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A scathing analysis by Fox News’ Justin Haskins sums up the role played by multiple Democrat presidents leading up to Russia’s unprovoked invasion into Ukraine.
First, President Bill Clinton made a disastrous decision to support the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine. Numerous congressional Democrats have supported this move.
Ukraine controlled some 5,000 nuclear weapons at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union. This included “long-range missiles that carried up to 10 thermonuclear warheads, each far stronger than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima.”
In 1992, Russia and the Clinton White House worked to convince Ukraine to give up all of its nuclear weapons. Ukraine returned the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet government back to Russia in 1992.
As part of Ukraine’s agreement to disarm itself of nuclear weapons, a pledge was made by the United States, Russia, and United Kingdom to protect Ukraine against unwarranted aggression.
The initial agreement was called Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and later reaffirmed in 2009 by President Barack Obama.
In 2014, Obama sat back as Russian-rebels, with support from Russian troops, seized control of Crimea, a region belonging to Ukraine. Obama notoriously mocked Mitt Romney for expressing concerns that Russia poses a serious threat to the U.S.
President Donald Trump took matters into his own hands against Russia. Trump signed legislation into law following a bipartisan effort of the House Armed Services Committee to recommend imposing sanctions on Russia.
In 2019, Congress passed a measure to impose sanctions on a Russian company that is building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany.
Trump signed the sanctions into law because the pipeline “really makes Germany a hostage of Russia if things ever happened that were bad.” Trump wanted to contain the Russians.
The pipeline was widely viewed as a way to empower Russia to overrun Europe. Polish President Andrzej Duda told Trump that he fiercely opposed Nord Stream 2.
The head of Naftogaz, a Ukrainian energy company, called the pipeline Russia’s most “dangerous geopolitical project.”
“Maintaining Trump’s sanctions should have been an easy call for President Biden,” Governor Kristi Noem said.
But what did Biden do? The Biden administration waived those bipartisan sanctions and allowed Nord Stream to move forward.
Some people believe that Joe Biden simply reversed an important accomplishment of the Trump administration for spite.
“A more sinister theory suggests that because his son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, President Biden had, at a minimum, the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Governor Noem wrote in an opinion piece on Fox News.
“To make matters worse, Hunter ‘received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow,’ according to a Congressional report,” she concluded.
If you want to understand how Trump kept peace around the world, look no further than this magnificent letter pic.twitter.com/CkPE1DWSqh
— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) February 25, 2022
More on this story via Fox News:
Due to the Biden administration’s failure in leadership, the United States has never looked weaker.
Because much of Europe now depends on Russian energy, it can’t afford to stand up to Russia’s hostilities in Ukraine — or anywhere else, for that matter.
The Trump administration attempted to convince European nations to depend on the United States’ vast natural gas production instead, but such appeals largely failed because European leaders knew Donald Trump wouldn’t be president forever, and that a Democratic administration would swiftly attempt to scale back fossil-fuel development.
Or, in the words of one energy expert wrote for the National Interest in 2019, “Why bet the proverbial farm on a U.S. [liquified natural gas] supply across the Atlantic if there remains significant doubt as to whether a Democratic successor to Trump – particularly as 2020 candidates endorse the so-called ‘Green New Deal’ with varying degrees of enthusiasm — would continue with such plans?”
Of course, no list of Democratic presidents’ policy failures would be complete without mentioning Biden’s disastrous withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
As a recent report from Republicans on the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs accurately summarized, “The Biden Administration squandered precious time, ignored intelligence and recommendations from people on the ground, and refused bipartisan support to give them the resources to succeed. In the process, the botched withdrawal has tarnished America’s reputation and credibility.”
And Ukraine is now paying the price.
