Recently, Vivek Ramaswamy has presented his theory of foreign policy applied to Ukraine at the Nixon Library. It was an interesting speech as he makes his bid for the Presidency. I have to admit I like Vivek. He's articulate, intelligent, quick witted and has a wonderful grasp of our founding principles. His critics have said he is weak on foreign policy. I can't quite agree. He has some good ideas and may be able to implement them effectively. No, I wouldn't say he's weak on foreign policy as a logical discipline; I'd say he's weak on history. The root cause of all foreign policy failure is history.
You can be good at math, but if you aren't adding up the right column of figures, you will get the wrong answer every time. It happens to the best of us.
Any foreign policy view concerning the Russian - Ukraine war is incomplete without some history, and for that we should start at the beginning. There are basic assumptions that people gravitate towards: the war is Russia's fault, or the war is Ukraine's fault, or, if we go into the shadows of conspiracy: the war is a piece of the globalist strategy to enslave us all.
The fact most overlooked is that this war is Obama's fault. He ignored the Budapest Memorandum, devastated foreign policy as it relates to nuclear proliferation, broke American integrity, and gave Putin a green light to move forward.
I'm not ignoring Putin's guilt. Putin is the aggressor. He is a rabid dog that needs to be put down, but Russia wouldn't have moved an inch into Ukraine if it weren't for Obama.
When Ukraine freely surrendered more than 1,200 nuclear warheads, Bill Clinton signed the Budapest Memorandum to guarantee the territorial integrity of their borders. I have since read a mountain of verbiage explaining why the USA is under no constraint to keep our promise: it wasn't ratified as a treaty, it was just a memorandum, after all.
But to my mind that magnifies the dilemma: if the Budapest Memorandum is binding, then we are at fault in our integrity; if the Budapest Memorandum is NOT binding, then we perpetrated the greatest con job in human history, and tricked more than 1,200 nuclear warheads out of a nation we deceived. The first makes us liars, the second makes us worse than scoundrels, the low life of the world. Take your pick who you want to be.
The silence of the media and the politicians on this one point alone tends to make me think they prefer being scoundrels. Being uninformed, the average man ends up asking, "Why are we sending them so much money?" His math is right, but he’s not working with the right numbers. He's never even heard of the Budapest Memorandum. They gave up 1,200 nuclear weapons and we argue over every piece of military hardware we send for their defense?
The real question is: "why aren't we keeping our promise, why aren't we defending their borders, why didn't we stop Russia nine years ago?" This would all be over but for Obama.
They believed we would protect them. They surrendered their nuclear arsenal. The guy who can turn his back on such a nation should go back to drinking bud light, and let the real men come forward.
Vivek presents himself as a man, for sure, and I hope he has some backbone. He talks big. Shut down the FBI. Close the Department of Education. Stop the war in Ukraine.
He should be careful, though. Making any claim you will "freeze the lines of conflict" in a war is a declaration of authority and control that you may not have.
We need a bit more history to clarify: Ukraine has no intention of stopping until their borders are restored. (Did I mention the Budapest Memorandum?) There is a rage boiling in the people of Ukraine. They stood up without us in the beginning in 2014, they stood up without us in the full scale invasion in 2022, and the idea they will stand down because an Outsider wants to divide Russia from China is ludicrous.
Saying, we must stop the war in Ukraine because we are driving Russia into China's arms, is a bit like saying "we must stop illegal immigration at our southern borders because the price of Avocados is rising." There may be some truth to the saying, or there may not, but you are certainly using it to ignore the greater reality. You would do better to talk about ending a war because war is hell, not because of a potential consequence in another hemisphere. Not to address the reality is to disqualify yourself from the discussion.
Put yourself in Ukraine’s shoes: Clinton bilked them out of 1,200 nuclear warheads, Obama gave Putin a green light to invade, and Biden manipulated them with a billion dollars.
Are you sure they, or anyone else, is ready to believe anything we say?
Vivek would do best to get some history under his belt, and fulfill the Budapest Memorandum. When a nation surrenders a nuclear arsenal, let the rest of the world know that it won’t be used against them, and they will never stand alone. North Korea and Iran might start listening. China would tremble in their boots and never dare to touch Taiwan.
That would be good foreign policy.
