Yesterday the news broke that Swamp
Monster-In-Chief John Bolton has been pushing President Trump to withdraw from
the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the 1988 arms control agreement
between the US and the Soviet Union eliminating all missiles of a specified
range from the arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers. Today, Trump has announced that he will be doing
exactly as Bolton instructed.
This would
be the second missile treaty between the US and Russia that America has
withdrawn from since it abandoned the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty in 2002. John Bolton, an actual
psychopath who Trump hired as his National Security
Advisor in April, ran point on that move as well back when he
was part of the increasingly indistinguishable Bush administration.
This is why John Bolton shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near US foreign policy. This would undo decades of bipartisan arms control dating from Reagan. We shouldn’t do it. We should seek to fix any problems with this treaty and move forward. fxn.ws/2q1FqTi #FoxNews
“This is
why John Bolton shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near US foreign policy,” tweeted Senator Rand Paul in
response to early forecasts of the official announcement. “This would undo
decades of bipartisan arms control dating from Reagan. We shouldn’t do it. We
should seek to fix any problems with this treaty and move forward.”
“This is
the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s,” Malcolm
Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services
Institute, told The
Guardian. “If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New
Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left
without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time
since 1972.”
“A disaster
for Europe,” tweeted Russia-based
journalist Bryan MacDonald. “The treaty removed Cruise & Pershing missiles,
and Soviet ss20’s from the continent. Now, you will most likely see Russia
launch a major build up in Kaliningrad & the US push into Poland. So you’re
back to 1980, but the dividing line is closer to Moscow.”
“Russia has
violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years and I don’t
know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out,” Trump told reporters in
Nevada. “We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons
and we’re not allowed to. We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and
we’ve honored the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honored the
agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.”
What Trump
did not mention is that the US has indeed
been in violation of that agreement due to steps it began
taking toward the development of a new ground-launched cruise missile last
year. The US claims it began taking those steps due to Russian violations of
the treaty with its own arsenal, while Russia claims the US has already
been in violation of multiple arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament
agreements.
#Ryabkov: US seeking pretext for breakup of #INFtreaty. Liability for destruction of one of the pillars of the system of arms control will fall on Washingtonfacebook.com/RusEmbUSA/phot…
So, on the
one front where cooler heads prevailing is quite literally the single most
important thing in the world, the exact opposite is happening. Hotter, more
impatient, more violent, more hawkish heads are prevailing over diplomacy and
sensibility, potentially at the peril of the entire world should something
unexpected go wrong as a result. This is of course coming after two years of
Democratic Party loyalists attacking Trump on the basis that he has not been
sufficiently hawkish toward Russia, and claiming that this is because he is
Putin’s puppet.
In response
to this predictable escalation the path for which has been lubricated by
McResistance pundits and their neoconservative allies, those very same pundits
are now reacting with horror that Putin’s puppet is now dangerously escalating
tensions with Putin.
“BREAKING:
Trump announces that the United States will pull out of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty that the US has been in for 31 years,” exclaimed the popular
Russiagater Brian Krassenstein in a tweet that as of this writing has over
5,000 shares. “Welcome back to the Cold War. This time it’s scarier And no,
It’s not Obama, or Hillary or the Democrat’s fault. It’s ALL TRUMP!”
“Hilarious
to listen to all this alarmed screaming about US withdrawal from INF Treaty
emanating from those who for 2 years have been demanding that Trump get tough
with Russia,” tweeted George Szamuely of the
Global Policy Institute. “Now that they’ve got their arms race I hope they are
pleased with themselves.”
“Are those
who have spent the past two years warning of a Trump-Kremlin conspiracy &
cheering confrontation w/ Russia ready to shut the fuck up yet?” asked Aaron Maté, who has
been among the most consistently lucid critics of the Russiagate narrative in
the US.
Are those who have spent the past two years warning of a Trump-Kremlin conspiracy & cheering confrontation w/ Russia ready to shut the fuck up yet?
Are they
ready to shut the fuck up? That would be great, but this is just the latest
escalation in a steadily escalating new cold war, and these blithering idiots
didn’t shut the fuck up at any of the other steps toward nuclear holocaust.
They didn’t shut the fuck up after Trump’s capitulation to the
longstanding neoconservative agenda to arm
Ukraine against Russia. They didn’t shut the fuck up after Americans killed Russians in Syria as part of their regime change occupation of that
country. They didn’t shut the fuck up when this administration adopted a Nuclear Posture Review with greatly increased
aggression toward Russia and blurred lines between when nuclear strikes are and
are not appropriate. They didn’t shut the fuck up when Trump started sending war ships into the Black Sea “to counter Russia’s
increased presence there.” They didn’t shut the fuck up when this
administration forced RT and Sputnik to register as foreign
agents. They didn’t shut the fuck up when this administration helped expand NATO with the addition of
Montenegro, at the assigning of Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special
representative to Ukraine, at the shutting down of a Russian consulate in San Francisco and
throwing out Russian diplomats in August of last year, when Trump threw out
dozens more diplomats in response to shaky claims about the
poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, or when he implemented aggressive
sanctions on Russian oligarchs. Why would they shut the
fuck up now?
As signs
point to Mueller’s investigation wrapping up in
the near futurewithout turning up a single shred of evidence that
Trump colluded with the Russian government, it’s time for everyone who helped
advance this toxic, suicidal anti-Russia narrative to ask themselves one
question: was it worth it? Was it worth it to help mount political pressure on
a sitting president to continually escalate tensions with a nuclear superpower
and loudly screaming that he’s a Putin puppet whenever he takes a step toward
de-escalation? Was it worth it to help create an atmosphere where cooler heads don’t
prevail in the one area where it’s absolutely essential for everyone’s survival
that they do? Or is it maybe time to shut the fuck up for a while and rethink
your entire worldview?
This is the top response under a tweet by @krassenstein about how Trump is escalating nuclear tensions with Putin. You know you've hit peak conspiracy theory when the evidence disproving the conspiracy theory is interpreted as proof of the conspiracy theory.
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