Read on Twitter
1) I want to explain the difference betw these 2 seemingly similar pieces, both of which are eagerly scooped up and RT'd w/out a read, bc people need to see the Kremlin as a lesser danger, it's comforting, and they need to see their own country, or China, as worse bc then fixable
2) The faux contemplative headline by people who actually think Russia *is* a lesser danger purports to lay out that RU isn't really a conscious and planned evil but makeshift & crude, *and at a low scale*. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-meddling-as-dangerous-as-we-think?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned
3) The thrust is to remove the escape hatch for blaming Russia if Trump wins, and to make it seem domestic issues are unrelated to Russia/the world and thereby controllable by the left. But it's really about hammering that very temporary leftist perestroika re: Moscow eg Maddow
4) If they can get Maddow and a few others to drop Russia as a thing, and use their perches to focus on, say, police brutality, they can bolster the divided left/liberals and get rid of Russia as a conflict driver in US politics. It won't work. Russia means one deliberately.
5) It's fine to focus on police brutality, racism, immigration. But a bit of fanning here and there by RU can make a difference and can escalate as we saw in 2016. It's ok to point this out without believing it explains everything. It explains some things. Like the Bernie Bros.
6) Please tell me there will not be any Bernie Bros again this time who will vote for Trump, in part riled up by Russian meddling and in part singing from the same hymn sheet as GOP Mueller skeptics and FBI haters. Oh, you can't. What are you doing about them right now?
7) This article by a Russian blogger lays out how crude the Kremlin is and makes the similar point that this isn't rocket science & conspiracy but just dumb reaction seemingly not even in self-interest i.e. w Serbia https://twitter.com/Interpreter_Mag/status/1303721404643397635 But no pretense it's no danger then.
8) THAT is the difference. Finding that the Kremlin is crude, makeshift, reactionary, not acting in self-interest isn't the same as therefore declaring that it isn't a problem and not a danger. Indeed, it becomes more a danger when it is unpredictable and not even self-interested
9) But I actually have a 3rd perspective, I think crudeness is a sometimes a deliberate tactic to get many to think that therefore it must be the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight and lower their guard. This isn't a conspiracy theory. This is paying attention to how they do it.
10) Russia announces in 2013 that it has created special forces that can fight outside of Russia; Galeotti and others rush to say they are "like" US Special Forces (they aren't) or they are going to, oh, Southern Abkhazia. And they've reduced their military spending so...
11) All of this is going to be a nothingburger. They won't shoot straight; their feet will be bound up in rags. Except then they go invade first Crimea, then the Donbass -- not Abkhazia with special forces of this type and everyone is shocked & unprepared and think it can't last.
12) Galeotti said they would leave Crimea. Or take the bombing of Syria. It's not an air bridge, it's just air messenging, say. There's nothing coming, it's just swagger. Their generals aren't getting paid enough and officers don't have apartments. Then they bomb Syria. And so on
13) Over and over, the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight lurches off, and maybe doesn't shoot so straight, but does kill people, does cause havoc and at a very large scale. What other country in the world has invaded a neighbour and massacred 12,000 people in 5 years? Not Israel
14) I mean, look at this list, guys, and do the math, and note that some, like Libya are RU allies and buy RU weapons to boot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasions#2000%E2%80%93present
15) There's a lot more chapter and verse I and others could supply on this. But the other point is that sure, it's not great, but the way to fix it is to sweep around our own door. Problem is, we've been sweeping - we had 8 years of Obama where we repaired some of our own wrongs.
16) During that time, Russia invaded Georgia; it invaded Ukraine; it bombed Syria; it poisoned or shot its leading opposition members; it assassinated Chechen emigres and likely its own stray oligarch abroad, and much more. Yes, we got more health care and friended Iran RU's ally
17) Did those things help RU to become less aggressive, more cooperative, more nuanced, less crude? No, it didn't. Because either the dynamic is that it doesn't work that way -- it's not a hydraulic system. Or RU sees such things as weakness and pounces. Or both.
18) Policy implications from the ideology of the New Yorker is -- work on our own "resilience" and don't "obsess" about Russia. But what *action* did the obsession by both parties produce in terms of a plan for Russia? Treasury blocks oligarch back accts if they do bad - good!
19) Sanctions are in place, altho movable for some favorite Trump oligarchs at home and abroad. But it's not enough. And really there has to be more. Because paid preschool daycare and maternity prevention programs however needed don't stop the invasion of Ukraine.
20) The second article is useful in terms of reminding us that no, Putin doesn't control the print on matchboxes as in the Soviet era and the type of uniforms that schoolgirls wear, as Arkadag does in Ashgabad. But he created enough of a vertikal, a self-replicating system
21) Putin doesn't need to control everything. He controls *just enough*, ordering assassinations here or special forces there or stopping a grant in another place or deep-sixing a program elsewhere and people get to know what happens if they colour outside the lines.
22) Poisoning the top dissident abroad & the top dissident at home will likely be enough to intimidate many, many others especially for whom the cost of loss of income is greater, such that he doesn't need to get in every blogger's teacup, you know? KGB always worked that way.
23) So let's not be children here. There's no advantage to minimizing the Kremlin's menace. It's not like our Mueller reports and Congressional committees did a whole lot more than indict the IRA, Manafort and a few others and put some doubts around Trump not affecting campaign
24) It's not like there was any big threat of any more big action against Russia such that the New Yorker had to abandon its principles & round up the usual suspects cautioning Putin-whispering. What are they afraid of? The answer is Navalny and Germany. That does change dynamic
