Can the West force an end to the war in Ukraine — and how badly did US presidents botch the rise of Vladimir Putin in the first place? “Obviously, it’s going to end up at some bargaining table at some point sooner or later,” Adam Baldwin declares, although the question of what concessions can be swallowed by either side is very much open. The West has botched Putin since at least the Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama “reset button” in 2009, we both argue, and Adam brings in astute observations from Victor Davis Hanson to underscore our predicament.
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Welcome back to my VIP video series “The Amiable Skeptics,” featuring my friend Adam Baldwin! Adam is well-known for his long and storied Hollywood career, starting with My Bodyguard, and especially for his roles in Full Metal Jacket, Firefly, its film sequel Serenity, Chuck, and The Last Ship.
George W. Bush’s naïveté about Putin might have been understandable as wishful thinking until the summer of 2008, I argue, but the invasion of Georgia should have eliminated all doubt about Putin’s imperialism. Rather than rally the West to isolate Putin at that time, “what’s the first thing they [Obama and Joe Biden] do?” I ask, “They blame the problems between Russia and the United States on George W. Bush,” which Hillary and Obama symbolized with the reset button to Sergei Lavrov.
“That’s right,” Adam responds. “George Bush was still mired in the aftermath of the attacks in 2001,” but Obama, Biden, and Hillary don’t have that excuse. And even the deterrent threat against Putin got eliminated by Biden’s disgraceful rout out of Afghanistan, Adam points out. “What threat from them is going to stop [Putin] at this point? This is the reason why you don’t pull out of Afghanistan, right?”
There’s plenty more discussion here, too, especially on John Durham’s flop in the Igor Danchenko trial and especially about the real Russian connections to the Bidens rather than the unfounded rumors of such with the Trumps. Don’t miss it, and be sure to join the conversation in the comments below!
