1) Mathilde Boussion (Johannesburg correspondent), “Lavrov visits South Africa: Pretoria defends military drills with Russia, China; South African authorities recently confirmed joint military drills with…
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The “rational actor model” assumes that the unitary mind making the calculations has access to all relevant information.
However, organizational behavior and bureaucratic politics may affect the information available to a given leader, such as Vladimir Putin. These in turn may be affected by a leader’s personal emotions and prejudices, and his choice of close advisers upon whose advice–and information–he relies.
Even operating under these constraints, his own decisions–as opposed to the actual behavior of his government–may be the product of a rational calculation of costs and benefits as he understands them.
But what if, perhaps under the stress of an international crisis or of war, he has gone absolutely mad? Bonkers?
Horrors the contemporary Western mind can hardly grasp
Unless Putin is stopped, the world may be on the brink of witnessing the devastation of near all-out war on a scale and with an intensity not seen since World War II. This could start in Ukraine, to be sure, but would entail an enormous risk of escalation to nuclear conflict.
This is a horror that the Western mind, insulated from such terrors since 1945 (aided and abetted by an aversion to looking at what was going on in Syria in the civil war which began in 2011) can hardly grasp. It doesn’t want to grasp this possibility.
Nonetheless the prospect of such horror is absolutely clear, and seems to be bearing down on Kviv and Kharkhov with ineluctable force.
Yet there is an even greater terror, which the Western mind, at a subconscious level, seeks with even greater determination not to see. That is the possibility of nuclear conflict, and even escalation to nuclear war–or World War III, as the Russians warn in seeking to deter any U.S. or NATO military involvement in Ukraine.
Our minds cannot grasp it, just as they could not conceive of the evil in Hitler’s Germany that would lead to the death of six million Jews.
How can Putin be stopped?
…5) NATO countries conduct missile or drone strikes on or bomb Russian columns approaching Kviv, and prepare for escalation by Putin.
According to latest reports based on private satellite photos, a 60 kilometer-long (36 mile-long) column of vehicles, armor, and men is currently advancing toward Kviv.
They would make excellent targets.
At some point, as Russia kills tens of thousands of people under the umbrella of Putin’s nuclear threats, NATO countries may have to take military action in Ukraine, As Emmanuel Macron has reminded Putin, NATO has nuclear weapons too.
In conclusion, there are two things the Biden administration can do immediately to influence Russia, and Russian public opinion. First, now would be a great time for Biden to hold a ceremony celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations with China, perhaps with Henry Kissinger participating, and to issue an invitation to Xi Jinping to hold a summit with him in Washington, D.C., perhaps at Camp David.
It is time to put aside the emotional approach to China, to focus on furthering U.S. interests, and to take the initiative in trying to improve personal and diplomatic relations.
It is also time to resume Russian-language short-wave broadcasts to Russia.
Biden should order that these actions be taken at the earliest possible moment.
The challenge is to try to leap out of bureaucratic and government time, and to try to move as fast in war time as Russian tanks are moving in Kviv and Ukraine.
Draft – Developing This is a draft of an article on fast-breaking events related to Ukraine. Please check back for updates and additions, “We are…
Negotiations within the Minsk process are not likely to make progress so long as Putin remains totally intransigent. His mobilization of an invading force of 190,000 troops suggests that that could be a long time.
The great risk in any meeting between Biden and Putin, or in negotiations to avoid an invasion, is that the U.S. and NATO, and/or Macron and Olaf Scholz, could pressure Zelensky to make concessions in the Minsk negotiations which in the end will amount to a surrender, or that a secret deal could be made behind his back that effectively blocks Ukraine from ever becoming a NATO member.
Such concessions would amount to rewarding Putin for his aggression.
As the Munich Pact in 1938 demonstrated, rewarding aggression through a policy of appeasement may bring “peace in our time”, but that time is likely to be short.
Following the Munich Pact on September 30/October 1, 1938, Hitler invaded “rump” Czechoslovakia in March, 1939, and Poland on September 1, 1939. Indeed, Hitler’s threats against Poland and Germany’s false-flag and propaganda operations in late August 1939, accompanied by frenetic diplomatic activity, greatly resemble Russia’s threats and false-flag operations against Ukraine today.
Final thoughts
As Radek Sikorski, a former foreign minister of Poland, said on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS program this morning, “Putin doesn’t want security guarantees. He wants Ukraine.”
Another quote from Sunday’s TV programs is worth bearing in mind. Retired. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, former Vice-president Mike Pence’s National Security Adviser, reminded his audience on Fox News, “Putin doesn’t bluff.”
Yang Yi, who video-entered his speech, said, “Sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of every country should be protected and respected. This is one of the basic norms of international relations.” Ukraine is no exception here, he stressed.
This statement is not surprising in its content. It underlines the fact that China has traditionally supported basic norms of international law and the U.N. Charter in principle. It disputes it is in violation of international law despite the 2016 arbitration decision under the of the Sea Convention holding that its claims have no basis in international law, and make the argument that Taiwan is part of China/ It disputes the findings of humann rights violations in Xinjiang province. The important thing is that it supports the basic norms of the U.N> Charter, in principle, as this statement makes clear.
One of the regrettable things about Blinken’s intervention at the Security Council meeting on February 17 was that he failed to make the strong legal case against Russia that was available to be made, and which could be useful in persuading other countries, especially China, to support the basic principles of the U.N. Charter and international law which Putin is violating.
The United States and other law-abiding nations in the coalition opposing Russian aggression should be lobbying China very hard to state its position even more loudly, and to intervene with Putin to persuade him to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis and withdraw his troops from regions bordering Ukraine.
This may be one of the last things the allied coalition can do to dissuade Putin from launching an invasion of Ukraine. Other steps, which we have urged before, include announcing that Russia will be expelled from the SWIFT international payments system if it invades Ukraine, and announcements by NATO and other countries that if Putin invades Ukraine, they will view the situation as it evolves, and will take all appropriate measures in response, including the use of force if deemed necessary.
Finally, the U.S. and the EU should begin imposing graduated sanctions now, for Putin’s violation of the U.N. Charter prohibition against the threat of using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, including Ukraine.
There is no sign that the Biden administration has decided to launch a serious international legal critique of Russia’s mobilization of troops near the Ukranian…
It turns out that the analysis of the former Director of MI-6 and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists were on to something, when they laid out in great detail the facts pointing to the likelihood of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology being the source of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has now cost over 800,000 lives in the United States alone.
Dr. Alina Chan of Harvard and MIT:
“I think the lab origin is more likely than not. Right now it’s not safe for people who know about the origin of the pandemic to come forward. But we live in an era where there is so much information being stored that it will eventually come out.”
Dr. Chan is the co-author of a book on the subject with Viscount Ridly. Lord Ridly on the dangerous nature of the experiments:
“We know now that experiments were being done at biosecurity level 2 (similar to a dentist’s office) that resulted in 10,000 times increases in infectivity of viruses and three or four times their lethality. The important thing is to stop doing these experiments that are risky.”
See Jacques Follorou((avec Benjamin Barthe), “Les talibans cherchent à briser leur isolement diplomatique; La Russie organise une conférence internationale le 20 octobre à Moscou censée…
The Democrats refuse to prosecute Donald Trump. Moreover, they enforce a conspiracy of silence under which not even the question of whether Trump should be prosecuted can be discussed, or even raised.
Meanwhile, Trump, who appears to have committed numerous felonies in full public view, is left free to hold rallies and breathe air into a growing fascist movement led by the Republican party and his supporters
President Joe Biden continues to stumble, to blow the opportunities his and the Democrats’ narrow victories in 2020 have afforded him.
Neither Biden nor the Democratic leaders seem to understand that fascist threat.
The country faces a fascist challenge supported by 35-40 million voters living in a propaganda universe, an alternate universe where facts and the truth do not hold sway, plus perhaps another 20 million cynical fellow travelers.
Nowhere are their leaders with the courage to stand up and defend our democracy by taking bold actions, such as indicting Trump.
The latest blow-up with the French over the nuclear submarine deal the U.S. cut with Australia behind their backs is just the latest foreign policy…
Yet however emotionally appealing Noonan’s prescriptions may be, to follow them would be to court disaster on an extraordinary scale. Any attempt to force open corridors by the use of military force would produce open armed conflict between the Taliban and the U.S. forces, which were sent to Afghanistan on an evacuation mission. American soldiers would be killed.
The Taliban occupy the entire city of Kabul, and the rest of the country. Who knows how many people would die if the U.S. tried to force the issue with military force.
Anyone entertaining such ideas should immediately watch the classic movie, Black Hawk Down (2001) which realistically depicts what happened in 1993 when American forces attempted to extract a relatively small number of soldiers from a firefight in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Why are F-16’s overflying Kabul?
