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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 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

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Sep 16

A few years back Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom, a friend and former fellow faculty member at @NavalWarCollege wrote a bestselling book “The Death of Expertise.” Since my return to the US I’ve been thinking about that book, and that Volume Two needs to be written. But different.1/5

The sequel to his bestselling book should be called “The Death of Basic Competence,” for what’s choking America today is the disappearance of basic skills a society needs to run itself-this from my encounters with our bureaucracy, federal, state and local to our service sector2/5

This deepening coarseness of daily interactions whenever you try to transact simple business is also about disappearing social skills, about de facto functional illiteracy that makes daily communication harder each day. And as basic competence vanishes, our world spirals. 3/5

Read 5 tweets

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Sep 15

🧵Did you ever think you would live to see the day when our great Western civilization would sell out to corporate interests embedded in a 1.4 billion communist state to leverage labor arbitrage? And where elites would disregard the welfare of the country that made them rich?1/5

What are we made of? Where is the spirit of pride that made Western maritime powers dominate the seas? Why is it possible that people in our great American cities are murdered by thugs while citizens cower in fear? And why out schools produce unemployable young people? 2/5

Why is it that across the W est vulgarity has become mainstreamed, while in the US people who continue to abuse the rights the great American Constitution gave them and tell us “their rights” carry no obligation to contribute to the society that gave them that very freedom? 3/5

Read 5 tweets

Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Sep 12

🧵It’s high time for strategic clarity, so here we go: #Russia breached #Poland’s airspace, sending 19 drones (maybe more) into what is @NATO territory. The US reaction has been ambiguous, with POTUS calling Russia’s breach of the West’s security fence possibly a “mistake.” 1/10

Responses from European allies have also been wanting, with resounding speeches, promises of more help for #Poland etc., but practical assistance that amounts to an AMD battery and a few additional aircraft. Let’s be clear: We have witnessed yet another failure of deterrence.2/10

This lack of a decisive @NATO response could start alliance fracturing. The worst endgame would be to have an attack on a NATO ally—whether Poland or others—effectively reduced to a discrete problem set instead of a shared responsibility. If it comes to that, NATO is done. 3/10

Read 10 tweets

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