…what’s up, doc? [DOT 22/2/22]

…as if the times weren’t interesting enough

This is the way the postwar world ends, and the post-Cold War world, too: not yet with a bang, and not with anything close to a whimper, but with a rant. In an extraordinary soliloquy viewed live around the world Monday, President Vladimir Putin of Russia attacked and delegitimized not just independent Ukraine and its government but all facets of the security architecture in Europe, declaring both to be creatures of a corrupt West — headed by the United States — that are unremittingly hostile toward Russia.

By the time he was done speaking, Mr. Putin had not only broadcast his intent to disrupt institutions that have kept the peace in Europe, mostly, after 1945 but also laid out the ideological basis for launching a war — even if he did not quite declare it. The key point was to recognize two Russian-backed breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, and thus to discard any pretense of respecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity. More ominous, given his subsequent dispatch of “peacekeeping” troops over the border into the regions, was Mr. Putin’s demand that “those who seized and hold power in Kyiv” cease hostilities, or else “all responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine.” War looming, he had this warning to those who helped oust a Kremlin-backed regime in Ukraine in 2014: “We know their names, and we will find them and bring them to justice.”

Rebutting Mr. Putin’s arguments is almost beside the point — it’s doubtful even he believes his wild accusations about Ukraine as a future platform for NATO aggression — but not entirely. The truth is that Ukraine is a member state of the United Nations, whose security Russia itself undertook to respect 28 years ago, in exchange for Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament. Ukraine has not been waging “genocide” against a Russian-speaking ethnic minority, as Mr. Putin alleged, but defending itself from a 2014-2015 Russian destabilization campaign that created the breakaway regions and engineered the seizure of Ukraine’s strategic Crimean region on the Black Sea. Mr. Putin’s pseudo-history about the kinship of Russians and Ukrainians ignores those facts. His true reason for targeting Ukraine is not Russian national security but to preserve his own power in Moscow, which would be threatened by a successful democratic experiment in a former Soviet republic of Ukraine’s size and cultural importance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/21/vladimir-putin-recognition-ukraine-separatists-end-postwar-world/

Russia faced western sanctions and bitter condemnation at the United Nations after Vladimir Putin ordered troops over the Ukrainian border into Moscow-controlled territories in the east of the country, which he had recognised hours earlier.

With reports of Russian armoured columns advancing into the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under the guise of “peacekeepers” in the Russian-backed enclaves, the US imposed some limited sanctions and warned more would come on Tuesday. The UK is also due to unveil its own package of punitive measures.
[…]
Russian lawmakers will likely approve the Kremlin decision on Tuesday. Observers are concerned over the exact borders of the territories that Russia has recognised as independent.
[…]
The UK’s ambassador, Dame Barbara Woodward, told the UN meeting: “Russia has brought us to the brink. We urge Russia to step back”, and warned that an invasion would unleash “the forces of war, death and destruction” on the people of Ukraine.
[…]
Putin announced the decision in a televised speech marked by the Russian leader’s visceral anger at a country he has called a “brother nation”.

“Those who took the path of violence, bloodshed and lawlessness did not recognise and don’t recognise any other solution to the Donbas problem besides the military,” Putin said. “Therefore I believe it is necessary to take a long-overdue decision to immediately recognise the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic” – the Russian proxy states in east Ukraine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/22/russia-strongly-condemned-at-un-after-putin-orders-troops-into-eastern-ukraine

…& although you might think it seemed like a lot of people said many times over that russian troops crossing a border they’ve now crossed would definitely constitute an invasion that would have to be answered

The new situation could force a significant adjustment in the meaning and purpose of the alliance. Putin has been clear about his goals: He wants to reestablish Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe. Some are willing to concede as much, but it is worth recalling that when the Russian empire was at its height, Poland did not exist as a country; the Baltics were imperial holdings; and southeastern Europe was contested with Austria and Germany. During the Soviet period, the nations of the Warsaw Pact, despite the occasional rebellion, were effectively run from Moscow.

Today, Putin seeks at the very least a two-tier NATO, in which no allied forces are deployed on former Warsaw Pact territory. The inevitable negotiations over this and other elements of a new European security “architecture” would be conducted with Russian forces poised all along NATO’s eastern borders and therefore amid real uncertainty about NATO’s ability to resist Putin’s demands.

This takes place, moreover, as China threatens to upend the strategic balance in East Asia, perhaps with an attack of some kind against Taiwan. From a strategic point of view, Taiwan can either be a major obstacle to Chinese regional hegemony, as it is now; or it can be the first big step toward Chinese military dominance in East Asia and the Western Pacific, as it would be after a takeover, peaceful or otherwise. Were Beijing somehow able to force the Taiwanese to accept Chinese sovereignty, the rest of Asia would panic and look to the United States for help.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/21/ukraine-invasion-putin-goals-what-expect/

…the answer seems to be less clear than the record to date may have suggested

A senior US administration official said more sanctions would imposed on Tuesday and would be proportionate to Russian steps overnight. It was unclear however if the deployment of “peacekeeping forces” in the Moscow-backed enclaves would be seen by Washington as an invasion. The official pointed out that Russian forces had been acting covertly in the area for eight years.
[…]
Johnson told Volodymyr Zelenskiy that he would “explore sending further defensive support to Ukraine” at the request of the country’s government.

The prime minister will chair a Cobra meeting on Tuesday morning to discuss the latest developments, as he warned a Russian invasion could happen “in the coming hours and days”. A No 10 spokesperson said a “significant package of sanctions to be introduced immediately” will be discussed.
[…]
It appeared likely that Putin’s declaration would mean the cancellation of a potential summit between Biden and Putin. The Kremlin had earlier played down the prospect of the summit as “premature”, while the US made clear it would not take place if Russia invaded.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/21/putin-eastern-europe-donetsk-luhansk-reaction

…although some of this stuff is pretty clearly a sort of theatre

Putin is running this Security Council meeting like a Netflix drama. Starts by saying basically we're all going to decide the fate of Ukraine today, then lots of plot filling from the others before we get the answer.

Extraordinary way to find out the future fate of Europe. pic.twitter.com/Q1IDSWJnQi

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) February 21, 2022

Putin: Are there any different points of view?

[CRICKETS]

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) February 21, 2022

Sitting alone at a desk in a grand, columned Kremlin room, Vladimir Putin looked across an expanse of parquet floor at his security council and asked if anyone wished to express an alternative opinion.

He was met with silence.

A few hours later, the Russian president appeared on state television to give an angry, rambling lecture about Ukraine, a country that in Putin’s telling had become “a colony with a puppet regime”, and had no historical right to exist.

Putin’s double bill, which was immediately followed by the signing of an agreement on Russian recognition of the two proxy states in east Ukraine as independent entities, is likely to go down in history as one of the major turning points in his 22-years-and-counting rule over Russia.

This was not a politician convening his team for discussions, this was a supreme leader marshalling his minions and ensuring collective responsibility for a decision that, at minimum, will change the security architecture in Europe, and may well lead to a horrific war that consumes Ukraine.
[…]
It is hard to tell whether or not Putin had decided his plan for Ukraine months ago, or whether he has been making plans on the hop, but it was certainly clear that the decision on recognition had been taken well before this strange, stage-managed event.

There was very little exchange of opinion, and the idea that it was all spontaneous was further undermined by the fact that closeups of the watches of certain participants appeared to suggest that the “live” broadcast had in fact been filmed several hours earlier.
[…]
The appearance of Putin just a few hours later with his long, pre-prepared and wide-ranging speech made the claim this was all a real-time decision-making process even more implausible.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/21/putin-angry-spectacle-amounts-to-declaration-war-ukraine

…it’s a little uncomfortable throwing around the term “plausible” at this point

Anatomy of a Russian Seperatist False Flag – On February 18th the Telegram channel of the press service of the People's Militia of the Donetsk People's Republic published the following video, claiming to show a sabotage operation targeting chlorine tankshttps://t.co/Syk8NG2zKx pic.twitter.com/R4mfggxbPg

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) February 20, 2022

There was only one problem with the Kremlin’s dramatic account of the incident. It was entirely fake. The soundtrack of shooting and explosions was actually more than a decade old. It had been recorded in April 2010, according to open source researchers, during a Finnish military exercise.

Ukraine’s intelligence service believes the video is the work of the GRU, Russia’s military spy agency, which has worked actively in Ukraine since the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the shooting down of the MH17 passenger plane. The film’s creators appear to have lifted the original Finnish video from the internet.
[…]
“Russia has a long record of doing this. It isn’t surprising,” Elliot Higgins, founder of the investigative website Bellingcat told the Guardian. He added: “What’s surprising is they haven’t got any better at doing it. In some ways they have got worse. It’s really dumb and lazy.”
[…]
Over the past week Russia has churned out numerous false stories from what Ukraine’s foreign ministry Dmytro Kuleba called a “fake producing factory”. They include claims Ukraine is planning to attack separatist enclaves, and that it on Monday smuggled armoured vehicles and saboteurs across the border – supposedly recorded by helmet cam.

The Kremlin’s media goal is to create a pretext for invasion, Higgins suggested. As part of this strategy Russian TV has begun actively promoting information which suggests a vast humanitarian crisis is unfolding in eastern Ukraine. It has claimed residents have come under heavy Ukrainian shelling – something Kyiv says is not true.

The information has ranged from reports on increased bombardment to more outlandish “provocations,” such as attempted car bombing on Friday outside the separatist administration building in Donetsk. The same day the territory’s pro-Moscow leader, Denis Pushilin, released a video saying the situation had become so grave civilians had to be bussed out to safety and Russia.

Pushilin’s evacuation order was released on 18 February. Bellingcat, however, discovered from the video’s meta-data on the channel Telegram that it had actually been filmed two days earlier – last Wednesday. “It’s incompetence,” Higgins said. At the time the situation across the line of control between the Ukrainian military and separatists positions was calm.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/21/dumb-and-lazy-the-flawed-films-of-ukrainian-attacks-made-by-russias-fake-factory

…not least since there was a fair amount of clarity about how things would go were russia to invade…at least until there seemed to be a bunch of troops crossing that border…& now

President Biden promptly condemned the actions and ordered sanctions against the two separatist regions. But he wisely desisted from firing the full fusillade of punitive measures he has threatened should Mr. Putin unleash the invasion he has prepared by massing Russian forces on all sides of Ukraine, including some in southern Belarus only about 140 miles from the capital, Kyiv. The possibility of deterring the threat of full-bore invasion through diplomacy simply cannot be abandoned so long as it has the slightest chance.

Though hawks like Senator Lindsey Graham are demanding crushing sanctions now, the potent punishment threatened by the United States and NATO — which is likely to include severely limiting financial transactions with major Russian banks; restricting the sale of technologies needed by Russian industries; closing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline; and personal sanctions on Mr. Putin and his lieutenants — would become useless as a deterrent once ordered, making a full invasion more likely.

Recognizing the separatists in the “peoples’ republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk is not tantamount to that invasion. The separatists control only partial zones of the provinces they claim, and their enclaves have been under effective Russian control since the low-intensity conflict erupted in 2014.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-sanctions.html

This weekend at the Munich Security Conference, which I attended, U.S. and European officials sang the song of “unity” again and again. Verses came from Vice President Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as from the leaders of NATO, the European Union, Germany, Britain and others, both on the main stage and in the private meetings at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. But this well-orchestrated chorus was interrupted abruptly Saturday afternoon when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took the stage and pointed out that this “unity” left his country largely alone to face down 150,000 Russian troops.

In effect, Zelensky asked the assembled dignitaries a simple question: What is the point of a European security architecture that doesn’t seem willing or able to do the one thing it for which it was constructed — namely, to prevent war?
[…]
He accused the West of appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin by holding back support for Ukraine in the many years it has been under constant Russian attack. He reminded Europeans that a major war in Ukraine will not stay in Ukraine. He pointed out that no U.S. or European leader could actually name the “swift and severe” sanctions that are supposed to scare Putin into backing down, or what exactly would trigger them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/21/ukraine-needs-western-help-now-not-after-russian-invasion/

[…] Putin cynically exploited NATO’s expansion closer to Russia’s borders to rally Russians to his side to cover for his huge failure of leadership. Putin has utterly failed to build Russia into an economic model that would actually attract its neighbors, not repel them, and inspire its most talented people to want to stay, not get in line for visas to the West.

[…] Most Americans paid scant attention to the expansion of NATO in the late 1990s and early 2000s to countries in Eastern and Central Europe like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, all of which had been part of the former Soviet Union or its sphere of influence. It was no mystery why these nations would want to be part of an alliance that obligated the U.S. to come to their defense in the event of an attack by Russia, the rump successor to the Soviet Union.
[…]
On May 2, 1998, immediately after the Senate ratified NATO expansion, I called George Kennan, the architect of America’s successful containment of the Soviet Union. Having joined the State Department in 1926 and served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow in 1952, Kennan was arguably America’s greatest expert on Russia. Though 94 at the time and frail of voice, he was sharp of mind when I asked for his opinion of NATO expansion.

I am going to share Kennan’s whole answer:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

“We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was. I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.

“Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”
[…]
Of course, none of this justifies Putin’s dismemberment of Ukraine. During Putin’s first two terms as president — from 2000 to 2008 — he occasionally grumbled about NATO expansion but did little more. Oil prices were high then, as was Putin’s domestic popularity, because he was presiding over the soaring growth of Russian personal incomes after a decade of painful restructuring and impoverishment following the collapse of communism.

But across the last decade, as Russia’s economy stagnated, Putin either had to go for deeper economic reforms, which might have weakened his top-down control, or double down on his corrupt crony capitalist kleptocracy. He chose the latter, explained Leon Aron, a Russia expert at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life,” who is now writing a book about the future of Putin’s Russia. And to both cover and distract from that choice, Putin shifted the basis of his popularity from “being the distributor of Russia’s newfound wealth and an economic reformer to the defender of the motherland,” Aron said.

And right when Putin opted for domestic political reasons to become a nationalist avenger and a permanent “wartime president,” as Aron put it, what was waiting there for him to grasp onto was the most emotive threat to rally the Russian people behind him: “The low-hanging fruit of NATO expansion.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nato.html

…&…well…between crimea & a couple of other ex-soviet spots…it’s not exactly unprecedented

Georgia – 2008/ Ukraine – 2022. Putin did not even have to write a new decree. pic.twitter.com/MGnroOo4Ta

— Alona Shkrum (@Aly_shkrum) February 21, 2022

…or exactly short of echoes

As tragic events unfold in Ukraine, take a moment to consider that the foreign policy goals of defeated former president Donald Trump and his MAGA movement bear a striking resemblance to those of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

What does Putin want? His aims go well beyond Ukraine. As the Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum summarizes

Trump’s foreign policy sought to do much of what Putin wants to achieve, including intimidating Ukraine by withholding vital defensive weapons. Trump, like his role model in Moscow, favored weakening NATO, elevating dictators (from China to Turkey to North Korea to Hungary to Russia), undermining democratic elections, demonizing the media (the best check against power-hungry politicians) and finding common ground with kleptocratic-style governments.: He “wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.”

None of this was based on America’s interest, but it was in the interest of wannabe authoritarians and illiberal regimes. As Fiona Hill, a former Trump adviser and brave witness in the former president’s first impeachment hearings, put it: “There’s no Team America for Trump. Not once did I see him do anything to put America first. Not once. Not for a single second.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/21/maga-foreign-policy-putin-trump-common-goals/

…so…if it feels like the waters are rising…well…there’s a reason for that

Over the past century, sea levels in the United States rose by approximately a foot. That is a staggering amount — and one that could be matched in just the next three decades, according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and five other agencies. By 2050, U.S. sea levels could rise between 10 and 12 inches. In the East and the Gulf Coast, the figure could be even higher.

The impacts would be devastating. Coastal flooding has already become more frequent and harmful in areas such as Maryland’s Eastern Shore. By the middle of the century, “moderate” flooding events — ones that involve some damage to roads or structures and potentially require flood warnings and evacuations — could become 10 times more common than they are today.
[…]
The report comes with an urgent warning: Emissions matter, both now and in the future. Thanks to heating that has already taken place, the 2050 projections will likely still materialize even if emissions are curbed. But if emissions are not reduced, the situation will be far worse: Sea level along the U.S. coastline could rise up to 7 feet by the end of the century, a catastrophic outcome.

White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy called the findings a sign that “our climate crisis … is blinking ‘code red.’ ” It’s yet another reminder of the importance of keeping temperature increases under 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, the threshold scientists warn we shouldn’t pass. That imperative won’t be achievable without large-scale policy changes to boost energy efficiency, clean technologies and alternatives to fossil fuels.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/21/sea-level-rise-noaa-report-devastating-impacts/

…sure would be nice to feel like the folks in charge are well placed for timely action in the face of the exact problems that have been so exhaustingly (if not necessarily exhaustively) discussed

A recent court ruling that bars the Biden administration from accounting for the real-world costs of climate change has created temporary chaos at federal agencies, upending everything from planned oil and gas lease sales to infrastructure spending.

The Feb. 11 decision by a Louisiana federal judge blocked the Biden administration from using a higher estimate for the damage that each additional ton of greenhouse gas pollution causes society. This formula, called the social cost of carbon, applies to consequential decisions affecting fossil fuel extraction on public lands, infrastructure projects and even international climate talks.

The Justice Department said it intends to appeal the Louisiana judge’s preliminary injunction. But in the meantime, the ruling could set off a scramble at federal agencies to redo their analyses of major decisions that relied on the higher social cost of carbon, a top Biden administration official warned in a brief filed Saturday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/02/21/social-cost-of-carbon-biden/

…because…you know…we don’t appear to have a lot of time to waste

Here’s the new antivaxxer/anti-CRT plan for school boards:⁰⁰

— File a mountain of phony lawsuits against schools

— Make ridiculous demands, like closing all vaccine clinics and banning books they say “promote pedophilia”

— If they don’t cave, ask for millions in damages

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) February 21, 2022

…still…it’s only tuesday…who knows what the rest of the week has in store