The situation in Ukraine is bewildering to those of us who received parochial American educations. The Wall Street Journal attempts to explain it in “Putin’s Endgame: Unravel the Post-Cold War Agreements That Humiliated Russia”:
The Russian leader is trying to stop further enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose expansion he sees as encroaching on Russia’s security and part of the West’s deception and broken promises. He wants NATO to scale back its military reach to the 1990s, before it expanded east of Germany.
In sum, Mr. Putin seeks to undo many of the security consequences of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, an event the Russian leader has called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
Looking back, many current and former Western officials say it is clear that the U.S. and its allies handled relations with Moscow poorly in the 1990s, and that the triumphalism over winning the Cold War was excessive.
“Although I think that Western diplomacy was arrogant and incompetent in the 1990s, and we’re paying the price now, that is not a reason for Putin to put himself in a posture that makes other people think he’s about to launch a war,” said Rodric Braithwaite, who was British ambassador to Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Yet in 1994, Russia joined with the U.S. and U.K. in committing “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force” against it, a security guarantee that helped persuade Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons.
Where are the US and the UK today with their “security guarantee”? (See the Budapest Memorandum.)
A successful friend who grew up in Ukraine:
Overheard young Swiss on a chairlift:
Guy 1: All this stuff with Ukraine is crazy. If World War III happened, it would be kind of cool. But also kind of not cool.
Guy 2: Yeah, it would not be. But you know, if we [Switzerland] manage to repeat what we did in WW2, we should be fine.
An American on the European response (putting the amazing new undersea pipeline on hold):
Man the Germans are sticking it to Putin. They are only going to buy half of their natural gas from him.
A Deplorable American with a Ph.D. in biology:
New sanctions are going to be about as effective against Putin and Russia as cloth masks were against the coronavirus.
From an aircraft mechanic:
If Putin takes over the Ukraine does Hunter still get his board of director payments?
An American passionate about free speech:
I am curious to see how long it takes for Twitter to suspend Putin’s account for spreading misinformation. Or does suspension apply only to “mean tweets”?
One question is whether the 44 million people who live in the Ukraine can qualify for asylum in the U.S. A person who says “my spouse is hitting me” qualifies for permanent residence in the U.S. and, if he/she/ze/they does not wish to work all that much, a lifetime of associated means-tested subsidies for housing, health care, food, and smartphone. As fearsome and difficult to escape as a domestic partner might be, a shooting war involving the powerful Russian Army is surely scarier. (Note that the New York Department of Health actually spends more than what the Russians spend on their entire military.)
I asked a friend who gets a paycheck from the refugee-industrial complex what would stop all 44 million Ukrainians from going to Mexico, walking across the Rio Grande, and saying “I request asylum”. His response:
They might qualify, but due to Trump policy that courts have not let Biden rescind, asylum seekers are being sent back across the border to wait in Mexico. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the case. They might have a better chance of getting asylum if flew into NY on a tourist or other visa and then got a lawyer and filed asylum claim.
Me: “I don’t see how one can argue that Ukraine is not a dangerous place to be right now.”
Covid rule is different. That’s called “Title 42” and allows for immediate deportations due to health crisis. It also depends which city your hearing is held in. Rate along southern border is much lower than in NY. And if you have a lawyer, about 10x better chance. I would agree those fleeing Ukraine have a decent claim, but you’d still have to convince asylum judge. Being a political dissident or member of religious minority is better than just saying “I’m scared of war”. If Russians or Separatists declare that they’re looking for you that would help. You need to be able to convince a judge that you have a reasonable fear of persecution. Asylum seeker must show that they have a “well-founded fear of persecution in their home country on account of either race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.” That’s the legal principle.
He pointed out that Temporary Protected Status would also be an option for Ukrainians who wished to be far away from any armed conflict.
Haitians had it after earthquake.
(“Temporary” for Haitians began in 2010 and was recently extended to at least 2023. Children born in the U.S. in when “temporary” began are now biologically capable of having children themselves.)
The question of 44 million Ukrainians being entitled to come here makes me wonder a bit about what kind of society the U.S. is building by giving immigration priority to those who say that they are at risk of being attacked somewhere else. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, people migrated to the U.S. because they liked the idea of living in the U.S. Now we are filling the U.S. to a Chinese/Indian density with people who say that they don’t want to live wherever they’ve been living. It isn’t that they are attracted to what they perceive as American cultural values, for example, but they are repelled by threats against life and limb wherever they are. They might find American cultural values, such as hatred of Asians and discrimination against Blacks and those who identify as “women”, abhorrent, as Eileen Gu does, but living in the U.S. is nonetheless preferable to suffering inescapable domestic or gang violence in their home countries.
Not all Ukrainians want to stay in NY. Some visit and leave. Ukrainians got country of their own. Putin surely long prepared for this war, given the gift of Biden in the White House. Since last year he incompetently stock up on dollars, euros and other currencies, to the tune of more then a half of trillion dollars, he probably lost hundred of billions of dollars in inflation. For that he appears to sell much of the gold mined in Russia, which brought price of gold down from all time high but now it has almost recovered. https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=XAU&to=USD&view=5Y
I guess that future of Ukraine is in re-arming, as it is recovering after old president Yanukovich who destroyed its military. I do not think that NATO really would really Ukraine as a member due to internal Ukrainian affairs and many interconnections with Russia before current Russian aggression. I am confident that if Putin did not attack now Ukraine could grow closer with Russia in next generation or two due to pure state affairs in the West.
Non NATO countries could live with Russia, for example Finland, but they have to concede to be at some degree dependent o Russia, like Finland, and ideally to show it as a huge problem if attacked, like Finland did in 1940.
Given inarguable incompetence Clintonites and neocons, it is still hard to imagine how Poland and Baltic States which disliked Soviet rule wold not end up in NATO.
As a single country, Ukraine has no future. It’s a political chimera, shaped by internal Soviet politics, consisting of wildly disparate parts. It would be better for Russian parts go back to Russia and former Polish parts go back to Poland.
averros, with all due respect you are showing the real problem with Russian imperial thinking. I have no bones in this conflict except for feeling terrible because of unprovoked aggression against non-militaristic strange Ukrainian people and culture but if I were in their place I would be fighting hard right now because if they lost for good they would be fighting next Russian imperials wars for Kremlin while you will be having fun in Silicon Valley, scratch it, Texas and feel pride for mother Russia.
Well, any country in the post-Soviet space is a political chimera. Byelorussia, Khazakhstan, even Russia itself, all satisfy your definition. Yes, Ukraine is a highly corrupt country although less so than Russia, yes, per capita GDP is almost 3x lower than that of Russia, but that is no excuse for the madman Putin to start a full scale invasion against a country that did not present any military threat whatsoever to Russia except in Putin’s paranoid mind.
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank
With the exception of the Crimean peninsula where I lived awhile ago and perhaps the Lugansk/Donetsk areas with which I have no familiarity, Ukraine, from the predominantly ethnically Russian cities Kharkov and Odessa to mostly Ukrainian Kiev and Vinnitsa (I had a lot of friends in all four places) seems pretty cohesive judging by their ability to repel the the overwhelmingly better armed aggressor for almost three days.
Whether or not Ukraine has a future, or where and which part should go should be up to people who live there, not the nuclear neanderthals from Russia.
Putin is also capitalizing on the political divisions in the United States. Listening to NPR and then perusing Conservative websites today, the biggest news isn’t about Ukraine or Europe or the natural gas, or many other important things – it seems to be: “How can we blame Trump and the Republicans [/Biden and the Democrats] for This?” even as the political parties (through their associated megaphones) are still relatively quiet on the question….because they each have no idea what is going to happen yet!
But among the “rank and file” it’s a huge a question, maybe the biggest one! This is one instance where the party leaderships in the U.S. are both holding back while their rank and file members get ready to fight it out.
If Putin has learned anything in the past six or seven years, it is how to manipulate divisions in the American political system to his advantage, which has greatly amplified his power. Some things have been direct acts, some have been indirect, some have been by proxy, and some have involved complete plausible deniability.
It doesn’t explain everything, but the divisions in the US have strengthened his hand, to the point where he can try things that once would have seemed foolish – just the fun of watching our reaction and the associated political turmoil here.
Addendum: And I think the fact that he wants to be President for Life and hopefully get a good chance to execute some Ukrainian ruling class who have strayed from their faith in his ability to do so also plays a role. If he is successful here by his own metrics, it will strengthen the resolve of his supporters in Russia and the satellite states and make his Putin Fo’Evah! campaign more Inevahtable, and he wants that a lot. Cheesy wimp-ass countries that change their governments every four years at great expense and fanfare are no match for Getting the Old Regime Back Together well-oiled machines. He seeks to prove that Western-style democracy itself (such as we practice it) is a figment of an increasingly outmoded fantasy that had its moment in the sun and then died its own death from its internal cancers.
Finally: And I don’t think it’s bad time for him to try anything, almost no matter how arbitrarily crazy it is, because frankly I think the United States is less politically stable than Russia is right now. I don’t think we’re far from civil war and a total breakdown of this society. Meanwhile, I watched the price of gasoline where I live literally go up while I listened to the news coming out of Ukraine this morning…and the temperature outside is now dropping into the teens this evening. Winter is not over! A couple more well-played hands by Putin and we could be looking at $5.00 a gallon or more, before summer, and literally every nickel Americans might have gotten through their COVID stimulus checks will have been burned in higher gasoline prices and all we’ll have is the national debt to show for it.
…inching closer to oblivion…
Gosh, it’s almost as if Putin foresaw all of this and intentionally helped Trump get elected and predicted the resulting GOP’s bewildering alignment with Russian activities–a complete 180 to their decades long cold war stance–and willingness to stoke division. If only there had been some not subtle clues, such as a pro Russian Ukrainian agent, working pro bono as Trump’s campaign chairman! Republican’s have a penchant for the absurd and conspiratorial, while overlooking the obvious.
@Senorpablo: I hope you don’t lump me in with ‘them’ because that’s one of the many things that had nothing to do with ‘mean tweets’ that I didn’t like about Trump. And I would prefer him not to run for President ever again. I am a Superheretic – I really don’t like either side of American politics.
Senorpablo, I think you should accept Alex’s point about internal strife used by Putin and not try to come up with some excuses of very concrete recent failures. If US prohibits or punishes political speech, how different it would be from Putin’s Russia? On practice, Republicans where they still have relative power, in US Senate, are much more hawkish on Putin then Biden and Democrats. You can argue about approaches but now, when Putin threatens with nuclear war and openly invades Ukraine including military action near Ukrainian capital, you can not argue that White House approach worked. While we will never know whether Republican approach would have worked, it could not be worse.
Not meant to be an attack on Alex. He rightly pointed out the extreme division of America right now and that Putin is using to his advantage. And I absolutely agree with that. The attack is on the republican party. It’s absolutely, objectively, the republican party who have stoked that division at every opportunity for political gain. Trump was nothing more than a catalyst to accelerate and stoke division for no other purpose than to be contrarian to democrats on every subject and the GOP fell right in line and on cue no matter how corrupt or bizarre the circumstance. Abject moral bankruptcy. And here we are. Trump’s response to news of Russia setting up to invade Ukraine as being a very smart move. Reagan must be rolling over in his grave right now.
Let’s not forget this gem:
ZELENSKY: I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We. are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically, we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United· States for defense purposes.
TRUMP: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your weal thy people. … The server, they say Ukraine has it.
SP: I think you’re saying that if Republicans had no political power, as in California, that the US would be optimally governed (as California is).
As a thought-experiment, suppose that all Republicans had lost every Federal election starting in 2000. There would have been only Democrats in Congress and the White House. In that beautiful-to-imagine world, what would have happened with Ukraine and Russia?
@SP, @Philg: That’s an interesting point and I had a similar thought the other day, regarding COVID-19. Since we “now know” because the #Science has changed that the vaccines are not preventive and require booster shots, and the various authorities are gradually climbing down from their mask mandates, can you imagine what America would have looked like politically if Trump had prevailed in 2020?
HE would not have eliminated the Plague with vaccines and masks, EITHER, after all the promises and effort and Operation Warp Speed!!! I can only imagine the level of damage and blame that the US and global news media would have been inflicting on the Republicans for that abject failure to protect the globe and control the virus! Instead, most of the news media in this country is giving the Biden Administration and the Democrats plenty of slack and space to reframe their narratives and turn their Story Ship around so they don’t get any blame for it.
But boy, if we were sitting here in late February 2022 with Trump as POTUS and the virus not defeated, we’d have riots in the streets!
Alex: That is a great point. In the unimaginably horrible world of Trump Second Term, the higher number of deaths in 2021 compared to 2020 would have been attributed to His failure to follow Science (I capitalize “His” because Trump is a kind of deity for Democrats, albeit a malignant deity). With the Science-following governance of Biden, however, we have to be grateful for the increased death toll of 2021 compared to 2020 because, without mask orders and forced vaccination, it would have been far worse. (As I’m going to point out in a standalone blog post, the curious thing about that belief is that mask orders and vaccine coercion are being dropped right now by people who say that mask orders and vaccine coercion have been highly effective at controlling the virus. Why stop doing something thing works and saves lives?)
@Senorpablo, let’s not forgot who sold USA to Russia [1], [2]. That was enough to show Putin what matters the most for American politician.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNxEDomUlXw
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXMBQ-ayuT0
Philg – California seems to be doing quite well for itself, no? Despite being ruled by the communists nearly uncontested, though we do have clowns like Devin Nunes, Dana Rohrbacher, and Kevin McCarthy, and having the highest number of illegal immigrants–which you constantly attribute to the US’s demise–it’s the number 1 producer by GDP in the country. I guess it’s happenstance, that CA does everything wrong in the eyes of a republican, and are somehow extremely successful. Certainly I’ve never suggested that the democrats have all the right answers and I’m a firm believer in the give and take of politics to strike a balance. But, what the republicans have been engaged in during my adult life is petty, childish, and morally bankrupt gimmicks aimed squarely at the ignorant or intolerants who’ve moored themselves to petty, single issue politics. All they stand for now, not unlike yourself, is contrarianism. Any notion of change, democratic principal or agenda, any government function is bad and it should all be handed over to the wealthiest American “job creators” to straighten out. The desperation of the republican party, at the thought of never winning the popular vote again, is alarming. Stop the steal! It’s banana republic level stuff. The hypocrisy has reached levels where republican’s contradict themselves constantly and with zero shame. The basis for the ACA was a republican idea–nope, can’t have that. Oh, supreme court justice dies with almost a year left in office? Must let the voters decide. Justice dies with a few months of election? Yeah, we’ll appoint a new one. Failing to repeal the ACA after grandstanding for years and holding 70 votes. Swift boating, whitewater, Trump!, Benghazi, her emails!, Sarah Palin!, Trump!, Hunter’s laptop, Trump!
All you need to know about how things would have turned out with Trump vs someone else in office is that, regardless of what practical impact it may have had, Trump was Putin’s guy. And Putin picked the guy who suited his agenda. Anyone who thinks all the connections to Russia, Ukraine (Manafort) and Trump were purely coincidental, you’re mistaken.
Senorpablo cant wait for Trumps second term! 2024 can’t come soon enough for him,
sanctions vs natural gas. Who will win this Great Game of poker.
The USA is rotting from within and it is not just Russia taking precautions against the sclerotic exudate of American Empire. Tony Soprano could only watch in envy at the “bust out” of Russia by the Summers’ Gang from Harvard in the 1990’s. The ‘Peace Dividend’ unleashed on the former USSR was so draconian that it severely lowered the average life expectancy in Russia, so they are actively pushing back against all the forces that want to push the “Great Reset” button.
Take an objective look at the behaviour of the US, EU, and NATO in the last two decades in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Haiti, Honduras, etc.. You will see more than Mr. Putin staring back at the mess we have unapologetically created around the globe.
Correct.
You can add Serbia to that list. The 78-day long bombing of Serbia by NATO forces may have left a lasting impression on Putin back in the Spring of 1999. Just a few months before he officially became the prime minister of Russia in August that year.
As an aside, Germany’s participation in the NATO air campaign against so-called dual use targets (meaning civilian infrastructure) was celebrated in the press at the time (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/303314.stm)
Eric:
There is a certain number of people in my circle of acquaintances, Russians, Western/Eastern Europeans, Indians and some others, all conservative leaning, dissatisfied with the current woke ideologies as practiced in many places in this country and elsewhere, dissatisfied with the associated foreign policy of this country (nation building, force fed ideology, etc). What unites this motley group of people is their respect and in some cases admiration for Putin as a leader. They regard him as a modern crusader, a savior as it were of the Western civilization values, a staunch opponent of the above mentioned woke religion in its various forms, a preventer of the West rot, a preserver of traditional family values.
I have a friend who is an ethnic Czech living in a small city of Olomouc (Czech Republic), a PhD in EE. He and his friends despite the events of 1966 had a lot of good will towards Russians in general, and Putin in particular, primarily due to their anti-woke sentiments. On many occasions, I tried to convince him that Putin was not a messiah he thought him to be, although I admit that until Feb 24 2022 there was an appearance and lure even for rather intelligent people to consider him such.
Yesterday, my Czech friend called me and said that I had been more right than he could ever imagine, and that Putin, his immediate circle and by extension the Russians who are taking part in the invasion of Ukraine are indeed murderous thugs. According to him, his Czech Russophile friends also saw the light and are prepared to help in any way available to them the victims of the Russian aggression.
Now, you and the others who support your rhetoric are on the same moral plane as the Russian murderous thugs. It’s your choice, of course and you will have to live with it.
From a long-time (35 year+) friend elsewhere in the Elsewhere, just now:
“Please pray for my [s]ister-in-laws family they live in Kiev and are currently in a bomb shelter.”
So Putin takes Crimea during Obama’s presidency, does nothing in the Trump years, and continues now. Yet we are informed widely that Trump is Putin’s puppet.
I’ll take the mean tweets if you give me back a functioning economy, low inflation, better COVID management and an administration that does not look like a bunch of scared, weird teenagers trying to organize a school party.
But I’m sure that Putin has deep respect for admiral Levine, who will save the day!
By better COVID management, you mean proclaiming it will be magically gone by Easter, nearly getting killed by it, going to a presidential debate while infected and making fun of the opponents mask wearing? Pure genius, or absolute ignorance and selfishness? You also realize that Trump’s financial agenda and budget run into Biden’s first year, and were surely responsible for the inflation we’re seeing now? I mean, why raise interest rates from all time lows when we have the “best economy ever in America” for four years straight?
I think Trump had better covid management than sleepy Joe. Trump brought us 3 vaccines plus a few therapeutics. What has sleepy Joe given us?
Toucan – It’s amazing that Trump found the time to be President, get numerous Phds, digest centuries worth of research data, plus spend time in the lab developing vaccines and remedies. Though his favorites, such as injecting bleach, UV lights down the lungs, and hydroxychloroquine never did pan out. He is the smartest and best at everything! Too bad he never applied all that untapped genius to fixing healthcare, which he promised to do in the first month holding office. Maybe in 2024 he’ll find the time.
It never ceases to amaze how much space Trump continues to occupy in the minds of his political opponents…
G. Ranma: Yes, the salaries of Trump’s opponents depend on his destruction. All bureaucracy skeptics like Reagan, Thatcher and Trump needed to be destroyed. We have the Race/Gender/Academic/Media Industrial Complexes that need to continue their rackets.
G. Ranma, Anonymous,
The space isn’t occupied by Trump, but his supporters. He’s a moron of unthinkable proportions, and people like that are somewhat common in society–nothing out of the ordinary. What’s remarkable is that the majority of the republican party and nearly half of American’s fell under his spell of idiocy. That’s the bewildering part that needs repeating and must never be forgotten. Shame on all the American’s who lowered their standards and morals to desperately defend their single issue politics, such as “anti-bureaucracy.” Couldn’t find a sane person to carry that flag?
If you want to hurt Putin and his oligarchs, flood the market with all available oil and natural gas we and the world has so the prices drops down to $30. That will bankrupt Putin and his oligarchs. Also, don’t just freeze Putin and his oligarchs foreign assets, seize them for good.
Putin has done nothing wrong. Godspeed to Putin. And the usual American tough guys that have been fighting the world’s wars for the last 100 years are not going to show up for this one.
Besides if Russia’s hypersonic missiles work as alleged what does a large scale war look like?
Carrier Battle Groups become artificial reefs, USA would be unable to move enough supplies into theater to get a footing never mind wage war.
@GB, do not buy into / spread Putin propaganda. In reality Russia uses WWII – era design tank destroyers in Ukraine, their supersonic (at the start) missiles are slow subsonic on final attack stages and can be tracked manually with a mobile phone. Ukraine does not have defense from them but should be easy target for current US Aegis edition What has happened with old good B-52 wings patrols over the arctic? Hard to argue with few dozens nukes hanging over and above.
That’s an amazing admission of where you stand, and it is exactly, not metaphorically, equivalent to saying “Hitler did nothing wrong”.
@Ivan Sorry man the Hitler card is worn out. Comparing Putin to Hitler won’t get the real American men to go fight your stupid war. American men are sitting this one out, send the trannies, women super soldiers, and new Americans, if they loved America enough to swim here they should be overjoyed to fight Russia for her. Not that fighting Russia is going to help Americans, but keep saying it one of the new Americans might believe you.
GB:
“the Hitler card is worn out”. Au contraire, your amigo Putin has been extremely successful in resurrecting this corpse.
Just to put matters straight, it is not my war and I think the US should stay out of the Russian-Ukraine mess, militarily, as long your hero does not try to invade Eastern Europe.
Your Hitler trope fails again. Putin doesn’t want to invade Eastern Europe or the Ukraine(this was a very limited strike.) Putin and the Chinese have learned from the US and Europe that empire building leads to the loss of your own country. Russia and China just want internal security, and will get it as our empire building has rendered us weak and stupid.
@Ivan – I advise you to go and find some photos of Azov battalion, or of any parade celebrating one Bandera. Then tell us who are the actual Nazis in this conflict.
The US Navy can’t stop running over fishing boats they have no chance against the Russian Bear. The rest of America’s armed forces are more interested in promoting trannies then fighting. The Russians would win and some people on America’s side know it, whether or not the pols will listen to those wise people who knows.
Wouldn’t be such a bad idea for the US to pick up some Soviet mathematicians, if any are still left and haven’t already gone to Israel. A major factor in Israel’s tech ascendancy was the the mass Soviet emigration to Israel when the FSU dissolved in 1991 — including lots of world class mathematicians.
That’s the political point in Israel due to political muscle of former Soviet citizens there and 100% Soviet immigration helped Israel science and technology but I would not separate Soviet Jewish immigration from other Ashkenazim and Sephardi Jews. After all, air drones, other aviation, Gabriel sea skimming missiles and first commercial cellphone were developed in Israel prior to large Soviet immigration to Israel. Of course Israel was much poorer back than. And Soviet immigrants created a lot of staff, including defense staff. I agree that the best thing that people in Russian cities who now protest Russian aggression could do is to stop working to make Putin regime stronger and to leave Russia and leave Putin alone with cossack troops and his supporters in Donetsk and Lugansk
Between Crimea & Ukraine, we had 2 leaders who were very focused on social welfare programs, climate change & clearly never going to act on any foreign crisis. 1 leader in between was focused on the military & was a lot more likely to respond to a foreign crisis.
What Joe Robinette could really do without escalating it into WWIII is unknown. The problem is a lot more of Europe is next if he continues the current path of sleeping.
Well, serious economic sanctions could cause the Russian oligarchs to think seriously about replacing the insane capo di tutti capi if all of a sudden they cannot afford to repaint their yacht. As it is, the sanctions so far are rather pitiful and do not truly target the richest Russian “elite” or their families living abroad. I do not believe Putin can be removed from outside, it has to be an inside job. Given the Western “democracies” current state, I find real sanctions against Russia unlikely to ever happen (“Belgium was seeking an exemption for its large diamond sector,”).
lion2: You raise a good point. It is tough for any other country to take the U.S. seriously when Americans elected a confused near-octogenarian as Commander in Chief, even if, in his younger days, he defeated Corn Pop (see https://youtu.be/oihV9yrZRHg and also https://amzn.to/3sdLpFA ).
Ivan: Thanks for that reference to https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/24/world/russia-ukraine-putin#eu-russia-sanctions ; an expanded quote…
Austria, Germany and Italy raised concerns about imposing broad sanctions on cross-border financial transactions and banking operations. And Italy was pushing to leave the luxury goods industry untouched so that it could continue exporting fashion and other high-end products to Russia. …
Belgium was seeking an exemption for its large diamond sector, and no E.U. countries were seriously advocating sanctions on Russia’s vital energy sector.
I wonder if the EU boycott of Russia is like the U.S. boycott of the Beijing Olympics in which we sent the Chinese $billions in TV rights, but did not send any of our prime-grade politicians to watch in person. Did NBC manage to find anyone in China to say “I am so sorry that Kamala Harris isn’t here”?
Ivan and Philip, I do not think that Russian oligarchs are now have voice in what Putin is doing. He seems to have separated himself during covid from everyone and probably only deals with his state security and military staff, not anyone in government or business. It may take another generation for those in power hurt by any sanctions personally, if there will not be a larger war. We have a nut in power who threatens use of nuclear weapons and who knows what he is going to want next.
@LSI: If the oligarchs in Russia are doing so well there without consulting with Putin on their every important deal, they should be neutral or even unsupportive of regarding his President for Life bid. They shouldn’t fear regime change in Russia because it’s working well for them, completely independently of what Putin’s latest geopolitical ideas are – but is that the case?
After all, the sanctions and so forth are purported to be targeting them more or less to the individual. So if they’re not really involved in supporting them, why are we considering damaging their fortunes in a bid to get Putin to halt his advance?
Doesn’t the fact that these sanctions are supposedly targeted at the oligarchs supporting him – by your logic – mean they’re hopeless and Putin should just disregard them?
Sorry: “If they’re not really involved in supporting him….”
Put another way, my counterpoint to you is: “If Putin really is that self-isolated and doesn’t consult with “the oligarchs” and vice-versa, why should they care about his quite visible and persistent bids to quash dissent? If the rest of Russia is just humming along merrily by itself, why on Earth would they feel in any way supportive or dependent upon his continued leadership?” They shouldn’t care if he’s replaced in the next election there, and maybe get up on TV and say: “Putin is a hollow man and we don’t care about what happens to him. Vote how you prefer.” But that’s not what I’ve been able to discern (albeit dimly, from my great distance.)
Alex/LSI: You do have a point that punishing Russian oligarchs has, since 2014, failed to bear any fruits for the reasons LSI mentioned. Perhaps, the punitive sanctions were not strong enough to cause sufficient pain to make “the oligarchs” manufacture a coup, perhaps they are so scared that the thought of being poor but alive looks like a good deal (in the case they might consider a mutiny), I do not know.
There’s a bit of a novel approach being tried now, i.e. collectively punishing political elites, members of the Duma and such, on the theory that they rather than oligarchs exert some influence on the satrap’s decisin making. Not sure if it’s going to work for the same reason: fear.
There’s one MP, though, who did dare to speak against the invasion, ironically, a Communist:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10554099/Fury-Putins-invasion-mounts-Russia-Communist-MP-says-war-stopped.html
@Ivan: Thank you for the link. I make no claim to being a knowledgeable person about the present condition of the relationship of “the oligarchs” vs. Putin with Russia, or how people in the Russian Duma are interpreting all of this. I’m looking at it from across the Atlantic ocean and frankly my direct knowledge (with just a couple of minor exceptions) is very limited and dependent on the plethora of news sources available to me via the Internet. I also do not possess any special background in the study of Putin’s leadership in Russia – except the things that I have seen.
A lot it comes down to my hunches and semi-educated guesses. I’m hoping that I’m a little better than a coin flip, and I appreciate everyone’s honest commentary, particularly when it sheds some new light into areas I have not seen.
We are watching a complex and dangerous moment in history develop and unfold, right before our eyes. Surprises always occur: even isolated events involving tens or hundreds of people often take weeks or months to interpret accurately. I am trying my best to apply my very limited brainpower in good faith to comprehend what all of these history-making events may mean for all of us. It’s a big task!
None of the philg chorus is likely to solve a problem like this (maybe Alex, by carpet-bombing it with words – just kidding!).
I despair for Biden, but have no longing for the good old DJT days or the new GOP.
We need new leadership. Who is it, seriously?
Maybe we have run our course.
@EO: I know, I can be verbose. Sometimes I try to cram too much into an explanation, so guilty as charged – I did kind of “carpet bomb” the subject.
The Ukrainians are apparently resisting Russia’s military with unexpected tenacity. It remains to be seen what and how many words Putin utters if and when he decides to use thermobaric weapons to vaporize them.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10552743/Furious-Putin-prepares-use-father-bombs-brave-Ukrainians-hold-advance.html
Wouldn’t this be a great time for the US to demonstrate its principled opposition to taking territory by force? It could do this by returning Texas, New Mexico and California (or all the territory the US conquered in 1846-8) to Mexico. That’s something that every critic of Russia can get behind, no?
@Lord Palmerston: Yeah, but what would California do without U.S. federal money? Mexico doesn’t want that kind of burden imposed on it, administrative or fiscal! It would be cruel justice!