Fareed Zakaria on Where Russia’s War in Ukraine Stands — and Much More The journalist discusses how Moscow’s invasion, U.S.-China relations and the rise of nonaligned countries affect America’s place in the global order. ......... There is the conflict itself, which matters enormously. And then there’s the way it’s reshaping global geopolitics and the relationships and balancing of the great powers. ........ the way it felt at that moment like we were re-entering an age of great power conflict ......... how it’s changed the relationships and competition between America and Europe and China and India among others. ......... this is sort of buyer’s remorse on the part of the Russians. They were weak in the mid-1990s — I mean, amazingly weak. The Russian economy had contracted by 50 percent between 1990 and 1996. That’s more than it had contracted during World War II. So Russia, at a moment of weakness, felt it gave up too much and is trying to, in a sense, claw back a piece of that, regardless of the fact that it violates international law, treaties that it’s signed, norms that have been established since 1945. ............. it is a sort of last gasp of the last multinational empire in the world .......... in terms of empires not wanting to let go of what they see as defining their core colonies that in a sense define who they are. The Ukrainians don’t want to be part of Russia’s empire. And if there’s one trend line you see over the last 100 years, it’s nationalism. It’s the power of people, once they have decided that they want to live free. That is an unstoppable force. And that is what Russia is against............ there will be day-to-day ups and downs, and the Russians will do well one month, and the Ukrainians will do well one month. But I think the secular trajectory is that Ukraine is going to be an independent nation. ............
people seem to have settled in to a long, protracted war of attrition.
.......... the absolutely implacable nature of Ukrainian nationalism ........... But because the conflict has become so dark, the Russians have done things that are really extraordinary, bombing civilian facilities and water treatment plants and hospitals, it’s difficult to imagine how these two sides come to an agreement, a settlement, recognize each other.I think this ends more like the Korean War, which technically hasn’t ended.
It just is the two sides stopped fighting. There is a demilitarized zone between the two armies, which is exactly why it’s called the DMZ. But there’s never a peace treaty signed. ............. Russia is managing to limp along without the kind of punishing depression that would really put a lot of pressure on Putin. ......... we designed the sanctions so that Russia could continue to export energy. Russia could continue to sell oil and natural gas and also sells a lot of coal. And the reason is if Russian oil, natural gas and coal were completely shut out of the world markets, it would trigger a global recession. Oil would go to $200 a barrel, because all that Russian supply taken out of the market would mean that demand would vastly exceed supply. You would suddenly have huge price spikes. Much of the developed world would go into a recession, maybe even worse.................. they’re getting a lot of revenue. Russia is a huge exporter of energy, perhaps the world’s largest depending on how you count it. ........... it turns out, about 50 percent of the world economy is now the so-called emerging markets. And they’re not abiding by the sanctions. .............. many of those abandoned Western businesses have been taken over by Turkish businesses, Chinese businesses, Russian-owned businesses. So there’s a whole rest of the world economy out there that is still playing with Russia. ............... the Russians are essentially evading the sanctions by importing things through Turkey ......... The Turks buy something from the West. The Russians buy that same thing from Turkey. How do you prevent that? ............ It is absolutely clear that Russia is crippled by the lack of access to Western technology at the very high end, particularly of the digital economy, high-end computer chips, for example. ............ that central conundrum, which is sanctions tend to empower the regime in place .......... Look at what the Iran sanctions have done. They have empowered the most conservative elements of Iran, the Revolutionary Guard, because they’re the guys that do all the smuggling. ................ you, in a sense, empower the state, and you disempower society, which are the broad forces that would be empowered by commerce, contact, capitalism. ............ Look at Venezuela. The sanctions there haven’t worked. Look at Iran, they haven’t worked. So we’re trying it with Russia. I don’t — I actually support the sanctions in Russia, because they do put pressure on the regime. But you’re not going to change Putin’s calculus. The only thing that can change Putin’s calculus is defeat on the battlefield. .............. there’s a limit to how fast the Ukrainians can learn to use the most sophisticated American weaponry, such as our advanced fighter jets, such as our best tank. ............ Putin has already escalated, that he is already terrified of defeat. But allowing him to stay in this middle ground is allowing an extended equilibrium that just creates more constant danger as opposed to an actual resolution. ............... as Winston Churchill argued passionately that the United States was not giving enough weaponry to Britain in ‘41 even ............ Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. It has a huge army. It has the capacity to do much more damage in Ukraine proper. Most of the damage they’ve done has been in the parts of Ukraine that they believe should be incorporated into Russia — the Donbas — and that band of Ukraine. They could unleash much more havoc on Ukraine itself. Now, they would pay a huge price. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Russians have done everything they can. In fact, that’s what scares me. I think the Russians could go up this escalation chain. ................. This has revived the core purpose of the West as a strategic concept. And I think you see it most importantly in this transformation of Germany. .............. Merkel ... When Time magazine chose her as their person of the year, she not only refused to give them an interview. She wouldn’t even sit for a photograph. And I remember asking — I think it was Nancy Gibbs, the editor of Time at the time — what was the last person who refused to give you a sit-down for a portrait when they were named person of the year? And she said, well, it was 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini. ................. a plurality of Republicans now oppose funding Ukraine. ........... The Republican Party was the party of isolationism in the ‘20s and the ‘30s. And this was the most bitter debate that took place in America in the last hundred years on foreign policy was not Vietnam. It was entry into World War II. And the Republicans were staunchly on the side of isolationism then. ............... if you look at the young hotheads, where the energy and action of the party is, unfortunately, it looks like a very isolationist party. .............. People who claim to be able to read what is going on in the minds of five people in Beijing and really one are, I think, exaggerating. .............. The Chinese have a very realpolitik conception of international affairs. ......... he said, look, strong countries, big countries are meant to tell little countries what to do. That’s the way the world works ............ The way the Chinese view it, Russia is a big, strong country. There’s this little country on its border, Ukraine. Of course, Ukraine has to be subservient to Russia. And that’s the natural order of things. ............. Xi Jinping does not seem to be a very effusive and emotional man, but he has often referred to Putin as something like my dear friend, my very best friend or versions — variations of that. .......... And they talk about staying up all night talking when they’re together .............. They believe that when regimes lose faith in themselves, as Gorbachev lost faith in the Communist regime, that that is the moment when you crack and crumble. And the second is that the U.S.-led global order must be diminished, eroded, attacked. And so that keeps them very strongly together. ........... just as Russia went to a plan B after not being able to conquer Kyiv, I think the Chinese are on a plan B. And the plan B Now is to try to appear to the real audience, which is the global South, that they are not quite in the same category as Russia. They are the neutral power. They keep making the point that they are actually neutral on this war. .................... They want to be seen as a broker, not as the weaponry supplier for Putin........... the technology bans have really come to bite. ........... But they have also needlessly provoked the Chinese in ways that, I think, are largely an expression of the domestic politics of the moment. ............. And I watched it and thought, oh, my God, this is what happens when you have bipartisanship in Washington. You have unthinking groupthink. You have a kind of herd mentality. And that’s what really was going on with this. It became a competition of who could bash China more. It became largely devoted to a kind of existential argument about really why the Chinese Communist Party should be overthrown. That was the subtext of the entire hearing. ................ think of the period in the ‘50s when we thought this about the Soviet Union and McCarthyism and the paranoia about the missile gap and all those kind of impulses that led us into Vietnam, that led the C.I.A. to try to overthrow dozens of regimes around the world, mostly unsuccessfully, but with huge lasting impact in terms of how those countries perceive the United States. .............. Think about after 9/11, the run-up to the Iraq War, the war itself. We lose the capacity to think. We lose the capacity to assess. ................ we need to rightsize the Chinese threat. The United States is still way more powerful than China. We are the dominant power in the international system. ............... We need to run fast. We don’t need to run scared. .............. And every news network is following the balloon on live balloon cam. .......... It was a meteorological balloon that also had some espionage capacity. It did seem to veer off course. ............ the Chinese have hundreds of spy satellites up in the air that are orbiting the Earth 24/7, have taken hundreds of thousands of photographs of every sensitive sites in the United States. .................... There is some marginal information you can get from a low-flying balloon, but from everything I can gather, not that much. ............... we do this much more than they do it. So we’ve got all this capacity. And so nations spy on each other. .............. And maybe this is a wonderful example of modern politics, where, because it’s visual, because you can see it, because CNN can track it — ............... It was like a low-speed car chase. It was like the O.J. Simpson chase of espionage problems. ........... there were $300,000 sidewinder missiles to hit these $20 balloons. ............. We’re going to be competitive in the economic realm. We’re going to be competitive in the geopolitical realm. But we want to find a way to have a working relationship with the country that is the second most powerful country in the world, which is, by the way, our third largest trading partner. We trade $700 billion of goods with China every year.............. The dictators stay in power partly by judging how far they can move things. .............. I have no doubt in my mind that TikTok is harmful. Not TikTok particularly, but social media in general is harmful for teenagers. ............ TikTok is particularly bad because it’s particularly good. By which, I mean it’s particularly effective, in fact, stunningly effective. .......... The Chinese government would not need to create a company then have the luck of it being super successful, and then use that company to extract data. You could just buy it from Facebook. You could buy it from Google. You could buy it from Amazon. For all we know, they are doing that. ............ To me, part of the argument that makes me friendlier to banning TikTok is that this is attentional infrastructure. And attention is critical. ............. Think the 2000 election and the 2020 era, when we have much more polarized parties. And now, on TikTok somebody turns up the dial on just rampant conspiracy theorizing and things that get Americans ever more at each other’s throats. And we don’t even really know that it’s happening. It’s just a kind of attentional dark matter that is making us hate each other more or is making Americans turn towards Trump again or whatever it might be. ................. It’s just too diverse. It’s too disaggregated. It’s — the fundamental shift that’s taking place in information is that you were going from a one-to-many broadcasting system to a many-to-many network system. .............. And when you have a many-to-many network system, there is no central node. It’s all happening at a disaggregated distributed level where the algorithm is noticing what you like and giving you more of that, and noticing what I like and giving me more of that. So it’s very difficult to imagine how you would control any such digital products. So if you have a problem with TikTok in that sense, what comes next? Do we ban Chinese cars, because Chinese cars after our cars are essentially now digital products. They are software on wheels. And the cars know where you go. And maybe there could be listening in on you. ........................ It feels to me like the distinction you’re making between books and pamphlets on the one side and TikTok on the other is you’re saying, they can do this stuff as long as I don’t think it’s very efficient. If it’s very effective, I’m against it. But if it’s ineffective and inefficient by using books and pamphlets, it’s OK. ....................... to say we’re going to try to hold you back is very different than saying we’re going to try to protect ourselves....... There are still in place today sanctions that do not allow the United States to transfer certain technologies to India, because India was not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, partly as a result of Cold War stuff, where the U.S. was pro-Pakistan and anti-India. So it’s not such a leap to say that you don’t want China to have this most advanced capacity. ............ the semiconductor chips that are being denied to China, I think, constitute less than 5 percent of the market. They may actually be even less than 3 percent of the market. So 95 percent, 98 percent of the market is open. It’s where — we buy a lot of Chinese chips. The stuff that goes into washing machines and all that is much of it is Chinese, much of the assembly of computers is. ............... Huawei was, in many ways, one of the great institutions, a great pride in China. It was a private company that had made it on its own, was outcompeting every Western company at the very high-end technology. .......... for the Chinese, that became a sign of exactly what you’re saying, that this is not a case where the West wants to compete with us. They want to cripple us, so that we can’t grow. ............. Well, the Indians, who are the pro-American democrats, their position on global warming is essentially the same. It’s as hard to get them to do anything. And in fact, the Indians are very ornery on all kinds of things. And part of that is thatwe don’t understand what the world looks like from New Delhi or from South Africa
. ............... George Kennan being the perfect example — spoke fluent Russian, had spent years in Russia, understood the society. You’d be hard pressed to find a lot of people like that in America today. ......... Mike Gallagher, the guy who runs the China committee, you mentioned, in the House — I believe I have this accurately — has never been to China. ................... We had lost sight that Turkey had become this consolidated more democratic, more successful, more proud country. And this is almost literally true. We forgot to ask it whether we could use Turkey as a base to invade Iraq. Most people forget Iraq was meant to be invaded on a two-front invasion, from the South and Kuwait up and then from the north through Turkey down. ............ The Turks surprised the U.S. and said, no, we are now a functioning democracy. This has to go to parliament. And I think it lost in parliament by a couple of votes. So that’s a perfect example of how we haven’t noticed, what I call in the post-American world, the Rise of the Rest. ....... these countries are no longer willing to be pawns on the table. They want to be players in their own right. And we say the right thing sometimes, we mouth the clichés, but we don’t really understand these places. ................. nations representing two thirds of the global population, they’ve not been with us in Russia. They are not necessarily with Russia either. ............. The West routinely cuts deals with violent autocracies to advance its own interests. The United States is improving ties with Venezuela to get more oil. Europe is signing energy contracts with repressive Arab Gulf regimes. Remarkably, the West nonetheless claims that its foreign policy is guided by human rights and democracy. India at least lays no claim to being the conscience keeper of the world.” ................ the number of forcible annexations is down to a handful of times in 75 years. If you go and look at the 75 years before 1945, I mean, it happened so routinely that you could barely count how many times that had happened. So this order is a better order than anything we’ve seen before. ......... the hypocrisy that attends the idea that we can constantly deviate from it. We get to invade Iraq. We get to not sign on to the International Criminal Court....... We do things like — we are accusing China in the South China Seas of violating the law of the Seas Treaty, a treaty to which we are not a signatory. .............. when you want oil, you go to Saudi Arabia, and you don’t worry about the fact that it’s a medieval absolute monarchy. When you want to change your policy, as you say, on Venezuela, you suddenly decide, oh, we were trying to overthrow you last year. This year, we want to buy your oil. .............. And then, when the Indians do it, we shriek, and we say, how dare you? You’re supposed to be a democracy — or South Africa or Indonesia — rather than recognizing that they all have their interests. ................ I mean, the Indian case is particularly complicated, because the Indians buy most of the advanced weaponry from Russia. Now, why do they buy most of their advanced weaponry from Russia? Largely because the United States wouldn’t sell it to them. During the Cold War, the U.S. was allied with Pakistan. The Indians also violated the N.P.T., which, by the way, so did the Pakistanis. ............. the Indians have always relied on Russia for unwavering support on something like Kashmir, which is the disputed territory between India and Pakistan. ............. And they know that the Russians will be the reliable veto in the U.N. Security Council on that. So they’re not going to burn their bridges with the Russians all at once. They’ve distanced themselves a little bit. ............. one of our biggest problems is that we look at the world and we say to ourselves, but we’re bringing you all these wonderful things. Why don’t you just take them and let us shower you with these benefits and tell you what to do? ........... And we don’t understand how strong that desire of doing your own thing is, whether it’s in Iraq, whether it’s in Vietnam, whether it’s in Cuba. ............ nobody thinks, globally, that we follow that order. ......... in the ‘40s and ‘50s, the whole decolonizing world was looking to America. And people like Ho Chi Minh would make overtures to the Americans. .............. When Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, because of the power of the dollar, he kept in place American secondary sanctions. So even though the rest of the world wanted to trade with Iran, they couldn’t. And that has so frustrated the Europeans — ........... basically, if the Americans say, we will sanction you for trading, even though you’re part of the Iran deal, effectively, they have to be cleared through the New York Fed. This is what I’ve called our last true superpower weapon. ................... the Europeans got so frustrated, because they thought that Trump’s pulling out of the Iran deal was totally unjustified, unilateral, entirely a violation of the rules-based order. They set to work trying to find some alternative to a dollar-based system. You know, we have a system called SWIFT, and the Europeans have been trying to set up a different one. ................... This feels to me like the year that, narratively — and probably in reality, too — India began moving towards superpower status. ............... It is still a very poor country. You know, India’s per capita GDP is still under $3,000 a year. China’s — just give you a quick — I mean, Chinese economy is five times larger than India’s. ........... So the Indians innovated, in a way that we could all learn something around the world from, in creating a biometric ID system, where basically, 99.9 percent of Indian adults now have a biometric ID. They have a code. ............. you’re given this number at birth, or if you are an adult, you applied for it, and they were able to get it to everybody. If you want to open a bank account in India, it now takes 90 seconds. ......... Everything else that exists on that scale is a private monopoly. .............. those two things, really — the two infrastructure booms — the digital side, where India is really the world leader. India has the only billion-plus internet platform that is not privately owned. Every other global billion-plus-person internet platform — Google, Facebook — are all private. ............. And what that means is that the whole Indian private sector builds on that public edifice, which means it’s a much freer, much less monopolistic, much more open, much more efficient system. So they’re a real world leader in that. ........... For the first time when I went to Mumbai — you know, I’ve been several times, but it kind of caught my attention this time — you look around, and the number of cranes you see reminded me of Shanghai 20 years ago. ............... He’s one of the most effective politicians I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. He is really brilliant in some ways. ........ Muslims have been in India for 1,000 years. And if you look at some of the symbols of the new India, the new Indian parliament, you’d be hard-pressed to find many visual instances of that. ................. I’ve always thought that India reminded me of America in the 19th century, which is this big, messy, chaotic democracy that’s largely internally focused. .............. India is one of the two or three most pro-American countries in the world. .............. I think India, Israel, and Poland — usually, in the 70 percent-plus say they like — have a favorable view of America. ........... And it’s palpable if you go to India. Every businessman wants to do business with America. Every kid wants to find some way to get to America for education. ........... But the Indians also know that they have a real strategic problem with China. ......... They have a border dispute that is very real and very alive and has not been resolved, and they came to blows, literally, a few years ago. And for that, they need the United States. .......... If the two largest countries in the world, the two most dominant economies in the world, seal themselves off hermetically, that will lead to a collapse of the globalization that’s taken place over the last 30 years. You know, the last time something like this happened — and it’s not even a perfect analogy — is Britain and Germany at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th — two very powerful countries, deeply connected economically, that ended up in a geopolitical rivalry that essentially brought down the world. ............... how getting the news has replaced morning prayers as a kind of binding act that keeps communities together. .......... I sometimes think when people go to listen to watch Fox, they’re not watching television. They’re going to church. They’re going — they’re hearing the catechism. That’s what they want. That’s what they need. And I’m sure you could make the argument on the other side. .Facebook owner Meta plans to create Twitter rival Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox said coding was under way on the platform. The tech giant aims to release it soon, although no date was given. There is some speculation that it could be as early as the end of June. ...... The text-based network - which has a working title of P92 - could turn out to be a greater rival to Elon Musk's Twitter than either BlueSky or Mastodon. ....... the Instagram community is enormous. Meta says it has around two billion users, which dwarfs the 300 million that are believed to use Twitter - although its figures can no longer be verified. ......... If even 25% of Instagram users can be coaxed into using P92 (it will undoubtedly have a sexier name when it launches), it will instantly become bigger than its older rival. ........ Meta says it takes "inspiration" from other products, although others put it less kindly - Stories on Facebook was based on a Snapchat feature, and Reels on Instagram is unmistakably similar to TikTok.
Ukraine army attacks Russian forces in southern Zaporizhzhia region Several military experts have said the focus of Ukraine's long awaited counter-offensive will be Zaporizhzhia. ...... They argue Kyiv is trying to regain access to the Sea of Azov, splitting the occupying Russian forces in the region into two detached groupings. ......... The Zaporizhzhia region is also home to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which is in an area controlled by Russian forces. ....... the resulting emergency is threatening the region's water supplies, with the WHO also warning that cholera could spread.
Ukraine war: Oleg Orlov faces jail time for criticising Putin's war Oleg Orlov has been an outspoken critic of both wars the Kremlin is currently waging: the war in Ukraine and, back home, the war on dissent. ........ "First of all, the Russian Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. I wrote an article presenting my assessment of events. Prosecuting me for that violates the Constitution. "Secondly, what is happening in Ukraine - let's be clear and call it a war - it is against the interests of Russia and Russian citizens. As for 'preserving international peace and security', that's a joke. It reminds me of George Orwell's 'War is Peace' and 'Freedom is Slavery'. Claiming that the war in Ukraine is 'in the interests of international peace' is just nonsense." Article 29 of the Russian Constitution does, indeed, guarantee freedom of speech. On paper. .......
"The scale of repression and the number of cases is reminiscent of the era of [Soviet leader] Leonid Brezhnev," believes Oleg Orlov. "But by the level of cruelty, and by the length of prison terms being handed out, it's like Stalin's time."
LEAKED SCREENSHOTS: This is what Instagram’s upcoming Twitter competitor looks like
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) June 8, 2023
And its public name could be Threads, based on internal documents pic.twitter.com/T9YVC2PzFa
Maps: Tracking Smoke From Canadian Fires“We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run” … a top meta exec told employees. https://t.co/Ykj5Ilsn61
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) June 8, 2023
Wildfire Smoke Blots Sun and Prompts Health Alerts in Much of U.S. The smoke was pouring across the border from Canada, where hundreds of wildfires remain unchecked, and the hazardous smoke conditions are expected to linger through Wednesday and perhaps until later in the week. ....... An eye-watering and cough-inducing smoky haze from Canadian wildfires smothered a swath of the eastern and northern United States on Tuesday, with officials warning residents with health risks to stay indoors and keep their windows closed. ...... In New York City, the smoke could be tasted as well as smelled, and it wrapped the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Manhattan’s other landmarks in a blanket of orange-gray haze. ............. The smoke was pouring across the border
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