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Category: Politics

Contrarians aren’t critical thinkers

Contrarians aren’t critical thinkers

David French writes: I want to share with you two remarkably similar numbers. At first glance, they should have nothing to do with each other. On closer examination, they’re inextricably linked. The first number is 57. That’s the percentage of Republicans who told Yahoo News/YouGov pollsters that the United States should take Ukraine’s side as it defends itself against Russian invasion (28 percent said the U.S. should back neither, and 5 percent said we should back Russia). By contrast, 76…

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Low morale, corruption and bad leadership define Russia’s military

Low morale, corruption and bad leadership define Russia’s military

John Sweeney reports: The Russian army is 13 miles from my rather fancy Airbnb flat on Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s main thoroughfare, where I am typing this. The hot tub doesn’t work, but there is a war on. Every now and then the air raid sirens howl and artillery crumps sound; however, the last time I felt incoming through my boots was three days ago. The electricity is still on, the internet is still on, and I still wear my neon-orange, lucky…

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A new diplomatic off-Ramp for Russia

A new diplomatic off-Ramp for Russia

Richard Wilcox writes: The war in Ukraine will end in some form. The longer it persists, the higher the costs to both Ukraine and Russia. Clearly a diplomatic solution is preferable, but it is difficult to identify a diplomatic construct that could provide a sufficient and face-saving off-ramp for Russia as well as the kind of security that Ukraine needs. The center of gravity of any negotiated settlement to this war will be the question of Ukraine’s status between the…

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How Putin’s oligarchs bought London

How Putin’s oligarchs bought London

Patrick Radden Keefe writes: Roman Abramovich was thirty-four years old—baby-faced, vigorous, already one of Russia’s richest oligarchs—when he did something seemingly inexplicable. The year was 2000. Abramovich, an orphan and a college dropout turned Kremlin insider, had amassed a giant fortune by taking control of businesses that once belonged to the Soviet state. He owned nearly half of the oil company Sibneft, and much of the world’s second-biggest producer of aluminum. A man of cosmopolitan tastes, he favored Chinese cuisine…

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The man who could help big oil derail America’s climate fight

The man who could help big oil derail America’s climate fight

Chris McGreal reports: In the spring of 2019, Phil Goldberg, a lawyer and hired gun for a front organisation serving some of America’s most powerful oil firms, spotted an opportunity to serve his masters. The University of Hawaii was holding a conference about a wave of lawsuits against the oil industry, and Goldberg was alarmed the event failed to include representatives from the energy business. So the day before the symposium, he fired off an email to the university demanding…

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America is zooming through the pandemic panic-neglect cycle

America is zooming through the pandemic panic-neglect cycle

Ed Yong writes: All epidemics trigger the same dispiriting cycle. First, panic: As new pathogens emerge, governments throw money, resources, and attention at the threat. Then, neglect: Once the danger dwindles, budgets shrink and memories fade. The world ends up where it started, forced to confront each new disease unprepared and therefore primed for panic. This Sisphyean sequence occurred in the United States after HIV, anthrax, SARS, Ebola, and Zika. It occurred in Republican administrations and Democratic ones. It occurs…

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Tucker Carlson’s favorite anti-Semite

Tucker Carlson’s favorite anti-Semite

Yair Rosenberg writes: Douglas Macgregor is a retired U.S. Army colonel who has become Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s go-to foreign policy expert. In recent appearances on the channel, he has argued that the U.S. should not sanction Russia and that Vladimir Putin should be allowed to annex as much of Ukraine as he wants, which is why many today consider Macgregor to be less a neutral observer than a Russia apologist. What they may not know is that he’s…

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The evidence is clear: It’s time to prosecute Donald Trump

The evidence is clear: It’s time to prosecute Donald Trump

Laurence H Tribe and Dennis Aftergut write: On 8 March, a jury took three hours to render a guilty verdict against Guy Reffitt, a January 6 insurrectionist. Donald Trump could not have been pleased. DC is where Trump would be tried for any crimes relating to his admitted campaign to overturn the election. Jurors there would have no trouble finding that the evidence satisfies all statutory elements required to convict Trump, including his criminal intent, the most challenging to prove….

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Dictators like Putin, sow the seeds of their own demise

Dictators like Putin, sow the seeds of their own demise

Brian Klaas writes: In the span of a couple of weeks, Vladimir Putin—a man recently described by Donald Trump as a strategic “genius”—managed to revitalize NATO, unify a splintered West, turn Ukraine’s little-known president into a global hero, wreck Russia’s economy, and solidify his legacy as a murderous war criminal. How did he miscalculate so badly? To answer that question, you have to understand the power and information ecosystems around dictators. I’ve studied and interviewed despots across the globe for…

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The best peace plan for Ukraine is military support

The best peace plan for Ukraine is military support

David Ignatius writes: With the war for Ukraine in its third bloody week, the world faces two urgent questions: How do we help the brave Ukrainian people continue their fight for freedom? And how do we bring this war to an end before Ukraine is destroyed? The two questions may seem sharply at odds, but the Biden administration rightly believes they are related. By stepping up military assistance to Ukraine — and making President Vladimir Putin pay an ever-steeper price…

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A Ukrainian town deals Russia one of the war’s most decisive routs

A Ukrainian town deals Russia one of the war’s most decisive routs

The Wall Street Journal reports: A Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder, Voznesensk’s funeral director, Mykhailo Sokurenko, spent this Tuesday driving through fields and forests, picking up dead Russian soldiers and taking them to a freezer railway car piled with Russian bodies—the casualties of one of the most comprehensive routs President Vladimir Putin’s forces have suffered since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine. A rapid Russian advance into the strategic southern town of 35,000 people, a gateway to a Ukrainian…

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Four Russian generals killed in three weeks show Moscow’s vulnerabilities in Ukraine

Four Russian generals killed in three weeks show Moscow’s vulnerabilities in Ukraine

The Wall Street Journal reports: Four Russian brigadier generals have died in three weeks on the battlefield in Ukraine, Kyiv officials said, showing faults in Moscow’s ability to lead troops into battle. The fallout could shape the outcome of the war, according to Ukrainian and Western officials. The deaths of Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov, Gen. Oleg Mityaev and Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky were announced by Ukrainian officials and confirmed by some Russian media reports, but not the Kremlin. They…

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‘We all will be judged.’ Russian prisoners of war voice disquiet, shame over war in Ukraine

‘We all will be judged.’ Russian prisoners of war voice disquiet, shame over war in Ukraine

CNN reports: “I want to tell our commander-in-chief to stop terror acts in Ukraine because when we come back we’ll rise against him.” Russian President Vladimir Putin “has given orders to commit crimes. It’s not just to demilitarize Ukraine or defeat the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but now cities of peaceful civilians are being destroyed.” “The crimes that we committed; we all will be judged.” These are the voices of Russian prisoners of war now held by Ukraine. Nearly a…

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Mass graves identified in Syria could hold evidence of war crimes committed by Assad’s forces

Mass graves identified in Syria could hold evidence of war crimes committed by Assad’s forces

The New York Times reports: By day, the workers used heavy machinery to dig pits and trenches. After dark, the corpses arrived, sometimes hundreds at a time, in the beds of military pickups or in refrigerator trucks meant for transporting food. As government intelligence officers looked on, the dead were dumped into the ground and buried near the capital, Damascus, according to men who worked at two mass grave sites in Syria. Sometimes, the workers packed the dirt down tightly…

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By enabling Putin and other global kleptocrats, the West has undermined democracy

By enabling Putin and other global kleptocrats, the West has undermined democracy

In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Anne Applebaum writes: All of us have in our mind a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like. There is a bad man at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by networks…

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‘We’re living a nightmare’: Life inside Russian-occupied southern Ukraine

‘We’re living a nightmare’: Life inside Russian-occupied southern Ukraine

The Guardian reports: Russian soldiers patrol the streets of Berdyansk in cars and armoured vehicles marked with the “Z” symbol that denotes the Russian occupying force. Local government officials in this city in southern Ukraine, which has been controlled by Russian troops for the past two weeks, have been kicked out of their offices, and the local radio station plays Soviet ballads and Russian pop songs, interspersed with excerpts from Vladimir Putin’s speeches and news items about Ukraine being “liberated…

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