For those who have been patting themselves on the back that diplomacy was working so a military buildup for both deterrence and, if the worst should happen, response was not needed, well your diplomacy just failed!
Putin is expected to make an address to the Russian nation any minute now. Scheduled for 9pm Moscow time but he’s usually late.
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 21, 2022
What does this mean, well given the rhetoric and statements coming out of Moscow, most likely this:
Something to be worried about: Russian Interior Minister Kolokoltsev told Putin that Moscow should recognize all of Donetsk and Luhansk regions as D/LNR. He said, “from Mariupol and ending with those historical borders.” So all the gray area in this OSCE map. Frontline is red. pic.twitter.com/j8bhHUHd6J
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 21, 2022
Translation: Russia may very well annex Luhansk and Donbas. https://t.co/eoXY0wbtdm
— Terrell Jermaine Starr (@Russian_Starr) February 21, 2022
Regardless, please remember that EITHER scenario is an attack on Ukrainian sovereignty; the DNR/LNR "governments" are Russian proxies and Russia's recognition of them, just like its annexation of Crimea, S. Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, should not be tolerated. (2/2)
— Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) February 21, 2022
We are going to have to wait and see what the actual recognition statement that Putin makes states, but if they recognize all of the Donetsk and Luhansk breakaway territories, it would double the territory Russia has grabbed in eastern Ukraine and put the current line of control right in the middle of Russia’s two newest vassal states. From Putin’s perspective this would, of course, turn the Ukrainian military forces on that line of control into invaders of the sovereign territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. Territory that Russia has pledged to defend. This is the final, fabricated pretext for war.
What do the two diplomatic geniuses Macron and Scholz have to say for themselves?
BREAKING: Germany's Scholz and France's Macron expressed 'disappointment' over Putin's recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk republics
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) February 21, 2022
Well that’ll put Putin in his place! And a lot of Ukrainians are going to die because of it.
As much as I like the way Biden and his team have handled things so far, especially the information warfare and PSYOP campaign that has gotten inside Putin’s information cycle and wrong footed him, Zelensky, in his speech to the Munich Security Conference, was not wrong about how the US, the EU, and NATO have handled this crisis. And not just for the past several months, but going back to at least Spring of 2014.
If the US and our NATO and non-NATO EU allies and partners wait until Putin escalates and reinvades/further invades to take actions to punish him then simply announcing you will won’t deter him. And as we’ve seen they haven’t deterred him! Especially if either we or our NATO and EU allies have already taken the most powerful tools off the table. We’re not going to cut Russia off from SWIFT. We’re not going to use every last bit of our FINCEN capabilities and our allies’ equivalents to scarf up or seize every last one of Putin’s assets, his family’s assets, and those of his oligarchs and their families. We’re not going to revoke visas and green cards. We’re not going to cut Russia off from the Internet. We’re not going to deny flight into or out of Russia and his vassal states of Belarus, Kazakhstan, or Chechnya or make it impossible for flight between them. We’re not going to put an embargo on ground and sea lines of commerce against Russia and Putin’s vassals.
While doing any of these preemptively might focus Putin’s mind, the reality is they are acts of war in and of themselves. So we won’t do them because waging a war for the right reasons, which engaging Russia to deter its aggression in Eastern Europe would be, is not something we can do because of Afghanistan and Iraq something something, harrumph.
We love applying sanctions because it sounds tough, but it never works. If it did Cuba and Iran would both be a democratic paradise.
And we’re sure as hell not going to put the military foot print in place to give him pause and by the time he does attack a NATO state, which will be Poland to connect Belarus and Kaliningrad where he’ll claim, despite it being bullshit, his actions are to protect ethnic Russians in the northeastern tip of Poland between the two who are being targeted because they’re ethnic Russians, we’ll be so far right of boom that the military response will be that much more prolonged and deadly because we’ll have to fight onto the objectives to clear them. And that’s provided we actually do anything and don’t remain frozen by Russia’s anecdotally articulated doctrine on using tactical nukes in conventional war despite it not being in their formal doctrine.
Russia has been waging war in Ukraine since 2014. They’ve been waging war in Georgia since 2008. They’ve been waging a low intensity and unconventional war against the US and our EU and NATO partners since between 2011 and 2014.
Perhaps reality will finally overtake wishful thinking. The time for the semantic games of whether what Putin has been doing and is doing is really war or is just warfare or something something cyber crime has long passed. Putin has made it clear by his actions and, often, by his words, regardless of what is or is not really motivating him, that he seeks to roll back everything that has happened within the global systems since the Soviet Union collapsed. And, if possible, the whole post World War II international order. Regardless of why, Putin is going to do what he’s going to do. Right now he is the driver of these events and we have to wait and see where he steers things.
The only question now is whether we have the will to stop him.
Open thread!
Cermet
Frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck. When millions died in the Congo because we need rare earth minerals and many hundreds of thousand still die, can’t see any response by us. Tens of thousands of children are in near slave status and in horrible conditions digging those minerals essential for our phones and …fucking crickets by the US of A. With little cost and few casualties we could save those people and help the Congo but Ukraine is so vital to our survival … not. When millions were butchered in Burundi we did … crickets. But we could have saved millions and suffered few casualties but again minerals helped the nearby rebels (killing people in the Congo for them still today!) and we do nothing.
People stressing over the Ukraine because Russia – yes, its bad guy Russians and shouldn’t happen but will millions die? NO, and our desire for cheap phones which drives the killing in the Congo is continuing but hey, look over there, the Ukraine has territory stolen by those Russians.
Al Z.
Thanks Adam for elucidating on this. First I heard of the DNR and LNR – just reading reports from the actual Russian security council (from Digby’s: https://digbysblog.net/2022/02/21/crazy-time-in-moscow/)
Sounds crazy. Has Putin lost his mind?
Adam L Silverman
@Cermet: I’m in favor of doing something about the situation in the Congo as well. And our failures in Burundi are not forgotten either.
tam1MI
Oooooooh, lookie, another preerning, sneering, gloating post by Savvy Adam Silverman telling everyone how STUPID and NAIVE they were to even hold on to a shred of hope that a situation might get resolved peacefully! Time for everyone to fall into despair and hopelessness and eat bullets!
He’s always on brand, I’ll give him that,
Adam L Silverman
@Al Z.: He’s basically high on his own supply.
Miss Bianca
@Cermet: Ah, the old “we didn’t care about THAT atrocity so it’s morally false to care about THIS one!” canard. Really, you’re just getting more and more annoying as your reaches get more and more pathetic.
At least “But what about The Congo!” is a different flavor of whine than “But the very existence of NATO is such an existential threat to Russia that they’re justified in fucking with Ukraine!”
@tam1MI: You can get stuffed too.
Adam L Silverman
@tam1MI: Hope is not a strategy. And I am not here to tell you sweet things that make you happy.
SpaceUnit
This thread’s gonna be a shitfest.
Adam L Silverman
@Cermet: @Miss Bianca: The hardest part of national security strategy and policy is reconciling our national values and ideals, from which Cermet is commenting here and I am applying in my analysis of what we should be and should have been doing vis a vis Putin’s aggression, with the reality of politics (realpolitik). Far too often the former are sacrificed on the altar of the latter. It doesn’t make it right. It does mean when presented with a new problem set we should strive to improve over the last time.
Adam L Silverman
@SpaceUnit: Of course it is.
trollhattan
Will this make them…Russian enclaves inside Ukraine? If so, I suppose “connecting them by land to the Russian border” will be on the agenda.
2liberal
is Kyiv part of the “breakaway” republics?
Adam L Silverman
@2liberal: No.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: Donetsk and Luhansk already share a land border with Russia.
Cacti
This is Putin’s Sudetenland moment.
Nothing good followed the original.
I don’t have high hopes for the sequel.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: @SpaceUnit: It was a shitshow… obviously.
(YouTube channel I follow for World of Warcraft news has done that saying for years with a handy graphic. Most def applies here.)
The Dangerman
@Adam L Silverman: Now we get to play whack-a-troll, right? And try to guess if Republican or Russian. As if there is a difference these days.
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: I’m pretty sure Clorox wipes are going to be insufficient in that scenario.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: I recognize that. I guess as I get older and farther removed from the progressive zealot “Nuance is just another word for Cop-Out” phase of my life, I get increasingly impatient with people who *won’t* recognize that.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Ah, thanks (tanks?).
suffragette city
Today I learned Feb 24 is Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia.
Seeing snippets of the speech he is giving to the nation and I’m wondering if that date will play into this clusterfuk.
R’s will scream even louder to capitulate if an ounce of pain is felt by them over this.
Xantar
I’m not sure actual deterrence was ever possible. If Putin is determined to start a shooting war, he will. The best hope is to make it costly to him.
Also, this post seems to be arguing against doing just diplomacy with no action. And that kind of seems like a straw man. I didn’t see anybody arguing for that around these threads.
The Dangerman
How the hell did Kaliningrad come into being? That screams “let’s go invade Poland someday” to me.
ETA: Seems to me we missed a golden opportunity to not send Trump to service Putin while he was Covid positive.
Adam L Silverman
@The Dangerman: I’m just going to ignore the obvious troll other than my one response.
Adam L Silverman
@Xantar: It wasn’t necessarily directed at anyone here.
zhena gogolia
To be honest, I don’t appreciate the sneering either.
Chip Daniels
@The Dangerman:
It does seem like he wants to put together the map of the USSR by whatever means or pretext.
If I were in any of the Eastern European countries I would be very nervous.
dimmsdale
One of the Twitterers I follow suggests that once Putin recognizes the “breakaway” areas, Ukrainian troops within those areas become hostile forces, thus precipitating Putin’s “invasion.” It really does not appear there’s any rabbit Biden can pull out of a hat that’ll stop Putin, the guy’s nuts. At this point it’s the paradox of the crazy school bus driver heading over the cliff with a bus full of kids (well, all of Europe, actually). Adam, a question: if we seem to have the spectacular intelligence inroads into the inner decision-making in the Kremlin and the RU military that the last few days have shown, is it fair to assume there’s a plan B somewhere based on “this guy’s nuts and we need to take steps to stop him NOW”?
Nadjasdoll
Unlurking after many years to say thanks, Adam, for always giving an honest analysis. I look forward to your insight as events develop since the media insists on making it seem so far away while still expecting Biden to fix it all.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: I’m not sneering, I’m enraged. And it is NOT directed at anyone here.
Gin & Tonic
Good post.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: “Before you reach for the Clorox wipes, reach for Trojan.” – Trojan ad, sometime in the near future
Cameron
I thought the Russians were demanding some sort of Normandy format conference. Sounds like they were just blowing smoke about that. What a fucking mess. Ukrainians are going to pay a price just for wanting to make their own decisions.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: The DOD has plans for everything, with sequels and contingencies, as well as outright contingency plans. That said, the decision makers have to be willing to consider them, request adjustments, and then decide to use them.
That’s the long way of saying that yes, I expect there is a Plan B. What I don’t know is if it will be considered.
Gravenstone
@Miss Bianca: Pie filter is getting an early workout on this thread.
Adam L Silverman
@Nadjasdoll: Biden can’t fix it all. I’ve been exceedingly pleased with how Biden and his team have been dealing with this. Frankly, the selective release of clearly classified information as part of an information warfare campaign that has wrong footed Putin is brilliant. But, unfortunately, there comes a point when other measures need to not just be considered, but taken. And in my professional opinion we’re well past that point.
Ksmiami
@Adam L Silverman: should we just start arming Ukraine or would you suggest something like a Berlin airlift plus guns? Putin will only respond to force at this point
WeimarGerman
Thanks Adam. Much better and concise information than the current news.
A Ghost to Most
Thanks, Adam. Your viewpoint is most welcome.
Adam L Silverman
Buzzfeed’s Chris Miller is live tweeting Putin’s address. Here’s the link:
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1495831679100985345?cxt=HHwWgoC5yZS_ocIpAAAA
He’s completely unhinged (Putin, not Miller)
Adam L Silverman
@Ksmiami: We’re already arming them. Yesterday NATO announced a formal, NATO training mission.
Urza
@Adam L Silverman: People really just don’t like realism, or preparing for the worst. Someone has to say it though. Even if the worst doesn’t occur, its still more likely than the best sunshine and unicorns people hope for.
Lyrebird
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks Adam, for your post and for this note to @dimmsdale: , which helped me get a better overall picture of your longer piece.
I am glad I do not work in the State Dept right now, or for the last 6 years, gotta be rough.
I am bad at describing nuance, but I can firmly believe both of these are true:
1. there are millions of reasons to be glad it’s Joey O’Biden in the WH and not the orange menace.
2. Gin & Tonic’s urgent criticisms and yours are legit
Holy moly what a mess…
Nadjasdoll
@Adam L Silverman: Truth.
Adam L Silverman
Here’s another excellent thread by a historian who was providing real time analysis of Putin’s speech as he delivered it:
https://twitter.com/jcbehrends/status/1495831617818046467
Ksmiami
@Adam L Silverman: might as well go big or go home. Hmm I think Tito’s guide to partisan warfare against Nazis is apt right now for Ukrainians.
dimmsdale
Adam, I just went back and re-read your “In order to actually demonstrate that we have the will and the capability to respond we would need to mobilize and deploy…” note from the other night. Anything in it you’d change at this point? (I remember you got a few horselaughs from people about it and, well, here we are.)
Gin & Tonic
@Ksmiami: Trust me, Ukrainians know about partisan warfare.
Doug
@The Dangerman:
Kaliningrad oblast is half of the former German province of East Prussia, itself established as part of the settlement that ended the Great War. The city itself was known for centuries as Königsberg and was the home town of Immanuel Kant. It was also where the Prussian dukes did homage to the Polish kings until one fine century they didn’t.
After the Second World War, the USSR kept the parts of Central Europe that it had chosen when Stalin and Hitler divvied up that part of the world. Until the early 1990s, roughly the western half of contemporary Poland was legally “under Polish administration” while formally existing as part of the German Empire, pending treaties that ended the war. East Prussia was split, with half under Polish administration and half under Soviet administration. That latter half is now Kaliningrad. The “Two Plus Four” treaties and various other works of the 1990s aligned the de jure boundaries with the de facto control throughout Eastern and Central Europe.
(Sorry if you knew a bunch of this already, I couldn’t tell from your question.)
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Seconded.
Marcus
Hi Adam
Long time reader since Cole was a good republican
My Question: Why military intervention now?
Putin usually as more foresight and patience then this…why not wait for a Russian puppet Ukraine president in the next election
He has been pretty good with Brexit and the US elections
geg6
Adam, in the last few months, I’ve read several pieces with unnamed Russian sources discussing the changes in Putin since COVID and lamenting that he seems to have lost whatever sense of sanity that he had. The photos I’ve seen of him in the last few weeks show him to be a bloated mess, physically speaking. How much do you buy this explanation for what seems like his completely insane decision during this situation?
LOL, been trying to dust off my old tea leaf reading of Politburo photos and not feeling very confident in skills learned in the late 70s/early 80s.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: I’d include more troops.
The sad and unfortunate reality is that, barring a miracle, we were always going to end up here. Putin’s speech today, for all that it was ahistorical, revanchist, revisionist, and unhinged, makes it very clear: he intends to remake the map of Europe in order to remake the international order. Which is the same bottom line as his ahistorical, revanchist, revisionist, and unhinged essay from last year and his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.
Maybe we’ll get lucky, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Another Scott
(via VladDavidzon)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
Modern conventional warfare is exceedingly expensive. How does Russia sustain a large-scale drawn out conventional conflict? Yes they have nuclear weapons and a large military. But their GDP is about half that of the UK and closer in size to that of Mexico. How do they sustain this sort of thing indefinitely without turning the country into the next Venezuela?
trollhattan
Boy, is BoJo ever chuffed to have a Russia-Ukraine distraction from BoJo’s hi-jinks.
debbie
I still hold out hope for sanctions working at some point before we all destroy ourselves, but now that Putin’s moved forward, I think whatever was being planned should go forward too. Hopefully, they’ll cause real damage to those sons of bitches’ wallets.
germy
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: So how much London property are you going to seize, dickface?
debbie
@geg6:
I’m not who you asked, but I think Putin’s fallen victim to The Trump Effect. Look what he’s done to others. They’re all fucking unhinged.
Another Scott
Ursula’s tweet (above) doesn’t sound very accepting to me.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
Doug
@Adam L Silverman: @36 “other measures need to not just be considered, but taken”
Could you spell out what you mean?
I’m guessing it’s the list in this post: https://balloon-juice.com/2022/01/29/the-strategists-policy-makers-dilemma-assumption-of-risk/
That’s a lot to put into a very hot environment, where the price of repeating The Guns of August is very possibly the end of human civilization.
Adam L Silverman
@Marcus: I think he’s completely convinced himself, from imbibing his own propaganda and revisionist history, that this is how the world should be. And that he is the history bestriding man to force that world into being.
We are, unfortunately, at the place that psychology cannot answer: is he a madman, a genius, delusional? These were the same questions asked regarding Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, the Kims, and many others. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if he actually decides to try to achieve his objectives.
germy
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Tweets are not actions.
Tony Jay
I learned long ago (on some top 10,000 blog, as it happens) that outside of scripted drama there will never, ever, come a time when the bastards of this world react to a defeat by holding up their hands and saying “Ah, you got me, I’d best hand myself over to the authorities and mend my ways“.
Won’t happen. Not ever. All they do, every single time, is deny what just happened, spew a load of unintelligible victimitude into the faces of any onlookers, and just start reaching for the next shitty thing they can do to make the people they don’t like pay for existing.
They won’t stop until they get stopped. And they won’t stop permanently until they get stopped permanently. Either terminally, or by removing their relevancy. That’s just the way it is, and that will never, ever change.
So it looks like Putin is offering the world a choice. Either terminate his reign over Russia, or make Russia irrelevant. How our tottering, insidiously undermined democracies manage to do either of those two things is a matter for wiser heads than mine*.
*Not yet, Baud. Your time will come.
lowtechcyclist
@Miss Bianca: I think Cermet has a valid point. We had – and have – a hell of a lot more agency in the Congo than we do in Ukraine. We can’t realistically put boots on the ground in Ukraine, and our European allies would be the ones to take it on the chin in a sanctions war, so to a great extent that’s not really our decision to make.
Yes, Russia is the bad guy here, yes they’re far more evil than the U.S., but no, we’re not going to go to war with them head-to-head. We’ve supplied Ukraine with arms and training, and that may be the best we can do. We may be a superpower, but we can’t save everyone.
gene108
@Chip Daniels:
When Imperial Russia collapsed, in 1917, many places under the Czar’s rule declared independence, like Ukraine and Poland.
When the Bolsheviks took control of Russia, they set about recreating the borders of Imperial Russia. The independent Ukrainian state fell to Russia, in the 1920’s. Poland fought Russia off, until WW2.
If history repeats itself, Putin will want to do what Stalin did and recreate the borders of Imperial Russia. Apparently those borders are something Russia cannot let go of.
Ksmiami
@Gin & Tonic: I have no doubt- it’s just that Tito’s manifesto was clear: Leave no Nazi alive
FlyingToaster
Two weird things I noticed (via Twitter):
I’m trying to figure out what Putin’s endgame is. The “Ukraine is a puppet of the US” talking point is not merely counterfactual, it’s batshit insane.
Given this performance, there’s no way that Biden will waste his time meeting with Putin, and I doubt that Blinken will meet with Lavrov (or that Lavrov will meet with Blinken). Which somehow translates into Putin “winning”, for Charlie Sheen values of “winning”, I guess.
Does Putin believe that NATO is a US client, or is this some kind of performance art?
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
Adam–Since Putin has always dreamed of crushing Ukraine’s independence and has reached an age where he probably realizes he hasn’t got much time left to do it, and since he has now become, as you put it, “unhinged,” would taking the steps you recently recommended have been likely to deter him? If not, how would they have improved Ukraine’s position and ours compared to where we are now?
Pharniel
Yeah. If you want a !troops method, the only thing to do is start to seize assets belonging to the oligarchs in Russia in order for them to put the squeeze on Putin.
Because that meeting was, indeed, just bonkers.
And while the Tankies are out in force with joy about the idea of the USSR back, Putin was all in on the Russian Empire. He’s going full Tsar, not commissar.
Mallard Filmore
I wonder what China will do. With their economy crashing, I am sure they are as desperate to loot Taiwan as Putin is to loot Ukraine.
Adam L Silverman
@geg6: I have no idea. Honestly, I’m not being flippant. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter much. Regardless of why, all that will matter is what he does.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic: Good point. Aren’t oligarchs stacked into the tony parts of London like Russian cordwood?
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: I’m sure they will.
mozzerb
Ah, the good old Adam Silverman typos. For the bit that came out as “Afghanistan and Iraq something something, harrumph”, I presume you meant to type “shitloads of Russian nukes and a desire not to make the human race extinct”.
Practically speaking, waging a war with a major nuclear power — whose doctrine includes a willingness to go first strike if they feel like they’re losing — is not an option any sane Western leader should want to rush into. Especially since there aren’t any actual treaty obligations involved. Any analysis that doesn’t have that as Point 1 is equally wishful thinking.
If by “war” you mean shipping Ukraine all the arms they can use, and/or SWIFT, FINCEN measures etc then that’s one thing. For “deny[ing] flight into or out of Russia and his vassal states” and “put an embargo on ground and sea lines of commerce against Russia and Putin’s vassals”, I hope you just mean banning flights, trading etc and cracking down on anyone in the West trying to do an end-around via China or other nations not taking part. If you mean physical action — and I don’t see how you can “make it impossible for flight between them[?!?!?!]” without it — how the fuck do you do that without a big risk of starting a shooting war, that could escalate into a nuking war a lot more easily than is comfortable?
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Their GDP is just a bit larger than Los Angeles’ GDP.
They will pay for it via petroleum and natural gas sales to China.
Pharniel
@Mallard Filmore: Considering how important Taiwan is to the global chip fabrication supply chain, I’d expect literally everyone in the world to freak out about a Chinese invasion.
But also, China has to solve that whole “60 miles of open ocean” problem. It’s not like in Eastern Europe where you can walk dudes over.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic:
Kent
Minsk is in Belarus. Or is that shorthand for some diplomatic accord that the author is referring to?
lowtechcyclist
@dimmsdale:
Yeah, I remember that. I was one of the horselaughers. And I still am, because I don’t know what any of that mobilize-and-deploy shit would have done to discourage Putin from what he’s doing right now. Not because Putin’s gone apeshit, but because it seemed a lot like going to war in Iraq to fight the 9/11 terrorists.
Dopey-o
IIRC the Budapest Memorandum guaranteed Ukrainian territorial integrity. Does that provide Kyiv any leverage in this crisis?
Russian troops in the 2 breakaway regions would effectively checkmate Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Could this be the extent of Putin’s incursion? Blocking NATO membership and gaining a couple of warm-water ports would be a huge victory for Moscow.
Of course, Ukraine would rush forces to the breakaway regions, leaving Kyiv and Odessa vulnerable. And once the dust settles, 75,000 Ukrainians will be dead and Western Europe will shiver thru a deep recession.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: It all comes down to what the EU actually does. What the US actually does. What NATO actually does. If we just continue to ramp up the sanctions we’ve been imposing, it won’t have any effect. Putin said as much in his speech.
Adam L Silverman
@Doug: That, combined what I wrote in the post above, is what I mean.
John Revolta
Anybody remember the First Family album? They did a skit on ordering lunch at a UN meeting, and when it came to Khrushchev, he said “Oh, you don’t have to order special for me! I’ll just have a bite of everybody else’s!”
Adam L Silverman
@germy: Seddon kind of mangled that tweet. Putin stated that Clinton told him flat out in that conversation that the answer was no.
Marcus
@Adam L Silverman: Strange he has been in power so long… Hitler and Stalin historical moved a lot faster in realizing their ideologies
If the assessment that he is a madman with nukes and the US 45% pro Putin with capitalists needing global markets to make things work. I hope I’m very wrong …but i think the NATO faction will stand down
Another Scott
The FORTE11 Global Hawk isn’t showing up on FlightRadar24 at the moment. Some mysterious (to me, maybe not in reality) nearly unidentified CL35 is now landing in Kyiv.
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: This. If the Oligarchs funds are frozen, they might be tempted to take of the situation.
Wishful thinking on my part.
Another Scott
@Kent: There are at least a couple of diplomatic agreements called “Minsk” regarding eastern Ukraine. The second one VVP apparently started violating before the ink was dry.
Cheers,
Scott.
dimmsdale
Adam, can you recommend any NatSec Twitterers to follow as things get yeasty over the next few weeks? I’m ping-ponging between Dara Massicot, Michael McFaul, Julia Davis, Chris Krebs, Dmitri Alperovitch, Naveed Jamali, and of course Gary Kasparov….I’m a little short on the military side. Any recommendations? (Editing to add: today is feeling a lot like the day Bush promised the bombs would start falling on Iraq–“Shock and Awe.” Was glued to the internet, such as it was, back then too.)
Papenheimer
@Adam L Silverman: out of bubble gum, nothing left but hard times…
lowtechcyclist
It also had some bridges that nobody could cross all of without crossing at least one bridge twice. This resulted in some theorems by Leonhard Euler that are regarded as the beginning of a field of mathematics known as graph theory.
Adam L Silverman
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: I honestly don’t know. All I do know is what we have been doing didn’t.
geg6
@FlyingToaster:
This is one of the things I’ve been seeing in a lot of articles about Putin over the last few months. He has been holed up, essentially alone, for months on end due to his fear of COVID. When he does actually allow someone into his space, he keeps them so far from himself that the visitors have to shout to be heard. He’s gone full paranoid.
gene108
@lowtechcyclist:
I read a critique of why Hitler’s crimes against humanity stay so strongly with us today, and it’s because Hitler butchered white people.
We don’t have the same focus on Japanese war crimes against Asians. The U.S. absolved those running Unit 731 from war crimes prosecution, and then denied it happened, after the USSR published confessions of those Unit 731 personnel it captured and tried.
The West has never truly reckoned with the savagery it inflicted on sub-Saharan Africa, from the slave trade to King Leopold II’s savagery in the Congo, the way West Germany did after WW2.
I do wonder what China is thinking, with regards to whether it should copy Russia and seize all the territory it claims are China’s and dare the world to react. China has claims on territory and maritime disputes with most of its neighbors from India, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, etc.
Adam L Silverman
@mozzerb: I actually addressed the nuclear doctrine directly. Perhaps you need to learn how to read.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Diplomatic accord established after Putin scarfed up Crimean and eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Adam L Silverman
@dimmsdale: Terrell Jermaine Starr and Chris Miller are in Ukraine. So follow them.
dimmsdale
@Adam L Silverman: thanks, Adam. on it.
UncleEbeneezer
Just curious, Adam, do you think Biden’s current polling being low and him being constantly under attack from the GOP, Media and various White Nationalist-adjacent crybabies (anti-mask, truckers etc.) is a factor in why Putin is making this move now? Seems that common-sense answer would be yes, knowing Biden is going to be hesitant given his low popularity and MidTerms just around the corner.
Sebastian
At this point Ukraine’s best bet is to install a shitton of explosive charges on the Chernobyl sarcophagus with a dead man switch.
Or start firing one mortar shell every day at it until everyone gets to their fucking senses.
Adam L Silverman
@UncleEbeneezer: It would not surprise me.
SpaceUnit
Is Putin following the same OP as when he took Crimea? I don’t recall all the grandstanding and huffing and puffing and just generally dicking around on the border for weeks.
I could be wrong. I really don’t remember.
Doug
@lowtechcyclist: Genau!
MazeDancer
@Gin & Tonic: Tweeted something similar without the dickface. Perhaps I should do another with that.
J R in WV
I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, which I was in grade school for.
Now I’m retired, and old, and here we go again, fearing nuclear total destruction. One way to end current global climate change — by introducing nuclear winter into those uneasy equations~!!~ Probably not the best solution, though.
ETA: Thanks Adam, for sharing your education, experience, expertise, with us in these scary days.
Unhinged dictator for life, where have we seen that movie before? At least TFG SFB isn’t in the White House.
The Thin Black Duke
Get ready for the ugly noise Fox is going to broadcast tonight.
Cameron
@gene108: Wonder why Stalin was into that, considering he wasn’t Russian.
Adam L Silverman
I’ve not eaten anything yet today. I’m going to go and make something and eat it. I’ll try to check back in later.
UncleEbeneezer
Also, now that you are back Adam, just wanted to share this fairly extensive article by Barb McQuade, (Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan 2010 to 2017; co-chair of the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee 2015 to 2017; and co-chair of the Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee for the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee 2010 to 2017), on Biden’s plan for countering Domestic Terrorism in the US. Seems like something in your wheelhouse that might be worth a deep dive post when you have more time.
Raven Onthill
So, Vladimir Putin tells us he wants to make Russia great again. I had hoped that, at least, he would not publicly threaten all of eastern Europe.
One difference between this time and the 1930s, or even the 1960s, is that the world is watching in real time. Putin has given a rambling bellicose speech that will most likely do well within Russia itself, but poorly in the rest of the world. The rest of the world will react in real time.
Doug
@Cameron: Complex question. How much time have ya got?
Mallard Filmore
@gene108:
China’s army is not that good. They were pushed back by Vietnam at least once, maybe twice. They also were not a resounding success against India the last time they tried to slice off some territory.
zzyzx
@gene108: It’s only been very recently that Jews have been considered to be white and it’s a very provisional definition.
Another Scott
Psaki at WH.gov:
There’s that word “swift” again…
Cheers,
Scott.
MazeDancer
Jen Psaki:
trollhattan
@zzyzx: Charlottesville shook me to the core in part because of the out-and-proud antisemitism. Never saw that on such a blatant display in the US, in my adult life before, or at least not since Skokie.
MattF
Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall, but Timothy Snyder has an illuminating essay on the NYRB website about Ivan Ilyin, a founding ‘philosopher’ of Russian fascism. Putin is a follower of Ilyin.
Tony Jay
@Cameron:
‘Die for the Glory of Greater Georgia’ didn’t play so well in the major markets he was interested in promoting his brand to. You’ll notice Napoleon didn’t have himself crowned (ETA didn’t crown himself) Emperor of Corsica and Adolf had little interest in being the Fuhrer of Grossostereich, for much the same reason.
Raven Onthill
@zzyzx: Jews are only white until the jackboots march, and for more than 16 centuries, the jackboots (or their moral equivalents) have always sooner or later marched.
slybrarian
One of the things that I personally think is holding back effective responses like directly targeting the foreign wealth of Putin and his cronies is how corrupt global property markets have gotten. If the UK, for example, did seize all of the oligarch’s holdings, what happens next to the London real estate prices? It’s known that huge swathes of it, entire buildings even, are just sitting empty as wealth storage vehicles for overseas interests. How much of that would turn out to be Russian rather than Saudi, etc? I don’t think anyone knows and I don’t know if anyone is willing to pull the trigger.
Well, at least on purpose. Flobablob might do it by accident without realizing the implications or just out of spite.
MazeDancer
Kind of wish Jen had said something along the lines of what Rick Wilson expresses here:
Steeplejack
@Another Scott:
Whose plane is FORTE11 Global Hawk?
mozzerb
@Adam L Silverman: You mentioned it in passing, yes (same way I did). You didn’t, however, address how your proposed moves would minimise the risk of things escalating towards that.
You say the “military response will be that much more prolonged and deadly” for a future invasion of Poland (although if Putin goes that crazy, all bets are off anyway). OK, fine. So exactly what level of current “military response” are you really advocating here? Simply moving a bunch of assets into the region? Probably less deadly, yes (unless their mere presence acted as a trigger, but bets, crazy etc). Hardly less prolonged, as presumably they’d have to stay there more or less indefinitely to act as deterrence and play out Cold War 2.0.
The trouble is that the style of your rhetoric sounds like you’d like some kind of hot military response right damn now. If that’s so, please explain how it doesn’t go sideways fast. If not, then maybe tone it down? It’s sounding like the sort of thing you’d normally get from wild-eyed Republican politicians (except that this time they’re all on Russia’s side).
lol chikinburd
This revisionism stuff has potential. I recognize the Novgorod Republic. And not just because I’m jockeying to be Baud’s ambassador there. Okay, mostly.
1917’s not far enough to roll back to; let’s try 1263. History’s greatest tragedy was the collapse of the Golden Horde.
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
This. One thing you should always do is to look at whether the person’s nominal values align with their suggested course of action. “You didn’t care enough about that wrong, so you shouldn’t care about this one,” is a BS argument. But it also betrays its principles. If you failed to live up to your principles in the past, you should redouble your efforts to live up to them in the future. If instead you recommend abandoning them, it’s a sign you never really believed in those principles in the first place, and you’re just looking for an excuse to give them up officially. An excuse for inaction is just an excuse for inaction, whether or not it’s framed in high principle.
Miss Bianca
@lowtechcyclist: I never suggested that we were going to go into Ukraine with our troops. (Although at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes to that.) Cermet’s whinging about “why didn’t we go into the Congo” strikes me less as an actually valid point, and more as “whataboutism” for trolling purposes. I mean, we could get into whataboutism over Tibet, as well, for example.
At some point, as Adam pointed out, you have to take realpolitik into consideration whether you want to or not, if you’re being intellectually honest.
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: US Air Force.
I assume their being so easily visible is intentional. And it’s good. (I also assume that there are lots more things watching beyond those two planes.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
Nigeria and Venezuela also have massive petroleum reserves, but that hasn’t prevented both of their economies from descending into the kleptocratic abyss, even if the leadership still clings to power.
mrmoshpotato
@SpaceUnit:
And your comment is getting nominated.
Kent
I live in the Pacific Northwest. We have had outbreaks of it pretty constantly over the past several decades. And not just in Northern Idaho.
RaflW
One can only read the first part of it because the writer is (appropriately) wanting to earn a living, but interesting pocket of info about Russia’s international intertwinement in the global aviation industry. Some of this may be overblown (I mean the industry sources he’s quoting, not Ostrower’s post itself) but it speaks to the complexities of just slapping massive sanctions.
Steeplejack
@Another Scott:
So it’s a surveillance drone. I thought it might have been some bigwig’s private aircraft.
Fair Economist
If Putin doesn’t grab more territory, he has no gains. He went from a small section of Ukraine controlled by some thugs supported by him but recognized by nobody else to a small section of Ukraine controlled by some thugs supported by him but recognized by nobody else. Nothing has changed, other than effectively declaring intent to take the rest of the 2 provinces. There’s not much call for *new* sanctions although it could be a great justification for sanctions we *should* have imposed in 2014.
Precisely because it gains Putin nothing I find it implausible he’s going to quit now. Actually it’s rather a loss because it would further cement Ukrainian despite of him and reliance/cooperation with the West. If he does it means he thinks we won and just wants something to save face. I’m not expecting that.
Roughly I see four possible goals.
1) What he’s just done
2) Also taking the rest of Donetsk and Luhansk.
3) Also tacking areas that were pro-Russian prior to 2014 – roughly Ukraine east of the Dnieper, and the Black Sea coast. (Note these areas aren’t so pro-Russian anymore).
4) Taking the whole country.
As long as he doesn’t go for 4), it’s possible our pressure and support has made a difference. If NATO’s relative unity makes him shift from 4) to 2) it’s been a big win. We’ll never know, though, because only Putin knows what he intended and he lies about everything. If I had to guess, I’d say his plan was indeed 4) and he’s now planning to back off to 2) or 3) because he doesn’t want an indefinite guerrilla war where NATO can support the Ukrainians through a land border over 1000 km long. But, no way to know at present.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Not to knock those guys, who are both good, but there are a lot of Ukrainian journalists tweeting in English. My front-page post from a couple of weeks ago lists some of them.
Another Scott
That was fast. Mysterious (to me) flight CL35 has left Kyiv and is flying west.
Cheers,
Scott.
moops
Does Ukraine have any hope of withstanding this amassed Russian force?
Betty Cracker
@slybrarian: I suspect you are right, and the same is true in some US cities. It says a lot about our values as nations that we’d sooner contemplate military conflict with a nuclear-armed state than disrupting the global oligarchy property markets.
SpaceUnit
@mrmoshpotato:
Hooray for me!
Roger Moore
@Marcus:
The obvious answer to this is that he doesn’t expect to be able to get his puppet in charge in Ukraine through the democratic process. This is a drawback of pulling the most pro-Russia parts of Ukraine out of the country; it means the remaining parts are more vehemently pro-Western and less likely to elect a leader who’s favorable toward Russia.
moops
@Fair Economist: Putin’s raving today makes me think his ultimate plan is invading all the former Soviet Republics and that *for now* he will take his consolation prize of puppet vassal states in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Pharniel
@Kent: They don’t have a neighbor who has a history of keeping bellicose puppet states to use as an distraction.
The Chinese would absolutely love to have Putin as a 2nd Kim – tying up all sorts of resources that might be used against them otherwise.
Also China has a huge electrical supply problem that Russia’s vast petrochemical reserves would go a long way towards solving.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Stalin didn’t content himself with the historical borders of Russia. He was effectively in charge of the whole Warsaw Pact, which substantially expanded them. I don’t think Putin would want to stop with historical Russian borders, or even Warsaw Pact, borders if he had his druthers. No matter how far he pushes the borders, there will always be something on the other side he needs to defend himself from.
RaflW
@Adam L Silverman: From that thread “@jcbehrends
Listen to Putin, this is not about Russia’s security or NATO enlargement. It is all there in the open – his mission is the return to empire.”
At a time when the US is internally very fractured, this is quite chilling. Kamala Harris’ speech in Munich was good, and stressed Western unity, but even on the trip home, GOP senators were right back to their petty, trashy domestic bullshit twitter-fighting against the Dems on the same g.d. airplane as them!
Not to mention the Tucker Carlsons and Tulsi Gabbards of our goddamned country. It’s a fine time to try to empire against us.
(Me, I’m not convinced Putin has the economic might to finance empire re-building, but that’s something we’ll only know as it happens. Very high risk for him, but he’s likely going for broke in the classic sense.)
Butter Emails!
@lol chikinburd:
It’s true. We really should give most of Russia back to Mongolia.
debbie
@moops:
Those vassal states may be looking for some sort of quid pro quo.
Hoodie
The rant seems to be directed to numbskulls at home, have a hard time thinking Putin actually believes this nonsense. He’s not slavic Hitler; he’s just a fucking wise guy. Saying crazy shit like this is a way of amplifying the threat, the old Mad Man theory of international relations. His strategy is to park his goons on your border, start ranting about world historical nonsense, and then ask for the vig instead of burning your house down. The vig today is Donetsk and Lubyansk. A few years earlier, it was Crimea. In another few years it will be another little slice of Ukraine or another bordering area. Yeah, maybe that ends up reconstituting the old Russian Empire, but he’s sure going about it at a pretty relaxed pace, more like a stroll than a blitz.
That’s likely because these territories are not of any particular importance. Rather, it’s more about maintaining the fiction that he’s a relevant world leader. When you’re a crook, every day is mostly about keeping one step ahead of the approaching bullet or knife in your back. Stopping him probably lies in taking the cash he and his friends have stashed around the world; his capos will get pissed off and may find some way for him to have an unfortunate accident. Now, to get corrupt US and European pols to go along.
Roger Moore
@slybrarian:
It’s not just that Russian oligarchs have bought up a big swath of London real estate. It’s that them buying up the land has been part of a gigantic bubble. If seize the oligarchs’ holdings, you risk not just pissing them off but popping the bubble. When you do that, a lot of people lose a lot of money. Now that money was mostly imaginary anyway, and it was going to go poof the moment there was a crisis that forced a large group to liquidate their holdings, but nobody wants to be the one who actually pops the bubble.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Fair Economist:
Someone on Twitter said that Putin has effectively taken over Belarus without a shot fired. A provocative statement, but perhaps true if the Russian troops there don’t leave after the current crisis.
Hoodie
@Steeplejack (phone): He controlled it before then, he just put down a rebellion that his stooge Lukashenko was too incompetent to handle. He made that mistake letting things get out of control with Yanukovych in Ukraine and wasn’t about to let it happen again. The example is that you can screw up as long as you remain loyal, and Vlad will have your back (until he poisons your soup later on when no one is watching). This is about him staying on top of the pack of jackals he runs with. If anything, I’m beginning to wonder if Vlad is scared of new blood coming in and taking him down out of a perceived sense of weakness.
Bill Arnold
@J R in WV:
Mixed, since CO2 would stay in the atmosphere a lot longer than the dust/smoke from a large thermonuclear war, but on the plus side (though not for humans), it would mostly stop human CO2 emissions, perhaps for a long while depending on how much civilization was left, and the depopulation, mostly from starvation, would reduce the human CO2 footprint even if civilization recovered quickly.
I do wonder how much Putin trusts his guards.
Aubsole
@Cermet: So you’re saying a pickpocket has no right to stop a pedophile.
Right.
Another Scott
VVP would demand the whole bag, no matter his age.
(via dsquareddigest)
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
@slybrarian: I suspect some chunks of highrise and/or fancy Toronto as well. Does oligarch money flowing freely in the tony postcodes of central London mean that sanctions on the oligarch’s holdings would tank the Greater London bubble? I honestly don’t know. Would love to find out if any credible* econ folks have gamed this.
*tall order, alas.
Bill Arnold
@Steeplejack (phone):
There was an announcement yesterday(?) that the Russian maneuvers in Belarus were permanent. (paraphrased)
Subsole
@Adam L Silverman:
And I for one appreciate that.
So, what’s the deal on our end, Adam?
I mean, I can’t believe Biden doesn’t have a clear geasp of the issue. So is it…what? Popular opinion? Congressional malfeasance? Lack of will among our allies?
I was actually impressed with the leaking strategy. I mean, if I am an aggressor and my opponents are broadcasting my invasion timetable, that would give me some pause.
Kay
@Another Scott:
It’s funny though. The Marshmallow study was weaponized against poor kids for 40 years. Good for them for following up and poking a hole in their own work.
Miki
@Gin & Tonic: What are your thoughts (if any) on Brian Bonner, former editor of Kyiv Post? I’m following him on Twitter and FB for his retweets based on a very old (mid 80s) association when he was a journalist for the local St Paul paper.
Gin & Tonic
Another Scott
[eta:] KyivIndependent news feed:
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
My gut feeling is that nobody knows. Bubbles are, by their very nature, a psychological phenomenon as much as an economic one, which means we lack the tools to predict what would happen if a bunch of property was seized. Would it spook oligarchs from other countries into taking their money elsewhere? We don’t know, and it’s possible that we can’t know because we can’t reliably predict how other people would react.
Peale
@The Dangerman: Well to answer that questions, you have to answer the question of how Koenigsburg ended up with 85% Russian ethnic population after the war and where the Germans who lived there went. No one wanted the enclave because no one wanted it within their territory with the Russians still in it.
Bob
@Xantar: I’m worried Adam is arguing for us to go to war in the Ukraine. Putin might be Hitlerish but nukes change the situation. Escalating the situation in that way would be insane, IMO.
Gin & Tonic
@Miki: I’d follow people from the Kyiv Independent, basically the former Kyiv Post’s staff minus Bonner. He decided to retire when the Post was shut down, and I don’t know if he’s left Kyiv or not, but nevertheless is less likely to be in the thick of things.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob: Adam is not arguing that and it’s not “the” Ukraine.
Bob
Direct question time: Are you arguing for the US to go to war in the Ukraine? Because that’s what it sounds like to me. Putin is as bad as they get but he has nukes, so do we, and I’m not fond of humanity turning into cinders.
Miki
@Gin & Tonic: Yep – saw that. He came back to the States for a visit, but recently returned to Ukraine.
I’m gonna keep watching his stuff and also start following your suggestions.
Thanks.
RaflW
@Roger Moore: Just noticed this bit of cage rattling from a blue check with 275K follows. Dunno how legit he is but always nice to see Bojo getting pushback.
Another Scott
@Bob: Please drop the “the” when mentioning Ukraine.
Adam has laid out his recommendations in detail. And he has answered questions about them.
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris Johnson
I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Adam: fog of war messes with my head something hardcore. I’ve been following Vaush’s live coverage of all this, you’re completely up to speed and I’ll be paying attention to your takes on this.
Gin & Tonic
@RaflW: Bill Browder is as legit as it gets. Sergey Magnitsky was his lawyer when Browder was doing business in Moscow.
Subsole
@geg6:
Eh. He probably knows better than anyone how effective the Sputnik vax is.
jonas
Do we have any intelligence/insight into how the Russian military — I mean the officer corps, the generals — feel about all this? Are they all just fanatical Putin toadies who will fall in line, or are there any signs that anyone has any chance of talking him down from the ledge here? Even Stalin occasionally let Zukhov tell him no.
Another Scott
Biden from WH.gov:
There’s that word “swift” again…
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott: I hope there’s a word missing from the last sentence.
Scout211
@RaflW: @Gin & Tonic:
Red Notice was an amazing memoir. In checking for the link, I see that he has a new book coming out in June, Freezing Order:
Full Title: Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, And Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath
I will be reading that one, too.
Bob
@Another Scott: Sorry re “the” — I noticed years back that everyone was just saying “Ukraine” but it’s a case of an old habit dying hard and I sometimes slip back into it. I also just Googled to see if I had seriously put my foot it in, and it looks like I did — I didn’t know or had forgotten the connotations. So my apologies and thanks.
Another Scott
@jonas: I’d be surprised if there was anything public – information like that would presumably be closely held.
However, Bellingcat had a long interesting story last November that might provide some insight on how Russia does things.
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
Raven Onthill
@jonas: at least one retired general has posted an open letter in opposition. One report from Belarus is that the Russian troops are in poor shape, out of food and rotten with covid.
But I doubt that the generals will stop this.
Leto
@Steeplejack: @Another Scott: I know I’m responding to this way late, but the GH landed. Remember how I said in the thread below that it was circling off the coast waiting to land? It landed.
sab
@Scout211: Magnitskey was such a patriot. I guess if you want to be a hero you have to accept dying however. Not just in a blaze of glory. Just in determined stubborn resistence. Dying of mistreatment in a jail cell. What a person.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia: I think they’re explicitly reminding VVP about the risk of being cut off from SWIFT – the global secure electronic financial trading system. (Supposedly VVP has said cutting Russia off would be an act of war.)
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@sab: Stubborn resistance combined with torture.
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott:
But
Seems like something’s off there.
topclimber
@Another Scott: Those recommendations included sending tens of thousands of US troops. Apparently Biden didn’t think that was a good idea. All due respect to Adam, but I go with Joe.
Roger Moore
@zhena gogolia:
I read that as acknowledgment that what happened in 2014 counts as Russian aggression.
prostratedragon
@zhena gogolia: It’s a verb, it’s a modifier?
zhena gogolia
@prostratedragon: Oh, okay, “further” is an adjective, not a verb. Sentence really needs to be reframed.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
I believe “further,” in this instance, is an adjective and not a verb.Never mind.
zhena gogolia
@Roger Moore: I was reading “to further” as an infinitive verb.
Nettoyeur
@Adam L Silverman: His version of Mein Kampf has been out for over a year.
The Pale Scot
@MattF:
If you clear your cookies and google the title “Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism” the link should give a complete article
Another Scott
@Leto: Yup.
There are a couple of USAF C130s doing circles now in Poland just outside the western Ukraine border. I don’t see any Global Hawks at the moment.
https://www.flightradar24.com/RAGGY81/2ae5a5d2
https://www.flightradar24.com/125759/2ae5a926
Cheers,
Scott.
brantl
@tam1MI: Please, bite me. Twice.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia: Ah.
It’s a federal holiday. Their proof-reading eyes are still on vacation.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@topclimber: Yeah, the politics of it might not be easy. I remember back in the day, all the protests against Pershing 2 missiles being based in Europe to counter Russian intermediate-range missiles. Of course, analogies are always imperfect.
Plus, even without actual combat, deployments can be dangerous.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: I am eagerly awaiting similar demonstrations from “anti-imperialists” in the West protesting Russian imperialism.
The Pale Scot
I don’t think so. The nearest US base that could be a rally point is over a 1000 miles away. It is a landlocked country for purposes, no deep water ports, no major airports. The US would have to build a transport system from scratch. Other than dropping in Green Berets and supplying them by air, it would take months to put “boots on the ground”. The accessible responses were the same as being proposed here, sactions and seizures
Anomalous Cowherd
@Adam L Silverman:
My theory is that Gramps Putin is old and soft – he probably caught COVID and is experiencing the cognitive decline that results from long COVID. Either that or he thinks he can pump the US stock market up and down a few times so he and his buddies can make some $$$ from the roller coaster.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: They seem to be distracted, planning for their speeches at CPAC, or something.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Haha. I just heard about Tulsi.
debbie
@Scout211:
I still remember his interview on NPR almost five years ago.
Another Scott
ObOpenThread –
(A Wason Center poll on his agenda items shows that it’s unpopular.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
?
So sorry VA had to relearn the same lesson over again.
debbie
@Baud:
“The Great Un-Wokening.” ??♀️
debbie
@Another Scott:
“Read the room, baby.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
For want of a nail….
I am reminded of the (I think, true) story of some minor diplomatic kerfuffle that came about because the French envoy, during some negotiation, used a version of demander, and the English-language translator said “we demand” instead of “we ask” or “we request.” Of such small moments and misunderstandings are great crises generated.
AnotherKevin
A major build-up of US military forces nearby would have been, and still would be, unwise. It would just have strengthened Putin’s false narrative, and undermined the unanimity for meaningful sanctions. And your repeated implicit advocacy for kinetic US military action is unworthy of your usual thoughtful commentary. It is both completely impractical, counter-productive, enhancing the counter-narrative to our position while not meaningfully changing the balance of military power on the pertinent battlefield.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Oh lort. What’s she done now?
ETA: I checked her Wikipedia page, but didn’t see anything recent.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
She’s going to speak at CPAC.
The Pale Scot
Interesting graph showing Moscow’s disinformation network, includes Zero Hedge, I thought they were just goldbugs
Gin & Tonic
In case anyone is interested, the “sanctions” so far announced by Biden in response are completely worthless. The strategic equivalent of a wet fart.
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s “CPAC Florida”, which I guess is different from the usual national one in DC, or the international one in Budapest or wherever they hold it next.
Cheers,
Scott.
hueyplong
@Gin & Tonic: Any chance that Biden is playing it that way in the hope of limiting RU occupation to the area actually controlled by the two breakaways as opposed to the areas they claim, or are we foolish for even contemplating, just on a message board, an offramp scenario?
Baud
@Another Scott:
Ah, I thought it was the national one. Still.
hueyplong
@Another Scott: At least Tulsi hasn’t yet committed to CPAC Moscow.
germy
Roger Moore
@The Pale Scot:
The US government said something last week about Zero Hedge repeating Russian propaganda. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised at any source in the US starting to funnel Russian propaganda. Our news media is in precarious financial shape, which makes it ripe for exploitation by anyone with some money to throw around.
Gin & Tonic
@hueyplong: B.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: The currency traders don’t seem to happy. If I’m doing the figuring right, it looks like the rubble has lost about 3.8% of its value against the dollar in the last 24 hours or so.
WH.gov Factsheet on the new Executive Order.
That would seem to be a biggy. US technology is in almost everything (via the patent system and licenses).
I’m sure more is coming because VVP shows no signs of backing down yet.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: That EO prohibits activity that is not taking place.
Brachiator
@Gin & Tonic:
What would you like to see happen?
Gin & Tonic
@Brachiator: Cut them off from SWIFT. Ban all air traffic to/from the EU. Enforce the GB unexplained wealth order. Revoke all visas, and PNG the oligarchs and their families in Spain, Switzerland, etc. Stuff with teeth, not prohibiting non-existent economic activity.
Kay
@Another Scott:
Republican politicians hate public schools, so they always assume public schools are more unpopular than they are.
The polling on public schools hardly changed at all during the pandemic, and I say this as a person who was worried they weren’t responsive enough. Some honest people who cover education kept posting the polls all during the critical race theory panic and the attacks on schools for being closed but political media wanted an anti-public school narrative so they just went with it. I was afraid it would become self-fulfulling- they would repeat it enough that people would just go along with it.
Thor Heyerdahl
This classic Yes Prime Minister clip seems rather apt – “Salami Tactics and Nuclear Deterrent”
https://youtu.be/o861Ka9TtT4
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: There was a similar story about an interpreter at the UN getting flustered by some complicated idiom and said “something rotten in the state of Denmark” as an attempt at it, causing immediate offense in the Danish delegation.
I have no idea if that’s true either. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
HinTN
@Brachiator: Welp, amateur that I am, I would like to see Ukraine announce that Russia presents a case that “the people” of these regions “prefer” Russian governance and that Ukraine will back off all civilian support and military posture in those regions while the international community conducts a binding referendum. I would also like to see the US and EU crunch down quietly but hard on the assets of the appropriate set of Russian oligarchs.
My parochial 2£
HinTN
@Gin & Tonic: RE: @HinTN:
There’s that, too.
Frank Wilhoit
@germy: There’s only one explanation: Trump is contagious. All the mannerisms are there. What’s the Russian word for “unfair”? (Does the concept even translate? I’d prefer to think it didn’t.)
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
Advanced drone, there appear to be nearly 50 of them, less losses to crashes or shoot downs.
Brachiator
@Gin & Tonic:
OK. Thank you very much for detailing this for me.
lowtechcyclist
@Mallard Filmore:
Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite Doonesbury strips.
RaflW
@jonas: Dunno where I saw it, but there was a recent graphic of the short life expectancy of retired Russian generals. Had a certain “lot of falling out of windows” feel to it.
Frank Wilhoit
@RaflW: …and if Boris so much as turns his head in that direction, he’ll be wetworked. The oligarchs are a power unto themselves. It is entirely possible that they are running Putin — or that they think they are.
lashonharangue
Recently read “Not One Inch”, a newly published history of the decisions that lead to the scope of and process for expanding NATO. Putin is bad but I think it important to remember that Russian opposition to NATO expansion goes back to Yelstin. I learned a lot from this book. Anyone interested in a book club discussion?
J R in WV
@Bob:
deleted
Roger Moore
@Mallard Filmore:
Those were both quite a while ago. You might as well predict French performance in WWI based on how quickly the Germans overran them during the Franco-Prussian war.
debbie
Putin yearns for a return to a great empire? I think I just found his playbook (thread):
RaflW
@Baud: IOW, she’s finally gonna get paid by those what brung her.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Oh. Ugh. Thanks.
BellyCat
@SpaceUnit: Eight lines in and the Magic 8 ball says: “You right, You right!”
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Thanks. Basically confirms everything we always knew about her.
Eggbert
For those who have been patting themselves on the back with their middle-school level strategizing and calling for the US to insert troops into Kiev, well, your war-mongering just failed!!!!
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: Plus, at least according to Wikipedia, China and maybe both sides, were intentionally holding back for various reasons.
1979 was a universe away compared to where China is now.
Cheers,
Scott.
Peale
@Gin & Tonic: yep. Are you trying to get in on the ground floor of a business opportunity on Donbas? Well sucks to be you. There might be 6 people in the US who were thinking about it.
Another Scott
@Eggbert: Citation needed.
Cheers,
Scott.
SpaceUnit
@BellyCat:
Yeah. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Baud
@Peale:
Psaki’s statement makes clear that they aren’t done yet.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Ha ha!
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Well, Russia *has* just further invaded Ukraine. So what’s stopping the sanctions?
hueyplong
@Eggbert: I mean, really, who doesn’t like pie?
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
The statement was issued after today’s events. It announced initial sanctions and indicated more will be announced soon.
Brachiator
And on top of everything else:
It’s going to be quite a year.
lowtechcyclist
Well yeah, and like I said, there’s really only so much we can do here. Recognizing those limits is realpolitik.
Adam’s screaming (lately, all his posts have sounded like he’s screaming) that we ought to have already imposed sanctions on Russia. OK, and which of those sanctions wouldn’t have caused Russia to up the ante by cutting off natural gas supplies to Europe? And are our European allies (especially Germany) OK with that possibility, or do we have some other way of replacing that supply in real time? If the answer to both is ‘no,’ how’s it gonna work out if we plunge ahead with sanctions?
In the meantime, as Adam admitted:
And how far has it gotten them? From a realpolitik perspective, letting them go ahead and bite off more of the same seems exactly the best medicine. They may have nukes, but when it comes to conventional warfare, they’re not only not world-beaters, so far they’re not even Georgia- and Ukraine-beaters.
The argument against letting them bite off, if not more than they can chew, then probably enough to keep them from being able to pose a realistic threat of invading anywhere else for another decade or two, is humanitarian: if there’s a war in Ukraine, a lot of people will get killed who we’d rather see live.
But the thing is, if you’re only serious about lives over here, and not lives over there, then your humanitarian argument is bullshit. It’s not lives that matter to you, it’s the lives of the right sort of people.
So let’s can the humanitarian bullshit, and get back to realpolitik. Looks like I see the realpolitik of this situation a bit differently than you or Adam. And when someone’s practically screaming the way he is, there’s something going on in his analysis besides analysis, let alone from a realpolitik angle.
I’m sure he thinks it’s important that the Russian bear be bopped on the nose, and I’d love for it to be done, but the problems I’ve raised about the efficacy of sanctions still stand.
Audrey
Can Biden impose many sanctions unilaterally? I mean without congress. I think I read about a sanctions bill that was moving through but I don’t know where that stands or whether it’s even required before the WH can bring in much harsher measures….
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: It says “should Russia further invade.” Russia *has* further invaded. No conditional.
ETA: That was supposed to be to Baud.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
So it’s impossible for Russia to do any more? I don’t understand.
Gin & Tonic
@lowtechcyclist: 14,000 Ukrainians have died in the war since 2014.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: I’m saying apply the sanctions. Psaki is saying should they invade further, we will apply additional sanctions. I’m saying that test has been met, and we should be proceeding on that basis.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
My only point was the sanctions they announced today in response to today’s actions by Putin aren’t the final response, according to the statement.
Ksmiami
@Audrey: Ironically- the President has pretty vast war powers as things stand today
prostratedragon
@Frank Wilhoit: It’s often struck me that there’s no easy way to tell which direction that thing is going.
The Pale Scot
Miss Bianca
@lowtechcyclist: You really sound like you have convinced yourself that somehow there isn’t going to be a lot of people dying in Ukraine regardless of whether or not they are “people we would like see live.” Arguably more than if we sit on on our hands.
Again, Christ on a cracker, I am not arguing that we are or should be sending American troops into Ukraine.
I am really not sure who you are arguing with in your head, but to quote the Bard of Duluth, it ain’t me, babe.
lowtechcyclist
The detailed recommendations were all about moving a shitload of troops to various European destinations. But not Ukraine. Again, I fail to see just what difference that makes unless we’re credibly threatening to militarily jump into Ukraine if Putin invades.
Oh wait, that’s what Adam says we need to do:
So that’s Adam’s bottom line: a U.S. military response to a Russian attack on Ukraine. Swell.
To war, to war, to war we’re gonna go…
lowtechcyclist
@Miss Bianca:
I could say the same in return. Where in my comment you’re responding to do I even bring up American troops in Ukraine?
And where do I even hint at suggesting that not many people would die if Russia invades?
Seriously, in both cases, where?? I’m willing to defend what I said, but only that, not other people’s imaginings of what I said.
Another Scott
France24:
I’m thinking that this is a good approach at the moment. VVP should not decide the pace of western responses. It’s especially important to make sure that everyone is on the same side in whatever is announced.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: I understand G&T’s desire for more urgency, but I agree with you that it is necessary to get everyone on board and I expect that there are Nato countries that are less than thrilled about the idea of severe sanctions.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: I’m thinking this is complete horseshit. An invasion is an invasion is an invasion. This semantic hairsplitting is why Ukrainians will die.
Take a fucking stand. Either “the international order” means something or it doesn’t.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott:
And I am imposing sanctions on Another Scott and Omnes Omnibus to prevent them from flying to the moon.
The US is now fully demonstrating its toothlessness
Another Scott
“Now let’s go to our man in Kyiv, Philip Crowther…”
Zooks!
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Respectfully, I disagree, but I am not going to argue the issue with you tonight.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: I understand your frustration. As you know, the US government works slowly. Beyond that, there are 27 countries in the EU. There are 30 members of NATO. It’s important to have all of them working together on this. One of VVP’s goals is to split these alliances…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Vladimir Putin has declared war on the EU and the EU will argue about semantics while the US will wait “for the tanks to roll” *while they are rolling.* Willful blindness.
I’m done. I need a drink. Or two.
Another Scott
ICYMI, WH.gov background by senior administration official:
More at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim Appleton
@Gin & Tonic: Are there actual Russian forces in Donetsk and Luhansk?
My understanding is no.
Today’s official recognition lays the pretext for sending forces into Ukrainian sovereign territory, presumably at the “request” of the Russia-backed illegitimate “government”.
Another Scott
https://www.aljazeera.com/ has live video of the UN Security Council meeting going on now. Ireland just finished speaking.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim Appleton
@Jim Appleton: My bad. Should have read the rest of the thread.
GT you’re right. They’ve invaded in force.
Subsole
@The Pale Scot:
What is the Ukrainian for Quisling?
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah…that kinda reads like the old 1990’s debate over the difference between genocide and ‘acts of genocide’…
I understand why we split those particular hairs, but the outcome is no less ghastly for all that.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: The UN Security Council meeting is over. All 15 members spoke.
It was surreal for Russia to be acting as President of the council now. If you didn’t hear it, you can imagine the counter-factual diatribe he delivered. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
(via CherylRofer)
Cheers,
Scott.
Desmo
I’m a lurker here with only a couple of comments over time. But I feel as though I do have something to add to this thread.
My father was a WWII Quartermaster, operating mostly in North Africa. Dad talked frequently about the reality of warmaking, and what follows is a distillation of his teaching:
1. Wars are won or lost not by heroic trigger pullers and tanks, but by supply lines. A soldier who has not eaten in two days, and is wet and muddy and out of ammunition, is not going to put up much of a fight. Plus, most of these guys didn’t want to be there in the first place.
2. Troops can advance faster than their supply lines, hence they often outrun their supply lines. See comment 1 above.
3. Commanders who have great plans for a troop movement often neglect thinking about where their troops will fall back to if their grand attack doesn’t work out. So they then retreat to a spot where the supply lines can’t reach them. See comment 1 above.
4. Military equipment (tanks, etc.) is complex, designed by Mechanical Engineers sitting in warm offices with their computers whirring. (Back in my Dad’s day it was whirring drawing boards but…same concept.) This equipment is maintained by 22 yr. old conscripts who may have a couple of years of training. They are working with limited tools, and their parts supply depot is a long ways away. This equipment is operating in hostile conditions, and it breaks. When it breaks, the result is a situation known tactically as “sitting duck”.
5. The more different equipment you have, the more spare parts and tools you need, and the more trucks and truck drivers you need to haul this stuff around. The trucks have to be fueled, the drivers have to be fed and they will need dry socks and toilet paper.
In short, the attack on Ukraine and the ensuing “reconstruction” of the Russian empire is a massive endeavor and could very easily bankrupt the country. I suspect Putin did not fill out his Excel spreadsheet regarding the cost of this adventure.
Another Scott
@Desmo: Excellent points. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
I heard this live. It really is excellent.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ancient Atheist
Capitalist have discovered that Oligarchy works best for them.
AnotherKevin
If “something” means sending US troops to try to create a just governance in a far away country, that is an even worse idea than inserting US troops into Ukraine.
@Adam L Silverman:
AnotherKevin
@hueyplong: I think this speculation is exactly right. Biden needs to give Putin a face-saving off-ramp where in reality nothing has changes in Russia’s favor. And in fact this outcome would actually be positive in some respects (although Ukraine’s government obviously could not say this), because the balance of opinion in Ukraine now shifts from something like 60-65% pro-West to about 75% pro-West and he has lost for at least his lifetime the prospect of bringing them back into Russia’s sphere.
lurker
@Adam L Silverman: ya know… some of work really hard to get people upset with us… you are just making us feel the need to up the game another notch or three …
in all seriousness, the situation sucks big hairy donkey … somethings … and having a clear-eyed assessment is useful, even if the language reminds me of what I tend to hear from active duty types when dealing with a problem, rather than a friendly conversation over a beer. There’s a limit to how much someone can pull punches in providing perspective on a shitshow involving arms and troops and realpolitik…
Grum Grumby
@Adam L Silverman: I’ll take whatever Adam says over any other random commenter 99 out of 100 times.
Grum Grumby
@Adam L Silverman: Is there any conceivable scenario where we could insert special ops into Moscow to assassinate Putin and gang?
Grum Grumby
@Roger Moore: Can’t we (whatever country we’re discussing, such as UK), like, BOOK the value of seized property and assets, convert them into value for the gov’t or banks? Why does the value just evaporate?
Grum Grumby
@RaflW: Bill Browder is legit. He is primarily responsible for getting the Magnitsky Act passed after the murder of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009. The Trump Tower meeting (Jr: “If it’s what you say, I love it!) was primarily meant to discuss getting rid of Magnitsky Act, lying about it being about Russian adoptions, of all things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Browder
WaterGirl
@Desmo: Thank you for that. Lurk less, comment more. :-)