How not to reason about the war — Allison in The Washington Post

February 28, 2023 Graham Allison, one of the most cited political scientists and respected analyst, has published an op-ed in the Washington Post that has one scratching one's head in bewilderment. It is a mashup of unexplained and unsupportable assumptions presented as fact, and sloppy reasoning that hides its shortcomings behind rhetorical flourishes. I am …

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 …

Russia is, for now, the insurmountable obstacle to peace

December 5, 2022 It has been a while since I've written an update on the war, and now several recent events have prompted some analysis. The events in question: recent surveys about support for the war in Russia (both public-sourced and leaked internal to the Kremlin), the continuing fallout of the misstep by a host …

Washington Post publishes another call to surrender to Putin

December 2, 2022 My happiness of seeing my long-suffering op-ed appear in the Union-Tribune today was destroyed by the Washington Post publishing an outright call to capitulate to Russia by some unknown to me "specialist" named Robert Wright. Comrade Wright has thoughts: "If an enduring peace can be had through negotiation — and we won’t …

Foreign Affairs in Wonderland: Stanovaya and imaginary “peacemakers”

November 24, 2022 Each Ukrainian success on the battlefield is followed by two things: a ferocious terrorist attack on civilian infrastructure by Russia, and a slew of articles preaching capitulating to Putin in the West. This time, it's in Foreign Affairs, and is a fantasy short-story penned by Tatiana Stanovaya. Let me begin by summarizing …

Another abominable Putin-verstehener: vanden Heuvel in the WaPo

November 15, 2022 Another abominable screed by a Putin-verstehener who's been peddling Kremlin propaganda since the start of the war. Why is WaPo publishing this drivel, I do not know, but I do know that they have TWICE now rejected my submissions for the alternative view of what needs to be done. Quick summary of …

Russia is never as strong as we fear, or as weak as we hope

October 28, 2022 There is an increasingly widespread, and popular, narrative in Ukraine and in the West that Putin realizes he's losing the war, has taken relatively extreme measures -- unthinkable until recently (mobilization, re-creating penal battalions, moving the economy to wartime footing) -- to slow this down because he fears the impact a defeat …

Putin’s Military Solution?

September 29, 2022 Moscow is preparing for the annexation of the four regions where the Kremlin recently staged the circus act they call "referenda." The demonstration in support of the annexation is set for Sep 30, and the sessions of the Duma and the Federation Council are set for Oct 3 and 4, respectively. It …

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 …

The imperialists in Russia see red

September 16, 2022 The Russian channels are abuzz with activity -- the crazies have concocted the "peace plan" that Ukraine supposedly delivered to Russia through Erdogan. Here's what these science fiction writers came up with: Removal all of Russian military from territories taken after February 24 2022. Transfer of all gold and foreign currency reserves …