Why wait for Tucker…
“Undercover DC Police Officer Pushed Protesters Toward Capitol, Climbed Over Barricade: Court Filing”— https://www.theepochtimes.com/undercover-dc-police-officer-pushed-protesters-toward-capitol-climbed-over-barricade-court-filing_5067663.html
Opening grafs:
‘Three undercover Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers joined the march of protesters up the northwest side of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—including one who climbed over a barricade and pushed others toward the Capitol and another who walked behind Ashli Babbitt and predicted that “someone will get shot,” according to newly disclosed court documents.
‘New filings by Jan. 6 defendant William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, also show MPD bicycle officers stopping four armed men in plainclothes on Jan. 6. The men turned out to be federal agents. Video included with Pope’s filings also shows uniformed MPD officers saying, “We were set up [to fail on Jan. 6].”
‘Information in the court papers is likely to rekindle the debate about the role that undercover officers and agents played in the riots of Jan. 6 and why the U.S. Department of Justice and federal judges have kept the evidence under seal and away from public view.
‘“This video clearly evidences undercover law enforcement officers urging the crowds to advance up the stairs and scaffolding towards the Capitol on January 6,” Pope wrote in one motion. “The government may claim that incidents like this did not happen, but the facts show they did.
‘“Since the government cannot be trusted to disclose these facts, it becomes even more important that defense teams, including Pro Se defendants, be able to directly examine the evidence.”….’
Or why can’t Russia be trusted by those who know her.
Ah, om, you beat me to it. Estonians know very well that Russia’s intentions are not “defensive,” as is being claimed. They want to expand their territory and their sphere of influence and to destroy the western alliance.
Kate:
I posted a link to it last night in a comment thread with Turtler and Bunge, but this link is better. “Our” Scott the Badger commented on the post from cdrsalamander.
An associate minister from my church, John Lipp (RIP), was an Estonial refugee arriving immediately after WWII as a teen. Served in US army. Decidedly not a Russophile.
Meanwhile, in the real world that is inching closer to nuclear war…
I don’t think chanting “Putin bad, Putin bad” is going to be terribly helpful when it comes to digging a fallout shelter,
Mike
Thanks for that, i really only knew cohen from the hallelujah cover
So Neo, when are you going to write a post about Dominion’s filing for a summary judgement against Fox News? Very interesting revelations from texts and emails from the discovery phase and from depositions from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and other senior Fox execs.
So Neo, when are you going to write a post about Dominion’s filing for a summary judgement against Fox News? Very interesting revelations from texts and emails from the discovery phase and from depositions from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and other senior Fox execs.
The WJ link is a bit vague:
______________________
Curtis began his presentation to the committee by playing a video of himself testifying before Congress in 2004, following the presidential election won by George W. Bush.
He testified at the time that he believed the election in Ohio was rigged using a computer program that altered election results.
______________________
I followed up on Curtis. He was part of a large group of Democrats who believed that Bush forces had rigged the 2004 election against Kerry. That belief has been discredited even by the progressive “Salon”:
Re: Estonia – The Baltic states have good reasons to be wary of Russia, but all are NATO members. I have little doubt that Russia would like to reacquire the Baltics, but attacking a NATO member is quite a different thing than attacking a not-yet NATO member, like Ukraine.
Regardless of how the Ukraine war plays out, the only scenario in which I could see Russia making a move for the Baltics would be one in which the US is tied down elsewhere, such as in Taiwan.
Glenn Greenwald has more than a bone to pick with this guy.
And from the “Payback is a B%#ch” File (cross-filed with “Anti-Racist Racists, Racist Anti-Racists and Other Creatures”) we have this pedagogical gem:
“Students at ‘Anti-Black Oppression’ Seminar Stage Mutiny Against ‘Racist’ Black Professor’
” ‘They had learned, in one of their workshops, that objective facts are a tool of white supremacy,’ writes Vincent Lloyd, professor director of Africana Studies at Villanova”— https://freebeacon.com/politics/students-at-anti-black-oppression-seminar-stage-mutiny-against-racist-black-professor/
This guy must be one heckuva teacher.
His epitaph? “He loved all his students and taught them all too well….”
Follow-up to my 11:26 a.m. comment on the “Intrepid Biden”:
“Unannounced visit to Kyiv”?
Well, unannounced to everyone except Putin, it seems.
I guess Putin got the message loud and clear…!
The awful thing about the Ukraine war is that Biden and Co. refuse to act decisively.
What effect would unleashing our oil and gas industries have? Prices go down = less money for Russia and their war effort. Biden and Co. refuse.
Biden and Co. have slowly increased the level of weaponry that Ukraine is given. Why? Indecisive and afraid of escalation, IMO. Putin doesn’t want to fight all of NATO. As long as the alliance is strong, we have the upper hand. Yet Biden and Co. act like, we don’t.
Russia knows that no one can win a nuclear war unless……..one side is so indecisive they fail to retaliate. They see indecisiveness galore in Biden and Co
Put the weapons in that the Ukrainians need to push the Russians back and be ready for all-out war. Pussyfooting around only encourages Putin, Xi, and the Mullahs. The lessons of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are plain. Go in to win as quickly as possible or get bogged down in a quagmire that drags on endlessly until our political will wanes and we withdraw. Blood and treasure spent and not much accomplished. Putin has seen this. His plan is to wait for our political will to fade. History tells him it’s a workable strategy.
Also, as long as the other NATO countries aren’t completely on board (and some aren’t) then Putin is encouraged to wait. Get them on board. Get them all to contribute their share of the money and weapons.
Increase oil/gas production, give Ukraine MIGs, more air defense weapons, and plenty of Javelins! Put our military on a war time footing. Be strong and assertive.
The negotiated end of the war can only be successfully concluded if we and NATO are truly serious about standing firm and show we are ready for a wider war. Unless Putin sees that, he will continue to wait us out.
Had Biden and Co. been more decisive from the start, this invasion probably wouldn’t have happened. Purin is doing what thugs do – taking advantage of weakness and indecisiveness.
IMO Ukraine is an intractable problem. I see nothing but lose-lose outcomes available.
The current stalemate, I suspect, is the best of all possible worlds at the moment. But it won’t last and we will miss it when it’s gone.
Here’s a quote from a speech I had not come across before.
“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”
Sounds pretty extremist to me. Any guesses?
Related:
The Greenwald-Omidyar (currently adversial) nexus…
Very interesting revelations from texts and emails from the discovery phase and from depositions from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and other senior Fox execs.
And even more interesting revelations from communications by Dominion employees about the unreliability of the software.
Two points about those Fox “revelations.” First, I’d like more context as to exactly what they were referring to as “crazy,” etc., from objective reporting. Second, even if they didn’t believe the fraud claims, there’s nothing wrong with reporting the claims. That’s in contrast to the NYT, WaPo etc. who never fairly report anything but what they themselves believe.
Prior to 2014 Russia was not occupying Crimea, The Kerch Narrows Bridge did not exist, the Little Green Men of the Donbas and Luhansk were occupied in Georgia(?), and Moldova didn’t have Russian troops ensconced on their lands. How quickly things can change and become accepted as inevitable and immutable. Lukashenko in Belarus will not live forever; will another Russian toady replace him? Vlad’s house has some card-like aspects.
Somewhat like the orban soros dynamic i dont know when the latter became a supervillain
Once upon a time he aided samizdat media in eastern europe and orban the youngest of the dissidents then, came to his attention
sans the pipeline cutoff, putin would have no leverage, now i’m not saying the 750 k to all the right parties, from nordstreams parent gazprom, including 20K for the big guy was the deciding factor, but it’s not irrelevant either, the ukrainian grain that was the squirrel, ended up overwhelming the western european stores,
having some javelins in reserves (like chekov’s gun) served as a powerful deterrent, using up all our stores, is a dangerous act of brinksmanship,
Because you had to know how the “French Elvis” sang “Hey Joe” when he was 63:
It’ll be interesting in about 6 to 8 months when Trump and DeSantis are campaigning full-bore against our Pavlovian involvement in Ukraine. Can’t wait to see the mental and moral pretzels people twist themselves into over that.
Mike
They broke up when Orban began to comprehend Soros’s true goals; and, concurrently, when Soros realized he could no longer rely on, i.e., manipulate, Orban.
This extraordinary article (from the Spring of 2019) on Orban (and, peripherally, Soros) by—whom else?— Christopher Caldwell, was linked to quite a while ago by Powerline blog. Note the title (and note, too, that
“liberalism”‘s Overton window has shifted wildly to the left and began doing so several good years before 2019).
“Hungary and the Future of Europe;
“Viktor Orbán’s escalating conflict with liberalism.” https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/hungary-and-the-future-of-europe/
– – – – – – – – –
And THIS: the bitter truth staring the country in the face (downstream from your link at 3:26 pm)…
“So basically Tucker Carlson is going to have to do the job of the DOJ because our AG has spent two years covering up the truth.“— https://twitter.com/thebradfordfile/status/1627861218621784064
But even that quote isn’t quite accurate.
Garland didn’t just spend two years “covering up the truth”.
He spent two years actually SUBVERTING IT and prosecuting innocent Americans while trampling like a herd of elephants on the Constitution and Constitutional process and protection.
By rights he should be put away.
By rights all of ’em should be.
‘when the going gets weird, the weird go pro’ once upon a time I detested greenwald and assange, partially because of his habit of sock puppeting, and some of his stance, re the long wars in afghanistan and Iraq,
a dozen years later, his samizdat is a better perspective than most of the blank pages, that flash on our screens, with the authenticity of milli vannilli,
And as a perfectly logical follow-up to the Omidyar post (2:36 pm), here’s Turley:
“The War On Musk: Washington Post Slammed Over Twitter Hit Piece”— https://www.zerohedge.com/political/war-musk-washington-post-slammed-over-twitter-hit-piece
It’s a bit too early to tell but Musk may well have saved the country. Quite possibly we have reached “the end of the beginning” but there’s a long, long ways to go.
(And so the gloves are off as “Biden” will never forget…and never forgive. Musk will be Trump-inated, relentlessly. Unceasingly.)
I suspect that Musk being the person he is will be content to pay any price for having done what he did. Or at least having tried. (He knew—he had to know—the potential price he’d have to pay when he decided to release the twitter files.)
A profile in extraordinary courage.
the procurator general, yes the allusion to pontius pilate is not accidental, has been a scourge on the body politic, barr was not very helpful in this regard, on a whole host of fronts, well from a certain point of view, anyways,
whats not on the printed pages, or at the corners of same, are as interesting as what makes it to the front page, this has been true, for a long time, when something is echoed in a 100 different venues, at the same ear bleeding intensity it is likely to be wrong,
take the tyree nichols case, it happened but the circumstances of why it happened what heather mcdonald notes, is the most important thing,
sdferr, thanks for that.
No, I didn’t follow up on that thread and didn’t see your post, unfortunately.
The guy seems like a quirky, contrarian iconoclast (perhaps a mite too-clever) for whom the greatest sins are being dull (and/or unwittingly hypocritical, i.e., un-self-aware, i.e., essentially logically incoherent).
His list of articles in “Tablet Magazine” seems to follow a certain bizarro, but not-necessarily uninteresting consistency… https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1628129104674361378?cxt=HHwWxMC4yeyyo5gtAAAA
They seem worthwhile; OTOH I recall now reading one of them recently, not knowing he was the author, that I abandoned soon after having started—on the militant lesbian I believe—using my favorite versatile, all-purpose excuse: “Life is too short…”.
Must have given him a great frisson of derring-do to have unloaded like that on Bloom… AND Strauss.
Oh well. We are who we are. (Or should that be, “I yam what I yam…”?)
Thanks again.
BTW that’s a priceless site. (I suppose one could call it, “Jewish Liberals Who’ve been Mugged Mag”)…or mostly Jewish.
@MBunge
It’ll be interesting in about 6 to 8 months when Trump and DeSantis are campaigning full-bore against our Pavlovian involvement in Ukraine. Can’t wait to see the mental and moral pretzels people twist themselves into over that.
DeSantis has the actual flexibility and relative lack of a track record to make such a pivot, but I do not see it with Trump. He was quite vocal and active in supporting the Ukrainians during his term and limiting Russian influence. Downplaying or rejecting that is something I do not see rendering any benefit, especially since it is a useful antidote to the myth that he was Putin’s puppet. Moreover his aid was fairly successful at maintaining the static fighting and continuing to bleed Russian resources in a slower, more controlled fashion
He can also point how the catastrophic failures that were Minsk I and II were primarily the fruit of his political enemies like Obama, Biden, Merkel, and so forth. Likewise how their appeasement of Putin after 2008 in Georgia and a host of other misadventures helped embolden him to push the situation to the breaking point.
But regardless I do not see my stances changing much. America must come first, and while I greatly support Ukraine I desire a certain limit in the scope of our involvement, if not necessarily in its duration. If DeSantis or Trump did decide to run “full bore” against supporting Ukraine I would be disappointed, since beyond a moral or foreign policy level I would view it as domestically foolish both because it plays into the left’s script that anybody who opposes them must kiss Putin’s ring and also goes against the strong sentiment that the US should support Ukraine.
Though on the subject of twisting one’s morals into pretzels, I still wonder how those explicitly clanging the bell over the (unlikely to be realized) threat of world war and nuclear apocalypse can square the circle. Putin and the wider Russian bureaucratic machine has a pretty strong track record over the past 30 or so years.
If US opposition to the Kremlin’s misadventures in Ukraine is supposedly running the risk of nuclear war….. how is the Kremlin’s own pathologies and actions there and elsewhere not the root cause of that? Moreover, how would letting up on material or diplomatic support for Ukraine would fundamentally eliminate that risk (rather than merely subsiding it for a time or downplaying it, which admittedly in its own right may be necessary at different points like it was over Cuba).
The Cuban Missile Crisis analogies absolutely do not work on two fundamental levels. The first being that the crisis was caused over the Soviets actually stationing strategic nuclear weapons in Cuba and then the Castros trying to use them to start the apocalypse, and it subsided when the US cut a deal with an increasingly worried Moscow that saw the strategic nuclear weapons removed from Turkey and Cuba while the latter was allowed tactical nuclear weapons able to hit invading troops but not the American mainland, at least for a while before the Soviets withdrew those. The attempts by the Kremlin’s propagandists to conflate Nuland, Fauci, and the DOD conducting skeevy but mundane medical research in Ukraine (with the knowledge and agreement of both Putin himself and Putin’s Ukrainian client Yanukovych) have blown up in spectacular fashion as lies. Extremely unconvincing lies.
Moreover, the US has ultimately tolerated the continued existence of Cuba as a Fanatically anti-American terrorist state and dystopia just miles from our shores in spite of its regime having a far worse track record than any Ukrainian one. Which reveals the analogy as the incoherent special pleading that it is.
Appeals to the idea that Russia somehow feels it must have a neutral or subservient Ukraine are unconvincing. It would still feel that need whether we resist it or not, and it would almost certainly extend to other nations in its near abroad unless decisively checked. Moreover, the Kremlin’s precious feelings are more than offset by the Kremlin’s acknowledgement that such feelings have no basis in law or in fact at Astana, among others.
The idea that we are uncritically believing Biden by supporting Ukraine is likewise unconvincing. I for one came to my conclusions well before Obama and Biden did. Moreover, so what? I am not going to alter my stance on the likes of IS just because Biden condemns them, and while Putin is not as qualitatively awful as IS the general principle remains.
The brutal reality is that if we are going to be dealing with dysfunctional, aggressive, backstabbing, authoritarian Russian governments for the foreseeable future it is best to deprive them of as many resources as practical. And to be blunt, if the threat of WWIII is looming (as it is) it is best to have it start as far East as possible. The Soviets and Russians have long had a much more in depth and mature grasp of nuclear grand strategy than that of the West and its “everything or nothing” approach to nuclear deployment in a war, and there is a reason they relied on Poland and other buffer areas being pasted by NATO nukes to draw fire away from other targets.
At least with unoccupied Ukraine on the West’s side, there will be more real estate Russian, or Chinese, or Iranian, or North Korean, or who have you nukes have to be spread out over. That makes it far more likely none will hit the fallout shelters of either myself or Mike Bunge.
Ultimately, we can only live in terror for so long and so deeply.
I know a lot of people just roll their eyes at om. I mean, he seems more like a bot than a person whenever Ukraine is the subject. But here’s a little Rod Dreher essay on what people who think (if you can call it that) like om are leading us into:
“Twitter brought to my attention some extraordinary comments at the Munich Security Conference made by Kaja Kallas, the leader of Estonia. I’ve cued the video to the question she was asked in a panel discussion, and her answer: watch it here. In her answer, she calls not only for a postwar Nuremberg trial for Russian leaders (she was explicit about that at an earlier point in the discussion), but also here for a vast de-Putinification program in postwar Russia, to re-educate the Russian people about their nation’s crimes. The only way we can have lasting peace, she says, is by re-educating the Russians and changing them.”
“This is insane. You know that, right? How the hell does one get into the position to behave that way? You have to utterly conquer a nation. Kaja Kallas is calling for total war on Russia. If that’s not what she means, then what does she mean?”
And if you think it could never happen, who thought we’d be in Iraq for 20 years? Who thought we’d be in Afghanistan for 20 years, only to see the Taliban return to power the moment we left?
Mike
no, the voice of santayana, fwiw,
MBunge:
Quit personalizing everything. Om does the same. I have gotten very tired of it. Believe me, you garner just as many eyerolls as om, perhaps more.
because this administrations ‘dark deeds’ prove it is the greater enemy, imposed on us, by a cabal of financiers and scribblers, I saw when angela davis, endorsed him, it was a very bad sign, when denied this marxist insurgency that calls itself antifa, the roots of this regime and it’s enablers
corrupted by the enemy action of the modern zinoviev telegram, the danchenko dossier,
sometimes trump is his worst enemy, I will freely admit, sometimes he wasn’t the best of staff choices, but he was limited it what could pass muster through the possum senate,
I understand why banderas dead for than 60 years has a following, he had many faults, trusting the Germans was among the worst, but he held out against the Soviet and Polish Armies for four years, in the Carpathian mountains,
Bunge:
How do you “know” what anyone thinks about your or my positions on Ukraine, eye rolling or whatever, as if that matters. Is you Magic 8 Ball talking to you again?
There seem to be some unique assumptions at play in your cognitive processes. But you are the Bunge after all.
@MBunge
I know a lot of people just roll their eyes at om. I mean, he seems more like a bot than a person whenever Ukraine is the subject.
A fair point, and one I disagree with on om. I do think his approach is counterproductive and even trolling, and even if I sympathize with many of his points (though FAR from all) i despise much.
But here’s a little Rod Dreher essay on what people who think (if you can call it that) like om are leading us into:
“Twitter brought to my attention some extraordinary comments at the Munich Security Conference made by Kaja Kallas, the leader of Estonia. I’ve cued the video to the question she was asked in a panel discussion, and her answer: watch it here. In her answer, she calls not only for a postwar Nuremberg trial for Russian leaders (she was explicit about that at an earlier point in the discussion), but also here for a vast de-Putinification program in postwar Russia, to re-educate the Russian people about their nation’s crimes. The only way we can have lasting peace, she says, is by re-educating the Russians and changing them.”
Honestly, I absolutely agree with her. I already spoke about how one of the great flaws with Versailles was that it did not have Kaiser Wilhelm, General-Quartermaster Ludendorff, and Marshal Hindenburg hanged and Fritz Haber gassed, so that there would be little grounds to deny the atrocities they had committed or their guilt for starting a criminal war, and even less ability to claim they did not lose it or to believe that there would not be lethal consequences for such actions. I am not naive enough to think this would have resulted in Peace on Earth and Good Will to all Men, but it would have done much to cut the legs out from under the people who started the historical WWII.
The failure of Desovietization in places like Russia has long been recognized as a giant bane, in large part because it did not clean out the corrupt and authoritarian upper and mid level management (from which Putin ultimately arose) who had been inculcated in the regime’s pathologies and who took advantage of the flux of the post-Soviet period to pursue their own ambitions while falling back on both the power and connections (both personal and not) of the Soviet Period.
Which is one reason why you have no shortage of leftists who complain that Soviet iconography is treated as comparable to Nazi and Fascist iconography in the nations that know best due to experiencing both, and why Putin is hardly a Leninist but will go on to defend many of the Leninist regime’s legacies with prosecution.
The big issue we have is about HOW such a thing could be accomplished, as well as the timing.
“This is insane. You know that, right?
No, I absolutely do not know that. You might be able to argue it is reckless, depraved, or bloodthirsty, especially if you subscribe to Dehrer’s thesis (which I do not) that it could only be accomplished by direct war. But it is ANYTHING but Insane, especially for someone who has grown up in a region that has been a crossroads for imperial projects for centuries and has lived either in the shadow or under the boot of various Russian regimes for around 800 years.
Because to the Estonians, there is simply no more compelling priority than finding some way to pacify the threat Russia poses. Even issues I take much more seriously such as the “Migrant” Crisis, Creeping Islamicization in Europe, and the Brandon Regime are either more distant to them or are less of a concern. That’s what needs to be addressed if we are to discuss what she claimed.
How the hell does one get into the position to behave that way?
Many ways.
You have to utterly conquer a nation. Kaja Kallas is calling for total war on Russia. If that’s not what she means, then what does she mean?”
This is where Dehrer loses me on multiple levels because it simply isn’t true. It IS True that on some level utterly conquering a nation is the simplest and most obvious way to do it, and the one we are most familiar with due to things like Denazification. But it is far from the only way.
om, Bauxite, and I talked about the example of Yugoslavia and how while Serbia was thoroughly defeated on all fronts by 1999, it was never “utterly conquered” by its enemies and Milosevic’s overthrew came not from NATO troops or the UN bashing in doors and hauling him out to a waiting APC, but from his domestic enemies growing angry, throwing him out, and ultimately turning him over for trial. We also see similar on opposite ends of the spectrum with Portugal at the end of Estado Novo/”The New State” in 1974-5, the Argentine Junta of the 1970s and early 1980s, and Communist Ethopia’s empire (which included Eritrea) at the end, though only the latter led to widespread trials. The ideological legacy of the regimes in those countries range from being discredited and disreputable to being outright criminalized and banned.
But this is much trickier than the former, because we understand the basic concept beyond driving tanks into the capitol, shooting or hanging those we deem responsible, and trying to rebuild society. What can trigger such an INTERNAL revelation and change in a country without our boots on the ground (at least in any visible or confirmable capacity, because I’m sure there is no shortage of black ops potential) is much trickier, and I wish I had a good answer. But in general catastrophic conventional military defeat or a grinding war of attrition tends to help push it along precisely because it calls the regime into question and casts shadows on its ideological and policy pretensions.
And if you think it could never happen, who thought we’d be in Iraq for 20 years?
This is one case where I have to raise my hand and pat myself on the back to some degree. I admit I was a precocious youth with a mind for history, but very soon after 9/11 I realized that the war on Islamist terror would almost certainly last longer than I would be alive, and when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq I took a stock at our troop presence in places like Japan, South Korea, Germany, and so forth and did some basic date crunching. Likewise with South Vietnam while it lasted. So I realized we would be here for a WHILE and it would cost us.
I do not write this to claim false credit, and still less to claim the mantle of infallible prophet. I have been wrong about PLENTY, but I was one of those who called this.
Who thought we’d be in Afghanistan for 20 years, only to see the Taliban return to power the moment we left?
The latter is what tripped me up. I did acknowledge the risk that we would be in Afghanistan that long (indeed, I predicted it) and the risk that the Taliban and co might win in spite of it all. But the sheer collapse of the Afghan Government (bad as it was) stunned me. Credit is where credit is due: the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan with far more dignity and poise than we did and left behind a semi-functioning client dictatorship that fought on for years afterwards. We at best left behind a return to the old Northern Alliance style insurgency after a handful of days.
I am thankful in some way for the deaths of Osama and the buying of a few years where Afghanistan could not coherently be used as a terrorist base for strikes on the homeland, but it is hardly consummate with the results and I do think says a lot bad about the US clarity of vision and commitment.
But regardless: De”Putin”ization/DeSovietization in Russia would doubtless be a much more palpable goal compared to trying to Debaathify Iraq or DeTalibanize Afghanistan. And I would wager it would be somewhat easier to do IF/WHEN the situations to implement it were given. The issue, as you point out, is how to do it. Especially without causing nukes to fly from trying to drive Abrams onto Red Square, which would entail a level of cost and risk I am not willing to accept even if the Estonians are.
The ugly rub is that while I think very little of what Kallas says is wrong outright, we are not in a position to directly force “DePutinization” or anything like a Russian Nuremburg through Western bayonets being jammed into Putin’s throat. Certainly not without the risk of the world going to ash. Which leaves us with the other opinion, difficult as it is. That Russia would have to have it come about from itself. Which is possible and I think desirable, but also can only be done indirectly. But one of those would be helping to ensure the Kremlin does not win in Ukraine (whether it outright loses or is kept bleeding in the quagmire at rates far above those the US and its allies suffered does not greatly matter in this case).
But to address a few of Dehrer’s points:
To bring you up to speed: I believe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was wrong. I believe Russia should get out of Ukraine.
Fair, and this is why I will not claim Dehrer is a stooge of Putin’s or a Kremlin apologist. People of similar sentiment and good will can disagree on matters like this, after all. And even if he WAS any of those nasty things it would not necessarily invalidate the rational value of his claims, which would have to be argued on their own.
I believe that Ukraine surrendering the Russian-owned areas of Donbass and Crimea and accepting Finlandization in exchange for peace — a peace that can somehow depend on far more than Russia’s word — would be an acceptable price to end this war. Of course this is unacceptable to the Ukrainians, who want the Russians off their land. But this is the real world. We have to deal in what is possible, not in what is ideal.
The issue I see with this is threefold.
The first is what Dehrer admitted: That there is no serious appetite for Finlandization in Ukraine, especially since it arguably came close to being Finlandized in the decade or two prior to 2014 only to get kicked in the stomach. I will not dwell on this point.
Secondly: I find a lot of Western commentators SERIOUSLY overstate both the practicality of “Finlandization” for Ukraine, but also its justness or acceptability. Especially since decades later much of the Lapland and even the major city of Viipuri remain under Russian control, utterly depopulated of Finns, Laps, and Sami that had lived there before, as well as decades of terrified subservience. It was a much more acceptable outcome to Finland than outright subjugation under the Pact or annexation to the USSR proper, but by NO stretch of the imagination should we think it was just or acceptable, and the Finnish desire to be free of it underlines that.
Moreover, it is worth noting that it was prompted by among the most dire of circumstances. The immense damage suffered by Finland in three (maybe 4 if you count the wider WWI or 5 if you count the Lapland War against Nazi Germany) wars, most more-or-less against a Russian-centered polity, between 1914 and 1945, after Finland lost at least as many dead as Ukraine did in spite of having a much smaller population, even at the time.
Moreover, it worked in Finland for a few different reasons, starting with the much more distinct boundaries between Russian and Finn and how even the assorted Bolshevik and German regimes were focused on foisting their preferred clients into power in Finland rather than directly claiming “This is as Russian as Novgorod the Great/German as Goldnap now”. It is much less likely to work for Ukraine in any case, and Ukraine has much less reason to do it.
This article I think sums up many of the good arguments against this.
The latter-day, rosy interpretation of Finlandization rests on three faulty assumptions. The first is that Finlandization was a strategy cannily devised by the Finns themselves, rather than one imposed on them by the Soviets. Second is that it resulted in the country’s neutrality, meaning a political equidistance between East and West, as opposed to its actuality: a softer form of the subservience endured by satellite nations occupied by Soviet troops. The third is the belief that, whatever Finland gave up in terms of foreign policy autonomy, it was able to maintain a healthy, western-style society and form of government.
*SNIP*
Trumpeting appeasement in such fashion has significant consequences, as it renders acceptable any and all infringements on freedom as long as they can be justified in the service of pleasing the foreign aggressor. And there is no limit in pursuit of such a nebulous goal. Laqueur likened the uniformity of public and political opinion in Finland to the phenomenon of gleichschaltung, or “bringing into line”, which saw millions of Germans voluntarily join the Nazi Party and its affiliated structures soon after it came to power in 1933. Finland’s formal neutrality as an actor on the international stage may have been a defensible, if difficult, pill to swallow in order to keep the country safe from external threat, but Finlandization went much further, morally corrupting the country’s politics and society. Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, says that Finlandization’s effect on society was “deeply corrosive” in that “nothing of consequence happened in domestic politics without [Kekkonen’s] acquiescence.” And it has had lingering effects, “seen even today as a [foreign policy] discussion culture is only now emerging. (Before, engaging in it was a recipe for going nowhere in your career as a politician or civil servant.)”
Today’s proponents of Finlandization write as if all it entails is foreign policy neutrality; they have either forgotten or are completely unaware that it also involved frequent and substantive Soviet meddling in Finland’s domestic affairs and would entail constraining Kiev’s sovereignty beyond a mere formal commitment not to join certain multilateral organizations. For example, Brzezinski proposes Finlandization in the same breath as he calls for the West to make clear that “overt or covert Russian participation in its neighbor’s domestic conflicts” would carry a high diplomatic and economic price for Moscow, an assertion that betrays ignorance of how the two are mutually exclusive. For what else were Night Frost, the Note Conflict and the Black Dozen if not examples of “overt” Russian intervention (“participation” too salubrious a word) in the sorts of activities that, in a normal, sovereign country, are the exclusive domain of democratically elected politicians?
*SNIP*
Perhaps the strongest case against Finlandization is the example of Finland itself. After the term began surfacing on op-ed pages and at international security conferences, I heard from a variety of Finnish political figures and defense experts who were taken aback at the ways in which their country’s experience was being used to shape the fate of another land. Carl Haglund, the Finnish Minister of Defense, told me that he was “surprised and astonished that they tried to make this comparison.” Part of this anger derives from a sense that the plan’s proponents have not taken care to distinguish between the Finland of the Cold War and the Finland of today. “This Finlandization thing is passé, outdated”, Haglund told me. “I understand that they are trying to make an example, but it’s not applicable to the world in 2014.”
Indeed, if Finlandization were such a success, one might expect the Finns to be at the forefront of those pushing it on the Ukrainians. Yet it is difficult to find anyone in Finland suggesting that Ukraine follow its example. Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland immediately began wresting itself out of the Finlandization straightjacket. It made a mad dash for EU membership, formally joining the organization in 1995. And while opposition to NATO membership has usually enjoyed support from a plurality of Finns over the past 25 years, the annexation of Crimea has turned the debate on its head; immediately after taking office, the country’s new Prime Minister said that the country ought to have joined the alliance back when it entered the European Union nearly two decades ago. “When the Cold War ended, Finland dropped this policy directly and the Finns themselves are ashamed that they had to be so submissive to the Soviet Union”, says Stefan Olsson, Director of the Stockholm Free World Forum think tank. “I have not heard any Finnish foreign policy expert advocating this as a solution to the Ukraine situation.”
Thirdly: It does not address the obvious issue of how Russia would be made to keep its word on this matter. To his credit, Dehrer acknowledges this, which is why he speaks of “a peace that can somehow depend on far more than Russia’s word.” Which is at least a good awareness of the issue.
But it is not a solution for it by any stretch of the imagination. And that is all the more important because the wars in post-Soviet space have largely been driven by the Kremlin doing “Takesy Backsies” on its previous promises in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and elsewhere. Any such peace settlement has to factor that in, and I frankly think one of the best (though not necessarily the only) outcomes is simply bleeding the Kremlin’s war machine so much it is no longer feasible to conquer at an acceptable cost.
The fact is, the longer this war goes on, the worse it is for Ukraine, and the greater the risk of a wider war. More on this in a moment.
The issue I see is that the main risk of the wider war comes from the Kremlin or even more nebulously hardliners both in and out of it, openly talking about stuff like the invasions of Estonia and Poland. As such I believe the better remedy for this is to militarily humiliate Russian arms.
Moreover, while the war will make it harder for Ukraine as it goes on, it will also make it harder for Russia.
Of course states with nuclear weapons are beyond the law. It should not be, but it is. The United States, Britain, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and any other nuclear states on earth, will never submit to total defeat and occupation, such that an occupying power can undertake to “re-educate” its citizens, precisely because these states have nuclear weapons, and would impose too great a cost on any would-be conquerors.
I’m glad Dehrer brought this up, because Pakistan is actually a useful example. Firstly: it shows how the discrediting of a regime or at least its leadership can happen in the absence of total defeat and occupation. Pakistan’s leadership (especially in the military) waged a “Dirty War” against Bangladeshi nationalists and Bengali cultural figures in 1971, which ultimately blew up into a major guerilla war and ultimately a conventional war with India, which saw the Pakistani military get smashed and “East Pakistan” be overrun by an alliance of the Bangladeshi rebels and Indian military. In response the junta fell and some steps towards war crimes were taken, mostly in Bangladesh itself, though most of it fell fallow in Pakistan itself beyond the disgrace of the Yayha Khan admin.
This didn’t happen with nuclear weapons (indeed, the defeat in 1971 prompted Pakistan to work on nuclear weapons) but it is also worth noting we saw similar, if even less satisfying, with the Kargil War. That is grounds to remember you don’t have to go all the way to the capital to get results, but it is also underlining the risks of not doing so.
Why do you think it mattered so much to the North Koreans to acquire nuclear weapons? They saw what happened to Libya and Iraq.
This is putting the caboose before the engine. NorKistan had been seeking nuclear weapons since the 1960s at the latest, and was a nuclear state no later than 2006, half a decade before Gaddafi’s demise in Libya. Iraq certainly encouraged the trend but it did not cause it.
You’d have to be a fool not to understand that this is the way the world works. If Hitler had had nukes, there would have been no Nuremberg trials, no de-Nazification campaign. There also would likely not have been a Europe.
Honestly there probably would have been, but it would have been conducted amidst clicking radiation detectors as the US (which had fully intended to nuke Berlin up until Germany collapsed before it) responded to Nazi actions by simply striking until Germany went down. Especially given the nature of Axis atrocities against humanity and the US’s interests, the lack of ability to co-exist with Shicklegruber and the assorted Japanese juntas, and a fair bit of naivety about nukes (seriously, we planned to use these things to help secure beachheads for landing troops).
What the Estonian prime minister is saying is incredibly dangerous.
Fair, but it is certainly not more dangerous than assorted talking heads in Pravda or major Russian military blogs (which are different from us because they tend to have significant ties to the government) talking about “Denazifying Poland.”
Which brings us to something I feel Dehrer is overlooking. The GAMEMANSHIP and DIPLOMATIC value of this. That there is value to saber rattling in a controlled fashion (if there wasn’t, why would Girkin and Putin do it?) and to move the overton window, and people like K are probably the best people to do it and play “Bad Cop.”
We all understand, or should understand, why peoples of the Baltic states fear and loathe the Russians. Still, imagine that you are a Russian, and you hear that the leader of a NATO member country is calling for the re-education of your country, according to Western standards.
And I think it is important that someone at least publicly floats that trial balloon. Both because it is qualitatively different from blather about dismembering Russia (which I view as utterly dangerous insanity outside of my more Meme moments of a Greater Finland based on WWII wet dreams, precisely because there is no legitimacy or good reason for it) and because it helps touch on many of the important problems with Russian political culture and how to deal with it.
You will know that to accomplish this requires your country to be invaded, defeated, and occupied. What are you supposed to think?
This is a fair point, though I disagree that it necessarily involves foreign invasion, unlike say outright dismembering Russia into a bunch of different states like an independent Buryatia, which REALLY has no serious support in Russia and would require foreign invasion.
But it is also useful to keep a certain drumbeat of war crimes talks and Deputinization going because it will make the Russian public react. And we should highlight decently successful examples of this like with Serbia.
What Kallas said is a total gift to Putin and his propagandists. She makes it clear that the Russians really are fighting an existential war.
Putin’s propagandists have much better in terms of gifts as nonsense talking about a partitioned Russia. The key is to point out that the Soviet legacy and Putin are not necessary for the existence of Russia, any more than Milosevic’s brand of genocidal lunacy was necessary for the existence of Serbia or “Las Malvinas” and the “National Reorganization Process” were necessary for the existence of Argentina. One of the best ways to underline that is handing Ukraine the means to give Russia conventional military defeats while publicizing atrocities (I would argue from both sides) and punishing those who perpetrate them and can be got (again, on both sides).
And the Estonian government is in an ideal position to be the side raising these kinds of trial balloons precisely because of their anger at previous Russian imperial misdeeds and their history, but also their ability to simultaneously A: Speak with authority, and B: Muster only so much authority. So it isn’t like Brandon talking about the need to dismember Russia or arguing that Putin needs to go to the guillotine in order for there to be peace (Though I couldn’t put either past them) or Whats-is-name (was it Graham?) calling publicly for Putin to be assassinated (which is the definition of “Saying the quiet part out loud”).
While I have moderate AT BEST confidence in our current “leadership” to do it, some Good Cop Bad Cop can be very useful.
On the whole, Dehrer and I agree far more than we disagree, especially on the morals and ethics but even on policy. I agree we can do precious little from the outside to change Russia in the way that would see Putin go to the gallows, let alone in foreign courts like Den Haag. Which is why I do not view it as necessary for victory. I also concede that trying to influence Russian politics indirectly is difficult and risky, even by doing things like supporting the Ukrainian resistance and trying to discredit the Kremlin by military defeats. I just view it as the less dangerous of options.
Especially since Putin has a vested interest in encouraging dysfunction in the West by sponsoring the Greens and other ne’er-do-wells, both on the left and the right.
Turtler:
Bottom line:
Bunge rolls over for Russia because Putin threatens the Western world with nukes. Its a feature of Putin’s behavior or strategy.
That which is rewarded is repeated.
Polish it up and write a tome about it but it doesn’t change the essence of Bunge.
Turtler:
Consider that in your comment to MBunge at 5:05 you seem to have swept the legs from his most recent rationalizations of Russian behavior, yet there is no evident effect in his positions.
Your patient detailed explainations may work on Brian E, but seem utterly ineffective on the person they were addressing. Well, there are others reading so they may benefit.
Don’t knock yourself out or burn yourself out.
turtler –
I always appreciate your comments. At leat on the matter of a wider war, you seem to take a position that I’ve seen a lot, but don’t understand:
“If US opposition to the Kremlin’s misadventures in Ukraine is supposedly running the risk of nuclear war….. how is the Kremlin’s own pathologies and actions there and elsewhere not the root cause of that? Moreover, how would letting up on material or diplomatic support for Ukraine would fundamentally eliminate that risk (rather than merely subsiding it for a time or downplaying it, which admittedly in its own right may be necessary at different points like it was over Cuba).”
If NATO becomes involved in this war, or God forbid, China gets in as well, we go from the current scenario with tens to hundreds of thousands dead to a scenario with tens to hundreds of millions deads and destruction that will last for generations. Civilizational collapse would be a real possibility. At that point, who would really care that the Kremlin was the “root cause?”
So the question is can Russia be contained without risking nuclear armegeddon?
That’s an interesting discussion about what Finlandization really was. I had no knowledge of it before.
Bauxite:
Isn’t the issue the same one that’s been faced ever since the nuclear arms race began, which is that if any nuclear-armed nation can hold the world hostage and therefore get whatever it wants, isn’t that a type of “civilizational collapse” already?
To come around to my earlier post, the extremist who said that was JFK in 1961. Wonder what the Dems of today would say to that.
It’s Vlad’s speech from today translated into english. Information warfare.
To Bauxite, life is all about balancing risks and rewards. Always has been, sorry. IIRC at one time some people complained that slavery under the Pharaoh was the good old days.
@Bauxite
I always appreciate your comments.
Thanks, and sorry for it.
At leat on the matter of a wider war, you seem to take a position that I’ve seen a lot, but don’t understand:
Fair. I might as well try.
If NATO becomes involved in this war, or God forbid, China gets in as well, we go from the current scenario with tens to hundreds of thousands dead to a scenario with tens to hundreds of millions deads and destruction that will last for generations.
I agree, which is a major reason why I fundamentally oppose open NATO involvement in this war and am one of those who raged against Biden and others openly boasting of giving Ukraine information to help kill Russian brass. Not because I’m opposed to giving actionable intel, but because tooting horns over it was both utterly provocative and served no material purpose for America’s interests (beyond MAYBE providing some small balm to reassure America’s allies and clients that we aren’t always as impotent and uninvolved as we were in the collapse of Afghanistan).
There are precious few situations where I could agree with changing that, and the current one is not one of them. Which is why I have always been always blunt (even cruelly so) that I would accept throwing Ukraine to the wolves if it meant helping to wrestle our country’s freedom back from the likes of Biden and his handlers.
Above all, at present it simply is not necessary. The Kremlin is struggling to gain and keep ground as it is in Ukraine. Moreover, it would be counterproductive and an actual boon to Putin’s propagandists, since they can turn a dirty large war against a fraternal country and let the reverbs about how “Russia is at war with NATO for its very existence” strengthen.
Civilizational collapse would be a real possibility.
Agreed, and that’s a major problem. But it is also worth identifying what are the likely risks and causes of it.
At that point, who would really care that the Kremlin was the “root cause?”
Honestly I’d imagine quite a few people. Nukes are nasty stuff and two relatively crude and small yield ones turned cultures across the world on their ear, especially the Japanese (though interestingly they are NOW starting to prod at the nuclear taboo). The fact that Soviet and Russian strategic planning for their use has always been much deeper and more open than Western nuclear strategy (at least since about the 1960s and the end of Eisenhower) also gives me cause for concern, precisely because I feel the Kremlin is more likely to risk it than we are, and that will likely trigger a murderous, even genocidal backlash.
Which is one reason why I want to indirectly strangle Russian strategic reach, likewise for that of the PRC, North Korea, and Pakistan. And one way to do that is by frustrating its conventional military abilities and encouraging domestic Russian anger to turn inwards and upwards, towards its own leadership.
One of the major issues I have with Biden is how his boasting and efforts to take political benefits from this go against the fact that the US and other allies need to control how much their profile in giving aid to Ukraine sticks up. I don’t want to hide it all together, but we are far too high profile in it now, which helps prevent Russian anger and frustration from turning inwards and upwards.
Of course this is a risk. But the question I have is: is it really a risk that can be avoided by changing policies in a way that we could live with? Our decades of failures to appease and bring Putin on board make me think No.
So the question is can Russia be contained without risking nuclear armegeddon?
The counterargument I’d say is “define risking nuclear Armageddon.” That sounds pretty coy, and I agree it is, but it holds a point. I do think that as long as the power over Russian nukes lies in the hands of stridently anti-Western leadership who are willing to go up to the brink, nuclear Armageddon will be a risk, even if a background one.
That said, I DO Think it is a risk that can be kept at levels that are acceptably low to the American public and that of others. Especially now with the problems with Russia’s conventional forces meaning the Russian government has to funnel more resources into the fight and away from it.
There’s always going to be a risk that Putin gets shot and replaced by someone that makes General Ripper or Stalin look sane who immediately launches a full spectrum first strike with every WMD in the book. But I think it’s a rather low risk, especially given the general stability of Russian governments and their resistance to coups since at least the middle of the 1800s (which can be frustrating in many ways but also has its benefits since you generally know who are are going to be dealing with tomorrow). The key issue is to avoid giving the Kremlin reasons it can utilize to justify nuclear weapons to its elites and to a lesser extent its people.
One way to do that is to avoid directly endangering core Russian territory itself with conventional land forces. It was one reason why the counterattack at Kherson was so rapt and nail biting for many people since it was officially recognized as Russian territory by the Kremlin’s policies. And in that I do think a big, costly war on the frontiers is probably the ideal vehicle for that.
It’s not perfect. Not even close. It also isn’t without risks of nuclear oblivion and hundreds of millions of dead. But I do think that on balance it helps us manage the risks on multiple levels, including on the base, ugly level of “If the nukes do fire, at least they have to hit more targets this way.”
@Philip Sells
Indeed. Granted, I do think the article goes too far in some ways, for instance focusing on the experience of Finland under Kekkonen (who for whatever his virtues I do think was the Finnish leader to really EMBRACE it and use it as a weapon against his domestic opposition, as opposed to his predecessor Paasikivi), and I do think it overstates the degree to which it was imposed by the Soviets as opposed to emerging as a Finnish survival strategy to the situation in 1944, but I think it is a welcome counterbalance to casual talk about Finlandization. That this was not a good situation to be in, that it only looks like a good situation in comparison to outright occupation and often bloody suppression and even ethnic cleansing in Soviet Space, and that there is a reason the Finns do not like being reminded of it and why it remains controversial.
For instance, as a major military gamer I play many strategy games, and the “Wargame” series of video games features a conventional, technothriller post-Vietnam WWIII between “BLUFOR” (namely the West and its allies like South Africa, Israel, and South Korea) and “REDFOR”, a united Communist front between the USSR, PRC, and their puppets and clients.
Finland is *REDFOR* in that setup, with what lore there is talking about a communist-inspired coup that takes Finland into the war.
I personally am adverse to this, or at least to the sides being so locked, since I know there was STRONG Underlying anti-Soviet sentiment and most Finnish wargaming was preparation against the Soviets. And it’s also been a constant bone of contention on the forums. But the developers have stuck to their guns by pointing to the reality of Finlandization and Finland’s inclusion on NATO documents as a possible hostile force.
I think that helps us remember that sometimes, freedom and sovereignty are not lost all at once but step by step. Not just domestically but also with foreign enemies. Given the situation of Current Year and what we see with Biden and co, I fear that’s a lesson that’s more urgent to remember than ever.
“President Joe Biden’s warning that the world is at risk of a nuclear “Armageddon” was designed to send an unvarnished message that no one should underestimate the extraordinary danger if Russia deploys tactical nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, administration officials said Friday.” (Oct. 7)
“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people – this is not a bluff,” Putin said in a televised address to the nation. back on Sept. 21.
It seems it’s our rhetoric that created this fear of nuclear “Armageddon”, not anything Putin has said.
I can’t find any instance where Putin said he might use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
I did find this Atlantic Council article that seems willing to read a lot between a few lines.
If I was Putin attacking the US, it would look more like East Palestine and less like an ICBM.
Omigerd….
“The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions”
by Greta Thunberg
4.6 out of 5 stars.
What kind of moron do you have to be to believe that she is/was capable of writing a book? She can barely express a coherent idea.
@Brian E
It seems it’s our rhetoric that created this fear of nuclear “Armageddon”, not anything Putin has said.
Disagree. While I have plenty bad to say about Biden and the rest, it’s pretty important at how even before the war proper kicked off about a year ago,
(Yes, it’s reuters and so covers only part of the story but it provides some sources, and helps it.)
I think it’s really important to realize that loudly talking about the potential for nuclear war and Armageddon is very much a tool in Putin’s belt, and particularly that among the sort of constellation of wider Russian nationalists, Neo-Communists, and mixed nuts orbiting the Kremlin’s effort here. Moreover, I’d argue it is a tool the Kremlin uses much more freely than the US or the West does precisely because they understand nuclear war and fears of it play like electricity among Western public and that they can influence things from the bottom down.
The brilliant Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Benjamin Kerstein talked about “double discourse.” They largely used it to refer to Noam Chomsky, as Kerstein lays out.
Most of Chomsky’s other writings are exercises in simultaneously saying and not saying, attempts at what Pierre Vidal-Naquet called Chomsky’s “double discourse” in which mammoth amounts of effort and prose are dedicated to being as unclear as possible while simultaneously pandering to the double sentiments of Chomsky’s dual audience: the radicals who come to him for his unabashed extremism, and his more moderate, liberal readers who he fears may be repulsed by precisely that.
Of course this is nothing new or particularly revolutionary. Other authors and pundits nowhere near as evil as Chomsky is do it all the time, and so do politicians. We can see it with the “Coonskin Hat” strategy of saying one thing in the North and another – sometimes opposite – side in the South in the first decades of the 1800s. We can see it with Nixon triangulating between his attempts to appeal to the South on one hand without alienating his status as a Liberal Republican, and even Goldwater (who I greatly admire) had to handle his status as a rock-ribbed conservative with difficulty due to his need to appeal to Neo-Confederates and Segregationists on one hand and anti-Segregationists on the other because of his principled stance of “Anti-Segregationist, Anti-Jim Crow States Right Advocate.”
EDIT: Oh, and who can forget about Barack Obama, He of the Forked Tongue? Probably one of the most potent and insidious examples in recent history, and all of US history.
I’d argue that Putin and many other Russian/Soviet governments have maintained a Double Discourse about nuclear weapons. Frequently making reference to the possible use of them either directly from the top or through trusted useful idiots (who can be quickly muzzled or disavowed) before pulling back and offering to negotiate or so on. How sincere they are in any given threat is hard to tell, which is part of the appeal.
But it has absolutely contributed to the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty about it.
Again, this isn’t to remove blame from “our side.” Biden and much of the globalist left are repulsive, evil, and irresponsible and have said plenty of wretchedly bad things worsening this. Moreover, the MSM making it hard to get undiluted transcripts of what Putin and other tools say rather than either nothing or just reports of what some of them Supposedly said does not help. But the Kremlin is absolutely PART of the reason behind the fear of nuclear Armageddon and it is ABSOLUTELY intentional on their parts.
I can’t find any instance where Putin said he might use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
I’d have to check a lot closer than I have, especially since I’m not a Russian language speaker or reader. In any case I can even believe there is a slim possibility he has never openly threatened it (key word: Openly) in as many words.
Which is also part of the appeal. Even Putin doesn’t want to make such threats too openly, because like many diplomats strategic ambiguity can help.
I did find this Atlantic Council article that seems willing to read a lot between a few lines.
Sure, but that’s kind of because Putin’s many, sometimes contradictory proclamations on the matter require you to have to read a lot between the lines. Kremlinology developed for a reason and while arguably it is no longer QUITE as alien and obscure as it once was it does underline why reading between the lines is useful. and even necessary. When the seating arrangement and presence or not of a “Socialist Kiss” could tell world-shattering developments in internal politics, reading between the lines becomes very important.
So on that level I can’t fault the Atlantic Council for that alone. The Kremlin has a vested interest in maintaining the obvious threat of nuclear blackmail but keeping it ambiguous but present, precisely so it can escalate or deescalate the perceived threat at any given time. In some ways we’re not that different on that.
@Chase Eagles
Absolutely. I would also recommend that to us if we seek to strike at Putin, the CCP, Iran, or Pakistan. And fear about terrorists doing similar. Deniability can be among the most potent weapons of all.
Of course it was just a coincidence when Putin started using missiles designed for nuclear strikes but loaded with high explosives on Ukraine. Totatally had no message besides, boom!
Brian E says, “I didn’t hear anything;” it must have been “hushaboom” (see Rocky and Bullwinkle). But you would have to be a Boomer.
@om
Of course it was just a coincidence when Putin started using missiles designed for nuclear strikes but loaded with high explosives on Ukraine. Totatally had no message besides, boom!
To be honest it probably was, or at least any great big messages were of tertiary importance. The Soviets went BIG into multipurpose warheads and tried to make it so that most of their missile types could be fitted with nuclear payloads. Which is one reason for their design characteristics and why they are so relatively inaccurate.
So Putin just used what he had on hand, which surprise surprise often was nuclear-capable missiles fitted with conventional explosive payloads.
Of course that doesn’t rule out some possible messaging that way or discount the very real threats he and others have made with at least nuclear undertones. But ultimately the simplest explanation for the missiles is “Chyort, zis is what we have on hand!”
“…Dominion….”
Are the dominoes falling yet?
‘ Key Dominion exec admitted company products riddled with bugs’ days before 2020 vote: Fox lawyers;
‘ In 2018 email cited by the defense in voting machine company’s defamation suit against Fox News, Dominion director of product strategy and security acknowledged the company’s technology was marred by a “*critical* bug leading to INCORRECT results.” ‘— https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/dominion-employee-admits-fox-news-lawsuit-machines-have-bug-causing-incorrect
That’s right: The bugs ate my homework. Honest!
(Except, you KNOW they’re lying about that, too….)
neo – I think you overstate your case. If Russia were to dominiate Ukraine the way it dominates Belarus, that would be evil, but it would hardly constitute civilizational collapse. Also, nuclear war is an evil that is orders of magnitude worse than a legacy nuclear power dominating its near-abroad.
Major nuclear powers have the tools to dominate their near-abroad, or plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust. We don’t have to like that, but our dislike doesn’t make it any less true. Pushing Russia into a position where it predictably triggers a nuclear conflagration is dumb (and arguably immoral). Although Putin would be primarily responsible for the results, that’s really not going to matter much to the victims of the nuclear war.
The Concerned Conservative™ discovers “Better Red Than Dead.”
Lord love a duck (and cover). There’s room in the bunker for two.
What if it’s ALL theater?
…Ah, but we can’t count on that, can we…?
And that’s the “beauty” of it!
P.S. (…or can we?)
Turtler:
IIRC Putin dropped a missile into Kiev that is one of the nuclear armed varieties with an inert substitute for the payload early into his “freeze them in the dark”
campaign.
IMO he was sending a “I will nuke you!” calling card. Not something you get from Hallmark.
Since those early optimistic days Russia has burned through most of its inventory of missiles and has been using weapons intended to attack US aircraft carriers, S300 SAMs, and whatever it can get from Iran. Some of those missile types are
dual capable. He’s reduced to doing his “best” with what he has left. That wasn’t the case with his first subtle message from the Holodomor.
“Again and again I’d hear how we—the global meritocracy—would’ve solved poverty and inequality and climate change long before if not for evil saboteurs. We were enlightened administrators of the rational future, civilizing braying savages for their own good. Feelings in our collective gut amounted to the sum of human wisdom: we’d read the New York Times and realize of course we’d always known.”
Hubris run amok. The hubris is a sign of mental and moral defect.
These are the Walter Mittys of the world slandering everyone else in order to feel morally superior. They are a plague.
Barry Meislin:
Shocked, truly shocked. That is completely unprecedented? 😉
Making all of Europe safe for Roosia, one province at a time. All will be happy again under Mother Russia. Da.
Given the current (and not so current) zeitgeist, some of you might enjoy this:
“William Bullitt’s Search for Permanent World Peace;
“The famous diplomat blamed Woodrow Wilson when it didn’t work out.”— https://spectator.org/william-bullitts-search-for-permanent-world-peace/
H/T Powerline blog.
Fascinating, if a bit sloppily edited in parts…
Turtler, I was trying to say it was Biden that created this fear of nuclear annihilation, not any threat by Putin.
The only warning Putin gave was regarding invading Russia.
Was Biden’s off the cuff comment, which the really smart bureaucrats had to “explain” another “Biden being Biden” similar to his regime change comment?
Fred Kagan, in a podcast says it may have had a positive effect.
“No, I don’t think that we’re looking at Armageddon. I mean, yes, if you squint really hard and look at some extraordinarily low probability high impact scenarios, you could see how that could happen. But I think that, that is unlikely to the point of vanishingly improbable. But to Biden’s comment, I have a lot of issues with where he said it and what he said and what thought process that reflects. But in a certain fundamental way, I think it was actually helpful because the logical train that is implicit in that statement is, if Putin uses nuclear weapons and tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the U.S. will take military action. If Putin escalates in response to that action, the U.S. will escalate further. And if Putin continues to escalate, then the U.S. will nuke him. That’s the only way that you get Armageddon, is that you have a full scale thermonuclear exchange.”
This is being kind to Biden, IMO.
What Kagan is proposing is the US entering the war using conventional military weapons to defeat the Russian army in Ukraine. That also has huge risks.
The way forward is to accept that Ukraine is not going to move the borders back to pre-2014. At what point is the tremendous destruction and loss of life a hollow victory?
Kagan’s insights are worthy of discussion here.
Here’s a transcript. Kagan certainly mirrors your perspective. Kagan enters the conversation on page 5.
You trust Putin more than Brandon, or choose to ignore Putin’s statements, …
‘they are not really threats just musings of a well intentioned former KGB employee’ … (om extrapolation)
made since 2/24/2022.
Convienient that Putin can claim all the territory (formerly Ukraine) that he has annexed since 2014 as forever Russian (or Roosian to deney him legitimacy, mockery).
Then of course aggressive actions of Ukraine to seize Russian lands will be met with ultimate force (nukes) as those actions threaten the existence of Russia! (Vlad speak)
The war ain’t over yet and borders may not work out as you hope. Wars are like that.
Time will tell.
Bauxite; Barry Meislin:
I think you misstate my case, which I actually stated quite clearly. It’s not about Russia or Ukraine or Belarus. It’s about giving in to nuclear blackmail and letting a nuclear power do whatever it wants. When civilizations won’t defend themselves, that’s another type of “civilizational collapse.”
@Bauxite
neo – I think you overstate your case. If Russia were to dominiate Ukraine the way it dominates Belarus, that would be evil, but it would hardly constitute civilizational collapse.
I agree, but I don’t think Neo is disagreeing. The issue in this case is how we got there. If Putin simply played his cards better and came to dominate Ukraine diplomatically or politically like he did during the Yanukovych years, that wouldn’t be civilizational collapse. But not so subtly threatening everything from a “new” Cold War, to World War, to nuclear apocalypse in an attempt to secure it might. In any case it would be utterly terrible behavior being awarded, and encourage more apocalyptic games of “Chicken.”
Also, nuclear war is an evil that is orders of magnitude worse than a legacy nuclear power dominating its near-abroad.
Also agreed, but allowing a hostile nuclear armed power to more or less openly threaten it in order to get its way and be rewarded for it makes the threat of that greater evil significantly but unquantifiably worse. It encourages said bad actor and others to pursue conflicts further and gamble more, and puts us on the back foot. And more conflicts also mean that the risks of something going wrong – someone miscalculating at the wrong time, someone going to far, or mixed messages being sent – happening.
Which is why while I am prepared to accept losing some or all of Ukraine to Russia in order to avoid nuclear world war, I think that should only happen after the war critically weakens Russia and will leave it struggling to “digest” its conquests for at least a few years, if not decades. That is still an unfortunate situation that will leave us worse off than it started as well as letting down a brave ally (or at least client), but it will be after inflicting enough costs to bog Russia down trying to win the peace and hopefully signal to other Malcontents that we have the ability to make their lives very unpleasant if they push the issue, even if they WIN.
It also would buy us time for things to change. For Putin to die or be deposed, for the CCP’s “Bare Branches” to rise up against the regime that has so mistreated them, and so forth.
Major nuclear powers have the tools to dominate their near-abroad, or plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust. We don’t have to like that, but our dislike doesn’t make it any less true.
Agreed, but we also have to accept that if such a power truly wished to do so, there is very little we could do to stop it. And we have to balance out de-escalation or trying to avoid it with concern for our own power, including the strategic depth that comes from having an ally like Ukraine.
At a minimum we have to accept that there is wisdom to helping sustain an alliance so that, to put it bluntly, “They can’t nuke ALL of us, at least not to the levels deemed satisfactory by Russian doctrine.”
Is that horrifying to contemplate? Yes it is. Is it something we should do a lot to avoid? Yes it is.
But too much blinking will make us more at risk of things going thermonuclear, not less, and that’s leaving aside the moral and practical concerns.
Pushing Russia into a position where it predictably triggers a nuclear conflagration is dumb (and arguably immoral). Although Putin would be primarily responsible for the results, that’s really not going to matter much to the victims of the nuclear war.
Sure, which is why we generally haven’t pushed Russia to the point where the Kremlin would predictably trigger nuclear world war. We have not invaded Russia or encouraged the Ukrainians to do so. We have been extremely leery about what equipment we have given the Ukrainians due to the risks of deep strikes into Russia’s undisputed patrimony. Nuclear strategy relies on VERY clear red lines and we have not crossed them.
Which is one reason why we are dealing with so much ambiguity and nameless but hard to quantify fear rather than the certain “Oh Damn.”
Hard to tell, but on the face of it it isn’t entirely news. There has been an agreement for “Union” between Belarus and the Russian Federation since 1999, which is why Belarus is officially a “Union State.” The ultimate goal being to unite the two countries.
For various reasons Lukashenko took to dragging his feet on that matter, but he can’t walk away from it now since it is so tied to his brand, and so planning to one degree of seriousness or another for it has been ongoing for years.
Given the current (and not so current) zeitgeist, some of you might enjoy this:
“William Bullitt’s Search for Permanent World Peace;
“The famous diplomat blamed Woodrow Wilson when it didn’t work out.”— https://spectator.org/william-bullitts-search-for-permanent-world-peace/
H/T Powerline blog.
Fascinating, if a bit sloppily edited in parts…
Agreed, and well written. I despise Wilson but I do not blame him for losing the chance of “Permanent Peace.” Not when people like Lenin, Stalin, von Seeckt, Mussolini, and Hitler stalked the world.
IIRC Putin dropped a missile into Kiev that is one of the nuclear armed varieties with an inert substitute for the payload early into his “freeze them in the dark”
campaign.
IMO he was sending a “I will nuke you!” calling card. Not something you get from Hallmark.
You are absolutely correct, he did in the form of at least one X-55. I remember it being significantly reported on earlier.
Since those early optimistic days Russia has burned through most of its inventory of missiles and has been using weapons intended to attack US aircraft carriers, S300 SAMs, and whatever it can get from Iran. Some of those missile types are dual capable. He’s reduced to doing his “best” with what he has left. That wasn’t the case with his first subtle message from the Holodomor.
Agreed there.
I dont trust putin i dont trust some who is waging war on all are institutions to every degree possible they mean to ‘bury us’ meaning all that is good in this country
Why is that reality so hard to understand if we were foolish to want to get into a scrum with a nuclear power we would do the opposite of everything we are doing
Gosh, wonder if Lukashenko’ll put it to a national plebiscite(!)
Though why would he do that? (Wonder if he’d dare…)
Probably not, because he likely knows what the result would be(!)…even as he also knows what the result SHOULD be—make that MUST be…
So let’s assume that he’ll just keep on “dragging his feet” until the question is decided for him.
BTW, most curious—isn’t it—that both “Biden” and Putin are just soooo into “Unity!”… (or maybe it isn’t…)
– – – – – – – – –
Miguel, might that mean that “Biden” is NOT in a scrum with a nuclear power?
His evolution was quite interesting as a young man he was naive about the nature of peace with the soviets as we seem to be with xi, despite the blood price that has been paid
And what Miguel is the opposite of what the West (we) are doing that you would endorse? Sing “Kum ba yah?” Chant the new “Barney” song? A bit short on specifics, Senor.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Why wait for Tucker…
“Undercover DC Police Officer Pushed Protesters Toward Capitol, Climbed Over Barricade: Court Filing”—
https://www.theepochtimes.com/undercover-dc-police-officer-pushed-protesters-toward-capitol-climbed-over-barricade-court-filing_5067663.html
Opening grafs:
‘Three undercover Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers joined the march of protesters up the northwest side of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—including one who climbed over a barricade and pushed others toward the Capitol and another who walked behind Ashli Babbitt and predicted that “someone will get shot,” according to newly disclosed court documents.
‘New filings by Jan. 6 defendant William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, also show MPD bicycle officers stopping four armed men in plainclothes on Jan. 6. The men turned out to be federal agents. Video included with Pope’s filings also shows uniformed MPD officers saying, “We were set up [to fail on Jan. 6].”
‘Information in the court papers is likely to rekindle the debate about the role that undercover officers and agents played in the riots of Jan. 6 and why the U.S. Department of Justice and federal judges have kept the evidence under seal and away from public view.
‘“This video clearly evidences undercover law enforcement officers urging the crowds to advance up the stairs and scaffolding towards the Capitol on January 6,” Pope wrote in one motion. “The government may claim that incidents like this did not happen, but the facts show they did.
‘“Since the government cannot be trusted to disclose these facts, it becomes even more important that defense teams, including Pro Se defendants, be able to directly examine the evidence.”….’
File under: A time to umask.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%203&version=NIV
…alas the sinister “Adversary” is most brazen….
Posted last night but linked on Instapundit this morning, Ukraine war (what else?):
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/a-view-from-tallinn
Or why can’t Russia be trusted by those who know her.
Ah, om, you beat me to it. Estonians know very well that Russia’s intentions are not “defensive,” as is being claimed. They want to expand their territory and their sphere of influence and to destroy the western alliance.
Kate:
I posted a link to it last night in a comment thread with Turtler and Bunge, but this link is better. “Our” Scott the Badger commented on the post from cdrsalamander.
An associate minister from my church, John Lipp (RIP), was an Estonial refugee arriving immediately after WWII as a teen. Served in US army. Decidedly not a Russophile.
Meanwhile, in the real world that is inching closer to nuclear war…
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-politics-de0af48be7ea480ccb0175f55a065363
I don’t think chanting “Putin bad, Putin bad” is going to be terribly helpful when it comes to digging a fallout shelter,
Mike
Thanks for that, i really only knew cohen from the hallelujah cover
So Neo, when are you going to write a post about Dominion’s filing for a summary judgement against Fox News? Very interesting revelations from texts and emails from the discovery phase and from depositions from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and other senior Fox execs.
Indeed
pic.twitter.com/pNrgvnf940
Yeah!! Preach it brothuh!!
“Writing Code to Flip Votes Is ‘Very Easy to Do’ but ‘Hard to Stop,’ Says Democratic Computer Programmer”—
https://www.westernjournal.com/writing-code-flip-votes-easy-hard-stop-says-democratic-computer-programmer/
So Neo, when are you going to write a post about Dominion’s filing for a summary judgement against Fox News? Very interesting revelations from texts and emails from the discovery phase and from depositions from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and other senior Fox execs.
Hans Mahncke on a roll…
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/
One of the “Biden” administration’s more charming “Aw f%*# ’em” moments:
“Buttigieg will finally visit Ohio train wreck site — ‘when the time is right’ “—-
https://nypost.com/2023/02/21/buttigieg-says-he-will-finally-visit-ohio-train-disaster/
(Gosh, maybe he’ll have to notify Putin before his visit…and Vladimir is mucho busy at the moment?)
+ Bonuses:
“Buttigieg points finger at rail industry after Ohio train derailment…”—
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/buttigieg-points-finger-rail-industry-ohio-train-derailment-gop-officials-cite-biden-admin-policies
“Something Strange Now Happening to the Skin of Residents Near East Palestine Train Crash”—
https://www.westernjournal.com/something-strange-now-happening-skin-residents-near-east-palestine-train-crash/
Bunge:
I thought you already had your bunker dug, stocked, and your Depends deployed.
“Brave, brave Sir Robin ….” he’s got you by the short ones. Not a good way to go through life, living in constant fear. But, you be you.
…as President No Malarkey’s “That’s Entertainment” World Tour continues in style!
“Air Raid Sirens Blared For Dramatic Effect During Biden’s Visit To Kiev”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/air-raid-sirens-blared-dramatic-effect-during-bidens-visit-kiev
A real barrel of monkeys…
But the competition is FIERCE!
” ‘I never claimed to be Jewish’: Santos suggests his false Jewish claims were a ‘party favor joke’ in new interview”—
https://forward.com/fast-forward/536903/george-santos-jewish-congress-interview/
https://nypost.com/2023/02/20/george-santos-admits-hes-a-terrible-liar-in-piers-morgan-sitdown/
Re: Programmer can flip votes on machines
Barry Meislin:
The WJ link is a bit vague:
______________________
Curtis began his presentation to the committee by playing a video of himself testifying before Congress in 2004, following the presidential election won by George W. Bush.
He testified at the time that he believed the election in Ohio was rigged using a computer program that altered election results.
______________________
I followed up on Curtis. He was part of a large group of Democrats who believed that Bush forces had rigged the 2004 election against Kerry. That belief has been discredited even by the progressive “Salon”:
–“Was the 2004 election stolen? No.”
https://www.salon.com/2006/06/03/kennedy_39/
I’d sorta like to believe the Bush people had the chops to successfully rig voting machines, but somehow I doubt it.
Which does not debunk Curtis’s claims about voting machines, of course. It’s interesting how people can be such mixtures solid and sloppy thinking.
When were ruled by a confederacy of dunces preparation is only fair
Its odd how what dominions people have actually said in discovery is not pertinent but opinions by third parties are.
https://youtu.be/XYO03BBKZ_4
Re: Estonia – The Baltic states have good reasons to be wary of Russia, but all are NATO members. I have little doubt that Russia would like to reacquire the Baltics, but attacking a NATO member is quite a different thing than attacking a not-yet NATO member, like Ukraine.
Regardless of how the Ukraine war plays out, the only scenario in which I could see Russia making a move for the Baltics would be one in which the US is tied down elsewhere, such as in Taiwan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyhiiKUrWRU
Roosia wants. History. Foresight vs hindsight. Twitter isn’t the real world.
No surprises here, unfortunately.
“Mystery Solved: Left-Wing Billionaire Pierre Omidyar Bankrolls Shadowy Anti-Musk Group;
“Omidyar money behind organizations pushing corporate boycott of Twitter”—
https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/mystery-solved-left-wing-billionaire-pierre-omidyar-bankrolls-shadowy-anti-musk-group/
Glenn Greenwald has more than a bone to pick with this guy.
And from the “Payback is a B%#ch” File (cross-filed with “Anti-Racist Racists, Racist Anti-Racists and Other Creatures”) we have this pedagogical gem:
“Students at ‘Anti-Black Oppression’ Seminar Stage Mutiny Against ‘Racist’ Black Professor’
” ‘They had learned, in one of their workshops, that objective facts are a tool of white supremacy,’ writes Vincent Lloyd, professor director of Africana Studies at Villanova”—
https://freebeacon.com/politics/students-at-anti-black-oppression-seminar-stage-mutiny-against-racist-black-professor/
This guy must be one heckuva teacher.
His epitaph? “He loved all his students and taught them all too well….”
Follow-up to my 11:26 a.m. comment on the “Intrepid Biden”:
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1628021045365022720?cxt=HHwWgIC9_fug8pctAAAA
+
https://twitter.com/HeyMickeyHeyMic/status/1628023830710042627
“Unannounced visit to Kyiv”?
Well, unannounced to everyone except Putin, it seems.
I guess Putin got the message loud and clear…!
The awful thing about the Ukraine war is that Biden and Co. refuse to act decisively.
What effect would unleashing our oil and gas industries have? Prices go down = less money for Russia and their war effort. Biden and Co. refuse.
Biden and Co. have slowly increased the level of weaponry that Ukraine is given. Why? Indecisive and afraid of escalation, IMO. Putin doesn’t want to fight all of NATO. As long as the alliance is strong, we have the upper hand. Yet Biden and Co. act like, we don’t.
Russia knows that no one can win a nuclear war unless……..one side is so indecisive they fail to retaliate. They see indecisiveness galore in Biden and Co
Put the weapons in that the Ukrainians need to push the Russians back and be ready for all-out war. Pussyfooting around only encourages Putin, Xi, and the Mullahs. The lessons of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are plain. Go in to win as quickly as possible or get bogged down in a quagmire that drags on endlessly until our political will wanes and we withdraw. Blood and treasure spent and not much accomplished. Putin has seen this. His plan is to wait for our political will to fade. History tells him it’s a workable strategy.
Also, as long as the other NATO countries aren’t completely on board (and some aren’t) then Putin is encouraged to wait. Get them on board. Get them all to contribute their share of the money and weapons.
Increase oil/gas production, give Ukraine MIGs, more air defense weapons, and plenty of Javelins! Put our military on a war time footing. Be strong and assertive.
The negotiated end of the war can only be successfully concluded if we and NATO are truly serious about standing firm and show we are ready for a wider war. Unless Putin sees that, he will continue to wait us out.
Had Biden and Co. been more decisive from the start, this invasion probably wouldn’t have happened. Purin is doing what thugs do – taking advantage of weakness and indecisiveness.
IMO Ukraine is an intractable problem. I see nothing but lose-lose outcomes available.
The current stalemate, I suspect, is the best of all possible worlds at the moment. But it won’t last and we will miss it when it’s gone.
Here’s a quote from a speech I had not come across before.
“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”
Sounds pretty extremist to me. Any guesses?
Related:
The Greenwald-Omidyar (currently adversial) nexus…
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1452677286575198217?lang=enhttps://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1452677286575198217?lang=en
Very interesting revelations from texts and emails from the discovery phase and from depositions from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and other senior Fox execs.
And even more interesting revelations from communications by Dominion employees about the unreliability of the software.
Two points about those Fox “revelations.” First, I’d like more context as to exactly what they were referring to as “crazy,” etc., from objective reporting. Second, even if they didn’t believe the fraud claims, there’s nothing wrong with reporting the claims. That’s in contrast to the NYT, WaPo etc. who never fairly report anything but what they themselves believe.
Prior to 2014 Russia was not occupying Crimea, The Kerch Narrows Bridge did not exist, the Little Green Men of the Donbas and Luhansk were occupied in Georgia(?), and Moldova didn’t have Russian troops ensconced on their lands. How quickly things can change and become accepted as inevitable and immutable. Lukashenko in Belarus will not live forever; will another Russian toady replace him? Vlad’s house has some card-like aspects.
Roosia may want, but time will tell.
Lol
https://twitter.com/GrabienMedia/status/1628127500562751489?cxt=HHwWgoCzgb3VopgtAAAA
Somewhat like the orban soros dynamic i dont know when the latter became a supervillain
Once upon a time he aided samizdat media in eastern europe and orban the youngest of the dissidents then, came to his attention
sans the pipeline cutoff, putin would have no leverage, now i’m not saying the 750 k to all the right parties, from nordstreams parent gazprom, including 20K for the big guy was the deciding factor, but it’s not irrelevant either, the ukrainian grain that was the squirrel, ended up overwhelming the western european stores,
having some javelins in reserves (like chekov’s gun) served as a powerful deterrent, using up all our stores, is a dangerous act of brinksmanship,
Because you had to know how the “French Elvis” sang “Hey Joe” when he was 63:
–Johnny Hallyday, “Hey Joe” (Flashback tour 2006)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUK5GVpWmaE
Still a rocker. Fierce.
But it took two guitarists to cover Hendrix.
It’ll be interesting in about 6 to 8 months when Trump and DeSantis are campaigning full-bore against our Pavlovian involvement in Ukraine. Can’t wait to see the mental and moral pretzels people twist themselves into over that.
Mike
They broke up when Orban began to comprehend Soros’s true goals; and, concurrently, when Soros realized he could no longer rely on, i.e., manipulate, Orban.
This extraordinary article (from the Spring of 2019) on Orban (and, peripherally, Soros) by—whom else?— Christopher Caldwell, was linked to quite a while ago by Powerline blog. Note the title (and note, too, that
“liberalism”‘s Overton window has shifted wildly to the left and began doing so several good years before 2019).
“Hungary and the Future of Europe;
“Viktor Orbán’s escalating conflict with liberalism.”
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/hungary-and-the-future-of-europe/
– – – – – – – – –
And THIS: the bitter truth staring the country in the face (downstream from your link at 3:26 pm)…
“So basically Tucker Carlson is going to have to do the job of the DOJ because our AG has spent two years covering up the truth.“—
https://twitter.com/thebradfordfile/status/1627861218621784064
But even that quote isn’t quite accurate.
Garland didn’t just spend two years “covering up the truth”.
He spent two years actually SUBVERTING IT and prosecuting innocent Americans while trampling like a herd of elephants on the Constitution and Constitutional process and protection.
By rights he should be put away.
By rights all of ’em should be.
‘when the going gets weird, the weird go pro’ once upon a time I detested greenwald and assange, partially because of his habit of sock puppeting, and some of his stance, re the long wars in afghanistan and Iraq,
a dozen years later, his samizdat is a better perspective than most of the blank pages, that flash on our screens, with the authenticity of milli vannilli,
And as a perfectly logical follow-up to the Omidyar post (2:36 pm), here’s Turley:
“The War On Musk: Washington Post Slammed Over Twitter Hit Piece”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/war-musk-washington-post-slammed-over-twitter-hit-piece
It’s a bit too early to tell but Musk may well have saved the country. Quite possibly we have reached “the end of the beginning” but there’s a long, long ways to go.
(And so the gloves are off as “Biden” will never forget…and never forgive. Musk will be Trump-inated, relentlessly. Unceasingly.)
I suspect that Musk being the person he is will be content to pay any price for having done what he did. Or at least having tried. (He knew—he had to know—the potential price he’d have to pay when he decided to release the twitter files.)
A profile in extraordinary courage.
the procurator general, yes the allusion to pontius pilate is not accidental, has been a scourge on the body politic, barr was not very helpful in this regard, on a whole host of fronts, well from a certain point of view, anyways,
whats not on the printed pages, or at the corners of same, are as interesting as what makes it to the front page, this has been true, for a long time, when something is echoed in a 100 different venues, at the same ear bleeding intensity it is likely to be wrong,
take the tyree nichols case, it happened but the circumstances of why it happened what heather mcdonald notes, is the most important thing,
Barry, just for potential interest/amusement I dropped a note for you back a few days: https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/02/16/open-thread-2-16-23/#comment-2667131
an interesting postscript to the book thread,
https://www.youtube.com/@flashlightaudiobooks3547/videos
Bunge barks for Vlad, Pavlovian indeed.
Six to eight months is a long time in a bunker.
Time will tell.
sdferr, thanks for that.
No, I didn’t follow up on that thread and didn’t see your post, unfortunately.
The guy seems like a quirky, contrarian iconoclast (perhaps a mite too-clever) for whom the greatest sins are being dull (and/or unwittingly hypocritical, i.e., un-self-aware, i.e., essentially logically incoherent).
His list of articles in “Tablet Magazine” seems to follow a certain bizarro, but not-necessarily uninteresting consistency…
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1628129104674361378?cxt=HHwWxMC4yeyyo5gtAAAA
They seem worthwhile; OTOH I recall now reading one of them recently, not knowing he was the author, that I abandoned soon after having started—on the militant lesbian I believe—using my favorite versatile, all-purpose excuse: “Life is too short…”.
Must have given him a great frisson of derring-do to have unloaded like that on Bloom… AND Strauss.
Oh well. We are who we are. (Or should that be, “I yam what I yam…”?)
Thanks again.
BTW that’s a priceless site. (I suppose one could call it, “Jewish Liberals Who’ve been Mugged Mag”)…or mostly Jewish.
@MBunge
DeSantis has the actual flexibility and relative lack of a track record to make such a pivot, but I do not see it with Trump. He was quite vocal and active in supporting the Ukrainians during his term and limiting Russian influence. Downplaying or rejecting that is something I do not see rendering any benefit, especially since it is a useful antidote to the myth that he was Putin’s puppet. Moreover his aid was fairly successful at maintaining the static fighting and continuing to bleed Russian resources in a slower, more controlled fashion
He can also point how the catastrophic failures that were Minsk I and II were primarily the fruit of his political enemies like Obama, Biden, Merkel, and so forth. Likewise how their appeasement of Putin after 2008 in Georgia and a host of other misadventures helped embolden him to push the situation to the breaking point.
But regardless I do not see my stances changing much. America must come first, and while I greatly support Ukraine I desire a certain limit in the scope of our involvement, if not necessarily in its duration. If DeSantis or Trump did decide to run “full bore” against supporting Ukraine I would be disappointed, since beyond a moral or foreign policy level I would view it as domestically foolish both because it plays into the left’s script that anybody who opposes them must kiss Putin’s ring and also goes against the strong sentiment that the US should support Ukraine.
Though on the subject of twisting one’s morals into pretzels, I still wonder how those explicitly clanging the bell over the (unlikely to be realized) threat of world war and nuclear apocalypse can square the circle. Putin and the wider Russian bureaucratic machine has a pretty strong track record over the past 30 or so years.
If US opposition to the Kremlin’s misadventures in Ukraine is supposedly running the risk of nuclear war….. how is the Kremlin’s own pathologies and actions there and elsewhere not the root cause of that? Moreover, how would letting up on material or diplomatic support for Ukraine would fundamentally eliminate that risk (rather than merely subsiding it for a time or downplaying it, which admittedly in its own right may be necessary at different points like it was over Cuba).
The Cuban Missile Crisis analogies absolutely do not work on two fundamental levels. The first being that the crisis was caused over the Soviets actually stationing strategic nuclear weapons in Cuba and then the Castros trying to use them to start the apocalypse, and it subsided when the US cut a deal with an increasingly worried Moscow that saw the strategic nuclear weapons removed from Turkey and Cuba while the latter was allowed tactical nuclear weapons able to hit invading troops but not the American mainland, at least for a while before the Soviets withdrew those. The attempts by the Kremlin’s propagandists to conflate Nuland, Fauci, and the DOD conducting skeevy but mundane medical research in Ukraine (with the knowledge and agreement of both Putin himself and Putin’s Ukrainian client Yanukovych) have blown up in spectacular fashion as lies. Extremely unconvincing lies.
Moreover, the US has ultimately tolerated the continued existence of Cuba as a Fanatically anti-American terrorist state and dystopia just miles from our shores in spite of its regime having a far worse track record than any Ukrainian one. Which reveals the analogy as the incoherent special pleading that it is.
Appeals to the idea that Russia somehow feels it must have a neutral or subservient Ukraine are unconvincing. It would still feel that need whether we resist it or not, and it would almost certainly extend to other nations in its near abroad unless decisively checked. Moreover, the Kremlin’s precious feelings are more than offset by the Kremlin’s acknowledgement that such feelings have no basis in law or in fact at Astana, among others.
The idea that we are uncritically believing Biden by supporting Ukraine is likewise unconvincing. I for one came to my conclusions well before Obama and Biden did. Moreover, so what? I am not going to alter my stance on the likes of IS just because Biden condemns them, and while Putin is not as qualitatively awful as IS the general principle remains.
The brutal reality is that if we are going to be dealing with dysfunctional, aggressive, backstabbing, authoritarian Russian governments for the foreseeable future it is best to deprive them of as many resources as practical. And to be blunt, if the threat of WWIII is looming (as it is) it is best to have it start as far East as possible. The Soviets and Russians have long had a much more in depth and mature grasp of nuclear grand strategy than that of the West and its “everything or nothing” approach to nuclear deployment in a war, and there is a reason they relied on Poland and other buffer areas being pasted by NATO nukes to draw fire away from other targets.
At least with unoccupied Ukraine on the West’s side, there will be more real estate Russian, or Chinese, or Iranian, or North Korean, or who have you nukes have to be spread out over. That makes it far more likely none will hit the fallout shelters of either myself or Mike Bunge.
Ultimately, we can only live in terror for so long and so deeply.
Oops…wrong link (in my dotage).
Try this:
https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/blake-smith
I know a lot of people just roll their eyes at om. I mean, he seems more like a bot than a person whenever Ukraine is the subject. But here’s a little Rod Dreher essay on what people who think (if you can call it that) like om are leading us into:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/on-to-moscow-the-nato-leader-said/
The nut:
“Twitter brought to my attention some extraordinary comments at the Munich Security Conference made by Kaja Kallas, the leader of Estonia. I’ve cued the video to the question she was asked in a panel discussion, and her answer: watch it here. In her answer, she calls not only for a postwar Nuremberg trial for Russian leaders (she was explicit about that at an earlier point in the discussion), but also here for a vast de-Putinification program in postwar Russia, to re-educate the Russian people about their nation’s crimes. The only way we can have lasting peace, she says, is by re-educating the Russians and changing them.”
“This is insane. You know that, right? How the hell does one get into the position to behave that way? You have to utterly conquer a nation. Kaja Kallas is calling for total war on Russia. If that’s not what she means, then what does she mean?”
And if you think it could never happen, who thought we’d be in Iraq for 20 years? Who thought we’d be in Afghanistan for 20 years, only to see the Taliban return to power the moment we left?
Mike
no, the voice of santayana, fwiw,
MBunge:
Quit personalizing everything. Om does the same. I have gotten very tired of it. Believe me, you garner just as many eyerolls as om, perhaps more.
because this administrations ‘dark deeds’ prove it is the greater enemy, imposed on us, by a cabal of financiers and scribblers, I saw when angela davis, endorsed him, it was a very bad sign, when denied this marxist insurgency that calls itself antifa, the roots of this regime and it’s enablers
corrupted by the enemy action of the modern zinoviev telegram, the danchenko dossier,
sometimes trump is his worst enemy, I will freely admit, sometimes he wasn’t the best of staff choices, but he was limited it what could pass muster through the possum senate,
I understand why banderas dead for than 60 years has a following, he had many faults, trusting the Germans was among the worst, but he held out against the Soviet and Polish Armies for four years, in the Carpathian mountains,
Bunge:
How do you “know” what anyone thinks about your or my positions on Ukraine, eye rolling or whatever, as if that matters. Is you Magic 8 Ball talking to you again?
There seem to be some unique assumptions at play in your cognitive processes. But you are the Bunge after all.
@MBunge
A fair point, and one I disagree with on om. I do think his approach is counterproductive and even trolling, and even if I sympathize with many of his points (though FAR from all) i despise much.
Fair point, and I will.
Honestly, I absolutely agree with her. I already spoke about how one of the great flaws with Versailles was that it did not have Kaiser Wilhelm, General-Quartermaster Ludendorff, and Marshal Hindenburg hanged and Fritz Haber gassed, so that there would be little grounds to deny the atrocities they had committed or their guilt for starting a criminal war, and even less ability to claim they did not lose it or to believe that there would not be lethal consequences for such actions. I am not naive enough to think this would have resulted in Peace on Earth and Good Will to all Men, but it would have done much to cut the legs out from under the people who started the historical WWII.
The failure of Desovietization in places like Russia has long been recognized as a giant bane, in large part because it did not clean out the corrupt and authoritarian upper and mid level management (from which Putin ultimately arose) who had been inculcated in the regime’s pathologies and who took advantage of the flux of the post-Soviet period to pursue their own ambitions while falling back on both the power and connections (both personal and not) of the Soviet Period.
Which is one reason why you have no shortage of leftists who complain that Soviet iconography is treated as comparable to Nazi and Fascist iconography in the nations that know best due to experiencing both, and why Putin is hardly a Leninist but will go on to defend many of the Leninist regime’s legacies with prosecution.
The big issue we have is about HOW such a thing could be accomplished, as well as the timing.
“This is insane. You know that, right?
No, I absolutely do not know that. You might be able to argue it is reckless, depraved, or bloodthirsty, especially if you subscribe to Dehrer’s thesis (which I do not) that it could only be accomplished by direct war. But it is ANYTHING but Insane, especially for someone who has grown up in a region that has been a crossroads for imperial projects for centuries and has lived either in the shadow or under the boot of various Russian regimes for around 800 years.
Because to the Estonians, there is simply no more compelling priority than finding some way to pacify the threat Russia poses. Even issues I take much more seriously such as the “Migrant” Crisis, Creeping Islamicization in Europe, and the Brandon Regime are either more distant to them or are less of a concern. That’s what needs to be addressed if we are to discuss what she claimed.
Many ways.
This is where Dehrer loses me on multiple levels because it simply isn’t true. It IS True that on some level utterly conquering a nation is the simplest and most obvious way to do it, and the one we are most familiar with due to things like Denazification. But it is far from the only way.
om, Bauxite, and I talked about the example of Yugoslavia and how while Serbia was thoroughly defeated on all fronts by 1999, it was never “utterly conquered” by its enemies and Milosevic’s overthrew came not from NATO troops or the UN bashing in doors and hauling him out to a waiting APC, but from his domestic enemies growing angry, throwing him out, and ultimately turning him over for trial. We also see similar on opposite ends of the spectrum with Portugal at the end of Estado Novo/”The New State” in 1974-5, the Argentine Junta of the 1970s and early 1980s, and Communist Ethopia’s empire (which included Eritrea) at the end, though only the latter led to widespread trials. The ideological legacy of the regimes in those countries range from being discredited and disreputable to being outright criminalized and banned.
But this is much trickier than the former, because we understand the basic concept beyond driving tanks into the capitol, shooting or hanging those we deem responsible, and trying to rebuild society. What can trigger such an INTERNAL revelation and change in a country without our boots on the ground (at least in any visible or confirmable capacity, because I’m sure there is no shortage of black ops potential) is much trickier, and I wish I had a good answer. But in general catastrophic conventional military defeat or a grinding war of attrition tends to help push it along precisely because it calls the regime into question and casts shadows on its ideological and policy pretensions.
This is one case where I have to raise my hand and pat myself on the back to some degree. I admit I was a precocious youth with a mind for history, but very soon after 9/11 I realized that the war on Islamist terror would almost certainly last longer than I would be alive, and when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq I took a stock at our troop presence in places like Japan, South Korea, Germany, and so forth and did some basic date crunching. Likewise with South Vietnam while it lasted. So I realized we would be here for a WHILE and it would cost us.
I do not write this to claim false credit, and still less to claim the mantle of infallible prophet. I have been wrong about PLENTY, but I was one of those who called this.
The latter is what tripped me up. I did acknowledge the risk that we would be in Afghanistan that long (indeed, I predicted it) and the risk that the Taliban and co might win in spite of it all. But the sheer collapse of the Afghan Government (bad as it was) stunned me. Credit is where credit is due: the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan with far more dignity and poise than we did and left behind a semi-functioning client dictatorship that fought on for years afterwards. We at best left behind a return to the old Northern Alliance style insurgency after a handful of days.
I am thankful in some way for the deaths of Osama and the buying of a few years where Afghanistan could not coherently be used as a terrorist base for strikes on the homeland, but it is hardly consummate with the results and I do think says a lot bad about the US clarity of vision and commitment.
But regardless: De”Putin”ization/DeSovietization in Russia would doubtless be a much more palpable goal compared to trying to Debaathify Iraq or DeTalibanize Afghanistan. And I would wager it would be somewhat easier to do IF/WHEN the situations to implement it were given. The issue, as you point out, is how to do it. Especially without causing nukes to fly from trying to drive Abrams onto Red Square, which would entail a level of cost and risk I am not willing to accept even if the Estonians are.
The ugly rub is that while I think very little of what Kallas says is wrong outright, we are not in a position to directly force “DePutinization” or anything like a Russian Nuremburg through Western bayonets being jammed into Putin’s throat. Certainly not without the risk of the world going to ash. Which leaves us with the other opinion, difficult as it is. That Russia would have to have it come about from itself. Which is possible and I think desirable, but also can only be done indirectly. But one of those would be helping to ensure the Kremlin does not win in Ukraine (whether it outright loses or is kept bleeding in the quagmire at rates far above those the US and its allies suffered does not greatly matter in this case).
But to address a few of Dehrer’s points:
Fair, and this is why I will not claim Dehrer is a stooge of Putin’s or a Kremlin apologist. People of similar sentiment and good will can disagree on matters like this, after all. And even if he WAS any of those nasty things it would not necessarily invalidate the rational value of his claims, which would have to be argued on their own.
The issue I see with this is threefold.
The first is what Dehrer admitted: That there is no serious appetite for Finlandization in Ukraine, especially since it arguably came close to being Finlandized in the decade or two prior to 2014 only to get kicked in the stomach. I will not dwell on this point.
Secondly: I find a lot of Western commentators SERIOUSLY overstate both the practicality of “Finlandization” for Ukraine, but also its justness or acceptability. Especially since decades later much of the Lapland and even the major city of Viipuri remain under Russian control, utterly depopulated of Finns, Laps, and Sami that had lived there before, as well as decades of terrified subservience. It was a much more acceptable outcome to Finland than outright subjugation under the Pact or annexation to the USSR proper, but by NO stretch of the imagination should we think it was just or acceptable, and the Finnish desire to be free of it underlines that.
Moreover, it is worth noting that it was prompted by among the most dire of circumstances. The immense damage suffered by Finland in three (maybe 4 if you count the wider WWI or 5 if you count the Lapland War against Nazi Germany) wars, most more-or-less against a Russian-centered polity, between 1914 and 1945, after Finland lost at least as many dead as Ukraine did in spite of having a much smaller population, even at the time.
Moreover, it worked in Finland for a few different reasons, starting with the much more distinct boundaries between Russian and Finn and how even the assorted Bolshevik and German regimes were focused on foisting their preferred clients into power in Finland rather than directly claiming “This is as Russian as Novgorod the Great/German as Goldnap now”. It is much less likely to work for Ukraine in any case, and Ukraine has much less reason to do it.
This article I think sums up many of the good arguments against this.
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/07/27/finlandization-is-not-a-solution-for-ukraine/
*SNIP*
*SNIP*
Thirdly: It does not address the obvious issue of how Russia would be made to keep its word on this matter. To his credit, Dehrer acknowledges this, which is why he speaks of “a peace that can somehow depend on far more than Russia’s word.” Which is at least a good awareness of the issue.
But it is not a solution for it by any stretch of the imagination. And that is all the more important because the wars in post-Soviet space have largely been driven by the Kremlin doing “Takesy Backsies” on its previous promises in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and elsewhere. Any such peace settlement has to factor that in, and I frankly think one of the best (though not necessarily the only) outcomes is simply bleeding the Kremlin’s war machine so much it is no longer feasible to conquer at an acceptable cost.
The issue I see is that the main risk of the wider war comes from the Kremlin or even more nebulously hardliners both in and out of it, openly talking about stuff like the invasions of Estonia and Poland. As such I believe the better remedy for this is to militarily humiliate Russian arms.
Moreover, while the war will make it harder for Ukraine as it goes on, it will also make it harder for Russia.
I’m glad Dehrer brought this up, because Pakistan is actually a useful example. Firstly: it shows how the discrediting of a regime or at least its leadership can happen in the absence of total defeat and occupation. Pakistan’s leadership (especially in the military) waged a “Dirty War” against Bangladeshi nationalists and Bengali cultural figures in 1971, which ultimately blew up into a major guerilla war and ultimately a conventional war with India, which saw the Pakistani military get smashed and “East Pakistan” be overrun by an alliance of the Bangladeshi rebels and Indian military. In response the junta fell and some steps towards war crimes were taken, mostly in Bangladesh itself, though most of it fell fallow in Pakistan itself beyond the disgrace of the Yayha Khan admin.
This didn’t happen with nuclear weapons (indeed, the defeat in 1971 prompted Pakistan to work on nuclear weapons) but it is also worth noting we saw similar, if even less satisfying, with the Kargil War. That is grounds to remember you don’t have to go all the way to the capital to get results, but it is also underlining the risks of not doing so.
This is putting the caboose before the engine. NorKistan had been seeking nuclear weapons since the 1960s at the latest, and was a nuclear state no later than 2006, half a decade before Gaddafi’s demise in Libya. Iraq certainly encouraged the trend but it did not cause it.
Honestly there probably would have been, but it would have been conducted amidst clicking radiation detectors as the US (which had fully intended to nuke Berlin up until Germany collapsed before it) responded to Nazi actions by simply striking until Germany went down. Especially given the nature of Axis atrocities against humanity and the US’s interests, the lack of ability to co-exist with Shicklegruber and the assorted Japanese juntas, and a fair bit of naivety about nukes (seriously, we planned to use these things to help secure beachheads for landing troops).
Fair, but it is certainly not more dangerous than assorted talking heads in Pravda or major Russian military blogs (which are different from us because they tend to have significant ties to the government) talking about “Denazifying Poland.”
Which brings us to something I feel Dehrer is overlooking. The GAMEMANSHIP and DIPLOMATIC value of this. That there is value to saber rattling in a controlled fashion (if there wasn’t, why would Girkin and Putin do it?) and to move the overton window, and people like K are probably the best people to do it and play “Bad Cop.”
And I think it is important that someone at least publicly floats that trial balloon. Both because it is qualitatively different from blather about dismembering Russia (which I view as utterly dangerous insanity outside of my more Meme moments of a Greater Finland based on WWII wet dreams, precisely because there is no legitimacy or good reason for it) and because it helps touch on many of the important problems with Russian political culture and how to deal with it.
This is a fair point, though I disagree that it necessarily involves foreign invasion, unlike say outright dismembering Russia into a bunch of different states like an independent Buryatia, which REALLY has no serious support in Russia and would require foreign invasion.
But it is also useful to keep a certain drumbeat of war crimes talks and Deputinization going because it will make the Russian public react. And we should highlight decently successful examples of this like with Serbia.
Putin’s propagandists have much better in terms of gifts as nonsense talking about a partitioned Russia. The key is to point out that the Soviet legacy and Putin are not necessary for the existence of Russia, any more than Milosevic’s brand of genocidal lunacy was necessary for the existence of Serbia or “Las Malvinas” and the “National Reorganization Process” were necessary for the existence of Argentina. One of the best ways to underline that is handing Ukraine the means to give Russia conventional military defeats while publicizing atrocities (I would argue from both sides) and punishing those who perpetrate them and can be got (again, on both sides).
And the Estonian government is in an ideal position to be the side raising these kinds of trial balloons precisely because of their anger at previous Russian imperial misdeeds and their history, but also their ability to simultaneously A: Speak with authority, and B: Muster only so much authority. So it isn’t like Brandon talking about the need to dismember Russia or arguing that Putin needs to go to the guillotine in order for there to be peace (Though I couldn’t put either past them) or Whats-is-name (was it Graham?) calling publicly for Putin to be assassinated (which is the definition of “Saying the quiet part out loud”).
While I have moderate AT BEST confidence in our current “leadership” to do it, some Good Cop Bad Cop can be very useful.
On the whole, Dehrer and I agree far more than we disagree, especially on the morals and ethics but even on policy. I agree we can do precious little from the outside to change Russia in the way that would see Putin go to the gallows, let alone in foreign courts like Den Haag. Which is why I do not view it as necessary for victory. I also concede that trying to influence Russian politics indirectly is difficult and risky, even by doing things like supporting the Ukrainian resistance and trying to discredit the Kremlin by military defeats. I just view it as the less dangerous of options.
Especially since Putin has a vested interest in encouraging dysfunction in the West by sponsoring the Greens and other ne’er-do-wells, both on the left and the right.
Turtler:
Bottom line:
Bunge rolls over for Russia because Putin threatens the Western world with nukes. Its a feature of Putin’s behavior or strategy.
That which is rewarded is repeated.
Polish it up and write a tome about it but it doesn’t change the essence of Bunge.
Turtler:
Consider that in your comment to MBunge at 5:05 you seem to have swept the legs from his most recent rationalizations of Russian behavior, yet there is no evident effect in his positions.
Your patient detailed explainations may work on Brian E, but seem utterly ineffective on the person they were addressing. Well, there are others reading so they may benefit.
Don’t knock yourself out or burn yourself out.
turtler –
I always appreciate your comments. At leat on the matter of a wider war, you seem to take a position that I’ve seen a lot, but don’t understand:
“If US opposition to the Kremlin’s misadventures in Ukraine is supposedly running the risk of nuclear war….. how is the Kremlin’s own pathologies and actions there and elsewhere not the root cause of that? Moreover, how would letting up on material or diplomatic support for Ukraine would fundamentally eliminate that risk (rather than merely subsiding it for a time or downplaying it, which admittedly in its own right may be necessary at different points like it was over Cuba).”
If NATO becomes involved in this war, or God forbid, China gets in as well, we go from the current scenario with tens to hundreds of thousands dead to a scenario with tens to hundreds of millions deads and destruction that will last for generations. Civilizational collapse would be a real possibility. At that point, who would really care that the Kremlin was the “root cause?”
So the question is can Russia be contained without risking nuclear armegeddon?
That’s an interesting discussion about what Finlandization really was. I had no knowledge of it before.
Bauxite:
Isn’t the issue the same one that’s been faced ever since the nuclear arms race began, which is that if any nuclear-armed nation can hold the world hostage and therefore get whatever it wants, isn’t that a type of “civilizational collapse” already?
To come around to my earlier post, the extremist who said that was JFK in 1961. Wonder what the Dems of today would say to that.
Here is a link for Bunge:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ln4mmepwcTU&pp=QAFIAg%3D%3D
It’s Vlad’s speech from today translated into english. Information warfare.
To Bauxite, life is all about balancing risks and rewards. Always has been, sorry. IIRC at one time some people complained that slavery under the Pharaoh was the good old days.
@Bauxite
Thanks, and sorry for it.
Fair. I might as well try.
I agree, which is a major reason why I fundamentally oppose open NATO involvement in this war and am one of those who raged against Biden and others openly boasting of giving Ukraine information to help kill Russian brass. Not because I’m opposed to giving actionable intel, but because tooting horns over it was both utterly provocative and served no material purpose for America’s interests (beyond MAYBE providing some small balm to reassure America’s allies and clients that we aren’t always as impotent and uninvolved as we were in the collapse of Afghanistan).
There are precious few situations where I could agree with changing that, and the current one is not one of them. Which is why I have always been always blunt (even cruelly so) that I would accept throwing Ukraine to the wolves if it meant helping to wrestle our country’s freedom back from the likes of Biden and his handlers.
Above all, at present it simply is not necessary. The Kremlin is struggling to gain and keep ground as it is in Ukraine. Moreover, it would be counterproductive and an actual boon to Putin’s propagandists, since they can turn a dirty large war against a fraternal country and let the reverbs about how “Russia is at war with NATO for its very existence” strengthen.
Agreed, and that’s a major problem. But it is also worth identifying what are the likely risks and causes of it.
Honestly I’d imagine quite a few people. Nukes are nasty stuff and two relatively crude and small yield ones turned cultures across the world on their ear, especially the Japanese (though interestingly they are NOW starting to prod at the nuclear taboo). The fact that Soviet and Russian strategic planning for their use has always been much deeper and more open than Western nuclear strategy (at least since about the 1960s and the end of Eisenhower) also gives me cause for concern, precisely because I feel the Kremlin is more likely to risk it than we are, and that will likely trigger a murderous, even genocidal backlash.
Which is one reason why I want to indirectly strangle Russian strategic reach, likewise for that of the PRC, North Korea, and Pakistan. And one way to do that is by frustrating its conventional military abilities and encouraging domestic Russian anger to turn inwards and upwards, towards its own leadership.
One of the major issues I have with Biden is how his boasting and efforts to take political benefits from this go against the fact that the US and other allies need to control how much their profile in giving aid to Ukraine sticks up. I don’t want to hide it all together, but we are far too high profile in it now, which helps prevent Russian anger and frustration from turning inwards and upwards.
Of course this is a risk. But the question I have is: is it really a risk that can be avoided by changing policies in a way that we could live with? Our decades of failures to appease and bring Putin on board make me think No.
The counterargument I’d say is “define risking nuclear Armageddon.” That sounds pretty coy, and I agree it is, but it holds a point. I do think that as long as the power over Russian nukes lies in the hands of stridently anti-Western leadership who are willing to go up to the brink, nuclear Armageddon will be a risk, even if a background one.
That said, I DO Think it is a risk that can be kept at levels that are acceptably low to the American public and that of others. Especially now with the problems with Russia’s conventional forces meaning the Russian government has to funnel more resources into the fight and away from it.
There’s always going to be a risk that Putin gets shot and replaced by someone that makes General Ripper or Stalin look sane who immediately launches a full spectrum first strike with every WMD in the book. But I think it’s a rather low risk, especially given the general stability of Russian governments and their resistance to coups since at least the middle of the 1800s (which can be frustrating in many ways but also has its benefits since you generally know who are are going to be dealing with tomorrow). The key issue is to avoid giving the Kremlin reasons it can utilize to justify nuclear weapons to its elites and to a lesser extent its people.
One way to do that is to avoid directly endangering core Russian territory itself with conventional land forces. It was one reason why the counterattack at Kherson was so rapt and nail biting for many people since it was officially recognized as Russian territory by the Kremlin’s policies. And in that I do think a big, costly war on the frontiers is probably the ideal vehicle for that.
It’s not perfect. Not even close. It also isn’t without risks of nuclear oblivion and hundreds of millions of dead. But I do think that on balance it helps us manage the risks on multiple levels, including on the base, ugly level of “If the nukes do fire, at least they have to hit more targets this way.”
@Philip Sells
Indeed. Granted, I do think the article goes too far in some ways, for instance focusing on the experience of Finland under Kekkonen (who for whatever his virtues I do think was the Finnish leader to really EMBRACE it and use it as a weapon against his domestic opposition, as opposed to his predecessor Paasikivi), and I do think it overstates the degree to which it was imposed by the Soviets as opposed to emerging as a Finnish survival strategy to the situation in 1944, but I think it is a welcome counterbalance to casual talk about Finlandization. That this was not a good situation to be in, that it only looks like a good situation in comparison to outright occupation and often bloody suppression and even ethnic cleansing in Soviet Space, and that there is a reason the Finns do not like being reminded of it and why it remains controversial.
For instance, as a major military gamer I play many strategy games, and the “Wargame” series of video games features a conventional, technothriller post-Vietnam WWIII between “BLUFOR” (namely the West and its allies like South Africa, Israel, and South Korea) and “REDFOR”, a united Communist front between the USSR, PRC, and their puppets and clients.
Finland is *REDFOR* in that setup, with what lore there is talking about a communist-inspired coup that takes Finland into the war.
I personally am adverse to this, or at least to the sides being so locked, since I know there was STRONG Underlying anti-Soviet sentiment and most Finnish wargaming was preparation against the Soviets. And it’s also been a constant bone of contention on the forums. But the developers have stuck to their guns by pointing to the reality of Finlandization and Finland’s inclusion on NATO documents as a possible hostile force.
I think that helps us remember that sometimes, freedom and sovereignty are not lost all at once but step by step. Not just domestically but also with foreign enemies. Given the situation of Current Year and what we see with Biden and co, I fear that’s a lesson that’s more urgent to remember than ever.
Information warfare:
What Russia Lost.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htworld/articles/20230221.aspx
How much is true? How much is exaggerated?
Fog of war.
“President Joe Biden’s warning that the world is at risk of a nuclear “Armageddon” was designed to send an unvarnished message that no one should underestimate the extraordinary danger if Russia deploys tactical nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, administration officials said Friday.” (Oct. 7)
“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people – this is not a bluff,” Putin said in a televised address to the nation. back on Sept. 21.
It seems it’s our rhetoric that created this fear of nuclear “Armageddon”, not anything Putin has said.
I can’t find any instance where Putin said he might use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
I did find this Atlantic Council article that seems willing to read a lot between a few lines.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/to-decipher-putins-nuclear-threats-watch-what-he-does-not-what-he-says/
If I was Putin attacking the US, it would look more like East Palestine and less like an ICBM.
Omigerd….
“The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions”
by Greta Thunberg
4.6 out of 5 stars.
What kind of moron do you have to be to believe that she is/was capable of writing a book? She can barely express a coherent idea.
@Brian E
Disagree. While I have plenty bad to say about Biden and the rest, it’s pretty important at how even before the war proper kicked off about a year ago,
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/has-putin-threatened-use-nuclear-weapons-2022-10-27/
(Yes, it’s reuters and so covers only part of the story but it provides some sources, and helps it.)
I think it’s really important to realize that loudly talking about the potential for nuclear war and Armageddon is very much a tool in Putin’s belt, and particularly that among the sort of constellation of wider Russian nationalists, Neo-Communists, and mixed nuts orbiting the Kremlin’s effort here. Moreover, I’d argue it is a tool the Kremlin uses much more freely than the US or the West does precisely because they understand nuclear war and fears of it play like electricity among Western public and that they can influence things from the bottom down.
The brilliant Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Benjamin Kerstein talked about “double discourse.” They largely used it to refer to Noam Chomsky, as Kerstein lays out.
https://antichomsky.blogspot.com/2004/10/what-uncle-sam-really-wants-review.html
Of course this is nothing new or particularly revolutionary. Other authors and pundits nowhere near as evil as Chomsky is do it all the time, and so do politicians. We can see it with the “Coonskin Hat” strategy of saying one thing in the North and another – sometimes opposite – side in the South in the first decades of the 1800s. We can see it with Nixon triangulating between his attempts to appeal to the South on one hand without alienating his status as a Liberal Republican, and even Goldwater (who I greatly admire) had to handle his status as a rock-ribbed conservative with difficulty due to his need to appeal to Neo-Confederates and Segregationists on one hand and anti-Segregationists on the other because of his principled stance of “Anti-Segregationist, Anti-Jim Crow States Right Advocate.”
EDIT: Oh, and who can forget about Barack Obama, He of the Forked Tongue? Probably one of the most potent and insidious examples in recent history, and all of US history.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2010/10/29/obama-the-radical-in-chief/
I’d argue that Putin and many other Russian/Soviet governments have maintained a Double Discourse about nuclear weapons. Frequently making reference to the possible use of them either directly from the top or through trusted useful idiots (who can be quickly muzzled or disavowed) before pulling back and offering to negotiate or so on. How sincere they are in any given threat is hard to tell, which is part of the appeal.
But it has absolutely contributed to the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty about it.
Again, this isn’t to remove blame from “our side.” Biden and much of the globalist left are repulsive, evil, and irresponsible and have said plenty of wretchedly bad things worsening this. Moreover, the MSM making it hard to get undiluted transcripts of what Putin and other tools say rather than either nothing or just reports of what some of them Supposedly said does not help. But the Kremlin is absolutely PART of the reason behind the fear of nuclear Armageddon and it is ABSOLUTELY intentional on their parts.
I’d have to check a lot closer than I have, especially since I’m not a Russian language speaker or reader. In any case I can even believe there is a slim possibility he has never openly threatened it (key word: Openly) in as many words.
Which is also part of the appeal. Even Putin doesn’t want to make such threats too openly, because like many diplomats strategic ambiguity can help.
Sure, but that’s kind of because Putin’s many, sometimes contradictory proclamations on the matter require you to have to read a lot between the lines. Kremlinology developed for a reason and while arguably it is no longer QUITE as alien and obscure as it once was it does underline why reading between the lines is useful. and even necessary. When the seating arrangement and presence or not of a “Socialist Kiss” could tell world-shattering developments in internal politics, reading between the lines becomes very important.
So on that level I can’t fault the Atlantic Council for that alone. The Kremlin has a vested interest in maintaining the obvious threat of nuclear blackmail but keeping it ambiguous but present, precisely so it can escalate or deescalate the perceived threat at any given time. In some ways we’re not that different on that.
@Chase Eagles
Absolutely. I would also recommend that to us if we seek to strike at Putin, the CCP, Iran, or Pakistan. And fear about terrorists doing similar. Deniability can be among the most potent weapons of all.
Of course it was just a coincidence when Putin started using missiles designed for nuclear strikes but loaded with high explosives on Ukraine. Totatally had no message besides, boom!
Brian E says, “I didn’t hear anything;” it must have been “hushaboom” (see Rocky and Bullwinkle). But you would have to be a Boomer.
@om
To be honest it probably was, or at least any great big messages were of tertiary importance. The Soviets went BIG into multipurpose warheads and tried to make it so that most of their missile types could be fitted with nuclear payloads. Which is one reason for their design characteristics and why they are so relatively inaccurate.
So Putin just used what he had on hand, which surprise surprise often was nuclear-capable missiles fitted with conventional explosive payloads.
Of course that doesn’t rule out some possible messaging that way or discount the very real threats he and others have made with at least nuclear undertones. But ultimately the simplest explanation for the missiles is “Chyort, zis is what we have on hand!”
“…Dominion….”
Are the dominoes falling yet?
‘ Key Dominion exec admitted company products riddled with bugs’ days before 2020 vote: Fox lawyers;
‘ In 2018 email cited by the defense in voting machine company’s defamation suit against Fox News, Dominion director of product strategy and security acknowledged the company’s technology was marred by a “*critical* bug leading to INCORRECT results.” ‘—
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/dominion-employee-admits-fox-news-lawsuit-machines-have-bug-causing-incorrect
That’s right: The bugs ate my homework. Honest!
(Except, you KNOW they’re lying about that, too….)
And so…what AREN’T those bast%*ds telling us…?
Meanwhile…in Georgia…
“Georgia grand jury recommended indictments in Trump election probe”—
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/georgia-grand-jury-recommended-indictments-trump-election-probe
Hmmm.
neo – I think you overstate your case. If Russia were to dominiate Ukraine the way it dominates Belarus, that would be evil, but it would hardly constitute civilizational collapse. Also, nuclear war is an evil that is orders of magnitude worse than a legacy nuclear power dominating its near-abroad.
Major nuclear powers have the tools to dominate their near-abroad, or plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust. We don’t have to like that, but our dislike doesn’t make it any less true. Pushing Russia into a position where it predictably triggers a nuclear conflagration is dumb (and arguably immoral). Although Putin would be primarily responsible for the results, that’s really not going to matter much to the victims of the nuclear war.
The Concerned Conservative™ discovers “Better Red Than Dead.”
Lord love a duck (and cover). There’s room in the bunker for two.
What if it’s ALL theater?
…Ah, but we can’t count on that, can we…?
And that’s the “beauty” of it!
P.S. (…or can we?)
Turtler:
IIRC Putin dropped a missile into Kiev that is one of the nuclear armed varieties with an inert substitute for the payload early into his “freeze them in the dark”
campaign.
IMO he was sending a “I will nuke you!” calling card. Not something you get from Hallmark.
Since those early optimistic days Russia has burned through most of its inventory of missiles and has been using weapons intended to attack US aircraft carriers, S300 SAMs, and whatever it can get from Iran. Some of those missile types are
dual capable. He’s reduced to doing his “best” with what he has left. That wasn’t the case with his first subtle message from the Holodomor.
Speaking of Belarus…
“Leaked Russian document shows how Putin plans to annex ally Belarus by 2030”—
https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-plans-to-take-over-belarus-by-2030-leaked-
document-2023-2?op=1
Sneak preview?
Or just more theater…?
File under: Smile at the birdie…?
https://ivyexile.substack.com/p/the-view-from-the-top
“Again and again I’d hear how we—the global meritocracy—would’ve solved poverty and inequality and climate change long before if not for evil saboteurs. We were enlightened administrators of the rational future, civilizing braying savages for their own good. Feelings in our collective gut amounted to the sum of human wisdom: we’d read the New York Times and realize of course we’d always known.”
Hubris run amok. The hubris is a sign of mental and moral defect.
These are the Walter Mittys of the world slandering everyone else in order to feel morally superior. They are a plague.
Barry Meislin:
Shocked, truly shocked. That is completely unprecedented? 😉
Making all of Europe safe for Roosia, one province at a time. All will be happy again under Mother Russia. Da.
Given the current (and not so current) zeitgeist, some of you might enjoy this:
“William Bullitt’s Search for Permanent World Peace;
“The famous diplomat blamed Woodrow Wilson when it didn’t work out.”—
https://spectator.org/william-bullitts-search-for-permanent-world-peace/
H/T Powerline blog.
Fascinating, if a bit sloppily edited in parts…
Turtler, I was trying to say it was Biden that created this fear of nuclear annihilation, not any threat by Putin.
The only warning Putin gave was regarding invading Russia.
Was Biden’s off the cuff comment, which the really smart bureaucrats had to “explain” another “Biden being Biden” similar to his regime change comment?
Fred Kagan, in a podcast says it may have had a positive effect.
“No, I don’t think that we’re looking at Armageddon. I mean, yes, if you squint really hard and look at some extraordinarily low probability high impact scenarios, you could see how that could happen. But I think that, that is unlikely to the point of vanishingly improbable. But to Biden’s comment, I have a lot of issues with where he said it and what he said and what thought process that reflects. But in a certain fundamental way, I think it was actually helpful because the logical train that is implicit in that statement is, if Putin uses nuclear weapons and tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the U.S. will take military action. If Putin escalates in response to that action, the U.S. will escalate further. And if Putin continues to escalate, then the U.S. will nuke him. That’s the only way that you get Armageddon, is that you have a full scale thermonuclear exchange.”
This is being kind to Biden, IMO.
What Kagan is proposing is the US entering the war using conventional military weapons to defeat the Russian army in Ukraine. That also has huge risks.
The way forward is to accept that Ukraine is not going to move the borders back to pre-2014. At what point is the tremendous destruction and loss of life a hollow victory?
Kagan’s insights are worthy of discussion here.
Here’s a transcript. Kagan certainly mirrors your perspective. Kagan enters the conversation on page 5.
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aei.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F10%2FEpisode-171-Final-Transcript.docx%3Fx91208&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK
Brain E:
You trust Putin more than Brandon, or choose to ignore Putin’s statements, …
‘they are not really threats just musings of a well intentioned former KGB employee’ … (om extrapolation)
made since 2/24/2022.
Convienient that Putin can claim all the territory (formerly Ukraine) that he has annexed since 2014 as forever Russian (or Roosian to deney him legitimacy, mockery).
Then of course aggressive actions of Ukraine to seize Russian lands will be met with ultimate force (nukes) as those actions threaten the existence of Russia! (Vlad speak)
The war ain’t over yet and borders may not work out as you hope. Wars are like that.
Time will tell.
Bauxite; Barry Meislin:
I think you misstate my case, which I actually stated quite clearly. It’s not about Russia or Ukraine or Belarus. It’s about giving in to nuclear blackmail and letting a nuclear power do whatever it wants. When civilizations won’t defend themselves, that’s another type of “civilizational collapse.”
@Bauxite
I agree, but I don’t think Neo is disagreeing. The issue in this case is how we got there. If Putin simply played his cards better and came to dominate Ukraine diplomatically or politically like he did during the Yanukovych years, that wouldn’t be civilizational collapse. But not so subtly threatening everything from a “new” Cold War, to World War, to nuclear apocalypse in an attempt to secure it might. In any case it would be utterly terrible behavior being awarded, and encourage more apocalyptic games of “Chicken.”
Also agreed, but allowing a hostile nuclear armed power to more or less openly threaten it in order to get its way and be rewarded for it makes the threat of that greater evil significantly but unquantifiably worse. It encourages said bad actor and others to pursue conflicts further and gamble more, and puts us on the back foot. And more conflicts also mean that the risks of something going wrong – someone miscalculating at the wrong time, someone going to far, or mixed messages being sent – happening.
Which is why while I am prepared to accept losing some or all of Ukraine to Russia in order to avoid nuclear world war, I think that should only happen after the war critically weakens Russia and will leave it struggling to “digest” its conquests for at least a few years, if not decades. That is still an unfortunate situation that will leave us worse off than it started as well as letting down a brave ally (or at least client), but it will be after inflicting enough costs to bog Russia down trying to win the peace and hopefully signal to other Malcontents that we have the ability to make their lives very unpleasant if they push the issue, even if they WIN.
It also would buy us time for things to change. For Putin to die or be deposed, for the CCP’s “Bare Branches” to rise up against the regime that has so mistreated them, and so forth.
Agreed, but we also have to accept that if such a power truly wished to do so, there is very little we could do to stop it. And we have to balance out de-escalation or trying to avoid it with concern for our own power, including the strategic depth that comes from having an ally like Ukraine.
At a minimum we have to accept that there is wisdom to helping sustain an alliance so that, to put it bluntly, “They can’t nuke ALL of us, at least not to the levels deemed satisfactory by Russian doctrine.”
Is that horrifying to contemplate? Yes it is. Is it something we should do a lot to avoid? Yes it is.
But too much blinking will make us more at risk of things going thermonuclear, not less, and that’s leaving aside the moral and practical concerns.
Sure, which is why we generally haven’t pushed Russia to the point where the Kremlin would predictably trigger nuclear world war. We have not invaded Russia or encouraged the Ukrainians to do so. We have been extremely leery about what equipment we have given the Ukrainians due to the risks of deep strikes into Russia’s undisputed patrimony. Nuclear strategy relies on VERY clear red lines and we have not crossed them.
Which is one reason why we are dealing with so much ambiguity and nameless but hard to quantify fear rather than the certain “Oh Damn.”
@Barry Meislin
Hard to tell, but on the face of it it isn’t entirely news. There has been an agreement for “Union” between Belarus and the Russian Federation since 1999, which is why Belarus is officially a “Union State.” The ultimate goal being to unite the two countries.
https://president.gov.by/en/belarus/economics/economic-integration/union-state#:~:text=The%20Republic%20of%20Belarus%20and,phase%2Dby%2Dphase%20principle.
For various reasons Lukashenko took to dragging his feet on that matter, but he can’t walk away from it now since it is so tied to his brand, and so planning to one degree of seriousness or another for it has been ongoing for years.
Agreed, and well written. I despise Wilson but I do not blame him for losing the chance of “Permanent Peace.” Not when people like Lenin, Stalin, von Seeckt, Mussolini, and Hitler stalked the world.
Also, Freud was a disgusting fraud.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/freud-was-a-fraud-a-triumph-of-pseudoscience/
@om
You are absolutely correct, he did in the form of at least one X-55. I remember it being significantly reported on earlier.
Agreed there.
I dont trust putin i dont trust some who is waging war on all are institutions to every degree possible they mean to ‘bury us’ meaning all that is good in this country
Why is that reality so hard to understand if we were foolish to want to get into a scrum with a nuclear power we would do the opposite of everything we are doing
Gosh, wonder if Lukashenko’ll put it to a national plebiscite(!)
Though why would he do that? (Wonder if he’d dare…)
Probably not, because he likely knows what the result would be(!)…even as he also knows what the result SHOULD be—make that MUST be…
So let’s assume that he’ll just keep on “dragging his feet” until the question is decided for him.
BTW, most curious—isn’t it—that both “Biden” and Putin are just soooo into “Unity!”… (or maybe it isn’t…)
– – – – – – – – –
Miguel, might that mean that “Biden” is NOT in a scrum with a nuclear power?
His evolution was quite interesting as a young man he was naive about the nature of peace with the soviets as we seem to be with xi, despite the blood price that has been paid
And what Miguel is the opposite of what the West (we) are doing that you would endorse? Sing “Kum ba yah?” Chant the new “Barney” song? A bit short on specifics, Senor.