Streetwise Professor

Early this afternoon I tweeted that if I could do Photoshop I’d do a have-you-seen-me? milk carton with Lloyd Austin’s picture on it. Shortly thereafter, lo and behold, he and his sidekick General Mark Milley emerged for a press conference. Punxsutawney Lloyd should have stayed in his den.

His deer-in-the-headlights performance hardly inspired confidence. To paraphrase: “the Taliban have us by the balls and my plan is to hope they don’t squeeze too hard.” He flatly admitted that the US does not have the ability to bring Americans to the airport from Kabul and environs: their ability to get there is dependent on the goodwill of the Taliban. (“Goodwill of the Taliban.” That’s a phrase I never imagined writing non-ironically.) The State Department is advising said civilians to “make their way to Kabul Airport.” Great! Thanks! Well unless they’re in a convoy led by Mad Max good luck with that.

If anything, Milley was worse. He was mainly interested in defending himself, but every explanation/excuse only condemned him all the more. There were several appalling moments, but this was probably the worst:

Milley: I stood behind this podium and said that the Afghan security forces had the capacity… to defend their country. This comes down to an issue of will and leadership pic.twitter.com/c8tPcOnqry

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 18, 2021

Napoleon said that “In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one.” Will and leadership ARE capability/capacity. Evaluating those should have been Milley’s primary focus. The best equipped force is worthless if morale is low and leadership is poor and lacks the will to fight (cf. the collapse of the Iraqi Army before ISIS–so it’s not as if this should not have been in Milley’s mind). To think that counting noses and rifles and vehicles is the key to evaluating combat capability is beyond amateurish. And it is not as if the morale and leadership problems are news. The Afghanistan Papers make it crystal clear that the problems are of longstanding, and were well known.

This is a confession of utter incompetence. He made other confessions, but this was the worst.

The saddest thing is that he clearly doesn’t realize that he confessed to all the world his abject incapacity for command. The fact that this man has not resigned staggers the imagination. Same goes for Austin. Same goes for Biden.

Honor is dead.

The immediate problem is that the US perimeter is, well, the perimeter of the airport. Which is in an urban area making it impossible to protect with airstrikes. Further, all of the Americans looking to get out of Afghanistan are outside the perimeter, and the Taliban controls every inch of ground they need to cover to get to the airport.

Any attempt to expand the perimeter would lead to a fight in which the enemy has all the advantages. Numbers. Fighting the US in urban terrain where the US cannot rely on armor and airpower as it did in say Fallujah or Mosul. A perimeter so small that relatively modest weapons (e.g., mortars) can reach everything within it–which would basically put a stop to air operations while the fight is ongoing.

Not to mention that the Taliban have thousands of potential hostages. So even if we dared the odds the objective of saving Americans would be compromised, not advanced.

Today questions were raised to the pathetic duo regarding the evacuation of the Bagram Airbase. It is more defensible, not being in urban terrain. So a much larger perimeter could be defended by fires, mainly from over-the-horizon via B52/B2/B1/AC130 airstrikes (and even carrier air a la 2001/2002), but also from Apaches at Bagram itself. It has two runways, not one.

Could Bagram be retaken, Milley was asked. “Great question!” he said. Then he weaseled and replied that he was not going to comment on “branches and sequels off our current operation.” That kind of argle bargle is exactly why the American military was ridiculed and disrespected in Vietnam.

Bagram is in Taliban hands (having been gifted to them some weeks ago). It could not be retaken without a major fight . . . and again, the Taliban have thousands of potential hostages.

It’s worth noting that the airbase was abandoned at the recommendation of CENTCOM commander Kenneth McKenzie, and Milley approved the decision. The “logic” was that Kabul International and Bagram were equally vulnerable (probably not true, but whatever), but that only one had to be chosen because the troops committed were limited to 600-700:

"KIA" indeed. To be clear, General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "approved" the proposal by @CENTCOM Gen. McKenzie & then @USFOR_A Gen. Miller to shut down Bagram and rely on Kabul airport. Hold them accountable. Milley and McKenzie should resign or be fired. https://t.co/mxe1COsIE1

— Bill Roggio (@billroggio) August 18, 2021

In other words, the mission was sized to fit the (pitiful) force allotted, rather than sizing the force to meet the mission.

(I also suspect this explanation is a lie: no doubt choosing KIA was done in deference to Afghan political sensitivities.)

But even the question of Bagram vs. KIA doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. The US should have been gathering its citizens and moving them out or at least staging them to a place they could be defended before moving them out. Like I said yesterday: move the soft stuff out first. It didn’t happen.

And this is where we are as a result.

I predict that the Taliban will magnanimously allow a large fraction of the Americans, other foreigners, and even some Afghans to leave, thereby achieving propaganda victories. But they will retain many, many hostages. Hell, the US doesn’t even know–within +/- 5000–how many Americans are in Afghanistan. So how would we even know if the Taliban have hostages, or how many?

So the current situation is like Mogadishu plus Benghazi multiplied many times over, plus Iran 1979, also likely multiplied many times over. With hostage takers that make the mullahs and their henchmen look placid and sane by comparison.

In other words, Kabul 2021 is a concatenation of America’s biggest military disasters of the past 42 years, times a large number.

So what is this going to be called? Operation Shitshow? Operation Anklegrab? Operation Clusterfuck?

Whatever it’s called, it is a debacle. And one that could have been prevented by better leadership. No, not in Afghanistan–in DC (or should I call it Kabul on the Potomac?).

This afternoon Joe Biden delivered an angry, bitter, and defensive speech in an attempt to quell the uproar over the fiasco in Afghanistan. It was a pathetic attempt at misdirection–rhetorical three card monte by a man with slow hands, therefore fooling no one who does not want to be fooled.

The bulk of the speech was a strident defense of his decision to withdraw. Ironically, I agree with many of the points he raised: indeed, I raised them in earlier posts. Further ironically, I am sure that Donald Trump would have delivered the same speech to justify a withdrawal. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

But that’s not the point right now. The issue isn’t whether withdrawal is wise: it is whether the handling of the withdrawal was executed with any competence at all, or was instead a historical debacle with few parallels in American history. On this fundamental question, Biden had little to say–and what he did say stood in stark contrast with what he said a little more than a month ago.

Biden heaped blame on the Afghan army and government. And there is much blame to heap–again, I agree with his points. But the harder he pushes that argument the more he demonstrates the cataclysmic failure in planning.

The defects Biden highlighted were common knowledge. For years. Meaning that any planning to withdraw had to take into account the manifest deficiencies in the Afghan army and government.

But if anything, the reverse was true. The WSJ reports that the American military told the Afghan president that the dispersion of his forces throughout Afghanistan in penny packets made them extremely vulnerable, but that Ghani said it would be “political suicide” to withdraw from isolated areas and concentrate. So he decided to commit military suicide instead–and the US conceded.

Further, the US eliminated all air support for the Afghans, and withdrew US maintenance personnel for Afghan aircraft. This was a recipe for catastrophe. Patton once wrote in his diary: “[French general] de Langres said the poorer the infantry is the more artillery it needs.” Well, (a) the Afghan infantry was about as poor as one could imagine, and (b) airpower is effectively artillery. So there should be no surprise that isolated and dispersed Afghan units crumbled when the US yanked the airpower crutch it so desperately needed. (Eerily reminiscent of 1975 Vietnam, by the way.)

So not only did the withdrawal “plan” fail to account adequately for the well-known deficiencies in the Afghan army and ameliorate them–it exacerbated them.

Moreover, according to the NYT, Biden was on notice that the Afghan army would collapse:

In late March, Mr. Austin and General Milley made a last-ditch effort with the president by forecasting dire outcomes in which the Afghan military folded in an aggressive advance by the Taliban. They drew comparisons to how the Iraqi military was overrun by the Islamic State in 2014 after American combat troops left Iraq, prompting Mr. Obama to send American forces back.

“We’ve seen this movie before,” Mr. Austin told Mr. Biden, according to officials with knowledge of the meetings.

Withdrawal in the face of an aggressive enemy is one of the hardest military tasks, but the basic steps are clear. Get out the soft stuff first. Concentrate around decisive points. Defend those points with fires while troops exit.

The approach implemented violated all these principles. The soft stuff–notably upwards of 10,000 American civilians, not to mention those of other nations–remained in place while the situation went to hell in a handbasket. Which is a major reason for the chaos at the Kabul airport.

Biden alluded to this in his speech, when he said that the Afghan government opposed the withdrawal of civilians because it would send a bad signal. That is understandable. It certainly would have been a sign of no confidence in the Afghan government. But we had no confidence in the Afghan government–Biden said as much. So deal with the reality and do what is necessary when you can’t rely on the locals. Get out the civilians while the getting is good.

Besides, evacuation of civilians would not have told the Taliban anything that they didn’t know–that the Afghan government and army were teetering on the brink. Would the Taliban have acted any differently if civilians had been evacuated? Ha!

As for concentration, as noted above the Afghan forces remained dispersed, vulnerable to being picked off unit by unit–as they were. And realizing that they were isolated and unsupported, decided that discretion was the better part of valor and either ran or surrendered. The military planning by the US should have attempted to counterbalance that, and further, it was another reason to accelerate removal of civilians.

As for firepower, again as noted, the US deliberately withheld that even though that has long been the American comparative advantage and that our military knew that the Afghans were desperately dependent on it.

Withdrawal before the enemy requires exquisite sequencing, but the US “plan,” such as it apparently was, had its sequencing completely out of whack, in large part because of deference to and undercutting of a government that Biden excoriated today for its incompetence and unreliability.

Biden’s speech also proved his mendacity, and that of Milley and Austin. As I posted yesterday, on 8 July Biden gave a stirring defense of the Afghan army and concluded that there was no way it would fold before the Taliban. Then, Biden said that this would not happen because of the army’s numbers and equipment: today he said that it happened despite its numbers and equipment. But Milley and Austin supposedly (per NYT) told Biden this would happen. Nonetheless, he adamantly opposed any changes to his plans.

In other words, he shamelessly lied a month ago about the reliability of the Afghan army, and lied today when he said that the collapse of that army came as a shock.

Milley is no better. He also stated categorically in public that the Afghan army would not fold–but this was not what he told the president. He should not have lied in public, and if he felt compelled to do so he should have resigned.

As for Austin–who knows? He’s like Major Major Major from Catch 22. Is he on vacation with Jen Psaki? Searching for extremists and vetting CRT training materials? Got me. He responded to an emailed question about whether he would resign by saying no. Other than that, he’s been personus not aroundus.

In sum, all of the factors that Biden emphasized in his speech do not justify how the withdrawal was planned and executed. In fact, they do the reverse. They emphasize the additional challenges facing an inherently fraught military operation–withdrawal before an aggressive enemy–which were not remotely adequately addressed, and were in fact aggravated.

Getting out makes sense for the reasons Biden stated. The way of the getting out makes no sense–and Biden provided no reasons for it. And it is for that getting out–bugging out, more precisely–that Joe Biden’s name will live in infamy and ignominy in American military and political annals.

As I suggested in my previous post, the “who lost Afghanistan?” debate is in full swing. And again I say: this is the wrong question. Everyone loses the un-winnable, and Afghanistan was un-winnable if one defines victory as the establishment and maintenance of a stable, centralized civil government. Believe me: the Taliban will fail at this too.

It all comes down to timing. When would the US choose to reap the whirlwind? When, not if.

The possibilities frontier does not, did not, and never will include a stable centralized civil government, let alone one that proudly flies the pride flag–or lets women out of the house. The US basically had two choices: bug out and let the Taliban run rampant, followed by another Afghan civil war or stay in and play Whac-a-Mole year after year after year after year after . . .

The “optimal” choice depends on the carrying cost and how heavily one discounts the future. The carrying cost ran into many tens of billions of dollars per year, and at least tens of American lives, and in some years many more. One has to discount the future fairly heavily to justify incurring such a cost.

Politicians discount the future very heavily. They do not personally bear the carrying costs, and are willing to pay a lot to defer disaster until after they leave office.

Politicians also tend to take the past into account, when they should not: as Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break noted in the comments, the sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy, but one that people fall for over and over and over–and politicians more than most.

So the incentive structure is perverse, and leads to procrastination and doubling down on un-winnable bets. And this is why the US stayed long past the time that it was clear that the war could not be “won.”

It’s plausible that the speed of the rout would actually have been slower, had the US bugged out in 2005 or 2011 rather than 2021. The US succeeded in keeping the Taliban at bay, but their strength actually increased over time during the resulting stalemate while the Afghan government and army treaded water at best and in fact probably regressed because of the moral hazard created by American protection and insurance.

The Biden administration and its myriad lackeys are trying to blame Trump. Well, if Trump had been reelected and followed through on his plan to withdraw, it’s certain that the outcome would have been the same. But the Biden administration chose to withdraw. If the Trump plan was so flawed, why did Biden follow through with it? After all, he’s had no reservation about reversing every other Trump policy (e.g., the border). So the choice to pull the plug is Biden’s and Biden’s alone. So he owns this.

The military and “intelligence” communities are covered in ignominy for their failure to predict this outcome, although their ability to prevent it was minimal or non-existent.

Ultimately the fundamental problem was the failure to develop an effective Afghan army despite the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars. The US should have spent money on speed bumps: they would have slowed down the Taliban advance far more effectively than the Afghan army on which the US lavished so much money and effort, and at much lower cost.

And why? Culture. As The Pilot noted in a comment, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Read John Keegan’s A History of Warfare: he emphasizes the cultural dimension of warfare It’s obviously not that Afghans are not warlike. They are obviously one of the most warlike people on the planet. It is that their cultural mode of warfare is guerrilla, tribal conflict, not regular battalions like a Roman legion or an American airborne outfit.

The United States attempted to create the simulacrum of a regular, western army, and failed miserably. This tweet is illuminating:

The fall of Afghanistan explained in 41 seconds pic.twitter.com/wMJeP2vIIu

— Ali A. Rizvi (@aliamjadrizvi) August 15, 2021

Can you imagine being one of the trainers?

I could go on and on about the underlying reasons. But the main question is why are the guerrillas so tough, and the regulars so pathetic?

Self-selection is the root of the issue. Guerrillas like the Taliban are self-selected, and committed for ideological/religious, tribal, or mercenary motives, or all of the above. Conscripts or those who volunteer for a pittance (much of which is stolen by their commanding officers) are drawn from the left tail of the distribution because their opportunity costs are low: you have to be pretty desperate to want to join the Afghan army. This is especially true in a “nation” that has no national identity and where military service does not generate any social status or prestige: can you imagine any Afghan saying “thank you for your service” to this lot? As for post-military employment, no doubt service in the Afghan army is (was) a negative signal of intelligence, motivation, etc. So the equilibrium is an army consisting primarily of unmotivated misfits who get trounced by steelier if less well-equipped guerrillas.

But it’s not as if this should have been a surprise to the US military in 2002, let alone in 2021. Yet year after year, we pretended to train them, and they pretended to be a military force. And we lied–to ourselves–about the results.

The American model of training indigenous forces to fight in the western fashion has failed over and over again. Vietnamization sort of worked when backed by massive American airpower (as in the Easter Offensive of 1973), but not when that airpower was withdrawn. Elsewhere it has failed time and again (again remember the rout of the American trained and equipped Iraqi army before ISIS).

And as numerous Middle Eastern wars have shown, it’s not an American problem alone: Middle Eastern states have not been able to produce regular western-style forces that can stand up to stalwart opponents (e.g., the Israelis, the US, or local guerrillas).

Again, it’s a cultural thing. And this should have been obvious long ago, and led the US government to conclude that the Afghan army would never be able to stand up to the Taliban on its own. But the overemphasis on the past and the excessive discounting of the future by politicians and the military and intelligence establishments continued to give life to the lie.

Given all this, I really don’t blame the Biden administration. Yes I’m sure they (and the Pentagon) could have been more foresightful and found ways to avoid the avalanche that has occurred–even delaying the withdrawal to the winter would have bought something of a respite, but the difference would have been in the degree (and only slightly) rather than the essence. They haven’t lost Afghanistan: they have chosen to take the inevitable L.

That said, I do find their response to the debacle to be appalling.

Biden’s condescending and cocky July press conference in which he heaped scorn on the prospect of a rapid Taliban victory is one example.

This may become the most infamous — and devastating — press conference ever held by an American President. pic.twitter.com/j4kKwyPDVm

— BDW (@BryanDeanWright) August 15, 2021

Was he lying? Was he delusional? Was the Pentagon (specifically, JCS Chair Michael Milley) lying to him–and he was too credulous to question them or understand that they were lying?

Doesn’t matter. This will turn out to be the most grimly farcical prediction made by any president in American history. He should have leveled with the country. He didn’t, and deserves the obloquy that his arrogance will engender.

As bad as Biden’s statements before the fact were, the after-the-fact statements of the execrable Secretary of State Anthony Blinken are even worse. Because he doesn’t acknowledge the facts that are obvious to every sentient being (which may, of course, excuse Joe Biden). Instead, he blows sunshine up our asses, which adds insult to injury.

#BREAKING US Sec. of State Blinken insists Afghan mission 'successful', rejects comparison between Kabul and Saigon pic.twitter.com/29ZMYoKtt2

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 15, 2021

Blinken’s “success” criterion is that the US achieved its objectives in Afghanistan, but not Vietnam. The US objective in Afghanistan was to defeat Al Qaeda, which we did, he says. Well that happened in 2001-2002 (which would mean the success would be Bush’s). So why were we still there in 2021? Was the post-Al Qaeda mission a success? Obviously not.

Stalin’s “Dizzy With Success” apologia for the catastrophe of Soviet collectivization was more tethered to reality than Blinken’s Dizzy With Success characterization of the Afghanistan debacle.

If this is success, dear Lord spare us failure.

Another loathsome individual is Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, whom I’ve detested since his previous stint as Pentagon flack under Obama–although thank God he’s no longer in a Navy uniform, which was a truly nauseating sight.

.@PentagonPresSec John Kibry: “Kabul is not, right now, in an imminent threat environment.” pic.twitter.com/ktzTAi7yXe

— The Hill (@thehill) August 15, 2021

I guess you have to say that he’s right. It’s not an “imminent” threat environment (which implies something that could happen in the future)–it’s a full on here-and-now threat environment.

Admit the truth. Level with us. Take the L and admit it is an L. Move forward.

Things are going pear-shaped, to put it mildly, in Afghanistan. A Taliban offensive launched on the heels of the American withdrawal has resulted in the fall of 12 provincial capitals, the collapse of the Afghan army, and the likely fall of Kabul within weeks if not days.

No doubt this will be framed as “who lost Afghanistan?” But maybe it should be framed as “should we have lost it later–or sooner?” Because it is likely that the loss was inevitable, and we only had control over the timing.

In 2009, I wrote a post about Afghanistan and my ambivalence about our continued presence there, a mere 8 years after our intervention (not 20). In that post, I suggested it might be best to come home–in 2009, mind. No doubt if we had, what we are seeing now would have been acted out then. Which could have been preferable to having it acted out now.

The real insight in that post was not mine, but that of a University of Houston colleague, Frank Holt, who wrote Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan. I again quote from his 2003 book:

[W]e must acknowledge that the wars waged in Afghanistan by Alexander, Britain, the Soviet Union, and now the United States share some salient features that may not bode well for our future.   For example, all these invasions of Afghanistan went well at first, but so far no superpower has found a workable alternative for the recipe for ruin in Afghanistan:

1. Estimate the time and resources necessary to conquer and control the region.

2. Double all estimates.

3. Repeat as needed.

Afghanistan cannot be subdued by half measures.   Invaders must consider the deadly demands of winter warfare, since all gains from seasonal campaigns are erased at every lull.   Invaders must resolve to hunt down every warlord, for the one exception will surely rot the fruits of all the other victories.   Invaders cannot succeed by avoiding cross-border fighting, since the mobile insurgents can otherwise hide and reinforce with impunity.   Invaders must calculate where to draw the line between killing and conciliation, for too much of either means interminable conflict.   Finally, all invaders so far have had to face one more difficult choice: once mired in a winless situation, they have tried to cut their losses through one of two exit strategies:

1. Retreat, as did the British and the Soviets, with staggering losses.

2. Leave a large army of occupation in the area, as Alexander did.

Neither option seems acceptable to the United States, which must therefore learn from its predecessors’ mistakes and seek another path.   (pp. 18-19).

Ignoring Holt’s injunction, we did not seek another path. We eventually retreated, and though our losses were not as staggering as those suffered by the British or Soviets, they were bad enough, the financial costs were high, and the damage to American reputation great.

Contrary to Holt’s warning, the US attempted to subdue Afghanistan by half measures (which was the main thing I cautioned against in 2009). We ended up “mired in a winless situation,” and eventually chose to exit rather than occupy indefinitely a la Alexander. (Although note that Alexander quickly went on to other things and left the dirty work to his subordinates.)

Holt was very prescient, because he wrote this in 2003 when the glow of the initial routing of the Taliban and al Qaeda brightened many an American cheek. But he saw ahead, by looking back at history. Somewhat later I read him, and agreed with his gloomy assessment.

So I was in the “sooner” camp over a decade ago. In poker, trading, and war, you need to know when to cut your losses, and stop doubling down.

Could we have lost it better, then or now? Perhaps. Rather than withdrawing after a long and rather desultory campaign against the Taliban, as we did, a robust attack on them that seriously degraded their capability immediately prior to withdrawal might have bought the Afghan government and army some time. Might. But the evident abject failure of our enormously expensive and time consuming efforts to create a stable, relatively uncorrupt government and competent military suggests that the end result would have been the same, just delayed by a few months–until next spring, most likely. Those few months would hardly justify the lives and treasure spent in firing such a Parthian shot.

The US track record on third world nation building and third world army building is dismal (recall the utter rout of the American trained and equipped Iraqi army before ISIS). There is no reason to believe a miraculous improvement in the Afghan government and military even given a respite from the Taliban bought by American blood and bombs.

In retrospect, the Colin Powell Pottery Barn assertion (“you broke it, you bought it”–he applied it to Iraq but it is apposite for how we approached Afghanistan as well) was incorrect. Yes, we broke it, and achieved fairly rapidly our objective of dispersing Al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters. But then we went all romantic, believed that we owned it, and thought we could transform Afghanistan into something it has never been: a stable, even moderately peaceful, polity. Remember the purple fingers? Yeah. Good times, good times.

We shoveled trillions down a rathole, lost thousands of American lives and damaged many others, and failed utterly to change Afghanistan in any meaningful way. Nor, realistically speaking, was there any prospect of doing so–nobody has succeeded in doing so in 2300 years. The attempt was hubris, and nemesis has duly arrived.

In retrospect, the appropriate policy would have been to break it in 2001-2002, and leave it in 2003. If a terrorist threat to the US analogous to bin Laden’s had reappeared, go in and break it again. There might have been the political will to do that. But now, the we-broke-it-bought-it-and-didn’t-fix-it policy of the past 20 years has created a situation where the American people have no appetite whatsoever to have anything to do with Afghanistan ever again.

Vladimir Putin penned–or at least posted–a long disquisition about how Russia and Ukraine really, really, really belong together. They are meant for each other. They are one soul ripped apart in a great historical injustice.

The most charitable way I could characterize it is that it reminds me of Pepe LePew (Putin LePew?) trying to sweet talk a reluctant female feline into falling for his historical charms. But that would trivialize what is really a weird and creepy and threatening missive. More Travis Bickle than Pepe LePew.

Putin portrays Russia and Ukraine as being spiritually connected and wrongly separated by malign Western actors (the Lithuanians, Poles, and Austrians at one time, the EU and US today), and misguided Bolsheviks who dismembered Holy Russia. Thus, they belong together. They need to be together. They are a single soul separated by cruel fate, who need to be reunited. And Putin is just the man for the mission.

But this begs the question: why don’t Ukrainians feel the same way? If the historical and spiritual ties are so deep, so mystical, why aren’t most Ukrainians equally desperate to be reunited with their Russian soulmate?

Putin’s answer, such as it is, is that malign forces–again Western–are conspiring to keep them apart. They have bewitched Ukrainians, or somehow fascistically intimidated them (which seems like a clear case of projection). Moreover, the underlying Western purpose of separating Ukraine from its spiritual kin is to attack Russia itself. And thus, Russia is justified in using force to unite Ukraine and Russia–it is an act of self-defense!

Yes, Putin and Travis Bickle have a lot in common. The paranoia and obsessions and delusions in particular. Except Travis only had Smith & Wessons and Walthers, not tanks, Buks, and nukes.

Putin goes on and on about how history, over a thousand years of it, means that Ukraine and Russia are destined to be as one. This argument is apparently quite persuasive to him, but not to most Ukrainians. Nor is anyone else in the world likely to be persuaded. Such historical arguments–especially ones stretching back to well before the First Millennium–are almost never persuasive or even plausible to those not steeped in that history. What seems self-evident to Putin seems bizarre to anyone who does not already believe in the Third Rome view of history. And especially so to anyone who views Russia as a historically predatory, imperial power.

Which would include Poland. Yes, Poland attempted to exploit Russian (Muscovite, actually) weakness during the Time of Troubles, but examining the sweep of history one must conclude that Poland has been far more the victim of Russia than the victimizer thereof.

Poland comes in for much criticism from Putin, but look at the benign way that he characterizes Russian connivance at the dismemberment of Poland:

After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire regained the western Old Russian lands, with the exception of Galicia and Transcarpathia, which became part of the Austrian – and later Austro-Hungarian – Empire.

The partitions just happened, I guess. And for someone who emphasizes the importance of language and religion, it is striking how Putin somehow happens to overlook that the partitions brought in Polish-speaking Catholics into the Russian Empire when it “regained the western Old Russian lands.” I would love to hear historian Putin’s explanation of say the January 1863 insurrection in the Polish parts of “Old Russian lands.” Somehow he left that out. Huh.

Indeed, reading this, I would say that not only Ukrainians should be put on notice as to Putin’s ill intent: Poles should be as well.

Another example of Putin’s selective history:

I would like to dwell on the destiny of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of Czechoslovakia following the breakup of Austria-Hungary. Rusins made up a considerable share of local population. While this is hardly mentioned any longer, after the liberation of Transcarpathia by Soviet troops the congress of the Orthodox population of the region voted for the inclusion of Carpathian Ruthenia in the RSFSR or, as a separate Carpathian republic, in the USSR proper. Yet the choice of people was ignored. In summer 1945, the historical act of the reunification of Carpathian Ukraine ”with its ancient motherland, Ukraine“ – as The Pravda newspaper put it – was announced.

Yes, elections held in the presence of Soviet tanks and bayonets and NKVD executioners are clearly an expression of the will of the people.

And if we want to go all historical, it is also sickly amusing that Putin’s tract was published 550 years to the month after Muscovy won a decisive victory that culminated it its subjugation of Novgorod the Great, which sort of harshes the entire image of the deep fraternal, linguistic, historical, and spiritual bonds between Russian peoples.

The question is whether Putin intends to reprise Ivan III, this time in Ukraine. The threatening tone surely suggests this. He gives the impression of trying to persuade Ukraine to embrace Russia willingly. But he is abundantly clear that should his advance be rejected, it is due to the fact that the country is ruled by local stooges of malign Western powers who threaten Russia, hence reunification may only be accomplished by force, which is (according to him) fully justified and which he is willing to use.

Empty threat or real? It would be unwise to discount it. Operationally and logistically, it would be difficult, and would likely result in a stalemate and vicious guerrilla warfare (as occurred in the aftermath of World War I during the Russian Civil War, and in the aftermath of WWII) that could well stop any Russian drive well before it reached Kiev/Kyiv. It would sharply increase tensions between Russia and the West, far more than the Crimean anschluss did. Poland and the Baltics–Nato members–would clearly consider such an invasion a mortal threat. This sharply raises the odds of a Russia-Nato confrontation.

But despite these obstacles and risks, Putin is clearly obsessed with Ukraine. He has been throughout his presidency. He clearly views the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Maidan as devastating personal defeats. Megalomania and the knowledge that he is aging and thus doesn’t have long to achieve what he believes to be a historical mission may push him to act, sooner rather than later.

Ukraine is hard to love. It is the most Sovok of the Soviet successor states–a painful illustration of how decades of Soviet oppression wreaked havoc on psyches and institutions. Some of Putin’s criticisms of it have more than a grain of truth. But that does not mean that it should be consigned to Putin’s tender mercies. Especially since there is no guarantee that Putin’s pining for Russian lands will stop in Ukraine.

The situation is fraught. A man obsessed with a messianic mission, be he Travis Bickle or Vladimir Putin, is not easily deterred.

A few posts back I said that the America Founding is a political Rorschach test. Yesterday–4 July 2021–proved that beyond cavil: the haters were out in force. The NYT claimed that flying the American flag is divisive–reading between the lines, what they meant was only knuckle dragging right wingers do it. NPR–your tax dollars at woke!–makes the banal point that people were not equal under the law–some were indeed enslaved–at the time that Jefferson penned “all men are created equal.” It adds that the Declaration includes a racist slur–“Indian Savages.” (I guess I will have to take a sledgehammer to may GGGGGF’s tombstone, which reads: “Here Lies the Body of ABEL SHERMAN Who Fell By The Hand of the Savage,” said Abel being ambushed and scalped by Silverheels on 15 August, 1794.)

The likes of NPR were joined by some of our illustrious solons, including Rep. Cori Bush:

When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people.

This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free.

— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) July 4, 2021

(Pssst. Cori. You’re living on stolen land! Please move!)

And Maxine Waters:

July 4th… & so, the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal. Equal to what? What men? Only white men? Isn't it something that they wrote this in 1776 when African Americans were enslaved? They weren't thinking about us then, but we're thinking about us now!

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) July 4, 2021

As I said before, this point is so banal. FFS, people (including especially the British) were pointing this out about, oh I dunno, 5 July, 1776.

But it completely misses the truly subversive effect of the Declaration. Accepting it as a statement of founding principle made the reality of slavery untenable. These things could not coexist. The logical tension was too great–one would have to give way. In the end, slavery did. Not easily, but it did.

This was a point Lincoln pounded on in speech after speech, starting from the Lyceum address in 1838, and especially in his debates with Douglas in 1858. If you believe in the Declaration, you must believe slavery is wrong. You cannot have both. Pick one.

That is, the Declaration started two revolutions, one immediate, against the British, and one that took generations to ripen, culminating in the Civil War four score and five years after the first. The very contradiction between ideal and reality that so exercises midwits (feeling generous today) like Bush and Waters and NPR sparked a dialectic that culminated in emancipation. (Leaving, of course, other contradictions, meaning that the dialectic continues to operate.)

The language of the Declaration–“that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”–reveals plainly its natural rights roots. And this is another thing that drives leftists mad–although they are more circumspect in criticizing this aspect of it. The modern left in particular finds natural rights an anathema. (Not all conservatives embrace natural rights, but the modern left loathes the idea.)

Those of you who are old enough might remember Joe Biden’s weird questioning of Clarence Thomas about natural rights at the latter’s confirmation hearing, back when Joe was a compos mentis Senator idiot rather than a non compos mentis President idiot (not feeling that generous). To Biden and his ilk, the idea that rights exist independently of the government is dangerous crazy talk.

Relatedly, the Declaration is subversive because it asserts that the people have the right to revolt against a government that deprives them of their natural rights. It’s that subversive thinking that leads Joe to threaten nuking anyone who dares act upon it.

Lincoln’s treatment of the Declaration–which he venerated, over the Constitution, in fact–represents a far more sophisticated and lucid approach than the simplistic screeds of the NPRs, the Cori Bushes, and the Maxine Waters of the world. (I could expand that list greatly.) Lincoln venerated the principles the Declaration espoused, and dedicated his life to making those principles reality–and eventually gave his life in the attempt. The haters can’t get past the fact that the principles weren’t the reality instantaneously. And many of the haters don’t actually venerate the real principles–the natural rights principles–of the Declaration. In fact, they loathe them.

And that’s the nub of the real division in America today. The Declaration, though a statement of universal principles, is not universally embraced. Not just because the principles were not reality in 1776. But because some venerate the Declaration’s principles of liberty and natural rights–including the right to resist a tyrannical government–and some don’t. What’s happened progressively over the years (pun not intended) is that the ranks of the don’ts have swelled, and the ranks of the dos have thinned. The Fourth of July has therefore become a national Rorschach test that reveals the shift in that balance.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, apparently studied Medieval fortification quite closely, as he implemented a classic motte-and-bailey stratagem in defense of the military’s program of Critical Race Theory indoctrination.

Expressing outrage, Milley dishonestly replied to Republican questioning about CRT thus:

I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military general officers, our commissioned [and] noncommissioned officers, of being “woke” or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.

Why do I say dishonest? For an ambitious officer rising through the ranks during the Cold War, or shortly thereafter, studying Lenin, Marx, and Mao was a way to “know thine enemies.” To know how they thought. To know what motivated them. That is valuable knowledge in trying to counter them. Reading communists provides part of a good foundation for devising strategies to confound communists. As the movie Patton said while watching the Germans retreat at the Battle of El Gattar: “”Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book.” 

Mandatory indoctrination in CRT at the academies, and in the ranks and officer corps, is nothing of the sort. It is not about educating servicemen and -women about a foreign enemy to be able to defeat them. It is about coercively reshaping the minds and hearts of those who have volunteered for armed service to force them to pay obeisance to beliefs most of them find inimical. Indeed, puts an official imprimatur on the view that the majority of those who serve are irredeemably racist, and in need of reeducation of the type that Marx, Mao, and Lenin enthusiastically advocated. (No word on whether Milley also studied Pol Pot.)

No, Milley didn’t read Marx to become a Marxist. He read Marx to understand Marxists to fight them better. By forcing CRT on the armed forces, he and others in the military establishment, e.g., CNO Admiral Gilday, are waging war on the values, beliefs, and characters of a large majority of those whom they command.

Put differently: you read Marx et al to learn about the enemy; you force Americans who have volunteered for military service to read Ibrahim X. Kendri (aka Ibram Henry Rogers) et al because you believe they (the American volunteers) are the enemy.

And Milley said so, in not so many words:

I want to understand white rage, and I’m white. So what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here, and I do want to analyze it.

Kendri and his CRT ilk identify white people and “whiteness” as the enemy. If you are reading Kendri to understand white people, and their alleged rage, you are doing so because you have already bought into the idea that they are the enemy.

And about this “white rage” thing. Is it really a thing? I don’t think so. It is basically a standard epithet that leftists drag out when their political opponents don’t conform like good sheep. My first recollection of a variant on this is when Peter Jennings said that voters had thrown a “temper tantrum” when they voted out the Democrats from control of Congress in 1994. The real rage here is expressed by leftists (ironically, largely white) who cannot countenance opposition: the charge is just another example of psychological projection. “Mommy! No Fair!!! Johnny hit me back!!!!”

And it’s interesting that when it comes from the left, rage is considered a sign of authenticity, of righteous reaction to injustice. (“Days of Rage” in Chicago in 1968 was a label the leftists chose, not one that was applied to them.) This is particularly true of “black rage.”

So apparently the virtuousness (or not) of rage is politically situational and ideologically contingent. Go figure.

Another element of the motte-and-bailey strategy regarding CRT in the military is to claim that there are racial tensions in the military, and that such tensions degrade morale and military effectiveness. Therefore, proactive measures to improve racial understanding are imperative.

Well, there are such tensions, and not for the first time. I guarantee things were infinitely worse in the late-Vietnam and early-post-Vietnam era. The Navy had severe racial problems: that’s one of the biggest challenges Elmo Zumwalt faced as CNO: as I recall there is a chapter in his autobiography where he discusses his struggles to deal with racial conflict in the service in detail. Things had come a long way a short handful of years later when I was at USNA: they have improved substantially in the decades since.

But CRT indoctrination will not ameliorate racial tensions–it will exacerbate them, and substantiallynso. Tell me how, exactly, preaching that one skin color is inherently evil and oppressive, and other skin colors are inherently saintly and oppressed is going to promote a sense of camaraderie among a racially diverse group of individuals. It does the exact opposite. R. Lee Ermey’s way was much more effective.

The motte-and-bailey response to criticism of CRT is not limited to Milley and the military. It is particularly pronounced in public schools, where it is (dishonestly) argued that preventing teaching CRT prevents teaching about slavery: as MSNBC’s Joy Reid put it, if you don’t teach Critical Race Theory you are teaching Confederate Race Theory. This is obviously illogical bollocks: CRT emphasizes the evils of slavery, but not all curriculum that deals honestly with slavery is CRT. Another motte is to deny that such a thing as Critical Race Theory even exists: it’s just a figment of fervid (raging?) right wing/white wing imaginations dontcha know.

Wrong. CRT is a thing. It is a dishonest, pseudoscientific, divisive, coercive thing, and essentially a mask for the will to power. Cancerous Race Theory is a more accurate description. And it is now a cancer in the military.

One last thing about Milley. The left is in a rage (more irony!) about criticism of Milley’s remarks before Congress. Tucker Carlson’s trenchant description of the general (“He’s not just a pig, he’s stupid!”) has brought down howls demanding his cancelation (yes, it was a day ending in “y”).

Leftists defending the military “leadership.” The world turned upside down. But this isn’t because the leftists have changed: it’s because the military “leadership” has become leftist. It will become only more so in the next three and a half years as the purges work through the ranks. The military was once the sole institution the leftists hadn’t marched through: but now they’re doing so, like Sherman marched through Georgia.

Virtually everyone in the Founding generation had one fear: Tyranny. They did not want to replace one tyrannical government with another. On this Federalists and Anti-Federalists agreed. The difference was that the Federalists believed that the Constitution had adequate safeguards against tyranny, but the Anti-Federalists did not.

One manifestation of the dread of tyranny was a deep suspicion of standing armies, which were viewed as the enforcers of tyranny. Another was a veneration of an armed citizenry, not least because it was a check on tyranny, via the threat of armed resistance. Indeed, these two things went together: a large standing army could overawe even a well-armed citizenry.

Yesterday Gibbering Joe Biden expressed the sum of all the Founders’ fears:

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1407809806287704064

In other words, the armed citizenry is powerless against America’s massive standing military. Meaning that there is no check on tyranny. To which the Anti-Federalists would say: told you so.

Biden’s remarks, delivered in a drugged out way that wouldn’t be shocking if Hunter Biden had uttered them but is still disconcerting when Joe does, were revealing on many dimensions.

One of these–remarked upon by many–is his apparent willingness to use, or at least to threaten to use, nuclear weapons on Americans. Rather staggering, no?

Another is his apparent belief that F-15 pilots, and other members of the US military, would be willing to carry out orders to use massive force against Americans. I wouldn’t be so sure. Although an intent to ensure it may well explain the ideological offensive being waged against alleged “extremists” within the military at present.

Another, sickly ironic one, is the complete disconnect between this rhetoric and the rhetoric regarding January 6. The Babylon Bee says it better than I could:

'You'll Never Beat The Government With Just Guns,' Says Party That Also Believes Government Was Almost Toppled By Unarmed Mob On January 6https://t.co/NX4eJCfVe3

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 23, 2021

No, really, it is just too much. On the one hand, Biden and the Democrats say that armed resistance against the government is futile, but on the other hand, they say that unarmed resistance by a motley group at the Capitol was the greatest assault on American democracy since Pearl Harbor, and amounted to an insurrection that threatened “our democracy,” i.e., to overthrow the government.

Pick one. They both can’t be true.

There is a broader lesson here. The Founders and their 18th century vision–including their fear of state tyranny, their desire to center as much government as possible at the lowest level possible, and their belief that a revolutionary public is the last check against tyranny–is a 21st century Rorschach Test. A large number of Americans embrace it fervently. A large number of Americans loathe it. Indeed, that divide is a succinct way of summarizing the current American political fault line.

Clearly, most of the ruling class and the “elite” fall in the loathers camp. Most of the embracers are non-ruling-class “deplorables” whom the elite despises and wants to crush.

The ruling class and the “elite” sacralize the state, and especially the federal government. Unlike the Founders, who saw government as a necessary evil to be constrained, limited, and checked by a watchful–and if need be, revolutionary–citizenry, the ruling class and the “elite” have effectively adopted Mussolini’s credo: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

And this is understandable, because l’etat, c’est eux. They control the state. They utilize the state to amass power and riches. A threat to the state is a threat to them. And as Biden indicates, they are willing to use all means necessary–including nuclear weapons, apparently–to defend that position.

This elite sacralization of the state is another way in which the US is converging to Putin’s Russia. The only difference–for now–is that Putin and the Russian elite explicitly express their veneration of the state above the people, and explicitly say that the people exist to serve the state. The American ruling class does not say this in so many words. But the idea is implicit in their rhetoric–like Biden’s rhetoric yesterday, and the unceasing rhetoric flogging January 6. More importantly, it is implicit in their deeds.

The 21st century ruling class has rejected the vision of the 18th century ruling class–which happens to be the vision of the 21st century ruled class. That is the real divide in today’s America, and why the country is in a pre-revolutionary condition. The visions of the ruling and the ruled are completely incompatible. That can only end in the submission of one side, or the failure to submit by either culminating in armed conflict.

And if it comes to conflict, the ruling class shouldn’t be so sure that military might is sufficient to prevail. Hasn’t worked magic in Iraq or Afghanistan, has it? Nor did it in Southeast Asia decades ago.

At the end of the Civil War, a great fear in the North was that Southerners would resort to guerrilla warfare. Some Confederates (e.g., Edward Porter Alexander) advocated it but Lee demurred. But if the current house divided does not stand, that’s exactly the kind of conflict that would occur. And although the military might not lose such a war (assuming it agrees to fight it), it has never proved able to win one.

Pray that it doesn’t come to that. But such an outcome cannot be precluded, given the ruling class’s sacralization of the state and its corollary: growing tyranny.

The Biden administration self-inflicted two serious diplomatic wounds in the space of a single day.

First, even though India is experiencing a wave of covid infections and deaths, its worse so far, the administration refused to relent on a ban (imposed by the Trump administration) on the export of vaccine ingredients.

Yes, the policy was originally Trump’s, but (a) you’d think that would be a bug not a feature with this administration, (b) India’s circumstances are far more dire today than they were when the ban was implemented, and (c) in the US, vaccine usage has nearly reached a saturation point, with many providers having shots wanting for arms.

India (both the government but especially the citizenry) has reacted extremely negatively due to this refusal, which is not surprising given the state of covid panic in the country. The United States should be courting India, not alienating it. After decades of hostility to the US (due not least because of US support for Pakistan, India’s post-independence antipathy to colonial powers or their allies, and dependence on Soviet/Russian weapons), India’s existential conflict with an aggressive China had created an opportunity to make India if not an ally, a country with which the US could cooperate on issues of common interest–most notably containing China.

That underlying dynamic is still there, but this thoughtless refusal fuels the latent suspicions of the US among many Indians and makes such cooperation far, far more difficult. It benefits the health of Americans virtually not at all, but alienates a country we should be courting.

The second self-inflicted wound involves Biden’s official recognition of the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire during the depths of WWI. (Do not underestimate how this war scarred Turkey. The Ottoman Empire suffered a greater percentage loss of population during the war than any other nation, even if one deducts the Armenian dead. The Ottoman Empire was dismembered, and Turkey itself was almost devoured in the aftermath. Only Ataturk’s miracles in the War of Independence saved Turkey from being divided among the Western powers and the Greeks, and left as an Anatolian rump that no one else wanted.)

Yes, the fate of Armenians was horrible. Well over a million died. Numberless others were displaced, often to desolate camps in the Syrian desert. If you meet someone whose name ends in “ian” they are almost certainly the descendants of the Armenian diaspora. (Those with names ending in “yan” are usually post-Soviet emigres). Their martyrdom was widely acknowledged in the US. In my parents’ era, children were told to eat their vegetables, because of the starving Armenians.

Like all historic episodes, especially those that occurred in the crucible of WWI, the story is complicated. But regardless of where the guilt lies, it happened more than a century ago. Those who committed the atrocities, and those who suffered them, have long since died.

But living Turks of all political persuasions are neuralgic about being blamed for these long-ago events. Even ardent Erdoğan haters in the CHP are of one mind with him on this issue: calling what happened in the long-dead Ottoman Empire a genocide is a red line. Those who do so are Turkey’s enemies.

Turkey’s response was immediate. It recalled its ambassador to the US, and its foreign minister gave a bitter statement, claiming that this will irreparably harm Turkish-US relations. He also said that the US should not cast stones, given its historical treatment of Native Americans. (The administration’s repeated condemnations of America’s historical actions make it a particularly attractive target for such barbs.)

Many in the US, particularly in the Armenian community, dismiss this. They say that it will blow over.

Don’t be so sure. Under Erdoğan Turkey has been wobbling away from the American (and Nato) orbit. Given Erdoğan’s dicey domestic circumstances, stoking the resentment and taking real steps to distance the country from the US are natural political moves. Russia will clearly notice–and seize upon–the opportunity. Erdoğan will be quite open to their blandishments.

And do not underestimate the power of Turkish nationalism. In my experience, they are among the most chauvinistic people in the modern world. (Han Chinese are the only rivals for the title.) They are not postmodern or post-nationalist, like most Europeans. This is deadly serious to them. It will not blow over.

Turkey has geopolitical importance, not least because of its geographic position. It has been a difficult country for the US in recent years, in large part because of its mercurial and grandiose leader. Provoking it unnecessarily will bring the US many policy headaches. Virtually at the same moment as Biden’s announcement, Turkey escalated its conflict with America-aligned Kurds in Iraq. The genocide announcement will make it all the more difficult to try to manage that conflict.

And for what? This gesture will not bring anyone back from the dead. It will not undo what has been done. America helped in the best way possible–by welcoming tens of thousands of Armenians. (Including the Kardashians. Isn’t that sacrifice enough?) It is moral preening that will not reverse past atrocities, nor prevent future ones. And it is contrary to US national interests.

And Turks–including in particular Turks in the US–believe that Biden’s action does not even rise to the level of moral preening. In their eyes it is corruption, political venality, repaying Armenian-Americans (in California in particular) for massive campaign contributions, given in exchange for his promise to do what he just did. Given the absence of any other plausible explanation, this seems very reasonable. And very despicable

One day, two pointless gestures that do significant damage to relationships with two geopolitically important nations with which the US has had difficult relations. I see zero upside for US interests in these actions, and much downside. God help us if these are harbingers of US policy over the next four years–which alas is extremely likely.

But hey. At least we don’t have to worry about mean tweets, right?

Domestically, the US political situation is dysfunctional. On its best days. To compound the dangers, the international situation is fraught.

At present there are two smoldering hotspots involving world powers (and arguably superpowers) that could suck the US into a confrontation with such powers–Taiwan and Ukraine.

China has ramped up the rhetoric over Taiwan. It has also increased its provocative military behavior around the island.

Russia has amassed a 50,000 man plus military force, heavily armed and armored, on the borders of Ukraine.

Taiwan and Ukraine have been hotspots for years, but it is at least plausible, and in my view likely, that the increase in tensions is the direct result of the change in administrations. That is, China’s Xi and Russia’s Putin are testing Biden. Or they believe they have already found him wanting in the fortitude and strategic departments.

Who can blame them, really?

In Ukraine in particular, the Biden administration has played things in about the worst way imaginable, and has no doubt convinced Putin that they are weak.

Most notable was the embarrassing exhibition involving the supposed dispatching of two US destroyers into the Black Sea. The Russians reacted quite aggressively, and last week it was announced that no ships would be transiting the Bosporus after all.

I thought it was a horrible idea to send the ships in any event. Play out the game. If deterrence fails, and Russia and Ukraine recommence the hostilities that (sort of) ended 7 years ago, then either the DDGs would have to turn tail (which would not be a good look), or they could get involved in combat with the Russians. Even overlooking the dire consequences of armed confrontation between the US and Russia, the ships would have been able to accomplish little, and would be at extreme risk. Yes, they are very capable platforms, but are intended to operate as part of a carrier battlegroup. Operating independently, they would have little influence on a battle in Ukraine, and would be extremely vulnerable operating within range of dominant land-based air and missile forces. Which is why they almost certainly would have turned tail.

The Russians would have known this, and playing out the game, would have realized that two DDGs would not effect their operations in Ukraine. So the deterrence value of the deployment would have been close to zero; the upside of the deployment negligible; and the potential downside huge.

In other words, don’t make non-credible bluffs. That’s exactly what the administration did, before backing down. Thereby revealing that it was bluffing, and had no intention of backing it up.

This came to mind:

(That was John Cleese as Putin at the end.)

The worst possible way to play this, regardless of whether you believe that the US should risk a confrontation with Putin over Ukraine, or not. The. Worst.

It’s sickly ironic that this climbdown from a confrontation with Putin occurred about the same time that one part of the administration discretely acknowledged that the “Russian bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan” story was a complete crock. That story was flogged incessantly over the summer to reinforce the narrative that Trump cowered before Putin, and was running away from Afghanistan as a result. Well, the story was bullshit, so there was no cowering. It is the Biden administration that is demonstrably cowering. (Even while the Pentagon was backing off the bounties story, others in the Biden administration were continuing to assert it.)

That story was another flagrant example of media mendacity. The NYT journalists who wrote it should be consigned to oblivion–but they won’t be. If they were lied to by their anonymous sources, they should call them out–but they won’t. So there is NO accountability for lying, or for trading in lies (as the NYT journalists and so many other journalists do). They used to say never trust anyone over 30. That was always a dubious statement. It is anything but dubious to say never trust any journalist, regardless of age.

Furthermore, Biden cemented his image of weakness before Putin by offering to meet him in a summit–at least, you can be sure that this offer cemented an image of weakness in Putin’s mind. It makes it look like Biden is coming to Putin as a supplicant.

Another own goal.

And shifting to the other end of the world, you know Xi is watching this very, very closely.

The coming months could be worrisome, indeed.