#robert gates

[dadsinsuits]

Robert Gates

[politicaldilfs]

Drooling over all of them.

[older-is-better]

Robert Gates.

[imkeepinit]

[simply-ivanka]

Robert Gates Thinks Joe Biden Hasn't Stopped Being Wrong for 40 Years

"I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” former D

Robert Gates Thinks Joe Biden Hasn't Stopped Being Wrong for 40 Years

"I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says of then Vice President, now President Joe Biden.

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

Robert Gates and Liam Fox.  

Oh, the possibilities.

[tomorrowusa]

Putin’s problem is that, as dictators are wont to do, he has overplayed his hand. His aggressive threats against Ukraine have galvanised Nato and reaffirmed its clarity of purpose. His menacing policies have made Ukrainians even more anti-Russian and driven the country further into the arms of the west. Any Russian military action will result in Ukrainian resistance as well as larger Nato military deployments on Russia’s western border, potential suspension of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and painful economic sanctions.

Robert Gates, former CIA Director (1991-1993) and Secretary of Defense (2006-2011), writing in the Financial Times.

A good leader needs people around himself/herself who can say “no” without repercussions. Dictators try to be strong leaders but that doesn’t make them good leaders. Nobody says no to Putin. Nobody could say no to Donald Trump – and look where he is now.

Because Putin has unlimited powers inside Russia and nobody can say no to him, he thinks he can get away with anything anywhere. This has caused him to paint himself into a corner on Ukraine.

If Putin calls off the invasion, he ends up looking bad. Andrew Roth at The Guardian writes:

For Moscow it has become more difficult to pull back from its aggressive stance after US and Nato announcements that more troops would be deployed to the military alliance’s eastern flank. A unilateral drawdown now would leave the Kremlin a clear loser in the standoff, having provoked a strengthening of the very Nato presence that it had sought to banish from eastern Europe.

On the other hand, if he goes ahead with the invasion, Russia would face economic catastrophe and would find a stronger and more unified NATO to its west. There are already negative economic impacts on the country.

Russian financial markets took a beating as they woke up this week to the devastating potential for a conflict with Ukraine. Russian blue-chip stocks such as Sberbank and Gazprom lost more than 10% in trading on Monday and the Russian Central Bank was forced to temporarily halt purchases of foreign currency as the rouble has fallen nearly 6% against the dollar since the beginning of January.

And Moscow’s public demands that Nato clear out of eastern and central Europe have backfired as the threat of war has increased the demands for deployments closer to Russia’s borders.

Perhaps the only way out for Putin is to claim that NATO countries were misinterpreting his massive troop buildup. That may work for him internally for a short while.

But no matter what Putin does it would likely weaken his position in the mid to long term. He now has to choose whether he wants to step into a big pile of shit or a small pile of shit.

[ml-pnp]

Fmr Defense Secretary Gates Praises Trump Foreign Policy -- 'At Least He Hasn't Started Any New Wars'

Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press," Robert Gates, who served as Defense Secretary under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, praised President Donald Trump's foreign policy decisions. | Clips