Tag Archives: Sanctions against Russia

How Might This War End?

Posted on by under Global Issues, History, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Thomas Friedman is a political commentator and author whose work I have shared before. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues.  In his latest editorial for the New York Times, Friedman details three possible outcomes for the war in Ukraine and I find his assessment thoughtful, and also tragic.  This is a bit longer than my usual post, but I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read …

I See Three Scenarios for How This War Ends

By Thomas L. Friedman, Opinion Columnist

March 1, 2022

The battle for Ukraine unfolding before our eyes has the potential to be the most transformational event in Europe since World War II and the most dangerous confrontation for the world since the Cuban missile crisis. I see three possible scenarios for how this story ends. I call them “the full-blown disaster,” “the dirty compromise” and “salvation.”

The disaster scenario is now underway: Unless Vladimir Putin has a change of heart or can be deterred by the West, he appears willing to kill as many people as necessary and destroy as much of Ukraine’s infrastructure as necessary to erase Ukraine as a free independent state and culture and wipe out its leadership. This scenario could lead to war crimes the scale of which has not been seen in Europe since the Nazis — crimes that would make Vladimir Putin, his cronies and Russia as a country all global pariahs.

The wired, globalized world has never had to deal with a leader accused of this level of war crimes whose country has a landmass spanning 11 time zones, is one of the world’s largest oil and gas providers and possesses the biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads of any nation.

Every day that Putin refuses to stop we get closer to the gates of hell. With each TikTok video and cellphone shot showing Putin’s brutality, it will be harder and harder for the world to look away. But to intervene risks igniting the first war in the heart of Europe involving nuclear weapons. And to let Putin reduce Kyiv to rubble, with thousands of dead — the way he conquered Aleppo and Grozny — would allow him to create a European Afghanistan, spilling out refugees and chaos.

Putin doesn’t have the ability to install a puppet leader in Ukraine and just leave him there: A puppet would face a permanent insurrection. So, Russia needs to permanently station tens of thousands of troops in Ukraine to control it — and Ukrainians will be shooting at them every day. It is terrifying how little Putin has thought about how his war ends.

I wish Putin was just motivated by a desire to keep Ukraine out of NATO; his appetite has grown far beyond that. Putin is in the grip of magical thinking: As Fiona Hill, one of America’s premier Russia experts, said in an interview published on Monday by Politico, he believes that there is something called “Russky Mir,” or a “Russian World”; that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”; and that it is his mission to engineer “regathering all the Russian-speakers in different places that belonged at some point to the Russian tsardom.”

To realize that vision, Putin believes that it is his right and duty to challenge what Hill calls “a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force.” And if the U.S. and its allies attempt to get in Putin’s way — or try to humiliate him the way they did Russia at the end of the Cold War — he is signaling that he is ready to out-crazy us. Or, as Putin warned the other day before putting his nuclear force on high alert, anyone who gets in his way should be ready to face “consequences they have never seen” before. Add to all this the mounting reports questioning Putin’s state of mind and you have a terrifying cocktail.

The second scenario is that somehow the Ukrainian military and people are able to hold out long enough against the Russian blitzkrieg, and that the economic sanctions start deeply wounding Putin’s economy, so that both sides feel compelled to accept a dirty compromise. Its rough contours would be that in return for a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops, Ukraine’s eastern enclaves now under de facto Russian control would be formally ceded to Russia, while Ukraine would explicitly vow never to join NATO. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies would agree to lift all recently imposed economic sanctions on Russia.

This scenario remains unlikely because it would require Putin to basically admit that he was unable to achieve his vision of reabsorbing Ukraine into the Russian motherland, after paying a huge price in terms of his economy and the deaths of Russian soldiers. Moreover, Ukraine would have to formally cede part of its territory and accept that it was going to be a permanent no man’s land between Russia and the rest of Europe — though it would at least maintain its nominal independence. It would also require everyone to ignore the lesson already learned that Putin can’t be trusted to leave Ukraine alone.

Finally, the least likely scenario but the one that could have the best outcome is that the Russian people demonstrate as much bravery and commitment to their own freedom as the Ukrainian people have shown to theirs, and deliver salvation by ousting Putin from office.

Many Russians must be starting to worry that as long as Putin is their present and future leader, they have no future. Thousands are taking to the streets to protest Putin’s insane war. They’re doing this at the risk of their own safety. And though too soon to tell, their pushback does make you wonder if the so-called fear barrier is being broken, and if a mass movement could eventually end Putin’s reign.

Even for Russians staying quiet, life is suddenly being disrupted in ways small and large. As my colleague Mark Landler put it: “In Switzerland, the Lucerne music festival canceled two symphony concerts featuring a Russian maestro. In Australia, the national swim team said it would boycott a world championship meet in Russia. At the Magic Mountain Ski Area in Vermont, a bartender poured bottles of Stolichnaya vodka down the drain. From culture to commerce, sports to travel, the world is shunning Russia in myriad ways to protest President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.”

And then there is the new “Putin tax” that every Russian will have to pay indefinitely for the pleasure of having him as their president. I am talking about the effects of the mounting sanctions being imposed on Russia by the civilized world. On Monday, the Russian central bank had to keep the Russian stock market closed to prevent a panicked meltdown and was forced to raise its benchmark interest rate in one day to 20 percent from 9.5 percent to encourage people to hold rubles. Even then the ruble nose-dived by about 30 percent against the dollar — it’s now worth less than 1 U.S. cent.

For all of these reasons I have to hope that at this very moment there are some very senior Russian intelligence and military officials, close to Putin, who are meeting in some closet in the Kremlin and saying out loud what they all must be thinking: Either Putin has lost a step as a strategist during his isolation in the pandemic or he is in deep denial over how badly he has miscalculated the strength of Ukrainians, America, its allies and global civil society at large.

If Putin goes ahead and levels Ukraine’s biggest cities and its capital, Kyiv, he and all of his cronies will never again see the London and New York apartments they bought with all their stolen riches. There will be no more Davos and no more St. Moritz. Instead, they will all be locked in a big prison called Russia — with the freedom to travel only to Syria, Crimea, Belarus, North Korea and China, maybe. Their kids will be thrown out of private boarding schools from Switzerland to Oxford.

Either they collaborate to oust Putin or they will all share his isolation cell. The same for the larger Russian public. I realize that this last scenario is the most unlikely of them all, but it is the one that holds the most promise of achieving the dream that we dreamed when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 — a Europe whole and free, from the British Isles to the Urals.

The President’s Is Saying That His Recent Hard Line Stance Against Russia Was A Fluke

Posted on by under Political commentary

Friend Gronda has once again done an excellent job bringing us up-to-date on the latest about U.S.-Russian relations, sanctions, etc. Sub-title should be “Putin and his favourite puppet, li’l Donnie”. Please take a moment to read. Thank you, Gronda, for all your hard work on this one. Excellent post.

Gronda Morin

Image result for photos of trump nikki haley NIKKI HALEY

Remember when the republican President Donald Trump recently took what looked like a real stance against Russian oligarchs. I was pleasantly surprised that he had finally taken a tough position for the first time against the country that attacked our US democracy on numerous fronts having to do with our election infrastructure in 2016. In addition this was supposed the send Russia a message that the US was backing our ally Great Britain where two Russian expats were poisoned by Russian agents on UK’s territory.

Then very recently, I was beside myself with joy when the US Ambassador for the United Nations Nikki Haley had announced that the US was poised to enact additional sanctions against Russia that would be announced by the US Treasurer Steven Mnuchin on the 16th of April 2018.

Image result for photos of nikki haley and larry kudlow NIKKI HALEY

I did openly wonder about how this momentous event had happened as I…

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Sanctions: Too Little, Too Late?

Posted on by under Global Issues, Political commentary

For several months, most of 2016, in fact, there has been mounting evidence that Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election in ways designed to ensure the election of Donald Trump.  Not just one, but 17 U.S. intelligence agencies1 have confirmed that there is evidence linking Russia’s government to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The F.B.I. first informed the DNC that it saw evidence that the committee’s email systems had been hacked in the fall of 2015.

President Obama ordered a full investigation into the Russian hacking earlier this month, a move that many believe should have been made much earlier in the year.  Why did President Obama wait to confront the issue head-on?  Part of the reason was fear of sparking a wider cyber-conflict and an attempt to save talks with Russia over Syria.  But the bigger reason may have been that he did not want to give Donald Trump reason to cry foul following what most were certain would be a Hillary Clinton victory. All of which are valid reasons, and make good sense, politically.  However, it may have been a mistake to wait.

Today, President Obama announced multiple sanctions against the Russian government in light of a joint report compiled by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.  The full 13-page report can be seen here.

The new measures include sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies, three companies that are believed to have provided support for government cyber operations, and four Russian cyber officials2. The administration will also shut down Russian-owned facilities in Maryland and New York that were used for intelligence activities, and would declare 35 Russian operatives “persona non grata,” who have been given 72 hours to leave the United States. Additionally, a senior administration official told reporters those actions are not the lone ones Washington implemented, signaling covert retaliation, as well.

Donald Trump has dismissed the evidence sight unseen, saying, “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on.”  (grammar lessons???)  Today, however, after the announcement that the U.S. will impose sanctions, he altered his stance, but only slightly.  Now he has agreed to meet with intelligence officials next week “to be updated on the facts”. In a brief written statement, Trump said, “It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”  It is almost as if he’s saying, “I think it’s silly, but okay, I’ll play the game.”  The irony, of course, is that there is little doubt that Trump was aware of the Russian interference months ago.

The question becomes will Trump simply remove the sanctions after he takes office?  Technically, he can reverse the sanctions with a stroke of a pen, but doing so would bring his first disagreement with Congress.  Most Democrats and several key Republicans fully support the sanctions that were imposed. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell summed it up quite well: “The Russians are not our friends. Sanctions against the Russian intelligence services are a good initial step, however late in coming. As the next Congress reviews Russian actions against networks associated with the U.S. election, we must also work to ensure that any attack against the United States is met with an overwhelming response.” Then again, if he allows the sanctions to stand, he is breaking one of his campaign promises to engage in ‘warmer’ relations with Russia.  It sounds to me that Trump will be between a rock and a hard place on day #1!  A bed of his own making, so to speak.

Predictably, the Russian government responded to new sanctions from the US with a vaguely threatening statement condemning the move as “one last blow” to US relations with Russia. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in the statement, “Frankly speaking, we are tired of lies about Russian hackers that continue to be spread in the United States from the very top. We can only add that if Washington takes new hostile steps, it will receive an answer.”  After i finnished writing this post and was editing it, the news came across my screen that Russia just announced the closure of the American School of Moscow, and the U.S. Embassy vacation dacha in Serebryany Bor on the outskirts of Moscow, in retaliation for the sanctions.

In related news, two journalists, Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro, have filed a lawsuit against the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking records pertaining to Russia’s interference in the presidential election. They claim that the agencies have failed to comply with their request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Both Shapiro and Leopold are known as leading freedom of information activists and have brought countless such cases in the past.  What are the odds that they will win their request?  It is too early to tell, but it is almost certain that much of the information they would like will remain classified and therefore not subject to FOIA requests. There are three exclusions to the FOIA, and the third one, limited to the FBI, protects the existence of foreign intelligence or counterintelligence, or international terrorism records when the existence of such records is classified.

I applaud the efforts of President Obama in placing these additional sanctions on Russia.  My fear, however, is that it is a matter of too little, too late, to have any real effect.  At this point, the most that can be said is that it has certainly put Trump in a difficult position, but as usual, Trump will do whatever he wishes, and I would not be surprised to see him thumb his nose at Congress by lifting the sanctions within a few days of taking office.  Time will tell.

 

1 The 17 agencies are: Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency, Energy Department, Homeland Security Department, State Department, Treasury Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Marine Corps Intelligence, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, Navy Intelligence and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

2 The four Russian intelligence officials: Igor Valentinovich Korobov, the current chief of a military intelligence agency, the G.R.U., and three deputies: Sergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov, the deputy chief of the G.R.U.; Igor Olegovich Kostyukov, a first deputy chief, and Vladimir Stepanovich Alekseyev, also a first deputy chief of the G.R.U.