It is not always necessary to click on the latest press release from the neocon dynamic duo, McCain and Graham, to get a sample of the most outré pronouncements. Sometimes the most outlandish and warmongering “analyses” can be found in the strangest places.
Take the CATO Institute’s Andrej Illarionov, for example. Wrongly billed as “Putin’s closest advisor,” Illarionov has nothing to do with the current Russian government. He resigned as an economic advisor after a report in the US-government financed Freedom House convinced him that Russia was no longer a free country. He somehow makes a living continuing to ascribe all manner of hysterical motives and aspirations to the Russian government, with no one going back to fact-check his analytical accuracy.
So Illarionov is quoted yesterday warning that Putin is about to take over Finland and that he has aspirations to return Russia to the time of the last Tsar, Nicolas II.
He is disgusted with the lack of resolve in the West to counter what he claims is Putin’s unquenchable appetite for conquest.
Said Illarionov:
Six years ago Putin conquered Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. The west let him do it with impunity, and now he has got Crimea.
Sanctions only boost Putin and help Kremlin propaganda, says Illarionov. What does the CATO expert want? War!
We must offer resistance by all means available. I’m not a bloodthirsty person, but there is sometimes no other way than military power to stop an opponent.
This is what passes for libertarian foreign policy analysis inside the Beltway? Isn’t there a position open someplace somewhere like the Foreign Policy Initiative for this “expert” to continue his feverish crusade to lie his adopted country into fighting the battles he left behind?
