Trump: Biden Risking 'World War III' With Russia

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the escalating Russia-Ukraine crisis is "a NATO problem" that President Joe Biden has turned into a potential "World War III."

Russia has moved some 100,000 troops near Ukraine's borders, a buildup that the West says is preparation for a war to prevent the Eastern European country from ever joining the NATO alliance. The Kremlin denies planning an invasion.

However, the Russian denials ring a bit hollow when compared to Russian foreign policy goals Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been talking about since at least 2007.

“Putin’s Kremlin has been preparing for conflict ever since he declared the new age of hostility in a 2007 speech in Munich,” said Bob Seely in The Telegraph, but his words have been “largely ignored by nervous Western nations”.

Seely contends that Putin aims to do three things as his time in power reaches its final decade: “First, destroy an independent Ukrainian state; second, shatter NATO and third, cement Russia’s role as an illiberal rival to the West.”

In the same vein, a Ukrainian government minister and former top intelligence officer, Yuliia Laputina, has warned that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia could trigger “World War Three” as she said military action by Vladimir Putin would spill over into other former Soviet nations.

“If Russia will invade you know, you should also take care about the Balkans,” she told Sky News in an interview at her office in Kyiv. “What Russians are doing now in Serbia - they try to provoke a situation in the Balkans.

“But we also take into account [the beginning of] World War Three... We should pay attention to the Ukrainian issue because of the security of the continent.”

Our friends at NewsMax report that in response to the current situation in Ukraine, Trump, speaking to Lou Dobbs on "The Great America Show" podcast, slammed Biden for saying that any actions taken against Russia would depend on "if it's a minor incursion [into Ukraine] and we end up having to fight about what to do and what to not do, et cetera."

"What Biden said was psychologically very weak and very bad," Trump told Dobbs. "He said, Oh, they're going in. It was almost like an invitation to go in. We don't want to see that, but it was like an invitation."

"To start World War III, to start World War III," Trump told Dobbs. "It's just all so crazy. And it would have never happened under me. It would have never happened.

Trump blamed Russia's aggression — and China’s — on Biden's disastrous U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan late last summer.

"There’s a lot of dislike, and I think I lot of distrust on behalf of Russia toward us because of what happened over the past year," Trump told Dobbs. "They look at our country and they're laughing, they are laughing out loud.

"This is just a lack of respect for us."

Trump said the situation involving Ukraine is "a NATO problem, European problem."

The former President went on to launch an extended soliloquy on his record of getting NATO members to pay their proper share of the cost of the alliance’s military capability. "...we defended Europe because they weren't paying their bills. When I got in, I said, 'You're not paying your bills. You gotta pay your bills, you're delinquent.' And they said, 'Does that mean you wouldn't fight for us?' I said, 'If you’re delinquent, I wouldn't fight for you. No, you're right about that.’ The next day, billions of dollars came in," claimed Mr. Trump.

In one sense former President Trump is absolutely right – the security of Europe is a European problem – but as a tool for managing Europe’s security NATO has become a tool of limited utility.

And it is not, as Mr. Trump implied, because Biden has allowed NATO members to revert to their old ways of not paying their fair share for the benefits of the alliance.

Rather, it is because NATO members, particularly Germany, don’t share a strategic vision about how to deal with Russian aspirations and adventurism in what the Russians call their “near abroad.”

If the Germans and the United States were serious about confronting and defeating Putin’s aspiration to reestablish the old Soviet Empire in Europe, they most certainly would not have OK’d the Nordstream II natural gas pipeline and they would have bolstered Ukraine when Putin first began to carve-up the country back in 2014.

Instead, they did nothing of significance, and, as we pointed out in our article “Obama And Biden Already Gave Away Ukraine And Nothing Short Of War Will Get It Back” having had eight years to entrench himself in Donbas and Crimea nothing short of war is going to pry Putin out of the Ukrainian territory he now occupies. The time to repel Putin was 2014 when his incursion into Ukraine was fresh and international outrage was high, instead, Obama’s “point man” on Ukraine, Joe Biden, spent his time and influence assisting his son in looting the prostrate Ukrainians.

We urge conservatives to ignore the DC war party; the same Democrats who gave away Ukraine in 2014 and subsequently helped Hunter Biden loot the country are back in charge and we all know they are incapable of successfully facing down Putin and a reinvigorated Russia.

George Rasley is managing editor of Richard Viguerie's ConservativeHQ.com. A member of American MENSA and a veteran of over 300 political campaigns, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle, as Director of Policy and Communication for former Congressman Adam Putnam (FL-12) then Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and as spokesman for now-retired Rep. Mac Thornberry former Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

• Russia Ukraine border

• Joe Biden

• Vladimir Putin

• economic sanctions

• Donald Trump

• NATO

• World War III

• Afghanistan withdrawal

• Germany

• Nordstream II natural gas pipeline

• Donbas and Crimea