That’s impressive, as reported by the Times, but
1. All of that knowledge didn’t do him any good.
2. Biden has clearly demonstrated that the US intelligence on Russia was flawless. He tried to use this intelligence as leverage, showing the world everything Putin was going to do before it happened, and thus showing that the false flags were indeed false.
I wonder if #2 was a mistake. Because of the detail and accuracy of U.S. intelligence, Putin now knows that the USA has a mole in his inner circle. One thinks that he is working full time to expose that mole. Given that the intelligence ultimately did nothing to deter Putin’s ambitions, would it have been wiser to keep that hole card better hidden?
Masha Gessen talking to Hari on Amanpour had an eye-opening point about Putin’s script in Ukraine, that it’s directly inspired by what the U.S. did — lawlessly & unilaterally — in Serbia during the Clinton administration.
If the U.S. could self-appoint itself to be a global political sheriff, what was stopping the Soviet Union from doing the same? What’s good for the goose… Simple karma. Sure, you think you’re the good guys. I think I’m the good guy, too. Say, do ya like apples? Well then I guess you’ll like these apples. Video.
Gessen, Wednesday
Meanwhile, Noah Smith makes his case that it’s time conservatives stopped pretending America is Superman without kryptonite. Out there is a world where there are no rules. It’s our own thuggery that sets the table for the world’s wannabe bullies. Smith is a bit too optimistic to line up with my own take. But he makes some good points, as always. Blog post.
A moment of clarity, Thursday
I think we’ve discussed GOP grift quite a lot. There are many ways the left has been fiddling while Rome burned, too. NIMBY, for one.
Why is it so easy for a few vocal activists to slam the brakes on much-needed progress, nowadays? When this really wasn’t even a thing, 50 or 60 years ago? We’re no longer providing a middle class standard of living to Americans who haven’t already got it.
In that sense, MAGA really ought to be at least part of our agenda. We aren’t focused on the hard work of making life better for all. Not that the unevenness doesn’t exist & isn’t unfair. But as long as some of us get to hog the entire pie, there’s none left to divvy up.
And the left is right in the thick of why that’s been happening. The left’s obsession with purely symbolic maneuvers has been a driver of America’s long, slow-motion fall from grace.
This week’s The Weeds podcast (Vox) brings some clarity to what Dems do & won’t do that’s been driving away Americans who just want us to solve our actual problems & not waste so much of our limited time on earth inventing new imaginary ones, seemingly.
Why SF’s school board got booted, Tuesday
Wasn’t Serbia fighting with most of its neighbors under the guise of reuniting Yugoslavia or creating Greater Serbia or something? I don’t think Ukraine has been doing anything like what Serbia was doing in Bosnia-Herzogovina or Kosovo.
Also, was the US planning to make Serbia the 51st state, or at least set up a puppet state that would be completely obedient to the US? I don’t remember that part.
I thought the US went in to Serbia to stop aggression and try to put an end to warfare in the region. Is that what Putin is doing?
Gessen was representing Putin’s point of view. She did say that our aims were “genuine” & his are crooked. But how come we can do whatever we want, and everyone else has to follow the rules? The rules the U.S. set up for everyone, we seem to be exempted from. How could that be? These so-called laws are a joke. There’s no teeth until somebody steps up. It all boils down to naked power. Obama backing away from Syria’s chemical weapons crossed “Red Line”, that was a green light to Putin, Xi, Modi & Myanmar army.
Seen from Putin’s perspective, the U.S. going around and insisting falsely that democracy cures every ill, is morally the same as Russia’s growing its own sphere of influence. The U.S. plays with fire. Well, other humans have fire, too.
Nonsense. Iraq was questionable …Serbia was practicing genocide. See The Hague and the War Crimes Tribunal.
“After convictions in major war crimes and genocide trials in The Hague, right-wing nationalists stepped up their efforts to glorify criminals like Ratko Mladic, while top Serbian politicians criticised the UN tribunal and downplayed its verdicts.”
Oh, I concur, M. Le Figaro, nonsense, indeed. But, Bush the Elder did genuflect to the rules. It was a white lie. He sought & got “consensus”. Presidents since have often had to do without such niceties.
I also thought the world might’ve done something as tsutsi & hutu neighbors went on their murderous campaigns. After all, it was a Western professor who shone a light on a difference between them that had made no difference since before anyone alive could remember. But we shrank from it because violence even to counter violence exacts a price anyway. We have to pick our battles. The picking is anything but fair. But like it, or lump it, it’s what it is.
I’ll give you this much of a retraction: Putin’s versions of excuses that mirror America’s pro-war arguments are bald-faced lies or just bonkers. The importance of recognizing this false equivalence, though, is that we can stop telling ourselves that we can still reason with this implacable foe. His mind is at ease with his position. He will not stop until he hits a wall that will not give way to him.
A) Obama gave the green light to Putin for something to do with Syria? Not Trump for abandoning the Kurds? Not everyone to the right of George F. Will for supporting Trump’s love affair with Putin? It’s not the way the Right has fractured the US with non-stop lies, and brought our democracy to the brink of collapse with an attempted coup?
Wow. That is some creative thinking, right there; it would never have occurred to me.
B) I don’t know what to say about the Noah Smith thing; he tries to blame Putin’s Ukraine invasion on Bush’s 2003 Iraq invasion. I think George W, Bush should have been both impeached and tried as a war criminal. But the assumption that a guy like Putin plays by the rules until somebody else breaks them is dumb.
NOBODY has to give a guy like Putin the green light; the green light is the his perception of A) the weakness of his victims and B) the unwillingness of others to help them. That’s got nothing to do with Iraq in 2003, and a lot to do with Trump and the GOP fracturing America until our democracy trembles.
C) Finally,about MAGA. What I and (I assume) MyKey mean by making America great is making progress, by making America better than it ever has been.
The reason Trump and his supporters call it making America Great AGAIN is because they see what other people call progress as bad. They want to go back to the days before, well, you name it: gay marriage, feminsim, Martin Luther King, the civil rights movements of the 1950’s, FDR’s New Deal, you name it.
This is connected to the end of the post-WWII economic boom in a way I don’t really understand, except that hard times seem to make people look for living, breathing scapegoats to blame and hate. And for lots of people, times have not been good since the Reagan recession, or even the “stagflation” of the late 1970’s.
It’s been great for billionaires, though. The GOP has served them very well.
Biden and NATO basically had two options:
(1) start WW III
(2) not start WWIII
They chose (2), and the “winner” of that choice won’t be determined for several years.
This is Putin’s version of Hitler annexing the Sudetenland. Either that’s enough and he stops or it’s war. And once he gets away with it watch China jump on Taiwan. Interesting times. Could be worse, at least Trump’s not in charge.
Putin’s a lot older than Hitler…and likely ill. He’s very puffy looking on the videos…steroids? Maybe he’s in the apres moi, le deluge mindset.
No, it isn’t.
Hitler didn’t previously rule Sudentenland and invaded to get them back.
This is about Putin reclaiming Ukraine after they fought to gain their independence from his puppet government 8 years ago.
That’s it.
Yeah, there’s evidence to suggest he would love to get the band back together, the band being the former soviet union, but the list of options after Ukraine gets really short.
Most importantly, he’s convinced NATO wants to attack Russia. He’s even more convinced they’d use Ukraine to do it. He’s a paranoid psychotic.
So this is that. Once he secures Ukraine and regains control, he’ll put missiles in it and keep pushing NATO to completely withdraw from Eastern Europe, which isn’t happening.
But as the other poster says, rumor has said for a long time that he’s ill, possibly gravely ill. Sanctions, which are gonna be vicious, will cripple Russia and turn the already angry people further against him. If he goes, this all ends. Nobody else in Russia is paranoid about NATO and would likely be much more interested in peace talks and disarming than returning to the cold War like paranoid Putin.
Well, yeah, I admit it’s not a 100% match. But Russia surrounded Ukraine on three sides (side note, why is no one pissed at/sanctioning Belarus for helping) like a wolf’s jaws – the phrase used in 1938. The claim was similar: oh, this used to be part of our country, we just want it back.
I hope to hell Vlad is gravely ill. But Hitler was paranoid and sick too. He got progressively more strung out speed, he had a private quack shooting him full of bull adrenaline. The thing with Putin is, he had something on the ball in the first place. He used to run the KGB, he survived 1991 and came out on top; he knows how to plan.
I hope you’re right about the effect of the sanctions. But Putin likely saw sanctions coming & has planned for this contingency. I’m with you on the optimism part, though. Go Russians! Git his ass!
SIGINT was probably more important than HUMINT, I’d bet. You can’t prep an invading force of >180k troops along with the necessary armaments quickly or quietly, even though word is that lots of the troops being sent into Ukraine are poorly-trained conscripts – some are saying they were told it was a training mission and were surprised when they encountered live fire. Doesn’t seem like the Red Army is what it may have once been, and that probably holds for OPSEC as well.
It wouldn’t be shocking if intel came from a “walk-in” type of situation – invading Ukraine is a pretty unpopular notion with many Russians, and may be a losing gamble that someone in military leadership wanted to prevent Putin from taking. . Putin is weaker at home than the popular narrative in the west, and this could have been seen as the desperate play it is by someone who knew the nuts and bolts of the plan.
But what do I know?
According to the reporting, the USA had written copies of his war plans in late October. I think that has to be human intel.
And as insane as his plans are, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were multiple moles in his inner circle all ratting him out….
His speech tonight was as unhinged as some of the Mango Mussolini’s…
Certainly some of his ministers looked like they were crapping in their pants in the one video…
Putin probably doesn’t have the support of many of the top leadership. However, if something were to happen to him, Russia has never had a shortage of lunatic strongmen. The optimistic view is that none of them will be as talent as Vlad.
Nobody could stop Putin from doing this. At all. Russia couldn’t. Ukraine couldn’t. The UN couldn’t. Biden has zero to do with this. No amount of action or inaction matters here. He was determined to have Ukraine back and was tired of waiting for his propaganda to raise support in Russia, so he just went for it. He’s a dictator in Russia, he’s killed anyone who can contradict him, and he wants his puppet government back in Ukraine. That’s that.
The US Didn’t plan well enough ahead to counter the Russian Attack. The Sanctions are weak, the US response is flaccid. The President has no balls to give a positive response. Think Russia is afraid of the US? they arn’t. If Russia Uses Thermobaric Weapons think the US will get involved? no! The Us hasn’t stood up for anything to make things even.
Trump thinks Putin has made a genius move…
You’re living in some kind of dreamland. What’s a thermobaric weapon?
He’s taking Ukraine, not destroying it. They’re a prize, not an enemy.
Nobody is going to fight him over them, that’d be counter productive. Destroy more of what they’re trying to save.
This isn’t the US vs Russia, it’s everyone vs Russia. China is officially out, no stance, has their own problems. Everyone else is in on sanctions. Their economy is going to be brought to the stone age over this. Complete economic disaster. The Russian people, already pissed over this, aren’t going to stand for going without basic needs so Vlad can fight his vanity war. They’re already having mass protests over there, celebs are all over social media in Russia calling for an end, and it’s day two.
This isn’t the 80s. Russia has zero friends here. Nobody backs Putin on this. The entire UN agrees he’s gotta be stopped and sanctions are gonna hit them very, very hard.
bob apparently reads UK news. Or maybe Russian press releases.
There are reports of Putin threatening to use thermobaric weapons. They are a kind of fuel (in vapor form)/air explosion. They are supposed to be extremely powerful, although not atomic bomb level. I don’t think they have ever been used in combat.
Nothing bad to say about Putin, bob? All your criticism is directed at everyone except the people committing the crime? And you really ought to be directing some to the American Right. They are about .2 millimeters from actually cheering Putin on. They are resurecting old boogeymen like Hilary Clinton in a desperate effort to distract their base. Trump has called Putin a genius – what’s your take on that?
He’s not using some special new super destructive bomb.
You don’t blow up the jewelry store you’re about to rob.
I wish you had told me that before I tried to rob a jewelry store!
China is not out …
1, 2
China perhaps sees an opportunity to wound an “adversary”, eh.
Yielding back the balance of my time …
Hmm, an unknown source (fxstreet?) and fox.
Every other source has been saying for days and days: Beijing is annoyed, but is not taking a side. They’re not getting involved.
Could they be sanctioning Russia? Maybe, but that’s not what literally everyone else is saying. And that line makes more sense. Taking a side and risking the ire of paranoid Putin isn’t to their advantage right now. It isn’t like they’re looking to curry favor with the west, and they don’t need a bunch of cyber attacks on their infrastructure.
China notwithstanding “Taking a side and risking” lol as Ukraine w/world support may give Putin more than he bargained for, eh.
When a country’s leader is self-destructing ie Putin get the fuck out of the way …
Putin used the “false flag” tactic often (recently in Crimea), and via that misinformation, was able to win support from his populace.
By declassifying the intel & removing that weapon from Putin’s playbook, his invasion looks exactly as it is (horrific & villainous) to a much larger % of his own people, and to the world at large.
This invasion is much, much less popular among Russians than Crimea was, for example, and that is absolutely meaningful… both in terms of domestic & international politics.
It’s also a nice evolution in strategy from the Americans, who need to do a better job fighting these kind of enemies asymmetrically, and generally being less predictable (if their goal is the preservation of democracy at home & abroad).
Putin didn’t need to change anything. Only one way to fight a war.
Blow up shit with missiles. Including air defense systems. Cyber attack. Then send in the bombers/attack planes to soften up ground forces. Then send in ground troops to occupy.
Putin could have made a song and music video of his war plans. Ukraine couldn’t have stopped them
I think the intelligence in this case was not tactics, but the fact that there was definitly going to be a war, barring some extraordinary event.
Damn, I forgot to spell-check “definitely”. Now I look like a moron. OK, MORE like a moron. Automatic spell check stopped working for me here quite a while ago.
I hadn’t noticed!
The US clearly won the messaging war on this one even if it wasn’t able to stop Putin.
Better to lose the messaging war and win the war war.
That wasn’t an option
Well, two thoughts:
1- Why didn’t Putin change his plans? I think Biden was thinking Putin would back down just to prove the U.S. is wrong as usual, and maybe that deescalates things until Kamala Harris takes over, or Putin dies of natural causes.
2- Biden probably hoped that the rest of the world would do something besides condemn Putin’s actions. And because Putin didn’t change his plans Biden can now say anything he wants and the world might believe him.
On a side note, Biden’s condemnation of Putin’s actions eerily reflect the condemnation of the attack on Iraq a couple of decades ago. Bush had intel suggesting Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, which was the impetus of the invasion of Iraq. Putin claims Ukraine has chemical weapons, etc… Ironically in the later years, it was the democrats who were condemning Bush the most, with that filmmaker insisting the Bush lied because there were weapons found.