In response to a reading recommendation over the weekend I heard from a number of readers who said something along these lines: we’re not the ones escalating. Putin and Russia began this, did all the escalating. Many of these responses came down to this: Putin and Russia are completely in the wrong here. All the escalation is coming from one side.

This thread by Ian Kearns is the best I’ve seen so far capturing the totality of the situation in the Russo-Ukraine War and what we can and can’t do about it. It is an extremely dangerous crisis because both sides now have themselves committed to what they see as commitments and needs they cannot walk away from. He does a good job in my mind of making clear the need for both firmness/resolve and restraint and — since that’s easy enough to agree with and say in the abstract — just what those mean in this context.

I think that on balance the U.S. is making the correct decisions with respect to the Ukraine War and I disagree with the thrust of the arguments in this piece by Michael Hirsch in Foreign Policy. Russia’s actions are likely a better measure of their intentions than their words. But it’s a close run thing and I recommend the article to you. The gist of the argument is that the U.S. is creating a situation with no obvious end game, no off-ramps. We’re pursuing a policy the end of which is complete defeat for Russia in Ukraine rather than a political settlement. We’re stating explicitly a policy of weakening Russian military power and influence around the globe. That comes with real dangers and we should understand them, even if the risks are necessary.

I wanted to flag your attention to a relatively little seen op-ed by a former federal judge named J. Michael Luttig. The title of the piece: “The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election.” Pretty red meat, right? His focus is something we’ve talked about before, the so-called “Independent State Legislature” doctrine. This is the idea — a truly absurd and tendentious reading of the constitution — that holds that state legislatures are the arbiters of the conduct and also the results of federal elections, entirely independent and above the laws of the given state and even the state’s constitution. But before we get into that, let’s get back to Luttig himself who I’ve rather breezily described as a “former federal judge.”

From TPM Reader PT …

I think what’s been really puzzling about the Z War this last week or so is the disconnect between Russia’s propaganda / rhetoric and its actions. 

Let me share a few further thoughts on the current situation in Ukraine, the progress of the Ukraine-Russia war and the chances for further escalation and/or expansion of the conflict. No one knows what’s coming next or how Russia might respond to its escalating mix of battlefield reverses and national humiliations. Without any specialized knowledge in the area I’m especially in the dark. So I rely on the opinion of people who I believe are knowledgeable and have good judgment. For me, in this area, one of those is Tom Nichols. (He’s a defense academic specializing in Russia/Soviet Union and nuclear deterrence policy.) In this thread last night he made clear he’s very concerned about the present situation and what is behind or what is signaled by the escalating rhetoric emanating from Moscow. Maybe not panic level, but very concerned. The salient point from him though is that the decisions about some erratic escalatory actions are going to be made in Moscow and there aren’t a lot levers we have to affect it. That’s a very sobering conclusion.

Here’s an interesting and thought provoking Twitter thread by a Rand Corporation political scientist, Mike Mazarr, on the chances of a major Russian escalation in Ukraine. It touches on some points I noted yesterday about the dangers of Russian weakness and military failure. (It builds in part off this piece from a British national security think tank, “Operation Z: The Death Throes of an Imperial Delusion.”) On the ground in Ukraine it looks like Russia has failed miserably at its initial war aims and strategies and is now trying to grind out much more limited ambitions in the east. But within Russia and in Russian media rhetoric has escalated to make Ukraine itself almost a side issue. They portray Russia as in an existential struggle or holy war, a war that is really against NATO and the U.S. “Russian television has been flooded with statements urging escalation as part of an existential struggle.” A top legislative leader says: “This is a metaphysical clash between the forces of good and evil… This is truly a holy war we’re waging and we must win.”

Crazy stuff.

I was disappointed to see Elon Musk purchase Twitter. On most of the big questions and conflicts in the world today, he’s on the wrong side. It would probably be better for me if Twitter did not exist. But it does. I have what can only fairly be described as an addiction to it. In any case, it would remain a professional obligation to use Twitter even if I didn’t — it’s how I help distribute what we publish at TPM. The best prediction I’ve seen about what is likely Twitter’s future is neither the optimistic nor the extreme pessimistic views but rather that it will be mostly the same but go back to the less governed model of half a dozen years ago in which there was more harassment, neo-Nazis and government-backed disinformation campaigns. The simple truth is that content moderation is much, much less about “free speech” or unpopular opinions than some random guy DMing pictures of his penis every day for a year to a woman he’s harassing, or hoaxes about people dying, or copyright infringement. Of course, as Musk knows as well as anyone, Twitter is also a great tool for market manipulation and securities fraud. In other words, it’s less about “speech” than the digital amplification of the predatory dimensions of people’s personality disorders.

Here is what caught my eye this morning.

Here’s just the latest revelation from these Jan 6th related texts we keep hearing about. In a way it’s more of the same but the details are telling. This one turns on Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), yet another far-right House member, now the head of the Freedom Caucus. In the days after Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election he was texting Mark Meadows insisting that Meadows get DNI John Ratcliffe (another House right-winger who Trump had installed as chief of U.S. intelligence based on essentially no professional background) to have the NSA “immediately seize and begin looking for international comms related to Dominion.” Basically he was pushing the idea that China had hacked Dominion’s voting machines to make Biden the winner.

I recommend reading Josh Kovensky’s run-down on Russian threats to expand the Ukraine War to the breakaway region of Transnistria. To understand just what this is about you have to have a grip on the geography. So I’m going to momentarily focus on that. But I do so to illustrate a larger point about the state of the Ukraine war.

To start off, Transnistria is another of those breakaway separatist statelets which is recognized by Russia and basically no one else. It’s part of Moldova, another former Soviet successor state couched, landlocked, between Ukraine and Romania. Transnistria is a stretched-out slice of land along Moldova’s border to Ukraine, which is to the east. So to situate ourselves in some ways it mirrors the separatist statelets Russia sponsored along the Russian border in eastern Ukraine. Only in this case the separatist statelet in the eastern part of Moldova borders not Russia but Ukraine.