Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The state of the Union is sound, but Europe is at war
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Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Five vile things Trump did to Zelensky and Ukraine that you forgot about
The obvious rejoinder to this spin is that Trump got impeached for withholding military aid to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into manufacturing propaganda to help Trump’s reelection. This came even as Zelensky pleaded for help against Russian aggression, which the world is now witnessing unfold in all its horror.
But the focus only on that episode risks oversimplifying the story. It casts this recent history as being mainly about Trump’s personal corruption, i.e., his effort to use foreign policy to smear his campaign opponent.
Some news pieces to catch you up:
NY Times:
- Russian Troop Deaths Expose a Potential Weakness of Putin’s Strategy
- A Surge of Unifying Moral Outrage Over Russia’s War
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Exxon Mobil says it plans to leave its last remaining Russian project.
In just 72 hours, Europe overhauled its entire post-Cold War relationship with Russia
Just last week, many European countries were still so somnolent about the threat Russia posed to Ukraine that Germany’s spy chief was caught unawares in Kyiv when the Kremlin invasion started. He had to be extracted in a special operation.
But over just a handful of days, Europe has been shocked out of a post-Cold War era — and state of mind — in which it left many of the democratic world’s most burning security problems to the United States.
Switzerland no longer neutral? That’s not as shocking as Germany deciding to rearm.
Mitchell A Orenstein/Bulwark:
What Changed Germany’s Mind
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to give weapons to Ukraine overturned decades of tradition.Until yesterday, Germany remained extremely reluctant to create even the faintest appearance that it was threatening Russia militarily—hence its refusal even to allow overflight rights to NATO allies exporting arms to Ukraine. For its own domestic and moral reasons, Germany needed to be a peacemaker to the last.
Putin’s blatant and unprovoked assault on Ukraine changed that calculus. Now, no one in their right mind could possibly blame Germany, so it is finally safe to act. Germany can play a key role as a supporter of Ukraine, both by sending arms to help the poor people in Kyiv and throughout the country and by rearming itself, as Scholz has promised to do, to meet the obvious threat from Russia.
The new era has long been coming. For years, Germany’s leaders, committed to good relations, studiously refused to treat Russia as a threat, but rather as a potential partner. Putin made it easy for them to change their minds.
David Dayen/TAP:
Biden Wants to Take Down the Ocean Shipping Cartel
New initiatives would beef up investigations into anti-competitive conduct from the industry, which is enjoying astronomical profits.
President Biden will target the ocean shipping cartel in tomorrow night’s State of the Union address, outlining new steps to crack down on suspected anti-competitive behavior priced into the cost of every transported good, which has led to astronomical profits for the industry.
The steps include an executive action to commence investigations into ocean shipping excess profit-taking, and a legislative recommendation to bolster the Ocean Shipping Reform Act now working its way through Congress by taking away the industry’s antitrust exemption for so-called “ocean shipping alliances.”
The executive action results from a joint agreement between the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), the main regulator of ocean carriers, and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. Under the arrangement, the Antitrust Division will essentially act as the FMC’s counsel in investigating conduct in the industry, providing the lawyer-power for what would otherwise be an impossible task for an understaffed and under-resourced agency.
David Remnick/New Yorker:
The Ambassador Caught Between Ukraine and Trump
In her first major interview since testifying against Trump, Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, discusses Russia’s war on the nation and Trump’s attack on her.How far will Putin take this? The invasion hasn’t gone the way he would’ve liked, but maybe time is on his side. The sheer volume of arms is on his side. What does he want here?
I think he wants to control Ukraine. When I was in the country, from 2016 to 2019, I always felt that he didn’t really want to own Ukraine, because then there’s at least a modicum of responsibility. He would have to provide services. But he wanted to make sure that Ukraine didn’t have the power of self-determination. He wanted to keep it in his sphere of influence. What he discovered—due, ironically, to his own actions, particularly the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of the Donbass—was that he is the single biggest driver since independence, in 1991, of bringing the Ukrainian people together.
John Cassidy/New Yorker:
How Vladimir Putin Miscalculated the Economic Cost of Invading Ukraine
The Russian leader apparently failed to anticipate the unprecedented targeting of the Central Bank of Russia, a step that has battered the ruble and shaken the country’s financial system.In wartime, it is wise to treat statements from all sides skeptically. In this case, we don’t need to rely on the assessments of anonymous U.S. officials. When the international markets opened on Monday morning, the value of Russia’s currency plunged by a third. To stem the decline, the Russian Central Bank more than doubled its key interest rate, from 9.5 per cent to twenty per cent, and ordered Russian exporting companies to sell foreign currencies and buy rubles. These desperate moves helped trim losses, but at the close of trading in Moscow the ruble was still down by almost twenty per cent—a huge decline for any currency. In a briefing with reporters, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, conceded that “economic reality had significantly changed.”
In Washington, meanwhile, the Biden Administration intensified its economic offensive by imposing a freeze on the Central Bank of Russia’s assets held in U.S. financial institutions. The Treasury Department also prohibited any U.S. person, including American banks and businesses, from engaging in transactions with Russia’s Central Bank, finance ministry, or sovereign wealth fund. “This action effectively immobilizes any assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation held in the United States or by U.S. persons, wherever located,” the Treasury said, in a statement announcing the new policy. In London, the U.K government has introduced a policy along the same lines.
It wasn’t immediately clear just how much money the Central Bank of Russia still holds in New York, London, and other Western financial centers—and which it will no longer be able to access. (According to some estimates, about two-thirds of Russian reserves are now blocked off in countries that have introduced sanctions.) Even so, experts on economic sanctions described the targeting as unprecedented and highly effective. “The G-7 sanctions against the Russian Central Bank, not the swift sanctions, are the real hammer, and they’re showing effect,” Jonathan Hackenbroich, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said. “Russia’s Central Bank might struggle to fight massive inflation and panic even after it doubled interest rates and introduced capital controls.”