By FRITZ PETTYJOHN
“We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guarantor of only our own.” Thomas Jefferson.
When I was in the Alaska Legislature back in the 1980’s we were all fat and happy. With Alaska North Slope crude selling at over $100 a barrel, the only difficulty was how we were going to able to spend all the money.
Then the price began to fall and finally collapsed in 1986 to $32 a barrel. The Alaska economy went into a mini recession, the housing market nosedived, and cuts to the operating budget were needed. None of us could figure out what was going on.
Only later, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, did it become plain what had happened.
In his first foreign policy initiative, in 1981 President Ronald Reagan proposed selling AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. Israel and the American Jewish community were flabbergasted and outraged. With these planes, the Saudis would have early warning of any Israeli attack and could prepare to defend themselves. The Israeli air force owned the skies of the entire Middle East, and they wanted to keep it that way.
Reagan prevailed, and the Saudis owed us a very big favor. Soon they began flooding the world oil market, ostensibly to discipline OPEC cheating. But they kept it up, year after year until the market finally bottomed out in 1986.
It was no coincidence that it was in !986 that the Soviet politburo decided they could no longer compete with us in the Cold War. 90% of Soviet hard currency came from the sale of oil. No one in the world accepted payment in rubles, and hard currency was needed to have any participation in the world economy. You can’t play the superpower game if you don’t have any money.
Reagan had won the Cold War without firing a shot.
American economic power, when properly harnessed, can substitute for armed might. That’s how President Donald Trump will end the Ukraine war. He can use carrots, as well as sticks. He can threaten Putin with all out economic warfare if Putin rejects a reasonable settlement with Ukraine. He can also offer economic assistance once a deal has been reached.
It is in our manifest geopolitical self-interest to divorce Russia from China. This justifies giving tax breaks to American companies that invest in Russia. With American help, Putin can lead Russia to a prosperity it has never known in its entire history. Russia was poor when he took power. He can leave it rich. That can be his legacy.
This will also inhibit Russia’s historic imperialistic impulses over the long haul. Why invade Poland when you have more money than they do?
But what about the fact that Russia is and will continue to be a dictatorship? What about the Russian people? Shouldn’t they have a democratic form of government?
That’s up to them to figure out. We’re not going to guarantee anyone’s freedom but our own. That’s realpolitik, or rational self-interest. When we deviate from that , as in Vietnam and Iraq, it is both futile and costly in American lives and treasure.
Which brings us to Iran, which has been caught red-handed attempting to assassinate our president-elect. His entire family is in danger. This cannot be allowed to stand.
This doesn’t require an invasion, or any other military response. We can simply impose a total embargo on Iranian exports, by both land and sea. This will strangle their economy to such an extent that the Iranian people themselves will overthrow the despots who rule them.
A new era has begun, at home and around the world.
God bless America.
Fritz Pettyjohn’s first venture in politics was working for Barry Goldwater for president in 1964. He served in the Alaska Legislature in the 1980s and writes the blog ReaganProject.com.
Good thoughts Fritz.
It vastly helped end the Cold War and end Soviet ambitions that President Regan was instrumental in building up robust United States Navy.
Russia is selling more oil than ever. Their economy is flourishing.The sanctions appear to be a complete failure. The BRICS are working to replace the dollar as the worlds reserve currency and seem to be succeeding. We do not have the power we use to have. Trump has his work cut out for him. Don’t get me wrong, I think he may be able to pull it off, but not by trying to bully Putin. Those days are gone.
“American economic power” we have systematically outsourced our industry, degraded education to 3rd world standards and are destroying our energy production. Past tense economic “power”, it will take years to restore.
“Substitute for armed might”, a strong military requires a cohesive and unified society, a strong, self sufficient economy, state of the art technology and industrial capacity to economically mass produce weapon systems and munitions. And a competent and professional General Staff and officer corps. We currently have none of these components.
“threaten Putin with all out economic warfare” what do you think the US/EU have been doing for 10 years? Why did we blow up Nordstream? Maybe a new round #16 of sanctions? BRICS was created specifically to counter all out economic warfare. Our all out economic warfare has resulted in a strong Russian economy while Europe implodes.
We sent our little British Boris boy to Kiev to sabotage real, fair and workable peace arrangements. Russia won and the combined US/NATO with their proxy victim Ukraine lost. We caused the utter destruction of the brief modern 1991 version construct of Ukraine along with its’ population.
“It is in our manifest geopolitical self-interest to divorce Russia from China”
That ship of state diplomacy has long since sailed. Our state department has managed to cause the strongest alliance between China and Russia in history.
Russia has no reason to trust the US. Until and if Trump manages to dismantle every incompetent American institution and we actually become a force for world peace and stability they will continue to ignore us.
Let’s hope for our sake Trump pulls it off. And repatriates our military to our borders and end causing color revolutions, worldwide mass death, destruction and strife.
Brian: Your assertion that the Russian economy is strong is dubious. For one thing, the Russian “economy” is not all that large. Russia does have oil. And their dictator is ruthless but hardly infallible.
America has many advantages. Whether we have the discipline and skill to take advantage of our blessings remains to be seen.
The start will be to stop deficit spending and may attention to fundamentals.
Whether Donald Trump cam right size our government and start paying down the massive debt we’ve run up is a task most us desire.
Time will tell.
Joe: Don’t kid yourself with the nonsense our government controlled media publishes. In terms of value and quantities of natural resources Russia has a lot more than any other country, by a very large factor. Their massive landmass straddles the critical historic land transportation routes between Europe and Asia. They have continuous access for exporting and importing minerals, oil, gas and manufactured goods which is completely protected from external enemies to the largest manufacturing country in the world, China.
At this time the major countries comprising the EU are literally deindustrializing, and sliding into recession, and soon, likely depression status. Coupled with the suicidal policies they share with us of importing millions of unvetted foreigners who have no cultural similarities to the host countries, or any desire to assimilate. This has created massive societal instability and associated unrest and violence. The German government has fallen apart and Volkswagen is closing factories, which is a stark barometer of the decline of what had been the economic “engine” of Europe.
Russian industrial output has grown rapidly, particularly in their military industrial complex. When the Soviet Union collapsed their massive armament factories were mothballed, not disbanded. Their universities graduate a high percentage of highly educated engineers and other useful fields. Their general population is also well educated and motivated as to be competent to functionally work. (An unusual concept for our current status here).
This has allowed them to rapidly mass produce weapon systems, missiles and munitions that far exceeds the production that both the US and NATO combined produce, which amounts to a small fraction of their out put.
The infamous quote from the late John McCain that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country” was an illusion that our illiterate “leaders” believed and then miscalculated by commencing a war which we have lost very badly, destroying Ukraine in the process.
If you understood Russian governance you would know their president is not a “dictator”, the ultimate power rests in the Security Council. Putin answers to the Council, he does not retain power extrajudicially, or by force of personality, like Stalin, Mao or Hitler. Their elections are a lot cleaner than ours and Putin actually represents the vast majority, 80+%, of the population. We are content when our president represents 45 to 50% of our population.
No nation now, or ever, has a constitution which enshrines that all power of self governance belongs to the citizens, with individual liberty, rights and the concept of citizens as sovereign, even remotely similar to ours. But we as a distinct people outsourced our government to incompetents who manage our country for a handful of oligarchs and corporations. We live under an administrative state autocracy, and will remain that way, unless Trump is able to commence the deconstruction of this parasitical system, and lay the groundwork for several subsequent administrations to follow in his tracks, and return us to a constitutional republic.
Well said Fritz. I disagree on your assessment of strangling Iran – one must understand that the hold over their people by the mullahs is due to their belief. They tolerate no dissent. Anyone who disagrees is declared infidel and killed. We can make them poorer and angrier, but we cannot convert them to peace with money. Only through military might and a strength of resolve not seen in the world since WWII will Iran slow their efforts to bully and murder their way to world dominance.
Getting rid of the Obama/Harris/Biden doctrine of appeasement, if not outright capitulation, will do wonders to the balances of power. No longer will despots, terrorists, and tyrants be funded with American dollars the way that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis were after Obama/Harris/Biden handed over BILLIONS of dollars and removed economic sanctions from Iran.
During the Obama/Biden Administration
Crimea was taken by Putin, during the Obama/Harris/Biden Administration Putin knew he could try and take the rest of Ukraine.
During the first Trump Administration none of this nonsense happened.
I hope nobody takes this author seriously as he obviously is getting his “facts” from the likes of CNN and their fellow military industrial complex propagandists. The war in Ukraine is, for all practical purposes, over. The Ukrainians army is hollowed out and – with Trump’s landslide victory – out of ammunition. Under Trump’s proposed peace plan Russia will keep all of the annexed territories in the Donbass & also Crimes. The only result of Biden’s economic sanctions against Russia was to open up more markets to Russian oil and military hardware and the formation of BRICS a gold based world currency that is a very real threat to the US dollar’s reserve currency standing. The Biden foreign policy blunder that led to the war in Ukraine will go down in history as the biggest military debacle in American/NATO history to date. The losers are the American taxpayers and the Ukrainian people who lost a whole generation of men. The winners are fascist multi-national corporations who managed to acquire more than 45% of Ukrainian land and assets in a few short years at fire sale prices and members of Congress and their families, who gladly partook in the biggest money laundering operation in recent history!
It’s refreshing to read comments from someone who is paying attention.
There is zero accounting for the hundreds of billions in “aid”. A lot of the money simply is transfered to our MIC companies in no bid contracts for which the officers of the General Staff will eventually be appointed onto their boards. At the slow pace of production, Ukraine will cease to exist before most anything going forward is produced.
Of the weapons transferred to Ukraine an unknown percentage is stolen by their military and appears on the international arms black market. A large volume is destroyed by Russian missile and drone strikes long before it reaches the Line of Contact.
4 of the 6 known F-16s deployed were taken out within days. They were spotted and confirmed not to be decoys, and with the advanced Russian ISR, taken out with Iskander missiles in under 10 minutes. High priority targets. Haven’t anything since of the “game changer” aircraft!
We added many hundreds of billions to our national debt and destroyed a nation for the profit potential of natural resource ownership by private companies. We blew up Nordstream, ending direct natural gas transport from Russia to create a ready market of replacement natural gas for Europe from Ukraine to profit the Biden family’s interest in Burisma. This is what we call “capitalism” in America.
Black Rock has moved onto Moldova, as the resource extraction rights they purchased are now on territory the locals voted to rejoin with Russia.
Our national security priority now is to delay the inevitable collapse of the Kiev regime until January 20, 2025 to blame Trump for the debacle. 500 Patriot interceptor missiles (annual production is 650) and $2 billion cost, are being priority rush delivered for this purpose.
While Fritz accurately describes the best way to undermine Iran- cut off its cash flow by preventing it from selling oil in most markets, he gets it wrong with Russia.
Lets be clear what Russia is. It is a state sponsor of terror. Our goal must be to impoverish that regime with continued sanctions, and a vast reduction in the price of oil through some sort of agreement with the Saudis. What do we have to offer to get Saudi Arabia to increase production? That’s the question.
The USA smartly worked to get nuclear weapons out of Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. In doing so we pledged to help Ukraine militarily- so we have that long standing obligation to honor.
National policy must be to see regime change in Russia, as we must pursue in Iran. Once Putin is removed, and replaced by a functioning democracy where free speech, and human rights are respected, we can then welcome Russia back to the civilized world.
Under Putin Russia is in major decline. The death rate exceeds the birth rate, and average life expectancy is only 72 years. Russia doesn’t even make the top ten on the ranking of top countries by GDP- and is even worse if oil revenues are subtracted. Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of men in the war, and NATO has expanded due to Putin’s war.
This election has been traumatic for the remaining true believers in our failed national “security” priority mission of world hegemony under a woke, corrupt and morally void globalist cartel.
Fortunately for those grieving and so inclined, there yet remains a small window of opportunity to fight for the neocon cause against “the Putin”!
The Kiev regime desperately needs recruits and welcomes indocrinated foreigners. They will pay the one way ticket, provide 3 days of basic training and haul volunteers to the Line of Contact, to personally fight against the evil dictatorship, instead of just dreaming about it.
The downside, it’s unlikely to actually see a glazed eyed “commie” Russian storm trooper to kill. Between a few hours and a couple of days, there is just another, among thousands of other lifeless bodies, buried in debris from a FAB, Khinzhal missile, FPV drone or 220mm thermobaric rocket.
On balance, maybe the high moral calling of dying for Black Rock’s and the Biden family’s Ukrainian financial interests is worth it.
Thankfully America is now gaining competent leadership, to work towards sanity, peace, prosperity and world stability for real national security.
Ah yes, Putin has three allies. The scumbags in India. The scumbags in China. And “Brian Simpson”.
You are not credible when you agree to going after Iran, a state sponsor of terror, and not Russia, another state sponsor of terror.
Since I’ve served, and you probably did not, I’m not going to do it again, although I would love to fly an A-10 against Russian forces for an hour or two. The damage I’d do would be well worth it.
People like you, Brian, never learned history. Appeasing scum like Putin, or Hitler, never has good results. Putin is particularly dangerous because he is nuts, and is threatening the civilized world with nukes.
We destroyed the much bigger Soviet Union. We can do so again with Putin, and his gangster regime.
“We” didn’t destroy the Soviet Union. They destroyed themselves with the cost of maintaing their empire, with all their Warsaw Pact vassal states breaking them.
Just as the costs of maintaining all our NATO, Mid East and Pacific vassal states, 900 bases worldwide, subsidizing our dysfunctional MIC companies, none of which enhance our national “security” are breaking us now.
I absolutely disagree with the regurgated failed policy of the past 45 years of “going after” Iran. We spent hundreds of billions creating and arming the Saddam regime in Iraq to “go after” Iran, which failed, and hundreds of billions more, plus thousands of American lives to depose Saddam. The bonus prize earned for utter failure is Iraq now being an ally of Iran.
You support the extremist muslim Saudi Royal family dictatorship, a state sponsor of terror, that executes dissidents, minorities, and require their women to cover their heads with bags. Similar to the Iranian mullah regime. But somehow Saudi’s are “good guys”, no efforts to topple the Crown Prince and create a democracy.
In fact, Saudi is far more totalitarian than Russia.
Your boasting manner of insinuating superiority as having “served” is an unbecoming attitude and behavior of an American soldier, as well as having no idea about my own and generational family’s service.
By all means, please do arrange to fly an A-10 towards the Line of Contact!
A fantastic opportunity for setting Vegas odds bets on how many minutes you’d survive from take off until the flaming wreckage hits the ground. With a bonus round of how many kilometers from your target you make it! If you survive, note that the Ukraine military only evacuates their wounded that pay up front in cash. And the first Russian unit that salvages the wreckage will receive a large cash bonus, making them smile!
Like I wrote earlier, you’ve never learned your history. Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union with diplomacy with the Saudis, and other ways, with SDI.
In the end you fail to recognize true evil- Putin and his gangser regime. So there really isn’t much to say to someone like you.
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