Shanghai Crackdown on Omicron Shows Brutality of China's 'Zero Covid' Policy (VIDEO)

CONTENT WARNING!

There's video (HERE) of the massive state crackdown in Shanghai. To say it's troubling would be an extreme understatement. THIS is why the Chinese Communist Party controls all communication and information --- the regime cannot allow the outside world to see the brutal inhumanity of the "Middle Kingdom's" totalitarian system.

At the Financial Times, "Shanghai lockdown tests the limits of Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy":

In late March, as Shanghai residents began to worry that rising coronavirus infections would lead the city into its first mass lockdown, authorities turned to social media to calm the situation.

“Please do not believe or spread rumours,” the city government wrote on China’s Weibo platform on March 23, where posts warning that people would imminently be confined to their homes had already spurred panic buying of food.

Just days later, the outline of the rumours — if not the fine details — turned out to be true. In response to thousands of cases, China’s largest city last Sunday unveiled the most significant lockdown measures in the country since the sealing off of Wuhan when Covid-19 first emerged more than two years ago...

Citizens are jumping off high-rise building in mass, and people are hanging themselves in groves of trees.

The police are killing ALL cats and dogs in the city.

 

China Accelerates Nuclear Buildup

Well that's just great. *Eye-roll.*

At the Wall Street Journal, "China Is Accelerating Its Nuclear Buildup Over Rising Fears of U.S. Conflict":

China has accelerated an expansion of its nuclear arsenal because of a change in its assessment of the threat posed by the U.S., people with knowledge of the Chinese leadership’s thinking say, shedding new light on a buildup that is raising tension between the two countries.

The Chinese nuclear effort long predates Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the U.S.’s wariness about getting directly involved in the war there has likely reinforced Beijing’s decision to put greater emphasis on developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent, some of these people say. Chinese leaders see a stronger nuclear arsenal as a way to deter the U.S. from getting directly involved in a potential conflict over Taiwan.

Among recent developments, work has accelerated this year on more than 100 suspected missile silos in China’s remote western region that could be used to house nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the U.S., according to analysts that study satellite images of the area.

American leaders have said the thinking behind China’s nuclear advance is unclear. Independent security analysts who study nuclear proliferation say they are also in the dark about what is driving Beijing after exchanges between Chinese officials and analysts mostly dried up in the past few years.

The people close to the Chinese leadership said China’s increased focus on nuclear weapons is also driven by fears Washington might seek to topple Beijing’s Communist government following a more hawkish turn in U.S. policy toward China under the Trump and Biden administrations.

American military officials and security analysts are concerned China’s nuclear acceleration could mean it would be willing to make a surprise nuclear strike. The people close to the Chinese leadership said Beijing is committed to not using nuclear weapons first.

China plans to maintain an arsenal no larger than necessary to ensure China’s security interests, they said, adding that the Chinese military believes its nuclear weapons are too outdated to present an effective deterrent against a potential U.S. nuclear strike.

“China’s inferior nuclear capability could only lead to growing U.S. pressure on China,” one person close to the leadership said.

Nervous international reaction to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s call for his nuclear forces to be put on alert following his invasion of Ukraine has offered Chinese officials a real-world lesson about the strategic value of nuclear weapons. So did Ukraine’s decision in 1994 to turn over the nuclear weapons left in the country after the breakup of the Soviet Union in return for security assurances from the U.S. and Russia.

“Ukraine lost its nuclear deterrence in the past and that’s why it got into a situation like this,” said a retired Chinese military officer with ties to the country’s nuclear program.

The people familiar with the Chinese leadership’s thinking said Beijing hasn’t conveyed any adjustments to the country’s nuclear policy as a result of developments in Ukraine. China’s Ministry of Defense didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The people have knowledge of Beijing’s thinking about nuclear policy through their work with various agencies involved in security issues. None are directly involved in the setting of nuclear policy. They didn’t preclude that future developments might change Beijing’s approach and said other factors may also be influencing the leadership’s approach to nuclear weapons.

Their observations nevertheless bring greater clarity to a shift in Beijing’s thinking that has far-reaching consequences globally. Rising tension between the U.S. and China over nuclear weapons could throw the world back into a Cold War-style nuclear standoff similar to that seen in the decades following World War II between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

The risk of miscalculations this time could be higher, however, because while the U.S. and Soviet Union communicated about their nuclear weapons during arms control talks from the late 1980s, the Chinese program and Beijing’s thinking on the role of nuclear weapons has been shrouded in secrecy. China has declined to engage in nuclear arms control talks with the U.S., saying Washington should first reduce its nuclear inventory.

U.S. government and private sector estimates put China’s nuclear arsenal in the low hundreds of warheads, far below the roughly 4,000 warheads held by both Russia and the U.S. The Pentagon says it now expects China to have 1,000 warheads by the end of this decade.

Satellite images taken during January show the last 45 of the temporary covers over each of 120 suspected missile silos near the city of Yumen have been removed, suggesting the most sensitive work at all of the silos has been completed, said Matt Korda, a senior research associate for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. At two other smaller silo fields in western China, work is at earlier stages.

The silos at each of the sites are large enough for a new long-range Chinese missile known as the DF-41 that was put into service in 2020 and is capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, analysts say. Tests of missiles that are launched from aircraft and can carry nuclear warheads also give Beijing a stronger chance of being able to retaliate if it is hit first in a nuclear attack.

In public, China has played down its nuclear pursuits.

“On the assertions made by U.S. officials that China is expanding dramatically its nuclear capabilities, first, let me say that this is untrue,” Fu Cong, director general of the Foreign Ministry’s arms control department, said earlier this year. He said that China is working to ensure its nuclear deterrent meets the minimum level necessary for national defense.

Chinese leaders had seen nuclear weapons as being of limited value because they don’t offer realistic options for fighting most wars. A major shift occurred in early 2020, according to the people familiar with the leadership’s thinking, as the U.S. government hardened its stance toward Beijing in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Strong criticism of the Communist Party from senior Trump administration officials spurred a consensus among Chinese leaders that Washington was willing to take greater risks to stop China’s rise, some of the people said.

A May 2020 speech in Mandarin by former Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger was particularly alarming, they said. Speaking on the anniversary of a pivotal 1919 student protest in China, Mr. Pottinger said: “Wasn’t the goal to achieve citizen-centric government in China, and not replace one regime-centric model with another one? The world will wait for the Chinese people to furnish the answers.”

“The speech was obviously calling the Chinese to topple the Communist Party,” one person familiar with the Chinese leadership’s thinking said.

In response to a request for comment, Mr. Pottinger said that such an interpretation was “a profound admission that the Communist Party knows it has failed to deliver citizen-centric governance, and it confirms what everyone already suspected: What Beijing fears above all is its own people.”

At the same time, increased support from the U.S. for Taiwan, a democratically self-ruled island that Beijing views as a part of China and has vowed to put under its control, prompted Chinese leaders to debate the prospect that the U.S. might be willing to use nuclear weapons in a conflict over the island, according to the people close to the leadership...

 

Chinese President Vows to Control Covid Outbreak With Smallest Cost

Well, Xi must have gotten some blowback for welding his population in apartment blocks to stop the spread.

At WSJ, "Xi Jinping says leaders must ‘minimize the impact of the Covid situation on economic and social development’":

Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to reduce the impact of Covid-control measures on the economy and people’s lives, a first acknowledgment from the Chinese leadership of the costs of the government’s stringent policies to rein in outbreaks.

As other countries have moved away from lockdowns and social distancing, Beijing has touted the success of its draconian measures in keeping the number of cases low, despite a mounting toll on its people and economy.

However, Chinese officials have scrambled to boost confidence in the Chinese economy as the more contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus has prompted a surge in cases. The costs of fighting outbreaks add to recent headwinds, as Mr. Xi’s campaign of regulatory tightening last year has slowed economic momentum more than expected. The geopolitical crisis over the war in Ukraine, and the potential costs to China of its recent alignment with Russia, have also rattled investors’ nerves.

In a Thursday meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, Mr. Xi asked officials to minimize the impact on the Chinese economy and people’s lives from Covid-19 control measures, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

China is facing the biggest wave of Covid-19 infections since Wuhan became the original center of the pandemic in early 2020. Several local governments have resorted to the same playbook used over the past two years to stamp out new outbreaks by ordering large-scale shutdowns and mass testing.

Mr. Xi still urged officials to curb the spread of infection as soon as possible and said the central government would hold local officials accountable if they fail to respond to outbreaks promptly, Xinhua reported. Several officials in Jilin province in China’s northeast, where most of the recent cases have been reported, have been removed from their positions.

However, Mr. Xi said China must “strive to achieve the biggest prevention and control effect with the smallest cost, and minimize the impact of the Covid situation on economic and social development,” Xinhua reported.

Over the past two days, the rise in cases appears to have abated slightly. On Thursday, China reported 2,432 cases, including both symptomatic and asymptomatic infections. Of those, 1,157 were in Jilin.

Mr. Xi’s remarks came a day after senior officials moved to reassure investors rattled by the prospect of widespread factory closures and trade disruptions...

 

Putin's War Is Fortifying the Democratic Alliance

I love this.

And remember what I wrote the other day: "Unipolarity Is Not Over."

From Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, at Foreign Affairs, "Return of Pax Americana?":

The United States and its allies have failed to prevent Russia from brutalizing Ukraine, but they can still win the larger struggle to save the international order. Russia’s savage invasion has exposed the gap between Western countries’ soaring liberal aspirations and the paltry resources they have devoted to defend them. The United States has declared great-power competition on Moscow and Beijing but has so far failed to summon the money, the creativity, or the urgency necessary to prevail in those rivalries. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin has now inadvertently done the United States and its allies a tremendous favor. In shocking them out of their complacency, he has given them a historic opportunity to regroup and reload for an era of intense competition—not just with Russia but also with China—and, ultimately, to rebuild an international order that just recently looked to be headed for collapse.

This isn’t fantasy: it has happened before. In the late 1940s, the West was entering a previous period of great-power competition but had not made the investments or initiatives needed to win it. U.S. defense spending was pathetically inadequate, NATO existed only on paper, and neither Japan nor West Germany had been reintegrated into the free world. The Communist bloc seemed to have the momentum. Then, in June 1950, an instance of unprovoked authoritarian aggression—the Korean War—revolutionized Western politics and laid the foundation for a successful containment strategy. The policies that won the Cold War and thereby made the modern liberal international order were products of an unexpected hot war. The catastrophe in Ukraine could play a similar role today.

Putin’s aggression has created a window of strategic opportunity for Washington and its allies. The democracies must now undertake a major multilateral rearmament program and erect firmer defenses—military and otherwise—against the coming wave of autocratic aggression. They must exploit the current crisis to weaken the autocrats’ capacity for coercion and subversion and deepen the economic and diplomatic cooperation among liberal states around the globe. The invasion of Ukraine signals a new phase in an intensifying struggle to shape the international order. The democratic world won’t have a better chance to position itself for success.

SHOCK THERAPY

The United States has been talking tough about great-power competition for years. But to counter authoritarian rivals, a country needs more than self-righteous rhetoric. It also requires massive investments in military forces geared for high-intensity combat, sustained diplomacy to enlist and retain allies, and a willingness to confront adversaries and even risk war. Such commitments do not come naturally, especially to democracies that believe that peace is the norm. That is why ambitious competitive strategies usually sit on the shelf until a shocking event compels collective sacrifice.

Take containment. Now considered one of the most successful strategies in U.S. diplomatic history, containment was on the verge of failure before the Korean War broke out. During the late 1940s, the United States had undertaken a dangerous, long-term competition against a mighty authoritarian rival. U.S. officials had established maximalist objectives: the containment of Soviet power until that regime collapsed or mellowed and, in the words of President Harry Truman, support for “peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation.” Truman had begun to implement landmark policies such as the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe and the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. Yet before June 1950, containment remained more of an aspiration than a strategy.

Even as Cold War crises broke out in Berlin, Czechoslovakia, Iran, and Turkey, U.S. military spending plummeted from $83 billion at the end of World War II to $9 billion in 1948. The North Atlantic Treaty was new and feeble: the alliance lacked an integrated military command or anything approaching the forces it needed to defend Western Europe. Resource constraints forced Washington to write off China during its civil war, effectively standing aside as Mao Zedong’s Communists defeated Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government, and to draw a defense perimeter that initially excluded South Korea and Taiwan. U.S. statecraft combined sky-high ambitions with a bargain-basement approach to achieving them.

The reasons for this shortfall will sound familiar. U.S. officials hoped that the United States’ overall military superiority—especially its atomic monopoly—would compensate for weaknesses everywhere along the East-West divide. They found it hard to believe that even ruthless, totalitarian enemies might resort to war. In Washington, moreover, global visions competed with domestic priorities, such as taming inflation and balancing the budget. U.S. officials also planned to economize by splitting the country’s rivals—specifically, wooing Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s communists once they won China’s civil war and pulling that country away from the Soviet Union.

That policy failed: Mao sealed an alliance with Moscow in early 1950. Just months before, another strategic setback—the first Soviet nuclear test—had ended the United States’ atomic monopoly. Yet even then, Truman was unmoved. When Paul Nitze, the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, crafted his famous memo, NSC-68, calling for a global diplomatic offensive supported by a massive military buildup, Truman politely ignored the paper and announced plans to cut the defense budget.

It took a brazen international land grab to shake Washington out of its torpor. North Korean Premier Kim Il Sung’s assault on South Korea, undertaken in collusion with Mao and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, changed everything. The invasion convinced U.S. policymakers that the dictators were on the march and the danger of global conflict was growing. The conflict also dispelled any hope of dividing Moscow and Beijing: Washington now faced a communist monolith applying pressure all around the Eurasian periphery. In short, the North Korean invasion made the Truman administration fear that the postwar world was hanging in the balance.

U.S. policymakers decided not just to defend South Korea but to mount a global campaign to strengthen the noncommunist world. The North Atlantic Treaty became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with a unified command structure and 25 active divisions at its disposal. The Truman administration dispatched additional forces to Europe, where U.S. allies accelerated their military preparations and agreed, in principle, to rearm West Germany. In the Asia-Pacific, the United States created a cordon of security pacts involving Australia and New Zealand, Japan, and the Philippines and deployed naval forces to prevent a Chinese takeover of Taiwan.

The Korean War thus turbocharged the emergence of the global network of alliances and the enduring military deployments that constituted the backbone of containment. It precipitated the revival and rearmament of former enemies, Japan and West Germany, as core members of the free world. Underpinning all this was an enormous military buildup meant to make Soviet aggression unthinkable. U.S. defense spending more than tripled, reaching 14 percent of GDP in 1953; the U.S. nuclear arsenal and conventional forces more than doubled. “The Soviets respected nothing but force,” said Truman. “To build such force . . . is precisely what we are attempting to do now.”

To be sure, the Korean War also showed the danger of going too far...

Keep reading.

 

Unipolarity Is Not Over

Folks have been arguing that the American era of superpower primacy is over. Starting with the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, we've had a good run. Things have changed over the last 30 years, and China's now a top peer competitor about to knock the American hegemon off the its pedestal of global preponderance. We're Great Britain after 1914.

Actually, no. 

I mean, in just this last three weeks, the stunning American response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine should be ample indication of how powerful the U.S. remains in literally all aspects of global power and international interactions. The tremendous, crushing U.S. leadership of global financial markets, the international monetary regime --- and NATO in the military arena --- should give hostile nations pause. While sanctions don't always work, events have shown the breathtaking and devastating ability of the U.S. to lead allied states around the world to literally remove a threatening global state actor from the civilization of nations. 

It's near certain that Vladymir Putin will never back down in Ukraine, much less negotiate (in good faith) a ceasefire culminating in a new Russian modus vivendi. What we do know is with the exception of owning the world's largest nuclear arsenal, it's patently clear that Russia lacks the ability to wage a dominant regional war at the periphery of its sovereign authority, much less a continent-wide war against at least 30 democracies organized into the most powerful military alliance in world history.

And you can bet your sweet bippy the Chinese are watching events in Ukraine extremely closely, perhaps regretting the deal Chairman Xi entered into at the Winter Games last month sealing a new strategic partnership with Moscow. Indeed, Beijing's now distancing itself from Putin and the Russians, lest China be pulled into an even more antagonist relationship with the United States. It's been a heady start to 2022. 

The literature of internationalist relations theory sheds some light on the current distribution of capabilities. Professors Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth have published a number of papers (here and here, for example) throwing cold water on claims that China is overtaking the U.S. in global competition. More recently scholars Hal Brands and Michael Beckley have made the case for "The End of China’s Rise." While no doubt structural change is afoot in world politics, it's still much too early to declare the arrival of a multipolar order that hearkens back to the the "twenty years crisis" before the outbreak of World War II. 

Lots of folks will obviously disagree, but I'm bullish on America. I don't believe the U.S. and China are destined for war. 

I write all of this in response to young whippersnapper Josh Hammer's claim, at the American Spectator that, "With the rise of China and the return of great-power competition, that unipolar era is, for all intents and purposes, now over." 

I don't know?

China has two aircraft carriers, one it acquired, ironically, from Ukraine in 2012 and declared ready for combat operations just three years ago. Beijing is decades away from deploying a true blue-water navy capable of challenging the United States Navy on the open seas. We currently deploy 11 aircraft carriers, and the new Gerald R. Ford-class carrier is set to replace the Navy's current Nimitz-class carriers on a one-to-one basis over the next few decades. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the first next generation carrier delivered to the Pentagon, was commissioned in 2017. 

Ten Ford-class carriers are expected to be deployed over the next few decades. The United States can do this --- build the world's largest and most advanced naval warships in world history --- while spending just 3.2 percent of GDP on defense spending. In World War II, U.S. defense spending as a proportion of GDP was 40 percent, and 6 percent during Reagan administration's awesome defense build up in the 1980s. It's nothing, to the great consternation of our enemies. 

The U.S. still retains the world's largest military overall, but we've not been in something like a Cold War posture for 30 years. We lose small wars in place like Mogadishu, and U.S. democracy promotion by force proved bankrupt on the shoals of American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the U.S. still holds the command of the commons, though it will take wise and judicious leadership to maintain America's world strategic edge. 

Fact is, the U.S. actually needs more carriers than it currently deploys, if it hopes to deter Chinese naval power in the West Pacific. While nowhere near as sophisticated as U.S. naval forces, China now boasts the largest navy in the world. 

As noted at the Amazon page for Tom Clancy'a 1999 book, Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier, these ships "are floating cities with crews of thousands. They are the linchpins of any military strategy, for they provide what has become the key to every battle fought since World War I: air superiority. The mere presence of a U.S. naval carrier in a region is an automatic display of strength that sends a message no potential enemy can ignore."

There's much more to be said of the likely and long continuance of U.S. dominance in world politics, on a number of measures. But current financial sanctions against Russia demonstrate the sheer scale of U.S. power in the world economy, and American naval capabilities and technological sophistication won't likely be matched by peer competitor this century.

While this is a very rudimentary, preliminary analysis of the problem, when you hear some cocksure folks telling you our days as the world's Leviathan are over, you might take it with a grain of salt.

Russia and China's Plans to Evade U.S. Economic Power

From Zongyuan Zoe Liu and Mihaela Papa, at Foreign Affairs, "The Anti-Dollar Axis":

Russian forces are now seizing territory across Ukraine, shelling military and civilian targets, and creeping closer to capturing the capital, Kyiv. The international response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion has been furious, and U.S. allies are united against the invasion. U.S. President Joe Biden has led the international community in slapping punitive sanctions on Russian elites and firms with the intention of crippling the Russian economy and forcing a change of course. But so far, these measures have failed to compel Russia to accept a cease-fire or to withdraw.

The war is barely ten days old, and it remains to be seen what Putin will do if and when sanctions stoke greater public discontent in Russia. But these punitive sanctions may also backfire in another way. Biden’s flexing of American economic muscle will only embolden Russia and other U.S. rivals, notably China, to deprive the United States of the very power that makes sanctions so devastating. Russia and China will expedite initiatives to “de-dollarize” their economies, building alternative financial institutions and structures that both protect themselves from sanctions and threaten the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s dominant currency. Without concerted action, the United States will struggle to reverse this movement and see the weakening of its global standing.

The U.S. dollar’s preeminence in the global financial system, backed by vibrant U.S. markets and unmatched U.S. military strength, makes any sanctions imposed by Washington formidable. No other currencies, the euro and the yuan included, have come close to dethroning the dollar from its primary position in the global economy and in international financial markets. The dollar is the most widely held reserve currency in the world. It is the main invoicing currency in international trade and the leading currency across global financial institutions. It dominates global equity markets, commodities markets, development finance, bank deposits, and global corporate borrowing. In times of crisis, people around the world turn to the dollar as their first choice of a safe-haven currency. U.S. sanctions effectively amputate the financial power of a foreign aggressor, preventing it from raising capital in global markets to bankroll its activities.

Russia might be the most outspoken champion of throwing off the yoke of the dollar, but its agenda has great appeal among major powers. China’s commitment to diversifying its foreign exchange reserves, encouraging more transactions in yuan, and reforming the global currency system through changes in the International Monetary Fund further buttresses Russia’s strategy. Deteriorating U.S.-Chinese relations incentivize Beijing to join with Moscow in building a credible global financial system that excludes the United States. Such a system will attract countries under U.S. sanctions. It would even appeal to major U.S. allies who hope to promote their own currencies to the detriment of the dollar. When imposing sanctions, the Biden administration must not just consider how these measures will shape the war in Ukraine but also how they might transform the global financial system.

THE DOLLAR YOKE

For at least a decade, Russian policymakers have been wary of the preeminence of the dollar. In 2012, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov expressed Russia’s concern about the dollar’s dominance in international trade. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration expanded sanctions on Russia that targeted several large Russian banks, as well as energy companies, defense corporations, and wealthy supporters of Putin. The Russian government subsequently launched two critical pieces of financial infrastructure to fend off sanctions and preserve its financial autonomy if cut off from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication system, also known as SWIFT, which allows banks to send messages to one another. One was an independent national payment system that worked as a Russian alternative to payment platforms such as Visa and Mastercard. The other was a proprietary financial messaging system called the System for Transfer of Financial Messages, or SPFS, the Russian version of SWIFT.

SPFS became fully operational in 2017, transmitting transaction messages in any currency. In December 2021, it had 38 foreign participants from nine countries. As of this March, SPFS has over 399 users, including more than 20 Belarusian banks, the Armenian Arshidbank, and the Kyrgyz Bank of Asia. Subsidiaries of large Russian banks in Germany and Switzerland, the two most important financial power hubs in Europe, have access to SPFS. Russia is currently negotiating with China to join the system. This alternative financial infrastructure enables Russian corporations and individuals to retain some access, albeit limited, to global markets despite sanctions.

Since 2018, the Bank of Russia has also substantially reduced the share of dollars in Russia’s foreign exchange reserves with purchases of gold, euros, and yuan. It also withdrew much of its reserves from U.S. Treasury bonds; between March and May 2018, the Bank of Russia reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities from $96.1 billion to $14.9 billion. In early 2019, the bank cut its U.S. dollar holdings by $101 billion, over half of its existing assets. In 2021, after the Biden administration imposed new sanctions on Moscow, Russia announced its decision to completely remove dollar assets from its $186 billion National Wealth Fund, a major sovereign wealth fund.

Since the beginning of his fourth presidential term in 2018, Putin pledged to defend Russia’s economic sovereignty against U.S. sanctions and prioritized policies that steered the country’s economy away from the dollar. He advocated for getting “free” of the dollar “burden” in the global oil trade and the Russian economy because the monopoly of the U.S. dollar was “unreliable” and “dangerous.” In October 2018, the Putin administration supported a plan designed to limit Russia’s exposure to future U.S. sanctions by using alternative currencies in international transactions...

Keep reading. 

 

Ukraine: Fighting Continues as Peace Talks End (VIDEO)

I'm not exactly sure what was to be expected of the negotiations, especially since Putin was simultaneously bombing the hell out of civilians spaces in Kharkiv.

I'll try to figure it out. 

Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Times, "Fighting rages on in Ukraine as talks with Russia end without breakthrough":

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine came together Monday for a first round of talks that failed to ease Europe’s biggest ground war in 75 years as Russian missiles pounded Ukraine’s second largest city, troops pressed closer to the capital of Kyiv and more than half a million Ukrainians fled the country.

International efforts to punish and isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin intensified and took aim at his country’s most important finances, while even traditionally neutral Switzerland joined the growing coalition of nations imposing a raft of sanctions on Putin and associates, demanding Russia withdraw its troops immediately.

But Putin seemed to remain impervious to the pressure and insisted Russia was not targeting civilians in its attacks despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Rather than back down, Putin may be driven to increasingly brutal tactics, several experts warned.

With great skepticism, President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to the Monday negotiations, despite seeing “small chance to end the war,” and said the fate of his country as an independent nation had now entered a “crucial period.”

Delegations from Ukraine and Russia met for about five hours at a site near Ukraine’s border with Russian ally Belarus, and they agreed to hold another round of talks. But diplomats portrayed a wide chasm nowhere near resolution: Ukraine is demanding a cease-fire and withdrawal of Russian troops, while Russia wants a “demilitarization” of Ukraine and pledge of neutrality, meaning it must step away from the West.

In Kyiv, a two-day-long curfew was lifted Monday to allow residents to venture out cautiously to replenish supplies, get some fresh air and survey the state of their city of 3 million people. Many lined up for hours outside gas stations and supermarkets, mostly ignoring the occasional wail of air-raid sirens.

Fighting continued on the outskirts of the capital, with satellite images showing Russian troops mostly massed about 15 to 19 miles north of the city, according to U.S. and British defense officials. No major population centers have yet fallen to Russian forces, which has raised fears that Putin will soon order an all-out blitz to overrun Ukraine, depose its government and turn it into a vassal state.

“They have been slowed and they have been frustrated by their lack of progress on Kyiv, and one of the things that could result is a reevaluation of their tactics, and the potential for them to be more aggressive and more overt in both the size and scale of their targeting of Kyiv,” a senior U.S. Pentagon official said.

Zelensky once again called on his compatriots to defend their land.

“When I planned to become a president, I said that each of us is the president, because we are all responsible for our state, for our beautiful Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a video address Monday, the latest in a series of public messages that has buoyed and drawn the admiration of many of his people. “Now it has happened that each of us is a warrior. ... And I am confident that each of us will win.”

But more than half a million Ukrainians have now fled their war-torn country, said Filippo Grandi, the head of the United Nations’ refugee agency. At last count, about 281,000 people had entered Poland from Ukraine, more than 84,500 had escaped to Hungary and nearly 100,000 had arrived in Romania, Moldova and Slovakia, the agency said. The remainder had found their way to other countries.

There were signs of stress in Russia as well, with the heavy sanctions imposed by the U.S., Europe and other nations, including Japan and Australia, beginning to take a toll...

Still more.

 

Europe's Dependence on Russia's Natural Gas Supplies Following the Invasion of Ukraine

Oil.

Petroleum.

Fossils fuels.

No matter how much radical environmentalists deceive the leaders of the developed democracies, the fact remains that without fossil fuels, these countries would perish.

At the Economist, "If the supply of Russian gas to Europe were cut off, could LNG plug the gap?":

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to renewed speculation about the future of European energy, and in particular about its supply of natural gas. The continent gets around a quarter of its energy from gas. In 2019 Russia provided over 40% of that gas. The West has not gone so far as to place limits on Russian gas exports, although Germany has suspended the licensing of Nord Stream 2 (ns2), a completed but not yet operational pipeline between Russia and Germany. But what if Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, were to cut off gas to the West? One alternative source of energy is liquefied natural gas (lng), which is usually transported by sea. To what extent could lng replace piped Russian gas as a source of energy for Europe?

Europe already uses a lot of lng; it makes up around a quarter of the region’s natural-gas imports. One question is how much more of the stuff Europe can process. lng is first turned into a liquid in order to be transported; it must then be “re-gassed” at terminals, usually near the coast, before it can be used to heat and power homes. Heavy investments in regasification plants mean that Europe has plenty of idle capacity. The region’s import terminals ran at 45% of capacity last year, according to Energy Intelligence, an industry publisher, although not all of these terminals are in the right place. Germany has no terminals, while Spain has a quarter of the continent’s capacity, even though its gas infrastructure is largely isolated from the rest of Europe.

The more pressing problem is the available supply of lng. The biggest exporters of lng are America, Australia and Qatar. Although they all have plenty more gas, all are already exporting at or near full tilt. It takes a long time to expand liquefaction and export capacity, so Europe’s best short-term hope would be to get hold of existing lng cargoes originally destined for elsewhere. But Asia also has a strong appetite for lng. China’s imports grew by 82% between 2017 and 2020, for example; last year it overtook Japan as the world’s biggest importer. And around 70% of lng traded globally is on contracts that run for ten years or more. Europe tends to rely on spot markets and shorter contracts. In the past that has allowed Europe to take advantage of low prices when stocks were plentiful, and ensured that countries did not commit themselves to using fossil fuels decades into the future. But it also leaves Europe at the mercy of the market.

When Europe’s gas reserves dwindled over the autumn and winter, in part because Russian supplies dropped, lng imports shot up (see chart). So did prices. In the past, spot prices in Asia have typically been higher than in Europe. But in recent months the price in Europe has at times matched Asian levels. The invasion of Ukraine has only made things worse...

Still more.

 

Putin's Looking to Rebuild Russia's Empire

 It's Niall Ferguson, at the Spectator U.K., "Vlad the Invader."

The pun refers to Vlad the Impaler:

‘War’, in Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s most famous dictum, ‘is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.’ A generation of Democrats — the American variety, but also European Christian and Social Democrats — have sought to ignore that truth. Appalled by the violence of war, they have vainly searched for alternatives to waging it. When Vladimir Putin ordered the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Barack Obama responded with economic sanctions. When Putin intervened in the Syrian civil war, they tried indignant speeches.

When it became clear that Putin intended a further and larger military incursion into Ukraine, Joe Biden and his national security team opted for sanctions once again. If Putin invaded Ukraine, they said, Russia would face ‘crippling’ or ‘devastating’ economic and financial penalties. When these threats did not deter Putin, they tried a new tactic, publishing intelligence on the likely timing and nature of the Russian assault. Cheerleaders for the administration thought this brilliant and original. It was, in reality, a species of magical thinking, as if stating publicly when Putin was going to invade would make him less likely to do so.

Those who dread war approach diplomacy the wrong way, as if it is an alternative to war. This gives rise to the delusion that, so long as talks are continuing, war is being averted. But unless you are prepared ultimately to resort to force yourself, negotiations are merely a postponement of the other side’s aggression. They will avert war only if you concede peacefully what the aggressor is prepared to take by force.

Putin decided on war against Ukraine some time ago, probably in July when he published a lengthy essay, ‘On the Historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainians’, in which he argued tendentiously that Ukrainian independence was an unsustainable historical anomaly. This made it perfectly clear that he was contemplating a takeover of the country. Even before Putin’s essay appeared, Russia had deployed around 100,000 troops close to Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southern borders. The response of the United States and the European Union was to make clear that Ukraine was a very long way indeed from either Nato or EU membership, confirming to Putin that no one would fight on Ukraine’s side if he went ahead with his planned war of subjugation.

Over the past few months, Putin has used diplomacy in the classical fashion, seeking to gain his objectives at the lowest possible cost while at the same time carefully preparing for an invasion. Western leaders have achieved nothing more than to remain united in saying they will impose sanctions if he invades. But a Russian invasion of Ukraine beyond the Donbas will create an entirely new situation. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic may express a common outrage, but it will not take long for their unity to be eroded by the altered reality and their fundamentally divergent interests. The US does not need Russia’s natural gas. At least in the short run, Europe does.

If war is the continuation of politics — ‘policy’ is, in fact, a better translation — then what exactly is Putin trying to achieve? This question has elicited many wrong answers over the years...

 Still more.

Can Ukraine's Resistance Defeat the Russian Army?

This was published before armed hostilities broke out Thursday.

At War on the Rocks, "Can Ukrainian Resistance Foil a Russian Victory?":

The plans of a country facing invasion by a larger foe rest on a fragile hope: Once a nation’s conventional defenses are defeated, a pre-planned, citizen resistance will arise and contest the occupying invaders. Partisan warfare will impose costs on the occupiers, prevent the enemy from consolidating gains, and create the time and space required to receive external support for liberation. If Russia launches a fresh invasion, Ukraine will surely seek to fall back on such a strategy. Kyiv’s resistance plans — which have been carefully and loudly choreographed — are a key part of its hopes to deter Russia. Still, questions remain about Ukraine’s calculation for committing to a partisan-style guerrilla war. If Russia invades, will Ukraine’s partisans fight, survive, and change strategic outcomes? Would the threat of a citizen resistance, across the depth and breadth of Ukraine, meet its promise?

As a former U.S. Army special operations officer, I have spent some time building resistances or fighting them. On behalf of the Joint Special Operations University, I have more recently worked with countries to help craft resistance strategies as part of their total defense plans. In my experience, state-sponsored resistance movements defy easy categorization. Few stock templates exist because resistance plans are crafted to the political will, geographic constraints, alliance structures, and social dynamics of a given nation-state. It is also difficult to predict the behaviors of citizen resistors under the stress of invasion and occupation. Although I cannot predict what will happen, I can offer a framework to better understand the role of Ukraine’s citizen-resistance plans in resisting a Russian invasion.

Look Fearsome

A citizen-resistance must show enough of its capability to be feared. This truth comes in handy in the mountains nearby my home. When I see a bear while hiking, I calmly raise my arms and side-embrace anyone with me to look like a hyper-sized, multi-limbed threat. The bear experiences just enough doubt to pause and move on, seeking easier prey. Resistance, employed as a deterrent, has a similar effect. When a state threatens to fight a superior force with a motley collection of citizen-patriots, it must show enough width and breadth to make the invader pause. Ukraine has a credible threat in this regard. With its seven-year history of citizen-militias, quasi-official proxies, and official resistance formations, there is no question that invading forces will be met by gutsy irregulars. Ukraine has a Territorial Defense Force structure of over 150 battalions, geographically assigned to cover all of Ukrainian territory. These units are not uniformly functional, nor are they fully manned and equipped. However, they do provide a localized agency by which to organize infrastructure security and resistance. Ukraine is vocally advertising its resistance movement as one of many signals intended to deter invasion.

As I have previously discussed in Small Wars Journal, Ukrainian resistance units formed organically and spontaneously in 2014, often funded by private-sector oligarchs, rather than the state. Since then, Ukraine has regulated or incorporated many of these irregulars into the fabric of its defense plans. A recent poll indicated that 24 percent of Ukrainians plan to engage in armed resistance if attacked. The Ukrainian armed forces are currently outnumbered and face potential invading forces from the north (Belarus), east (Russia) and south (Crimea, Black Sea, Transnistria). If such an envelopment occurs, resistance forces will be required to fight when and where Ukrainian regulars cannot. Ukraine’s visible partisan warfare plan, when coupled with other deterrence measures, is aimed at deterring a new Russian offensive.

Switzerland employed such a strategy in 1940. When Nazi Germany conquered and occupied much of Europe in the spring and summer of 1940, tiny, neutral Switzerland was fully surrounded by Axis powers. Switzerland mobilized 400,000 citizen-soldiers, and planned to fight in the cities and destroy civil infrastructure before withdrawing to the Alps — favorable terrain for a guerrilla resistance. German staff estimates concluded that Switzerland could only be conquered with a massive commitment of Wehrmacht combat power. As such, Hitler decided against an attack. Other factors contributed, of course: Swiss industrial output, favorable neutrality and banking policies, and demands on German forces elsewhere. Still, Swiss preparedness to resist was a major factor. Spared in the summer of 1940, the Swiss successfully deterred in the moment and, as it turned out, for the rest of the war. Like the Swiss, the goal of Ukraine’s resistance build is to prevent an invasion instead of fighting one.

A Legal Framework

Ukraine passed an innovative law, “On the Foundations of National Resistance,” in July 2021. The law creates a legal framework by which to incorporate, organize, and guide a citizen resistance, as well as a specification of the role of irregulars, militias, and other citizen resistance actions. Since the Ukrainian government understands that not all resistance is productive resistance, the law sets legal boundaries by which the state can monitor, contain, or block counter-productive resistance.

The specter of all citizens taking up arms in a chaotic moment is as nightmarish to Ukraine as it is to Russia. Such chaos could advantage Russia, as it did in February 2014, when Russia snatched Crimea in a lightning strike of creative statecraft. The precipitating event for Russia’s Crimea takeover was a Ukrainian political crisis that led to widespread anti-government protests and civil unrest. In today’s unfolding crisis, Ukraine fears the unlawful spaces where Russian hybrid tactics thrive. Ukraine seeks to avoid wholesale societal breakdown, even if such chaos directly threatens invading Russians. The Ukrainian government has passed legal frameworks to prevent the emergence of chaos that advantages Russia. 

Radical Inclusion 

The power of resistance movements is their ability to bring opposition to scale, presenting multiple dilemmas to skilled, but task-saturated occupying forces. Resistance movements are, by definition, under-gunned and will lose in a conventional fight. Ukrainian planners are aware that Russian regular forces can and will take terrain, if ordered to do so. Furthermore, Russian tactical battle groups will not cede terrain to Ukrainian regulars, much less to the citizen-farmer defending his land with a hunting rifle. The widespread use of civil resistance, amplified by social media, presents a challenge to invading forces who will be intensely focused on winning kinetic battles...

Keep reading. 

Putin Raises Tensions by Putting Nuclear Forces on High Alert (VIDEO)

Starting up today's Ukraine coverage.

Check back throughout the day.

At the New York Times, "Live Updates: Ukraine Agrees to Talks with Russia, as Putin Places Nuclear Forces on Alert":

KYIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine agreed on Sunday to have Ukrainian officials take part in talks with Russia “without preconditions,” even as President Vladimir V. Putin further escalated tensions by placing his nuclear forces on alert.

“We agreed that the Ukrainian delegation would meet with the Russian delegation without preconditions on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, near the Pripyat River,” Mr. Zelensky announced on his official Telegram channel, describing a phone call Sunday with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus.

Mr. Lukashenko “has taken responsibility for ensuring that all planes, helicopters and missiles stationed on Belarusian territory remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation’s travel, talks and return,” Mr. Zelensky continued. The Belarusian leader is a close ally of Mr. Putin’s.

It was not clear when the talks would begin, and late Sunday a Russian state news agency reported that they would only start Monday morning.

But just before Mr. Zelensky’s announcement, Mr. Putin issued a new threat to the West, which has increasingly rallied behind Ukraine as its citizens and its military fight back against the Russian invasion. In brief remarks aired on state television, he told his defense minister and his top military commander to place Russia’s nuclear forces on alert.

The Ukraine Interior Ministry said on Sunday that 352 civilians have been killed since the invasion began, including 14 children.

And even as the talks neared, satellite imagery showed a miles-long convoy of hundreds of Russian military vehicles bearing down on Kyiv.

Mr. Putin characterized his nuclear alert move as a response to the West’s “aggressive” actions...

 

Ukraine Civilians Take Up Arms Against Russian Invaders (VIDEO)

Vitali Klitschko, the Mayor of Kyiv and the World Boxing Council's heavyweight champion, with his brother Wladimir (also a world championship boxer), at the video:

From NBC News: 

Few Ukrainians Thought Vladimir Putin Would Would Launch Full-Scale Invasion

At the editors' note appended to the top of this article: "On February 24, six hours after this article was filed, Russia began an all-out attack on Ukraine."

It's Tim Judah, at the New York Review of Books, "Ukraine on the Brink":

It is quite normal to refuse to believe that you are about to be engulfed by a cataclysm.

People in Kharkiv may not believe much in a Russian attack, but by the time you read this it may have begun. When I started writing it in the Half an Hour café in Kharkiv, there was news that the puppet regime in separatist-controlled Donetsk was evacuating the population, which sounded like a prelude to war. By the time I finished it, Russian troops were reported to be arriving there. Meanwhile they were playing Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” in the café, which was full of earnest young people poring over their laptops or relaxing.

In my experience it is quite normal to refuse to believe that you are about to be engulfed by a cataclysm that will change your life forever—or kill you.

In 2014 I was invited to a Passover Seder by the Donetsk Jewish community. During the dinner the rabbi said unexpectedly, “We have a foreign guest, he can make a speech!” I said that “Next Year in Jerusalem” was all well and good but there were separatists constructing checkpoints on the highway into the city, so “Next year in Donetsk” might be more apt. “Nah,” they said, “it will all be fine!” A few weeks later they probably all fled. It was the same in Bosnia and Herzegovina just before the war in 1992. People said that since everyone knew that tens of thousands would die, there would be no war.

I met a teacher who told me that she veers between panic and shrugging it all off. In January Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Russians might try to occupy Kharkiv, which alarmed people here. President Joe Biden was said to have told Zelensky a few days later to “prepare for impact,” though that was later denied. But then you think about it rationally, which of course Putin may not be doing, and you wonder how he could hope to seize a city of some 1.5 million people, let alone much of the rest of Ukraine.

In Kharkiv’s history museum there is a section devoted to World War II. Battles here were as bloody and devastating as anywhere in Europe. Millions of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians were killed or starved to death. Then something caught my eye: a panel explained that by the time the Red Army expelled the Germans from Soviet Ukraine in 1944, it numbered 2.3 million men. Putin has amassed anywhere between 150,000 and 190,000 on Ukraine’s borders, we are told, not all of whom of course will actually fight. Some are quartermasters, mechanics, and cooks. One of the videos circulating on social media, also allegedly from Belgorod, showed army mobile kitchens—identifiable by the chimneys poking out from under their tarpaulins—flowing past in a convoy.

In Lviv, in western Ukraine, I saw Ukrainian soldiers practicing with new antitank missiles that the British had given them. Some commentators scoffed that, in the face of overwhelming Russian military might, these were symbolic. Oh no, said the Ukrainian soldiers, these were great for the 200-400-meter range, which they did not possess, and were especially suited for urban warfare. When he talks about Ukraine, it is clear that Putin believes many Russian myths and has outdated views about its people. He published a long essay last year on the “historical unity” of Ukrainians and Russians. But what he and even many liberal, intellectual Russians may not appreciate is that Ukraine is not the same place it was when Mikhail Bulgakov grew up in Kyiv at the beginning of the last century. It is not the same place it was at independence in 1991 or at the time of the Orange Revolution in 2004, nor is it the same country that was wracked by revolution and war in 2014.

In Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and finally Kyiv, something struck me for the first time after many years of coming here: their post-Soviet feel has finally been cast off. That is not the case in smaller Ukrainian towns, but for the first time these big cities feel like anywhere else in Europe.

Unlike Russians, Ukrainians have not needed visas to visit Europe’s twenty-six-country Schengen area since 2017, and thanks to cheap flights millions have done so. Most young Ukrainians, who have no memory of the Soviet era (for which you need to be close to forty), are now just like other Europeans. They are no longer people from Russia’s periphery who mentally, culturally, and socially orbit Moscow. I can imagine that older Russians like Putin, if he knows this, must hate it. It relates directly to the wise maxim of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser: “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.” As the links that have bound Russia and Ukraine for centuries slowly snap with every passing year, no wonder Putin is worried and thinks this is his last chance to suborn and subordinate.

And Putin’s war since 2014 has made a big difference here. There are no longer direct flights or trains between the two countries. At Hoptivka, Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Trubachev of Ukraine’s Border Guard Service told me that before 2014 some 25,000 people crossed there every day. Now that figure is 2,500, and even if you discount the effect of Covid it is symbolic of the frayed ties. While I was there a two-mile line of trucks was waiting to enter Russia. A driver told me they had been there for perhaps three days, and it was the same to enter Ukraine. There is no logical reason for this, but as Taras Danko, a professor of international business in Kharkiv, noted tartly, “You need the cooperation of the border authorities and for that you need the cooperation between states, not talk of one state invading another.”... 

Keep reading.

 

New U.S. Containment Policy Against the Soviet Union Russia

I don't think most people realize, especially the weird right-wingers siding with Russia over Ukraine (something I haven't completely figured out, except for maybe Tucker Carlson?), that it's a new era. Big time.

NATO's never before authorized armed mobilization under the NATO Charter's Article V, which calls for "collective defense" in the event of a military attack against any NATO member. If there's an attack, each other NATO member is committed to providing mutual aid to any other member state of the alliance. There are 30 members, but without the U.S. it's pretty weak. 

The fighting in Ukraine, its initiation and its conclusion, will either dramatically shift the world balance of power or dramatically alter the perceptions of the world balance of power, regardless of the material qualitative/quantitative indices of national capabilities. 

The U.S. already looks weak after basically 20 years of unsuccessful wars, with the punctuation mark being the Biden administration's debacle in Afghanistan last summer. My sense, in the short term, is that China will quickly pocket whatever relative gains there may be. It's not a combatant, for one thing. Russia's now a total client state to Beijing. And the U.S. will be seen for clumsy, noncommittal strategic restraint. If Ukraine can't hold out, the U.S. will once again look the weaker, nothing like we were after World War II, when only the Soviets could claim to be a peer rival. 

No matter what happens, current events show how much things have change. The post-WWII international order is collapsing, or has already collapsed.

To even mention "containment" in the same breath sounds strange. During the Cold War, the U.S. was fully ready to back up its deterrence posture with hard force, anywhere in the world, and especially with our strategic nuclear weapons.

In any case, at the New York Times, "Biden Targets Russia With Strategy of Containment, Updated for a New Era":

WASHINGTON — More than 75 years ago, faced with a Soviet Union that clearly wanted to take over states beyond its borders, the United States adopted a Cold War approach that came to be known as “containment,” a simplistic-sounding term that evolved into a complex Cold War strategy.

On Thursday, having awakened to a violent, unprovoked attack on Ukraine, exactly the kind of nightmare imagined eight decades before, President Biden made clear he was moving toward Containment 2.0. Though it sounds a lot like its predecessor, it will have to be revised for a modern era that is in many ways more complex.

The nation that just moved “to wipe an entire country off the world map,” in the words of Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, also remains a key supplier of natural gas to keep Germans and many other Europeans warm. That explains why Mr. Biden has been constrained from cutting off the valuable export. And the Russia of today has a panoply of cyberweapons that it can use to strike at the United States or its allies without risking nuclear Armageddon — an option to retaliate against American sanctions that was never available to President Vladimir V. Putin’s predecessors.

Those are only two examples of why containment will not be easy. But Mr. Biden has been clear that is where he is headed.

For three decades, American presidents described a series of Soviet and Russian leaders as “businesslike” or even “partners.” They celebrated “glasnost” and ushered Moscow into the World Trade Organization and the Group of 7 industrial nations. Washington even entertained the idea in the 1990s — very briefly — that one day Russia could join NATO. No one has talked that way in years. But Mr. Biden, who came to office last year talking about establishing a “stable, predictable” relationship with Moscow, spoke of a completely ruptured relationship on Thursday.

“Now the entire world sees clearly what Putin and his Kremlin allies are really all about,” Mr. Biden said in a speech from the White House. “This was never about genuine security concerns on their part. It was always about naked aggression, about Putin’s desire for empire by any means necessary, by bullying Russia’s neighbors through coercion and corruption.”

He vowed to make Russia pay “dearly, economically and strategically,” and to make Mr. Putin a “pariah on the international stage.” Those words might have even been familiar to George F. Kennan, the American foreign service officer who became famous as the grand strategist who invented containment, though he later warned, at age 94, that expanding NATO to Russia’s borders was a bad idea, bound to become “the beginning of a new Cold War.”

The “containment” Mr. Kennan described in his famous “Long Telegram,” an 8,000-word dispatch from the American embassy in Moscow, was primarily aimed at putting geographical limits on Soviet ambitions. But even though the Long Telegram was long, it spent the most time explaining the psychology of Stalin’s regime, which Mr. Kennan described as paranoid, viewing the outside world to be “evil, hostile and menacing.”

The similarities to Mr. Putin’s speech on Monday night, in which he accused Ukraine of triggering genocides and seeking nuclear weapons — both false claims — and the United States of seeking to use Ukrainian territory to strike at Moscow, are striking. So was his description of America’s “empire of lies.”

But as Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said on Thursday, “It’s much more complicated to make containment work today.”

The Soviet Union largely presented a military and ideological challenge, he noted. Yet modern-day Russia is a provider of needed fuel and minerals, “and that gives them leverage over us, even as we have leverage over them.” The force of that leverage was made clear from Mr. Biden’s answer to a question on Thursday about why Russia had not been thrown out of SWIFT, the global communication system for financial transactions.

Barring Russia from that system would be a devastating move, cutting off its government from oil and gas revenue. That accounts for about 40 percent of its incoming cash and would be the one sanction almost certain to hurt Mr. Putin like no other.

But Mr. Biden noted in his speech that “in our sanctions package, we specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue.” When asked about barring Russia from SWIFT, he added, delicately, “Right now, that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take.” In fact, the debate over SWIFT has been a source of tense behind-the-scenes exchanges, chiefly with Germany. The German objection is clear: If the country cannot pay for its gas, Russia will not deliver it.

But the second reason containment may not work is that Russia has a new, if not very enthusiastic, partner in standing up to the West: China...

Keep reading.

 

China Rethinking Embrace of Putin?

Following up, "'Brandon's Big Plans for Stopping Russia From Invading Was to BEG CHINA TO STOP RUSSIA...'"

Hey, Maybe China is a little scared of the U.S. after all.

At WSJ, "China Adjusts, and Readjusts, Its Embrace of Russia in Ukraine Crisis":

China’s leader Xi Jinping on Friday called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate with Ukraine, the most recent twist as Beijing modulates its embrace of Russia.

Beijing has been flailing to adjust its position on the Ukraine situation ever since Mr. Xi signed on to an extraordinary solidarity statement with Mr. Putin early this month, a decision influenced by a Chinese foreign-policy establishment stuck in a belief that Mr. Putin wasn’t out for war.

“China supports Russia and Ukraine to resolve issues through negotiations,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Putin in a phone call, while pledging to safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core, China’s state media reported. Mr. Putin told the Chinese leader he was prepared for talks with Ukraine based on “signals just received from Kyiv,” according to a Kremlin readout of the call.

For weeks, China’s foreign-policy establishment dismissed a steady stream of warnings from the U.S. and its European allies about a pending Russian invasion, and instead blamed Washington for hyping the Russian threats.

Now, China is trying to regain its balance after making a calculation that could seriously undermine a position it has tried to build for itself as a global leader and advocate for developing nations.

As late as this week, with signs looming of an impending invasion, when a well-connected foreign-policy scholar in China gave a talk to a group of worried Chinese investors and analysts, he titled the speech “A War That Won’t Happen.”

“We see little chance of Russia unilaterally declaring war on Ukraine,” Shen Yi, a professor of international relations at Shanghai’s Fudan University who advises the government, said at the Tuesday teleconference held by a securities firm, according to people who dialed into the call.

Less than 48 hours later, Mr. Putin launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine...

Thing go wrong during wartime, badly wrong. 

Keep reading.

 

'Brandon's Big Plans for Stopping Russia From Invading Was to BEG CHINA TO STOP RUSSIA...'

Heh.

Ace's comments on NYT's burning skull report of the Biden administration pressing Beijing to prevent war in Ukraine.

At AoSHQ,  "America is BACK: Brandon's Big Plan for Stopping Russia From Invading Was to BEG CHINA TO PRESSURE RUSSIA; Instead of Helping Brandon, China Betrayed Him and Told Russia All About His Undignified Groveling":

Actually, this wouldn't fit in the headline:

Brandon shared secret intelligence with China to prove Russia was about to invade. China showed how much it Feared and Respected Brandon by immediately giving that US intelligence to Russia.

America is Back, baby...

RTWT. 

Biden Administration Pressed Beijing to Help Avert War in Ukraine

At the New York Times, "U.S. Officials Repeatedly Urged China to Help Avert War in Ukraine":

WASHINGTON — Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.

Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.

The previously unreported talks between American and Chinese officials show how the Biden administration tried to use intelligence findings and diplomacy to persuade a superpower it views as a growing adversary to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and how that nation, led by President Xi Jinping, persistently sided with Russia even as the evidence of Moscow’s plans for a military offensive grew over the winter.

This account is based on interviews with senior administration officials with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomacy. The Chinese Embassy did not return requests for comment.

China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and the two nations have been strengthening their bond for many years across diplomatic, economic and military realms. Mr. Xi and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, two autocrats with some shared ideas about global power, had met 37 times as national leaders before this year. If any world leader could make Mr. Putin think twice about invading Ukraine, it was Mr. Xi, went the thinking of some U.S. officials.

But the diplomatic efforts failed, and Mr. Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning after recognizing two Russia-backed insurgent enclaves in the country’s east as independent states.

In a call on Friday, Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that the United States and NATO had ignored Russia’s “reasonable” security concerns and had reneged on their commitments, according to a readout of the call released by the Chinese state news media. Mr. Xi reiterated China’s public position that it was important to respect the “legitimate security concerns” as well as the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all countries. Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said China supported any such move.

Some American officials say the ties between China and Russia appear stronger than at any time since the Cold War. The two now present themselves as an ideological front against the United States and its European and Asian allies, even as Mr. Putin carries out the invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty China has recognized for decades.

The growing alarm among American and European officials at the alignment between China and Russia has reached a new peak with the Ukraine crisis, exactly 50 years to the week after President Richard M. Nixon made a historic trip to China to restart diplomatic relations to make common cause in counterbalancing the Soviet Union. For 40 years after that, the relationship between the United States and China grew stronger, especially as lucrative trade ties developed, but then frayed due to mutual suspicions, intensifying strategic competition and antithetical ideas about power and governance.

In the recent private talks on Ukraine, American officials heard language from their Chinese counterparts that was consistent with harder lines the Chinese had been voicing in public, which showed that a more hostile attitude had become entrenched, according to the American accounts.

On Wednesday, after Mr. Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine but before its full invasion, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the United States was “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.”

“On the Ukraine issue, lately the U.S. has been sending weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the possibility of warfare,” she said. “If someone keeps pouring oil on the flame while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral.”

She added: “When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?” She has refused to call Russia’s assault an “invasion” when pressed by foreign journalists...

More.

 

Eileen Gu Is Golden Again at the Beijing Olympics After Win in the Freeski Halfpipe

The "Genocide Olympics" end tonight. Thank God! 

And now Eileen Gu/Gu Ailing's being hailed --- after wining three medals --- as the most successful athlete at the Winter Games. 

I didn't see it, but #EileenGuTraitor might as well have been trending on Twitter.

At WSJ, "She will leave Beijing as the first athlete—man or woman—to win three freestyle skiing medals in a single Olympics":

ZHANGJIAKOU, China—Eileen Gu snapped up another gold medal for Team China at the freestyle skiing halfpipe event on Friday, capping off the 18-year-old’s first Olympics with three medals (two golds and a silver) and cementing herself as the belle of the Games in the host country.

She will leave Beijing as the first athlete—man or woman—to win three freestyle skiing medals in a single Olympics. The big air event, in which Gu won a surprise gold, debuted at these Games. Gu earned a silver medal in the slopestyle event earlier this week.

Gu’s performance was so dominant that her final trip down the halfpipe was a de facto victory run, as her 95.00-point second run was the highest in the field by nearly five points. Defending gold medalist Cassie Sharp of Canada attempted a third run with the highest degree of difficulty of any competitor in the field, but fell short, earning 90.75 points—placing her in silver medal position. Rachael Karker, also of Canada, took bronze with a 87.75-point run.

Of all the medals Gu won in Beijing, her gold on Friday was the most expected. Across five competitions during the 2021-22 season, Gu was undefeated in the event. She made her victory on Friday all but a foregone conclusion with a solid first run that scored 93.25 and vaulted her to the top of the standings. When it came time to climb the podium, she did so wearing an Anta-branded panda hat, a nod to the Beijing Olympics’ pudgy panda mascot Bing Dwen Dwen.

“I have an Olympics panda hat. This is the coolest thing ever,” Gu said, pointing to the Bing Dwen Dwen mascot sewn on the left side of her hat. “Bing Dwen Dwen is very hard to get now so I want to wear it and show off,” she said in Mandarin. The skiing supernova spent nearly an hour walking through the mixed zone to take questions from broadcast and print media. Looking back at her two-week Olympic run fraught with both plaudits and controversies, Gu said: “These few weeks have been emotionally the highest I have ever been and the lowest I have ever been.”

“At the end of the day, I feel very proud, and feel very grateful for the people who have supported me. And for the people who don’t support me, I’ve actually genuinely made peace with it. I’ve dismissed it,” she said.

“My motto is now if they don’t think I’m doing good in the world, then they can go do better,” she added.

Though the score from her first run was high enough to win the competition, Gu improved upon her margin on the second run. She laid down a more difficult final trick involving twists on two different axes and put up 95.25 points. It was the third-highest score she has posted this season, having put up 97.50 points at a World Cup event in California in January.

“She’s competing against herself now,” said the announcer at the Genting Snow Park, as Gu readied for her second run. Starting last in a field of 12 women, her score from the first run topped the field even after the other 11 women had completed two trips down the pipe.

After Sharp failed to top Gu’s score during her third run, despite landing a combination of tricks that no other woman in the field attempted, Gu just needed to wait for two more skiers to throw down. Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru, bronze medalist in the women’s slopestyle competition earlier in the week, scored 85 points; Karker fell.

With a gold medal assured, Gu appeared visibly emotional ahead of her third and final run. She slid down the halfpipe with a few effortless tricks, appearing to have fun by posing with her poles between spread legs after catching big air and whizzing to the bottom to a euphoric home crowd.

Remi Lindholm: Finnish Cross-Country Skier Gets Frozen Penis During Race at Winter Olympics

Umm, definitely not optimal. 

Yikes!

At CNN, "Cross-Country Skier Remi Lindholm Suffers Frozen Penis":

Lindholm explained that he used a heat pack to try to thaw out his appendage once the race was over.

Well, that was a hard one! 

Jason M. Kelly, Market Maoists

At Amazon, Jason M. Kelly, Market Maoists: The Communist Origins of China’s Capitalist Ascent.