More CNS Columnists Laud Putin, Bash Biden And NATO

Pat Buchanan is not the only CNSNews.com columnist who is advocating that President Biden and the U.S. capitulate to Vladimir Putin’s demands over Ukraine. Some just want to avoid war, while others simply love Putin or hate Biden that much.

Doug Bandow is the former camp in his Jan. 27 column, beginning by whining, “What is it about Republican legislators that makes them so fond of wreaking death and destruction upon others?” He then went on to write that “Nothing suggests that Putin wants what can never be given.” The same day, a column by Ted Galen Carpenter lamented that “U.S. assistance to anti-Russian guerrillas would further poison bilateral relations” and that “actively assisting Ukrainian resistance forces could prove embarrassing and discrediting for professed U.S. commitments to liberty and democracy.” Carpenter went on to blame the U.S. for the situation: “If Washington had not foolishly pushed the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders and interfered in Ukraine’s internal affairs, turning the nation into a Western political and military client, Moscow would have few reasons to make trouble for the United States.”

Michael Letts used his Feb. 14 column (also published at WorldNetDaily) to accuse Biden of wagging the dog over Ukraine:

My question is: Why do anything? The U.S. has no vital interests there. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. So there is only one possible compelling reason Joe Biden has to pull the Russian Bear’s tail, putting the U.S. at risk of receiving anything as fundamental as cyber attacks to full-scale thermonuclear World War III.

The reason is ratings.

Historically, being a wartime president is synonymous with high public approval ratings.

George W. Bush was not doing that well until 9/11, when he shot up to a 90 percent approval rating.

But are high poll numbers worth the risk? No.

Are high poll numbers even guaranteed to raise Biden’s chances in a future election? No.

Laurence Vance, a writer for a libertarian think tank, devoted a Feb. 16 column to parroting non-intervention talking points from uber-libertarian Ron Paul to argue against interfering in Ukraine: “Non-interventionism is practical, sane, moral, just, and right. It is the foreign policy of the Founding Fathers — and Ron Paul.”

Jose Nino argued for dissolving NATO in a Feb. 21 column because it “has done scant little to uphold middle American interests” and “would incentivize countries to pursue more independent foreign policies and start taking defense matters into their own hands, like any self-respecting nation that believes in sovereignty should.” He also touted “populist presidential candidates like Eric Zemmour” in France, who “have explicitly called for a rapprochement between Russia and France.”In fact, Zemmour is a far-right politician, an anti-immigration Islamophobe who has been fined for peddling hate speech.

Carpenter returned for a Feb. 22 column whining that “Foreign policy hawks in the United States habitually equate a noncommunist Russia with the totalitarian Soviet Union, insisting that today’s Russia is not the USSR and softpedaling Putin by comparison: “Politically, Putin’s rule embodies a conservative authoritarianism, not the outsized, revolutionary ambitions of the USSR’s communist rulers.” 

On Feb. 24 — several hours before Russia invaded Ukraine — R. Emmett Tyrrell suggested that Putin might be hesitating on an invasion, making sure to take a shot at Biden: “A couple of weeks ago, I saw something in Putin’s eyes that I had not seen before. He seemed to lapse into hesitancy. For the first time ever, he seemed a bit flabby. Is he keeping with his martial arts regimen? Frankly, he looked stunned and put me in mind of our almost 80-year-old president, President Joe Biden. Could Putin be giving his grand design a second thought?”

The same day, Ryan McMaken complained that “countless media stories” were trying to link Russia with China, insisting that “Russia is not the geopolitically secure juggernaut many Russophobes apparently believe it to be.”

Nino returned for a Feb. 25 column once again blaming NATO for Russia’s invasion:

With Russia launching a military invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, the corporate press has grown shrill in its calls for punishing Russia with draconian sanctions, supplying Ukraine with increased military aid, and diplomatically isolating the Eurasian power as much as possible. The two-minutes hate against Russia has been cranked up to 11, thereby making any nuanced analysis of why the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has reached such a point almost impossible.

The failure of policy wonks to understand why Russia took decisive action against Ukraine is emblematic of a flawed grand strategy that has dominated D.C. foreign policy circles since the end of the Cold War. Once the dust settled from the Soviet Union’s collapse, international relations specialists were convinced that the U.S. had entered an “end of history” moment where liberal democracy would become the governing standard worldwide. Former Soviet Union (FSU) states would be the preliminary trial ground for this new liberal democratic project.

Carpenter served up another NATO-blaming column the same day: “Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but NATO’s arrogant, tone-deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter-century deserves a large share as well.” He also insisted that “It was entirely predictable that NATO expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow.”

Meanwhile, Buchanan served up more praise for Putin and NATO-bashing in his Feb. 25 column:

Putin did exactly what he had warned us he would do.

Whatever the character of the Russian president, now being hotly debated here in the USA, he has established his credibility.

When Putin warns that he will do something, he does it.

[…]

Whatever we may think of Putin, he is no Stalin. He has not murdered millions or created a gulag archipelago.

Nor is he “irrational,” as some pundits rail. He does not want a war with us, which would be worse than ruinous to us both.

Putin is a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist and a cold and ruthless realist looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was and he believes it can be again.

But it cannot be that if NATO expansion does not stop or if its sister state of Ukraine becomes part of a military alliance whose proudest boast is that it won the Cold War against the nation Putin has served all his life.

President Joe Biden almost hourly promises, “We are not going to war in Ukraine.” Why would he then not readily rule out NATO membership for Ukraine, which would require us to do something Biden himself says we Americans, for our own survival, should never do: go to war with Russia?

Buchanan’s column is only a couple days old, but it’s already not aging well.