Ukraine War

[Mdhorn 5897]

16 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

You are right in appraising our culpability (guilt) in the killing of so many civilians particularly in Iraq but surely too many in Afghanistan, too. I don't like the way we sugarcoat the results of our military action. 

Trump is wrong in that he equates US policy and history with Putin. I think any American or American commander would prefer victory with no civilian deaths; they always err on just how many civilians we'll kill. It's horrendous. In contrast, Putin has employed murder broadly in political competition and is using civilian slaughter as a chosen strategy to win his evil war against Ukraine. 

In this comparison, I think intent does matter. Our well-meaning isn't a get out of jail card for the civilians we kill. Putin's willful slaughter deserves condemnation for what it is: outright, premeditated murder.

As a side note, the US is diverse in the hand it reaches towards other nations and peoples. Government is usually a bloodied fist, but sometimes there is a real attempt at humanitarianism. Privately, countless entities, including many of the churches that I don't much like for other reasons, show up to provide health care, education, training, and doubtless many things I don't even know about. The bloody fist isn't the only aspect of American engagement. It pretty much is the only aspect to everything Putin does.

 

Putin at his core is a criminal and the rule for criminals is to take. Trump understands this which makes it ironic that he established charities and then did as expected. When he could’ve just skimmed off the top, claiming CEO fees, he instead chose to take it all. Both should be prosecuted for openly conducted crimes.

[WhatTheBuck 28696]

29 minutes ago, Mdhorn said:

Putin at his core is a criminal and the rule for criminals is to take. Trump understands this which makes it ironic that he established charities and then did as expected. When he could’ve just skimmed off the top, claiming CEO fees, he instead chose to take it all. Both should be prosecuted for openly conducted crimes.

At their core, they’re the same person. 

[956 Worldwide 34241]

On 3/20/2022 at 12:14 AM, Caponata said:

 

 

This take is dumb AF. Fair enough, the West doesn’t treat humanitarian aspects of war equally and and recognize the human catastrophe as the same. 

But war as a means of statecraft had disappeared from Europe for over 70 years. The Balkans were not an example of state in state aggression.  Nuclear powers had completely refrained from redrawing maps and acquiring territory via military means. This war is a norm-shattering event of historic significance and with destabilizing potential for the global system, as wars in Europe frequently end up being. People are absolutely right to be more afraid and concerned over what this means as well as upset about the retrogression of an entire continent from a zone of peace to a zone of war than they should be over endemic regional warfare in MENA. 
 

Someone who understood what realpolitik means would get it.  

[Brisketexan 104226]

16 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

This take is dumb AF. Fair enough, the West doesn’t treat humanitarian aspects of war equally and and recognize the human catastrophe as the same. 

But war as a means of statecraft had disappeared from Europe for over 70 years. The Balkans were not an example of state in state aggression.  Nuclear powers had completely refrained from redrawing maps and acquiring territory via military means. This war is a norm-shattering event of historic significance and with destabilizing potential for the global system, as wars in Europe frequently end up being. People are absolutely right to be more afraid and concerned over what this means as well as upset about the retrogression of an entire continent from a zone of peace to a zone of war than they should be over endemic regional warfare in MENA. 
 

Someone who understood what realpolitik means would get it.  

THIS.

[HenryJames 65849]

 

[Hookah Horns 3057]

Gonna be a lot of disillusioned and angry mommas and poppas in Russia.

[Hookah Horns 3057]

2 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

At their core, they’re the same person. 

Thank god Trump is far less competent at, well, pretty much everything. 

[bolverk 29261]

37 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

So they're averaging just over 500 dead Russian soldiers a day since March 2. 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33779]

16 minutes ago, bolverk said:

So they're averaging just over 500 dead Russian soldiers a day since March 2. 

[F250 28623]

17 minutes ago, bolverk said:

So they're averaging just over 500 dead Russian soldiers a day since March 2. 

The amount of deaths both military and civilian is disturbing. Putin should be locked in a cage out in a town square to be scorned on a daily basis. Ship him around the world as an exhibit.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20334]

The Economist on the woes of the Russian Army:

 

Spoiler

WHEN SOVIET-LED forces invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, it was a straightforward affair. The invaders met little resistance, the country’s leader was whisked off to Moscow on day two and the West “just swallowed it”, notes Sergey Radchenko, a historian. “What we have today in Ukraine is playing out very differently.”

The bulk of Russian forces are now 25km from the centre of Kyiv, the capital, and will probably encircle it in the coming days. Russian forces have also broken through Ukrainian lines in the south, driving west to Odessa, a major port, and north to the centre of the country, where they could cut off Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine. Kharkiv, which repelled attacks over the weekend, faced heavy shelling on Monday.

The Russian war machine is nevertheless struggling. Things are very different from 1968. But its performance is also “worse [than] in Georgia in 2008”, says Konrad Muzyka, a defence analyst. That war led to sweeping reforms to the armed forces, but perhaps not sweeping enough. Images from Ukraine show mangled clumps of Russian armour. A video from the alleged aftermath of an ambush on one convoy near Sumy, a north-eastern city, on Sunday, shows the loss of at least a dozen armoured vehicles, including two tanks, and a self-propelled howitzer. The question is whether these troubles are temporary or indicate a deeper rot that Ukraine can exploit.

Russia’s biggest problem appears to be logistics. A Western official says that Russia has particular problems with engineering units. Ukraine has blown up many bridges, and Russia has been unable to get bridging units through congested roads. Russian tanks and other vehicles lie abandoned on the roadside, either broken-down or out of fuel, suggesting supply lines are overstretched, and support units are unable to keep up. Marooned units are prime targets for ambushes. Ukrainian forces have no shortage of arms with which to strike them—in recent days, Denmark, Luxembourg and Finland became the latest European countries to say they would supply thousands of anti-tank missiles.

Nor has Russia secured the skies. Western officials thought that Russian missiles would wipe out Ukraine’s air defences—a network of radars and surface-to-air missiles—in the first hours of a war. In fact, the strikes were lighter than expected, possibly to conserve low stocks of precision munitions. Perhaps as a result, Russia has not made much use of its warplanes so far, though recent footage appears to show Su-34 bombers over Kharkiv and in the south of Ukraine.

The absence of air superiority has two knock-on effects. One is that soldiers lack proper fixed-wing air support—a historic weakness for Russia because of poor co-ordination between ground troops and air forces, says Guy Plopsky, an expert on the country’s air power. The other is that, because Russia is not sweeping the skies with fighter jets, Ukraine can keep more planes up—something helped by Russia’s sparing use of missiles, which means it is hitting only a few points on airfields, rather than cratering them completely. Ukraine is using its Turkish-made TB2 drones to conduct deadly strikes on unsuspecting Russian forces, who seem to have no idea what is above them. Few experts thought these drones would be usable four days into a war.

All of this points to deeper tactical shortcomings. In modern war different elements, including infantry, armour, artillery, air defence, engineering units and electronic warfare, are supposed to work together, each compensating for the other’s weaknesses. A tank, for instance, provides firepower for the infantry that travel with it; in turn, the infantry can dismount and hunt down anti-tank platoons. Russia is making a hash of this. In some cases, its tactics verge on the suicidal. A video reportedly taken in Bucha, a town north-west of Kyiv, shows a Russian armoured vehicle broadcasting propaganda, instructing civilians to remain calm. A man wielding a rocket-propelled grenade strolls up to the vehicle and calmly destroys it.

One reason for these blunders may be the scale of the Russian deployment. During its previous invasion of Ukraine in 2014-15, Russia sent no more than a dozen or so battalion tactical groups (BTGs) of 1,000-odd troops. This time it has sent well over 100. The result is “diluted BTGs”, as one American armour officer puts it. The intelligence units that would normally pick up signals of a TB2 loitering overhead and the artillery forces that would soften up Ukrainian defenders, as they did in 2015, may not be available in sufficient numbers to deploy into every BTG. “So now you’re leavening your best ingredients into a much larger loaf,” says the officer.

There are signs of poor morale in some units. Video footage shows at least one tank column hurriedly reversing after being confronted by unarmed civilians. Dima Adamsky, an expert on Russia’s armed forces at Reichman University in Israel, says he is surprised by the high numbers of young conscripts. They may be confused as to whether their Ukrainian opponents are brothers bound in “spiritual, human and civilisational ties”, as Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, put it in an essay published last summer, or instruments of drug-addled Nazis, as he thundered recently. In Berdyansk, a port city that fell to Russia on Sunday, local residents openly protested against the Rosgvardia (national guard) troops on their streets.

Some Western officials and military experts conclude that Russia’s army is a paper tiger. “This isn’t a good army executing a bad plan…or out-of-context tactics,” says B.A. Friedman, a military analyst and reserve officer in the US Marine Corps. “It’s a bad army!” Others are more cautious. They say that Russian tactics may adapt in the days and weeks ahead, and that the country has mass on its side. Russia is yet to deploy a quarter of the forces on Ukraine’s border, according to American officials. One column, its southern end 27km from Kyiv’s centre, stretches over another 27km of road, according to satellite imagery. American officials also say that the Kremlin has sent fighters from the Wagner Group, a Kremlin-linked mercenary outfit, to Ukraine.

Russia has so far worked much harder to avoid civilian casualties than in its air campaign in Syria and than was expected at the start of the conflict, says Mr Adamsky. But the war may be entering an “uglier stage”, he warns. That is evident in Kharkiv. Rockets and cluster munitions have begun targeting residential areas, causing widespread damage to entire blocks of flats. Images show corpses littering the street. The appearance of Su-34 bombers suggests that the city may soon be struck from the air. Mr Putin’s gamble on a quick war has failed—now he appears set on a grim one.

 

[Thatguy 8393]

53 minutes ago, F250 said:

The amount of deaths both military and civilian is disturbing. Putin should be locked in a cage out in a town square to be scorned on a daily basis. Ship him around the world as an exhibit.

Not really. That's about right as far as Russians go.

[Tuco 5076]

16 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Last paragraph: 
Russia has so far worked much harder to avoid civilian casualties than in its air campaign in Syria and than was expected at the start of the conflict, says Mr Adamsky. But the war may be entering an “uglier stage”, he warns. That is evident in Kharkiv. Rockets and cluster munitions have begun targeting residential areas, causing widespread damage to entire blocks of flats. Images show corpses littering the street. The appearance of Su-34 bombers suggests that the city may soon be struck from the air. Mr Putin’s gamble on a quick war has failed—now he appears set on a grim one.

As Putin gets further from any reasonable version of victory, I can definitely the goal to shift more to breaking the country rather than taking it.  If nothing else, to serve as a warning to others.  

[Brisketexan 104226]

1 minute ago, Tuco said:

As Putin gets further from any reasonable version of victory, I can definitely the goal to shift more to breaking the country rather than taking it.  If nothing else, to serve as a warning to others.  

Correct.

It's the go-to move of an enraged despot who has been defied.  "If I can't have it, nobody can."

[F250 28623]

12 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Correct.

It's the go-to move of an enraged despot who has been defied.  "If I can't have it, nobody can."

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20334]

41 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Correct.

It's the go-to move of an enraged despot who has been defied.  "If I can't have it, nobody can."

All of Ukraine will be destroyed because of one man's fragile ego.  The bitter irony is that Russia has already lost. It may not be apparent immediately but they've lost. So all of these lives on both sides are being lost because of one man's fragile ego and that man will never achieve what he set out to do. 

When this is over, nothing other than the complete dismantling of the Russian government will be acceptable. 

 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20334]

The Economist:  Putin's invasion is making it hard for Right-Wing populists around the world:


 

Spoiler

It WAS THE sort of crowd you might expect on Amsterdam’s Leidseplein, around the corner from the Bulldog Palace marijuana café. Several dozen demonstrators—awkward young men, middle-aged couples and ageing hippies—turned out on March 13th to support Forum for Democracy (FvD), a far-right populist party that thinks covid is a hoax and blames Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the West. A DJ played electronic dance music atop a trailer festooned with posters of Thierry Baudet, the FvD’s leader, a dandyish Eurosceptic with a PhD in legal philosophy. The party has five seats in the Netherlands’ 150-seat parliament.

Soon Mr Baudet’s ally, Willem Engel, a dreadlocked salsa-dance instructor and covid-sceptic internet influencer, took the stage. “We cannot let ourselves get dragged into a war,” said Mr Engel, denouncing Dutch shipments of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine’s defenders. The media, he said, was whipping up hatred towards Russians just as the Nazis had towards Jews. (“Ach, the media”, tutted a woman in the crowd.)

Almost every Western country has groups like the FvD: nationalist-populist outfits that oppose immigration, Islam, multiculturalism, the EU and UN, gay or transgender rights and liberalism in general, and that warn of an elite globalist conspiracy. In America they are often known as the alt-right, in Europe as the identitarian right. Many have cultivated Vladimir Putin, seeing him as a Christian conservative or at least a fellow opponent of globalism. (In mid-February Mr Baudet called Mr Putin “a terrific guy who was so right about NATO aggression, the war-hungry EU, the World Economic Forum and so on”.) They often have ties to Russian-sponsored think-tanks and get help from Russian state-backed media and internet trolls.

In 2016, the year of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, history seemed to be going their way. But their fortunes since have been mixed, and the invasion of Ukraine looks like a turning-point. Outrage against Russian aggression puts those who have defended Mr Putin on the back foot. The war has energised the centrist parties with which they compete, and revived enthusiasm for liberal internationalism and the EU. Russian subsidies for think-tanks are drying up. Russian propaganda outlets such as RT and Sputnik have been expelled from some countries and kicked off platforms like YouTube. And nationalist-populist politicians have been forced to choose: find some way to excuse Mr Putin’s invasion, or condemn it and admit that they were wrong about him.

In Europe the dilemma has been most embarrassing for France’s Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, and for Italy’s Matteo Salvini. Mr Salvini, leader of the far-right Northern League party, praised Mr Putin in 2019 as “one of the best men in government in the world”. He has tried to redeem himself by supporting Ukrainian refugees, but has failed to condemn the Russian invasion explicitly. On a visit to the Polish border town of Przemysl on March 8th he was humiliated by the mayor, who presented him with a T-shirt featuring Mr Putin—similar to one Mr Salvini wore smilingly in a photo on Red Square in 2014 (see picture: Mr Salvini is on the right).

Ms Le Pen, who argued that the West should acquiesce to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and took a €9m ($12m) campaign loan from a Russian bank in 2014, contests a presidential election on April 10th and 24th. The press has grilled her over a campaign pamphlet which features a photo of her shaking hands with Mr Putin. She has condemned Russia’s invasion, and admits it changed her view of the Russian president, whom she now calls an “authoritarian”. That seems to have been, electorally, the right move: Ms Le Pen has remained steady in the polls at about 17%. Mr Zemmour, her farther-right rival, blames the war partly on NATO. His support has dropped abruptly since the invasion, from 15% to 12%. The invasion has bolstered the chances of the incumbent, President Emmanuel Macron. (He is overwhelmingly likely to win, according to The Economist’s forecasting model.)

Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party faces an even thornier problem. Its base is in the former East Germany, where voters are more sympathetic to Russia than in the country’s west. It also draws votes from ethnic Germans who lived in the Soviet Union and came to Germany after its collapse. Most speak Russian and watch Russian state media. Alice Weidel, the AfD’s leader, has tried to equivocate, blaming Russia for invading but also the West for suggesting Ukraine could join NATO. She has looked miserably uncomfortable making the argument.

For Mr Putin’s right-wing friends in western Europe the war is mainly a political problem. For those in central and eastern Europe it is often a practical one: Russia does economic favours for them. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s president, is a nationalist-populist who, like Mr Putin, claims to defend Christian Europe against a global liberal conspiracy. His takeover of Hungary’s courts and media is sometimes described as a soft version of Putinism, and he tried to restrain EU sanctions after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Mr Orban’s friendliness towards Mr Putin has secured Hungary discounts on Russian gas and billions of dollars’ worth of loans in a deal to upgrade its Soviet-built nuclear power plant. This, not ideology, is the main reason Mr Orban now opposes EU sanctions on Russian energy, thinks Anton Bendarzsevszkij of the Danube Institute, a government-linked think-tank in Budapest.

In the Balkans, too, Russia’s ties are deep. Serbia has received Russian backing since the Kosovo war of 1999. It has a hard-right populist government that resembles Mr Putin’s and signed a deal last year for cheap Russian gas. It has refused to implement sanctions, and its state media repeat baseless Russian propaganda accusing Ukraine of genocide against Russian-speakers. This is a matter of old grudges, says Nermina Kuloglija, a journalist in Sarajevo: nationalists who never accepted that Serbs committed genocide against Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s embrace Russian claims in order to “accuse the West of double standards”. But choosing the Russian side in the conflict could wreck Serbia’s dormant application for EU membership.

As for Mr Putin’s apologists across the ocean, the war in Ukraine has been a political mess. Mr Trump, who was bizarrely deferential towards the Russian leader during his presidency, at first called his recognition of the independence of the Donbas on February 22nd “genius”. That was not well received even by Mr Trump’s fans. He has gradually altered his tone since the invasion, but still praises Mr Putin as “smart”.

In parts of America’s populist right this still plays well. At a meeting of the far-right America First Political Action Committee on February 26th the crowd chanted Mr Putin’s name. Alt-right influencers such as Tucker Carlson, a TV host, Candace Owens, a podcaster, and Madison Cawthorn, a freshman Republican congressman, have deflected blame for the war away from Mr Putin and questioned America’s arms deliveries to Ukraine. Some use Twitter to celebrate the prowess of Russian military technology, or amplify Kremlin propaganda about rising anti-Russian “racism” in the West.

But that pits them against most of the right. Republican voters blame the war on Russia just as much as Democrats do, according to several polls this month; they criticise Joe Biden mainly for not giving Ukraine enough weapons. Conservative Republicans are more likely than moderate ones to want to do more for Ukraine. By equivocating over the war, the populists are lending confidence to Republican politicians who have cautiously begun to challenge Mr Trump’s dominance.

End of an era

For some nationalist-populists, the war in Ukraine is merely a manageable headache. Mr Orban has stopped boasting of his good relations with Mr Putin and reluctantly accepted EU sanctions. With an election coming up on April 3rd, he is campaigning on keeping Hungary out of the war, saying the country must resist being used as a “piece on a chessboard” by the great powers. He has near-total control of Hungary’s media, so his message seems to be working. Spain’s Vox party quickly condemned Russia’s invasion, proclaimed it was eager to welcome Ukrainian refugees (as opposed to Muslim ones) and attacked the governing left-wing coalition as the real friends of Mr Putin.

For others the war is far afield. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s populist president, has not suffered much from the odd decision to make his first-ever visit to Moscow in mid-February. He now wants to use sanctions on Russia as an excuse to relax rules on mining. Populists who were adamantly anti-Russian from the start, such as Poland’s governing Law and Justice party, have done fine, too. Indeed, they may benefit from wartime solidarity: the EU is expected to relax its punishment of Poland over the government’s attempt to take over the courts.

But Mr Putin’s invasion has probably put an end to the vision of a global alt-right, with himself among its leaders. Half a decade ago, Americans were worrying that the online propaganda that won Mr Trump the election had been hatched in troll factories in St Petersburg. Western conservative Christians were staging conferences with groups from the state-backed Russian Orthodox Church to fume against “gender ideology”. The idea of a unified nationalist-populist movement against Western liberalism, stretching from Moscow via Budapest to Washington, seemed worryingly plausible.

Now it looks fanciful and out-of date. The great majority of American and European conservatives have been horrified by the invasion. Crippled by sanctions, Russia lacks the means to continue its support for the international identitarian right. It had already cut back before the war: Russian-backed think-tanks have been dormant for years. “There were so many meetings and congresses, but they never came up with anything that would unite them,” says Anton Shekhovtsov, an expert on Russia and the far right at the Free Russia Foundation.

As for Mr Baudet’s FvD, it is isolated. The Netherlands’ other nationalist-populist parties have all condemned Russia’s invasion. Curiously, the FvD was founded, in the far-right’s banner year of 2016, to promote a Dutch referendum against Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU. It had already begun to splinter in late 2020: three MPs defected over suspicions that Mr Baudet was becoming a fascist. Of course, the FvD’s adherents have an explanation for that split, too. “There was a coup in the party,” says Mr Engel, directed by agents of the Dutch secret service. It is, he says, part of the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned of. It’s all part of the script. ■

 

 

[WhatTheBuck 28696]

Is there there some sort of rule against posting links to articles in The Economist?

[Brisketexan 104226]

1 minute ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Is there there some sort of rule against posting links to articles in The Economist?

The rule of "it's blocked by a paywall so you won't be able to read it if all they do is post a link?"  Seems like a good rule.

[HOOKEM4 5007]

4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

The rule of "it's blocked by a paywall so you won't be able to read it if all they do is post a link?"  Seems like a good rule.

I am more concerned that posters actually believe other posters actually pay for that site. Someone let them out of their round rubber room and likely gave them scissors.

[Hornius Emeritus 12387]

That's pretty great stuff from The Economist. 

"In 2016, the year of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, history seemed to be going their way. But their fortunes since have been mixed, and the invasion of Ukraine looks like a turning-point. Outrage against Russian aggression puts those who have defended Mr Putin on the back foot. The war has energised the centrist parties with which they compete, and revived enthusiasm for liberal internationalism and the EU. Russian subsidies for think-tanks are drying up. Russian propaganda outlets such as RT and Sputnik have been expelled from some countries and kicked off platforms like YouTube. And nationalist-populist politicians have been forced to choose: find some way to excuse Mr Putin’s invasion, or condemn it and admit that they were wrong about him.

In Europe the dilemma has been most embarrassing for France’s Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, and for Italy’s Matteo Salvini. Mr Salvini, leader of the far-right Northern League party, praised Mr Putin in 2019 as “one of the best men in government in the world”. He has tried to redeem himself by supporting Ukrainian refugees, but has failed to condemn the Russian invasion explicitly. On a visit to the Polish border town of Przemysl on March 8th he was humiliated by the mayor, who presented him with a T-shirt featuring Mr Putin—similar to one Mr Salvini wore smilingly in a photo on Red Square in 2014 (see picture: Mr Salvini is on the right)."


IN YO FACE!

[Brisketexan 104226]

1 minute ago, HOOKEM4 said:

I am more concerned that posters actually believe other posters actually pay for that site. Someone let them out of their round rubber room and likely gave them scissors.

Wait....so your position is that you don't think people subscribe to The Economist?

[Anastasis 23329]

People that use the spoiler tags to post full text are heroes. 

[elfenix 34161]

 

[staboner 4955]

7 hours ago, Mdhorn said:

Not long ago families were all sitting together having meals and maybe watching tv. Now they may be separated, dead or trying to figure out how to survive minute by minute—when/where to rest, scavenge food, and how to stay warm. All while I debate whether I want to bring or grab a lunch at work. It’s surreal. 

it is certainly surreal. there are days that go by where i feel like just going there and fighting would do my soul better that sitting and watching. its burning me up.

just to remind you of the new world we live in. i got into an argument with a lebanese guy (due to my team's american accents) in casual talk on this over some vball this weekend. whataboutism is the new MAD. "America did this, does this, I can't talk politics with Americans, etc." funny thing is whatever are this dude's grievances are (and I am sure I can guess) are understood by me and many Americans to be real. But we can't get past the initial part due to extreme victimhood so he ended with "putin's not that bad your media blah blah blah"

MAW - mutually assured whataboutism. allowing shit to happen because shit has happened. 

[Hookah Horns 3057]

15 minutes ago, staboner said:

it is certainly surreal. there are days that go by where i feel like just going there and fighting would do my soul better that sitting and watching. its burning me up.

just to remind you of the new world we live in. i got into an argument with a lebanese guy (due to my team's american accents) in casual talk on this over some vball this weekend. whataboutism is the new MAD. "America did this, does this, I can't talk politics with Americans, etc." funny thing is whatever are this dude's grievances are (and I am sure I can guess) are understood by me and many Americans to be real. But we can't get past the initial part due to extreme victimhood so he ended with "putin's not that bad your media blah blah blah"

MAW - mutually assured whataboutism. allowing shit to happen because shit has happened. 

The whataboutists are the political version of the dorks who respond to any questioning of their football team's HC with some variation of "where do you coach?" or "and you could do better?"

[WhatTheBuck 28696]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

The rule of "it's blocked by a paywall so you won't be able to read it if all they do is post a link?"  Seems like a good rule.

That’s a bad rule. It’s poor scholarship. Someone posted an article titled “Putin’s Folly” recently and I searched for that title at The Economist and only found an article with that headline dated in 2002

What if someone else is a subscriber to The Economist? What if someone wanted to share the article with a friend who’s a subscriber? What if that article motivated someone to become a subscriber? It takes practically no time to be responsible and include a link. I will never assert something to anyone and defend it by saying, “I don’t know, someone I’ve never met posted it on the internet.”

While I’m not accusing anyone of falsifying an article from The Economist, I can’t do anything with an unsourced article of any kind. Usually I just ignore them and scroll on by because there’s too much info online to waste time on unsourced articles. I just happened to notice three consecutive references to The Economist, none of which included a link. It tempts me to falsify an article from The Economist just to make a point. But I’d probably give myself away because I always provide my sources. If I didn’t then it would rightly raise suspicion.

Incidentally, the “Putin’s Folly” article that was posted really didn’t give any more insight than an article from the New Yorker not long ago. I’ll post that here, with a link. I normally go through and edit out all the ads and correct formatting but I’m not going to bother here because I’m just trying to make a point.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin

Spoiler

The Weakness of the Despot
An expert on Stalin discusses Putin, Russia, and the West.

By David Remnick
March 11, 2022

“The shock is that so much has changed, and yet we’re still seeing this pattern that they can’t escape from,” the Russia expert Stephen Kotkin says.

Stephen Kotkin is one of our most profound and prodigious scholars of Russian history. His masterwork is a biography of Joseph Stalin. So far he has published two volumes—“Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941.” A third volume will take the story through the Second World War; Stalin’s death, in 1953; and the totalitarian legacy that shaped the remainder of the Soviet experience. Taking advantage of long-forbidden archives in Moscow and beyond, Kotkin has written a biography of Stalin that surpasses those by Isaac Deutscher, Robert Conquest, Robert C. Tucker, and countless others.

Kotkin has a distinguished reputation in academic circles. He is a professor of history at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford University. He has myriad sources in various realms of contemporary Russia: government, business, culture. Both principled and pragmatic, he is also more plugged in than any reporter or analyst I know. Ever since we met in Moscow, many years ago—Kotkin was doing research on the Stalinist industrial city of Magnitogorsk—I’ve found his guidance on everything from the structure of the Putin regime to its roots in Russian history to be invaluable.

[Get the in-depth analysis and on-the-ground reporting you need to understand the war in Ukraine. Subscribe today »]

Earlier this week, I spoke with Kotkin about Putin, the invasion of Ukraine, the American and European response, and what comes next, including the possibility of a palace coup in Moscow. Our conversation, which appears in the video above, has been edited for length and clarity.

We’ve been hearing voices both past and present saying that the reason for what has happened is, as George Kennan put it, the strategic blunder of the eastward expansion of nato. The great-power realist-school historian John Mearsheimer insists that a great deal of the blame for what we’re witnessing must go to the United States. I thought we’d begin with your analysis of that argument.

ADVERTISEMENT

I have only the greatest respect for George Kennan. John Mearsheimer is a giant of a scholar. But I respectfully disagree. The problem with their argument is that it assumes that, had nato not expanded, Russia wouldn’t be the same or very likely close to what it is today. What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before nato existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today.

I would even go further. I would say that nato expansion has put us in a better place to deal with this historical pattern in Russia that we’re seeing again today. Where would we be now if Poland or the Baltic states were not in nato? They would be in the same limbo, in the same world that Ukraine is in. In fact, Poland’s membership in nato stiffened nato’s spine. Unlike some of the other nato countries, Poland has contested Russia many times over. In fact, you can argue that Russia broke its teeth twice on Poland: first in the nineteenth century, leading up to the twentieth century, and again at the end of the Soviet Union, with Solidarity. So George Kennan was an unbelievably important scholar and practitioner—the greatest Russia expert who ever lived—but I just don’t think blaming the West is the right analysis for where we are.

ADVERTISEMENT

When you talk about the internal dynamics of Russia, it brings to mind a piece that you wrote for Foreign Affairs, six years ago, which began, “For half a millennium, Russian foreign policy has been characterized by soaring ambitions that have exceeded the country’s capabilities. Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of fifty square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass.” You go on to describe three “fleeting moments” of Russian ascendancy: first during the reign of Peter the Great, then Alexander I’s victory over Napoleon, and then, of course, Stalin’s victory over Hitler. And then you say that, “these high-water marks aside, however, Russia has almost always been a relatively weak great power.” I wonder if you could expand on that and talk about how the internal dynamics of Russia have led to the present moment under Putin.

We had this debate about Iraq. Was Iraq the way it was because of Saddam, or was Saddam the way he was because of Iraq? In other words, there’s the personality, which can’t be denied, but there are also structural factors that shape the personality. One of the arguments I made in my Stalin book was that being the dictator, being in charge of Russian power in the world in those circumstances and in that time period, made Stalin who he was and not the other way around.

Russia is a remarkable civilization: in the arts, music, literature, dance, film. In every sphere, it’s a profound, remarkable place—a whole civilization, more than just a country. At the same time, Russia feels that it has a “special place” in the world, a special mission. It’s Eastern Orthodox, not Western. And it wants to stand out as a great power. Its problem has always been not this sense of self or identity but the fact that its capabilities have never matched its aspirations. It’s always in a struggle to live up to these aspirations, but it can’t, because the West has always been more powerful.

Russia is a great power, but not the great power, except for those few moments in history that you just enumerated. In trying to match the West or at least manage the differential between Russia and the West, they resort to coercion. They use a very heavy state-centric approach to try to beat the country forward and upwards in order, militarily and economically, to either match or compete with the West. And that works for a time, but very superficially. Russia has a spurt of economic growth, and it builds up its military, and then, of course, it hits a wall. It then has a long period of stagnation where the problem gets worse. The very attempt to solve the problem worsens the problem, and the gulf with the West widens. The West has the technology, the economic growth, and the stronger military.

ADVERTISEMENT

The worst part of this dynamic in Russian history is the conflation of the Russian state with a personal ruler. Instead of getting the strong state that they want, to manage the gulf with the West and push and force Russia up to the highest level, they instead get a personalist regime. They get a dictatorship, which usually becomes a despotism. They’ve been in this bind for a while because they cannot relinquish that sense of exceptionalism, that aspiration to be the greatest power, but they cannot match that in reality. Eurasia is just much weaker than the Anglo-American model of power. Iran, Russia, and China, with very similar models, are all trying to catch the West, trying to manage the West and this differential in power.

What is Putinism? It’s not the same as Stalinism. It’s certainly not the same as Xi Jinping’s China or the regime in Iran. What are its special characteristics, and why would those special characteristics lead it to want to invade Ukraine, which seems a singularly stupid, let alone brutal, act?

Yes, well, war usually is a miscalculation. It’s based upon assumptions that don’t pan out, things that you believe to be true or want to be true. Of course, this isn’t the same regime as Stalin’s or the tsar’s, either. There’s been tremendous change: urbanization, higher levels of education. The world outside has been transformed. And that’s the shock. The shock is that so much has changed, and yet we’re still seeing this pattern that they can’t escape from.

You have an autocrat in power—or even now a despot—making decisions completely by himself. Does he get input from others? Perhaps. We don’t know what the inside looks like. Does he pay attention? We don’t know. Do they bring him information that he doesn’t want to hear? That seems unlikely. Does he think he knows better than everybody else? That seems highly likely. Does he believe his own propaganda or his own conspiratorial view of the world? That also seems likely. These are surmises. Very few people talk to Putin, either Russians on the inside or foreigners.

ADVERTISEMENT

And so we think, but we don’t know, that he is not getting the full gamut of information. He’s getting what he wants to hear. In any case, he believes that he’s superior and smarter. This is the problem of despotism. It’s why despotism, or even just authoritarianism, is all-powerful and brittle at the same time. Despotism creates the circumstances of its own undermining. The information gets worse. The sycophants get greater in number. The corrective mechanisms become fewer. And the mistakes become much more consequential.

Putin believed, it seems, that Ukraine is not a real country, and that the Ukrainian people are not a real people, that they are one people with the Russians. He believed that the Ukrainian government was a pushover. He believed what he was told or wanted to believe about his own military, that it had been modernized to the point where it could organize not a military invasion but a lightning coup, to take Kyiv in a few days and either install a puppet government or force the current government and President to sign some paperwork.

But think about the Prague Spring, in August, 1968. Leonid Brezhnev sent in the tanks of the Warsaw Pact to halt “socialism with a human face,” the communist reform movement of Alexander Dubček. Brezhnev kept telling Dubček, Stop it. Don’t do that. You’re ruining communism. And, if you don’t stop, we will come in. Brezhnev comes in, and they take Dubček and the other leaders of Czechoslovakia back to Moscow. They don’t have a puppet regime to install. In the Kremlin, Brezhnev is asking Dubček, after having sent the tanks in and capturing him, what should they do now? It looks ridiculous, and it was ridiculous. But, of course, it was based upon miscalculations and misunderstandings. And so they sent Dubček back to Czechoslovakia, and he stayed in power [until April, 1969], after the tanks had come in to crush the Prague Spring.

ADVERTISEMENT

One other example is what happened in Afghanistan, in 1979. The Soviet Union did not invade Afghanistan. It did a coup in Afghanistan, sending special forces into the capital of Kabul. It murdered the Afghan leadership and installed a puppet, Babrak Karmal, who had been hiding in exile in Czechoslovakia. It was a total success because Soviet special forces were really good. But, of course, they decided they might need some security in Afghanistan for the new regime. So they sent in all sorts of Army regiments to provide security and ended up with an insurgency and with a ten-year war that they lost.

With Ukraine, we have the assumption that it could be a successful version of Afghanistan, and it wasn’t. It turned out that the Ukrainian people are brave; they are willing to resist and die for their country. Evidently, Putin didn’t believe that. But it turned out that “the television President,” Zelensky, who had a twenty-five-per-cent approval rating before the war—which was fully deserved, because he couldn’t govern—now it turns out that he has a ninety-one-per-cent approval rating. It turned out that he’s got cojones. He’s unbelievably brave. Moreover, having a TV-production company run a country is not a good idea in peacetime, but in wartime, when information war is one of your goals, it’s a fabulous thing to have in place.

The biggest surprise for Putin, of course, was the West. All the nonsense about how the West is decadent, the West is over, the West is in decline, how it’s a multipolar world and the rise of China, et cetera: all of that turned out to be bunk. The courage of the Ukrainian people and the bravery and smarts of the Ukrainian government, and its President, Zelensky, galvanized the West to remember who it was. And that shocked Putin! That’s the miscalculation.

ADVERTISEMENT

How do you define “the West”?

The West is a series of institutions and values. The West is not a geographical place. Russia is European, but not Western. Japan is Western, but not European. “Western” means rule of law, democracy, private property, open markets, respect for the individual, diversity, pluralism of opinion, and all the other freedoms that we enjoy, which we sometimes take for granted. We sometimes forget where they came from. But that’s what the West is. And that West, which we expanded in the nineties, in my view properly, through the expansion of the European Union and nato, is revived now, and it has stood up to Vladimir Putin in a way that neither he nor Xi Jinping expected.

If you assumed that the West was just going to fold, because it was in decline and ran from Afghanistan; if you assumed that the Ukrainian people were not for real, were not a nation; if you assumed that Zelensky was just a TV actor, a comedian, a Russian-speaking Jew from Eastern Ukraine—if you assumed all of that, then maybe you thought you could take Kyiv in two days or four days. But those assumptions were wrong.

Let’s discuss the nature of the Russian regime. Putin came in twenty-three years ago, and there were figures called the oligarchs from the Yeltsin years, eight or nine of them. Putin read them the riot act, saying, You can keep your riches, but stay out of politics. Those who kept their nose in politics, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, were punished, sent to prison. Others left the country with as much of their fortune as possible. But we still talk about oligarchs. What is the nature of the regime and the people who are loyal to it? Who is important?

ADVERTISEMENT

It’s a military-police dictatorship. Those are the people who are in power. In addition, it has a brilliant coterie of people who run macroeconomics. The central bank, the finance ministry, are all run on the highest professional level. That’s why Russia has this macroeconomic fortress, these foreign-currency reserves, the “rainy day” fund. It has reasonable inflation, a very balanced budget, very low state debt—twenty per cent of G.D.P., the lowest of any major economy. It had the best macroeconomic management.

So you have a military-police dictatorship in charge, with a macroeconomic team running your fiscal, military state. Those people are jockeying over who gets the upper hand. For macroeconomic stability, for economic growth, you need decent relations with the West. But, for the military security part of the regime, which is the dominant part, the West is your enemy, the West is trying to undermine you, it’s trying to overthrow your regime in some type of so-called color revolution. What happened is that the balance between those groups shifted more in favor of the military security people—let’s call it the thuggish part of the regime. And, of course, that’s where Putin himself comes from.

The oligarchs were never in power under Putin. He clipped their wings. They worked for him. If they didn’t work for him, they could lose their money. He rearranged the deck chairs. He gave out the money. He allowed expropriation by his own oligarchs, people who grew up with him, who did judo with him, who summered with him. The people who were in the K.G.B. with him in Leningrad back in the day, or in post-Soviet St. Petersburg—those people became oligarchs and expropriated the property to live the high life. Some of the early Yeltsin-era people were either expropriated, fled, or were forced out. Putin built a regime in which private property, once again, was dependent on the ruler. Everybody knew this. If they didn’t know, they learned the lesson the hard way.

ADVERTISEMENT

Sadly, this encouraged people all up and down the regime to start stealing other people’s businesses and property. It became a kind of free-for-all. If it was good enough for Putin and his cronies, it’s good enough for me as the governor of Podunk province. The regime became more and more corrupt, less and less sophisticated, less and less trustworthy, less and less popular. It hollowed out. That’s what happens with dictatorships.

But such people and such a regime, it seems to me, would care above all about wealth, about the high life, about power. Why would they care about Ukraine?

It’s not clear that they do. We’re talking, at most, about six people, and certainly one person as the decision-maker. This is the thing about authoritarian regimes: they’re terrible at everything. They can’t feed their people. They can’t provide security for their people. They can’t educate their people. But they only have to be good at one thing to survive. If they can deny political alternatives, if they can force all opposition into exile or prison, they can survive, no matter how incompetent or corrupt or terrible they are.

And yet, as corrupt as China is, they’ve lifted tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty. Education levels are rising. The Chinese leaders credit themselves with enormous achievements.

Who did that? Did the Chinese regime do that? Or Chinese society? Let’s be careful not to allow the Chinese Communists to expropriate, as it were, the hard labor, the entrepreneurialism, the dynamism of millions and millions of people in that society. You know, in the Russian case, Navalny was arrested—

This is Alexey Navalny, Putin’s most vivid political rival, who was poisoned by the F.S.B. and is now in prison.

Yes. He was imprisoned in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine. In retrospect, it could well be that this was a preparation for the invasion, the way that Ahmad Shah Massoud, for example, was blown up in Northern Afghanistan [by Al Qaeda] right before the Twin Towers came down.

ADVERTISEMENT

You have the denial of alternatives, the suppression of any opposition, arrest, exile, and then you can prosper as an élite, not with economic growth but just with theft. And, in Russia, wealth comes right up out of the ground! The problem for authoritarian regimes is not economic growth. The problem is how to pay the patronage for their élites, how to keep the élites loyal, especially the security services and the upper levels of the officer corps. If money just gushes out of the ground in the form of hydrocarbons or diamonds or other minerals, the oppressors can emancipate themselves from the oppressed. The oppressors can say, we don’t need you. We don’t need your taxes. We don’t need you to vote. We don’t rely on you for anything, because we have oil and gas, palladium and titanium. They can have zero economic growth and still live very high on the hog.

There’s never a social contract in an authoritarian regime, whereby the people say, O.K., we’ll take economic growth and a higher standard of living, and we’ll give up our freedom to you. There is no contract. The regime doesn’t provide the economic growth, and it doesn’t say, Oh, you know, we’re in violation of our promise. We promised economic growth in exchange for freedom, so we’re going to resign now because we didn’t fulfill the contract.

What accounts for the “popularity” of an authoritarian regime like Putin’s?

They have stories to tell. And, as you know, stories are always more powerful than secret police. Yes, they have secret police and regular police, too, and, yes, they’re serious people and they’re terrible in what they’re doing to those who are protesting the war, putting them in solitary confinement. This is a serious regime, not to be taken lightly. But they have stories. Stories about Russian greatness, about the revival of Russian greatness, about enemies at home and enemies abroad who are trying to hold Russia down. And they might be Jews or George Soros or the I.M.F. and nato. They might be all sorts of enemies that you just pull right off the shelf, like a book.

ADVERTISEMENT

We think of censorship as suppression of information, but censorship is also the active promotion of certain kinds of stories that will resonate with the people. The aspiration to be a great power, the aspiration to carry out a special mission in the world, the fear and suspicion that outsiders are trying to get them or bring them down: those are stories that work in Russia. They’re not for everybody. You know many Russians who don’t buy into that and know better. But the Putin version is powerful, and they promote it every chance they get.

The West has decided, for obvious reasons, not to go to war with Russia, not to have a no-fly zone. Economic sanctions have proved more comprehensive and more powerful than maybe people had anticipated some weeks ago. But it seems that the people who these are aimed at most directly will be able to absorb them.

Sanctions are a weapon that you use when you don’t want to fight a hot war because you’re facing a nuclear power. It’s one thing to bomb countries in the Middle East that don’t have nuclear weapons; it’s another thing to contemplate bombing Russia or China in the nuclear age. It’s understandable that economic sanctions, including really powerful ones, are the tools that we reach for.

We are also, however, arming the Ukrainians to the teeth. And there’s a great deal of stuff happening in the cyber realm that we don’t know anything about because the people who are talking don’t know, and the people who know are not talking. And there is quite a lot of armed conflict, thanks to the courage of the Ukrainians and the response and logistics of nato, with Washington, of course, leading them.

We don’t know yet how the sanctions are going to work. The sanctions often inflict the greatest pain on the civilian population. Regimes can sometimes survive sanctions because they can just steal more internally. If you expropriate somebody’s bank account in London or Frankfurt or New York, well, there’s a source where that came from originally, and they can go back inside Russia and tap that source again, unfortunately. Putin doesn’t have money abroad that we can just sanction or expropriate. Putin’s money is the entire Russian economy. He doesn’t need to have a separate bank account, and he certainly wouldn’t keep it vulnerable in some Western country.

ADVERTISEMENT

The biggest and most important sanctions are always about technology transfer. It’s a matter of starving them of high tech. If, over time, through the Commerce Department, you deny them American-made software, equipment, and products, which affects just about every important technology in the world, and you have a target and an enforceable mechanism for doing that, you can hurt this regime and create a technology desert.

In the meantime, though, we saw what Russian forces did to Grozny in 1999-2000; we saw what they did to Aleppo. For Russia, if precision doesn’t work, they will decimate cities. That is what we’re seeing now in Kharkiv and in other parts of Ukraine. And it’s only just begun, potentially.

Russia has a lot of weapons that they haven’t used yet, but there are a couple of factors here. First of all, Ukraine is winning this war only on Twitter, not on the battlefield. They’re not winning this war. Russia is advancing very well in the south, which is an extremely valuable place because of the Black Sea littoral and the ports. They are advancing in the east. If the southern and eastern advances meet up, they will encircle and cut off the main forces of the Ukrainian Army. What’s failed so far is the Russian attempt to take Kyiv in a lightning advance. Otherwise, their war is unfolding well. It’s only a couple of weeks in; wars last much longer.

But here are some of the considerations: after three or four weeks of war, you need a strategic pause. You have to refit your armor, resupply your ammo and fuel depots, fix your planes. You have to bring in reserves. There’s always a planned pause after about three to four weeks.

If Kyiv can hold out through that pause, then potentially it could hold out for longer than that, because it can be resupplied while the Russians are being resupplied during their pause. Moreover, the largest and most important consideration is that Russia cannot successfully occupy Ukraine. They do not have the scale of forces. They do not have the number of administrators they’d need or the coöperation of the population. They don’t even have a Quisling yet.

ADVERTISEMENT

Think about all those Ukrainians who would continue to resist. The Nazis came into Kyiv, in 1940. They grabbed all the luxury hotels, but days later those hotels started to blow up. They were booby-trapped. If you’re an administrator or a military officer in occupied Ukraine and you order a cup of tea, are you going to drink that cup of tea? Do you want to turn the ignition on in your car? Are you going to turn the light switch on in your office? All it takes is a handful of assassinations to unsettle the whole occupation.

Let’s take the story back to Moscow. We know the story of how Tsar Paul I was assassinated by people around him. Khrushchev was overthrown and replaced, eventually, by Brezhnev. Under Putin, is there any possibility of a palace coup?

There is always a possibility of a palace coup. There are a couple of issues here. One is that [the West is] working overtime to entice a defection. We want a high-level security official or a military officer to get on a plane and fly to Helsinki or Brussels or Warsaw and hold a press conference and say, “I’m General So-and-So and I worked in the Putin regime and I oppose this war and I oppose this regime. And here’s what the inside of that regime looks like.”

At the same time, Putin is working overtime to prevent any such defection while our intelligence services are working overtime to entice just such a defection—not of cultural figures, not former politicians but current security and military officials inside the regime. This happened under Stalin, when General Genrikh Lyushkov of the secret police defected to the Japanese, in 1938, with Stalin’s military and security plans and a sense of the regime. He denounced him at a press conference in Tokyo.

ADVERTISEMENT

So now we’re watching Moscow. What are the dynamics there with the regime? You have to remember that these regimes practice something called “negative selection.” You’re going to promote people to be editors, and you’re going to hire writers, because they’re talented; you’re not afraid if they’re geniuses. But, in an authoritarian regime, that’s not what they do. They hire people who are a little bit, as they say in Russian, tupoi, not very bright. They hire them precisely because they won’t be too competent, too clever, to organize a coup against them. Putin surrounds himself with people who are maybe not the sharpest tools in the drawer on purpose.

That does two things. It enables him to feel more secure, through all his paranoia, that they’re not clever enough to take him down. But it also diminishes the power of the Russian state because you have a construction foreman who’s the defense minister [Sergei Shoigu], and he was feeding Putin all sorts of nonsense about what they were going to do in Ukraine. Negative selection does protect the leader, but it also undermines his regime.

But, again, we have no idea what’s going on inside. We hear chatter. There’s a lot of amazing intelligence that we’re collecting, which is scaring the Chinese, making them worry: Do we have that level of penetration of their élites as well? But the chatter is by people who don’t have a lot of face time with Putin, talking about how he might be crazy. Always, when you miscalculate, when your assumptions are bad, people think you’re crazy. Putin pretends to be crazy in order to scare us and to gain leverage.

Do you think that’s the case with this nuclear threat?

I think there’s no doubt that this is what he’s trying to do. The problem is, we can’t assume it’s a bluff. We can’t assume it’s a pose of being crazy, because he has the capability; he can push the button.

ADVERTISEMENT

Steve, Sun Tzu, the Chinese theorist of war, wrote that you must always build your opponent a “golden bridge” so that he can find a way to retreat. Can the United States and nato help build a way for Russia to end this horrific and murderous invasion before it grows even worse?

You hit the nail on the head. That’s a brilliant quote. We have some options here. One option is he shatters Ukraine: if I can’t have it, nobody can have it, and he does to Ukraine what he did to Grozny or Syria. That would be an unbelievable, tragic outcome. That’s the pathway we’re on now.

Even if the Ukrainians succeed in their insurgency, in their resistance, there will be countless deaths and destruction. We need a way to avoid that kind of outcome. That would mean catalyzing a process to engage Putin in discussion with, say, the President of Finland, whom he respects and knows well, or the Israeli Prime Minister, who has been in contact with him; less probably, with the Chinese leadership, with Xi Jinping. Someone to engage him in some type of process where he doesn’t have maximalist demands and it stalls for time, for things to happen on the ground, that rearrange the picture of what he can do.

It’s not as if we’re not trying. The Finns know Russia better than any country in the world. Israel is another good option, potentially, depending on how skillful Naftali Bennett proves to be. And then China, the long shot, where they’re paying a heavy price and their élites below Xi Jinping understand that. There’s now quite a lot of worry inside the Chinese élites, but Xi Jinping is in charge and has a personal relationship with Putin. Xi has thrown in his lot with Putin. But how long that goes on depends upon whether the Europeans begin to punish the Chinese. The Europeans are their biggest trading partner.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Chinese are watching this very closely. They’re watching (a) our intelligence penetration, (b) the mistakes of a despotism, and (c) the costs that you have to pay as the U.S. and European private companies cancel Russia up and down. Xi Jinping, who is heading for an unprecedented third term in the fall, needed this like a hole in the head. But now he owns it.

Finally, there’s another card that we’ve been trying to play: the Ukrainian resistance on the ground and our resupply of the Ukrainians in terms of arms and the sanctions. All of that could help change the calculus. Somehow, we have to keep at it with all the tools that we have—pressure but also diplomacy.

Finally, you’ve given credit to the Biden Administration for reading out its intelligence about the coming invasion, for sanctions, and for a kind of mature response to what’s happening. What have they gotten wrong?

They’ve done much better than we anticipated based upon what we saw in Afghanistan and the botched run-up on the deal to sell nuclear submarines to the Australians. They’ve learned from their mistakes. That’s the thing about the United States. We have corrective mechanisms. We can learn from our mistakes. We have a political system that punishes mistakes. We have strong institutions. We have a powerful society, a powerful and free media. Administrations that perform badly can learn and get better, which is not the case in Russia or in China. It’s an advantage that we can’t forget.

The problem now is not that the Biden Administration made mistakes; it’s that it’s hard to figure out how to de-escalate, how to get out of the spiral of mutual maximalism. We keep raising the stakes with more and more sanctions and cancellations. There is pressure on our side to “do something” because the Ukrainians are dying every day while we are sitting on the sidelines, militarily, in some ways. (Although, as I said, we’re supplying them with arms, and we’re doing a lot in cyber.) The pressure is on to be maximalist on our side, but, the more you corner them, the more there’s nothing to lose for Putin, the more he can raise the stakes, unfortunately. He has many tools that he hasn’t used that can hurt us. We need a de-escalation from the maximalist spiral, and we need a little bit of luck and good fortune, perhaps in Moscow, perhaps in Helsinki or Jerusalem, perhaps in Beijing, but certainly in Kyiv.

 

[WhatTheBuck 28696]

5 hours ago, Hookah Horns said:

Thank god Trump is far less competent at, well, pretty much everything. 

Yeah, people like Putin, Kim, and Xi have been preparing their whole lives to be dictators. A guy like Trump with no experience in politics at all, it’s almost like he took a correspondence course on authoritarianism at Putin U. Fortunately he’s still an amateur and so far our democratic institutions have held on. I’m not sure if they can survive him getting his master’s degree in dictatorship.

[Sawbonz 27301]

7 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

This take is dumb AF. Fair enough, the West doesn’t treat humanitarian aspects of war equally and and recognize the human catastrophe as the same. 

But war as a means of statecraft had disappeared from Europe for over 70 years. The Balkans were not an example of state in state aggression.  Nuclear powers had completely refrained from redrawing maps and acquiring territory via military means. This war is a norm-shattering event of historic significance and with destabilizing potential for the global system, as wars in Europe frequently end up being. People are absolutely right to be more afraid and concerned over what this means as well as upset about the retrogression of an entire continent from a zone of peace to a zone of war than they should be over endemic regional warfare in MENA. 
 

Someone who understood what realpolitik means would get it.  

Finland should retake the land they lost in 39.

[Guest Lobo]

2 hours ago, elfenix said:

 

It's funny because Mike Flynn will be killed in action by his own troops.  But they'll be Russian troops and his family still gets to live under delusion.  

And where's the storyline from Trump about how "Many Generals" are contacting him for advice on how to get tough on Russia?  That story percolated earlier today and then conveniently ebbed away...

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

4 hours ago, Tuco said:

As Putin gets further from any reasonable version of victory, I can definitely the goal to shift more to breaking the country rather than taking it.  If nothing else, to serve as a warning to others.  

This is what John Mearsheimer has been saying his plan would be since 2014. I think he is a little dismayed by how successful the resistance has been -- but not surprised -- but he has never intended to absorb Ukraine. It has been to break it -- the exact word Mearsheimer uses. To beat it like a stepchild. And then to pull out with the promise that Russia is always prepared to do it again if Ukraine gets uppity with them.

[Hagbard Celine 10659]

4 hours ago, Anastasis said:

People that use the spoiler tags to post full PLAIN text are heroes. 

fify

[brakeman 28202]

“If they climb inside, it’s their fault.”

She drives a Chevy Volt full of missiles, Go sunflowers!

[Anastasis 23329]

[cactusflinthead 27588]

11 hours ago, Mdhorn said:

Not long ago families were all sitting together having meals and maybe watching tv. Now they may be separated, dead or trying to figure out how to survive minute by minute—when/where to rest, scavenge food, and how to stay warm. All while I debate whether I want to bring or grab a lunch at work. It’s surreal. 

I've left a lot on the cutting floor. Who is going to tell of the 96 yr old survivor of the holocaust blasted by a lazy lob of a shell?

It ain't gonna be me. I'll hold a candle. Give money to the ones feeding lost souls. But, I can't handle an endless barrage of faces.

I'll tell you what got me.

"Buy me a mum dad. Or I won't have anyone to walk me to school."

Goddammit boy. You work on walking on those legs first. 

 

[brakeman 28202]

On 3/20/2022 at 7:05 PM, Lobo said:

Please somebody make this come true.  I know the Danes would use the proceeds for a good cause.  Holy shit, I would buy ten of these to build with my kids.  I know they purposely don't do much in the "real" war space, mainly sticking to spaceships, pirates, etc.---nothing involving modern warfare.  But c'mon Lego, seize the moment, do something good with the sales, and let's have a few laughs.  

 

[Mdhorn 5897]

7 hours ago, F250 said:

The amount of deaths both military and civilian is disturbing. Putin should be locked in a cage out in a town square to be scorned on a daily basis. Ship him around the world as an exhibit.

While people throw rubles, hryvnia, pennies and pesos at him--let it rain.  

[Mdhorn 5897]

2 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

This is what John Mearsheimer has been saying his plan would be since 2014. I think he is a little dismayed by how successful the resistance has been -- but not surprised -- but he has never intended to absorb Ukraine. It has been to break it -- the exact word Mearsheimer uses. To beat it like a stepchild. And then to pull out with the promise that Russia is always prepared to do it again if Ukraine gets uppity with them.

Putin's showing he's got a tiny peewee while sitting on nuclear weapons to bail out his shitty forces and governance.  Nobody now looks at Moscow as anything greater than a nuclear pile of shit.  Getting pantsed by an ex comedian on the world stage isn't much of a master plan. 

Edited March 22, 2022 by Mdhorn

[Thatguy 8393]

13 hours ago, F250 said:

(DT)Take that shit back to the Football board!!(DT)

[cactusflinthead 27588]

Stupid bitch

[immamac 42390]

2 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Stupid bitch

Stop giving this idiot views. 

[cactusflinthead 27588]

8 minutes ago, immamac said:

Stop giving this idiot views. 

On the contrary, make her the face of the GOP. 

[Red Five 40574]

It's like her mission is to be as terrible and wrong as possible on every possible occasion. 

[Brisketexan 104226]

Just now, Red Five said:

It's like her mission is to be as terrible and wrong as possible on every possible occasion. 

So....you're familiar with the entire GQP these days.

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

16 hours ago, brakeman said:

 

If you want, you can give directly to the Ukrainian government. 

 

just click on this link and pick your crypto of choice. 
 

https://donate.thedigital.gov.ua

 

[Judge Roybeanbag 11776]

8 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

If you want, you can give directly to the Ukrainian government. 

 

just click on this link and pick your crypto of choice. 
 

https://donate.thedigital.gov.ua

 

Don't click on the link, just FYI.  Crypto is horse paste for morons and traitors.  This poster is a hocker of horse paste, bullshit and other propaganda.   

[Judge Roybeanbag 11776]

11 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

If you want, you can give directly to the Ukrainian government. 

 

just click on this link and pick your crypto of choice. 
 

https://donate.thedigital.gov.ua

 

You're a goddamned disgrace to everything Americans "should" believe in.  

[Irwin F Fletcher 3550]

"Many Generals" are contacting him for advice on how to get tough on Russia?  That story percolated earlier today and then conveniently ebbed away...

I'm almost positive this was a Surly "tounge-in-cheek" post.

[Brisketexan 104226]

4 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Don't click on the link, just FYI.  Crypto is horse paste for morons and traitors.  This poster is a hocker of horse paste, bullshit and other propaganda.   

Correct.  And there are plenty of ways to donate to the Ukrainian defensive military effort directly: https://kyivindependent.com/national/heres-how-to-support-ukrainian-military/

You don't need to go "crypto bro" to do it, no matter how desperately the crypto bros want you to believe that crypto is the only way to fly.  

[Judge Roybeanbag 11776]

Hey fellas, I have this magic pill, called Super Beets.  You can buy it with Bitcoin.  It cures all that ails ya!  It does!  Just put your bitcoin right here, no, a little more to the right, and Super Beets will fix your prostate problems, your ex-wife problems, any problems you have!!