How to fake a scholarly argument — Abrahms in The Atlantic

March 8, 2023 This article caught my eye because its author, Max Abrahms, charges that there is "frequent disconnect between international-relations scholarship and common espoused views in Western media about the war." Now, I do not know why common views should reflect IR scholarship necessarily, but I do have an issue with the claim that …

NYT publishes another call for Ukraine to surrender

February 7, 2023 This morning I woke up to an email from Hein Goemans and a link to an op-ed in The New York Times by Christopher Caldwell. It is yet another call for the US to abandon Ukraine in order to force its surrender to Russia, dressed up as a call for negotiations. I …

Walt lectures us on “dispassionate” analysis — maybe he should learn to think

November 29, 2022 God help me, there's another diatribe by Stephen Walt in his house outlet, Foreign Policy, and it's as bad as one has come to expect. This time, the old wine of nonsense he peddles with Mearsheimer & Co. is packaged in a new bottle -- a call for dispassionate analysis. The problem …

Peak dishonesty: Mearsheimer in The New Yorker

November 18, 2022 The Kremlin Posse is out in force: first it was vanden Heuvel, then Walt, and now, of course, Mearsheimer, this time in an interview for The New Yorker. All peddling the same story, which is not surprising -- they are three people but it's the same circle jerk that's been peddling anti-Americanism …

Realism without reality: Kupchan in the NYT

November 3, 2022 Another day, and another shoddy analysis of the Russo-Ukrainian War, with appropriately counter-productive policy prescriptions: this time by Charles Kupchan in the New York Times. As usual, I will note problems with logic and evidence in specific parts of the argument. "The war in Ukraine is dangerously escalating." This is the opening …

The impending loss of Kherson: How will Putin spin it?

October 20, 2022 Two days ago, the Ukrainian military asked all bloggers, YouTubers, and social media personalities to observe radio silence when it comes to events and operations in Kherson Region. The last time they imposed such a media blackout was when the Kharkiv Offensive began. There is, essentially, total compliance with this request, and …

Endgame

September 25, 2022 The war in Ukraine is fast approaching the moment of truth -- the series of events that will tell us what the eventual outcome is likely to be. Putin's situation is desperate, and is getting worse by the hour: while the mobilization didn't create the social explosion many analysts were predicting, it …

Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: A Conundrum for the West?

September 15, 2022 I am not a specialist on the region, so please take what follows as thoughts of someone whose primary interest right now is in the war in Ukraine, and so necessarily sees things through a particular lens (i.e., always wanting to know what this means for that war). Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) and the …

The Kremlin’s Fairy-Tales & Dugina’s Assassination

August 23, 2022 Hi Friends. There have been a few developments that warrant a new post on the war in Ukraine. A few days ago, Turkey's Erdogan had a meeting with Zelenskyy after talking to Putin in Sochi. The meeting lasted 40 minutes, and both sides would only says they talked about generalities. We now …

The war grinds on while Russia’s near-abroad erupts in turmoil

June 20, 2022 It has been several days since my last update, so it's time for some analysis of the war in Ukraine and its global repercussions. As usual, we begin with an operational update, starting from the North, with Kharkiv. Unfortunately, the RFA has made some small advances toward the city, which has now …