I said at the start of this war that I thought it was the beginning of the end of Putin, and the military mobilization was precisely the kind of thing I had in mind. A 🧵 The invasion was never a rational choice from an economic standpoint as crushing sanctions and isolation were the clear consequence. Those effects were going to violate a crucial social compact Putin had with the Russian people.

🧵 I’ve said it before but I guess we’re back here again: please stop talking about SWIFT re Russia (or anyone else). It’s a distraction and not a helpful one, as I’ve written before. atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atla… SWIFT is a messaging service, more akin to Outlook than anything else. Cutting Russian banks off of Outlook would be annoying and somewhat costly — they’d have to rejigger their email systems and incur temporary disruption — but it won’t have the impact people think.

Amid the blame directed at Biden over Afghanistan, I see little that pins blame on the venality and corruption of the leaders of Afghanistan over the last 20 years. I don’t consider myself deep enough to cast much light on the US decision but everything about this is so very sad. Right or wrong on the US side (not just Biden; Trump was going to do exactly this too), it is hard to understand how the US was supposed to fix the governance problems that have plagued Afghanistan for centuries.