Brent Renaud, Renowned Filmmaker and Journalist, 'Gunned Down' by Russian Forces in Ukraine

The Washington Examiner links Nick Stylianou, who reports, "Head of the Kyiv Police Department says that Russian troops opened fire on a car with foreign journalists in and shot dead 51-year-old New York Times videojournalist Brent Renaud in Irpin. One of his colleagues is injured and is in hospital."

The Times' story is here, "Brent Renaud, an American Journalist, Is Killed in Ukraine." The report indicates, "The Ukrainian authorities said he was killed in Irpin, a suburb that has been the site of intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days, but the details of his death were not immediately clear." 

You'd think the Times might have mentioned that Renaud's auto came under fire by Russian troops. Folks on Twitter are peeved by this section of the story:

Mr. Renaud had contributed to The Times in previous years, most recently in 2015, but he was not on assignment for the company in Ukraine. Early reports that he was working for The Times in Ukraine circulated because he was found with a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment years ago...

Renaud was on assignment for Time. The magazine's statement is here, "A Statement from TIME on the Death of Journalist Brent Renaud," via Memeorandum.

Origins of the Nuclear Taboo

I heavily discount Russian threats to deploy nuclear weapons against the U.S. and its allies should the latter intervene militarily in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. That's not to say Vladimir Putin is dishonest or insincere in his threats (just bluffing). His rocket-test saber-rattling rightfully sows fear in countries involved in the conflict.

It's more I don't believe nuclear weapons are usable in the current day and age. Nuclear deterrence doctrines are so well-developed it'd be national suicide for a state to launch a first strike against the U.S. (and other nuclear armed states with concomitant deterrence capabilities.) But there's more: Since 1945 it's been, how do you say?, politically incorrect to use nukes. The international moral prohibitions and political consequences of first use of are overwhelming.

An entire "peace movement" developed during the Cold War to stigmatize and delegitimize states possessing nuclear weapons --- and protest activism worked as a powerfully constraint on the deployment of strategic capabilities. Popular culture, and especially the 1983 film, "The Day After," bombarded, if you will, the U.S. population with completely real and terrifying images of nuclear holocaust. The endless debates on nuclear war among state leaders, diplomats, and the military sector, severely complicated political decision-making. 

During the 1950s, when France fought an anti-colonial war in Vietnam, the notion of deploying the bomb horrified President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who exclaimed, "You boys must be crazy. We can’t use those awful things against the Asians for the second time in ten years. My God." Nuclear use is, basically, "racist." Atomic bombs were dropped on Japan --- not Germany --- to bring about the end of World War II. While it was the necessities of wartime planning and strategy that dictated the U.S. decision on when and where to drop the bomb, wartime diplomacy and U.S. peace efforts failed to induce Japan to surrender in 1945. At the time, fear of "Japs" and the "Yellow Peril" conditioned public acceptance of dropping the bomb on the Japanese people. The emperor gave us no choice. 

Over time there developed a powerful normative prohibition on the use of nukes, known as the "nuclear taboo." This concept is tested by ideational and normative theories of international politics. See, Nina Tennenwald, "Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo":

In 1958 Lt. Gen. James Gavin, a principal promoter in the U.S. military of the development of tactical nuclear weapons, wrote, “Nuclear weapons will become conventional for several reasons, among them cost, effectiveness against enemy weapons, and ease of handling.” Indeed, during the 1950s numerous U.S. leaders fully expected that a nuclear weapon would become “just another weapon.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles accepted “the ultimate inevitability” that tactical nuclear weapons would gain “conventional” status. Adm. Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Dwight Eisenhower, predicted in 1956 that the use of nuclear weapons “would become accepted throughout the world just as soon as people could lay their hands upon them.”

These leaders were articulating a view with a long tradition in the history of weapons and warfare: a weapon once introduced inevitably comes to be widely accepted as legitimate. In reality, however, nuclear weapons have come to be defined as abhorrent and unacceptable weapons of mass destruction, with a taboo on their use. This taboo is associated with a widespread revulsion toward nuclear weapons and broadly held inhibitions on their use. The opprobrium has come to apply to all nuclear weapons, not just to large bombs or to certain types or uses of nuclear weapons. It has developed to the point that uses of nuclear weapons that were once considered plausible by at least some U.S. decision makers—for example, tactical battlefield uses in limited wars and direct threats to deter enemies from conventional attack—have been severely delegitimized and are practically unthinkable policy options. Thomas Schelling has argued that “the evolution of that status [nuclear taboo] has been as important as the development of nuclear arsenals.” Evidence suggests that the taboo has helped to constrain resort to the use of nuclear weapons since 1945 both by reinforcing deterrence and by inducing restraint even in cases where deterrence did not operate.

What gave rise to this taboo? Schelling attributes the taboo to a general sense of revulsion associated with such destructive weapons and the perception that nuclear weapons have come to be viewed as different.6 He does not, however, trace the evolution of this process. Historian John Lewis Gaddis has argued that moral considerations help to explain the nonuse of nuclear weapons by the United States in the first ten years of the Cold War, but he does not specifically connect this sentiment to the development of a taboo.

Within the field of international relations, there has been little systematic analysis of the nuclear taboo. Traditional realists, of course, would be skeptical of the existence of a taboo, tending to see it as largely indistinguishable from prudential behavior. To the extent that a tradition of nonuse existed, it would reflect the interests of the most powerful (nuclear) states. Rationalist approaches, which are often sympathetic to norms, could easily incorporate the existence of a taboo. They would emphasize the uniquely destructive nature of nuclear weapons, the impossibility of defense, and therefore the (obvious) of having a social convention on their use.

As I show in this article, although there is some truth to these explanations, they are inadequate. The nuclear taboo was pursued in part against the preferences of the United States, which, for the first part of the nuclear era, opposed creation of a taboo because it would deny the self-proclaimed right of the United States to rely on nuclear weapons for its security. I argue for a broader explanation that emphasizes the role of a global antinuclear weapons movement and nonnuclear states, as well as Cold War power politics, in the development of the taboo.

The model of norm creation here highlights the role of antinuclear discourse and politics in the creation of the taboo. Although rationalist variables are important, the taboo cannot be explained simply as the straightforward result of rational adaptation to strategic circumstances. The larger questions are: where do global norms come from? How and why do they develop? And how are they maintained, disseminated, and strengthened? The case of the nuclear taboo is important theoretically because it challenges conventional views that international norms, especially in the security area, are created mainly by and for the powerful. The case is important practically because it illuminates an important source of restraint on the use of nuclear weapons.

In this article I locate the origins of the nuclear taboo after 1945 in a set of domestic and international factors and trace its subsequent development. Elsewhere I have analyzed how the taboo has influenced U.S. decision making in specific instances, but here I focus on what accounts for the rise of the taboo and how it developed in global politics and U.S. policy. Ideally, a full account require an examination of how the taboo came to be accepted and internalized in the decision making of other countries as well. The central role of the United States in the development of the taboo, however, makes it a particularly significant case...

Keep reading.

Rebekah Koffler, Putin's Playbook

At Amazon, Rebekah Koffler, Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America.

Batya Ungar-Sargon on 'Real Time with Bill Maher'

She appeared last night, "Catch Up on the Latest."

On Twitter.

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.

Roman Abramovich, Russian Oligarch, Hit by Sanctions

This guy's getting slammed

Chelsea's a diamond on the football world and the team plays in the Premier League, the top division in England.

This is from yesterday at WSJ, "Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich, Owner of Chelsea Soccer Club, Is Sanctioned by U.K."

And from this evening, "Roman Abramovich U.S. Hedge Fund Investments Are Frozen":

Hedge funds told to freeze Russian oligarch’s assets after he was sanctioned by the British government.

A number of U.S. hedge-fund firms that have investments from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich have been told to freeze his assets after he was sanctioned by the British government Thursday, according to people familiar with the instructions.

A message from fund administrator SS&C Globe Op to one firm said, “Currently accounts attributed to Roman Abramovich are blocked from transacting, as such any distributions, redemptions or payment cannot be made and no subscriptions or contributions can be accepted.”

SS&C, whose clients include hedge funds and other investment managers, said in the message it was monitoring the situation for guidance from the U.K. Treasury, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation and the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. Other funds have received similar messages, according to people familiar with the matter.

The guidance likely puts a stop to recent efforts by Mr. Abramovich to sell his interests in a slew of hedge funds, said people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Abramovich, who for years has accessed hedge-fund investments through New York-based adviser Concord Management, had been trying to sell interests in funds including those managed by Empyrean Capital Partners in Los Angeles and Millstreet Capital Management in Boston, the people said.

Mr. Abramovich had been seeking to sell the funds on the secondary market since at least late February, the people said. For at least some of the funds, the investor is Concord, with Mr. Abramovich or entities connected with him being the underlying investor, said people familiar with the matter. People familiar with the matter said Concord was a small investor in Millstreet.

Mr. Abramovich also is invested through Concord in hedge funds including Millennium Management, Sarissa Capital Management and Sculptor Capital Management, SCU -2.09% formerly known as Och-Ziff Capital Management, said people familiar with the matter. It couldn’t be determined Friday if he had tried to sell his interests in those funds as well. Mr. Abramovich’s hedge-fund portfolio includes investments in many small funds betting on and against stocks, one person briefed on the matter said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Abramovich didn’t respond to requests for comment. Concord didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The New York Times earlier reported Mr. Abramovich’s ties to Concord.

The U.K. on Thursday froze Mr. Abramovich’s assets and prevented him from doing any business in the country or selling assets including soccer club Chelsea F.C.

While managers in the past welcomed Concord’s money—the firm has a reputation for being a thoughtful, long-term investor in the hedge-fund industry–the relationship is proving delicate following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cascade of sanctions it triggered.

Managers would have welcomed a sale as a way to distance themselves from a sanctioned oligarch, and some had been thinking about forcibly redeeming Mr. Abramovich from their funds, said people familiar with the matter.

One manager had been considering the possibility of replacing Mr. Abramovich with other investors, another person familiar with the matter said...

 

'Hey Jealousy'

Here's the Gin Blossoms. (On Jon Stewart's show like, umm, ages ago. The dude's a young man!)

Have a good weekend everybody!

Poll: Biden's Handling of Russia-Ukraine Crisis Hasn't Boosted His Public Approval Ratings

Evan at 42 percent, I'm surprised he's getting as much support as he is. The poll was conducted March 2nd to March 7th, and thus doesn't capture changing public sentiment over the this last week's rapid rise in gas prices. 

Entire lives and livehoods are being turned upside down by this oil crisis. It's obviously the Democrats' case for full decolonization of the economy has collapse and will burn them in the November elections. This is religion to these folks. Reason cannot break thought. We're about a fanatical adherence to faith doctrines. disconfirming evidence is whisked away with a condescending hand.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Biden, Democrats Lose Ground on Key Issues, WSJ Poll Finds":

WASHINGTON—President Biden and his fellow Democrats have lost ground to Republicans on several of the issues most important to voters, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds, a troubling sign for the party seeking to extend its controlling majority of Congress for another two years.

The new survey showed that 57% of voters remained unhappy with Mr. Biden’s job performance, despite favorable marks for the president’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a recent State of the Union speech, which provided him an opportunity to directly speak to millions of Americans. Just 42% said they approved of Mr. Biden’s performance in office, which was virtually unchanged from the previous Journal poll in mid-November.

Meanwhile, Democratic advantages narrowed over Republicans on issues related to improving education and the Covid-19 response. A 16-percentage-point Democratic edge on which party would best handle the pandemic was down to 11 points, while a 9-percentage-point lead on education issues was down to 5 points.

When asked about which party was best able to protect middle-class families, the 5-point advantage for Democrats four months ago evaporated and left the parties essentially tied on the question.

Voters also gave Democrats poor marks for handling inflation and the economy, which 50% cited as the top issue they want the federal government to address. The Ukraine conflict was No. 2, with 25% of voters saying it was most important. A majority of voters, 63%, said they disapproved of Mr. Biden’s handling of rising costs, the president’s worst rating on six policy issues surveyed in the poll. Meanwhile, 47% of voters said Republicans were better able to handle inflation, compared with 30% who preferred Democrats.

Underscoring the political problem for Democrats: More voters said that Republicans had a better plan to improve the economy, 45% to 37%, even though Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the party’s leaders in each chamber, have advanced few specific economic-policy proposals they would pursue if they controlled Congress.

Since the last Journal poll, Americans have been confronted with a spike in Covid-19 cases from the highly contagious Omicron variant, bottlenecks in supply chains that left gaps in store shelves in January and surges in gasoline and other consumer prices that have driven inflation to a 40-year high.

“The mood of the country hasn’t gotten any better since the last poll. In fact, it’s gotten a little worse,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who was the lead pollster for Mr. Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and whose company conducted the Journal survey along with the firm of Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio.

Still, the challenges for Democrats haven’t significantly changed how voters said they expect to vote this year: 46% of voters said they would back a Republican candidate for Congress if the election were today, compared with 41% who favored a Democrat, with Republicans gaining support among Black and Hispanic voters since the last Journal poll...

No Breakthrough in Russia and Ukraine's High-Level Diplomatic Talks

Diplomacy won't work if one side not negotiating in good faith. Nothing I've seen so far demonstrates Moscow's interest in winding down the war, to say nothing of developing humanitarian corridors, relieving besieged cities, and protecting Ukrainian human rights.

At the New York Times, "Russia Batters and Encircles Ukrainian Cities, as Diplomacy Falters":

The top diplomats of Russia and Ukraine failed to make even a hint of progress Thursday in their first face-to-face meeting since the Russian invasion began, while Russian bombardments spread more carnage in a two-week-old war that Ukraine estimated had already inflicted $100 billion in damage.

The Russian side, which has refused to call the conflict a war, insisted that it would not end until Ukraine was “demilitarized,” dousing flickers of hope that the meeting in Turkey of Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, might lead to even a brief cease-fire. Mr. Lavrov later told reporters that was not even discussed.

“The broad narrative he conveyed to me,” Mr. Kuleba said afterward, “is that they will continue their aggression until Ukraine meets their demands, and the least of these demands is surrender.”

Across swaths of Ukraine, the fighting continued and suffering deepened, especially in besieged and bombarded cities like Mariupol in the southeast and Chernihiv in the north.

Near Kyiv, Russian forces gained control of the town of Bucha and moved southwest in an attempt to encircle the capital. They were also approaching Kyiv from the east, with heavy fighting involving a line of Russian tanks reported in the suburb of Brovary, according to videos posted online on Thursday.

In Mariupol, 70 bodies have been buried since Tuesday, without coffins, in a mass grave, according to video recorded by The Associated Press, and local officials said an airstrike that destroyed a maternity hospital on Wednesday had killed three people, including a child. In Chernihiv, residents lacked electricity, gas for cooking or warding off the winter cold, or even space to bury the dead, said the mayor, Vladyslav Atroshenko.

“Dozens of people have died,” he said. “Dozens of multistory buildings have been ruined. Thousands of people have no place to live.” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in his latest video message, said the hospital bombing in Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov, was further “proof that the genocide of Ukrainians is taking place.”

Despite photographs of the ravaged hospital and victims of the bombing, corroborated by the United Nations, Russian officials denied having hit the hospital, or alternatively said it had not been used as a hospital. Attacks on medical facilities can constitute war crimes.

The chief economic adviser to Ukraine’s government, Oleg Ustenko, estimated that his country had already suffered $100 billion in damage since the invasion began Feb. 24. “The situation is a disaster that is really much deeper than somebody can imagine,” Mr. Ustenko said at a Peterson Institute for International Economics virtual event.

Vice President Kamala Harris, in Warsaw to meet with Polish officials, said Russians should be investigated for war crimes in Ukraine, though she did not name any individuals. Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, said, “I have no question the eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of the aggression and these atrocities.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has insisted that Ukraine disarm, guarantee that it will never join the NATO alliance and officially cede parts of its land by recognizing two Russian-backed separatist regions as independent countries and accepting Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Mr. Putin’s false claims that Ukraine’s government is run by Nazis and that his goal is “denazification” of the country suggest, as Western governments have charged, that he intends to install a puppet government in Kyiv. But conflicting statements from Moscow have left unclear whether he intends to occupy some or all of the country, or annex more of it, or how far he would go in devastating Ukraine in order to subjugate it...

 

European Union Countries More Reluctant to Cut Off Russian Energy Imports (VIDEO)

Well, deal with the devil, you know?

Look how that's turning out. Under Moscow's thumb.

At Deutsche Welle, "European leaders wary of cutting off Russian oil and gas":

Quickly cutting off energy revenues with oil and gas embargoes would hit Moscow where it hurts. But European leaders have argued for a phased approach, openly admitting their dependency on Russian energy supplies.

The leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands on Monday said Europe was too dependent on Russian energy supplies to stop imports overnight as part of any eventual sanctions package in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Energy exports are a key source of income for Russia, and there are growing calls for oil and gas embargoes to increase pressure on the Kremlin.

However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that although Berlin supported tough measures against Moscow, Russian energy supplies remained "essential" for daily life in Europe.

"Europe's supply with energy for heating, for mobility, power supply and for industry cannot at the moment be secured otherwise," Scholz said in a statement.

Russia is the largest supplier of natural gas to Germany, currently accounting for more than half of imports, according to the government. Gas accounts for around a fifth of German power production.

A 'step-by-step' process

On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said cutting dependency on Russian oil and gas was "the right thing to do," however it must be done in a "step by step" process.

"We have got to make sure we have substitute supply. One of the things we are looking at is the possibility of using more of our own hydrocarbons," Johnson told a press conference following talks with his Dutch and Canadian counterparts in London.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a halt to Russian oil imports last week. However, Canada is the world's fourth-largest oil producer and its imports from Russia were comparatively negligible.

Although the UK relies much less on Russian gas than other countries in Europe, Johnson said it was important that "everyone moves in the same direction."

"There are different dependencies in different countries, and we have to mindful of that," he said. "You can't simply close down the use of oil and gas overnight, even from Russia."

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told the press conference that weaning Europe off Russian energy would "take time" and it was a "painful reality" that Europeans were still "very much dependent" on Russian gas and oil...

 

Ukrainian Forces Destroy Russian Tank Convoy Near Kyiv (VIDEO)

At the New York Post, "Video shows Russian armored convoy caught in Ukrainian ambush on way to Kyiv."

And Sky News, "Ukraine war: Sky News examines drone video from village near Kyiv that shows Russian convoy 'ambushed'."

Can the West Save Kyiv Without Starting a War With Russia?

 From Janice Gross Stein, at Foreign Affairs, "The Ukraine Dilemma":

In the months preceding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning an attack, the United States and its allies pursued two strategies in sequence. First, they tried to control escalation. U.S. President Joe Biden made an early and firm commitment not to send U.S. forces to Ukraine in order to reduce the chance of an all-out war with Russia. Then, he turned to a strategy of coercive diplomacy, combining threats with inducements. Biden warned of severe economic consequences if Putin attacked and offered to negotiate with Russia over its security concerns.

That strategy failed the moment Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border. Now, as Russian forces push closer to Kyiv, Western policymakers have two competing objectives. On the one hand, they want to do everything short of committing military force to help Ukraine survive Russia’s brutal and unjustified attack. On the other hand, they want to prevent a full-scale war between Russia and NATO. What makes the challenge so hard is that the more they do to achieve one objective, the less likely they are to achieve the other. Tradeoffs are the norm in foreign policy, but rarely is the choice as stark as it is in Ukraine. It is no surprise that NATO members are struggling to thread the needle.

Consider the question of a no-fly zone, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urgently requested NATO establish over his country. A no-fly zone would significantly help Ukraine’s embattled forces, but it would also raise the odds that Russian forces might unintentionally or deliberately attack NATO aircraft, which is why members of the alliance have ruled it out. In other words, the United States and its allies face a tough dilemma: how can they protect Ukraine and push back against Russian aggression, but avoid a war with Russia, a country that has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons?

SPIRALING OUT OF CONTROL

As attacks on Ukraine go on, it is all too easy to imagine scenarios in which NATO and Russia find themselves in a direct conflict that neither side wants. One pathway to escalation involves the convoys coming in from Poland and Romania to resupply Ukrainian forces with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. Russia could attack these convoys in order to choke off the flow of military supplies that are making a significant difference on the battlefield. Although it is not NATO itself that is organizing these shipments but rather individual members, NATO is a collective security organization. An attack against any NATO member is an attack against all. Imagine if a Russian jet bombed French military equipment being unloaded at a base in Romania. Would such an attack justify invoking Article 5, the commitment to collective defense in the NATO charter? That proposition has not been tested, but if NATO leaders concluded that such an attack did justify collective defense, then NATO and Russia would find themselves at war.

Even more alarming are scenarios in which the current crisis could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. In the days immediately preceding the attack and several times since, Russian leaders have spoken about nuclear weapons. Putin has raised the alert of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces twice, and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, warned on March 2 that any war with NATO would be nuclear. So far, Russian forces have not increased their readiness in response to these alerts, and some argue that Russian nuclear threats are nothing more than saber rattling designed to deter NATO from providing the critical military support in the air and on the ground that Ukraine needs. But no member of NATO, especially those in Europe, is willing to dismiss Russian nuclear threats as a bluff and open the door to deadly escalation.

So far, the West has made little progress on controlling escalation. The negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian officials are moving at a desultory pace. They have agreed only to establish humanitarian corridors for refugees and safe zones around nuclear plants, and Russian forces violated both almost immediately after the agreements were announced. The Pentagon and the Russian Ministry of Defense have also established a new hotline to deconflict U.S. and Russian forces. But all these measures are only weak brakes on escalation.

Deterrence at its current level of punishment also doesn’t seem to be working. Sanctions always take time to work; they don’t stop tanks that are rolling. Russia’s leaders have given no indication yet that they are genuinely interested in a ceasefire or negotiations. To the contrary, they are doubling down on their attacks. After his March 3 conversation with Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron said he had concluded that the Russian president was intent on taking all of Ukraine. Battlefield pressures may push Putin to make an offer, but he has made his long-term intentions clear.

TWO ROADS DIVERGED 

As public outrage over the invasion grows and civilian casualties mount, NATO countries will have to walk a fine line between deterring Russia and escalating the conflict. There are two ways to think about this problem.

The first draws heavily on well-established theories of rationality and deterrence. The only way to stop an aggressive leader, these arguments go, is to raise the costs of military action and demonstrate unshakable resolve, both in words and deeds. That was how the economist Thomas Schelling saw the Cuban missile crisis. Schelling argued that the standoff with the Soviet Union was a game of chicken, in which two drivers are headed straight toward each other on a narrow road. When you’re playing chicken, Schelling argued, the best strategy is to throw away your steering wheel, so that the other driver sees that you can no longer swerve. That driver now has no choice but to swerve in order to avoid a crash.

Since the war began, NATO leaders have reinforced deterrence...

 

American Woman Warns Russians to Back the Fuck Up

Woot!

Right on, baby!

On Twitter.

Biden Democrats Say Americans Should Suffer Astronomical Gas Prices for the Good of Ukraine (VIDEO)

It's Laura Ingraham --- looking hot and on breathing fire at the same time --- slams the kooky Biden administration's demand that Americans lower their standard of living for Ukraine.

REPORT: Chicago Bears Set to Trade Khalil Mack to Los Angeles Chargers

At ABC News.

Dude be like:

pic.twitter.com/yCxYU29nnh

— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) March 10, 2022

Russian Airstrike Kills 3 at Maternity Hospital in Ukrainian Port City of Mariupol (VIDEO)

CNN's first out with this report, "3 dead after Mariupol maternity hospital bombing."

Below, Richard Engel had the story this morning, for NBC News.

And from yesterday's Los Angeles Times, "Russia bombs maternity hospital amid evacuation effort, Ukraine says":

KOZELETS, Ukraine — With basic survival in Ukraine growing increasingly precarious, civilian evacuation efforts sputtered yet again Wednesday as Russian bombs slammed into a maternity hospital. Ukraine’s government had announced a daylong cease-fire for several corridors around the country that were designated for the safe exit of residents. The routes covered some of the hardest-hit areas, including the southern port city of Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been trapped for days with no electricity and water and dwindling supplies of food and medicine.

But late Wednesday afternoon, Russia appeared to break the cease-fire when bombs hit a Mariupol hospital complex, injuring 17. Images showed emergency responders carrying a bloodied pregnant woman through a courtyard littered with mangled cars and a heavily damaged building still smoldering.

The bombs added to the misery of a blockaded city where hungry residents have begun breaking into stores and officials dug a mass grave to bury dozens of soldiers and civilians killed in recent days.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called the hospital attack “beyond an atrocity” and appealed again to the West to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine so Russia “no longer has any possibility to continue this genocide.”

The attack prompted international outrage, with a top U.S. State Department official demanding that Russia “stop these heinous acts now.”

Still, Western officials continued to rule out the possibility of a no-fly zone for fear that it could escalate the conflict.

“If I were in President Zelensky’s position, I’m sure I would be asking for everything possible,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said during a news conference in Washington.

But, he said, the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization want to end “senseless bloodshed” and not provoke Russia by flying in aircraft or launching attacks from NATO countries.

“Our goal is to end the war, not to expand it,” Blinken said.

That is also why the U.S. has said it will not transfer fighter jets to Ukraine as proposed by Poland, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, saying it was too “high risk.”

American officials were caught off guard when the Polish government said Tuesday that it would send about two dozen Soviet-era MIG-29 fighter planes to the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany. Polish officials apparently had hoped the U.S. would then deliver the planes to Ukraine, whose pilots are trained on the aircraft.

Kirby said the aircraft are “not likely to significantly change the effectiveness” of the Ukrainian resistance and warned that the move could “be mistaken as escalatory” and result in a broader conflict with Russia.

U.S. lawmakers and military officials have looked for alternative ways to support Ukraine, with Congress agreeing Wednesday to send $13.6 billion in aid to the beleaguered country and Defense Department officials moving Patriot missile-defense systems to Poland, where Vice President Kamala Harris arrived for a three-day trip aimed at shoring up transatlantic efforts to isolate Russia.

U.S. officials have also continued to combat what they describe as a disinformation campaign waged by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The White House on Wednesday condemned a Russian claim — echoed by Chinese officials — that the U.S. is developing chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine.

“It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Twitter...

 

Tone-Deaf Team Biden Responds to High Gas Prices With Electric Car Sales Pitch

From Stephen Kruiser, at Pajamas, "Never have I been more grateful to not have to leave my house much as I am here in Joe Biden’s America, with gas prices hiking up to vertiginous heights. It’s quite economical to only have to travel from my bedroom to my living room office each morning."

Denmark to Increase Defense Spending -- Denmark!

 Wow. 

This is some big change. I mean, does Copenhagen even boast national armed forces? WTF?

It does, it turns out. 

At Politico E.U., "Denmark to increase defense spending and phase out Russian natural gas: Copenhagen latest to join countries around EU rethinking defense strategies in light of Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Killer Inflation

Margaret Talev just minutes ago on Wolf Blizter's "Situation Room": Gas prices could go double-digits.

Here's the data, on Twitter:

Mass Graves in Mariupol Ukraine (VIDEO)

The city's completely besieged and cut off from all supplies --- medicine, food, and water. It's a desperate situation. And there's been no progress in setting up humanitarian corridors to facilitate evacuation for civilians.

At Reuters, "Ukraine says Russia snubs plea for humanitarian access to besieged civilians."

And at the New York Times, "After a Week of Siege, Bloodied Mariupol Plans Mass Graves":

Under a relentless Russian barrage, there is no heat or electricity, and people are boiling snow for water. A 6-year-old died of dehydration, the authorities said.

LVIV, Ukraine — Marina Levinchuk said she received an alarming text message from the local authorities in the besieged city of Mariupol several days ago, before she decided to flee. “If somebody dies in your family,” she said, recalling the message in her own words, “just put the body outside, cover it, tie up the hands and the legs and leave it outside.”

“That’s what’s going on in Mariupol now,” she said of the city, currently ringed by Russian forces pounding it with bombs, missiles and artillery, and hitting a maternity hospital on Wednesday. “There are just bodies lying in the streets.

“There is no water, no heating, no gas,” she continued in a video call on WhatsApp on Wednesday. “And they are collecting snow, melting the snow, and boiling the snow.”

It has been seven days since Russian forces encircled the city, an important port on Ukraine’s southern coast, and began to lay siege to the roughly half a million people living there. Most communications with the outside world were severed, leaving primarily those with access to satellite phones to alert Ukraine and the rest of the world to the increasingly dire state of affairs.

Having failed to defeat the Ukrainian army in the war’s first weeks, and encountering stiff resistance in major cities like Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kyiv, Russian commanders appear to be resorting to tactics used in previous wars in Chechnya and Syria: flattening cities with overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower.

A video uploaded to Facebook on Wednesday evening showed the center of Mariupol after an aerial bombardment. It looked like a wasteland, with tree branches singed, windows blasted out of entire apartment blocks and the destroyed maternity hospital.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, condemned the strike on the hospital, berating world powers for failing to stop the killing and echoing his calls for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

“Mariupol. Direct Strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital,” he wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday afternoon. “People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity.”

In all, 17 people were injured in the hospital attack, including staff members and maternity ward patients, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor, told a Ukrainian television station.

Efforts to negotiate a cease-fire to give civilians a chance to escape have failed repeatedly. For three days, the prospect of relief reaching the city though a “humanitarian corridor” fell apart in a hail of mortar and artillery fire.

The fighting around the city has been some of the most intense of the war, residents who managed to escape the conflict say...