When not to follow the leader...

Here's an addendum to my previous post about Phillips P. O'Brien's The Strategists: in the introduction to that 2024 book, O'Brien muses about what Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine might reveal about the Russian's capacities as a war leader.

... As this book is being completed, the greatest example of this reality of personal grand-strategy-making is playing out before us.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, an attempt to create a greater, more powerful Russia, shows once again that grand strategy can be hijacked by deeply flawed individuals over bureaucracies or structures. In no rational world could the Russian invasion of Ukraine be seen as something well thought out or in the Russian national interest. It was poorly conceived, based on a hopeless misreading of Ukrainian intentions and capabilities. The Russian Army was also constructed in such a way that it was far less than the sum of its parts.

While Putin might have had an ends-ways-means plan in his own mind, we can say now that he had poorly constructed means, which he employed in wholly unrealistic ways in a vain attempt to achieve completely unrealistic ends. Yet just before the invasion he was considered perhaps the most savvy and intelligent leader of a major power in the world.

Putin’s grand-strategic performance has in many ways combined the worst strategic traits of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In a rational world, with a sober evaluation of the Russian Army, one would have imagined a state’s decision-making bureaucracy would have tried to halt his invasion of Ukraine—as one would have imagined the Italian state might have restrained Mussolini from invading Greece, or German influences might have kept Hitler from attacking the Soviet Union with Britain still fighting.

Like the Axis leaders of the 1940s, Putin made war on the Ukraine of his imagination with a military greatly debilitated by corruption and incompetence of which he was either ignorant or unconcerned. Russia ran into something unanticipated in Ukraine. O'Brien's substack chronicles the consequences. It's my go-to source on the Ukraine war and seems honest, though not objective. He knows who he supports.

Of course, Putin is not the only contemporary leader of a powerful military and country who ignorantly substitutes his fantasies for any coherent plan or strategy. 

 

Does the character of leaders matter?

Phillips P. O'Brien's The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler--How War Made Them and How They Made War approaches the history of what Americans call World War II from an angle that I found counter-intuitive. Studying history, I've absorbed the lesson that most of what happened in human societies had less of its origins in the foibles of individuals than in wide economic and intellectual forces which shaped the possible. But, of course, people with power play out their times in the terrain which those forces make possible. This book is O'Brien's whack at how five strong leaders shaped their European war.

And it's a delicious volume, human stories smoothly recounted and convincingly deconstructed on the landscape observed by a student of military history and international relations. I had been reading O'Brien's indispensable substack on the Ukraine war and wanted to explore his scholarship. This makes an easy introduction.

For the purposes of this book, the strategic decision is the choice by the leader, with or without the opinions of advisers, of the strategic plan that the state should follow. The implementation is the translation of that plan into action. ... One of the great tests of grand-strategic leadership is learning what not to do as well as what to do.

O'Brien's subjects were two men born in the 1870s (Stalin, Churchill) and three in the 1880s (Roosevelt, Mussolini, Hitler). They were all, in some sense, survivors. 

Stalin clawed his way through prison under the Tsar, civil war, and Bolshevik revolution to make himself the unchallengable ruler of the Soviet Union by 1930. He was something of an unlikely successor to that more complex and brilliant revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin:

Stalin’s fundamental problem was that he was not competent enough to fulfill the purposes of his command. ... You can work very hard to create the reality you want, and with enough power you can often succeed. ... Playing up the idea of a vast conspiracy of traitors in their midst ... helped Stalin appeal to Lenin. He might not have been terribly competent, but he would take extreme measures to protect the Leninist line against all possible enemies—even those who were not enemies yet. Lenin approved of Stalin’s willingness to use the most brutal means against possible enemies, even when he was aware Stalin was making things up. ...

Churchill traveled around the British empire as a young privileged adventurer, then took up political party politics, and got himself appointed in 1914 as First Lord of the Admiralty in time to be held responsible for the British/Australian landing in Turkey which ended in a massacre. More to his credit, he also used his position to inspect the trench warfare in France and took enduring lessons:

Churchill now understood that modern weapons had made a mockery of bravery. Machines would determine the outcome of this war, and exposing oneself was more likely to lead to injury or death than anything else. ... If he had retained many boyish traits when the war started, the man that returned to London was more sober, cautious and methodical in his strategic outlook. He now had a holistic war strategy that stretched from the production of weapons to the deployment of forces in the field, all underlined by a coherent geopolitical vision.

O'Brien skims only lightly over the personal crisis of which Roosevelt was a survivor. During World War I he worked for the Wilson administration in the Department of the Navy and came away with an understanding of how controlling the oceans might be America's great strength. He was a political up-and-comer, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate on a losing 1920 ticket. And then he barely survived polio and emerged with paralyzed legs. Despite this seemingly insurmountable setback, he won the governorship of New York State in 1928 and then the presidency in 1932, in time to confront the Depression depths of bank failures and mass unemployment. But he also repudiated his non-militarist foreign policy positions.

During a time of financial hardship and growing military threats in both Europe and Asia, Roosevelt’s agenda strengthened the US Navy while providing desperately needed industrial jobs in shipyards up and down the country. It would be the start of Roosevelt’s military preparations for World War II, and would reveal the enduring legacy of his earlier experiences.

The three who became the leaders of the Allied powers had held responsible, although subordinate, positions during World War I; the two Axis dictators had been ordinary soldiers in the Great War. 

O'Brien manages no respect at all for Mussolini. Of these five men, I had known the least about the Italian fascist, so will quote at some length.

Making Italy great, and himself even greater, would be his foundational strategic mindset—even if he had as of yet no clear idea [in 1918] how to achieve it. ...

... Much of the time within the narrative of World War I, the Italian experience is overlooked in favour of the great battles of the Western and even Eastern Fronts. Yet by Western Front standards, the Italian soldier made an equal, and in some ways greater, sacrifice to that of his British and French comrades. By the end of the war, five million Italians had served in the armed forces, and 650,000 of them had died (or would soon perish because of war-received wounds) 

... trincerocrazia (rule by those who had served in the trenches) would form the core of a “new and better elite” which [Mussolini] claimed should rule Italy after the war. Of course, he was too modest to point out that a prominent newspaper editor who had served in the army would be ideally suited to lead this new trench-ocracy. Mussolini was coming closer and closer to arguing for an overthrow of the Italian state. The journey to a personal dictatorship was shortening. ...

Mussolini had a prescription for regaining Italy's imagined former military greatness.

He said the Germans had made a terrible mistake going on the defensive on the Western Front in 1917, as this was actually “more expensive” than going on the offensive. How anyone who had witnessed how machine guns and modern artillery could devastate attacking infantrymen could still think the defensive was more expensive boggles the mind. However, instilling the right values remained to Mussolini the key to preparing soldiers to advance. 

... In the balance between morale and equipment, willpower always triumphed over steel. Mussolini was “certain that thousands of cannons and machine guns are not enough for victory, if the spirit of the soldiers is lacking.”

Having posed the question of Italian "greatness," he made himself the answer for attaining it after that war.

If the Allies had unfairly thwarted Italy at Paris [in the Versailles Treaty], Mussolini would be the man to make Italy great again. He created his own political movement in the midst of this supposed humiliation ... In November 1921 the Fascist Party itself was founded with Mussolini as its leader, and in 1922 he seized power over all of Italy. It was the culmination of his wartime learning. 

Mussolini viewed the Italian state, not insensibly, as too weak and chaotic to save itself. He thus threatened a march on Rome more as an act of bluster than any widespread violent action. Indeed, he was prepared to call the whole thing off if the government reacted with force. Luckily for him they didn’t, and the indecisive King was only too happy to invite Mussolini to take power to end the chaos. Il Duce was made. 

World War I had taught Mussolini how to seize and manipulate power, and the value of acting like a great power even if you were not one. The only trouble with this strategic outlook would come if someone called Mussolini’s bluff.

The rest of O'Brien's account of Mussolini's role in World War II amounts to how Churchill and then Hitler did indeed call the Italian's bluff. Italian fighters executed their deposed dictator in 1945.

Despite having been born in Austria, Adolf Hitler volunteered as a lowly dispatch courier for the Germans in the Great War. And according to to O'Brien, Hitler got lucky, suffering a minor wound that kept him out of the worst of the German rout and killing fields, while leaving some indelible impressions. 

Hitler’s wound, in the thigh, was relatively light, but he was pulled off the line and sent to a military hospital near Berlin. Once there, due to the vagaries of military bureaucracy as much as anything, he would wait approximately six months before returning to the Western Front. Hitler was shocked by what he discovered in Germany. Instead of a people united in support for the war, he came face to face with widespread dissatisfaction, even defeatism, in both the army and the general public. 

Though his doubts about the true resilience of the German people remained, he did not want to admit that Germans might honestly doubt that this miserable war, which had already killed hundreds of thousands and brought misery and famine to their doorstep, was a mistake. No, the real culprit had to be the Jews. In his fact-free world, the Jews had used the war to embed their domination throughout the production process and to stoke animosity between Bavaria and Prussia, all the while skillfully avoiding military service themselves.

He did take one practical if over-blown lesson from his war experience:

Hitler had a much greater focus on the importance of military equipment in determining the outcome of modern battles. ... Hitler’s fascination with the largest, heaviest firepower reveals something common in dictators: a stress on strength, without a corresponding ability to understand rational trade-offs. ...

Hitler's wartime service convinced him that he had found his destiny:

... To answer the question of why [the 1918 German] disaster had occurred, Hitler fell back on the conspiracy theories he had been nursing for years and magnified them to enormous proportions. An internal, criminal enemy had poisoned the mind of the German people, leading them to betray the valiant troops at the front and transforming a possible war-winning situation into a humiliating defeat. 

This is the crucial piece of the puzzle in understanding Hitler as a war leader in World War II. It combined his grasp of how to win wars (heavy equipment based on German technology which carried the biggest punch possible) with how Germany lost this one (home front weakened and then betrayed by evil influences—particularly Jews). 

The combination of these ideas also seems to have been the motivation he needed to change professions. If Hitler went into the army in 1914 still thinking he would become a great artist or architect, by 1918 he had decided to immerse himself in politics. 

Having explored the life lessons these five men brought to World War II, O'Brien's actual recounting of the events of that war is more sparse. Pretty much all of them acted in accord with pre-existing character. 

Hitler, whose ego was already massive, started telling people that everything now depended on him and him alone, and that he needed to act in case he died early and Germany was deprived of his historic leadership. ...

Hitler's war became a parade of strategic failures for Germany. 

On the other hand --

After December 7, 1941, neither Franklin Roosevelt nor Winston Churchill had any doubts about the outcome of World War II. They were both convinced that Germany, Italy and Japan would all be crushed. ... Their earlier experiences with war had taught both Roosevelt and Churchill the vital importance of controlling the air-sea super-battlefield—and in that way they had a massive advantage over Adolf Hitler, with his more parochial war and life experiences.

The Russian ruler was the one who learned and adapted most over the course of the war. Because Stalin enjoyed the material support of Britain and the United States and led a country where war had evoked patriotic nationalism, he had time and opportunity to learn to be a successful war leader. 

Stalin’s meeting with [Roosevelt's envoy] Harry Hopkins was just one example of how he reacted to adversity not by doubling down on his own brilliance, but by trying to cultivate and benefit from the support of others. This was not because of any change of personality; it was because he had calculated, accurately, that the chances of his personal survival and that of the USSR (and then later of their further successes) would be better assured by taking help where he could get it, even if this showed him doing things that ideologically or personally he had not done before. ... Stalin had the capacity to learn. In 1941 and early 1942, Hitler and Stalin were quite similar as military commanders. ... 

When Stalin let his generals lead, with Allied materiel arriving, the immense size and valor of the Russian army came into play and turned the tide against Germany. Stalin learned.

O'Brien faults Roosevelt for not being willing to face his own mortality and for failing to prepare his vice president Harry Truman. From having been an anchor of stability, Roosevelt risked the final success of the alliance. 

Though one does not want to analyse Roosevelt’s psyche too much, part of him seemed to believe that, as long as he was president, he could not really die. ... in 1944, Roosevelt would make one of the most selfish choices in international relations history, something so profoundly self-centred that historians still shy away from addressing it. He not only decided to run for office while dying; he decided to change vice president to someone he did not like, would not confide in and would not prepare in any way to be president. ... 

... In refusing to provide the US government with an idea of concrete war aims and purposes, Roosevelt was making a mockery of the Clausewitzian notion of strategy being a connection between ends, ways and means. Roosevelt, more than any war leader, had a clear idea of ways and means—fighting the war with air-sea power and many machines over soldiers, etc.—but [these] seemed disconnected from the ends. The ends were what he wanted at any given moment. 

... By the end of the war, three of the five were dead: Hitler by suicide, Mussolini gunned down on a street corner and Roosevelt whose body failed after all his exertions. Even the two survivors, Churchill and Stalin, had aged greatly because of the stress of war leadership. Neither was the same forceful figure after the war that he had been when it started.

O'Brien concludes by arguing in favor of greater focus in historical accounts on the character and capacities of leaders. (Yes, now as then, that seems forever to mean all men.) I greatly enjoyed this book; it rounded my understanding of massive events which I've studied through other lenses. But I wonder -- is this truly the best way to greater understanding?

... grand strategy in World War II was far more personal than we might believe. ... then, now and in the future—we have to try to understand the minds of the individual leaders who make the crucial choices. Though we use phrases like “national interest” or “greater good,” these are abstract concepts in grand-strategy-making. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Churchill and Roosevelt had very personal notions of what national interest was; in some cases, notions that led to the lives of their fellow citizens being made far worse. All of them also believed that they were personally indispensable in terms of making their countries greater, and all imposed their own visions on their states during the course of the war. As such, they regularly acted like their personal views of the world were in the national interest of their countries, when they were decidedly not. If we want to understand strategy, we must also understand the strategist.

Perhaps. Certainly any contemporary American is forced to see what horrors a leader with no moral character at all can lead to.

Truth tellers: from embattled Ukraine

There remain among us people who insist on telling the truth -- the truth of Donald Trump et al.'s depredations and the truth of who some American people aspire to be. 

Consider, for example, Tim Mak. Based in Kiev, Ukraine, and ensuring through The Counteroffensive substack that Ukrainian writers can describe the war as they live it, Mak has carved out his own definition of the job of a war correspondent. 

Tim’s breakout in journalism doesn’t follow a known model. Born in Canada, he moved from academic institutions there to the forefront of American politics and cut his teeth reporting on the Obama administration and key political movements, including the rise of the Tea Party and two elections. But the intensity of the 2016 campaign season forced him into an unexpected detour, where he joined the U.S. Army as a combat medic, a role he believed at the time would strengthen his resilience to enrich his later journalism.  

Mak is an American citizen by choice; he could have just remained a Canadian observer of his big neighbor's follies. But he chose to come inside our bedraggled tent. He's also an observer of wars' horrors by choice; his talents could have won him other berths. But he persists because something about Ukraine's stubborn resistance to Russian imperialism reminds him of what he values. He views Trump's turn to enabling Russian conquests as betrayal of his adopted country as well as of Ukrainians.

... One of the reasons I wanted to become an American is that it meant something more than just citizenship in a country. Americans, even when the country failed to live up to its ideals, at least tried to uphold values of freedom and human rights.

America did not need to made “great again” because it was already good — or at least *tried* to be. America exemplified a place where immigrants could make it, fellow allied democracies were boosted, and bad actors were confronted.

... [Trump's new "National Security strategy] throws away any pretense of American exceptionalism or idealism.

It’s a Neanderthalish view of interacting with the world. We are great because we are powerful. We are powerful because we can kill or coerce, or otherwise manipulate you due to the threat of both. ...

Tim Mak thinks we can do better. Sometimes we have done better; sometimes we still do. 

We could use some truth telling

 

It seems a waste of pixels to post this (from the Guardian UK) but I'm feeling intolerant of foolishness and will not resist. This headline is false, absurd, and based on lies. Why do otherwise semi-sane media continue to play along with the game?

 

There is NO evidence that any party to the war being fought by Ukraine against Russian aggression wants "peace."

• Putin wants to erase Ukraine from the map; it's all Russia in his fantasy.

• Trump wants Russian minerals and whatever additional payoff Putin is offering. Oh yeah -- and a peace prize.

• Ukrainians want Russia to get the hell out of their country and must wander through whatever convoluted byways are required to keep that hope alive. While suffering.

• Europeans wish the whole thing would stop impinging on them; though on alternate Tuesdays they understand Russia threatens them all.

Ukraine is the Spanish Civil War of our era, a messy contest between more-or-less democracy and fascism in which the unfortunate Ukrainians provide a plaground for big bullies.

This time as deadly farce ... 

For Ukraine, it's search out the future -- or die

Environmental and climate advocate Bill McKibben points out that the planet-wide shift to harness energy from the sun is not only transforming how we produce heat and power cars. It is also changing how war is waged.

It's hard to drone a solar panel. 

The war in Ukraine may be adding resilience to the list of clean energy's virtues. 

As I write this, the Orsknefteorgsintez refinery in Orsk, Russia is ablaze. It sits 1,400 kilometers from the border with Ukraine—in fact, along the border with Kazakhstan. The refinery has a capacity of 6.6 million tons of oil yearly, and among other things it’s one of two refineries capable of producing the jet fuel used by the country’s strategic bombers.

The best reason for nations to switch to power from the sun and wind is that it will reduce, by some degree, the severity of the climate crisis (and save millions of lives lost each year to pollution). The second best reason is that it’s cheaper than fossil fuel, and any nation who doesn’t shift will be stuck with an economy running on expensive energy. But it seems to me—not a military analyst, but a fairly good tea-leaves reader—that the war in Ukraine may be adding a third to the list: its comparative invulnerability to attack.

As the world has begun to figure out, something important has happened amidst the carnage of Russia’s immoral invasion: warfare has changed forever, with the small drone quickly replacing much of the military hardware we grew accustomed to in the 20th century. 

Drones have been ubiquitous along the front lines, where the no-man’s zone between the armies is lethally patrolled by squadrons of drones able to take out tanks, troop transports, and pretty much anything else—that explains much of the stasis of the last two years; the competing forces are largely pinned down. 

The Russians, of course, have also been using drones to attack civilian assets—every night a new sortie, mixed in with missiles, seems to take out kindergartens, hospitals, and old folks homes. An early target was Ukraine’s energy sources, in an effort to freeze the fight out of the nation. (Currently the Russians seem to be playing dangerous games with the offline nuclear power plants not far from the front lines). But as we head into yet another war of winter, Ukraine hangs on—and more than hangs on. 

Over the course of the war, by sheer necessity, Ukraine has developed a formidable drone industry, and increasingly it is using them against a singular set of targets: the oil refining and transport infrastructure spread out across its sprawling foe. Russia has formidable air defenses, of course—Ukraine couldn’t fly a bomber across 1,400 kilometers of the country’s airspace to bomb a refinery. But the small and comparatively slow drones have proved equal to the task. ...

Russia can, and does, shoot rockets at the centers of Ukrainian civilian life. But Ukrainians, motivated by necessity and determined courage, have found, at least for the moment, an answer that sustains their embattled nation with sun power they have developed themselves. The war is making oil refining and coal burning obsolete and perilous technologies to depend on.

...The general lesson to be drawn from this, it seems to me, is that centralized and complex energy facilities are now sitting ducks for drone attack, and that that will certainly alter military calculations going forward. A refinery, for instance, is one of the most complicated machines humanity has ever constructed, often covering hundreds of acres. It’s filled with highly complex equipment and highly flammable hydrocarbons; hit one corner with a drone and the flames and the damage are likely to spread quickly. Not far behind—as Ukraine has learned to its sadness—are coal and gas-fired power plants—expensive infrastructure that can take months or years to rebuild as your citizens shiver. 

By contrast, solar farms and wind turbines are scattered, which makes them harder to hit, and relatively simple to fix. Silicon doesn’t explode when it’s hit: a drone may take out some panels, but they are easy to switch out for new ones. And individual rooftop installations are too small to be systematically attacked. ...

I'm sure McKibben would agree that it would be far better if Russia hadn't made war on its proud, self-reliant neighbor. But since Russia has, we can marvel at how Ukrainian innovation is showing how a small nation can preserve its independence by adopting the energy source of the future. 

Too often, war midwifes scientific advances that only kill more efficiently. There is so much death in Ukraine, but also so much life. 

International rules against torture breaking down

Russia wants out of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Punishment which it signed onto 1996. 

According to Radio Liberty (thanks to Google translate): 

Putin submitted to the state Duma a draft on the denunciation of the Convention against torture...

After withdrawing from the convention, Russia will no longer be obliged to admit international inspectors to its prisons. Complaints from Russian prisoners to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture will no longer be considered. 

The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has reported extensive Russian torture of captured Ukrainians.

“Almost every single one of the Ukrainian POWs we interviewed described how Russian servicepersons or officials tortured them during their captivity, using repeated beatings, electric shocks, threats of execution, prolonged stress positions and mock execution. Over half of them were subjected to sexual violence,” said Danielle Bell who heads HRMMU. “Most POWs also recounted the anguish of not being allowed to communicate with their families, and being deprived of adequate food and medical attention.” 

Although the United States has historically been allergic to international treaties which might subject acts by our citizens to international judgement, we signed the analogous United Nations Convention against torture in 1988 and ratified in 1994. 

I doubt somehow doubt that the Trump/Hegseth regime gives a damn about internationally recognized bars to torture. But one hopes most American citizens might.

Might Ukraine be winning its war against Russia? We wouldn't know.

The last few weeks of "diplomacy" over Russia's intent to destroy the independent nation of Ukraine have been pretty nauseating. Serious Americans should concede the obvious: our president gets his jollies from acting as Putin's ventriloquist's dummy, while Ukrainians struggle to stay alive and keep a weak and divided Europe on side. It's all just noise, empty noise for Ukrainians for whom the war is about life and death. Meanwhile the American media deliver up the nonsense as if it were meaningful.

Retired Australian General Mick Ryan studies wars, visits wars, and is the sort of guy who makes speeches at international "security"  conferences. His serious view of the Ukraine war is quite different from the common blather: 

Russia’s ability to convince certain foreign politicians that it is winning the war greatly exceeds its ability to actually do so.

There is an often-used metaphor that is employed to challenge Russian narratives about success in this war. It goes like this:

Imagine it is 2006. It is three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. After three years, America has only succeeded in taking 20% of the country, has not yet toppled Saddam Hussein, and has suffered over one million casualties. Would we view this as ‘winning’?

I think it is a useful framework for examining military and strategic success and failure in this war. But I would add another layer to this metaphor which, I believe, really brings home the precarious position that Russia is in. The additional layer is this:

Imagine again that it is 2006, and in addition to the ongoing operations in Iraq with the conditions described previously, that Iraq is undertaking a widespread serious of strikes against oil and gas production, refining and storage facilities across America.

Do we seriously think that this would not have a massive impact on American politics, war policy and the economy? It would certainly have an influence on domestic views of winning and losing and would objectively indicate that America was not winning.

This is the situation that Russia now faces. It is making only minor gains on the ground for massive human and material losses. It is facing an expanding series of Ukrainian strikes against economic and military targets in Russia that it appears powerless to stop.

Let me restate my hypothesis: Ukraine’s long-range strike operations reinforce that Russia cannot win this war.

Yes, our media breathlessly report the U.S. is blocking Ukraine from using U.S.-supplied missiles to attack Russian oil depots.  But Ukrainians, fighting for their lives, have developed their own sophisticated arms industry; Ukraine [is] becoming the ‘Silicon Valley’ of defense as startups develop long-range drones and missiles.

“Fighting in the air is our only real asymmetric advantage on the battlefield at the moment. We don’t have as much manpower or money as they have,” said Iryna Terekh, head of production at Fire Point.

Terekh spoke as she surveyed dozens of “deep-strike drones” that had recently come off the assembly line and would soon be used by Ukrainian forces to attack arms depots, oil refineries and other targets vital to the Kremlin’s war machine and economy.

Spurred by its existential fight against Russia — and limited military assistance from Western allies — Ukraine has fast become a global center for defense innovation. The goal is to match, if not outmuscle, Russia’s capabilities...

Maybe Trump can kill off this development for Putin. But it's going to be hard. The U.S. can no longer count on being able to tell other countries to jump and having them ask "how high?" And the intellectual habits of the U.S. "defense" establishment make Ukraine's increasing independence unimaginable among Trump's lackeys.

Paul Krugman recently shared thoughts about elite mind rot among U.S. "intellectual experts" with Phillips P. O'Brien. Krugman is a Nobel prize winning economist who remains broadly curious; O'Brien is an historian of strategic studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland who watches wars. They agree that conventional wisdom can be both extremely durable and simply false.

O’Brien: ... it's a fraternity of failure. So many people were so wrong that it's much easier for them to defend each other and keep hiring each other and keep referring to each other than admit that they all screwed up and don't know what they're talking about. So it was a community that failed, not just a few people, a whole community failed.

And that community existed in the analytical community, it existed in the intelligence community, it existed in the Pentagon and the ministries of defense. And instead of having a real introspection—like what the heck have we got wrong?—they have gone into self-defense mode. Everyone got it wrong. And that somehow makes it okay. We all got it wrong. And all that means is that the same people who got it wrong to begin with are getting it wrong now, but they're being treated as if they have any idea of what they're talking about when they don't.

Krugman: The parallel in economics is there were a lot of people predicting that getting down from the high inflation of 2022 would require mass unemployment which was utterly wrong. And, you know, we all make bad forecasts, but it was clearly analytically wrong. It just had the wrong model of what this inflation was about. And those same people are still out there, you know, talking to Bloomberg every couple of days and making confident pronouncements. So, yeah.

O’Brien: I mean, we’ve all seen community behavior where a community would rather defend itself than actually look at its own methods, it seems to me. And that's what we're seeing now. Protection of reputation is all. In towns like Washington, New York, Boston, whatever, it's so important to be smart, and to be seen to be smart.

Meanwhile Trump sucks up to Russia's mad nationalist dictator and Russia's killing machine grinds on.

Stuck between Trump and Putin

I too stand with Ukraine, rule of law, and freedom. Just saying.

• • • 

In response to Donald Trump's announced suck up session with Vladimir Putin on Monday in Alaska we should remember that when the Russian dictator steps on US soil, our international obligation is arrest him and convey him to answer the indictment of the International Criminal Court. 

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

Charges

Allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, (i) for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute), and (ii) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control, pursuant to superior responsibility (article 28(b) of the Rome Statute).

Not likely, but this is who Donald fawns over. I guess Donald is about to make himself an accessory to Putin's crimes ... That would be on top of the many Trump crimes against the US Constitution and us here in this country.

Checking in on Ukraine's war

Donald Trump may blunder about, mostly just licking Vladimir Putin's ass, and pretending he's ending the war of the Russian invasion of Ukraine -- but as in most things Trump, the reality is elsewhere. And there are multiple reports that indicate that 1) Europe knows it must step up in order to defend itself from the smothering Russian offensive and 2) Ukraine is far more united and able to fight on without much US help than we've been told.

On the first point, Finnish security expert Minna Ålander explains: 

What often escapes the public’s notice – partially because so much is happening and it’s hard to keep track of all the news items – is that Ukraine’s defence industry is being swiftly integrated into the emerging European Defence Industrial and Technological Base (EDIB). Most importantly, it is not just charity but a win-win situation: Ukraine’s self-sufficiency is improved by increased own production and European defence companies get in on the latest innovations from the Ukrainian battlefield. A year ago, in May 2024, the EU hosted the first EU-Ukraine Defence Industries Forum in a series of multilateral defence industrial events that the government of Ukraine launched in 2023. In September 2024, the EU also opened a Defence Innovation Office in Kyiv.

In a proper Orwellian sense, the EU has mobilised €11.1 bn from the European Peace Facility for military support for Ukraine, and has an additional €50 bn Ukraine Facility to bolster Ukraine’s resilience, to support its EU integration process, and de-risk investment in Ukraine. The support is both grant- and loan-based, including a €35 billion loan to be repaid with revenue from the frozen Russian assets. ...

By working together with Ukraine, European companies are not only increasing Ukraine’s own production capacity but also learning directly from Ukraine’s battlefield experience – something that will help Europe not only to replace US capabilities, but to think ahead.

But what of the long suffering Ukrainians, now engaged in a war in which their longtime US backers are changing sides? Because they have no choice -- no chance of national or even personal survival if they back off -- they fight on. The Atlantic reporter Anne Applebaum has made the pilgrimage to Ukraine recently. 

... Ukrainians believe the war will continue, and the prospect no longer scares them. Partly this is because they have no other choice. Unlike the Russians, who could withdraw from the battlefield and go home at any time, the Ukrainians cannot withdraw from the battlefield. If they do, they will lose their civilization, their language, and their freedom. Under Russian occupation, the mayor of Lviv and the journalists at the Lviv Media Forum would end up in prison or dead, just like their murdered and imprisoned colleagues in Russian-occupied Ukraine today.

More to the point, Ukrainians are confident that they can continue fighting, even without the same level of American support. The Ukrainian army is not retaking territory, as it did in the autumn of 2022, nor does it have plans for a major new counteroffensive. But neither is it losing. The tanks and heavy equipment that Ukraine needed from others don’t matter as much as they did two years ago. The Ukrainians still need American intelligence and anti-missile defenses to protect civilians in their cities. They still get weapons and ammunition from Europe. But on the frontline, this conflict has become a drone war, and Ukraine both produces drones—more than 2 million last year, probably twice that many this year—and builds software and systems to run them. In February, a Ukrainian unit deployed the first of what it hopes will be several hundred fighting robots. Last month, a Ukrainian sea drone took down a Russian airplane. One brigade has designed a drone that can reliably take out a Shahed, the Iranian drones that are used to kill Ukrainian civilians.

... The results are visible on the ground. Remember, if you can, the panic that accompanied news reports from Ukraine nine months ago: The city of Pokrovsk was about to fall, a calamity that many believed might precipitate the collapse of the whole front line. But Pokrovsk did not fall. The Russians continue to attack that region: On May 15 alone, Ukrainian soldiers based on the Pokrovsk front line repelled 74 separate assaults and offensive actions. But in recent months, the front line has hardly moved. ...

This is a gift link to Applebaum's story of her visit. Well worth your time.

Warning: Trump is doing his best to get Ukrainians killed

The Trump administration has accomplished something I didn't think would be where I'd dwell any longer -- thrown me back into my lifelong, all too familiar, posture of opposing a US imperial adventure. I was always a peacenik because our wars seemed so manifestly unjust -- until I saw a little country fighting for its very life against a relentless bully. I knew if I were a Ukrainian, I'd know which side I was on. And, I hope I'd be willing to take risks for my choices.

With the change of regime in this country, the United States is making itself a party to Putin's imperial war against Ukraine's freedom aspirations. 

Phillips P. O'Brien is a Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a close observer of the Ukraine war. He writes:

Our Lady of Kiev

Trump Is Helping Putin Kill Ukrainians. The USA Is Running Down Ukrainian Air Defense in Coordination With Russia.

... Just in the last few days we have incontrovertible proof of how Trump is helping Putin kill Ukrainians—both some now and many more in the future. Its the combination of what the US will not sell Ukraine (even though Ukraine has the money to buy them), the Russian missile campaign against Ukrainian civilians, and how the two come together ...

... Ukraine is desperate to purchase Patriot anti-air missiles, as the Ukrainians are running out of this vital system. These were provided (too late) by the Biden Administration in 2023. From the moment they appeared, however, they revealed themselves to be the most effective air-defense weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal.

... Having Patriots allowed the Ukrainians to keep the power on during the Russian Winter attacks in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. ... In sum, these are a very effective but expensive system. They have made Ukraine much safer than it would be otherwise. ...

... And the very effectiveness of the Patriots has provided Trump with a weapon to help kill Ukrainians. Even being sparing in their usage, Ukraine is running out. Patriots are an American system and the USA has been the source of most of the missiles. Right now there is no new US aid on its way to Ukraine. ...

... Trump, however, working hand in hand with Putin, is refusing to sell them—even though that would benefit US workers and help the US economy. Indeed, in the last few days he has started boasting about the fact that Ukraine is desperate to buy more Patriots, and he is refusing to make a deal.

... The USA (Trump is the duly elected president with the support of Congress—so this is the official position of the US government) is now working together with the Russian government to see more Ukrainians killed. The USA is encouraging a Russian missile campaign against Ukrainian civilians by letting the Russians know that the US will deprive Ukraine of the means to defend those civilians and no longer provide Ukrainian Patriots.

So, the next time a Russian missile lands in a Ukrainian city and bodies litter the streets, realize this is an act that is being encouraged and supported by the USA. The USA is no longer a defender of democracy in Europe, it is an enabler of dictatorship and death.

Phillips' post is much more detailed and unlocked. Take a look.

Probably misused, but still righteous

I have to admit I was gobsmacked to encounter several iterations of this photo on Facebook. The picture is of the lighted facade of the church in Washington DC which my Episcopalian comrades presumptuously call the Washington National Cathedral. It's the Protestant denomination's big diocesan church in the capitol, only by custom called "national." Episcopalians aren't "the ruling class at prayer" any longer. 

As far as we can tell, though many Christian nationalists intend to be our ruling class, broad based Christian nationalist attention to humble petition to God for the poor and suffering is pretty muted these days.

Nonetheless, I guess I'm happy to see being passed around what is clearly an affirmation of support for the brave and desperate people of Ukraine under Russian attack. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the image derives from an ecumenical prayer service held alongside the Ukrainian ambassador in July 2023.

Anyway, I'm a Christian fully in the camp of supporting Ukrainians in their war for their country and their lives. It has not been simple for me to find myself supporting one side in a war. I've spent a lifetime opposing the wars of the United States empire; I've explored pacifism and find it the better way to live. But not in the case of this conflict. Ukrainians deserve their own country if they want it enough to fight for it and they've shown they do. The Russian invasion is brutal and criminal; it aims at the erasure of a particular history and people. Insofar as the US has been supportive of Ukraine, I think that has been a good use of a tiny fraction of my taxes. 

And I know Donald Trump's infatuation with and capitulation to Russia's strong man is a betrayal of all that is decent in our complex land.

Foul Betrayal (2)

I bemoaned Donald Trump's betrayal of Ukraine and of this country last week. Our country is being disgraced by small empty men and the ignominy is just beginning.

Today I'll outsource commentary on the Trump/Vance boys bullying the brave Ukrainian President in the Oval Office to Phillips P. OBrien, an American historian and professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. 

Just Say Thank You and Shut Up

... The key theme throughout is that Trump is a great man who can work with Putin, while Ukraine needs to shut up, show gratitude, and take what is coming to it. Trump makes that clear when he criticizes the Ukrainians for basically wanting to fight for their freedom and not cave in to Putin, which he terms being “very disrespectful to this country” (this country being the USA—in other words, himself).

Then Trump and Vance go on what can only be called the great gratitude rant. Even though the USA under Trump has approved not a single new dollar in aid for Ukraine, Trump and Vance want Zelensky to constantly say thank you to them. Its, as always, an attempt to be humiliate a democratic state and for Trump to take credit for something other people have done. As Vance finally snaps. “Just say thank you.”

And then Trump lets the cat out of the bag. This was not a meeting or disagreement over the minerals deal. He was trying to pressure Zelensky into agreeing a cease fire along Putin’s lines and Zelensky refused. Trump comes out and says that explicitly at the end.

“You’re buried there. Your people are dying. You’re running low on soldiers. No, listen … And then you tell us, ‘I don’t want a ceasefire. I don’t want a ceasefire. I want to go and I want this… You’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest, that’s not a nice thing.

So there we have it. Ukraine should shut up and take Trump’s and Putin’s terms. It is not an independent, sovereign, democratic state, it is a dictator’s plaything which should be eternally grateful for the scraps from Trump’s and Putin’s table.

Thousands of Ukrainians didn't die for this -- and millions of Americans over three generations didn't fight fascism and for more complete democracy for this. As O'Brien goes on to say, it's now up to Europeans to step up and repudiate Trump's betrayal of all the European zone has stood for. Can they rise to their own defense?

The New York Times reports: 

European leaders quickly pledged their continued support for Ukraine on Friday after President Trump’s blistering criticism of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a meeting at the White House.

Leaders lined up behind Ukraine and praised its embattled president, the statements coming one after the other: from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Norway, Finland, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Belgium, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Ireland. Canadian, Australian and New Zealand leaders added their voices to the Europeans’.

For once the paper got a headline right: 

The Orange Toddler defends his only friend. What a gaping hole for a soul that monster in the White House reveals.

Foul betrayals

A thoughtful description of Donald Trump's sell out of Ukraine to Putin comes from Kviv via David Rieff in The New Republic:

The Trump Presidency Is an Unmitigated Catastrophe for Ukraine 

Ukrainians aren’t shocked—they have a lot of experience in the betrayal business. ...

... the mood here in the days running up to the third anniversary of the start of the war has oscillated between despair and grim fortitude. It could hardly be otherwise, and for the obvious reason: With the rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, as exemplified by the U.S.-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia that excluded Ukraine, the presidency of Donald Trump has already been proven to be an unmitigated catastrophe for Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy apparently will be putting in an appearance in Washington this week to receive our Orange Toddler's ultimatum. There's plenty of speculation about how that will play out, but whatever results almost certainly will be horrible for Ukrainians -- and all of Europe now under the Russian imperial gun.

It's worth remembering the sort of figure Zelenskiy has been over the last three years.

Zelenskiy’s sang froid during his press conference, at what amounts to nothing less than the Trump administration’s betrayal of every promise and commitment the United States has made to Ukraine, both unilaterally and through NATO in concert with Washington’s European allies, was remarkable. It served as a gripping reminder of how important, for all his faults and both the military failures and failures of governance in Ukraine that have occurred during his watch, Zelenskiy’s leadership has been since, in the first hours of the full-scale Russian invasion three years ago, he declined the Biden administration’s offer to evacuate him with his family to Poland, defiantly saying, “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Even the many Ukrainians who are disenchanted with him in general terms accept that the country could not hope for a better war leader. In this, the oft-made comparison between Zelenskiy and Winston Churchill is anything but hyperbolic. Like Zelenskiy, Churchill before the war was considered something of a buffoon, a political dilettante who had changed parties several times and who had done everything but distinguish himself during various periods as a government minister. And then, of course, immediately after the war, in the so-called “khaki election,” in which the votes of the war veterans proved dispositive, the British public voted Churchill out of office. 

But although many Ukrainians are predicting the same fate for Zelenskiy in a postwar Ukraine, as long as the war goes on, like Churchill between 1939 and 1945, Zelenskiy has proven himself the invaluable man. ...

Donald Trump is going to get away with his crime against brave Ukrainians -- just as he has skated on his crimes from his last tenure and most likely will continue to escape justice for his current even more corrupt and vicious assault on us here at home. This Friday's meeting may -- or may not yet -- resolve the shape of the Ukrainian betrayal.

A vigil in Chicago this week. Ukrainians are not without friends in the States.

Rieff goes on:

... European political elites misunderstood and misunderstand the U.S. in a way their Ukrainian opposite numbers never did. Betrayal is a good teacher in that regard. And throughout its history, from the days of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth to the subjugation of Ukraine by the Russian Empire to the murderous days of Red Power and the Moscow-made famine of 1932–1933, the Holodomor, to the contemporary era in which Ukraine was constrained to give up its nuclear weapons in return for independence and security from Russian revanchism, through to the Biden administration’s consistently insufficient grants of aid, to Donald Trump’s monstrous U-turn, Ukrainians have the misfortune to be connoisseurs of betrayal.

... Then there’s the victory of the Christian Democrats in Germany, and, more importantly, the statements by the soon-to-be Chancellor Friedrich Merz ... Donald Trump, Merz went on, had made it clear that his administration was “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.” The message was clear: As far as Merz was concerned, the fate of Europe was inseparable from that of Ukraine. ...

... if Ukrainians continue to hope, what other choice—besides flight—do they have? Which is why this bitter defiant twist on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous theory of the five stages of grief—defiance, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—is now making the rounds in Kyiv. In the Ukrainian telling, the first four stages are the same. But instead of acceptance, the fifth stage is the polar opposite: It’s “Fuck you.” There are worse ways to prepare oneself for the ordeals that lie in store.

It didn't have to be this way. Biden got off to a good start against Russia's attack on Ukraine, but muffed the follow through. American elites of both parties never really warmed to defending Ukraine; perhaps they were always shamed by encountering a people that was so clear-eyed when it faced utter evil. This country -- so rich, so complacent -- basks in more muted colors.

For me, the historical analogy which the Ukraine war has always brought to the fore is of the European democracies' betrayal of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s. Oh sure, Britain and France were (mostly) glad to see the Spanish monarchy give way to a multi-party Spanish democracy. But that democracy was messy and contained leftist, pro-Soviet elements. Better to allow a Spanish Christian Fascist with German Nazi support go on to murder, pillage, and eradicate this unsavory, short-lived Republic.

In the '30s, abstaining from supporting Spanish democracy only meant Britain, France, and eventually the United States had to fight the Nazis a few years later. This time around, Donald Trump is bringing us in on the side of the Nazis. We, the citizens of these United States, also have been betrayed this week.

War crimes accelerate in Ukraine

As the Trump regime settles in, it would be too easy to look away from horrors far away. But let's not.

Here's retired Australian general Mick Ryan reminding us why Ukraine cannot surrender to Putin's aggression:

Russian Executions of Ukrainian PoWs Continue.

The Prosecutor General's Office in Ukraine this week opened yet another criminal case against Russia for war crimes after a video emerged that shows Russian soldiers executing six unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war. The events shown in the video, which include the Russian soldiers discussing who should shoot each prisoner of war, apparently occured in the Donetsk region.

The number of executions of unarmed Ukrainian POWs immediately after their capture has increased significantly in the past year. The Ukrainian authorities have recorded in excess of 180 executions of Ukrainian POWs by the Russians since February 2022. Given how much ambiguity there often is in combat operations, there almost certain to have been many more than this number. ...

The prevalence of these crimes in the Russian army indicates that their soldiers are either ordered or incentivised to shoot PoWs by their commanders, or that Russian commanders willingly look away from such events. Either way, it has been systematised now in the Russian system. And the fact that Russian soldiers video these crimes and post them online means they don’t fear any form of retribution from their own commanders.

As such, not only are the individuals who commit the crimes responsible but so is their entire chain of command that has ignored these events. There is simply no way now that any Russian officer can claim in the future that ‘I didn’t know this was occuring’.

For those interested in more details about the magnitude of Russian war crimes committed since February 2022, this report from the Congressional Research Service provides a good overview.

I have to wonder whether under the Trump regime, that government report will be trashed. Get it while you can.

I'm sure Trump's idea of "peace" in Ukraine is that the embattled country must surrender. Ukraine can't.

It's cold in Ukraine this winter

Here I pass along observations from Kateryna Kibarova, a Ukrainian economist and resident of Bucha, writing in Persuasion. 

If you live in Ukraine today, checking the news is your morning routine. You have to understand what is going on—how can you not?

You have to understand which direction the drones are flying from, whether it is dangerous to go outside. If you want to protect yourself, you have to constantly monitor the situation. When the air raid alarm goes off, immediately everyone’s phones in the office start howling. Everyone has the alerts set up.

The Russians have gotten more sophisticated with the air raids. Now they fly lower, at altitudes that make our air defense system operators fear that interceptions will hit houses or schools or kindergartens. They launch drones along the highways so low that they are almost level with cars, or along riverbeds so that they cannot be tracked and shot down. On the one hand, in Kyiv, the sheer number of drones—sometimes 150 per attack—makes it impossible to intercept them all. On the other hand, the cities closer to the front, like Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv, are simply defenseless. They are in a constant state of fear—without air defenses, facing more complex attacks, tougher and more precise than ours in Kyiv. It’s an impossible situation.

The scariest thing is how cold-blooded you become. You're out there driving to work, and you’re turning up the radio, listening to YAKTAK and Svyatoslav Vakarchuk,1 in the car so you don't hear the suicide drones fly overhead. They’re launching the Shaheds2 in just incredible numbers to deplete our missile defense systems, so that we have no protection. And the Russians are constantly threatening to blow up the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia. In my bag, next to my documents, I keep a special pill. In case of a nuclear explosion or meltdown, it has to be taken to neutralize the first of the waves of radiation. I carry it everywhere I go.

 ...  Many of my friends have gone abroad with their children. I think it’s the right decision because it’s so dangerous for kids to be here right now. This summer, 200,000 more Ukrainians left the country. Now that the winter blackouts are coming, more will leave.

But probably the strangest and scariest part of this situation is that there is already an abyss between us, between those who live in Ukraine and those who have left. Those who have left—even my friends who come here to see their parents or just to see their friends—aren’t embedded in the context of what is happening here anymore. I’m about ninety percent sure they’re not coming back. They have learned the languages of the countries where they live now; their children are going to school; they themselves have got jobs or are receiving welfare support.

Those of us who remain have become very wounded internally, in our spirit. For example: I feel strange when my girlfriend, who emigrated, comes to visit. She’ll make some ordinary comment and laugh, and I’ll get scared that I no longer have these simple, unburdened feelings. ...

Go read it all. Many Ukrainians seem to think something good could come for them from Donald Trump; I doubt this, but I hope they are right and I am wrong.

Ukraine thrown to Putin's mercies

Unlike many of my friends on the generally progressive side of things, I've long believed that US support for the flawed, but democratically legitimate, Ukrainian state was a right action. This is the first US intervention I've supported in a lifetime of rejection of US imperialism, yet support for Ukraine feels the natural continuation of a long trajectory. Russia's war is an imperial war, seeking to subjugate and absorb a people who want the freedom to define their own way. Yes, I'm something of a quasi-pacifist -- but Russia's crimes against an occupied population are heinous and should not be minimized.

The election of Donald Trump presumably means that Ukrainians are to be thrown to Putin's mercies. Europe is unprepared to step up and replace us. This is a crime much akin to western democracies' abandonment in the 1930s of the Second Spanish Republic to Hitler and Mussolini's pet local strongman, Francisco Franco. That betrayal did not slake the appetite of that era's fascists -- this abandonment won't today either. And we in the United States are even less prepared or even able to recover from our folly than we were then. Bad times indeed. 

• • •

Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian Army. He writes a substack of military analysis.

A Peace Plan for Ukraine?: The West’s strategy for Ukraine is no longer failing. It has clearly failed.

... when the combined wealth of NATO’s five biggest members (U.S. Germany, UK, France and Canada) is twenty times that of Russia, and their military outstrips Russia in technology, size and capability, is a searing indictment about the strategic thinking, execution and will in what is currently known as ‘the west’.

It did not have to be that way. But a generation of western political leaders that were conditioned into slovenly strategic thinking by the long post-Cold War peace and the discretionary, slow-paced wars of the past two decades have been unable to sufficiently adjust their mindsets to deal with the ruthlessness of Putin and his supporters.

There is an old Chinese saying: strangle the chicken and frighten the monkey. It is a saying that a PLA General used with a friend of mine one time. In essence, if you wish to shape the behavior of a big competitor, attack and destroy a small ally of the competitor.

Unfortunately, the U.S. and NATO ‘strategy’ for Ukraine over the past three years, as well as their strategic impatience and inclination to enter into negotiations with a Russia that has the strategic initiative, means that the West instead has ‘fed the chicken and encouraged the monkey’.

We will regret this. And so, eventually, will our citizens.

• • •

In 2015, the British journalist Tim Judah, veteran observer of too many wars including the agony in the Balkans in the 1990s and 2000s, published In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine. This is a little book of vignettes from the early stages of the war between Ukrainians engaged in forming their European national identity and others who supported the continuation of life within the Russian imperial sphere. Long before the Russian invasion of 2022, Judah shed light on the creativity and resilience of so many in this benighted part of the world.

Despite being such a big country, Ukraine, for most of us who live the western part of the continent, is, or was, somewhere not very important. ...The aim of this book is not to record a blow-by-blow account of the events that led to the Maidan revolution of 2014, the annexation of Crimea, or the war that followed. ...

What I thought was that between journalism and academic books there was not much that explained Ukraine, that made it a vibrant place full of people who have something to say and tell us. Wherever I went I found, as in few other places I have been, just how happy people were to talk. Then I understood that this was because no one ever asks them what they think. Often when they started to talk, you could hardly stop them. If we listen to people who can understand why they think what they do, and act the way they do.

In Ukraine ... people have been taken for granted for so long, as voters or taxpayers or bribe payers, that when finally the rotten ship of state springs leaks and begins to list, everyone is shocked. But they should not have been. ... This book is about what I saw, what people told me and also those parts of history that we need to know in order to understand what is happening in Ukraine ...

Judah might not find the same openness to conversation today, two years into a devastating, existential war. Or perhaps he might. Ukraine has long surprised us. We do not know yet how the next chapter plays out.

Does Trump really want to run against NATO?

Having grown up in Buffalo, NY,  a city where 150,000 people claim Polish ancestry, I do sometimes wonder whether American voters with eastern European roots might look askance at a Republican party which wants to let Putin's Russia overrun its neighbors. The old country(s) are important to many. There are pockets of ethnic pride in communities across the nation which might make an electoral difference.

Click to enlarge

These are American states where a few votes can make a difference. I would not assume these folks are open to Putin love.

For love or money, people get around

You might think that a deadly war in somebody else's country would repel most people who had any option to stay well away. And, in general, that's true. But there are exceptions.

In Ukraine, from the earliest days of Russia's attempt at conquest, there have been quite a few voluntary international participants. According to the Associated Press:

In early 2022, authorities said 20,000 people from 52 countries were in Ukraine. Now, in keeping with the secrecy surrounding any military numbers, authorities will not say how many are on the battlefield but they do say fighters’ profile has changed.

The first waves of volunteers came mostly from post-Soviet or English-speaking countries. Speaking Russian or English made it easier for them to integrate into Ukraine’s military, [Oleksandr Shahuri, an officer of the Department of Coordination of Foreigners in the Armed Forces of Ukraine] said.

Last year the military developed an infrastructure of Spanish-speaking recruiters, instructors and junior operational officers, he added.

And recruitment is succeeding in Bogota, Columbia where 10,000 highly trained soldiers retire every year. Service in Ukraine is a good deal for these vets.

Corporals in Colombia get a basic salary of around $400 a month, while experienced drill sergeants can earn up to $900. Colombia’s monthly minimum wage is currently $330.

In Ukraine any member of the armed forces, regardless of citizenship, is entitled to a monthly salary of up to $3,300, depending on their rank and type of service. They are also entitled to up to $28,660 if they are injured, depending on the severity of the wounds. If they are killed in action, their families are due $400,000 compensation.

Let's hope these recruits are not bringing a Columbian record of human rights abuses with them.

Meanwhile on the other side of that war, in Russia, hungry Cubans are providing recruits to be ground up in mass human wave operations, according to Reuters:

Cuban seamstress Yamidely Cervantes has bought a new sewing machine for the first time in years, plus a refrigerator and a cellphone - all on Russia's dime.

She said her 49-year-old husband Enrique Gonzalez, a struggling bricklayer, left their home in the small town of La Federal on July 19 to fight for the Russian army in Ukraine. Days later, he wired her part of his signing-on bonus of about 200,000 roubles ($2,040) which she received in Cuban pesos, Cervantes told Reuters.

... On the 100-meter dirt road where Cervantes lives, at least three men have left for Russia since June, and another had sold his home in anticipation of going, she said.

"You can count on one hand those who are left," the 42-year-old said as she surveyed the street from a small terrace where she'd repurposed two broken toilet bowls as flower pots.

"Necessity is what is driving this."

From its onset, the Israeli war on Gaza has presented challenges to Israel's human economy. The war pushes Israel toward becoming ever more an unsustainable, malignant Sparta. Many men who make its modern economy hum were called up to serve in the Israeli Defense Force, while Palestinian laborers were locked out of the agricultural sector to be replaced by whatever migrant workers Israel could import.

According to a report in the Guardian, Israeli recruitment of foreign construction workers is focusing on India.

The industry relied on approximately 80,000 Palestinian workers, who are now barred from entering Israeli territory. As a result, half-finished residential blocks are everywhere, yellow tower cranes waiting motionlessly overhead. In the West Bank, poverty rates have soared.

The economic impact for Israel could also be severe. The finance ministry has estimated the expulsion of Palestinian construction workers is costing 3bn shekels (£656m) a month, and could eventually lead to a loss of 3% of GDP because the building and housing industries owe 400bn shekels in loans.

... “Right now I earn around 15,000 rupees (£150) a month,” said Rajat Kumar, 27, from the north Indian state of Haryana. Though he has a bachelor’s degree, for six years he had been unable to get any other job except construction, earning a salary he described as “peanuts”. The prospect of travelling abroad to a country engulfed in conflict was a small price to pay for regular, well-paid work, said Kumar, who got his first passport in order to apply for a job as a plasterer in Israel.

The job he has applied for in Israel would pay 138,000 rupees a month, with accommodation provided, which he saw as a small fortune. “When I compare it with what I earn here, I can’t think of anything but the better life I and my family will have,” he said.

A bilateral labour agreement was signed between Israel and New Delhi last May, before the war in Gaza broke out, but has since become a priority for both countries. Israeli transportation minister, Miri Regev, said during a visit to India earlier this month that Israel would be “lessening its dependence on Palestinian workers” by replacing them with skilled foreign workers.

As always in contemplating migrant flows, let's hope this is worth it to the human individuals caught up in the flow of people. But people always get around, something US immigration restrictionists fail to understand.