Tag Archives: Russia

Political Rants

Pulling us up to the brink again

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I’m not in the greatest state of mind right now, so I’ll be brief. I just wanted to take a moment to amend my post from last week, Examining the Three Crises Three. In short, I missed a crisis or two. And the one that appears to be percolating up into the national consciousness is the Ukraine Crisis.

Now, the national conversation about this conflict is enough to drive anyone mad. I have never seen so many policy cross-currents between left and right as over this question. Trumpist right-wingers are adapting a narrow anti-war stance that appears to be counseling caution with respect to Russia and crackpot aggression toward China. “Muscular” liberals and centrists appear to be hell bent on building an iron wall around the Soviet …. I mean, Russia. Dogs are dancing with cats. What a mess.

What about the Minsk agreement?

There is a diplomatic solution to this. Anatol Lieven, writing for The Nation, details The Minsk II agreement, worked out in 2015, which provided for limited autonomy for some of the disputed parts of Ukraine. He writes:

“A solution exists that was drawn up by France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine and endorsed by the US, the European Union, and the United Nations. This solution corresponds to democratic practice, international law and tradition, and America’s own past approach to the settlement of ethnic and separatist conflicts. Moreover, it requires no concessions of real substance by either Ukraine or the US.” (Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem in the World)

Lieven works with the Quincy Institute, a foreign policy think tank headed by Andrew Bacevich, none of whose researchers are likely to show up on Morning Joe anytime soon.

So why are we ….? Oh, yeah.

We appear to be beefing up our presence in Eastern Europe, preparing to wield crippling sanctions against Russia, etc. The one thing we don’t appear eager to do is simply admit that Ukraine is not in the short line for NATO membership. Frankly, it shouldn’t be in the long line either. And most of the commentators closest to power claim that the U.S. has no intention of defending Ukraine militarily within its borders.

Okay, but what is this conflict about? Why are we facing off at the front lines of what has the potential to be a disastrous, perhaps world-ending war? My guess is that it’s because we always lead with the military. That’s where we hold the strongest hand, so we always play it. See Iraq. See Libya. See Syria.

Instant money – just add congress

Congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle – Democrats and Autocrats (formerly Republicans) – are falling over each other trying to shovel money into Ukraine’s military. The price tag is around $500 million.

When it comes to this sort of thing, there’s always money. When it comes to pulling people out of poverty, even children, the cupboard is bare. Let’s hope this little investment in bellicosity doesn’t trigger the global holocaust we’ve been arming up for since before I was born.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Just a few short minutes to midnight

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Sometimes it’s hard to ignore the extent to which our past haunts us. I suspect that most senior news editors grew up during the cold war. That may be why our media culture seems to be stuck in a very retrograde vision of the world. That east v. west pattern was struck deep, and it will take more than a little rain to wear it off.

The current crisis unfolding in eastern Europe is a chilling example of this. If Americans rely on the mainstream media to shape their perception of what’s happening overseas, they will not hear a single skeptical voice regarding our current policy. And if this administration doesn’t get a lot of push-back on this issue, we may find ourselves on the brink of a terminal nuclear war before we even know what’s happening.

If you thought you were safe because Trump exited the White House last January, think again.

The cost of NATO expansion

I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Nations have enduring interests, and regardless of who is running the country, leaders will pursue them any way they can. If someone interferes with this pursuit, there will likely be hard feelings, perhaps conflict. With regard to Russia, vital interests include, crucially, not being threatened with invasion from the West, particularly. That sentiment is the result of their having been invaded three times since the rise of Napoleon, the last time at the cost of 20 million souls.

When the Soviet Union fell, the United States (under then-president George H. W. Bush) pledged to Gorbachev not to expand NATO any further to the east. The United States quickly abrogated that agreement, bringing Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Baltic states into the alliance through the 1990s and 2000s. Further expansion into Ukraine would bring NATO right to the border of Russia, and they find that prospect to be unacceptable. And yet Biden and his foreign policy team will give no assurance that NATO membership for Ukraine is off the table.

This is nuts. The Doomsday Clock isn’t inching towards midnight for nothing. War with Russia simply cannot happen – so what the fuck are these people thinking?

The pivot to Asia

Speaking of indefensible positions, the Biden Administration is ratcheting up the pressure on China over various policy disputes. The administration tends to point an accusatory finger at Beijing over their treatment of the Uyghurs (with some justice), as well as their policy on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and shipping lanes around the periphery of Asia. There is merit in some of these positions, but it’s kind of hard to argue that Biden and his State Department are acting out of principle.

We can do next to nothing to affect how China behaves. But there are other bad actors amongst the family of nations with whom we have tremendous influence. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Israel … even Turkey relies on us to some extent. The Saudi-led, U.S. enabled war on Yemen has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and yet we’re still shipping arms to MBS. That’s to say nothing of what we ourselves have done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.

Worthy and unworthy victims

Talking heads on Morning Joe spent most of the last decade obsessing over Syria and Russian aggression. Now roughly as many people have died in Yemen as during the Syrian conflict, and there’s not a peep out of those fuckers.

Hey, if you want to save lives and help the oppressed, start with the low-hanging fruit … namely those we actively persecute, by our own actions and by proxy.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

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This week the airwaves were filled with more breathless speculation than we’ve seen since the last major award show. Biden meeting with Vladimir Putin! The newly repopulated set of Morning Joe was all a-twitter with neo-Kremlinology. They even invited John Bolton on board to share his valuable perspective (though his only use might be as a reverse barometer).

The talking heads, I kid you not, were hoisting charts that compared the wait times of various heads of state who met with American presidents over the past fifteen years. If Biden comes a half hour late, what does that mean? Is Tony Blinken frowning too much? Jesus Christ, I wish I were joking. You would think, with all the air time, they would talk about the IMF treaty, or Open Skies …. something substantive. Not a chance.

The only mildly interesting piece of this whole sordid drama was the competition for the moral high ground underway between Biden and Putin, each playing to his own domestic audience.

Sympathy for the Devil

In the lead-up to the summit, Putin was interviewed by an NBC reporter, who asked him about Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident (and ultra nationalist, btw). Now, there are plenty of counter examples Putin could have invoked in response if he wanted to demonstrate American hypocrisy. He instead chose the January 6 insurrectionists as examples of people being arrested for expressing political views.

That’s just plain adorable. Putin sees a gang of white supremacists trying to overthrow elective government as dissidents and freedom fighters, even though they had the backing of the President of the United States and more than a few members of the institution they were attacking that day. Hardly outsiders, and treated with relative kid gloves by the police. Of course, they wanted Putin’s favored candidate to remain in power – not because Putin loves Trump, but because Trump is a burning disaster.

Suggestion Box

If Vlad wanted to perform some genuine what-about-ism, he could have chosen much better subjects. Now, I’m sure he has no sympathy for Reality Winner – who was recently released from prison – because she exposed some intelligence on Russia’s influence campaign in the 2016 Presidential election. But he might have gone with Edward Snowden, who after all, is relatively close at hand (in exile in Russia).

Probably a better pick would have been Julian Assange, who is now serving hard time in London and under indictment by the U.S. Justice Department and whose health is rapidly deteriorating. Assange’s “crime” was the release of the Iraq war documents, diplomatic cables, and collateral murder video, for which they’ve been hounding him non-stop for over a decade, through administrations of both parties (see my older posts on this). They are slowly killing Assange, in essence. That’s roughly equivalent to the Navalny accusation.

Of course, Putin could also point to, I don’t know, millions of other incarcerated Americans. Or perhaps the text of our 13th Amendment. The man just has no imagination!

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Meeting the enemy (and it is still us).

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President Biden headed off to Europe this week to meet with the leaders of rich, white-dominated countries on that side of the pond. His meeting with Putin is drawing as much interest as you might expect. Some of the recent hacking attacks and ransomware incidents have been blamed on operatives connected at least tangentially with Russia. And, of course, a goodly number of people within the broader Democratic coalition see Russia as responsible for having delivered Trump into the White House in 2016. They see all this, and more, as pieces of the same puzzle, and they want Biden to read Putin the riot act.

To the extent that the ransomware stuff can be attributed to the Kremlin, it can be seen as part of the same effort that drives their illicit involvement in our political campaigns. They want to sow confusion and internal conflict in the world’s sole remaining superpower as a means of keeping us from confronting them – that only makes sense from their point of view.

But the idea that they are having an out-sized effect on our politics is vastly overblown. We Americans are fond of conspiracy theories, especially ones that involve nefarious foreign actors. Yes, we have serious problems, but they are self-inflicted, not imposed from without.

Clinton v. Clinton

I’ve said it on this blog many times before, and I’ll say it again – I never liked Putin, even back in the early 2000s when that was kind of a minority view. But the impact of their agitation in support of the Trump campaign in 2016 was marginal at best. The biggest reason for the failure of the Clinton campaign was – wait for it! – Hillary Clinton. The biggest non-Hillary factor in her loss was the FBI probe and James Comey, but even that issue was rooted in her own flat-footedness.

Let’s face it – she was a terrible candidate from the beginning, and in spite of that, was almost elected. Regarding Trump’s win, she has no one to blame but herself.

Putin’s Favorite POTUS

Did Putin want Trump to be president? Probably, as likely any Russian leader would. It was obvious that Trump was going to make a mess out of everything from the very beginning. That comports with Russia’s long-term strategic goals viz the U.S. And yes, Trump was nice to Putin as part of his constant self-dealing (he wanted that Trump Tower Moscow), but U.S. policy towards Russia was basically the same as in recent administrations.

As Americans, we have no idea of what it’s like to be a nation in the world that has to deal with the United States. The U.S. is the most powerful military, economic, and political player on Earth, and we don’t exactly walk around on tiptoe. Basically every other nation is dwarfed by our power and influence, so they reach for whatever they can to throw us off.

In the case of Russia, the most cost-effective methods of doing that include exacerbating existing divisions between political factions and, perhaps, making commodity prices – gas and beef – go up. That’s espionage 101. We do similar things in other countries, only from a position of power.

What will Biden say to Putin? God only knows. It would be nice if he did some serious work toward de-escalation of differences, maybe reinstating the IMF treaty, etc., but only time will tell. When you have most of the power, you are inevitably tempted to wield it in increasingly arbitrary ways. That would be hard for Biden to overcome, and he shows no sign of doing so.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Muddle in the middle.

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A snapshot from the day’s news – MSNBC is obsessing over Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s announcement that we’re withdrawing 12,000 troops from Germany. The various former Republicans that populate its talk show panels are lamenting Trump’s undermining of the NATO alliance. In real time, we are seeing the Biden foreign policy take shape. I won’t say it’s a more aggressive posture, as Trump is aggressively pursuing conflict with Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China, and others. There is, however, a somewhat nostalgic turn to the emerging centrist doctrine Biden will no doubt pursue. It appears we may be in for a slight return of the cold war model, the east-west divide, the Russian menace. If that’s the case, it would be a bitter trade in exchange for the crap show we’re living through now.

I am tentative about this observation because it’s hard to be certain what a Biden foreign policy will be when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has consistently avoided posting any details about it on his campaign site. Since it’s likely to be formulated by committee, I’m guessing it will be bellicose, but measured; assertive, but mindful of precedent; proactive, but not necessarily the first to any party. Where will we bomb, drone, invade next under a President Biden? One can only guess. Likely he will re-deploy those 12,000 troops to Germany, whether or not they pony up the Euros for costs associated with the posting. Indeed, the only net positives might be a return to some type of arms control regime with Russia, Iran, and others, and perhaps a re-commitment to the tepid, voluntary goals of the Paris Accord on Climate. Not nearly enough for my taste, but there you have it.

I think the most compelling case for this muddle in the middle, from a foreign policy standpoint, derives from the very nature of the presidency and who holds that office. The U.S. president is too powerful. It is an office that wields force, both military and economic, in unlimited magnitude. No one should be THAT powerful, particularly not someone who is accountable to an electorate that makes up less than five percent of the world’s population. Placing Donald Trump in the cockpit of that titanic killing machine is not only irresponsible, it’s sheer madness. Regardless of any minor departures from the hard-line Republican orthodoxy on foreign relations and national security, Trump has proven his propensity to flub his way through any situation, with disastrous consequences. We’ve seen this in his response to the Coronavirus. Even as he seems inclined to curry favor with Putin, we’ve seen him tear up crucial arms agreements with the Russians, hurtling us back into a deadly arms race.

Plainly, Biden’s foreign policy will likely be as imperial and neoliberal as he can get away with. But every moment Trump sits behind that so-called Resolute Desk, we are in mortal danger. He simply has to go.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Intelligence and skepticism.

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I had a weird feeling of displacement this week, hearing commentators and political officeholders talking about intelligence reports regarding the Russians’ alleged payment of bounties to the Taliban for the killing of Americans. Such an allegation is not particularly far-fetched – the United States has been in Afghanistan for almost twenty years, and there are plenty of people there who would try to kill our soldiers without compensation, but they probably would accept payment if offered. Still, listening to the outrage, it felt like some of the conversation in the months leading up to the Iraq war. Powell’s presentation to the UN in February 2003; the insistent claims about evidence of WMDs in Iraq, etc. All bogus, incidentally, and no one responsible for the misinformation was ever held accountable, as far as I know.

Of course, that was an example of an administration using its intelligence services to a specific end – in effect, weaponizing it. In the current case, Trump seems at odds with the intelligence community, but I’m not convinced his administration is. Let me be clear; while I don’t think Trump is some kind of Manchurian candidate programmed by Putin to destroy America, I do think that he’s a tremendously crappy president who wants nothing more than to license a Trump Tower Moscow when he leaves government service. If the stories about the bounty on U.S. soldiers are even partly true, it would be just one more example of Trump putting his own interests ahead of those of the people he is supposed to serve as president. Is anyone surprised by that?

Look, Trump is not some kind of unicorn. Anyone who has worked at a small business knows who Trump is. If you’ve ever worked for someone who had their name on the door, you know what I’m talking about. Trump’s ignorance, arrogance, impatience, arbitrariness, bullying tactics, self-aggrandizement, and parsimony are familiar to all former employees of America’s beloved small businesses. They’re not all that way, of course – some are benevolent dictators – but the American myth of the self-made man is a compelling one, and I’ve heard versions of it spouted to me over the years. They all pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, no help from anyone.

Though I’ve never met the president, I did briefly work for him in 1987-88, when I worked with a band that played Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. His company was terrible to employees, bands, etc. Now we’re seeing the same thing on a national scale – relentless self-dealing and an almost cult-like belief in himself. What. A. Freak. But at the same time, I recommend skepticism with respect to the information products of the intelligence agencies, even if the asshole-in-chief says it’s bullshit. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Time running out.

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While you were looking over there, Donald Trump, our racist five-year-old drunken Twitter-troll of a President, pulled out of yet another arms control treaty with the Russians. Signed in 1992 by then president George H.W. Bush, the Open Skies Treaty allowed for short-notice, unarmed reconnaissance flights as a way of verifying compliance with other arms control treaties. As he always does when announcing the end of an international agreement, Trump breezily claimed that the Russians were not adhering to the treaty, and that by pulling out we will eventually end up with a new agreement that’s better than the current one.

This announcement comes in the context of:

  • Withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which removed extremely destabilizing and dangerous medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe;
  • Trump’s reluctance to renew the New START treaty next February when it expires. The accord provides for inspection of nuclear forces in by both parties, and is the final remaining pillar of the U.S.-Russian arms control regime.

This madness is another case of Trump’s key role as a rubber stamp for the most extreme elements in the right-wing political grouping that is currently running the country through him. I am certain Trump did not wake up in the middle of the night and say. “We must toss out all of our arms control agreements with Russia!” My guess is that the president’s strongest negative feeling might be reserved for New START, as that was signed by Obama in 2010, but otherwise this planet-saving series of treaties is probably of very little interest to him. Sure, there is some posing involved here, Trump trying to appear “tough”, trying to please daddy, etc., but why even bother getting into that? The man’s only ideology is himself. He is a uniquely valueless human being – the perfect vessel for a resurgent militarist right.

The administration’s rhetoric points to prompting a new arms race that will spend both China and Russia into a hole. Set aside for a moment the blatant insanity of such a policy (recall the dark days of the early 1980s) – it appears to be based on a popular misconception of what happened in the last arms race. We didn’t spend the Soviet Union into oblivion; empires decay, that’s what they do. We nearly spent ourselves into oblivion, investing trillions of dollars in the production of waste (useless military hardware) instead of putting those dollars into building a better society. Soviet military spending was pretty much flat through the 1980s. A renewed nuclear arms race puts humanity at risk, pure and simple – there’s no upside.

What is presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s position on this issue? Good question. I can’t find anything about it on his web site. For some more discussion about the lack of evidence of a Biden foreign policy, see the current episode of Strange Sound, our new podcast.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Their man.

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It’s been a summer of discontent, to be sure, and the signs aren’t good for this fall. Internationally we appear to be on the brink of major upheavals, from India’s escalation of the conflict in Kashmir to uprisings in Hong Kong, Russia, and elsewhere. India-Pakistan is particularly worrisome, as these now nuclear armed states have already fought three wars over founding disputes like Kashmir; with Modi in control, this could end very badly. What a great time to have Donald Trump as president, right?

As much as pundits have tried to paint Trump as an atypical GOP politician with regard to foreign relations, his administration is doing about what you might expect a president Rubio to do; bellicose rhetoric, imperial policies, and arrogant attitude. The only question about Trump is whether, at any given moment, he may be pursuing his own narrow self interest or following the directions handed to him by his neocon national security team. It is hard for TV commentators to hold both administration positions in their heads at the same time.  Trump speaks nicely about Putin, while his cabinet officials tear up arms control agreements signed by Reagan. Trump exchanges notes with Kim Jong Un while is Pentagon plans military maneuvers in South Korea. Trump appears to resist the march to war with Iran, but the confrontation continues. The net effect of all of this is basically a mainstream Republican foreign policy, with a few fewer diplomats.

Trump, King of Greenland? Nice.

The fact is, I would far rather Trump and his administration start having a dialog with Russia over nuclear arms and nuclear materials. The mishap they had in the northeast of the country, at the Nenoksa test site, this past week underscores that need. Putin’s proposed nuclear-powered cruise missile is a tremendously destabilizing and toxic program. Think of it: even if it works as planned, you would have a missile with a conventional payload spewing radioactive fuel all over the place when it strikes its target, rendering it basically a dirty bomb. We are playing a similarly dangerous game with the development of low-yield nuclear “bunker busters”. Both of these weapons amount to a backdoor introduction of nuclear isotopes into common use in a conventional war. We need to put nuclear disarmament back at the top of the agenda … and right now, we’re heading in the opposite direction at full speed.

When the Trump administration is finally over, no doubt the GOP will attempt to distance themselves from this dumpster fire, claiming Trump was, at heart, a lifelong Democrat. Nothing doing. We need to hang this around their necks for as long as they remain the party of right-wing extremism, climate change denial, serial invasion, etc.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Grifting.

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I’ve been reading the Washington Post edition of the Mueller Report, basically the same as all of the other versions, and I have to say that it is both an interesting and a sickening document. Much as it has been discussed on cable news, you never get the full story without reading it yourself, and there’s a lot in there that never makes it to your television. I’m taking it slow, splitting time with another book that I can’t put down (Visions of Freedom by Piero Gleijeses), but my biggest take away is, well, just what a grifter Donald Trump is, and the same goes for the people he surrounds himself with.

I haven’t written about this scandal very much on this blog, as not to superfluously comment on material that is being handled much more competently elsewhere, but I basically fall into the non Russia-obsessed segment. Sure, there’s a lot in the report about Russian hacking and influence campaigns, but that is something states do in their efforts to advance their perceived national interest. I’m not saying it’s right – I’m saying it’s common practice. If it were up to me, we would regulate campaigns a lot more tightly than we do now. I’m also of the opinion that there isn’t enough brain power in the Trump clown car to effectively pull off any sophisticated kind of collusion with a foreign power. I think the Russians and other foreign governments – UAE, Saudi, Israel – inserted themselves into the 2016 election in hopes of affecting the outcome in some way. And clearly, the Trump team was glad for the help. So there was a confluence of interests, that’s probably about it.

Not a three-dimensional chess master

Something tells me Trump’s biggest problem coming out of this scandal will be his own financial misconduct over the years and that of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Again, they’re not the brightest bulbs on the porch, so they would have been very poor at concealing, say, money laundering in any sophisticated way, resorting to clumsy attempts at stonewalling. The Democrats should move forward with the investigation if only to keep the president on his back foot. And no, I don’t think Trump is playing three-dimensional chess. I think he’s a dunce, and it pains me to see people ascribing more wits to Donald Trump than is indicated by what comes out of his festering gob. This phenomenon is not limited to Trump. People tend to think of creatures like Dick Cheney, John Bolton, and Henry Kissinger as mad geniuses; the fact is, they are massive fuck-ups whose policies invariably result in catastrophic failure, even when viewed through the distorted lens of their own harebrained objectives.

God help us if (or when) we get reactionary leaders that are actually competent at what they attempt to do. Up to now, the only thing that has saved us has been their ignorance and ineptitude.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Empire redux.

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There were some hair-on-fire moments on talk television this week about Trump acting as a Russian “agent” or “asset” or something similar. I have my own thoughts on this issue, which I’ve shared previously on this blog, but what I find kind of interesting about this discourse is the degree to which it reveals the state of mainstream opinion on national security issues. Mind you, I don’t mean popular opinion; rather, “articulate” opinion of the kind you find on Morning Joe and other similar platforms. The ability of the American imperial project to repackage itself in such a way as to appeal to another generation of gullible subjects has always fascinated me, and we’re seeing it play out again on screens large and small all across the nation.

One of the points of outrage regarding Trump came from a newspaper piece that reported on the president floating the idea of pulling the U.S. out of NATO. The reaction went beyond just the usual tropes about NATO’s vital mission of keeping the peace in Europe since the end of the last war and how Russia is dedicated to pushing it back and splitting it up. Some commentators suggested that the idea of ending NATO is something so outlandish and outside of the mainstream that it simply had to come from Russia. Of course, unless these people are all younger than they look, they might all recall that at the end of the cold war many Americans questioned whether NATO still had a mission. People can disagree on that, but it isn’t outlandish to raise the question, particularly in that context.

NATO expansion since 1945

What’s more, it doesn’t take a Putin apologist to suggest that the Russian government has a more than defensible reason to be suspicious of the NATO expansion that has taken place over the past three decades. For one thing, Russia was promised by the U.S. – George H.W. Bush specifically – that NATO would not expand one inch to the east. That was a lie, of course. Why would Russians care about that? The biggest reason is that they have been invaded by foreign alliances three times in the last century, the last time at the cost of 20 million lives. When the Soviet Union ceased to be a thing, I’m sure their expectation was that NATO would go away. It didn’t, and like any hammer looking for something to do, it sees everything as a nail.

As Trump prepares another generation of phony missile defense weapons, one can only hope that these aren’t coffin nails.

luv u,

jp