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Editor of FPRI's Orbis Profile picture
@FPRI_Orbis
Feb 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
Longish🧵trying to make sense of the Russian decision to go into Ukraine. @RadioFreeTom & I have both taught the case study "Saddam's Delusions," which tries to explain why Saddam Hussein continued to pretend to have operational WMD even as a U.S. invasion loomed. 1/
A mix: Saddam's personal worldview, his leadership style, bureaucratic snafus, palace politics ... all came together and facilitated a set of grave miscalculations. I predict we will one day have a new case study on "Vladimir's Delusions" as we assess whether the decision 2/
to go into Ukraine was an intelligence failure, a bureaucratic failure, a policy failure or the failure of one man. To start. Delusion 1: Ukrainians will greet Russians as liberators. So much of the first three days of the operation seemed to have been based on an assessment 3/
Update: more on the “we will be greeted as liberators” point:

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More from @FPRI_Orbis

Editor of FPRI's Orbis Profile picture
Sep 18
Last night before this happened, our conversations in Philadelphia about policy choices already touched on this. Science can determine whether a technological fix is possible or validate a concept. It can’t tell you whether you should/ought to do something. Science … 1/
can determine whether nuclear power can generate the power needed for large-scale desalination to address the water crisis and what the risks of nuclear power are. It can’t tell you whether you should support a building of a nuclear plant in your area. Science … 2/
can validate population reduction measures to deal with the overstretch of the carrying capacity of the planet … but can’t say if those measures ought to be adopted. Science can just as easily work under techno-authoritarianism as well as democracy. Political choices … 3/
Read 4 tweets
Editor of FPRI's Orbis Profile picture
Jun 17
So will tag @reziemba ... got some questions about the whole asking people to lend to Ukraine by offering as collateral the interest accrued from frozen Russian assets. Seems overly complicated and risky, but am I missing something? 1/
The G7 decided not to endorse confiscation of the assets--so technically Russia retains ownership. But what is the legal ground to sequester income/interest payments and to be able to offer them as collateral if the original assets are recognized as Russian property? 2/
A lender is asked to make a loan to Ukraine with the promised collateral being the collected income of this fund. But wouldn't there need to be a legal action for the income from frozen assets to be guaranteed? IOW, what prevents someone from suing to recover damages ... 3/
Read 5 tweets
Editor of FPRI's Orbis Profile picture
Dec 17, 2022
In speaking with a number of colleagues, there appears to be now embedded in U.S. strategy a series of temporal assumptions, as follows: a) the U.S. can focus on Ukraine & postpone pivots elsewhere because of an expected Russian defeat/setback by spring/summer '23. 1/
b) the U.S. will have enough time to then pivot to the "China challenge" and to pursue a very competitive strategy that will change Beijing's calculus (sustainability of its ability to contest the U.S. and its partners) by mid-to-late 2020s. 2/
c) by end of decade, conditions will be in place for a U.S.-led global coalition to tackle the major climate/ecosystem/transnational challenges and meet various 2050 deadlines. 3/
Read 4 tweets
Editor of FPRI's Orbis Profile picture
Dec 7, 2022
A year ago I described Kremlin thinking as follows: that increases in energy prices and possible shortages will lead to higher prices from everything from heat to groceries ... 1/
(since limits on natural gas impact not only electricity generation but things like the production of fertilizer). With domestic politics in European states (and even in the United States) already brittle and stressed, the thinking is that domestic opinion ... 2/
with changing the geopolitical balance in Eastern Europe and more on reaching these transactional arrangements to get supplies increased and prices lowered. This is the stress test we are experiencing--and to what extent did Moscow get it right or wrong? 3/
Read 4 tweets
Editor of FPRI's Orbis Profile picture
Nov 14, 2022
For those interested, a line of speculation on recent developments in #Kherson. A thread ... 1/
Kremlin approaches both inside Russia itself and in surrounding areas in recent years have focused on inducing "resigned compliance": in other words, to disincentivize opposition by taking action against opponent, but otherwise accepting a large degree of popular passivity. 2/
In the case of Ukraine, part of the strategy of "resigned compliance" has been to create impression that territorial shifts are permanent and largely irreversible. In opening days of the invasion, the rapid collapse of Ukrainian resistance in the south & capture of Kherson ... 3/
Read 12 tweets
Editor of FPRI's Orbis Profile picture
Nov 2, 2022
Sat through some Indo-Pacific presentations today, and got me worried ... we seem to have so much to do this in this region in terms of national security, and more should have already happened. Yet there is still an optimism that we can still focus all attention on Europe ... 1/
and that we'll always have enough time to pivot to the Pacific if a crisis breaks out. Combine that with quiet assessments that Russia's ability to sustain its efforts in Ukraine has exceeded what U.S. was quietly predicting ... is there a time limit or upper limit on U.S. aid 2/
to Ukraine, and does that aid shift to ensuring Ukraine can hold the line without committing to levels needed to recover lost territories? Still concerned about @dzakheim1's "Eurasian simultaneity" situation breaking out ... 3/
Read 4 tweets

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