Putin’s Rise Highlights U.S. Descent from Global Stage
Current and former U.S. officials fretted about the international standing of the United States on Sunday, as multiple global crises in the news made it increasingly clear that U.S. influence alone is not enough to assure either stability in general or specific outcomes favored by the Obama administration.
On ABC’s This Week Sunday morning, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel conceded that the U.S. may not be perceived, internationally, as being quite as powerful as it has been in the past.
“I do think that there is a sense out there…by some, that somehow U.S. power is eroding, or we’re not going to use our power, or we’re too timid about our power,” Hagel said. “I don’t believe that. I think we have been wise in how we use out power.”
Hagel challenged the notion that the U.S. has weakened, but echoed an assessment made by President Obama that the U.S. cannot fix global problems on its own. (my emphasis)
On the perception that the U.S. is weak or indecisive, Hagel said, “I have seen some of that, yes, and I think that’s the kind of reality that’s out there,” However, he added, “We are still the dominant power. No one is in our universe, whether you apply a metric or measure of economic power, military power. But that doesn’t mean that we can solve every problem alone. No nation can do that.”
Hagel’s interview was aired after a three-day stretch in which Russian President Vladimir Putin took a public victory lap in Crimea, the region of Ukraine that Russia invaded and annexed earlier this year; played in a televised ice hockey exhibition (in which he scored six goals); and presided over a massive parade of Russia’s military might in Moscow.
Putin, whose troops have been massed on the border of eastern Ukraine for weeks seemingly in prelude to invasion, asserted publicly last week that he had withdrawn the units to their training grounds. However, U.S. and NATO intelligence services said that no such movement has occurred.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and reported that Putin had, indeed, moved some troops, but that it was a simple rotation of conscripts whose two-year enlistment was running out.
“The only thing we’ve really seen is that they are pulling troops out, but for the sole purpose of rotating out their conscripts,” he said. “This is a function of making sure they have fresh conscripts at the border.”
Rogers, who has announced that he is retiring after his current term in order to pursue a career as a talk radio host, criticized the administration’s overall stance on foreign policy as too reactive, and not sufficiently assertive.
Also on Face the Nation, Secretary Hagel’s immediate predecessor in the office, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, offered some insight into the current situation in Ukraine based on his past dealing with Putin.
“The key to understanding Putin is the past,” he said. “Vladimir Putin is all about lost empire, lost glory, lost power. When he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geostrategic geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, he meant it.”
Gates said that he doesn’t believe the U.S. has any viable military options for influencing the situation in Ukraine. Of Putin, he said, “I don’t think he’ll rest until there is a pro-Russian government in Kiev or a federated Ukraine where the eastern part of the country, for all practical purposes, looks to Russia.”
Putin, Gates said, “is reasserting Russia’s place as a superpower and a force to be reckoned with around the world.”
While he laughed at the idea of Russia presenting a national security threat, Gates said he was concerned about the global impression – identified by Hagel – that the U.S. may not be as much of a global power as it once was.
“Our allies are watching to see whether we will be there for them they are challenged, internally or externally. Other countries, whether it’s Russia, china, Iran or North Korea are looking to see if what they perceive as withdrawal from international leadership presents them with some opportunities down the road.”
He added, “If there is a perception that the U.S. is withdrawing back home, then other countries are going to look for opportunities to advance old nationalist ambitions or satisfy revanchist claims. In the end, he predicted, the world faces increasingly frequent conflict if the U.S. does not assert its role as “guardian of the international order.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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