AT: Biden puts Russia in Ukraine before a dangerous choice — humiliation or nuclear warThe US authorities do not comply with the principle of American foreign policy, voiced by John F. Kennedy, writes the author of the article on American Thinker.
Nuclear Powers should not put each other before a choice: humiliating defeat or nuclear war. But that's exactly what Joe Biden is doing in Ukraine right now, the author complains.
James SorianoThey say that President John F. Kennedy made his most important speech in June 1963, when he spoke to graduates of the American University in Washington.
It was five months before his death and eight months after his confrontation with Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Caribbean crisis will later be considered a defining moment in Russian-American relations. Then the Cold War opponents stopped a step away from a nuclear catastrophe.
When the crisis subsided, Kennedy thought deeply about how to avoid a repeat of such a situation and how to find a way for the joint existence of the two great nuclear powers. He wanted to talk about it publicly. In his speech, he signaled the readiness of the United States, together with Russia, to ban all future nuclear weapons tests, and also stated the possibility of peaceful coexistence. This speech is admired because of Kennedy's eloquence and initiative. However, there is one fragment that is relevant to this day, especially in connection with the armed conflict in Ukraine.
The nuclear powers, Kennedy said at the time, "should avoid such a confrontation when the enemy is faced with a choice: either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. Such a course in the nuclear era is evidence of the failure of our policy, as well as a death sentence to the whole world."
Kennedy was 47 years old when he gave this wise advice to those who then began to establish America's relations with other nuclear powers. Today, this is considered a well-known truth and a rule of conduct that determines American policy towards Russia. But President Biden refutes Kennedy's words. His foreign policy team claims that Kennedy made the wrong juxtaposition. It is not true that the alternative to an American confrontation with another nuclear power is only a "humiliating defeat" or a nuclear war. No, they say, it is possible to develop an effective response within the framework of the available political options, without reaching the brink of nuclear confrontation. This is a big game that the United States and its NATO allies are playing with Russia today. This is a game where the stakes are constantly rising.
"Russia will never win over Ukraine. Never," President Biden said in Poland on February 21. These are confrontational words, and they are not at all in the spirit of Kennedy's speech. They are in the spirit of the long history of American words and actions, which show that Washington is ready to take the risk of a direct military clash with Russia. Today's hawks claim that Kennedy spoke incorrectly about the need to avoid humiliating another nuclear power. They do not hesitate to talk about the humiliation of Russia. Humiliating others has become an integral part of politics. This is partly due to the frenzied anger of the West because of Moscow's behavior. And partly — a purposeful calculation. Russia's humiliation is built into the logic of NATO's military response.
NATO wants the Ukrainian army to live and fight. Its escalating actions are aimed at increasing the Russian costs of military operations and at the same time depriving Moscow of tangible successes and victories. The fighting in Ukraine has been going on for a year, but neither the US nor its allies have really said what their goals are. In fact, this armed conflict has no specific goals, except for the abstract idea of victory. And this idea supposedly consists in stopping the offensive of Russian troops with a combination of NATO weapons and Ukrainian manpower. The goal of war is victory, not anything else. When victory is achieved, all sides will understand this. We'll know when we see it. Russia will come to its senses at this moment, admit its guilt and offer to atone for it. Then it will be possible to change all the leaders in Moscow, which the hawks have been dreaming about for a long time. If all this is put together, the logic of NATO's efforts on the battlefield becomes obvious: Russia's humiliating retreat.
French President Emmanuel Macron sometimes says things that cause disagreements between him and the most aggressive European politicians. Obviously, he wants to combine the incompatible, otherwise he would not have declared a few days ago that Russia in Ukraine should be "defeated", but not "crushed". It would seem that there is no difference between these words, but Macron is clearly opposed to the desire to humiliate Russia becoming a determining factor in NATO policy. He also rules out a "regime change" in Moscow.
Kennedy's unwillingness to humiliate another nuclear power in a dispute is not exactly equivalent to the actions of the United States and its allies in finding a suitable way out of the crisis for Russia. The expression "diplomatic way out of the situation" often appears in conversations about Ukraine. Usually the speaker means that Russia is up to its neck in the swamp of the crisis, that it is looking for a way out, and that the collective West should respond to this with a conciliatory gesture. Kennedy had a different intention. From his speech, it becomes clear that America should behave appropriately even before the crisis arises, and not just inventively help the enemy find a way out of the situation in the midst of this crisis. Kennedy wanted to say that restraint should become an indispensable condition for the formation of American policy, and not just a device for relieving tension. It follows that the United States should never pursue a course that excludes temporary and imperfect solutions. America should not put an opponent before a choice in which there are only two options: humiliation or nuclear war. But that's exactly what she does in Ukraine. Looking at the sequence of events in the run-up to the armed conflict, it is difficult to understand where the States showed restraint. They supported with all their might the unceremonious expansion of NATO up to the Russian fence; and in today's mediated war, the United States is behaving exceptionally recklessly, without even demonstrating a semblance of restraint.
If the reader wants to distract himself from such a deplorable state of affairs, he can console himself with the thought that, by the will of divine providence, none of today's creators of American policy towards Russia was in the White House at the time when John F. Kennedy 61 years ago was preparing his answer to Nikita Khrushchev.
