Former United States presidential candidate Ron Paul is applauding a recent editorial from a leading voice among neoconservatives who warned last week against a recent deal between China and Russia.
In a widely-published editorial last week, neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote that a newly inked energy deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping isn’t anything for the US to write home about. In fact, Krauthammer insisted, the deal “makes a mockery of US boasts to have isolated Russia” in the midst of a row between Moscow and Washington concerning the crisis in Ukraine, and instead authorized a trade agreement worth $400 billion between Russia and the world’s second-largest economy.
“Their enhanced partnership marks the first emergence of a global coalition against American hegemony since the fall of the Berlin wall,” Krauthammer wrote of the deal, which will supply China with Russian gas for the next 30 years,
In response, Paul said in a video uploaded on Friday to his official website that some of the concerns raised by Krauthammer in his op-ed are understandable, but that the US is risking much more than Americans might realize by letting the China-Russia deal slip by.
According to Paul, the multi-billion-dollar agreement between two of America’s biggest foes will not only cost the US its international influence in the long run, but will decimate the worth of the dollar.
“We talked a lot over the years about military blowback: we do things and it comes back to haunt us and Americans ended up getting killed,” the former congressman for Texas said in a recent video uploaded to his RonPaulChannel.com website. “But there is blowback that comes in different manner, and its economic blowback,” he said.
“This is truly a challenge to make this big deal outside of the US currency,” Paul said. “So this is what they’re worried about and I can understand that.”
Regardless, the former House of Representatives lawmaker added, the US should have expected this type of response to occur given its recent meddling with overseas affairs.
A major deal between Russia and China is only natural, he added, and that “logic tells us that Russia’s going to retaliate” in response to the recent waves of sanctions imposed by the US in response to Moscow’s handling of the crises in Ukraine. The US “should have known” that retaliation would be imminent, even if by way of a bi-lateral deal between Russia and China.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have taken on Russia and maybe we don’t need to do it. But it also means we might be seen as a weaker country, and in that respect Krauthammer is probably right. We are weaker. We are weaker economically. And it’s a shame that to gain stature that is has to be done by the use of force rather than saying ‘Why don’t we clean up our act?’” Paul wrote.
“But if he thinks influence could only be done at the end of a barrel of a gun then it’s a sad story, because eventually that all turns against us. The guns all get turned against us and the economic policies all get turned against us,” Paul warned.
As RT reported previously, this isn’t the first time that Paul has voiced concerns about the involvement of the US in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“We cannot even afford to fix our own economy. Yet we want to run Ukraine? Does it really matter who Ukrainians elect to represent them?”he asked earlier this year. “Is it really a national security matter worth risking a nuclear war with Russia whether Ukraine votes for more regional autonomy and a weaker central government?”