BakeNecko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots:
Mark Mamerow, Dave. S., Mark O., Dennis Curley, and Geoff Carter
Bots,
The EU and the US have frozen the assets of the Russian Central Bank, and this – along with numerous corporate sanctions – is tanking the ruble. The US is cutting off Russian oil imports, and this isn’t helping Putin either, though I suspect that they’ll find other buyers. Oil is fungible. But even the major oil companies – BP, Exxon, and Shell – are walking away from their oil production partnerships with Russia. Somehow these companies will survive and will even be profitable. And even McDonald’s, for Crissakes, is closing 850 restaurants in Russia. There’s never been a combined set of government sanctions and “voluntary” corporate economic cutoffs like this before.
In their entirety, the sanctions are a major escalation of economic tactics over what we’ve seen before. Essentially, they are an act of economic warfare. You have to be careful how you poke the bear. What kind of retaliation might it trigger? One potential is Russian cyberwar against soft targets in the US. It would be a proportionate economic strike against the US. So, bots, you’d be well advised to lay in a supply of bottled water. Our municipal water utilities are low hanging and unprotected fruit in this potential war. So says my daughter, who worked for several years at ASCE, the American Society of Civil Engineers. Water utilities are among the most low tech of the institutions that provide essential services.
–Mark M.
Destroying our adversaries’ economies is pretty standard operating procedure for U.S. foreign policy and it is pretty effective. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan are all examples of hamstrung economies that are well strangled by our sanctions and/or theft (aka freezing) of their foreign assets. These countries have very little leverage or means to fight against these economic weapons. Russia is different in that they can threaten the West. One, through cyber attacks as Mark mentions. Two, through what seems obvious but is almost completely ignored by western media in this crisis, their nuclear arsenal.
How hard do you poke a bear with nukes at the ready? Hmmmm.
Mark O.
Point taken, Mark. The US is really at good at muscling our money, but I think the difference here is that everybody is going along with the sanctions. Even Switzerland, who—like our moms—never takes sides. Reports on Monday said the ruble had crashed, Russia had refused to open its stock market, and that inflation was already skyrocketing. Put that on top of a citizenry that’s already pissed off about the invasion and I don’t know if Putin will have more than he can handle. I hope so.
I was impressed with the protestors in Moscow and St. Petersburg who went out knowing they’d probably be arrested and worse, and also with the Ukrainians who are crazy brave. I can’t help wondering if—for all our hoorahing and flag-waving and “Proud to be an American” bullshit—how many Americans would have that kind of courage.
(That said, I am filling my bathtub as we speak.)
—Geoff
It seems like one can go two ways with an analysis or, heaven forbid, a prediction of what will happen with the Ukraine debacle.
The first possibility is that Putin is insane and this invasion will result in disaster for Russia and the end of his regime.
The second is that Putin has a plan for the long game and is going to play it out. What that plan consists of is way beyond my capabilities and the capabilities of any media “experts” you might see proclaiming their wisdom on the situation. There’s probably a handful of people in the Pentagon, CIA and NSA who have an educated guess of that long game plan. It definitely won’t include occupying or annexing the country of Ukraine for any length of time.
Or maybe Putin has just lost his mind. As a side note, if it turns out Putin has lost his mind, it will look very bad for Donald Trump and his aspirations to become President again.
Mark O.
Bots,
I am going to provide a mini transcript of an exchange on the podcast Pod Save America, because it really scratched an itch for me (Pod Save America).
Tommy Vietor: Richard Engel from NBC News tweeted “Perhaps the biggest risk calculation/moral dilemma of the war so far: A massive Russian convoy is about 30 miles from Kyiv. The US/NATO could likely destroy it. But that would be direct involvement against Russia and risk everything. Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?”
John Favreau: If we didn’t watch in silence and we did something, then we would be at war with Russia!
John Lovett: We’re not watching in silence. How many f*cking times do we have to go through this? The options aren’t Nothing or War. I have such admiration for the way in which the Biden Administration has defiantly defended that view, that we have other powerful options…. it seems that a lot of people are surprised by just how effective, just how unified, just how much force these sanctions and these sort of diplomatic, economic, and non-military actions– how much of an effect they’ve had, to push back on this invasion. To call that silence is to go back to Bush era nonsense that there’s only two things you can do: there’s Bombing and there’s Nothing. Diplomacy’s not real. Finances aren’t real. Sanctions aren’t real. None of it’s real. The only thing that’s real is bombs.
Tommy Vietor: You hear this stuff all the time. There’s no discussion of casualties, of legal authority,the risk of nuclear war. You saw this in ostensibly straight coverage of Syria and Afghanistan, and now in Russia. This f*cking moralizing tone, like “are we going to do something, or are we going to stand on the sidelines?” That gets celebrated, and that gets praised. I don’t know what Biden should do or NATO should do — I’m not pretending to — but the journalists covering this have got to stop framing this choice as between military involvement or “watch in silence”. It is so irresponsible. It creates political incentives that push us toward war, and it also ignores the reality that, if you look at a lot of the wars that were just fought– Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria– sometimes the best thing America can do is not get involved. Especially the military. We have done a lot more harm than good in some of these places, and we should at least make that part of the discussion.
I’ve really disappointed with the approach taken by the major US networks on the Ukraine situation. They are implicitly pushing the perspective that the US is right about everything, is the world’s savior, and that military action by the US is an unalloyed positive. A perfect example was a comment by veteran correspondent Andrea Mitchell in the post-SOTU analysis. She said that Biden enumerated the struggles of the Ukranians against Russia, but didn’t explain “what we are going to do!” It was so preachy and moralizing. The implication was that, unless US troops and planes get involved, we are doing “nothing” to support the heroic Ukrainian people. (Andrea Mitchell is only the best example of this kind of pearl clutching, conventional wisdom on foreign affairs.)
And here’s my other beef: the “go to” assumption of American journalists, that Putin is no longer rational. Mark, you mentioned this in your response, but I’m pushing back. Don’t forget that the US media labels every non-European adversary of the US as a “madman”: Saddam, the Iranian Mullahs, Khadafy, Kim Jong-Un. Now Putin gets to join that club. I don’t think that mentally non-functional individuals rise to levels of supreme authority in these authoritarian regimes. Sure, they act in ways that would get them removed from the Christmas card list of most civilized people. But their sometimes brutal and vicious actions make sense in their own twisted environments.
Consider the madman Saddam, who invaded Kuwait. Yah, he got spanked in Gulf War I. But he completely hosed the US in the aftermath, putting down a Sunni revolt, and sparking an exodus of Kurds from northern Iraq. He ruled Iraq with an iron first for another 12 years before finally winding up in a noose Most historians would consider that he had a pretty good run!
–Mark M.
Yo bots,
Great posts.
Things don’t seem to be going Vlad’s way lately, do they? Hard to say what end game Putin and his cronies had envisioned by invading Ukraine–perhaps the threat to the Russian border seemed like a legit reason, but now it smells like a fishy excuse.
Despite the Ukranians putting up a surprisingly strong fight, despite other nations backing up Ukraine with lawyers, guns and money, despite the crippling economic sanctions on Russia, despite the mounting, horrific death toll and the destruction, Putin just can’t let go.
As MarkO speculates, Putin may be going off the deep end. Allow me to share a strange but true bit of anecdotal evidence from Costa Rica to back up this theory:
There are actually a few Russian and Ukrainian expats here in Santa Teresa. A few days ago, I sat down for lunch at the local soda (soda’s are low-priced Tico mom and pop restaurants). Sitting at the same communal table was a younger couple speaking in a guttural language that I quickly recognized–thanks to my deep study of James Bond films. Aha, Russian, I think. Here’s my chance to possibly glean some info about this war from a perspective that is not Wolf Blitzer’s:
“Hola,” I say to them all smiley. “Buenos dias.”
“Hola”, they say back without much enthusiasm.
“Tú hablas Inglés o Español?” I ask.
“Speak little bit English,” the guy answers a bit reluctantly. Unlike us friendly Americanos, Russian tourists are not known for their outgoing, glad-handing nature, but I am on a fact-finding mission here.
“Ah, OK, great,” I say. “Me too, ha-ha.”
Though I already know the answer, my next question will both aid my mission and satisfy tourist etiquette. “And where are you guys from?”
“Russia,” the woman answers. “Moscow.”
“Ahh. Yes. Moscow, a beautiful city. Lots of history” I say with enthusiasm, though I really don’t know squat about Moscow,
“You been Moscow?” the guy asks slowly. He eyes me up a little suspiciously like maybe I’m CIA or KGB or a man from UNCLE.
“Er. Well, No. I’ve seen a lot of photos though, Um, you know, the amazing cathedrals with all those crazy domes, ha-ha, and .. uh..” This isn’t going well I think, but the woman smiles kindly.
“Yes. Some parts Moscow nice pretty. But Moscow very cold,” she says.
“Where I come from in Wisconsin it is also very cold.” I say. We stick to the safer conversational ground of weather. The Russian couple seems to relax a little. We banter a little about which place is colder–Moscow or Wisconsin. I let them win the banter. I’m smooth like that.
“But we here now with this intense warm beauty place,” the woman says, waving her hands towards the palm-lined beach.
“Yes. Intense,” I say. I ponder her unusual word choice, then see a way to transition to what my finely-tuned senses tell me may be a delicate subject for them.
“Hey, how about that war?” I ask. “That’s pretty intense, isn’t it?” Ah, such subtlety.
The guy looks at me a second before he answers. “Uhh. I suppose. War intense,” he answers noncommittally..
“And Putin. He’s…” Dammit, I’m trying to walk a diplomatic tightrope here. “He seems pretty, um, intense, doesn’t he?”
At the mention of Putin the guy and the woman both freeze and go wide-eyed as if some microchips have just powered-up in their brains.
The woman answers in a robotic monotone. “Putin is very attractive man,” she says. “Very handsome”.
“Putin strong man,” the guy says in the same monotone. “Very strong and attractive.”
“Very attractive man,” the woman says again, almost to herself as she stares at the table.
“We go now,” the guy says. They both get up and walk out of the soda.
I’m dumbfounded as I watch them half-walk/half-run down a dusty side street. The woman turns her head and looks back at me with what looks like fear in her eyes, then quickly looks away.
Wow. WTF? Just plain frickin’ weird on so many levels. Why were they so spooked? Are deep-cover KGB operatives prowling the sunny beaches of Costa Rica checking up on the loyalty of Russian expats? And, if so, is their mission to actually ensure that the traveling Russians are saying that Putin is “a very attractive man”? Not a brilliant leader? Or even a very stable genius? But “a very attractive man“? In the words of former President George W. Bush, “That’s some crazy shit.” (Caught on tape during Trump’s Inaugural speech.)
Has Putin, as MarkO suggests, climbed aboard the Trans-Siberian crazy train and taken over as conductor? It’s kinda looking that way. As Putin’s schemes go awry he seems to be pushing that train harder and harder But it’s a train built with the hammers and sickles of old Soviet-bloc workmanship. The bolts and hinges are popping and shearing off, but Vlad keeps cracking the whip on his aging KGB lackies as they shovel a heavy coal-plutonium mixture into an Brezhnev=era Soviet coal/nuclear hybrid furnace .
“Schnell Schnell,” Putin hollers at them (oh wait, sorry, that’s German from “Hogan’s Heroes”). “быстрее, быстрее,” he yells. “Faster, Faster’. The crazy train is coming off the rails and his countrymen are exhausted, but Vlad keeps pushing them. He watches them sweating and wheezing. “They are weaklings — not strong and attractive like me,” he thinks.
“Is my fault, comrades,” Putin tells them. “My blame. For too long have I let you languish in Facebook troll farms–good work you did, yes, making fine tales about enemies of Comrade Donald and Mother Russia drinking blood of babies in pizza pie shops–so amusing-– ahahahaha. But you sat by computer box day after day, eating sweetcakes and swilling vodka, and now you are too much weak in flab body. You are dead weight slowing down train. So, in words of Comrade Donald, ‘you’re fired’.
With that, Putin takes off his shirt, flexes his well-toned biceps, and proceeds to throw his troll farm lackeys off the speeding train one-by-one. The last lackey to hit the dirt has just one question in his mind. “Why was Vladimir speaking to us in broken English rather than Russian?”
“Now Vlad must win the war all by himself,” Putin mutters, dusting off his hands. He grabs a shovel and stokes the coal/nuclear hybrid furnace with pure plutonium. The crazy train shoots forward, red hot, completely off the rails.
Putin has no idea where his train is going, but he knows it will crash somewhere and that the crash will be spectacular. He catches a reflection of himself in the window of the train engine. He is shirtless, the sweat gleaming on his muscled torso. “Putin is a strong man,” he thinks. “Putin is an attractive man.”
– Dennis C.
This is redundant for Mark M.: Different tangent to him earlier but I learned something from a Paul Krugman NY Times story I did not know and is worth sharing here. According to Paul K., NATO has vast air superiority to Russia. Thus the scenario quickly pushes Putin to the Nuke button and the prevailing winds sends it back his way and on to China. Whatever…very speculative but I thought it interesting. He also speculated that much of Ukraine’s IP (Intellectual Property….young kids) are fleeing west ward and Putin will inherit a tired sick workforce….(but I suppose there are inorganic methods to reducing those headcounts—”ve have vays”. It now appears seizing the nuke plants is another act of brinkmanship. And today he just said no to any contrary FB posts.
One last quote—this one from Maureen Dowd: “Putin is a 5’-6” man trying to act as if he is 5’-7”
My take/ hope is the sanctions affect enough masses in Russia—aren’t there any that were on board with the Gorbachev initiative?—and he gets toppled from within . If NATA takes to the air we obviously have a mad man at play and I think we could see nukes fly. It scares me to think of just how far ahead of us they may be in terms of some weird first strikes to initiate chaos….(like the middle east).
Finally: I wonder why they cast a Russian, (Illya Kuryakin), next to Bond like Napoleon Solo back in those Man from U.N.C.L.E. days?
-Dave S.
Comrade Dennis,
Though you, like the rest of us (except Dave) no doubt are also “weak in flab body”, I’m pretty sure you can pull off the shirtless horseback look with that deep Costa Rican tan.
To paraphrase Jethro Tull: Ol’ Vladimir stole the handle, and the train it won’t stop going, no way to slow down!
Good work, Dennis!
-Mark