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Following are sentiments I sent to my siblings. Sharing these thoughts...
There is a popular notion today that Biden's debacle in Afghanistan represents the worst foreign affairs outcome for the United States at least since Vietnam, and possibly ever. Further, that today's conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a direct result of how terribly America's weakness and incompetence was put on display in Kabul. Perhaps that is a correct assessment. It is at least arguable that Biden's debacle in Afghanistan will prove more disastrous for America than 2014 when President Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, sat on the sidelines while Russia invaded Ukraine and subsequently annexed Crimea, bad as that was.
In my personal opinion, however, Biden's Afghanistan debacle ranks second on our list of disastrous foreign policy blunders, not first. I say that from the perspective that failed opportunities can be at least as damaging as overt acts of incompetence. From that perspective, 2000 looms larger.
Short of defending our own borders against attack, America's most vital security interest is Europe. Thus we formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to serve as a shield against aggression from the east, namely the Soviet Union. Between 1989 and 1991, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. With the evaporation of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, so too did the imminent threat of European invasion evaporate.
That outcome alone was amazing, but the truly golden fruit hanging from that wonderful tree was the 2000 request by Vladimir Putin to have Russia join NATO. Putin put out his initial feelers for NATO membership in 1999, and made it an overt request to the U.S. president when Bill Clinton visited Moscow in 2000. As Putin said at that meeting, "Russia is part of the European culture, and I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe." At the same time, Putin likewise wanted Russia to join the European Union. In an almost unimaginable moment of complete failure and lack of imagination, the Clinton administration essentially told Putin to take a walk. Neither of Putin's requests were accepted by NATO or the EU. Opportunity lost.
That failure to seize such a golden opportunity to change the world as we know it has to rank as the most abject failure in U.S. foreign policy history, even more of a failure than Biden's debacle in Afghanistan. If only the Clinton administration had the vision, the imagination, to embrace that golden opportunity handed to them by Russia. Imagine how different the world would be today, and how there would be no Russia-Ukraine conflict that we now see. Instead, the Clinton administration treated Russia disdainfully like some kind of insignificant second-rate country that had been vanquished in the Cold War.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States did not treat vanquished Germany, Japan, and Italy that disdainfully. Rather, our enlightened leaders had the foresight to bring democracy to those countries, to rebuild them through the Marshall Plan, and return them to the fold of free nations. If only the United States had similarly enlightened leadership in Bill Clinton during the aftermath of our Cold War victory.
Today we are paying the price for Clinton's failure in 2000. Russia is on the brink of invading Ukraine, may have already invaded by the time you read this. Most Americans do not understand how dangerous this moment in time is. History has shown, again and again and again, that war anywhere has a nasty habit of devolving into larger-scale conflicts. Make no mistake, we still live under the "nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads" as John F. Kennedy famously said in 1961. That has not changed. Russia still has an active arsenal of ten thousand nuclear warheads, and hundreds lie just under the surface of the oceans within a five-minute flight time of striking the United States.
The war will start in Ukraine, but it may be our fate that we pay the ultimate price for the failure of 2000.
There is a popular notion today that Biden's debacle in Afghanistan represents the worst foreign affairs outcome for the United States at least since Vietnam, and possibly ever. Further, that today's conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a direct result of how terribly America's weakness and incompetence was put on display in Kabul. Perhaps that is a correct assessment. It is at least arguable that Biden's debacle in Afghanistan will prove more disastrous for America than 2014 when President Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, sat on the sidelines while Russia invaded Ukraine and subsequently annexed Crimea, bad as that was.
In my personal opinion, however, Biden's Afghanistan debacle ranks second on our list of disastrous foreign policy blunders, not first. I say that from the perspective that failed opportunities can be at least as damaging as overt acts of incompetence. From that perspective, 2000 looms larger.
Short of defending our own borders against attack, America's most vital security interest is Europe. Thus we formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to serve as a shield against aggression from the east, namely the Soviet Union. Between 1989 and 1991, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. With the evaporation of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, so too did the imminent threat of European invasion evaporate.
That outcome alone was amazing, but the truly golden fruit hanging from that wonderful tree was the 2000 request by Vladimir Putin to have Russia join NATO. Putin put out his initial feelers for NATO membership in 1999, and made it an overt request to the U.S. president when Bill Clinton visited Moscow in 2000. As Putin said at that meeting, "Russia is part of the European culture, and I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe." At the same time, Putin likewise wanted Russia to join the European Union. In an almost unimaginable moment of complete failure and lack of imagination, the Clinton administration essentially told Putin to take a walk. Neither of Putin's requests were accepted by NATO or the EU. Opportunity lost.
That failure to seize such a golden opportunity to change the world as we know it has to rank as the most abject failure in U.S. foreign policy history, even more of a failure than Biden's debacle in Afghanistan. If only the Clinton administration had the vision, the imagination, to embrace that golden opportunity handed to them by Russia. Imagine how different the world would be today, and how there would be no Russia-Ukraine conflict that we now see. Instead, the Clinton administration treated Russia disdainfully like some kind of insignificant second-rate country that had been vanquished in the Cold War.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States did not treat vanquished Germany, Japan, and Italy that disdainfully. Rather, our enlightened leaders had the foresight to bring democracy to those countries, to rebuild them through the Marshall Plan, and return them to the fold of free nations. If only the United States had similarly enlightened leadership in Bill Clinton during the aftermath of our Cold War victory.
Today we are paying the price for Clinton's failure in 2000. Russia is on the brink of invading Ukraine, may have already invaded by the time you read this. Most Americans do not understand how dangerous this moment in time is. History has shown, again and again and again, that war anywhere has a nasty habit of devolving into larger-scale conflicts. Make no mistake, we still live under the "nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads" as John F. Kennedy famously said in 1961. That has not changed. Russia still has an active arsenal of ten thousand nuclear warheads, and hundreds lie just under the surface of the oceans within a five-minute flight time of striking the United States.
The war will start in Ukraine, but it may be our fate that we pay the ultimate price for the failure of 2000.
