Thread by @PalmerReport

Biden is enacting partial sanctions against Russia right now, and he’ll probably end up having to do full sanctions later. But Biden has to do this in strategic, not frenzied, fashion. It’s far more nuanced than most of the hysterical foot stompers on Twitter think.

Biden has begun a partial, limited invasion today. We still don’t know if Putin has the ability and/or stones for a risky full invasion. But if Biden does full sanctions now, it means Putin is being punished as if he had fully invaded – giving him no reason NOT to fully invade.

Biden is wisely going with partial U.S. sanctions for now, which – combined with full European sanctions – hits Putin very hard but leaves room for more. If there is any scenario where Putin would compelled to back down, it’s consequences with the threat of further consequences.

***** Putin has begun… not “Biden has begun”

The pundits yelling “Biden must full sanctions right this second” are either incapable of strategic thinking, or are just pandering to your angst about the situation.

Same folks who would blindly fire off all their ammo in the first ten seconds of battle.

If there is a way this draws down, it’s with Putin agreeing to withdraw his “peacekeeper” invaders, Biden agreeing to drop the partial sanctions and not enact even harsher ones, Europe agreeing to pipelines, etc. All sides must have bargaining chips to play with.

And maybe Putin has already decided to fully take Ukraine at any cost. But if so, sanctions aren’t going to stop him anyway, so there’s no harm in Biden doing the sanctions incrementally.

But hey, that kind of nuance doesn’t allow pundits on Twitter to look tough and aggressive and get retweets and TV bookings. So of course they’re tweeting things like “Biden must do full sanctions this second or he’s weak” even though it’s just grandstanding gibberish.

It’s also rather obvious that a liar like Putin shouldn’t be taken at his word. Yet nearly every pundit on here is insisting that because Putin says he’ll do this or that scary thing, it means he’s definitely going to do it. This is a kindergartener’s understanding of things.

Are the most prominent pundits all childishly naive when it comes to believing every scary thing that every villain threatens to do? Of course not. The pundits are just playing you by taking the most hysterical doomsday position possible.

The pundits all pulled the same nonsense whenever Trump would threaten to do some scary thing, even if it was laugh out loud impossible for him to do it. Anything to amplify the fear factor, and get more retweets and attention accordingly.

So as this complex and dangerous process plays out with Russia, Ukraine, Putin, and Biden, keep in mind that actual foreign policy and negotiating leverage has literally nothing to do with the simplistic, naive, histrionic foot stomping nonsense you're hearing on Twitter tonight.

Putin and Biden are playing a complex game of chess, and they're both very skilled at it. Most political pundits on here are commentating on that chess match as if it were a game of hungry hungry hippos. As usual in political punditry, there's a total disconnect from reality.