Putin’s Odd Reaction to Trump’s Foreign Diplomacy Should Petrify Everyone
Last week, Trump announced his decision to pull out all troops in Syria as well as reduce the military in Afghanistan. Anyway you look at it, this retreat sends disastrous ripples across the world. Undoubtedly, ISIS will spin this retreat as a strong recruiting tool. After years of fighting, the US soldier must put his tail between his legs and abandon the battlefield. Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds, our best defense against ISIS, puts us right back to square one. Years of diplomatic progress, flushed down the toilet.
The only voice that would sing praise over this decision, comes from Moscow. Trump’s foreign diplomacy serves Putin, and this Syrian pull out is no different.
On Thursday, Putin told reporters
“On this, Donald is right. I agree with him,” Putin said of Trump’s assertion that the militant group has been defeated in Syria, where Russian troops have supported the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“Whether do we need the presence of the American military, I guess we do not need that presence,” he continued. “The presence of your troops is illegitimate so if you’ve made this decision it is the right decision.”
For starters, ISIS has not been defeated. Armytimes wrote,
“I think the most critical problem with this decision is actually the simplest: ISIS is not defeated,” said Jennifer Cafarella, an expert covering the Syria conflict for the Institute for the Study of War.
For one, ISIS still holds onto some rural villages scattered across the Middle Euphrates River Valley, where the terrorist group has shown some resiliency in launching large-scale counteroffensives.
Of course, Putin would applaud Trump’s decision, because it gives him unlimited power now in the Middle East. Russian media was ecstatic. On one Russian State TV show, director of the Moscow-based Center for Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies, was asked what US withdrawal would mean for the massive Syrian oil reserves.
“I hope we’ll get it and not the Turks. Praise God, we thank him!” — TheDailyBeast
As every Russian is celebrating Trump’s foreign diplomatic blunder, how does Putin react? On the day that Trump announced his plans to withdrawal from Syria, Putin, the single guy in the world who should be heaping flower petals at Trump’s feet, instead was threatening America with nuclear demolition.
While speaking at his annual news conference, Putin mentioned how Russia will be forced to take countermeasures in response to Trump’s withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
Putin also emphasized that the U.S. is pondering the use of ballistic missiles with conventional warheads, saying that the launch of such a missile could be mistaken for the launch of a nuclear-tipped one and trigger a global catastrophe.
“If that happens, it could lead to the destruction of the entire civilization and may be even our planet,” he said. — GlobalNews
It all seems so staged.
Remember in April of last year, when Trump dropped dozens of missiles on a Syrian base that was allegedly making chemical weapons? Miraculously, none of the bombs left any damage. In fact, hours after, Syrian warplanes were taking off from the same airstrips that were just bombed.
More bizarre, the busy airstrip was empty. Analysts assume that US gave Russia a warning about the bombing, and instructed Syria to remove soldiers and airplanes, Telegraph.
Something is going on behind the curtains. Nothing is more profitable than the big war machine. If Trump and Putin start firing missiles at each other, a few people stand to make a lot of money.
