As a political news wonk, I sometimes notice things that the average individual may miss. I thought this observation would be of interest to you.
I FOUND IT INTERESTING in U.S. diplomat David Holmes’ testimony Thursday that he decided to conclude his opening remarks with his thoughts on a bit of Ukraine history.
Following a specific reference to Russia’s 2014 occupation of the Crimean peninsula and invasion of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, and an ensuing war that has cost Ukraine almost 14,000 lives, he slipped into the current environment there, in which “large majorities of Ukrainians again chose a fresh start by voting for a political newcomer as president, replacing 80 percent of their parliament and endorsing a platform consistent with our democratic values, reform priorities, and strategic interests.”
Noticeably missing was any reference to former President Obama’s failure to come to the rescue of Ukraine, and more importantly, an appreciation of President Trump’s providing anti-tank weapon systems. A review is appropriate.
Despite an urgent request for military assistance by Ukraine’s president during his Washington mid-March 2014 visit, Obama went along with the Pentagon’s refusal, and offered instead, blankets, military rations, non-lethal military gear, and training.
“Why did we deny Ukraine weapons?” the late columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in “Obama’s pathetic response to Putin’s invasion of Crimea.” “Because in the Barack Obama-John Kerry worldview, arming the victim might be taken as a provocation. This kind of mind-bending illogic has marked the administration’s response to the whole Crimea affair.”
Obama did threaten Russia with consequences, that turned out to be visa denials and frozen assets for a handful of Russians. Russia’s Vladimir Putin responded with contempt by recognizing Crimea’s secession and signed a treaty of annexation. Obama followed with more sanctions.
Looking back, The Nation, a leftist publication, reacted to Obama’s moves as “measured,” and cheered the fact that he “ignored or rejected calls from hardliners, hawks and neoconservatives … to rush weapons to the new government in Kiev, send the U.S. naval fleet into the Black Sea, install anti-missile defense systems in eastern Europe and so forth.”
Who can forget how President Obama mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for calling Russia the United States’ Number 1 “geopolitical foe?”
On March 23, 2014, The New York Times stated that the United States was “caught flat-footed by (Russia’s) initial infiltration of Crimea.”
I was shocked to learn then that The Nation believed that “Few Americans are truly concerned about Ukraine, nor should they be. The United States has no real national interests there, and whether all or part of Ukraine and its Crimean region are part of Russia is irrelevant to broader U.S. national security issues.”
That seemed to be the basis of the Obama doctrine. “Obama’s theory here is simple,” wrote Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic. “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.”
“Indeed,” Obama told Goldberg. “The fact that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”
Diplomat Holmes certainly didn’t convey that belief in his testimony. He was more interested in crowing about having overheard the loud cell-phone conversation between EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and President Trump in a Kyiv café, and the fact that he later shared that experience with colleagues.
After listening to the bureaucrats drone on and on over the effect of a delay in another shipment of weapons to Ukraine – “two people were killed yesterday” – I wondered, do they really care about Ukraine, or are they more interested in indicting President Trump for his desire to assure that President Zelensky would look into interference in the 2016 election?
Other than Holmes, the Thursday impeachment inquiries featured Dr. Fiona Hill, who like the other career bureaucrats interviewed, couldn’t hide her disapproval of President Trump’s unorthodox foreign policy that included the use of his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, leading an irregular back channel to Ukraine.
INTERESTINGLY, Dr. Hill admitted that most of the diplomatic corps rode the wrong horse in the 2016 election.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW? Members of the House and Senate go back home to face their constituencies over the Thanksgiving recess. Hopefully, they will get an earful of from those who see this as waste of time and a shameful continuation of the coup to bring down the Trump presidency.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
