🧵 A word of advice for all those "realists" among Western elites who oppose support for #Ukraine: Finally, once and for all bury the Yalta mindset. Understand the Russia is no more entitled to a sphere of influence than a gangster is entitled to keep the spoils of a robbery. 1/
Time to set aside our double standard whereby when it comes to #Russia, we don't enforce the rules, but instead hope for a good tsar (Gorbachev, Yeltsin) with whom we can (to quote Lady Thatcher) "do business." We should also set aside the nonsense about Russian high culture. 2/
Russian culture must be seen in its totality -- it's not just Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or ballet; it's first and foremost the Gulag, prisons, firing squads, rape and torture. It's the culture of violence and theft as a mode of governance. It's an empire awash in blood. 3/
Watch how the Russians behave in #Ukraine, where premeditated destruction and murder is the rule, and ask yourself if that this someone you would like to invite to dinner, or even live next door to. Bottom line: Europe will know no peace until Russia is expelled from Europe. 4/
Listen to Finns, Poles, or Balts. They have lived next door to Russia for centuries and paid an awful price while the West often looked the other way. It's time "realists" among Western policy elites grow up and end the "what-about-ism" nonsense when it comes to Russia. 5/
Democracies are not perfect, but we certainly are better than the Russian and Chinese alternatives. And the Ukrainians are fighting on our behalf, they want to be a part of us. They deserve our respect and all the material and political support we can muster. #ArmUkraineNow

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More from @andrewmichta

Jan 27
🧵I have been thinking why so many in our policy circles show so little appreciation of what Russia's victory against Ukraine would mean for Europe and for global security. First, the Russian narrative is that they are not fighting just Ukraine, but @NATO and the West. 1/
Hence, for Moscow this would be a civilizational win, placing revisionist imperialist Russia along @NATO's entire flank, increasing exponentially the risk of a wider war in #Europe. Russia would be convinced that the West lacks the staying power in a fight, an press further. 2/
#China would draw similar conclusions, making the likelihood of a kinetic confrontation in the Indo-Pacific that much more likely. The US would be faced again with a two-frontier crisis, and an even closely knit Sino-Russian alliance united in its opposition to the West 3/
Read 5 tweets
Jan 22
🧵With all the focus on #Ukraine, I have not seen much written about possible end-states in Russia. The traditional paradigm has been that imperial Russia (including the USSR) historically has goon through cycles of fracturing and re-centralization. 1/
It could be said that Putinism is another cycle in reconsolidation following Yeltsin's cмутное время, and indeed it appears so. But in this case the new "tsar" has also launched a war at a time when #Russia's resources were but a pale shadow of its imperial past. 2/
So at least consider that this time for Russia there may be no "do-overs" and that there are points in history when empire end. Could it be that we are looking at the Russian empires coming fragmentation, with consequences that will reverberate worldwide. 3/
Read 7 tweets
Jan 20
🧵Just one comment on where the West is today: Good times produce soft mediocre politicians. Tough times produce leaders. I don’t know where we will end up, but remember that those we call in American the “greatest generation” were the children of the Great Depression. 1/
For those guys an Army cot, three squares a day and a pack of smokes was a good deal. We are so different today, but maybe this time of adversity will bring forth a new crops of genuine leaders. People is principle with a quiet certitude of Western democratic values 2/
I hope so, for what looks like another international crisis in #Ukraine is really about us, about what we stand for in the West, and whether we can still transmit our cultural DNA to the next generation. Beachside if we can’t, it doesn’t matter how rich we are. 3/
Read 4 tweets
Jan 17
🧵In daily commentary on the war in #Ukraine we often don’t pay enough attention to the larger ideological framing driving Russia in this war. So here are a few thoughts: 1. This invasion is not about restoring the past; it’s about framing Russia’s future as Moscow defines it. 1/
Key concept is “empire”-a belief that in order to remain a great power Russia needs to control its geo-economic space by excluding others/the West. 2. RUS imperial ideology today is driven both by post-Cold War revisionism and by fear of the changing global power distribution. 2/
RUS propaganda denies it, but relative to China & the US, RUS power has been waning for 30yrs. 3. Unyielding hostility to the West is the key ideological driver. It’s foundational to RUS worldview. RUS sees the West as an existential threat that negates its status as an empire.3/
Read 6 tweets
Jan 16
🧵I’ve written for years about European disarmament and the threat it has posed to the Continent’s security—my warnings (and those of others) were largely ignored, despite the Russian invasion of #Georgia in 2008 and #Ukraine in 2014. But after Feb. 24 2022 I expected change.1/
Things have indeed changed but not everywhere. So here is my bottom line: There has to be a real debate across European body politic, especially in #Germany. Europe needs what we call in the US a “dinner table conversation” about what’s at stake in this war. 2/
It must become clear what every EUR must do to end RUS genocide in Ukraine and secure Europe’s future. Europe needs to come to a consensus on the nature of the RUS threat and, much like during the Cold War, agree on a common course of action that goes beyond rhetoric of unity. 3/
Read 7 tweets
Jan 9
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/
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/
Read 8 tweets

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