Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Russia and Eastern Europe Page 6 of 17

Russia Turns Up the Pressure (and Turns Off the Gas) on Germany and the EU

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On July 18, 2022

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Well, well…

Russia’s Gazprom has told customers in Europe it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of “extraordinary” circumstances, according to a letter seen by Reuters, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the west over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Dated 14 July, the letter from the Russian state gas monopoly said it was declaring force majeure on supplies, starting from 14 June.

Known as an “act of God” clause, a force majeure clause is standard in business contracts and spells out extreme circumstances that excuse a party from their legal obligations.

So, Europe and Germany get gas in exchange for rubles. But Russia can’t spend those rubles for most of what it needs from the West.

The question is, does Europe, especially Germany, need gas more than Russia needs rubles and an increased exchange rate (not always a good thing)?

Everyone has been concentrating on the winter and assuming Germany didn’t need much gas until then, but a great deal of Germany’s electrical grid is supplied by natural gas plants, and as you may have heard, there’s a heat wave in Europe and most of the rest of the world.

So much for air-conditioning. And if much of Germany’s industry will have to shut down as well.

Germany can lose a huge chunk of its industrial base if this continues. The whole “keep buying gas from Russia until we can transition off of it” idea was always dubious, because other gas is much more expensive, but it also rested on the idea that Russia was desperate to keep selling; that there was a symmetry of needs.

But Russia will suffer a lot less without sales than Europe will without gas, and in any case, a shutoff will likely increase the price of gas they are selling elsewhere, making up some of the losses.

The fact is that Germany, an industrial state without a lot of resources, and Russia, a resource state, are natural economic allies, but Germany needs Russia more than Russia needs Germany.

The companies who have been given notice that of force majeure are saying they don’t accept it, but what are they going to do?

The grace period for payments on two of Gazprom’s international bonds expires on 19 July, and if foreign creditors are not paid by then the company will technically be in default.

This is a non-threat threat, because Russia has already defaulted on loans, as it is largely shut out from the Western banking system and thus can’t even transfer the money. (As happened to Argentina.) More defaults theoretically mean that Russia will be unable to access Western loans and so on, but they already can’t, and they have access to the Chinese banking system, which is larger than any Western country’s and perfectly capable of keeping Russia and Russian companies afloat.

Understand clearly that most Germans and Europeans support the anti-Russia sanctions. This is a popularly backed policy: Europeans are paralyzed by fear of Russia and were long before Ukraine. I had a friend in Austria tell me how he scared he was of Putin back in 2016.

We will, however, see what the result of this is. I would guess that in the short-term, it will stiffen opposition to Russia, but I’m less sure about the medium- and long-term. German elites, especially, will feel a need to end the Ukraine war and get back to a steady Russian supply.

No matter what, however, it highlights the price Europe is paying for its anti-Russia stance.

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Ukraine KIA 500-1,000 a Day

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On June 16, 2022

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And that’s what Ukraine is willing to admit to.

Up to 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are being killed or wounded each day in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, with 200 to 500 killed on average and many more wounded, a top Ukrainian official said on Wednesday.

In the initial attack, Russia took heavy casualties. They didn’t expect the Ukrainians to really fight, don’t seem to have taken into account the amount of fortifications built in the East since 2014 and were very sparing with artillery and air power. Since then, however, they have engaged in grinding attrition warfare. They have air superiority, more missiles, and far more artillery. They also have far more reserves, and their supply lines aren’t interdicted by hostile air forces, so they easily rotate units in and out of the front.

The result of this is that Ukraine is now taking much higher casualties than Russia and will have a higher killed/injured ratio as well. If they’re willing to admit up to 1K a day, I’m betting it’s at least double that.

Russia is advancing slowly, but they are taking ground, and they seem in no rush. Once they conquer Donbas and Luhansk, the question is whether their primary pivot is to Odessa or to Kharkiv. (I’d say taking Odessa does more harm to Ukraine, as Russia could then easily close off Ukraine’s entire coast, but Russia may want Kharkiv more.)

The other thing to bear in mind is that once Donbas and Luhansk are conquered, most of the rest of Ukraine is not nearly as heavily fortified, except in the sense that all cities are natural fortifications, and that Ukraine is essentially a flat open plain. Advances may speed up a fair bit, though the post Cold-war Russian army (as with most armies) isn’t really suited to breakthroughs and blitzkrieg warfare, as like other modern armies it is organized around brigades which don’t really have the mass and men necessary.

As I have long noted, barring an economic/logistical collapse which seems extremely unlikely, there was never any way that Russia was going to lose the conventional stage of any war with Ukraine. They have a far larger military, and it’s not, actually, crap.

The decision of when to stop the Ukraine war is Putin’s. If he is seen to lose the war, he will lose power and almost certainly wind up dead along with his family, so he won’t end the war until he has a victory, and, as he controls the more powerful military force, he can choose to win.

The longer Ukraine puts off making peace, the worse the terms are likely to be.

As for a guerilla war, my guess is that Russia will take parts that are primarily Russian, and anyone who is pro-Ukraine will be encouraged or forced to leave. Nasty ethnic cleansing, but it is one of the ways you break insurgencies. (They may not even have to do very much, though, considering how many have fled the war. Just don’t let them come back if they aren’t pro-Russian.)

The longer-term consequences are harder to forsee beyond the obvious stuff like Russia now being a junior Chinese ally and Europe now being a much firmer US satrapy. There’ll be a famine, there’s going to be a recession (caused as much by the political and central bank response as the war and sanctions), and so on. Europe won’t recognize whatever Russia takes, and there’ll be a festering sore, probably for decades.

But, bottom line, Russia is winning and will keep winning. The only thing that could change that would be direct entry by NATO, and that would probably lead to nuclear war.

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Who Wins and Loses Because of the Ukraine War?

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On May 16, 2022

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I’m basing this on current trends and what I see as the most likely outcome.

Russia will take about 30% to 40% of Ukraine: the East and the coast along the Black Sea, areas that are generally Russian ethnic or speaking. While they were pushed back from Kharkiv, I think they’ll take the Oblast by the end of the war. Basically, see where Russians are the majority and that’s the land that Russia will feel it can keep and not fight an endless guerilla war.

They make have to take more land than that to force a peace on terms they can stand, but they won’t want to keep it because everyone knows the West is trying to draw them into a long term guerilla war. (Such a war could be won in Ukraine because of the terrain, but doing so would require a lot of killing, deportatons and camps and many years. It’s not worth it for Russia.)

The Russians original goals will not be met, and Finland and Sweden will joint NATO (although they were already quite integrated), so in one sense it can be said that Russia has “lost”. In certain other senses it can be said to win.

But let’s look at the major players, one by one.

Ukraine: the big loser. Unless this war goes far different than I expect (possible and I’ll admit it if it does) they’re going to come out of it a smaller country with no coast, who has lost their industrial heartland and even if the gas is turned back on, they will lose most of the transit fees in a couple years max as the EU transitions away. They will find that the “rebuilding” they were promised is IMF style neoliberalism and the average person will wind up worse off.

Verdict: Disastrous Loss.

The EU: In the win column, the EU should have built up a larger military long ago and will now do so. They will be more unified, at least initially, feeling they have all supported a war and with fear of Russia acting as unifying glue.

In the lost column they have firmly moved into the US satrapy column. In order to move out they would have to create their own army that is not dependent on US built military equipment and that’s the opposite of what they’re doing. (Foolish, because the US is losing its ability to build either ships or combat planes. The F-35 was a boondogle, Boeing has lost its engineering chops, and they recently decided to decommission built ships because they are so bad.)

The increase in price of fuel (US gas is about 50% more expensive than Russian), commodities and food as well as the general inflation shock from the Ukraine war will lead to a poorer Europe. Spending more money on the military will make ordinary people feel worse off and so will inflation. Industry will be badly damaged by increased fuel and mineral prices. All of this will lead to increased political instability and is likely to help the fascist right and possible the more radical left (if the left ever gets its act together.)

Joining the US in such huge sanctions and seizing Russia’s reserves (“frozen”) means that they are choosing to join the US side of the new cold war world rather than being a third pole, and this will eventually limit their trade options, as they, like the US, cannot be trusted with money.

The EU is, overall, likely to come out of this war poorer, more isolated and with increased political instability, but with a much larger military and feeling more unified at the elite and country to country level (at least until and if political instability changes that.)

Veridict: Slight Loss.

The US: The US has gotten Europe firmly back as a satrapy. NATO expands, the Europeans will spend more more on US military goods and buy expensive US gas and oil. The possibility of Europe becoming independent and forming a third pole in the upcoming cold war between the US and China is now minimal, and essentially zero for at least a decade or two.

On the negative side, Russia is now firmly in the Chinese sphere. Because the US’s strategy in the case of a war with China would be to strangle China with a military enforced trade embargo, this is a big problem. Russia can supply China with massive amounts of food, fuel and commodities, making the “choke them out” strategy against China unlikely to succeed. Likewise a friendly Russia means China has a relatively secure flank to the Northwest. There are even signs of Chinese-Indian rapprochement, and though I’ll believe it when I see it, India not joining against China would be a huge boon to China.

Since China is the “real” threat, not Russia, the one country that can replace the US as the world’s most powerful nation, strengthening China’s position is a loss.

The US also will suffer due to inflation from knock on effects of the Ukraine war, and that will cause increased domestic instability. Elites continue to funnel massive money to the domestic security apparatus (police of various varieties, spies who target US residents), however, and elites feel fairly secure, though I think they’re wrong as they’re funneling resources to police who stand a good chance of joining a right wing uprising.

The final major effect for the US is that freezing Russian reserves and encouraging the massive level of sanctions, is seen by most of the world as evidence it’s not safe to keep money in the US lead banking system, or even to trade with them. This has accelerated de-dollarization and I suspect will be seen as the precipitating event of losing reserve status for the American dollar. The world will split into two financial blocs, one centered around China-Russia, the other around the US-EU. The US receives huge benefits from reserve status and from being at the center of the world financial system, and as with Britain after WWI, it will suffer mightily when it loses this position.

My evaluation is that what the US will likely gain from the Ukraine war is less than it has or will lose: dollar hegemony and being the financial center of the world are a big deal, and confirming Russia as a junior Chinese ally makes their main geopolitical rival far stronger.

Verdict: Loss

Russia: Russia has weathered the initial economic storm well, but most EU countries will move off Russian gas and oil. Some of that gas and oil cannot be brought to market anywhere else for a few years (probably 3) until new pipelines are built and while there are customers, they will pay less than the Europeans did.

Sanctions will not cripple Russia, but there are goods like advanced semiconductors and, more importantly, some tech needed for gas and oil extraction, that they will be cut off from. China cannot immediately replace those oil and gas related goods, and they are at least ten years behind in semiconductors (and themselves cut off from some key capital equipment they can’t yet build). That said the oil and gas tech is probably within quicker reach, and Russia doesn’t need the most advanced semiconductors in large quantities so far as I know.

In most economic terms Russia will be OK: they have a big food surplus; they have more than enough fuel, of course, and they can buy almost everything they don’t make from China, who is not going to cut them off; indeed, rather the reverse. India is also rushing to cut deals with Russian businesses. Sanctions will force more import substitution and help overcome the “resource curse”, making it cost-effective to make more things in Russia (if they aren’t overwhelmed by cheap Chinese goods.)

Sanctions will not cripple Russia the way they have many other countries, though they will be felt. Nor will they cause a revolution and if there is a coup it will be because Putin is old now and may be ill with Parkinsons or something else.

In territorial terms Russia likely to wind up larger. They get the industrial part of Ukraine and the coast, they can send water to Crimea (which has been cut off from years, and whose agriculture was devastated as a result) and while many will say they didn’t win the war, etc… people who want to stand up to them will not be keen on “winning and losing 30% of our country.” If that’s victory, it looks pretty bad.

A unified Europe with more countries in NATO and a bigger military is a loss for Russia, and one can expect that NATO will move more missiles and ABMS close to the Russian border, including hypersonic missiles as soon as they have them. In that sense the war is a clear loss: Russia wanted those weapons removed from near its border, and there will probably be even more of them.

In the end Russia will be able to credibly claim it won the war as a war: it took territory and kept it and it’s hard to say that a country which took its enemy’s territory lost a war. That said, there will be a case that it is a Pyrrhic victory, in that there is an economic hit, NATO has expanded, Europe will have a bigger military and so on.

The counter-case is simple: Ukraine was talking about getting nukes and had started shelling Donetsk in what looked like a prelude to invasion. Russia didn’t get its maximal goals, but it did gut Ukraine as a threat and did secure Ukrainian land in what is likely to be a semi-permanent fashion absent an all out NATO/Russia war.

The maximal goals didn’t happen, but in a bad situation Russia may reasonably claim it got quite a bit. As for sanctions, every year there had been more of them, none had ever been rescinded and all the war did was move them up.

Verdict: Marginal victory.

China: Yes, strictly speaking China isn’t involved in the war, but the war affects China greatly. China needs about 10 years to get to a reasonable parity with the US in semiconductors and aviation, the golden technologies of US hegemonic rule. The Ukraine war has made it clear they probably have less time than that, and that the world economic order is likely to split sooner because China is stuck between US demands to support sanctions and its own strategic needs, which require Russia as an ally, or at least a reliable supplier. Russia being decisively defeated or economically crushed would be catastrophic for China, so they must keep it alive and viable.

Still, all in all having Russia unable to sell to or buy from the West is unbelievably good for China: there is no alternative for Russia. If they can’t go to the West they must go to China. India may be willing to trade, but India’s economy is tiny compared to China’s and its industry scarce. China can make almost everything Russia needs and everything it can’t make it’s working on learning how to make. And, as previously discussed, Russia as an ally makes it impossible for the US to choke China out in a war.

Verdict: Victory

Concluding Remarks: Of course all of this based on a model of how they war will go which may not be the case. Perhaps the maximalists in the West are right, and the Russian military is fundamentally incompetent, can’t do logistics to a disastrous degree, and is on the verge of collapse. If you think Russia can’t even win the conventional war, all of this is is nonsense because a definite loss is likely to lead to regime change and possibly even collapse.

Likewise if you think that sanctions will have much more effect than I do, or that China will not integrate with Russia economically, then this is all wrong.

But overall, this war looks like a case where Russia gets a marginal victory; the US and the EU get some wins but their victories are effectively Pyrrhic, and China is the big winner.

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The Possible Dire Consequences of NATO & Ukrainian Escalation

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On April 28, 2022

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So, UK foreign secretary Trus has said that the war in Ukraine must continue until Russia is forced out of Ukraine entirely, including Crimea.

Meanwhile, the UK is shipping weapons to Ukraine that are capable of striking Russian cities.

As a moral matter, of course, the Ukraine has the right to strike Russia, same as so many countries have the right to assassinate American leaders and bomb American weddings in which “high value targets” might be involved.

But let’s consider the state of the war. Putin calls it a special military operation. Reserves have not been called up, and a great deal of care is being taken in the use of force. Unlike in Iraq, Russia has not taken out power, sewage, water systems, most roads, or rail. It has not unleashed level bombers for massive bombing of Ukrainian cities.

Russia has also not called up its reserves. Putin appears to think that would be unpopular. Russia has millions of men in its reserves. It could call up two million men and not exhaust them. They’re not the best troops, but they would swamp Ukraine.

Now, if Ukraine hits Russian cities, however fair that is, what will happen to Russian public and elite opinion? Imagine Iraq somehow managed to hit New York and cause real damage in the 2000s (if you want a scenario: perhaps they could have smuggled bombs into the harbor on cargo ships).

How would Americans have reacted?

That’s how Russians will react. Add in some atrocity propaganda (and there are plenty of videos of Ukrainian soldiers doing horrible things, they aren’t saints) and Putin will easily have all the backing he needs to go to total non-nuclear war. In fact, even if he doesn’t want to escalate, it would be difficult to avoid.

This would mean, as a start, bombing every road and rail crossing leaving the Ukraine that Russia or Belarus doesn’t control, so more weapons can’t get into Ukraine. It would likely mean removing all power and water from western Ukrainian cities and forcing most of the remaining population in those areas to flee: 20+ million people. And it would mean taking major cities, which Russia will have the manpower to do.

Further, the idea that any Russian government would ever give up Crimea is insanity (that Russia would fight a war to keep Sevastopol is why I was able, in 2008, to predict the next war would be over Crimea).

This idea that NATO has that it can safely fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, without any chance of war-spillover is insane. Likewise, China CANNOT afford to let Russia be broken up. If it is, then China can almost trivially be blockaded and forced into subjugation. They need Russian oil, gas, coal, minerals, and food and without them they cannot survive a confrontation with the West. It is literally impossible.

What China sees is that the US wants to fight wars where they aren’t at risk. If there’s a war in Asia against China, without using nukes, China has little ability to hit the US mainland, while the US can hit China. Yes, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan (if they’re stupid enough to join in) get devastated, but the US laughs as the damage is done overseas.

I strongly suspect the Chinese now see this as the US plan for them. The US has stated it wants to place hypersonic missiles in the first island chain off China, which includes Taiwan, the same sort of movement of weapons which contributed to Russia’s demands before the Ukraine war (the US is a year or two from hypersonic, but the placement of other missiles and ABM close to Russia has been protested by Russia for years), and recently there has even been talk of putting US troops in Taiwan as a trip wire similar to the one in South Korea.

This means China needs a conventional deterrent; they need missiles that can hit the continental US, and they need to increase their navy to the point where it can fight the US navy in international waters and win. Remember that China’s ship-building capacity is VASTLY larger than that of the US.

The US and UK, both of whom think that Russia and China can’t hurt them, are pushing this war in ways that are very dangerous. This is a bet, in fact, that Russia and Putin are entirely “rational”, despite the rhetoric and won’t risk escalation. But Putin is reputed to have spent hours watching the video of Gaddafi being sodomized by a bayonet before being killed, and the CCP knows that “regime change” is what the US wants for China.

Regime change in China will leave a lot of CCP members, and especially leaders, dead.

This is an existential issue for China and Russia. If they lose to America, their leaders are overthrown. Russia will be dismembered (this is what multiple NATO leaders have said they want), and China will be relegated to permanent 2nd tier status at best. Many of the leaders will die, and many of those will die ugly.

This is understandable for the US. They have a wasting asset: China, given enough time, will inevitably have a larger military, since it has the larger economy, and they are catching up in technology. The US Navy has been shrinking for decades and the US has lost the ability to build ships: they have had to cancel recent designs because on testing, they suck. The US’s ability to build planes is also in doubt: the F-35 was a massive mess and is far too expensive.

Since the US also judges that any escalation short of nuclear won’t hit them, except economically, and will hurt their enemies and their satrapies worse (making Europe weaker economically and stronger militarily is a win for the US), they have a great deal of incentive to escalate as much as possible, and just make sure it doesn’t go nuclear.

This isn’t in anyone else’s interest, but Europe is consumed with fear of Russia, and Western European leaders have accepted the narrative of Eastern Europe and the USA about Russia as a completely rogue power which must be destroyed, because it can never be trusted.

Meanwhile, the US’s ability to control foreign countries outside of Europe is dropping fast. Three of the four Gulf States (creations of the UK and kept in existence by the US) refused to side with NATO in the UN. Saudi Arabia has basically told the US to fuck itself. The Solomon Islands signed a military pact with China which spawned threats from Australia and the US of military action if a base is built because apparently the right to make military alliances and do what you want in your own territory is available only to would be American allies.

India has not gone along with sanctions and Malaysia is wavering.

US hegemony is breaking. Western hegemony is breaking. As alarmed and scared as Chinese and Russian elites are, American and Western elites are furious: absolutely livid that anyone dare challenge them, or that the days of their hegemony may soon be over. Right now, calculating that the costs of wars to stay in charge will not primarily be born by them, they are willing to escalate recklessly.

Since passions are up, I note that this is not a moral analysis about who is good or bad. There was certainly moral justification for going to war against the USSR at various points, but we didn’t and we avoided escalating beyond certain levels because we knew that war with them was unthinkable.

War with Russia is still unthinkable. War with China is abominable.

Our time is done. We sold our patrimony to the Chinese from the 90s thru the 10s, so that our elites could break our working class and get richer than if they had to pay 1st world wages and costs. That’s the truth. Our elites thought they were international elites, not national elites, and they were wrong. The Chinese knew they were a national elite, and, in effect, bribed our elites to give away the most important sources of their real power: having the largest industry, and having a huge tech lead.

Our elites gave it all away, for a few trillion dollars, and China paid happily. Our elites now see that their only chance to retain power is to use the waning asset of military supremacy. First they need to take out Russia, then they can choke China out.

This is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. Even if it doesn’t blow into nuclear war, it can easily blow into hot war. American allies in Asia, I would suggest, would be well advised to decouple militarily. This especially goes for Japan: build your own nukes and conventional deterrent and sit this one out. China can’t reach the US mainland yet, but it can reach you.

On top of all of this extraordinarily dangerous nonsense is the opportunity cost: we should be spending trillions on preparing for climate change and ecological collapse, not playing war games. NATO and Russia, over the last 10 years should have been disarming near mutual borders, not rushing troops, missiles and planes to the borders.

We are acting insane, chimpanzees trying to maintain dominance, locally or globally. And we are going to pay for it, even if we avoid nuclear war, with hundreds of millions, probably billions, of unnecessary deaths.

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Poland Refuses To Pay For Russian Gas In Rubles, Russia Cuts Them Off

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On April 27, 2022

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Well, well.

But, so far it looks like Germany will just buy extra (paying in rubles) and ship it to Poland. Me, if I were Putin, I’d refuse to sell Germany more than its usual amount (what is contracted for) and see how long it takes Poland to break. Granted it’s not winter, but so far as I can see Europe can’t switch off Russian natural gas in less than about two years, though perhaps a few countries could (and pay more, since the Russians sell for less than anyone else will.) Natural gas prices (as of this writing) are up about 10% on the news, though it doesn’t mean much.

I remain convinced that sanctions will do far more harm to Europe than to Russia.

Meanwhile, Malaysia has said they will sell Russia semiconductors. They aren’t as good as Taiwanese ones, but they’ll be good enough for now, and China is crashing semiconductor tech anyway, for its own reasons. In a decade, the West and its allies won’t have much of a gap in semis compared to the rest of the world, if any.

Update: seems the news Malaysia would sell semis is probably not correct.

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The Bottom Line On Ukraine As An Example Of Decision Analysis

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On April 26, 2022

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I could write a lot of words on this, but let’s keep it simple.

First: Russia keeps taking land.

Second: Putin has far more reserves he can commit than Ukraine does.

Third: this means that the decision about whether to win or lose is Putin’s.

Which do you think he’ll choose.

Oh, there’s considerations around acceptable costs and a possible guerilla war later, but this it the essence of the invasion.

This is a fairly basic but important style of analysis. Ask yourself:

1) Who makes the decision?

2) Do they have sufficient resources and power to enforce their decision?

3) What do they think the right thing to do is? (This isn’t always about self interest, though it often is.)

4) What decision are they likely to make?

You can add bits to this, like “does anyone have a veto?” but this is the essence of it.

This is why I have said for years that nothing would be done about climate change till too late, because the people who have the power to make the decision don’t think it affects them, and do think that the status quo is good for them, so they aren’t going to do anything.

Most reasonably reliable analysis comes down to simple heuristics like this one. Complicated heuristics for social decision making rarely work.

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Is Putin Conducting a “Stalinist” Purge of Russia’s Intelligence Service?

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On April 12, 2022

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I find this story says more about the West than it does about Russia:

A “Stalinist” mass purge of Russian secret intelligence is under way after more than 100 agents were removed from their jobs and the head of the department responsible for Ukraine was sent to prison.

In a sign of President Putin’s fury over the failures of the invasion, about 150 Federal Security Bureau (FSB) officers have been dismissed, including some who have been arrested.

All of those ousted were employees of the Fifth Service. This a division was created in 1998, when Putin was director of the FSB. It’s purpose was to carry out operations in former Soviet Union countries with the single aim of keeping them within Russia’s orbit.

Now, when Stalin purged the secret police, the party, or military, he purged based on perceived loyalty — as well as to get rid of people who were too popular or powerful, and whom he thus regarded as a threat. It’s generally conceded that Stalin’s military leadership purges were part of why the Red Army was, at first, defeated badly by the Wehrmacht.

Does this describe what Putin is doing?

It’s possible, of course, that these officers tried to tell Putin the truth about Ukrainian ability to resist, and Putin wouldn’t listen. But isn’t it also reasonable to think that, if Russia had expected significantly less resistance from Ukraine’s military than what they actually encountered, it is because that’s what the intelligence service told Putin and the military command? So couldn’t this be Putin getting rid of those secret agents who screwed up, and is, therefore, appropriate? And given that thousands of Russian soldiers have died, in large part due to faulty intelligence, and Russia’s position in the world has been damaged, is it not appropriate for the head of the responsible division to go to prison? (Though, he’s been officially accused of corruption, not incompetence.)

Who was fired because of incompetence in Iraq or Afghanistan? What intelligence agents or generals were let go because they made predictions which did not come true? Would the US be better off if those who kept saying that victory in Afghanistan was just around the corner had been fired or even court-martialed?

The West has such a culture of impunity for elite incompetence that elites think that whenever elites are fired or punished for anything it’s “Stalinist.”

Likewise, during the war, we’ve had reports of a number of Russian general dying in combat. Western commenters were aghast, but shouldn’t generals be close enough to the front lines to be in some danger? Isn’t that, actually, good leadership practice?

Russia has serious problems with how it is run; if Russia doesn’t fix its corruption and demographic issues, I think it will fall out of the “Great Power” category in time. But I also posit that Putin holding important people to account for their failures is a positive sign, not a negative one.

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Putin’s Goals, A Map, For Discussion

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On March 30, 2022

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I didn’t make this map and it isn’t based on what I think. I put it up because reader GrimJim sent it to me and I think it’s well done and a good place to start a conversation.

Putin's Goals by GrimJim

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