I must confess I didn’t think Putin was going to be going beyond the moves into the two breakaway regions but then again given both Biden’s feckless response and the knowledge that the polling in the US is looking bad for the Democrats who enable him I guess he figured he better grab what he can now before the leadership in the US changes.
And you thought stealing a US election was going to bring back normalcy.
A lot of people are thinking Taiwan is next on the menu figuring that China might see things the same way as Putin, move while America is still weak. Of course it’s a lot harder. You’re talking a D-Day like invasion against a well armed foe that realizes it has nothing to lose by going all out. Additionally such a move is going to have an electric effect on Japan and I suspect China is not all that anxious for either a rearmed or a nuclear armed Japan deciding to calculate if a first strike is necessary.
And please don’t insult me with the “Japan doesn’t have nukes” stuff. Japan has all the technology and expertise to have nukes any time they want them. If they decide on Ash Wednesday (Mar 2nd) that they need nukes they’ll have them before Easter Sunday (April 17th). Of course they would be likely to go the Israel route of not admitting they have the bomb but rest assured if China scares them they will.
There have been a lot of dumb takes on Ukraine from their government asking people to send Russia mean tweets (yeah like Russia cares) to John Kerry worrying about the effect of climate change of this war to worries about the vaccine status of people escaping bombs, however if you had to pick the single most ironic it was Justin Trudeau grandstanding on how Canada would stand firm against Authoritarianism.
Given his actions of the last month this broke irony meters everywhere but I suspect Justin was delighted to have the eyes of the world someplace other than Canada.
Apparently Trudeau’s had picked Senate (70% Trudeau appointed) was going to reject his emergency extension that every member of his party voted for just a few days ago. Additionally the harm to Canadian banks by the freezing of assets of those who dared expressed dissent put a bad taste in people’s mouths.
I think Canada, Truedau and the Banks that backed him up will discover it’s a lot easier to throw away trust and faith then it is to get it back once you’ve tossed it out the window.
Personally I think Any person who keeps money in a Canadian bank is a fool.
Finally let’s point out something that any person should know. Biden provided the funds for Putin’s invasion. As Walter Olsen (via Insty) put it:
Because fuel exports are the basis of the Russian economy, Putin’s war-making capability depends critically on energy prices being high, as they are now. The most effective step countries like the U.S. can take in response does not require sanctions, let alone military action. It’s simply to remove artificial constraints on energy production, especially on relatively clean natural gas. That means removing roadblocks to fracking, pipelines and LNG export facilities that could supply Europe.
The Biden’s Administration’s reaction to this invasion is basically a paraphrase of the episode Yes Prime Minister where the Israeli ambassador tells Jim Hacker that his foreign office in response to an invention by east Yemen: will “make strong diplomatic representations but do nothing” except our diplomatic representations will be weak.
I’ll give the last word to Glenn Reynolds:
there’s more reason to think that environmentalists and other energy-deniers are on the Russian payroll than there ever was for Trump.
I’m sure Joe & Company got their cut.
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