I joined the Marines in 09, at the height of the Afghan war. I enlisted in the Infantry. I am not afraid to punch a bully in the face. I spent most of my life champing at the bit.
Today, I'm absolutely opposed to US military adventurism. Its not because I've had some profound revelation about the costs of war or humanity or whatever, I just recognized that our National Security bureaucracy is absolutely sophomoric, like the author.
Our Secretary of Defense said, just last year, that "COVID" was the greatest threat to DOD and then promptly lost Afghanistan to a couple goat herders in Toyotas. When Romney claimed just a decade ago that Russia would become the greatest geopolitical rival to the US, Obama mocked him and then claimed *climate change* was the greatest existential threat. Our CJC made it a point to understand "white rage" and our officers have spent their time giving lectures on anti-racism rather than focusing on actual threats to the United States.
I am opposed to war because I can't imagine these people every winning one. In fact, to date, they haven't. I am sure that the only people who could be more stupid than the Russians in this mess is probably the Americans.
Only Americans, this author included, can completely miss the fundamental point that *deterrence* happens *before* the fight begins. Like that iconic scene in Dr. Strangelove "Of course the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, Eh?"
How else could people justify wading into a war with Russia now unless they were totally ignorant to how the 40 years of Cold War were fought? Throughout the entirety of the Cold War US/NATO troops never fought the Soviet Union despite the fact that at least one side was generally embroiled in a war at any given point. Seasoned Cold Warriors understood that deterrence happened upfront with clear communication and unambiguous red lines.
So what do we have now? We have a War bureaucracy that made no credible effort to deter the Russians and a military that was militarily unprepared to fight them and now that the Russians are getting bogged down these idiots want to help push things over the edge. They make no serious effort to understand the risks. Would Putin use tactical nukes to save his army from NATO intervention? Would he use any WMDs against European targets to ensure other NATO members stay out? Would he attack NATO member states delivering weaponry to kill Russians, and would NATO treat this as an attack on NATO?
No, thats where the author gets this wrong. At least for me I'm not afraid of war I'm just opposed to stupid wars. If we wanted to do this right we would have been serious about Russia and our military from the start and we wouldn't have gotten punked off in Afghanistan. We would have announced that we would be actively arming the Ukrainians before Russia invaded. We would have declared a No-Fly Zone before Russia invaded. We would have somehow have found our balls (I guess they were somewhere near Zelenskys) *BEFORE* Russia invaded because now that Russia is there the only thing we are going to do is start WW3. There is no part of "deterrence" where wading into what would by definition be WW3 counts as deterrence.
The trouble with our isolationists is that the their position leads them (1) to find excuses for V. Putin’s blatant act of aggression while (2) disparaging America. There’s plenty of that in the commentary on this article and it’s not an edifying spectacle, to put it no more pointedly.
The excuses for Putin include the risible claim that his actions are merely a reaction to NATO “encirclement.” This, of course is a lie, recycled from the Cold War era. And to accept it is to embrace Putin’s claim that Russia has the right to dictate the foreign policy of the countries on its borders, based on nothing more than Russia’s former imperial rule over those countries. Putin has made this quite explicit in the case of Ukraine, arguing that the country was always part of Russia and therefore has no right to exist. That’s the b.s. the isolationists have signed up to support.
Moreover, the claim that NATO represents a security threat to Russia is garbage. Nobody, Putin included, believes that NATO would ever launch an attack on Russia. What makes him mad is that NATO constrains his imperial ambitions. And our isolationists seem to be mad about that also.
Along with this comes praise for the Russian despot that’s frankly nauseating when it comes from Americans and people in other Western countries. Supposedly Putin is a towering figure, the Russian Bismarck, outwitting the West at every turn. There’s some truth in this, of course, but why must it be embraced with such glee? And now, as Putin’s colossal blunder regarding Ukraine becomes more and more apparent, his apologists are in denial.
Finally, all too many isolationists are making their case by asserting that America is a country in decline that anyway has no moral standing to stand up against Putin. Particularly disgusting to me as a retired soldier have been the numerous slurs and insults directed against the US armed forces, in some cases by veterans. Funny way to support the troops!
All this is accompanied by multiple whataboutisms, e.g. “what about the southern border?”
Nobody wants war. But you can’t secure peace by looking the other way when some would-be Napoleon or Hitler—guys like this rat Putin—starts a war
Putin is clearly trying to rebuild the Russian Empire. While you might find this offensive to your sensibilities, its no more ambitious than America has been in it's history. Russia is essentially a 2nd rate regional power far from our borders. It has no substantial navy and it's biggest threat to the US is through its Nuclear Arsenal which is it's only claim to serious strength. Thus, the US, nor NATO, gains any significant benefit from expanding NATO to borders it can't defend. Ukraine isn't even NATO but its certainly a liability now. The Baltics are even more indefensible. To add insult to injury, Romney was mocked in 2012 for calling Russia a threat, and Trump was condemned for daring to prod NATO to up its defense spending, by the very same people most eager to get us into a shooting war with Russia.
The forest that is really getting missed here is that Russia has already showed it's cards. Russia's army is in Ukraine, and it's air force is running sorties over Ukraine. There is nothing that the US is going to do militarily that isn't going to constitute the most significant chance of Nuclear War in world history. That is to say, by escalating we aren't "deterring" anything we are just escalating without any strategic off-ramp.
It's clear to me that you can't conceive of the poltical and military realities here. We do not have the military capacity to attend to our national priorities and Ukraine is very low on that list. The risk of escalation in Europe are grave and escalation is likely to pose much greater risk to national security than it is to benefit us. The Nation is also incredibly divided with a weak leader who has already lost one war within the last year. A war with Russia sprung on us like this, without any significant strategic benefit to be had, while also entailing substantial risk of a total nuclear war, is just one of the dumbest things I can imagine.
Well yes, as a matter of fact my sensibilities are offended by what's unfolding in Ukraine: a blatant act of aggression, utterly without justification, in a delusional attempt to recreate a defunct empire. Maybe you're okay with that but I'm not.
There are many things short of direct military intervention that the US and the West can do to frustrate V. Putin's imperial ambitions. And they have to be done because, as you pointed out, various NATO member states, which we're treaty bound to defend, would be next on Putin's agenda if he succeeds in Ukraine. That's the actual situation, as oppozed to your isolationist natcon fantasies.
You are the one living in fantasy land if you think that Russia is as dangerous as the Soviet Union or that defending the Baltics or the Finnish border is worth the risks.
Europe is rotten to the core and we have seen that with a generation of underspending by European NATO states and Germany's insistence to offload it's energy burden onto Russia. The Europeans have spend the last 30 years basking in the post-cold war progressive glow ignoring all geopolitical realities on their horizon. They dug themselves into a hole and now expect American rescue.
Our military, too, is not prepared for a great power struggle. We spent the last 20 years bombing Camels in the desert, we now must contend with a revanchist Russia and an expansionist China. We don't have armored formations in Germany and we aren't guaranteed naval or air superiority in the East China Sea.
Worst still, our military leadership has dithered in facing these issues and has been more insistent in promulgating DNC party ideology throughout the ranks as opposed to focusing on America's enemies. These people thought that COVID was the greatest threat to DOD as they lost Afghanistan to some goat herders in Toyotas.
I'm not "okay" with what Russia is doing, but I am not willing to risk a Nuclear War because no one wanted to listen to Romney in 2012 or to Trump during his tenure. The people champing at the bit for war with Russia do not understand the risks and actively pushed policies that empowered Russia for their political benefit.
Europe has more than enough resources to handle the Russians on their own. The EU's economy is like 13 times the size of Russia's. We aren't dealing with a global communist threat we are dealing with a 2nd rate Regional power biting at the fringes of Europe, a power that is only dangerous to us if we corner it. Any way you cut it there is no strategic interest for us beyond outdated treaty commitments which should have been scrapped 30 years ago anyways.
I know it might be hard for old folks like you to let go of the "Russian boogeyman" mythos but it's really time to do that before you drag us into a holocaust for no reason.
No, what makes him dangerous clearly is his 1600 Thermonuclear Warheads that are currently ready to go.
Anyone that says otherwise is clearly not capable of understanding the military or political situation here.
I mean, it is self-evident that Putin's ability to destroy the world necessarily constrains our options.
As confounding as your inability to understand this basic concept is, equally confusing is that while you recognize that Putin is aggressive and erratic you totally ignore the fact that he might not respond to the conventional western rational-actor hypothesis.
Putin wants to reestablish the Russian empire. NATO did nothing to constrain him over the last 20 years. He invaded Georgia in 2006 and Eastern Ukraine in 2014. This did not stop us from buying his oil or lead to any meaningful sanctions. We did not prepare militarily for a confrontation and did nothing to signal any significant opposition to his moves.
Sorry maybe you should rewatch Dr. Strangelove and brush up on your deterrence basics but deterrence doesn't work after the fact. "The whole point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!" Unfortunately for Ukraine that ship has sailed.
The best we can do now is encourage Europe to shore up its Eastern Flank and try to decouple from Russian energy. Anything more aggressive just opens us up to meaningless escalation without affecting the strategic situation.
Weirdly I appreciate overt corruption, similar to what we see in poorly developed countries - an all out ruthlessness, blatant corruption, unchecked rules.
get all the cards out. In contrast this faux covert corrupt horse shit in "developed countries" like for sure US is a joke.
*
Let me muse on rules and laws and enforcement in the us for a min.
Oh and I havent read this piece but the comments are ripe. This is exactly what we need civil discourse to learn and grow. All brains work better than ONE
After 9/11, the Western power elite immediately began to find it easier and more satisfying to punish their own citizens than to combat actual terrorism or to counter the ambitions of Russia and China. Fear of terrorism was quickly replaced by fear of being accused of racism. First, it was grandmothers with artificial hips being molested at the airport by TSA agents in the name of "keeping us safe". Twenty years on it's metastasized into deploying anti-terrorism laws against parents in school board meetings. And since Covid, the "go back to sleep darling, we're only doing this to keep you safe" sweet nothing has been whispered in our ear so many times, we've been lulled into a state of drowsiness and deceit so profound that it's hard to see what will wake us. Certainly no nation in this current enervated and deluded state could successfully prosecute a war against a tyrant abroad.
The leaders of Europe deserve their share of blame for enabling Putin with energy dependence. From what I've read, he disdains them as foolish, cowardly and effete -- as did Hitler in his time. Ironically, Germany now plays the lead appeasement role France and Britain once did.
This blog is infested with lunatics mimicking Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Putin himself. You all are so fucking dumb to think NATO is to blame for Putin's behavior. Let's all willfully ignore his open proclamations of retaking everything lost after the Berlin Wall fell. I guess you pay to be heard but you can't fool me nor can you fool anyone who has actually studied these issues.
Check-out Glenn Greenwald’s take on the Ukraine/Russia invasion and it will be clear why this piece is more propaganda than journalism. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnHo6JXxcQM
"Britain watched its empire collapse and the American empire, which the Americans never called an empire, rise."
I get your drift, but let's be clear that there has never been an American empire the way there was a British empire, a Russian (Soviet) empire, or -- the biggest and, apart from some of its outlying reaches, the most iron-fisted of them all -- the Islamic Empire. Those were literal, physical empires.
In literal, physical terms, the US can be said to have dabbled in colonialism at most. To get to the rhetorical flourish "American empire", one must stretch out and work with notions of "soft empire": great economic and cultural influence; political alliances with autocrats; the ability to project military power abroad. That list gradually brings us near the borderline between soft empire and hard, but to erase the borderline is to do an injustice to people who have lived under hard-form empires.
If one must refer to America's predominance in the world as an empire, let the word "empire" always appear in quotes.
Strimpel's essay says it all in the tidy little headline: Putin does indeed know that America is afraid of war. He's licked his greedy little finger, held it up to the global political winds, and smelled the blood. I don't wear my political convictions on my sleeve, especially nowadays, but if ever a campaign slogan proclaimed a will to change our national self-image for the better, it's the clarion call to "make America great again." Of course Putin has a fear of his own, as this perceptive essay illuminates: he doesn't want Ukraine to have the protection of NATO, so what better opportunity to pounce than when we have an administration that waits until the rockets' red blare is over the cities of Ukraine and then yawns and promises to make a speech TOMORROW? Yes, of course Teddy Roosevelt was right: reasonable and responsible discourse backed by strength and resolve. But it's hard for any regime to rise to that very sensible course of action when it is busy trampling on the human rights of its own citizens, let alone being led by a man with embarrassingly diminishing cognitive skills, shamefully plummeting polls, and a litany of spectacular and bloody failures. Being a great nation is not just a question of justifying nationalism; it's a matter of displaying the priority for national survival in a world where power-hungry madmen lurk and plot. We'd damn well better get our act together if we want to survive in such a world, let alone lead in it.
Thanks again, Bari, for another penetrating look past partisan rhetoric and into the light of reality.
This article is full of flaws and omissions that make it difficult to comment on the major points addressed. For one thing, the author expresses skepticism that Trump opposed the Iraq war, despite his many steadfast and adamant expressions of opposition and disgust for how the U.S. entered and conducted said war. Back in about 2004 when the Iraq adventure had begun, Trump was asked by some journalist whether he agreed with the action, and he responded, "Yeah, I guess..." which is what the rest of us said, too, having been fed the line that it was necessary to stop nuclear proliferation. However starting around 2009, when he became increasingly vocal about politics, and seeing the nation headed in a bad direction, he certainly did express regret that the U.S. had wasted so much blood and treasure for so little gain.
Regarding the title of this very article: is America afraid of war? Well, given the large number of veterans of combat returning to the U.S. and becoming involved in civic affairs and running for office, one can safely say that there is a large population of men and women who have SEEN war and are much more realistic about it. This group is not as large as the woke mobs that post their vitriol from safe basements, unfortunately, but it's not nothing.
Regarding that Yale historian Moyn, his odious views do indeed represent the Academy and such people should be under scrutiny and, if possible, kept away from our children.
"In 1994 Ukraine agreed to destroy the (nuclear) weapons, and to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Under the agreement, the United States, Russia and Britain were to provide security assurances for Ukraine when it gives up its weapons and becomes an adherent of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." LA Times 1994.
So, how do the Ukrainians feel now -- duped? They are dependent on the US and Britain to defend them based on a treaty from almost 30 years ago. And if we don't defend Ukraine, then what does it mean for agreements going forward with other countries like Iran? I am not for a war at all but... what is the most pragmatic way to approach this situation?
In 1974 Willy Brandt resigned as chancellor of West Germany, after one of his closest aides was exposed as an agent of the Stasi. Today Putin doesn’t bother with aides, he buys chancellors wholesale, like Gerhard Schroeder, who was given plum jobs at the top of Russian oil companies. Schroeder not only didn’t resign as chancellor, but even after Russia started the war refused to resign from the job of chairman of Rosneft. He said: “Many mistakes have been made - on both sides”.
Putin’s mistake obviously is that he didn’t also hire Hunter at one of the Russian oil companies.
America’s mistake is that it’s divided into two tribes of fanatical loonies who agree only on the fact that it’s OK for the Ukrainians to be butchered by Putin.
Eastern Europe’s mistake is to have dared to believe that it could ever escape the clutches of the Russian colonial empire.
And Ukraine’s mistake is simply to exist, which according to Putin is not even true.
So let Putin erase Ukraine from the map, while one half of America repeats Carlson Tucker’s aberrations and the other half recites the leftist anti-American credo of the ‘80s, which was actually whispered to them by Communist propaganda.
I’m wondering (before my next Patreon renewal date) whether I’ve stumbled on the wrong website because this place seems more like it should be renamed “Anguished Handwringing of the Feckless Center-Right” rather than “Common Sense”.
And, by the way, do “Never Trump Movement Conservatives” ever do or believe anything they thought was wrong, or is it all problems caused by “woke liberals” or cynical fascist power mongers like Trump and his cult? And how is it that center right doctrine is never the problem, but it’s been ascendant for 40 years since Reagan. How long is it before anyone gets that the “common sense” of 1980 isn’t working in the 21st century.
Well, good to air a variety of viewpoints, but playing chicken with Russia over Ukraine is insane.
Wow this article was bad.
I joined the Marines in 09, at the height of the Afghan war. I enlisted in the Infantry. I am not afraid to punch a bully in the face. I spent most of my life champing at the bit.
Today, I'm absolutely opposed to US military adventurism. Its not because I've had some profound revelation about the costs of war or humanity or whatever, I just recognized that our National Security bureaucracy is absolutely sophomoric, like the author.
Our Secretary of Defense said, just last year, that "COVID" was the greatest threat to DOD and then promptly lost Afghanistan to a couple goat herders in Toyotas. When Romney claimed just a decade ago that Russia would become the greatest geopolitical rival to the US, Obama mocked him and then claimed *climate change* was the greatest existential threat. Our CJC made it a point to understand "white rage" and our officers have spent their time giving lectures on anti-racism rather than focusing on actual threats to the United States.
I am opposed to war because I can't imagine these people every winning one. In fact, to date, they haven't. I am sure that the only people who could be more stupid than the Russians in this mess is probably the Americans.
Only Americans, this author included, can completely miss the fundamental point that *deterrence* happens *before* the fight begins. Like that iconic scene in Dr. Strangelove "Of course the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, Eh?"
How else could people justify wading into a war with Russia now unless they were totally ignorant to how the 40 years of Cold War were fought? Throughout the entirety of the Cold War US/NATO troops never fought the Soviet Union despite the fact that at least one side was generally embroiled in a war at any given point. Seasoned Cold Warriors understood that deterrence happened upfront with clear communication and unambiguous red lines.
So what do we have now? We have a War bureaucracy that made no credible effort to deter the Russians and a military that was militarily unprepared to fight them and now that the Russians are getting bogged down these idiots want to help push things over the edge. They make no serious effort to understand the risks. Would Putin use tactical nukes to save his army from NATO intervention? Would he use any WMDs against European targets to ensure other NATO members stay out? Would he attack NATO member states delivering weaponry to kill Russians, and would NATO treat this as an attack on NATO?
No, thats where the author gets this wrong. At least for me I'm not afraid of war I'm just opposed to stupid wars. If we wanted to do this right we would have been serious about Russia and our military from the start and we wouldn't have gotten punked off in Afghanistan. We would have announced that we would be actively arming the Ukrainians before Russia invaded. We would have declared a No-Fly Zone before Russia invaded. We would have somehow have found our balls (I guess they were somewhere near Zelenskys) *BEFORE* Russia invaded because now that Russia is there the only thing we are going to do is start WW3. There is no part of "deterrence" where wading into what would by definition be WW3 counts as deterrence.
The trouble with our isolationists is that the their position leads them (1) to find excuses for V. Putin’s blatant act of aggression while (2) disparaging America. There’s plenty of that in the commentary on this article and it’s not an edifying spectacle, to put it no more pointedly.
The excuses for Putin include the risible claim that his actions are merely a reaction to NATO “encirclement.” This, of course is a lie, recycled from the Cold War era. And to accept it is to embrace Putin’s claim that Russia has the right to dictate the foreign policy of the countries on its borders, based on nothing more than Russia’s former imperial rule over those countries. Putin has made this quite explicit in the case of Ukraine, arguing that the country was always part of Russia and therefore has no right to exist. That’s the b.s. the isolationists have signed up to support.
Moreover, the claim that NATO represents a security threat to Russia is garbage. Nobody, Putin included, believes that NATO would ever launch an attack on Russia. What makes him mad is that NATO constrains his imperial ambitions. And our isolationists seem to be mad about that also.
Along with this comes praise for the Russian despot that’s frankly nauseating when it comes from Americans and people in other Western countries. Supposedly Putin is a towering figure, the Russian Bismarck, outwitting the West at every turn. There’s some truth in this, of course, but why must it be embraced with such glee? And now, as Putin’s colossal blunder regarding Ukraine becomes more and more apparent, his apologists are in denial.
Finally, all too many isolationists are making their case by asserting that America is a country in decline that anyway has no moral standing to stand up against Putin. Particularly disgusting to me as a retired soldier have been the numerous slurs and insults directed against the US armed forces, in some cases by veterans. Funny way to support the troops!
All this is accompanied by multiple whataboutisms, e.g. “what about the southern border?”
Nobody wants war. But you can’t secure peace by looking the other way when some would-be Napoleon or Hitler—guys like this rat Putin—starts a war
What a Joke.
Putin is clearly trying to rebuild the Russian Empire. While you might find this offensive to your sensibilities, its no more ambitious than America has been in it's history. Russia is essentially a 2nd rate regional power far from our borders. It has no substantial navy and it's biggest threat to the US is through its Nuclear Arsenal which is it's only claim to serious strength. Thus, the US, nor NATO, gains any significant benefit from expanding NATO to borders it can't defend. Ukraine isn't even NATO but its certainly a liability now. The Baltics are even more indefensible. To add insult to injury, Romney was mocked in 2012 for calling Russia a threat, and Trump was condemned for daring to prod NATO to up its defense spending, by the very same people most eager to get us into a shooting war with Russia.
The forest that is really getting missed here is that Russia has already showed it's cards. Russia's army is in Ukraine, and it's air force is running sorties over Ukraine. There is nothing that the US is going to do militarily that isn't going to constitute the most significant chance of Nuclear War in world history. That is to say, by escalating we aren't "deterring" anything we are just escalating without any strategic off-ramp.
It's clear to me that you can't conceive of the poltical and military realities here. We do not have the military capacity to attend to our national priorities and Ukraine is very low on that list. The risk of escalation in Europe are grave and escalation is likely to pose much greater risk to national security than it is to benefit us. The Nation is also incredibly divided with a weak leader who has already lost one war within the last year. A war with Russia sprung on us like this, without any significant strategic benefit to be had, while also entailing substantial risk of a total nuclear war, is just one of the dumbest things I can imagine.
Well yes, as a matter of fact my sensibilities are offended by what's unfolding in Ukraine: a blatant act of aggression, utterly without justification, in a delusional attempt to recreate a defunct empire. Maybe you're okay with that but I'm not.
There are many things short of direct military intervention that the US and the West can do to frustrate V. Putin's imperial ambitions. And they have to be done because, as you pointed out, various NATO member states, which we're treaty bound to defend, would be next on Putin's agenda if he succeeds in Ukraine. That's the actual situation, as oppozed to your isolationist natcon fantasies.
You are the one living in fantasy land if you think that Russia is as dangerous as the Soviet Union or that defending the Baltics or the Finnish border is worth the risks.
Europe is rotten to the core and we have seen that with a generation of underspending by European NATO states and Germany's insistence to offload it's energy burden onto Russia. The Europeans have spend the last 30 years basking in the post-cold war progressive glow ignoring all geopolitical realities on their horizon. They dug themselves into a hole and now expect American rescue.
Our military, too, is not prepared for a great power struggle. We spent the last 20 years bombing Camels in the desert, we now must contend with a revanchist Russia and an expansionist China. We don't have armored formations in Germany and we aren't guaranteed naval or air superiority in the East China Sea.
Worst still, our military leadership has dithered in facing these issues and has been more insistent in promulgating DNC party ideology throughout the ranks as opposed to focusing on America's enemies. These people thought that COVID was the greatest threat to DOD as they lost Afghanistan to some goat herders in Toyotas.
I'm not "okay" with what Russia is doing, but I am not willing to risk a Nuclear War because no one wanted to listen to Romney in 2012 or to Trump during his tenure. The people champing at the bit for war with Russia do not understand the risks and actively pushed policies that empowered Russia for their political benefit.
Europe has more than enough resources to handle the Russians on their own. The EU's economy is like 13 times the size of Russia's. We aren't dealing with a global communist threat we are dealing with a 2nd rate Regional power biting at the fringes of Europe, a power that is only dangerous to us if we corner it. Any way you cut it there is no strategic interest for us beyond outdated treaty commitments which should have been scrapped 30 years ago anyways.
I know it might be hard for old folks like you to let go of the "Russian boogeyman" mythos but it's really time to do that before you drag us into a holocaust for no reason.
What makes V. Putin's Russia dangerous is the indulgence of it imperial fantasies by people like you.
No, what makes him dangerous clearly is his 1600 Thermonuclear Warheads that are currently ready to go.
Anyone that says otherwise is clearly not capable of understanding the military or political situation here.
I mean, it is self-evident that Putin's ability to destroy the world necessarily constrains our options.
As confounding as your inability to understand this basic concept is, equally confusing is that while you recognize that Putin is aggressive and erratic you totally ignore the fact that he might not respond to the conventional western rational-actor hypothesis.
Putin wants to reestablish the Russian empire. NATO did nothing to constrain him over the last 20 years. He invaded Georgia in 2006 and Eastern Ukraine in 2014. This did not stop us from buying his oil or lead to any meaningful sanctions. We did not prepare militarily for a confrontation and did nothing to signal any significant opposition to his moves.
Sorry maybe you should rewatch Dr. Strangelove and brush up on your deterrence basics but deterrence doesn't work after the fact. "The whole point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!" Unfortunately for Ukraine that ship has sailed.
The best we can do now is encourage Europe to shore up its Eastern Flank and try to decouple from Russian energy. Anything more aggressive just opens us up to meaningless escalation without affecting the strategic situation.
Putin is out of control
Weirdly I appreciate overt corruption, similar to what we see in poorly developed countries - an all out ruthlessness, blatant corruption, unchecked rules.
get all the cards out. In contrast this faux covert corrupt horse shit in "developed countries" like for sure US is a joke.
*
Let me muse on rules and laws and enforcement in the us for a min.
Everyone is bought.
Oh and I havent read this piece but the comments are ripe. This is exactly what we need civil discourse to learn and grow. All brains work better than ONE
Bush II was an isolationist before 9/11. It was one of his campaign promises.
After 9/11, the Western power elite immediately began to find it easier and more satisfying to punish their own citizens than to combat actual terrorism or to counter the ambitions of Russia and China. Fear of terrorism was quickly replaced by fear of being accused of racism. First, it was grandmothers with artificial hips being molested at the airport by TSA agents in the name of "keeping us safe". Twenty years on it's metastasized into deploying anti-terrorism laws against parents in school board meetings. And since Covid, the "go back to sleep darling, we're only doing this to keep you safe" sweet nothing has been whispered in our ear so many times, we've been lulled into a state of drowsiness and deceit so profound that it's hard to see what will wake us. Certainly no nation in this current enervated and deluded state could successfully prosecute a war against a tyrant abroad.
The leaders of Europe deserve their share of blame for enabling Putin with energy dependence. From what I've read, he disdains them as foolish, cowardly and effete -- as did Hitler in his time. Ironically, Germany now plays the lead appeasement role France and Britain once did.
This blog is infested with lunatics mimicking Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Putin himself. You all are so fucking dumb to think NATO is to blame for Putin's behavior. Let's all willfully ignore his open proclamations of retaking everything lost after the Berlin Wall fell. I guess you pay to be heard but you can't fool me nor can you fool anyone who has actually studied these issues.
Check-out Glenn Greenwald’s take on the Ukraine/Russia invasion and it will be clear why this piece is more propaganda than journalism. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnHo6JXxcQM
"Britain watched its empire collapse and the American empire, which the Americans never called an empire, rise."
I get your drift, but let's be clear that there has never been an American empire the way there was a British empire, a Russian (Soviet) empire, or -- the biggest and, apart from some of its outlying reaches, the most iron-fisted of them all -- the Islamic Empire. Those were literal, physical empires.
In literal, physical terms, the US can be said to have dabbled in colonialism at most. To get to the rhetorical flourish "American empire", one must stretch out and work with notions of "soft empire": great economic and cultural influence; political alliances with autocrats; the ability to project military power abroad. That list gradually brings us near the borderline between soft empire and hard, but to erase the borderline is to do an injustice to people who have lived under hard-form empires.
If one must refer to America's predominance in the world as an empire, let the word "empire" always appear in quotes.
Liz Cheney 2024 anyone?
Strimpel's essay says it all in the tidy little headline: Putin does indeed know that America is afraid of war. He's licked his greedy little finger, held it up to the global political winds, and smelled the blood. I don't wear my political convictions on my sleeve, especially nowadays, but if ever a campaign slogan proclaimed a will to change our national self-image for the better, it's the clarion call to "make America great again." Of course Putin has a fear of his own, as this perceptive essay illuminates: he doesn't want Ukraine to have the protection of NATO, so what better opportunity to pounce than when we have an administration that waits until the rockets' red blare is over the cities of Ukraine and then yawns and promises to make a speech TOMORROW? Yes, of course Teddy Roosevelt was right: reasonable and responsible discourse backed by strength and resolve. But it's hard for any regime to rise to that very sensible course of action when it is busy trampling on the human rights of its own citizens, let alone being led by a man with embarrassingly diminishing cognitive skills, shamefully plummeting polls, and a litany of spectacular and bloody failures. Being a great nation is not just a question of justifying nationalism; it's a matter of displaying the priority for national survival in a world where power-hungry madmen lurk and plot. We'd damn well better get our act together if we want to survive in such a world, let alone lead in it.
Thanks again, Bari, for another penetrating look past partisan rhetoric and into the light of reality.
This article is full of flaws and omissions that make it difficult to comment on the major points addressed. For one thing, the author expresses skepticism that Trump opposed the Iraq war, despite his many steadfast and adamant expressions of opposition and disgust for how the U.S. entered and conducted said war. Back in about 2004 when the Iraq adventure had begun, Trump was asked by some journalist whether he agreed with the action, and he responded, "Yeah, I guess..." which is what the rest of us said, too, having been fed the line that it was necessary to stop nuclear proliferation. However starting around 2009, when he became increasingly vocal about politics, and seeing the nation headed in a bad direction, he certainly did express regret that the U.S. had wasted so much blood and treasure for so little gain.
Regarding the title of this very article: is America afraid of war? Well, given the large number of veterans of combat returning to the U.S. and becoming involved in civic affairs and running for office, one can safely say that there is a large population of men and women who have SEEN war and are much more realistic about it. This group is not as large as the woke mobs that post their vitriol from safe basements, unfortunately, but it's not nothing.
Regarding that Yale historian Moyn, his odious views do indeed represent the Academy and such people should be under scrutiny and, if possible, kept away from our children.
"In 1994 Ukraine agreed to destroy the (nuclear) weapons, and to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Under the agreement, the United States, Russia and Britain were to provide security assurances for Ukraine when it gives up its weapons and becomes an adherent of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." LA Times 1994.
So, how do the Ukrainians feel now -- duped? They are dependent on the US and Britain to defend them based on a treaty from almost 30 years ago. And if we don't defend Ukraine, then what does it mean for agreements going forward with other countries like Iran? I am not for a war at all but... what is the most pragmatic way to approach this situation?
In 1974 Willy Brandt resigned as chancellor of West Germany, after one of his closest aides was exposed as an agent of the Stasi. Today Putin doesn’t bother with aides, he buys chancellors wholesale, like Gerhard Schroeder, who was given plum jobs at the top of Russian oil companies. Schroeder not only didn’t resign as chancellor, but even after Russia started the war refused to resign from the job of chairman of Rosneft. He said: “Many mistakes have been made - on both sides”.
Putin’s mistake obviously is that he didn’t also hire Hunter at one of the Russian oil companies.
America’s mistake is that it’s divided into two tribes of fanatical loonies who agree only on the fact that it’s OK for the Ukrainians to be butchered by Putin.
Eastern Europe’s mistake is to have dared to believe that it could ever escape the clutches of the Russian colonial empire.
And Ukraine’s mistake is simply to exist, which according to Putin is not even true.
So let Putin erase Ukraine from the map, while one half of America repeats Carlson Tucker’s aberrations and the other half recites the leftist anti-American credo of the ‘80s, which was actually whispered to them by Communist propaganda.
All is well when it end well.
I’m wondering (before my next Patreon renewal date) whether I’ve stumbled on the wrong website because this place seems more like it should be renamed “Anguished Handwringing of the Feckless Center-Right” rather than “Common Sense”.
And, by the way, do “Never Trump Movement Conservatives” ever do or believe anything they thought was wrong, or is it all problems caused by “woke liberals” or cynical fascist power mongers like Trump and his cult? And how is it that center right doctrine is never the problem, but it’s been ascendant for 40 years since Reagan. How long is it before anyone gets that the “common sense” of 1980 isn’t working in the 21st century.