You may remember Fiona Hill. She was the nonpartisan Russia expert on the National Security Council who testified in Trump’s first impeachment trial. Politico interviewed her at length soon after Putin invaded Ukraine. Hill provides interesting political and historical insights into why Putin invaded Ukraine. She has been observing both Russia and Ukraine for many years, as well as Putin.
Hill says we are already in the midst of World War 3.
She warns:
Reynolds: The more we talk, the more we’re using World War II analogies. There are people who are saying we’re on the brink of a World War III.
Hill: We’re already in it. We have been for some time. We keep thinking of World War I, World War II as these huge great big set pieces, but World War II was a consequence of World War I. And we had an interwar period between them. And in a way, we had that again after the Cold War. Many of the things that we’re talking about here have their roots in the carving up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire at the end of World War I. At the end of World War II, we had another reconfiguration and some of the issues that we have been dealing with recently go back to that immediate post-war period. We’ve had war in Syria, which is in part the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, same with Iraq and Kuwait.
All of the conflicts that we’re seeing have roots in those earlier conflicts. We are already in a hot war over Ukraine, which started in 2014. People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time.
But this is also a full-spectrum information war, and what happens in a Russian “all-of-society” war, you soften up the enemy. You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you. The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war. I mean he has got swathes of the Republican Party — and not just them, some on the left, as well as on the right — masses of the U.S. public saying, “Good on you, Vladimir Putin,” or blaming NATO, or blaming the U.S. for this outcome. This is exactly what a Russian information war and psychological operation is geared towards. He’s been carefully seeding this terrain as well. We’ve been at war, for a very long time. I’ve been saying this for years…
What Russia is doing is asserting that “might makes right.” Of course, yes, we’ve also made terrible mistakes. But no one ever has the right to completely destroy another country — Putin’s opened up a door in Europe that we thought we’d closed after World War II.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“What Russia is doing is asserting that “might makes right.” Of course, yes, we’ve also made terrible mistakes. But no one ever has the right to completely destroy another country — Putin’s opened up a door in Europe that we thought we’d closed after World War II.’
Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Argentina, Chlie, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and many others would all like a word here. Is Ms. Hill truly trying to say that all of those were just “mistakes” (albeit “terrible”) ones? Even though there are mounds of documents showing how they were planned in advance knowing the devastating consequences? Since you posted Naomi Klein the other day, may I suggest you go back and read the book that put her on the map in the first place?
BTW, it’s telling that she felt it necessary to say “in Europe”. That door has been wide open to the U.S. in all the aforementioned areas for a long time, but now we’re concerned because it’s happening “in Europe”? Thanks for that refreshing bit of honesty.
Dienne, one question: do you support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?
She is a walking, talking example of the Putin enablers Hill talks about. I hope she is unaware that she is a Putin puppet because if she is aware she is a traitor.
I don’t understand Dienne. She spouts Putin’s propaganda. She believes that the Russians invaded to clean Nazis out of the government. She thinks NATO threatens Russia because Putin says so.
Anyone with eyes can see that Putin invaded Ukraine without any provocation. He is now carrying on a vicious bombardment of civilian sites: schools, hospitals, homes. Russia agrees to honor evacuation routes, them bombs them as families try to flee.
Putin is a war criminal.
I don’t understand why you prefer to believe that dienne77 is a real person who just happens to support bombing maternity hospitals (especially when she has previously made it clear in 100s of posts how repulsive she finds attacks on civilians to be – when the west does it).
Either dienne77 is a right wing QAnon follower or she is a Putin-troll. She is as right wing as they come. I always believed her pro-Trump anti-Clinton posts were over the top in 2016, and she is absolutely not a progressive.
So when people take her seriously, it is like treating a Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson post seriously. Don’t you think they would be laughing at you?
A thought experiment: try rereading the interview and replace every word ‘Putin’ with the word ‘Bush’. Replace ‘Ukraine’ with ‘Iraq’. Replace ‘Russky Mir’ with ‘greeted as liberators’. Replace ‘neo-nazis’ with ‘WMDs, weapons of mass destruction’. Try it just for fun.
I do not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Like the article stated in the introduction to the interview, I see the news and am incredulous. Can Putin really be doing this? It seems to be madness or megalomania. And he certainly seems prepared to use nuclear weapons if cornered. I disagree, however, that this is now or about to be world war number three. When we invaded Iraq, I was incredulous. It seemed like madness or megalomania.
I understand and agree that most of the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries had their roots in the redrawing of maps after the first two world wars: “We’ve had war in Syria, which is in part the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, same with Iraq and Kuwait.” The difference between Iraq and Ukraine: race. Those are white people being killed, maimed, and made refugees. O, the horror!
In congruence with Dienne, I see the Russian invasion the way I see all of the fairly recent American invasions. It’s not Hitler trying to take over the world. It’s a jerk trying to take land rich in resources for the profit of supporting oligarchs. To understand Putin, America, look in the mirror.
No. The Russia of today bears little resemblance to the U.S. We have shared the idea of a dominant role/place in the world, but that’s a little bit like saying we both like meatballs.
Lol, Dienne is not right-wing. And yes, she’s a real person.
Who DOESN’T like spaghetti with some spicy meatballs!
🙂
LCT, one question: do you support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?
Or like dienne77, do you find that question impossible to answer because saying that you don’t support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not allowed?
Just checking because I assume you would not find it impossible to actually write “I don’t support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine”.
If you do support Putin’s invasion, LCT, then I concede that both you and dienne77 could be real folks on the left (unlikely as that seems)
Leftcoastteacher:
Saddam Hussein was a truly evil fellow. He grew up a street thug and worked for the Ba’ath Party as a hitman. The United States engineered his rise to control of the party and of Iraq. A Frontline documentary describes how in one of his first actions as President, Hussein called a party conference and stationed armed guards at the door of the auditorium. Then, he read out, one by one, a list of those who had opposed him. And one-by-one, the guards took these into the hallway at the entrance of the auditorium and shot them. Thus he brutally made clear how things would work in the new Iraq. . He used chemical weapons on the Kurds, indiscriminately killing civilians, including children, in an extraordinarily brutal way. He created an ecological disaster by draining marshlands. He ran a police state. And he had delusions of grandeur. He was LITERALLY rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon (Seriously, I am not kidding), with his name written on every brick. Like Osama bin Laden before him, Hussein started out as our guy (for that story, see the outstanding book The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright) but then slipped away. He turned increasingly toward Russia. After Bush Senior sent him the wrong signal (telling the Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, that he, Bush, was not interested in Hussein’s territorial dispute with Kuwait), Iraq invaded Kuwait, and, on coaxing from Maggie Thatcher, Bush senior intervened in the First Iraq War. This was legal under international law because it was conducted in response to an unprovoked aggression. Ofc, that wasn’t Hussein’s view. His view was that the Americans and the Brits had carved out Kuwait as a rich client oil state and so stolen the oil fields that were by rights Iraq’s patrimony. I well remember Azis saying, “Those people (the Kuwaiti rulers) don’t even speak Arabic. They all grew up in boarding schools in France and England.” Hussein’s view was that Kuwait was rightfully Iraq’s, and he wanted that oil wealth with which to reclaim ancient glory–for the rebuilding of Babylon. I suspect that most American know little or nothing of all this because they don’t pay attention.
The Second Iraq War was an entirely different story. This was an illegal invasion of a sovereign state on a cooked-up pretext. A really revealing view of this can be found by reading CIA Director George Tenet’s autobiography At the Center of the Storm. Tenet, who can hardly be called a leftist (lol), details how the Shrub maladministration cooked the intelligence and faked the case for WMDs, which became the pretext for the invasion. According to Tenet’s book, the only WMDs found in Iraq were barrels of chemical weapons, supplied to Iraq by the United States back in the days when the two countries were cozy and Hussein was our guy. And, according to Tenet, the U.S. bombed that chemical weapons storage facility to destroy the evidence. In this Second Iraq War, the US ruthlessly carpet bombed the country into submission. That war was an example of two kinds of violation of international law: the crime of aggression and war crimes against civilians. Truly evil, and if there were justice in the world, those who perpetrated it would have long ago stood in the dock at the International Court of Criminal Justice.
Now, Putin is committing the same crimes in Ukraine that the U.S. did in that Second Iraq War, and also on faked pretexts, and it’s just as stupid and evil as the Second Iraq War was. Whataboutism about that is not an excuse. Putin is a mass murderer and war criminal.
Yes, Hussein was a brutal dictator and got what he deserved, but hundreds of thousands of innocents suffered for his crimes, alas.
This is what persistently troubles me. Does the world ever learn? History hints that we do not. What do we do when Putin is gone? Do we revert to the ongoing finger pointing at who we conveniently label the other? Far too many of human kind are perfectly comfortable following narcissistic autocrats down the rabbit hole of nationalistic fervor and perpetual violence, seeing this as the true model of strength. We continuously deny our complicity in the the messes we make while leaving our progeny to pick up the pieces only to start the process over again. Don’t get name wrong, Putin represents an evil projection of power and must be stopped. It’s just that in the end, too many refuse to want anything else.
Too many have never known anything else.
Yet there are those who have and continue to justify violence for domination.
If only conflict was that easy to analyze.
…or that the alternative actions are easy or obvious.
I don’t think that Hitler, Stalin or Putin came to power because “the people” wanted them. They came to power because they were/are ruthless and scheming and use others to gain power. Most people don’t know what’s going on.
I would argue that most despots in history get power the way Hitler, Stalin and Putin did. However, all three of these authoritarians had critical support while pursuing power. Perhaps my lament comes from an era where democratic governance showed profound progress while other political elements, including in the United States, took every opportunity to debunk the legitimacy of representative government. The evolution of the current Republican Party goes all the way back to the founding of the John Birch Society and Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on free speech. It doesn’t take a majority to gain illegitimate power, but it does require players critical to that demise.
I should explain the comment about bin Laden. As Wright explains in his book, bin Laden first made his name when he led a group of what Ronald Reagan called “freedom fighters” who stopped a convey of Russian tanks using American-made Stinger missiles during Russia’s war in Afghanistan. In other words, he was on our side in that conflict, a Frankenstein monster, like Hussein, our creature who got away from us and went on to perpetrate horrors.
Someone posted a comment about Ukraine allegedly having bio weapons labs. It seems that this claim is Putin propaganda and has been debunked.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/2022/03/10/russia-debunked-biolab-claim-ukraine-us-polglase-pkg-ovn-intl-vpx.cnn
NYpsp, perhaps you would like to reread my comment to find the answer to your question.
Dienne, you are making excuses for mass murder, because that is what your hero is doing, right now; he is committing mass murder.
Putin could have chosen to liberalize, pursue a democratic course, join the civilized world as an equal (and peaceful) partner. But once a Chekist, always a Chekist.
I just looked up Chekist. Scary.
Here’s the Los Alamos Study Group’s proposed solution, but I suppose you’ll all say this is “Russian propaganda” too: https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/07/a-proposed-solution-to-the-ukraine-war/
This is a silly statement.
Who threatened Russia?
Did Ukraine threaten Russia?
After Putin has devastated Ukraine and neutralized it, the NATO nations Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will be on Russia’s borders.
Will Putin attack them next?
THIS! Is! Reason!!!! Well said. Well argued, Diane.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/09/europe/russia-invasion-ukraine-evacuations-03-09-intl/index.html?iid=cnn-mobile-app
Dienne, in your opening comment you chose to argue just a snippet of Hill’s thesis, on a more-or-less semantic basis. This ignores that our two world wars were initiated among the most powerful military forces in the world, which dragged in many less powerful nations such as the ones you mention– which have been chewed over between world wars in proxy wars between the top military forces of their day. That reduces what you have to say to a whataboutism quibble.
However, I think your countering link from Los Alamos Study Group should be read by all as a different interpretation of the ongoing events. The Los Alamos Study Group [founded 1989] lists as their mission “nuclear disarmament, environmental protection, social justice, and economic sustainability.” They are described by influencewatch.org as “a left-of-center advocacy group that promotes eradicating the nuclear energy and weapons programs of the United States. The group also sponsored the Green New Deal.”
Its premise: “Russia seeks security, while the U.S. and its NATO allies have been using Ukraine to deny that security — to “break Russia,” in Henry Kissinger’s 2015 phrase.“ [That’s just an intro, people should read the whole thing.] I give it some credibility, as it traces back to Reagan’s neoconservative advisor Paul Wolfowitz, the guy who was behind the ‘Axis of Evil’, which was behind GWBush’s invasion of Iraq.
My sentiment: I tend to go more with Hill’s narrative, as it synchs with Putin’s recent speech. However, the other viewpoint is worth considering. It is possible we all in the West are too married to the sequence of WWII, with its condemnation of Chamberlain’s acquiescence to Germany’s swallowing Sudetenland, and failing to predict the invasion of Poland. [Recent interpretation is that Chamberlain was more likely postponing confrontation until England could build up its military forces.]
“Recent interpretation is that Chamberlain was more likely postponing confrontation until England could build up its military forces.”
Wow, talk about revisionist history. I had not heard that before — Chamberlain as the hero of Britain’s ability to withstand the Nazi bombardment.
I wonder what the Czechs think of that. Does that mean Chamberlain’s censorship of news was for maintaining freedom? It sounds almost Orwellian. Or like something the right wing Trump Republicans would say.
Thanks for that heads-up, nycpsp. I knew nothing about that, so googled a few articles: disturbing. I got this interpretation from the film “Munich: The Edge of War.” It deals with the period immediately prior to Chamberlain’s signing he Munich Agreement. Worth a viewing.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/05/war-conflict-enemies-of-truth/
dienne77– Garbage, though from the same source of your last link worth looking at [consortiumnews.com]. Whataboutism body counts don’t do it when you’re looking at a conflict that realistically threatens to draw the nations with earth-destroying weapons into military confrontation. An empty intellectual enterprise.
I watched a BBC interview of two Russian experts yesterday (one of them had been high up in Putin’s government at one time and knows Putin well, and they pretty much agreed that we are already in WWIII. The said the only way to stop Putin is to force him to stop by standing up to him using military force. There is no way to negotiate our way out of this war. Putin is “dead” set on getting what he wants, a Putin Russian Empire with the United States, UK and EU crushed and swept away as history’s trash.
I think Putin sees himself as a genius, a great leader, a great conqueror, who will succeed where Alexander the Great, Hitler and Napoleon failed. And if he doesn’t get what he wants, then Putin, like Hitler, will punish us all with Russia’s nukes.
There is no going back. Putin sees himself as the greatest conqueror of all time to rival or bypass Genghis Khan with his brutality.
If the Russian military fails him, if the Russian people fails him, he will punish them all by starting a nuclear war.
Saddam Hussein had a similar brutal mind set. He wanted to created an empire in the Middle East and failed when he waged a crippling, bloody war with Iran, and failed again when he attacked Kuwait. He also failed at building nuclear weapons.
Putin already has the nuclear weapons.
BTW, even NBC is admitting Ukraine’s nazi problem is real, notwithstanding their Jewish president. Whether or not that nazi problem is related to Russia’s invasion or just a convenient excuse is a matter of opinion. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimir-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946
Dienne, are you trying to justify Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine?
Maybe Putin will invade the US to kill all the Nazis here too.
You astonish me.
Constantly defending Putin and his death machine.
Whataboutism…using the same Russian propaganda tactic to deflect from what’s right in front of you…the irony. https://www.npr.org/2017/03/17/520435073/trump-embraces-one-of-russias-favorite-propaganda-tactics-whataboutism
I think Dienne is loving her or his 15 minutes of fame here 😦
Russia has its own neo-Nazi problem. Perhaps Tsar Putin the Horrible should invade his own country to neutralize the Russian neo-Nazis. Putin doesn’t give a damn about neo-Nazis, it’s just a hyped up pseudo-problem. His real aim is to turn Ukraine into a compliant vassal state.
And the person who invoked neo-Nazis doesn’t care about neo-Nazis in our own country. If she did, she would not have been so protective of Trump and so willing to look the other way at the white supremacist groups who supported Trump.
“Even NBC”….lol!
Because they printed an op ed from this guy?
“ALLAN RIPP is principal of Ripp Media, a New York-based press relations boutique that for more than 20 years has represented leading law firms, professional services firms, financial institutions and consumer brands.”
Can you imagine anyone on the left who would take this person as their source? A corporate lackey who represents all the things that leftists don’t trust.
This guy is a source that right wing Trump supporters would believe. Basically, just some guy who says what they believe.
We all know that the US has a nazi problem, too. And some of us here rabidly defended the US president who wouldn’t condemn those Nazis.
Allan Ripp is the new “go to” source for pro-Putin propagandists. lol!
dienne77– Yet another whataboutism link. You could say the exact same things about France’s antisemitism, still around circa-WWII era (as in Ukraine). Countries with antisemitic pasts (including the US) erupt with antisemitic incidents with every recession or other economic disruption such as the pandemic. No doubt the situation in Ukraine for Jews is more dire, based on their history—which is tied to Russian history. There can be nothing more ironic than Russians claiming to eradicate ‘Nazism’ in Ukraine. That is all about reminding Russians of the Nazi German invasion/ destruction of millions of Russians—hardly about anti-Jewish sentiment. Viewed from the antisemitic lens, we have only to look at Russian pogroms going back more than a century, and continued antisemitism under the communists, forcing Jews to seek exile right up into recent times
Russia was the source of the infamous anti-Semitic pamphlet “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a propaganda piece used to inflame hatred for Jews in many countries, including the U.S. Henry Ford published them in Detroit.
Hill: “…Unfortunately, we have politicians and public figures in the United States and around Europe who have embraced the idea that Russia was wronged by NATO and that Putin is a strong, powerful man and has the right to do what he’s doing: Because Ukraine is somehow not worthy of independence, because it’s either Russia’s historical lands or Ukrainians are Russians, or the Ukrainian leaders are — this is what Putin says — “drug addled, fascist Nazis” or whatever labels he wants to apply here.”
She says this after asserting that there have been US foreign policy failures. The US might do the wrong thing, but that does not justify aggression.
This woman should be president of the United States. What is it with this country that we elect idiots like Donald Trump when people of this caliber could be in the office? The founders of this country could not have imagined the confluence of mass market consumer culture idiocy and universal suffrage.
When I speak of Trump as an idiot, I am not being hyperbolic. It’s quite literally true. Trump’s judgment, moral sense, knowledge, and ability to reason are to Fiona Hill’s as dogs**t is to ice cream.
You’re right, Bob. However, let’s not only blame the con-men (like Trump & most TV/stadium preachers) & idiots (like Margerie Taylor Greene & Lauren Bobert, et.al.) who get elected to public offices. They must be supported or elected by idiots who fall for their BS, mistruths, half-truths & outright lies. As an educator of HS students for close to 40 years, I find it breathtakingly frustrating at the ignorance of so many of the general populace out there who end up electing those types. If only every one of our elected officials at every level had the understanding of history as what we just read from Fiona Hill, our country would be in a much better place!
Well said, loved2teach!
supported . . . by idiots who fall for their BS [and by great numbers of Russian assets working in the United States, including on social media]
She’s not US born, alas.
Ah. I didn’t know this. Thanks, UAN!
Which country asserts that might makes right? Which country has hundreds of military bases around the world? Which country spends more on its military than any other in world history? Which country has dropped more bombs than any other during the twenty-first century? Which country has engaged in several “regime change wars” since 2001? Which country now seeks to even militarize outer space? (There’s no such thing as a nonpartisan historian!)
Which country is slaughtering the innocent citizens of Ukraine right now? Which country bombed a children’s hospital in Ukraine overnight? Which country agrees to humanitarian evacuation routes, then bombs the people trying to use them? Which country has cut off civilians from food, water,and heat? Which country is shelling villages with no military value? Which country is threatening to use nuclear weapons if anyone tries to stop the slaughter? Which country has shut down the free press within their borders? Which country arrests protestors and threatens a 15-year prison term for anyone to tell the truth about its war against Ukraine?
“Which country has shut down the free press within their border”?
You mean the countries that have shut down RT and other left-wing sites? The country whose corporate media don’t allow any consideration of Russian/NATO history prior to February 24, 2022? The country that has actively stifled all dissent from the pro-NATO party line?
RT was not closed down by the US government. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/media/rt-america-layoffs/index.html
You can read anything you want in the US. You continually send references to pro-Putin commentaries that were published in the US.
Putin has closed down every independent source of news in Russia.
No one closed down The Progressive or the Nation or The Intercept or any of the scores of independent outlets.
The
You may have noticed, Dienne, that the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn Putin’s aggression. Only four nations voted with Russia: Syria, North Korea, Eritrea, andBelarus.
Which country has imprisoned and tortured Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Craig Murray and Daniel Hale (and would have done the same to Edward Snowden) for whistleblowing and airing America’s dirty war crime secrets?
I think it’s a crime to release classified information. Do you think that’s wrong? Would it be criminal to reveal Zelensky’s hiding place? I think so.
Now answer the questions my original comment. Are you fine with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its slaughter of innocents? Do you think that jailing spies and leakers is worse than killing children?
Dienne,
No more apologies forPutin’s war crimes. Calm down. Go find a friendly pro-Putin site where you camps be among sympathizers. Your comments embarrass you and annoy me.
“I think it’s a crime to release classified information.” I think people like Daniel Ellsberg are heroes Diane. The pentagon has a history of hiding war crimes and concealing information in order to perpetuate failing and failing wars.
That is true, and I think Ellsberg was right.
I also think Reality Winner was right to release the documents proving Russia’s complicity in shaping the 2016 election.
But not every leak is benign. I remember a rogue CIA agent who released the names of agents in hostile countries and several were murdered. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think that’s a public service.
If there are documents that reveal how to hack into our power grid and disable it, I would not want anyone to reveal it to hostile people.
I’m not the person to draw the line, but there surely is a line to protect our safety. Not to hide failures, as in Vietnam, but to keep us safe.
During the twenty-first century, no country on Earth has a worse record on human rights than the U.S. The U.S. is responsible for over a million deaths and tens of millions displaced since 2001. Your blinkered view of world events reveals a bias in service to the interests of U.S. empire, not peace, freedom, truth, or principles. You are highly qualified to opine on education issues, but on U.S. foreign policy you seem too willing to parrot pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist talking points.
Dienne is another one who complains about the US and spews hatred among his or her country yet they still choose to live here 😦 yep
Mr. Eales, whataboutism is not an argument. And let’s be clear about this. Are you saying that you support the Russian war on Ukraine?
I do not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I also recognize that economic sanctions can cause deaths just as horrific as those caused by bombs and bullets. The civilians of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya have suffered needlessly. Perhaps Americans should shut up for once and not be so quick to once again push for another escalation of tensions far away from home.
James, a quick reminder: Russia invaded Ukraine. Not the US.
Yes. I think of this every t ime I read about sanctions.
“Bleating “whataboutism” at sincere attempts to get the US empire to stop doing evil things is just defending those evil things.
You’re basically just saying “Shut up! Now’s not the time to talk about the bad things the US power alliance does, we’re on something else right now!” Okay, so when? Nothing has ever been done about the crimes of the empire. No meaningful changes whatsoever were made after Iraq.” –Caitlin Johnstone
Bleating. Lol. We shepherds should know something of this.
James, what “evil things” is the “US empire” doing right now that you want to stop? Should we leave the Ukrainians to the tender mercies of Putin? Any idea how to stop Putin from doing “evil things,” like bombing hospitals and apartment buildings?
Mr. Eales: Did you read the Hill interview? Unlike the Russian assertions of purity, Hill has some choice words for American foreign policy as well. This is the difference. You can criticize American policy without landing in jail. Criticize Putin and you just might end up drinking a cocktail that is mildly atomic.
Quit all the false equivalency.
I used to show my kids my copy of Mao’s Little Red Book and say to them, unlike the people of the country ruled by this guy, I can own this book that calls for the overthrow of the United States without having secret police knock down my door in the middle of the night. And that’s why the guy who wrote this book is evil. My very possession of it is its refutation.
James is complaining about the US but still chooses to live here 🙂 Sorry but a bit hypocritical.
My parents had a “love it or leave it” sticker on their Chevy Nomad during the Vietnam War. Of course, the sentiment was an effort to stifle discussion, not promote it. I’m an American by accident of birth, but I complain because I care about the U.S. As a citizen of the U.S., I have a right, if not an obligation, to speak my mind on issues of the day. I applaud Diane Ravitch for allowing me to share my views on her blog, even those with which me might disagree. To suggest that those who complain should consider leaving isn’t in keeping with the Constitution’s First Amendment. What could be more American than sharing opinions in an effort to forge a more enlightened city, state, nation, and world for all?
Well put!
I don’t remember exactly what you wrote, but I think the push back really comes when comments are focused on “whataboutism.” It diminishes the suffering of the Ukranians which should be the focus and says that the U.S. should do nothing because we are not without sin.
Exactly right. Whataboutism is a rationale for doing nothing to help the Ukrainians.
Regarding the point of blaming the U.S. or NATO, I’ll re-post something I posted the other day.
This is the Democratic Socialists of America’s statement on the Ukraine war.
https://www.dsausa.org/statements/on-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/
The DSA condemns the invasion and “urges” Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. Then it says this:
To my knowledge, DSA members in Congress, like AOC and Jamal Bowman, haven’t commented on this.
One facile discussion of “socialism” in this country goes like this: “If socialism means single payer healthcare, then what’s wrong with socialism?” Or: “Republicans think all government programs are ‘socialism.’ Well, if social security and public schools are ‘socialism,’ then call me a socialist!” Or: “I’m not a socialist, I’m a Democratic Socialist, like Norway!”
But the DSA isn’t just Norway, or national healthcare, or well-funded public schools. Look at the DSA’s own words if you want to know what it’s about.
It is possible to believe in universal healthcare while not being an isolationist.
I agree.
Diane, another post I made is in moderation, but the first two paragraphs of this DSA statement were conveniently omitted (no doubt “accidentally”):
“The Democratic Socialists of America condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demands immediate diplomacy and de-escalation to resolve this crisis. We stand in solidarity with the working classes of Ukraine and Russia who will undoubtedly bear the brunt of this war, and with antiwar protestors in both countries and around the world who are calling for a diplomatic resolution.
This extreme and asymmetrical escalation is an illegal act under the United Nations Charter and severely threatens the livelihoods and well-being of working-class peoples in Ukraine, Russia, and across the region. We urge an immediate ceasefire and the total withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. ”
Bernie Sanders made some very strong statements against Putin and this act of aggression. You would not know it from the edited paragraphs posted here.
Withdrawing from NATO would be mind-blowingly stupid. Suicidal.
Doesn’t this situation show that pacifism is mind-blowingly stupid too? Quakers, repent!
Yes. Walk softly and carry a big defensive stick.
Ponderosa: My father was a pacifist. He was against the idea of a second World War because he saw the futility of the first one. Others who opposed US involvement in Europe were Nazi sympathizers. There was a difference.
I think my father was always ambivalent about his WWII stance. But it was an honest opinion, not deserving of simplistic dismissal. I have often been asked: “What if everybody had been like your father? How would we have won the war?”
I always say: If everybody in Germany had been like my father, Hitler would have been an artist, and Jews would have been among his best friends.
Your father sounds like a wonderful man who produced a wonderful son
Roy, I identify with that. I don’t know that I’m a pacifist, but I watch world events like this in horror and I never know what the correct response is.
I hate war.
Diane: Thanks for the compliment. My father was a farmer who studied Gandhi and saw the Christ of radical pacifism. Still, he never discussed his beliefs much, even as anti-war activism rose in response to the Vietnam war. Like old John Seyney, who falsified baptismal certificates for Jews in Hungary during the Nazi era, my father never talked about his decisions.
I on the other hand am sort of like Flerp describes, watching all this unfold with horror and indecision.
What a great man.
I hate war but I’m not a pacifist.
I wish Hitler had been killed before he launched his barbarous war against Europe.
I hope we have the strength to stand up to Putin and not let him reassemble the USSR. I wish we could do more to help the Ukrainians.
Thugs like Putin laugh at satyagraha and slaughter its adherents. Until the world is rid of thugs (never), the good people will need to arm themselves and fight. Pacifism only works within the confines of civilized societies.
Ponderosa: But in the mix of creative non-violence, the motivation of those who would oppose the thugs are inspired by the obvious evil associated with those who would attack the pacifist. Thus Civil Rights workers who took the blows of White Supremacy advocates who had proven their hostility beyond all doubt for generations changed the minds of good people, who passed laws and forced change on our society. United force will obviously be required to stop Putin, but his jailing of pacifists defines his evil for us.
DSA’s response contained in this article: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/dsa-ukraine/
Bernie Sanders made some very strong statements against Putin and this act of aggression.
I stand with Bernie’s view of Putin. Do you?
Bernie Sanders, the most powerful Democratic Socialist in America:
“Regardless of what revisionist historical argument or flimsy legal pretext Putin may offer, this war is clearly an act of premeditated aggression against Ukraine and its people. This aggression is unacceptable, and the nations of the world must respond vigorously to defend democracy and the rule of law.
Now is the time to maintain unity with our allies, and impose severe sanctions on Vladimir Putin and his government…..”
Bernie also talks about how 1,000 anti-war protesters are being arrested in Russia because Putin is a horrible authoritarian dictator who suppresses democracy.
I don’t understand how anyone here who constantly defends Putin or constantly attacks critics of rabidly pro-Putin folks have the chutzpah to attack Bernie Sanders’ view of this.
I AGREE with Bernie Sanders, foremost Democratic Socialist in America. dienne77 does not.
I have no idea what the motives are of folks who try to smear Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders when Bernie has a perfectly respectable view of Russia’s aggression.
But misinforming folks seems to be their modus operandi.
Who here has a problem with Bernie’s statement besides our resident Putin-defender? I think Bernie’s statement is excellent. And I think Fiona Hill would agree.
Every time you post a link, you offer evidence of our free press.
Now find a link in Russia that shows criticism of Putin’s war crimes.
Dienne,
Are these the Ukrainian Nazis you referred to? From The Guardian:
Ukraine will try to evacuate civilians from six besieged cities, including the port of Mariupol where conditions are described as “apocalyptic”, along safe routes agreed with Moscow, the country’s deputy prime minister has said.
Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukrainian forces would hold their fire in the areas concerned during a 12-hour window from 9am until 9pm local time on Wednesday, and she appealed to Russian forces to observe their “official public commitment” to do the same.
Referring to several previous attempts to evacuate civilians that were aborted after so-called “humanitarian corridors” came under fire, she said Ukraine already had “negative experiences of when commitments undertaken did not work”.
Ukrainian authorities said the routes should allow civilians from heavily bombed Mariupol, Enerhodar, Sumy, Izyum and Volnovakha to leave, and residents of several towns around Kyiv, including Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel, to get to the capital.
Initially at least, the civilians would be evacuated to destinations inside Ukraine. Kyiv has repeatedly rejected proposals from Moscow for safe routes offering fleeing civilians escape only to Russia or its ally Belarus, calling the plans “cynical and immoral”.
After buses carried about 7,000 civilians – including 1,700 foreign students – out of Sumy on Tuesday, the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Lysenko, said on Wednesday that civilians in private cars were starting to leave along the same corridor, with priority for pregnant women, women with children, and elderly and disabled people.
The mayor of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, said a temporary ceasefire was in force that would allow buses with humanitarian supplies into the south-eastern city, which has been under heavy fire. “On the way back they will pick up civilians who want to leave” for the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia, he said.
International aid groups were most concerned, however, to ensure the successful evacuation of encircled Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of residents have been sheltering from brutal Russian shelling and missile attacks for more than a week without water, power or heating. Phone signals are also down.
Attempts on Tuesday to begin the process of bussing about half the besieged city’s 400,000 desperate inhabitants out via a “humanitarian corridor” were abandoned after the Ukrainian government accused Russian forces of shelling it.
The Red Cross has described conditions in Mariupol as “apocalyptic”, while Vereshchuk said the humanitarian situation in the besieged city was “catastrophic” and Ukraine’s president, Volodomyr Zelenskiy, compared levels of devastation and suffering to those caused by the Nazis in the second world war.
Journalists in the city described corpses lying in the streets and hungry people breaking into stores in search of food and melting snow for water, while thousands sheltered in basements. Authorities are reportedly planning to start digging mass graves.
The head of the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR, Filippo Grandi, said on Wednesday that up to 2.2 million people had fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on 24 February. “The time is now to try to help at the border” rather than get involved in discussions on the division of refugees between countries, he said.
As fighting continued across the country, Ukraine’s general staff said on Wednesday that its armed forces were building up defences in cities in the north, south and east, and that forces around Kyiv were “holding the line” and resisting an apparently stalled Russian offensive with unspecified strikes.
While the capital has been relatively quiet in recent days, Russian forces have continued to pound its outskirts and suburbs. The head of the Kyiv regional government, Oleksiy Kuleba, said on Wednesday that Russia was “artificially creating a humanitarian crisis in the Kyiv region”.
Ukrainian officials said Russian shelling had made it impossible to move the bodies of five people who died when their vehicle was fired upon on the outskirts of Kyiv as well as the bodies of 12 patients of a psychiatric hospital where about 200 patients remain without food and medicine.
Every time you post a link, you offer evidence of our free press.
Now find a link in Russia that shows criticism of Putin’s war crimes.
THIS!!!!!
I think rank ignorance is at the root of many Leftist delusions. They think the West has a monopoly on imperialism. Do they not understand that Russia has been an aggressive imperialist for the past 500 years? The Ukraine was gobbled up by them, bit by bit, over the 1700’s.
In their ignorance of the world, many of the Left also think that whites have a monopoly on racism. Racism is everywhere –India, Mexico, China, Japan… It’s a universal human impulse.
This is why schools need to teach more world knowledge. Unfortunately, we’re moving in the opposite direction –“historical thinking skills” instead of historical knowledge.
Unfortunately, we’re moving in the opposite direction –“historical thinking skills” instead of historical knowledge.
Emphatically agreed.
Students need both historical thinking skills and historical knowledge.
The gag orders against CRT ban both.
Sadly, I agree with you. There are racism religious wars and racism ongoing in various parts of the world. We must not allow the right to dictate how history is taught. Understanding is a far better tool to combat the “know nothings” than ignorance.
Diane,
The war on historical knowledge is being waged by the Left as well. The keynote speaker at the recent California Council of the Social Studies conference, Indiana University education professor Keith Barton, explicitly stated that social studies teachers should not build a foundation of knowledge. Instead they need to enlist kids of all ages in social justice activism and only have them obtain the knowledge necessary to achieve those social justice goals. Almost every session at the conference was congruent with this approach. The nakedness of the ideological intent shocked me. It was clear that many at the conference have their daggers out for your wonderful CA content standards. They’re seen as impediments to the pure social justice revolution in schools. One thing I learned at the conference is that “civics” is the new code word for “social justice”. That’s the Trojan horse they’re using to import indoctrination into the schools. History is on the chopping block in places with woke superintendents like Anaheim. Teachers must shift to civics (read; social justice indoctrination) or be punished (e.g. by having assignments switched).
Ponderosa, you know I have a strong commitment to learning historical knowledge. When I was active in writing the standards in the mid-1980s, the social studies field was awash with soft skills and hostility to content knowledge. I can’t remember how many debates I engaged in with people believed that no one could say what knowledge mattered or who believed that knowledge grew so fast that it was impossible to teach it, and you could look up stuff when you needed it. I know what you mean.
FLERP!,
wow! Why did you leave out the ENTIRE FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS? Just a happy accident?
“The Democratic Socialists of America condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demands immediate diplomacy and de-escalation to resolve this crisis. We stand in solidarity with the working classes of Ukraine and Russia who will undoubtedly bear the brunt of this war, and with antiwar protestors in both countries and around the world who are calling for a diplomatic resolution.
This extreme and asymmetrical escalation is an illegal act under the United Nations Charter and severely threatens the livelihoods and well-being of working-class peoples in Ukraine, Russia, and across the region. We urge an immediate ceasefire and the total withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine.”
Unlike some of the pro-Russia trolls who post here, the DSA actually condemned the invasion. It is the height of hypocrisy for you to intentionally leave out the first 2 paragraphs to make a sweeping condemnation of the DSA. But when it comes to dienne77 who posts non-stop pro-Putin posts, you defend her!
Why can’t the DSA have a far less pro-Putin position than the person you are always quick to defend, dienne77?
Trying to mislead readers by leaving out the first 2 paragraphs of the statement — the paragraphs that demonstrate how the DSA view is far less pro-Russia than dienne77 which you constantly defend — is unconscionable.
Once again, the double standard. Bernie Sanders is the main standard bearer of Democratic Socialism in America and you conveniently left him out. After the invasion, Bernie Sanders said:
“Bernie Sanders condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “an act of premeditated aggression” and called for a global response to defend the country from attack.
“This aggression is unacceptable and the nations of the world must respond vigorously to defend democracy and the rule of law,”
Bernie called for SEVERE sanctions on Russia. He also noted that over 1,000 Russian citizens were being arrested.
Bernie Sanders – representing the DSA – has a very defensible position. dienne77 does not.
So why do you criticize Bernie Sanders’ DSA and always defend dienne77?
Ah, another high-pitched, accusatory comment by my resident biographer.
I summarized the first two paragraphs. I summarized them accurately. My point focused on the latter two paragraphs. So I quoted them in full. And I provided the link so you and others can see for yourself.
My comment was about the DSA, not Bernie Sanders.
I disagree with Dienne about a lot of stuff. I don’t attack her because she’s invariably being piled on by you and several others, and pile-ons don’t sit well with me.
Diane told me to ignore your comments and I should, but I’ve failed here.
Your defense is that Bernie Sanders doesn’t represent Democratic Socialists? Got it.
Why did you leave out the ENTIRE FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS?
Flerp didn’t leave these out. He (is Flerp a he?) summarized them. This seems reasonable because he wanted to make the point that this organization had taken the INSANE stance, shared with Trump, that the U.S. should withdraw from NATO.
Bob Shepherd,
Bernie Sanders is NOT “insane”. And his positions are not “insane”.
Did you hear his speech? I posted a transcript and it was held up in moderation. It was a glorious speech. Not insane. His position as the foremost and most powerful Democratic Socialist in America is perfectly reasonable, even if I might not agree with all of it.
So this is like posting a paragraph from something published by the Catholic Church and declaring the Catholic Church INSANE. None of us do that, nor do we demand all Catholics on here condemn that out of context paragraph.
It’s propaganda. Pivoting from a very important discussion of Fiona Hill’s points to a paragraph by the DSA that is presented with no nuance when the most powerful Democratic Socialist in America has an admirable stance on this issue?
What is the point?
“Bernie Sanders condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “an act of premeditated aggression” and called for a global response to defend the country from attack.
“This aggression is unacceptable and the nations of the world must respond vigorously to defend democracy and the rule of law,”
Bernie called for SEVERE sanctions on Russia. He also noted that over 1,000 Russian citizens peacefully protesting the extreme aggression against Ukraine were being arrested.
Bob,
I also object to anyone equating the “anti-NATO” position of Trump and the “anti-NATO” position of Bernie Sanders.
Both the right wing Republicans and many progressives were “anti-Obamacare”, but the progressives wanted a thoughtful replacement for something that had flaws and the right wing Republicans just wanted to repeal with no concern about the suffering it would cause.
Just saying both groups were “insane” because they both were “anti-Obamacare” is a misleading presentation of the reality.
I repeat. Withdrawing the U.S. from NATO would be INSANE. It’s a totally freaking crazy idea. This would be catastrophic.
NATO exists to defend Europe. Are you really arguing, NYCPSP, that the U.S. should not defend Europe? Seriously?!?!?!?!?
Bob says: “Are you really arguing, NYCPSP, that the U.S. should not defend Europe? Seriously?!?!?!?!?”
That’s not what I’m arguing! That’s not what Bernie Sanders is arguing! That’s why I was hoping you understood the nuance I was talking about. The US should defend Europe. Bernie believes that, as do I. But it seems reasonable to discuss whether NATO or something that would be better than NATO that replaced it, would be a better way to defend Europe.
Which is why I made the “repeal Obamacare” analogy. The progressives who might say “repeal Obamacare” aren’t saying that the US should have no universal healthcare. The progressives want to repeal Obamacare and replace it with Medicare for All (or something else). Whereas those on the right don’t want the US to have universal healthcare.
And that’s the nuance that is missing when people say “both Bernie and Trump want to leave NATO.” That is technically true but they are no more alike than the far right and progressives who wanted to repeal Obamacare were alike. Bernie believes the US should defend Europe, but he supports a different (arguably better organization) to do it, while Trump just wants to leave NATO and abandon them as he would abandon Ukraine to Russia.
I can’t oppose NATO unless I know what is proposed to replace it.
Diane,
Exactly! That’s a perfectly reasonable response. I would certainly expect that Bernie Sanders or AOC would be thoughtful about that (and I would like to hear them on the subject at some point when the world is hopefully more peaceful). Bernie clearly supports defending European countries. Trump doesn’t care what happens. Bernie does. And I would be interested in hearing a strong supporter of defending Europe like Bernie Sanders talking about what would replace NATO before I called him insane.
On my decision to start using the “S” word:
And this:
Hey Paul, did you ever hear the expression “don’t crap where you eat”…take that into consideration
Thank you for this insightful and frightening article. People around the world should read this, particularly Europeans.
Reynolds: So, similar to Hitler, he’s [Putin’s] using a sense of massive historical grievance combined with a veneer of protecting Russians and a dismissal of the rights of minorities and other nations to have independent countries in order to fuel territorial ambitions?
Hill: Correct. And he’s blaming others, for why this has happened, and getting us to blame ourselves.
If people look back to the history of World War II, there were an awful lot of people around Europe who became Nazi German sympathizers before the invasion of Poland. In the United Kingdom, there was a whole host of British politicians who admired Hitler’s strength and his power, for doing what Great Powers do, before the horrors of the Blitz and the Holocaust finally penetrated.
Reynolds: And you see this now.
Hill: You totally see it. Unfortunately, we have politicians and public figures in the United States and around Europe who have embraced the idea that Russia was wronged by NATO and that Putin is a strong, powerful man and has the right to do what he’s doing: Because Ukraine is somehow not worthy of independence, because it’s either Russia’s historical lands or Ukrainians are Russians, or the Ukrainian leaders are — this is what Putin says — “drug addled, fascist Nazis” or whatever labels he wants to apply here.
So sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again.
We had a number of Nazi sympathizers in this country before we got involved in WW II. It is hard to imagine, but they actually held a rally in Madison Square Garden. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-nazism-and-madison-square-garden
YUP. And some of these Nazi sympathizers were very powerful and influential people–Henry Ford, for example.
It is important to note that Hitler was more than aware of the horrible Treaty of Versailles and its impossibly ridiculous assertion that Germany was solely to blame of the First World War.
But his assertion, though true, covered no ground toward a real justification for his hideous philosophy. Rather it only provided him cover for this philosophy.
Regardless of our mistakes and atrocities, allowing Putin unlimited expansion is unthinkable. It is time for the UN to do something, but it may be too late. The UN is hopelessly involved in its previous compromises.
How can Ukraine join NATO, it’s not the North Atlantic. And Chicago is the midwest? This geographic misinformation must be stopped.
Lots of NATO members are not located on the North Atlantic. Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc.
Having been subjugated by the USSR in the past, they joined for self-defense.
Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic…lots of NATO members are not on North Atlantic.
From the predatory nature of Global Capitalism to the Neocon Pax Americana to the rising fascination with autocracy it is as if the volcanic dome is about to burst. In reading the histories of 1850s America, Industrial Europe with desperate monarchies, and the punishing march of global depression in the 1930s you can’t help but think that this era of savage economic inequality, growing climate instability, and pandemic is not leading to another global crisis of epic proportion. The recent fascination with the Bronze Age collapse tells us one very devastating fact, human global catastrophe happens. Whether we can reset to prevent it is very much in doubt.
There are no nazis in Ukraine because Zelenskyy is Jewish. https://twitter.com/tunit20/status/1501619547152871427
So you support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Still not a word of criticism from you about the massive slaughter of civilians–old, young, women, children. A maternity hospital was bombed today. The BBC showed film of pregnant women being wheeled away on hospital tables? Was the maternity hospital filled with Nazis? The picture of the mother and her two children killed trying to escape–were they Nazis too?
Why do you think dienne77 can’t criticize Putin at all? It’s really strange, if she is who she professes to be.
NYC:
I agree it is very strange. It’s as if she’s performing for some supervisor who’s scoring her comments.
This is the dumbest comment I have ever seen.
Funny, dienne77 brought up domestic neo-Nazi faction in other post before(which is actually true). Why is she doing this kind of stud is beyond me.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimir-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946
Of course there are Nazis in Ukraine. There are also Nazis in the U.S. and Russia. Putin is a Nazi. Percentage-wise, I bet there are more Nazis in the US than in Ukraine —the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Boogaloo Boys, the Three Percenters, and the armed militias in many states (like the one in Michigan that plotted to kidnap the Governor).
The fact that Ukraine elected a Jewish president says something. It doesn’t say that there are no Nazis in Ukraine but it suggests that the government is not run by Nazis.
Vladimir Putin’s father worked for the KGB. They were poor and lived in a one-room apartment, but because of his father’s job, they had a telephone. Putin was a runt. The other boys beat him up. He loves telling a story about a time when, living there, he cornered a rat, and the rat jumped at him. He had a propaganda film made about himself that tells about how at the age of 16, he tried to volunteer to join the KGB.
Putin took a law degree and joined the KGB and was posted to East Germany. When the Soviet Union fell, he frantically shredded documents and went to St. Petersburg. Putin describes the fall of the Soviet Union as the greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century.
The mayor of Saint Petersburg hired Putin to oversee foreign contracts. Any business wanting to open an office in Saint Petersburg had to go through Putin. Putin took a lot of kickbacks. The citizens were extremely poor, and the grocery stores were empty. Putin was put in charge of a program whereby the city would receive raw materials, such as petroleum and wood, and exchange this for food from Europe—butter, milk, eggs, wheat, etc. Putin created companies to trade the materials for cash, pocketed the money, and none of the food arrived. Investigators wanted to charge Putin with theft. The mayor squashed the investigation. Putin then got a job in Moscow working for Yeltsin. Yeltsin had started off as a brave reformer but became corrupt. He sold off Russia’s state-owned businesses to his buddies and family members and had become very wealthy. These became the billionaire oligarchs. Yeltsin appointed Putin head of the FSB, the state security service and successor to the KGB.
Meanwhile, back in Saint Petersburg, the corrupt mayor had been voted out and was being charged with fraud. Putin arranged to have the guy flown out of Russia, to Paris, in the middle of the night. This did not go without notice by Yeltsin, who had a problem. He was in very ill health and needed to retire, but the moment he did, he would himself be investigated by the new president for his crimes in selling off state assets. So, Yeltsin and Putin came up with a plan. Putin would become President and squash any investigation into Yeltsin. However, Putin was relatively unknown and probably wouldn’t win an election.
Then, a series of apartment bombings started taking place in Moscow and elsewhere in the middle of the night. Putin went on national television and said that these were the work of Chechen terrorists and that he would hunt them down and kill them while they were sitting on the pot in their outhouses. This was Russia’s 9/11. For a time, ordinary citizens in Russia didn’t know whether as they slept, they adn their loved ones would be blown up. Putin promised to hunt down those responsible and became a national hero.
Then, one of the apartment bombs, in the city of Rayazin, failed to detonate. Investigators defused the bomb, located in a basement. It was made of explosives and used a detonator available only to the Russian military and FSB. The local police arrested the FSB (state security) guys who planted the bomb. Putin put out the transparently false story that this was just a training exercise. Once a Chekist, always a Chekist.
Investigators looking into the apartment buildings started turning up dead. Murdered on the street. Putin became the government’s voice, in the media, of a war against Chechnya in retaliation for the terrorist bombings. This worked. Putin was overwhelmingly elected president. Thousands had died in the apartment bombings and in the First Chechen War. Putin called a meeting of all the Yeltsin-era oligarchs and let them know, in a subtle but certain manner, that henceforth, if they wanted to hold onto what they had, Putin would get his vig on every transaction. If an oligarch didn’t play ball, Putin would cook up an excuse to jail him and nationalize the business, effectively taking it over himself. For example, the richest man in Russia, head of the oil giant Yukos, was stopped by police. One of the police threw a bag into the guy’s car. Then the guy was arrested for transporting an illegal handgun and sent to prison for 10 years.
And so it went. Every bit of business in Russia had to pay its Putin tithe, and Putin became the richest person in the world. He became the ruthless criminal leader of a kleptocracy, the boss of all bosses in a Mafia state.
Thanks for that summary. Sources?
Thank you!
As background to Putin, I highly recommend this superb biography of Stalin, Putin’s brother from another mother. It’s breathtaking and truly frightening:
The excellent, gripping documentary Citizen K, about Mikhail Khordorkovski, is available on Amazon Prime.
Let me just say the link that takes you directly into the book is pretty neat.
Google Frontline documentaries Putin
Thanks for the history, Bob.
And, Roy, I loved reading about your dad.
Not to mention Diane, All I can say is, you’re one of the last people on this planet I’d ever want to “annoy”. It is truly wonderful you offer the public this venue to bring it on.
I immediately keyed in on Ms, Hill’s use of the phrase “might makes right”. I’ve always done a lot with my high school students about philosophy and my college class works on a paper using the ideas of Machiavelli.
That’s the crux of this disaster in Ukraine. Fear, might, the end justifying the means…. not just there but in China, the Mideast and here in the U.S….
We’re at a true inflection point at this moment in history.
What’s past is past. But can we bend this curve in a better direction, right now?
Our kids, all of them everywhere, deserve so much better. My God, I can’t believe this is 2022 and this is the best the Earth can do?
Of course, that’s always been the heart of this blog, our children.
Let me just add, I’m glad I put the car in the garage last night. It’ll save me brushing off the snow this morning. I got up early and now you’ve all put me a bit behind my schedule AGAIN, ha, ha.
Keep up the good fight.
Thank you, John. As you may have noticed, the content on the blog is eclectic. I figure if it interests me, it might interest you.
Madison Cawthorn actually called Zelensky a “thug”. Truly unbelievable.
And the real slur that Cawthorn used to justify Putin’s attack and the mass casualties of entire families in Ukraine: Zelensky has been “pushing woke ideologies”.
If anyone was under the delusion that “wokeness” is anything other than a manufactured crisis created by the right wing, that should put it to rest.
Next thing you know, Madison Cawthron will be accusing Zelensky of pushing CRT!
Words fail to capture the size of Putin’s miscalculation in invading Ukraine as a whole. He had managed to plant a lackey in the Oval Office of the United States and to win an entire U.S. political party to slavish subservience to that lackey. He had members of that lackey’s party calling for the U.S. to pull out of NATO. He had driven deep wedges between the U.S. and its European allies. He had forged a powerful, historic alliance with China. It seemed likely that the pro-Putin party in the United States would win the 2020 midterms and the presidency, again, in 2024. He and his pals had amassed enormous wealth. He had rewritten the Russian constitution to ensure his near lifetime control. He enjoyed popularity at home despite the economic troubles suffered by the Russian people in the kleptocracy he had created. He had annexed Crimea with no major negative consequences to his government or to him personally. He had made himself into a Tsar and, quite possibly, into the wealthiest person on the planet.
But like many a strongman before him, he had surrounded himself with people afraid to tell him the truth, and this hubris led to the gravest of mistakes. By making this move, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory; brought disgrace upon himself and economic ruin (at least in the short term) on his country; destroyed much of the personal fortunes of his wealthiest and most powerful supporters; made of himself an international pariah and, very likely, and very soon, an indicted war criminal; strengthened NATO; brought the warring factions in the United States and the nations of the world, with few exceptions, to unanimity in opposition to him; revealed his vaunted military forces to be in disarray (probably due to that history of kleptocractic mismanagement); and risked nuclear annihilation.
This is what happens to strongmen. Hubris born of ignorance born of the fear that they create around them.
“This is what happens to strongmen. Hubris born of ignorance born of the fear that they create around them.”
Let’s hope so.
One of many difference between Russia and the U.S. that Dienne 77 refuses to recognize- in the U.S., a person like Tulsi Gabbard can even run for President.
Elena Branson (ex-wife a Princeton econ. professor) has been indicted for failing to register as a foreign agent,. Elena donated to one political candidate, Tulsi Gabbard (2019).
Tulsi and Tucker Carlson are Putin’s “American” defenders.
Linda,
Has Tulsi even criticized Putin’s warmongering yet? I love how folks like dienne77 and others throw all the “I care about children” values out the window when it comes to excusing Putin’s murderous invasion. Then, those children and their families are expendable and their deaths a small price to pay for “freedom” (that is, the freedom to live under Putin’s rule).
‘No one has ever the right to destroy a country’…such beautiful and touching words. And what, may I ask, has the US been up to since the end of WW 2? Destroying countries but such inconvenient truths are swept under the carpet.
Vera, the US has a flourishing independent media. Does Russia?
Vera, you forgot to tell me why you are using a server in Europe. Where are you?
The US, EU and NATO made grave mistakes when they let Putin conquer and start war in Georgia in 2008 and declare independence of the two Georgian regions in Abkhazia and Samachablo. What did the US, EU and NATO do? Absolutely nothing! Merkel and Obama expressed concerns and closed the case. Therefore, Georgia’s 2008 invasion was Putin’s test run for bigger wars and military adventures. 100% Obama’s and Merkel’s fault! The US, EU and NATO leadership completely failed. Then what did Putin do? In 2014 Russia attacked and took over Crimea at first and then Eastern Ukraine, where the Russian forces directly and indirectly engaged in warfare against the Ukrainian state. What did the US, EU and NATO do? Absolutely nothing! They forced (Germany & France) Poroshenko to accept horrible Minsk treaties and the EU/US did hit Russia with the bare minimum of sanctions that did not amount to anything… This further motivated Putin to solve his political goals of restoring the Russian Empire through military means and bloodshed. Therefore, now we have this global disaster! That’s why Putin did dare to start another war of conquest of the free Ukraine to enslave its people and change their future, their destiny & limit their freedoms and turn Ukraine into the Russian subservient state. Now we have this bloodshed, war crimes and terror… Whose fault is it? It is Putin’s fault as much as it is the US, EU and NATO leadership’s fault who kept ignoring the international bully and turned blind eye on the atrocities committed in Georgia and Ukraine for the past 15 years! US, EU & NATO need to impose the No Fly Zone immediately! At least above the humanitarian corridors so that Putin won’t be able to continue killing the civilians and children.
You are so right. When a bully like Putin seized territory from other states with no consequences, he wants more and expects that his adversaries will not stop him. Inaction against aggression encourages more aggression.
It was Donald Trump who authorized anti tank & armour piercing missle systems for use in Ukraine….it was on Joe Bidens watch that Putin invaded not Trumps. Ms.Hill states a very perceptive & historicaly rootedl overview but her anti Trump political motives blur the basic truth here. Putin was emboldened to invade Ukraine because of Joe Bidens catastrophic bumbling in Afganistan. He wanted to do the same while Trump was in office but didn’t dare try it for fear of immediate & painful retaliation. Ms.Hill simply doesn’t make a believable case & her words are politically motivated.
Hey, Frank, did you forget that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine because he wanted Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden? Did you notice that Trump was obsequious to Putin?