Journalists and commentators were looking forward to the boost in clicks and views that typically accompanies a robust presidential primary. But since the Republican primary was over before it began, and the media’s beloved Democrats are now making a mess of both domestic and foreign policy, many in the commentariat are spending a lot of time speculating about who former President Donald Trump will select as his running mate.
After Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) nuked her veepstakes odds with the bizarre decision to prove her toughness by bragging about shooting a puppy with a 12-gauge, North Dakota governor and former sort-of presidential candidate Doug Burgum emerged as a top choice. Other names such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), perpetual Arizona candidate Kari Lake, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard have also been floated by “sources,” but Trump’s vice presidential pick likely won’t matter one way or the other.
The 2024 presidential election is not complicated. If President Joe Biden’s team and its friends in the press can shift the focus to Trump’s legal battles and somehow convince the electorate that Jan. 6 was worse than Pearl Harbor, Biden will win. If the focus is kept on Biden’s age, mental decline, outrageous family corruption, and disastrous economic and foreign policy, The Donald will join President Grover Cleveland in the history books.
The book has been thoroughly written on Biden and Trump. They both have been public figures for most of their extremely long adult lives, and very few people are without a strong opinion on both men.
MAGA fans talked a big game about keeping neoconservatives out of a potential second Trump administration, but they have proven that talk is cheap. Trumpworld looked the other way as the former president went soft on abortion and refused to accept any blame for COVID-19 lockdowns and Faucism, and they now hate Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) for essentially echoing all of Trump’s positions verbatim.
They will fall in line even if Trump selects a hawk such as Nikki Haley or a social centrist such as Scott. Establishment Republicans who personally dislike Trump dislike Biden more (or at least dislike Biden’s policies more). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) endorsed the former president, and the McConnell wing of the party will turn out for Trump — even if he picks a grifter such as Lake or a literal Democrat such as Tulsi Gabbard.
Some Democratic strategists and talking heads have suggested that Biden should replace wildly unpopular and comically incompetent Vice President Kamala Harris to bolster the ticket. But in the extremely unlikely scenario where Vice President Venn Diagram is benched, it likely won’t help the president. This is a simple election: Sleepy Joe vs. Orange Man Bad. The stage is set. Everyone knows the players. May the best old man win.
The world is full of both major irritations and relatively minor ones, and the new tipping regime falls somewhere in the middle. Foreigners don’t tip, at least not the way we do. It’s not a thing in most other countries. But it’s a thing here. That means you should do it. You should tip generously because it’s understood that the people helping you rely on tips, or at least that used to be the understanding. Waiters, cabbies, bellhops – these people were expected to get a little something extra from the customers to help make ends meet, and they made less money hourly because of it. If they were really good at their job, they could do really well, and that’s great. But now, everybody’s got a tip jar out. And I can’t even.
I’m a strong believer that when you tip, you should tip well. It’s a touch of class. I know some people resent tipping, but that’s what you do in the United States in the appropriate context. It’s part of our culture. You should just do it because that’s what’s done, and, at least in the past, the people helping you depended on tips because it was assumed you would.
But you know, when I hit the dry cleaners and there’s a tip jar there, that’s a beg too far. A tip jar at a fast-food place? What the what? That’s crazy talk, especially in California, where you have to pay a McWorker as much as a Goldman Sachs vice president (I can’t imagine getting a tip back when I worked at Mickey D’s for $3.35 an hour). It’s just not a tip-worthy effort to ring up your order, turn around, and hand you your Big Mac. In the hybrid food places where you bring your food, yeah, maybe a little something is appropriate – especially if you are a regular. But at Starbucks? Just making your half-decaf, half-latte espresso and sticking it on the counter is not a tipable event.
Where did this tip tsunami come from? I don’t think I was consulted. Nobody ever asked me about any change in the gratuity paradigm I lived with for the first 55 years of my life. One day, tip jars just sort of appeared everywhere. Then we started seeing tip options coming up on electronic transaction screens. You put up your credit card, and there’s the check amount, and then suddenly you are asked if you want to add a tip. Well, maybe sometimes, but not always.
Here’s my additional beef. They don’t have the tip options that I’m looking for. A proper tip is 15%. I usually go for 20%, but that’s my choice. The 15% gratuity is the understood tip for decent service and has been pretty much forever until about six months ago. But if you get one of these screens, have you noticed how they don’t have 15% as an option anymore? It starts at 18%, with additional options for 20% and 22%. But that’s if you’re lucky. Sometimes it starts at 20% and goes up from there. The idea is to keep you from being that guy who goes and hits the custom tip thing for the regular 15%. I expect it works pretty well.
By the way, a little tipping hint: Use cash when you can. That way, you don’t have to worry about the boss pocketing the credit card payments.
Now, there are circumstances where a 22% or 25% tip is perfectly reasonable, but there are also times when 0% is perfectly reasonable. I probably did a No-Tip five times in my life, and the waiter pretty much had to spit in my food and twerk at me to end up with zilch. But you know, I’d like the option without tapping the little custom button and trying to figure out how not to tip.
It’s just obnoxious that you’re somehow now expected to give 18% minimum. Again, did we as a society decide to change, or was it just imposed upon us without our consent like everything else seems to be? Routine tipping is 15%. I like having the option for 20% because that’s what I usually give – again, I’m not against tipping, I’m for it – but it’s a gratuity. It’s optional. I don’t owe it to anybody. And I shouldn’t have it thrust upon me.
I’m all about making a buck, and if somebody’s willing to give you a tip for ringing up your vape cartridges, lottery tickets, and monster energy drinks at the local QuikiMart, more power to them. But I find it obnoxious that what was once not expected, at least officially, now seems to be officially expected. Hey, I understand adding a mandatory gratuity on a large table. Large tables are a giant hassle and take up a disproportionate amount of time, and if it’s disclosed in advance, that’s just fine. You can eat there or not eat there. It’s part of the bill. But the idea that in other circumstances a tip is effectively mandatory, and if you don’t give one you’re going to get a bunch of side-eye, is not something I can be down with.
But don’t blame the people doing the actual work for today’s tip mania. It’s not the guy bringing you your hot chicken sandwich and garlic fries with extra mayo who programmed the little electronic cash register thing that makes you start out with a tip of 18%. Don’t be a deadbeat. If someone’s waiting on your table and doesn’t pour a glass of Napa Cabernet over your head while calling you a transphobe, you should tip well. One of my tests back in my dating days, which last occurred in the previous century, was I would watch how the woman I was with would treat the help. If she was obnoxious to a waiter or waitress who had no power over you, she was a bad person, and it was only a matter of time before that turned on me. Bad tipping is obnoxious. The people helping you out are working hard. They deserve a good tip. But it’s a tip. Everything is not tipable. It’s optional. It’s a gratuity. No one is entitled to it.
Let’s get back to tipping as usual before we tip over.
If it weren't for the fact that they are running interference for the worst president in the history of the republic, and one of the most deeply and fundamentally corrupt political figures since Huey Long - maybe Caligula - I'd almost feel sorry for White House staffers. These poor saps are trying to cover up President Joe Biden's mental and physical decline, and it's getting harder by the day. Every time the president speaks, it's another Gaffe-A-Palooza, and the problem is this: Every time he speaks, the White House has to issue an official transcript.
Now we learn that, just since January 1, 2024, the President's remarks have had to be "corrected" in those transcripts no fewer than 148 times. And it's not just the fact that he had to be corrected - it's the why.
The White House releases an official transcript anytime the president gives a speech or takes questions. Communications staff frequently correct, add to or alter Biden’s official remarks in order to either bring them into compliance with official White House policy or, in some cases, reality, a Daily Caller analysis showed. In several cases, official statements had to be changed to convey the exact opposite of what Biden actually said.
Through 118 statements, speeches and chats with reporters spanning from Jan. 1 to April 24, the White House has officially updated its transcript with corrections to what the president said out loud at least 148 times.
Corrections, indeed. Here's the onion: It's not always correcting the things he said, it's adding things he "should have said, but didn't." You know - for context.
Some of the modifications include corrections to names, dates and titles of organizations. Others change verbs and modify the meaning of the president’s statement entirely. Words that the president didn’t say, but should’ve, according to the White House staff, have also been added to the transcripts.
“It was then, through no — through my American Rescue Plan — which every American [Republican] voted against, I might add — we made the largest investment in public safety ever,” the White House transcript of Biden’s March State of the Union address read.
So, unnamed staffers are second-guessing the president of the United States.
Granted, the president could use some second-guessing, as his first guesses aren't generally very good. Joe Biden, throughout his long career in which he never has actually done an honest day's work, was never what you'd call an engaging speaker. Even at his prime - and I use the word "prime" in the broadest possible sense - he was never more than a middling orator. I'm not talking about his supposed stutter; take a look at this clip from his speech in 1987, when he was forced to drop his presidential campaign over allegations of plagiarism, and you won't see any real evidence of that stutter.
This is more than a speech impediment. It's a brain impediment. This is the ongoing mental and physical deterioration of the one man who is arguably the most powerful man on the planet. And it's getting more and more difficult to hide it.
The "adding things he should have said, but didn't" is especially troubling. These are staffers - unelected, largely unknown - who are adding words to history's record of the president of the United States, words he did not say, words that these staffers have decided he should have said but didn't.
The Biden presidency has descended from unintentional comedy to farce. It's a train wreck that is still ongoing, and November just can't come soon enough.
At the start of this month we covered how Democratic strategist James Carville has been issuing warnings about President Joe Biden's chances for reelection, especially when it comes to the demographics he's losing. This includes young, non-white male voters, a key part of Biden's 2020 coalition. As the unpopular incumbent president continues to flounder in the polls, it would seem that Carville's really letting that desperation show when it comes to the idea that former President Donald Trump could once more be elected.
In a video clip of "James Carville Explains" that's been making the rounds this week, Carville goes on an angry, expletive filled rant about how young voters may not share his exact views on the election. It hardly comes off as him actually explaining anything.
Carville warns that "there will be no government left, there will be no rights left, you will live under theocracy, you'll end up with Christian nationalism," a hysterical point that's been hyperbolically addressed before, especially when Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) earned the gavel.
"But that's all right, you little f**king 26-year-old, you don't feel like the election's important to me, you're not addressing the issues that I care about," Carville continued in a mocking tone of voice.
James Carville threatening young people to vote for Biden: "[If Trump wins] There will be no government left, there will be no rights left, you will live under theocracy, you'll end up with Christian Nationalism. But that's alright you little fucking 26 year old, you don't feel… pic.twitter.com/vixpjLRzc2
Not helping the case for Carville to be taken seriously is that the full 12-minute YouTube video containing that excerpt is titled "Donald Trump: A Fart or a Shart? That Is The Question." The first couple of minutes were full of some particularly immature content.
Calling a fart a "trump," like Carville said he learned they call it in the United Kingdom, even calling upon viewers to have their children and grandchildren do so, is "very important to our strategy of mocking [Trump] and doing things [the] Biden campaign isn't able to do."
Carville then addressed how something he says he hears "a lot," is how "'young voters are not into this, it's two candidates, one is in his 80s, one is almost in his 80s, they're concerned about things, about Washington or politicians, and you just can't blame 'em for...'"
In a creepy and sudden change of tone, Carville then snapped "oh s**t, f**k you, all right! Are you watching what is happening in the Supreme Court?! If you're 26, do you see what they're doing?!" He went on to claim that the Court was taking away "every right that you could possibly have away from you" and that "the Supreme Court has out of nothing getting ready to create immunity for one person, Donald Trump!" Carville also brought up Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, conservative justices who have frequently been targeted and even threatened by liberals.
Carville then referred to those who call themselves originalists "a**holes" and "illegitimate whores," as he mocked them too with his tone. As his rant became more unhinged, he likened the Supreme Court to Russia, insisting we are dealing with "an illegitimate court."
"You think that Thomas is legitimate?! You think Thomas didn't perjure himself about Anita Hill?! Are you kidding me?!" Carville was referencing Thomas' confirmation hearing from over 30 years ago now, during which sexual harassment claims about Thomas came up. It's worth reminding that Carville helped President Bill Clinton get elected in 1992, a man who has faced a slew of accusations when it comes to crimes of a sexual nature.
Carville also accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh of lying about accusations from Christine Blasey Ford, who has been and continues to be thoroughly debunked. "You think Kavanaugh told the truth when this woman came out, that he raped her?!"
From there, the Democratic strategist even engaged in election denialism, which Democrats constantly lambast Republicans over when it comes to the 2020 election, despite how they themselves did it with the 2000 election. "You think Bush was really elected in 20--in the year 2000?! Of course he wasn't elected! He was installed, by the right-wing Supreme Court justices!"
"You think that Gorsuch--you think that that was legit?! Oh please! You think that hurrying up Barrett's confirmation by Mitch McConnell against what he said he couldn't do when Obama was president?! So never look at these people and say this is a legit third branch of government, it is not! This is an illegitimate organization that unfortunately, if I don't do what they say, they'll throw my ass in jail!" It's worth reminding how Biden has defied the Courtwhen it comes to student debt.
"But never, don't teach your children, don't teach your students, don't teach anybody that the current Supreme Court has any moral or legal legitimacy. It doesn't! It's in there because of contrivement and it's in there because of weakness and cowardness," Carville declared as he went back to ranting about Bush v. Gore even more so. "Let these sons of bitches trample all over you," he continued as part of his rant. "That's no longer a principle of the United States of America," Carville sai when speaking about how nobody is above the law. "Understand that," he insisted, gesturing wildly.
Although he had previously spared Chief Justice John Roberts, Carville went after him too, along with his wife. Carville also brought up Adolf Hitler when addressing how Roberts regarded the case of immunity.
Carville again brought his rant to calling out young voters he's trying to win over. "And then you tell these young people, if you don't get involved right now, in this election, they're going to be involved in your life for the rest of your frickin' life! If Trump and Roberts and Alito and Gorsuch and Thomas and Leonard Leo and, uh, the Heritage Foundation, if they get ahold, there will be no government left," which brings us to the remarks in that clip above.
A few minutes later in the full video he offered "my advice [is] to tell these young people to get off your mother f**king ass and go vote because you should vote like your entire future and the entire future of this United States depends on it because quite frankly it does and that's not an exaggeration." Carville emphasized such a point by menacingly getting up closer to the camera.
Carville's always been a little unconventional; it's what he's known for. He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have been getting into it with each other for years. But this doesn't seem like the smartest tactic to take. It also is a whole other level of unhinged ranting.
Even fellow liberal and Trump-hater Brian Krassenstein called Carville out over remarks.
"Ok, so, I despise Trump. I think he would be a disaster for this country, but this is too extreme. Trump was already president and the institutions held. We didn’t slip into a theocracy, we didn’t lose all our rights, and the government is still here," he said in his post. "Don’t sound like a lunatic melting down. That doesn’t serve a purpose other than make people think that everyone on the left is a lunatic," Krassenstein also aptly wrote.
James Carville on Trump 2024:
"If they get ahold, there will be no government left, no rights left, you’ll live under theocracy, you’ll end up with Christian Nationalism, but that’s alright, you little f***ing 26-year-old…”
Even if his tactic isn't necessarily the way to go, Carville is right to worry. Trump is leading Biden in the polls, with RealClearPolling showing him up by +1.4. Included are the slew of polls we've recently covered, such as Harvard CAPS-Harris, where he's up by +4 with first choice and leaners and the CNN poll where he's up by +6. There's also the most recent poll from Morning Consult, where Trump and Biden are tied at 43 percent each, although Trump has more support with Independents and from Republicans and those who voted for him in 2020 than Biden does with Democrats and his voters from 2020.
When it comes to the young voters whom Carville is ranting and raving about, the crosstabs for the Harvard poll actually show Trump leading with voters 18-34, with 53 percent support to Biden's 47 percent.
The CNN write-up also devotes an entire paragraph to how poorly Biden is doing with young voters, according to their own poll:
In the Biden vs. Trump matchup, the poll finds Biden faring worse than in previous CNN polls among the youngest voters, trailing Trump by a 51%-to-40% margin among voters younger than 35. Biden’s deficit with voters in that group is driven largely by those who did not vote in 2020. With that group excluded, voters between the ages of 18 and 34 in this poll divide 46% for Biden to 47% for Trump. Although not all polls release crosstabs or use the same age breaks when reporting results, other recent polling has shown a wide range of results for younger voters in testing a matchup between Trump and Biden, ranging from an 18-point Trump advantage among those younger than 30 in the Fox News poll in mid-March up to a 21-point Biden advantage among those younger than 30 in the Pew Research survey earlier this month.
A separate CNN analysis about the poll also mentioned how "Biden is still experiencing problems with key sectors of his own coalition, including younger voters, a new CNN poll shows."
New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik filed an ethics complaint Tuesday alleging Special Counsel Jack Smith’s rushed lawfare campaign against former President Donald Trump is tantamount to election interference. Smith, Stefanik said, has been “abusing the resources of the federal government to unlawfully interfere with the 2024 presidential election.”
The complaint, filed with the Office of Professional Responsibility within Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), argues Smith is attempting to rush the trial of Trump regarding his speech about the 2020 election ahead of this November’s rematch, in violation of the DOJ’s Justice Manual.
Section 9-85.500 of the manual stipulates “federal prosecutors … may never select the timing of any action … for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
Stefanik argues Smith violated the statute in August of 2023 when “he petitioned the District Court for a January 2, 2024, trial date.” Stefanik cites the roughly 13 million pages of discovery Trump’s team had to review, alongside other evidence, to argue that Smith’s intended five-month turnaround was an obvious attempt to rush a complex case to get a judgment before Election Day.
“It’s obvious to any reasonable observer that Jack Smith is trying to interfere with the 2024 election and stop the American people from electing Donald Trump,” Stefanik said in a statement. “At every turn, he has sought to accelerate his illegal prosecution of President Trump for the clear (if unstated) purpose of trying him before the November election.”
Stefanik also alleges Smith violated the same statute when he unsuccessfully tried to expedite his case against Trump by begging the Supreme Court to grant certiorari before a lower court had rendered a judgment.
“That Jack Smith was solely motivated by the desire to interfere in the November election was effectively proven two months later” when he opposed Trump’s petition for certiorari on the issue of presidential immunity, Stefanik reasoned. Smith argued the nation had a “compelling interest in the prompt resolution of this case” in opposing Trump’s petition.
“The public, respondent, and the government are entitled to nothing less,” Smith argued, despite the fact that the Sixth Amendment grants the right to a speedy trial to defendants, not “the government” or “the public.”
“Aside from the upcoming election, what ‘compelling interest’ does the public have in the prompt resolution of this case?” Stefanik asked. “Why should this interest—based on an unstated reason—override the due process rights of a criminal defendant?”
The congresswoman also alleged Smith “repeatedly and deliberately violated” a district court’s stay of proceedings, including when he served an additional nearly 4,000 pages of discovery to Trump’s team. The district court had stayed “any further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant.”
In addition to the 4,000 pages of discovery, Stefanik pointed to Smith’s decision to file “a motion in limine in District Court” after Smith indicated to the Supreme Court that “the case is now on hold” at the district level. Smith’s “refusal to abide by the District Court’s stay” violated D.C. Rule of Professional Conduct 3.4(c), and his admission to the Supreme Court that the case was “on hold” indicated he did so “knowingly,” Stefanik argued.
“Jack Smith emphatically said that ‘no one in this country … is above the law.’ If that is true, then he should be open to, and welcome, an ethics investigation into conduct that, on its face, implicates potential violations of DOJ policy and multiple rules of professional conduct,” Stefanik wrote. “Biden special counsel Jack Smith’s highly unusual and clearly improper attempts to expedite trial, and his blatant violation of District Court orders, evidence his partisan attempt to influence the results of the 2024 presidential election.”
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz filed a similar complaint in March requesting DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz investigate why Smith is apparently hellbent on trying Trump before November.
Romania is building NATO’s largest military base. Poland is negotiating to host American nuclear weapons. Finland, long known for “Finlandization,” or studied neutrality, is now in NATO and calls itself “a front-line state.”
Vladimir Putin says he invaded Ukraine to push back NATO. Instead, Russia’s nearest western neighbors are closing ranks as a new Iron Curtain takes shape along a north-south front against Russian expansionism. The neighbors wonder: Could we be next?
Starting from the south, Bulgaria last month shipped to Ukraine 100 Soviet-era BTR-20 armored personnel carriers and armored scout cars. Long seen as Russia’s closest “Slavic Brother,” Bulgaria’s capital has a monument to Tsar Alexander II, the Russian leader who freed Orthodox Christian Bulgaria from Turkish rule.
Modern Russia’s bombing of Mariupol and destruction of historic Bulgarian communities in Ukraine, though, soured Bulgarians on their “older brother.”
Further up the Black Sea coast, Romania broke ground this spring on a 10-square mile expansion to Mihail KogΔlniceanu International Airport, Romania’s closest air base to Russia-controlled Crimea.
The flag of the NATO military alliance flies alongside those of other members nations during military exercises on March 4, 2024 near Gniew, Poland. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Destined to host F-16 and F-35 warplanes, the new base will include two new airstrips, as well as housing, schools and a hospital for 10,000 NATO soldiers and their families. The $2.5 billion project is designed to be a Ramstein Air Base for eastern Europe.
“An American city will appear in Constanta County,” warns a Russian news site, Reporter. Facing Crimea 250 miles across the Black Sea, Constanta is Romania’s biggest sea port. Before the war closed the Black Sea to outside navies, Constanta was a regular port of call for American Navy ships.
The base project is being fast tracked by Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis. In March, he announced his candidacy for NATO secretary general. Facing tough competition from the outgoing Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, Mr. Iohannis burnished his NATO credentials last month by announcing that 50 Ukrainian pilots will undergo F-16 training at FeteΘti Air Base, NATO’s European F-16 Training Center.
To keep the war on the far side of the Danube River, Romania has refrained from loud protests over the five Russian kamikaze drones that have fallen on Romanian territory since the 2022 invasion. After four decades under Communist rule, Romanians are acutely aware of deeply ingrained Russian imperial attitudes.
On March 15, the former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, alluded to the Romani, or gypsy, influence on Romania’s national culture, posting on social media site VK: “Romanians, as you know, are not a nation, but a way of life.”
Mr. Medvedev, currently deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, was objecting to a European Parliament resolution urging Moscow to return 91 tons of Romanian gold it has held since World War I. Calling the resolution “impudence,” Mr. Medvedev said Moscow keeps the gold to punish Romanians for “bad behavior.”
Moving up Russia’s border, some Poles think about Russia and start thinking about going nuclear. Two weeks ago. Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, met in America, separately, with President Biden and President Trump. Later, he told Polish newspaper Fakt: “If our allies decide to deploy nuclear arms on our territory as part of nuclear sharing, to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank, we are ready.”
Five NATO nations “host” American tactical nuclear weapons on their territories: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Control remains in American hands, but forward deployment is seen as a deterrent to Russia. In Belarus, a Russian satellite nation to the east of Poland, President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that “dozens” of Russian tactical nuclear weapons now are stored there.
President Gitanas NausΔd of Lithuania, a Baltic nation bordering on Poland and Belarus, supports Mr. Duda’s move to store American nuclear weapons. The Kremlin’s reaction is icy.
“Polish authorities have made no secret of their ambitions in terms of how to ‘cuddle up to’ the U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, they have been talking about this for a long time,” a Russian foreign ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, told reporters last week.
“The impression is that Warsaw is maniacally seeking to attract even more attention from military planners in the Russian General Staff,” she added, predicting that any storage site would immediately become a target for Russian missiles.
With some Poles saying that their president’s nuclear invitation was not thought through, Mr. Duda meets today with his political rival, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, to work out a joint policy. Both men are in agreement that the Russian threat is real. They believe that it probably would not come from Kaliningrad, Russia’s exclave bordering Poland, but through Ukraine.
“We have a choice: Either we have a defeated Russian army outside the borders of Ukraine or a victorious Russian army on the border with Poland,” Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, told German newspaper Bild in an interview published Sunday.
Saying he “wouldn’t be surprised at all” if Russia attacks, he added: “Russia has attacked Poland many times in the 500 years of our history. But in this scenario, Russia will lose, because we, the West, are far more powerful than Russia.”
Determined to build NATO’s largest army in Europe, Poland is on track to spend 4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense — double the NATO goal of 2 percent. In addition to large arms purchases from America, Poland is buying more than 1,000 tanks, self-propelled howitzers, multiple rocket launchers and fighter jets from South Korea. In February, NATO and Ukraine agreed to create a joint training center at a Polish city, Bydgoszcz, midway between Warsaw and the Baltic.
Further up the Baltic, the admission to the North Atlantic Treaty of Finland and then Sweden over the last year turned the Baltic Sea into a North Atlantic Treaty Organization sea. While the Baltics host this spring the largest NATO exercise since the Cold War, the biggest turnaround is Finland.
Finland’s entry to NATO turned a thinly monitored 832-mile land border into a tense, closely surveilled front line. First, Russia encouraged 1,000 economic migrants without visas for Europe to swarm across the border.
After Finland closed all land crossings with Russia, the Kremlin responded by recreating two Soviet-era military districts facing Finland and by stationing nuclear capable Iskander missiles in Karelia, a border area with historic ties to Finland.
“If this comes true, it won’t change anything,” Finland’s former director of military intelligence, Harri Ohra-aho, writes on X. “Operationally it seems absurd to bring missile systems with such a long range closer to our border. They make easy targets for us.” Finland is bulking up with traditional defenses: American rocket systems, F-35 jet fighters, and Israeli anti-tank and air-defense systems.
Russia, though, seems to be taking a non-confrontational, hybrid approach. GPS jamming this spring caused two Finnair flights to divert to alternate cities and forced the company to suspend all service to Estonia’s second largest city, Tartu, until a non-GPS navigational system is installed. Then, too, there is the mystery about an undersea communications cable that was cut last year between Estonia and Finland.
The Kremlin calls it paranoia. “The idea that we will attack some other country — Poland, the Baltic States, and the Czechs are also being scared — is complete nonsense. It’s just drivel, ” Mr. Putin said in late March. In the next breath, though, he warned that any NATO air base hosting Ukraine’s new F-16 fighter jets will be a “legitimate target” for his forces.
