Month: February 2022

This piece about Putin is worth reading. Ben Judah writes about the single most important thing most Russia observers missed about Vladimir Putin going into this crisis:

Among even the leaders who had spent weeks warning a major offensive was imminent, a tone of surprise was not too hard to detect in their statements. “I cannot believe this is being done in your name,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, trying to address, for a moment, the Russian people, “or that you really want the pariah status it will bring to the Putin regime.”

However, that phrase—“the Putin regime”—which has been stuck to all discussions of Russian politics now for almost 20 years, in some ways itself helps explain why so many people who believed they understood the country turned out to be so wrong about the Ukraine conflict. It has become clear that what exists inside the Kremlin is no longer a “regime” at all—a system of government where multiple figures can affect and feed into decision-making, from security chiefs to billionaires—as many believed.

Instead, it has transformed into what political scientists call a personalist dictatorship, where the whims of one man, and one man only, determine policy, a fact that has terrifying implications for Russia and the world.

Americans tend to see the world in much the same way as President Joe Biden frames it in his speeches, divided neatly between “democracies” and “autocracies.” But the reality is that authoritarian states exist on a political spectrum depending on how much power is exercised by a single individual—and where states land on this spectrum has a big impact on matters of war and peace. At one end, you have civilian-run regimes, like Hu Jintao’s China or Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, where political power is checked and shared within a ruling party. At the other, you have personalist dictatorships like that of, say, Saddam Hussein, where rivals are purged, loyalists are rewarded, cults of personality flourish, and all authority runs through the glorious leader.

The political science literature suggests that personalist dictatorships are more erratic and dangerous to the outside world than other sorts of autocracies.

Researchers have found they are more likely to start wars, for instance (institutionalized civilian-run regimes are about as apt to use force as democracies), and also tend to perform worse militarily (not surprising, since their leaders are often surrounded by yes men). But while civilian-run regimes might be less apt to launch destructive, harebrained conflicts in the short term, in the long term they can still be ticking time bombs.

That’s because as they age, their intricate power structures often devolve and allow dictators to consolidate personal control. In a forthcoming paper, Andrew Leber and Matthew Reichert of Harvard University and Christopher Carothers of the University of Pennsylvania theorize that this tends to happen when there’s no influential old guard of political elites who can stop them. All of which pretty much sums up what has happened in Russia over the last two decades.

If you are interested, he goes on to lay out the long road Putin took to get where he is. We watched it with our own eyes but didn’t see it.

And I don’t think I have to mention which form a certain orange monster would take if he had the chance.

I know next to nothing about military strategy but since we are seeing lots of footage of a very long convoy of tanks and military vehicles making their way to Kyiv today, I thought I would share what I’ve been reading about the current situation in Ukraine. The following is from Michael Kofman, Director, Russia Studies at CNA. Senior Adjunct Fellow, CNAS who follows Russian military capabilities, operations & strategy. Most of the Russia experts seem to think highly of his analysis:

Long thread about how I think the first 96 hours have gone, still very early/incomplete impressions. The initial Russian operation was premised on terrible assumptions about Ukraine’s ability & will to fight, and an unworkable concept of operations. Moscow badly miscalculated. 1/

The Russian operation was focused on getting to Kyiv quickly, forcing a surrender, and pushing a small number of units forward quickly in a way that avoided large engagements with UKR forces. They’ve been skirting major cities, going for key road junctions/smaller towns, etc. 2/

Why did Moscow choose this course of action? A few theories: they didn’t take Ukraine & its military seriously. They wanted to avoid attrition & devastation because of consequences for pol goals in Ukraine, costs of casualties, and they want to hide the costs from the public. 3/

It is also possible that Russian military planners genuinely wanted to avoid inflicting high levels of destruction given how unpopular this war was going to be at home. Most Russian soldiers are young & have little interest in fighting Ukrainians as an opponent. 4/

What I’ve seen so far suggests that Russian troops were unaware they would be ordered to invade, and appear reluctant to prosecute this war. They don’t see Ukrainians as adversaries and the military didn’t prepare them for this campaign. Outside of Chechens, morale seems low. 5/

This is an unworkable concept of operations. It seems they tried to win quickly and cheaply via ‘thunder runs,’ hoping to avoid the worst of sanctions & Western outrage. They’ve ended up in the worst of all worlds, trickling more resources into a failed strategy. 6/

However, this is barely a few days into the war. Ukraine has done remarkably well, but no analysts (except maybe in Moscow) expected Russia to defeat the largest country in Europe within 4 days, especially given UKR military capability. 7/

On the shambolic effort – Russian units are not really fighting as BTGs. They’re driving down roads in small detachments, pushing recon & VDV units forward. Tanks often by themselves and vice versa. Fires & enablers not used decisively, and often not used at all. 8/

Outside of the fighting NW of Kyiv we have a lot of smaller detachments, tanks, IFVs, often recon or VDV units pressing down roads & into cities. Small formations regularly outrunning logistics, without support, or letting support & artillery get ambushed behind them. 9/

Beyond large numbers of units strewn out in small detachments & checkpoints, we have the inverse situation as well. Long trains of Russian vehicles stuck in their own traffic jams, entering across the border. Air defenses not covering them, but stuck on the road with them. 10/

As companies & platoons run ahead to seize points, logistics can’t keep up, and they’re not being effectively covered by support. Most of the fights I’ve seen are small skirmishes, especially on the outskirts of major cities. These may be intense, but not major battles. 11/

The Russian failure is driven by the fact that they’re attempting to conduct a full-scale invasion without the mil operation that it would require, thinking they can avoid most of the fighting. This has led to not only unworkable force employment, but lack of employment. /12

The truth is that large parts of the Russian military have yet to enter this war, with many of the capabilities still unused. Not to take away from UKR great mil performance, and resilience, but I see a lot of early judgments & conclusions that need moderation. 13/

In the first 4 days, Russian tactical aviation, except for some Su-25s, largely sat on the sidelines. So have most combat helicopters. They have hundreds of both deployed in the area. Russia’s air force is missing in action, and largely unused. 14/

The Russian military sought to use cruise/ballistic missiles to destroy/suppress UKR air defense and target air bases. However, they’re not flying CAPs, or offensive counter air, and only today have I spotted the first Su-34 bomber conducting strikes. /15

Except for heavy shelling around Kharkiv, use of fires have been limited compared to how the Russian mil typically operates. Sadly, I think this will change. Russian mil is an artillery army first, and it has used a fraction of its available fires in this war thus far. /16

The bulk of the Russian military has yet to enter the fight. Outside Kharkiv, most of the 1st Guards Tank Army, and 20th Army, are just sitting there. They pushed a few BTGs a considerable distance past Sumy, but I think a lot of Russia’s forces are still on the sidelines. /17

Another point, Russian losses are significant, and they have had a number of troops captured, but they have been advancing along some axes. In general, Ukrainians are posting evidence of their combat successes, but the opposite is less true, distorting the overall picture. 18/

Hence my next thought. In a desperate effort to keep the war hidden from the Russian public, framing this as a Donbas operation, Moscow has completely ceded the information environment to Ukraine, which has galvanized morale and support behind Kyiv. Another miscalculation. /19

I won’t comment on the host of official claims made in this war so far, except that I think Kyiv is doing a great job shaping perceptions & the information environment. That said, folks should approach official claims critically in a time of war. /20

Looking at the military effort, I think Russian forces are getting some basics really wrong, but we’re also learning things that are probably not true about the Russian military as well. They’re not really fighting the way they train and organize for a major conventional war. /21

The assumptions have Grozny 1994 vibes, while some of the operations remind me of classic mil org driven blunders. Sending airborne air assault brigades or naval infantry in early on to ‘do their thing,’ even though it is unnecessary, risky, or impractical. /22

What’s next? Russia’s political leadership is still not conceding their plan’s failure, trying to take Kyiv quickly. But we’re seeing them open up greater use of fires, strikes, and air power. Sadly, I expect the worst is yet ahead, and this war could get a lot more ugly. /23

I was going to add, that I’ve seen and read other explainer threads out there about the Russian military failure. I differ with some of those explanations, they’re generally not coming from Russia mil experts, and 4 days into a war might be a bit early for conclusive statements.

Originally tweeted by Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) on February 28, 2022.

I heard Wesley Clark making many of the same points, suggesting that Ukrainians still have a very difficult fight on their hands but are, so far, doing a good job. He points out that they are aware of all this as well and are doing what they can with what they have, also emphasizing that it’s vitally important to keep supplying them with the military hardware they need.

I’m sure you’ll recall the hand-wringing about the incivility of anti-Trump citizens confronting members of his administration in public places. Poor Sarah Huckabee Sanders was politely asked to leave a restaurant once and the restaurant picked up the tab for her cheeseboard and the entire GOP fainted simultaneously.

Well get a load of this:

A video obtained Sunday night by the Las Vegas Review-Journal shows Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak and first lady Kathy Sisolak being accosted by at least two men at a Las Vegas restaurant.

As of Monday morning, the Review-Journal had been unable to confirm the date and time of the incident. The confrontation appears to have taken place at the Lindo Michoacan restaurant at 10082 W. Flamingo Road. A spokeswoman for the governor could not be reached late Sunday night. No one at the Flamingo Road restaurant could be reached late Sunday.

In the minute-long encounter, a man with a shaved head, beard and red shirt appears to be holding a phone camera up as he wraps his left arm around the governor, who smiles briefly.

“Sisolak, right?” the man says. “This is amazing.”

“Right,” the governor responds.

Neither the governor nor restaurant patrons are wearing masks in the video, although some restaurant staff appear to be masked, suggesting that the video could have been taken sometime after Sisolak lifted Nevada’s indoor mask mandate on Feb. 10.

“I can’t tell you what a piece of f—-ing s—- you are,” the man says.

“Sorry to hear that,” Sisolak says, stepping away.

The man then states: “You New World Order traitor piece of s—- b———. You’re in here without security?”

“New World Order” is a far-right conspiracy theory which, according to ADL, holds that “a tyrannical, socialist ‘one-world’ conspiracy has already taken over most of the planet and schemes to eliminate the last bastion of freedom, the United States, with the help of collaborators within the government.”

The man continues his profanity-laced rant as the governor walks toward the restaurant’s exit with his wife, Kathy.

Another man’s voice is then heard on the video.

“I want to second that,” the other man says. “You’re a traitor. You should go down for treason, and I hope you hang.”

The governor approaches the front of the restaurant, with staff nearby, and the two men continue to shout.

“I’m surprised you have the balls to be out here in public, punk,” the first man says. “Out here without a cop. Out here without security. Wooo. You got balls on you, boy. I’m not moving.”

“Wait till we find all the money that flowed his way,” the second man says, along with an inaudible statement and a reference to “hiding the Hydroxychloroquine,” an antimalarial drug and controversial COVID-19 treatment.

“Oh man,” the first man says. “Oh, you in trouble.”

Sisolak looks toward the camera and mouths the words: “Let’s go.”

The camera follows Sisolak, and the first man yells: “Yeah, you better get the f—- out of here, Sisolak.”

A voice in the background says, “Probably a good idea to go somewhere else.” It wasn’t clear if the statement was directed at the Sisolaks or the men accosting them, and it wasn’t clear who said it.

“Where’s your security at, punk?” the man says to Sisolak. “Don’t touch me lady.”

A woman’s voice is heard: “I’m not touching you.”

Sisolak says: “She’s not touching you.”

The first man continues: “Where’s your security at? You want to sell us all down the river. You working-for-China piece of s—-.”

Sisolak and his wife exit the restaurant, stepping onto a sidewalk.

A man in a blue plaid shirt and blue jeans, standing outside, points his finger and shouts at the governor: “It’s called treason.”

The first man responds: “We should string you up by a lamp post right now, p—— boy.”

The man in the plaid shirt then states: “You know what they do to traitors? They hang traitors.”

The first voice responds: “They hang them. That’s right, patriot.”

Then the other man states: “I think it’s awesome.”

As the governor and his wife continue to walk away on the sidewalk, the first man states: “You running into a patriot now. Huh? Huh? Where’s your security at?”

They seem nice.

It goes on all the way to the parking lot. They were threatening him. They should be held legally liable for that.

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I would suggest that all Democratic politicians have security with them at all times.

Barr’s a liar and a rank opportunist. He does not deserve to be quoted as a reliable source about anything. He doesn’t like Trump, now??? Bully for him.

Stop publicizing his book.

Let history note that Trump said NATO was obsolete and spent his entire term denigrating it and threatening to pull the United States out of the alliance. He pulled 12,000 troops out of Europe and planned to make a total withdrawal from Germany right after the election. (And there is no such thing as NATO “dues” which he never understood and never will.)

This excerpt from Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker’s book, “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” :

In fact, Trump had privately indicated that he would seek to withdraw from NATO and to blow up the U.S. alliance with South Korea, should he win reelection. When those alliances had come up in meetings with Esper and other top aides, some advisers warned Trump that shredding them before the election would be politically dangerous.

“Yeah, the second term,” Trump had said. “We’ll do it in the second term.”

Here’s a flashback, via the NYT:

WASHINGTON — There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

Last night this man appeared on Fox News:

Former Trump Advisor Douglas MacGregor says we need to stop demonizing Putin, lift all sanctions, stop providing weapons and aid, that it’s “hopeless,” and just let Putin take whatever part of Ukraine that he wants. pic.twitter.com/HBnLWVdVgD

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 28, 2022

That man was installed at the Pentagon after Trump lost the election. He was the one pushing for the withdrawal of 30,000 troops.

Trump nominated him to be the Ambassador of Germany. Thankfully, the nomination was held up in the Senate. Even some Republicans were appalled.

wow — Jennifer Griffin continues her live fact-check of Fox colleagues and guests:

“I feel like I need to correct some of the things that Col. Douglas MacGregor said, and I’m not sure that 10 minutes is enough time to do so, because there were so many distortions." pic.twitter.com/nsdvoGwwXi

— j.d. durkin (@jd_durkin) February 28, 2022

We’re still divided but not completely lost.

Yahoo/You Gov has some new polling on the Ukraine issue. It’s somewhat heartening that a large majority of Americans oppose the invasion. I wouldn’t have bet on it a week ago. But that’s where it ends. There is still a huge partisan divide. Just 3 percent of of Trump voters think Biden is doing a better job leading his country than Putin. Of course, they’re just following their Dear Leader who says Putin is a savvy genius who just walked into Ukraine and took it but even if that were true the idea that this constitutes doing “a good job leading their country” is just sickening.

In the opening days of the war in Ukraine, the fractious American public is remarkably united in opposition to Russia’s invasion, with 74 percent saying the breach is not justified and 76 percent expressing an unfavorable opinion of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

Yet in a striking sign of how deep partisanship continues to run in the U.S., just 3 percent of 2020 Donald Trump voters are willing to say President Biden is “doing a better job leading his country” than Putin. Nearly half (47 percent) of Trump voters say Putin is doing a better job than Biden, even as Russia’s economy threatens to collapse under the weight of crippling global sanctions. A slightly smaller share of Trump voters (45 percent) say “neither” man is doing a better job than the other.

More Trump voters also express an unfavorable opinion of Biden (95 percent) than of Putin (78 percent) — with a full 87 percent saying they have a “very” unfavorable opinion of the U.S. president versus just 60 percent who say the same about his Russian counterpart.

The poll of 1,532 U.S. adults, which was conducted online from Feb. 24-27, sheds light on how sharply domestic opinion has shifted toward Ukraine since Putin launched his onslaught — especially among Republicans. At the same time, it reveals how reluctant many of those same Americans are to credit Biden for his response.

Three weeks ago, Americans were more likely to say the U.S. should remain neutral (49 percent) than side with Ukraine (46 percent); today, they’re more than twice as likely to want the U.S. to side with Ukraine (57 percent) than to stay out of it (25 percent). Republican opinion has shifted the most, from 8 points in favor of neutrality earlier this month to 34 points in favor of siding with Ukraine.

Likewise, a plurality of Republicans now say “it’s in America’s best interests to stop Russia and help Ukraine” (44 percent), while fewer insist “the conflict is none of America’s business” (30 percent). Three weeks ago, Republicans were more likely to say the former (41 percent) than the latter (39 percent). A substantial majority of Democrats continue to say that stopping Russia and helping Ukraine is in America’s best interests (63 percent, up from 55 percent).

As a result, just a quarter of Americans (26 percent) now say the U.S. has no stake in the conflict — an argument that top Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson was pushing until late last week.

Americans also tend to agree on how the administration should be responding, with 56 percent saying they favor last week’s “major sanctions” designed to “cut off Russia’s government from Western banks and financial markets” — despite an explicit description that the sanctions were “imposed” by Biden. Unsurprisingly, 72 percent of Democrats favor Biden’s sanctions; just 6 percent oppose them. But the same sanctions also win the support of most Republicans (53 percent), with very little outright opposition (11 percent). Three weeks ago, just 40 percent of Republicans said they wanted the U.S. to “implement severe economic sanctions to counter an invasion.”

A clear majority of Americans (56 percent) agree, too, with Biden’s vow “not to send U.S. troops into Ukraine”; only 15 percent disagree. Even more (62 percent) want to see the U.S. continue to take action in response to the Russian invasion, either in the form of “more economic sanctions” (33 percent), “military force” (3 percent) or both (26 percent). Just 13 percent, meanwhile, prefer neither sanctions nor military force.

Yet in spite of this consensus, just a third of Americans (34 percent) say they approve of how Biden is handling “the situation with Russia and Ukraine.” Nearly half (48 percent) disapprove, and 17 percent are not sure. That’s roughly in line with Biden’s overall job-approval rating (41 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove) as well as the rating for his “foreign policy” more broadly (36 percent approve, 49 percent disapprove) — neither of which has fluctuated much in recent polls.

By the same token, just 28 percent of Americans say Biden’s response to the situation with Russia and Ukraine has been “about right” — while more say his response has been “not tough enough” (39 percent).

Partisanship largely explains the gap between agreement with Biden’s actions and approval of his leadership. Nearly 9 in 10 Trump voters (89 percent) say they disapprove of how Biden is handling the Russia-Ukraine situation. More than two-thirds (67 percent) say his response has not been tough enough. About the same number (68 percent) agree with Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz that “Europe is on the verge of war because of the weakness, the fecklessness of Joe Biden.” And on the question of who is a “stronger leader,” Republicans and independents who lean Republican continue to choose Putin (66 percent) over Biden (4 percent).

Yet even now, Republicans remain less likely than Democrats to support strong measures in response to Putin’s actions, such as implementing “severe economic sanctions to counter the invasion” (62 percent of Democrats vs. 49 percent of Republicans); sending “arms to Ukraine to use in its own defense” (46 percent vs. 35 percent); sending “troops to the region to bolster defenses, but not Ukraine” (31 percent vs. 19 percent); or “sending troops to the region to bolster defenses, including to Ukraine” (24 percent vs. 17 percent).

This contradiction is unlikely to resolve itself anytime soon. Consider the fact that even among the Republicans and Republican leaners who choose Putin as a stronger leader than Biden, 76 percent rate Putin unfavorably, 69 percent disapprove of the job he is doing as president of Russia and 75 percent consider his invasion unjustified. It’s not that Republicans like Putin. They’ve just made up their minds about Biden.

How to explain this contradiction? Well, they follow a cretinous pathological liar as if he’s the second coming of Jesus Christ so I don’t think their critical thinking skills are especially stellar.

Overall, however, the vast majority of Americans (72 percent) say Putin is “most responsible” for the situation in Ukraine. Just 11 percent say Biden, followed by the Ukrainian government at 8 percent, NATO at 4 percent and Trump at 4 percent.

It remains to be seen what happens next — and how Americans respond. The public is certainly paying attention, with more than two-thirds (70 percent) saying they’re following the news from Ukraine at least “somewhat closely” — including 30 percent who say they’re following “very closely.” Consistent with those numbers, nearly all Americans (86 percent) say the situation with Russia and Ukraine is “very” (54 percent) or “somewhat” important (32 percent); most now say the clash “threatens a much larger European war” (57 percent) rather than being “just a conflict between Russia and Ukraine” (20 percent). Similarly, 69 percent are at least somewhat worried (and 38 percent are very worried) that the invasion “might cause gasoline prices to rise in the U.S.”

Going forward, the war is likely to remain top of mind. When given a list of nine issues to choose from, the same number of Americans now say Russia and Ukraine should be Biden’s top priority (23 percent) as say “inflation” (23 percent). Immigration ranks third at 12 percent, with COVID-19 and health care tied for a distant fourth at 7 percent each.

Sometimes events overtake the best laid election plans. We don’t know how this will affect the November campaign. It has upended the board for the moment.

I don’t think anyone who happened to turn on the TV or went online over the weekend missed the horrifying events that are unfolding in Ukraine. The Ukrainians are putting up a valiant fight so far and seem to have thwarted the enemy’s plan for a quick takeover of their capital and decapitation of the democratically elected government. But it’s early days yet, so it’s important not to get overly optimistic. It’s going to be a very rough time for the Ukrainian people.

It also appears that it’s going to be a very rough time for Russia as President Vladimir Putin has accomplished one thing he probably did not anticipate: the unification of most of the world against him.

Both the European Union and United States, as well several other key countries in Europe and around the world, have acted very quickly to enact sharp sanctions on Putin and his wealthy oligarch compatriots. Russia’s already been cut off from the international banking system and the Ukrainians have already seen a massive resupply of military equipment. NATO has never been more united. Countries like Finland ,which have always rejected NATO membership, are suddenly discussing the possibility of joining up.

This is not what Putin wanted. He thought he was dealing with a fractured alliance and a United States so bitterly divided that it could not act with any credibility. It turns out he was wrong.

It’s a bit hard to focus on domestic politics while all this is going on but since the U.S. is involved, whether we like it or not, and our political situation is hugely relevant, it’s important not to lose sight of what’s happening here at home. This weekend the Conservative Political Action Conference was meeting in Orlando Florida and the keynote speaker was their once and future Dear Leader Donald Trump. He spoke on Saturday night to an ecstatic crowd that was eager to hear him do his greatest hits.

I think everyone in politics was interested to hear what he had to say about the Ukraine situation. Last week his comments about the invasion were abhorrent. After saying silent for the entire time the U.S. was warning Ukraine that the invasion was imminent he finally stepped up and said this:

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”

He followed that up with this comment the next day at a political event at Mar-a-lago:

‘Oh, Trump said Putin’s smart.’ I mean, he’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country, really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people and just walking right in.”

That’s the kind of talk you expect from drunk guys at the end of the bar, not a former American president. But this is Donald Trump so what else could we expect?

In the days that followed those comments, there was a sea change within the GOP coalition when it became obvious that much of their pro-Putin commentary was falling flat with the public. Putin cheerleaders like Tucker Carlson abruptly pivoted from attacking those who criticized Putin to attacking President Joe Biden for being weak and failing to stand up to him. And in fairness, Trump had been saying the same thing, of course, suggesting from the beginning that the genius and savvy Putin would never have attempted the invasion if he were still president.

His appearance at CPAC Saturday night would finally clarify if Trump would continue to extol the great genius of Putin — as he has been doing for years now — in the face of a brutal, unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country or whether he would finally find it in himself to condemn the actions of his favorite dictator. He did not do the latter.

It was the usual prepared speech (which sounded like a Stephen Miller special) mixed with ad libs about how America is an apocalyptic hellhole interspersed with shout outs to his cronies and fangirls. It took Trump nearly 15 minutes to even mention Ukraine and when he did it was an aside about “the perfect phone call.” His first mention of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was how he had allegedly told the world that Trump had done nothing wrong. (Zelensky did not do that.) It took several more minutes before he finally got to the part in his script where he condemned the invasion, calling it an outrage and an atrocity before he resumed bragging about what a great president he’d been.

In his first mention of Putin he said he’d made the decision to attack Ukraine after he witnessed the Afghanistan withdrawal and once again said he was smart and NATO and the U.S. are dumb.

If you take over Ukraine, we are going to sanction you, they say. Sanction? That is a weak statement. Putin says they’ve sanctioned me for the last 25 years. I can take over a whole country and they’re going to sanction me? They’re not going to blow us to pieces … at least psychologically?

Blow them to pieces psychologically? What in the world?

Then he slammed Democrats for defending Ukraine sovereignty when they supposedly care nothing about protecting their own borders which garnered huge cheers from the crowd. Apparently, Trump and his followers are unable to see any difference between people who are coming over the border to work in restaurants and harvest crops and an army mowing down innocent people with rockets and tanks.

And that was it on Putin. 

So Putin’s just a smart guy doing the smart thing according to our former president. But there is a serious threat to democracy and world peace that’s much worse:

This is an Ex-President who CAN return to power attacking our neighbor while Putin murders his neighbors https://t.co/TTRPxgh70a

— NYer in Florida (@JesseLaGreca) February 27, 2022

It’s tempting to make jokes about this but I really can’t. Trump pretty much announced he is running again at this event. (He said that he’s already won twice and he’s going to do it a third time.) And according to at least one recent poll, nearly half of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the situation in Ukraine. Only 66% of Democrats even approve. I’m not sure what they think he should have done differently, perhaps kowtow to dictators as Trump did?

This is all very concerning. Biden and his team have actually done a good job of wrangling a fractious alliance and putting together some very tough economic sanctions. Their decision to telegraph the intelligence that the invasion was coming took guts as well — because if Russia had pulled back they would have been accused of either lying or being hysterical. As it was, Biden and his team prepared the world for what was coming and laid the groundwork for a unified response. The fact that the president doesn’t even have the full support of his own partisans despite that is a very bad omen.

The man who practically declared war on Canada and literally cannot say a bad word about a dictator who has just invaded his own neighbor is still almost certain to be the next Republican nominee for president.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is, once again, at the top of many people’s minds as Putin threatens nuclear war.

As it happens, I’ve read extensively about the Missile Crisis. For those who would like to get a sense of what happened — and its relevance to Putin’s mad posturing — here are three books I’ve found essential to understanding the conflict. There are, of course, many others, including books that scholars prefer, but this is a pretty good start for those vaguely familiar with what happened.

Michael Dobbs’s One Minute to Midnight is an hour-by-hour description of the Crisis from the American, Russian, and Cuban sides. It is riveting and terrifying: you can’t help concluding that it wasn’t diplomatic genius that saved us but merely sheer luck.

The Kennedy Tapes was the first widely published transcript of the secretly-taped meetings that Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, McNamara, Lemay, Sorensen, and many others had in order to plan the American strategy for dealing with the Crisis. It is an astonishing read and provides considerable insight into JFK’s leadership — close to exemplary, in my opinion — and the serious limitations of many of the other participants. (JFK, however, has been blamed for blundering into the Crisis, and that, too, is not an unreasonable opinion to hold). Not to be missed is the insane confrontation between the far right General Curtis Lemay and Kennedy; had Lemay’s advice to bomb and invade Cuba been followed, none of us would be here today. (If you’re truly serious about studying the Missile Crisis, this transcript has been superseded by somewhat more accurate (and expensive) ones, There are also detailed analyses which are well worth reading. You can also find the original secret recordings online.)

The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg is about the history and planning for nuclear war. It includes a terrifying chapter or two on the Missile Crisis but extends both earlier and later. It is, like other writings by Ellsberg, brilliant, convincing, and terrifying. The assumption that nuclear weapons should not be allowed to fall into the hands of bad or irrational actors is an insane assumption. There is no one, and no country, that can be trusted with nuclear weapons. Banning them entirely might sound like an absurd, unrealistic goal but what is far more absurd and far more unrealistic is to assume that somehow humanity can not ban them and survive.

Just for the record, Bobby Kennedy’s Thirteen Days is deliberately misleading and inaccurate. It will, however, give you an idea of how RFK hoped history would remember the Missile Crisis. The tape transcripts paint a very different picture.

And also, no docudrama (like the movie Thirteen Days) comes close to evoking the terror of the Missile Crisis. To get a sense of how frightening and nuts it was, you’d be better off watching the (barely) fictional Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove.

(Incidentally, Fail-Safe the novel was published on October 22, 1962 — smack dab in the middle of the actual Cuban Missile Crisis.)

Maybe name-calling is not the most productive thing a president can do with his phone (The Guardian):

In a string of phone calls from a besieged Kyiv, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has persuaded the west to agree to a set of sanctions against Russia that were inconceivable a week ago.

Sensing how European public opinion is responding to the bravery of his people, Zelenskiy has been constantly on the phone to western leaders, using his Twitter feed to cajole, encourage, scold and praise his allies. In the process, sanctions regarded as unthinkable a week ago have become a moral baseline. The pace at which the west has been agreeing to the new sanctions has also left the lawyers, officials and bankers gasping for air, officials admit, as they work under severe pressure to turn headlines into reality.

One leader’s office said: “We are in awe of him. He may not eventually be able to save Ukraine, or change Russia, but he is changing Europe.”

And yet he is changing Russia, temporarily, just not with guns:

London/Moscow (CNN Business) — Russia was scrambling to prevent financial meltdown Monday as its economy was slammed by a broadside of crushing Western sanctions imposed over the weekend in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin was due to hold crisis talks with his top advisers after the ruble crashed to a record low against the US dollar, the Russian central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20%, and the Moscow stock exchange was shuttered for the day.

Meantime, Russia is deploying cluster munitions against civilian areas in Kharkiv, with “dozens dead … hundreds wounded,” per Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister.

#Russia cluster munitions being dropped on #Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million people.

Appalling.pic.twitter.com/UnamSTlJQS

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) February 28, 2022

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One truism readers may have seen here time and again is this: the right’s professions of faith in American (and their own) principles is a mile wide and an inch deep. Window dressing. The right’s belief in “a transcendant moral order,” in “defending the unchanging ground of our changing experience,” is public relations. That claim held only so long as traditional power hierarchies held, only so long as privileged social groups who believed they should be in charge remained in charge. They wil fight and die to defend that unchanging ground. Fight and die for their “freedom” to suppress others’. But never for a world in which they do not rule.

What the West is witnessing in Ukraine gives us pause, especially on the Monday after two conservative conferences in Orlando. At one, attendees cheered Vladimir Putin whose military is now advancing across Ukraine. Putin cannot abide a former key Soviet republic with a democratic system on his border standing as an example of a people who rejected authoritarian rule like his.

Ukraine may have its own hierachies its people will fight to preserve. But for now, Ukrainians’ focus is on Putin’s invading army. Internal cultural rivalries can wait for another day.

Emily Tamkin explains in the New York Times how Putin became a global celebrity for the “anti-woke” conservative. The movement once defined by its hawkishness and anti-communism has become its mirror image:

Part of this new paradigm is that foreign policy is now a partisan matter. In 2016, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary offered an endorsement of then-candidate Donald Trump, admiration that was later returned. Mr. Putin’s Russia reportedly meddled in the American election in 2016, and the Russian president has admitted that he wanted Mr. Trump to win. Those amicable relationships trickled down to the Republican voting population, which shifted its views on Mr. Putin’s favorability, which soared from a mere 10 percent in July 2014 to 37 percent in December 2016. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll from January of this year found that 62 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents consider Vladimir Putin a stronger leader than Joe Biden.

“Strong” may be the key word here. In this construction, a strong leader is apparently one who cracks down on opposition, cultural and political, and does not concede. This idea then dovetails with right-wing ideas that liberal elites are actively corroding deeply held traditional values — including traditional gender roles. For those who spend a fair amount of airtime worrying about the emasculation of men, the kind of strength portrayed by Mr. Putin — who on Monday convened his top security officials and demanded they publicly stand and support him — is perhaps appealing.

Many of the admirers of the world’s strongmen on the American right appear to believe that the countries each of these men lead are beacons of whiteness, Christianity and conservative values. On Wednesday, conservative commentator Rod Dreher wrote, “I adamantly oppose risking the lives of boys from Louisiana and Alabama to make the Donbass safe for genderqueers and migrants.”

“Whiteness” and “Christianity” are also key words here. They stand in for tradition, not principle. The “transcendant” moral order here is one in which white, male Christians dominate the West’s culture, and women and nonconforming persons, especially racial minorities, are second class and best shut away, silent and out of sight. That’s the shriveled concept of American greatness they profess loudly and proudly on their red caps. It has nothing to do either with the Declaration or the Constitution.

The less-filtered now declare themselves (and their ignorance) openly:

Lauren Witzke, the Delaware GOP's candidate for Senate in 2020, has nothing but praise for Putin and "his Christian nationalist nation": "I identify more with Putin's Christian values than I do with Joe Biden." pic.twitter.com/oQ2nhlVGCR

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) February 24, 2022

Russia is neither all white nor all Christian — it is a country that encompasses several regions, religions and ethnicities. Still, it is often perceived as white. The white nationalist Richard Spencer has referred to Russia as “the sole white power in the world.” Matthew Heimbach, a founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party who was involved in the 2017 Unite the Right rally, has expressed admiration for Mr. Putin and ultranationalist European political leaders. “Russia is our biggest inspiration,” Mr. Heimbach told The Times in 2016. “I see President Putin as the leader of the free world.” As The Times reported at the time, this construction of Mr. Putin as a beacon of far-right values began with the ultra-far-right nationalists in Europe and later spread to the United States.

But, as the Washington Post opinion writer Christian Caryl wrote in 2018, just as the halcyon image American Communists had of Stalinist Russia in the early 20th century belied the truth of a brutal regime, the Russia celebrated today by conservatives is also, in some ways, a fiction.

As is their image of themselves.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has become an international symbol of the kind of democratic values American conservatives once told themselves they embraced, values many quickly abandoned when the “unchanging” cultural ground shifted towards genuine equality for all.

This morning, as Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, wrote in a letter last week, Ukraine “protects European values ​​at the cost of blood of its children.”

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.