Biggest 20th Century Strategic Mistake

The NY Post reports:

People should be “outraged” at the New York Times for only just confirming the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Sen. Ron Johnson said Sunday, as he demanded apologies from the 51 former US intelligence experts who cast doubt on The Post’s reporting on the device.

“I am just amazed that the New York Times just now came to the conclusion that the Hunter Biden laptop was genuine,” Johnson, of Wisconsin, told ​host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable.”

“Where have they been? That was pretty obvious within a week or two of the New York Post’s stories​.” ...

Johnson called on the Gray Lady to apologize, as well as the 51 intelligence experts who cast doubt on the laptop as Russian disinformation in a letter released just days after The Post’s bombshell exclusives.​

So the NY Times has a track record of publishing anti-Russian propaganda. Now it has its own article on war propaganda:

Ukraine is waging an information campaign of its own, aiming to discredit Russia, exaggerate its own military successes and minimize its losses. It has also circulated false reports of heroism, including the martyrdom of soldiers defending an island in the Black Sea and the exploits of an ace fighter pilot in the skies over Kyiv.

By most accounts, Ukraine has so far been winning the information war, led by a powerful social media operation that flooded the internet with its own jumble of anecdotes and myths, bolstering morale among Ukrainians and uniting the Western world behind its cause. The most central figure in their campaign has been President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, whose video messages to Ukrainians and the world have combined bravery with the stage presence of the television performer he once was.

It goes on to blame Tucker Carlson for reporting that the USA was funding Ukraine bio-weapons research, but does not say that it was false.

To get away from any possible Putin propaganda, I went back to this 1998 video on Opposition to NATO Expansion. A bunch of right and left wing groups found that they agree on one thing. I was struck by the arguments, at 7:10 and 20:50, that NATO expanding 1998 was as big a strategic mistake as any in the 20th century.

They were right. This was the main cause of the Ukraine war.

Why was it done? There appear to be two main reasons. (1) State Dept. cold warriors wanted to continue the Cold War; and (2) defense contractors wanted to sell military equipment to NATO allies.