Earthling: Russia warnings not heeded by Obama and Bush
Plus: Cold War II McCarthyism; Biden’s nest of China hawks; Biggest comet ever, etc.
Russia expert Fiona Hill, who advised presidents Trump, Obama, and George W. Bush, revealed this week that she had warned Bush that promising NATO membership to Ukraine would antagonize Russia—advice Bush promptly ignored. William Burns, now head of the CIA and formerly ambassador to Russia, has already said he gave the Bush administration similar advice, writing in a 2008 memo that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”
Hill also said this week that President Obama didn’t heed counsel from her and other advisers about the costs of disparaging Putin in public. “We said openly, ‘Don’t dis the guy—he’s thin-skinned and quick to take insults.’ … He [Obama] either didn’t understand the man or willfully ignored the advice.”
Also this week, a State Department official confirmed that, in the runup to the Ukraine invasion, the Biden administration refused to discuss with Russia its demand that there be no further expansion of NATO. On a podcast, State Department Counselor Derek Chollet was asked, “So you folks refused to talk about NATO expansion with Russia? It was not on the table in terms of negotiations?” Chollet replied, “It wasn't.”
Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet access service, has helped Ukraine cope with invasion, report Meaghan Tobin and Masha Borak in Rest of World. Musk has donated thousands of Starlink terminals to Ukraine since the war began. This graph charts daily downloads of the Starlink app in Ukraine and in the 27 other countries where the service is available:
This week Politico appraised the team of China experts assembled by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to staff the National Security Council. The piece’s title: “Jake’s nest of China hawks.” Politico says there are a few administration officials who “believe collaboration with China is important to address both climate change and improve global economic conditions”—notably climate envoy John Kerry and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo—but they are often at odds with the NSC.
Meanwhile:
Beijing worries that Washington seeks regime change in China, and this fear is driving the accelerated expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, Alastair Gale of the Wall Street Journal reports. Sources close to Chinese leaders told Gale that America’s hawkish posture under both Trump and Biden has caused Beijing to revise its assessment of US intentions. The Arms Control Association estimates that China possesses 350 nuclear warheads compared to America’s 5,500.
Russians and Belarusians have been banned from competing in the Boston Marathon, which takes place this Monday. Russians and Belarusians who don’t currently reside in either country can participate, though not under their country’s flag. The organizers announced the ban April 6, less than two weeks before the race. The Earthling has covered other examples of war-induced Russophobia here, here, and here.
A fireball that streaked above Papua New Guinea in 2014 was a rock from another solar system, the US Space Command has confirmed. The 2014 meteor sighting thus becomes the earliest known witnessing by earthlings of an interstellar object. (One other meteor had been identified as interstellar, but it was witnessed in 2017.) The scientists who concluded that this meteor was interstellar (based partly on its extraordinary velocity) hope to recover shards of it from the seabed of the South Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile, scientists this week published their estimate of the size of a comet that was first seen last year and can now be called the biggest comet on record (and can also be called by its ungainly name, C/2014 UN271-Bernardinelli-Bernstein). Its icy core is estimated to be at least 65 miles in diameter and possibly more than 80 miles in diameter.
