Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The illuminated war in Ukraine is taking place in plain sight
This post was originally published on this site
Twitter and the non-commercial outlets are doing an amazing job covering this war. Between open source intelligence, subject matter experts and government sources, everyone has a bird’s eye view for what’s going on. From the battle of Kyiv, to the sinking of the Moskva, to the Russian drive in Mariupol, the objectives and positioning are all there in plain sight. Some examples follow (and they aren’t the “Russia is winning” framing provided by our major papers).
Philips P O’Brien/Twitter:
The upcoming Battle of the Donbas: where we might be when looking at both the most predictable but also one of the strangest battles in modern war. As everyone seems to guess, after losing the Battle of Kyiv, this battle is now Russia’s great priority.
Philips P O’Brien/Twitter:
Well this is interesting. Ukrainian armed forces report that Ukrainian forces are pushing out from Kharkiv. This would be very threatening to Russian communications, logistics coming out of Belgorod. Take a look below where Bazaliyaka is in particular (next tweet)
Ilya Mateev/Twitter:
Mikhail Khodorenok, a retired colonel with the Russian general staff currently working as an analyst, writing *three weeks before the war*:
1. No one in Ukraine will happily greet Russian troops in case of the invasion. [An obvious one, but okay]2. Russia has no capability to destroy the Ukrainian military and thus end the war with one missile attack. It just doesn’t work that way.
3. The war will not end quickly because of Russia’s air supremacy. Russia lost in Afghanistan and Chechnya despite them having zero planes. And Ukraine does have an air force and air defense.
Philips P O’Brien/Twitter:
A brief thread on the political economy of the war and why what has happened since the invasion has also destroyed any strategy the Russians might have had. Clearly the Putin government miscalculated on what sanctions Russia will face.
(That there is a tank turret.)
O”Brien isn’t the only analyst out there, but he’s one of the better explainers without falling into military jargon. Oh, and by the way, don’t miss Markos Moulitsas right here on this site explaining what’s going on (here’s a great example). I don’t generally highlight our own writers on the theory you’re already reading them (and want to know what’s going on elsewhere), but these posts fit today’s theme and are too good not not mention.
Eliot A. Cohen/Atlantic:
This Is the War’s Decisive Moment
The United States and its allies can tip the balance between a costly success and a calamity.
For those of us born after World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Upon its outcome rests the future of European stability and prosperity. If Ukraine succeeds in preserving its freedom and territorial integrity, a diminished Russia will be contained; if it fails, the chances of war between NATO and Russia go up, as does the prospect of Russian intervention in other areas on its western and southern peripheries. A Russian win would encourage a China coolly observing and assessing Western mettle and military capacity; a Russian defeat would induce a salutary caution in Beijing. Russia’s sheer brutality and utterly unwarranted aggression, compounded by lies at once sinister and ludicrous, have endangered what remains of the global order and the norms of interstate conduct. If such behavior leads to humiliation on the battlefield and economic chaos at home, those norms may be rebuilt to some degree; if Vladimir Putin’s government gets away with it, restoring them will take a generation or longer.
Cas Mudde/Twitter:
This should not be/remain a local story. There will be many more Kim Morissons soon, across “red” America, while many others will self-censure. Students, schools and whole country will suffer. 🧵
My state, Georgia, just passed an “anti-CRT” law. Obviously, it is not about Critical Race Theory, it is about racism. More specifically, it is about limiting “racism” to a very specific, personal, ideology, overtly expressed and supported by just a minority of Americans.The sentiment is perfectly captured in this banner: “Don’t Make Me Into A Racist”.
Hunter Walker/Substack:
‘Hard Core Trump Guys’ And Alternate Electors: Key Details From Mark Meadows’ Latest Leaked Texts
In recent weeks a stream of text messages exchanged by President Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, have leaked. The latest Meadows texts, which were published by CNN on Friday, show his conversations with two Republican allies in Congress — Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) — and there are two key details.
Overall, the messages show that both Lee and Roy encouraged and aided efforts to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. We already knew that members of Congress were part of the push to block President Joe Biden’s victory that culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as the vote was being certified. Last October, I reported that two organizers of the main January 6 rally where Trump spoke on the White House Ellipse claimed they were involved in “dozens” of planning calls where Republican members of Congress discussed strategies for overturning the election with activists. Along with adding to the evidence that members of Congress actively strategized to reverse Trump’s loss, the messages from Lee to Meadows provide some new detail on the White House’s efforts to overturn the vote.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells/New Yorker:
The First Post-Trump Republican Race
In Ohio’s raucous Senate primary, conservatives are competing for the ex-President’s favor—and to define what Trumpism still means.People who know conservative politics say that the Republicans running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio may be the most high-profile, well-resourced, and audacious group in the country—a good place to see the future of the Party a year after Donald Trump departed the White House. Certainly they’ve been pushing a boundary of some kind. Earlier this month, Vance cut an ad in which he asks his audience, “Do you hate Mexicans?” Ostensibly, it was a way to mock knee-jerk liberals, but he also seemed to blame border-crossing cartels for his mother’s opioid overdose. Around the same time, Josh Mandel, the forty-four-year-old former Ohio state treasurer, who overtook Gibbons in one recent poll, released an ad that begins with an Ohio woman saying critical race theory is “crap.” It then cuts to Mandel on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma, saying, “Martin Luther King, Jr., marched right here so skin color wouldn’t matter.”