Oligarchs are gonna be pissed off
Swiss bankers doing something right? The world has gone insane. All they need do now is give back all the money they got from the Nazi’s.
Thrag
3289
I did not see that coming.
CraigM
3290
I didn’t have that one on my bingo card.
Dejin
3292
Tweeter is CNN National Security Correspondent:
Also along similar lines, Cornell Professor in Southeast Asian Studies discusses what an insurgency might look like based on his study of Vietnam and Malayan insurgencies:
I’m not sure. On the one hand, we do put a lot of stock in “the president is the one who makes the call” here in the US, and I don’t doubt that Trump, always vulnerable to the flattery of dictators (if not in Putin’s pocket outright) would avoided doing anything if at all possible. OTOH, I think it would be very hard for any president to resist the calls for retaliation if American troops (on Estonian soil) were killed by Russian bullets. That’s why we put them there, both to convince our allies of our seriousness and deter enemy aggression.
Scotten
3294
That’s weird because I read the opposite yesterday. I wonder what changed their position?
a) recent scandal published internationally showing they’re still at it and b) they’re in very hot water with the European Union generally - small country being pushed around, so this is an easy diplomatic decision, basically - plus they got horribly beaten up by the US a few years back about their entirely untransparent and basically criminal banking activities.
I think in general you are probably right; I just don’t think the issue is clear-cut. I don’t, frankly, trust nations to abide by treaties that impose costs. I’m extremely skeptical these says, but hope I am wrong.
Agreed, it’s not “evidence,” in the sense that the situations are not identical, but again, I also think that the strength of the commitment to NATO depends on the member states feeling that doing so is worth the cost. It’s entirely possible that crossing that line would be enough to ensure that calculus. It’s also possible, in my view, that the arguments would end up being the same, that is, it would still be too risky because deep down none of these nations really believes war is possible, and none of them is ready to actually risk it when faced with a real possibility of death and destruction. In short, I’m extremely cynical at this point about Europe’s willingness to bear any sort of pain whatsoever. I hope I am wrong, really.
And to be clear, I do not thing NATO should be bombing the Russians or anything right now. I’m mostly reacting to what I see as really poor use of diplomacy on the part of the US and NATO, and what I feel is terribly mishandling of the lead-up to this fiasco.
What do you think should have been done differently?
I could see giving more military aid to Ukraine, other than that I’m not sure how we dissuade Russia if it is determined to restart the Cold War.
Banana in the tailpipe also works
This is in agreement with their position yesterday. Their position yesterday was that they will adhere to any EU sanctions but will not issue their own. I.e. they claim no responsibility for the sanctions they are implementing in order to pretend to be neutral. They will not go above and beyond EU sanctions when they have the data and capability to do so.
dtolman
3300
Lot of reports of Russian units having to forage for supplies after only 48 hours of combat. Quite the logistical fuckup - maybe those posts about Russian units prior to the war selling diesel for alchohol were no joke…
Two biggest Chinese banks stopped working with Russia.
I imagine a lot of spitting being done in any such food.
Hey, it’s much easier to criticize than to provide alternatives! Seriously, I’m mostly upset by the way things were done and said, not so much what they said or did. Our options are limited, as many have noted quite wisely. But in general, I like a “speak softly, carry a big stick” approach. I think US policy in general is awful because we usually do the opposite. I would prefer the US to rarely use force, but when it does, use it decisively and effectively (and as opportunities/requirements for that sort of thing are rare, it has the double benefit of limiting our use of force even more). I also am not a fan off preemptively telling people “no matter what you do, or how bad you are, we are not going to do X,” when often X is the only thing the other side really cares about. So I would have preferred we not take anything off the table explicitly. Even if we were never going to actually do certain things, I see no benefit in telling the Russians that up front.
I also think that if we (US, NATO, EU, etc.) were going to say anything about consequences, we should say less about them and focus more on actually implementing them–make it very clear that there is an action-consequence loop. Too often there is a lot of noise and hemming and hawing in public that I find unhelpful.
Admittedly, I’m sort of an old-school diplomacy fan, not big on diplomacy by social media and all that. It is what it is though.
Right, but what consequences could we have possibly implemented? Military action is basically entirely off the table, which leaves sanctions. I don’t think preemptively sanctioning Russia would have worked at all. And while I really hope everybody gets together and comes down hard on the Russian economy right now, I just don’t think there’s anything anyone could have done (within the last month or two) that would have realistically changed Putin’s course.
Timex
3305
I feel like it’s impressive that Russian logistics is this bad.
Can you imagine if they were fighting against someone like the US, where we were actively employing our full might to destroy their supply lines?
I know it’s still early to call, and who knows how much of this is real, but if half of this stuff is true then Russia’s military is not even remotely in the same league as the US.
