Mexico was an official US ally from 1948 to 2004 as a member of the Rio Pact. We then became closer with the signing of NAFTA in 1994 which made Mexico one of only two countries with both a mutual protection pact and a free trade agreement with the United States.
By any metric, Mexico was one of America's closest allies. There were work visas available for farm workers coming to this country, and relations were good.
When Bush came into office, one of the first things he did was have to respond to the 9/11 attack and the way he did so was by appropriating funds to investigate who attacked us, discover and dismantle the financial support for terrorism around the world, track down and kill suppliers of weapons, and strategically implement more rigorous visa investigations on countries where the terrorists were from. By dismantling terrorist networks politically, economically, and militarily the Taliban was permanently weakened and terrorism is far less of a threat today compared to 20 years ago.
Just kidding. He decided that instead of doing all that he was going to implement visas on our allies and end the farm worker visa program. He also decided to follow Netanyahu's advice without further investigation and start a brand new war in Iraq which led to the rise of ISIS and reduced support to stabilize Afghanistan. This colossal failure has been a major gift to terrorists around the world.
Netanyahu and Putin have a special relationship, and Israel has provided no military support to Ukraine, despite Ukraine being the only other country with a Jewish head of state and Jewish head of government. This is odd.
By doing this, Mexicans rightfully feel like they were being discriminated against, and they are right, which led to Mexico resigning from the Rio Pact and our relations have not recovered since.
Russia followed up by founding "BRIC" which is an odd grouping initially of Russia, China, India, and Brazil, later adding on South Africa. This gets more attention even though it doesn't really do more than a conference. But its existence distracts the media from the reality of how Brazil is as much a US ally as Canada, Germany, or France while it helps push India away from improving relations with the United States which would be devastating to Russian geopolitical interests. Every article about "BRICS" is an article which does not focus on the reality that the United States has mutual protection pacts with more countries than any other country in history.
The BRICS grouping was originally invented by Jim O'Neill, who was a member of David Cameron's cabinet, and a supporter of Brexit. Yet another coincidence.
Now most Americans didn't immediately notice how the Bush Administration was massively harming one of America's closest alliances, the media did not report on the repeal of the farm worker visas which led to illegal immigration supplying our labor force instead of through legal channels, to Mexico finally saying to hell with you and leaving one of our two most important multilateral defense pacts.
Neither would anyone necessarily suspect anything more than that.
But then we fast forward to the end of the Bush Presidency and NATO and the European Union is expanding eastward as one democracy after another joins both organizations. America's defensive capabilities are significantly expanded, the world is more free, and things are looking positive for the future in general.
The next two countries applying to join NATO are Ukraine and Georgia. They were going to be the fourth and fifth former Soviet Republics to join the alliance, and for some reason for Putin its fine if Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania join NATO, but not Ukraine or Georgia. Merkel is the main actor who prevents their accession, likely due to covert threats of cutting off natural gas which Germany is dependent on, and both countries fail to get unanimous support to join the alliance.
At the very end of the Bush administration becomes the first time in decades when Europeans need to get visas in order to visit the United States, another blow to our close diplomatic relations with countries on the peninsula.
Obama did not realize what was going on. He was brainwashed into talking about a "pivot to Asia" by his advisors, which meant that the United States did not work on fixing the issues in Europe which were created by the Bush administration. Pivot to Asia funny enough did not mean building US-Indian relations however. It was mostly meaningless. European relations were largely ignored, even after the aftermath of the invasion of Georgia. It is now obvious that even if Ukraine and Georgia were not going to be able to join NATO, the United States should have made a multilateral mutual protection pact with GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova) in an effort to counter the obvious aggression Putin was demonstrating in 2008. Bush and Obama failed to do this.
When Ukraine was invaded, instead of recognizing the severity of Putin's actions Obama pushed a stalemate which sacrificed three regions of Ukraine to Russia in perpetuity, laying the stage for the current ongoing war.
For decades London has been one of Russia's favorite locations for money laundering, given how the United Kingdom has relatively lax laws on the issue. In 2014 the European Union passed a set of laws meant to detect and eliminate money laundering in the organization, and since the United Kingdom was a member state of the European Union, London banks would be subject to such laws. As soon as the counter money laundering regulations were passed, Russian assets Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer, and David Cameron started to push for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. They essentially used Bush's playbook by blabbering on about immigration, "illegals", crime, sovereignty, and a bunch of other nonsense which was never threatened by being a member state of the European Union, when in reality I believe that it was about the cleaning up of London banks the whole time.
Each of these events in recent history have strengthened Russia at the expense of the United States. The failure to finish the job in Afghanistan and not properly move Afghanistan towards a government which works for the people has increased Russia's geopolitical strength in Asia. The Iraq War strengthened Netanyahu's control of Israel while diverting American resources. The weakening of the Rio Pact by Mexico resigning from the alliance has pushed Latin America away from the United States. BRICS is a mostly meaningless distraction which creates a lot of anti-American propaganda, which is its main focus. The UK leaving the European Union has maintained London as a preferred route for dirty money to move between Russia and the rest of the world. American media worrying about Russian nuclear bombs raining down on New York has convinced the Biden administration that fully supporting Ukraine would be devastating.
Any one of these events alone looks rather tame, but when you string it all together you start to notice that the Republican Party has been working hard on weakening America's relations with countries around the world for the last 25 years to Russia's benefit.
It started with pushing Mexico away from the United States.
The way to counter this is to call it out and do the following actions:
- Support Ukraine all the way to a full military victory.
- Improve relations with Mexico, starting with the resumption of farm worker visas and culminating with them rejoining the Rio Pact.
- Ukraine and Georgia join NATO.
- The United Kingdom rejoins the European Union.
- The United States and the European Union abolish eVisas and resume visa-free travel.
This is how we can significantly weaken Russia by reversing their actions over the last 25 years and build a more peaceful world for the future.
