More on Brinkmanship

 

Saw one of CNN’s advisors on military affairs proclaim what the Russian strategy would be re: the ‘peace-keeping’ forces expected in Donetsk and Luhansk. He surmised that Putin would push to expand and create a buffer zone well past the boundaries of the People’s republics.

His appraisal sent me squawking at the box and bellowing my own prognostication at my wife. As it happens, my nerves were calmed when I later saw a different military advisor whose assessment mirrored my own.

Putin’s aim with all this is to gain a corridor through Ukraine to the Russian bases on the Crimean Peninsula (that bit he stole last time from Ukraine). He is assembling troops enough to accomplish that by force of arms but that is a sort of window dressing

He’s practicing brinkmanship – the old Cold War modus operandi – by which one state threatens then backs off from the brink with a stronger negotiating hand, diplomatically speaking.

Putin is banking on the notion that Europe does not want another European war. Indeed, the UN and NATO were supposed to have eliminated expansion by conquest from the language of global politics; all but eliminating the possibility of Europe at war.

Enter brinkmanship. Think ‘Neville Chamberlain if the Sudetenland hadn’t yet been invaded’.  Think of Soviet presence in Cuba without the nuclear missiles. Think of a green gorilla in a tutu.
Sorry…

Russia’s amassing of forces along the Ukraine border, threatening military invasion, declaring prior sovereignty of territory, denying the sovereignty of an independent Ukraine, being stridently bellicose and generally operating outside of the norms of the 21^st century is Putin’s exercise in brinkmanship.

Putin was raised in the world of Real Politik and the global chessboard concept of willful domination and power. This is Putin practicing brinkmanship; Brinkmanship Putin-style.

Push can assuredly come to shove, but Putin is relying on the EU and NATO to dither, hem, haw, gather support, spell out sanctions and schedule summits, while mustering troops and setting battle plans. All of that global finagling allows for the build-up of forces to create greater tension; greater anticipation. That tension is the core of brinkmanship.

When Putin relieves that that tension by a slight draw-down or pull-back – when he backs away from the brink - he’ll be in a more favorable position to demand a corridor from the newly recognized Donetsk People's Republic to Russia’s Black Sea bases in Crimea.

That’s what Putin wants. (That and to be seen as a Stalin-esque strong man and hero of Mother Russia, restorer of the Empire.) He’ll risk the lives of thousands or tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians to attain those ends if the ploy of brinkmanship fails. 

Biden is also well-versed in Cold War shenanigans; that he’s making all of Putin’s moves public is brilliant; a stroke of genius. It takes the wind out of Putin’s sails and decreases the tension by making known what would normally be held under wraps.

The EU and NATO, according to the Cold War script, must play a kind of four-dimensional cat and mouse game; play the mouse to Putin’s cat while preparing a bigger cat to bag Putin’s rat. Deception within deception; standard fare from the Cold War. 

Germany halting the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia came as a big blow in the first salvo of sanctions. Germany’s action will force the hand of the other nations to follow suit, cutting off the flow of natural gas from Russia and the cash flow thereof as well. That, in turn, will knock the pins out of Putin’s reliance on the interminable vagaries of real politik diplomacy to prolong tension and forestall an attack order. The threat of loss of revenue to Gazpron may force Putin’s hand. Perhaps Germany should have acted more mouse-like.

We shall see.

The General Assembly is abuzz with speechifiers denouncing in the strongest terms the reprehensible, atavistic behavior of the Russian Federation. Outlaws! Gangsters! Bullies!

All true, of course, but are NATO and the EU willing to respond with a force of arms? 

Putin’s bet is that they are not. However, his bet is also that this show of strength, if it succeeds in Russian gaining some concession for a land corridor along the Ukraine coast to Crimea, will be enough to off-set the economic effects of sanctions sure to be felt by the Oligarchs and the people of Russia. 

There’s a lot riding on that bet.

Putin's Brinkmanship

 

“Brinkmanship’ is from the lexicon of the Cold War. Brinkmanship is the practice of trying to achieve an advantageous outcome by pushing dangerous events to the brink of active conflict. 

Brinkmanship is what Putin is doing with Ukraine. He’s pushing a posture of war, threatening an armed invasion. His stated purpose is to thwart the expansion of NATO and thusly protect Russian interests by this military threat.

The sub-text is that Putin still considers Ukraine a vassal state. Putin’s stated aim is the re-invigoration and re-establishment of the former Russian empire if not the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  This is, in short, why he snatched Crimea; to demonstrate for his nationalistic supporters that he is the strongman – the ‘Man of Steel’ – which they crave. 

As a chess player, Putin is playing to his nationalistic supporters as well as the Western powers and Ukraine. The current situation can be seen as a ‘forking move’; threatening two chess pieces with capture, forcing the opponent to choose which piece to lose. Putin is banking on the nations of NATO, being roundly averse to another devastating European war, would choose the sovereignty of Ukraine as the chess-piece that NATO will sacrifice. 

Putin bet that Ukraine would buckle when confronted with a Russian military build-up on its borders. Putin, further, has bet that the Americans – freshly withdrawn from Afghanistan – would convince its NATO allies that defending Ukraine was not worth the price of blood and treasure that would have to be paid. 

Moreover, Putin’s military display would bolster his support from the people of Russia. That is his plan; by the display of force, Putin hopes to gain politically and militarily while suffering little down-side. 

This is not to assert that Putin’s military threat isn’t real. Brinkmanship fails as a strategy if the threat of military force is not perceived as viable and imminent. Putin’s massing of forces along Ukraine’s borders in Belarus, Crimea and Russia presents a clear and present danger; of that there is no doubt. 

However, President Volodymyr Zelensky has pooh-poohed Russia’s threat and thwarted one prong of Putin’s strategy. The steadfastness of Biden’s administration and the NATO allies (specifically; Germany, France, Great Britain and Poland) have, furthermore, stymied Putin’s grander game of conquest and left him with a ‘Sophie’s Choice’. He must either back-down and show weakness or signal the invasion and suffer military and economic retribution from which he, himself, would not recover. His claims of a draw-down is a subterfuge.

He has been backed into a corner and has placed himself and the Russian Federation between a rock and hard place. (Never let it be said that diplomacy is a dull enterprise.) How Putin will play his end-game in Ukraine will be most interesting.

 

 

 

 

Signal!

 

‘Signal’. Know what it is? Not the common noun or the verb but the proper noun that signifies the communication app.
(FYI: Signal is a ‘cross-platform centralized encrypted instant messaging service’.) It’s like ‘Twitter’ but -  and here’s the Big But – but, it’s encrypted and private.

Interesting, you might say, but what has this to do with anything? 

One of the heretofore anonymous texters (Congressman Scott Perry) reached out to Mark Meadows on, January 6^th, 2021, and recommended that they use ‘Signal’ for further communication. Rep. Perry wanted to keep his texts to the Chief of Staff secret. You know, like a crook, or a spy or an insurrectionist might do.

In point of fact, Meadows used his own personal cell phone and email addresses, as well as Signal, for official government business. (This may trigger memories of the Republicans (e.g. Gym Jordon, Trey Gowdy, etc) screaming bloody murder for years when they accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of doing that very thing.)

Perry undoubtedly knew that Meadows used Signal, rather than another app, for secret messages and so made the recommendation to go ‘encrypted’.

Why the secrecy if you’ve got nothing to hide? Mr Perry can try to explain that when he testifies before the Jan.6 Select Committee.

This adage may be applied to Roger Stone’s recent use of the 5^th amendment to stone-wall the Committee and still give the appearance of not violating the subpoena to appear. Simply reciting a claim of 5^th Amendment protection when asked one’s name is not compliance or cooperation.   

An observer with a functional memory might recall, his Orange Eminence stated categorically that ‘taking the 5^th’ in and of itself was a tacit admission of guilt.

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” is generally attributed to Joseph Goebbels. It’s undeniable that Pius Thicknesse uttered the sentence in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. It’s doubtful that either had ‘taking the 5^th’ in mind.

 

PowerPoint for Dummies

 

Hoo-boy! The 38-page ‘PowerPoint for Demented Dummies’ has certainly kicked over the camp latrine, hasn’t it? The ramifications of that stupendous reveal will ripple on for years. The January 6^th Select Committee must feel pretty big in the britches about now. One could almost imagine seeing smirks on the faces of several Committee members. Self-satisfaction was certainly playing around the eyes of Ranking Member, Liz Cheney.

Or was that me projecting?

One must wonder openly about what the hell Mark Meadows thinks he’s doing turning over truly block-buster documentation to the Select Committee and then – THEN – refusing to testify under the bogus and nonsensical claim of executive privilege!

Asha Rangappa, lawyer, former FBI agent, senior lecturer at Yale University, saw Meadows’ predicament as being ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’; a rock and a hard place. 

Apparently, an existential dilemma of this is sort is the key to remaining in the MAGA camp. Does Meadows somehow think that this is ‘taking one for the team’ or ‘falling on his sword’ while saving his own back-side? Ms. Rangappa also opined that Meadows may be hoping that the lesser jail-time for failing to honor a subpoena would forestall his being tried for more serious crimes. This woe-begotten tactic should favorably influence no one.  

CNN’s Elie Honig referred to Meadows’ actions as leaping half-way across a ditch; he’s neither in nor out. Neither a cooperating witness nor a hostile one. So, how does Meadows plopping down in the middle a muddy ditch serve himself or the former Guy? Time will tell but the smart money is on it failing miserably.

Or perhaps this is Meadow’s version of the grand gesture of throwing oneself on the hand grenade (to invoke the testimony of Gordon D. Sondland at the hearings on Trump’s demonic finagling with Ukraine.)

What is certain is that several Fox News entertainers have gotten caught with their feet wedged firmly their lying mouths. Ingrham, Hannity and that little weasel from the Fox & Fiends sofa all texted Meadows urgeing Trump to act presidential on that day while quieting their tele-sheeple with a gas-lighting fairy tale denying the dire reality of that day.

Little Donnie Jr even got into the act - to his dubious credit - begging Meadows (!) to talk to Junior’s Orange Daddy. Evidently, Jr. couldn’t call his own father, even given the drama and pompous circumstances of the day. Lawrence O’Donnell attributed that to caller I.D. Mary Trump said it was more that Jr. didn’t want to bring Big Daddy bad news. 

As a bonus, the public has learned of the existence of conspiracy theorist and PowerPoint maker, Philip Waldron, a retired U.S. Army colonel. One would imagine Chairperson Bennie Thompson has already drawn up a subpoena for that person of note.

Question: Were any of the leaders of the National Guard of a similar mind to Col. Waldron (rt.) on that day?

 

Inaction is NOT an Option

 

In his speech at the Democracy Summit, Biden said, “We should be making it easy for people to vote, not harder.” He went further, “And that’s going to remain a priority for my administration until we get it done. Inaction is not an option.”

There has been a lot of palaver criticizing Biden and the US generally for having the presumed audacity to host a summit on Democracy. The argument supporting this dismissive view runs thusly: The USA has fallen from its perch of moral superiority as a staunch proponent of Democracy in light of the Trump/MAGA-land attempt to negate a free and fair election. The argument normally has included reference to the various Republican-led moves to restrict voting rights and curtail the opportunities to vote by targeted communities. In sum, the US is in no position to lecture the rest of the world on Democracy if they can’t keep their own house in order, as it were.

The purveyors of this silliness ignore the fact that Democracy is always – always – a work in progress. It has always been; as each sub-set of a nation’s population gains recognition and power, that sub-set enters the democratic fray. The more democratic the society, the quicker each sub-set gains the power of its collective voice. That’s how Democracy works. 

The prime model for Democracy, the city state of Athens, did not allow women or slaves, or even the majority of the adult population of the state, to vote.  Nevertheless, Athens is cited as the cradle of Democracy. The USA, as the modern paragon of Democracy, by the aforementioned dismissive argument, did not allow slaves or women to vote until decades after its inception.

The struggle for Democracy is ongoing and perpetual. It is always a work in progress. Unfortunately, there will always some who turn to undemocratic methods, such as fascism, racism ultra-nationalism and autocratic rule to gain power. Those factions must be combated and repressed unceasingly. (Indeed, a great, inherent paradox of Democracy is that such undemocratic sectors must be included in the Democracy.)

They do not have to be tolerated but they must not be repressed, either. Thus, the struggle for maintaining a Democratic state is perpetual. 

Point of opinion; Biden’s duty as a world citizen and his role as President obligated him to call the Democracy Summit to counteract the growing presence and power of undemocratic actors.

“Inaction is not an option.”

 

The Goon Squad

 

                                          The GOP Goon Squad

I have recently written about the dire need to nullify the Insane Right. (i.e. Boebert, MTG, Gosar, Gohmert, Brooks, Cotton, Gaetz, et al.) The way that their narrative of alt-reality is nullified is not by debate. To debate their like is to elevate their nonsense to a legitimate, respectable platform. 

There is no debating psychosis.

There cannot be a rational response to the ravings of a lunatic. One cannot reason with insanity. When Alice entered the Looking Glass, she knew she was entering a world which was not governed by rationality and logic. In the words of Marty Balin of ‘The Jefferson Airplane, logic had ‘fallen sloppy dead’ and was not to be revived by the application of rational thought.

What must take place is not debate. The insane chatter of the Right must be usurped, over-thrown, derided and disposed of. That is done by the clear and repeated statement of the narrative which guides the rest of us to accept scientific findings, to place value in education, to instill a sense of social responsibility and require compliance with beneficial policies.

Moreover, the vapid and befuddling talking points of the Q-pixilated should not be addressed directly, nor quoted for the same reason that debate is discarded; to quote the right is to lend credence to the madness.

To be clear, the madness itself must be addressed. Mental illness must be treated but it must be treated by mental health professionals who can shepherd the addled to a safe haven. There, in professional care, the demented might gain a proper perspective of their own madness. There is little doubt that the members of the MAGA-cult have taken leave of their senses. MTG – perhaps by choice – exhibits symptoms of psychosis. It is a psychosis that is propagated by Donald Trump and his adherents and spread to a segment of the US population.

A delusion shared between partners is called ‘folie a deux’ – the madness of two. What has happened in the American public has been termed ‘folie de millions’ – the madness of millions - by Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump".

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/09/psychiatrist-bandy-lee-trumps-election-meltdown-is-most-dangerous-period-of-this-presidency/.

The Insane Right

 

                                                                The Brain Trust

The 'Insane Right', exemplified by MTG, Boebert, Gosar and Gohmert, must be nullified. They are the replicating tumors that have metastasized with the cancerous growth of the MAGA-cult. They and their psychotic, ignorant ilk must not be allowed to take control of the House or the Senate in 2022 or in 2024. This is not simply a matter of loyalty to the Democratic party or the ‘liberal’ agenda.

Full disclosure: I am not a staunch Democrat. I do not adhere blindly to the policies of either major party. True, I have voted Democratic. I have also voted Republican. And I have voted Libertarian, as well. No party has a lock on what is proper, right and ethical. Obama was not perfect. Neither was JFK or FDR for that matter. The less said about Nixon, Reagan and either Bush, the better.

However, when confronted with the sheer lunacy and ignorance of the ‘Alt-right’, considerations of loyalty to a political party must be set aside. There can be no middle ground reached with those who have slipped the bonds of sanity. There can be no compromise with the insane without becoming insane oneself in the process of appeasement.

One cannot accept as fact that ‘up is down’ without losing one’s sense of direction. One cannot give credence to the blather of Marjorie Taylor Greene without tacitly acknowledging ‘Jewish Space Lasers’ as fact or that cancer is contagious or that Dr Anthony Fauci is on par with a monster like Dr Mengele.

While it is most troubling that a substantial number of MAGA-landers have accepted the blithering of Trump, MTG, Gosart, et al. as truth, we must maintain our own, grounded, world view; one which takes medical science seriously and holds the ludicrous nonsense of the MAGA-view (e.g. the Big Lie) as a despicable, woeful departure from reality.

Nullifying the psychotic gibberish of Trump-landers is a step that must be taken. The alternative is unthinkable: the end of the American Experiment.