Streetwise Professor

In the continuous process of Bayesian updating, my estimation of Noah Smith’s sensibility went up when I read his post on high frequency trading: he too recognized the ambiguous effects of informed trading. But my estimation plunged today when I read this. The piece comparing economists new and old is silly, superficial, and truth be told, embarrassingly ignorant.

Smith’s basic thesis is that economists of the 60s and 70s were “policy scientists”, theoretical rather than empirical, and ideological rather than practical, with that ideology being pro-market and anti-government: conservative, in a word. In contrast, modern economists are engineers focused on predicting human behavior rather than trying to influence policy, relentlessly empirical rather than theoretical, and due to their more practical grounding, less ideological, more skeptical of markets, and more supportive of government intervention.

All of which is tripe, of course.

Smith’s exemplar of the 60s-70s economist is Milton Friedman. Smith’s views of Friedman are apparently based on YouTube videos: he refers to those, but not to one piece of Friedman’s professional work. If he had paid the slightest attention to that work, he would have realized that his characterization is completely at odds with reality.

Friedman was all about using economics to explain human behavior and the consequences of the interactions between individuals in market settings. He was, first and foremost, a scientist.

Yes, Friedman did theory. But as his famous (and controversial) essay “The Methodology of Positive Economics” demonstrates, he viewed empirical evidence as the ultimate arbiter: theories were only as good as the empirical validity of their predictions. The objective of theory is to explain practical things. What’s more, Friedman practiced what he preached. He did empirical work. Lots of it. His PhD thesis, on the income from professional practice, was empirical. His most important and influential work, A Monetary History of the United States, 888 pages (!) of empirical work, done back when empirical work was a true labor.

Moreover, Friedman’s theoretical efforts spawned massive amounts of empirical research, precisely as he desired. The most notable example of this is his work on the theory of the consumption function, which was motivated by the empirical failures of the Keynesian consumption theory.

Nor was Friedman alone. The great Gary Becker just passed away. Becker was all about using economic theory to explain an incredible range of human behavior. He made practical predictions that are as amazing and empirically valid as those of auction theory and random utility discrete choice which Smith cites with approval as representative of modern economics.

In fact, the 1960s and 1970s were a period during which neoclassical economics was developed and applied extensively to produce tremendous insights on a broad range of human behavior, including family and fertility, crime, and myriad other subjects.  It was first and foremost about explaining human behavior. To the extent these explanations had policy implications, some economists were not shy about pointing them out. But that was a side-effect of the main thrust of their inquiries.

And believe it or not, these basic microeconomic tools are still amazingly powerful today.

Indeed, part of the reason that these theories were powerful is that they showed the flaws in numerous policies. Anti-trust and regulation immediately come to mind.

In other words, many economists of this earlier generation-and most notably Friedman-were all about understanding and solving real-world problems. This is not something that came to economics in the last decade or two. Noah Smith grossly mischaracterizes, and arguably slanders, the giants on whose shoulders he stands.

Such is the danger of doing the history of economic thought based on YouTube videos.

Smith notes that a larger fraction of published research today is empirical. Friedman would not be surprised. As Smith notes, the  price of empirical research relative to theoretical research  has gone down due to computation costs and the availability of data sets, and any good price theorist would predict that this will lead to substitution towards empirical work.

There is a corollary to this. The value of the marginal regression will fall to its marginal cost. As that cost has gone to zero, so has the value of the marginal piece of empirical research.

Insofar as the politics and ideology of economics is concerned, to say that economics was  a “conservative science” in the middle of the 20th century is beyond delusional. In what alternate universe?

In the 60s and 70s in particular, economists were broadly in favor of government intervention: this had been true since the 1930s. This was the golden age of Market Failure Economics. In macro, Keynesian fine tuning reigned supreme. To say otherwise is completely ahistorical.

Friedman and other avowedly pro-market economists were the exception, rather than the rule.

There was a shift among economists towards more pro-market, anti-government attitudes in the late-70s and early-80s due to the marked empirical failure of Keynesian economics in macro, the theoretical and empirical work on the actual causes and effects of regulation, and Coase’s logical evisceration of the Pigouvian market failure paradigm. To the extent that the pendulum has swung back it is due to the financial crisis, just as the shift to pro-intervention among economists in the 30s and 40s reflected the impact of the Great Depression.

Smith remarks that the  most well known current public economist, Krugman, is liberal, whereas the most well-known public economist of the 60s and 70s was Friedman, a conservative. But here again Smith is making a fundamental error. Yes, Friedman was a public figure in the earlier era, but there were many more economists on the left that played the role of public intellectual: Paul Samuelson is the most notable of these. Friedman was again the exception. What is remarkable is that these other economists have faded from view, whereas Friedman lives on, as the YouTube vids that Smith mentions attest. Who will remember Krugman 40 years from now? I am betting that Friedman will be better known in 40 years than Krugman will be. For myriad reasons, professional and personal.

Smith’s biggest blind spot-and the above shows that there are many-relates to government, and specifically government failure. He mentions how information economics has identified additional sources of market failure. But he utterly neglects to mention how some economists-including many from that earlier generation-have identified how private arrangements can mitigate these problems, and completely overlooks the fact that government may not be able to ameliorate these failures, and may create failures of its own. (And by saying “may” I am being overgenerous.)

Again, an awareness of the insights of some of those “policy scientists” whom Smith denigrates would disabuse him of this error. Coase in particular comes to mind. He emphasized that any analysis of policy could not end with the identification of a market failure: that was at best a beginning. Any analysis has to make comparisons between real world alternatives, rather than conjuring a magical government solution. I would further note that Coase was relentlessly empirical. “The Theory of Social Cost” grew out of an analysis of how the Federal Trade Commission actually worked.

Smith characterizes modern economists as more practical and less ideological than those of an earlier generation. And lo!, they are also liberal and favorably disposed to government intervention.

Smith is probably right about the political leanings of modern economists, and the basis for those views. So much the worse for modern economics.

But he can only make favorable comparisons between the current generation and Milton Friedman and others of an earlier generation by completely distorting the professional work of Friedman and his contemporaries. Smith probably does this out of ignorance, but that is no excuse. Smith doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and this leads him to denigrate unfairly the legacy of the earlier generation and exaggerate the virtues of his own.

Rogozin the Ridiculous is reveling in the role of Rogozin the Rabid in the post-Crimea period.

He made a road trip to Transnistria, where he said that if Moldova continues to pursue closer relationships with the EU and NATO, Russia would “unhitch” Transnistria from Moldova, a la Crimea. While in  Chisinau, Rogozin collected petitions pleading for Russia to Crimea-ize Transnistria.

The plane carrying some of the petitions and part of the Russian delegation was intercepted in Ukrainian airspace and forced to return to Chisinau, where the documents were seized. Rogozin took to Twitter, where he insinuated the plane he was on had been intercepted. But in fact, Rogozin was on another flight and made it to Moscow with some additional petitions, and the intercepted plane only carried his flunkies.

Romania had refused overflight to the Russian aircraft, which sent Rogozin into paroxysms of rage. He threatened to return to Moldova in a Tu-160 strategic bomber. The Romanians were not amused.

But Rogozin was just getting started. He has now communicated threats to shut off GPS stations in Russia, to cut off sales of Russian rocket engines to the US, and to deny US access to the international space station after 2020.

The last threats are unsurprising, and expected countermoves to US sanctions (e.g., cutting off exports of military-related technology). But the zest with which Rogozin delivered them is revealing.

But the most revealing thing is that Putin is unleashing Rogozin, and making the rabid one the public face of the Russian government. He is calculating that the weak-kneed in the west will wilt before this rhetorical onslaught. And sad to say, he is probably right.

The Kabuki dance in Donetsk goes on. The “separatists” announce they are holding a referendum on independence. Putin comes out and says, during a press conference with the head of the OSCE, that he wants them to delay it. The west breathes a sigh of relief. The markets rally.

But this call is not echoed by other Russian officials or on Russian media, and Putin does not repeat it. Separatists feign shock! shock! that Putin has betrayed them.

The referendum goes ahead and-brace yourself-the independence motion is adopted near unanimously with everybody voting. Sometimes more than once! To show how much they desire this, or something.

Within hours of the vote, the separatists ask for Russia to “absorb” the regions of Ukraine  that voted for independence. The Russians don’t come out and immediately say “I do”, but did make cooing noises:

“The preliminary results of the ballot counts convincingly show a real desire on the part of citizens of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions for the right to independently make decisions about issues that are vitally important to them,” it said.

It stopped short of advocating independence for the regions or their absorption into Russia, saying: “We believe that the results of the referendum should be brought to life within the framework of dialogue between Kiev, Donetsk and Luhansk.”

But of course the play is not over. But this being Kabuki, the future acts are very predictable. There will be some incident in the Donbass that will mean that Russian lives are at risk, and that fraternal obligations require the Russian Federation to take the newly independent republics under its wing. Or the Russians will do this after the Kiev government refuses to negotiate with the new “people’s republics” (as Russia is sure that it will not, as it cannot): the Russians will rage at how the American dupe fascists are refusing to negotiate with the reasonable people of Donetsk and Lugansk, and that the Russian government is left with no choice but to protect these poor oppressed people from the criminal junta in Kiev and their American overlords.

And the last act-as always-will involve Merkel and Obama and Kerry harumphing and vituperating. And then doing nothing, because nothing is the thing they want to do more than anything. And Vlad will nod and move on to his next target. Transnistria. Or the rest of “Novarossiya”. Or both. The end.

On Thursday, Putin held an ad hoc meeting with motley collection of leaders of the motley connection of nations that represent his allies: Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These members of the Organization of Collective Security Treaty were called together in haste for an emergency meeting on Ukraine.

One remark jumped out at me, and illustrates my earlier post on how WWII history is used to advance Russian imperial objectives. Belarus’s Lukashenko brought up an episode from the War that the Soviets used in a way that I’ll discuss in a bit:

“Events happening in Ukraine do not allow one to sit quietly on the side-lines and just look at what’s going on,” – said Alexander Lukashenko after the meeting with Putin. According to the Belarus head of state first of all it concerns events in Odessa. “This takes us to the bad old parallels. I see that on TV screens these parallels have already appeared. We remember Chatyn, when several hundred villages in Belarus were burned by the Nazis on the same principle,” – he said. “Such actions are unacceptable in any state, and it will be even more unacceptable if we will quietly and watch what is happening. This is particularly true of the Russian Federation and Belarus. Naturally, we cannot just watch it, because that’s our people and they cry out for help and we need to respond to such things,” – said Lukashenko, adding that the situation is evolving very quickly.

The name of the village Chatyn is usually rendered as Khatyn. It is the site of a memorial complex commemorating more than 100 Belarussian villages where the Germans destroyed and massacred civilians in retaliation for partisan attacks.

But why in Khatyn? Why that particular hamlet from of the 100 villages  where Nazis massacred civilians, or of the over 9000 destroyed (with some of their residents surviving)?

The answer to those questions speaks volumes about the use and abuse of history by the Soviet Union and Russia.

Note the similarity of the name Khatyn to that of Katyn, where the NKVD assassinated tens of thousands of Polish officers with a pistol shot to the back of the head. When the Germans discovered the graves, the Soviets denied responsibility, and for decades shrilly asserted that the Germans had killed the Poles. At Nuremberg the Soviets tried to put Germans on trial for the killings, but the Americans and British knew the truth and refused to go along.

This was a forbidden subject in Communist Poland, but Poles around the world continually pressed the Soviets to acknowledge their guilt. They made a political issue of it in the United States. Congressional hearings on Katyn were held in the early-50s. It was an embarrassing and annoying subject for the USSR. So they came up with a bizarrely Sovok scheme to attempt to consign Katyn to the memory hole and  put a memorial to the victims of German atrocities in Khatyn. They erased all references to Katyn, the site of a Soviet atrocity, and made a great spectacle of Khatyn, the site of a German atrocity. By this three card monte trick the Soviets attempted to gull the world into believing that Katyn really was the site of a German war crime.

A CIA historian summarizes it well:

Meanwhile, the Soviets obliterated references to Katyn on maps and in official reference works. Then, in 1969, Moscow did something strange that many believe was further calculated to confuse the issue further: it chose a small village named Khatyn as the cite for Belorussia’s national war memorial. There was no apparent reason for the selection. Khatyn was one of 9,200 Belorussian villages the Germans had destroyed and one of more than a hundred where they had killed civilians in retaliation for partisan attacks. In Latin transliteration, however, Katyn and Khatyn look and sound alike, though they are spelled and pronounced quite differently in Russian and Belorussian. When President Nixon visited the USSR in July 1974, he toured the Khatyn memorial at his hosts’ insistence. Sensing that the Soviets were exploiting the visit for propaganda purposes, The New York Times headlined its coverage of the tour: “Nixon Sees Khatyn, a Soviet Memorial, Not Katyn Forest.” (The Times probably got it right. During the Vietnam war, the Soviets frequently took visiting US peace activists to Khatyn.)

The Telegraph ran a story about Nixon’s visit at the time:

President Nixon’s visit to the memorial in the Byelorussian village of Khatyn has caused a mistaken impression that Russia has erected a memorial to the victims of the wartime massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn forest. In fact, Khatyn and Katyn are two entirely different places; Khatyn, in which the ‘kh’ is pronounced like the English ‘h’ is a small village some 30 miles to the north-east of Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia.

Katyn, which is pronounced as written, is a town about 15 miles west of Smolensk, a provincial city in Russia proper. Khatyn is about 160 miles west of Katyn.

When Stalin and Hitler divided up Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, some 240,000 Polish officers and men fell into Russian hands. After Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941, 15,000 were found to be missing and the Russians denied all knowledge of them.

Katyn fell into German hands in the late summer of 1941 and at the beginning of 1943 the German army discovered a mass grave of 4,443 Polish officers and men.

When the Polish Government-in-exile appealed for an international tribunal to determine how the Poles died Stalin broke off relations. After re-taking Katyn the Russians set up their own inquiry and said the Poles had been executed by the Germans.

Later researches by Polish and independent authorities in the west, as well as wartime Foreign Office documents, leave no doubt that the Poles were executed by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD.

The Russians have tried to erase Katyn from maps and history books. The reference to it in the 1953 edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia was dropped in the 1973 edition. No visitors are allowed to the area and no memorial has been erected.

It was not until 1969 that the Russians announced the unveiling of a “memorial complex” on the site of the village of Khatyn. It was one of 9,200 Byelorussian villages destroyed by the Germans, and one of 136 of which all the inhabitants were killed.

The Russians appear to have chosen Khatyn because of the similarity of its name to Katyn. They hoped in this way to obscure the fact they have erected no memorial to the victims of Katyn, which was no less a crime than the one committed at Khatyn.

This is the way the Soviets manipulated World War II history to serve their ends. Putin continues these manipulations to this day, and good Sovok Lukashenko resurrects this staple of Soviet propaganda to slur the Ukrainians, by comparing them to Nazis.

Keep this in mind whenever Putin or any other Russian or FSU Sovok uses World War II history to make a political point, or to advance a political objective.

Russia’s “Victory Day” celebration is exceptional in virtually every way. Sixty-nine years after its end, no other nation commemorates WWII like Russia. Indeed, whereas the events in Russia involve the entire nation, if there were official ceremonies in the US and the UK and Continental Europe recognizing VE Day, they were unnoticeable.

Of course Russia’s gargantuan losses in the conflict had an emotional impact far beyond that experienced in any other allied nation. But that does not explain the form, content, or tone of the Russian commemoration. It is not focused first and foremost on remembering the dead. Instead, it is focused first and foremost on venerating the Russian state. On using the Russian (and non-Russian Soviet) deaths to stake a moral and political claim for the state.

To modify the anti-war aphorism, remembrance of war is the health of the Russian state. The Great Patriotic War is used to legitimize the Russian state,  to immunize it from criticism, and to attack those who oppose the state. Note as two examples the attack on opposition channel TV Rain for even questioning whether the sacrifice of the Siege of Leningrad was worthwhile, and the just signed law criminalizing “distorting” the USSR’s role in WWII.

And it has been so from 3 July, 1941. On that day, 11 days after the launch of Barbarossa, a shaken Stalin emerged from hiding and declared a Great Patriotic War. Stalin in particular needed to protect himself against charges of criminal incompetence that cost millions of lives. The narrative of a wise and brave Soviet state uniting with the people to vanquish the Nazi hordes proved amazingly powerful. It united the people emotionally with the state. It was-and is-a reliable way to silence criticism of the state.

It is also grotesquely cynical, exploiting the deaths and suffering of millions to serve the interests of the state and the autocrats that rule over it. In Stalin’s case in particular, it is particularly cynical and grotesque, because he was directly responsible for millions of those deaths and maimings through his operational incompetence and callous indifference to death and suffering. This makes it all the more revealing-and tragic-to see many pictures of Stalin carried reverently at Friday’s Victory Day celebrations.

This is not to gainsay that the Soviet war effort was necessary to defeat Hitler. But so was the Anglo-American effort. No, the British and the Americans did not bleed anywhere near as much as the Soviets. But this is more of a reproach than a compliment to Stalin and the Soviet state. As the movie Patton said,  “I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”

Not only is WWII remembrance deployed for domestic political purposes. Russian suffering is presented as a moral claim on the world to justify first Soviet, and now Russian, expansionism and imperialism. Just witness how the defense of Sevastapol and the Crimea in WWII is being used to legitimize Putin’s recent Anschluss.

This claim is defective for two reasons, at least.

First, it ignores completely Soviet complicity in and responsibility for the war. Stalin provided massive material support for Hitler that made possible Germany’s victories in the west in 1940: indeed, trains loaded with fuel and grain destined for Nazi Germany continue to roll west out of the USSR even as the Wehrmacht was rolling east on 22 June, 1941. The Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact was also a necessary precondition for the war.

Second, Soviet behavior after the war gives the lie to the Soviet and Russian claim that the Red Army liberated anything. Yes, they defeated the Germans, but replaced Nazi tyranny in conquered lands with Soviet. To say that the Soviets were not as bad as the Germans is to succeed by the very lowest of possible standards, and very cold (war) comfort to those who endured the Soviet yoke for nigh onto 50 years.

The supposedly liberated, especially in the Baltics and Poland, do not buy into the Soviet-Russian narrative, and this drives modern Russians to paroxysms of hysteria. Recall the thuggish Russian reaction-both official and popular-to the Estonian decision to move a memorial to the Red Army in Talinn. The Estonians saw the monument as a daily reminder of their imprisonment at Soviet/Russian hands. The Russians saw the Estonian reaction as an act of extreme ingratitude.

The twisted Russian syllogism is this. The Glorious Red Army defeated fascism. If you criticize what the Red Army did in eastern Europe, or the Soviet rule of eastern Europe enforced by the Red Army, you are a fascist. To say that the Russians are blind to how they are perceived in the lands they conquered is to miss the point: they see things in a totally different way, and cannot even comprehend that anyone would see it differently, except if they are Nazis at heart.

This is not a new phenomenon, with Russians generally or Putin in particular. I wrote about Putin’s 2007 Victory Day speech, and what I said then rings true today:

As outrageous as these remarks are, his paean to the “unity” of the former USSR is even more offensive:

Victory Day not only unites the people of Russia but also unites our neighbors in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. We are deeply grateful to the generation of people whose difficult fate it was to face this war. They have passed on to us their traditions of fraternity and solidarity and their truly hard-won experience of unity and mutual aid. We will preserve this sacred memory and historical legacy. Those who attempt today to belittle this invaluable experience and defile the monuments to the heroes of this war are insulting their own people and spreading enmity and new distrust between countries and peoples.

Hate to break this to you Vlad, but your “neighbors” didn’t exactly view the USSR as a fraternal organization, hence their haste to depart it at the first opportunity. They viewed the Soviet system of “mutual aid” in the same way the web caught fly perceives a spider. The Estonians (the clear referent in Putin’s paragraph just quoted) are not “defiling” a monument to heroes of WWII, insulting themselves, or spreading enmity. To them, the monument to which Putin refers is a painful reminder of their subjugation by a regime that showed utter disdain for human life and dignity, and which imposed “comradeship” at the barrel of a gun.

If Putin had any interest in allaying distrust between countries and peoples, he would acknowledge the gaping physical and psychic wounds inflicted by the regime he so clearly misses, and express understanding at how monuments to that regime just might be painful reminders of those wounds. Instead, by refusing to concede the USSR’s awful legacy, it is Putin who exacerbates historical distrust. The Estonian move seems a reasonable compromise; the monument will stand and the dead will be buried in a place where those who wish to mourn and honor the fallen may do so, but where the statue does not serve as a daily reminder of Estonia’s subjugation and the USSR’s crime. A crime, by the way, that grew out of a conspiracy between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to divide eastern Europe between them. Yes, no state suffered more than USSR from the depredations of the Nazis–but no state did more to make those depredations possible.

But that’s just the problem, methinks–Putin (and the ultranationalist Nashiniks who are his most vocal constituency) want that daily reminder. And they really want to return to those days when the uppity Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians, and myriad others knew their place.

The sobering fact is that although he was a true believer in the Cult of the Great Patriotic War then (and before), Putin is using it even more today to strengthen his authority and to silence dissent internally, and to justify aggressive expansion externally. (Note that the St. George colors flaunted by the separatists in Ukraine are the same as those used to commemorate WWII.) There is a direct connection between the prominence of the Cult and Putin’s authoritarian actions at home and imperialism abroad. It is his way of yoking the Russian people to the ambitions of the state–and Putin.

The fact that this year’s Victory Day celebration was as elaborate and passionately intense and overtly politicized (by Putin’s Crimea appearance) as any since the fall of the USSR means that it is a harbinger of greater oppression at home and greater aggression abroad.  Never forget that when Russians make a point of remembering the war, that bad things follow.

Putin flipped a double bird at the world, traveling to Sevastapol to deliver a truculent speech at a Victory Day celebration in the Crimean port city.

A major theme of Putin’s short (4 minute) speech was a demand for respect of Russia.

Obsession with respect and disrespect is characteristic of mafioso, gangbangers, and other psychopaths. Given the rapturous reception to Putin’s rhetoric and actions in Russia, one can only conclude that this is a national trait.

In news from Ukraine, Victory Day wasn’t as bad as I feared. There was fighting in Mariupol that left 21 dead (20 of them apparently separatists killed when the police station that they had seized was retaken by Ukrainian forces). But for the most part, the country was peaceful though restive.

And speaking of psychopaths, the separatists in the Donbas are proceeding with their referendum, allegedly without Russian support. But thinking through the decision tree, this is really a no lose situation for Putin. He (via the GRU) started this effort. If separatist sentiment appeared broad and deep (similar to what appeared to be the case in Crimea) he could support the referendum, insist it proceed, and claim that he was “respecting the right of self-determination” and demand the world do the same. If separation had little support, Putin could do what he has done: request that it be stopped. No doubt, however, he is encouraging the effort privately, because he can now claim publicly that the separatists’ insistence on proceeding demonstrates he does not control them.  What’s more, the apparent climbdown feeds western apathy and encourages western delusions that he can be negotiated with.

And I am sure you are shocked, but there is zero evidence that Russia has withdrawn troops from the border. Nato and the US deny they have observed any movement. But you don’t have to take their word for it. Recall that when Russian troops were moving to the border, there were numerous videos posted on YouTube and numerous photos posted on Twitter and elsewhere showing convoys of Russian armor moving west, on trains, and on the roads. There have been no similar postings of troops moving in the opposite direction either before or since Putin’s claim that the troops had returned to their bases.

This isn’t over. The subversion continues. The election is two weeks out, and expect the efforts to undermine it to pick up.

I will take credit for being one of the first to point out the fact that Snowden’s whistleblower narrative was a total crock because after the initial flurry his leaks had little to do with NSA surveillance of individuals, but instead revealed information that was highly damaging to US national security and foreign policy. The only question in my mind was when he was when he became a Russian asset. I still don’t know, but as I also pointed out a while ago, the fact that collected disproportionately such national security-related information made it very plausible that he was tasked to collect this information, and given the identity of the ultimate beneficiary-Russia-it was also plausible that he was Russia’s witting or unwitting tool from the get go.

I didn’t know the 1.7 millionth of it. Edward Jay Epstein’s long article in today’s WSJ lays out the damaging details:

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2014, that “The vast majority of the documents that Snowden . . . exfiltrated from our highest levels of security had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities.”

. . . .

Mr. Snowden’s critics regard the whistleblowing narrative as at best incomplete, at worst fodder for the naïve. They do not believe that it explains the unprecedented size and complexity of the penetration of NSA files and records. For one thing, many of his critics have intelligence clearance. They have been privy to the results of an NSA investigation that established the chronology of the copying of 1.7 million documents that were stolen from the Signals Intelligence Center in Hawaii. The documents were taken from at least 24 supersecret compartments that stored them on computers, each of which required a password that a perpetrator had to steal or borrow, or forge an encryption key to bypass.

Once Mr. Snowden breached security at the Hawaii facility, in mid-April of 2013, he planted robotic programs called “spiders” to “scrape” specifically targeted documents. According to Gen. Dempsey, “The vast majority of those [stolen documents] were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures.”

. . . .

Mr. Snowden took the Booz Allen Hamilton job in March of 2013, but it was only at the tail end of his operation—in May—that he copied the document (possibly the only one) that specifically authorized the NSA’s controversial domestic surveillance program. This was a Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act court order, instructing Verizon to provide metadata on U.S. phone calls for 90 days, that Mr. Snowden gave to the Guardian newspaper in London on June 3, 2013. (He also leaked a secret presentation in slides about the NSA’s Prism Internet surveillance. This program, operated with the FBI, targeted only foreigners, though it could be extended, with the approval of the attorney general, to suspects in the U.S. in contact with foreign targets.)

Contrary to Mr. Snowden’s account, the document he stole about the NSA’s domestic surveillance couldn’t have been part of any whistleblowing plan when he transferred to Booz Allen Hamilton in March of 2013. Why? Among other reasons, because the order he took was only issued by the FISA court on April 26, 2013.

Here’s my favorite line:

A former member of President Obama’s cabinet [who has to be Panetta: no other candidate makes sense] went even further, suggesting to me off the record in March this year that there are only three possible explanations for the Snowden heist: 1) It was a Russian espionage operation; 2) It was a Chinese espionage operation, or 3) It was a joint Sino-Russian operation.

Snowden’s whole privacy/civil liberties narrative was just the piece of bacon wrapped around a poison pill. But even that narrative had subversive and corrosive effects, particularly in its effect on US foreign policy and the perceptions of the US abroad. Most notably in Germany, where they succeeded in driving a very deep wedge into an already fractured relationship.

And Snowden wants to negotiate a return. His best leverage is that he can reveal the details of what he took, who he worked with, and what he did subsequent to absconding so that the US can attempt to assess better the damage, and contain it.

But this is exactly why Russia will never let him set foot out of the country.  No, the entire negotiation charade is just another attempt to get Snowden sympathy and put the US in an unfavorable light: “look at how the US government continues to persecute this brave whistleblower.”

Fortunately, the world is tiring of Snowden. His newer allegations don’t have the same impact. But the damage is already done. And the real damage is not from what he’s told the world, but what he’s told the Russians (and perhaps the Chinese) in the deepest secrecy.

Events in Syria today should give pause to those sighing in relief at Putin’s apparent climbdown in Ukraine.

The Syrian government took effective control of Homs, as rebel forces evacuated the city.

This is yet more evidence that Assad is on his way to winning the brutal civil war, making Putin and the Iranians very glad indeed.

What, you haven’t heard about Syria lately? Well that’s exactly the point.

Syria dominated the news in the late-summer of 2013. Then Obama cut a face saving deal over Syrian chemical weapons. The immediate crisis having passed, Obama put Syria in his rear view mirror, and the US and European publics put it out of mind too, as they were more than anxious to do.

But not Assad, Putin, and Khatami. The attentions of the world turning elsewhere, they continued a relentless assault against the rebels, and are now on the verge of victory.

But aren’t you glad that almost none of the tens of thousands slaughtered died from chemical weapons?

There is a very real risk the same will transpire in Ukraine. The immediate crisis apparently averted, the west will eagerly avert its gaze. But Putin, an intelligence operative at heart, will continue his covert campaign to subvert Ukraine. His termites will continue to eat away at the country from within.

Syria demonstrates the decisive effect of differences in the will to prevail. Assad and Putin and the Iranians were dead-set on prevailing. With an emphasis on the dead. Putin is dead-set on prevailing in Ukraine. Hell, he’s been smarting and scheming since the Orange Revolution a decade ago. You think he’s just going to take his ball and go home now?

No. He will draw back. Reconsider. Calculate. And return. He will exploit the inattention of the west. It’s more than inattention, actually. It’s a positive desire to be shed of such messy problems that intrude on the end of history.

What started today is a pause. And it will not refresh.

Back in Houston, with a few moments to catch up.

I mentioned Obama’s press conference in the Philippines yesterday. It deserves a more detailed treatment, because it is quite an amazing performance.

The incredible petulance-an Obama trademark-jumps out in even a cursory reading. But when you drill down, you’ll see a rather stunning farrago of shoddy reasoning and logical fallacies (with straw men and false choices taking center stage).

Here’s my annotated take on the presser, with my parenthetical comments in bold face:

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, Ed, I doubt that I’m going to have time to lay out my entire foreign policy doctrine.  [Because he’d have to think it up first.] And there are actually some complimentary pieces as well about my foreign policy, but I’m not sure you ran them.

Here’s I think the general takeaway from this trip.  Our alliances in the Asia Pacific have never been stronger; I can say that unequivocally.  Our relationship with ASEAN countries in Southeast Asia have never been stronger.  I don’t think that’s subject to dispute.  As recently as a decade ago, there were great tensions between us and Malaysia, for example.  And I think you just witnessed the incredible warmth and strength of the relationship between those two countries.

We’re here in the Philippines signing a defense agreement.  Ten years ago, fifteen years ago there was enormous tensions around our defense relationship with the Philippines.  And so it’s hard to square whatever it is that the critics are saying with facts on the ground, events on the ground here in the Asia Pacific region.  Typically, criticism of our foreign policy has been directed at the failure to use military force.  [Really? This is typical?] And the question I think I would have is, why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force [Everybody? Please name five even moderately prominent national office holders or media figures who espouse this view. OK: Three. OK: One.] after we’ve just gone through a decade of war at enormous costs to our troops and to our budget?  And what is it exactly that these critics think would have been accomplished?

My job as Commander-in-Chief is to deploy military force as a last resort, and to deploy it wisely.  And, frankly, most [Most? Really?] of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American people had no interest in participating in and would not advance our core security interests. [Again. Name names. As many as Three Finger Brown could count on his pitching hand.]

So if you look at Syria, for example, our interest is in helping the Syrian people, but nobody suggests that us being involved in a land war in Syria would necessarily accomplish this goal.  [That’s right, actually. No one has suggested a land war in Syria.] And I would note that those who criticize our foreign policy with respect to Syria, they themselves say, no, no, no, we don’t mean sending in troops.  Well, what do you mean?  Well, you should be assisting the opposition — well, we’re assisting the opposition.  [Please. The US assistance is minimal, and explicitly does not include weaponry, especially the kind of weaponry the opposition needs to have a fighting chance. Throughout this answer, Obama avoids addressing head on the specific policies that those criticizing him have advocated. He bashes straw men, attacking things that haven’t been suggested, and ignoring the things that have been.] What else do you mean?  Well, perhaps you should have taken a strike in Syria to get chemical weapons out of Syria.  Well, it turns out we’re getting chemical weapons out of Syria without having initiated a strike.  [Intelligence agencies, including those in Israel and the US, believe that Syria has not disclosed all its CW or the facilities to produce them. More to the point: it is Obama that fetishized chemical weapons. Assad is wreaking a humanitarian crisis using conventional weapons and barrel bombs and the old standby of starvation. Obama ignores this, with his obsessive focus on CW. What’s more, even from a bloodless, geopolitical perspective, American inaction and indifference is handing a strategic victory to Iran and Russia.] So what else are you talking about?  And at that point it kind of trails off. [No. It doesn’t trail off, Barry. You just ignore it.]

In Ukraine, what we’ve done is mobilize the international community. [Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin’ eyes? Obama is deferring to the least common denominator, compromised countries like Austria. This mobilization has obviously had a huge impact on VVP. Huge I’m tellin’ ya.]  Russia has never been more isolated. [And Putin obviously doesn’t give a sh*t. To deter someone you have to credibly threaten the ability to damage something they care about, not what you care about. Putin is consciously and publicly attempting to isolate Russia from the west, politically and culturally. In other words, Barry: you are Br’er Fox and Putin is Br’er Rabbit. By isolating him you are throwing him in the brier patch, which is exactly where he wants to be. Well played. Well played. And truth be told, the isolation that Putin might care about-namely cutting Russia off from the world financial system-has been avoided like the plague.]  A country that used to be clearly in its orbit now is looking much more towards Europe and the West, because they’ve seen that the arrangements that have existed for the last 20 years weren’t working for them.  And Russia is having to engage in activities that have been rejected uniformly around the world.  [And this rejection does what for Ukraine, actually? Putin is moving, through asymmetric means, virtually unopposed. All the moral dudgeon in Europe and the US won’t help Ukraine one whit.] And we’ve been able to mobilize the international community to not only put diplomatic pressure on Russia, but also we’ve been able to organize European countries who many were skeptical would do anything to work with us in applying sanctions to Russia.  [American sanctions are a joke. European sanctions would have to be put in steroids in order to achieve joke status.] Well, what else should we be doing?  Well, we shouldn’t be putting troops in, the critics will say.  That’s not what we mean.  Well, okay, what are you saying?  Well, we should be arming the Ukrainians more.  Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian army?  [Yes. It’s not unreasonable. At all. The “correlation of forces” does not heavily favor Russia, especially when one considers the implications of occupying Ukraine, rather than just attacking it. Even modest increases in Ukrainian military capacity could tip the correlation against Putin.] Or are we more likely to deter them by applying the sort of international pressure, diplomatic pressure and economic pressure that we’re applying? [What? These things are mutually exclusive? Hardly. Why not both? And the opponents of your policy are advocating more robust economic actions against Putin and Russia. Again, you ignore the actual policies that your critics advocate, and wear yourself out attacking things they have never proposed.]

The point is that for some reason many who were proponents of what I consider to be a disastrous decision to go into Iraq haven’t really learned the lesson of the last decade, and they keep on just playing the same note over and over again.  [What a slur. Just who is advocating this, actually? Indeed, one major  lesson of Iraq-the challenge of occupation-favors arming the Ukrainians. The Russians have no doubt studied Iraq, and realize that a well-armed irregular force would make any attempt to occupy hell. So why not do it?] Why?  I don’t know.  [There’s a lot you don’t know, Barry.] But my job as Commander-in-Chief is to look at what is it that is going to advance our security interests over the long term, to keep our military in reserve for where we absolutely need it.  There are going to be times where there are disasters and difficulties and challenges all around the world, and not all of those are going to be immediately solvable by us.

But we can continue to speak out clearly about what we believe.  Where we can make a difference using all the tools we’ve got in the toolkit, well, we should do so.  And if there are occasions where targeted, clear actions can be taken that would make a difference, then we should take them.  We don’t do them because somebody sitting in an office in Washington or New York think it would look strong.  That’s not how we make foreign policy.  And if you look at the results of what we’ve done over the last five years, it is fair to say that our alliances are stronger, our partnerships are stronger, and in the Asia Pacific region, just to take one example, we are much better positioned to work with the peoples here on a whole range of issues of mutual interest.

And that may not always be sexy.  That may not always attract a lot of attention, and it doesn’t make for good argument on Sunday morning shows.  But it avoids errors.  You hit singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run.  But we steadily advance the interests of the American people and our partnership with folks around the world.

Obama came to prominence as a critic of the Iraq War. That’s how he made his mark, and it is clear that is how he defines himself. He is the un-general, un-fighting the last war. He has Iraq Syndrome, which is like Viet Nam Syndrome, except worse.

In his mental universe, the US policy establishment is populated with mouth-breathing warmongers who see only military solutions to strategic and geopolitical problems. In his mind, Obama is Horatio at the Bridge, holding back these barbarian hordes. This is profoundly insulting to those of goodwill who happen to disagree with Obama. But Obama cannot possibly conceive that anyone who disagrees with him is of goodwill. His is a truly Manichean worldview: those who agree with him are good, those who disagree are evil.

In fact, many of his critics have argued consistently that his deference to the Assads and Putins and Khamenis of the world has made military conflict (and conflict waged on terms unfavorable to the US) more likely, not less. With respect to Putin in particular, the critics have argued that acquiescing to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, terminating missile defense in eastern Europe, signaling a willingness to be “flexible” after re-election, and most notably, utterly caving in Syria has greatly emboldened Putin, thereby increasing not reducing the risk of military conflict. (When Obama took office, who was seriously discussing the credibility of our commitment to enforce Article 5 of the Nato Charter in the event of a Russian attack on Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania?)

But Obama either will not or cannot see this. He is completely convinced that he is enlightened and good, and that his critics are benighted and  evil. Seeing the world in these harsh contrasts, he is incapable of change in response to reality.

Bush was criticized, and rightly so, for his black-and-white view of the world. But Bush was capable of making mid-course corrections in response to incontrovertible evidence of failure.

By contrast, Obama makes Bush look like a paragon of subtlety and flexibility.

In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner wrote: “For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863 [i.e., the moments before Pickett’s Charge].” Obama is far worse. In his mind, every instant, it is Iraq, circa March 2003. He sees everything through that prism. This is a crippling limitation. And a crippled United States unleashes the most reprobate actors in the world, the most notable of whom at present is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Russia has commenced its invasion of eastern Ukraine. No, tanks have not rolled over the border, and Sukhois are not dropping bombs on Kharkov or Donetsk. But the invasion has begun, with the seizure of government buildings in several eastern cities by armed men. Men dressed in combat garb carrying advanced automatic weapons (including AK-100s with grenade launchers).

No, these troops have not declared that they are Russian soldiers. But that just adds to the outrageousness. What’s more, this is exactly the Crimea MO. Exactly. Recall that the Russians swore up and down that those who took over Crimea weren’t theirs. Until Putin let the cat out of the bag and bragged how the Crimean operation had demonstrated the tremendous progress that had been made in reforming the Russian military.

Post-Crimea, Occam’s Razor tells you that Little Green Men popping up anywhere in the Near Abroad are taking orders from Putin. This is an invasion.

And why shouldn’t he take another slice of Ukraine? The US and EU have said that they might maybe could ramp up sanctions a little bit if Putin’s tanks roll into Kyiv. But they let him take a slice-Crimea-with virtually no consequence. So why shouldn’t he take another slice? And once he digests this one, another? And another?

It is beyond obvious that the US and EU are desperate to avoid facing hard realities. They don’t want to confront Putin. The bleat about diplomacy and off-ramps and de-escalation, which Putin translates into “surrender.” And rightly so. So he will advance inexorably.

The Ukrainian government is paralyzed. It realizes that if it exercises force against the intruders that Putin will use that as a pretext to unleash the forces massed on the border. It knows that it is unlikely that the US/Nato will provide any meaningful assistance in that event. So it goes fetal.

These are the wages of fecklessness. Yet again.

We are governed by-I will not say led by-craven midgets. Obama played golf today. He spent last week making scurrilous charges of racism against his real enemies: the Republicans. That’s when he wasn’t hyping Obamacare while defenestrating the cabinet secretary charged with its implementation. Biden will be traveling to Ukraine Tuesday. Not this Tuesday, silly:  next Tuesday, the 22d.  Joe is probably still working on his taxes, and has plenty of fundraisers to attend to in the interim. So first things first. It’s the weekend, so Europe is, um, unavailable.

Clausewitz called “the offensive” the first principle of warfare. By this, he meant that the combatant with the initiative has a decisive advantage. He can choose the time and place to attack, and do so in a way that exploits his advantages and his enemy’s disadvantages.

Putin has the initiative. In part this is due to the fact that his adversary-Nato-is a coalition, and decision making in coalitions is inherently slow, and its councils divided. (I recall a story of Napoleon rejoicing to learn that another country had joined a coalition against him.)

But the United States in particular has the ability to act unilaterally, and drag Nato along with it. The US could unilaterally impose crippling costs on Russia, by effectively cutting off its access to the world banking system. Yes, this would cause the Germans and the Brits to squeal. But so be it. Leadership must sometimes be exercised with the flat of the sword laid to the backs of necks.

Putin has the initiative because Obama has conceded it to him.

The western OODA loop-observe, orient, decide, act-is pitifully slow. It is slow because of an intense desire to avoid conflict and to deny the reality of Putin’s behavior. It is slow because of a conscious choice of the US to abdicate leadership, and to defer to countries like Germany that have a deeply compromised relationship with Russia.

This means that Putin can easily keep the initiative because the US has deliberately chosen to cede the initiative to him. He can get inside our OODA loop over and over again. He can present us with faits accompli.

Until Obama-and no one else-bestirs himself to confront Putin, the Russians will continue to take slice after slice of Ukraine. Perhaps some parts will be incorporated into Russia, and other parts set up as formally independent Russian satrapies. But the formalities are irrelevant. Unless Putin is confronted, before long all of Ukraine will be subordinate to Russia.

And once that is accomplished, why should you think that Putin’s thirst to restore the USSR will be slaked? And it is not just about Putin and Russia. Once the idea that irredentism and revanchism will not be confronted takes hold, it will not be limited to the FSU. Obama is sowing the wind. His successors-and you and me-will reap the whirlwind.