Let’s zoom out from today’s events on the US campaign trail — where @KamalaHarris is restoring hope for democracy worldwide — as well as in Kursk, Gaza, the UK, Bangladesh & Venezuela to absorb a birdseye summary of what the 2024 #GOP candidate for president represents: 🧵 1. Trump was successfully cultivated by Soviet & Russian intelligence starting in the 1980s. His corruption, venality & crassly transactional self-interest checked every KGB recruitment box. Witting or unwitting, he’s been working for them since Putin entered the Kremlin.

Twenty-eight months into Moscow's full-scale genocidal onslaught against Ukraine -- a decade after Russia's criminal invasion & illegal occupation of Crimea & Donbas began -- allies still haven't committed to Ukraine's victory or organized themselves to win this war. A 🧵: To be sure, the Nordic & Baltic Eight (NB8) are on a near-war footing with higher defence spending & strong military assistance flows. @G7 economies are under-performing & impose caveats; the US blocked support for six months. Here's a top ten from a losing strategy:

2/12

Iran's missile/drone attack on Israel came just as more Iranian-made drones were hitting Kharkiv & other Ukrainian cities. Iran launched this deadly payload at Israel from Syria, Iraq, Yemen & its own territory. The missiles & drones that hit Ukraine came from Russia.

1/n We need to see these fronts as part of a single war. Moscow & Tehran are operating together, trying to destroy Ukraine & launch a larger war against Israel. Moscow has been actively pushing Iran's IRGC in this direction for months now: October 7 was Putin's birthday.

2/n

For timeliness & high stakes, Volodymyr @ZelenskyyUa’s address to Canada’s parliament today was historic — maybe the most momentous since Churchill’s famous ‘some chicken, some neck’ speech given in Ottawa in December 1941. (More on that parallel later in this 🧵.)

1/12

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1705307468929146993

It was not the first. On 26 May 2008 President Viktor Yushchenko addressed Canada's parliament. Seven weeks earlier, allies had agreed at Bucharest that Ukraine & Georgia "will become members of @NATO." Ten weeks later Russia invaded Georgia.

2/12

ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer…

Withholding security guarantees from Ukraine in 1994 & Ukraine/Georgia in 2008 led Russia to invade Georgia. Failure to intervene in Syria emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine in 2014. Failure in Afghanistan opened the door to this larger war.

1/22

https://twitter.com/calxandr/status/1512364306297499650

Let's be frank: to end this war in a way that prevents even more dangerous threats, Ukraine must defeat Russia fully. All talk of 'golden bridges', 'de-escalation' or 'Putin failing' is just appeasement by another name. Ukraine must liberate all its territory.

2/22

In today's @nytimes, @stavernise recalls Boris Yeltsin's apology “for having failed to justify the hopes of people who believed that we would be able to make a leap from the gloomy & stagnant totalitarian past to a bright, prosperous & civilized future at just one go.”

1/ Yeltsin made this apology on January 1, 2000 -- the day he resigned. In fact, during his presidency the 'totalitarian past' had never left Russia, whose army still occupied parts of Georgia & Moldova, while waging two brutal wars in Chechnya, in 1994-96 & 1999-2000.

2/

This is an important piece, reminding us that post-1991 Russia was never isolated, but rather showered with endless chances to be prosperous in a rules-based system.

Unfortunately, @BillClinton makes a big error in his analysis of why Putin has twice invaded Ukraine.

1/7

https://twitter.com/BillClinton/status/1512115104988422150

"It wasn’t an immediate likelihood of Ukraine joining NATO that led Putin to invade Ukraine twice (...) but rather the country’s shift toward democracy that threatened his autocratic power at home, & a desire to control the valuable assets beneath the Ukrainian soil."

2/7

As Ukrainian forces advance, let’s look at what a decisive Ukrainian victory & full Russian defeat might mean. For over 20 years, Putin’s Russia has arguably been the main force driving extremism & undermining democracy worldwide. The stakes are very high.

A thread:

1/12 Ukraine would rebound, with true bravery & leadership having brought eight years of occupation to an end. An era of true independence & European integration, now a century (or two) overdue, would finally open, making Ukraine a worldwide source of democratic renewal.

2/12

"Adopt a lend-lease act similar to the US Lend-Lease Act of 1941. This should authorise national governments to supply Ukraine with necessary materials, including food, ammunition, tanks, fighter jets & anti-tank & anti-aircraft systems."

ft.com/content/b9b13e… "Caught in his self-made trap, suffering heavy casualties both in blood and treasure (thanks to western sanctions), Putin has switched to plan B: level our cities & kill, starve or break our populations into submission."

Ukrainian President @ZelenskyyUa speech to @NATO leaders, March 24, 2022: "Yes, it is true we are not members of the alliance, not part of the most powerful defensive alliance in the world, not one of those nations that are subject to Article 5 & entitled to defence."

1/7 @ZelenskyyUa @NATO "But we have a feeling that we are in a grey zone between the West & Russia, & yet we are defending all our shared values (...) for a month now -- a month of heroic resistance, a month of the darkest suffering & of the destruction, with impunity, of global security."

2/7

"Biden contends his decision to (...) concede Afghanistan to the Pakistan-backed Taliban is one of realism & geopolitics (...) so that America can focus on China. This (...) misjudgement (...) has allowed China to gain a strategic foothold in the region."

nationalpost.com/opinion/shuval… "Pakistan’s policy of 'strategic depth,' obsessively undermining India from Kabul to Kashmir, finds perfect symmetry with China’s Belt & Road Initiative, which obsessively imposes its authoritarian model for economic development."

"Afghanistan’s war did not start with airstrikes & CIA operatives in October 2001.

External aggression has been an unbroken reality for Afghanistan for 50 years."

nationalpost.com/opinion/chris-… "It started with Pakistan’s 1970 general election, which triggered unrest in East Pakistan that Pakistan’s army then violently repressed."

The 9/11 attacks were planned by ISI operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (‘Mokhtar’) in Karachi, Pakistan.

In 2001, Osama Bin Laden quickly fled Afghanistan for Pakistan, which sheltered him for a decade.

ISI also planned this year’s invasion of Afghanistan.

#SanctionPakistan More on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, including his time planning the 9/11 attacks while in Karachi, Pakistan: newyorker.com/magazine/2010/…

1. Reading these remarks has been an acutely painful experience for me. The falsehoods, the callous inhumanity, the pusillanimity of this ham-fisted bid to dress up disaster as 'necessary unpleasantness' are truly shocking, presaging new calamities.

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… 2. At bottom, this ill-tempered screed is a new manifesto for isolationism. For @JoeBiden, the US has not role 'remaking' other countries. It won't defend the basic principles of the UN Charter. Democracy isn't even mentioned. This is Trumpism re-branded for WaPo/NYT readers.

Having now read the full article, I have two major comments. First, fear took the US to war in 1941 as well, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. That did not prevent the ensuing gargantuan US & allied effort from producing flourishing democracies in Asia, Europe & elsewhere. 1/10

https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1431131083257614337

The issue was never fear or even rage as motivating factors, nor 'nation-building' as either deliberate or incidental goals, but rather war strategy: we had a plan to fight 'Taliban' in Afghanistan, but never a strategy to deter or defeat the actual aggressor, Pakistan. 2/10

Ten years' ago Osama Bin Laden was killed in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan -- a stone's throw from the Pakistan Military Academy, their version of West Point. The statement below mentions Afghanistan three times; Pakistan not once. Why? 1/4
whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… By May 2011 Bin Laden had been living in Pakistan for over nine years. He founded Al Qaida at Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1988 in response to a previous US withdrawal from the region. The terrorist group responsible for 9/11 & countless other attacks is still based in Pakistan. 2/4

A first-rate opinion piece outlining the strategy we should all pursue in relations with China: "Our goal should not be to dictate to China how it is governed, but to embolden & enable those Chinese who want change to achieve it."

@globeandmail theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl… "(...) the Communist regime is not authoritarian, but totalitarian. Historian Robert Conquest defined a totalitarian state as one that recognizes no limits to its authority in any sphere of public or private life, & extends that authority to whatever length feasible."