A friend recently dropped off an old @CarnegieRussia brochure, and while it’s from well before my time at the CMC, I couldn’t help but share the nostalgia! (Russia hands may find this amusing. Or not. Caveat emptor.)
First things first: Alexei Arbatov never changes. Ever.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but this is not the end of Trump. To paraphrase Churchill, it’s not even the beginning of the end. And to be honest, I’m not sure that it’s the end of the beginning.
Any jubilation is misplaced, I’m afraid.
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Trump’s response to these verdicts is the logical continuation of his response to the election. In that regard, I’m not worried about people storming the courthouse. The capacity of Trumpworld for violence is, I think, overrated.
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A violent challenge to the system requires an appetite for risk and a degree of solidarity that I don’t see in Trump’s supporters. The Jan. 6 prosecutions and the lack of aftermath make that clear. But the non-violent risk is almost worse.
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For context and insight, it might be useful to go back to something @gbrunc and I described in "Putin vs the People", about how Putin understands and utilizes crises and tragedies:
So many thoughts have been expressed in the time that it has taken me to collect my own, that I'm not sure what this is worth. By the key words are Navalny's own: не сдавайтесь. Don't surrender.
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Navalny is not the first of Putin's political opponents to die. He will not likely be the last. But it is up to those who care to find a way -- any way -- to keep Russia's other political prisoners alive. The pressure must always be on.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza. Ilya Yashin. These names you know, or should know. Evan Gershkovich, too. Or Navalny's own lawyers, Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser. But there are hundreds more.
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This excellent thread from @DrRadchenko is in part a rebuttal to one aspect of my thread yesterday, in which I argued, inter alia, that Putin needs a forever war. Sergey argues Putin needs victory and would be happy for the war to end. It’s worth unpacking this.
First, I think we both agree that Putin needs the war to continue — in some form or another — through the March 2024 presidential election. The Kremlin has predicated Putin’s campaign on this war continuing and will not want to pivot too quickly.
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Second, I agree with Sergey’s point that, from a macro-historical perspective, there is no predetermination here. I also share Sergey’s aversion to monocausal explanations. It was never inevitable that Putin would take this path.
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Does Vladimir Putin want negotiations? Almost certainly yes.
Does Putin want to negotiate? Almost certainly not.
The difference is not semantic.
(A long-ish 🧵)
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We have all, by now, read the reporting in the @nytimes about "quiet signals" evidently being sent from the Kremlin to Washington. We have all, I imagine, also seen the criticism of that reporting on this website and elsewhere.
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And, to be sure, we have also seen Russia's continual escalation of its violence in Ukraine, including today's massive aerial bombardment of civilians.
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I’d ignore the bluster about weapons production. Yes, of course Russia makes more than Ukraine. We already knew that. And so did the people Putin’s talking to.
But why throw ideology into the mix?
Because it’s ideology, not artillery, that wins the war at home for Putin.
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Putin is asking people in the Russian military to believe that this is a war worth fighting. He’s asking the rest of the elite and society to believe this is a war worth making sacrifices for. Ideology is key to both, but not in a straightforward way.
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