Giving the domestic and foreign press some claptrap, 78-year-old President Joe Biden extended the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START], first signed July 31, 1991 by President George H.W. Bush and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Signing the extension of the START treaty gives Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin some temporary cover, distracting the media from the reality of rapidly deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow. Five days after sworn in a Secretary of State, 58-year-old Antony Blinken slammed Putin for arresting, and, more recently, convicting 44-year-old anti-corruption activist Alexi Navalny to two-and-a-half years in a Russian penitentiary. Viewed as a hero in the U.S. and European press for standing up to Putin, Navalny was anything but a anti-corruption activist but a Trotskyite revolutionary seeking to drive Putin from power.
So, the real back-story on the hoopla from signing a symbolic extension of START treaty is that Biden and Blinken infuriated Putin by promoting Navalny as a pro-democracy hero in Russia, fighting Putin the evil Goliath, plundering the Russian Federation from its wealth and basic human rights. Putin told Biden and Blinken to mind their own business, stop meddling in Russian internal affairs. For the past five years, U.S. officials have accused Putin’s Russia of meddling in U.S. elections, prompting former President Barack Obama to oust 35 Russian diplomats Dec. 31, 2016, only three weeks before 74-year-old President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2017 inauguration. “The 5-year extension of the New START makes the United States and the world safer,” Blinken tweeted, diverting attention away to his antagonistic statements toward Putin and Kremlin when it comes to Navalny.
No where is the hypocrisy more glaring that with Trump’s persecution by the Obama White House through the FBI, accusing Trump of colluding with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used her fake paid opposition research AKA “the Steele dossier” to accuse Trump of serving as a Russian asset for all four years of his presidency. Putin knows that Trump was under a Special Counsel investigation making baseless charges that Trump had serious ties with the Kremlin. Even when 76-year-old Robert Mueller concluded March 23, 2019 that Trump or his 2016 campaign had no ties with Russia, Democrats and the U.S. press continued to press the fake narrative. Biden and Blinker see Navalny, a known Totskyite seeking to topple Putin’s government, as hero, playing the same stupid game Hillary played in 2012, promoting street dissent all over Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry also played along touting the START extension to shift the public’s attention off Navalny and onto something positive. “This welcome step is the start of our efforts to pursue effective arms control that lowers the risk of war and helps prevent an arms race,” said Russia’s Foreign Ministry. Trump decided to let the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF] lapse Aug. 2, 2019, originally signed Dec. 8, 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev at the White House. Trump let the treaty lapse because Putin skirted around the treaty, creating many new weapon systems originally banned by the INF. Extending the START treaty does little practically to halt the production of the world’s most deadly weapons, now proliferating at a furious pace. START limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,500 long-range warheads and 700 deployed ICBMs.
Whatever the numbers specified in START, both sides cheat on the numbers, have many more Interncontinental Ballistic Missile [ICBMs] stockpiled and in development. While there’s nothing wrong with arms control, there’s something utterly phony about Biden and Blinken condemning Putin for letting Russian courts sentence Navalny for whatever reason they see fit. Blinken tweeted out his contempt for Navalny’s sentence, demanding that he and other dissidents be released from detention. Yet Biden and Blinken have no problems letting out-of-control Democrats try and convict Trump of high-crimes-and-misdemeanors, charging the former president with “incitement of insurrection” for the hoodlums that stormed and vandalized the Capitol Jan. 6. Unlike Navalny who’s openly advocated Russian revolution, Trump did nothing other the deliver as speech.
Arms control agreements must be linked with good U.S.-Russian relations or the agreements are all worthless. Slamming Putin for cracking down on rabble rousers in Moscow and around the country was condemned by Biden and Blinken, showing nauseating hypocrisy. Trump never advocated a coup d’etat but has been accused by the White House, House and Senate Democrats of “incitement of insurrection.” Whatever happened Jan. 6 at the Capitol, it was not an insurrection but an angry mob of misanthropes, misfits and losers lashing out at the Capitol. Navalny has openly called for Russian citizens to overthrow Putin’s government, yet Biden and Blinken demand he be released from detention. No, to Biden, Blinken, House and Senate Democrats, Trump’s the American Trotskyite revolutionary calling for revolution. Backed the U.S. press, the madness continues until Trump’s acquitted for the second time.
