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Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Jan 9, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X

Let's review the basics: Until February 2022, every time Putin used military power, he scored a geopolitical win. He invaded #Georgia in 2008 - he still got Nord Stream 1; he invaded #Ukraine in 2014 - he got Nord Stream 2 nonetheless; 1/

@ZelenskyyUa

3. he butchered the Syrians in Aleppo - he returned Russia to MENA with little or no objection from the West. And had #Ukraine's @ZelenskyyUa not shown real leadership and the Ukrainian people real patriotism, where do you think Europe would be today on this conflict? 2/

Analysts like to talk about "inflection point in history," often exaggerating the importance of a given event. But the war in #Ukraine is truly a system-transforming war. We are watching an event that happens once in several generations. It sets the course of history. 3/

Depending on how the West responds - especially Europe as the US support for #Ukraine has been there for all to see - will determine whether the European dream a Continent "whole and free and at peace" will become reality, or if Europe will once again pay a much higher price. 4/

@WSJ

I say this because there is a whiff of 1938 about Europe's political stasis today. In a recent piece for @WSJ I called it a "crisis of disbelief" -- the unwillingness to accept that for three decades the West deluded itself. So, my advice (take it for what it's worth): 5/

First and foremost, let's be honest with ourselves about how misguided European Russia policy was -- all thirty years of it. And let's say it loud and clear that Russia is a fascist neo-imperial state, and that talking about "Russia's legitimate security concerns" is nuts. 6/

We are in a twilight struggle against an enemy that doesn't live by our rules. This is one of those moments in history where one needs to step up, defeat the enemy, and only then talk about a postwar settlement. Let's stop buying into the Russian narrative. 7/

Russia is the aggressor murdering innocent people in #Ukraine. It must be decisively defeated so that there will never be another Putin spinning the narrative about a "betrayal of the great Russian people" or any other Russian version of the Dolchstoßlegende - it is simply a lie.

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More from @andrewmichta

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Oct 29

🧵History never repeats itself, but it rhymes on occasion, and when it comes to the decomposing European security architecture, historical analogues are compelling. A determined revisionist state – Russia – is arming at speed and scale to reverse the outcome of the Cold War. 1/8

References to past traumas can be overdone; still, we're living through an era of Western appeasement of Russia that invites comparisons to the interwar period in Europe. Putin repeatedly used military power to seize territory but paid only a relatively small price for it. 2/8

Western leaders seem unable/unwilling (?) to acknowledge that aggression is staring them in the face. After all, it's not every day one hears @NATO SecGen opine that not shooting down Russian aircraft repeatedly violating @NATO airspace is a sign of our collective strength. 3/8

Read 8 tweets

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Oct 22

🧵The maxim ”know your adversary” should be one of the core principles of US foreign policy. It should be the founding principle of US-Russia relations. Stop mirror-imaging and stop assuming that Russia is behaving as we would. Russia is not a part of the West—it never was. 1/10

Russia is not a nation-state; it is an empire that expanded from a tiny Duchy of Muscovy into a tsarist domain spanning eleven time zones. After 1917 Stalin continued in the same vein, pushing deep into Europe. And now Putin and his cronies are having yet another go at it. 2/10

The expectation that one can have a lasting negotiated peace deal with Russia is not borne by facts. In the Russian imperial tradition what matters is only power—both in the country’s internal governance and in foreign affair. The Leninist “kto-kogo” (who beats whom) is key. 3/10

Read 10 tweets

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Oct 18

🧵As I watched the wrangling over Germany’s demand that PL extradite the Ukrainian man accused of blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, I asked myself whether and when the EU will live up to its professed principles. The debate should not be about what that man did/did not do. 1/5

The discussion focus on why Germany pursued the Nord Stream project in the first place. Why isn’t there real soul searching and naming names Berlin? It was Moscow’s brutal geopolitical project to isolate @NATO’s eastern flank allies while continuing to supply Germany with gas.2/5

Had the Nord Stream pipes become fully operational, Russia would have become EU’s biggest supplier of natural gas and Germany its biggest distributor. On the eve of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine, Germany already went from some 35% dependence on Russia gas to over 50%. 3/5

Read 5 tweets

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Oct 1

🧵Today I sat through a think tank discussion on China. The tenor was predictable and it could be summed up in one sentence: It's over. China is an industrial powerhouse, it has taken the lead in a number of key fields like AI, automated systems, etc. etc., and we're losing. 1/11

I didn't get a chance to object as there was a line of people asking questions, so let me try to do it this way. First, it's uncanny that we talk of China's grand strategy but rarely break it down into theater strategies in a way that factors in geographic constraints. 2/11

Most US gov't agencies, with very few exceptions, continue to live in the world of PPTs and tables, numbers and flow charts. But as with those production numbers cited for China, there is a difference between mass manufacturing and designing state of the art weapon systems. 3/11

Read 11 tweets

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Sep 21

🧵I've been reflecting of late on what has been driving the polarization I see in America that, in extremis, risks national fracturing. Some conservatives see the roots in the rise of the woke ideology of left. Others see it in the 1960s revolutions, mass immigration, etc. 1/10

Liberals and the left, on the other hand, skew to arguments over the subject of race in American society as the key driver, though they reach different conclusions and approach the problem with different levels of optimism/pessimism. Some make economics its centerpiece. 2/10

Increasingly I've leaned to the view that the driver of our societal fracturing correlates with the debasement of the idea of American citizenship which now tracks mainly towards rights, with obligations nary mentioned. And the attendant fracturing of basic order in society. 3/10

Read 10 tweets

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Sep 17

🧵Surveying recent commentary on the war in Ukraine or our brewing conflict with China I'm struck by the tenor of "what-about-ism" both in published commentary, social media, etc. The message is clear: the US policy community is not ready for what's brewing over the horizon. 1/5

It's worth asking why, and one possible explanation is the national fatigue after two decades of strategic meandering during GWOT. The normative bent in how we approached national security during that era ("defending the rules-based order") shunned geopolitical reasoning. 2/5

Another possible explanation is the deconstruction of American national identity, driven by postmodernist changes in our school and college curricula, mass migration and the decline of the middle class in the wake of outsourcing, with the attendant loss of self-confidence. 3/5

Read 5 tweets

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