Our team pulled together a sampling of the analysis this week courtesy of The GZero's Ian Bremmer, The Financial Times, the Washington Examiner, The intercept, Project Syndicate and other valued partners we consult weekly. Our Social Media Corner will be curated daily:
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Putin may win the battle for Ukraine, but he has already lost the war | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Even with a battlefield "victory," Russia will come out of this weaker. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Want to understand the world a little better? Subscribe to GZERO World with Ian Bremmer for free and get new posts delivered to your inbox every week. Like this newsletter? Share it with others you think would enjoy it, too. Early Friday morning, Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia power station, Europe’s largest nuclear plant. And on Wednesday, Russian troops gained control over the southern Ukrainian port city of Kherson, the first major city Russia has seized since it began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine more than a week ago. Kherson’s strategic location on the Black Sea and the Dnieper River will serve as a launching pad for further Russian incursions into central, west, and east Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian missiles and airstrikes continue to indiscriminately hammer residential areas in Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s capital and its second-largest city. And the strategic port city of Mariupol, which connects Crimea with the Donbas, remains under a brutal siege.
More than 2,000 civilians have died, about a million people have been displaced, and over a million have fled the country since last Thursday, according to the Ukrainian government and the United Nations. Despite Ukrainians’ formidable resistance and Russia’s initial battlefield underperformance, much of east and south Ukraine will surely fall to Russian control in the coming weeks. Moscow’s numerical and material superiority is too overwhelming. Make no mistake, though: Russia may “win” the battle for Ukraine, but it has already lost the war. President Vladimir Putin’s grave miscalculations have resulted in a geopolitically feebler Russia, an emboldened Ukraine, an invigorated West, an economy in shambles, and heightened political instability. Geopolitical blunder weakens Russia, strengthens adversariesPutin has embroiled his country in a decades-long quagmire that has diminished Russian power and strengthened Russia’s adversaries, and that will sap his regime of legitimacy—at home and abroad. After 30 years of listlessness, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has “given NATO a reason to live again.” Never since the end of the Cold War had the trans-Atlantic alliance been more united or more galvanized.
Europeans have been woken up to the realities of hard power and are showing themselves willing to sacrifice sacred cows in areas like financial sanctions, weapons transfers, defense spending, and energy decoupling to rise to the occasion. Germany broke with eight decades of policy orthodoxy overnight, not only halting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline but also delivering lethal weapons to Ukraine, doubling its defense budget, and taking immediate steps to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas. Even Putin admirer Viktor Orban’s Hungary supported the EU sanctions on Russia, and long-standing havens like Monaco and Switzerland have jumped on the bandwagon. Putin has also managed to stir the United States to (briefly) overcome its political division to confront a common enemy, a feat not even the Covid-19 pandemic could achieve. Moreover, Ukraine is now firmly and irrevocably aligned with the West, with the European Commission openly discussing its admission to the EU. Georgia and Moldova followed Kyiv in applying for membership. Historically neutral Finland and Sweden are now considering joining NATO, despite Moscow’s warnings. It’s not just Russia’s neighbors that are drawing away from Moscow. Of the United Nations General Assembly’s 193 members, only North Korea, Eritrea, Syria, and Belarus voted against a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (35 members abstained). Kazakhstan, one of Russia’s closest partners, recently refused Moscow’s request for troops. And China, Russia’s largest strategic ally, has consistently called for a negotiated settlement and disapproves of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Economic sanctions, cultural boycott will hurt all RussiansAs a result of Putin’s actions, Russia’s economy and financial system are on the verge of collapse. Owing to crippling Western sanctions on Russian banks, companies, and individuals, the ruble is getting weaker by the day, most banks have been blocked from making transactions, the central bank’s reserves have been frozen, the government is set to default on its debt, and Russian companies have lost nearly all of their value. Beyond sanctions, a growing number of Western companies are refusing to do business in or with Russia, with Microsoft, Apple, Google, Intel, AMD, TSMC, Oracle, HP, Dell, Ford, BMW, Volvo, Harley-Davidson, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Boeing, Airbus, MSC, Maersk, FedEx, UPS, Airbnb, IKEA, Adidas, and Nike, among the multinationals corporations announcing they are divesting from Russia or halting their Russian operations. Mind you, many of these same companies did not bat an eye when the Soviet Union was threatening nuclear war at the peak of the Cold War, so this boycott is unprecedented in its scale and severity.
All of this means that most trade with the US and Europe is about to grind to a halt, as Russia will find it increasingly hard to export the commodities it relies on for revenue (most notably, oil and gas) and to import both intermediate and manufactured goods from much of the world. The rapid forced decoupling of the Russian economy from the global trade and financial system will push it towards severe stagflation (i.e., double-digit recession and inflation), impoverishing ordinary Russians and oligarchs alike. And it’s not just the economic effects that matter, because Russia is being ostracized culturally as well. Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount, and Universal have announced they will not release any new films in Russia. The country has also been banned from hosting and participating in sporting and cultural competitions, including the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Champions League, the Winter Paralympics, the Formula 1 Grand Prix, and Eurovision. And Russian tourists, students, and businesspeople will find it much harder to travel abroad, as Russian airlines will be effectively banned from flying internationally. Regime change no longer unthinkablePutin’s political legitimacy and hold on power at home are under greater threat now than at any other time before. The more he escalates and the longer the war goes on, the more domestic disapproval of his regime will grow, as evidence of the violence inflicted on Ukrainians, economic pain, lifestyle disruptions, asset seizures, and cultural isolation turn the general population and the elites against him. While state media continues to obscure the extent and destructiveness of the Russian “military operation” in Ukraine, history shows that the truth has a way of getting out—especially in the age of social media. Several prominent Russian influencers, athletes, artists, and politicians have voiced their opposition to their followers, and more than 6,500 Russians have already been arrested across multiple cities for protesting the war.
The millions of Russians with Ukrainian loved ones, or with relatives and friends deployed to fight there, will soon hear of the pointless bloodshed being unleashed by their government. Many of them will not stay quiet. Putin still has a stranglehold over Russia’s security services and military. As long as that remains true, his seat at the Kremlin will remain safe. That’s why the risk of a palace coup is still low. At the same time, the threat is also the highest it’s ever been. Even his loyal siloviki have their red lines, and this war of choice could come close to crossing it. A pyrrhic “victory”All of this is Putin’s doing. For a leader who sought to chip away at NATO’s unity, weaken the European Union, divide the United States, prevent NATO and the EU from closing in on his "near-abroad," make Russia strong, and tighten his grip on power, he has accomplished the opposite in one fell swoop. He failed to bully Ukraine and NATO into giving in to his demands. He underestimated the Ukrainian military and overestimated both Ukrainian pro-Russian sentiment and his own military’s abilities, miscalculating how swiftly, easily, and bloodlessly Kyiv would fall, the Ukrainian government could be deposed, a puppet regime could be installed, and occupied territory could be held. He misjudged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ability to inspire external support and domestic resistance. He was unprepared for the ferocity and cohesion of the West’s response, especially Europe’s. He was overconfident in Russia’s ability to evade and withstand sanctions. And he did not imagine the extent of international backlash, diplomatic isolation, and corporate blacklisting his invasion would trigger. In hindsight, Putin’s strategic blunder will be seen as comparable to the Soviet-Afghan War that ultimately precipitated the collapse of the USSR (and, incidentally, also to the Afghanistan War that eroded America’s standing and undermined its global leadership).
Unfortunately, all of Putin’s missteps don’t make it any less likely that Ukraine will suffer a tremendous amount of death and destruction. By sheer force of numbers, Russia will achieve its military objectives. The battle will be protracted. Ukrainians will mount a fierce insurgency that will drain Russia of blood and treasure, and thousands of innocent people on both sides will die. Putin will fail to subjugate the Ukrainian people. But eventually, Russian forces will take Kyiv, establish a puppet government, and forcibly occupy part of the country. Yet Putin’s likely “victory” on the battlefield guarantees that he will never achieve his core political objective and the one reason he chose to invade Ukraine in the first place: to make Russia great again. Russia will come out of this war significantly—and, possibly, existentially—weakened. In the midst of all the news stories that have taken the headlines, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has continued its work. Today, in a lawsuit, it told a judge that the committee “has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.” The filing also said that a “review of the materials may reveal that the president and members of his campaign engaged in common law fraud in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.” One of the emails it released to support the filing indicated that Trump legal advisor John Eastman knew those delaying the electoral count were breaking the law. The January 6th committee is investigating the events of January 6, 2021, to see what changes in the law, if any, should be in place to make sure what happened on January 6 cannot happen again. It cannot charge anyone with a crime, although it can make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, which the department will then consider. Today’s statement makes it seem likely that the committee will be making such a referral. Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal told MSNBC: “This is as deadly serious as it gets, seditious conspiracy.” The filing was in a case over whether Eastman, the author of the memo outlining how then–vice president Mike Pence could use his role in the counting of electoral votes to overturn the election, can refuse to turn over about 11,000 pages of emails and documents to the committee. Eastman wants to withhold them, saying they are covered by attorney-client privilege. But he has not been able to establish that Trump was his client, and, further, attorney-client privilege cannot be invoked to cover a crime. Also today, in a case concerning whether the Oath Keepers, who stormed the Capitol on January 6, engaged in seditious conspiracy, Joshua James of Alabama pleaded guilty. According to CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane, who is following all the January 6 cases, James agreed that he tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of presidential power and that Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes had a “plan” for accomplishing that disruption. In the plea deal, James said that “Rhodes instructed James &..conspirators to be prepared, if called upon, to report to the White House grounds to secure the perimeter & use lethal force if necessary against anyone who tried to remove President Trump." Meanwhile, the Russian attack on Ukraine continues to escalate. Today, United States ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield confirmed that Russia has used cluster munitions and vacuum bombs, which are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions establishing limits to deadly weapons, in Ukraine. A million refugees have now crossed the border to get out of Ukraine. People are also fleeing Russia as its economy collapses and Russian president Vladimir Putin persists in turning the country into a global outcast. Russian-American journalist Julia Ioffe wrote: “Friend after friend fleeing Russia. Five today alone. The best and the brightest, the journalists who were telling people the truth about their country—gone. Emigres, like the white Russians of a century ago. Putin is destroying two countries at once.” Russian authorities have started to crack down and refuse to let people leave. In both the U.S. and Russia in the last several years, anti-democratic leaders have sought to impose their will on voters, and the similarities between those impulses make them unlikely to be independent of each other. On July 27, 2016, even before the Republican National Committee changed the party’s platform to weaken the U.S. stance in favor of Ukraine in its struggle to fight off Russia’s 2014 invasion, U.S. News & World Report senior politics writer David Catanese noted that senior security officials were deeply concerned about then-candidate Trump’s ties to Russia. July 27 was the day Trump referred at a news conference to his opponent and then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s emails that were not turned over for public disclosure from her private server and said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” (We know now that Russian hackers did, in fact, begin to target her accounts on or around that day.) Former secretary of defense Leon Panetta, who served under nine presidents, told Catanese that Trump was “a threat to national security,” not only because of his call for help from Russia, but because of his suggestion that he would abandon the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if he were elected and, as Catanese put it, “his coziness toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Former National Security Advisor Thomas E. Donilon also expressed concern over the hack of the Democratic National Committee by Russian operatives, and said that such an attack mirrored similar attacks in Estonia, Georgia, and, most prominently, Ukraine. He called on officials to confront Russian leaders publicly. Cybersecurity expert Alan Silberberg told Catanese that Trump looked like an ally of Putin. "The Twitter trail, if you dig into it over the last year, the Russian media is mirroring him, putting out the same tweets at almost the same time," Silberberg said. "You get the sense that people think it's a joke,” Panetta said. “The fact is what he has said has already represented a threat to our national security." Putin’s attempt to destroy democracy in Ukraine militarily has invited a reexamination of the cyberattacks, disinformation, division, attacks on opponents, and installation of puppet leaders he used to gain control of Ukraine before finally turning to bombs. This reexamination, in turn, has led journalists to note that those same techniques have poisoned politics in countries other than Ukraine. Over the weekend, British investigative journalist Carol Cadwalladr warned that we are 8 years into “The first Great Information War,” a war sparked by Putin’s fury at the removal of his puppet Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 from the presidency of Ukraine. Putin set out to warp reality to confuse both Ukrainians & the world. The “meddling” we saw in the 2016 election was not an attempt to elect Trump simply so he would end the sanctions former president Barack Obama had imposed on Russia in 2014 after it invaded Ukraine. It was an attempt to destabilize democracy. “And it's absolutely crucial that we now understand that Putin’s attack on Ukraine & the West was a JOINT attack on both,” she wrote. Today in The Guardian, political and cultural observer Rebecca Solnit wrote a piece titled “It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network.” — Notes: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/ https://www.theguardian.com/  Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNewsMarch 2nd 2022 1,225 Retweets6,579 LikesScott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews March 3rd 2022 1,486 Retweets3,118 Likeshttps://www.rawstory.com/  Jim Sciutto @jimsciuttoMarch 2nd 2022 3,518 Retweets7,532 Likeshttps://www.npr.org/2022/03/  Julia Ioffe @juliaioffeMarch 3rd 2022 1,896 Retweets7,210 Likes Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwallaFebruary 27th 2022 28,886 Retweets75,284 Likeshttps://www.theguardian.com/
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