Just compare Hillary’s well-informed and logical position on Russia with Bernie’s gushy, ignorant BS.
You think a presidential candidate who confuses Kurds and Quds is an idiot? Well, it’s not like he’s alone in his profound contempt for anything but his own, dearly beloved navel.
I’ll just leave this here:
Despite giving demagogic corporate speeches, Sanders brags that he is even more in line with big oil’s anti-Russia campaign than President Obama.
“The entire world has got to stand up to Putin. We’ve got to deal with sanctions, we’ve got to deal with freezing assets,” he declared in a TV interview with FOX news host Bill O’Reilly.
In the same interview, he declared:
“You’ve got to totally isolate them politically. You’ve got to totally isolate them economically… You freeze assets that the Russian government has all over the world… International corporations have huge investments in Russia, you could pull them out…”
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Really? This is not what he used to be saying but if he is choosing a more reasonable, nuanced position, I’m very glad. Thank you for the good news.
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It’s from an interview he gave to Bill O’Reilly last year. I doubt the events between 03/2014 and now have given him any reason to change his opinion of Putin.
You also won’t find any Democrats saying he’s a strong leader, BTW.
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And yet he said the following: “I happen to believe that when you talk about foreign policy, a the very top of the list is the need for the United States to lead the world, to work with China, work with Russia, work with India in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.” The idea that Russians can be persuaded to move away from fossil fuels, which are the only support of their economy, for the sake of something nobody in Russia believes in is so ludicrous that I was afraid for Bernie’s sanity when he said it.
I do hope that this was an isolated incident, though, or that he simply misspoke.
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According to this unscientific poll on his Senatorial webpage,most people who responded to it are pretty set against Russia’s actions in the Ukraine.
The difference between the Chinese and the Russians is that the Chinese know they have to adapt to a post-fossil fuel world, and the Russians have yet to figure that one out.
That you get alarmed over boiler-plate “we must work with Nation A for goal B” denotes a lack of seriousness on your part. Besides, painting other nations as being intractable is so 2002.
Given his experience of the last 7 years, I think that he would show a pretty steep learning curve once in office when faced with opposition to reasonable proposals made to the Russkies in this area. Unlike Obama when he was faced with the Congressional Republicans for his first few years.
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I am hardly a “Bernie-ite.” I don’t want him to be the Democratic nominee because I just don’t see Sanders winning the presidency. But I don’t think the “work with Russia” comment is as terrible as you do. It’s pretty common knowledge that Russia has a fossil fuel based economy and I am sure Sanders is aware of this.
But, it still makes sense to include Russia on a list of countries that the US would speak to concerning fossil fuel usage. The biggest fossil fuel users are (I believe) China, Russia, India, and the US. So it would be strange if he didn’t mention Russia on this list. Sanders didn’t say Russia would agree to any deals or plans made by the US. I see “working with” as a sufficiently vague term that could mean any number of things.
Russia could choose (or likely would) ignore or scoff at any American overtures on this front. But it seems to me that if there were an international discussion about fossil fuel usage that the Russians should at least be included? I don’t think an American president should pretend Russia doesn’t exist when it come to fossil fuel over- dependence. Do you?
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At this point Putin isn’t interested in being reasonable with the U.S. on any issue, and he’d see any overture made to him as a sign of weakness. The only thing he respects is strength, and he isn’t going to see that from the American government until we get a new President.
I’d feel much more comfortable having Hillary face-off with Putin than Sanders.
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Absolutely. It’s crucial that everybody understands this because that’s how the mentality Putin comes from sees the world. Any concession on anything is weakness. When Obama gave in to Putin on Syria, that predetermined Ukraine’s fate. Putin realized that he could do anything he wanted while a guy who allowed him to scold him like a schoolboy on the pages of NYTIMES was in office. And hey, I like Obama but he never managed to understand who he’s dealing with here.
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“At this point Putin isn’t interested in being reasonable with the U.S. on any issue, and he’d see any overture made to him as a sign of weakness.”
But this is just a fossil fuel discussion (and a hypothetical one at that). Nothing military. I am not sure that United States will seem strong if the American president hypothetically begins a fossil fuel dependence discussion and just pretends Russia doesn’t exist. How does one show “strength” when discussing fossil fuel consumption anyway?
Again, this probably a conversation that won’t happen. But I really think Sanders was just listing fossil fuel consuming nations and suggesting that the US should to have a conversation with these countries at some point.
This isn’t to say that Russia will reduce fossil fuel consumption upon any American request. It seems reasonable to me to assume they won’t. But it seems a bit strange to suggest that the American president should never enter in to any conversations with Russia about anything?
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Right now, Obama is refusing to meet with Putin even though Putin had been trying to push him for a personal meeting. Obama is very reasonably refusing to negotiate until Putin begins to honor the Minsk agreement.
In any case, any suggestion that Russia might give up on fossil fuels for the sake of the environment will evoke nothing but extreme contempt from anybody in Russia. Anybody, even the best, most reasonable people. It’s simply not how you talk to Russians. Or Ukrainians, or anybody from that part of the world.
Sanders ‘ s statement was egregious. “I’ll talk to Hitler and tell him not to kill Jews because it’s not nice.”
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And it’s not even about Russians or fossil fuels, really. It’s this terrifying incapacity to imagine that other people in the world might be different from you, that they might have interests of their own, that they are not obligated to be a mirror image of you. The incapacity to accept the existence of others as valid human beings. This is one thing that drives me crazy about Americans and it just scares me so much.
For all their faults, Russians are constantly aware that other people exist and they are different. They are not responding to that realization very well but at least they accept it.
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“But it seems a bit strange to suggest that the American president should never enter in to any conversations with Russia about anything?”
This isn’t remotely what I said. I said it’s fruitless to attempt to engage with PUTIN at this point in time, because he’s not inclined to cooperate with the U.S. on ANYTHING. He doesn’t care about the environment, or about the welfare of the world, or even of the Russian people. (And no, you can’t engage with “Russia” on any issue, on any level, without Putin calling the shots.)
Nobody is pretending that Russia doesn’t exist. Why do you think we’ve got all those sanctions against it, or are building up NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe, or are watching so closely (but doing nothing) while Putin is currently installing Russian rocket launchers in Syria?
Unless Putin is stupid enough to trigger a war in Europe by overtly invading a NATO country (he isn’t) , then the U.S. is — at best — in a holding pattern with Russia until the 2016 elections.
Sorry if this sounds grim and cynical, but that’s the way it its.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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