• 364: Russia’s Halfway to Hell Strategy: Why Putin Has Not Yet Launched a Total War in Ukraine, submitted on 2023-03-06 21:04:10+08:00.
• 365: Why European Defense Still Depends on America: Don’t Believe the Hype—the War in Ukraine Has Led to Little Change, submitted on 2023-03-08 02:33:12+08:00.
• 366: After the Iran Deal: A Plan B to Contain the Islamic Republic, submitted on 2023-03-09 00:52:45+08:00.

364: Russia’s Halfway to Hell Strategy: Why Putin Has Not Yet Launched a Total War in Ukraine, submitted on 2023-03-06 21:04:10+08:00.

—– 364.1 —–2023-03-06 21:17:32+08:00:

[SS from the essay by Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist and Co-Founder and Editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services’ activities, and Irina Borogan, an investigative journalist and Co-Founder and Deputy Editor of Agentura.ru.]

Putin’s halfway strategy has scored some notable successes. Throughout 2022, for example, the Russian economy was not hobbled by excessive militarization or government control. To the contrary, Russia’s economic contraction was smaller than most Western analysts predicted. Moreover, the strategy also helped Putin maintain a fine balance between tightening the rules and not alienating Russia’s economically active urban middle class. For their part, many ordinary Russians have been glad to ignore the war as much as possible, and the Kremlin’s strategy has skillfully played on these feelings: it has allowed many Russians to pretend that they will not be affected by the war.
Indeed, the strategy has also been aimed at those who fled into exile. Many Russian men who went abroad to avoid being mobilized have since been signaled that they will not be punished at home if they return. On February 1, for example, Russia’s Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov reported to Putin that 9,000 “illegally mobilized citizens”—people who are supposed to be exempt from mobilization because they perform critical jobs in IT or in the banking and financial system—had already been returned home. The Russian authorities are also seeking ways to lure the country’s exiled IT specialists—which it needs to sustain the war effort—back to Russia. The government has promised workers in this category exemption from the draft and a free plane ticket home. Putin knows his people well: some Russians, desperate to believe there is a way back to prewar reality, are returning to Russia thanks to this strategy.

365: Why European Defense Still Depends on America: Don’t Believe the Hype—the War in Ukraine Has Led to Little Change, submitted on 2023-03-08 02:33:12+08:00.

—– 365.1 —–2023-03-08 02:38:53+08:00:

[SS from the article by Max Bergmann, Director of the Stuart Center and the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Sophia Besch, a Europe Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.]

Instead of galvanizing efforts to address deep structural problems in European defense, the war has only reinforced them. European forces are in worse shape than previously thought, and weapons stockpiles have necessarily been depleted to support Ukraine. As Europe seeks to rearm, it is finding that its defense industries aren’t fit for purpose. Efforts to coordinate European procurements are not working, with countries all going their own separate ways, adding to the general dysfunction. The United States has demonstrated its indispensability to European security and confirmed Europe’s dependence on Washington. European leaders have seemingly accepted this as the natural state of affairs, with many declaring the pursuit of European “strategic autonomy” dead and turning their backs on cooperation with other EU countries. The momentum in favor of reform and change that had built up over the last decade appears to have vanished.
Although proposals exist for addressing these problems, none offer the kind of sweeping initiative that would be necessary to fix them. In short, a broken status quo prevails.

366: After the Iran Deal: A Plan B to Contain the Islamic Republic, submitted on 2023-03-09 00:52:45+08:00.

—– 366.1 —–2023-03-09 00:58:53+08:00:

[SS from the essay by Suzanne Maloney, Vice President of the Brookings Institution and Director of its Foreign Policy program.]

Despite the challenges, trying to salvage the deal made tremendous sense for Biden. The president was eager to shake off the United States’ post-9/11 entanglements in the Middle East, and he wanted to show the world that after the tumultuous Trump era, Washington was again committed to diplomacy. Resurrecting the deal was central to Biden’s plan for restoring U.S. leadership in the world—a tangible step toward undoing the reputational damage incurred by Trump’s abandonment of the agreement.
But as the boxer Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.” And Biden’s Iran aspirations have suffered from multiple blows. The first came in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and irrevocably shattered the great-power coordination that had enabled the nuclear deal to take place. A second punch landed in August, when Iran began shipping drones to Russia, making Tehran an even more prominent and harmful nemesis. And a third blow arrived in September, when protests erupted across Iran against the government’s brutality, captivating the world, undermining the regime’s control, and making any agreement that would send Tehran massive new resources both dangerous and unsavory. By itself, each of these jolts was enough to keep JCPOA on the ropes. Together, they constituted a knockout.

Yet so far, the Biden administration has not seriously rethought its Iran policies. Consumed by the war in Ukraine and competition with China, the government has instead sought to navigate this new environment with purposeful ambiguity, offering symbolic support to the protesters while soft-pedaling (but not publicly disavowing) the prospect of a new nuclear accord. This strategy may temporarily prevent a crisis over Iran, but it cannot indefinitely stave off disaster. Indeed, the stalling may invite a crisis by encouraging Iranian brinkmanship or Israeli impatience.