War in Europe. It has begun.
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Unseen,
I do agree that people shouldn’t target work-a-day Russians for the acts of global gangster Putin. Ukrainian Russians are among the bravest fighters for Ukraine and Russian Russians are protesting Putin’s invasion as well. Rather than blocking movies to Russia, streaming services should be flooding Russia with anti-Communist, anti-Nazi, anti-tyranny movies and programs.
Specifically Russian/Cold War ones include: We The Living, The Defection of Simas Kudirka, Sakharov, Moscow on the Hudson, White Nights, Eleni, The Rambo/First Blood Series, G.I. Joe, An American Tail, An American Tail: Feivel Goes West, and many others!
And include movies on business and entrepreneurship. Looney Tunes and John Sutherland cartoons can be very informative on Economics and Free-Market Capitalism! Hell, U.S. Citizens could use those too!
Putin doesn’t give a shit about reinventing the Soviet Union, creating a stable Russian empire or anything whatsoever to do with the long term anything of Russia. If he did he would have made life tolerable and prosperous for Russians and have made wiser foreign policy decisions with other nations. He is ensuring his own interests and those who help keep him in power (oligarchs as the media calls it). At least he believes this invasion (by whatever calculations and plan he has [which we cannot possibly know all the details] in hopes it will work out) will help him maintain it. In reality: he (and the elite) have amassed obscene wealth, they beat down their own people one fewer human right and one less piece of dignity at a time to achieve this, they mess with the development of petty neighbouring countries to perpetuate a state of military conflict, distractions and struggles and bring instability, insecurity and uncertainty everywhere they look to keep doing the nonsense they do while lying about virtually everything to the world and to Russians. There is no real ideological plan. Those are all excuses, narratives, babble. They are just maintaining what they have (and getting as much out of it as they can).
If there is one thing anyone has said so far that rings true it is Reg who is right that Putin will dig deep and continue. Putin has no choice. Can he stop this war and hold onto power? If he were to lose power would they even let him flee to wherever he thinks he might go and be safe and is there a place he could safely go for long? Will be become more and more reckless in trying to achieve his/their goals? I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets uglier and uglier, but then we cannot be sure. At this point things do for the first time seem unstable and a mutiny or revolt isn’t out of the realm of possibility. We cannot predict much. We lack too much information.
We do not know his plan and those who say they do are full of it. We don’t know their calculations and how they believe this invasion will achieve it, though we do know their calculations have worked until now and they have been fairly careful. We cannot put it all on a mentally instable Putin as the elites wouldn’t allow him to pull them down with him for long. We hardly have the full picture. We can just hope it resolves in the least destructive way possible for all parties.
When Vladimir Putin escalates his war, the world must meet him
Marvel at the heroism and resilience of Ukraine. In the first days of war, the armoured might of Vladimir Putin shrivelled before the courage of the nation he had attacked. In the face of Mr Putin’s invasion, the Ukrainian people have discovered they are ready to die for the idea that they should choose their own destiny. To a cynical dictator that must be incomprehensible. To the rest of humanity it is an inspiration.
If only this week’s bravery were enough to bring the fighting to an end. Alas, Russia’s president will not withdraw so easily. From the start, Mr Putin has made clear that this is a war of escalation—a hygienic word for a dirty and potentially catastrophic reality. At its most brutal, escalation means that, whatever the world does, Mr Putin threatens to be more violent and more destructive even, he growls, if that means resorting to a nuclear weapon. And so he insists that the world back off while he sharpens his knife and sets about his slaughter.
Such a retreat must not happen. Not only because to abandon Ukraine to its fate would be wrong, but also because Mr Putin will not stop there. Escalation is a narcotic. If Mr Putin prevails today, his next fix will be in Georgia, Moldova or the Baltic states. He will not stop until he is stopped.
Escalation is at the heart of this war because it is how Mr Putin tries to turn defeat into victory. The first wave of his invasion proved as rotten as the cabal who planned it—just like his earlier efforts to suborn Ukraine. Mr Putin seems to have believed his own propaganda that the territory he has invaded is not a real country. The initial assault, which led with botched helicopter strikes and raids by lightly armed units, was conceived for an adversary that would implode. Instead, Ukrainian spirits have flourished under fire. The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been transformed into a war leader who embodies his people’s courage and defiance.
The optimism of the warmonger made Mr Putin lazy. He was so sure Ukraine would fall rapidly that he did not prepare his people for it. Some troops have been told they are on exercises, or that they will be welcomed as liberators. Citizens are not ready for a fratricidal conflict with their fellow Slavs. Having been assured that there would be no war, much of the elite feels humiliated. They are horrified at Mr Putin’s recklessness.
And Russia’s president believed that the decadent West would always accommodate him. In fact, Ukraine’s example has inspired marches through the capital cities of Europe. Western governments, having listened, have imposed severe sanctions. Germany, which only a week ago drew the line at sending anything more lethal than helmets, is dispatching anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, overturning decades of policy based on taming Russia by engaging with it.
Faced with these reverses, Mr Putin is escalating. In Ukraine he is moving to besiege the main cities and calling up his heavy armour to wantonly kill their civilian inhabitants—a war crime. At home he is bringing Russians to heel by redoubling his lies and subjecting his people to the harshest state terror since Stalin. To the West he is issuing threats of nuclear war.
The world must stand up to him, and to be credible it must demonstrate that it is willing to bleed his regime of the resources that enable him to wage war and abuse his own people even if that imposes costs on Western economies. The sanctions devised after Mr Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 were riddled with loopholes and compromises. Instead of being deterred, the Kremlin concluded that it could act with impunity. By contrast, the latest sanctions, imposed on February 28th, have crumpled the rouble and promise to cripple Russia’s financial system. They are effective because they are destructive.
The danger of escalation is that this can easily become a test of who is most willing and able to go to extremes. Recent wars have been asymmetric. Al-Qaeda and Islamic State would commit any atrocity, but their power was limited. America could destroy the planet, but against foes like the Taliban in Afghanistan, nobody imagined it was willing. The invasion of Ukraine is different, because Mr Putin can charge all the way to Armageddon and he wants the world to believe he is ready to do so.
The idea of Mr Putin using a battlefield nuclear weapon is surely unlikely, but not impossible. He has, after all, just invaded his neighbour. And so the world must deter him.
Some will say there is no point in saving Ukraine only to trigger a spiral that may destroy civilisation. But that is a false choice. Mr Putin says he wants to drive nato out of the former Warsaw Pact countries and America out of Europe. If escalation serves him, the next confrontation will be even more dangerous because he will be less ready to believe that, for once, the West will stand its ground.
Others may conclude that Mr Putin is insane and deterrence is hopeless. True, his goals are abhorrent, as are his means of achieving them. Neither does he have Russia’s true interests at heart. But he nonetheless has an understanding of power and how to keep it. No doubt he is alive to the language of threats.
By contrast, still others will want to short-circuit escalation, saying that Mr Putin must be stopped before it is too late. As images of suffering emerge from the ruins of Ukraine’s cities, calls are going up for nato to do something, such as to create a no-fly zone. However, enforcing one requires shooting down Russian aircraft and destroying Russian air-defences. Instead, nato needs to preserve a clear line between attacking Russia and backing Ukraine, while leaving no doubt that it will defend its members. That is the best brake on escalation.
What, then, can it do to deter Mr Putin without courting devastation? Only Mr Zelensky and his people can decide how long to fight. But if Mr Putin causes a bloodbath, the West can tighten the screws. An oil-and-gas embargo would further ruin Russia’s economy. Ukraine’s backers can send more and better arms. nato can deploy more troops in its frontline states.
Diplomacy matters, too. At peace talks in Belarus this week Russia still made outrageous demands, but negotiations should continue because they could help avert a war of attrition. The European Union has done well to open its arms to Ukrainian refugees, who already exceed 1m. A haven can strengthen the hand of the Ukrainian negotiators, as would a path to eu membership. China and India have so far refused to condemn Mr Putin. As he escalates, they may be sufficiently alarmed to be willing to try to talk him down.
And there is work to do in Russia. Military commanders should know they will be prosecuted for war crimes using the evidence generated by innumerable smartphones. So should Mr Putin’s entourage. His enforcers signed up to line their pockets in a kleptocracy, not for a ticket to The Hague. The West can discreetly assure them that, if they remove Russia’s president from power, Russia will get a fresh start. However nauseating, the West should give Mr Putin a route into retirement and obscurity—just as it should give asylum to those fleeing his terror.
A palace coup may come to seem more plausible as the horror of what Mr Putin has done sinks in. The economy faces disaster. Russian military casualties are growing. Russians’ Ukrainian kin are being massacred in a conflict unleashed to satisfy one man. Even now brave Russians are taking to the streets to protest against a crime that stains their country. In a deep sense, Mr Putin’s needless war is one that neither he nor Russia can win.
Jake,
So how do you think an international movement against Authoritarians would work if we do as you propose and have the Ukrainians surrender to Putin?
Let me tell you something: There have been many movements against Authoritarians throughout human history:
The 300 Spartans at Thermopolae against The Persian Empire’s attempt to impose conquest and enslavement against them!
The Jews on top of Masada against the Roman Legions demanding the Jews to bow to idols such as those of Antiochus!
William Wallace and The Picts of Scotland standing against King Edward Longshanks!
The Peasants’ War in Germany–where the supposed bad-ass rebel against The Papacy Martin Luther stood against the peasants and with the established order!
The Levellers in the English Civil War, who coined the phrase: “Life, Liberty, and Property!”
And then there was that outfit everybody forgets called The Founding Fathers who also upheld these ideals against the mightest Empire in the World at their time, with less than a third of the Colonies activle on their side and only a fraction of those doing the actual fighting!
And then there’s all the movements inspired to extend the ideals of “L8fe, Liberty, and Property” to all!
The Abolitionists who fought against “the excreable commerce where men and women are bought and sold” with everything from pamphlets and newspapers, refusal of a Walden Pond man to pay taxes for a slavery-extending war, “puttin’ on Ol’ Massah” by slowing and stalling work, an “Underground Railroad” that smuggled escaped slaves to freedom, even cases of suicide to avoid slavery, wrong-headed cases of infanticide to keep children from being enslaved, and armed uprisings against the whip-wielders, culminating in a Civil War that cost 600,000 U.S. lives on all sides!
The Women’s Movement to get an entire gender to have Equal Rights and Justice in everything from marriage to careers to government positions to voting!
The movement started by LGBTQ+ at The Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village of New York City, where people who were shunned and abused by their homes and peers for how they love, criminalized by law for how they love, harrasseed by police for where they met, got tired of all the bullshit and decided to be abused, criminalized, bullied, and pushed no more!
And it the fight goes on and on in every nation in the world to this day!
And the one thing all these had in common was that surrender was and is not an option!
Just strike that from your “To-Do” list entirely!
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