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The independent presidential candidate previously worked as an environmental lawyer
The ousted congressman, who is facing nearly two dozen federal criminal charges, is suing late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel
The vote was a defeat for the isolationist forces within the Republican Party
Soldiers of Ukraine’s 32nd Mechanized Brigade in the Kharkiv region this month.
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In a stunning historical development, Democrats seized upon a Republican surrender to take control of the agenda of the House floor.
The post Mike Johnson Surrenders: Democrats Seize Control of House Floor appeared first on Breitbart.
Elon Musk's Tesla has issued a recall for all 3,878 Cybertrucks shipped to date because of a defect that can cause the accelerator pedal to get stuck, increasing the risk of crashes.
The post Pedal Stuck to the Metal: Tesla Recalls All Cybertrucks Due to Dangerous Faulty Accelerators appeared first on Breitbart.
EXCLUSIVE: Ellen Greenberg’s death by 20 stab wounds - including to the back of her neck - was ruled suicide. Her mother Sandra, who has spent 13 years fighting for justice and says she will ‘never give up’, says bombshell new testimony may finally prove her daughter was murdered
Mr Blinken says he is focused on ‘work to deescalate tensions’ along with his fellow G7 foreign ministers
The Biden administration on Friday formally endorsed House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) scheme to fund Ukraine's border defense.
The post Joe Biden Formally Endorses Speaker Mike Johnson’s Ukraine Funding Scheme appeared first on Breitbart.
Jury selection nears completion but former president complains case is ‘a mess’, he’s too cold and being prevented from attending important campaign events in swing states
‘The W93 will also incorporate modern technologies to improve safety, security, and flexibility to address future threats,’ energy department agency says
Donald Trump will learn the scope of questions he could face from Manhattan prosecutors during cross-examination if he does choose to take the stand to testify in his first criminal trial
Officers in riot gear clear out tent encampment and detain dozens occupying the campus lawn
Russian state media asserts the country's armed forces shot down at least eight "Ukrainian balloons" in three days this week.
The post Spy Balloons Are Back: Russia Says it is Shooting Down Ukrainian ‘Terrorism’ Balloons appeared first on Breitbart.
Al Roker and his production company have been sued by a producer who alleges he was fired after objecting to the company's failure to implement diversity initiatives for an upcoming PBS animated show.
The post Lawsuit Claims Al Roker ‘Circumvented’ DEI Quotas on PBS Kids Show ‘Weather Hunters,’ Fired Producer for Objecting appeared first on Breitbart.
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Ukraine´s air force claimed Friday it shot down a Russian strategic bomber, but Moscow officials said the plane crashed due to a malfunction.
The post Ukraine Says it has Shot Down Russian Strategic Bomber: Moscow Denies appeared first on Breitbart.
Former President Donald J. Trump at the CPAC Convention in February. European leaders are seeking to plan for a possible second Trump presidency.
A new trial aims to seek accountability for the deadly collapse of Renaissance Residence, near the Turkish city of Antakya, during an earthquake last year.
If convicted, 16-year-old could be imprisoned for life
A makeshift memorial to victims of the stabbing attack in a Sydney shopping mall.
It is important to not merely accept axiomatically that Putin, like all autocrats, is bent on aggression and expansion.
NATO countries must “help Ukraine push Russia out of its territory and end this unprovoked aggression,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said on April 2, “because if they do not succeed, of course, the concern is that Russia will feel compelled to keep going.”
Smith is not the first to warn that Ukraine is the dam that is holding back a Russian conquest of Europe. U.S. President Joe Biden told Congress on December 6 that “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there…. He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned that “Putin will not stop at Ukraine.” And Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained that Putin has “made clear that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says that, “if Putin wins in Ukraine, there is real risk that his aggression will not end there.” On March 28, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, insisted that “this aggression, and Putin’s army, can come to Europe.” He said that “at the moment, it’s us, then Kazakhstan, then Baltic states, then Poland, then Germany. At least half of Germany.”
“If Ukraine loses the war,” he said on April 7, “other countries will be attacked. This is a fact.”
Aside from the value these warnings have in convincing the public—and the U.S. Congress—to continue sending money and weapons to Ukraine, the insistence that Putin’s ambitions are not limited to Ukraine but have their sights on Europe is based on two historical myths.
The first is that autocrats by their nature desire conquest and the expansion of their empires. “We have also seen many times in history,” the U.S. ambassador to NATO said, “where if a dictator is not stopped, or an authoritarian leader, they keep going.”
Inconveniently, this axiom is not borne out by history. Nor does the U.S. apply it to several of its contemporary friends; Washington does not assume that the autocratic rulers of Saudi Arabia or Egypt are bent on conquering the Middle East or Africa.
The historical record shows that, in his over two decades in power, Putin has not “kept going.” When Russian forces have been deployed, they have been limited to specific objectives when they could have easily kept going, as in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, when military conquest could have been accomplished with ease.
The second is that Putin has said as much. Putin is often quoted as saying that “people in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart.” The second part of his statement is quoted less often: “And those that do regret it have no brain.”
The same selective use of quotations is applied to Putin’s comment that “we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster.” Though quoted as proof of Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet Union and his desire to reestablish it, the strategy requires lifting the quotation from a context that makes it clear that the disaster Putin is referring to is not the absence of the Soviet Union but, primarily, the economic hardship that followed in the wake of its break up. He bemoaned that “individual savings were depreciated” and oligarchs “served exclusively their own corporate interests.” He remembered that “mass poverty began to be seen as the norm.”
There are at least three points that need to be factored into Western calculations of Putin’s ambitions that should temper the confidence of the forecast that he is bent on conquering Europe and on war with NATO.
The first is that there is no evidence for it. After her warning that Russia will “keep going,” Smith admitted that “we do not have indicators or warnings right now that a Russian war is imminent on NATO territory, and I really want to be clear about that.”
The Baltic countries complain that their warnings of the expansionist threat posed by Russia have been dismissed by the West. “For years,” Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski says, the West was “patronizing us about our attitude: ‘Oh, you know, you over-nervous, over-sensitive Central Europeans are prejudiced against Russia.’” Estonia’s former President Hendrik Ilves complained that the West does “Russia policy without consulting people who know far more about Russia.”
Smith responded, “I don’t want to give our friends in the Baltic states the impression that somehow war is coming to NATO territory overnight. We take it seriously, but we do not see this to be an imminent threat.”
The second point is that the Western statements of Putin’s ambitions are not consistent with the historical record of Putin’s statements of his ambitions.
Putin has said that “the Ukraine crisis is not a territorial conflict, and I want to make that clear…. The issue is much broader and more fundamental and is about the principles underlying the new international order.”
Those fundamental principles have consistently included a guarantee that Ukraine will remain neutral and not join NATO, a guarantee that NATO won’t turn Ukraine into an armed anti-Russian bridgehead on its border, and assurances of protection of the rights of Russophile Ukrainians.
There is nothing on the historical record to suggest that conquering Europe or confronting NATO have ever been among the stated goals of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This point has been conceded by Ukraine and by NATO. Davyd Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team at the Istanbul talks, says that Russia was “prepared to end the war if we agreed to, as Finland once did, neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.” He says that a guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO was the “key point” for Russia. Most importantly, Zelensky has said that the promise not to join NATO “was the first fundamental point for the Russian Federation” and that “as far as I remember, they started a war because of this.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently conceded that a “promise [of] no more NATO enlargement…was a precondition for not invading Ukraine.” When NATO refused to discuss such a promise, Putin “went to war to prevent NATO—more NATO—close to his borders.” Stoltenberg concluded that “Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO.”
The third point is that the historical record suggests that Putin went to war in Ukraine, not as a step toward war with NATO, but to prevent a war with NATO.
“Listen attentively to what I am saying,” Putin said just three weeks before the invasion. “It is written into Ukraine’s doctrines that it wants to take Crimea back, by force if necessary…. Suppose Ukraine is a NATO member…. Suppose it starts operations in Crimea, not to mention Donbass for now. This is sovereign Russian territory. We consider this matter settled. Imagine that Ukraine is a NATO country and starts these military operations. What are we supposed to do? Fight against the NATO bloc? Has anyone given at least some thought to this? Apparently not.”
Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine “to prevent NATO…close to his borders” may have been motivated by concern that a Ukraine in NATO that attacked Donbas or Crimea would draw Russia into a war with NATO.
Just three days before launching the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin said that “the reality we live in” is that if Ukraine is “accepted into…NATO, the threat against our country will increase because of Article 5” since “there is a real threat that they will try to take back the territory they believe is theirs using military force. And they do say this in their documents, obviously. Then the entire North Atlantic Alliance will have to get involved.”
If Putin went to war in Ukraine to prevent a war with NATO, then it makes little sense that he would use the war in Ukraine as a means to start a war with NATO.
Since the claim that, if Russia wins in Ukraine, Putin will keep going and bring war to Europe and NATO, is wielded to justify continuing the fight instead of encouraging a diplomatic solution, it is important to not merely accept axiomatically that Putin, like all autocrats, is bent on aggression and expansion. The frequently made warning rests uncertainly on myths and misreading of the historical record that, when examined, recommend a less confident forecast of Putin’s intentions.
The post Is Putin Bent on Conquering Europe? appeared first on The American Conservative.
As is so often the case with Bidenomics, even good news is bad news because of the upward inflationary pressure.
The post Breitbart Business Digest: Good News Is Bad News in Biden’s Economy appeared first on Breitbart.
Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta were charged with multiple counts of obstruction of justice alongside the former president last year
After three days of jury selection, 12 Manhattan residents were been selected to sit on the panel that will decide the fate of former president Donald Trump
On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow,” Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz stated that Columbia University President Nemat Shafik should get some credit for her handling of antisemitism on campus, but “she hasn’t dealt with the problem.
The post Dershowitz: Columbia Hasn’t Addressed DEI, Which Causes Antisemitism and Will ‘Destroy’ Every School appeared first on Breitbart.
On Thursday's broadcast of CNN's "The Lead," former Vice President Mike Pence blamed "this new Republican isolationism" on President Joe Biden's foreign policy failures.
The post Pence: ‘New Republican Isolationism’ Is Because of Biden’s Failures appeared first on Breitbart.
The US said a Palestinian state could only be established through negotiations with Israel
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a final rule including abortion in the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA).
The post Biden’s EEOC Says Employers Must Accommodate Workers’ Abortions appeared first on Breitbart.
“I’m not looking for a fight with China,” President Biden said during a visit to the United Steelworkers Union in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. “I’m looking for competition — and fair competition.”
The Wisconsin Republican, 40, said that while he had ‘signed up’ for such threats and ‘late-night swatting’, his family had not
Shant Soghomonian faces between five to 20 years in prison if he is convicted
Mr DeSantis signed the bill behind a podium that read “ANTI-COMMUNIST EDUCATION” on Wednesday
Late Italian prime minister divided opinion in his home country and frequently fell afoul of the law after becoming embroiled in sex and corruption scandals
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