{"id":59538,"date":"2025-05-10T06:56:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T04:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=59538"},"modified":"2025-05-12T06:52:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T04:52:37","slug":"signs-of-change-united-states-treasury-secretary-considers-putin-a-war-criminal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/05\/10\/signs-of-change-united-states-treasury-secretary-considers-putin-a-war-criminal\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of change? United States Treasury Secretary considers Putin a 'war criminal'"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The current US administration's position on Russia appears to have begun to change, as we've seen this week.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/05\/09\/the-third-rome-russia-displays-its-alliance-with-dictatorships-that-persecute-christians\/\">The Third Rome? Russia displays its alliance with dictatorships that persecute Christians<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/04\/17\/the-usa-votes-with-russia-at-the-un-against-a-text-because-it-rejects-the-invasion-of-ukraine\/\">The USA votes with Russia at the UN against a text because it rejects the invasion of Ukraine<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p>Less than a month ago, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/04\/17\/the-usa-votes-with-russia-at-the-un-against-a-text-because-it-rejects-the-invasion-of-ukraine\/\">The United States voted alongside Russia at the UN against a text because it rejected the invasion of Ukraine<\/a>. It was yet another example of the Trump administration's embarrassing rapprochement with the Kremlin, <strong>perhaps in an attempt to break up the Russia-China alliance that has failed miserably<\/strong>, as the entire world saw yesterday with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/05\/09\/the-third-rome-russia-displays-its-alliance-with-dictatorships-that-persecute-christians\/\">the images of the meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping in Moscow<\/a> and the parade of Chinese soldiers in the Russian capital's Red Square on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>The White House seems to have already realized this failure. We saw it the other day with <a href=\"https:\/\/es.euronews.com\/my-europe\/2025\/05\/01\/ucrania-firma-un-acuerdo-historico-con-washington-sobre-minerales-de-tierras-raras\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the signing of a minerals agreement between the US and Ukraine<\/a> under very different conditions than those Trump initially intended and which ended up being <strong>a diplomatic success for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/strong>. But there has been another clear sign of this change, a sign that will have sat very badly in the Kremlin.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, May 7, <strong>the US Congress held a hearing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent<\/strong> (his position is equivalent to that of finance ministers in other countries). Bessent is a member of the Republican Party, a staunch supporter of Trump, who took office on January 28. During that hearing, <strong>Democratic Congressman Juan Vargas asked him: \"Do you consider Vladimir Putin a war criminal?\" Bessent didn't hesitate: \"Yes.\"<\/strong> You can see the scene in this video (at 1:38:43, I've embedded it so it starts playing there):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a7h4mctwgmo?si=zYpxZAqVmL6F9onk&amp;start=5923\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Vargas then asked Bessent if he would negotiate with a war criminal, and the Treasury Secretary compared the Russians to the Japanese in World War II<\/strong>, stating that it was necessary to negotiate with them after that war.<\/p>\n<p>The comparison does not seem inappropriate to me, since during that war, <strong>the Japanese Empire committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and even crimes of genocide<\/strong>, such as the Nanking massacre (1937-1938, up to 300,000 dead), the Changjiao massacre (1943, with 30,000 dead and numerous women raped) and the Manila massacre (1945, with more than 100,000 dead).<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, <strong>that negotiation with Japan did not prevent Japan's unconditional surrender<\/strong>. The alternative would have been \"prompt and utter destruction\", according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomicarchive.com\/resources\/documents\/hiroshima-nagasaki\/potsdam.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Potsdam Declaration<\/a> of July 26, 1945, signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of China. <strong>I look forward to seeing the US send a similar message to Russia regarding Ukraine<\/strong>, promising all possible aid to the invaded country if the Russians refuse to withdraw their troops. <strong>That's the only language thugs like Putin understand: the language of force.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>---<\/p>\n<p><small>Photo: Bloomber.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The current US administration&#8217;s position on Russia appears to have begun to change, as we&#8217;ve seen this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10373],"tags":[9189,10731,16153,24405,15307,10431,7887,16074],"class_list":["post-59538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","tag-donald-trump","tag-russia","tag-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-of-2022","tag-scott-bessent","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodimir-zelenski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59538"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}