Author “Dawn of Eurasia,” “Belt and Road,” “History Has Begun,” “Geopolitics for the End Time,” forthcoming “Masters of the Metaverse.” - Foreign correspondent
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May 1 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
By the standards of protests in the US, for example 2020, these are extremely peaceful and orderly protests. I even see people mocking how nerdy and bookish the protestors sound. Height of violence was breaking a glass to get to a door handle, as one does when leaving keys inside
But US authorities have been whipping themselves into a fever and a frenzy: “terrorists, Muslims, Hamas, monsters, inhumans”, they shout, cheering each other on in a kind of collective madness or witch-hunt
Aug 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
US intelligence sources again blame Ukraine for the counteroffensive’s failure but this time they say Ukrainians were not willing to accept the necessary casualties washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
Officials envisioned “Kyiv accepting the casualties” “but Ukraine chose to stem the losses on the battlefield”
Jul 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Everyone whose opinion I respect thinks the US does not want Ukraine to win the war. It’s a troubling conclusion but hard to avoid
And some of those people tell me there are ongoing, top secret exchanges between the US and Russia to begin shaping a peace agreement…
Jul 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Death and literature in Ukraine. My notebook from Kyiv on books and war, Volodymyr Vakulenko and Victoria Amelina newstatesman.com/world/europe/u…
The photo I mention in the notebook
Hope people realise the significance of the diplomatic game between the EU and China over the past few weeks
EU threatened to impose export restrictions on 8 companies registered in China and Hong Kong accused of circumventing EU sanctions. China desperately wanted to avoid this not only because of the restrictions but because a sanctions spiral could follow
Jun 21, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Well, sanctions evasion comes overwhelmingly from the US. Should the US impose secondary sanctions on itself?
But:
“Export control analysts told Newsweek they did not know of any examples since the start of the war where a company based in the U.S. or in an allied nation knowingly sold critical technology directly to Russia for the express purpose of helping Moscow's war effort.”
Jun 20, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Article 5 does not commit Nato members to use armed force against an attacker, so Ukraine could be admitted and continue receiving support without the use of armed force by Nato partners but now as a matter of treaty obligation and with the goal of bringing about victory. But…
… that might be seen as weakening the deterrence against a future attack by normalising a reduced kind of support. So the question remains of how to admit Ukraine before the end of the conflict without automatically bringing all Nato members into war with Russia
Jun 20, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The amount of racist tweets in the For You tab is just staggering. I had not seen a single racist tweet before Musk took over, as I don’t follow racists. But what surprises me is how the EU has not launched an investigation.
Twitter is not a media outlet. It’s an online service. Imagine your phone company had a racist platform. Or the train company
Jun 19, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
What is happening is Washington decided it needs to focus on Russia for now. Hence the attempted thaw with China. As some of us pointed out, should have been done two years ago when Russia started its buildup
Also reveals there is now sufficient understanding in USG that there is no great alliance between Russia and China so it is possible to work with Beijing on the issue, provided incentives are offered
Jun 18, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is the thing. When my American friends ask what they get out of Nato, well there is a constant and significant transfer of wealth across the Atlantic which Europe accepts as a price to pay for Nato.
The United States has become for the first time in its history a great conservative power, this century’s Austro-Hungarian empire, attempting to crush the revolutions brewing all around us
Tweet dedicated to @balajis
Jun 17, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Giving a talk Monday in a workshop on India’s, South Africa’s positions on the war. I don’t think national interest explains it
National interest explains Turkey’s position reasonably well: condemn Russia’s invasion, preserve economic links where useful, try to use Russian weakness to improve terms. India and South Africa are doing none of this
Jun 11, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I asked @adam_tooze the other day how he explains the apocalyptic dimension of current world politics. The way destruction has become the only solution
Let’s see: for the US, China’s collapse is the only solution. For China, America’s collapse. For Europe and Ukraine, Russia’s collapse. For Russia, Nato’s and the EU’s collapse. For Tory Britain, the EU’s collapse, for the EU, Tory Britain’s collapse.
Jun 10, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Problem with contemporary Russia is not that it is illiberal, but that it is uncivilised. There are many civilisations besides liberalism, but Russia is the very negation of civilisation
By civilisation I mean — in accordance with every civilisation - the creation of a human life, a life of human possibilities, above that of brutes
Jun 10, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I continue to see this propaganda line that Ukraine did not believe an invasion would happen. Let’s clarify a few things:
1. Ukraine started preparing for a full scale invasion in 2015. Why it kept pleading with Obama and Trump about delivery of Javelins, which were seen as first line of defence against a mechanised invasion
Jun 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I talked to a top foreign policy official from Taiwan a couple of weeks ago. No concern whatsoever about an invasion or blockade from China this decade. I would trust Taiwanese authorities more than US intelligence myself
Compare that to Ukraine who had been warning about a full scale Russian invasion since at least 2017. I heard concrete warnings in my visit to Kyiv that year. They were, of course, ignored by the West
May 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Recently I have become convinced that fiction is the best way to write about geopolitics. Here is my first attempt city-journal.org/article/anarch…
Trusting @mervatim can write an essay on geopolitics and the dialogic imagination
Apr 18, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The problem in Europe is rather complicated. We don’t want a strong state with a powerful military complex. It’s not that we’re too weak or incompetent to create it, it’s that we don’t like life with it. It’s not the life we want. But…
… living in a world that is no longer a world without blocs and which is no longer converging to common rules without a strong state and a military complex suddenly looks impossible. It’s not obvious how this can be solved. In reality it can’t
Mar 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This only in Ukraine, no? What a country
We could have seen something like this in Western Europe but a long time ago I think
Mar 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If you read the Patrushev interview you see what keeps this group of people going is the belief the US and EU are about to fall apart. Every time you try to compromise or to provide an off ramp or not to “escalate” you are in fact escalating because you reinforce their views
They are acting offensively against an enemy they think is weak, not defensively against a strong enemy. So do you want to give them hope and animus? Nothing better to prolong the war than refusing to hit Russia as hard as you can
Mar 28, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Debate on the Belt and Road in the West is practically unintelligible. For some reason it was decided the Belt and Road is about trains in Africa and Central Asia even though it was always about global technology and finance. And now most people are stuck in their own definition
When I track its progress I look at the growth the yuan area, semiconductors in China and security role in Saudi-Iran agreement. I don’t look at trains
