Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Second rate reporter says what?

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Hot air and ill-informed banter

You cannot shame the shameless.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Late Night Open Thread: The ‘Mad’ Monk Moth

Late Night Open Thread: The ‘Mad’ Monk Moth

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Russian immigrant Slava Malamud:

Another Russian immigrant, journalist Julia Ioffe, at Puck, on “Putin’s Post-Trump Tantrum”:

Several readers have written in to ask, in so many words, whether Russia will invade Ukraine. The short answer is that we still don’t know. And we don’t know if Vladimir Putin knows…

… Meduza, an independent Russian publication, polled several Russian military and foreign policy experts, most of whom said that they don’t think Putin will end up invading Ukraine. Their logic is that, unlike in 2014, Russia’s troop movements are not happening in secret, which is indicative less of an imminent invasion than of Putin’s classic negotiating tactics, known in Washington as “escalate to de-escalate.” In short, the strategy is to create a crisis that the West then has to scramble to solve. This can only be done, of course, by talking to the man who created the crisis in the first place, and he always has something he wants—usually respect, but in this case, a guarantee to stop the expansion of NATO, which had stopped expanding anyway…

Or maybe not, and we’ll wake up one morning to news that Russian troops are pouring across the Ukrainian border. We just don’t know. And the fact that we don’t know is also part of Putin’s strategy, as I’ve written before. There’s a lot of power in being the unpredictable actor, in making everyone think about you and try to guess your motives and next steps. And Putin loves being the center of attention….

… Why is Putin acting out now, and not when Donald Trump was in office? The simplest answer is that he didn’t have to. Trump hated NATO and bashed it every chance he got. He publicly questioned the need for the alliance and for whether he’d order American troops anywhere if Article V (collective defense) were invoked. He publicly sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies. He spoke constantly of how much he liked Putin and how Russia was an important and strong power that America should respect. He told G7 leaders that Crimea is Russian. Trump did everything Putin wanted without Putin even having to ask for it, and Brussels and Washington lived in constant fear that Trump would announce a U.S. withdrawal from NATO. (As one former Kremlin advisor told me on the sidelines of a NATO conference in 2018, “Trump is our wrecking ball.”)

Putin knows that NATO can’t just come out and capitulate to his demands, but maybe he’ll accept something less, like scaring the West enough into never considering Ukrainian accession to NATO, even if they’d never admit it publicly. (One of the unspoken tenets of “escalate to de-escalate” is that Putin rarely gets 100 percent of what he wants. But because the ask is so extreme, even getting a part of what he wanted is still a lot.) Still, Putin couldn’t just back down the day after the call with Biden; that would look weak. Nor did he get what he wanted, or even close to it. He might push harder to get something that allows him to back down while saving face. (When Putin backs down, his style is to do so only when the spotlight has moved on. At some point people will notice that the sabers have been put away, but few will be able to pinpoint exactly when or how they were placed back in the scabbard.)

Things are different with Biden, who told Putin to his face that he didn’t have a soul. Biden is an old member of the D.C. foreign policy establishment, which has always been skeptical of Russia and which Putin hates. Moreover, Biden was the one who, as vice president, dealt directly with the Ukrainian government after Russia invaded in 2014. He was actively and intimately involved with both the Russian and Ukrainian sides, and he was very clear about whose side he was on (not Russia’s) and what he thought Ukraine’s future looked like (not under Russia’s influence).

In other words, Trump naturally respected Putin’s boundaries and shared his worldview. Biden very much does not. This time, Putin needs a more, um, convincing way to get his message across. And so here we are.

Reader Interactions

39Comments

  4. 4.

    Mike G

    Putin is exactly that: the picture of cheap, insecure masculinity, rattling weapons, being offended at everything, holding a perpetual grudge, dreaming of revenge and constantly riling against “others” and in defense of the “oppressed white men”…stomping on the weak.

    You can see why Trump mooned after him like a puppy. They’re the same weak man’s idea of a strong man.

  7. 7.

    ColoradoGuy

    Kind of wonder if Vlad has had plastic surgery (Russian plastic surgery – shudder). He looks different in that goofy picture compared to what we see now. Can you really do that much with make-up?

    That cheap suit is really something, good catch.

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    Romanticize carries the cachet of whatever is described as being inherently appealing, with much more than a whiff of wistfulness and fondness as ascribed to an exalted ideal.

    I could accept (grudgingly) lionize or (more readily) aggrandize — better still would be simply to say exaggerate — but vociferously rebel at this (IMHO, sick) use of romanticize.

  9. 9.

    sab

    We can laugh all we want, but he is possibly the world’s richest man, because he has been happy to suck his destitute country dry of all resources. He is still short with a receding hairline and chin. But he is rich.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Clarification.

    #8230;but vociferously rebel at this (IMHO, sick) use of romanticize, especially as being applicable to the generalized “folks in the West.”

  13. 13.

    opiejeanne

    I really wish people would stop equating being short with being a small person, as in small in spirit. Height has nothing to do with it.

  16. 16.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: Ha! I’d forgotten all about that character. Had to look him up.

    Height’s got nothing to do with the size of a person’s spirit, their goodness or their meanness. My husband is short and you couldn’t find a nicer human, our youngest child is 4’10” and she’s a force of nature.

    But, as Randy Newman sang, Short People Got No Business.

  17. 17.

    Cermet

    Whether these matters really concern us – as the hyper military power that commits’ mass murder so the 0.001% continue to get wealthy I don’t give a sh*t anymore. Ukraine, Taiwan these are issues that simply don’t matter when we are falling to the fascist. But as for whether the snaked eyed murderer putin has the stomach for invading Ukraine – highly unlikely.

    He knows we and Europe would apply really deep, crippling sanctions; there’d be a guerrilla war that would bog down their military for years; and finally, russia is struggling more with the pandemic then the US is and that will get worse with the military forced to be in close quarters for years.

  18. 18.

    Nicole

    @opiejeanne:

    I really wish people would stop equating being short with being a small person, as in small in spirit. Height has nothing to do with it.

    It’s also emblematic of toxic masculinity, because that’s where the height bias is applied (women, in one of the very few areas where we have a societal advantage, are given a bit more leeway about what heights are considered acceptable).  And it’s interesting that the same people mocking Putin for being insecure about being short are… still mocking him for being short.  Height is one of the few areas left where it’s acceptable to make fun of someone for something they have no control over. And it’s all based in toxic masculinity’s idea of what makes a person a “real man.”  (As is the cultural notion that a man should be taller than his woman partner.  Why? What is that based in?)

    I agree with you.

    Dr. King was 5’6″. ;)

  19. 19.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Folks in the West tend to romanticize the KGB

    maybe he means overestimated. The only romanticizing of the KGB I can recall is in Doctor Zhivago, but that was written by a Russian, living under Soviet rule.

    I can’t think of any time when Beria, Andropov, or Felix Dzerzhinsky were romanticized. Even Rudolf Abel is portrayed as a cross btwn Chancey Gardner and Mr. Magoo.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    Exposing and/or seizing Putin’s ill-gotten gains would fix his little red wagon right quick, but there are probably many billions of reasons no state actor attempts that.

  21. 21.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Cermet: The question of whether Putin “has the stomach” to invade was answered in 2014, when he did exactly that. Nearly 14,000 Ukrainians have been killed since then, and the war is ongoing. In the meantime, the Biden administration delays sending promised armaments and has yet to even nominate an ambassador to Ukraine.

  23. 23.

    Geminid

    Last night I read that with his appearance at South Carolina’s Orangeburg State University commencement, President Biden has now visited 27 states since his inauguration.

  24. 24.

    Betty

    @opiejeanne: I think in Putin’s case, the issue of height is based on “short man syndrome”. I have encountered the problem with some men believing their shortness makes them less masculine and they over-compensate for it. My husband is short and managed to escape the syndrome entirely.

  25. 25.

    lowtechcyclist

    @opiejeanne: But, as Randy Newman sang, Short People Got No Business

    Two things: first, it was a song about how stupid and irrational prejudice is. The refrain:

    Short people are just the same as you and I
    a fool such as I
    all men are brothers until the day we die
    it’s a wonderful world

    Second, it was “short people got no reason”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8UVBgUd9GE

  26. 26.

    John S.

    @Betty:

    Not all short men have a Napoleon complex, but most men with a Napoleon complex are short. Everyone is different, and there are no hard and fast rules with personality traits.

    I was a late bloomer. When I was 17, I was around 5’6. By the time I was 19, I was 6’ (which was really interesting for my wife who I began dating at 17). My height didn’t affect my personality.

  27. 27.

    Nicole

    @John S.:

    but most men with a Napoleon complex are short.

    Because we don’t use that term for insecure tall men (see: TFG).  We don’t have a phrase for it, because we don’t “other” tall men.  We assume short men are insecure because they’re short and come up with terms for it.

    The problem is not a “Napoleon complex,” the problem is that we as a society ascribe value to height, which is not something a guy has any control over, as a sign of masculinity.  It’s a bias.

  28. 28.

    opiejeanne

    @Nicole: Thank you.

    I really should be asleep right now, but my mind is racing and I can’t unwind enough. Probably because my son is on the road between LA and Portland, driving straight through which is not wise. At least there doesn’t seem to be snow in the forecast in the passes.

  29. 29.

    Geminid

    There was some good news on the redistricting front yesterday. New Mexico Governor Michele Lujan Grisham signed off on a new map that should make Republican Representative Yvette Harrell (NM-2) a one-termer. Last year Harrell beat Representative Xochitl Torres-Small by ~7.5%. The new map adds part of Democratic Albuquerque to the 2nd, and places eastern communities such as Roswell, Vaughan, and Hobbs in the 3rd District. Last year trump won the 2nd by 11 points, but the new 2nd is thought to be D+6.

    Xochitl Torres-Small just started as Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development, and probably won’t run in the 2nd next year. Another capable New Mexico Democrat will represent the 2nd after the midterms.

  31. 31.

    debbie

    @opiejeanne:

    It’s not so much what others think about a short man; it’s that man who feels he has to act Napoleon-ically to get his deserved respect.

  32. 32.

    Betty Cracker

    @Gin & Tonic: Probably even more so post-Brexit, and I’m sure they aren’t the only ones. As for Biden’s actions on Ukraine, I wish he’d nominated Ambassador Yovanovitch on January 21. That would have been a statement. (For all I know, she doesn’t want the job.)

  33. 33.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Geminid: Thank you for posting this! (I miss having Xochitl Torres-Small in Congress, but have been very glad she was picked to join the current administration.)

    Here’s to someone excellent winning the Democratic primary for her former district….​

  34. 34.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: The Virginia Supreme Court has yet to approve the Congressional map it’s “Special Masters” drew. If they approve it, I will shift from an R+6 Fifth District to a D+7 Eleventh. My new Representative will be Jennifer Wexton.

    Reprentative Abigail Spanberger (VA-7) may be talking to real estate agents. The new 7th District will include more northern Virginia suburbs. Whereas the 7th was pretty much a 50-/50 district, it will now favor a Democrat by several points. But Spanberger’s home in the Richmond suburb of Glen Allen is now outside the 7th. She represented a good chunk of the new 7th, though, and doesn’t have to move far to live in the new district.

    If Spanberger does move and run for reelection, she will probably face a primary contest. A member of the notorious Blue Dog Caucus,  Spanberger will certainly be seen as too moderate by some Democrats in the new 7th. That could be an interesting primary, but I think Spanberger will win it.

  35. 35.

    rm

    Wasn’t there a meeting between Obama and Putin where Putin made a big deal about how tough his dog was, and how his tough dog could tear Bo to pieces?

    It doesn’t get much more insecurely masculine than “my dog could beat up your dog.”

  36. 36.

    Another Scott

    Ioffe’s summary is decent, but everyone in the US foreign policy establishment knows that.  It goes back to the 60s and the Cuban Missile Crisis (and probably earlier).  Any de-escalation rewards will come weeks later, out of the news and distant enough to argue that there’s no connection.

    I’m heartened that there was so much early reporting about the buildup, strong pushback about it, and even reporting on Putin’s potential timeline to invade again (January).  And Blinken’s explicit comments that he’s looking for a fake provocation.  Make it clear to him that we see what he’s doing, and make him question whether the US and NATO have moles inside…

    I don’t know what will happen, of course, but I’m heartened that there is no indication that we will just roll over.  And that any military action will be strongly countered economically – we have more choices than just getting involved militarily in yet another land war in Asia…

    Fingers crossed.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  37. 37.

    Steeplejack

    @opiejeanne:

    Yeah, not a great idea. Almost 1,000 miles on a (presumably busy) interstate. My last big drive was from NoVA to Atlanta, about 630 miles, and that left me frazzled.

  38. 38.

    Jess

    @rm: I actually own a Russian street dog (recent adoption) who is sure he can beat up any other dog, and tries his best to start something with every dog he sees. I tell him, “you’re in New England now; that’s not how we do things here,” but he’s only just beginning to listen to me.

    I remember a picture of Obama and Putin in close conversation, where Obama appears to be deliberately looming over him in an intimidating way. I wonder if that was in response to the dog comment…

  39. 39.

    dopey-o

    Or maybe not, and we’ll wake up one morning to news that Russian troops are pouring across the Ukrainian border. We just don’t know. And the fact that we don’t know is also part of Putin’s strategy, as I’ve written before. There’s a lot of power in being the unpredictable actor, in making everyone think about you and try to guess your motives and next steps. And Putin loves being the center of attention….

    (cough) Joe Manchin (cough)

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