Darrell Castle talks about the withdrawal of Russia from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start), Mr. Putin's annual speech to the Russian Parliament, President Biden's trip to Poland and Ukraine, and China's Global Security Initiative (GSI) Concept Paper.

Transcription / Notes

ETERNAL WAR AND A NUCLEAR ARMS RACE

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 24th day of February in the year of our Lord 2023. I will be talking about the withdrawal of Russia from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start), as well as Mr. Putin’s annual speech to the Russian Parliament, President Biden’s trip to Poland and Ukraine, and finally China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI) Concept Paper.

President Biden reportedly left Washington in secret at 4:15 am on Sunday morning, flying to Poland where he made a speech and then he took a 10 hour train ride to Kiev Ukraine. The secrecy of the trip and itinerary was certainly understandable given the security issues with a U.S. president today. I’m pretty sure the secret service had quite a difficult time in advance work for this trip.

He chose to deliver a speech in Poland where he expressed pride in the accomplishment of building a coalition from the Atlantic to the Pacific to oppose Russia. He missed his words a little bit, but he was trying to say that NATO, the U.S., and Japan were all in on their determination to stop Putin’s brutal war of aggression. He almost always uses that rhetoric even though reportedly in a phone conversation with Putin in January as well as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a meeting with Secretary of State Blinken, the Russians appealed to the U.S. to stop the inflammatory rhetoric to give diplomacy a chance to work.

One might conclude from the continuation of that language that American diplomats do not want a negotiated peace at this time, but nevertheless the President went on to Kiev as scheduled. He met Ukrainian President Zelensky, and they walked together bravely through the streets while air raid sirens screamed for the American media. The problem with the air raid sirens was that it seems as if they were staged for the TV audience because National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that Russia had been informed of the President’s intent and his itinerary before the visit.

CNN’s Alex Marquardt reported that he had been in Kiev for five days and heard no explosions and no sirens. They started right when Biden started his stroll with Zelensky, but the two brave presidents did not scramble to the shelters and did not even get off the street. Warning the Russians in advance was understandable so that no attack would be forthcoming during the visit, but it has become a kind of tradition with our military now.

General Milley, said he assured the Chinese that he would warn them in advance of an American attack because his commander in chief was supposedly crazy. When told that Chinese balloons were floating over America during the Trump administration, Trump said that’s the first I’ve heard of it and the Joint Chiefs said yes, we decided not to tell him because he was too aggressive. So, the Biden team notified the Russians that he was going there even though they understandably  kept it secret from others.

I don’t mean to make light of any of this since this war is deadly serious and raging on without end. When asked how long, the president responds, “as long as it takes.” Congress should perhaps exercise its responsibility and duty to inquire exactly how long is as long as it takes. Is the American taxpayer, suffering from inflation at home, supposed to fund this war to bleed Russia dry forever? By the way comparably speaking Europe pays very little in this struggle, which I suppose is another tradition, but it seems that escalation and the possibility of nuclear conflict grow day by day.

So, the president went to Kiev approximately one year after the Russian invasi...