Lithuania’s top diplomat, Kęstutis Budrys, delivered a stark message to Western allies from NATO’s eastern flank during his Monday visit to Washington: The era of self-deterrence is over.
The time, he insisted, is now to confront Russian aggression with overwhelming force – and budget.
Speaking at the Hudson Institute after a day of meetings with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Benson and other US officials, Budrys offered a stark, cold-eyed assessment from NATO’s frontline. The West, he argued, has been trapped by a Russian-planted idea: that escalation should always be avoided.
“The only thing that you shouldn’t do is escalate – who created this [mantra]?” Budrys challenged. “You shouldn’t be afraid to escalate. This is what works,” he emphasized.
Advertisement
Drawing on Lithuania’s long experience with Russian power, Budrys said that Western restraint only invites more aggression.
He paraphrased Lenin’s maxim – that if you probe with a bayonet and encounter mush, push; if you encounter steel, withdraw – to argue that Russia always advances until it meets force.
Every time the West holds back, he warned, “they think we’re weak – pushovers,” he said.
The killing of two unarmed Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank city of...
Ninety-one years ago this week, millions of Ukrainians starved to death while grain rotted in Soviet...
The Israeli army on Monday again targeted several locations in southern Gaza that fell under the...
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) called Sunday on the Trump administration to refocus its energy on defending...
