Sunday, May 22, 2022

May 22: Ukraine

We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the United States have both signaled that Russia’s debacle in Ukraine could lead to a nuclear strike. By claiming that Russia is readying its weapons, by warning of a “serious” risk of nuclear escalation and by declaring “there are few rules left,” they purposefully rattled the ultimate saber. Vladimir Putin himself has noted that he has weapons his opponents do not and that he will “use them, if needed.” .......... Henry Kissinger has argued that we should give the threat consideration. ......... We should imagine the unimaginable, specifically how we would respond militarily and economically to such a seismic shift in the global geopolitical terrain. ......... By invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin has already proved that he is capable of illogical and self-defeating decisions. ......... he will also have permanently diminished Russia as a great power and reinvigorated its adversaries ........ It is possible that Mr. Putin could face significant internal challenges to his leadership. ........ free nations must continue to support Ukrainians’ brave and necessary defense of their country. Failing to continue to support Ukraine would be like paying the cannibal to eat us last. ......... If Mr. Putin, or any other nuclear power, can invade and subjugate with near impunity, then Ukraine would be only the first of such conquests. Inevitably, our friends and allies would be devoured by brazen, authoritarian nuclear powers, the implications of which would drastically alter the world order. ........ The right answer is to continue to give Ukraine all the support it needs to defend itself and to win. Its military successes may force Mr. Putin to exit Ukraine or to agree to a cease-fire acceptable to the Ukrainian people. .......... But if a cornered and delusional Mr. Putin were to instead use a nuclear weapon — whether via a tactical strike or by weaponizing one of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants ......... NATO could engage in Ukraine, potentially obliterating Russia’s struggling military. Further, we could confront China and every other nation with a choice much like that George W. Bush gave the world after Sept. 11: You are either with us, or you are with Russia — you cannot be with both. ............... Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event.

Any nation that chose to retain ties with Russia after such an outrage would itself also become a global pariah.

Some or all of its economy would be severed from that of the United States and our allies. ........... Today, the West represents over half of the global G.D.P. Separating any nation from our combined economies could devastate it. The impact on Western economies could be significant, but the impact on the economies of Russia and its fellow travelers would be much worse. It could ultimately be economic Armageddon, but that is far preferable to nuclear Armageddon. ............. The potential responses to an act so heinous and geopolitically disorienting as a nuclear strike must be optimally designed and have the support of our NATO allies. Mr. Putin and his enablers should have no doubt that our answer to such depravity would be devastating.

How the West Is Strangling Putin’s Economy Russia’s military failure in Ukraine has defied almost everyone’s predictions. First came abject defeat at the gates of Kyiv. Then came the incredible shrinking blitzkrieg, as attempts to encircle Ukrainian forces in the supposedly more favorable terrain in the east have devolved into a slow-motion battle of attrition. .......... The remarkable — and, in some ways, puzzling — effectiveness, at least so far, of Western economic sanctions against the Putin regime, sanctions that are working in an unexpected way. ........ Europe, in particular, still hasn’t placed an embargo on Russian oil, let alone done anything substantive to wean itself from dependence on Russian gas. .........

Russian exports have held up, and the country appears to be headed for a record trade surplus.

.......... That surging surplus is a sign of weakness, not strength — it largely reflects a plunge in Russia’s imports, which even state-backed analysts say is hobbling its economy. Russia is, in effect, making a lot of money selling oil and gas, but finding it hard to use that money to buy the things it needs ........... Russia seems to have lost access to imports even from countries that aren’t imposing sanctions. ......... exports from neutral or pro-Russian countries, including China, were down almost as much — 45 percent. ........ Imagine yourself as the chief executive of a Chinese company that relies on components produced in South Korea, Japan or the United States. If you make sales to Russia that might be seen as helping Putin’s war effort, wouldn’t you worry about facing sanctions yourself? ......... Sanctions on Russia’s financial system, such as the freezing of the central bank’s reserves and the exclusion of some major private banks from international payment systems, may also be crimping imports. Hard currency may be flowing into Russia, but using that currency to buy things abroad has become difficult. You can’t conduct modern business with suitcases full of $100 bills. .......... over time Russia will find workarounds that bypass Western sanctions. But time is one thing Putin doesn’t seem to have. ........... the war in Ukraine appears to have devolved into a battle of attrition, and that’s not a battle Putin seems likely to win: Russia has suffered huge equipment losses that it won’t be able to replace any time soon, while Ukraine is receiving large equipment inflows from the West. This war may well be over, and not to Putin’s advantage, before Russia finds ways around Western sanctions. ............ Imports, not exports, are the point of international trade. .......... Russia’s trade surplus is a sign of weakness, not strength; its exports are (alas) holding up well despite its pariah status, but its economy is being crippled by a cutoff of imports. ......

Putin is losing the economic as well as the military war.



My Lunch With President Biden I ate a tuna salad sandwich with tomato on whole wheat bread, with a bowl of mixed fruit and a chocolate milkshake for dessert that was so good it should have been against the law. ......... He just put NATO together, Europe together and the whole Western alliance together — stretching from Canada up to Finland and all the way to Japan — to help Ukraine protect its fledgling democracy from Vladimir Putin’s fascist assault. ......... he has enabled Ukraine to inflict significant losses on Russia’s invading army, thanks to a rapid deployment of U.S. and NATO trainers and massive transfers of precision weapons. ........ It has been the best performance of alliance management and consolidation since another president whom I covered and admired — who also was said to be incapable of putting two sentences together: George H.W. Bush. Bush helped manage the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, without firing a shot or the loss of a single American life. ........... I left our lunch with a full stomach but a heavy heart. ........

He’s worried that while he has reunited the West, he may not be able to reunite America.

.......... he knows that without some basic unity of purpose and willingness to compromise, nothing else is possible. ......... with every passing day, every mass shooting, every racist dog whistle, every defund-the-police initiative, every nation-sundering Supreme Court ruling, every speaker run off a campus, every bogus claim of election fraud ......... I fear that we’re going to break something very valuable very soon. And once we break it, it will be gone — and we may never be able to get it back. ........... I am talking about our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately, an ability we have demonstrated since our founding. The peaceful, legitimate transfer of power is the keystone of American democracy. Break it, and none of our institutions will work for long, and we will be thrust into political and financial chaos. ........... the investigations around the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol are revealing a movement by Trump and his supporters that is not propelled by any coherent set of policies, but rather by a gigantic lie — that Biden did not freely and fairly win a majority of Electoral College votes and therefore is an illegitimate president. ........... their top priority is installing candidates whose primary allegiance is to Trump and his Big Lie — not to the Constitution. And they are more than hinting that in any close election in 2024 — or even ones that aren’t so close — they would be willing to depart from established constitutional rules and norms and award that election to Trump or other Republican candidates who didn’t actually garner the most votes. They are not whispering this platform. They are running for office on it. ........... My formative experience in journalism was watching Lebanese politicians go there in the late 1970s and plunge their frail democracy into protracted civil war. So

don’t tell me that it can’t happen here

. ........ Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano — an election denier who marched with the Jan. 6 crowd at the Capitol — just won the G.O.P. primary to run for governor. ............. It is stomach-turning to watch the number of Trump Republicans running for office affirming his Big Lie, when we know that they know that we know that they know that they do not believe a single word of what they are saying. ......... the G.O.P. is abandoning our most cherished principles at home.......... “Thank God — America is back.” And then they add, “But for how long?”

How My Father, Ronald Reagan, Grappled With Abortion In 1967, as governor of California, my father signed a bill making abortion legal for victims of rape and incest, and in cases where a woman’s mental or physical health was in danger. That law was among the first in the country to decriminalize abortion. He was acutely aware that women who were victims of rape or incest and became pregnant would be re-victimized by being forced to have their attacker’s baby. But his religious faith left him questioning when life begins. ........... I was 14 when he signed the law; I didn’t give much thought to it at the time. About a year later, I met a girl who had been raped by her uncle and got pregnant. She had an abortion in California, and she said the bill my father signed made that possible. She asked me to thank him, but I never did. I never told him about her, or about how proud I was of him right then because I dreaded being asked questions about who my friends were, who I was hanging out with. To this day, I wish I had passed along her gratitude, and my pride. ............ the “soul-searching” he had done before signing the 1967 bill and the long hours of reading and research he had done. He was starting to have regrets because he’d learned that some psychiatrists were diagnosing unwed mothers-to-be with suicidal tendencies after five-minute assessments so that they could get abortions. .......... When you don’t acknowledge your grief, it keeps pulling on you, leading you back to the waters you’re trying to avoid. ....... Throughout those years, he wrestled with his feelings. I think that needs to be said. While he stated that abortions after rape or incest fell into the category of “self-defense,” as did saving a woman’s life if pregnancy or childbirth would threaten it, he couldn’t accept the notion that a woman would choose to abort a fetus for other reasons. .......... and my father said it should be allowed only for rape, incest or the risk of a woman dying. Nothing else. I asked about situations in which a woman isn’t able to care for a child at that time — shouldn’t it be her choice? For some reason I turned to my mother with the question, and she quietly said, “Yes, it should.” ............ I’m assuming that my mother never lobbied my father with her feelings about abortion and choice. Or at least not vehemently. He did listen to her opinions, although there was no guarantee his mind would be changed. ......... In 1986, he elevated William Rehnquist to chief justice on the Supreme Court and nominated Antonin Scalia to fill the vacancy that was left. Abortion rights groups warned that Roe v. Wade could be in jeopardy. Mr. Rehnquist had consistently opposed Roe v. Wade, and Mr. Scalia was known to oppose abortion rights. They were, to me, disturbing appointments. .......... There was complexity to his views on abortion; there was, as he said, “soul-searching,” and I believe to some degree his views remained a work in progress. ....... his faith pulled at him when considering this issue, as did his personal history of losing a newborn. ........ On this issue, though, I’m not sure my father ever found that peace.

G.O.P. Lawmakers Recast Abortion Stance, Wary of Voter Backlash While Democrats decry a draft opinion that would eliminate the constitutional right to an abortion, Republicans who worked decades for this moment have been largely silent. ........ “Big picture, tell me what the 30-year fixed mortgage rate will be and if anything has improved with gas and groceries, and I’ll tell you the results,” said Corry Bliss, a veteran strategist who advises Republican candidates. “That is what the midterms are going to be about — period, end of discussion.” ...... a post-Roe America looming as early as next month. ........ And “mainstream” is how the Republican campaign arms want their candidates to present themselves — as soft-spoken, compassionate, “consensus builders,” as the talking points put it. ....... It is still possible that the court will not go as far as the draft. Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed that the leak was authentic but cautioned that the decision was not final. ......... lawmakers in Louisiana pushed forward legislation that would do precisely what the Washington talking points deny: grant constitutional rights to “all unborn children from the moment of fertilization,” and classify abortion as homicide. Such a law could, in fact, put women and doctors in prison and ban certain types of contraception, such as IUDs, that block implantation of a fertilized egg. ...... A near-total abortion ban has been in place in Texas for eight months, and seemingly no political price has been paid so far. ....... “This has been done so incrementally, it’s like there’s a learned helplessness. We’ve taken so much abuse; what’s a little more?” he said, likening women in states like Texas to the frog in the boiling pot of water. ......... Another factor mitigating the backlash might be the rising popularity of long-term contraception, such as IUDs, and the increased access to birth control in general, which has helped lower the nation’s abortion rate in recent years and given more women a sense of reproductive security.

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