"They fucked up in 2014," Woodward quoted Biden saying to a close friend in December 2023, according to the Associated Press, who obtained a copy of Woodward's book [“War”] before its publishing date of October 15. "Barack never took [Russian President Vladimir Putin] seriously." Biden is also quoted as telling the friend that the White House "never should have let Putin just walk in there" and that Washington "did nothing" when Russia invaded.
And also in 2015, when Barack and Vova met on the sidelines of the UNGA. Strobe is our shit list for that. And John Kerry.
There are only a few weeks left until Americans don’t re-elect Trump. Whether Ukrainians will receive or not receive answers to questions they have been asking since, er, 2014, largely depends on whether the fog has lifted between the ears of American policymakers. It’s up to them — not Z — to decide the future volume and range of arms supplies, as well as the limits of their use.
Sovereignty — unlike subjectiveness — neither transcends nor resides in an elected official, but is a sequence of gestures and utterances – a repeated script – performed between those with credible parts to play and with command of the occasions in which to play them.
Ukraine is more sovereign than subject, as Giorgia and Z demonstrated yesterday in Rome.
I didn’t even know Italy had an army. Next up: the Pope.
For some in the West compromise is the German post-war model: an occupied country, the western part by the United States, the eastern part by the USSR.
When Putin talks about compromise, he thinks about the Georgia post-invasion model. The country is formally independent but is paranoid about being re-flattened. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for October 26. The ruling Dream Party's election banners compare war-damaged buildings in Ukraine with restored ones there.
When western leaders talk about forcing Putin to stop invading Ukraine they mean something different than Z. Their coercion is not part of the president’s Victory Plan (de-occupation of annexed Crime, restoration of 1991 borders), but at forcing Putin to abandon the Georgia model in favor of the Germany model (that Ben at The Financial Times hopes will prevent Vova from committing the act of nuclear suicide everyone is worried about1).
This is the corridor of opportunities within which it will be possible to negotiate our future. But definitely not now while Putin is seizing territory. Unless we put a gun to his head, he will push through the Georgia model. It is precisely the dosing of force so that it is enough to incline Putin to a compromise acceptable to the West, but not too much to provoke nuclear escalation, that troubles Uncle Joe.
Z, meanwhile, has shared his Victory Plan with everyone except Ukrainians, revealing serious cognitive dissonance between half-baked proposals he whispers abroad and the public promises he makes at home.
On the Belarus jacket, this:
It’s from a 40-page report, titled “Stolen Childhood: How the Belarusian Regime is Erasing Ukrainian Children's Identity through Displacement, October 2024 Re‑education, and Militarization” released this week.
Ukraine, Nato membership and the West Germany model. Security guarantees will have to underpin any peace deal where Russia retains control of Ukrainian land (The Financial Times, October 5, 2024)
This is semantics, obv, but the Georgia model might need to be the Chechnya model for Ukraine given all the blood spilled.
hi, igor. yes. the same sick logic. there's also the austria model