billbindc

You have to love the way China isn't just not helping but is actually attracting Russian investment to the PRC as industry in Putin's Tsardom are desperate for an infusion of it. My over all take on that article is that it confirms the theory that Xi was led to believe that Ukraine was going to be short and decisive war (taste notes of Austria-Hungary's plans for Serbia) and made his commitments accordingly. When Putin failed to managed it, Xi scaled back his support accordingly. No Kaiser he.

Newsweek is not the same information source it was 20 years ago. Take everything therein with a huge grain of salt.

The idea that Russia has to lose in some dramatically obvious way in order to lose decisively never ceases to amaze somebody like me who has seen the US lose in both Afghanistan and Vietnam without ever losing a single battle.

That is very unlikely to happen short of Russia using a tactical nuke or a large chemical weapons attack.

I am very doubtful this comes to fruition. Russia never sticks to its agreements so Ukraine (and Turkey) are going to require stringent terms it won't want to make. Russia also has little global leverage at the moment. It's best lever after fossil fuels is the ability to squeeze global food stocks to create painful inflation in the coalition against it. The likeliest motivation for Putin to allow these talks to continue fruitlessly to provide a better pretext for the blockade. Russia will tell India, Mexico and others that would be happy to let their grain through but the warmongers in Brussels and Moscow won't allow it. As always, it's all tactics all the time.

This quote is just... She wrote that the assumption Putin knows he's losing "stems from the mistaken idea that Russia's main goal is to seize control of large parts of Ukraine—and therefore, when the Russian military performs badly, fails to advance, or even retreats, that this amounts to failure." At the bare minimum, Putin's plan involved decapitating the Kyiv government at the start of the war in the expectation that organized national resistance would collapse. IR people seem to be addicted to clowning themselves regarding this war.

"Russia isn't magic" is my new mantra.

I'm *pretty* sure the China/Taiwan statement was not a gaffe. It's been our sotto voce policy forever to defend Taiwan militarily if the PRC tries to seize it militarily but that's nots not a marker a POTUS would normally be able to place so obviously in normal times. The successful reaction to the Ukraine invasion made it pretty easy. Now it's been said, bluntly, and it's now a clear diplomatic and military reality with which Xi must contend. Yet another reason for Beijing to be irritated with Putin.

There simply isn't a hesitation to send them. Today it was leaked to the WSJ that systems with a range of 60m are already in process and will be on the battlefield in about 6 weeks. The supposed "gaffe" was Biden referring to the fact that the USG was not going to send the longest ranged systems. Most commentators haven't the foggiest idea of systems and ranges so they simply assumed the worst. Welcome to Washington.

To your points above (numbered because I can't be arsed to figure out split quotes): 1. You get at something I didn't articulate well earlier. I think *every* administration would have reacted negatively to the Russian invasion of Ukraine...even the Trump administration. The key thing to focus on is that *this* administration took the ball in *April, 2021* and ran very hard with it. I don't think any other would have because no other likely US POTUS has the experience Biden does in foreign policy and with Putin directly. In other words, the execution was nearly flawless and that's the primary reason the EU nations were ready when it came and responded in the manner they did. 2. I would be quite skeptical of the idea that Biden is not directly and immediately in charge on a day to day basis. The staff work, the approach to the EU, the Nordstream 2 deal made with Germany, the absolutely astringent view take of Russia and Putin are all hallmarks of his approach to foreign policy. I get it. He can seem like a goofball. What you will notice is that it's very hard to find anyone on either side of the aisle who's worked with him extensively who doesn't take him seriously. 3. The ends of the horseshoe share one important interest...they pretty much always think America is wrong.

Avoiding any partisan statement whatsoever, it's clear that in virtually every US administration before this one there was a distinct lack of desire and/or political will to grab the nettle on Russia. In some cases those reasons were understandable and justifiable at the time and some were not. What is quite clear is that this administration decided as of last April that the time had come to do so and then put considerable effort and time in to alter the outcome Putin expected. This was not without cost. I personally think that the conduct of the exit from Afghanistan was affected as officials were at the time already feverishly working the issue. DC observers were criticizing Jake Sherman at the time for seeming preoccupied as Kabul fell. Now, we know why. In short, I think Putin would have succeeded at almost any time before 2020 in getting a better outcome with greater or lesser levels of resistance depending on the particular occupant of the office but the reaction of this White House has been highly exceptional in scope and degree.

Analytical vapor lock is a real thing. I very much respect Kofman's expertise but that expertise is rendered less useful if it's deployed in the service of salvaging an earlier (and in many ways entirely reasonable) misjudgment. That's pretty clearly what he's doing.

I think it's fair to say that Kofman's understandable misreading of the situation and the somewhat huffy arrogance he's frequently displaying lately is lowering regard for him pretty significantly.

Chomsky and his ilk tend to see the messaging that confirms their priors or see messaging as having a malign intent almost by definition. Did the Biden administration shape public opinion in both Europe and the US before Russia invaded? Sure. By making sure that a truthful account of what was happening out competed the propaganda emanating from Moscow. Is that 'manufacturing consent'? I'd argue not. It's leveling with your voters. PS: I should add that what Schneider is specifically discussing is the coordinated messaging that was being done before the war began. That made sense then because it was necessary to actively escalate attention to Russian actions that were indicating what was coming. Now, it's here. Russian misdeeds are dominating the news every day and thus the need for what he's describing has waned. Not offense to Schneider but what he's describing is a fairly banal reassessment of need and action.

Schneider's cynicism is a bit weird given that we've just witnessed the most effective integration of intelligence, diplomacy and military initiative since WWII. Are there bumps on the road with allies? Sure. But in the end, the intelligence is driven by the US and there's not an ounce of slack in that system right now. NATO? Well sure...but that's not where the real game is happening.

1. Draghi is fine but Italy as a whole is only very reluctantly going along with the rest of the EU and NATO. There's a lot of anti-American feeling and lots of corruption of long standing tied to Russia. 2. Kherson fell apart because there was apparently a very high level betrayal of the leading military and intelligence figures in the oblast.

I'd been hearing since the end of last year that the Biden folks had been obsessing about and intensely working diplomatic ties regarding a Russian invasion since April of 2021. The article confirms it. That fact puts a lot of fairly shocking developments...not least the way in which the EU countries reacted so decisively...in context. Russia telegraphed the punch and thankfully we had the right people running the show who could take advantage of it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/26/biden-white-house-secret-planning-helped-ukraine-counter-russia/ "Germany was a reluctant but essential ally, and the Biden administration made a controversial decision last summer that was probably crucial in gaining German support against Russia. Biden gave Germany a pass on an initial round of sanctions against a company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in exchange for a pledge from Chancellor Angela Merkel that if Russia invaded, Nord Stream 2 would be scrapped. When the invasion came, Merkel was gone but her successor, Olaf Scholz, kept the promise."

Yes.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/putins-pivot-to-a-really-big-war-in-ukraine Soldatov on Putin and the war.

And the warmongers will be the winners of any power struggle. They have too much power to be overthrown and their argument ("if only they had listened to us, we'd be having this conversation in Kiev") is far more compelling until the Russian capacity for continuing is exhausted.

I'm less than convinced of these stories. The rule of thumb I would use is that if you've heard about it, it's either not serious or it's chickenfeed designed to support a particular agenda (i.e. the hardliners wanting to make the peaceniks look disloyal). At the moment, the levers of power are very tightly held and if Putin is ushered off the stage it will come from the small coterie very close to him. Patrushev is the likeliest candidate to take over and we are unlikely to see it until it's been happening for a while. The deprecating stories of Putin directing individual companies make me think maybe the process has already begun.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/24/world/europe/russia-shrinking-war-ukraine.html An excellent breakdown by the Times.

Yet another reason for Xi to be irritated with Putin. The invasion of Ukraine created the space for this to happen.