Vicious cycles

Spent all night not being able to sleep, trying not to scroll the war feed but not really succeeding. A scary and uncertain time — not just for Ukrainians, but Russians, too. I’m not in Russia or Ukraine. I’m here in America. So aside from everything else going on with this invasion, I gotta say that Putin has really fucked Americans on the domestic front. You can already see how his attack is empowering and legitimizing the craziest, most jingoistic elements of our society. We’re about to enter a whole new pro-war era. It’s gonna get dumber and nastier on all sides. So we’re all in this together, whether we like it or not.

—Yasha Levine

PS: Last night I was just thinking about what I wrote over two years ago — about something I called America’s “Ukraine Doctrine.” It looks like it’s gonna finally play out. It’s gonna be grim, however it concludes. And this time, Putin — usually conservative and cautious in his geopolitical moves, but now reckless and in full-on mafia boss grievance mode — is the one making the bad moves.

Ukraine can’t defeat Russia no matter how many American military advisers train Ukrainian troops or how many millions the good and totally not corrupt people at Raytheon Inc make selling their Javelins. The point isn’t for Ukraine to win the war. The point is to make Russia bleed — economically and militarily. And it doesn’t matter how many people die or suffer or how much of Ukraine and its economy is laid to waste in the process.

As I’ve written in bits and pieces before on here before, America’s foreign policy establishment — its diplomats, spies, and politicians — have seen Ukraine as a key field of battle against the Soviet Union going back to late 1940s…