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Date: 2024-06-30 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00023340

PDA / RALPH NADER ELECTION SUPPORT
4. NATIONAL SECURITY: Arms & Immigration
NATIONAL SECURITY NOTES

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Peter Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

NATIONAL SECURITY NOTES

* “When Trump exited the Iran deal, Iran’s “breakout time” to build a nuke was over a year. Now it’s a few weeks. Its enrichment has gone from 3.67 percent to 60 percent and its stockpile is 18 times greater. Within six months, it could produce five bombs. Good going, Trump.

* Sixty-three House Republicans—nearly one-third of the entire GOP caucus—voted in the summer of 2022 against support for NATO “as an alliance founded on democratic principles.” The GOP is “Soft on Putin.”

* Of course, Trump is now saying that Putin would never have invaded if he had been president in 2022. John Bolton, instead, suggests that Putin was waiting for a second Trump term, when the U.S. president—who never liked NATO—would have looked the other way. “If Trump had been re-elected, Putin would be in Kyiv already,” Bolton said.

* Trump described the Ukraine invasion at first as “genius” and “savvy.” Imagine him taking that view as president. The West would never have united as it has against Putin and wouldn’t have provided a significant level of military assistance to Ukraine.

* The danger is that escalating western support for Ukraine—fueled by Putin’s barbarism, Ukrainian success, and western optimism—can create the conditions for Russian miscalculation born of desperation. Yet Russia’s aggression cannot be allowed to succeed without empowering other totalitarian countries with territorial ambition. In this extremely fraught and dangerous situation, America needs—and has—steady leadership in Joe Biden.

* Putin’s greatest fear is not NATO but Democracy.