Peloni: This foreign policy speech by Vance, delivered before the Quincy Institute, provides an important insight into Vance’s world view. Notably, the speech was just under 30 min. in length, and Vance explains that it is not intended to provide an encompassing description of his views, but he does discuss what he describers as two important topics, and while the first topic is China, the second topic is Israel.
@Felix You changed my mind – yes you did – about Ukraine by posting the BBC’s objective coverage starting in 2014 before they became NATO’s Pravda along with the rest of the legacy media once Russia became involved and this war began.
Clearly not propaganda. Then.
Very reassuring that this guy is so articulate and so well versed in U.S. national security issues and has such a firm grasp of international politics generally. Also, of course that he is a firm supporter of Israel. He would make a very competent president if something bad happens to Trump. I guess Trump’s instincts were right when heasked him to become his vp.
Sebastien
What are you trying to find out? Do you mean this contested period from about 2012 to 2022? If so much in this will help.
@Felix What is this?
Sebastien
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/23/neocons-and-the-ukraine-coup/
In these circles references do not imply agreement. It is for purpose of knowledge.
Laura
That’s the very last thing I would do.
@Laura
If you read what I wrote, you could not mistake the point I was making about the burden on the US being sourced to Ukraine, and not to Isreal. With regards to the issue of the donative to the US MIC masked as aid to Israel, the burden from the aid does not lie on the US but rather on Israel herself. Israel must find the means to separate herself from this US dependency which has made her weak, and misguides her judgements regarding existential threats. By eliminating the resulting dependency on US, Israel will become a better ally, a stronger nation, and a more prosperous and better defended Jewish state, capable and willing to tell the US ‘no’ more readily and more easily when it becomes necessary, and it has become necessary more and more frequently over the past many decades, with less and less commitment by Israel’s leaders to actually make such a stand against their perceived benefactors in the US.
Indeed, the burden to the US does not come from aid going to Israel, from which the US benefits greatly. Rather the burden comes from the commitment to supplying the corrupt money laundering nation of Ukraine with an open purse from which the US gains slim to none benefit and only massively increases the US deficit, while filling the pockets of the oligarchs of both Ukraine and the US.
@Felix Can you find again the BBC coverage from the 8 years before the war? You know, the Kremlin Broadcasting service (Cyrillic is so weird with what looks like the same letters but they’re not.)
Just as believable as the “persecution” of ethnic Russians in Georgia as a pretext for the invasion of that country. You guys just fall for every Kremlin claim hook, line and sinker.
@Laura
“All you need is love.” -John Lennon, Paul McCartney.
My comment: Even a stopped clock is right, twice a day. Let’s hope Trump, with Vance’s help, can a) take his rightful seat and b) negotiate the armistice he has promised, stopping this elective blood bath and nuclear-armed Russia’s steadily closer Bear hug with our existential enemies, not to mention the Ukrainian Nazi persecution of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, as Felix mentioned. I think Transcarpathia should go back to Hungary as well. Only Western Ukraine is really Ukrainian, anyway. Anyhow, to start with, This is what you get when nations are created by politicians who are oblivious to the history and cultures of a region just by drawing lines on a map, eg. Rwanda, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan. I looked up the question of arms for the Ukraine. Truly a question for the ages. The lady in question was an armless Roman, which is who I set out to look for, in the first place, seeking historical parallels if only poetic ones on several levels (move over Victor David Hanson 😀 )
“Why we’re still up in arms about the mystery of the Venus de Milo”
(This article is more than 9 years old)
A new 3D reconstruction suggests that Venus was a textile-spinning prostitute. But never mind these unprovable claims, the more interesting question is why does this beautiful but broken sculpture still fascinate?
There are multiple theories about the Venus de Milo, the ancient Greek statue famous for its immaculate beauty and lack of arms. Many suggestions about how those missing limbs were once positioned and what Venus was doing with them have been advanced since this elegant antiquity was discovered in 1820 on the Aegean island of Milos.
Was she holding a spear? Or looking in a handheld mirror? Archeology professor and textiles expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber suggested that Venus was spinning, and suggests the statue may represent a prostitute, as spinning was an activity associated with ancient Greek sex workers.
It is impossible to prove this or any other theory about the absent arms of the Venus de Milo. Cartoonists who depict her weightlifting have as much credibility. A new 3D reconstruction showing how Venus might look as a spinner just adds a techno gloss, rather than any evidence. There are many images of hetaira – as courtesans were called – in Greek art but a marble statue on this scale seems much more likely to be the goddess of love than a professional lover…”
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/may/11/venus-de-milo-arms-reconstruction-spinning-prostitute-sculpture
{A commenter who no longer wishes to be mentioned called my thinking zany Now that wasn’t zany, at all, was it? “Fun, but in no sense, zany.”
https://youtu.be/byW49j2YSjE?si=-BuNdrsoUdJXdTKT
[actually, I’ve never mentioned that this clip, which I’ve posted before, is obviously a conscious parody of Edward Said, who I knew slightly, who was a very westernized fixture of the Upper West Said, and English Professor at Columbia, an expert in classical music, especially Bartok, and a close friend of famed Argentine-Israeli pianist and conductor, Daniel Barenboim.]
Felix you are literally regurgitating Kremlin propaganda. What you are saying is false history. Russia has actually been the one using neo-nazi mercenaries. https://youtu.be/XQc6mJ7u8gQ
Apparently, you are unaware of just how big our economy is. Some can claim that arms to Israel is a burden and they certainly do and we always debunk those arguments. Out of our GDP, less than 3% is spent for defense. Out of the defense budget, a mere fraction of that is going to arm Ukraine. Also, we are providing Ukraine with our older weapons systems and the money we spend is for building new weapons systems for ourselves. So the money is actually going for our own defense. That’s how it works.
Laura
You divert all the time
Fact…those Ukrainian Nazis had diverted from Jew hatred to Russia hatred
Trace it to at least the coup
In 2014 they attacked defenceless civilians
Their own people
…but could not tolerate Ukrainians speaking Russian language
It was really stepped up in 2022 hence Putin could not stay on sidelines
Hard to discuss with ignorant of history people
Peloni and others
America is truly imperialist. It needs to be top of the dunghill.
I see the moves afoot, they fear the economic and other strengths of china.
Sanction talk always ends in real war.
This is a complicated question not to be solved by chat here but by some real knowledge
Drill baby drill leads to more warming of earth because CO2 is a warming gas
In the end physics is simple
All I said at beginning was I welcome vance v Zelensky…just that
How about another referendum? I think we can all agree that the Ukrainian government has done an amazing job in educating its people. “One picture is worth a thousand words.” – Albert Einstein
@Laura
I am curious where you received your background in economics, because it is quite unhinged to suggest that providing billions of dollars worth of arms might not present a burden to the US, particularly when the US does not have a fraction of the arms which are needed by Ukraine to win. And this latter fact is validated by no other than the Neocon RAnd Corporation, and became ever more acutely a burden to the Americans when Hamas attacked Israel last year. As Vance noted, we should take the arms being gifted to Ukraine and send them to Israel instead. Ukraine needs to broker a ceasefire or a surrender, their choice, but whatever they choose they should pony up the coin to support their failing war effort if they choose to proceed with this further. The burden on America is real, and so too is the burden extending across all the world as this needless war needlessly increased the price of energy around the world, crushing the world middle class in its wake. This needs to end, I look forward to seeing it end in about four and a half months.
@Felix
Hate? You are reading with the wrong yardstick. In fact I respect China as an ancient people which has a perspective entirely based around China itself.
Many nations would benefit from such a perspective, and Israel would be included in this. Yet, it should be noted that the aspects of empire which surround and permeate the American nation is exactly the vantage from which China expects to one day view the world, and to Laura’s point, while I have no love of America extending its dominion over others, I would love it far less to have China doing so instead.
As to the parallel between Russia and China, well, no such parallel exists, and this fact has come to generate a great deal of empire-envy among the Russian elites who no doubt stand perplexed as to how China was able to come to a position so much greater than Russia could ever hope to regain in the immediate age. In fact, had it not been for the crazy Americans and their unhinged plan to bring about regime change in Russia using their sanctions war alongside their New Green Agenda, Russia would have likely suffered a far greater economic crisis as the US could have exported enough gas to trully overturn the Russian economy and likely the current Russian regime with it.
Geopolitics should not be viewed thru the lens of political interests, but only with an appreciation of what is really accurate and reasonable. With this in mind, it is hardly reasonable that Russia has the means or capabilities to conquer her neighbors with ease, much less threaten anything which truly impacts the American people. This same statement could not be made of China which has come to hold the dominating world economy, along with an increasingly dominating military built on stolen American/European know-how and supported by its own version of the globalist EMF. So it isn’t hatred of China which draws my attention to it, but the clear realization that everything which is falsely claimed about Russia could come to be true with China. Which is why the corrupt, inept, war obsessed US needs to refocus their attention to check China before war becomes an unavoidable reality, and if this reality should come to be, it would come at the cost of far more than the millions or so Slavs who now lie dead in Ukraine due to America being run by the playbook of the American oligarchs.
My guess it’s almost 6 years ago I was a frequent on this site and I see some things never change, as Felix is still on the wrong side of everything. Like he and Democrats I know are stuck in the wrong lane and doesn’t either know how or refuses to move to the right. Like a nephew of mine like is mother (RIP) was a diehard Democrat. He told me “I was born a Democrat and will die as a Democrat.This is blind loyalty and I believe this is the attitude of most Democrats. Sad.
I agree with Peloni on China. Felix, you just support anything that’s anti-American. If you think a world controlled by Russia and China will bode well for freedom and the Jewish people, you’re crazy.
Spoken like a good little Putin lackey.
Laura
You are easily answered. It was not any invasion
Special operation is correct.
To prevent a genocide of Russian speakers (0f Ukrainians) in eastern Ukraine.
Easy to document. Biden up to his ears in this.
We should be together on this.
Peloni
You seem hungry up over china.
Why are you replacing hatred of Russia with China?
Laura, you’re right on. We should be providing the weapons and the appropriate ones they need to defend themselves. Unfortunately, I am not crazy about their president and our Democrats who no doubt are laundering the money we provide them.
There doesn’t seem to be any accountability of funds that are ushered around our nation and elsewhere. I believe none of the crises occurring around the world would have taken place if Pres. Trump was in office.
Concerning the brutal attack on the Israelis 10/7 was the last straw, I believe this time God is allowing His people to crush the enemy, no more let-ups, and return to the same old, same old again. His people had been too generous with the Pals and it was time to call it quits and take full control of all of Israel including Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Don’t feel sorry for the Pals, they brought it on themselves, and they had numerous opportunities that were squandered because the so-called Hamas leaders didn’t want peace. They also aided Hamas in more ways than none, who do you think dug all those tunnels?
If any country doesn’t like it, tell them to take in the Palestinians as their neighbor.
My daily prayers are for the Israelis and the hostages, I pray God will lead the IDF to where they are held and rescue them and pray they are all okay,
Prayers also for those Democrats who have yet to realize this party has gone off the tracks and moved too far to the left and show signs of communism, thanks to the likes of Obama/Soros and company.
You keep pushing this absurd notion that we provoked this war rather than Russia which you and like-minded folks are claiming is somehow the “victim” acting in “self-defense”. Is there a more crackpot narrative than that? Ukrainians are fighting and dying and are only asking for the arms to fight with. Providing arms does not present a burden to America. Putin is a megalomaniacal ruler who envisions himself as Peter the Great and wants to reconstitute the Russian empire such as existed in the days of the tzars. Ukraine is only the beginning of its ambitions. One could argue that Russia is incapable of succeeding and they are probably right, but that won’t stop it from causing much bloodshed and damage in the process. Why let it get to that point rather than stopping Russia now. I’ve said previously that Ukraine would be a better fit for NATO than Turkey which should be kicked out because it’s an islamo-nazi dictatorship.
You just want Russia to win for reasons I don’t know. I can’t begin to understand the infatuation with Putin and Russia some on the right have.
@Felix
More than specifically on Ukraine, Vance essentially describes the Trump Doctrine in this speech. Defining allies as like minded nations which are partners rather than vassals, with these partners being capable of enforcing US interests within their respective regions, thus leaving the US capable of dealing with China, all the time focusing upon the principle of peace thru strength rather than peace thru conquest as has been the failing US policy pursued for the past 3 decades.
Ukraine offers the US no such ability as a partner but needs the US in every aspect of its existence, not being capable of paying its own govt salaries, produce the first bullet, or even to succeed as the bought and paid for proxy force which it has chosen to become.
Some VERY interesting points made that everyone should be aware of and take a POSITION on in the following article:
Music to my ears is this extract
“But he has also made a name for himself as a leading critic of aid to Ukraine.
“I think that it’s ridiculous that we’re focused on this border in Ukraine,” Vance said on an interview on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in 2022. “I gotta be honest with you: I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”. ”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/17/trump-jd-vance-vp-ukraine