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Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Feb 17

@MunSecConf

🧵Moving between speeches, panels and round tables here at @MunSecConf I suddenly had this eerie feeling that perhaps this is what 1938 in Europe must have felt like. We all know that there is a storm brewing outside, but here inside the Bayerischer Hoff all seems normal. 1/

Shaking hands with European and American friends I have worked with over the past three decades, making new acquaintances—it all seems so routine. And yet it all changes suddenly when a Ukrainian parliamentarian pointedly tells the audience we are failing to act fast enough. 2/

Or when a Moldovan speaks of her country hanging by the fingernails, not knowing what comes tomorrow. Or when a Finn, a Balt, or a Pole doesn’t mince words to tell us all the truth about what’s riding on this war. But then the conversation seems to revert back to platitudes.3/

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Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Feb 17

@MunSecConf

🧵Many insightful discussions yesterday and today at @MunSecConf, with a lot of brain power in the room and good analysis of where European security is today.But it makes me wonder why almost a year into the #UkraineWar democracies still appear to be in denial about the threat.1/

I am waiting for our leaders to speak directly to the people about what is at stake in this war. Putin has framed the war as a civilizational struggle against the U.S., NATO and the collective West. If he were to win, the consequences would reverberate both in Europe & Asia 2/

If #Ukraine were to lose the lesson Beijing would learn would be that the West has no staying power. That we talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. It would raise the risk of a wider war in Europe & the Indo-Pacific, for notwithstanding our wealth, we would be seen as weak . 3/

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Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Feb 16

🧵The talk of “great power competition” is now so pervasive in the policy community that it is about to become the same cliche as the “end of history” line. It seems to evoke in the analyst community the familiar echo of grand geopolitical games of the 19th & 20th centuries.1/

What’s missing is a clear articulation of what the “win” looks like-the end state that goes beyond the mantra about preserving the rules based order. It also seems to misread the temporal aspect of competition. The centrality of the process and the importance is staying power 2/

Competition is not just about the telos, but also about what it takes to stay in the race. It’s about focus and perseverance. Russians believe they lost because they’re were cheated, but they lost because once the digital revolution happened they couldn’t stay in the race. 3/

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Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Feb 16

🧵I’m increasingly convinced that #Putin and “Putinism” have been made possible by the accumulation of resentments across the Russian society. #Putinism has emerged from Russians’ inability to accept that they lost the Cold War because the Soviet Union could no longer compete 1/

#Putinism is akin to the Dolchstoßlegende that emerged in Germany after its 1918 loss in Wold War I. It argued that the great German people were never defeated, but betrayed by cowardly politicians-stabbed in the back. That German legend fueled DEU interwar national resentment.2/

Roughly within a decade after WWI the Dolchstoßlegende and the national resentment it fueled gave rise to Hitler and his attempt to re-litigate the outcome in 1918. Only the unequivocal defeat of Germany in 1945 buried the legend, foreclosing the path to empire through war.3/

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Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Feb 15

🧵Russia’s invasions of #Georgia in 2008 and #Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 are kinetic campaigns in Russia’s hybrid war against the West for the last 20yrs. Other than Eastern flank countries, Europe has not yet fully awakened to this reality. Let’s focus on RUS information ops.1/

Estimates put Russia's "white budget" expenditures on foreign media manipulation at more than $1.5 billion annually. At the same time, European institutions dedicated to countering Russian disinformation remain under-resourced and understaffed. 2/

Russia deploys non-military instruments to corrupt Western institutions &subvert political processes. Disinformation operations have been an integral part of RUS way of warfare. Since 2022 they have increased, targeting Western societies to undercut their support for #Ukraine 3/

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Andrew A. Michta

@andrewmichta

Feb 14

@NATO

🧵One of the largest problems facing @NATO that the #WarInUkraine has exposed is the lack of adequate stocks of weapons and munitions when considering the rates of munitions consumption in this war. For 20yrs of GWOT the assumption was that a major war of this kind was unlikely1/

The mantra was “just-in-time” when it came to munitions and supplies in the name of efficiency. That “efficiency” is today our vulnerability. The big five US defense contractors are scrambling to surge production. The situation of Europe’s defense industry is borderline dire.2/

The extent to which the proponents of globalization have de-industrialized the country leaves us with little capacity to switch to wartime production in an emergency. In WWII Chrysler could retool from making cars to making tanks. How do you retool Facebook to make missiles.? 3/

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