Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The price of Putin's misplanning
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Andrew Goodman/War on the Rocks:
PUTIN THE PLANNER
Still, there was no reason for Putin to act so long as Donald Trump was president. Putin saw Trump weakening NATO by bashing it verbally, questioning whether the United States should honor Article 5, and reportedly flirting with the idea of withdrawing completely. If NATO might self-destruct, then there was no need for Putin to act to prevent Ukraine from joining it.
Putin had to change his calculus after Trump’s defeat in 2020. Joe Biden took steps to reassure allies of the U.S. commitment to NATO. Although there was nothing in NATO’s official statements to suggest that Ukraine could or would obtain membership at a definite point in time, the change in the U.S. attitude towards the alliance, combined with Zelensky’s support for membership, meant that the Ukraine problem became more acute. The timing might appear to be coincidental, but just a few months after Biden took office, the Russian military build-up began on Ukraine’s borders. This development fits with Putin’s penchant for planning carefully before taking action. It also suggests that Putin may already have made the decision to invade.
Putin gets what he didn’t want: Ukraine army closer to West
The list of arms flowing to Ukraine is long and growing longer. It includes new American battlefield aerial drones and the most modern U.S. and Canadian artillery, anti-tank weapons from Norway and others, armored vehicles and anti-ship missiles from Britain and Stinger counter-air missiles from the U.S., Denmark and other countries.
If Ukraine can hold off the Russians, its accumulating arsenal of Western weapons could have a transformative effect in a country that has, like other former Soviet republics, relied mainly on arms and equipment from the Soviet era.
Chrissy Stroop/Open Democracy:
Is Hungary’s Viktor Orbán the US Christian Right’s new Vladimir Putin?
The fall of Putin’s star among US evangelicals leaves a void they may seek to fill with another strongman leader devoted to ‘family values’
In the summer of 2013, after my first of three academic years teaching at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, I was back in the American state of Indiana – the Republican stronghold in which I was born and raised, and whence the very evangelical former vice president, Mike Pence, also hails.
That same summer, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed his country’s ‘don’t say gay’ law, which banned the dissemination of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to minors (known in non-Orwellian language as life-saving information that LGBTQ children need to thrive).
I was at an outdoor concert in a suburb of Indianapolis with some of my evangelical relatives when this topic came up in conversation, and I distinctly remember how dismayed I was when one of them opined on how “refreshing” it was to see a political leader “finally standing up to the gay agenda”.
That was the moment it dawned on me that Putin’s star was on the rise with the American Christian Right, a phenomenon I began to observe systematically, and on which I eventually published commentary and policy research.
NY Times (in case you missed it with the extensive French election coverage):
Europe’s Far-Right Populists Suffer a Setback in Slovenia
The country’s prime minister, Janez Jansa, a Trump admirer, appears to have lost to centrist rivals.
With 95 percent of the vote counted in an election that the opposition called a “referendum on democracy,” results indicated that Mr. Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, competing against 19 rival parties, had won around 24 percent of the vote. That is far behind the 34 percent of its main rival, the centrist Freedom Movement, meaning that Mr. Jansa is highly unlikely to keep his post as prime minister.
The results, showing that no single party won a clear majority, presage a period of political haggling as rival groups try to stitch together a stable coalition in parliament. That should be within reach of the Freedom Movement, led by a political newcomer, Robert Golob, a former energy company executive, with help from the Social Democrats and other smaller parties.
History and Energy: Understanding Germany’s Shameful Russia Policy
When the Russians invaded Ukraine at the end of February, it appeared to be a watershed moment for Germany. Yet two months on, the initial fighting talk by Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been replaced by pseudo-pacifism
This is a Zeitenwende moment, Scholz declared; Germany was at a “turning point.” He then pledged about $110 billion to bolster Germany’s stagnant military and raise defense spending to 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, which is nearly $3.7 trillion. This makes it the world’s fourth largest economy, behind the United States, China and Japan.
The day before, Scholz had reacted to the Russian invasion by suspending the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. A week later, Germany agreed to transfer weapons systems to Ukraine, in what seemed a dramatic policy shift for the country.
However, two months on, it all seems to have dissipated as Germany has reverted to its pre-invasion vacillation, political stuttering and sanctimonious excuse-making.
Jonathan V Last/Bulwark:
Biden’s Handling of Ukraine Is the Most Successful American Intervention Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall
And voters refuse to give him credit for it.
At each stage of this conflict, there has been criticism of Biden from across the spectrum. At various points he’s been criticized for:
Not sending MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine.
Not imposing a No Fly Zone.
Not sending enough offensive weaponry.
But Biden’s challenge at each point has been to titrate the minimum-force necessary to achieve our objectives—because keeping that force as small as possible kept the risks of Putin escalating the conflict as small as possible.
And at each moment Biden has been correct. Again: Look at the facts on the ground. Kyiv is free. A quarter of the Russian forces are out of action. The Russian economy is contracting at a fantastic rate. There has been no escalation of the conflict.
Think of this as the diplomatic and military equivalent of Just-in-Time Theory. And Biden’s team has executed it with tremendous success. A level of success that just about no one—including me—thought would be possible in the weeks leading up to the invasion.
I’ll say it again: The single biggest American foreign policy success since the fall of the Berlin Wall.1
And yet the American people disapprove.
Adam Bass/Ordinary Times:
From Jackasses to Sad Sacks: Democrats Struggle in The Culture War
In a two-way war, the conflict is engaged by both sides, fighting for their goals and causes.
…
Clearly, the party has not heeded the words from former President Barack Obama to not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Even so, it appears that national Democrats would prefer to focus on anything else other than standing their ground and fighting the culture war.
If their fear is that it will sink their chances in 2022, the reality is that they were doomed from the start due the infamous midterm curse that the president’s party suffers.
If they are worried that the GOP will pivot to inflation again, then they are cowardly in taking the risk of not holding the opposition party’s feet to the fire.
People’s lives could be at stake, and doing nothing is simply unacceptable at this point.