The best foreign policy maxim for time and all eternity came from Theodore Roosevelt, not one of SLL’s favorite presidents: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” It’s a lesson most boys learn in the schoolyard, and once learned, it should never be forgotten. Unfortunately, the maxim has no place in the Biden administration. From Brian Cloughley at strategic-culture.org:
We can only hope that President Biden will ignore the war fanatics and agree that negotiation is preferable to confrontation.
One of the recent political absurdities in Europe was a stage-managed photo sequence of Britain’s foreign minister Liz Truss posing boldly but comfortably with her head and shoulders poking out of the turret of a British army tank. The pathetic charade took place in Estonia, close to Russia, when she visited British troops deployed there as part of the U.S.-Nato buildup along Russia’s western frontier. She was on her way to attend a meeting of foreign ministers of the U.S.-Nato military alliance held on November 30 in Riga, the capital of Latvia, some 300 kilometres from Russia.
According to Nato, this is where it “has enhanced its forward presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, with four multinational battalion-size battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, on a rotational basis.” The meeting of foreign ministers was chaired by publicity-hungry Secretary General of the Nato alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, who issued the usual challenge to Russia that “we stand together to defend and protect all Allies” — meaning, specifically, Ukraine, concerning which the U.S.-Nato military alliance will “maintain our political and practical support for our partner.” This includes confrontation in the air, under Nato orders whereby “allies take turns deploying to air bases at Šiauliai, Lithuania and Ämari, Estonia, on a four-month rotational basis, ready to be launched by NATO’s Combined Air Operations Centre Uedem, Germany if required.”
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 