After decades of ignoring Russia’s national security concerns, the West is confronted with a military invasion of Ukraine which serves as a precursor… - Scott Ritter
" "After decades of ignoring Russia’s national security concerns, the West is confronted with a military invasion of Ukraine which serves as a precursor for a new Cold War that will define Russia’s relationship with the West for years to come. Let there be no mistake, on Feb. 24, the world awoke to a new reality. Prior to this date, Russia was treated by the West as an annoyance, belittled by economic and even military elites as little more than a “giant gas station masquerading as a nation,” to quote John McCain... Russian President Vladimir Putin had been subjected to a series of sophomoric psychological profiles that trivialized Russian national concerns as little more than the psychotic whim of a troubled individual. The caricatures that emerged of the Russian state and its leadership colored the analysis of Russia’s oft-stated concerns over what it viewed as its legitimate national security. This blinded the West to the reality of what was transpiring. Because no one took Russia seriously, no one could imagine a large-scale ground war in Europe....
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About Scott Ritter
William Scott Ritter Jr. (born July 15, 1961) is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served with the United Nations implementing arms control treaties, with General Norman Schwarzkopf in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq, overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and as a United Nations weapons inspector, from 1991 to 1998. He later became a critic of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter stated that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities, becoming according to The New York Times "the loudest and most credible skeptic of the Bush administration’s contention that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction." A registered sex offender, Ritter was arrested in 2001 in connection with police stings in which officers posed as under-aged girls to arrange meetings of a sexual nature and later convicted of sex offenses in 2011. He served 30 months of his prison sentence. He has defended Russia during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and written opinion pieces for various state media outlets.
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William Scott Ritter, Jr.
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William Scott Ritter
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Additional quotes by Scott Ritter
I'll say this about nuclear weapons. You know I'm not sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'm not in on the planning. I'll take it at face value that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successfully eliminated nuclear weapons in the first phase of the operation.But keep in mind this. That the Bush Administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'usable nukes.' And they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the Commander in Chief deems U.S. forces to be in significant risk. If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. What will happen is the Iranians will respond, and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will prompt the Bush administration to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a couple of divisions in, probably through Azerbaijan, down the Caspian Sea coast, in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over, we now have 40,000 troops trapped. We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U.S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out! There's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point in time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance, and it may not work. But what it will do is this: it will unleash the nuclear genie. And so for all those Americans out there tonight who say, 'You know what - taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you if we take on Iran, we're gonna use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle, until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So, tell me, you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L.A.? Boston? New York? Miami. Pick one. Cause at least one's going. And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.
The administration of President Joe Biden has promulgated its vision of the US role in the world today in a new document, the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS). This outlines a leadership posture built on the premise of US diplomatic, economic and military superiority on the global stage. The critical notion underpinning this strategy is that US democracy serves as a center of gravity around which a rules-based international order rotates. But the partisan political divide in the US, combined with the growing global multipolar challenge led by Russia and China, makes the promise of US global dominance little more than an empty narrative.
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