U.S. policy misfires in dealing with Russia

We misunderstood him

Since we're facing a possible Armageddon event flowing from the Ukraine war in the coming months, this topic is timely. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a detailed analysis of US-Russia relations dating back to the start of the cold war. That is when mistakes started to be made. The analysis includes these observations and arguments:

Getting Russia right—assessing its capabilities and intentions, the long-term drivers of its policy and threat perceptions, as well as its accomplishments—is essential because the alternative of misreading them is a recipe for wasted resources, distorted national priorities, and increased risk of confrontation.

A critical examination of U.S. policy misfires in dealing with Russia and its intentions and capabilities over the past several decades is long overdue. Three factors largely account for this problem. All of them continue to affect contemporary policymakers’ approach to a deeply troubled relationship with Moscow. By unpacking the analytical assumptions that underlie these misconceptions, President Joe Biden’s administration and other important policy players will be better equipped to ensure that U.S. policy going forward is grounded in the most realistic understanding of the challenge that Russia poses and the right kinds of tools that the United States should use to contend with it.

The first factor is the lingering euphoria of the post–Cold War period. For many Western observers, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the implosion of Russian power demonstrated the permanent superiority of the United States. The perception that Russia’s decline was so deep and irreversible that it would no longer be able to resist Western initiatives made it difficult to accept Moscow’s pushback against Western policies. This was a particular problem when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) pursued several rounds of enlargement in the 1990s and early 2000s under U.S. leadership. U.S. leaders ignored Russia’s objections and underestimated the lengths to which Russian counterparts were prepared to go to secure the homeland against perceived threats.

Second, American policymakers and experts have long paid too little attention to the drivers of Russia’s external behavior. Russian threat perceptions are part of an inheritance heavily shaped by geography and a history of troubled relations with other major European powers. They are compounded by the trauma of the loss of its empire, the lingering ideology of greatness, and a sense of entitlement based on its sacrifice in World War II. President Vladimir Putin stokes all of them for domestic political gain.

Third, U.S. policymakers have not fully internalized the lessons of the two biggest crises of the Cold War—the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the Euromissile crisis of the early 1980s. In both cases, the Soviet Union went to great lengths to counter what its leaders perceived was a unilateral U.S. threat to the Soviet homeland that could not be tolerated. In 1962 they almost triggered a nuclear war. In 1987, they agreed to eliminate an entire class of intermediate-range nuclear weapons to secure the homeland from U.S. missiles. In both situations, U.S. missiles deployed in Europe would deny the Kremlin the advantage of strategic depth and decision time in a crisis. The lessons of those crises were ignored as anachronisms when NATO embarked on its eastward expansion on the assumption that it would no longer need to worry about, let alone maintain the necessary capabilities for the territorial defense mission. After all, Russia was permanently weakened. When Russia proved otherwise, the alliance was caught by surprise.

In another surprise for the United States and its allies, Russian foreign policy has become increasingly assertive, adversarial, and ambitious over the past decade. In the post-Soviet space, the Middle East, Latin America, and parts of Africa, Russia has deployed a diverse tool kit rich in hard, soft, and gray zone power instruments to assert itself as a global power. Russian foreign policy agility and even daring have repeatedly caught the West by surprise and sparked fears of its return as a major threat to Western interests. In reality, Russian gains and tools used to accomplish Moscow’s objectives have not been all that impressive. But Russia has made up for it by capitalizing on mistakes made by the United States and its allies or moving into power vacuums left by them.

The continued tendency to dismiss Russia as a “has been” or declining power whose bark will always be worse than its bite can lead to the United States overextending itself, making unrealistic commitments, and risking a dangerous escalation with the one country that is still its nuclear peer competitor. The push to expand NATO without taking into account the possibility of Russia reemerging as a major military power was an example of such thinking, which is to be avoided in the future.

At the same time, the scope and scale of the threat that Russia’s global activism poses to U.S. interests will depend largely on how Washington defines those interests in regions where Russia has expanded its footprint over the past decade. Absent a sober assessment of Russia’s gains and tools for power projection, the United States will position itself to needlessly chase after the specter of Russian expansionism in distant corners of the world where major U.S. interests are not at stake. 

This paper makes four central arguments: 

• First, in proceeding with NATO enlargement in the 1990s and early 2000s under U.S. leadership, the alliance ignored key lessons of the Cold War and the long-term drivers of Russian policy—namely, threat perceptions and the lengths to which its leaders were prepared to go to secure the homeland. 

• Second, outside Europe, which is the principal theater of East-West confrontation, Russia’s gains have been considerably less significant than commonly portrayed. 

• Third, while Russia’s global activism is a challenge to U.S. interests, the scale of that challenge is determined largely by how narrowly or expansively the United States defines its interests in those regions where Russia has expanded its footprint over the past decade. 

• Fourth, for the foreseeable future Russia will remain a top tier challenge on the national security agenda of the United States and must be dealt with by the president and his most senior national security officials.

Misconstruing Russian motivations and capabilities is especially dangerous when the “correlation of forces” on the ground favors Russia rather than the United States. The U.S.-led effort to extend NATO membership invitations to Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 did not take into account either the strength of Russia’s opposition to this or its capabilities for preventing the two countries from joining the alliance. The result has been a situation in which the United States has overpromised and demonstrated its inability to deliver on the pledge for well over a decade.

It is an open question as to whether the Biden administration is up to the job of competence in dealing with Russia. Just as open are questions of whether it can also deal competently with China, the environment, insane fiscal policy, erosion of the rule of law and other important issues at the same time. 

One of the few things that is fairly certain in politics is this: If Trump had been re-elected, none of those questions would be open, especially questions about the environment, China and the collapse of the rule of law. The US and its interests would be significantly worse off on all of those matters.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to PD for bringing this analysis to my attention.

Hurt feelings and Armageddon

Just a test

Maybe hurt human feelings can cause Armageddon. The Guardian wrote this in 2016:

The current level of hostility in US-Russian relations was caused in part by Washington’s contemptuous treatment of Moscow’s security concerns in the aftermath of the cold war, a former US defense secretary has said.

William Perry, who was defence secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration from 1994 to 1997, emphasised that in the past five years it has been Vladimir Putin’s military interventions in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere that have driven the downward spiral in east-west relations.

But Perry added that during his term in office, cooperation between the two countries’ militaries had improved rapidly just a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union and that these gains were initially squandered more as a result of US than Russian actions.

“In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years I have to say that the United States deserves much of the blame,” Perry said, speaking at a Guardian Live event in London.

“Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when Nato started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that Nato could be a friend rather than an enemy ... but they were very uncomfortable about having Nato right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”

In his memoir, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, Perry writes that he argued for a slower expansion of Nato so as not to alienate Russia during the initial period of post-Soviet courtship and cooperation. Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat, led the opposing argument at the time, and was ultimately supported by the vice-president, Al Gore, who argued “we could manage the problems this would create with Russia”.  

Perry said the decision reflected a contemptuous attitude among US officials towards the troubled former superpower.

“It wasn’t that we listened to their argument and said he don’t agree with that argument,” he said. “Basically the people I was arguing with when I tried to put the Russian point ... the response that I got was really: ‘Who cares what they think? They’re a third-rate power.’ And of course that point of view got across to the Russians as well. That was when we started sliding down that path.”  

The third factor that Perry pointed to in the poisoning of US-Russian relations was Washington DC’s support for pro-democracy demonstrators in the “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics including Georgia and Ukraine. Perry agreed with the ethical reasons for backing such revolutions but noted their severely damaging effect on east-west ties.

“After he came to office, Putin came to believe that the United States had an active and robust program to overthrow his regime,” the former defense secretary said.

“And from that point on a switch went on in Putin’s mind that said: I’m no longer going to work with the west ... I don’t know the facts behind Putin’s belief that we actually had a program to foment revolution in Russia but what counts is he believed it.”

That highlighted paragraph, that is obvious arrogance. IMO, it amounts to professional political malpractice, not just excusable incompetence. Things like this: Perry agreed with the ethical reasons for backing such revolutions but noted their severely damaging effect on east-west ties, are what requires professionalism, experience, intelligence, tact and pragmatism over ideology to deal with. The blunderbuss tactics of American politics have badly failed and betrayed us.

Clearly Gore was wrong. We could not manage the problems we created. As the popular but only mildly effective deflection goes, “mistakes were made.”  

Our two-party system is not working at all now. Arguably it has been a mess for decades. Between arrogant ideological blindness, distrust of government and expertise, gross incompetence and other ridiculous stupefying factors, it seems that we are in a deep hole we helped dig.

Whatever this horror is, it could get most all of us killed fairly soon. One can only hope the odds of that are extremely low. But with all the incompetence, stupid demagoguery and moral rot going on in American politics, the odds might not be aren't low enough for comfort. Now we get to contemplate an unknowable possibility of nuclear Armageddon. 

Acknowledgement: Thanks to PD for pointing this article out.

Maybe a surprise coming to a city near you

As rule of law rots away criminals run free and wild

The New York Times writes:

One of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who investigated Donald J. Trump believed that the former president was “guilty of numerous felony violations” and that it was “a grave failure of justice” not to hold him accountable, according to a copy of his resignation letter.

The prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted his resignation last month after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, abruptly stopped pursuing an indictment of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Pomerantz, 70, a prominent former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer who came out of retirement to work on the Trump investigation, resigned on the same day as Carey R. Dunne, another senior prosecutor leading the inquiry.

Mr. Pomerantz’s Feb. 23 letter, obtained by The New York Times, offers a personal account of his decision to resign and for the first time states explicitly his belief that the office could have convicted the former president. Mr. Bragg’s decision was “contrary to the public interest,” he wrote.  

“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did,” Mr. Pomerantz wrote.

Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne planned to charge Mr. Trump with falsifying business records, specifically his annual financial statements — a felony in New York State.

Mr. Bragg’s decision not to pursue charges then — and the resignations that followed — threw the fate of the long-running investigation into serious doubt. If the prosecutors had secured an indictment of Mr. Trump, it would have been the highest-profile case ever brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and would have made Mr. Trump the first American president to face criminal charges.

One can only wonder what kind of bribe got Bragg to call off the prosecution. Maybe he had  a chat with Merrick Garland and the two of them had a good laugh over people who actually still believed the rule of law for elites, wealthy people and politicians was real instead of mirage.

The moral rot in America's two-party system runs deep. Maybe democracy has finally fallen and all we are left looking at is smoke and mirrors.

Alvin Bragg, what did it take to buy him off?

Republican moral rot: Beyond rancid, into the indescribably ghastly

The demagogue traitor Mo Brooks with the demagogue traitor 

ex-president when times were better between them

Now they're in a snit at each other

The New York Times writes:

Representative Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican who was deeply involved in former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to use Congress to upend the 2020 election and stay in office, claimed on Wednesday that the former president had asked him repeatedly in the months since to illegally “rescind” the election, remove President Biden and force a new special election.

Mr. Brooks made the extraordinary charge as the two onetime allies were engaged in a bitter political feud, and it was not immediately clear how their falling out related to the accusation. But the account from the Alabama congressman, who played a central role in challenging electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6, 2021, suggested that Mr. Trump has continued his efforts to overturn his defeat and be reinstated.

It marked the first time a lawmaker who was involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to invalidate his election defeat has said that Mr. Trump asked for actions that, were they possible, would violate federal law.

His statement came after Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks in the Republican primary for Alabama’s Senate seat, undercutting the congressman’s already slim chances in a crowded intraparty race.

“President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency,” Mr. Brooks said in a statement on Wednesday. “As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that Jan. 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period.”  

In a subsequent text message, Mr. Brooks said Mr. Trump had made the request of him on “multiple occasions” since Sept. 1, 2021. He said the former president did not specify how exactly Congress would reinstall him as president, and Mr. Brooks repeatedly told him it was impossible.

“I told President Trump that ‘rescinding’ the 2020 election was not a legal option. Period,” Mr. Brooks wrote.

The GOP vs. the ex-president

This post is not about what the ex-president did and tried to do.[1] This is about Republican Party moral rot. Deep, thick rot. So deep and thick that probably ~95% of the GOP leadership is no longer able to see it in themselves. Incredible as it may seem, they appear to actually believe they are good guys. 

Here, we have a sitting Republican congressman, himself a liar and an all-around anti-democratic atrocity, who had knowledge of the ex-president's illegal treasonous explicit demands to illegally regain power, allegedly starting in September of 2021[2]. Brooks knew of this but nonetheless said nothing until the ex-president imperiled his own re-election by withdrawing his support. Brooks cared more about his own re-election than he cared about democracy, truth or most anything else. That is hard core moral rot. 

Since Brooks knew of this, it is fair and reasonable to believe that the entire Republican leadership knew of it as well. Arguably, all Republicans in congress knew but kept it to themselves. If they did, they were aiding a corrupt demagogue's attempt to overthrown the government for political purposes. This started September of 2021 and continued until Brooks flew into a snit and spilled the rotten beans. If the GOP leadership was not aware of all of this, then they are grossly incompetent and unfit to hold power. 

The GOP has worked long and hard by words and actions to earn public distrust. Therefore, it is fair and reasonable to believe that Republicans in congress knew about this, but just hid it from the American people for partisan political purposes. The burden of proof is on the GOP to prove it did not know. Since the GOP does not deign to explain or justify itself to the public, such proof will not be forthcoming. Thus, one can reasonably conclude the demagogic Republican leadership and politicians are just as corrupt and treasonous and the party's demagogic, corrupt and treasonous leader.

Or is there a flaw in that reasoning?

Footnote: 

1. By now, the non-deceived who are paying at least some attention know that he was and still is a divisive demagogue, a chronic liar, a criminal (a multiple felon), a pro-Russian traitor, a fornicator (Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, and God only knows who else), a cruel despot wannabe, and some other ghastly things, e.g., an unindicted co-conspirator (UNINDICTED, Merrick Garland, are you listening, you worthless jackass?). That is old news and minds are not going to change.

2. Who knows? Maybe Trump had been making such requests starting shortly after the 2020 election. With America's morally rotted, neo-fascist Republican Party, it's a significant possibility. Most of those people are chronic liars.