European War in 2022 will be deadly, brutal and shocking. The Russian Military Buildup is the largest in Europe since 1945 and they are in an offensive posture. When the cost of aggression or threats of aggression are deemed to be acceptable the likelihood of war increases.
2/ That fact is etched in the hard granite of human history since before its first memory was recorded on a cave wall. Vladimir Putin is a Russian nationalist who believes the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century wasn’t the Second World War which killed upwards of
3/ 40 million Russians or the horrors of Soviet totalitarianism that killed tens of millions more. He believes the collapse of the Soviet Union was the preeminent human catastrophe of the last 100 years. The functional borders of modern
4/ Europe, drawn after Allied victory in 1945, collapsed beginning in 1989 when the captive nations of Eastern Europe, yoked to Russia, threw off the Soviet Jack Boot. Russian losses in the Second World War and the suffering
5/ beggar belief. Functionally, for the duration of the Cold War, the Russians were able to move their border a thousand miles West from what it had been on the morning Hitler invaded.
6/ The end of the Cold War moved that border back towards Moscow and then some. Are spheres of influence real? They are. The United States and Dwight Eisenhower understood this in 1945 when Pattons’ Army was stopped on the Czech frontier. This was understood in Hungary in 1956
7/ and Prague in 1968. The Soviet’s understood their ambitions would be checked at the border of NATO which began in West Berlin. The wisdom of further eastward expansion for NATO should be factored into any discussion about NATO membership for countries like Georgia or Ukraine.
8/ Article 5 obligations will destroy NATO if they are tested and found hollow. America is obligated to fight Russian aggression in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia with American blood. Each of those countries defended America after the 9/11 attacks with their blood and treasure
9/ The question around the admission of Ukraine into NATO or the EU is a legitimate debate but one that is irrelevant at this moment. Russia, a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council and a Nuclear Power would shatter international law and the Post
10/ World War 2 International order with an invasion of Ukraine. The action will be expansionist and based on the rules of a far deadlier time, where stronger nations preyed on weaker ones, in a brutalist world where the law of the jungle obliterated more than a hundred million
11/ human beings. Putin’s invasion will send millions of refugees crashing through EU borders in a humanitarian crisis unequalled in the last 77 years in Europe. The whole world will demand the fighting be stopped. Putin knows this. He knows he has to move fast. He knows the
12/ Russian Army must achieve its objectives quickly. He knows that a stalemate will be a disaster, the type of disaster that could be a bridge too far in his gangster state. Live by the sword, die by the sword as they say. The United States must resist calls for an early peace
13/ when they come from well intentioned nations and people. They must be resisted when they come from sources of great moral authority whether they be the Pope or Dali Lama. The Ukrainian people must be allowed to fight. They must be given the opportunity to resist to the last
14/ person in the defense of their homeland from an invader who seeks their subjugation, submission and cultural eradication. Our TIK TOK world of Likes and 👍🤩isn’t rigged for the type of bloody reality that may be about to unfold. Freedom isn’t free. It always requires blood
15/ sacrifices. Americans are geographically lucky. Lincoln pointed this out. He said the mightiest European Army could never take a sip from the Ohio River. He added that if we were to lose freedom, it would be by our own hand. It seems we are well down that path
16/ a silly people, hypnotized by liars and dividers into believing everyone is a victim and each victim a martyr. We’ve allowed a cancer of indifference and stupidity to infect our American democracy. We have allowed it to be weakened by profiteers in a Hate Industrial Complex
17/ who have wrecked the common good for money and power. We have allowed it to be desecrated by the vanity of a single man, his criminal family and devoted accomplices who are assaulting it with lies and conspiracies. Ukrainians live in a country with a deeply flawed system of
18/ Government that is spectacularly corrupt and only nascently democratic. Yet, they seem determined to preserve what they have and make it better. They have no time for the frivolous stupidity that has besieged the North American continent. The Wolf is at the door.
19/ The United States and the American people should support the Ukrainian people in this dangerous hour in every way we can with the exception of deploying American forces. Should Putin unleash War, the West must make sure it ends in Russian tragedy. There must be no
Capitulation forced on the Ukrainian people when the fighting starts. Their strength cannot be smothered by western squeamishness. Vladimir Putin will be the author of this horror show. Should it come, let him also be its victim.

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More from @SteveSchmidtSES

Feb 14
The Super Bowl half time show will probably be the high water mark for Gen X. The 15 minutes we got to rule! Since we live in a hyper politicized era that is teeming with vitriol, contempt, racial malice, extremism, anger violence and a spreading toxic bloom of autocracy the 15
2/ minutes of joy, nostalgia and culture that exploded across America at the mid point of a great Super Bowl could not just be left alone. “Sexual Anarchy!!!” Proclaimed the disordered young fascist, Charlie Kirk, Reichjungendfuhrer, of Trump’s extremist movement.
3/ Degenerate Art is the term the Nazi’s used 100 years ago to wage culture war. When Elvis Presley shook his hips on TV millions of Americans who stood with the cause of spitting on black kids going to school thought they recognized something in the movement.
Read 13 tweets
Feb 13
This is an excellent thread about what the Russians will do in response to the massive economic retaliation that must come. It will not be free for the West. In fact, it may be painful. However, it is the unraveling of the global order that emerged from the Second World War that
must be protected at all costs. This is the monstrous prelude to the world imagined in the recent joint Russian-Chinese communique. The combined economic might of the Democracies precisely targeted can destabilize Putin domestically. In short, make him bad for business.
Putin’s invasion will begin a catastrophe that will unfold in many different and unpredictable ways. It will be blood soaked. The Ukrainians must be given the lethal aid and cash to fight the Russian Bear. Successful aggression will beget more aggression as is evidenced by this
Read 5 tweets
Feb 12
I’d like to get in on this conversation in a respectful manner not because I’m dumb but rather because I’m icing a swollen knee outside on a clear, blue sky, warm mountain afternoon, Lauren Hill on the Sonos, long tweeting. Ire. First, I share @mehdirhasan perspective on a great
2/ many issues while disagreeing with him on some. He is a must watch for me. @RadioFreeTom is also someone I admire and often agree with. My perspective on Covid is shaped by my experiences with it which starts with the impact it has had on my kids. This is how I see
3/ it. The American people elected an incompetent and deadly buffoon to the Presidency of the United States. His insanity, selfishness, dishonesty, incompetence, corruption and anger turned the United States, the most scientifically advanced nation in the world,into the epicenter
Read 17 tweets
Feb 12
This story is contemptible. First, Nathan Chen and Chloe Kim are AMERICANS. No American on the USA team is an Asian. They are North Americans because that is where the United States is. Can’t find the story about white people being over represented in the Nordic Combined.
Curious? Where is it? I’d like to offer a little primer. I am the descendant of German, Irish, Polish and Scottish people. That does not make me European. I am an American, like Nathan Chen. Eileen Gu, for example, is not an American. She is Chinese. @espn ludicrously referred to
her as a “US Teen skier” who wants to inspire Chinese women through sports.” She renounced her US Citizenship to serve the Chinese Communist Party and an autocratic state engaged in Genocide, ecocide, human rights abuses and hundreds of other abuses against the dignity of the
Read 8 tweets
Feb 11
👇what is it that we are seeing unfold in real time? What will these convoys become? What are they now? @FoxNews @TuckerCarlson and all their fellow travelers and legion of lesser bottom feeders, conspiracy theorist and Covid Fascists that have destabilized American democracy
2/ have taken the bit. Whatever this is, it will grow and spread and when it shows up in the States there will be a lot of guns. Mobs which claim their self virtue and demand the power to rule because they are aggrieved and believe democracy is burdensome towards their wants are
3/ dangerous. They are dangerous to freedom because absent law, their is chaos. Absent democracy, which places the human being above the power of the state and its jack boot, the powerful rule and prey on the weak. They take whatever they want, whenever they want it. The next
Read 5 tweets
Feb 11
He had been the Vice President of the United States for 21 days when this picture was taken. 30 days later he would become the 33rd President of the United States. He had gone to Speaker Sam Rayburn’s hideaway office for a Bourbon and was told by the House Parliamentarian there
2/ had been a call for him from the White House. He called through and exclaimed “Jesus Christ and General Jackson” as he hung up. When he entered the White House he was received by Eleanor Roosevelt who said “Harry, the President is dead” Truman was stunned silent for a
moment and said “Is there anything I can do for you?” Mrs Roosevelt replied “ Is there anything we can do for you. You are the one in trouble now”. Truman said he felt like “the moon, the stars and all of the planets had fallen on him.” 77 years after this picture was taken the
Read 5 tweets

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