he might get that from Trump,” said Ms. Stent, who was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia during the administration of George W. Bush.

But now, she added, the Russians look at the chaos in the White House “and see a level of unpredictability there, which makes them nervous.” The reaction, she said, was to retreat to old habits — and the expulsion of diplomats is, of course, one of the oldest.

Those in the administration who served during the Cold War are also returning to that terminology. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told a security conference in Aspen, Colo., this month that he had no doubt that the Russians “are trying to undermine Western democracy.” His boss has never uttered a similar phrase.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity on what has become one of the most sensitive diplomatic problems facing the Trump administration, said the White House had not given up hopes for a better relationship. 

Mr. Putin’s interview on Russian television, in which he announced the reduction in staff, was free of bombast, the official noted. Russia seems uncertain about the direction of the relationship, leaving open the possibility of a reversal.

“The Russians would have preferred not to head down this path, but Putin didn’t feel he had a choice but to respond in the classic tit-for-tat manner,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who has served in a number of senior intelligence roles for the United States, including in Russia. “We’ve been in a new Cold War for some time now. Any hope for a short-term improvement in relations is gone.”

That downturn accelerated in the last days of the Obama administration, he argued, “when emotions took over the relationship.” Now, said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who recently became director of intelligence and defense projects at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School, “fear has replaced anger in dealing with Russia.”

Sergey V. Lavrov, the savvy Russian foreign minister, has struck a measured tone in his conversations with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. In public, he has blamed not Mr. Trump, or the investigation into the Russian influence operation around the election, but Congress. 
“The latest developments have demonstrated that the U.S. policy turns out to be in the hands of Russophobic forces that are pushing Washington toward confrontation,” the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, after the passage of the latest sanctions act.

Forty-eight hours later, Mr. Putin announced the huge reduction in diplomatic staffing. He said the order would take effect Sept. 1. That leaves time for haggling.

But the fundamental issue will not go away by then. Mr. Putin has now concluded that his central objective — getting relief from the American and European sanctions that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014 — is years away. Once new sanctions are enshrined in law, like the ones Congress passed and Mr. Trump has reluctantly agreed to sign to avoid an override of his veto, they generally stay on the books for years.

Moreover, Washington is awash in warnings that the attacks on the election system last year are just a beginning. “They are just about their own advantage,” James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee just before he was fired by Mr. Trump. “And they will be back.”

James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence and a veteran of the Cold War, echoed that thought recently and mixed in more than a few issues that sounded straight out of the 1980s nuclear competition. “What we don’t mention very often is the very aggressive modernization program they’re embarked on with their strategic nuclear capability,” he said.

And that, in the end, is the real risk. With the exception of Syria — where the militaries of both nations have had sporadic, if mutually suspicious, contact — there is virtually no military-to-military conversation of the kind that took place routinely during the Cold War. And with Russian and American forces both operating near the Baltics, and off the coast of Europe, the chances for accident and miscalculation are high.

This latest plunge in relations comes at the 70th anniversary of “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” an article George Kennan, the architect of Cold War strategy, published in Foreign Affairs in July 1947 under the pseudonym “X.”

It defined the strategy that dominated Washington for the next four decades, captured in Mr. Kennan’s line that the “United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

That was not the approach Mr. Trump had in mind a year ago. It may now be the approach forced upon him.

Russia is pretty much an economic basket case due to Putin. (Maine Writer: Russian Ruble today Aug. 2, 2017 = $0.16)

Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad are evil terrorist bookends

Imagine yourself walking into a meeting room where two international "leaders of genocide" are sitting? Worse than walking into Adolf Hitler's final World War II bunker.

Kim Jong-un and Bashar al_Assd. They're evil dictators and poisonous governmental bookends at the table. Both of them are over their heads in perpetrating cruelty to their own citizen human beings and have past the point of no return. 

Even scarier than their evil ambitions to eliminate political opposition and maintain power are how they also differ. Kim Jong-un is now the keeper of an atomic bomb or, even a more sinister hydrogen or "H" bomb.  On the other hand, Bashar al-Assad must look to Russia for a holocaust causing nuclear weapons. In my opinion, both of these evil driven ambitious power hungry men with sinister ambitions are desperate because they know how fragile their control is. About the time the only way to maintain political power is by causing death, destruction and genocide, then there's justs no remorse in killing more people, over time, in ther vain efforts to create leadership by ruling others with fear.  

Obviously, China has propped up North Korea as a buffer zone against the US allied governments in South  Korea and in Japan. In Syria, Russian President Putin holds the puppet strings over the Assad genocide machine, because, in part, it's retaliation for Europe tanking the Russian economy.

Nevertheless, the two evil world dictators and holocaust bookends are dangerous human belings. As such, they're also mortal men. Meanwhile, until their inevitable mortality occurs, the world is increasingly torn apart by the state sponsored terrorism each is fueling, because neither will participate in international negotiations to improve the humanitarian crises of which they are the root causes.  

Obviously, the salient question is how can the world survive these two and their evil intentions?  It may seem counter-intuitive and politically unpopular, but one way to combat evil is by causing stronger isolalation via economic sanctions and even preventing humanitarian assistance to many victims of these holocausts. Tragically, the response of greater armament only causes an equal and opposite retaliation; but neither dictator can continue to survive the economic collapses of their entire nations. Russia can't prop Assad up forever and Kim Jong-un can't continue to look fat while even his army looks like they're starving from lack of sustenance.  

Moreover, Kim Jong-un can't buy nuclear technology without money or food to feed the people who provide the expertise. Nor will he be able to buy medicine when he inevitably gets sick or mortally ill.

Unfortunately, the routes of economic sanctions and isolation haven't been enormously evident in the past. Nevertheless, we really can't measure how much worse off the world would be if these measures weren't tried in other situations, like in Cuba or Iran. Frankly, economic sanctions contributed to bringing down the Cold War Berlin Wall in Germany and may have finally caused a thaw in Cuban-American relations. (Cuban president dictator Fidel Castro may have had a "call to redemption" when he met with Pope Francis.)

Eventually, somebody in North Korea and in Syria will also create change and reject evil. Let's just hope the evil bookends will topple under the weight of their own tyranny.

Republicans are branded by Trumponianism

McCarthyism, a label coined in 1950, was created in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents. Soon, Americans will have yet another Republican inspired "ism", labeled Trumponianism.

Senator Joe McCarthy, Republican- 1908-1957

McCarthyism was a label rooted in extremism, led by former Senator Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957), who was an American Republican politician. 

McCarthy served as a Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from 1947, until his death in 1957. 

Beginning in 1950, McCarthy was the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions between the Western nations and Russia, fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. 

McCarthy was noted for making claims about large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate.

The term McCarthyism, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.,

So, now Americans are confronted with Trumponiasm, a reinvention of right wing McCarthyism.  

Of course, right wing extremism never disappears. Even when Senator McCarthy died, his dangerous movement changed into unwarrented suspicions associated with racism and the anti-immigration movement.  

Not surprisingly, Trumponian paranoia is casting a dark political shadow on the entire Republican party. Instead of the "Grand Old Party", Trumponiainisms are creating a Grotesque Old Party. This branding will serve no purpose except to act like a "wrecking ball" for the entier Republican party, said Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican presidential candidate, when he was telephone- interviewed on the MSNBC- TV, "Morning Joe". 

If Americans embraced Muslim groups, the people currently being unjustly marginalized by Trumponianisms, it's entirely possible the effect would be to assimilate the religious groups in the culture, so they would, possibly, be indistiguishable from other citizens.  

Unfortunately, the Republican establishment allowed the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump to go on for too long.  Most candidates expected the self funded Trump to crash and burn by now. In fact, Jeb Bush made a terrible mistake when he didn't attack Donald Trump for taking such a caustic stand against Mexican immigrants, because his wife is Mexican-American and he met her in Mexico. Bush didn't stand up to Trump, when he made those disparaging ethnic remarks about Mexicans. In my opinion, if "Jeb!" had challenged Trump, the Bush campaign would be competitive, instead of on "life support".  

In some respects, the rise of Trumponianism is the Republican party "reaping what it has sown".  

Now, the Republican establishment has waited too long to put the evil genie back into the political cauldron.  

Therefore, it's time to create another conservative political party, before American voters find an alernative.

Vladimir Putin surely studying Hitler communication -Russia's propaganda war

To bolster Vladimir Putin’s cult of personality, the Kremlin cultivates washed-up Western movie stars.  (This would be Saturday Night Live humor if it weren't so scary.)

After reading this article published in The Week May 15, 2015, it seems like the comparison between two of modern history's evil leaders are being reincarnated by Vladimir Putin. Adolf Hitler's relentless take over of other countries because he could, seems analogous to Putins' take over of the Crimea and his moves into the Ukraine. Of course, Joseph Stalin was the Russian leader responsible for opposing Winston Churchill and creating the 20th century's Cold War.  

Putin certainly seems intent on reliving the legacy of both.

Perhaps, Vladimir Putin's bedtime reading includes 20th century history because he's clearly intent on using already tried strategies to affirm his ambitious leadership. In fact, it's a fair assumption to consider how Putin is evaluating how Hitler succeeded and where he failed. Likewise with Stalin. And Putin intends to fix what both of them did wrong and to get it right. Why? Because Putin has become delusional, corrupted by his own power. In "The Week" report, it appears Putin's strategy is heavily dependent on a propaganda war to garner domestic support.

Vladimir Putin’s government is engaged in a global Orwellian campaign to sow confusion and undermine the West.

Since it annexed Crimea a year ago, Russia has launched an all-out disinformation campaign on multiple fronts. State-run international news channels and websites such as RT and Sputnik give a pro-Kremlin slant to real news stories, and spread outright lies and outlandish conspiracy theories. State agencies and private firms employ platoons of bloggers who scour Western and Russian news sites for articles about Russia or Ukraine and swamp them with pro-Kremlin comments. Russian agencies have set up news websites in several East European languages. The order to create this propaganda campaign, on which the Kremlin spends an estimated $600 million a year, came straight from the top: President Vladimir Putin said in 2012 that Russia would develop “a matrix of tools and methods to reach foreign policy goals without the use of arms but by exerting information and other levers of influence.” The propaganda is surprisingly successful in sowing confusion. “Journalists are taught to report both sides,” said Rick Stengel, former managing editor of Time and now a U.S. undersecretary of state. “When the Kremlin says there are no Russian soldiers in Crimea, they have to repeat it. How do you combat someone who just makes stuff up?”

What tools does the Kremlin use?

One primary tool is the television network RT, which was called Russia Today until authorities renamed it to obscure the Russian connection. RT has cable and satellite channels in English—including RT America, which potentially reaches 85 million viewers. It covers current events in the U.S., focusing on police brutality, protests, and poverty, but it also produces wacky segments investigating whether, for example, the CIA created Ebola. Few Americans watch RT, and one of its anchors quit after publicly disavowing the “lies” that she and others were ordered to tell about the conflict in Ukraine. But the web version, RT.com, does have reach. It became the first news channel to rack up 1 billion views on YouTube. In the past year, the main theme has been the supposed rise of neo-Nazi groups and fascism in Ukraine—making pro-Russian separatists the good guys.

How are stories faked?

StopFake, a Ukrainian myth-busting site run by journalism students, has documented hundreds of fake photos spread by Russian news sites and social media. Peter Pomerantsev, aleading authority on Russian propaganda efforts, says that stories alleging that Ukrainian fascist gangs, trained by NATO, had murdered children were popping up all over these sites in early 2014, when Russia was taking over Crimea and fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine. StopFake traced the photos back to their original sources and found that some were from past Ukrainian conflicts, some were from crime scenes in other countries, and some were actually stills from movies. The group also discovered that Russian news shows were using actors to play weeping or wounded victims and tell tales of Ukrainian government brutality. Russians call this maskirovka, or masquerade—an information war to accompany actual war.

What about East European sites?

Dozens of pro-Russian news sites have cropped up in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Fluently written in the local languages, the sites carry the same kinds of faked photos and articles about supposed Ukrainian fascism as well as skillfully argued analyses extolling Russia’s benevolent intentions. Czech counterintelligence has flagged one of the sites, Aeronet.cz, as “a source of dangerous pro-Russian propaganda.”  Earlier this year, when a NATO convoy passed through Czech territory, several of these Czech sites reported that the local population was outraged by the incursion of “foreign” troops. In fact, the convoy was greeted with Czech throngs waving U.S. flags.

What do the Kremlin’s bloggers do?
Russia has a 24-hour “troll factory” in St. Petersburg, where hundreds of employees work in 12-hour shifts writing pro-Putin comments on Western and Russian news articles, fabricating their own news stories, creating and posting satirical videos, and posting tweets and Facebook updates from fake profiles. “They bombard the websites of CNN and the BBC,” says one former employee, Marat Burkhard. One day’s assignment, he said, was to assert that NATO troops had been embedded with Ukrainian forces all along. Another was to call President Obama an uncultured “monkey” for chewing gum during his January visit to India. “You work in the Ministry of Truth, which is the Ministry of Lies, and everyone kind of believes in this truth,” says Burkhard. “It’s Orwell.”

What’s the ultimate goal?

To give the Kremlin plausible deniability of its aggressive activities, and create sympathy for Russia in the old Soviet bloc. In eastern Ukraine, Pomerantsev says, Russian media managed “to create a parallel reality where ‘fascists’ have taken power in Kiev, ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are in mortal danger, and the CIA is waging a war against Moscow.” 

Russia recently launched a similar campaign in former Soviet republic Estonia, which has a large ethnic Russian population. 

In March, Russian-language television in Estonia broadcast a faked clip purporting to show Estonian government support for Nazism—a clear attempt to foment another pro-Russian uprising. “This is a new idea of war,” Pomerantsev says. “This is information-psychological war with endless subversion.”

Putin’s movie star pals

To bolster Vladimir Putin’s cult of personality, the Kremlin cultivates washed-up Western movie stars. Action hero Steven Seagal, for example, is a personal friend of the Russian leader. Both men have black belts in martial arts, and palling around with Seagal helps bolster Putin’s ultramacho image. 

“He is one of the greatest world leaders, if not the greatest world leader, alive today,” Seagal has said of Putin. On a boxing tour of Russia last year, actor Mickey Rourke wore a Putin T-shirt and said Putin was “a real good regular guy.” Another Putin admirer, French actor Gérard Depardieu, even accepted Russian citizenship as a way of avoiding French taxes. He has praised the Russians’ “powerful temperament,” adding, “One must be very strong to be Russian.”

THE WEEK
May 15, 2015

Putin divides to conquer - he's cackling at the grimaced world

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is cruelly doing whatever he chooses to take over Syria, the Crimea, and the Ukraine and.....what's next? Eastern Europeans must be furious with the inability of the Western powers to take decisive action, other than a few economic sanctions, to prevent Putin's divide and take what he wants ambitious military strategy. 

Vladimir Putin doesn't act like he's worried about the impact of economic sanctions on his nation's already deteriorating economic problems. Nevertheless, governing the expansive and diverse Russian nation doesn't appear to be a priority for Putin. Caring about people has never been his focus. 

Instead, Putin obviously sees national expansion as beneficial to his own Napoleonic political future. What will he accomplish? He'll justifiably be able to say that he came back to win the Cold War, after it was declared a defeat for the Russian nation. He can claim world dominance, something Nikita Khrushchev talked about but never accomplished.  

In a nutshell, Putin cackles at the grimacing world. He'll divide Syria by supporting the nation's civil war and drive the humanitarian disasters until the only people left standing are Russian puppets. At the same time, Putin will isolate the Ukraine by putting a stranglehold on the Crimean peninsula; meanwhile, he's going to march right into Kiev and take over Ukraine's capital. 

CNN reports: Slavyansk, Ukraine (CNN) -- On the one side, Ukraine's interior minister said Saturday that military operations in the east would continue and vowed, "We are not stopping."

On the other, there was the pro-Russian separatist leader in Luhansk who announced the formation of an army to march on Kiev.

These and other statements suggest Ukraine's future will feature yet more unrest, more fighting and more likelihood that it will spawn a full-scale civil war and, perhaps, an international one.

How Putin can afford to pay for his divide and conquer ambitious agenda is a mystery, especially if Western Europe becomes energy efficient and more independent of the need for oil. 

Nevertheless, Putin is probably in a political situation whereby doing nothing to flex his political will and flaunt his Napoleonic ambitions will only make Russia look increasingly inept. This is an especially impossible egotistical situation for Putin, a post the Cold War warrior, because the nation he worked for recoiled from strategic military ambitions, when the Cold War ended.  

World leaders must see where Putin is going. He wants to win the Cold War! Putin doesn't care who doesn't like him or how isolated his nation will become as a result of his staggering ambitions.  

Tragically, the world can shun Putin's bullying all they want, it doesn't matter to him. A bully enjoys cackling in the face of those who grimace at their outrageous and destructive behaviors. Sadly, Putin becomes more ambitious, while the western world leaders scold his bully behaviors.  

Of course, Putin's ambitions will eventually bankrupt Russia's ability to maintain dangerous military strategies. Although he'll probably march into Kiev, like Hitler paraded into Warsaw, his cruel actions won't create a secure Russia, nor help pay the nation's bills. Regardless of how much oil Putin thinks he can sell to China, there's a cost to production. In fact, Putin will have to increase the cost of the oil sold to China, or other nations, to pay for his fiscal ineptness. This increased price will naturally reduce consumption. Poor timing of Putin's gamble on selling Russia's oil is a situation of too much too late. This is because world dependence on oil, and the cost of buying it, are already mitigated by fuel efficient cars and energy initiatives.  

Putin's divide and conquer strategy in the face of a scolding world is causing millions of people to live in fear, and trepidation about what's to become of them and their families. Although Putin is grimacing at the scolding world, his cruel behavior simply can't continue, forever.....but the damage he'll cause before something is done to prevent his ambitions from succeeding are an embarrassment to the entire world. Putin simply cackles,while the world grimaces, scolds, and waits, apparently paralyzed, to prevent a World War II deja vu.

The problem, of course, is there's no equivalent of Winston Churchill to raise the consciousness of the world. There's nobody in my known litany of world leaders who can stand up to Putin like Churchill held off Hitler. President Obama has already failed to do anything, except react to political pressure, and to talk but carry a balsam stick.  

While Putin cackles on....