“The citizens of Russia are right now making the choice between freedom and slavery. Today, tomorrow, this week, is still the time when you can defeat evil. Don’t miss this opportunity.” – President Zelensky
“I believe there’s a sentiment that we’re fearful about what Putin might do. And what he might consider as an escalation. It’s time for him to be fearful of what we might do.” -Senator Mitt Romney
Diplomatic Solution: Hard to imagine something happening. Either:
- Russia agrees to a cease fire and pulls its troops back out of Ukraine…or
- Ukraine surrenders large parts of its country and gives up its hopes for NATO or the EU.
Neither scenario seems likely or realistic. But for the “siloviki”…read the best analysis and perspective of what “might” happen in Russia below titled “Putin doesn’t fear a coup by oligarchs. But he should fear his fellow spies.”
STOP Russian Oil: Russia’s world exports of oil are financing Putin’s devastating invasion of the Ukraine. The United States and the western world need to boycott Russian oil now.
Hard fact: oil and gas revenues make up about half of the Kremlin’s budget and is critical to financing Putin’s bloody war.
We have the capacity to be energy self-sufficient in the U.S. and provide exports to much of the world. This should be a commonsense approach in a time of war.
Putin’s War Crimes: Russia is purposely and knowingly killing unarmed civilians as they try to evacuate cities under attack. Given the precision of these attacks, it is clear the Russians are targeting these evacuation routes.
Putin and his military commanders MUST be held accountable for their war crimes.
Let’s Stop WWIII In Ukraine: If we don’t stop Putin and his Russian minions in Ukraine, we are poised for World War III. Putin will continue his reckless “rebuilding” of his Russian Empire. China will see the lack of resolve of the west and attack Taiwan.
It is a Time for Choosing and I hope we choose correctly. Peace through strength is the only concept the bad guys understand.
–Saul Anuzis
Click Here for Past Commentary from Saul
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
Saul Anuzis calls for meaningful USPS reform, inflation rises yet again, and Rashida Tlaib says there is no inflation!
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/10/cpi-inflation-february-2022-.html
https://dailycaller.com/2022/03/09/tlaib-no-inflation-blames-extortion/
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Putin Accidentally Revitalized the West’s Liberal Order
The Russian president thought he sensed an opportunity to take advantage of a disunited West. He has been proved wrong.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a chorus of despair—beyond the cost in Ukrainian lives, the international order that the U.S. and its allies built after World War II is, we are told, crumbling. The writer Paul Kingsnorth has declared that the liberal order is already dead. The Indian journalist Rahul Shivshankar has argued that “in the ruins across Ukraine you will find the remains of Western arrogance.” Even the brilliant historian Margaret MacMillan has written that “the world will never be the same. We have moved already into a new and unstable era.”
The reverse is true. Vladimir Putin has attempted to crush Ukraine’s independence and “Westernness” while also demonstrating NATO’s fecklessness and free countries’ unwillingness to shoulder economic burdens in defense of our values. He has achieved the opposite of each. Endeavoring to destroy the liberal international order, he has been the architect of its revitalization.
Germany has long soft-pedaled policies targeting Russia, but its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, made a moving and extraordinary change, committing an additional $100 billion to defense spending immediately, shipping weapons to Ukraine, and ending the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was constructed to bring gas to Germany from Russia. Hungary, thought to be the weakest link in the Western chain, has supported without question moves by the European Union and NATO to punish Moscow. Turkey, arguably the most Russia-friendly NATO country, having bought missile defense systems from Moscow, has invoked its responsibilities in the 1936 Montreux Convention and closed the Bosporus strait to Russian warships. NATO deployed its rapid-reaction force for the first time, and allies are rushing to send troops to reinforce frontline states. A cascade of places have closed their airspace to Russian craft. The United States has orchestrated action and gracefully let others have the stage, strengthening allies and institutions both.
… Those of us already living in free societies owe Ukrainians a great debt of gratitude. Their courage has reminded us of the nobility of sacrifice for just causes. As Ronald Reagan memorably said, “There is a profound difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.” What Ukrainians have done is inspire Americans and others to shake ourselves out of our torpor and create policies of assistance to them, in the hopes that we might one day prove worthy of becoming their ally.
Putin Has No Good Way Out, and That Really Scares Me
If you’re hoping that the instability that Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has wreaked on global markets and geopolitics has peaked, your hope is in vain. We haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until Putin fully grasps that his only choices left in Ukraine are how to lose — early and small and a little humiliated or late and big and deeply humiliated.
I can’t even wrap my mind around what kind of financial and political shocks will radiate from Russia — this country that is the world’s third-largest oil producer and possesses some 6,000 nuclear warheads — when it loses a war of choice that was spearheaded by one man, who can never afford to admit defeat.
Why not? Because Putin surely knows that “the Russian national tradition is unforgiving of military setbacks,” observed Leon Aron, a Russia expert at the American Enterprise Institute, who is writing a book about Putin’s road to Ukraine.
“Virtually every major defeat has resulted in radical change,” added Aron, writing in The Washington Post. “The Crimean War (1853-1856) precipitated Emperor Alexander II’s liberal revolution from above. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) brought about the First Russian Revolution. The catastrophe of World War I resulted in Emperor Nicholas II’s abdication and the Bolshevik Revolution. And the war in Afghanistan became a key factor in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.” Also, retreating from Cuba contributed significantly to Nikita Khrushchev’s removal two years later.
Send Ukraine planes now
As Russian warplanes pound Ukrainian cities with cluster bombs, President Volodymyr Zelensky has been begging the United States and its allies to make a decision: Either stop the carnage by establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine or give Ukrainians the fighter jets to do it themselves. “If you cannot shut the sky now … then give me the planes,” Zelensky said.
On Tuesday, Warsaw answered Zelensky’s call. The Polish foreign minister announced that Poland was ready to give its entire fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine “immediately and free of charge” — offering to send them to a U.S. air base in Germany and asking the United States “to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities” in exchange. The United States would then transfer the MiGs to the Ukrainian Air Force.
Incredibly, the Biden administration scoffed at Poland’s offer. “We do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The prospect of fighter jets … departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.”…
… Well, now Poland has made that sovereign decision — and put the ball entirely in Biden’s court. If those planes are not flying over Kyiv as soon as possible, Biden will be to blame. He alone will be responsible for denying Zelensky the vital military capability he has said he needs to save innocent Ukrainian lives. Every day that he dithers, innocent Ukrainians are being slaughtered. As Zelensky told NATO’s leaders last week, “All the people who will die from this day will die because of you … because of your weakness.”
Those words should now be ringing in Biden’s ears. Sending American pilots to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine risks putting us in direct combat with Russia. But there is absolutely no excuse for denying Ukraine the aircraft it needs to patrol its own skies.
Poland’s MiGs can be flying in Ukraine tonight. If they are not, blame lies with one man: Joe Biden.
Hitting Putin Where It Hurts by Sanctioning Russia’s Oil Exports
A mere U.S. ban on Russian oil imports is a distraction from the real issue.
American politicians are suddenly scrambling to ban the U.S. purchase of Russian oil, and the Biden Administration seems likely to go along. Too bad this is a largely symbolic gesture that ducks the main issue: whether to sanction all Russian energy exports.
Oil and gas revenue makes up about half of the Kremlin’s budget and is critical to financing Vladimir Putin’s bloody war on Ukraine. The problem is that sanctions on Russian energy could also harm the world economy and especially Europe, which imports about 25% of its oil and 40% of its natural gas from Russia. But unless the West is willing to grasp this nettle, the world will continue to finance the Putin war machine.
U.S. politicians are ducking this subject even as they rush to ban U.S. imports of Russian oil. The best argument for banning U.S. purchases is to show a reluctant Europe that the U.S. is willing to make sacrifices first. But Russia accounted for only 8% of U.S. petroleum imports and 3% of oil consumption last year. It wouldn’t be hard for the U.S. to replace this—or for Russia to find another buyer.
What Baltic leaders think about a war they’ve long warned was coming
Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania and Alar Karis of Estonia are eagerly supporting Ukraine — and wondering what could be next
Many in the U.S. government have been ignoring the bleak warnings of the Baltic states about President Vladimir Putin’s malign intentions since 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia. Then in 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea from Ukraine, Baltic leaders warned that he would not stop there. “The U.S. policy community underestimated Putin’s intentions,” lamented Chris Skaluba, a former Pentagon official who is now director of the transatlantic security initiative at the Atlantic Council. If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, there is the threat of a spillover or a wider war, and the Baltic leaders are worried once again about what Putin’s next target will be. The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth interviewed President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania and President Alar Karis of Estonia by videoconference this past week as the war in Ukraine ground on. Edited excerpts follow, first from the interview with Lithuania’s Nauseda:
Putin doesn’t fear a coup by oligarchs. But he should fear his fellow spies. Russia’s security services have tried to topple its leaders before
Analysts and Russia watchers are batting about the idea that perhaps Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin has become mentally unstable. They point to ranting speeches where Putin seems to invent history out of whole cloth, or his public and cringeworthy dressing down of one of his intelligence chiefs. Then there are the meme-worthy photos of Putin sitting at the end of ridiculously long tables. Some observe that Putin simply doesn’t look well physically — puffy in the face and less steady on his feet. Speculation suggests that all of this is due to the Russian leader’s increased isolation, his surrounding himself with yes-men, or his angst over the bite of widespread economic sanctions the West and other allies have leveled against him since Russia invaded Ukraine. Others say he is afraid of covid-19 and taking draconian precautions.
Putin is indeed afraid, but not of covid. He fears a coup.
The oligarchs aren’t the ones who would turn on Putin. There is something of a power-sharing agreement between Putin and his oligarchical team, but it is one-sided and mostly economic: Putin allows them to run large moneymaking entities in Russia and abroad, and in return, they help him launder his own funds or assist him for whatever else he deems them useful. But the oligarchs have no direct access to hard power, such as police or other armed security forces in Russia…
…The real threat to Putin comes from the siloviki, a Russian word used loosely to describe Russia’s security and military elite. These are people like Nikolai Patrushev, currently the secretary of the Russian security council, and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), as well as other current and former senior security officials…
…If the security elite perceives the system is rotting, they will do what’s necessary to protect their interests. They have weapons and the personnel to threaten Putin. They know how to operate under Putin’s radar, because they are the ones in charge of the radar itself. And while it is reasonable to assume Putin has some means to monitor the siloviki, he will not be able to follow their actions constantly and with great precision, given all the other issues on his plate.
The invasion of Ukraine has triggered a withering response that threatens the viability of the Russian state. As in 1991, the country is at grave risk. The siloviki, watching the slow-motion dissolution of the kleptocratic autocracy that has kept them in power for the past three decades, have the ability to end Putin’s regime. They may decide to act.
Putin would do well to remember the words Felix Dzerzinskiy, the brutal head of the Cheka, uttered over 100 years ago: “We stand for organized terror — this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution.”
MAKING COERCION WORK AGAINST RUSSIA
As the Ukraine war enters its third week, Western countries continue to impose significant economic sanctions against Russia and support Ukrainian forces with overt military aid. But Western leaders have refrained from making explicit demands about what Russia must do for this coercive punishment to stop. There have been calls on President Vladimir Putin to end hostilities and military operations in Ukraine. But, so far, these requests are not especially specific, nor are Western leaders connecting them to the rollback of economic sanctions and military aid.
Many analysts and reporters have noticed the absence of coercive demands with alarm. If the United States and Europe hope to compel Putin to stop the war, they will need to tell Putin what specific actions he can take to reconnect Russia to the global economy. A compellence strategy imposes costs with the threat of more pain to come until an adversary changes its behavior in some way. It must involve clear demands. Otherwise, the adversary could assume that no amount of concessions will be sufficient to end the punishment. In the Ukraine war, however, the Western focus on economic and military punishment seem prudently designed to turn up the heat on Putin and his elite supporters. Indeed, withholding demands buys time for sanctions and lethal aid to inflict visible costs on Russia.
But the success of punishment today creates a key dilemma for coercion tomorrow: It is going to be difficult to credibly promise the Russians that this pain will stop. On the one hand, the United States and Europe need to convey their resolve to punish Russia until it withdraws from Ukraine. On the other hand, Washington and Brussels must eventually promise to roll back punishment if Moscow concedes. This assurance would present Putin with an off-ramp to avoid further pain by complying with Western demands over Ukraine.
Putin Flirts with Economic Suicide
On the menu today: It sounds absurd, but it’s true — Vladimir Putin is now running the Communist revolutionaries’ playbook on foreign investment, foreign assets, and foreign debts. History tells us this is a quick path to a massive economic calamity, but Putin appears willing to commit economic suicide in order to bring his vision of a conquered Ukraine to fruition.
When a government declares it will confiscate the assets of foreign companies and foreign investors and that it won’t pay its debts, severe and lasting economic calamity follows.
This may seem like long-forgotten history, but it is particularly relevant now that Putin has announced Russia will confiscate the assets of foreign companies and foreign investors and strongly hinted that it won’t pay its debts.
Yesterday, Putin revealed how he wants to respond to the challenge of foreign companies shutting down their operations in Russia: “With regard to those who are going to close their production, we need to act resolutely and in no case allow any damage for local suppliers, Russian suppliers of components. It is necessary then to introduce external management as the prime minister suggested, and then turn over these enterprises to those who want to work. We have enough legal, market tools.”
Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin proposed that, “If foreign owners close the company unreasonably, then in such cases the government proposes to introduce external administration. Depending on the decision of the owner, it will determine the future fate of the enterprise. The key task will be to preserve . . . the activities of organizations and jobs.”
“Introduce external management” means Russian management. Those McDonalds restaurants, Starbucks cafés, and Adidas stores that are closed or closing may soon reopen under new management — although they’re going to be dependent upon Russian or Russian-allied suppliers. (Just how good is the beef, coffee beans, and leather from Belarus?)
Russia waged a cheap war in Syria. Here’s what those tactics might look like in Ukraine
Destroying hospitals and critical infrastructure is part of the playbook.
Russian troops are increasingly bogged down in Ukraine — and global sanctions have hit the Russian economy hard. As the economic costs of invading Ukraine rise, will the Kremlin look at cost-saving warfare strategies it used in Syria? The bombing of Ukrainian hospitals suggest Russia may be doing this already.
Our research on Russia’s campaign in Syria offers insights into what those strategies might entail. In Syria, Russian troops shifted the course of a civil war by destroying critical infrastructure from the air, deploying widespread siege tactics, and using paramilitary and local fighters to advance the country’s goals. If Russia’s intervention in Ukraine drags on, our findings suggest that Russian strategies along these lines will raise the costs for civilians significantly.
Democrats’ problem with Hispanic voters isn’t going away as GOP gains seem to be solidifying
The Democratic Party’s early 2000s dream of an emerging majority based on a diversifying electorate has run into reality. Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election, and they barely won in 2020. Part of their problem was declining support among White voters.
But the 2020 election also pointed to another problem: Hispanic voters (who are growing as a portion of the electorate) moving toward the Republican Party. Recent polling — and now this week’s Texas primaries — show that these Republican gains don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
Texas is a heavily Hispanic state relative to the country as a whole. There are 16 counties in Texas where Hispanics make up at least 80% of the citizen voting age population, according to the latest data available from Census Bureau. The county with the highest percentage of Hispanic adult citizens (Starr County) backed now-President Joe Biden by 5 points in 2020, after voting for Hillary Clinton by 60 points four years earlier. (That’s not a misprint. It really was a 55-point swing.)
Regularly scheduled primaries, of course, don’t feature a Democratic candidate versus a Republican candidate. We can, however, look at the relative turnout between the Democratic and Republican primaries. This is instructive in Texas where voters don’t register by party and can choose which party’s primary to vote in…
… The fact that the political preferences of Hispanic Americans are jumping around may get at something larger: Their votes are up for grabs more so than the average voter’s. While they may still be more Democratic-leaning, both parties have a good chance of making up ground among the Hispanic electorate.
I’d expect a lot of attention to be focused on this growing bloc of voters in the midterms.
Senate Republicans set sights on blue state ‘sleeper’ races
Republicans are eyeing Senate races in a handful of blue states they believe have the potential to come into play ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, underscoring the confidence the party is feeling as it seeks to reclaim the upper chamber.
In an interview with The Hill last week, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), said that the GOP was poised to take back the Senate majority in November, and suggested that the party could eventually expand its prospects beyond the handful of already-established battlegrounds and into states currently considered safe for Democrats.
“I think we’re going to have some sleepers, where people are going to say, boy, we didn’t anticipate that one,” Scott told The Hill.
