The back and forth between the Pentagon and the Kremlin over Vladimir Putin’s knowledge about his war in Ukraine has gotten very confusing, so I thought I would take a shot at figuring out what’s going on.
I'm all for driving Putin crazy. It's his turn after his run of luck with Trump. Which kind of goes along with "Everything Trump touches dies." I think people should observe more closely how this works and avoid him like the plague he is.
In case anyone is interested, there's a really good article dissecting Putin in Foreign Policy, going into Russian history and so forth on up to now. Pretty much Putin is the worst of the worst.
The old childhood game at work: 'I know that you know that I know what you know...'. There's nothing that Putin knows that we don't already know, and that we're moving to counter. Putin is under the Klieg lights, and he lives in a goldfish bowl. How's that for feeding his paranoia. It's the inverse of World War II's capture of the Ultra machine. What good is being a dictator if everything worth knowing about Putin is transparent, out in the open, and in the clear. As a former intelligence officer, this must be maddening and unnerving to Putin. We read his mail before he even sees it. The element of surprise is gone. No opportunity to bluff. He's playing poker with every one of his cards face up on the table. He can't capitalize on a strong hand because his opponents won't bet against him, and every weak hand he holds costs him money because he loses his ante in every time. He's run out of soft targets, and if he masses his forces to seize worthwhile objectives, he loses on every other front.
In the meantime, Putin looks weak and indecisive. He's got limited resources, and his ability to maintain a strong and resilient logistical chain is severely compromised. Think Germany and Japan in the spring and summer of 1945. His adversaries are getting stronger by the day, if not by the hour. What's Putin going to do that we don't know about, and might not have thought about, and planned for. It's like being a mouse in a maze where the top is open, and where observers can see where each path leads, and then make adjustments to the pathways before the mouse can exploit an opportunity to move forward. Putin can run, but he cannot hide.
At the same time, the people Putin relies on are also told that the we know whatever Putin is about to do next. There goes his leadership down the drain. They know that Putin is an open book, and Putin's adversaries are already moving to counter his every move. These become set piece battles where the opponent has all of the options at his disposal: mass, maneuver, surprise and shock action, economy of force, weather and terrain. Worse yet, Putin's forces are going in blind. Who wants to be point man on that advance. The whole exercise is to cause Putin to lose confidence in himself, because his innermost fears are already analyzed in detail and published in the overseas press. The fear, paranoia, and paralysis percolate through the entire command structure. The natural instinct is for everyone to cut his losses, and nobody risks anything.
The end result is that instead of having to deal with a raging, unpredictable Russian bear, we have a whipped animal whose bite can cause serious injury, but which can be easily avoided.
You are correct on every point, sir, especially your line about who wants to be a dictator if everyone knows every single thing you do before you do it. Me thinks that his rivals in the Kremlin, and I'm sure he has a few, are watching all of this rubbing their hands together with glee. The only question remaining, really, is how long before one or more of them makes a move to remove him from the maze and take over and shut this mess down, which is costing Russia billions, and potentially trillions. Plus, they want their condos overlooking
Biscayne Bay and the Riviera back, and their wives want to return to the Prada store in Milan.
I am glad you approve. As to the question in the alternative, I think we've got that covered too, at least in its broad outlines. Intelligence professionals talk to one another, in hypothetical terms, of course. They are, of course, the best of enemies, each of whom despises their respective political masters. I guess, for these 'frenemies', avoidance of doing precipitous and stupid things is Job One. Each undoubtedly has a collection of 'tells' that a shrewd analyst on either side can use to develop a reasonably accurate picture of what's going on across the street in the other guy's shop that could prove worrisome for all concerned. Nothing that could be interpreted as treasonable by either of their governments, because without conversation, nobody learns anything. We had Trump, who never listened to his intelligence services; and the FSB has their own cross to bear in the form of Vladimir Putin. Commisseration makes life easier for everybody.
That would be hard to imagine. With Putin, it's all about power. Personal power generating unseemly wealth for a lucky few. Trump's a grifter and petty chisler. Trump has a knack for losing money. For Trump it's low rent prestige, and really wealthy people shy away from him. His business do poorly because he's a lousy businessmen. Trump's businesses are short lived, because they appeal to people who are easily impressed by bright shiny objects. At heart, Trump's a slumlord.
I'm writing this after seeing news reports that Putin is calling up 135,000 conscripts to help his army man up. Again, is like watching a poker player putting a bucket full of poker chips on the table to intimidate everyone else sitting at the table. Except, these aren't real poker chips representing real money. Instead, he's treating this poker game like the futures market, where he hopes to deliver 135,000 trained soldiers about a year or two from now, because that's about how long it actually takes to get a high enough level of competency to take to the field. It takes approximately 10 weeks of actual training and infantry skills to get someone who can survive for a day or two on the battlefield, much less carry the fight to the enemy. This is all for show and propaganda. Putin doesn't have those soldiers right now; and as I said earlier, it'll be at least a year, may be two years before these raw recruits are capable of doing anything worthwhile.
This is part of that long Russian tradition of throwing untrained men into battle, and then throwing more men into battle when there are not enough survivors of the first engagement to carry the fight to the enemy. We saw this happen during the second world war, repeatedly. I saw a report recently concerning the casualty losses between Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II, that for every German soldier killed, 20 Russians lost their lives. This time, however, Russia's reckless expenditure of human life is inevitably going to catch up with them. They don't have the staying power to see this through to the end.
As Lucian states in his essay, digital computing in gun laying has largely eliminated the need for having perfectible skills, until the computers aren't available. Back when I was wearing green, we practiced map reading and land navigation incessantly. We're going from GPS coordinates on a Google map, back to using a lensatic compass, to dead reckoning by starlight. If the Russians are incapable of fielding a modern army that can go toe to toe with NATO, they need to find a way to end this war. The fight in Ukraine is now; and Putin is making a big show of having some future army show up two years from now is a lot of hot air and chest thumping. Undoubtedly, the fight will still be going on two years from now, but by then, hopefully, the Russian army will have been sufficiently bloodied that they won't be willing to continue the war.
The history of the American Civil War shows the same result, with the economy of the defeated Confederacy on its knees by the end of the war. The Russian economy is a one-trick pony, whose strength lies only in its oil fields and gas wells. Take those away, and the economy is unsustainable. And the reason that is so is that a diverse economy is less vulnerable to the kinds of pressure and corruption that Putin and his cronies have been engaged in over the past 20 years. It's as if Russia had suddenly become Iran or Iraq, two other countries where petrochemical exports predominate to the exclusion of almost everything else.
Actually, no. Wars are divisive and cause economic uncertainty. World trade reached a peak in 1913, but was shattered by the war years, and it took decades to recover. The same with World War II.
And 3, it is a way out for putin who could blame everything on his generals. He only commissioned a special operation, not a full-scale invasion. Some heads roll (which were going to fall anyway) and Putin saves face, which is the only way out of the conflict without nuking anything, because i'm afraid there's not enough psy-war in the whole wide world that can take down vladimir and friends.
Lucian, you have succeeded in producing another superb analysis.
Brilliant. Outstanding.
You are asking precisely the questions that need to be asked.
Anyone reading this analysis might be left with only one take-away: confusion. “What’s really going on here?”
However, I venture to say that there are several distinct, highly plausible likelihoods:
Putin is very likely to be in a bubble of his own making. Putting his Ukraine FSB deputy commanders on house arrest or suspension or whatever indicates he probably wasn’t fully informed and/or they have underperformed. Losing an unprecedented percentage of high officers, soldiers, and military vehicles also suggests both military incompetence and poor command (perhaps ignorance of facts on the ground) at the highest levels.
I suggest that the likelihood that Putin is insulated from facts is extremely high also because I am convinced the US government does not want to be caught in a lie later on down the road. The US values its integrity in this administration. Sure, during WWII, the Allies concocted that whole story about Hitler being illegitimate, and that his true surname was actually Schickelgruber. All that was a lie. Casting false aspersion on Hitler as “illegitimate,” during a period of history when there was actual pejorative cultural value in that accusation, served the purpose of devaluing him as a person. But notice how relatively innocuous that lie was. That was personal disinformation, not directly related to the war and its strategic outcome. Sort of an aside, or sidebar.
This man is probably the richest man in the world, considering that he has forced all those oligarchs to give him half of whatever they make. See Greg Olear and other sources to confirm that info, search Khodorkovsky. He kills opponents. He asks for, and receives, compliance for disgraced underlings to kill themselves. So in his country, he is perceived as all-powerful, certainly by subordinates in his govt. He is a true mafia boss, a criminal top dog in every sense. There is damn good reason we see journalist reports that his cabinet and other underlings are terrified of him, and are terrified of making big mistakes. Any big mistake under this guy can easily be a life-threatening event.
So what are the chances that he is being insulated from information, especially bad news, by his subordinates?
Very high, IMO.
No one underneath him wants to be scapegoated. Not good.
I was being entertained (in a good way) by the account of the psyops war, and and then "(Their nuclear capabilities are a separate and much darker issue.)" brought me back to reality. Much much darker, approaching black hole for humanity. It's too easy to imagine how our totally dysfunctional systems on both sides could spiral out of control and pull the trigger. Driving Putin crazy may not be what we actually want......
It seems totally unlikely that Putin isn’t watching CNN like everybody else. And I imagine he fully understands and gets it about our psyops moves. It’s all on a chessboard for Putin. He is as calculating as they come and he contemplates every move on the big board. He sees the losses as pawns in the game. He’s cold as ice and a control freak. His only enemy is betrayal. My take.
I think Putin is smart enough to ask the right questions in order to get a clear and accurate picture of battlefield status. He is paranoid enough to not accept what is reported at face value. I could be wrong, but I believe he has a better understanding of what is going on than the Pentagon and administration give him credit for.
I would guess that at the least, he is getting broadcasts about what is going on from around the world and might even be spending hours watching them ala Trump. His senior folks may also be telling him that what he is seeing is really not an accurate portrayal and although they have had some problems, they are in the process of adjusting strategy accordingly. I would guess there is intelligence watching the intelligence in Russia and a lot of different levels. They are pros and protecting their butts from being sent to the gulag and profiting as much as possible along the way. They are all lying to each other at some level. Unfortunately, it looks like the current strategy is to try to bomb the Ukraine into submission which will make this whole thing even uglier.
It is indeed very confusing-because as I've stated in a previous comment, Putin might just have all the information we have because he has satellite/and/or/ diplomatic people sending him stuff we've been saying on our end, so he knows exactly what is going on, but there's a deeper reason for our talking this way-and we're just showing off in front of him.
Psyops indeed, and Putin might have done it himself in his days in the KGB and is fully aware of what we're doing. Maybe it's all true and he's sitting in his bunker driving himself crazy because we know he's losing, and he can't stand that kind of intelligence getting out, but he has no way to send his operatives out because he's shut them down, or we have by sanctions against everything Russian, including their propaganda machines.
RT in the US has been shut down, and I guess the only way they have any news is in Pravda now-because it has to be the government's message, not ours.
It's 2 wars-one of intelligence and the other for the physical gains. He's losing both.
I got dizzy just reading this. (That's a compliment, Lucian.) I've been suspicious of the "Putin's in the dark" scenario because Putin isn't stupid and he isn't gullible. His survival in the KGB and post-Soviet Russia are testimony to that. He's also got access to more info than his immediate underlings are giving him, and his immediate underlings know that. Unless his faculties have deteriorated substantially or his fears of Covid have turned into paranoia (Vladimir Putin, meet Howard Hughes?), I suspect he knows he's in the fight of his life.
Thank You for the refresher, Roland. As I wrote in response a year ago "Thank you [Greg Olear] for this excellent, if disturbing, piece. I have never seen modern Russia's political history and economy explained so clearly, concisely and cleverly. To think how close we came to...I can't go there." I was referring to tRump's defeat then. Now we are ...
Lucian, your 2 most recent Ukraine war pieces have been some of your best work, period.
Thank you so much.
I am posting this article because there hasn’t been a good place to put it, so I’m just dropping it here. It’s an opinion piece from an experienced, highly placed Chinese academic about Chinese Russian policy during this war. Enjoy.
Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China’s Choice, by Hu Wei
‘Opens up the possibility of corporate interests, both foreign and domestic; utilizing the log rhythms of Madison Avenue thru Fox Broadcasting and the like; to promulgate the Nouveau Reich agenda…. ‘Jus sayin’
You may be right but if you are it doesn't speak very well of the NY Times and other outlets that allow themselves to be used as tools of US government propaganda. I wonder what that says about the alleged distinction between a closed Russian media serving as agents of the Russian state and our free and open media?
The NY Times and the Post have been used in the past as propaganda outlets. I could look it up but as recently as the Iraq War they were complicit in befouling the waters with the US line. Remember the 'weapons of mass destruction' and Colin Powell saying they existed?
Or we could go further back to Vietnam. The government is well aware of the strategic use of media to inflame the public opinion.
They report what is out there with a bit of investigation and due diligence, but not much. Most of the news comes from the supposed experts they interview who mostly parrot one another and talk about the things they get from their insider friends. It's not like reporting on a fire or a murder. Most of the investigative reporting is limited and very focused on a narrow range of events.
I'm all for driving Putin crazy. It's his turn after his run of luck with Trump. Which kind of goes along with "Everything Trump touches dies." I think people should observe more closely how this works and avoid him like the plague he is.
In case anyone is interested, there's a really good article dissecting Putin in Foreign Policy, going into Russian history and so forth on up to now. Pretty much Putin is the worst of the worst.
The old childhood game at work: 'I know that you know that I know what you know...'. There's nothing that Putin knows that we don't already know, and that we're moving to counter. Putin is under the Klieg lights, and he lives in a goldfish bowl. How's that for feeding his paranoia. It's the inverse of World War II's capture of the Ultra machine. What good is being a dictator if everything worth knowing about Putin is transparent, out in the open, and in the clear. As a former intelligence officer, this must be maddening and unnerving to Putin. We read his mail before he even sees it. The element of surprise is gone. No opportunity to bluff. He's playing poker with every one of his cards face up on the table. He can't capitalize on a strong hand because his opponents won't bet against him, and every weak hand he holds costs him money because he loses his ante in every time. He's run out of soft targets, and if he masses his forces to seize worthwhile objectives, he loses on every other front.
In the meantime, Putin looks weak and indecisive. He's got limited resources, and his ability to maintain a strong and resilient logistical chain is severely compromised. Think Germany and Japan in the spring and summer of 1945. His adversaries are getting stronger by the day, if not by the hour. What's Putin going to do that we don't know about, and might not have thought about, and planned for. It's like being a mouse in a maze where the top is open, and where observers can see where each path leads, and then make adjustments to the pathways before the mouse can exploit an opportunity to move forward. Putin can run, but he cannot hide.
At the same time, the people Putin relies on are also told that the we know whatever Putin is about to do next. There goes his leadership down the drain. They know that Putin is an open book, and Putin's adversaries are already moving to counter his every move. These become set piece battles where the opponent has all of the options at his disposal: mass, maneuver, surprise and shock action, economy of force, weather and terrain. Worse yet, Putin's forces are going in blind. Who wants to be point man on that advance. The whole exercise is to cause Putin to lose confidence in himself, because his innermost fears are already analyzed in detail and published in the overseas press. The fear, paranoia, and paralysis percolate through the entire command structure. The natural instinct is for everyone to cut his losses, and nobody risks anything.
The end result is that instead of having to deal with a raging, unpredictable Russian bear, we have a whipped animal whose bite can cause serious injury, but which can be easily avoided.
You are correct on every point, sir, especially your line about who wants to be a dictator if everyone knows every single thing you do before you do it. Me thinks that his rivals in the Kremlin, and I'm sure he has a few, are watching all of this rubbing their hands together with glee. The only question remaining, really, is how long before one or more of them makes a move to remove him from the maze and take over and shut this mess down, which is costing Russia billions, and potentially trillions. Plus, they want their condos overlooking
Biscayne Bay and the Riviera back, and their wives want to return to the Prada store in Milan.
I am glad you approve. As to the question in the alternative, I think we've got that covered too, at least in its broad outlines. Intelligence professionals talk to one another, in hypothetical terms, of course. They are, of course, the best of enemies, each of whom despises their respective political masters. I guess, for these 'frenemies', avoidance of doing precipitous and stupid things is Job One. Each undoubtedly has a collection of 'tells' that a shrewd analyst on either side can use to develop a reasonably accurate picture of what's going on across the street in the other guy's shop that could prove worrisome for all concerned. Nothing that could be interpreted as treasonable by either of their governments, because without conversation, nobody learns anything. We had Trump, who never listened to his intelligence services; and the FSB has their own cross to bear in the form of Vladimir Putin. Commisseration makes life easier for everybody.
What if Putin was as inept as Trump?
That would be hard to imagine. With Putin, it's all about power. Personal power generating unseemly wealth for a lucky few. Trump's a grifter and petty chisler. Trump has a knack for losing money. For Trump it's low rent prestige, and really wealthy people shy away from him. His business do poorly because he's a lousy businessmen. Trump's businesses are short lived, because they appeal to people who are easily impressed by bright shiny objects. At heart, Trump's a slumlord.
I'm writing this after seeing news reports that Putin is calling up 135,000 conscripts to help his army man up. Again, is like watching a poker player putting a bucket full of poker chips on the table to intimidate everyone else sitting at the table. Except, these aren't real poker chips representing real money. Instead, he's treating this poker game like the futures market, where he hopes to deliver 135,000 trained soldiers about a year or two from now, because that's about how long it actually takes to get a high enough level of competency to take to the field. It takes approximately 10 weeks of actual training and infantry skills to get someone who can survive for a day or two on the battlefield, much less carry the fight to the enemy. This is all for show and propaganda. Putin doesn't have those soldiers right now; and as I said earlier, it'll be at least a year, may be two years before these raw recruits are capable of doing anything worthwhile.
This is part of that long Russian tradition of throwing untrained men into battle, and then throwing more men into battle when there are not enough survivors of the first engagement to carry the fight to the enemy. We saw this happen during the second world war, repeatedly. I saw a report recently concerning the casualty losses between Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II, that for every German soldier killed, 20 Russians lost their lives. This time, however, Russia's reckless expenditure of human life is inevitably going to catch up with them. They don't have the staying power to see this through to the end.
As Lucian states in his essay, digital computing in gun laying has largely eliminated the need for having perfectible skills, until the computers aren't available. Back when I was wearing green, we practiced map reading and land navigation incessantly. We're going from GPS coordinates on a Google map, back to using a lensatic compass, to dead reckoning by starlight. If the Russians are incapable of fielding a modern army that can go toe to toe with NATO, they need to find a way to end this war. The fight in Ukraine is now; and Putin is making a big show of having some future army show up two years from now is a lot of hot air and chest thumping. Undoubtedly, the fight will still be going on two years from now, but by then, hopefully, the Russian army will have been sufficiently bloodied that they won't be willing to continue the war.
The history of the American Civil War shows the same result, with the economy of the defeated Confederacy on its knees by the end of the war. The Russian economy is a one-trick pony, whose strength lies only in its oil fields and gas wells. Take those away, and the economy is unsustainable. And the reason that is so is that a diverse economy is less vulnerable to the kinds of pressure and corruption that Putin and his cronies have been engaged in over the past 20 years. It's as if Russia had suddenly become Iran or Iraq, two other countries where petrochemical exports predominate to the exclusion of almost everything else.
Aren't wars usually about what the wealthy want to occur?
Actually, no. Wars are divisive and cause economic uncertainty. World trade reached a peak in 1913, but was shattered by the war years, and it took decades to recover. The same with World War II.
And 3, it is a way out for putin who could blame everything on his generals. He only commissioned a special operation, not a full-scale invasion. Some heads roll (which were going to fall anyway) and Putin saves face, which is the only way out of the conflict without nuking anything, because i'm afraid there's not enough psy-war in the whole wide world that can take down vladimir and friends.
Right on, Putin isn't taking blame for anything. Heads will roll if they haven't already.
All well and good, but do we want Putin crazier than he might already be?
Lucian, you have succeeded in producing another superb analysis.
Brilliant. Outstanding.
You are asking precisely the questions that need to be asked.
Anyone reading this analysis might be left with only one take-away: confusion. “What’s really going on here?”
However, I venture to say that there are several distinct, highly plausible likelihoods:
Putin is very likely to be in a bubble of his own making. Putting his Ukraine FSB deputy commanders on house arrest or suspension or whatever indicates he probably wasn’t fully informed and/or they have underperformed. Losing an unprecedented percentage of high officers, soldiers, and military vehicles also suggests both military incompetence and poor command (perhaps ignorance of facts on the ground) at the highest levels.
I suggest that the likelihood that Putin is insulated from facts is extremely high also because I am convinced the US government does not want to be caught in a lie later on down the road. The US values its integrity in this administration. Sure, during WWII, the Allies concocted that whole story about Hitler being illegitimate, and that his true surname was actually Schickelgruber. All that was a lie. Casting false aspersion on Hitler as “illegitimate,” during a period of history when there was actual pejorative cultural value in that accusation, served the purpose of devaluing him as a person. But notice how relatively innocuous that lie was. That was personal disinformation, not directly related to the war and its strategic outcome. Sort of an aside, or sidebar.
This man is probably the richest man in the world, considering that he has forced all those oligarchs to give him half of whatever they make. See Greg Olear and other sources to confirm that info, search Khodorkovsky. He kills opponents. He asks for, and receives, compliance for disgraced underlings to kill themselves. So in his country, he is perceived as all-powerful, certainly by subordinates in his govt. He is a true mafia boss, a criminal top dog in every sense. There is damn good reason we see journalist reports that his cabinet and other underlings are terrified of him, and are terrified of making big mistakes. Any big mistake under this guy can easily be a life-threatening event.
So what are the chances that he is being insulated from information, especially bad news, by his subordinates?
Very high, IMO.
No one underneath him wants to be scapegoated. Not good.
I was being entertained (in a good way) by the account of the psyops war, and and then "(Their nuclear capabilities are a separate and much darker issue.)" brought me back to reality. Much much darker, approaching black hole for humanity. It's too easy to imagine how our totally dysfunctional systems on both sides could spiral out of control and pull the trigger. Driving Putin crazy may not be what we actually want......
Lucian, I love your Venn diagrams.
It seems totally unlikely that Putin isn’t watching CNN like everybody else. And I imagine he fully understands and gets it about our psyops moves. It’s all on a chessboard for Putin. He is as calculating as they come and he contemplates every move on the big board. He sees the losses as pawns in the game. He’s cold as ice and a control freak. His only enemy is betrayal. My take.
Mine too.
I think Putin is smart enough to ask the right questions in order to get a clear and accurate picture of battlefield status. He is paranoid enough to not accept what is reported at face value. I could be wrong, but I believe he has a better understanding of what is going on than the Pentagon and administration give him credit for.
I think you are correct, sir.
I would guess that at the least, he is getting broadcasts about what is going on from around the world and might even be spending hours watching them ala Trump. His senior folks may also be telling him that what he is seeing is really not an accurate portrayal and although they have had some problems, they are in the process of adjusting strategy accordingly. I would guess there is intelligence watching the intelligence in Russia and a lot of different levels. They are pros and protecting their butts from being sent to the gulag and profiting as much as possible along the way. They are all lying to each other at some level. Unfortunately, it looks like the current strategy is to try to bomb the Ukraine into submission which will make this whole thing even uglier.
It is indeed very confusing-because as I've stated in a previous comment, Putin might just have all the information we have because he has satellite/and/or/ diplomatic people sending him stuff we've been saying on our end, so he knows exactly what is going on, but there's a deeper reason for our talking this way-and we're just showing off in front of him.
Psyops indeed, and Putin might have done it himself in his days in the KGB and is fully aware of what we're doing. Maybe it's all true and he's sitting in his bunker driving himself crazy because we know he's losing, and he can't stand that kind of intelligence getting out, but he has no way to send his operatives out because he's shut them down, or we have by sanctions against everything Russian, including their propaganda machines.
RT in the US has been shut down, and I guess the only way they have any news is in Pravda now-because it has to be the government's message, not ours.
It's 2 wars-one of intelligence and the other for the physical gains. He's losing both.
I got dizzy just reading this. (That's a compliment, Lucian.) I've been suspicious of the "Putin's in the dark" scenario because Putin isn't stupid and he isn't gullible. His survival in the KGB and post-Soviet Russia are testimony to that. He's also got access to more info than his immediate underlings are giving him, and his immediate underlings know that. Unless his faculties have deteriorated substantially or his fears of Covid have turned into paranoia (Vladimir Putin, meet Howard Hughes?), I suspect he knows he's in the fight of his life.
A History of Putin’s Rise
https://gregolear.substack.com/p/plunder-tsar-putin-the-plutocrat?s=r
Thank You for the refresher, Roland. As I wrote in response a year ago "Thank you [Greg Olear] for this excellent, if disturbing, piece. I have never seen modern Russia's political history and economy explained so clearly, concisely and cleverly. To think how close we came to...I can't go there." I was referring to tRump's defeat then. Now we are ...
Lucian, your 2 most recent Ukraine war pieces have been some of your best work, period.
Thank you so much.
I am posting this article because there hasn’t been a good place to put it, so I’m just dropping it here. It’s an opinion piece from an experienced, highly placed Chinese academic about Chinese Russian policy during this war. Enjoy.
Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China’s Choice, by Hu Wei
https://uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-wei-russia-ukraine-war-china-choice/
‘Opens up the possibility of corporate interests, both foreign and domestic; utilizing the log rhythms of Madison Avenue thru Fox Broadcasting and the like; to promulgate the Nouveau Reich agenda…. ‘Jus sayin’
‘Excellent assessment.
You may be right but if you are it doesn't speak very well of the NY Times and other outlets that allow themselves to be used as tools of US government propaganda. I wonder what that says about the alleged distinction between a closed Russian media serving as agents of the Russian state and our free and open media?
The NY Times and the Post have been used in the past as propaganda outlets. I could look it up but as recently as the Iraq War they were complicit in befouling the waters with the US line. Remember the 'weapons of mass destruction' and Colin Powell saying they existed?
Or we could go further back to Vietnam. The government is well aware of the strategic use of media to inflame the public opinion.
They report what is out there with a bit of investigation and due diligence, but not much. Most of the news comes from the supposed experts they interview who mostly parrot one another and talk about the things they get from their insider friends. It's not like reporting on a fire or a murder. Most of the investigative reporting is limited and very focused on a narrow range of events.