What China Wants. How Ukraine War Ends. Stacey Abrams Millionaire.

What China Wants

by Larry Diamond, Glenn Tiffert via American Purpose China desires nothing less than global hegemony. The challenge it poses to the cause of freedom requires a long-term, multifaceted approach.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

How the Ukraine War Will Likely End

By: George Friedman

As we consider how the war in Ukraine will end, we must first understand how it began. Russia invaded for geostrategic reasons – having Ukraine as a buffer state safeguards Moscow from invasion from the west – and for economic reasons, which have often gone overlooked. The transition from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation wasn’t exactly lucrative. It may have increased total wealth, but Russia remains a poor country. Its gross domestic product ranks just behind South Korea's, a respectable placement but hardly where a superpower should be. And in terms of per capita GDP, Russia ranks 85th, nestled between Bulgaria and Malaysia.

Economic statistics rarely tell the whole story, of course, but in Russia’s case they fairly accurately present a country that is poorer than it appears, masked superficially by a top layer of the superrich elite. Life in major cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow is luxurious for the wealthy and bearable for the rest. Life in the countryside is something else entirely.

Individual regimes can’t be solely blamed for Russian poverty. The size of the nation, and the difficulties in areas such as transport associated with its size, makes Russia difficult to govern. From the time of the czars, it has been the state rather than shared economic prosperity that has kept Russia together. Often this has been achieved through the security services, which are tasked with maintaining state power, not with building an economy. It’s little wonder that the country that boasted the Okhrana also produced a president who cut his teeth in the KGB. Rightly or wrongly, Russia’s size and inefficiency tend to demand a strong hand.

This has created an expectation that the state will be strong even if the people are poor. There was pride in the czars and in Stalin – the so-called “man of steel.” But for a ruler to govern Russia, they must demonstrate strength. The intellectuals in Russia speak of democracy and human rights. The people want protection against invaders from without and against impoverishing chaos from within.

Over the years, President Vladimir Putin has made various gestures at improving Russia, but he learned in the KGB that without a strong hand Russia is ungovernable. And he knew that there are two types of strength: The kind that makes other countries tremble, and the kind that keeps homegrown “enemies” in check.

From Belarus to Kazakhstan, Putin has tried, in the only way he sees fit, to rebuild Russia brick by brick. Ukraine is the biggest brick. He believes he had to take it. Russia was becoming restless. Dissidents were being arrested, and foreigners were dismissing it. Strategy and power forced him to act. But the problem was that his instrument of action, the Russian army, was as ineffective as Russia itself. This had not always been the case. As brutal as military service could be, there was a certain pride in it.

The Russian army today seems disorganized, unimaginative and uninspired. The deployment of force, preparation of logistics and command of the battlefields on all levels simply wasn’t there. This was a different sort of Russian army, a bureaucratized one, one more afraid of the czar than of losing to the enemy. Putin demanded a rapid defeat of the enemy. But to rule by strength, you must see clearly and strike decisively at the center of gravity.

Ukraine had no center of gravity, only a widely dispersed light infantry force that provided no single point to destroy. Although that may seem like guerrilla warfare, it is not, and Ukraine surprised its enemy with resilience and unpredictability. The attacker can respond with brutal attacks on the population, but that leaves the Ukrainians with no choice but to fight. The Russian army wasn’t designed for this war, hadn’t planned for this war and has only brutal counter-civilian action to take. And Putin will take it.

The problem, then, is that Putin cannot stop, nor can he reach an agreement with Ukraine that he will keep. Every deal – except for surrender by the enemy – is a revelation of weakness on the part of a weak country and a weak ruler. The only alternatives are ineffective action because the force he sent to war was the wrong force from a country that didn’t have the right one.

He can reach a genuine cease-fire, but if he does, he’s finished. Not being able to defeat the Ukrainians, and held in contempt by others, destroys the myth of his power. Continuing the war endlessly reveals the same thing. As this goes on, Putin’s primary task is to pretend that the defeat is not happening because anything less than victory is a defeat. Every agreement must end in betrayal, and as it happens with guerrillas, they get stronger the longer the war drags out.

A crucial question is whether Russia has strategic reserves. The army has been in the field for over a month, in weather that is still cold, at the end of a logistical line that is problematic. It has been fighting a highly motivated, mobile light infantry force familiar with the terrain. It cannot go on indefinitely. Russia has to rotate its forces. Strategically, it must send more. Instead, it is executing a bloody withdrawal. You don’t fight for the same ground twice unless you have to.

This means that Putin’s war plan is shattered. The resistance has been effective and his troops need a relief he cannot provide. Putin will feint in other directions – perhaps in the Baltics or Moldova – but he lacks the force to fight on another front. He can’t sustain this war easily, especially in the face of NATO soldiers who have so far stayed out of the fray.

Even so, I cannot predict what a leader will do in the end. But for now, it’s clear to me that Putin will cling to power and blame everyone around him. But every day the war goes on, Putin gets weaker. Ukraine should not be able to resist, NATO should not be united, American economic warfare should not be so powerful. Putin is growing more desperate. He has mumbled about nuclear weapons, the sign of utmost desperation. But he knows he and anyone he may love will die in a nuclear exchange. Even if he is prepared to commit suicide rather than capitulate, he knows that the order to launch must go through several hands, and each of those hands knows that the counterstrike will kill their loved ones. Therein lies the weakness of nuclear war: Retaliating is one thing, initiating another. Putin trusts few people, and he doesn’t know how reliable anyone would be in this situation – nor what the Americans might do if they saw preparation for a Russian launch.

If Putin gives up his position, he is compromised, and perhaps lost. The buzzards are circling. So he must continue to fight until he is forced out and someone else not responsible for the disaster takes over and blames it all on Putin. I think that this can’t end until Putin is pulled from the game.

Obviously, I am moving here away from geopolitical analysis into the political. The former tries to minimize individual influence while the latter emphasizes it. That gives my forecast an inevitable imprecision. But given the situation on the ground, and given Russian internal dynamics, it does seem that all the forces coming to bear on Putin dictate a certain direction. The war will end, but the war is evolving in a way that creates unique pressures on the Russian political system, and, because of the nature of the system, that pressure pivots on Putin.

This is not the only outcome. Ukraine might collapse. Russia might collapse. The Russian army may devise a strategy to win the war. A settlement that is respected might be reached. All of these are possible, but I don’t see much movement in any of these directions. A political end is what I would bet on, with the Russians taking the short end of the stick. I wouldn’t have thought this on the first day of the war, but I think this is likely the shape of the last day.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Shake down specialist, Stacey Abrams, did not lose any weight but she did gain a lot of money:

Election Denialism Turned Loser Stacey Abrams Into A Multi-Millionaire

BY: JORDAN BOYD

Stacey Abrams’ miraculous journey from debtor to multi-millionaire only happened because Democrats gave her a platform for election denialism.

Stacey Abrams entered the Georgia governor’s race in 2018 with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, but her outrageous election denialism over the last four years made her into a multi-millionaire as she once again enters the gubernatorial race in the Peach State.

State disclosure filings from March suggest that Abrams is worth $3.17 million going into the 2022 election. Nearly four years after she racked up more than $400,000 in credit card debt, student loans, back taxes, car loans, and real estate debt and argued that her massive financial dues shouldn’t disqualify her from running, Abrams made at least $6 million dollars off of speeches, books, work, and holdings that largely centered around her baseless claims of election fraud.

When Abrams lost the election in 2018 to then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp by 1.4 percentage points, she refused to formally concede on the grounds that the election was “tainted” and resulted in the “disinvestment and disenfranchisement of thousands of voters.”

Abrams eventually acknowledged that Kemp “will be certified the victor in the 2018 gubernatorial election” but refused to concede.

“But to watch an elected official, who claims to represent the people in the state, baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote has been truly appalling,” she said in her non-concession speech. “So let’s be clear, this is not a speech of concession because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true, or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.”

There was no evidence for these claims, but Abrams profited off of them anyway. While her organization filed lawsuits alleging election misconduct, Abrams clamored to get her election fraud allegations on corporate TV programming.

Abrams’ penchant for being a sore loser resonated with the Democrat Party, which was still bitter about former President Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, and scored her political points with other failed candidates such as Hillary Clinton, who complained that “if [Abrams] had a fair election, she already would have won.”

More recently, she shoved her way into now-President Joe Biden’s vice president considerations. When the corporate media’s bid to put her in office didn’t work out, Abrams made a national show of calling for boycotts of Georgia when Republicans in her state passed election integrity laws.

The Georgia Democrat’s popularity with high-ranking Democrats pushed her to write several books outside of her normal steamy romance genre and give more paid speeches, which together awarded her at least $5 million in payments over the last 3-plus years. She was also featured in an activist documentary funded by Amazon highlighting her election fraud claims.

By 2019, Abrams’ lucrative election-doubting gig had reportedly floated her enough to pay off her credit card and student loan debt, which totaled more than $179,000.

She also raked in $700,000 working for her organization, the Southern Economic Advancement Project, which boasts about “broadening economic power and building a more equitable future.”

Abrams’ miraculous journey from debtor to multi-millionaire only happened because Democrats and the corporate media gave her a platform to repeat bogus election denialism — two years before they shamed Trump-supporting Republicans for raising legitimate election-rigging issues. Even if she loses in 2022, with the help of Democrats and the media she will keep making money off of her failure.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordangdavidson.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Will it happen?

War-crimes Tribunal for Putin?

By Mitchel G. Bard

As the evidence of war crimes committed by the Russians in Ukraine mounts, and President Joe Biden has already labeled Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” the United States should lay the groundwork for a war-crimes trial patterned after the Nuremberg trials following World War II. A tribunal should be formed with the most esteemed jurists from the United States, Britain, France, and perhaps one or more other countries, to ensure a fair and credible trial of Putin and the officers who carried out his orders.

The International Criminal Court is already gathering evidence, but the United States should not trust a body that has had a poor track record of convicting war criminals and deterring war criminals, and is so politicized that the United States doesn’t even recognize its jurisdiction.

During World War II, the U.S. government decided not to pursue German war criminals until after an Allied victory for fear of provoking reprisals against prisoners of war. The United States issued threats that it would punish the Germans for their actions, but the failure to do anything—such as capture and try Nazi officials or prisoners of war—led Hitler to believe he could continue to mistreat their prisoners, civilians and combatants with impunity.

When the war ended, representatives of the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union met and negotiated the ground rules for a trial of the “major” war criminals. An International Military Tribunal (IMT, though commonly referred to as the Nuremberg Trials) was created to prosecute Nazis for the common plan or conspiracy to wage aggressive war in violation of international law or treaties; planning, preparation or waging an aggressive war; violations of the international rules of war; and crimes against humanity.

The Allies’ motivation for holding a trial was to set an example for the future to show that crimes of the magnitude committed during the war would not go unpunished. They also wanted to demonstrate they could resist the temptation to exact revenge (British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, for example, thought criminals should be summarily executed) and instead uphold the rule of law. They also sought to hold superior officers accountable for the actions of their underlings and to nullify the excuse that they were “just following orders.”

IMT prosecutors were determined to develop sufficient evidence to leave no doubt as to the guilt of the defendants. Like the Nazis, Putin and anyone else accused of war crimes should be entitled to representation and their innocence or guilt must be determined based on documentary and witness accounts.

How will Putin and others be tried since they are not likely to answer subpoenas to appear in court? Some perpetrators may be caught during the war and others tried, as some Nazis were, in absentia.

Does Putin care if he is called a war criminal? Some argue the accusation will make him feel cornered and, feeling he has nothing to lose, may escalate his attacks on civilians and, in a nightmare scenario, use nuclear weapons.

The United States is already using that fear to justify its unwillingness to directly intervene to save the people of Ukraine and a fellow democracy. Will we also overlook Putin’s war crimes for the same reason? Doesn’t this allow him to use nuclear extortion to restrict our ability to take any action against him? Worse, doesn’t it send a message to other nuclear states, such as North Korea, that they can do the same, and encourage Iran to build a bomb to achieve the same leverage?

Putin may not care about being labeled a war criminal, but his commanders might. Instead of counting on oligarchs to somehow rein in Putin because their yachts are taken away, isn’t it far more likely the war can be stopped by Russian generals who see that Putin is leading them to disaster and don’t want to find themselves being prosecuted for their actions? As in Nuremberg, they will not be able to escape accountability by claiming they were only following orders. Even if they are not captured and escape to Russia, they will never be able to leave without facing the possibility of arrest, incarceration, and possibly, execution.

Maybe Putin’s minions will decide fighting a losing battle for an autocrat is not worth the shame their families will have to live with if they are convicted of war crimes. They can ask the families of Nazi war criminals what it is like to grow up with that stigma.

And what about others who have committed war crimes, notably Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has interned the Uyghurs in concentration camps? Like Putin, Xi has enjoyed the benefits of leading a powerful country to escape accountability. The difference today is that virtually the entire international community is aligned against Putin, and we can watch evidence of his crimes every day on television. We cannot see what is being done to the Uyghurs, though it is no secret, and world outrage has not been mobilized against Xi. Moreover, the world’s interdependence with China is far greater than with Russia, making even the United States unwilling to punish Xi. It may be wishful thinking, but perhaps seeing an internationally-backed tribunal punish Putin’s aggression would give Xi pause before invading Taiwan.

As we have already seen, the anti-Semites wasted no time in making a specious comparison between Russia and Israel, and argued that the Jewish state should be similarly sanctioned for its treatment of the Palestinians. Undoubtedly, they would also call on a war-crimes tribunal to put Israel in the dock, but Western powers are not going to try Israel just as they won’t impose sanctions. They will have to be satisfied by the investigations of Israel by the International Kangaroo Court and the United Nations.

Just maybe, a tribunal that shows that unprovoked aggression and the slaughter of civilians will not be tolerated in the 21st century can succeed where Nuremberg failed.