Yurii Gorodnichenko: Day of Infamy: ‘February 24, 2022 is the day of infamy too: Russia attacked Ukraine, bombed Ukrainian cities, killed innocent Ukrainians on the Ukrainian soil. It can’t be clearer: Russia is the aggressor; Ukraine is the victim. Ukraine has only one threat to Putin: Ukraine can be a free and successful country and thus give hope to Russians to become one day a free, successful country too. As I said before, this is the war with far reaching consequences for the global order, for the free world, and for the security for each of us no matter where we are.
It is a test for all of us.
Will the United Nations follow the fate of the League of Nations that helplessly observed the world spiraling into World War II? Or will it rise to the occasion and protect peace?
Will the free world provide help to Ukraine to fight the aggressor? Or will it be like the “phoney war” after Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland in 1939?
Will the free world realize that this war will not stop in Ukraine? Or will it be like Sudeten in Czechoslovakia?
Will the free world understand that by trading with the aggressor they fund war and death? Or will it run the business as usual until the war comes to its every doorstep?
Will the free world reject spheres of influence and insist on self-determination of nations? Or will it end up in another Yalta agreement with countries condemned to repression and misery?
I don’t know answers to these questions. Poland, Finland, Baltics, or any other historically disputed territory or country could the next targets of insane ambitions. Or maybe not. A new arms race could exhaust the “peace dividend” after the end of the Cold War. Or maybe not.
But I know one thing. It’s a choice. And we are making this choice now.…
Doug Dylan: Transistor Radio: ‘A bi-monthly podcast where we have a short Chip Chat about Transistors! Semiconductors are one of the most fundamental technologies of our time, yet are often under-discussed or misunderstood. We want to chat about them. Come learn…
Edward Luce: ’In 2017 I wrote “The Retreat of Western Liberalism”. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is ultimate test of whether democracy is capable of taking tough decisions, or whether our monied elites are too invested in global kleptocracy for our systems to hit back. We’ll find out soon enough…
Robert Gordon: Is the Great Stagnation Finally Coming to an End?: ‘The benchmark… 1920–70… growth rate of labor productivity… 2.9 percent per year…. With the exception of a nine-year period between 1995 and 2004, the growth rate of labor productivity has slowed to 1.3 percent per year during… 1970 and 2019… a profound slowdown…. The pre–1970 half century… the “Great Inventions”… electricity… the internal combustion engine…. In contrast computer-related ICT investment was a pale shadow, boosting productivity growth back temporarily to pre–1970 rates only for nine years…. The process of innovation has encountered diminishing returns….The number of robots in manufacturing doubled over the past decade, but productivity growth in manufacturing was actually zero between 2010 and 2019…
Ed Kilgore: Rick Scott GOP Agenda Shows Why McConnell Doesn’t Want One: ‘McConnell declined to offer any details about what Republicans would do in the event they recaptured both chambers of Congress…. “ I’ll let you know when we take it back.”… Rick Scott of Florida… “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” shows exactly why McConnell doesn’t like such exercises in hypotheticals. It is, to use a technical term, batshit crazy…. He wants to impose a 12-year limit on all federal employment…. IRS… 50 percent cut in funding and workforce… new minimum income tax Scott wants to impose on the majority of Americans…
Carrie A Lee: ’Today’s emergency assurance session with the oligarchs… it doesn’t seem like they were prepared for the degree of hurt currently being inflicted…. We don’t know what the decision-making structure inside the Kremlin is like…. Who is feeding Putin information and are they able to make honest recommendations?… The head of the industrialists’ lobby group tells Putin to avoid wrecking the Russian economy further in responding to Western sanctions; Putin responds describing today’s invasion as a “necessary measure”…
Glenn Reynolds (2012): With Liberty and Taxes for All: ‘The Obama administration’s political approach: Vote for us because we’ll take other people’s money from them and use it to buy you stuff. Whether it’s Sandra Fluke’s contraceptives, Obama’s “spread the wealth” response to Joe The Plumber, his 1998 plan to make welfare recipients a majority coalition or the free phone in the viral “Obamaphone” video, that’s the gist of it. And it obviously works…
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Tom Nichols: ’Russian troops are probably not very happy about fighting against Ukrainians, but they will be more than happy to fight against Americans and their allies if we wade into this. Sending NATO into Ukraine could be the greatest gift we would ever give Putin. It would rally Russia, prove him right, and lead to a nuclear crisis. This is horrifying and tragic, but this is no time to go ape and plunge into world war. I am increasingly convinced that D.J. Rothkopf is right that this could be the end of the Putin regime, but not overnight. The Russians have become embroiled in a war against their brothers and sisters; making this a war with NATO would be a deadly mistake…
It would certainly reassure us that handwringing, and attempting to find some way to very cheaply impose costs on oligarchs, is the right thing to do. But does the road to freedom and independence for Ukraine run through changing the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of Muscovy, and convincing them that they should be ashamed of attempting to impose a complaisant dictator on Ukraine? This is far outside my wheelhouse, and I am conscious of how truly pathetic this from the New York Times is:
David Leheny: ’Interested in a conversation between four analysts who have between them zero years of life in or study of Russia or Ukraine? Here you go. Thanks, Times! <https://t.co/JNvi7cdrhs>: “Four Times Opinion Writers Analyze Russia’s Invasion: ‘The World Has Changed Overnight’ Feb. 24, 2022, 5:35 p.m. ET… Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Farah Stockman, Ross Douthat and Frank Bruni”…
"So whose informed view on all of this should I borrow?"
Bret Devereaux's, of course. Devereaux points out (https://acoup.blog/2022/02/25/miscellanea-understanding-the-war-in-ukraine/) that direct intervention by NATO is a very very very bad idea because of the high risk of a mistaken apprehension by Russia of a nuclear attack and consequently a nuclear response.
On the other hand, NATO can absolutely crush Russia economically if it has the will to suffer the temporary economic disruption that will be caused by being deprived of Russian hydrocarbons. And given that this deprivation is Putin's logical escalation, it is deeply stupid not to get ahead of the game and seize the moral high ground. It's not like we're going to have to make the same sacrifices that Ukrainians are making.
It seems pretty clear that unless perhaps Putin starts on mass murders in the streets, neither NATO nor the EU is going to directly engage in Ukraine. And as long as there are still Ukrainians willing to fight with weapons shipped through Romania and Poland, why would they? And if there aren’t any left, why would NATO get involved? So his point is moot anyway.
I agree with Nichols at least on this: the best hope is that Ukraine holds out long enough that the Russian conscripts notice that they don’t seem to be in the midst of a hated Nazi dictatorship but rather among Russian-speaking Orthodox Slavs who are very pissed off with them.
I haven’t seen any analysis that anyone with a NYT subscription and a swift scan through Twitter and Reddit couldn’t come up with themselves: this was somewhat half-assed, Russia will still probably prevail, bloodily, and nobody can say whether and for how long there will be an insurgency, or how it will work out for Putin. It is a very strange decision, for sure.
"So whose informed view on all of this should I borrow?"
Bret Devereaux's, of course. Devereaux points out (https://acoup.blog/2022/02/25/miscellanea-understanding-the-war-in-ukraine/) that direct intervention by NATO is a very very very bad idea because of the high risk of a mistaken apprehension by Russia of a nuclear attack and consequently a nuclear response.
On the other hand, NATO can absolutely crush Russia economically if it has the will to suffer the temporary economic disruption that will be caused by being deprived of Russian hydrocarbons. And given that this deprivation is Putin's logical escalation, it is deeply stupid not to get ahead of the game and seize the moral high ground. It's not like we're going to have to make the same sacrifices that Ukrainians are making.
It seems pretty clear that unless perhaps Putin starts on mass murders in the streets, neither NATO nor the EU is going to directly engage in Ukraine. And as long as there are still Ukrainians willing to fight with weapons shipped through Romania and Poland, why would they? And if there aren’t any left, why would NATO get involved? So his point is moot anyway.
I agree with Nichols at least on this: the best hope is that Ukraine holds out long enough that the Russian conscripts notice that they don’t seem to be in the midst of a hated Nazi dictatorship but rather among Russian-speaking Orthodox Slavs who are very pissed off with them.
I haven’t seen any analysis that anyone with a NYT subscription and a swift scan through Twitter and Reddit couldn’t come up with themselves: this was somewhat half-assed, Russia will still probably prevail, bloodily, and nobody can say whether and for how long there will be an insurgency, or how it will work out for Putin. It is a very strange decision, for sure.