Thursday 28th of November 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

"great minds think alike….

... and fools seldom differ..."

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THE ABC (AUSTRALIA) CARRIES ON INTERVIEWING THE MOST HAWKISH HAWK IN THE USA, LOONY JOHN BOLTON... BUT HERE IS THEIR LATEST BIT OF FOSSICKING IN THE "BRAIN" OF THIS "GREAT DIPLOMAT" WHO HAS ONLY ONE IDEA ON HIS MIND: WAR....

 

from RN

Amid the latest spike in tensions between China and Taiwan, Donald Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton has a characteristically blunt message.

"We ought to be clear to China that we consider Taiwan an independent country … I think the doctrine of strategic ambiguity [towards Taiwan] has served its purpose," he told ABC RN's Between The Lines during a visit to Australia.

 

Bolton served in top positions for multiple Republican presidents, including as US Ambassador to the United Nations under George W Bush and 17 months with Donald Trump before a well-publicised falling-out.

He's a conservative China hawk and has been outspoken about China's rise in the past.

"It's not Taiwan that's provoking this crisis. It's the determination in China to subjugate Taiwan," he said.

Tense times

China, or the People's Republic of China (PRC), considers Taiwan, or the Republic of China (ROC), to be a breakaway province and has vowed to "unify" the island with the mainland.

Australia's stance is that Taiwan is not a sovereign state and it does not regard the authorities in Taiwan as having the status of a national government. Meanwhile, China is Australia's largest trading partner.

But Bolton advocated a very different approach to Taiwan.

"The fact is, on Taiwan, the people have decided they want to be an independent country. And in terms of their identification over the last 30 years, they see themselves as Taiwanese. They do not see themselves as Chinese."

He said the Taiwanese "don't want a 'one country, two systems' approach [with China]. They want a separate, democratic government — which they have".

"People can say, 'oh, come on, they're all Chinese'. Well, those same people would have to say, 'you people in Australia shouldn't be independent. You're really British'."

Conventional wisdom in the US is that its interests are best served by maintaining a status quo that balances de facto autonomy with formal ambiguity of status for Taiwan.

Tensions between China and Taiwan have recently increased, with a visit to Taiwan by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, followed by subsequent Chinese military drills around the island.

"I think Pelosi was right to go," Bolton said.

 

Echoing comments he has previously made about China's rise, he said "there's no doubt we need increases in the [US] defence budget".

"This is still part of the hangover from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the 'peace dividend' was declared. The US and many other countries dramatically cut their militaries."

 

Trump 2024?

In a wide-ranging interview with ABC RN's Between The Lines, Bolton also unpacked the current state of US politics and warned against a return to power for his former boss.

Trump and Bolton fell out in 2019 after significant disagreements, including on North Korea, and Bolton is now a harsh critic of the 45th president.

He said he was "actually fairly optimistic that Trump's support was declining" until the recent FBI search of the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Bolton claimed this "has caused a resurgence in his support".

"Before the subpoena, I believed Trump would not actually run for the nomination, he would talk about it incessantly … but he wouldn't actually run. He fears losing and being called a loser for Trump is the single worst thing," he said.

"But there's been a kind of tribal reaction to the Biden Justice Department going after Trump … I think Trump gathers support when he becomes the target of the Biden administration, or of the left in America. People rally around him."

Bolton said in his view, "[Trump's] real support within the Republican Party … his actual base, is maybe 15 to 20 per cent of the party".

And his message to Republican colleagues who say they will support Trump come hell or high water: "If you want to lose, be my guest".

 

Bolton said for the upcoming November midterm elections "if [they're] about Donald Trump, Republicans will not do as well as they should".

Looking beyond to the next US presidential election, he said: "My super PAC [political action committee]'s polling shows within the Republican Party … [people] want to see a new face in 2024".

'A very dangerous thing'

Since falling out with Trump and publicly criticising him in interviews and a book, Bolton has received some cheers from the progressive side of US politics, who he has fiercely clashed with for decades.

"There's plenty of irony in it. But it shows one of the distorting factors that Trump has had in American politics — people lining up and saying 'are you with Trump or against Trump?'" he said.

"And I think that's a very dangerous thing to happen."

 

"But if it's simply a loyalty test to a person as opposed to a philosophy, that's potentially very dangerous."

 

Ukraine is 'a race against exhaustion'

Bolton said of the current status of the war in Ukraine: "Both sides may be nearing exhaustion, in terms of casualties".

"The Russians have suffered casualties beyond comprehension in the West. I think it just shows their calculus about the value for human life is not what ours is," he said.

And he said while the Ukrainians "have been very silent about their total casualties, I don't think we should take that to mean they've been light — I think they've been very heavy".

"[So] we're in a race against exhaustion in a certain sense here. The most likely outcome, though, is that the war will simply continue because there's no diplomatic advantage, certainly for the Ukraine side, to bring it to a halt."

He said the West needs to keep the pressure on Russia, or even ramp it up.

"We need to make clear that the sanctions against Russia as a whole will remain in place and perhaps even increase until their troops are off Ukrainian soil."

 

A divided America

Despite the problems gripping America, Bolton said this is not the most divided the US has ever been. He swats down a comparison with the leadup to the country's civil war.

"I don't think the situation in America is even remotely close to what happened before the civil war, when the Union broke up," he said.

"It's just an exaggeration that really contributes to the problem and doesn't help find ways to solve it."

 

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-28/john-bolton-on-taiwan-china-donald-trump/101377348

 

BOLTON IS WRONG ON ALL SCORES, EXCEPT ON THE NON-IMPORTANCE OF THE 6TH JANUARY 2021..... ON THIS ONE, MADAM PELOSI MIGHT DIFFER THOUGH....IT'S HER BREAD AND BUTTER....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW......

 

one china……..

The one-China principle cannot be challenged and China must and will surely be reunified, according to the Chengdu Declaration adopted on Saturday evening during the Overseas Chinese World Conference for Promoting the Peaceful Reunification of China held in Chengdu, Sichuan province.

The conference drew over 3,000 participants from organizations for promoting China's peaceful reunification from over 120 countries and regions.

According to the declaration, there is only one China and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, and the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. This is a universally recognized norm governing international relations and the common consensus of the international community.

The declaration strongly opposed the visit of United States Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in early August and called on peace-loving people around the world to earnestly respect China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity, fully understand the desire to realize the country's reunification, and support the unremitting efforts of the Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits to achieve peaceful reunification on the basis of the "1992 Consensus" that embodies the one-China principle.

A history of 5,000 years proves reunification is the mainstream of Chinese history, according to the declaration.

"We sincerely hope the majority of Taiwan compatriots will fully understand that Taiwan's future lies in national reunification and its people's well-being lies in the Chinese nation's rejuvenation," it said.

As "Taiwan independence" is the biggest obstacle to China's reunification and a serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation, the declaration said it is a path leading to nowhere.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202208/29/WS630bff05a310fd2b29e74a59.html

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.....

bolton is deranged…...

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton insisted on Wednesday that only “regime change” in Moscow can achieve long-term US objectives in Europe. He proposed funding Russian “dissidents” who could team up with mid-level officers to overthrow President Vladimir Putin in a coup.

“There is no long-term prospect for peace and security in Europe without regime change in Russia,” Bolton argued in an article titled “Putin Must Go,” which was published by the online journal 1945.

Change “must involve far more than simply replacing Putin,” according to Bolton. “The whole regime must go.”

Bolton actually opened the article by quoting President Joe Biden, who said in March, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Biden’s aides had scrambled to walk that back, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken arguing that “we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia – or anywhere else, for that matter.”

The very next day, however, Biden insisted he wasn’t backpedaling, and that his remarks were not “articulating a policy change” but “expressing moral outrage… and I make no apologies for it.”

While serving as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Bolton championed regime-change policies for Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran – and derailed Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea, after which he was dismissed in September 2019. Yet the official US position on Havana, Caracas, and Tehran has not changed since Biden took office.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/564123-bolton-regime-change-putin/

 

 

READ FROM TOP....

 

MOST LIKELY, THE PENTAGON WILL GET BLOWN UP BEFORE A REGIME CHANGE IN RUSSIA... AND ONE HAS TO CONSIDER THAT PUTIN IS A MODERATE IN RUSSIA....../

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..... THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA FOR THE EMPIRE, BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE.... 

nutty bolton.....

 

BY SCOTT RITTER............

 

John Bolton’s Russia regime-change fantasy has little basis in reality


The neoconservative hawk is promoting his vision of revolution in Russia. Fortunately for the world, his ideas are based on fiction

 

 

John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor for President Donald Trump, recently published an article titled ‘Putin must go: Now is the time for regime change in Russia.’

One must keep in mind that these words come from a man who famously commented, while speaking in February 1994 at an event in New York called the ‘Global Structures Convocation,’ that the “Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

Bolton lambasts the fact that, according to the White House, President Joe Biden wasn’t really serious about regime change in Russia when, during remarks made in Poland last March, he blurted out “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” As I’ve said before, I believe Biden was, in fact, dead serious about his desire for regime change in Russia, and that it has been, and continues to be, the unstated policy of the United States to remove Vladimir Putin from office. And Washington is actively implementing policies designed to achieve that very result.

What separates Bolton from the Biden White House is the honesty that is produced by being outside the halls of power, as Bolton is today, where your words no longer resonate with relevance. Bolton is free to give voice to that which the Biden administration only whispers about in the dark recesses of the White House situation room.

How else would one describe the goals and objectives of a policy build on the massive sanctioning of the Russian people – designed to destroy their quality of life and means of support – in an effort to generate a level of domestic political unrest sufficient to fomenting a modern day ‘Moscow Maidan,’ reminiscent of the February 2014 events in Kiev that resulted in the ouster of former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich?

Bolton himself alludes to this possibility in his article. “There is no long-term prospect for peace and security in Europe without regime change in Russia,” he writes. “Russians are already discussing it; quietly, for obvious reasons.”

The notion that Putin is vulnerable to being ousted by a popular uprising flies in the face of reality, given Russian opinion polling. Even from western-linked sources.

Fact-based analysis, however, is not something Bolton is known for. One need only run down the litany of regurgitated points he cites to hammer his idea home – Russian casualties, economic ‘pain’ brought on by sanctions, ‘rising’ political opposition, young men 'fleeing' the country, the rhetorical ‘brandishing’ of nuclear weapons by Moscow, and, to top it off, he alleges Russian sabotage of the NordStream pipelines. 

Bolton’s mission is not to tell the truth about Russia but rather to shape perception for the purpose of manufacturing a false narrative. The perception of the existence of a viable domestic political opposition is essential to the regime-change fantasy being promulgated by Bolton. “Carefully assisting Russian dissidents to pursue regime change might just be the answer,” Bolton opines, responding to the question of how to bring about an end to the Ukraine conflict.  

Regime change, Bolton notes, “must involve far more than simply replacing Putin,” adding that “[among Putin’s] inner circle, several potential successors would be worse.” The problem, Bolton states, “is not one man, but the collective leadership constructed over the last two decades. No civilian governmental structure exists to effect change, not even a Politburo like the one that retired Nikita Khrushchev after the Cuban missile crisis. The whole regime must go.”

How to accomplish such a massive undertaking? Here Bolton seems to have been an avid reader of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled oligarch-turned-political activist, who in his new book The Russia Conundrum writes extensively about the so-called “Men of Power,” or Siloviki. “The key,” Bolton states, “is for Russians themselves to exacerbate divisions among those with real authority, the siloviki, the ‘men of power.’ Disagreements and animosities already exist, as in all authoritarian regimes, exploitable as dissidents set their minds to it.” By using the siloviki to shatter regime coherence and solidarity, Bolton declares, “change is possible.”

What “change” does Bolton propose? A military coup, of course, conducted not “from the top flag officers and officials, who are too personally invested in the Putin regime,” but rather “from the colonels and one-star generals, and their civilian-agency equivalents” who are, in Bolton’s view, “the most-likely co-conspirators to take matters into their own hands. These are the decision-makers whom the dissidents must identify, persuade and support to facilitate regime change.”

Fortunately for Putin, Bolton isn’t very good at carrying out regime-change operations, although he has publicly bragged about his role in implementing them as official US government policy. Coups, Bolton told CNN’s Jake Tapper during an interview in July 2022, “take a lot of work.” Bolton bragged about his status as “somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat.” 

By way of example, Bolton referred to efforts undertaken by the Trump administration to support Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido in his effort to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro. “Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try to overturn an illegally elected president,” Bolton bragged, before adding, “and they failed.”

It speaks volumes about the mental state of an individual who, uninvited, seeks to impose himself on one of the most important issues of our time–the geopolitical struggle between the collective West and Russia over the future European security framework–by promulgating a template of regime change in Russia drawn from the disastrous example of a failed US-backed coup in Venezuela.

The good news is that any such effort undertaken by the US government in Russia is guaranteed to suffer the same fate as the Bolton-inspired coup in Venezuela—abject failure.

The bad news is that the world has to suffer through the incoherent ramblings of a neoconservative warmonger who had been put out to pasture but, because of the vacuum of coherence that is US policy on Russia, saw an opportunity to reinject his flawed thinking into the cacophony of opinions that comprises what passes for informed foreign-policy discussion in America today.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/564526-bolton-russia-regime-change/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............................