Thursday, March 24, 2022

Today's News: One Month

After a month, Ukraine is pushing Russia back in both the north and the south: Putin started his pointless war against Ukraine a month ago. 
In that time, millions of Ukrainians have had to uproot and move, either to western Ukraine or out of the country. Thousands of Ukrainians have lost their lives. Thousands of homes and streets and buildings have been destroyed -- the New York Times today says Russia has "obliterated everyday life in Ukraine". Millions of Ukrainians have lost their jobs and their homes, likely forever because there's nothing to go back to. 
Unless the war ends in another month, there might not be much of a wheat crop in Ukraine this year either, nor barley or oilseeds.  Farmers will go bankrupt while nations in the Middle East, Africa and Asia that depend on Ukraine crops for subsidized grain and noodles will have to manage hunger next year too.
Also lets not forget the tens of thousands of Russian troops who have been killed, wounded, captured. In Russia itself, hundreds of thousands have lost their careers and their savings.
And in the west, we have spent billions on helping refugees and buying armaments while trying to wrap our heads around the terror we feel now that a Cold War may be start up again. 
And all of this misery and fear and ruin, for what? 
Just for Putin's stupid ego. 
This entire war is a monstrous war crime, a needless, pointless, meritless war of aggression against an innocent people who were doing no harm. Ukraine was not threatening anyone, and they had no expansionist ambitions. They only wanted to be left alone.
At Daily Kos, Hunter describes the basic incompetence of Putin's army: 
The Russian plan appears to be unchanged since the early days of the war; facing unexpected resistance, Russia is instead retaliating against civilians in an attempt to inflict as much non-military damage as possible. 
It is the military "strategy" Russia has fallen into in each of its recent conflicts, and we're now seeing that it may come less from the strategic plans of Russian leaders and more from consistent Russian incompetence at carrying out tactics that do not focus on unarmed foes. The United States government directly accused Russia of committing war crimes today, citing those attacks.
And because of this deadly combination of hubris and incompetence, this war will end in hate:
Yes, it is horrific, and the drumbeat for the US to do more to help Ukraine continues. 
Here's an interesting discussion about irrational vs rational decision-making from Rand Corporation political scientist Michael J. Mazarr, at War On The Rocks: 
 ...many demands for more belligerent actions reflect a mindset commonly associated with foreign policy catastrophes: acting based on an overwhelming sense of what a country must do, rather than a primary and rigorous assessment of which course of action would best advance its interests and goals. The pattern can be described as “imperative-driven judgment.” It is foreign policy by moralistic duty....
Once the direction is set by an imperative, the decision-making system shifts into a form of autopilot. And it can drive a nation right off a policy cliff ...[be] on the lookout for arguments or policy statements suffused with emotional language, heavy on claims of limitless stakes in the conflict, full of moralistic appeals to duty and obligation, and contemptuous of anyone who doubts the proposed course of action. 
... the best answer to imperative-driven tragedies is robust deliberation... Will this policy make a measurable difference in the war? Does it risk crossing some objectively defined escalatory threshold, such as the conduct of actual combat operations? What might Russia make of the act? How might it respond? Are there alternatives that would achieve the same effect, with lower risk? What are the possible second-order effects? Does the act accord with American national interests at stake? The effect of imperative-driven judgment is to brush aside such inconvenient questions. Had enough of them been asked — by the right people, at the right time, with the needed seriousness — the United States might have avoided catastrophes like the Bay of Pigs or the invasion of Iraq.... 
Global peace is at stake in the wider war that could spread from Ukraine. In this crisis, the United States does confront one undeniable obligation: to ask the right questions before, rather than after, taking large-scale action; to check its sense of duty and moralistic commitment; and, this time, to be sure it finds its way to wise action, rather than a road to disaster.

And here is an amazing story of one small Ukrainian town that fought back: And finally, back to Canadian politics:
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