Biggest mistake of failed Bush-McCain Republican Party was hubristic drive to treat Cold War as a victory and fledgling Russia as an enemy requiring permanent containment despite its having lost a third of its territory and half its people-Pat Buchanan, 7/5/2018

"While GOP grass roots have begged for measures to control our bleeding southern border, they were regularly denounced as nativists by party elites." 

7/5/18, “The Never-Trumpers Are Never Coming Back,“ Pat Buchanan 

“The Republican Party of Bush I and II, of Bob Dole and John McCain, is history. It’s not coming back. Unlike the Bourbons after the Revolution and the Terror, after Napoleon and the Empire, no restoration is in the cards. 

It is over. The GOP’s policies of recent decades–the New World Order of George H.W. Bush, the crusades for democracy of Bush II–failed, and are seen as having failed. With Trump’s capture of the party they were repudiated. 

There will be no turning back. What were the historic blunders?…The failures that killed the Bush party, and that represented departures from Reaganite traditionalism and conservatism, are: 

First, the hubristic drive, despite the warnings of statesmen like George Kennan, to exploit our Cold War victory and pursue a policy of permanent containment of a Russia that had lost a third of its territory and half its people. 

We moved NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic, onto her doorstep. We abrogated the ABM treaty Nixon had negotiated and moved defensive missiles into Poland. John McCain pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and even to send U.S. forces to face off against Russian troops. 

Thus we got a second Cold War that need never have begun and that our allies seem content to let us fight alone. Europe today is not afraid of Vladimir Putin reaching the Rhine. Europe is afraid of Africa and the Middle East reaching the Danube. 

Let the Americans, who relish playing empire, pay for NATO. 

Second, in a reflexive response to 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, dumped over the regime in Libya, armed rebels to overthrow Bashar Assad in Syria, and backed Saudi intervention in a Yemeni civil war, creating a humanitarian crisis in that poorest of Arab countries that is exceeded in horrors only by the Syrian civil war. 

Since Y2K, hundreds of thousands in the Middle East have perished, the ancient Christian community has all but ceased to exist, and the refugees now number in the millions. What are the gains for democracy from these wars, all backed enthusiastically by the Republican establishment? 

Why are the people responsible for these wars still being listened to, rather than confessing their sins at second-thoughts conferences? 

The GOP elite also played a crucial role in throwing open U.S. markets to China and ceding transnational corporations full freedom to move factories and jobs there and ship their Chinese-made goods back here, free of charge. 

Result: In three decades, the U.S. has run up $12 trillion in merchandise trade deficits–$4 trillion with China–and Beijing’s revenue from the USA has more than covered China’s defense budget for most of those years. 

Beijing swept past Italy, France, Britain, Germany and Japan to become the premier manufacturing power on earth and a geo-strategic rival. Now, from East Africa to Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, and from the South and East China Sea to Taiwan, Beijing’s expansionist ambitions have become clear. 

And where are the Republicans responsible for building up this potentially malevolent power that thieves our technology? Talking of building a Reagan-like Navy to contain the mammoth they nourished. 

Since the Cold War, America’s elites have been exhibiting symptoms of that congenital blindness associated since Rome with declining and falling empires. 

While GOP grass roots have begged for measures to control our bleeding southern border, they were regularly denounced as nativists by party elites, many of whom are now backing Trump’s wall. 

For decades, America’s elites failed to see that the transnational moment of the post-Cold War era was passing and an era of rising nationalism and tribalism was at hand. 

“We live in a time,” said U2’s Bono this week, “when institutions as vital to human progress as the United Nations are under attack.” 

The institutions Bono referenced — the U.N., EU, NATO — all trace their roots to the 1940s and 1950s, a time that bears little resemblance to the era we have entered, an era marked by a spreading and desperate desire of peoples everywhere to preserve who and what they are. 

No, Trump didn’t start the fire. 

The world was ablaze with tribalism and was raising up authoritarians to realize nationalist ends — Xi Jinping, Putin, Narendra Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, Gen. el-Sissi in Egypt — before he came down that escalator. 

And so the elites who were in charge when the fire broke out, and who failed to respond and refused even to recognize it, and who now denounce Trump for how he is coping with it, are unlikely to be called upon again to lead this republic.”
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Added: George W. Bush snubbed sincere overtures from Russia's new leader Putin that would greatly have helped the US:

7/26/18, “‘Vladimir the Terrible’: US Deep State desperately needs a Russian villain to cover its tracks,” Strategic Culture, Robert Bridge 

“Conventional wisdom would have us believe that Russia became America’s sworn enemy in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. As is often the case, however, conventional wisdom can be illusory. 

In the momentous 2016 showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a faraway dark kingdom known as Russia, the fantastic fable goes, hijacked that part of the American brain responsible for critical thinking and lever pulling with a few thousand dollars’ worth of Facebook and Twitter adverts, bots and whatnot. The result of that gross intrusion into the squeaky clean machinery of the God-blessed US election system is now more or less well-documented history brought to you by the US mainstream media: Donald Trump, with some assistance from the Russians that has never been adequately explained, pulled the presidential contest out from under the wobbly feet of Hillary Clinton. 

For those who unwittingly bought that work of fiction, I can only offer my sincere condolences. In fact, Russiagate is just the latest installment of an anti-Russia story that has been ongoing since the presidency of George W. Bush. 

Act 1: Smokescreen 

Rewind to September 24^th, 2001. Having gone on record as the first global leader to telephone George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Putin showed his support went beyond mere words. He announced a five-point plan to support America in the ‘war against terror’ that included the sharing of intelligence, as well as the opening of Russian airspace for US humanitarian flights to Central Asia.

 In the words of perennial Kremlin critic, Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, Putin’s “acquiescence to NATO troops in Central Asia signaled a reversal of two hundred years of Russian foreign policy. Under Yeltsin, the communists, and the tsars, Russia had always considered Central Asia as its ‘sphere of influence.’ Putin broke with that tradition.” 

In other words, the new Russian leader was demonstrating his desire for Russia to have, as Henry Kissinger explained it some seven years later, “a reliable strategic partner, with America being the preferred choice.” 

This leads us to the question for the ages: If it was obvious that Russia was now fully prepared to enter into a serious partnership with the United States in the ‘war on terror,’ then how do we explain George W. Bush announcing the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty just three months later?
There are some things we may take away from that move, which Putin tersely and rightly described as a “mistake.” 

First, Washington must not have considered a security partnership with Moscow very important, since they certainly understood that Russia would respond negatively to the decision to scrap the 30-year-old ABM Treaty. Second, the US must not considered the ‘war on terror’ very serious either; otherwise it would not have risked losing Russian assistance in hunting down the baddies in Central Asia and the Middle East, geographical areas where Russia has gained valuable experience over the years.  

This was a remarkably odd choice considering that the US military apparatus had failed spectacularly to defend the nation against a terrorist attack, coordinated by 19 amateurs, armed with box cutters, no less. 

Third, as was the case with the decision to invade Iraq, a country with no discernible connection to the events of 9/11, as well as the imposition of the pre-drafted Patriot Act on a shell-shocked nation, the decision to break with Russia seems to have been a premeditated move on the global chessboard. Although it would be hard to prove such a claim, we can take some guidance from Rahm Emanuel, former Obama Chief of Staff, who notoriously advised, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” 

So why did Bush abrogate the ABM Treaty with Russia? The argument was that some “rogue state,” rumored to be Iran, might be tempted to launch a missile attack against “US interests abroad.”

Yet there was absolutely no logic to the claim since Tehran was inextricably bound by the same principle of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) as were any other states that tempted fate with a surprise attack on US-Israeli interests. Further, it made no sense to focus attention on Shia-dominant Iran when the majority of the terrorists, allegedly acolytes of Osama bin Laden, reportedly hailed from Sunni-dominant Saudi Arabia. In other words, the Bush administration happily sacrificed an invincible relationship with Russia in the war on terror in order to guard against some external threat that only nominally existed, with a missile defense system that was largely unproven in the field. Again, zero logic. 

However, when it is considered that the missile defense system was tailor-made by America specifically with Russia in mind, the whole scheme begins to make more sense, at least from a strategic perspective. Thus, the Bush administration used the attacks of 9/11 to not only dramatically curtail the civil rights of American citizens with the passage of the Patriot Act, it also took the first steps towards encircling Russia with a so-called ‘defense system’ that has the capacity to grow in effectiveness and range. 

For those who thought Russia would just sit back and let itself be encircled by foreign missiles, they were in for quite a surprise. In March 2018, Putin stunned the world, and certainly Washington’s hawks, by announcing in the annual Address to the Federal Assembly the introduction of advanced weapons systems – including those with hypersonic capabilities – designed to overcome any missile defense system in the world. 

These major developments by Russia, which Putin emphasized was accomplished “without the benefit” of Soviet-era expertise, has fueled the narrative that “Putin’s Russia” is an aggressive nation with “imperial ambitions,” when in reality its goal was to form a bilateral pact with the United States and other Western states almost two decades ago post 9/11. 

Now, US officials can only wring their hands in angst while speaking about an “aggressive Russia.” 

“Russia is the most significant threat just because they pose the only existential threat to the country right now. So we have to look at that from that perspective,” declared Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of US Strategic Command, or STRATCOM.

Putin reiterated in his Address, however, that there would have been no need for Russia to have developed such advanced weapon systems if its legitimate concerns had not been dismissed by the US.  

“Nobody wanted to talk with us on the core of the problem,” he said. “Nobody listened to us. Now you listen!”” “To be continued: Part II: Reset, or ‘Overcharged’” 

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Added: 

After Soviet breakup in Dec. 1991, US elites thought Russia was theirs for the taking:

“In the years following the end of the Soviet Union, the idea that Russia was “ours to lose” gained wide currency in American foreign policy circles. …The idea that Russia is an enemy culture in addition to a geopolitical adversary has since gained wide purchase among American media and political elites. As one prominent commentator put it: “Russia has been targeting the American right.”…Our [US] “culture war” approach to foreign policy has only intensified since then. The failure of this project has contributed significantly to the present animus towards Russia and continues to hinder more reasonable diplomatic relations.” 

May 2018, “The Cold War Culture War,” James Carden, American Affairs Journal (“Carden served as an advisor to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the State Department in 2011–12”)
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