Startling new reports have revealed that Joe Biden is now offering Vladimir Putin access to several NATO military facilities in Eastern Europe in exchange for a vow from the Kremlin to de-escalate tensions with Ukraine.
The proposal which hearkens back to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Germany in the run-up to World War II was included in the White House response in late January to Russia’s unironic demands for “security guarantees” from the Western Nations. Guarantees much like those given to Kyiv in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, that Russia flagrantly violated by annexing the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and that the US under Barack Obama and UK under David Cameron further violated by taking no action.
According to The New York Post,
“The proposal was included in Washington’s response last week to Moscow’s demands for so-called “security guarantees” from the West, including barring Ukraine and other former Soviet states from becoming NATO members and rolling back forces from Eastern Europe.”
Appeasement Giving Putin Access? Or A Poorly Thought Out Diplomatic Trap?
The proposal was leaked to the Spanish news outlet El Pais and astonishingly was confirmed by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby who attempted to redress the unbelievable exchange as positive.
“We did not make this document public,” Kirby told reporters.
“But now that it is, it confirms to the entire world what we have always been saying: There is no daylight between our public statements and our private discussions.”
“The United States has gone the extra mile to find a diplomatic solution,” Kirby added. “And if Russia actually wants to negotiate a solution, as it claims it does, this document certainly makes clear that there is a path forward to do so.”
Some have suggested that this tactic is so overwhelmingly advantageous to Russia that refusing it would force them to yield the rhetorical high ground in negotiations, but with Vladimir Putin’s recent penchant for calling Joe Biden’s bluffs as shown by the allegedly unrelated shutdown of the Yamal-Europe pipeline’s liquified natural gas (LNG) flow from Russia to Europe.
On January 19th Biden had suggested that the Russians wouldn’t shut off any gas pipelines to Europe, saying “And, look, I think you’re going to see — for example, everybody talks about how Russia has control over the energy supply that Europe absorbs. Well, guess what? That — that money that they earn from that makes about 45 percent of the economy. I don’t see that as a one-way street. They go ahead and cut it off — it’s like my mother used to say: “You bite your nose off to spite your face.” It’s not like they have all these wonderful choices out there.”
It would appear that Biden is either an amateurish poker player or Putin simply has a much stronger hand than anyone suspected.
