Sofia Globe: Bucharest Nine: Russia is the most significant and direct threat to Allied security
Russia is the most significant and direct threat to Allied security, according to a declaration adopted on February 22 by the Bucharest Nine, at a meeting attended by the heads of state of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and the Slovak Republic, as well as US President Joe Biden and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
“A year ago, Russia ravaged peace and security in Europe by trying to subdue Ukraine by force. Kremlin’s actions led to a drastic degradation of the security environment in the Euro-Atlantic area, also gravely deteriorating the security of our partners,” the declaration said.
UPI.com: Joe Biden tells NATO, Bucharest Nine democracy is at stake in Ukraine war
Feb. 22 (UPI) — Calling the Eastern European countries that make up Bucharest Nine the “frontline of our collective defense” against Russia, U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday pledged the United States’ continued support, particularly with Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Biden talked with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and the Bucharest Nine leaders in Warsaw, Poland, as he concluded his three-day trip, which included a surprise visit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.
“You know better than anyone what’s at stake in this conflict, not just for Ukraine but for the freedom of democracies throughout Europe and around the world,” Biden said Wednesday. “That’s what President Zelensky and I talked about when I was in Kyiv. The leaders around this table have repeatedly stepped up to confirm our shared commitment to all of these values.”
Euractiv. com: Fresh from Kyiv, Biden rallies ‘Bucharest Nine’ allies in Warsaw
Fresh from his visit to Ukraine, US President Joe Biden will rally NATO’s eastern allies in Poland on Wednesday (22 February), a group of countries in which most – but not all – are strong supporters of military aid to Ukraine.
Biden used the trip to rally support for Ukraine as the war enters its second year, with no end in sight, and it came on the same day as a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he accused the West of seeking Russia’s destruction and dangled the threat of nuclear war.
Before returning to Washington on Wednesday, Biden will meet leaders of the Bucharest Nine, the countries on NATO’s eastern flank, to reaffirm support for their security.
The ‘Bucharest Nine’ (B9) was founded on 4 November 2015 in Bucharest, at the initiative of the President of Romania Klaus Iohannis and the President of Poland Andrzej Duda during a bilateral meeting between them. It gathers the Presidents of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Out of curiosity, what is the ethnicity of these nations? In general I mean. How diverse are they? What would the overall albedo of the peoples in all these nations, including Russia and Ukraine be like?
But wait, there’s more!
From the dialectic Daily Mail: Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban SNUBS Biden and Bucharest Nine meeting on president’s final day in Warsaw after saying only Trump could end war in Ukraine
Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban snubbed Wednesday’s meeting in Warsaw with President Joe Biden and the other Bucharest Nine leaders after insisting Donald Trump was the only person who could broker peace with Vladimir Putin.
Orban has been an outlier on the war in Ukraine, chiding the European Union for prolonging the conflict and saying in October that only former U.S. President Donald Trump could negotiate a deal between the Ukrainians and Russians to end the conflict.
‘This is going to sound brutal, but hope for peace goes by the name of Donald Trump,’ Orban said at the time, arguing Biden wasn’t the man for the job because he has ‘gone too far’ in calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a ‘war criminal.
(Remember when being far right meant you started and fuelled wars? Those were the days.)
From a year ago:
Biden and the dumbed down USA is the enemy of the world, which seeks to enforce its will upon a unipolar world.
Great essay describes the Trojan Ally.
Is the West escalating the Ukraine war?
[excerpts]
Are Ukraine’s repeated calls for more support and the West’s accommodating response a case of leveraging “strategic publicity”, performative diplomacy, alliance solidarity, or something else entirely?
…
Ukraine took a massive risk in defying the Russian redlines about Kyiv explicitly rejecting Nato overtures and stopping any military integration with the West. This was a maximalist gambit that presupposed Western military support and risked actively provoking Moscow to its own strategic disadvantage.
…
By virtue of its decision, Ukraine, along with its closest partners in Poland and the Baltic nations, became the classic “trojan ally” – smaller countries whose desire for regional clout against the extant middle power (Russia) is predicated on their ability to persuade an external great power and its global military network [US and Nato] to step in militarily on their behalf.
…
Ukraine’s future as a sovereign state would now hinge on its ability to successfully engineer an escalation.… Ukrainian demands largely stem from what the introduction of these weapons would represent politically, as well as their long-term geostrategic consequences for the next phase of the war.
For it is in Kyiv’s interests to steer Nato into becoming more closely entangled in the war. Ukraine has resorted to a combination of tactics – including information warfare and exploiting historic Western guilt – to instigate an informational and reputational cascade among Nato members that would assure accedence to Ukrainian demands.
Given its clear long-term weaknesses in quality manpower, artillery, and ammunition, the Zelenskyy government has shrewdly fought a hybrid war from the start, knowing that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia without Nato fighting on its side.
…
Perhaps following a similar logic [maintaining status quo unipolarity], the US establishment has worked to destroy any possibility of a Berlin-Moscow axis forming by aligning itself with the Intermarium bloc of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea, repeatedly opposing (and openly threatening) Nord Stream gas pipelines, and deliberately rebuffing Russian insistence on a neutral Ukraine.
…
[A]ny expansion in scope and degree of that support to include advanced weapon systems, such as F-16s or long-range missiles, is not only unwise but increasingly suicidal in any cost-benefit calculation.
…
Why, then, does the West continue to oblige Ukraine and give in to reputational pressure and arm-twisting from Nato’s newest members in the Intermarium corridor?
…
A closer inspection of the inter-alliance discourse within Nato also reveals an activist psychology lurking beneath the political and ideological signalling. Given that ideology – namely liberal humanitarianism and democratism….
For many liberal internationalists in the West, the clamour for a “just peace” that is sufficiently punishing to Russia suggests little more than a thinly-veiled desire to impose a Carthaginian peace on Moscow…
https://unherd.com/2023/02/is-the-west-escalating-the-ukraine-war/
“…Ukraine took a massive risk in defying the Russian redlines about Kyiv explicitly rejecting Nato overtures and stopping any military integration with the West…”
But did they, really? Or was the real gamble over whether that they had stockpiled sufficient dubious “leverage” over the President, his son, and who knows what other power brokers?
They’re so arrogant they were sure they had us in the bag. And the big cheeses have luxurious safe spaces outside the kill zone.
Arta Moeini’s essay is becoming a springboard for some deep thinking. See, for example, Schryver’s article on substack:
The Ontological Incoherence of American Imperial Exceptionalism
Jingoism by any other name still smells the same
https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/the-ontological-incoherence-of-american
^ ^ ^
Anti-American Americans can be very perceptive, with valuable insights expressed well. But their usage of the same tropes to trash their own country makes them allsmell the samestink.They’re so arrogant they were sure they had us in the bag. And the big cheeses have luxurious safe spaces outside the kill zone.
Arta Moeini’s essay is becoming a springboard for some deep thinking. See, for example, Schryver’s article on substack:
The Ontological Incoherence of American Imperial Exceptionalism
Jingoism by any other name still smells the same
https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/the-ontological-incoherence-of-american
^ ^ ^
Anti-American Americans can be very perceptive, with valuable insights expressed well. But their usage of the same tropes to trash their own country makes them allsmell the samestink.