We begin tonight with Mariupol above the jump. Earlier today reports began to circulate that the Russians had used a drone to deliver a chemical weapon attack on the Azov Regiment in Mariupol, where the regiment is most likely making its last stand. However, there is no independent confirmation yet, largely because there are no independent, verifiable reporters left in Mariupol because the Russian occupiers either killed them or ran them out.
While we are waiting for an official confirmation, here's a reminder that Russian puppets have been advocating for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainians in Mariupol earlier today https://t.co/x5F0XFUtZM
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) April 11, 2022
- While there are no trusted journalists in Mariupol, Russian propagandists are working there. So we can expect them boasting of their new achievement soon… And of course, blaming the Ukrainians. Just saying it for the record – hoping to be wrong
From The Kyiv Independent:
Ukraine’s Azov regiment said on April 11 that Russia had used a poisonous substance against Ukrainian troops in Mariupol, a besieged port on the Sea of Azov.
Azov leader Andriy Biletsky said that three people have clear signs of chemical poisoning. He added that there are no “disastrous consequences” for their health.
The claim followed a call by Russia’s proxies in the Donbas to use chemical weapons against Azov.
If confirmed, this is the first known use of chemical weapons by Russia during its aggression against Ukraine. Western leaders have pledged to step up their response to Russian aggression in case of a chemical attack.
Azov said that the poisonous substance had been distributed by a drone. Its victims have shortness of breath and vestibullocerebellar ataxia, the regiment said.
Earlier on April 11, Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for Russia’s proxies in Donetsk, made a statement on Russia’s attempts to capture Mariupol’s well-fortified Azovstal steel mill, which is held by Azov. Mariupol has been besieged by Russia since late February.
“There are underground floors (at Azovstal), and that’s why it makes no sense to storm this object now,” he said. “We could have a lot of our soldiers killed, and the enemy won’t suffer casualties. That’s why currently we should figure out how to block this mill and find all ways in and out. And after that we should ask our chemical forces to find a way to smoke these moles out of their holes.”
Russia has falsely accused Ukraine of having chemical and biological weapons programs. Western authorities have said this might indicate Russia’s intentions to use weapons of mass destruction and put the blame on Ukraine.
Both U.S. President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have said that the use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a red line and fundamentally change the nature of the conflict.
More at the link!
The question, of course is, if this can be confirmed, whether or not it actually leads to anything happening from the US and our NATO and non-NATO allies. The Biden administration has avoided taking a stand on the issue.
The Biden administration official is steering clear of defining any use by Russia of chemical weapons in Ukraine as a “red line,” a senior administration official told ABC News.
“We learned our lesson” the official said in describing the Obama administration’s ineffective response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons in 2012.
Instead, the administration is considering a new round of economic sanctions against Russia as a potential response should Russia use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, according to a senior administration official.
A senior administration official told ABC News that the U.S. would most likely respond to Russia’s use of chemical and biological weapons “with dramatically stepped-up” sanctions that could target Russia’s gold reserves or Russian leadership.
However, the official noted that developing additional rounds of sanctions might be difficult to put into play given the wide range of international sanctions against Russia that have been put in place since Russia’s invasion.
Much, much more at the link.
Based on the reporting, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, which is clearly not deterring Putin from doing whatever it is he wants. All the while patting ourselves on the back for our restraint as we fight Putin to the last Ukrainian.
Just a quick note about the Azov Regiment. From The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (emphasis mine):
(JTA) — Konstantyn Batozsky believes he is on a list of so-called “neo-Nazis” to be rounded up “Gestapo-style” and “exterminated” by Russian forces seeking to enter Kyiv.
Batozsky, a Jew from eastern Ukraine, said he was informed about the “bounty on his head” by Ukrainian intelligence sources. But as a longtime and avowed Ukrainian nationalist who has collaborated with an paramilitary group that has a reputation for including extremists, he knows that it’s people like him that Russian President Vladimir Putin was talking about when he cited a need for “denazification” as a pretext for invading his country.
“I have been staying underground away from my apartment where the Russians will try to find me,” Batozsky said from a makeshift bunker preparing for what appears to be an imminent invasion as bombs rained down outside the city center.
“I am happy that I’m alive,” he reflected, as he coordinated efforts to get much needed supplies to the Ukrainian army. “It now feels like every day could be the last.”
Initially cheerful in the early days of the war as the Ukrainians were surprisingly resilient against the much bigger Russian army, Batozsky now sounded more worried. And angry.
“The Russians are advancing and the West is not helping. Just words are not enough,” he lamented. Batozky pleaded for Western countries to intervene militarily.
Among those taking up arms for the first time as volunteers for the civilian army include Jews like Batozsky, who was passionately devoted to the Ukrainian national cause in his native Donetsk years before Russia decided to wage war on the entire country. He was a former advisor to the governor of Donetsk, Serhiy Taruta, now a member of the Ukrainian parliament.
It might seem perplexing to observers in the United States and beyond that Jews would embrace Ukrainian nationalism, which some of its opponents — including Putin — say is tinged with antisemitism.
“There was definitely a Jewish memory of anti-Jewish pogroms conducted by Ukrainians,” said Sergiy Petukhov, Ukraine’s former deputy minister of European Integration whose mother and grandfather live in Israel. Also a native of Donetsk, Petukhov describes himself as a Ukrainian with Jewish ancestry, “like our current president,” he said, referring to Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukraine’s history of antisemitism go far beyond pogroms. In their efforts to exterminate Jews, the Nazis were significantly aided by Ukrainians during World War II, according to several historians.
More recently, some of the initial paramilitary fighters against the Russian-backed takeover in Ukraine’s east, such as the Azov Battalion, were extremists and ultranationalists who displayed Nazi symbols.
“I know it’s hard for Jews abroad to understand, but these actions were intended as anti-Russian, not anti-Jewish,” Petukov said. “And when it comes to those supporting Ukrainian sovereignty and culture, this is really a tiny element.”
Now part of the national guard, the battalion of 900 to 1,500 members publicly claims to eschew all Nazi ideology.
Batozsky said he worked closely with the Azov Battalion during the 2014-15 conflict behind the scenes as a political consultant in Donetsk. It is this work, and his outspoken defense of Ukrainian efforts to defeat the separatists, that he says put him on the Russian hit list — and also that makes him confident that Russian charges of neo-Nazis in Ukraine are inaccurate.
“They were soccer hooligans and wanted attention, so yeah, I was shocked when I saw guys with swastika tattoos,” he said about the Azov members he got to know. “But I talked with them all the time about being Jewish and they had nothing negative to say. They had no anti-Jewish ideology.”
He insists that the image of Ukraine as a hotbed of antisemitism is absurd.
“I don’t practice, but still everyone knows I am Jewish — I have such a Jewish face! And I never experienced antisemitism from Ukrainians,” he insisted. “The military guys I am working with now really don’t care that I am a Jew.”
He does not have similar feelings towards his Russian neighbors. “I did have a Jew-hating Russian first-grade teacher who mockingly called my long hair payos,” recalled Batozky, using the Hebrew term for the long sidecurls kept by many Hasidic men. And he said he heard more slurs against Jews from Russians Moscow State University, which he attended in the 1990s, then he ever heard back home.
Daniel Kovzhun, a Jew from Kyiv who ran logistics during the war in Donetsk for paramilitary units, described a similar experience.
“There were Orthodox Jews in Azov,” he said. “I know because I was there on the battle lines. No one cared who was Jewish, we cared about keeping our country together.”
Like Batozsky, Kovzhun, who lived and studied in Israel before returning to Kyiv, has joined the newly formed civilian army in Kyiv, the Territorial Defense Forces — an overnight volunteer force that has attracted Jewish fighters across the country, and even from abroad.
Much, much more at the link!
Much more after the jump.
I’m just going to deal with a couple of quick items that popped up in comments last night or have become recurring in the comments. The first was in response to my including the reporting on Musk’s war profiteering and was in regard to what was going on between Musk and Twitter.
Musk, who is the subject of several ongoing SEC investigations, filed the wrong paperwork for his purchase of Twitter shares. He also filled the wrong paperwork out wrong too and filed it late. What he filed was the paperwork for someone who is just buying general shares, though a lot of them, but has no intention of being an activist investor. Meaning trying to either get on the board or take over the company. And Musk has a history of this, it is what he did with Tesla. He purchased it, forced out the owners, and took it over. Twitter’s response was to put him on the board. The reason for this is that as long as he was on the board he is not permitted to try to take over the company and force the current owners/leadership out. Basically Twitter’s current leadership was trying to block Musk. Musk, being Musk, immediately began acting like he had, in fact, taken over the company and was now running it. All the details on this are in these two threads from NYcitysouthpaw, which can be found here and here. Here’s a very quick visual explainer of the announcement from earlier today that he was not joining the board today:
A lot of people seem to have trouble parsing through corpo / legal / PR speak, so here's a helpful guide to the only two parts of this statement that matter: pic.twitter.com/k2lV2jV5Sh
— Dr. Bhaskar Ⓥ (@xbhaskarx) April 11, 2022
What I expect we’ll see now is a full fledged push by Musk to buy more shares of Twitter and then do what he’s really good at: taking over the company, pushing the current leadership out, and remaking it in his own bugfuck nuts image.
The second item I want to just briefly deal with is Rene Girard. For those not following along in the comments, he keeps coming up. Girard was a French epistemologist/philosopher of science/knowledge and a philosopher of language. Basically he did deep exegesis on the foundational texts of the ideas that interested him and then attempted to deconstruct and explain them in his own writings on the topic. He is best known in American academia for his late 1980s book on religious violence entitled The Scapegoat. Girard’s basic thesis is that all of human behavior is based on learning through observation beginning when one is an infant. Basically mimicry. He refers to this as mimetic theory and in The Scapegoat he posited that all socio-political violence, whether religious or not, was mimicry rooted in the biblical tales of scapegoats – Cain, Longinus/the Wandering Jew – which are themselves rooted in the concept of Azazel the Passover/paschal scapegoat, and that they are used as a societal and political steam release safety valve to lower the pressure that would otherwise blow up the entire political, social, religious, and/or economic system of a given state and/or society.
Unfortunately, Girard is very hard to read. Part of that is because he wrote in his native French and then had his work translated into English and those translations are thick and hard to get through. As a result, his biggest American academic proponent, Mark Jurgensmeyer who wrote an article attempting to use Girard’s thesis and then a decade later a book attempting to explain religiously based terrorism, doesn’t understand Girard. Frankly, I know Jurgensmeyer and he doesn’t understand violence, terrorism, social science, empirical social science theories, and data either, so there may be a deeper issue here. However, Jurgensmeyer is a big deal and for a while Girard was all the rage. I have no idea if he still is, but if you’re wondering what these references in comments are about, now you know.
And people wonder why I left academia…
Here’s today’s British MOD assessment:
And here’s their latest map update:
Not too much change again. Though The Kyiv Independent, via their Twitter feed, has reported:
- Ukraine’s General Staff: Russian troops unsuccessfully try to move further into Ukraine. The offensive operations are taking place in Donetsk Oblast and in the south of Ukraine.
Earlier today Russia warned Sweden and Finland not to join NATO. From the BBC:
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “the alliance remains a tool geared towards confrontation”.
It comes as US defence officials said Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has been a “massive strategic blunder” which is likely to bring Nato enlargement.
US officials expect the Nordic neighbours to bid for membership of the alliance, potentially as early as June.
Washington is believed to support the move which would see the Western alliance grow to 32 members. US State Department officials said last week that discussions had taken place between Nato leaders and foreign ministers from Helsinki and Stockholm.
Before it launched its invasion, Russia demanded that the alliance agree to halt any future enlargement, but the war has led to the deployment of more Nato troops on its eastern flank and a rise in public support for Swedish and Finnish membership.
Finnish MPs are expected to receive a security report from intelligence officials this week, and Prime Minister Sanna Marin said she expects her government “will end the discussion before midsummer” on whether to make a membership application.
Finland shares a 1,340km (830 miles) long border with Russia and has been rattled by the invasion of Ukraine.
And Sweden’s ruling Social Democratic party, which has traditionally opposed Nato membership, said it is rethinking this position in light of Russia’s attack on its western neighbour. Party secretary Tobias Baudin told local media that the Nato review should be complete within the next few months.
“When Russia invaded Ukraine, Sweden’s security position changed fundamentally,” the party said in a statement on Monday.
But Moscow has been clear that it opposes any potential enlargement of the alliance. Mr Peskov warned the bloc “is not that kind of alliance which ensures peace and stability, and its further expansion will not bring additional security to the European continent”.
Last week Mr Peskov said that Russia would have to “rebalance the situation” with its own measures were Sweden and Finland to join Nato.
And in February Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, warned of “military and political consequences” if the countries joined the bloc.
Much more at the link.
I’m not thrilled with announcing it now, but having a sixty to ninety day delay before joining. Putin’s standard operating procedure in regard to any European nation not in NATO seeking to join NATO, especially ones that Russia believes it has some historical claim to, is to start a conflict with them. Which then puts NATO’s policy about not being able to accept members that have ongoing border disputes into effect. All Putin has to do is stick a couple of companies of Wagner’s little green men on the borders, cause some trouble, and do some nice, low key operations and Finland, Sweden, and NATO will suddenly have a major problem. By doing so he either shows NATO to be hypocritical vis-a-vis Ukraine and Georgia if they go ahead and admit Finland and Sweden under those conditions or he achieves the blocking function and prevents them from joining NATO. Either way he wins.
More from Mariupol:
The Mariupol garrison is having it extreme now.
Our guys are all alone, in a besieged ruined city, defending the last pockets next the main fortress, the AzovStal plant.
The situation not seen in Europe since Wold War II.
But the Azov Sea Steel is still holding on… pic.twitter.com/QAW8EKblbi— Illia Ponomarenko ?? (@IAPonomarenko) April 11, 2022
“Mariupol is the heart of this war today. It’s beating, we are fighting, we are strong. If it stops beating, our position [at the negotiation table with Russia] will get weaker. People [in Mariupol] have distracted a big chunk of the enemy forces”, Zelensky tells AP
— Myroslava Petsa (@myroslavapetsa) April 10, 2022
All my thoughts today are with Mariupol and its defenders. Russia has turned Mariupol into a hellscape and a graveyard just because it is a Ukrainian city. This video is painful to watch, but just imagine what people in Mariupol are going through. #StopRussianAgression pic.twitter.com/535CYuJ6Pa
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) April 11, 2022
Buzova: (WARNING: THIS IS UNSETTLING!!!!)
“Let me see! Let me see! SON!!!”
Add #Buzova near Kyiv to the long list of Russian atrocities in #Ukraine.#RussianWarCrimes #StandWithUkraine #ArmUkraineNow @RusBotWien @RusBotschaft pic.twitter.com/fMo2a7YR9G— olexander scherba?? (@olex_scherba) April 11, 2022
Bucha:
BUCHA, Ukraine — A mother killed by a sniper while walking with her family to fetch a thermos of tea. A woman held as a sex slave, naked except for a fur coat and locked in a potato cellar before being executed. Two sisters dead in their home, their bodies left slumped on the floor for weeks.
Bucha is a landscape of horrors.
From the first day of the war, Feb. 24, civilians bore the brunt of the Russian assault on Bucha, a few miles west of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Russian special forces approaching on foot through the woods shot at cars on the road, and a column of armored vehicles fired on and killed a woman in her garden as they drove into the suburb.
But those early cruelties paled in comparison to what came after.
As the Russian advance on Kyiv stalled in the face of fierce resistance, civilians said, the enemy occupation of Bucha slid into a campaign of terror and revenge. When a defeated and demoralized Russian Army finally retreated, it left behind a grim tableau: bodies of dead civilians strewn on streets, in basements or in backyards, many with gunshot wounds to their heads, some with their hands tied behind their backs.
Reporters and photographers for The New York Times spent more than a week with city officials, coroners and scores of witnesses in Bucha, uncovering new details of execution-style atrocities against civilians. The Times documented the bodies of almost three dozen people where they were killed — in their homes, in the woods, set on fire in a vacant parking lot — and learned the story behind many of their deaths. The Times also witnessed more than 100 body bags at a communal grave and the city’s cemetery.
The evidence suggests the Russians killed recklessly and sometimes sadistically, in part out of revenge.
Unsuspecting civilians were killed carrying out the simplest of daily activities. A retired teacher known as Auntie Lyuda, short for Lyudmyla, was shot midmorning on March 5 as she opened her front door on a small side street. Her body lay twisted, half inside the door, more than a month later.
Much more at the link including lots of pictures.
Chernihiv:
All the bridges to Chernihiv had been blown up in heavy Russian bombing and the city was under a crippling siege but Tanya still managed to sneak out on a rowing boat through a secret route and head to Kyiv.
The 54-year-old only narrowly escaped death.
As she was scrambling onto the opposite bank of the Desna river, which cuts through the city, shelling struck nearby. She only avoided being shredded to pieces thanks to a nearby trench.
The aim of the dangerous journey was to help evacuate a group of elderly people but also to reach the capital to register and start fundraising for her new charity, which aimed to feed the bombarded city. To do this, she crept across the river, crossed the front line and weathered shelling and shooting – a daring undertaking she went through all over again on the way back from Kyiv.
Her task was urgent. People in Chernihiv were not only in danger of dying from a fierce air assault, but hunger and thirst. Tanya, an entrepreneur in her pre-war life, together with a pair of restaurant business owners and the head of a local charity in the city, worked out how to pool and maximise supplies within the city, and then later, how to sneak some in.
At one point they even dug a well to service thousands of people, with an industrial drill sourced from inside the city, despite everything being bombed and there being no electricity. They located and repurposed generators – also left behind – using their own car batteries for power.
“I was warned it was very dangerous but I took my chance,” says Tanya about her odyssey to Kyiv. She describes how the bodies of civilians who had been killed while fleeing littered the waters of the river.
“When I got to the other bank, we were heavily shelled. I was shelled on the way back too. But it was essential to get this charity up and running. People’s lives were at stake.”
Much, much, much more at the link!
Here’s a machine translation excerpt of the absolutely astonishing piece from Dmitry Trenin who is the director of the Carnegie Center for International Peace’s Moscow Center, Zhena Gogolya checked it for me and provided some commentary, which is in the brackets.
[Three important words here are “rossiiskii,” “russkii,” and “derzhava.” “Rossiiskii” and “russkii” are both translated as “Russian,” but rossiiskii refers to Rossiia, the state, not to the Russian ethnicity. “Derzhava” is translated by the machine as “power,” but it means “power” in the sense of “powerful state,” not power as strength or force, which would be “sila.” So I’m keeping these three words in Russian to avoid confusion.]The core of the rossiiskii civilization-derzhava are russkii people, with their language, culture, and religion, but the ethnic element within the framework of a unified civilization is not the defining element. On the contrary, the russkii community is open and accepts into its composition freely and on an equal basis not only individual representatives of other ethnicities but these ethnic groups as a whole. Tatars, Yakuts, Chechens, and the numerous ethnic groups of Dagestan can be and are russkii. Orthodox Christianity is the religion of the majority, but the tradition of religious tolerance allows for the peaceful coexistence and interaction of the basic indigenous confessions: Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. The unified state ensures peace, well-being, and development in the huge territory from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan and from the Arctic to the Caspian Sea. It is precisely the common derzhava that is the most important value for this complex civilization.
But the state itself is based on a system of values without which it will collapse. The Rossiiskii Empire fell apart not so much under the influence of the difficulties of the World War as from the loss of faith and trust of the supreme power [vlast’]. The Soviet Union perished not so much as a result of shortages of goods in the stores as from the falsity of the official ideology, which departed more and more from real life.
For our current state to remain stable it must be “reissued” based on the principles of freedom and responsibility, social solidarity, administrative competence, practical partnership [he uses the word that usually means “complicity,” like in a crime, but I don’t think that’s what he intends] in governing, including the taking of the most important decisions.
In this connection the narod [Volk; no English equivalent because “people” is plural] of modern Russia must rethink itself and its country, figure out the bases of its self-consciousness and worldview, and determine where the russkii path should lead. Only under such conditions can the aims of policy as well as strategy and the means of their attainment be determined. The sum total of these aims, strategies, and means, can be united by the concept of the russkii idea. In short, one may designate the russkii idea as the Russkii truth — the basis of the worldview and the codex of fundamental principles, the central support of which is the imperative of justice.
Alongside justice, the central part of the russkii idea is the principle of equality. Russians do not consider themselves a chosen people, they don’t have the idea of themselves as an exceptional phenomenon. Russkiis are not special, they keep themselves on the same level as the representatives of other peoples, not higher, but also not lower. The russkii colonial experience was in principle a different one than that of the Western Europeans. In the Rossiiskii Empire, russkiis did not have a higher position than “inorodtsy” [people of other ethnicities within the Russian Empire; this statement is so ridiculously false], and in the Soviet Union the national republics enjoyed various privileges and preferential economic conditions of which the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was deprived. At the same time, russkiis are not willing to accept being led by someone else. In russkii culture there is no place for racism [HAHAHA], and anti-Semitism — both by the state and in everyday life — was considered a shameful, reprehensible phenomenon. [hahaha] Russkii culture itself is open to the external world, its influences, which are adapted in a creative russkii reworking. [this is bad Dostoevsky]
Thus justice, equality, openness, and adaptability — while preserving inner integrity — make the russkii idea a reliable spiritual guide also for developing a strategy of foreign policy, especially in a period of a change in the world order. The russkii idea opens up the broadest possibilities for mutual understanding, respectful dialogue, and reasonable agreements with the presence of goodwill on both sides. As an idea of inner justice, external sovereignty, and peaceful good-neighborly coexistence, it may be appreciated by other peoples and civilizations.
Here we must emphasize that the russkii idea is intended precisely for russkii civilization, and not as an export product for the rest of the world. The attempt to formulate the idea in a universalist mode, as the associates of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev did when they elaborated their new political thinking, is hopeless from the start and therefore senseless. The global world, in which the diffusion of the Western model has reached insurmountable limits, is more and more diverging into civilizational platforms, where each civilization has its own idea. The russkii idea will affect the rest of the world by the very fact of its realization in russkii society and in the policy of the Rossiiskii state.
One does not have to invent the russkii idea, it must be rethought for the modern stage of development. German communism, and then American neoliberalism, obscured for many generations of russkii people the legacy of our own philosophers, writers, and historians — from Pushkin and Chaadaev to the Slavophiles and Westernizers to the religious philosophers and Eurasianists. Now this legacy of the past, which we have in many ways not worked through, is in particular demand in order for our meditations on the past and future to acquire depth. This is not about returning in our thoughts and actions to a hundred or two hundred years ago, but about finding a reliable foothold for our movement forward.
If you want to read the rest click across and use your browser’s/operating system’s machine translation program to read it.
Here’s a fascinating thread about what may or may not be going on in Belarus:
A few words about the resistance of Belarusians to the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Thread. pic.twitter.com/IUY8MxbfO4
— Pavel Slunkin (@PavelSlunkin) April 10, 2022
- 1/ After 2020 and an unprecedented wave of repressions, several hundred thousand people have left Belarus. Thousands are in prison for political reasons (see the map) [Adam here: click the tweet above to see the map and other graphics in the thread.]
- 2/ Torture and beatings that shocked the world in August 2020 have not disappeared. They have become even more cruel and large-scale. Some political prisoners tried to kill themselves right during the trial: by slitting their stomach or piercing neck with a ballpoint pen
- 3/ The last mass protests were crushed back in January 2021. Propaganda/state TV calls for the killing of opponents. However, Lukashenka has not become more popular (having about 30% support). His power rests on Kremlin’s support, loyal police and nomenklatura + total repression
- 4/ In 2021, civil society was almost completely destroyed in Belarus. Even organizations that were involved in protecting the rights of disabled people, ecology and biodiversity were liquidated. Leaders arrested or fled.
- 5/ In such conditions, the war found Belarusian society. The illegitimate Lukashenka has made Belarus a co-aggressor state, and its citizens are seen as traitors and occupants by the international community.
- 6/ Independent polls show that only 3% of Belarusians want the Belarusian army to enter the war with Ukraine on the side of Russia.
- 7/ Since the beginning of the war, more than 1,500 people have been arrested for anti-war actions. A broad partisan movement has revived in Belarus, which has been a symbol of the country since WW2. Partisans risk their lives. Some of them are shot, others are arrested
- 8/ This is a map of railroad sabotage actions. The partisans have been blocking the movement of Russian military equipment to Ukraine by rail. Russia had to switch to air transport because of this
9/ Belarusian cyberpartisans attack databases and train management systems, websites of state institutions, etc.@cpartisans- 10/ Belarusians massively share information about the deployment and movement of Russian troops and equipment. Information about the departures of Russian war planes is immediately published. This allows the Ukrainian air defense systems and the army to be ready for attacks
- 11/ Several Belarusian battalions are fighting for the freedom of Ukraine. They are the first national battalions in the Ukrainian army. Belarusian soldiers died, including defending Bucha.
- 12/ Belarusians have created dozens of initiatives to support the Ukrainian army and Ukrainian refugees. Thanks to them, the Ukrainian army has received some new vehicles and weapons, they help refugees financially and provide medical, psychological support and service assistance
- 13/ An important feature is that these initiatives are predominantly in exile since 2020. They are led by the same people who have proven themselves 2 years ago.
- 14/ But even inside Belarus, despite police persecution, Belarusians help Ukrainian refugees: they provide them with free services, help with housing, evacuation to the EU, and collect money for them.
- 15/ Anti-war sentiment and resistance actions are one of the reasons why Lukashenka has not yet sent the Belarusian army to Ukraine. End.
I did not like John Mearsheimer’s body of work when I had to read him in grad school. I did not like his body of work when I had to teach it. And the more experience I’ve gotten working in national security I’ve liked his body of work less and less.
John Mearsheimer, speaking 4 days ago, questions
Russia's responsibility for civilian deaths in Ukraine: "You talked about Putin targeting civilians, or the Russians targeting civilians. It’s obviously very hard to tell what’s exactly happened here." https://t.co/IiEasn0IzQ 1/5— Dylan Primakoff (@DylanPrimakoff) April 11, 2022
- “But with that caveat in mind, you want to remember that the Americans have been pushing to arm civilians in Ukraine and to tell those civilians to fight against the Russians. So by definition, in lots of the firefights that have taken place and will take place…” 2/5
- “Russians are going to be fighting against civilians because those civilians are fighting against the Russians. So just remember, this is a very complicated business.” It should go without saying – this is disturbingly detached from the reality of this war under discussion. 3/5
- These comments show that Mearsheimer is either unaware of or rejects the exhaustively documented reports of widespread Russian atrocities against unarmed Ukrainian civilians. It seems that whatever information he is getting about this conflict is seriously off base. 4/5
- There are reasonable disagreements about the general explanatory value of Mearsheimer’s theories, but I think this inexcusable denial of the unambiguous facts of Russian war crimes in Ukraine and completely discredits his broader analysis on this conflict. 5/5
- If anything, the context makes it even worse. Another speaker made a passing remark earlier in the panel about Russia targeting civilians, and Mearsheimer apparently felt the need to return to the issue in his closing remarks to “set the record straight.”
- I’m not in any way shape or form a Mearsheimer defender, but this quote is not nearly as bad in context.
Tell me you don’t know anything about Irish or European history without telling me you don’t know anything about Irish or European history!
This video shows why Eastern Europeans have been so frustrated for years with Western Europeans who just don’t understand what Russia is & how it works.
Irish MEP tells a Bulgarian MEP in the European Parliament that peace can only come through diplomacy. pic.twitter.com/nQKtgBNi3R
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 10, 2022
We are, apparently, having some issues with where we stand on dealing with Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine. From The New York Times (emphasis mine):
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is vigorously debating how much the United States can or should assist an investigation into Russian atrocities in Ukraine by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.
The Biden team strongly wants to see President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and others in his military chain of command held to account. And many are said to consider the court — which was created by a global treaty two decades ago as a venue for prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide — the body most capable of achieving that.
But laws from 1999 and 2002, enacted by a Congress wary that the court might investigate Americans, limit the government’s ability to provide support. And the United States has long objected to any exercise of jurisdiction by the court over citizens of countries that are not part of the treaty that created it — like the United States, but also Russia.
The internal debate, described by senior administration officials and others familiar with the matter on the condition of anonymity, has been partly shaped by a previously undisclosed 2010 memo by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Obtained by The New York Times, the memo interprets the scope and limits of permissible cooperation with the court.
Much more at the link!
The Office of Legal Counsel should be required by law to post each and every one of its memos, which function as a shadow system of laws/legal system for the Executive Branch, so that everyone can know what a bunch of unelected people have determined the law is or is not despite what the law actually says!
Your daily bayraktar:
The #Russian Ka52 helicopter blasted at a Russian airbase by #Ukrainian TB-2 Bayraktar Drones. pic.twitter.com/aG187UxRyF
— Daily Turkic (@DailyTurkic) April 8, 2022
And your daily Bayraktar:
— Oriannalyla ?? (@Lyla_lilas) April 10, 2022
Open thread!
Kent
That Irish MEP Clare Daly is quite the piece of work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Daly
Basically the Irish version of Jill Stein but far more strident and with an actual seat that she won with 11% of the vote due to the wonder of multimember proportional representation
She is, of course, a Putin tool, but also:
smintheus
So Biden is to blame for not doing more to ‘deter’ a Russian invasion of Ukraine that already transpired? Sanctions are about inflicting harm for harm, not about deterrence.
David Anderson
Does he at least make a mean cup of coffee?
Ksmiami
We need to do more. And stop fearing Russian retaliation- no one’s going to attack that shithole country when we -through Ukrainian forces armed with everything we can give -can destroy their army in Ukraine now.
Kent
Sanctions are also about not being complicit in Russia’s actions. We cut off trade with Russia not only in an attempt to force a policy change, but also to say that we, as Americans, are not going to support Russia’s war of aggression by sending them our dollars through trade.
Kelly
An interesting article from retired General Mark Hertling. Some new anecdotes that reflect what he’s been writing on twitter. Russian military is a disorganized corrupt mess and has been for a long time. Ukraine applied themselves and developed from a corrupt mess to a high class force.
https://www.thebulwark.com/i-commanded-u-s-army-europe-heres-what-i-saw-in-the-russian-and-ukrainian-armies/
Omnes Omnibus
If NATO is as feckless as you keep suggesting, why are Sweden and Finland rushing to join? Also, if Putin stirs up a border issue while Sweden or Finland are applying, it will be obvious why he did it and it would be absurd to think that he could somehow chalk it up as a win.
Ohio Mom
How does Russia not making its payment on its foreign debt figure into all of this? I guess that is the sanctions working — but isn’t it hurting the western bond holders more than it’s hurting Russia (note, I am hardly shedding tears for the bondholders, that’s a risk they willingly took).
Another Scott
Thanks for this.
s nycitysouthpaw / nycsouthpaw
On the chemical attack, I’m reminded of what happened in Syria. And Putin’s (and Kim’s) attacks on opponents with various poisons. Syria was a different case because of the multitude of factions, so it should be easier to determine responsibility in Ukraine, but it may still be difficult. Using a drone for delivery seems surprising though.
Vindman has been arguing for much stronger responses for a while.
A post on CherylRofer’s Twitter thing says that Zelenskyy hasn’t confirmed it yet.
We know VVP keeps pushing as long as he can to get what he wants. Nobody knows, of course, what he will do… I’m sure NATO and Biden’s people have gamed all this out – I hope they’re right in whatever they do.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
NATO’s rules are not chiseled in marble. They *could* admit a new member that was engaged in a border dispute if they really wanted to. Just like they could admit Ukraine into NATO tomorrow if they wanted to. Or if, for example, Russia attacks Finland.
Mike in DC
@Another Scott: Unfortunately anti-escalation theory and anti-genocide seem to be in conflict, and the anti-genocide faction seems to be sitting at the back of the bus. Aggressive war on a European country? Not a red line. War crimes? Not a red line. Ethnic cleansing, rape and “light” genocide? Not a red line. Chemical weapons use? Not a red line either.
What’s left? Tactical nuclear weapons? Exterminating the entire populace?
If we won’t lift a finger even in the face of the worst acts the continent has seen in decades, why would the Baltics feel wholly confident that we’d actually honor Article 5(particularly if Trump gets re-elected, god forbid)?
Shouldn’t we set SOME threshold that would trigger NATO intervention in Ukraine, just to impose limits on the carnage?
ronno2018
OK, Adam please make smaller and more thoughtful posts!!!! I realize you are emotionally connected to the conflict, but the amount of links and the range of commentary is just too much. I worry your care and concern for Ukraine is making you too open to Azov right wing framing, etc. Hang in there! Thanks for all you contribute!
Kent
Question for Adam or anyone else who actually knows shit.
I’ve been wondering to what extent NATO countries might actually be assisting Ukraine on the down low without making official pronouncements. It is probably hard to send them really big shit like MIGs or Abrams tanks in secret. But I imagine that the Pentagon has the means to funnel billions of dollars worth of supplies into Ukraine without putting out news releases to that effect. As do other NATO countries. I wonder if there are actually two channels of support for Ukraine. The public channel that we read about on Twitter and the New York Times. And the back channel where stuff is sent secretly to preserve deniability and keep the Russians guessing.
I would also expect that western intelligence is hugely assisting Ukraine, both in terms of human intelligence about what is happening inside Russia, but also all the military satellite and electronic monitoring stuff.
We probably won’t know the whole truth for decades. But I have to hope we are doing more than publicly arguing about some of this stuff.
debbie
@ronno2018:
More thoughtful?!?
At what point will Putin have overextended his military?
sdhays
Adam, what do you think would be an appropriate US/NATO response if the use of chemical weapons in Mariupol is confirmed?
frosty
@Kent: allowing themselves to be used as propaganda tools is foolish
Jane Fonda is still living with this.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The piece from Dmitry Trenin, while full of some outrageous lies, touches on some issues that I think go far in explaining (on a purely speculative basis) why Putin felt that he had to conquer (or if not conquer then utterly destroy) Ukraine at some point.
My thesis is that the mere existence of a Ukraine which is organized along principles of social & political economy different from Putinist Russia is an existential threat to the latter.
This is because a successful, prosperous Ukraine would serve as a Trojan Horse for deeply antithetic values (individual autonomy & freedom, rule of law, accountable government, etc.) within the envelope of Russian Orthodox Christian civilization – the latter defined not so much in the narrow, geopolitical way of say Samuel Huntington, but in the broader and looser way of characterizing civilizations advocated by say Felipe Fernández-Armesto – who has written about the dynamism and strength of this civilization when viewed in the context of the last 1000 years.
It is one thing for Putinist Russia to fight against these values when they are embedded in the context of another alien civilization. But to wage the same ideological fight within their own house so to speak, that idea is intolerable. It is a House Divided Against Itself That Cannot Stand condition for them.
This tells me that the false pretexts raised before the invasion, regarding Ukraine joining the EU or joining NATO, were never the real issue. Those things were at most symptoms rather than causes of the root problem (from a Russian POV) of Ukraine becoming a vibrant and prosperous society.
I suspect that Putin could have tolerated a high level of Ukrainian independence from Moscow if it had been a corrupt kleptocracy and a state lacking in popular support – that was permissible. What was not permissible was showing up the Russian social model as a failure by way of contrast, or that another strong state could challenge Russian leadership within the civilization that they share in common.
Gin & Tonic
@ronno2018: Fuck yourself with your “right-wing framing.”
Another Scott
@Mike in DC: I have no inside information. But my understanding is that we are doing a lot to help Ukraine – certainly more than VVP expected. (Recall that Medvedev said that kicking Russia off of SWIFT would be an act of war.) Compare what is being done by NATO and the west now with Budapest 1956 (a former office mate fled to the US then) or Czechoslovakia 1968.
The overwhelming goal is to defeat Putin and Russia in this conflict. The post-WWII international order will be destroyed if Russia can continue to grab territory in Europe whenever it sees fit. That’s the red line here, IMHO. NATO and the west has to be smart about how Russia is defeated, and cannot let obvious provocations distract us from the goal. Yes, in my view, a strong response is needed if indeed Russia has used chemical weapons in Ukraine. But the response needs to further the overall goal.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Argiope
@Gin & Tonic: I was going to go with “Adam doesn’t write for those with limited attention spans” but this works too.
Comrade Bukharin
@Another Scott: If Vindman is so eager for American boots on the ground in Ukraine, he can start with his own.
Calouste
@Kent: That already happens, i.e. NATO countries sending more stuff to Ukraine than they publicly announce. The Dutch PM said so a few weeks ago, with the explanation that Russia doesn’t need to know in detail what the military needs of Ukraine are.
sanjeevs
@Kent: Clare Daly is a piece of work all right but the 11% vote is a bit misleading as European elections tend to have lower turnout and publicity.
Her partner in crime (Wallace) is even worse. Supposed a left wing property developer (yeah right) who went bankrupt.
Lyrebird
I do not see any mention here of China. If the US takes a more active role and they decide to resupply the RF, that’s more bombs raining down on Ukr citizens. I can’t find it now, but last week CNN was reporting that the Chinese government blamed the US for Bucha.
Calouste
@Kent: Uhm, in the US you have first past the post, and you get wonders like Gaetz and Cawthorn with about 0.1% of the national vote each. Nothing much to do with the voting system as with the electorate.
In the UK they had the Honourable Member for Baghdad Central, George Galloway MP (most recently employed by Russia Today), elected from not just one, but three different single member constituencies.
Argiope
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I think you may be into something here. None of the stated reasons ever really seemed to fully track, and decisions like this must have at least some internal logic. Putin isn’t crazy, he’s evil.
Carlo Graziani
The Trenin piece isn’t really bastardized Dostoevsky. It’s been stripped of the Russian Orthodox core, so that all that’s left is the idiotic 19th-century romanticism. In much less impressive and persuasive and descriptive and perceptive language.
I couldn’t actually tell what that document was attempting to accomplish. Is this really intended as a “multicultural” manifesto that will function as a philosophical rallying point for intellectual Putinists? He either needs to lay off the crack, or to smoke a lot more of it.
Alison Rose ???
@ronno2018: the hell is this?
terry chay
@Kelly: he also was one of the few analysts predicting Ukraine would win in the first day of the invasion. That alone makes him a worthwhile read.
I guess it makes sense that a tanker would understand the Russian military on a deeper level than most.
Kent
Shit is getting real inside the Kremlin. From the Times of London today: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-purges-150-fsb-agents-in-response-to-russias-botched-war-with-ukraine-lf9k6tn6g
Jay
Slava phoned me today.
they freed a Russian rape factory,
I had to tell him he violated OpSec, endangered his unit, he’s only supposed to use his phone when he is in the rear, as the Russians can track and target phones, in the front lines.
it sucks that I couldn’t support him, for a while.
Kent
@Calouste: Madison Cawthorn won his district with 54% of the vote, beating his Dem opponent by 12 points.
Jay
@ronno2018:
2014 Azov isn’t 2022 Azov.
terry chay
@Ohio Mom: the westerners who would be hurt by this would be the ones underwriting it. Right now, those were people making bets (profiteering) on Russian debt while a lot of others were trying to divest themselves of it. Quite frankly, they deserve to get pantsed and the only people who aren’t being punished but maybe should be are the banks that negotiated this transfer between some of their clients who wanted to unload vs. offload.
Default won’t happen for 30 days btw. Russia made the r payment in rubles which is a violation of contract. There is a 30 day window before that is considered a default.
The impact is twofold. First it will downgrade Russian debt which will make it expensive and difficult for their government to borrow. Almost all governments borrow because it makes good sense when you make capital investments. While Russia has run a budget surplus, I doubt that will continue. They will need it. Being cut off from Western capital is effectively a death sentence economically.
The other thing is political and long term. Russia hasn’t defaulted on their debt since the 1918 revolution. Not even during the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were some articles about the impact of that default. Yes, a lot of bond holders worldwide took a huge bath on it, but The Soviet Union never recovered economically from that bad rating and they were forced to pay up all they defaulted eventually anyways. We are talking about almost a century before Russia recovered from that fiasco with nothing to gain.
It is much worse for Russia than anyone else if they default.
Doc Sardonic
@ronno2018: Blow it out your ass you Kremlin concern troll twat
Carlo Graziani
@terry chay:
While I agree with what you write about the reasons that Russia has to dread the consequences of a default, Russia did in fact default on its sovereign debt in 1998.
Kent
Ha ha….
eddie blake
@Kent: that’s pretty damn funny
eta-i wonder if the super-crappy performance in ukraine of the t-72 and its descendants, the t-80’s and 90’s are due to the autoloader. having all of those ammunition bags right there on the carousel without blowout panels or wet storage would account for all of those turrets blown right the fuck off.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
As to John Mearsheimer:
A few months ago I began following a YouTube chess channel broadcasting from Moscow. It was entertaining because it featured nightly blitz tournaments among a cast of enthusiastic amateurs of all ages and both genders, and the female players were the fan favorites. But I stopped watching when it looked like Putin was heading toward war.
Recently, the channel’s owners posted a statement about their plans for the channel which didn’t mention the war or politics, saying they’d rather not talk about those things. Their reticence didn’t last long, though. In response to questions, they quickly revealed their true views — phrased as politely and diplomatically as possible for their international audience, and avoiding the most obviously loony lines of argument. The first thing they said was that they had read the writings of “J. Mearsheimer” and agreed with his views. (Before long, they were off to the races with whataboutism and blather about “fraternal peoples.”) These are intelligent, presumably educated and sophisticated people in early middle age, living in the capital city.
This incident among others provides evidence that the polls showing overwhelming Russian support for Putin’s war are probably reliable. It also confirms Mearsheimer’s status as a useful idiot whose main value is providing talking points for tankies.
Carlo Graziani
@Kent: Holy shit. It is going to be the second battle of Kharkiv.
Mallard Filmore
@Lyrebird:
Here is a video that mentions China. It’s a bit dated as Mr Zeihan says Kyiv is in danger. The video is split into chapters, start at about minute 36. He says China is MORE vulnerable to sanctions than Russia.
title: “Confronting A Geopolitical Strategist On Putin’s Big Plan | Ep. 640”
link: https://youtu.be/pdP01go8wdQ
terry chay
@Kent: Mark Hertling explains why it’d be impossible to impractical to send Abrams tanks. They basically run on jet fuel or some such so the logistics of such a tank is beyond a non NATO nation. It seems the value of such a tank is to give to former Soviet/now NATO allies so that they can release T-72s to Ukraine.
The problem with sending something without announcing it is what would happen if/when Russia captures or destroys said equipment. Lots of Javelins were sent and Russia has captured some. If we hadn’t announced that we were sending them, that’d be very embarrassing. In 2014 it was a disaster when a lot of counterbattery radar that we provided Ukraine were captured by the Russians. That was a different Ukrainian army.
It does make me think: we announced we were sending 100 switchblade drones but we never announced which (and how many of which) we sent. Presumably the limiting factor for this is either production/stockpile or the fact that the operators needed to be trained and it turns out that is BERY recent (I think Adam linked an article in this thread 3 days ago about it.)
I think it is possible that we sent many more than day 100 drones. But saying we sent 100 enough plausible deniability if a few get captured intact or they show videos of dozens of vehicles destroyed by such things.
OTOH, in many ways the psychological effect of the very existence “killer suicide drones” is bigger than their strategic impact. Any time a Russian is going to see a drone in the air they’re going to totally freak the fuck out. So who knows.
Jay
@Comrade Bukharin:
hi tankie,
eddie blake
@terry chay: lolol..pretty sure the idea is that you don’t see the drones.
Kent
@eddie blake: The poles were responding to this from Putin…
Kent
Jet fuel is just kerosine.
Adam L Silverman
@David Anderson: I don’t know him that well. I’ve met him once and listened to him give the worst presentation of his research I’ve ever heard and I’ve heard a lot of research presentations.
Comrade Bukharin
@Jay: WTF? Anybody who’s not in favor of a direct NATO-Russia war is a tankie?
eddie blake
@Kent: but of course, i mean, that sounds VERY plausible.
Jay
@Kent:
Abrams are multifuel.
Carlo Graziani
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: Mearsheimer’s problem isn’t that he’s an idiot: it’s that he has the imagination of a woodchuck. He learned to think about international relations and conflict as a grad student in the context of a Metternich Concert of Nations-type model, in which everyone zero-sums their way by rational decisions that everyone agrees are rational. He just can’t think in any other way, even when the conflict at hand obviously doesn’t fit.
Adam L Silverman
@Kelly: A lot of that is apocryphal.
Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.
Mallard Filmore
@terry chay:
There is a YouTube video of a Russian soldier seemingly hearing a drone, panicking, running back to his base … with the drone following.
eddie blake
@terry chay: i would imagine the ammunition would be the bigger issue: shells for the abrams are self-contained. shells in the ukranian inventory for the t-series (as well as the ones they’d be getting from poland and other eastern european countries) are two-piece, with a warhead separate from the propellant bag.
Jay
@Comrade Bukharin:
crapload of “Western” volunteers have volunteered. Some are my friends.
NATO needs to step up.
Adam L Silverman
@ronno2018: Yes, let’s ignore the Ukrainian Jews who I cited that indicated the Azov Regiment is not neo-NAZI.
And how exactly have I adopted the framing of the Azov Regiment?
prostratedragon
@Kent: Aha, someone remembered!
This kind of lame shit is one reason for my longstanding slight regard for that gnome.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Stephen Colbert talking about the Ukrainians making their drones to look like the drones from the Terminator movie series to terrify Russian soldiers.
https://youtu.be/zRtiy01yhGw
Chetan Murthy
@Comrade Bukharin: Glad to see that you jump *immediately* to direct NATO-Russia armed hostilities, *tankie*. Eat a gun, tankie.
Comrade Bukharin
@Jay: Step up and do what?
Bill Arnold
@Gin & Tonic:
Seconded, for that at least.
The Russian propaganda re Ukraine for at least the past 8 years has been beyond loathsome, poisoning 10s of millions of minds, and those propagandists should be pithed without mercy, or at least muzzled and their fingers broken.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: You are most likely correct in your speculation. If you’re not, something is really wrong.
Ishiyama
I’m just guessing, but if NATO intends to intervene in a substantial manner, the planning and positioning of forces would take more than a couple of weeks. I would not look for military assistance from NATO before the end of June, if ever. Maybe by then conditions in Russia will have changed and Putin will be out of power. Anything is possible as things proceed.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: It will either prevent them from joining per NATO policy, which is a win for Putin or NATO will go forward and that will show that NATO selectively enforces a policy that it used to justify not admitting Ukraine for 8 years. Which would also be a win for Putin.
Comrade Bukharin
@Chetan Murthy: I’m in favor of giving UA any and all weapons they need. Not in favor of direct US-Russia combat.
Jay
@Mallard Filmore:
yurp, led the drone back to his base.
word is, commercial drones are being tracked by the Russian ELINT forces, back to their operators, who become targeted, rather quickly.
Medicine Man
@Alison Rose ???: A sad, obvious troll attempt. Shaking of the head, lamenting how Adam is over-wrought, etc.
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: I don’t know because I don’t have access to either the contingency planning or the targeting options that would be included in that.
Jay
@Comrade Bukharin:
sanctions, weapons, outside of Ukraine training, closing borders, stopping the flow of oil and gas.
terry chay
@Carlo Graziani: I couldnt find the article I am referencing (It was over a month ago) but the 1998 default was not used/considered because it was a destiny in domestic, not foreign debt. The impact of the default following the 1917 revolution was considered by this economist as a more relevant example of the long term impact of default.
I hope that distinction makes sense.
BTW, here is an article on who made what bets re: russian debt
enplaned
Mearsheimer, in a 2016 video (as usual, saying that Russia’s behavior in Ukraine is the west’s fault for failing to allow Russia its alleged Great Power prerogatives) said unequivocally that Russia would not invade Ukraine because Putin isn’t that stupid. So far as I can tell, no one has called out Mearsheimer on this.
Has anyone asked Mearsheimer whether that same thinking means that Germany’s invasion of Poland was equally justifiable? I mean, by Mearsheimer’s logic, that was also just a great power seeking a buffer state.
Comrade Bukharin
@Jay: I absolutely agree.
EZSmirkzz
Juxtaposed with
So why isn’t it feasible to send the 82nd and 101st Airborn to have joint exercises with Sweden and Finland? It seems to beg the question, “What are America’s national interest in the region, and what is the worst case scenario of any action America or NATO embark on in that respect.
Are we at war with Russia, or is this just hyperbole?
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: I’ve got something regarding China for tomorrow night’s update.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, you said that. I tend to think that people would see through Putin suddenly ginning up an active border dispute with Sweden or Finland. YMMV.
Kent
Or NATO instead of selectively enforcing the policy, NATO could just announce they are rescinding the policy. How would that be a win for Putin?
Adam L Silverman
@Mallard Filmore: I posted it here last week.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Carlo Graziani:
This distinction is at the heart of that book The Shield of Achilles that I referenced in my long comment last week. Philip Bobbitt’s thesis is that during periods when there is a broad ideological consensus spanning much of the international community regarding what legitimizes a state, then wars and other interstate conflicts are constrained within an informal set of rules that contain the damage and tend to produce conflicts the termination of which can be a subject of negotiations.
But then there are times when the ideas & values legitimizing the state are themselves what is being fought over and those conflicts are far more bitter and violent and end only when 1 point of view triumphs and the competitors go under. They also tend to involve coalitions, and often last long enough to see one or more major powers switching sides during the course of the conflict. He calls these Epochal Wars.
In his chronology it is also very noticeable that as soon as one Epochal War ends, it usually doesn’t take very long before the next one begins. The brief interval from 1991 to 2014 is not that atypical.
In this schema, it is a woeful mistake to misunderstand the nature of a new war and get into an Epochal War without realizing it.
That is essentially the mistake that the Imperial Japanese government made in 1941 – they thought the war they were declaring on the USA was going to be a conventional one of colonialist plunder, of the sort that states fight all the time to dispute control over resources, amenable to being concluded thru compromise and negotiation which would leave them in possession of at least some of their gains, in the event that they inflicted enough pain on the USA to make the gains seem not worth the sacrifice. They were mistaken.
Mearsheimer is demonstrating the peril of this sort of willful blindness.
YY_Sima Qian
@Lyrebird: China is not going to give Russia direct material aid, especially not munitions or equipment (there are compatibility issues anyway). China is continuing its rhetorically pro-Russian neutrality while taking very little action one way or the other. The Bucha & other scenes of war crimes are not really discussed in state media, & in any case the country is focused on beating back the Omicron BA.2 outbreaks. On Chinese social media I’d say it is about 50/50 between those trying to amply Russia misinformation & blame everything on the US/NATO, & those who are expressing disgust at the behavior of Russian invaders & schadenfreude at its military ineffectiveness. This is a far cry from the early days of the war when Chinese social media was overwhelmingly pro-Russia (but does not necessarily represent overall popular sentiments). As I mentioned before, both the CCP regime & the Chinese population are much more motivated by an-US sentiments (as a consequence of the downward spiraling great power competition) than any sense of pro-Putin or pro-Russia loyalty. Xi’s generation of Chinese (leaders & population) may have some nostalgia toward the USSR, but sentiments tend to have little influence on Chinese policymaking. Furthermore, nobody in China is nostalgic toward Tsarist Russia, which is the path Putin seems to be traveling.
The old joke is that “China has picked a side in this conflict – China.”
There was some dispute about where the Tochka-U short range ballistic missiles that struck Kramatorsk train station actually come from. Supposedly the serial numbers on the missile bodies are a few digits off from missiles that Ukraine launched at Donbas a while ago (during the years of low intensity warfare there). Given the Tochka-U are used by both sides in the war, both drawing from ex-Soviet era stockpiles, having similar serials might not mean much, or Tochka-U that landed in rebel held Donbas years ago could have been launched by Russia then (either in a false flag operation or because it just missed the intended target). Russia seized on this information to claim that the Kramatorsk train station strike was actually a false-flag operation by the Ukrainian Army. Anyway, the official Chinese MFA line is that China is horrified by the humanitarian disaster caused by the war (but still not directly assigning responsibility to Russia for invading), noted the conflicting claims by the two sides on the Kramatorsk strike specifically, & supports an open & independent investigation into the incident. I suppose that is better than simply parroting Russian propaganda, which is something Chinese MFA spokespeople have all too often done through course of the war. (I am not sure, Russia may be calling for an “open & independent” investigation, too, but clearly in bad faith.)
Adam L Silverman
@EZSmirkzz: As I’ve been writing here since 2016, we are at war with Russia. Putin has been stating this publicly since 2007 and that as far as he’s concerned we are the aggressors. Additionally, we’ve largely ignored this reality because the bulk of this war has been fought using information power directed through the cyber domain, using weaponized diplomacy and economic power to penetrate American institutions, and when it has gone kinetic or lethal, it is always low intensity either through the use of Russian mercenaries and other proxies or via Russia’s wet work program.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t disagree. The problem is that the two possible responses to him doing so provide him with information warfare victories.
enplaned
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Yeah, I’ve had similar thoughts – a free, prosperous and democratic Ukraine is proof positive that to be Russian (or a close relative) does not mean that you must be a totalitarian state like Russia. It’s a living reproach.
Post Soviet-Ukraine was initially much as you describe, a Russian-style kleptocracy dominated by Soviet-holdover nomenklatura, at least for the 1990s. Then comes the Orange revolution in 2004, after which you get the first pro-Western president, Yushchenko (the guy who the Russians, or Russian-oriented Ukrainians, tried to poison with dioxin), whose administration was spoiled by infighting with Yulia Timoshenko. This leads to another pro-Russian president, Yanukovych (the one for whom Manafort worked).
In 2014 you get a second revolution after Yanukovych reneged on signing an agreement with the EU. Yanukovych flees to Russia.
After that, Putin clearly decides that Ukraine is now slipping away from the Russian orbit, so he grabs Crimea and gins up the eastern “independence” movements.
The point is that up until 2014, Putin presumably still had hope that Ukraine could be suborned into a Russian satellite (like Belarus, where Lukashenka made it easy for Russia).
After 2014, he clearly no longer believed that. And ironically, once he took Crimea and Donetsk, he stripped Ukraine of two of its most pro-Russian citizens, meaning that even if he hadn’t also p*ssed off all remaining Ukrainians, Ukraine was going to tilt decidedly west.
No one has worked harder than Putin to give Ukraine a strong national identity, something it definitely did not have (except in the far west) when the USSR collapsed.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: NATO will not rescind the policy because it is intended to prevent states involved in a variety of types of conflicts running to join NATO and then immediately invoking Article 5 to get NATO to enter the conflict on their side.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Carlo Graziani: Thanks for the insight, but the term “useful idiot” as normally employed doesn’t necessarily connote lack of intelligence. It can be precisely the kind of phenomenon you describe: an intelligent person who fails to take in the actual facts on the ground because of rigid preconceptions and winds up lending support to atrocities (e.g., the Webbs and George Bernard Shaw with respect to Stalinist Russia).
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I am not going to continue to beat this horse to death after this comment, but I don’t see the big win for Putin here.
terry chay
@Kent: *sigh* here is the link.
I don’t know anything about war or airplanes for that matter, but I wouldn’t want to pick an argument with a tank commander who rose to general about what a M1 tanks takes that is “similar to jet fuel.”
Maybe I’m naive but when petroleum is refined there are different parts that come out: diesel, gasoline, etc. Those parts can be further refined from diesel to kerosene for example. It sounds like what we call “jet fuel” may be further refined from kerosene we buy at the code space heaters. It sure doesn’t smell like diesel when it burns, IMO.
I think that given that the engine is a turbine, even if you could fuel it with bog standard kerosene, clearing out a camping supply store would probably only give it a couple miles of run as my understanding is that turbine engines on vehicles are notoriously fuel inefficient and that would be magnified on a tracked vehicle like a tank.
EZSmirkzz
@Adam L Silverman:
You recall I was happy to see you posting here while still posting at SST, so I am aware of the tensions with Russia since Putin was sandbagged on Libya.
Your response was non-responsive sir :-)
ETA Thanks for all your hard work. Good night.
Bill Arnold
@Kent:
One or more NATO members can block accession.
(OTOH, a border dispute can be resolved by destroying the invading forces.)
patroclus
@terry chay: The late 90’s Russian debt default was on external indebtedness just like the 1918 USSR default. The difference is that Lenin(and then Stalin) took the position that “we’re not going to pay and we’re never going to pay” which essentially was a repudiation, not just a default. Yeltsin, by contrast, ultimately (after several months of argument when things like the Swiss seizure of the touring Kremlin Heritage art exhibition, including lots of gold happened) took the position of “we’re not going to pay now, but we’ll agree to reschedule and, in the meantime, allow Russian debt to be traded on the secondary market.”
Both examples are relevant. Lenin/Stalin’s default/repudiation led to decades and decades of economic turmoil; Yeltsin’s default was negotiated to an acceptable resolution and turmoil only for the short and medium term. How will the international financial community react to this pending default? The obligations exist and won’t be extinguished unless agreed. I think, like your economist, that the reaction will be more like the 1918 default than the 1998 one because Putin is less likely to play ball like Yeltsin and that he more resembles Lenin and Stalin. But we’ll see. It’s a long-term probably post-war issue, if we get there. Not the more immediate issues that Adam highlights.
Kent
I understand the reason for the policy. But NATO doesn’t *have* to admit anyone.
They can still exclude countries who might try that stunt without actually having a written policy. Or they can refine it to build in exceptions involving Russia. I have faith in bureaucrats. That is what they do.
Carlo Graziani
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: Yeah, I know. Sorry. Mearsheimer gets up my nose.
Carlo Graziani
@Adam L Silverman:
Really, this is a red herring. Creating a conflict to block NATO membership is a ploy that Russia has been able to run against ex-SSRs in what it regards as its “sphere of influence”. Even attempting to do so in Sweden or Finland would bring down swift retribution from NATO and from the US, irrespective of NATO rules.
Calouste
@Omnes Omnibus: As Adam has mentioned, Ukraine has been preparing for a Russian invasion since 2014. Finland on the other hand has been preparing for a Russian invasion since 1945.
patroclus
I’ll add that the consequence of the upcoming Russian default will be that they won’t get financial credit for their obligations and will be less able to raise capital and do things like invest and grow their economy or fund their military long-term. The Chinese banks – now publicly-traded and multi-national – although certainly subject to administrative guidance by the PBOC, are large enough to provide credit to Russia, but lending money into a default is not exactly a “wise banker” move and the leadership of those banks won’t be inclined to do it absent a big policy move by the PRC government. Which I doubt will happen. I don’t think the Chinese are about to adopt a Lend-Lease for Russia in the midst of a war the Russians don’t appear to be winning.
Omnes Omnibus
@terry chay: Let’s say it’s is virtually the same as standard kerosene…. I am willing to bet that the Ukrainians do not have a supply chain set up to move massive quantities of JP8 to their front lines. Moreover, the tools needed to work on an M1A1 are different than the tools used on Warsaw Pact equipment. Tanks need a fuck load of maintenance to keep working. An entire parallel set of supply and maintenance channels would be needed to keep them moving.
terry chay
@Adam L Silverman: Wow, that is disappointing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole military band thing was apocryphal as that was sort of the point of the article: “I’m going to share a bunch of anecdotes and you can take them as true generalizations or b.s. about the actual disposition of the armies.” It would be disappointing if almost of the other anecdotes are fabrication as they are supposed to be his personal experiences.
terry chay
@eddie blake: According to the thread the biggest issue is logistical maintenance of the Abrams. But if we were to extrapolate Adam’s comment about Mark Hertling’s other article, maybe the general likes to talk out of his ass/exaggerate for effect?
Omnes Omnibus
@Calouste: And that border has been pretty stable over those years. All I am saying is that a border dispute that erupted now could easily be dismissed as a frivolous attempt to forestall a NATO bid rather than as a legitimate issue. And it would not be hypocritical to do so.
Adam L Silverman
@EZSmirkzz: Thank you for the kind words. And a very good night to you.
terry chay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: just want to mention I found your two comments here and at least one in a previous thread insightful, or at least thought provoking.
please keep it up.
eddie blake
@terry chay: i mean, if the idea is to restock t-series units that are sent to ukraine from eastern european countries with M1A2’s that makes sense; if they wanna send the abrams TO ukraine to be crewed by ukrainians, i’m pretty sure that’s not gonna work.
as was mentioned by omnes, they take a whole different set of tools to maintain and as i said, the rounds for the main gun are incompatible.
Adam L Silverman
@terry chay: I’m not sure which were and weren’t, I just had someone who would know tell me a lot of the anecdotes in the article were between embellished to tall tales when I asked if that person had seen the piece.
As a tanker and as a general officer, he knows his business. But there’s a reason I didn’t include his piece or reference it tonight and it’s because when I reached out to someone to do due diligence on parts of it, the response was less then positive.
Adam L Silverman
@terry chay: I’m only passing on what I was told regarding the Bulwark piece. I haven’t seen the thread you’re referring to and have no reason to believe it’s not accurate.
terry chay
@Adam L Silverman: BTW, I’m sure you know/remember this, but others might ❤️ this compilation of one such time it turned “kinetic.”
Adam L Silverman
@terry chay: Yep, I referenced it in one of the updates a month or so ago.
Adam L Silverman
I’m to bed. Everyone have a good night.
terry chay
@patroclus: Thanks for staying things far more accurately and clearly than my hazy recollection of an article I can no longer recall.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@terry chay:
Thank you, that is very kind of you.
I’ve been pondering some limitations regarding Bobbitt’s schema that concern me when trying to apply them to understanding what is going on this year.
First, his analysis is very Euro-centric. He focuses entirely on the European state system spanning roughly the last 500 years and ignores the rest of the world except insofar as non-European states were drawn into the Epochal war which he calls the Long War, that began in August 1914 and concluded in 1991.
He really does not grapple with the issue of wars that cross major civilizational boundaries, with the exception of Japanese involvement in the Second World War which I mentioned above.
This is I think potentially a source of hope, it may be that Epochal Wars as he defines them can to some degree be confined within civilizational blocs, if such blocs can learn to coexist with each other without being critically threatened by each others values & ideas.
The other problem which he attempts to grapple with but IMHO really fails to address in the book, is how an Epochal War plays out with nuclear weapons in the hands of both sides. Given that these wars tend to be existential for the states involved, this is a scary, scary problem.
hotshoe
@Gin & Tonic: I was hoping that someone would push back on that “right-wing framing” shit.
Thank you!
hotshoe
@Gin & Tonic: I was hoping that someone would push back on that “right-wing framing” shit.
Thank you!
@Gin & Tonic:
hotshoe
@Kent: If true, good news!
Although the FSB goons all deserve much worse than being fired from their positions, worse than going to Russian prison …
hotshoe
sorry ’bout duplicate comment: got error message that comment did not go through, message itself was in error I guess ;)
YY_Sima Qian
@Mallard Filmore: China is more vulnerable to economic sanction, because China is much more integrated into the global economy than Russia (which is little more than a resources & weapons supplier). By the same token, enacting sanctions on China (at least then ones that will actually hurt China significantly) will also cause much graver economic consequences for all involved. Therefore, the threshold for getting some kind consensus on Russia-level sanctions across the West will be orders of magnitude higher on Russia (& that was difficult enough). If you think the Global South is non-plussed about the West sanctioning Russia w/ little regard to 2nd & 3rd order effects on them, sanctioning China to the same level will be a hell of a lot worse. It will be economic armageddon & will likely cause a global depression.
On the key lessons from the Ukraine crisis (a consensus w/in China) is that China needs to make itself less vulnerable to sanctions. When the Trump Administration started sanctioning Chinese companies & research institutions (continued so far under Biden) w/ gusto, that focused the minds of Chinese bureaucrats & businessmen on increasing self reliance. It was always promoted by the government, but businesses (even state owned enterprises) generally made the practical decision of continuing to purchase components/inputs from the US or other Western countries because they are more mature, have better performance & sometimes cheaper, which starved domestic suppliers of cash to improve themselves. The key consequences of US sanctions on Chinese entities have been a universal consensus that 1st non-US, then non-Western, then domestic alternatives must be developed. It will take quite some time in some areas (such as semiconductors), but I see a real determination to pursue this goal across the board, & that is when China is at the most formidable. So now state owned & private businesses are avoiding US suppliers as much as possible (& use it to drive a harder bargain if they cannot avoid US suppliers) as well as making sure to make a percentage of purchases to domestic suppliers (even if they have lower quality, lower performance & higher cost right now). The 1st to benefit are of course European, Japanese & South Korea competitors of US firms, & domestic suppliers are getting a steady stream (or torrent) of revenue to finance their R&D, production improvement & capacity expansion. Members of the US Chamber of Commerce in China have identified the dynamic as #1 source of uncertainty for their prospects in the country. As an employee of a US company in China, I see it 1st hand.
China has also been working on instruments to circumvent the US dollar hegemony, such as alternatives to the SWIFT messaging system & the Digital Renminbi, these efforts will surely be redoubled in light of the Ukraine Crisis. These instruments will not likely threaten the US dollar’s hegemony in the short to medium term, it is the US’ domestic actions (& some international actions) that threaten the full faith & credit of the greenback, but they offer China options.
terry chay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: That is interesting. I guess your concern would be that if it is not confined, then it could spin into a world war with countries like China and India forced to take a side in a new epoch?
In some sense, if we were to combine that thought with Adam’s assertion/distinction in that the war has been being fought since 2007 and this is just a more kinetic continuation of 2014, we can say at some level this new epochal conflict is happening as we speak and metastasizing across the European regional boundaries.
For instance, even though the US and China both feel they are adversaries in this next order, they have an agreement with regards to a stronger Europe and more militarized Germany. US wished it in order to release military resources to strengthen the western alliances in the Pacific (Japan, South Korea, Austrailia, New Zealand, and increasingly countries such as Vietnam). China wishes it as a counterbalance to the US on the world stage (e.g. a Western country they can appeal to in a dispute that can stand up to the US as a peer vs. subject nation).
They are clearly not likely to be allied, but opposites and are making actions/prioritizing what they see to be the larger litmus tests in the conflict where the weapons are not just kinetic but are informational, economic and beyond (e.g. vaccine diplomacy).
So even if we take Bobbit’s schema, the nature of these epochal shifts is the fundamental nature and resolution of these conflicts is itself different from anything that preceded it (and the cause of blindness in previous formulations). There is no need to assume its resolution as decisive MUST be a military victory in this case, even if the resolution is a zero sum victory of one set of ideas over another.
If we look at this potential conflict as a bipolar one, then the two poles are the standard “Western” formulation (not in terms of location as Japan would be “Western” but rather in terms of economy, political system and ideals such as certain freedoms) vs. a new authoritarianism under the assumption that you can have the economic system and private ownership divorced from the western ideals of personal freedoms, democracy, etc. Historians decades from now may point to Tianamen as an expression of that (as it only occurred a couple years before the collapse Soviet bloc so far all intents and purposes was the first sign).
If that is the case, then I’d put the bet on the West as prevailing. While authoritarian systems can move much faster and decisively as well as initially do an end around when jump starting market economies from scratch (a la Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem), I’d argue that the long view of history has flowed where political changes that created “western” ideals have always followed from the increased power that accompanied the more equitable distribution of wealth in creating a viable “middle class” (Magna Carta through the American Revolution). In fact, the recent (post 1979) redistribution of wealth away from the middle class toward the tail is an aberration and is probably what enables autocracies and kleptocracies as a competing idea in the first place. In the long run those solutions, while important initially, break down and become victim to the same things that bring about initial success. (Japan Meiji restoration was phenomenal and authoritarian and one might argue that that same formulation made the template to make them blind about what Pearl Harbor would entail in terms of WW2 ending).
Anecdotally, yes China’s autocracy was phenomenal at dealing with COVID initially, but their need to play zero sum with the West cause them to create massive vaccine skepticism in their own sphere (esp. Hong Kong) and they became too entrenched in their COVID Zero policy long past the point where a Western country would have sought alternative. Yes, they are still doing better than the US, but their numbers relative to Japan or New Zealand or even South Korea are terrible. Arguing that over the long term their policies were more successful is like arguing that Sweden’s coverups were successful in creating “herd immunity.” We can admit the US response failed but there is no room to admit that in China which is bad.
Similarly, Putin seems to be a realist. However 20 years of authoritarian power and assiduously quashing dissent created a bubble that is starting to look like the largest strategic blunder in Russia’s history just a month and a half into it.
It is difficult to believe you can get all the benefits with none of the consequences. I, for one, will take the weaknesses and potential corruptions of the West and its ideals as I don’t believe the continued upward distribution of wealth (which seems to be the root cause of both the corruption and the creating of competing political ideal) is sustainable.
Democracy is ugly, but at least you have some (sometimes unfair) competition of ideas. Russia doesn’t seem to have any technocrats left outside of their Central Bank, and even that I call into question if they think they can think defaulting on their sovereign debt by paying in Rubles is a worthwhile gamesmanship. Either they too have been suborned but the authoritarian, or, (more likely) they are the economic equivalent of the Japanese or Mersheimer — not realizing the rules of the game and it’s resolution have fundamentally changed with a new epoch.
terry chay
@hotshoe: There was a set of twitter threads purported to be from inside the FSB Section 5 which said to the effect that they were not the ones advocating the war, but, for their own survival, their job was to produce the sort of intelligence that Putin wanted to hear in the run up to the War.
In other words think of these as the poor neocon saps that Cheney used to “prove” that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.
One such person was an intelligence cabinet official that Putin publicly berated a couple days before the reinvasion just for temerity to suggest that maybe they should pause because it was obvious that the United States knew what they were up to.
If so, these are not the “goons” you are talking about, If anything the sort of goons who murder their political opponents or encourage the commission of war crimes are now further entrenched and are probably being used to “detain” said FSB officers who will never see from again.
patrick II
@terry chay:
https://www.mcnallyinstitute.com/how-does-the-abrams-tank-multi-fuel-engine-work/
Someone doesn’t know what they are talking about.
YY_Sima Qian
@terry chay:
I am not sure what numbers you are referring to. China’s problem is quite specific: low vaccination rate among the > 80 y.o., which also doomed Hong Kong. There is no vaccinate hesitancy among the general population in either Mainland China or Hong Kong, 88% of all Chinese (from 0 y.o. up) are fully vaccinated, ~ 50% boosted. Even if people in China & Hong Kong were influenced by early misinformation against mRNA vaccines, they could still have taken Chinese vaccines. The problem is that the elderly are not taking any vaccines, period. This maybe a Sinosphere thing, because Taiwan has similar challenges. A higher percentage of its > 80 y.o. cohort is fully vaccinated than Mainland China, but far from Singapore, South Korea or New Zealand levels.
Holding on to “Zero COVID” (or at last policies associated w/ “Zero COVID”) for now at least slow down the spread enough to possibly afford the time to correct that mistake. As for other metrics, on which one is China doing worse than South Korea or Japan (who has always been very stingy w/ testing) or New Zealand? Positive cases, hospitalizations or deaths?
dopey-o
This is the key insight in 2022: we are at war, but we have not recognized it, because we are fighting the last war. Putin has not.
Putin prepared the battle space prior to invading Ukraine, and he attempted to defang NATO and the US.
If Russia is not defeated in Eastern Ukraine, and continues to undermine the Ukraine state, what will his next next moves be? More separatist ‘republics’? Guerrilla campaigns probing westward?
And if Putin should fall to cancer or Covid, how can we know that his successor won’t continue the same military course? Meaning 20 years of low grade conflict in Europe?
Martin
@terry chay: Abrams tank can run on damn near anything. Gasoline, #2 diesel, jet fuel. One of the benefits of turbine engines is that they can be designed to be very forgiving of fuel type. I’m sure it gets much better range on JP-4 or JP-8 due to the higher energy density, but you can pull up to Citgo and fill it up with whatever they might have on hand.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: But wouldn’t it in this case be accepting their admission fully knowing that such a conflict may happen? I mean, it’s not like NATO would be unaware of the consequences here, or the ways that Russia can game the outcome.
It seems to me the rule is there to protect NATO from situations it couldn’t forsee when it made the rule. But here is a situation it is more aware of than Finland is.
Martin
Agree on the OLC memo. I’ve heard now that part of the reason the DOJ hasn’t acted on some of the House referrals is that there are OLC memos that suggest there’s some special kind of privilege that should be extended to the Chief of Staff, etc.
OLC memos are turning into the Joe Manchin of the executive branch.
patrick II
@Martin:
Fuck OLC memos. Adjudicate it and see if the memo holds water. Any “memo” that allows a participant in an attempt to violently overthrow the our democratic government should not be worth the paper it’s written on. Any bureaucrat who follows it should be fired as attorney general. Any country that allows it’s own destruction through legalistic inaction in such circumstances deserves the fate it gets.
bookworm1398
, and even that I call into question if they think they can think defaulting on their sovereign debt by paying in Rubles is a worthwhile gamesmanship
I have heard a number of comments like this and they puzzle me. Why wouldn’t they default? No one in the West is lending to them anyway until there is a regime change, how does default make anything worse?
debbie
@bookworm1398:
Default would make them look bad. Look what it did to Greece.
wetzel
@Kent:
“She is, of course, a Putin tool”
WTF
Who talks like this?
Try to keep away from this antic tone. I don’t want to agree to the truth value of this claim ‘of course’ without warranted evidence.
You can’t present an accusation as if it were a socially accepted truth. There are two sets of people who do that: idiots or mind control experts. We’re trying to have a civilization around here. I am sorry to take a severe tone. I am saying this from the point of view of my personal response. I don’t know enough to judge whether she is or is not a ‘Putin tool’. I don’t even know who she is! Please don’t judge for me.
Another Scott
@patrick II: The English in that link is, er, interesting.
Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
Carlo Graziani
@bookworm1398:
There’s a point that I keep trying to emphasize, and I’m going to continue making: We’re still only 7 weeks into this war. We have been conditioned to a narrative driven at bottom by a 24-hour news cycle, which sets very short timescales for its chapters.
When we look back on the war a few years from now, we will reckon the natural unit of time in which significant things happened in weeks on the ground in Ukraine, and in months in politics and finance and macroeconomics in Russia. On the latter timescale, the inability to borrow will not be the shrug-emoji that you imply. It will be the difference between Russia being, or not being, an industrialized economy.
That’s leaving aside the easily-predictable, massive political instability that will ensue…
wetzel
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That is a very interesting theory about the political dynamics for Russia to have Ukraine tempted towards the West, like a rotting arm. There is good argument. Holodomor targeted Ukrainian nationalism and the influence of Polish intellectual life in this way of seeing it.
It was the same with the Mongols. Maybe it is a dynamic from the physical geography of inner Asia, but yeah, the cousins or brothers or nephews of Kublai Khan piled mountains of heads for a hundred years in Ukraine. After every Mongol expansion they would completely depopulate the borderlands the Empire. They ate a victory feast seated on a platform of boards crushing the nobility of Kyiv beneath their tables.
For the Mongols, it was fear that Ukraine would be pulled away by the Kingdom of Lithuania. It’s the border kingdoms. The emporer is always worried about because they make friends across the border. Spies pass back and forth. Make a depopulated zone on the steppe, an ocean of grass to be a strong wall in protecting the empire’s integrity like on the other side with the Pacific.
There are ephocal genocides in Ukraine from its physical geography between Asia and Europe. I think there is a great deal in what you are saying to answer the question “Why Ukraine?” It seems valid by inference, but there’s a big difference between Kublai Khan and Putin or Stalin.
Putin is a scientific Christo-fascist totalitarian under the influence of a totalizing Hegelian phenomenology. Stalin was a scientific communist totalitarian also under the influence of a variety of totalizing Hegelian phenomenology, Marxism. In scientific totalitarianism, genocide constitutes the state through terror.
For both Stalin and Putin, Ukrainian proximity with the West is useful to identify those who sympathize with Ukrainian victims in Russia, I suppose. Right now, the inner eye of the FSB is purging itself, and then it will become the inner eye of every Russian. It will turn outward and move on to purge Russia this year. After the totalitarian state has reconstituted itself with genocide, there will be no need for a spectacle of violence in Russia itself. The death mechanism in Russia will be disappearance.
I need to find a style of writing for this that isn’t so much like beating a trashcan lid. I don’t know if what I am saying is correct anthropology or philosophy because I’m having difficulty grounding the criteria for meaningfulness. Just as a footnote, I am looking at this through the existentialist humanism of Heidegger, Bachelard, Girard and Piaget mostly.
bookworm1398
@Carlo Graziani:
@Carlo Graziani:
I’m not saying that the inability to borrow isn’t bad. I’m just saying that ship has already sailed. They are already unable to borrow even if they were to pay back bond holders in full.
West of the Cascades
@Adam L Silverman: Could NATO have the third option of announcing a modified policy that it will admit new members that have current crises if it had previous security cooperation agreements with those nations? This would seem to distinguish Sweden/Finland from Georgia/Ukraine/other new nations involved in conflicts that might want to invoke Article 5 via an 11th hour admission to NATO. It would be weak sauce for the Ukrainians, but possibly preclude a propaganda win for Putin.
lee
First a question: Is there any chance of the US sanctioning US companies that are still operating in Russia (e.g. Koch)? That would certainly be delightful if that were to happen.
I’m not surprised about that ROI MP. There is a Irish subreddit that is full of those type of folk (/r/ROI). Immediately after the reinvasion most of the subreddit wanted UA to just surrender and negotiate.
I’ll put my money on the Finns in any conflict where they are invaded.
I learned yesterday that the Swedes’ armor and artillery fire significantly faster than everyone else’s. The idea is more rounds down range to make up for their smaller numbers against the USSR/RU.
Geminid
@lee: The Swedish Army has a large number of trained reserves. They ended their military draft early in the last decade but then reinstated it a few years later.
The Pale Scot
If the EP had any weight, the lads would be knocking on th door of the Irish MEP. But Nigel Farage was elected multiple times, so she’s viewed like a drunk ranting on a street corner
The Pale Scot
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
In a nutshell, I’ve read that young Ukrainians prefer to speak Ukrainian and learn English, instead of Russian. That is one big “Adios Jose” to Russia
lee
Interesting link
The Russian Defense Ministry is reportedly offering cash bonuses to incentivize forces withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine to reenter combat operations. Radio Svobodapublished images of a document on April 10 that it reported was issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense on April 2 offering specific bonuses for Russian troops in Ukraine.[1] The document specifies large payments including 300,000 rubles for destroying a fixed-wing aircraft, 200,000 for destroying a helicopter, and 50,000 for armored vehicles and artillery.Radio Svobodastated the payments are intended to coerce units withdrawn from the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions to reenter combat. We have previously reported several instances of Russian soldiers refusing orders to return to Ukraine after being pulled back
pluky
Was I the only one to notice in the translated screed that, in the list of religious diversity, the only acceptable Christian confession seems to be Orthodoxy?
wetzel
@pluky:
Putin is a Russian Orthodox Christo-fascist adherent of the White Russian Hegelian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, author of the wonderful oevre:
It is very difficult to grok Hegelian phenomenology just like ‘okay I see that’. It’s similar to the thought experiment that the structure of subjective experience is a brain in a vat but instead of underlying it’s structure being the live feed, it’s the time sequence of enlightenment in history and the individual that determines the structure of experience. We’re on the way! We’ll have that going for us if we only think harder!!!!
Hegelian phenomenology is totalizing in that experience taken in and for itself philosophically leads to the ultimate Idea, which is an understanding of divine providence.
In Ivan Ilyin’s philosophy, there is a special state, when the nation is faced with war, where an enlightened Christian government can purge nonbelievers. It is a form of idealization of God’s will on earth. Whether or not Putin believes this, or the totalitarian unconscious is propagandizing itself, or whatever, is not important.
There’s always an ‘ideology’, but it does not matter except as a means of enforcing public compliance, because what actually happens is the death of symbolic meaning, which, I can tell you, I don’t think Hegel intended with that line of reasoning!!!!
wetzel
I’m like Cliff from Cheers. Sorry to Bogart the thread.
Kent
@wetzel: Dude….Google is your friend.
Or you can follow the link I provided which will give you plenty of info.
wetzel
@Kent:
Oh yeah, Jill Stein. I remember her. She’s a Russian agent? I thought at first you were talking about somebody from European politics. Without the context, I had mistaken pragmatics.
Sounds like a criminal matter.
I don’t have time to go looking on Google.
Was Ralph Nader one too? How far back does that go in the Green Party?
There will be a steady ‘unveiling’ of ‘Putin’s tools’ in the West. It’s part of the programming as we become fascist too. It’s important to keep to plain language and keep a legal basis for accusation of crime.
You say ‘Putin’s tool’, but you didn’t say ‘Putin’s agent’. Aren’t those the same in counter-intelligence? You could be a foreign agent without being criminally culpable. Is that what you mean? If not, to accuse a person of a crime without warranted evidence or the findings of a court is not good behavior. It just rubbed me the wrong way, the ‘obviously’. It felt like cognitive priming, like I’m not rational if I don’t join in the club that thinks Jill Stein should be in prison.
I’m sorry to be so harsh. We are acclimatized to talking about Trump, who is, actually, obviously compromised by Putin. Jill Stein might be!!! Maybe so!!! Or she’s indifferent and just likes attention. She seems like a nice lady with a flawed idea of how political change occurs.
You can say the Green Party is the tool of the GOP. That just makes them idiots. To say the Green Party is the tool of Putin is to call them traitors.
Forgive me for being a dick and I will withdraw the point, because I understand you meant something else, I think, you did not mean that Jill Stein is a participant in conspiracy against the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngJ8NJhOQnU
Jinchi
Not a red line for what, though? It’s not like the US and NATO have been completely sitting on the sidelines, here.
It seems like the response has moved pretty quickly from warnings, to economic sanctions, to progressively more sophisticated arms shipments that have allowed the Ukrainians to inflict heavy casualties on the Russian forces.
NATO wants to stay out of direct combat with Russia, because as bad as things have been on the ground in Ukraine, they could get a lot worse.
Kent
@wetzel: Go back and read what I actually wrote if you don’t want to sound like an idiot. No one is talking about Jill Stein.
Wetzel
@Kent: see that’s the thing your the one saying June Stone was a tool of Putin I’m not giving a crap to go investigate whoever you are accusing it’s your kangaroo court
The Pale Scot
@YY_Sima Qian:
Yo man, ya’ll can keep giving them all those crappy tires you got, no problem
charon
https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1513901690549850118
lee
I’ve never had to use the pie filter until today. Glad it exists.
YY_Sima Qian
@The Pale Scot: Those tires turned out to be Russian made.
J R in WV
@ronno2018:
Dude, Welcome to the Pie Safe, where you will be unread forevermore!
the pollyanna from hell
@Wetzel: Why are you being so silly? Kent was talking about Clare Daly; he used Jill Stein as a reference to a comparable style.
Your treatment of thrownness-into-being is all just as I remember it from class. Unfortunately that doesn’t illuminate meaning in the applied context for me. I am just as leery of “phenomenology” language as I am of “god” language, because I have learned too many and contradictory connections I can make with it. I use plenty of careless buzzwords with a wink, but these two still bug me. A lot of paradoxes have paradox in common, and I am more inclined than most people to follow that connection.
Therefore I count the thrownness metaphor as weak in the parallel reasoning function of metaphor. In my terms, a Signpost metaphor, an Unworkable metaphor, a Mystery.
To make up for it I try to elaborate regarding salience capture, meme lock, arbitrary caprice, ceremonial rehearsal, etc. I appreciated your mention of atrocity spectacle. For years I’ve been mumbling to myself about how human sacrifice turns all eyes in one direction.
What experience is not thrown into being? Let’s suppose mediated experience.
Mediated experience generally seems to be thrown into mediation. It’s all thrown one way or another. Maybe I’m confused.
“FSB, as a bureau of catastrophic phenomenology” from your narrative
FSB, as a bureau of catastrophic thunder-stroke
FSB, as a bureau of catastrophic flesh-betrayal
FSB, as a bureau of catastrophic animal spirits
FSB, as a bureau of catastrophic remnant-remembrance
FSB, as a bureau of catastrophic miraculous escape
FSB, as a bureau of catastrophic abusive family
FSB, as a bureau of catastrophic psychotic friend
In context of the compassionate narrative that you gave us “flesh betrayal” seems almost relevant, but still massively unhelpful, because I’m still trying to match the unhelpfulness of thrown into being. Why would I use such a crazy method? My experience tells me that when help doesn’t show up right away in the easy places I can sometimes find it in the hard and hidden places. I suppose all of these are exactly right, and exactly useless. Kierkegaard’s curse has fallen upon us; it all gets harder and simpler and harder and harder.
“If both me and B.B. King was dyin’, which one would you choose?” (My game-master room-mate in his game just now.) (goodman)
Connections to “thrown into being” proliferate rapidly. I wish I could pick out a few that might illuminate for me your narrative. The average jackal will require days or even months of pointed meditation to understand how your dribbling out of the phenomenology mystery might support compassion for the hapless Russian bureaucrats in the FSB.
When the Rorschach test tricked me into telling three lies in a quarter hour, it started a slow burn of anger in me. I figured out the stool-stool pun as I climbed into my truck. I made a whole-blot integration of the wild flying hermaphrodite genital with delusions of divine personality in the wee hours that night. Three days were required to resolve the classic ambiguous gestalt of bat-ears/anus-lips. Over the next month or two I decoded every ink-blot from memory, but now if required I could explain in twenty minutes ten or a dozen cases of how each pressure charge of fear and ambiguity can blow off into self-deception.
Jackals should understand that your jargon has laid a similarly irritating provocation before them, and deriving any profit from it might require an effort similar to mine. Folks with an understanding of god or phenomenology just deep enough to flunk the veracity score can be treated as adults instead of patsies. Perhaps a distinction between thrown and overthrown would help, as implied but not explicated in the modifier ‘catastrophic’. If any of my loose ends amount to a homework assignment, it is not deliberate. For my own understanding of this story I want to see where social pathology shows up in oral and private histories. I think some of your work can help me anticipate what to look for even despite the jargon.
If phenomenology is part of your discovery heuristic, acknowledge it, but don’t expect it to carry big meaning.
In other news, my son Stillflame, whose story you heard beginning age 11, is as we speak writing software to control micro-pipette maneuvers and operations. Coincidence? I think not!
Be well my friend.
J R in WV
@Comrade Bukharin:
Lt Col (ret) Vindman has put in his many years in the Army. — enough to retire honorably… How many years have you served your nation, Comrade Bukharin, and which nation would that be? Russian Federation I suspect, and still serving the FSB from a troll ranch in St Petersburg…