Bret Stephens goes counter intuitive.
What if Putin Didn’t Miscalculate?
By BRET STEPHENS
The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin catastrophically miscalculated.
He thought Russian-speaking Ukrainians would welcome his troops. They didn’t. He thought he’d swiftly depose Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. He hasn’t. He thought he’d divide NATO. He’s united it. He thought he had sanction-proofed his economy. He’s wrecked it. He thought the Chinese would help him out. They’re hedging their bets. He thought his modernized military would make mincemeat of Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainians are making mincemeat of his, at least on some fronts.
Putin’s miscalculations raise questions about his strategic judgment and mental state. Who, if anyone, is advising him? Has he lost contact with reality? Is he physically unwell? Mentally? Condoleezza Rice warns: “He’s not in control of his emotions. Something is wrong.” Russia’s sieges of Mariupol and Kharkiv — two heavily Russian-speaking cities that Putin claims to be “liberating” from Ukrainian oppression — resemble what the Nazis did to Warsaw, and what Putin himself did to Grozny.
Several analysts have compared Putin to a cornered rat, more dangerous now that he’s no longer in control of events. They want to give him a safe way out of the predicament he allegedly created for himself. Hence the almost universal scorn poured on Joe Biden for saying in Poland, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
The conventional wisdom is entirely plausible. It has the benefit of vindicating the West’s strategy of supporting Ukraine defensively. And it tends toward the conclusion that the best outcome is one in which Putin finds some face-saving exit: additional Ukrainian territory, a Ukrainian pledge of neutrality, a lifting of some of the sanctions.
But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again?
The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence from The Times’s Carlotta Gall of her experience covering Russia’s siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade, stunning Moscow. The Russians regrouped and wiped out Grozny from afar, using artillery and air power.
Russia’s operating from the same playbook today. When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean. Since when has Putin ever played clean?
“There is a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens,” Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any further dissent with arrests and filtration camps and by turning and empowering local protégés and collaborators.”
Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s).
Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.
“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors.
If this analysis is right, then Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be.
It also makes sense of his strategy of targeting civilians. More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons.
Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes. Many in the professional middle class — the people most sympathetic to dissidents like Aleksei Navalny — have gone into self-imposed exile. The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good. To the extent that Russia’s military has embarrassed itself, it is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below. Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions.
This alternative analysis of Putin’s performance could be wrong. Then again, in war, politics and life, it’s always wiser to treat your adversary as a canny fox, not a crazy fool.
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Should payment be interpreted as criminal commission?
Trump: Fines Paid by Clinton Campaign, DNC Show Corruption
By Zachary Stieber
The fines paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) show corruption, former President Donald Trump says.
Clinton’s campaign and the DNC agreed to pay a combined $113,000 to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to documents made public on March 30, after the commission found probable cause that the entities violated federal law by describing payments that ultimately went to the Fusion GPS research group as going toward legal services and consulting.
Fusion used the funds, funneled through the Perkins Coie law firm, to pay for the compilation of a dossier riddled with unsubstantiated claims that Trump and his campaign had ties to Russian actors ahead of the 2016 election.
Clinton was the Democrat nominee in the election while Trump, the Republican nominee, won the presidency.
The operation “was done to create … a hoax funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign,” Trump said. “This corruption is only beginning to be revealed, is un-American, and must never be allowed to happen again.”
“Where do I go to get my reputation back?” he added.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC have not responded to requests for comment.
According to conciliation agreements the parties entered into with the FEC, they did not admit to misreporting the expenditures that funded the dossier’s creation. But they agreed to, in the future, abide by federal law that mandates reporting and accurately describing the purpose of disbursements of more than $200 per year.
Additionally, the election commission may, on the request of anyone filing a complaint, review compliance with the agreements. If the commission comes to believe the agreement has been violated, it can trigger a civil action in federal court.
Trump recently filed a federal suit against Clinton, the DNC, and others who helped create and disseminate the dossier, such as former government employee Bruce Ohr and Glenn Simpson, an ex-Wall Street Journal reporter who co-founded Fusion.
Dan Backer, an attorney who lodged the complaint with the election commission against the Clinton campaign and the DNC, told The Epoch Times that it’s the first time Clinton “has actually been held accountable for misconduct,” calling the fines “a great step for accountability.”
The amount of the fines was tied to the amount of money disbursed through Perkins Coie, or just over $1 million.
Federal law prohibits making false statements to the government, with violators facing up to five years in prison, but there are no signs at this time that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing charges, though the DOJ has charged a lawyer who represented Clinton’s campaign.
“What they did was very straightforward—they wanted to pay somebody to do some bad stuff, and they didn’t want anybody knowing that they were doing it and so, rather than disclose the payment as they’re required to do under the law, they hid it and reported it as something else,” Backer said. “That is a violation of federal law. And the DOJ is regularly prosecuting individuals and organizations for this exact act. But for the Democrats, the rules are different.”
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Doug Schoen is a rational Democrat who was involved in President Clinton's campaigns:
Biden says Ukraine is a battle for the free world — which is why he shouldn’t sign an Iran deal
By Douglas Schoen and Andrew Stein
Douglas Schoen is founder and partner in Schoen Cooperman Research, a polling and consulting firm whose past clients include President Bill Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Andrew Stein is a former New York City Council president.President Joe Biden President Joe Biden cannot enable Iran to build up nuclear arms and threaten democracies. Piotr Molecki/East News/Polaris
In a powerful speech Saturday in Poland, President Joe Biden framed the war in Ukraine as a once-in-a-generation battle for democracy, liberty and the fate of the free world.
That’s exactly why he mustn’t re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, which would be disastrous in every possible way for the cause of world peace and stability.
Biden said the fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin and “the darkness that drives autocracy” won’t be easy but must be waged “for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere.”
His tone was spot on. This conflict is much bigger than Russia versus Ukraine, which is one battle in the broader global war between democracy and autocracy.
Since the war began, the United States and Europe have imposed necessarily harsh sanctions on Russia and supplied Ukraine with billions of dollars in aid and advanced weapons. The time has come to tighten the noose on the Kremlin even further. A Russian win would set the West back in our mission to ensure the endurance of democracy globally.
But a renewed nuclear deal would sabotage Western interests, too, allowing two rogue powers to work together against America, with Russia leveraging Iran for relief from Western-imposed sanctions in exchange for Russia helping Iran do the same.
It simply strains credulity for the United States to impose debilitating sanctions against Putin vis-à-vis Ukraine while also entering a deal with Russia and another undemocratic state — Iran — that includes porous sanctions, provides these two countries with billions of dollars and creates a framework allowing Iran to become a nuclear power, thus further jeopardizing the free world.
The original 2015 deal — which gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program — was fatally flawed. It amounted to a win for Iran and its allies and a major setback for America and the West. And now, amid unprecedented levels of international instability, it’s clear that a 2022 deal would be even worse and have catastrophic consequences.
The original deal famously involved a large cash payment to Iran. Given the current closeness of Iran and Russia, the United States cannot in any shape, manner or form provide economic incentives to Iran when its principal partner is facing sanctions for a brutal invasion.
The 2015 agreement was filled with holes. It failed to address Iran’s ballistic missile program, which allowed Tehran to unrestrictedly build and test deadly weapons.
And it was next to impossible for the United States to know the full details of the Iranian nuclear program and whether Tehran was abiding by the accord’s guidelines. Instead of forcing Iran to stop developing nuclear weapons, the deal merely compelled Tehran to become more covert.
The deal’s sunset clauses were also problematic. Even if Iran were to again abide by the deal, the provisions have already started to expire and will end completely after 2030 — after which the Iranians are free to revitalize their nuclear program on a potentially even larger scale.
The problems don’t end there. The reinstated deal would fund terrorism in the Middle East and further destabilize the region. Its sanctions relief would provide the rogue state with tens of billions of dollars — some of which Tehran will funnel to Bashar al-Assad’s murderous Syrian regime and terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
To that end, the deal also imperils Israel, America’s closest Middle Eastern ally, in a way that threatens the security of the Jewish state and of Jews worldwide.
Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, remains in Iran’s nuclear crosshairs. A new deal would not only legitimize Iran’s nuclear ambitions — curtailing Israel’s ability to make important decisions with regard to its own national security — but would also give terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas a nuclear umbrella under which they would be free to wage war on Israel.
Ultimately, the Biden administration’s desperate and misguided effort to reinstate the deal hands Russia, Iran and other rogue states a win and directly endangers America and the West. It must change course.
If the United States stands for regime change in Russia — as Biden indicated in his speech on Saturday and a follow-up with reporters days later — we should certainly advocate a similar policy for Iran, where the mullahs lack popular support, the economy is in free fall and protests have been frequent over the past few years.
Take a page from your Poland speech, Mr. President. Call out, don’t aid, Russia and Iran if you want to promote the cause of freedom and enhance the chances of democracy’s emergence everywhere possible.
Douglas Schoen is founder and partner in Schoen Cooperman Research, a polling and consulting firm whose past clients include President Bill Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Andrew Stein is a former New York City Council president.
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Finally:
Biden has chosen to use oil as a political weapon since his domestic energy policies have driven oil prices to historic levels. He is releasing 1 million BBLS each day for 6 months in the hope it will bring prices down before to mid-term elections. In other words Biden has chosen to use his seed corn for political reasons and to hell with America's security.
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The Democrat Boomerang. Sometimes you can overplay your hand.
Biden administration will soon reinterpret Title IX to strike down Fairness in Women's Sports laws
Biden administration will soon reinterpret Title IX to strike down Fairn...
President Joe Biden's administration will soon take action to overhaul federal civil rights laws and enact a new...
So now, while Title IX was written to give women equal opportunity with men in their sports now they can't complain about the men who "decide" they are women and want to compete in women's college sports.
Note to Women's Lib Organization hypocrites who haven't made a peep about this destruction of women's college, if you want to fix this disaster your better vote Republican -- or you could just stop talking about "Women's Liberation"!
p.s. have you noticed that it's mainly men "deciding" that they are really "women" instead of the other way around.
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Are We Dumb About Intelligence?
Amy Zegart On The Capabilities Of American Intel Gathering
interview with Amy Zegart via Uncommon Knowledge
Amy Zegart is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a professor of political science at Stanford University, and the author of a new book, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence. In this frank conversation, Zegart grades American intelligence-gathering operations, recent and historical, and compares them to their counterparts in China and Russia. Professor Zegart also discusses Silicon Valley’s crucial role in these operations and how they often conflict with the politics of the people running tech companies. Finally, Zegart discusses the crucial ability of the intelligence community to recruit the next generation of spies and analysts, some of whom may be her own students.
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