Russia

TAMP ‘EM UP SOLID:

How to win in Ukraine: pour it on, and don’t worry about escalation: The Biden administration has been too cautious. There’s still time to change that. (ANDREW RADIN | MAY 22, 2024, Defense One)

Shifting U.S. policy in several areas would improve Ukraine’s military situation with minimal risk of Russian escalation. First, the United States could rescind its insistence that U.S.-provided munitions only be used on Ukrainian soil, and stop pressing Ukraine to refrain from attacks on Russian territory. Given that Ukraine suffers daily casualties from attacks on purely civilian targets, retaliation against Russian infrastructure is more than fair game and can help to even Ukraine’s odds by degrading Russia’s logistical capacity. Ukraine would bear the brunt of any Russian response, but Kyiv is prepared to take that risk.

Second, the United States could expand its visible U.S. military presence in Ukraine. Western advisors need to be in Ukraine to understand the status and needs of Ukraine’s forces to provide the necessary qualitative superiority. Increases in U.S. advisors or even trainers can be distinguished from any kind of combat role. If, tragically, U.S personnel were to be killed in a Russian attack, the Biden administration would have significant latitude to control its response.

Third, the United States should look to expand its operations in space and cyberspace in response Russia’s cyber attacks against U.S. space providers and jamming against NATO allies. In a recent RAND report on strategic stability in space, we argue that reversible actions like jamming are useful options for the United States because can signal to an adversary and provide an additional threat of punishment without increasing the scope of conflict. Given Russia’s use of space communications, for example, such actions also can have a temporary operational benefit. Russia could escalate with increased cyber attacks or other activities in response but would risk exposing their exploits and losing the opportunity to use such attacks in the future.

Additional U.S. action could also catalyze other allies to increase their support, as allies traditionally look to the United States for leadership. Germany would not provide Leopard tanks until the United States provided Abrams. Perhaps further U.S. support would lead to Germany to provide Taurus, its own long-range cruise missile. From a narrow U.S. perspective, greater U.S. involvement is an opportunity to test new capabilities and gain experience helping a partner facing a numerically superior foe. Such experience could be very relevant for helping Taiwan resist Chinese aggression.

To be sure, avoiding direct military conflict with Russia is of paramount interest.

No, it isn’t. That’s the mistake we made in the Cold War. Destroy the oil fields and challenge Vlad to respond. He’d last as long as Saddam.

THERE’S A REASON THESE GUYS ARE OBSESSED WITH MANHOOD:

Unilateral Illiberalism (Brian Stewart, 7 Mar 2024, Quillette)

When Ayatollah Khomeini granted Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci an interview in the holy city of Qom in 1979, the meeting was terminated when she tore off the chador she had been made to wear, calling it a “stupid medieval rag.” When Fallaci met Colonel Qaddafi in Libya, she was blunt: “I want to understand why everyone dislikes you so much, why you are so little loved.” And after an extended harangue from Yasser Arafat about the need to eradicate Israel with revolutionary violence, Fallaci drily remarked, “Conclusion: you don’t at all want the peace that everyone is hoping for.”

Bemused viewers of Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Vladimir Putin saw no evidence of the skepticism or thinly veiled contempt that La Fallaci (as she liked to refer to herself) brought to her craft. Nor were they rewarded with an informative glimpse into the Russian despot’s mind. Instead, they were treated to an unedifying display of sycophancy that permitted Putin to filibuster for more than two hours. In The Rebel, Albert Camus spoke of tyrants conducting “monologues above a million solitudes.” Thanks to Carlson’s flaccid performance, Putin’s semi-coherent and ahistorical monologue reached millions more than usual. […]

Did Carlson really expect anything less? Did he really think Putin would inveigh against the San Francisco school board or Hunter Biden? Imagine how disappointed he must have been to learn that the former KGB colonel is not a regular viewer of Fox, let alone Carlson’s show on Twitter. […]

But if Carlson thought that touting Putin’s credentials as a good Christian leader and a champion of law and order would earn him the approval of the Russian tsar he was mistaken. During the interview, Putin seemed to mock Carlson and later complained about the absence of “so-called sharp questions.” Seldom has there been such a poor return for ceremonial self-abasement before a blood-drenched ruler. Putin’s sneering hauteur could not conceal that he is not a leader to be trusted, still less to admired. And as Carlson fawned over the Russian despot, he displayed a personalized version of what the French philosopher Alain Finkelkraut calls the West’s “penitential narcissism.”

THANKS, VLAD!:

Blow to Putin as Europe breaks free of Russian oil for good (Jonathan Leake, 2/26/24, The Telegraph)

Analysts found that the UK and much of Europe have reversed a years-long rise in reliance on Russian oil and gas before the Ukraine conflict, shifting instead to other suppliers such as the US and Canada.

Jorge Leon, Rystad’s senior vice president for oil markets, said: “I think people underestimated how flexible the energy system is.

“Just before the war, just the idea of, we’re going to stop buying oil and gas directly from Russia, would have been crazy. But it has largely happened.”

Now destroy his oil infrastructure.

EVIL FROM THE JUMP:

A Century After Lenin’s Death, His Evil Legacy Lives On: Believing that the class struggle justified any means, he glorified murder as a moral obligation. (David Satter, Jan. 19, 2024, WSJ)

Vladimir Lenin has been gone for a century, but the evil he did lives on. The first leader of the Soviet Union died on Jan. 21, 1924, in Gorki, Russia (now called Nizhny Novgorod), after repeated strokes. His legacy is a world whose moral equilibrium he helped to destroy.

The Soviet Union was based on Marxism, a secular religion, and Lenin was the architect of its system of antimorality. For Lenin, as he said in his speech to the Komsomol on Oct. 2, 1920, morality was entirely subordinated to the class struggle. An action was right not in light of “extrahuman concepts” but only if it destroyed the old society and helped to build a new communist society.

The effect of this theory is felt today in post-Soviet Russia, where the legacy of communism’s blanket rejection of universal morality destroyed the hope for democratic reform.

One of the oddest anti-anti-Communist tropes from back in the day was that Western Communists should be excused as “idealists” as long as they bailed on the USSR once Stalin took over. Of course, Gorbachev’s great miscalculation was that he believed the same. But once they were permitted an opening, dissidents discredited the Revolution itself, not just Joe.

THERE IS NO BEAR IN THE WOODS:

The Russian Air Force Is Dying a Slow and Painful Death in Ukraine (Peter Suciu, 12/18/23, National Interest)

Russia saw two of its jets lost in just 24 hours over the past weekend, including one that was reported to have been shot down by its own forces in the skies over Ukraine.

Since launching its unprovoked war against Ukraine nearly two years ago, the Russian military has seen a significant number of combat aircraft lost in the fighting. The most recent aircraft destroyed included a Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bomber that was targeted on the ground at a Russian air base in an early morning raid on Sunday. Later that same day, a Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jet was shot down over the Zaporizhia region in eastern Ukraine on Sunday per Business Insider.

Kyiv claimed it wasn’t responsible for the downing of the latter aircraft.

“I can confidently state that it was not the Ukrainian air defense that shot down the Russian Su-25 attack aircraft! These were clearly the coordinated actions of Russian anti-aircraft troops, for which the entire Ukrainian people sends them great thanks!,” Mykola Oleshchuk, Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in a post on the social messaging app Telegram.