Ukraine | Reason ArchivesThe leading libertarian magazine and covering news, politics, culture, and more with reporting and analysis.(c) Reason
2024-03-28T20:34:52Z https://reason.com/feed/atom/WordPressLiz Wolfehttps://reason.com/people/liz-wolfe/liz.wolfe@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82702522024-03-25T13:32:14Z2024-03-25T13:30:24Z
137 dead: Over the weekend, gunmen affiliated with Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K)—an offshoot founded in 2015, mostly comprised of malcontent Taliban militants—opened fire on a Moscow concert hall where the band Picnic was playing. They killed 137 people and injured 180 more, and they also set the concert hall on fire. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack; Russian news media immediately started blaming Ukraine, claiming the West was lying about who is responsible.
The four suspects, who have been arrested, are men from Tajikistan who were in Russia as migrant workers. Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged the men "were heading toward Ukraine" to seek refuge after carrying out their attack.
"During the U.S. military withdrawal from the country, ISIS-K carried out a suicide bombing at the international airport in Kabul in August 2021 that killed 13 U.S. service members and as many as 170 civilians," reportsThe New York Times. ISIS-K has, up until now, been widely regarded as ineffective; the group has plotted several attacks in Europe—notably one on the cathedral in Köln, Germany, for New Years Eve 2023—yet has mostly been thwarted before they've had the opportunity to carry them out.
Trump goes to court (again): Former President Donald Trump will appear in a Manhattan court today to "seek another delay of his criminal trial on charges that he covered up a sex scandal that could have derailed his stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election," perThe New York Times.
There was a recent delay in this case, after new evidence was made available and the judge decided that Trump's lawyers needed a 30-day extension to review it. (Trump asked for either a 90-day extension or a thrown-out case.)
But Trump is also facing imminent financial trouble, from needing to either settle up in the civil fraud case—also in New York—or go the appeals route, which would require him to secure a half-billion-dollar bond. If Trump does not secure that bond, the state attorney general, Letitia James, will most likely start freezing Trump's bank accounts and seizing some of his assets. (He already secured a $91.6 million bond needed for another case—the defamation suit brought by E. Jean Carroll—but is struggling to do so for this much larger amount.)
Appeal bonds, like the one Trump is seeking, are "document[s] in which a company guarantees the. judgment, plus interest, should [a client] lose his appeal and fail to pay," says the Times. "Mr. Trump would need to pledge significant collateral to a bond company—about $557 million, his lawyers said—including as much cash as possible, as well as stocks and bonds he could sell quickly." He would also incur a roughly $20 million fee owed to the bond company.
Another day, another "RFK Jr. considers running on Libertarian ticket" piece, this time from Politico. (FWIW, I do not think this is very likely to happen, but that doesn't mean the mainstream media will stop writing pieces about it.)
Investors approved the Truth Social/Digital World merger I mentioned in Friday's newsletter, which will line Donald Trump's pockets with a bit more cash.
Transit system assaults in New York City really are rising. Zach Weissmueller and I talked about this (and more) with Peter Moskos on last week's Just Asking Questions:
Transit assaults 2006-2023. It's not just a "perception" issue. Reported assaults have tripled over the past decade. That's not good. https://t.co/4t2imulhBb
"The Wisconsin attorney general's attempt to find a right to abortion in the Wisconsin Constitution is unprecedented, and wrong," write Christine File, Heather Weininger, and Dan Miller in National Review.
Belmopan: the city of bureaucrats, totally centrally planned, made boring as a result, with a population of only 25,000 despite being Belize's capital city.
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A couple mourns at a spontaneous memorial to the victims of the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, organized at the entrance to the Tekhnologichesky Institute metro station in St. Petersburg.Ilya Sominhttps://reason.com/people/ilya-somin/isomin@gmu.eduhttps://reason.com/?post_type=volokh-post&p=82694212024-03-18T20:18:15Z2024-03-18T20:18:15Z
Marshall University recently posted the video of my online talk on "Putin's Western Supporters," which is part of their weekly series of panels and lectures related to Russia's war against Ukraine.
In the presentation, I distinguish between Westerners who like and admire Putin's regime from those I call "anti-anti-Putinists," a term inspired by Cold War-era anti-anti-communists. I also explain why Cold War-era Western sympathizers with the Soviet Union were overwhelmingly on the political left, while Putin's Western supporters are mostly on the political right. Whereas the USSR's appeal was tied to that of egalitarian socialism and communism Putin's Russia promotes nationalism and social conservatism. Finally, I discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of Putin's regime in the international war of ideas, and what can be done to counter it. Some of the points made relate to issues addressed in my recent National Affairs article, "The Case Against Nationalism" (coauthored with Alex Nowrasteh).
Reason immigration writer Fiona Harrigan has a valuable new article surveying the growth of private migrant sponsorship over the last two years:
The two African refugees arrived in Oneonta, New York—a quaint, upstate college town of just over 12,000 people—in summer 2023. By then a group of volunteers had been preparing for them for "six, seven, eight years."
Mark Wolff, communication chair of The Otsego Refugee Resettlement Coalition (ORRC), says his group had to put its hopes of helping refugees on hold during the Trump administration, which cut the refugee cap to its lowest level ever. Even after Joe Biden's inauguration, with promises of a more humane immigration policy on the horizon, things didn't look good for their plan…
The ORRC had already begun to raise money and identify community partners. It had done its homework and it had momentum. So when the Biden administration announced the Welcome Corps—an initiative that would let private citizens take the lead on sponsoring and supporting refugees, rather than the longstanding government-led approach—the coalition knew it had found its way to welcome newcomers. "We were one of the first [private sponsor groups] in the United States to get approval," Wolff says…..
The Welcome Corps is one of several private sponsorship schemes to be rolled out in the last three years. From the Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans to Uniting for Ukraine to a program specifically for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), Americans who are moved by scenes of suffering around the world can put those feelings into action.
Wolff's sentiment speaks to the promise of these young private sponsorship schemes: getting more Americans directly involved in the welcoming process, getting newcomers to the point of self-sufficiency more quickly, and improving outcomes for immigrant and native communities alike. At a time when Americans are increasingly concerned about migration into the country, these community-driven approaches could be key to rebuilding trust in both immigrants and immigration.
As Harrigan recounts in detail, the new private sponsorship programs—beginning with Uniting for Ukraine (in which I am a sponsor myself)—have enabled hundreds of thousands migrants fleeing oppression and war enter the United States much faster than the traditional government-driven refugee system, and at little cost to the public fisc. By giving migrants an alternative legal way to enter the US, they have also reduced congestion and disorder at the southern border. Overall, these programs are the Biden Administration's biggest and most successful immigration policy innovation.
But, as Fiona also notes, the programs have important limitations. All were established through the exercise of executive discretion, which means the next president could potentially terminate them at any time. That's a highly likely scenario if the next president turns out to be Donald Trump. Ideally, Congress would enact legislation preventing the executive from taking such action.
In addition, participants in most of these programs are only granted temporary residency and work permits (two years in the case of CNVH and Uniting for Ukraine, though participants in latter can now apply for two-year extensions, as can Afghan parolees). For reasons Fiona describes, it would be better if these rights were permanent.
The only private sponsorship program that does grant permanent residency rights is Welcome Corps. But participants are required to meet the absurdly narrow legal definition of "refugee" to be eligible. Congress could potentially fix this problem by expanding the definition.
Sadly, given the current political environment, it's unlikely Congress will successfully address any of these issues in the near future. The long-run fate of the new private sponsorship programs may well depend on the outcome of the 2024 election.
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Matthew Pettihttps://reason.com/people/matthew-petti/https://reason.com/?p=82681412024-03-08T04:27:20Z2024-03-08T04:27:20Z
President Joe Biden came into office promising to get American troops out of "forever wars." Tonight, in his State of the Union address, he offered a vision of indefinite U.S. involvement in conflicts around the world.
In April 2021, speaking about the war in Afghanistan, the president railed against those who believe that "withdrawal would damage America's credibility and weaken America's influence in the world. I believe the exact opposite is true." Tonight, Biden attacked skeptics who "want us to walk away from our leadership in the world."
He began his speech with a plea for more U.S. military aid to Ukraine, arguing that "the free world is at risk, emboldening others who would do us harm to do what they wish." Later, Biden announced sweeping plans for U.S. involvement in Gaza.
While the U.S. military will build a new port in Gaza to deliver food to Palestinians—and, the president promised, "no U.S. boots will be on the ground"—the Biden administration will continue to arm the Israeli military campaign that Biden said "has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined."
The Biden administration has transferred weapons to Israel at the American taxpayer's expense, and is providing targeting intelligence to the Israeli military. "Creating stability in the Middle East also means containing the threat posed by Iran," Biden added, touting his airstrikes on Yemen.
That air campaign has thrown a wrench into Yemen's peace talks—which, ironically, the Biden administration brokered a couple years before.
Biden positioned himself as a peace dove during the 2020 presidential debates, and one of his first major decisions in office was to go through with a long-planned U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. "It's time to end the forever war," the president announced in an April 2021 speech, rejecting an "approach where U.S. exit is tied to conditions on the ground."
"We have to have clear answers to the following questions: Just what conditions require to—be required to allow us to depart?" he asked in that speech. "By what means and how long would it take to achieve them, if they could be achieved at all? And at what additional cost in lives and treasure?"
Today, Biden answered those questions: The wars will continue for the foreseeable future.
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Matthew Pettihttps://reason.com/people/matthew-petti/https://reason.com/?p=82675892024-03-04T23:06:32Z2024-03-04T23:06:32Z
Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira was sentenced to 16 years in prison after pleading guilty on Monday to leaking classified military documents to an online Discord chat group.
Teixeira had originally pleaded not guilty, but he admitted to "willful retention and transmission of national defense information" in a deal with prosecutors to avoid espionage charges. He will also be required to brief officials on the information he leaked during his work for the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base.
The sentence is harsher than that of other recent leakers. Daniel Hale, a U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst who exposed key details about the Obama administration's drone assassination program, was sentenced to 45 months in prison. Reality Winner, a National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents about alleged Russian hacking, got five years.
Unlike other historical leakers, Teixeira was not an intentional whistleblower. He originally sent documents to a raucous Discord server called Thug Shaker Central—the title was a reference to a porn film—with a few dozen gamers in it. The files went viral after other users reposted them elsewhere.
Teixeira would not be the first person to leak restricted documents to gamer friends. So many people have posted sensitive weapons data to the War Thunder video game forum that it has become a meme: "0 days since classified document leaks."
But the Discord leak wasn't a mere attempt to impress friends or a joke. Teixeira, who has been described as "antiwar" and "libertarian," appeared to have some qualms about U.S. foreign policy and wanted to talk through these issues with his friends.
"It wasn't really 'pushing these to teenagers for clout,'" Vahki, a pseudonymous member of the chatroom where Teixeira posted the documents, told CNN. "It was more like showing these to friends, so we won't be shocked by the news cycles. And we know what's going on with our tax dollars."
At the time of the indictment, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that Teixeira leaked "information that reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security if shared…In doing so, he is alleged to have violated U.S. law and endangered our national security."
The leak embarrassed U.S. friends and foes alike. Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov, stung by reports that Russia was secretly buying rockets from U.S. ally Egypt, called the documents a "hoax."
Perhaps most embarrassingly, the documents revealed the extent of Washington's eavesdropping on its partners, from South Korea to Israel. Rather than threatening American lives, Teixeira's real crime may have been humiliating American diplomats.
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102nd Intelligence Wing members salute the flag on Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, Feb. 3, 2024.Liz Wolfehttps://reason.com/people/liz-wolfe/liz.wolfe@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82672802024-03-01T16:16:06Z2024-03-01T14:30:09ZBloomberg blames right-wingers, and more...]]>
Why can't we apprehend both of them at the border? Yesterday, both President Joe Biden and his presumed opponent in November, former President Donald Trump, arrived at the southern border for a whole lot of politicking and very little actual problem solving.
Media outlet after media outlet described it as a "split-screen" showdown. The New York Times described it as a visit "pitting the president's belief in legislating against his rival's pledge to be a 'Day 1' dictator." All right.
"A very dangerous border—we're going to take care of it," said Trump upon arrival. Biden has "the blood of countless innocent victims" on his hands, Trump added, citing the recent murder of Laken Riley—an Augusta University nursing student believed to have been killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, while running on trails at the University of Georgia.
"The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime. It's a new form of vicious violation to our country," Trump said, leaning hard into fear-based messaging.
Biden, on the other hand, blamed Republicans in Congress for sinking deals that would attempt to handle the crisis at the border and kept meekly calling for bipartisan compromises. "Join me," Biden said to Trump—in what the Times described as an "olive branch"—"or I'll join you" in passing the bipartisan border deal that Trump recently lambasted, leading Senate Republicans to turn on the legislation.
If at first you don't succeed, try…an executive order? He's no border dove, though: Biden is reportedly mulling an executive order to majorly crack down on asylum seekers, forcing more rigorous entry standards and deportations for those who do not meet the updated criteria. Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act extends latitude to presidents to block certain categories of entrants if deemed "detrimental to the interests of the United States." This would allow him to bypass Congress entirely.
Ironically, Section 212(f) was how Trump instituted the Muslim ban back in 2017. It's dark horseshoe theory that Biden is now considering sidestepping Congress and using the same provision. It's almost as if actual checks and balances would be helpful here, and setting cogent policy in the first place, as opposed to sweeping executive orders to attempt to bandage long-festering problems.
The number of border crossings has reached record levels. December saw almost 250,000 arrests by Border Patrol, a number which fell by more than half in early January due to Mexican immigration authorities stepping up to the plate. The top five nationalities being apprehended are currently Mexicans, Venezuelans, Guatemalans, Honduras, and Colombians, but people from all over the world are now attempting to cross the border as well—including Chinese migrants (the fastest-growing group of border-crossers).
Whether it's Biden's pointless "join me!" pleas, designed to make the media fawn all over him, or Trump calling illegal border-crossers "fighting-age men"—as if they're creating some sort of militia as opposed to seeking work as, like, dishwashers and roofers—nothing good happened at the border yesterday, and the situation got no closer to being resolved.
Scenes from New York: A little before 4 a.m. Thursday morning, an A train conductor was attacked—his neck slashed, as he stuck it out the window to make sure the train was cleared to leave—at the Rockaway Avenue station in Brooklyn (a few stops before mine).
By rush hour Thursday morning, train crews were boycotting the safety conditions they must work under and calling straphangers' attention to attacks on transit workers. For those of us trying to take the A to work (like me, to film a documentary for Reason), it was a massive inconvenience, as trains operated with severe delays. But safety on the subways has gotten intolerably bad: Year over year, NYPD reports a 13 percent increase in crime within the subway system, and an 11 percent increase in assaults specifically. Last week, a man was shot and killed on the D train. In January, a man was shot and killed on the No. 3. Merely 1,000 of the city's 6,500 subway cars are equipped with surveillance cameras; meanwhile, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has installed bright yellow barriers at the Washington Heights stop to deter criminals from pushing people onto the tracks as part of a new pilot program—which would be terribly expensive to actually scale and wouldn't solve many categories of subway-system crime (like yesterday's neck slashing).
As for the conductor in question, he received 34 stitches and nine sutures and thankfully survived.
Congratulations to The New Republic for finally acknowledging the fact that, generally, plastic isn't actually getting recycled (whereReason has been for a decade-plus): "Between 1990 and 2015, some 90 percent of plastics either ended up in a landfill, were burned, or leaked into the environment," reports The New Republic. Yes, we know.
Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in some saber-rattling toward the West yesterday, saying that the prospect of nuclear conflict ought to loom large if any countries intervene on Ukraine's behalf. "We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory," Putin said. "Do they not understand this?"
"Several youth advocacy groups are concerned over the Secure DC bill and its potential impact on juveniles," reports ABC7. NeeNee Taylor, the founder of Harriet's Wildest Dreams, a nonprofit in the area, expressed concern at an event Wednesday night about a provision that would make stealing $500 worth of merchandise rise to the level of a felony. "A couple of my young ladies may have committed retail theft—they were actually stealing clothes for themselves to wear to school," Taylor told the news channel. "So what can we do to avoid them to have to steal the clothes?" Actually, they did not have to steal the clothes. Nor do they need to steal $500 worth of clothes in order to be able to cover their bodies to attend school.
Bloomberg—normally good—seems to think that the Google Gemini scandal—in which its AI-powered image generator simply could not return historically accurate images of white people, but had to turn, like, the Founding Fathers into black men—was actually a "Republicans pounce" situation. (It was not.)
Watch the dudes of The Fifth Column grace the wonderful Megyn Kelly Show with their presence (and tear Keith Olbermann apart):
"He wants to now replace the court with something else…"@mcmoynihan, @MattWelch, and @kmele on Keith Olbermann's meltdown over Supreme Court hearing Trump immunity case.
A Russian defector is assassinated in Spain. The Chinese government offers bounties for dissidents who take refuge in foreign countries. The Canadian government fingers Indian officials for murdering a Sikh activist in British Columbia. What do these incidents have in common? They represent acts of "transnational repression," a form of authoritarianism that reaches across national frontiers and has becoming disturbingly common in recent years.
Repression Without Borders
"More than 20 percent of the world's national governments have reached beyond their borders since 2014 to forcibly silence exiled political activists, journalists, former regime insiders, and members of ethnic or religious minorities," finds a Freedom House report released in February. "According to the new data, 25 countries' governments were responsible for 125 incidents of physical transnational repression in 2023 alone, including assassinations, abductions, assaults, detentions, and unlawful deportations."
Last year enjoyed the dubious distinction, the report adds, of featuring the first documented cases of transnational repression by Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, and Yemen. Well, it's only fair that every regime gets an opportunity to terrorize a critic or political opponent in another country, instead of leaving all the fun to the year's main culprits: Russia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Turkmenistan, and China.
A Busy Year for International Thugs
Along those lines, recent weeks saw the assassination of Maksim Kuzminov, the Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine in 2023 in protest of his country's invasion of that nation. Russian media reported that military intelligence issued a kill order for Kuzminov, which, it seems, was carried out.
"Kuzminov, who was reportedly living in Spain under a false identity, was found dead in the Spanish town of Villajoyosa, near Alicante, on Feb. 13. Police said attackers shot the former pilot six times before running him over with a car," reportsPolitico. "Sources in Spanish intelligence services…believe Moscow hired hitmen from outside Spain to carry out the assassination."
China's overseas efforts are broader and more overt in their efforts to target dissidents.
"Fox Hunt is a sweeping bid by General Secretary Xi to target Chinese nationals whom he sees as threats and who live outside China, across the world," FBI Director Christopher Wray charged in a 2020 speech. "Hundreds of the Fox Hunt victims that they target live right here in the United States, and many are American citizens or green card holders."
Chinese officials threaten dissidents' family members who remain in China, but also pressure those overseas through "police stations" covertly established in foreign countries and intended to convey the impression that the regime reaches everywhere. U.S. officials busted one such outpost in New York City last spring.
India's government, for its part, stands accused by Canadian officials of orchestrating the June killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Accused of terrorism by India in pursuit of a Sikh homeland, Nijjar had a bounty on his head and was shot dead outside a temple in British Columbia.
Just months later, U.S. officials claimed to have thwarted a similar attempt on American soil against Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
Last year was a busy year for international thugs and assassins, it appears. But if we go back just a bit further, we find other incidents, such as the gruesome 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabian agents in Istanbul, or the botched but lethal attack the same year on Sergei Skripal in the U.K. by Russian agents using the Novichok nerve poison (one of the Putin regime's favorite calling cards). There is a frightening abundance of examples from which to choose.
"Between 2014 and 2023, Freedom House has recorded a total of 1,034 direct, physical incidents of transnational repression committed by 44 origin-country governments in 100 target countries," observes Freedom House. "The governments of China, Turkey, Tajikistan, Russia, and Egypt rank as the most prolific perpetrators of transnational repression overall since 2014. China's regime on its own accounts for 25 percent of all documented incidents of transnational repression."
Bad Examples Encourage Bad Behavior
Part of the problem, unmentioned by Freedom House, is that relatively free democratic governments can compound the problem with their own misbehavior. While Canada, the U.S., and their allies aren't known for poisoning overseas dissidents (at least, not as a matter of course that they want publicized), they do sometimes bend laws to target inconvenient people in other countries. The U.S. federal government, aided by its British allies, has tormented journalist Julian Assange for years with arrest and extradition efforts over what Amnesty International describes as "politically motivated charges" under the Espionage Act. His "crimes," points out the Freedom of the Press Foundation, are "things journalists at news outlets around the country do every day."
That sets a precedent on which authoritarian government can seize.
"National security laws of other countries, including the US and the UK, also have extraterritorial effect," sniffed China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning when challenged on arrest warrants and bounties for Hong King dissidents residing in other countries. The scope of China's actions extend way beyond those of any western government in reach and severity, but she had a point.
"It's clear that governments are not being deterred from violating sovereignty and targeting dissidents living abroad," commented Freedom House's Yana Gorokhovskaia of events documented in the recent publication. "Democracies must ensure that the perpetrators of these brutal acts face real consequences. Otherwise, the use of transnational repression is likely to spread."
That's true. But if officials in relatively free countries are serious about deterring overtly authoritarian regimes from spying on, blackmailing, assaulting, kidnapping, and killing people who've taken refuge across national borders, they have to refrain from anything that even slightly resembles such behavior themselves. The end of transnational repression begins at home.
Since April 2022, the US has admitted some 200,000 or more Ukrainian migrants under the Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) program, which enables US citizens and legal residents to sponsor Ukrainians fleeing Russia's brutal invasion to live and work in the United States for up to two years (I am myself a sponsor for two Ukrainian families). Although the program has many virtues and has been highly successful, the two-year time limit has been a major downside, from the beginning. Many of the Ukrainians will need a permanent refuge. And giving it to them will also enable them to contribute more to our economy and society.
Yesterday, the Biden Administration began a program under which U4U participants can apply for "re-parole." Those whose applications are accepted would be allowed to live and work legally in the US for an additional two years.
This is a step in the right direction. The war in Ukraine shows little sign of ending anytime soon. And many of the refugees may be unwilling or unable to return even after the fighting stops (e.g.—because their former homes have been destroyed by the Russian military). Past refugee crises show that it is often impossible and undesirable to force everyone to return to their original homes, even after the fighting is over.
But the re-parole process does have some downsides. One is that the relevant forms and application process seem unduly complicated, and some aspects of the system are unclear. For example, I cannot figure out whether the two-year extension is tacked on to the end of the original two years, or whether it begins as soon as USCIS accepts an application (in the latter case participants may end up with less than four years total) [see update for clarification on this issue]. The filing fees are also hard to determine, though they seem to be $575 per person, if I understand the USCIS website correctly. That goes well beyond any plausible administrative expenses and is a considerable burden for the many parolees who lost everything in the Russian invasion and may be employed at working-class jobs today. At the very least, the fees should be lowered.
In addition, the extension, like the original U4U program, is a matter of executive discretion. What Caesar giveth, he or his successor could taketh away—a very real danger, given the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House. It is not entirely clear whether the president could unilaterally strip U4U parolees of their status before their term ends. At the very least, the president could simply let the term expire and refuse to renew it.
Despite such limitations, the re-parole system is a useful step. Otherwise, many U4U participants will see their residency and work rights expire in 2024 or 2025. But, like the earlier grant of a right to apply for TPS status, this is not a substitute for giving Ukrainians permanent residency rights. Congress must pass an adjustment act to do that; I outlined the case for doing so here. There is in fact a bipartisan Ukrainian Adjustment Act proposed by several members of Congress. But it doesn't seem likely to pass this year. Similar adjustment acts should be adopted to cover Afghans, Venezuelans, and others in similar straits, who fled war and oppression, entered the US through the use of presidential parole power, and now face arbitrary time limits on their residency and work rights.
If you are a U4U participant or a sponsor who needs help with the re-parole process, please let me know and I will see if I can get answers to your questions.
I have made inquiries with government officials and other experts to try to clear up some of the uncertainties noted above. If I learn anything useful, I will update this post.
UPDATE: A USCIS official has now confirmed to me that Ukrainians who successfully apply for re-parole will get an additional two years on top of their full initial term. Thus, if someone's parole is expiring on April 25, 2024, they file for re-parole and USCIS grants it, the re-parole period will be a full two years beginning on April 25, 2024 and ending on April 25, 2026. The official also indicated that agency will be prioritizing the re-parole of persons whose initial parole period expires earliest, to minimize the risk of anyone losing employment rights in the meantime.
It is often said that "you can't kill an idea." Those who quote the saying usually do so to suggest you cannot defeat an ideology through the use of force. Thus, if the ideology has broad enough support, you have to accommodate it—at least to some significant extent.
This truism has recently been invoked in regards to Israel's war against Hamas. For example, top European Union diplomat Joseph Borrell warns that "Hamas is an idea and you don't kill an idea." John Sawers, former head of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency, similarly claims "you can kill individuals, you can't kill an idea." I have occasionally seen seen this trope invoked with respect to Russia. Even if Putin suffers a defeat in Ukraine, it is said, we can't kill the idea of Russian imperialist nationalism.
Such claims are false, or at least greatly overblown. Coercion can and often does kill ideas! But before going further, I should emphasize I do not mean to suggest that all ideological conflicts can and should be settled by force. Within liberal democracies, the best response to evil ideologies is usually a combination of constitutional constraints on government power, and suasion.
Even when large-scale force is both effective and necessary (as is sadly often true in dealing with terrorists and authoritarian regimes), it may work better if combined with other tools—sticks complemented by carrots. Finally, nothing in my argument suggests that "anything goes," even in conflicts with the most abhorrent of ideologies. Minimizing harm to innocent civilians is a moral imperative, even in cases where it may not be strategically necessary.
Taken literally, the claim that you cannot kill an idea is undeniably true. Ideas have no physical existence, and therefore cannot be destroyed by physical force. But force can and often does play a decisive role in ensuring that an idea doesn't get implemented. And that has important implications for how we should handle various conflicts, including those facing Ukraine and Israel. Overwhelming force can be a crucial tool.
Most obviously, implementation of an ideology can often be forestalled by killing its adherents. Dead fascists, communists, or radical Islamists cannot do much to implement their ideas. Perhaps their deaths will inspire others to take their places. But that is far from a given—especially, as we shall see, if the cause they espouse suffers a shattering defeat. Moreover, new recruits may lack the experience and skills of their predecessors. If, for example, Israel wipes out the best Hamas fighters or Ukraine decimates the most effective frontline Russian units, their replacements are likely to be less potent. And fear of being killed or wounded like their predecessors may deter many potential recruits from joining up at all.
In addition to personnel, effective implementation of an ideology usually requires institutions. The use of force can destroy those institutions. When the Nazi state was destroyed by the Allies, that made it extremely difficult for surviving Nazis to keep on implementing their ideas. The same goes for the destruction of the nascent Confederate state by the Union, the destruction of the ISIS regime by a US-led coalition, and many other cases. Ideologies whose implementation itself requires large-scale coercion—including fascism, communism, and Hamas' radical Islamism—are particularly in need of institutional support. Thus they are particularly likely to be stymied by the destruction of their institutions.
Sometimes, institutions can be rebuilt. But doing so is a difficult task. And that rebuilding can itself be blocked by the use of force, or the threat of it.
So far, I have outlined ways in which the use of force can kill ideas by blocking their implementation even without changing anyone's mind. The dead cannot carry on the fight for their cause, even if they remained true believers to the end. And even living true believers often have little ability to do so if they lack the necessary institutions.
But history shows catastrophic defeat can greatly reduce the appeal of an ideology, as well. Conversely, victory can boost it. I outlined some of the reasons why in an earlier post on the Russia-Ukraine war:
Historically, victory in war has often boosted support for the ideology of the winners. The triumph of the American Revolution increased support for Enlightenment liberalism on both sides of the Atlantic, in the process advancing causes such as democratization and the abolition of slavery. The Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent Communist victories in the Russian Civil War and World War II greatly increased worldwide support for Marxism. Similarly, Mussolini and Hitler's early successes won new adherents for fascism.
By contrast, the crushing defeat of the Axis in World War II led to a collapse of support for fascist ideology, including even in Germany and Italy. The Soviet Union's defeat in the Cold War (admittedly only partly military) and subsequent collapse greatly weakened the appeal of communism….
Throughout human history, ideologies have risen and fallen in part based on success and failure in military and geopolitical conflict.
Much of this reflects irrational factors in public opinion formation. Victory in war doesn't actually tell us much about the merits of the winner's ideology. Might does not make right…
But in a world where public opinion is heavily influenced by ignorance and bias, people routinely use crude information shortcuts to make political judgments. One such shortcut is the presumption that it's good to be on winning side. If adherents of an ideology prevail in a high-profile war, there must be something to their ideas! Such biases may be reinforced by the fallacious, but widespread assumptions that it's necessarily good to be "on the right side of history" and that the "arc of the moral universe bends towards justice." If so, one way of telling which side has a just cause is by looking to see who wins!
Another notable example from American history is the defeat of the Confederacy. The ideas of slavery and secession were crushed by coercion more than persuasion. Before and during the war, Confederates openly and proudly avowed their commitment to these ideals. Crushing defeat led most to accept that secession was impossible, and many to pretend they had not actually been fighting for slavery at all, but rather for "states rights."
Defeat is particularly likely to drain support from ideologies that rely heavily on projecting an image of strength and power. That's true of many forms of nationalism, including that of Vladimir Putin's Russia. Projecting strength is a major theme of Putin's propaganda, even including such things as depicting Putin himself as a virile macho hunter and athlete. If a regime that boasts of its strength suffers a crushing defeat and is thereby revealed to be weak, that is likely to reduce support for its ideology. Just ask the Nazis and Italian and Japanese fascists!
Furthermore, crushing defeat undermines hope that the cause will ever ultimately triumph. In principle, adherents can retain their commitment to their cause, even if they believe it has little or no chance of success. But fighting on without hope is painful and depressing. So, many one-time believers—especially less committed adherents—will instead turn their backs on the ideology and even try to persuade themselves and others they never really supported it in the first place. Consider the way many Germans, after World War II, claimed they never supported Hitler (even though all too many had in fact backed him).
Such dynamics may not affect the most fanatical adherents of an ideology. But hard-core ideologues can't win without the aid of a much larger group of less committed adherents. No ideological movement has ever prevailed without the backing of large numbers of the latter.
In sum, the use of force—especially in the form of inflicting crushing defeats—can and often does kill ideas. As we consider how to counter enemies of Western liberal democracy, we would do well to keep in mind the persuasive power of victory.
That does not mean we should rely on force alone. To the contrary, it often helps to couple force with positive ideological appeals, promising a better life to those who reject the ideology of our adversaries. For that reason, among others, I have advocated opening Western doors to both Russian and Gaza Palestinian refugees fleeing their respective horrific regimes and the wars they started.
We should also incentivize Russian troops to surrender, reach out to Russian opposition leaders like Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, and emphasize that a future, more liberal Russia will get good treatment, like that accorded to Germany, Italy, and Japan after World War II. For their part, Israeli leaders would do well to consider how to more effectively appeal to and reward Palestinians willing to reject Hamas's ideology.
Ideally, we should use the big stick of force to crush and demoralize adherents of the enemy's ideology, while simultaneously offering carrots to those who repudiate it, or sometimes (as in the case of Russian military deserters) even just simply refuse to support the enemy regime. In any given case, finding the optimal balance between the two can be difficult. I certainly don't claim this post is anything like a definitive guide to how to do it. But I hope it may achieve the much more modest goal of explaining how and why the use of force often plays a key role in killing ideas.
Today is the second anniversary of the start of Vladimir Putin's brutal effort to conquer Ukraine. While Russian aggression against Ukraine dates back to the seizure of Crimea and parts of the Donbass in 2014, the February 2022 invasion vastly escalated the conflict, led to large-scale death and destruction, and—even worse—extensive atrocities committed by Russian forces.
This is an update of last year's February 24 post, compiling my writings about the conflict up to that time. There have been many more over subsequent year. I ended last year's post with the hope that Ukraine might win a decisive victory soon, but also stating "I fear I may be compiling another list like it a year from now." Sadly, that fear has come to pass.
In this post, I compile links to my writings about the conflict over the last two years. Many focus on the enormous refugee crisis it has triggered, as that is the aspect most closely related to my areas of expertise. But I have also written on a variety other issues related to the conflict.
Since the early days of the conflict, I have advocated that the US and other Western nations should open their doors to both Ukrainian refugees and Russians fleeing Vladimir Putin's increasingly repressive regime. Over time, I have become more and more convinced that the West should give Ukraine as much weaponry and supplies as possible, in order to push for the largest possible Ukrainian victory. The Ukrainians have done well militarily; their recent problems are largely a result of ammunition and supply shortages caused by slowdowns in US and other western aid. Russia's forces, for their part, have suffered heavy losses, are only modestly competent, and have poor morale and discipline. They can be beaten, if only the West is willing to make a fairly modest investment, much of which can be funded by confiscating Russian government assets in Western nations.
There are also large moral and strategic benefits to Ukrainian victory. The moral aspect is obvious—saving millions of people from oppression, atrocities, and mass murder at the hands of a brutal authoritarian regime. In addition, Ukrainian victory would give a boost to liberal democracy in its ideological struggle against authoritarian nationalism. Strategically, Putin's regime is one of the main enemies of the United States and the West. Any Russian forces damaged or destroyed in Ukraine are ones we don't have to face elsewhere. And a defeat for Russia is also the best hope for a more liberal, or at least hostile, government in that country.
Those who claim helping Ukraine is a diversion from countering China in the Pacific would do well to remember that our Asian allies—including Taiwan—believe helping Ukraine is in their strategic interest. They know that weakening Russia also weakens China (for whom Russia is a key ally), and that showing resolve in Ukraine helps deter China, as well.
I discuss many of these points—and others—in greater detail in various pieces linked below.
In the first part of this post, I compile links to writings on refugee and immigration issues. In the latter part, I compile links to other pieces. Unless otherwise noted, all of these pieces were published right here at the Volokh Conspiracy blog, hosted by Reason.
I list them in chronological order. If you just want to look at more recent pieces, simply scroll down!
"Learning From People Who Vote with their Feet," Oct. 5, 2022. This piece explains what we can learn about the quality of Russia's government from the fact that large numbers of people are voting with their feet against it.
"We Sponsored Refugees Under a New Biden Program. The Results Were Astonishing," Washington Post, Jan. 3, 2023 (non-paywall version here). This was probably my second-most influential piece on issues related to the war. It apparently led over 100 people to sign up as refugee sponsors in the Uniting for Ukraine program, according to data compiled by the Welcome.US sponsor matching site. I have since sponsored several additional Ukrainian migrants myself, and have helped other people become sponsors.
I have also done a variety of podcasts and broadcast media interviews on migration and refugee issues arising from the war. For examples, see here,here, here, and here.
II. Writings on Other Issues Related to the War
"Law, Justice, and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict," Feb. 23, 2022 (post written just as the Russian attack began; I think it's still a helpful summary of the moral and legal issues at stake in the war).
"Two Illiberal and Unjust Zelensky Policies the West Should Force Him to End," April 1, 2022. This drew more negative reactions than anything else I have written about the war. Still, I stand by it. Zelensky's government is vastly better than Putin's and deserves Western support in the war. But that doesn't justify overlooking its wrongs.
"Fund Ukraine's War Effort by Confiscating Russian Government Assets," Nov. 17, 2023. The importance of this issue is underestimated. The $300 billion in Russian government assets currently frozen in the West could, by itself, fund Ukraine's war effort for a long time to come.
"Alexei Navalny, RIP," Feb. 16, 2024. Russia's most prominent opposition leader—recently murdered by Putin—understood the evil of Putin's war on Ukraine.
I hope the US and its allies bolster support to Ukraine, and the war reaches a successful resolution soon. But, once again, I fear I may end up posting another list like this in 2025.
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What a real invasion looks like. Russian armored vehicle in Ukraine. March 2022.Ilya Sominhttps://reason.com/people/ilya-somin/isomin@gmu.eduhttps://reason.com/?post_type=volokh-post&p=82656092024-02-16T23:09:14Z2024-02-16T17:13:07Z
Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader, died in prison today at the age of only 47. Given that he was previously poisoned (likely at Vladimir Putin's order), it seems likely that his death was ordered by Putin, as well.
In 2021, after being treated for the poisoning in Germany, Navalny bravely returned to Russia, despite knowing he was likely to be arrested and imprisoned on arrival (as indeed happened). The charges against him were obviously trumped up; his real crime was opposing Putin's dictatorship.
Navalny devoted his life to opposing Putin's brutal regime, despite the grave risks of doing so. At times, he took some dubious positions in order to appeal to Russian nationalists, as with his waffling on the issue of Russia's seizure of Crimea, which he called illegal and unjust, but also said should not be reversed. But there can be no doubt Navalny stood for a vastly freer and more democratic Russia than now exists. Even in prison, he denounced Putin's war against Ukraine and called for the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine's internationally recognized borders (which would require withdrawal from Crimea, as well).
Navalny's views are not above criticism. But Westerners who think he didn't go far enough in his opposition to Putin should ask themselves if they would have had the courage to do as much as he did, were they in his place—knowing the price of dissent could well be imprisonment and death.
It is well to remember that Navalny was far from the only political prisoner in Putin's Russia. Opposition leaders such as Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin remain in prison right now. Western nations should press for their release.
We can also open our doors to Russians fleeing Putin's regime, as many nations have done for Ukrainian refugees. As Ilya Yashin (another opposition leader imprisoned for resisting Putin), urges us, we should not forget that " hundreds of thousands of [his] countrymen left their homes behind, refusing to become murderers on the orders of the government," and should "extend a hand" to Russians who oppose the regime.
It's always concerning when any federal legislation gets solid bipartisan support. That's certainly the case with the U.S. Senate's overwhelming support on Tuesday for a $95 billion supplemental foreign aid package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.
Only two Democrats, one independent, and 26 Republicans voted against sending billions of dollars to conflicts that the U.S. is neither a belligerent in nor stands much of a chance of changing the outcome of with more money.
To hear supporters of the additional spending tell it, this aid isn't necessarily about changing the course of either war. Rather, it's about reminding the world we're still a "leader."
"With this bill, the Senate declares that American leadership will not waver, will not falter, will not fail," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) after the vote, per the Wall Street Journal.
"There are no guarantees that Ukraine will defeat Russia," said Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah) on the Senate floor prior to the vote. But billions more in aid "allows America to remain the leader of the free world, and it shows that we honor our word to our friends and allies."
The 26 Republicans who voted against the aid bill—citing its fiscal impact, the more pressing need for federal resources at the southern border, and/or the hopelessness of a Ukrainian victory—were choosing "to forget about world leadership," wroteNew York Times columnist Bret Stephens.
The three non-Republican nos—Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), Peter Welch (D–Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.)—all based their opposition on the civilian casualties Israel is inflicting in Gaza.
One would think that "leadership" would involve more than just throwing money at interminable conflicts. It should also involve some judgment about what U.S. aid money is actually buying, whether the sticker price is worth it, and if we truly need to be the ones picking up the tab.
If U.S. leaders were to exercise more of the judgment that "world leadership" requires, they'd be sending $0 to either Ukraine or Israel.
The case for cutting aid to Israel is the easiest to make. It's a wealthy state with a modern military and plenty of resources at its disposal to prosecute its war in Gaza. Israeli taxpayers could easily cover military spending that U.S. taxpayers are currently shouldering. It doesn't need the additional $14 billion the Senate aid bill would send it.
The humanitarian case for cutting off U.S. support should also be compelling to anyone watching Gaza being turned into the lunar surface with U.S.-funded weapons. Even if it's not, cutting off U.S. aid is one of those odd horseshoe issues that unites critics and some supporters of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
People who think Israel is too aggressive in prosecuting the war, and needlessly killing civilians as a result, have argued against more U.S. aid given how complicit it makes us in the slaughter.
"I cannot vote to send more bombs and shells to Israel when they are using them in an indiscriminate manner against Palestinian civilians," said Sen. Merkley, one of the Democratic 'no's votes, in a statement explaining his vote.
On the other side of the issue are Israeli hawks who think U.S. aid comes with endless humanitarian conditions that handicap Israel's war effort.
"The biggest issue now is the control [U.S. aid] gives over our foreign policy. It is a concession of sovereignty and the decision making," said former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren on the EconTalk podcast earlier this month. "Even in the United States, they say, 'We can criticize Israel because we pay taxes.'"
Both sides are dissatisfied with the current middle ground the Biden administration is hewing of supplying weapons to Israel on the condition that they don't kill too many people with them.
To defend this middle ground, the Biden administration also has to go through the awkward contortions of arguing that Israel is a sovereign nation that doesn't have to answer to the U.S. while also trying to enforce humanitarian limitations on the use of U.S.-provided weapons.
All the money the U.S. is sending Israel certainly hasn't made the Israeli government more open to the Biden administration's pressure for a ceasefire or a post-war recognition of a Palestinian state.
So, if U.S. aid to Israel isn't improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza, isn't changing the course of the war, and is making everyone mad, why keep giving it?
Much the same can be said of U.S. aid to Ukraine, which at first blush, presents a more sympathetic case for American support.
Ukraine is a poor country that can't as easily pay for its own defense against a more powerful authoritarian invader. U.S. weaponry is arguably essential in keeping its war effort alive in the short term.
That still leaves unanswered the larger questions of what Ukraine with U.S. aid can realistically achieve and what risks the U.S. runs by continuing to provide it.
The U.S. has committed $44 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion, plus another $30 billion in nonmilitary aid. All told, Congress has appropriated $113 billion in military and nonmilitary Ukraine-related spending.
The result is a World War I–style stalemate that shows no signs of abating. A much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive last year failed to change this reality. An endless supply of Western weaponry can't erase the fact that Ukraine is running out of men for its army.
The grim reality is that even with another $60 billion, Ukraine is not going to be able to evict Russian troops from its pre-war borders.
"If Ukraine remains indefinitely on the defensive, then the areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia will remain in Russian hands—not legally, of course, but de facto," wrote Quincy Institute scholar Anatol Lieven at Responsible Statecraft last week.
The unavoidable takeaway is that Ukraine's war against Russia can, at best, end in a negotiated peace that cedes to Russia some of the territory it already controls.
Lieven suggests that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's shake-up of the country's military leadership, and the political turmoil generally in Ukraine, is primarily about politicians trying to position themselves so that they don't get the blame for the eventual negotiated peace.
How Ukraine eventually decides to make peace with Russia is obviously up to that country and its leaders to decide. Still, if you subsidize something, you get more of it. By continuing to fund Ukraine's war effort, the U.S. is encouraging the country to keep playing out the bloody status quo rather than begin the politically fraught, but inevitable, process of hashing out a peace agreement.
The lack of benefits of U.S Ukraine aid is compounded by the serious risks it runs that our proxy war with Russia becomes an actual war with Russia. That would be truly disastrous for the entire globe.
Supporters of continued Ukraine aid often try to minimize its cost by comparing it to ever larger buckets of federal spending.
"We were told that we couldn't afford the $60 billion for Ukraine-related funding. But somehow, we can afford an $850 billion defense budget and annual trillion-dollar deficits," said Romney during his floor remarks.
We actually can't afford those things either. To argue Ukraine aid is a drop in the bucket is to take the perverse position that the more bloated the defense budget, and the higher the deficit, the less we should care about each additional dollar spent.
The willingness to just throw money at foreign policy problems is how we got our current oversized defense budget. The pitifully little we have to show for all that money spent is one of the reasons that a sizable portion of Republican lawmakers are willing to vote against more spending on foreign wars.
Whether that growing skepticism of foreign military aid on the right will be enough to sink the Senate's aid bill in the Republican-controlled House remains to be seen.
War continues to be a bipartisan vote-getter.
Still, one can't shake the ultimate conclusion that U.S. aid isn't changing the outcome of the war in Ukraine or Gaza. It's just changing who ultimately has to pay the monetary price for them.
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Zach Weissmuellerhttps://reason.com/people/zach-weissmueller/zach.weissmueller@reason.comLiz Wolfehttps://reason.com/people/liz-wolfe/liz.wolfe@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?post_type=podcast&p=82653312024-02-15T15:23:55Z2024-02-15T17:00:12ZThe American Conservative, talks U.S. foreign policy on the latest episode of Just Asking Questions.]]>
"The greatest risk of a Republican administration is a war with Iran, and the greatest risk of a Democratic administration is a war with Russia," says Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative, a magazine for the types of conservatives who are skeptical of foreign military intervention.
Mills joined Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe on the latest episode of Just Asking Questions to talk about a $95.3 billion aid package, including $60 billion for Ukraine, that passed the Senate this week, which Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) called a "middle finger to America" during his filibuster of the bill. In this episode, they discuss the bill's passage, Paul's filibuster, Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent interview with Tucker Carlson, the Biden administration's airstrikes against Yemen, and whether or not the surge of foreign policy noninterventionism within the GOP is likely to last past 2024.
Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or on the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.
Do authoritarians, in fact, do it better? Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was in Moscow this week to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, had very nice things to say about the capital city during a speech in Dubai: "[Moscow] is so much cleaner and safer and prettier, aesthetically. Its architecture, its food, its service, than any … city in the United States. And this is not ideological. How did that happen? How did that happen? And at a certain point, I don't think the average person cares as much about abstractions as about the concrete reality of his life. And if you can't use your subway, for example, as many people are afraid to in New York City because it's too dangerous, isn't that the ultimate measure of leadership?"
But Carlson, who seems to be going through his foreign-exchange-student-likes-Barcelona-more-than-Paducah phase, misses a few finer details.
If you are a journalist, life in Moscow means constant fear of reprisal; pissing off the state means certain imprisonment. If you enjoy gay bars or other forms of LGBT-oriented nightlife, get ready for police raids. If you're an evangelical protestant, you will not be permitted to live out your faith. (Over the last decade, more than 500 Jehovah's Witnesses have been convicted of or charged with extremism, with many serving sentences.) And, if you're Ukrainian, well, sorry about your family getting brutally slaughtered and your homeland getting desecrated; hope you enjoy the clean subway system nonetheless.
Carlson goes on to say that Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi "are wonderful places to live." (And, oddly, that hegrew up in a country that had cities like those, which is odd because American cities in the '70s and '80s did not look like Abu Dhabi, and were not extraordinarily safe.)
One reason why we don't have clean streets in New York the way they do in Singapore is because we don't cane people for minor crimes. We don't give people the death penalty for manufacturing drugs (200 grams of cannabis resin warrants execution, if you're not careful), nor do we lock people in jail for a decade for the purported crime of getting high. We don't crack down on jaywalking, spitting, or cigarette-smoking the way they do. We also don't tend to use corporal punishment for our children.
Carlson's point is fine that people care about quality of life issues, that Skid Row in Los Angeles and subway-station junkies in New York City are embarrassments, and that our city officials ought to be able to clean up the streets to improve the lives of taxpaying residents—not just when Xi Jinping comes to town. You might think existing public disorder needs to be curbed, but there are many possible ways of doing so that could still protect civil liberties and wouldn't turn American cities into authoritarian hellholes. (In fact, we should probably turn to Russian out-migrationnumbersto seewhetherresidents agreewith Carlson's assessment.)
I simply do not think we need to hand it to authoritarians under any circumstances or speak in flattering terms about Putin's ability to govern. It's not that compliments like these ought to be haram; it's that Carlson is examining only one side of the ledger, and missing all the ways Russian laws rain down brutality on the innocent and undeserving. Just ask some of the tourists who've had their stays in Russia involuntarily prolonged, like Brittney Griner.
Senate passes Ukraine aid bill: Early this morning, an aid package for Israel and Ukraine cleared the Senate, as a group of Republicans split from their party and voted with the Democrats. The $95 billion emergency aid bill—$60 billion of which is meant for Ukraine, bringing the total U.S.-footed tab to $170 billion—must now clear the House, which makes its fate uncertain.
On Monday night, a group of 17 Republicans, mostly moderates and national security hawks, joined with Democrats to get the bill across a final procedural hurdle. Then, this morning, five more Republicans joined the dissenters' ranks. This saga highlights what most Republicans already know to be true: that the party is sorely divided on whether the United States ought to be the world's police, and—if consensus is shifting away from that role—how the U.S. ought to deal with its allies in the interim.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D–Calif.) said last night in a debate between candidates vying for California's empty U.S. Senate seat that she would support a $25 minimum wage and, possibly, even a $50 per hour minimum wage in the Bay Area.
Current Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel is set to step down at the end of the month. Donald Trump has endorsed his daughter-in-law, Lara, as a possible pick to replace McDaniel.
Hot take but I'm not sure 5-year-olds should be glued to computer screens:
one of my least favorite pandemic things is that tmw instead of a snow day my 5 year will have "remote kindergarten." REMOTE KINDERGARTEN?!?!? That's not a thing!!!! all she should be worrying about tomorrow is cartoons & hot chocolate with marshmallows, I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL
"Estonia's prime minister has been put on a wanted list in Russia because of her efforts to remove Soviet-era World War II monuments in the Baltic nation, officials said Tuesday," per the Associated Press. "The name of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas appeared on the Russian Interior Ministry's list of people wanted on unspecified criminal charges, although it was unclear when she was added, according to Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet. The list includes scores of officials and lawmakers from other Baltic nations."
Since we're taking a little trip through Central and Eastern Europe this morning, you might as well spend some time gnawing on Matt Welch's 2021 piece, "No Self-Respecting American Should Aspire to Hungarian-Style Nationalism."
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Matt Welchhttps://reason.com/people/matt-welch/matt.welch@reason.comNick Gillespiehttps://reason.com/people/nick-gillespie/gillespie@reason.comPeter Sudermanhttps://reason.com/people/peter-suderman/peter.suderman@reason.comEmma Camphttps://reason.com/people/emma-camp/emma.camp@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?post_type=podcast&p=82651302024-02-13T15:59:13Z2024-02-12T21:56:53Z
In this week's TheReason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and special guest Emma Camp react to the announcement that President Joe Biden will not be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents and parse a fresh batch of speech gaffes underpinning his apparent cognitive decline.
00:29—Quick reactions to last night's Super Bowl LVIII
06:10—Special counsel will not prosecute Joe Biden in classified documents case.
26:06—House Republicans attempt to tie foreign aid spending bill to domestic border crisis.
35:12—Weekly Listener Question
44:48—Congressional Budget Office delivers latest bleak report on future U.S. economic outlook
Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.
Today's sponsor:
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Liz Wolfehttps://reason.com/people/liz-wolfe/liz.wolfe@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82646002024-02-08T19:01:20Z2024-02-08T14:30:18ZBusiness Insider's journalism attempt, and more...]]>
Immigration/foreign aid deal stalled: And it's Ukraine that stands to lose.
Ukrainian military officials toldThe New York Times that on the eastern front, in places like Avdiivka, "the ratio of Russian to Ukrainian artillery fire is five to one," which means Ukrainian soldiers are being forced to conserve and put their own lives in danger when smaller groups of Russian forces approach. Russia, meanwhile, is being supplied by North Korea, Iran, and China.
It's an example of how American congressional haggling has a direct impact on the Zelenskyy-Putin showdown in Ukraine. Currently, America supplies about half of Ukraine's total foreign aid, to the tune of nearly $50 billion. But now, a deal that would have cracked down on the U.S.-Mexico border while supplying aid to Israel and Ukraine has collapsed in the Senate. To some, the stalled aid package is evidence that America is beginning to quench her thirst for foreign entanglements; to others, it's a gloomy sign that Ukraine may fall without continued U.S. assistance.
"Ukraine has found itself outgunned before," reports the Times. "In the first days, the military handed rifles from the backs of trucks to all willing to take them in Kyiv, as Russian troops advanced through the city's suburbs. Eventually, new American weaponry arrived, such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS, and Patriot air defense missiles. Now, Ukraine is once again seeking ways to adapt and improvise by expanding domestic armaments manufacturing and relying more heavily on drones built from commercially available, off-the-shelf parts."
Ukraine has also self-sabotaged via its own internal corruption scandals, including one involving top defense officials allegedly embezzling some $40 million meant to buy more arms.
Milei takes some heat: Yesterday, news broke that the party of Argentine President Javier Milei, La Libertad Avanza, has introduced a bill to parliament that would ban abortion in the country.
Abortion would be criminalized for women who seek it as well as for their doctors, a repeal of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Law, which currently legalizes abortion up to 14 weeks in Argentina (and forces taxpayers to pay for it so the government may provide it to anyone who wants it, free of charge).
La Libertad Avanza's bill calls for judges to have a great deal of discretion when deciding criminal penalties for abortion-seekers. Judges should consider "the reasons that prompted her to commit the crime, her subsequent attitude, and the nature of the fact" and prison terms should range from one to three years.
Javier Milei's swift action intended to transform Argentina's floundering economy provoked the country's biggest labor union to call tens of thousands to protest in Buenos Aires against his libertarian agenda. pic.twitter.com/WJn6ySB4UV
A Spielplatz (playground) in Berlin that's only for 6- to 12-year-olds. No parents allowed, no rules, no babies. A perfect free-range/free-play environment. (Reminds me of The Yard, New York's only adventure playground, on Governor's Island.) The kids had made a massive bonfire, which is part terrifying, part awesome. Can't wait to go back and visit again when my son is older.
QUICK HITS
"Those who argue that the tax code shouldn't favor parenthood treat children as a lifestyle choice or a consumption good, like a Tesla," writes Tim Carney in The Wall Street Journal. "The tax code shouldn't be pro-Tesla, but it should be pro-human, especially amid our baby bust."
Socialized healthcare isn't what people think:
All these dumb Americans who think socialized healthcare is the only metric that matters should go visit a cancer-stricken relative as they lay dying in an NHS hospital in Britain. I done that, friend, and it ain't whatever you think it is. It's not happiness and salvation.
"Former Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley has long maintained that he cut off his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein once he became boss of the UK bank," reportsBloomberg. "Legal documents seen by Bloomberg News claim that he had indirect contact with the late pedophile financier for years after that" via an intermediary.
I wish these people spent as much time investigating the rampant fraud and corruption of our public servants as they do "exposing" the identity of anonymous fintwit meme accounts https://t.co/8S7X458c6B
Very normal, healthy behavior: "Pakistan has suspended mobile calls and data services as millions head to the polls to vote in a new government," reports the BBC.
The regulators are coming for your paella. "A Spanish rice variety traditionally used to make paella is under threat from a fungus after the European Union banned a pesticide farmers said they relied upon, in another example of how the bloc's environmental rules are angering growers," reports Reuters.
Truly:
These ghouls always use the word "resurfaced" like it's a dead body that floated to the top of a lake. No. You searched for them, like gravediggers, picking the bones of the dead. pic.twitter.com/5beftNUUT8
Nothing enhances your appreciation for firearms like needing one to defend your family and yourself. That's certainly the experience of Ukrainians, say researchers. Many residents of the war-torn country—men in particular, who traditionally carry the burden of fighting and military service—recently told interviewers that they either own firearms or want to acquire them.
Ukraine Needs Guns
"Crazy thought, but those 20 million AR-15s now in this country could sure arm a lot of Ukrainians," actor and gun-control advocate George Takei snarked a few months after Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine. It wasn't his intention, but a lot of Ukrainians have come to agree with him.
"Between 43 and 46 per cent of men in every age group indicated that they either already own a firearm (7 per cent overall) or would like to own one," Gergely Hideg wrote last month for the Geneva, Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. "Only 11 per cent of women expressed the desire to own a firearm."
That disparity in opinion would seem to indicate a clash between the sexes until you remember that, while the demands of resisting Russia's invasion have thrust women into new roles, Ukraine is a traditional society with corresponding expectations about gender. That relatively few women want to own guns doesn't mean they lack appreciation for their defensive power.
"Despite women not wanting a firearm for themselves and many thinking that it is not necessary to have one, firearm proficiency appears to be regarded as an expected skill for a husband," Hideg adds. "Nearly six in ten women interviewed believed that 'some' (38 per cent) or 'most' (19 per cent) wives in their area expect their husbands to be familiar with firearms and know how to use them."
Why would that be? Because for two years, Ukrainians have been fighting for their independence against Russian invaders, and you don't do that with harsh words. In their defense, Ukrainian officials lobbied allies for heavy equipment and handed small arms to their own people.
"Gun shops have sold out of some weapons, such as AR-10 and AR-15 assault rifles," The Guardianreported the day before war began.
"We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on February 24, 2022.
An Armed Society Is a Society Accustomed To Being Armed
"Firearm possession appears to be more normalized nowadays in Ukraine," Hideg commented in the December 2023 Small Arms Survey report. Reasons cited for owning firearms include hunting (53 percent of respondents), defense against criminals (21 percent) and "protection against potential enemies" (14 percent). Potential enemies from a neighboring country? That's a good guess.
The report's author also observed that survey respondents did not all appear to be truthfully answering questions about firearms possession and that the rate of ownership was probably higher than formal responses suggest.
That certainly reflects the experience in the United States. Last summer, researchers with Rutgers University's New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center concluded that many survey respondents claiming to not own firearms are lying and actually possess guns.
"It may be that a percentage of firearm owners are concerned that their information will be leaked and the government will take their firearms or that researchers who are from universities that are typically seen as liberal and anti-firearm access will paint firearm owners in a bad light," the authors allowed.
Civilian Guns Are Here To Stay
Citizens of a country where civilian gun ownership has historically been less widespread than in the United States may also be concerned about attempts at disarmament. Weapons distributed by the government are, theoretically, supposed to be returned when hostilities end. Don't count on it.
"Ukrainians are in no hurry to return their weapons," notes Hideg. "A plurality of Ukrainians (39 per cent) concur that soldiers will keep (at least some of) their firearms instead of returning them to the military after the war ends."
Of course, even assuming their records are in order, postwar officials will face challenges proving that weapons handed to civilians were not lost in combat. There's also the matter of battlefield pickups. That's in addition to the many firearms privately purchased before the war and likely to be supplemented afterwards by people increasingly comfortable with their possession.
Even if, contrary to their announced attention to ease gun laws, Ukrainian officials ultimately succumb to European pressure to tighten them, they'll face the usual uphill battle against their own people. Ukrainians are unlikely to be more willing than anybody else to surrender what they possess, or to submit to laws they've concluded are bad ideas. There's also the challenge posed by human innovation.
"Improvements in technology and information sharing have transformed PMFs [privately made firearms] from crude, impractical homemade devices of limited value to most criminals into highly functional weapons that are increasingly viewed as viable substitutes for factory-built firearms, including converted firearms, ghost guns, and 3D printed weapons," finds another December 2023 Small Arms Survey report.
The European Union also reportedly has a thriving market for "illicit firearms ammunition and other explosive munitions," according to a third publication.
So, Ukrainians who want to own firearms for a variety of reasons after the experience of the war with Russia are almost certain to have their desires satisfied. They'll end up armed through legal markets, the leavings of combat, or the growing and increasingly sophisticated European black market.
Challenge Accepted
If it's any consolation to opponents of private arms, Ukrainians have yet to catch up with Americans.
"More than half of American voters—52%—say they or someone in their household owns a gun," NBC News reported in November 2022. "That's the highest share of voters who say that they or someone in their household owns a gun in the history of the NBC News poll."
Almost half of Ukrainian men want to assume the responsibilities of being armed? That's a healthy start.
Last week, I wrote about the case of Maria Kartasheva, a Russian immigrant whose application for Canadian citizenship was blocked because a Russian court convicted her of the "crime" of speaking out against Russian atrocities in Ukraine. She could even potentially have been deported back to Russia, where an eight-year prison sentence awaited her. For reasons outlined in my earlier post, this was a truly ridiculous decision. Fortunately, Canada's Ministry of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship has now announced a reversal of this previous action, and Kartasheva will be granted citizenship, after all:
Maria Kartasheva, 30, has lived in Ottawa since 2019.
She was convicted under a Russian law passed shortly after the full-scale invasion in of Ukraine in February 2022. The law prohibits "public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation."
Her convictions stem from two blog entries from March 2022, when she posted photos and wrote in Russian expressing her horror at the Bucha massacre…..
Under Canadian immigration rules, if an applicant is charged with a crime in another country that could be indictable under Canada's Criminal Code, their application can be revoked or refused….
According to a December letter from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the crime she committed in Russia "would equate to false information under subsection 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada…."
On Tuesday afternoon, Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller said in a social media post that Kartasheva "will not face deportation and has been invited to become a Canadian citizen."
I am happy that sanity prevailed in this case. But it's ridiculous the issue was ever in doubt in the first place. Speaking out against horrific war crimes is surely not the kind of "crime" that can ever justify denial of citizenship or deportation from any liberal democracy worthy of the name.
Since the start of the conflict, I have been making the case that the US and other Western nations—including Canada – should open their doors to Russians fleeing Vladimir Putin's increasingly repressive regime. Even for those who wouldn't go as far in this direction as I advocate, the case of a dissenter facing imprisonment for speaking out against Putin's war war should be a no-brainer.
Maria Kartasheva, a Russian migrant in Canada may be denied citizenship and potentially be deported because she was convicted of a "crime" back in Russia. What was her heinous offense? She wrote blog posts condemning Putin's invasion of Ukraine and war crimes committed by Russian troops there:
Federal officials are blocking a pro-democracy activist from Canadian citizenship because a Russian court convicted her for blog posts opposing Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Maria Kartasheva is appealing the decision by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and says she fears being deported to a Russian prison.
Kartasheva left Russia in 2019 because of rising authoritarianism, and is now a tech worker in Ottawa who co-founded a grassroots activist group for democracy in Russia….
Kartasheva, 30, learned via her family that in late 2022 she was charged by Russian authorities with a wartime offence of disseminating "deliberately false information" about Russia forces. The charges related to two blog posts she wrote while living in Canada.
Kartasheva notified Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada about the charges and uploaded translated court documents last May. Days later the department gave her an invitation to her citizenship ceremony.
On June 7, 2023, she logged into the ceremony alongside her husband. In the pre-interview that takes place before someone is allowed into the ceremony room, they were asked if anyone had been criminally charged, as part of a list of standard questions.
When she explained what had happened, an official pulled her out of the ceremony, though her husband went ahead and was given his citizenship…..
Last month, the department sent her a letter, saying that her conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offence in Canada relating to false information.
Kartasheva's blog posts condemning the invasion of Ukraine and atrocities committed by Russian forces ran afoul of new draconian Russian laws criminalizing dissent on the war. A Russian court convicted her in absentia, and sentenced her to an eight-year prison sentence. Ironically, Elena Lenskaya—the judge who sentenced Kartasheva—is under sanctions by Canada, for her role in perpetrating human rights violations. Yet Canadian immigration authorities are relying on her decision in this case as a reason to deny citizenship.
There is much stupidity and downright evil in US immigration law and policy. But if Canadian authorities don't reverse this decision, it would be up there with some of the worst of ours.
If anything, Kartasheva's conviction for speaking out against the war should help her cause, not hurt it. Like the US, Canada has a law granting refugee or asylum status to people who have a "well-founded fear of persecution" for their political views. If anyone has such a "well-founded fear," it's a person who faces a lengthy prison sentence for speaking out against her government's war of aggression and atrocities.
Last year, Canada granted refugee status to a young Russian fleeing conscription into Putin's war. Kartasheva's case is at least equally worthy. And the idea that her conviction is a crime meriting denial of citizenship in a liberal democratic society is absurd.
Since the start of the conflict, I have been making the case that Western nations should open their doors to Russians fleeing Putin's regime, on both moral and strategic grounds. For some of my writings on this topic, see here, here, here, and here. But even those unwilling to go as far in this direction as I advocate should at least be open to accepting Russians who face persecution and imprisonment for speaking out against the war.
The Financial Times reports that the US, European states, and other allies are considering seizing some $300 billion in Russian government assets located in Western nations, and giving them to Ukraine to fund its defense against Russia's war of aggression:
The US has proposed that working groups from the G7 explore ways to seize $300bn in frozen Russian assets, as the allies rush to agree a plan in time for the second anniversary of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
While no decisions have been taken and the issue remains hotly debated inside European capitals, the acceleration of work on confiscating Moscow's assets for Ukraine highlights its rising importance for the west.
The topic was discussed this month by both G7 finance ministers and their deputies, according to people briefed on the calls, which touched on how to develop such a policy and assess the risks involved.
The US, backed by the UK, Japan and Canada, has proposed moving forward with the preparatory work so the options would be ready for a potential meeting of G7 leaders around February 24, the date of Vladimir Putin's 2022 offensive on Kyiv.
The US and other allies shouldn't wait till February. They should instead move ahead immediately. Ukraine needs all the weapons and supplies it can get as quickly as possible. There is no reason to wait. Indeed, waiting will just unnecessarily prolong the war and associated suffering, enabling the Russian military to commit more atrocities and war crimes, as the Ukrainians run low on munitions.
In a previous post, I addressed a variety of objections to this step, such as claims that it is unfair to the Russian people, that it threatens property rights, that it would lead to a dangerous slippery slope, and that it would undermine international law. These arguments are all either flat-out wrong, or not compelling enough to outweigh the moral and strategic benefits of confiscating Russian state assets. The post also includes links to more detailed analyses by various experts.
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The Bank of Russia.Zach Weissmuellerhttps://reason.com/people/zach-weissmueller/zach.weissmueller@reason.comLiz Wolfehttps://reason.com/people/liz-wolfe/liz.wolfe@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?post_type=podcast&p=82583572023-12-21T20:16:10Z2023-12-14T17:45:07ZJust Asking Questions.]]>
"I have a history of being the only vote that was a 'no,'" says Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). "I've developed some trust with my constituents on those lone votes."
In the second episode of Just Asking Questions, Massie joins Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe to talk about his recent votes against aid to Ukraine and Israel, as well as a controversial meme that he posted on X (formerly Twitter), which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted as "antisemitic, disgusting, dangerous."
Massie says charges of antisemitism are "simply not true" and that his objectives are to avoid "open-ended support" for Israel's war and resist encroachments on free speech.
They also discussed Massie's attempt to force an in-person congressional vote on a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill in March 2020, a move which prompted former president Donald Trump to label Massie "a third-rate grandstander" and demand he be kicked out of the Republican Party. Massie defeated primary challenger Todd McMurtry 81-19 less than three months later.
"I was just trying to get people on record," says Massie. "The reason I was trying to get people on record is I knew this was one of the worst votes in history and nobody was going to be accountable for it… Here we are three years later, every bad thing that I said would happen as a result of [passing the $2.2 trillion relief package] has happened."
Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or on the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.
Watch the full video here and find a condensed transcript below.
Zach Weissmueller: I want to talk about something that's unfolding in D.C. right now, which is a vote on the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act. As part of that, the reauthorization of something called Section 702, which essentially allows the government to surveil communications between American citizens and foreign targets without a warrant. Though, after some resistance, a clean reauthorization of that is unlikely to happen. They're attaching it to the National Defense Authorization Act, which is kind of like the defense budget for the year. And they're trying to slip a more temporary extension into that. Could you tell us what is at stake for Americans with this issue?
Rep. Thomas Massie: So we're not trying to eliminate the FISA 702 program. It was established to allow our intelligence agencies to spy on foreigners without a warrant. In order to qualify to be spied on without a warrant, you have to be outside of the country and you have to be not an American citizen. If you're inside the country, or if you're an American citizen outside of the country, you can't be spied on by this program. Sounds great, right? But we've got 250,000 people on that list that we're collecting information on.
If you talk to a businessperson in France, for instance, your emails and stuff may get caught up in this data collection. Well, what they've been doing is going into this giant ball of data and they put in your name. They can put in Zach's name and search it without a warrant, without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. They are using this not to investigate suspects, but to create suspects.
Let's say that you and Liz are at a protest and they develop some nexus. They say, "Well, we think these protesters were inspired by Russia. We're just going to run all the protesters' names through this database." Now, even though the Intel community doesn't concede that they need a warrant for this, they've admitted that they violated their own protocols hundreds of thousands of times when they searched for U.S. persons data in this haystack. They say, "Well, it was created legally, so we don't need a warrant to go search it."
There are two proposals to reauthorize this program. By the way, the only chance you ever get to reform these programs is when they expire. So it's important that they do expire occasionally, and this one expires in January. And in the Judiciary Committee, which Jim Jordan chairs, and on which I serve, we've marked up a bill that would require them to get a warrant. It would create criminal penalties for people in the executive branch who abuse the program. Because there's never any culpability or blowback for anybody that's abused this program.
So we created this reform bill. And then the Intel committee has created a bill which is less than ideal. It doesn't have a warrant requirement. It doesn't have many of the reporting requirements back to Congress that the judiciary bill has. And in fact, it expands their ability to collect information. For instance, if you had free Wi-Fi at a cafe, that service provider would be treated like Google or Verizon now. And they would have to create a direct pipeline to the intel agencies for any of the communications that go through that.
So you've got two proposals out there, and we're running out of time. What Speaker Johnson has proposed and some senators have proposed is "Let's just keep the old program in place for a little bit longer." Your basic congressional kicking the can down the road exercise that's going to be passing the Senate probably today unless Mike Lee and Rand Paul can stop it. Then it comes to the House probably tomorrow.
Now, an interesting thing here is I serve on the Rules Committee, and Chip Roy and Ralph Norman do as well. And we told the powers that be that we can't go along with this. So they couldn't pass a rule to combine the FISA program with the NDAA. That's how they're going to try and get it through, attach it to must-pass legislation, the National Defense Authorization Act. Well, we said, "Nope, this shall not pass the Rules Committee." So they're going to try and do this on suspension. There's a House rule that says if you want to suspend all of our regular rules and expedite something, you need a two-thirds vote of the House. So this is going to be interesting to see if they can get effectively 290 people to vote for it.
Weissmueller: It is interesting because if you think back to when a lot of Americans were first awakened to this with the Snowden revelations about a decade ago, there were some lonely dissenters and most people just rubber-stamped this stuff. It does seem as if now there's more resistance. I assume some of that has to do with the way FISA was used against the Trump administration. Do you feel the political tides have shifted somewhat to the advantage of people who care about privacy and government surveillance?
Massie: The tides haven't just shifted, the stars have aligned. We've never had a chairman of either the Intel Committee or the Judiciary Committee who made reforming this program one of their priorities. So with Jim Jordan, we're very lucky to have him as the chairman of this committee. And one of his signature agendas is to get this reform, because we have seen abuses that have been used against President Trump.
So a lot of conservatives have woken up to the fact that this program is being used against them. You have liberals who are upset about the program. Obviously, the FBI's using this against Black Lives Matter as well.
So you do have this coalition of the left and the right. It used to be a coalition of a dozen people, Right? It was me and Justin Amash, Zoe Lofgren, and Tulsi Gabbard, maybe who were concerned about this. We used to come together and we would offer amendments to try to fix this in the funding bills. We would try to defund some of this stuff, which is a really blunt instrument. It's a lot easier to write legislation that affects the laws than it is to just defund something. And they would pat us on the head and say, "Well, you know, we appreciate the sentiment, but this isn't the time or place to do what you're doing. And you shouldn't be mucking around with the funding." But now is the time and place, the program is expiring. We've got a chairman who's sympathetic to the cause. You know, this reported out of the Judiciary Committee 35 to 2. There were only two dissenters.
Liz Wolfe:Congressman, I want to ask about foreign aid. This week, Zelenskyy came to Washington and made his pitch for why the United States, in his eyes, ought to be funding Ukraine's war against a horrible invasion by Vladimir Putin. There's also obviously a terrible foreign policy situation in the Middle East right now between Israel and Hamas. You have called funding Ukraine and funding Zelenskyy, "economically illiterate and morally deficient." Make the case for why you oppose this form of funding.
Massie: Well, the "economic illiteracy" is in reference to a letter that the White House sent to the House of Representatives last week. And in two or three of the paragraphs of the letter, they espouse the virtues of spending money with the military-industrial complex and sending that to Ukraine as a job creation program. That it would reinvigorate our military industrial complex. You've got to believe in the broken window fallacy to think this will be an economic stimulus for the United States.
Meanwhile, the moral deficiency comes from some of the senators who have said that this war is a great deal for America because all we have to do is supply the weapons and Ukraine supplies the soldiers and that we're grinding down the Russian army. We're degrading their capacity to do this elsewhere or to commit war against us. The problem with that is the number of people who are dying. Zelenskyy allegedly told the senators that he's raising the draft age to 40 and admitted that they are running out of soldiers either through attrition on the battlefield or from people who've defected and left the country.
You would think if this were a war about the existence of Ukraine and protecting a democracy and such a fine government that people would sign up, would volunteer to fight for their country. But the reality is hundreds of thousands of them had the means and the money got out of the country. Some are dying, trying to escape over mountains and through rivers to get out of the country. And far too many have died on the battlefield. We can keep supplying them with weapons. We can keep depleting our treasure, but they're going to run out of fighting-age males pretty soon.
Wolfe:Do you take that as an indictment of Ukraine's democratic system or more of a sense of leaving the country because they see it as a war that is totally unwinnable? How do you look at that situation? And more broadly, how should libertarians look at parallels, or lack thereof, between the U.S.'s involvement in funding Ukraine and the U.S. funding Israel?
Massie: Well, to your first question, I think it's both. They lived in a country where they know that bribery and corruption are part of the culture and the current government isn't immune to that. And so if you're fighting for your country, that's one thing. But fighting for the government that's in charge of your country is another thing. So I believe that's part of it. Obviously, self-preservation is going to be part of it as well.
When it's over, there's going to have to be some negotiated peace settlement. And nobody, I think, believes Crimea is going to go back to Ukraine. So why spend all their lives when the lines are going to be where they were when it started? Just realism is a third factor.
Weissmueller: Let me pick up on Liz's second point there, which is about Israel, because you've been kind of on the lonely end, certainly on the Republican side, of several votes pertaining to Israel. Could you explain your stance on Israel, where you're coming from, and what you think some of these critics might be missing about your position?
Massie: Sure. That was the first of 19 votes. Today. We're going to take our 19th virtue signal vote here in Congress. But I guess I got off on the wrong foot early and have been voting consistently ever since. The title of that bill is wonderful. I have no disagreement with the title of that bill, but there are 4 or 5 pages that go after that title.
The first objection I had was that there is an open-ended pledge of military support for Israel. We never declare wars anymore. The administration just kind of goes and does it. And Congress keeps funding it, but they find the imprimatur for their activity right there in these resolutions. So the open-ended guarantee of support for that war that's contained in the text of that bill, but not the title, could have implied boots on the ground. And that may be the only vote we get to take in Congress on whether we're going to do that or not. So, number one, I don't support that notion.
Number two, in that resolution they mentioned Iran. In the very first resolution, they're already trying to expand the war and incorporate as much of the Middle East as they can. There's some people that just can't wait to attack Iran, and they want to use this as the nexus to get there. So that was in the resolution, a condemnation of Iran. I think we should be trying to constrain the conflict, not to expand it in the first resolution of support that we passed.
Part of that resolution wanted stronger sanctions on Iran. And I don't support sanctions, never voted to sanction a sovereign country in the 11 years that I've been in Congress. I think it leads to war. Sanctions actually create crimes only for U.S. citizens because we're not going to put somebody in jail in another country who trades with Iran. What we're proposing to do when we pass a sanction is to make a federal law that would result in the imprisonment of a U.S. citizen who trades with Iran, and it hurts the people who are in the country. I think it actually edges us closer to war instead of getting us out of war. Even though I support Israel and I condemned Hamas, I did that on my own. I put out a statement. I support Israel's right to defend itself and I condemn these attacks. But that wasn't enough.
Weissmueller:You've taken more heat for what you would describe as a "virtue signal bill." It's essentially the House reaffirming the state of Israel's right to exist and recognizing that denying Israel's right to exist is a form of antisemitism. Where are you coming from on these sorts of bills that aren't even really directly tied to any sort of military aid?
Massie: Well, I recognize Israel's right to exist. I have to preface all of this stuff with that because people would imply from a vote that I don't. But when they passed that, I said, "You're basically saying that anti-Zionism is antisemitism." And people argued with me about that.
What's interesting is the next week they passed almost the same resolution and they replaced Israel's right to exist with Zionism. So maybe I'm just giving them clues for how to write their bills more directly because the next resolution said that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. And there are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who disagree with that statement. In fact, Jerrold Nadler, who's the most senior member of Congress, who's Jewish, went to the floor and gave a five minute speech, which is a long speech in the House of Representatives. But, he gave a five-minute speech on why that's untrue, to say that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
There are a lot of people who are antisemitic who are also against the state of Israel, but you can't equate the two. And I think these 19 votes, after today, are sort of part of the war effort for Israel to make it hard for anybody in the United States to criticize what they're doing.
Every two or three days here in Congress, we're taking these votes that a lot of what's in the resolution is just obvious and doesn't need to be stated. It's kind of like Black Lives Matter. You have to say "black lives matter." They're doing the equivalent with Israel. Now Israel matters. And so I agree that Israel matters, but we don't have to take all these votes. And some of them are going into campuses and trying to limit free speech by withholding federal money.
I've been called antisemitic for merely not supporting the money that goes to Israel. American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent $90,000 in my district running ads implying that I was antisemitic and then in a tweet, said that I was "antisemitic for not voting for the $14.3 billion to go to Israel." Even though I've not voted for foreign aid to go anywhere.
Weissmueller:Chuck Schumer has accused you of being antisemitic. He's blasted you on Twitter. Here's the tweet, he said: "Representative Massie, you're a sitting member of Congress, this is antisemitic, disgusting, dangerous and exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my Senate address. Take this down." And what he is referring to is the Drake meme, where you're saying, "No to American patriotism, yes to Zionism, Congress these days." What was your reaction to this?
Massie: Well, we ratioed him on that pretty soundly. I quote tweeted him and said, "If only you cared about half as much about our border as you care about my tweets."
It's just simply not true. By the way, in the replies to him, you'll find somebody who pointed out that of all 535 members of Congress, this cycle, he received more money from pro-Israel lobby according to Opensecrets.org than any other member of Congress. So it rings hollow when he says that. He's even in disagreement with Jerrold Nadler.
And I'll admit memes are not the most precise way to convey a point. But they can be effective. There's nothing in that meme that implies those two things are mutually exclusive. And that wasn't my intent. It's okay in Congress to be patriotic for Israel, but you can't be patriotic for America. That's considered nationalism, which American nationalism is a dirty word. And I know it's loaded. There are a lot of people that have attached themselves to it. But if you take it in the generic sense, it's pride in your country. Pride in America is looked down upon right now. It's out-of-fashion. But pride in Israel is something we have to vote on two or three times a week now in Congress.
Weissmueller: You have this reputation in your own district and nationally as the guy who's willing to make the meme and take the unpopular vote. I think that one of the prime examples of that is back during the depths of COVID, in March 2020, everyone was pushing for this $2.2 trillion COVID relief bill, including the president of the United States. And it was Representative Thomas Massie who was saying, "If we're going to have a $2 trillion vote here, let's follow the Constitution and have everyone come back to D.C. and actually do it in person."
And for that, going back to Twitter, President Trump's response to that was "Looks like a third-rate grandstander named Representative Thomas Massie, a congressman from, unfortunately, a truly great state, Kentucky, wants to vote against the new Save Our Workers bill in Congress. He just wants publicity. He can't stop it." He goes on to say that "the Republicans should win the House, but they should kick out Thomas Massie." What was that like having the Eye of Sauron on you for insisting on an in-person vote in March 2020?
Massie: I'll have to write a book someday. But those tweets happened about 60 seconds after a phone call ended between me and President Trump, where he basically burned my ear off, screaming at me for probably three minutes and said he was coming at me, he was going to take me down. That's a sobering proposition when you've got a primary election eight weeks away and you've been trying to keep the president out of your race. The person running against you says you don't support the president enough. And the president had a 95 percent approval rating among the primary voters who were going to vote in my election. But I just stood strong. I said, listen, if truckers and nurses and grocery store workers are showing up for work, then Congress should show up for work too. And that was, I think, an unassailable message. Because, ultimately, I was just trying to get people on record.
The reason I was trying to get people on record is because I knew this was one of the worst votes in history and nobody was going to be accountable for it. Here we are three years later, and every bad thing that I said would happen as a result of doing that has happened. And even my colleagues here in Congress, a lot of them admit to me that they were wrong about that. They won't say it too loudly lest anybody hear it.
The reporters came up to me as I walked out of the chamber that day and said, "Your own president just called you a third-rate grandstander. What do you have to say?" And I said "I was deeply insulted. I'm at least second-rate." And they didn't ever come back to that.
Wolfe: How much COVID policy remorse is there among your colleagues in Congress?
Massie: Not enough. Not nearly enough. The policy isn't just the spending, the vaccine mandates, the shutting down of our economy, the compulsory masking, the way people were treated like cattle. There should be far more remorse. But frankly, that's a reflection of the voters as well. If you poll this, most people have moved on. Even a year ago, most people had moved on.
I mean, look at Ron DeSantis. That was part of his signature issue. But he most famously opposed a lot of this COVID nonsense after it became obvious what we were dealing with. And he rode that wave and he was polling better than Trump. But I think people have moved on and they've got other issues to think about now. People have just moved on and so have my colleagues. And I think it's really unfortunate. And I wished that I had been able to get that recorded vote that day. We'd have a lot more people who wouldn't be back here in Congress perpetrating bad ideas like FISA.
Wolfe: You were elected during the era of the Tea Party reining in government spending. We care about our fiscal health. And so as a result, we can't just have the money printer constantly print money forever more. We have to be prudent because the bill always comes due. Do you think that message has any hopes of having any sort of revival in the coming years, especially given the runaway inflation that we've seen? Or do you think it's just a totally lost cause and we're all screwed?
Massie: Let me assign a 95 percent probability to that last proposition. I'm here with a 5 percent chance that we can save it. And in the 30 percent chance that if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, I can still be here and have some credibility to put it back together.
I think what's starting to curb the appetite for spending and bring some realism into the discussion is the only thing that was ever going to curb our appetite for spending, and that is our creditors are starting to balk. The rates at which the government can borrow money now aren't what we want them to be. When we go out to do an auction or a sale for treasuries or bonds what we're finding is the appetite isn't there, even at 4.5 percent, you know, to get a guaranteed 4.5 percent return on your money from the government backed by the U.S. military? That's not enough to loan that money to the government. They want 5 percent. That's an indicator that when the private sector and the other countries, the sovereign funds, usually have the appetite for our debt when they're losing their appetite, that's a sign that things are going south.
I wear this debt clock that I built in Congress to remind people of it. And one side effect of me wearing this is the rate at which the debt is increasing is going up. So for the math nerds, that's the second derivative. And today, the debt per second is $78,000. I don't think people realize. It feels like we're going over Niagara Falls right now. The rate of these bad things happening is increasing now.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
Congressional Republicans are linking extension of US aid to Ukraine to the imposition of more restrictionist immigration policies. They claim the two issues are connected because both involve border security. Thus, for example, House Speaker Mike Johnson says "If we're going to protect Ukraine's border, and we have to do what is necessary there,…. we have to take care of our own border first." This analogy is ridiculous. There is no comparison between a military invasion and undocumented migration. In addition, many of the GOP demands aren't actually about "border security" at all; they are proposals to make legal immigration harder, thereby predictably exacerbating disorder at the border rather than alleviating it.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine includes the mass murder of thousands of civilians, large-scale rape and torture, kidnapping of tens of thousands of children, and an attempt to forcibly annex much of Ukraine's territory and replace its democracy with a brutal dictatorship. Nothing even remotely comparable is happening at the US southern border. The main issue there is immigrants seeking freedom and opportunity in the United States. Unable to do so legally because of immigration restrictions, many find that illegal border-crossing is their only way to escape a lifetime of poverty and oppression. Many are escaping repressive communist regimes that conservative Republicans themselves condemn.
Conservatives rightly deride left-wingers who analogize any policies they don't like to fascism. The equation between the Russia's invasion of Ukraine and US border issues is a right-wing version of this trope. They are equating migration they dislike with invasion and mass murder by a neo-fascist regime (there are many obvious parallels between Vladimir Putin's expansionist authoritarian nationalism and early-twentieth century fascism).
It can be argued the analogy makes sense because illegal migrants might commit acts of terrorism. But the risk of terrorism at the southern border is negligible. Between 1975 and 2022, the total number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks by illegal migrants who crossed the southern border was zero. Immigrants do commit ordinary crimes, of course. But the crime rate of immigrants—including illegal ones—is actually lower than that of native-born Americans.
Elsewhere, I have argued that Western support for Ukraine is the right thing to do on for both moral and strategic reasons, ones analogous to those conservatives advance for backing Hamas against Israel. It's possible to argue against that on various grounds, such as that Ukraine's cause is supposedly hopeless, or that possible strategic costs outweigh the benefits. But those who want to abandon Ukraine for such reasons should at least stop hiding behind bogus analogies to the US southern border.
The analogy is also misleading because many of the GOP's demands are not really about stopping illegal migration, but about making the legal kind even more difficult than it already is. For example, Republicans seek to severely curtail executive parole authority that can be used to grant entry to migrants fleeing war, oppression, and other humanitarian catastrophes. As shown in a study by the conservative Manhattan Institute, Biden's use of parole to grant entry to migrants from four Latin American nations actually greatly reduced illegal migration across the southern border from those countries, because it enables would-be migrants to enter legally, often without even coming to the southern border at all. That progress has stopped in recent months because arbitrary caps on the number of parole admittees have created a massive backlog, leaving illegal migration once again the only option for most migrants from those nations.
GOP demands to make it harder for migrants to get asylum are similar. The harder it is to enter legally, the greater the incentive to do so illegally. The Biden administration has already adopted a harsh "Trump-lite" asylum policy, a move that hasn't succeeded in reducing illegal migration (the policy is currently the subject of legal challenges, but judges have allowed it to remain in place as litigation over it continues).
Trying to reduce illegal migration by making legal entry harder is much like trying to fight Prohibition-era bootlegging by making it harder to obtain alcohol legally. Such policies predictably promote the very thing they are supposedly seeking to combat. Most of the disorder at the border is a predictable result of the fact that legal entry is nearly impossible for most would-be migrants, combined with horrible conditions in migrants' countries of origin and strong demand for labor in the US. Restricting legal immigration even more would predictably exacerbate these problems, not alleviate them.
There is much Congress and the president could do to genuinely reduce disorder at the border. Among other things, they could drop arbitrary numerical and country limits on parole admission. They could also make it easier for immigrants to get work visas. Similarly, they could empower state governments that want more immigrants to issue state-based visas, as advocated by the Republican governors of Utah and Indiana. These moves and others like them would channel people away from illegal migration. Many would not even need to come to the southern border at all, instead entering by ship or plane.
Obviously, there are a variety of rationales for reducing legal migration that are unrelated to conditions at the border. For example, restrictionists argue that immigrants overburden the welfare state, spread harmful cultural values, damage the environment, and degrade American political institutions. It may be hard to believe. But if we get too many of the wrong kinds of immigrant voters, we might even elect a president of the United States who has so little respect for liberal democratic values that when he loses an election, he tries to use force and fraud to stay in power.
Jokes aside, these kinds of restrictionist arguments are worth taking seriously. I try to do just that in my book Free to Move, and other writings. But those whose real goal is reducing legal immigration should not hide behind the mantra of "border security." Still less should they analogize immigration policies they dislike to armed invasions like Russia's assault on Ukraine.
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What a real invasion looks like. Russian armored vehicle in Ukraine. March 2022.Liz Wolfehttps://reason.com/people/liz-wolfe/liz.wolfe@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82576582023-12-13T17:10:21Z2023-12-08T14:32:16Z
Gifts for Putin? "Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for," said President Joe Biden this week, in response to fiscal conservatives holding up a spending package that would dole out $110 billion in funding for Ukraine.
Republicans are saying that addressing the situation at the southern border is a necessary prerequisite, something that Biden must prioritize if he wants Ukraine aid approved. Biden said his political opponents, in opposing that massive chunk of government spending, "are playing chicken with our national security" but that he is also interested in "mak[ing] significant compromises on the border," if that's what is deemed necessary to get Ukraine money approved.
"Biden now faces a difficult choice about how much to throw himself into talks on an issue that for decades has defied efforts to reach bipartisan compromise," reportsThe New York Times. "And he will have to decide how far to go in giving in to conservative demands that he substantially choke off the number of migrants admitted to the United States while their asylum claims are considered."
It's a shame there are so few legitimately principled fiscal conservatives in Congress; holding up one form of spending to get another type greenlit is a time-honored tradition, but not one that truly dials back government spending.
Congressional testimony fallout: After the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all testified in front of Congress earlier this week on the issue of antisemitism on campus, the board of Penn's business school, Wharton, is calling on President Liz Magill to resign.
It's crazy that the free speech hypocrisy on elite campuses has gone on for this long and gotten this bad. High-up university donors and governing bodies should have probably pushed for cleaning house long ago, and more forcefully communicated opposition to the imposition of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies, campus speaker shout downs, and the like.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media treatment of the issue has changed quite a bit over the last few days.
Difference between Day 1 and Day 2 Coverage of the same event by the NYT. What happened in the meantime? I mean the NYT saw the event unspool, and initially thought it was parrying not dodging. pic.twitter.com/R2EiIcFscQ
The distinction made between conduct and speech by all three presidents remains largely correct. University administrators should push for and enforce policies that are broadly speech-permissive. It's just that there's a hollowness to this being their stance now after years of skirting this commitment.
"What does it mean to make Jewish students feel safe on campus? One way would be to crack down on anti-Israel rhetoric that might make many Jews feel threatened. That would be consistent with the methods universities have sometimes employed to protect other minority groups," writesIntelligencer's Jonathan Chait. "But it would also be deeply illiberal."
"When elite university presidents claim that even hateful speech should enjoy ironclad protection on college campuses, they are absolutely correct," writesReason's Robby Soave. "But if they are asserting that speech characterized as hateful currently enjoys ironclad protection on their campuses, they are blind."
Scenes from New York: Enjoyed chatting with Matt Taibbi on camera last night (possible Reason video forthcoming) at his provocatively-titled event "Hey, Haters: Come to Argue about Free Speech and Censorship in Park Slope." People were mostly sensible Taibbi superfans concerned by the government jawboning of social media companies.
QUICK HITS
Reason's Matt Welch and I will be on The Megyn Kelly Show today at noon. Tune in!
You seriously cannot make this up:
This guy got a vasectomy because he was worried a kid would cause climate change and then he and his wife took a 4-year traveling honeymoon around Asia running a travel writing gig and racking up about 4-12x a normal person's emissions all in one go. https://t.co/xPry1lh0c9
"Special counsel David Weiss leveled a nine-count indictment against Hunter Biden late Thursday, accusing President Joe Biden's son of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes from 2016 to 2020," per ABC News.
The unemployment rate has reportedly gone up, from 3.9 percent to 4. Bloomberg has more on the early signs of a recession.
"Should Biden really run again?" asksThe New York Times, citing dropping approval ratings and gesturing toward his senility (while characteristically spending much more time explicitly dinging Trump for his age). I think I can help the Times with this stumper: No, he should not. Down with the gerontocracy!
New York City Mayor Eric Adams' poll numbers are dropping.
Good news:
The Home Act passed yesterday at Austin City Council!
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Charles Oliverhttps://reason.com/people/charles-oliver/https://reason.com/?p=82570822023-12-04T15:26:56Z2023-12-06T09:00:27Z
Russian police claim they are being overwhelmed by the number of people snitching on each other, according to the BBC. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the government enacted new laws to punish those who criticize the war, and Russians have been eager to denounce those they feel violate those laws. Sometimes those who report others truly agree with the war effort, but sometimes it's done to settle a personal grudge. "People are always looking for an excuse to denounce someone over the 'special military operation'," said one former police officer. "Whenever something real comes up, there's nobody to investigate. Everyone's gone to check on some grandma who saw a curtain that looked like the Ukrainian flag."
Eager though we all are to learn how the Ukraine war ends for Ukraine, there is another great unanswered question about the invasion: How will the war end for Russia?
Will it revert to a quasi-Soviet totalitarian past, this time with a simulacrum of capitalism and an ideology of religious nationalism instead of communism? When Vladimir Putin's death or downfall comes, will that bring a new liberal "thaw"? Or will the country slide into violent strife between warlords like the late Yevgeny Prigozhin—leading, perhaps, to an even more belligerent fascist dictatorship? Or will the Russian Federation disintegrate as the Soviet Union did 32 years ago, with some of its constituent entities breaking off into independent states? And would that reduce Russia to a shrunken, humbled, impoverished, and increasingly irrelevant country?
Russia still commands a vast nuclear arsenal, and there is no realistic scenario where that's going to change soon. Russia's sheer size, its cultural influence, its place at the intersection of Europe and Asia, and its vast network of international connections give it, like it or not, a pivotal role in global politics and development. Whether Russia moves in a liberal or anti-liberal direction, whether it embraces markets or militarism, tolerance or tyranny, will influence social trends in many other countries.
For the past decade or so, under Putin's authoritarian rule, Russia has been a superspreader of global anti-liberalism. Now the war in Ukraine has dramatically reduced Moscow's influence by severely damaging its image, its international standing, and (thanks to Western sanctions) its economic reach.
But what next? Is the idea of a free, prosperous, peaceful Russia a serious possibility or a pipe dream?
What if Russia Wins?
Russia, of course, might win the war. Here's a possible scenario after a Russian victory.
By the start of 2024, the Ukrainian offensive (or counteroffensive) fails or at least is perceived as a failure, and the West pressures Ukraine to make territorial concessions in exchange for continued aid. The peace accords allow Russia to keep Crimea and at least some of the territories annexed last year, including the land bridge to Crimea and perhaps Mariupol, which Putin appears to view as an especially valuable prize. It's enough of a victory for Putin to position himself as a winner, especially if some or all of the economic sanctions on Russia are lifted (perhaps in exchange for limited reparations to Ukraine, which Kremlin propaganda could spin as generous fraternal aid).
It is certainly possible that, as Ukraine fears, Putin and the war hawks in his entourage would view such a peace deal as a breather for a new military buildup and a new effort to bring all of Ukraine under Russian control by installing a Moscow-friendly regime in Kyiv. Some Russian propagandists talk about Ukraine as a stepping stone toward rebuilding a Russian/Soviet empire, and even some Russian military men have echoed such themes; an interview from July shows Andrey Mordvichev (who commanded Russian Army divisions at the battle for Mariupol and was recently promoted to the rank of colonel-general) talking about the alleged need to attack Eastern Europe.
But given the current state of Russian armed forces and the population's lack of appetite for war (when the Russian government tried partial mobilization in 2022, the result was a mass exodus of men), such fantasies are likely to remain fantasies. Ukraine is only likely to agree to such concessions on the condition of NATO membership, which would essentially preclude another Russian invasion, perhaps with face-saving assurances to Russia that no NATO bases will be placed in Ukraine.
In this scenario, Russia's current neo-totalitarian cocoon will only harden. Political prisoners will remain in prison (unless, perhaps, they are traded for some valuable Russian prisoners of war), and there will be new prosecutions for sharing "fake"—i.e., accurate—information about the war or about Russian war crimes. Access to truthful reporting on these topics will remain severely restricted; the Kremlin will almost certainly further tighten restrictions on the internet.
Since the myth of the righteous war will be the foundation of the regime's survival, authoritarian, anti-Western, and anti-liberal propaganda will likely intensify. A cohort of Russian children will be raised on history textbooks (already introduced at the start of this school year) that portray Russia as both the indomitable bastion of all virtues and the eternal victim of nefarious Western intrigue, that discuss the mass-murdering tyrant Josef Stalin in positive terms, that treat Soviet-era dissidents and defectors as selfish and disloyal, and that glorify the "special operation" in Ukraine as part of Russia's historical mission to vanquish Nazism.
How long would such a hardline regime survive? At least as long as Putin does—and that could be a while.
Losing the War, Winning Freedom
It's a broad consensus among Russian dissidents of all stripes—not counting hawks who "dissent" in the sense that they think Putin isn't waging war ruthlessly enough—that undoing Russia's dictatorship will be impossible unless Ukraine wins the war. As chess grandmaster and opposition activist Garry Kasparov said in February at the Munich Security Conference, "Liberation from Putin's fascism runs through Ukraine." A joint "Declaration of Russian Democratic Forces," spearheaded by Kasparov and a fellow opposition leader, former businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, unequivocally called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from all territories recognized as Ukrainian under international law (which would include Crimea, annexed in 2014) as well as war crimes prosecutions and compensation for "the victims of aggression."
Such an outcome would indeed be a resounding and humiliating defeat.
The idea is not that disgruntled Russians will vote out Putin and his United Russia party, which currently controls the Duma (Russia's so-called parliament) and most local governments. In September, appearing on a YouTube channel created by former staffers of an independent radio station that had been shut down days after the start of the war, Khodorkovsky argued that peaceful transition at the ballot box is currently impossible in Russia: The entire system is designed to leave no chance of that happening. Khodorkovsky thinks the peaceful protest the Russian opposition has traditionally practiced is also futile: He is outspoken in insisting the opposition must be prepared to participate in violent action.
What Khodorkovsky has in mind is not a pro-freedom, anti-Putin uprising—the level of repression and surveillance in Russia today makes organizing dissent extremely difficult—but simply chaos, which, to paraphrase Game of Thrones' Littlefinger, the opposition can use as a ladder. The most likely scenario is an "elite coup": Some people within Russia's political elites get sufficiently fed up with Putin to remove him from power one way or another. Many Russian pundits have sarcastically mentioned "the tobacco-box option," a euphemism for regime change by assassination: In March 1801, Czar Paul I was attacked in his bedchamber by a group of high-level conspirators and knocked unconscious with a tobacco box before being strangled to death with a scarf. A less drastic way of removal would be to either officially place Putin under arrest or force him to announce a sudden retirement for health reasons.
It's almost impossible to intelligently assess the probability of any of those outcomes. But massive discontent with the war and with Putin is rife among Russia's business elites. This class once accepted a deal under which they got guarantees of stability in exchange for not seeking influence as independent players in Russian politics. That "stability" worked, for better or worse, given Western countries' willingness to do business with resource-rich Russia. But the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 spectacularly blew up that stability.
While Russian markets haven't tanked completely, thanks to continuing oil and gas purchases by non-Western partners, the rich and powerful have certainly taken a hit: Russian billionaires lost a combined $80 billion in the first week of the war. What's more, much of Russia's post-Soviet privileged class now finds itself cut off from access to its vast assets in the West. Bank accounts and investments have been frozen; luxury homes, villas, and yachts are out of reach.
Public expressions of discontent have been extremely rare, which is not surprising given how dangerous such expressions are in today's Russia. But on two occasions in the past year, leaked recordings of cellphone conversations showed B-list Russian businessmen lamenting the war, describing Putin as a "retard" who keeps saying that "everyone is an enemy, but we're going to win," and predicting that the current regime would eventually turn Russia into a "scorched desert."
Are there people with such views sufficiently high up in the Russian power structures—and with enough loyal armed men under their command—to carry out a coup, whether lethal or nonlethal? There is no way to be sure. For years, a great deal of talk has circulated about rival factions or "clans" within the regime, but all such information comes from supposed insiders or ex-insiders whose accounts cannot be confirmed. (It is alleged, for instance, that the June mutiny of Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary group was coordinated with one such faction.) But a successful coup certainly cannot be ruled out. The Prigozhin mutiny clearly showed that the Russian populace will not take to the streets to support Putin despite his nominally high approval ratings. (There was no outpouring of popular support for Putin either during or after the 24-hour rebellion, and many people in Rostov-on-Don, the city where Prigozhin's private army briefly made its headquarters, cheered for the mutinous mercenaries.)
The liberal opposition is extremely unlikely to seize power after Putin's ouster. But there is a more likely (and more morally gray) liberalization scenario. If the architects of an anti-Putin coup are people who want to rebuild good relations with liberal democracies and start reintegrating Russia into global markets and communications, they will have to demonstrate that the new regime is committed to liberal reforms. This will require holding elections with legitimacy in the eyes of the world, giving pro-freedom, pro-democracy parties and candidates meaningful opportunities to get their share of political power. A post-Putin regime might also bring at least some liberal opposition figures into the government, or into a power-sharing coalition, making them the human face of the new Russia.
Such a scenario might just mean a new crony-capitalist regime willing to use opposition leaders who are popular abroad, such as Khodorkovsky or the jailed Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, as a front for a corrupt political establishment. But any post-Putin government creates a window for meaningful change.
A Russian Spring—a fresh opportunity for political pluralism, the rule of law, civil society, and a market economy—may not seem very likely now. The liberal opposition is too small and fractured; Khodorkovsky's Open Russia movement, for instance, has been feuding with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation. Support for liberal ideas after almost a quarter-century of Putinism is fairly low even among young people (though measuring public opinion in a fear-ridden authoritarian country is no easy task), and most of the population seems to be mired in a passivity that analysts have described as collective learned helplessness.
Still, it's the most optimistic scenario, and it has at least a chance.
Private Armies and Scattered Principalities
A Russian coup could also lead to a far darker outcome: open armed conflict between rival political factions—some of it based on ideology, some on raw competition for power and wealth—and the emergence of multiple regional centers of power. This scenario looks especially plausible given the expansion of so-called private military companies (a misnomer, since they are typically entangled with the state) since the start of the Ukraine war.
These companies have existed in Russia for years; Gazprom, the majority state-owned oil and gas giant, has had several as a security service. During the war, these paramilitary units gained a new visibility when Prigozhin's Wagner Group, its ranks padded with convicts recruited from penal colonies, played a pivotal role on the frontline and was elevated in official propaganda to the status of legendary heroes.
In summer 2023, as Prigozhin grew increasingly defiant, Putin took steps to bring the Wagner Group to heel by requiring all "volunteers," i.e., mercenaries, serving in the "special operation" in Ukraine to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense. It was the Wagner Group's refusal to comply that led to Prigozhin's mutiny—a saga that ended with the Wagner Group being dismantled and with Prigozhin apparently blown up aboard his business jet.
But private military companies that do not answer to the Ministry of Defense can still legally function as long as they're not fighting in Ukraine. A month after the Prigozhin mutiny, new legislation was passed allowing regional governors to start such quasi-armies. Putin may think that they're a way to prevent or put down future rebellions, but they could easily have the opposite effect.
In other words, Russia has a lot of armed groups in the pay of corporate behemoths and government officials. It's not hard to imagine how this could go if the Putin regime collapses and the government fractures.
A protracted civil war seems unlikely, since most of the Russian population is too cowed and passive to mobilize for one side or another. But conflicts between armed groups controlled by a new breed of warlords may well lead to actual warfare, with disgruntled veterans (some of them violent ex-convicts) contributing to the turmoil. Post-Putin Russia could be an impoverished wasteland with well-protected islands of affluence, virtually autonomous cities run like medieval principalities, and roving gangs and militias. Depending on how impoverished it becomes, conflicts over resources could become frequent and brutal.
All that could lead to another frequently mentioned scenario: the dissolution of the Russian Federation.
A Russian Breakup
The Russian Federation currently has 89 distinct areas known as "federal subjects," 83 of them internationally recognized. (The other six are territories annexed from Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, portions of which Russia currently doesn't control.) That includes 21 non-Slavic "autonomous republics" such as Chechnya, Dagestan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, and Tatarstan, and six non-Slavic "autonomous districts," some with a population larger than some republics.
Some of these entities have previously tried to secede—most notably Chechnya (pacified through two brutal wars and a deal that allows its current president to rule it as a de facto principality) and Tatarstan (whose 1991 declaration of sovereignty was approved in a referendum but invalidated by Russia's Constitutional Court).
A May report from the Association of Accredited Public Policy Advocates to the European Union indicates that separatist movements exist in 36 of the federation's constituent entities, but they are mostly small and weak. Even in republics extensively used by the Kremlin as a source of cannon fodder for the war in Ukraine, such as Buryatia and Dagestan, there has been no clamor for liberation.
Obviously, that could change quickly if the Putin regime collapsed, the economy tanked, and the country descended into chaos. Even in regions with an ethnic Russian majority, a group of determined activists could generate a serious push for independence.
The possibility of Russia's dissolution has been extensively discussed, with vigorous disagreement on both the plausibility and the desirability of such a scenario. Some anti-Putin, pro-Ukraine pundits believe that the West's reluctance to give Ukraine enough support for a decisive victory is due in large part to fears that the collapse of the Putin regime will lead to the collapse of the Russian Federation and the proliferation of dangerous rogue statelets in its place. Warlords with nukes are the ultimate nightmare.
Many Russian opposition figures, including Khodorkovsky, believe that Russia's disintegration is extremely unlikely and would be a disaster if it happened. On the other hand, politicians, activists, and commentators from countries historically subjugated by the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union—be it Ukraine, Estonia, or Poland—often argue that Russia will remain an imperialistic menace unless it's literally cut down to size, and that its peaceful dissolution via separatism is the best chance to do that. Writing in Politico last January, Janusz Bugajski of the Jamestown Foundation even suggested that Western democracies should encourage Russia's disintegration by supporting local separatist movements.
A more dispassionate analysis of the federation's possible breakup is offered by French scholar Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, in a March paper for the Montaigne Institute. Tetrais warns that the disintegration of the Russian Federation, which he believes is entirely possible, would not be a relatively orderly event like the breakup of the USSR into 15 constituent republics. He instead expects a prolonged and chaotic process, very possibly accompanied by bloodbaths. What's more, the conflict would likely reverberate beyond Russia's borders—Tetrais bluntly writes that "the lockdown of Russia in the pandemic-related sense of the word" would be a necessary response—and the end result could be Russia's reunification under a new totalitarian regime.
The only good news, Tetrais argues, is that nuclear proliferation is unlikely, since Russia's nuclear forces today are almost entirely located "in the heart of the Federation," in areas under Moscow's secure control. But "severe disruption" could reach even those regions.
There's also the China factor. While Bugajski's Politico piece speculated that Russia's disintegration would weaken China because Beijing would lose a valuable ally, it is entirely possible to imagine a different outcome—one where China turns Russia's battered remnants into a resource-rich de facto colony, or even annexes portions of Russian territory in the Far East. (In September, China ruffled some feathers in Moscow by publishing a "national map" that includes some disputed land which is currently Russian.) While the Chinese regime almost certainly doesn't want Russia's collapse, since it favors stability, it would also be in a position to take advantage of such a collapse if it happened.
Forecasting Through the Fog of War
With the outcome of the war still uncertain, predicting the fate of the Putin regime and of Russia is necessarily speculative. Many other scenarios besides the ones outlined above may come to pass, most of which we cannot even envision today. (Who could have predicted the Prigozhin mutiny in early 2023, when the official Russian media were hailing the Wagner Group men as a heroic force fighting at Bakhmut?)
But there is a very strong chance that in a few years the United States and other liberal democracies will find themselves in a replay of the 1990s, making difficult decisions about how to respond to sweeping, uncertain changes in Russia. We may have to decide how much to trust and help a new liberalization, whether to respond with humanitarian aid or "lockdown" to chaos and collapse, whether to lend our support to breakaway republics.
After the evil that Russia has visited on the world in 2022–2023, reviving ghosts of World War I and World War II in the heart of Europe, it is tempting for many—especially those victimized by Russian imperialism—to write off the entire country as hopelessly toxic and fit only for a cordon sanitaire. But the exiled journalist and staunch Kremlin critic Igor Yakovenko has warned emphatically against such an approach.
"The idea that you can build a mile-high fence and dig a moat filled with crocodiles…and the rest of the world can breathe a sigh of relief—this is a mistake," Yakovenko said on his YouTube channel earlier this year. "Russia isn't going to fall into a deep hole, it's not going anywhere." An authoritarian Russia will pose a threat even if temporarily weakened; a Mad Max–like Russia of chaos, desperation, and private armies will pose a different kind of threat; and the replacement of Russia with a dozen or two dozen smaller states could create an entirely new set of problems.
Optimism about Russia's future, at this point, looks absurdly naive. But forever pessimism is not only bleak but ugly; it almost invariably involves borderline-racist notions of collective guilt and inherent national character. Better to adopt a cautious realism that adapts to developments within Russia and seeks to identify genuinely liberal forces. But nothing good is apt to come from Russia unless it is defeated in the Ukraine war and Putin's regime falls.
There is an ongoing political debate about the appropriate extent of Western aid to Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression. How much cost is it worthwhile for Western taxpayers to bear? Whatever, the answer, the burden can be greatly reduced by confiscating Russian government assets in the West, and using them to fund Ukraine's defense.
There is a staggering $300 billion in frozen Russian state assets located in Western nations backing Ukraine. Most of this wealth is located in European Union nations. But about $5 billion is in the US. To put this figure in perspective, it's worth noting that the total amount of US aid to Ukraine from February 2022 through July 31, 2023 was about $77 billion. The European Union, individual European states, and Canada, gave approximately $165 billion during the same period (I converted Euro figures to dollars at the current exchange rate). The $300 billion in frozen assets is equal to some two years of total Western assistance to Ukraine at the current pace of spending!
There is a strong moral and pragmatic case for seizing Russian state assets and using them to fund Ukraine's defense. Michael McFaul, a leading expert on Russian politics and foreign policy, summarizes some key points in a recent Washington Post article:
Since the war began, a broad coalition of countries has joined together to confiscate billions in Russian assets. Some of these assets belong to oligarchs who have propped up Putin's system; by far the largest amount, though, is sitting in frozen accounts held by the Russian Central Bank. These funds amount to some $300 billion, of which the largest share has been seized by the Europeans. These funds should be deployed as soon as possible to help bring the war to an end and finance Ukraine's reconstruction. Considering that Russia's unprovoked war has inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars of damage on the Ukrainian economy, it's only just that the international community should impose some of these costs on the Russian state itself….
[S]ome experts worry that transfer of these funds will set a negative precedent for global financial institutions. I disagree. Seizing assets of the Russian state after Putin invaded and annexed Ukraine sets a positive, deterrent precedent to other world leaders thinking about using military force to annex territory. And we should not want criminals to do their banking in the democratic world.
A recent Renew Democracy Initiative analysis by a team of lawyers led by Harvard law Prof. Laurence Tribe does a thorough job of addressing a variety of possible legal objections to such a step. But scholars such as Lee Buchheit and Paul Stephan, and Yale Law School Prof. Oona Hathaway have raised a variety of objections and reservations.
I won't try to go over all the law and policy issues here, and some are outside my areas of expertise. But I will cover some points that are within my competence, most notably those relating to property rights.
The most obvious moral objection is that the property in question ultimately belongs to the Russian people, and cannot legitimately be taken away from them by foreign powers. While the Putin regime is to blame for the war and resulting atrocities, most ordinary Russians are not. This objection might carry some weight if it were at all likely that Putin's government would use this property for purposes that benefit the Russian people. But given the nature of his authoritarian state, that is highly unlikely. If the present Russian government regains control of these assets, it is more likely to use them to further oppress Russians and Ukrainians like.
Using the assets to help Ukraine defeat Russia increases the likelihood of regime change in the latter state, or at least of some degree of liberalization. And that is the best hope for a Russian government that actually serves the interests of its people, or is at least less awful than the present regime. For that reason, we should not be deterred by fear of unjustly harming ordinary Russians. To the contrary, using Russian state assets to help Ukraine defeat Putin might actually benefit them.
There are also slippery slope objections to consider. If Western nations confiscate Russian state assets today, might they not confiscate other foreign property tomorrow, perhaps with far less justification? The answer to this objection is that legislation authorizing confiscation should be narrowly focused on Russian property, and possibly that of other states waging unjust wars of aggression and committing enormous human rights violations.
In addition, in the US the private property of foreigners is protected against confiscation by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which requires the government to pay "just compensation" if it takes "private property." Most European nations have similar constitutional protections for private property rights, as does the European Convention on Human Rights.
But the Fifth Amendment and its European analogues do not offer the same kind of blanket protection to the property of foreign governments. This distinction undermines claims by some critics that uncompensated seizure of Russian state assets would violate the Takings Clause and similar constitutional guarantees in Europe. It also mitigates concerns that confiscating Russian government assets would create a dangerous slippery slope. Private property rights of foreigners would remain protected by constitutional guarantees.
There could still be a slippery slope with respect to property owned by foreign governments. But that is mitigated by the strong incentives governments have to maintain good relations with allies and trading partners. It's unlikely that Western nations will start systematically confiscating foreign states' assets outside of extreme cases like that posed by Russia's horrific assault on Ukraine. To the extent that confiscation of Russian assets leads other authoritarian rulers to think twice about imitating Putin's actions, or prevents them from investing in the West, slippery slope possibilities might even be a feature, rather than a bug.
What is true of property rights protections is also true of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and other similar procedural guarantees against seizure of property. The Due Process Clause and other such provisions are meant to protect private individuals and organizations against deprivation of life, liberty, and property without due process. They don't offer comparable protection to foreign governments. Indeed, it would be perverse to use laws intended to protect individuals against arbitrary state oppression to instead protect a mass-murdering oppressive state from having its assets seized for the purposes of using them to resist its aggression and massive human rights violations.
Oona Hathaway argues that confiscating Russian state assets would violate sovereign immunity. I think the Tribe report offers compelling responses to this argument (pp 60-64).
In addition, I am not convinced that sovereign immunity is actually a just principle that we have a duty to obey. It is in fact a perversion of justice, enabling rulers to escape accountability for violating human rights and other injustices they perpetrate. It was a mistake to read it into the US Constitution. It is equally a mistake to allow it to be a principle of international law. Some laws are so deeply unjust that we have no duty to obey them. The law of sovereign immunity is one such case.
At the very least, sovereign immunity should not be permitted to shield authoritarian states like Putin's regime from having their assets confiscated in order to combat their wars of aggression, mass murder of civilians, and other large-scale human rights violations. Such rulers no more deserve sovereign immunity than Mafia bosses. Indeed, they are far worse than Mafia bosses.
If necessary, the US and European nations should enact legislation stripping the Russian state of all sovereign immunity. Any possible violation of international law here is well-justified.
There is a pragmatic concern that, absent sovereign immunity, authoritarian rulers will confiscate the property of Western governments. But authoritarian states have vastly more assets invested in the West than vice versa. Moreover, many of them have strong incentives to stay on the good side of the US and its allies. Confiscating Russian assets might even strengthen those incentives. They might think twice about imitating Russian actions if doing so leads to the confiscation of assets they have stashed in the West.
The above analysis assumes that Ukrainian resistance to Russia is a just cause worth supporting. If not, there is no reason to assist it. I won't go through all the moral and pragmatic reasons why supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do. But I have previously covered many of them here, here, and here.
I also won't respond in detail to those who argue the West should force Ukraine to make peace. I will merely point out that such a step would embolden further aggression by Putin and other authoritarians, and consign hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to horrific occupation. Anne Applebaum makes many additional relevant points in a recent Atlantic article critiquing the case for giving up on Ukraine.
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The Bank of Russia.J.D. Tuccillehttps://reason.com/people/jd-tuccille/jtuccille@gmail.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82526472023-12-19T15:45:45Z2023-10-23T11:00:20Z
If you suspect that, with Hamas's brutal attack on Israel added to the Ukraine war and other global conflicts, matters worldwide are heating up in unfortunate ways for all concerned including Americans, the U.S. State Department wants to tell you: You're right.
Americans at Risk Everywhere
"Due to increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests, the Department of State advises U.S. citizens overseas to exercise increased caution," warns a recent travel advisory.
Where should Americans "exercise increased caution?" Well, it's a worldwide advisory, so everywhere. That's understandable given that preexisting tensions with Russia and its allies almost pale in comparison to the growing stresses following Hamas's atrocities against Israeli citizens. As fighting rages, other nations are being drawn in, including traditional Israeli ally, the U.S.
"On Wednesday, the USS Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, opened fire on four cruise missiles and 15 airborne drones for nine hours, far longer than the military first said," reports military news site Task & Purpose. "Citing an American official familiar with the matter, the path and trajectory of the missiles had them en route to Israel. The missiles were fired by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to the Department of Defense, and would be the first attempt by any group in Yemen to strike at Israel in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terror attacks by Hamas two weeks ago."
There's a lot to unpack there. But it's not the full story.
"U.S. troops have been repeatedly attacked in Iraq and Syria in recent days, U.S. officials said on Thursday, as Washington is on heightened alert for activity by Iran-backed groups with regional tensions soaring during the Israel-Hamas war," notes Reuters.
A strong case can be made that military commitments to other countries are unwise—and has been made at least as far back as Thomas Jefferson's warning against "entangling alliances" in his 1801 inaugural address, and before him George Washington's caution against "permanent alliances" in his 1796 farewell address. But Washington added, "let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements," and the U.S. definitely has existing engagements with Israel.
America's Close Partnership with Israel
"U.S.-Israel security cooperation—a critical part of the bilateral relationship—is multifaceted," the Congressional Research Service noted in a report published last month. "U.S. law requires the executive branch to take certain actions to preserve Israel's 'qualitative military edge,' or QME, and expedites aid and arms sales to Israel in various ways."
No matter how large the U.S. presence when Israel enters Gaza to strike at Hamas, Americans are likely to suffer blowback for what is guaranteed to be a messy operation because the two countries are closely inked in reality and public perceptions around the world. That link is the result of personal ties, Israel's strategic position, and its status as a free-ish democracy in a region where that's unicorn-level rare.
Urban Warfare and a Bigger Mess to Come
Just how messy Gaza operations will be was illustrated when a rocket apparently launched at Israel by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally, went off course and hit a hospital parking lot in Gaza City. Much of the world was quick to blame Israel before the story was corrected, sparking protests around a world that is frequently hostile towards Israel when it's not explicitly directing hate at Jews—and motivating that global travel advisory.
"With great sadness, I have now confirmed that several of my relatives…were killed at Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza, where they had been sheltering, when part of the complex was destroyed as the result of an Israeli airstrike," former Libertarian congressman Justin Amash, himself of Palestinian descent, announced. "Give rest, O Lord, to their souls, and may their memories be eternal."
No war leaves the innocent untouched. That's especially true now that Israel understandably vows that, after a sneak attack that left more than 1,400 of its citizens dead and over 200 in captivity, Hamas and its allies need to be eliminated. That necessitates urban combat in an environment where the population is used by Hamas as human shields. More civilian casualties are bound to join the thousands already struck down in Gaza.
"If Israel does what it says it wants to do—toppling Hamas and destroying Hamas military capabilities—we are talking about a Mosul all over the Gaza Strip," private-sector intelligence expert Michael Horowitz toldThe Wall Street Journal, comparing operations in Gaza City to U.S. efforts against ISIS in Iraq's second-largest city. "And it means really extensive civilian casualties and really extensive damage."
Limiting Involvement Is Wise, But the U.S. Is Already Exposed
The U.S. government is well-advised to keep American troops out of that fight, other than whatever is required to help recover Americans among the hostages. U.S. forces already have extensive experience with thankless wars and don't need to join another, however necessary, fought by another nation.
But America's close partnership with Israel, its provision of weapons and materiel to the country, and the strong military presence in the region mean that Americans will take some measure of blame for what happens next. That's in addition to existing hostility towards Americans as a result of our country's support of Ukraine after Russia's invasion, stresses with China, and growing turmoil on a globe that seems to be entering a new and more chaotic period.
You might want to bookmark that State Department advisory about "worldwide caution" due to "increased tensions." It's likely to be applicable for quite some time to come.
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Stuart Andersonhttps://reason.com/people/stuart-anderson/https://reason.com/?p=82516412023-10-16T19:17:24Z2023-10-16T18:05:50Z
The U.S. Department of State announced good news for those who care about refugees and would like American college students to engage in more productive activities than protesting campus speakers or signing statements on controversial topics. Under a new policy announced in July 2023, Welcome Corps on Campus will allow U.S. universities and college students to sponsor refugees, helping them enroll in classes and navigate life in a new country.
In January 2023, the Biden administration announced Welcome Corps to permit Americans to become private sponsors of refugees. It is fair to say the Trump administration would not have championed such an initiative. White House immigration chief Stephen Miller told Cliff Sims, a Trump communications aide, that "I would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil." U.S. refugee admissions plummeted 86% between FY 2016 and FY 2020 under Trump, according to George Mason University economics professor Michael Clemens.
U.S. immigration law presents an imposing obstacle for most young people living in refugee camps hoping to pursue a U.S. college education. To obtain an F-1 visa, international students must demonstrate they will pay for school and maintain a residence abroad they do not intend to abandon after completing their studies. Miriam Feldblum of the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration says there needs to be more explicit language that acknowledges refugee students cannot intend to return to a home country until a conflict ends or conditions normalized. Even under guidance issued in December 2021, international students must still show an intent to depart the United States, notes former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) chief counsel Lynden Melmed.
At a Georgetown University event in September sponsored by the Welcome Corps on Campus consortium, Rosie Hughes, formerly with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told the story of a refugee from Zimbabwe who received a special exception to travel without a passport. He spent three harrowing days in detention in South Africa before high-level interventions freed him and permitted his travel to a U.S. university.
Admitting students to America as refugees provides resettlement in America, overcoming the need for an F-1 visa and the challenge of travel documents. Under U.S. law, a refugee typically adjusts to permanent residence (a green card) a year after entering. Five years later, they can apply to become U.S. citizens.
By sponsoring refugees, universities will ensure that education and living costs are covered for at least a year. The private sponsor group can help raise funds or assist refugees in obtaining additional aid. State Department officials note only 6% of refugees outside their countries have a chance to attend college, a significant loss of human potential.
Students from Kenya and Jordan will be the first refugees admitted under Welcome Corps on Campus, starting in the fall of 2024, according to Julieta Valls Noyes, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration. Noyes expects the program will eventually allow universities to refer specific students, who must meet the refugee standard and pass background screenings.
Some may wonder if refugees from different parts of the world can integrate into American society and participate in a modern market economy. New research shows those fears can be put to rest. Refugees possess an overwhelming desire to succeed and support their families.
In recent research from the National Foundation for American Policy, where I work, labor economist and senior fellow Mark Regets examined over 30 years of data on refugees and found that earnings for refugees increased by 70 percent in the 10 years after arriving in the United States. That compares to 25 percent for U.S.-born workers. Iraqis who came to America between 2005 and 2009 experienced real earnings growth of 127 percent over the next decade.
Refugees often start life in the United States with relatively low incomes that rise rapidly because they find niches in the labor market and invest in their education and ability to speak English. Regets found that the percentage of Ethiopians who arrived in the United States between 1985 and 1989 with a bachelor's degree rose from 17 percent in 1990 to 45 percent by 2000. More than 83 percent of refugees coming to the United States between 1985 and 2009 spoke English a year or more after arrival, increasing to 92 percent 10 years later. Incarceration rates for refugees are extremely low (0.2 percent for refugees vs. 1.3 percent for U.S.-born).
Jacquelyn Pilch, who runs Welcome Corps at the State Department, expects U.S. students will be the biggest winners of private refugee sponsorship. She believes the program will expose them to different lives, cultures, and hardships.
At the Georgetown event, Pilch told her experience in graduate school at Tufts volunteering to help a recently arrived Sunni Muslim translator for U.S. forces in Iraq. She said the student volunteers wanted to do something for the family around the holidays but "didn't want to offend them" and "agonized" over a gift due to respect for "sensitivities." They settled on "dull" gift cards for the Boston T (transit). "We went over to their apartment to drop them off before we all left for the holidays, and we walked in, and they had a giant Christmas tree in their living room with rainbow lights. Laughing, we said, 'What's the Christmas tree doing here?' They said, 'Well, everyone around us is doing it, and we just wanted to see how it felt.'"
Pilch said volunteering to help refugees had a lasting impact on her and fellow students at Tufts. She wants other American students to have those experiences, too. American students also could support the young people transitioning to new lives.
Under Uniting for Ukraine, the Biden administration allowed Americans to sponsor Ukrainian parolees financially, a unique policy initiative. Americans have stepped up, allowing over 270,000 Ukrainians fleeing Russia's invasion to be paroled into the United States.
Critics have roasted the Biden administration's government-centered approach to trade, antitrust, and investment. The administration's focus on empowering individual Americans to sponsor and help refugees could be its best policy.
Hamas' shocking terrorist attack against Israel has galvanized bipartisan support for Israel's cause in the US. But many conservative Republicans who back Israel simultaneously oppose continued support for Ukraine in its struggle against the very similar assault by Russia. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley says "[a]ny funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately." This pro-Israel/anti-Ukraine stance is incoherent. The moral and strategic rationales for backing Israel also apply to Ukraine, in some cases with even greater force. Both states are liberal democracies threatened by authoritarian mass murderers who seek to destroy them. And Russian atrocities are strikingly similar to those of Hamas, except on a much larger scale. There is no good moral justification for supporting Israel's cause that does not also apply to Ukraine's. The strategic rationale for backing Israel also applies to Ukraine, with at least equal force.
I fully recognize that pro-Israel/anti-Ukraine and support for both aren't the only possible combinations of views on these issues. Some Western leftists are pro-Ukraine and anti-Israel. And some people (e.g. right-wing anti-Semites, anti-American far leftists, consistently dovish/isolationist libertarians) oppose aid to both Ukraine and Israel. But, at least in the US, these latter two positions are relatively marginal. From President Biden on down, mainstream liberal Democratic supporters of Ukraine overwhelmingly back Israel against Hamas, as well, with rare exceptions such as members of the "Squad." Those who oppose aid to both Israel and Ukraine are, if anything, even more marginal. By contrast, pro-Israel/anti-Ukraine is the position of a large part of the political right.
Thus, in this post, I focus on critiquing the pro-Israel/anti-Ukraine position. It's the most politically significant alternative to supporting both.
Hamas's atrocities are now well-known to anyone who has followed this conflict, or just watches the news. They have slaughtered innocent civilians, including numerous women, children and even babies. Hamas terrorists have also taken numerous hostages, including kidnapping small children for that purpose. And it is likely they have engaged in widespread rape and sexual assault.
Russia is also similar to Hamas in seizing civilian hostages—including Americans—to exchange for its criminal operatives. For example, they detained US basketball player Brittany Griner, and eventually exchanged her for Viktor Bout, a Russian intelligence asset and arms supplier to terrorists. The latest such Russian hostage-taking is the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. Russia's hostage-taking operations have more of a veneer of legality than Hamas's, usually including trumped-up charges of one kind or another. But that should not mislead us about their true nature.
Just as Hamas seeks to destroy Israel entirely and impose a brutal despotism over the conquered land, so Putin seeks to establish Russian rule over all of Ukraine (which he denies has any right to exist as a separate nation), and impose the same sort of tyrannical regime that he established in Russia itself, and previously occupied Ukrainian territories. Neither's ambitions are confined to marginal territorial adjustments.
While Russia's atrocities are similar to those of Hamas, there is an enormous difference in scale. Hamas's recent onslaught has killed over 1000 Israeli civilians (a figure likely to rise as the victims are counted more fully). Innocent civilian victims of Putin's war number in the tens of thousands. The Russian military have also raped and tortured far more more people, and kidnapped vastly more children than Hamas.
This difference is not because Hamas is more ethical than Putin. If they could kill as many Israeli civilians as Russia has Ukrainian ones, they would surely do it. But the difference in scale matters when it comes to assessing the moral urgency of the situation. Other things equal, larger-scale atrocities deserve higher priority. They certainly cannot be assigned a lower one.
Hamas' radical Islamist ideology is not only at odds with Israel, but with Western liberal democratic values more generally. They seek to establish a brutal medieval despotism, suppressing dissent, religious minorities, and LGBT people, among other victims. Putin's Russia is a similarly brutal tyranny. It too suppresses dissent, persecutes minorities, and oppresses gays and lesbians. And, like the radical Islamists, Putin has repeatedly made clear he is an enemy of Western liberal democracy, not just Ukraine. His anti-liberal crusade long predates the current Ukraine war. Like Hamas, the Putin regime is an enemy of the West generally, not just of its immediate opponent on the battlefield.
Russia is a far larger and more potent enemy than Hamas could ever be—even in combination with its Iranian sponsors. And it's worth noting that those Iranian sponsors back Russia, as well. All of that strengthens the purely strategic case for helping Ukraine against Russia, even aside from moral considerations. That case is at least as strong as the strategic rationale for backing Israel against Hamas.
The Israeli and Ukrainian governments are not perfect paragons of virtue. There are genuine wrongs in Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, including violations of civil liberties, and unjust seizures of private property (partly curbed by the Israeli Supreme Court). The present right-wing government's effort to neuter the judiciary (now suspended as a result of the war) threatens to create a dangerous tyranny of the majority, if it were to pass. Ukrainian government policy also has illiberal aspects, which I have condemned.
But, despite very real flaws, there is a vast moral chasm between Ukraine and Israel on the one hand, and their respective enemies on the other. The former are functioning, if highly imperfect, liberal democracies. The latter are horrific tyrannies. In each conflict, one side systematically targets civilians, rapes and tortures the innocent, kidnaps children, and takes hostages, while the other does not.
As always, there is a risk that even liberal states with a just cause will engage in unjust policies during wartime. America's own history has all too many examples, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. We should not give either Israel or Ukraine a blank check in this regard. But there is an enormous difference between a state that has liberal values, yet sometimes fails to live up to them, and one that utterly rejects those values, as Russia and Hamas do.
Just as we should not overlook Israeli and Ukrainian shortcomings, we should also be careful to avoid undifferentiated demonization of Russians and Palestinians. In previous writings about the Russia-Ukraine War I have criticized imputations of collective guilt to Russians, and made the case for opening Western doors to Russians fleeing Putin's regime. Most of this reasoning is readily applicable to Palestinians, too. But recognizing that Putin's dictatorship and Hamas don't stand for all Russians and Palestinians is entirely compatible with recognizing that we should back efforts to defeat both of these evil regimes. If defeat leads to the collapse of one or both of them, so much the better! Recognizing the humanity of Russians and Gaza Palestinians entails recognition that they deserve to be free of the tyrants that currently rule them.
On all these moral dimensions, there is no good reason to back Israel, but not Ukraine. Both have flaws, but are vastly preferable to their adversaries.
A final possible reason to back Israel, but not Ukraine, is resource constraints. Perhaps we just don't have enough money to help both. But the US aid given to Ukraine since February 2022 (about $77 billion), is barely a rounding error in the federal budget (an annualized rate of less than 1% of the $6.27 trillion in federal expenditures in fiscal year 2022). And the resulting massive damage to the Russian military—one of our principal adversaries—could well actually save us more more money in the future. The Pentagon projects Ukraine will need a similarly modest amount over the next year (about $60 billion).
Israel, which faces a far weaker enemy than Ukraine, can likely make do with much smaller amounts of US aid. If necessary, aid to Ukraine and Israel can easily be offset with elsewhere. There is no shortage of wasteful and harmful federal expenditures! If we really want to deal with our looming fiscal crisis, we should focus on the gargantuan entitlement spending that is its principal cause.
If there nonetheless is a resource tradeoff, the ally facing a more powerful opponent—Ukraine—deserves priority. Israel can, if need be, defeat Hamas with little or no US aid, beyond diplomatic support and intelligence-sharing. Israel's forces are vastly superior to Hamas's in both quantity and quality. That will remain true even if the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah enters the war. Ukraine's position relative to Russia is far more difficult. From the standpoint of US geopolitical interests, Russia is a far more important enemy to curb than Hamas, precisely because of its greater power. At the very least, there is no good reason to assign it a lower priority.
I have not, in this piece, sought to outline anything like a comprehensive US strategy for these two conflicts. Each poses a variety of tactical and strategic issues that I cannot hope to cover here. But the points made do serve the more limited purpose of showing how there is no good rationale for the position of backing Israel against Hamas, but not Ukraine against Russia. The moral and strategic rationales for the former apply with equal or even greater force to the latter.
UPDATE: The original version of this post included an incorrect calculation of the percentage of the federal budget going to aid to Ukraine. I apologize for the mistake, which I have corrected.
Bad luck for Zelenskyy in D.C. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy met with President Joe Biden, making his plea for greater U.S. support for the war effort against Vladimir Putin's Russian invasion. Though the White House had just announced a $325 million air-defense package for Ukraine, "the Biden administration has opted not to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles known as ATACMS that would allow Kyiv to strike well behind Russian lines," reportsAxios.
Zelenskyy's plea for an additional $24 billion also does not look likely to materialize, as Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), along with six senators and 22 members of the House, used the occasion to voice their opposition to that high dollar amount of Ukraine aid. As Republicans in the House continue to oppose spending bill proposals, the U.S. government inches closer to shutting down, provided appropriations cannot be agreed to by the Sept. 30 deadline.
Meanwhile, as Zelenskyy has been in the U.S. this week, relations between Poland and Ukraine have soured due to a grain dispute, and Poland has declared it will no longer arm Ukraine. Also this week: "Nearly 50 children from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine were taken to Belarus… with the help of a charitable foundation that has been accused of facilitating Russia's forcible deportations of Ukrainian children," reportsThe New York Times.
On Tuesday, while in New York, Zelenskyy addressed the general assembly of the United Nations and sounded alarm about the kidnapping and deportation of children from occupied regions.
Kamala Harris, here to secure the border and end all gun violence? The White House has created a federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention and tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with leading it. "Every time I've met with families impacted by gun violence as they mourn their loved ones, and I've met with so many throughout the country, they all have the same message for their elected officials: 'do something,'" [President Joe] Biden said in a statement.
This, apparently, is that something. It's not clear how this office will actually work to solve the problem, nor is it clear that Harris' previous busywork—supervising the administration's border strategy—was completed successfully. No information has been released on how much funding this office will gobble up, either.
In August 2016, "Timpa told a [911] dispatcher that he was having a mental health crisis," saying "he had schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety and that he had not taken his medication. Two private security guards handcuffed Timpa and waited for the cops." Timpa was then held down by police officers in a prone restraint for over 14 minutes as he cried out, asking them to stop and telling them he was going to die. The police officers joked as they held Timpa down. Following his death, the government refused to give Timpa's family the body camera footage of the incident, and then invoked qualified immunity to shield the cops from civil liability (which was later appealed and overturned). "Tony Timpa's story shows how far the government goes to prevent victims of abuse from seeking recourse," notes Binion, who has covered this case extensively.
Now, finally, Timpa's case will be weighed by a jury. Trials like these are "incredibly valuable fact-finding tools—particularly when the defendants are government employees who may have violated the Constitution at the direct expense of the taxpayer," writes Binion.
Scenes from New York:
New York City is trying to do what virtually every city in the developed world already does — putting trash in garbage cans — and some NIMBYs aren't having it because the status quo of trash and rats spewed all over the sidewalks give that "cute neighborhood feeling"… Holy f*ck! pic.twitter.com/SNgyIf3pT2
At 92 years old, Rupert Murdoch is retiring. His son Lachlan will now oversee the Fox empire in his place.
Argentina "isn't just a place of multiple truths and ready arbitrage, it's a place in real crisis where the pegs and stories and chewing gum holding things together are all failing," reports Karl T. Muth for Noahpinion. ("Cualquier cosa es major que pesos," says one bitcoin ATM sign Muth encounters.)
"Jackson's experience is a warning to the vast majority of Alexa users and smart home dwellers who… are increasingly at the mercy of the tech they have embedded into their lives and bedrooms," writesTablet's Jarod Facundo in his investigation into the story of a black man who Amazon accused of making racist remarks in private.
Incredible:
san francisco's new approach to combatting property crime is encouraging victims to have less property pic.twitter.com/f7pg0lL7Fd
On Tuesday, Indonesian TikTok influencer Lina Lutfiawati was sentencedto two years in prison and more than $16,000 in fines. Her crime? Eating pork rinds, which is considered haram and is forbidden by the government.
No Curtis Mayfield or Marvin Gaye, really? Jann Wenner defends his picks for best artists in his new book, The Masters, but ends up sounding… a bit sexist and racist. (His defense of Rolling Stone's journalistic malpractice is similarly stunning.)
National debt exceeds $33 trillion, but no one seems to care. With a government shutdown possibly happening sometime over the next two weeks if there's no spending deal in Congress, the U.S. national debt has quietly slipped past the $33 trillion mark for the first time. It is on track to exceed $50 trillion by the decade's end. "The increase in debt over the last 20 years was overwhelmingly driven by the trillions spent on Republican tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and big corporations," a White House spokesperson toldThe New York Times.
But this wholly ignores Democrats' massive spending, which they say will have no dire consequences (ever!). The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, was estimated to cost $400 million but will cost something more like $1 trillion. It also does lots of things that are not inflation-reducing at all, not even if you squint. As Reason's Eric Boehm has argued, it's basically "a pared-down version of what Biden originally pitched as the 'Build Back Better' plan—it leaves aside much of the original bill's spending, but it maintains a huge corporate tax increase, huge spending on green energy initiatives, and a plan to swell the ranks of IRS agents." Some pandemic relief programs promoted by Democrats have either been wasteful or plagued by fraud, like the Employee Retention Credit ("The I.R.S. is freezing the program because of fears about fraud and abuse," reports the Times) and the Paycheck Protection Program, which Reason has coveredextensively.
Setting the blame game aside, there are massive implications that could stem from this addiction to spending. In the future, rising debt levels could make it harder for businesses to borrow money, kneecapping growth; rising debt could also mean massive inflation—even worse than what we've been contending with.
"This town is addicted to spending other people's money," commented Rep. Eli Crane (R–Ariz.) on X. "Enough is enough."
Zelenskyy cleans house. Six of Ukraine's top defense ministers were fired by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday ahead of his visit to Washington, D.C., and to New York, where he will address the United Nations. Roiled by reports of corruption, some have speculated that Zelenskyy needs to get his house in order before he makes big asks for U.S. aid, but no official reasoning for the defense ministry shakeup has been given. Defense Chief Oleksii Reznikov was axed by Zelenskyy earlier this month.
In other news, Ukraine has recaptured the village of Klishchiivka, near Bakhmut, which is Zelenskyy's "second significant gain in three days in [Ukraine's] grueling counteroffensive against the Russian army," per Reuters.
What's going on with the child poverty rate? "The poverty rate rose to 12.4 percent in 2022 from 7.8 percent in 2021, the largest one-year jump on record," reportedThe New York Times last week after the release of new Census Bureau data. "Poverty among children more than doubled, to 12.4 percent, from a record low of 5.2 percent the year before."
But it's a bit thornier than that. Poverty in America is measured in two ways: via the Official Poverty Measure (OPM), which uses cash and cash-like government benefits (welfare and unemployment checks), and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which factors in food stamps and tax credits. Depending on which measure you look at, you'll get a different sense of how dire (or not) the situation is. For example, stimulus checks, expanded food stamp benefits, and expanded child tax credits were counted only under the SPM (not the OPM). When they expired last year, the poverty rate (as counted by the SPM) rose. "The decline in the child poverty rate between 2021 and 2022 under the OPM was statistically insignificant," according to Matt Weidinger and Scott Winship at the American Enterprise Institute. "Because the undercounting of UI [unemployment insurance] benefits made the 2021 official rate too high, it's likely that a better-measured version would have shown an increase this year."
Besides, "there have been only three years with a lower child poverty rate in US history—2019, 1973, and 1969." And, "had inflation—partly caused by massive spending in 2021—been lower, the OPM might have reached an all-time low." Things are, by and large, getting better all the time.
Scenes from New York:
VIDEO THREAD: This morning in New York City, climate activists blockaded the entrances to the NY Federal Reserve.
NYPD quickly issued a warning over an LRAD and began arresting activists one by one.
"We need clean air, not another billionaire!" they chanted while refusing to… pic.twitter.com/wCUv16f6af
The European Union will likely ban payments for sperm, milk, and blood. "A ban on paid donations within the EU will thus decrease the quantity of plasma supplied from Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and force the EU to rely even more on imports from the US," writes Alex Tabarrok.
New Thomas Sowell interview just dropped: "Rawls refers to things that 'society' should 'arrange.' Interior decorators arrange. Governments compel. It is not a subtle distinction."
"Hunter Biden's multiplying gun charges threaten the right to arms and the right to trial," writesReason's Jacob Sullum.
Operation Underground Railroad founder Tim Ballard allegedly "invited women to act as his 'wife' on undercover overseas missions ostensibly aimed at rescuing victims of sex trafficking," reports Anna Merlan and Tim Marchman at Vice. "He would then allegedly coerce those women into sharing a bed or showering together, claiming that it was necessary to fool traffickers."
"I was a little too eccentric … I'm on the edge of a lot of things," said Rep. Lauren Boebert (R–Colo.) in response to reports that she got handsy with her beau (and him with her) at a performance of "Beetlejuice." Boebert reportedly also got into trouble for vaping in the theater, which is the most relatable she's ever been.
Instagram "was a platform for ads that didn't look like ads, and it would become the perfect place to sell makeup that didn't look like makeup," writes Molly Fischer on the Glossier empire.
Happy Yeltsin Supermarket Day (a few days late)! The abundance that delighted Boris Yeltsin 34 years ago has multiplied since his famous Randall's moment: "Between 1975 and 2022, for example, the number of products in an average U.S. supermarket has increased by more than three-fold, from 8,948 products to a whopping 31,530." What would Yeltsin have thought about today's supermarkets?
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Matt Welchhttps://reason.com/people/matt-welch/matt.welch@reason.comKatherine Mangu-Wardhttps://reason.com/people/katherine-mangu-ward/kmw@reason.comNick Gillespiehttps://reason.com/people/nick-gillespie/gillespie@reason.comPeter Sudermanhttps://reason.com/people/peter-suderman/peter.suderman@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?post_type=podcast&p=82487882023-09-19T20:37:12Z2023-09-18T19:14:40Z
In this week's TheReason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman pore over last week's indictment of Hunter Biden on federal gun charges and weigh in on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's upcoming meeting with President Joe Biden.
1:00: Hunter Biden indicted on federal gun charges
23:39: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet with President Biden next week
Judge Drew Tipton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas is in the process of considering an important immigration lawsuit that could have tragic effects if the plaintiffs prevail. The trial, which ran between Aug. 24 and 25, involves an ill-conceived lawsuit brought by Texas and nineteen other GOP-controlled state governments attempting to shut down an immigration policy that simultaneously rescues people fleeing violence and oppression and relieves pressure on the southern border. Ironically, statements by the plaintiff states' own leaders show why they deserve to lose.
The legal basis for these private sponsorship programs is the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which…. gives the Department of Homeland Security the power to use "parole" to grant foreign citizens temporary residency rights in the United States "on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit." Here, we have both "urgent humanitarian reasons" and "significant public benefit."
The humanitarian need is undeniable. Three of the four nations included in the program — Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — are ruled by oppressive socialist dictators, whose policies have created horrific conditions. Few have put it better than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), whose state is one of the plaintiffs in the present case.
As he said last year, Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro is a "murderous tyrant" who "is responsible for countless atrocities and has driven Venezuela into the ground." Venezuelan oppression and socialist economic policies have created the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Western hemisphere….
In 2021, DeSantis rightly described Cuba's communist regime as responsible for "poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech…."
The CNVH program also creates a significant "public benefit." In December, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a public letter to President Biden urging him to immediately address what he called a "terrible crisis for border communities."
CNVH parole does exactly that. Many of the migrants seeking entry at the border came from the four nations covered by program. Parole enables them to instead enter with advance authorization by ship or plane, and thereby bypass the border entirely, thus alleviating the "crisis" of which Abbot complained. A report by the conservative Manhattan Institute finds that "[t]he CHNV parole program…. has reduced combined illegal immigration by more than 98,000 immigrants per month…."
If the states prevail in this case, it will have dire consequences going far beyond the CNVH program. It would also imperil Uniting for Ukraine, which relies on the same authority, and has granted entry to some 140,000 Ukrainians fleeing Russia's war of aggression.
In addition, it would make it difficult or impossible for presidents to use parole to aid migrants fleeing future wars and repressive regimes. This harms both migrants unable to escape awful conditions, and the U.S. economy… It also undermines the U.S. position in the international war of ideas of against oppressive dictatorships, like those of Cuba, Russia and Venezuela.
Welcoming migrants fleeing their governments is a powerful signal of the superiority of ours. Conservatives understood this point during the Cold War, when they supported the use of this same parole power to grant entry to Hungarian, Cuban, Vietnamese and other refugees from communism.
The article is partly based on an amicus brief I filed in the case on behalf of the Cato Institute, MedGlobal (a humanitarian medical organization), and myself.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.Nick Gillespiehttps://reason.com/people/nick-gillespie/gillespie@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?post_type=podcast&p=82467592023-08-30T21:06:55Z2023-08-30T21:06:55Z
My guest today is Eli Lake, a repeat guest who for almost 30 years has been one of the country's leading national security journalists, working as a columnist for and contributor to publications such as Bloomberg Opinion, The Daily Beast, The New Republic, The New York Sun, and Commentary. His 2010 article for Reason, "The 9/14 Presidency," strongly argued for time-limiting all authorizations of the use of military force, especially those involving amorphous struggles such as the global war on terror.
In recent episodes of his podcast, The Re-Education, Lake has conducted deep dives into the dark histories of the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the FBI and how they routinely disregard constitutional limits on their activities. At a recent event in New York City, I talked with him about the fundamental tension between America playing an outsized role in world affairs and having secretive agencies that often keep Congress and voters in the dark about their operations. Can democracy and self-governance survive in such an environment?
Why We Can't Have Nice Things. A six-part Reason podcast series about the frustrating and foolish aspects of American trade policy that make everyday items more expensive. From last year's sudden shortages of baby formula to the Jones Act and President Lyndon Johnson's infamous "chicken war," host Eric Boehm sits down with industry experts and libertarian policy wonks to explore how these counterproductive rules got made—and explains why they can be so difficult to undo.
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Veronique de Rugyhttps://reason.com/people/veronique-de-rugy/https://reason.com/?p=82464482023-08-23T20:22:17Z2023-08-24T11:00:56Z
Remember how, mere months ago, the debt ceiling deal struck between Democrats and Republicans to avoid a government shutdown was touted as "an historic first step toward shifting government back toward common sense and conservatism"? The hope was that the spending caps in the deal would actually constrain spending. Well, it took less than two months for politicians to start evading the caps with an old trick: emergency spending.
In theory, there's nothing wrong with emergency spending. Rarely does a year pass without some unforeseen event requiring prompt access to federal funds. The supplemental spending process provides funding that cannot wait until the next appropriations cycle. When unexpected disasters strike, Congress should be able to deploy needed spending in a speedy and temporary way. That's what the emergency designation allows.
The problem, however, comes when politicians shamelessly abuse the emergency label to push through non-emergency spending that would otherwise violate budget constraints. This is exactly what's happening with President Joe Biden asking Congress to agree to $40 billion in new spending that won't count toward the debt ceiling cap. This includes $24 billion in aid to Ukraine, along with some funds for disaster relief and border enforcement.
No matter what you think of the merits of helping Ukraine repel Russia's invasion, one thing is for sure: The need to fund a war that started a year and a half ago is neither unforeseen nor temporary. Congress already authorized $113 billion in aid to Ukraine. If legislators believe more is needed, they should debate and allocate that money through the regular budget process. They should also decide which programs will lose funding.
The same comment applies to the funding for issues at the southern border, like shelter and services for migrants and counter-fentanyl efforts. Because these concerns are ongoing, they should be addressed through the regular budget process. Are these important problems? Of course. But this call for spending should not surprise anyone and still needs to be weighed against other priorities.
Indeed, putting the "emergency" label on anything important (or not so important) but not unforeseen makes a mockery of budget rules and the debt ceiling caps and, indeed, of the very concept of emergency spending.
In fairness to the president and members of Congress, this trick isn't new. I have been denouncing the abuse of the emergency spending process for almost 20 years. As I wrote back in 2008, "Once a small blip among federal outlays, emergency supplemental spending has exploded since 2002 when the Republican Congress let a key legislative restriction on its use expire." At the time, President George W. Bush's administration was engaged in the never-ending war on terror. Big spenders back then didn't like the "only use in case of dire emergency" constraint or the offset requirements. So, they got rid of both.
Very quickly, emergency spending became the tool of choice for avoiding budget constraints and dramatically increasing government spending. The abuse has been ongoing ever since. It has also become quite the partisan bargaining chip, with Republicans granting Democrats non-defense emergency spending in exchange for the ability to declare other things defense emergencies. There is always an excuse.
So how much money are we talking about? Over at Cato, Jordan Cohen and Dominik Lett write: "Over the last 10 years, Congress has spent more than $1.3 trillion on supplemental emergency bills. Add in emergency designations from regular appropriations bills and PAYGO emergency designations and the 10-year total rises to an inflation-adjusted $7 trillion—more than last year's entire federal budget."
It's time to fix the current process and stop an abuse that only further weakens the government's fiscal condition. The best option would be to stop exempting emergency spending from budget rules. That would mean that supplemental spending, emergency or otherwise, must be offset with spending cuts on other programs. Congress could also retain the emergency exemption but establish strict criteria for spending emergency declarations.
Because Congress is untrustworthy when it comes to following just about any rule that keeps it from spending more money, approval of all emergency spending should require a supermajority vote—a level of approval that should be easy to get in genuine emergencies. Or Congress could follow the example of many ordinary people and create a reserve fund for its emergency spending.
In the same way a diet is more effective alongside exercise, these options could be combined to provide more restraints on Congress. But no matter which option prevails, legislators must stop treating predictable occasions for government outlays as emergencies.
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Christian Britschgihttps://reason.com/people/christian-britschgi/christian.britschgi@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82465062023-11-22T20:53:11Z2023-08-24T04:05:46Z
The first 2024 Republican presidential debate made clear that there's no non-interventionist candidate in the race, even if there was a lot of quibbling over which specific foreign interventions the U.S. should prioritize.
When debate moderators asked the eight candidates on stage in Milwaukee who would not support additional military aid to Ukraine, only businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said they wouldn't.
Everyone else was enthusiastically on board with increased aid to the embattled country.
"Ukraine is the first line of defense for us," said former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie echoed those sentiments, warning that "if we don't stand up against this type of autocratic killing in the world, we will be next."
Former Vice President Mike Pence meanwhile suggested that it was borderline anti-American to suggest there's a trade-off between devoting resources to foreign entanglements and solving domestic issues. "Anyone who thinks we can't solve the problems here in the U.S. and be the leader of the free world has a small view of the United States," he said. "If we do the giveaway to [Russian President Vladmir] Putin, it's not going to be too long before he rolls across a NATO border."
Given that baseline, the responses from DeSantis and Ramaswamy were encouragingly skeptical of increased Ukraine aid.
"Your first obligation is to defend this country and our people. I'm not going to send troops to Ukraine," said DeSantis. Likewise, Ramaswamy said that "Ukraine is not a priority" for American defense. He also took heat from Haley for past statements he'd made opposing military aid to Israel. The only war he said he wants to fight was against the administrative state.
Nevertheless, both candidates endorsed using America's resources and military might on other interventions abroad.
When asked whether he'd send "special forces" to the southern border and even into Mexico to combat drug cartels, DeSantis was unequivocal.
"Yes, and I will do it on day one. The cartels are killing tens of thousands of our fellow citizens," said the Florida governor, adding, "We reserve the right to operate" and promising to leave drug dealers on the border "stone-cold dead."
Ramaswamy similarly contextualized his opposition to Ukraine aid as a means of opposing China. He described the Russia-China alliance as the greatest geopolitical threat to American interests. By withdrawing U.S. support for Ukraine, Russia would have less need to lean on China for support in its war in that country, he argued.
Furthermore, he said that he said that the U.S. should be working with Israel to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. Ramaswamy, like DeSantis, said that the resources we aren't using in Ukraine should be deployed to fight Mexican drug cartels.
"I think that this is disastrous that we are protecting someone else's border when we should be using those resources to stop the invasion of our southern border," he said.
No one on stage made the argument that the federal government, and the U.S. military specifically, is a poor instrument for solving our problems, foreign and domestic.
Today, the Biden Administration extended and redesignated Temporary Protected Status for Ukrainians in the United States who arrived here by August 16, 2023. TPS gives a foreign citizen the right to live and work in the US for a set period of time. The status is generally used for people whose home countries are in the throes of war, oppression, or a natural disaster.
In plain English, that means that the thousands of Ukrainians (the administration estimates their numbers at about 26,000) who currently have TPS in the US will be eligible for an extension through April 19, 2025. Otherwise, their status will run out on Oct. 19. Ukrainians currently in the US who do not have TPS, will be able to apply to get the status. That's important for the 140,000 or more who entered under the Uniting for Ukraine private sponsorship program, and whose residency rights (granted by parole) will otherwise run out in 2024 or early 2025 (including my own sponsorees). DHS estimates the total number of Ukrainians now eligible to get TPS status, despite not having it previously at 166,700.
However, the grant of TPS status may extend their residency or work rights only a few months past when they would have expired otherwise. It's possible that the president will address this problem by giving Ukrainian parolees a chance to apply for a two year extension of their parole status, as has already been done with Afghan parole recipients in a similar situation.
While this is a useful step, it is not a substitute for giving Ukrainians (and others in similar straits) permanent residency rights. Congress still needs to pass an adjustment act to do that; I outlined the case for doing so here.
The extension will in time expire. Moreover, what Caesar giveth he can taketh way (or his successor can). So this isn't the end of this issue. But it's an improvement, and it also gives more time for Congress to (hopefully) act.
For those on the watch for signs of ethnic bias or inconsistency, I remind readers that I am well aware that Ukrainians are not the only ones who need an adjustment act granting permanent status. I have repeatedly advocated taking the same step for other immigrant groups in similar situations, most recently in a post on the Afghan Adjustment Act.
Today, the Administration also extended and redesignated TPS for Sudanese in the United States (a total of about 4000 people are affected). Like Ukraine, Sudan has been wracked by a terrible war, and accompanying atrocities.
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William Rampehttps://reason.com/people/william-rampe/https://reason.com/?p=82444102023-08-07T21:13:11Z2023-08-07T14:42:08Z
President Joe Biden has claimed that the U.S.'s support for Ukraine "will not waver" amid its conflict with Russia, but new reports about the slow pace of Kyiv's counteroffensive highlight the costs of the fighting.
The New York Times reported last week that newly Western-trained Ukrainian brigades have failed to achieve any "sweeping gains," due to Russian artillery fire. Similarly, CNN hashighlighted Ukraine's difficulty in penetrating Russian defenses, with one Ukrainian official calling the density of Russian mines "insane." And Politico reported Tuesday that U.S. officials expect the counteroffensive to last "at least through the fall and possibly into the winter."
These reports follow a July 25 story in TheWall Street Journal claiming that the failure of Ukraine's counteroffensive to achieve its objectives has many Western officials fearing an "open-ended conflict"—and pessimistic that conflict-ending negotiations will occur this year.
"We are not expecting that they will be able to recover all the territory that was lost to Russia, especially if you are considering Crimea and even the territory which was lost in 2014 with Donbas," one European official told the Journal.
"It's going on pretty much according to the way I thought it would," says Lyle Goldstein, a visiting professor at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. "It always seemed ridiculous that you could have armored elements advancing without air cover, never mind having a deficiency in artillery. And when you add the mines to it, it always struck me as a nearly impossible task."
Yet earlier Western expectations thought Ukrainian valor could overcome this reality. As the Journal reported earlier in July, "Western military officials knew Kyiv didn't have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day."
"Pentagon and White House officials had low confidence of Ukrainian success, but allowed them (actually, outright facilitated their ability) to go on an offensive that was almost certain to fail," says Daniel L. Davis, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities. Ukrainian soldiers, he adds, "shouldn't have been sacrificed for a mission that was all but militarily unattainable."
For Ukraine's counteroffensive to succeed, the country's armed forces need time to wear down Russian defenses. "At this stage of active hostilities, Ukraine's Defense Forces are fulfilling the number one task—the maximum destruction of manpower, equipment, fuel depots, military vehicles, command posts, artillery and air defense forces of the Russian army," wrote Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, a month ago. "We are acting calmly, wisely, step by step."
But Ukraine's plans also require the U.S. and its allies to provide more military aid. "The only real response is an industrial mobilization that will give Ukrainians, and the Russians, a clear message that the Ukrainians will always have plenty of what they need," one Washington-based diplomat toldThe Wall Street Journal.
Such a policy underestimates the costs and dangers of supplying arms for the offensive, such as the threat of nuclear escalation. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stoked these fears on July 30 when he said that Russia would be forced to use nuclear weapons if Ukraine's offensive were to infiltrate Russian territory.
"I've been regularly documenting all kinds of nuclear threats that have traded back and forth," says Goldstein, "and I personally think that we've kind of underplayed those for political reasons."
There is another way the U.S. can help end the war. Instead of continuing to aid the counteroffensive, Washington could facilitate a negotiated end to the conflict by opening back-door diplomatic channels.
"The most prudent course of action now is to stop the offensive, use the rest of their striking force to begin digging in so that they guard against a Russian counterattack this summer," says Davis. "And then seek a ceasefire to end the killing of their men and destruction of their cities, and try to find a negotiated way out."
"The Ukrainians achieved a miracle—they saved the Ukrainian state—so they should pocket that victory and try to come to some kind of ceasefire," adds Goldstein. "I don't really see major political changes coming in either Moscow or Kyiv, so maybe a Korea-like settlement is the best we can hope for."
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Ukraine's counteroffensive has faced stout Russian defenses.Ilya Sominhttps://reason.com/people/ilya-somin/isomin@gmu.eduhttps://reason.com/?post_type=volokh-post&p=82438792023-07-31T22:56:46Z2023-07-31T22:56:46Z
Earlier today, I submitted an amicus brief to the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Texas v. Department of Homeland Security, a case challenging the legality of the CNVH immigration parole program. I wrote the brief on behalf of the Cato Institute, MedGlobal (a humanitarian organization that provides medical assistance to refugees and victims of natural disaster), and myself. Here is an excerpt from the summary of the brief posted on the Cato website:
In January, the Biden Administration adapted the approach used by the successful Uniting for Ukraine private migrant sponsorship program to include a combined total of up to 30,000 migrants per month from four Latin American countries: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti (the CNVH countries). Under these programs, migrants fleeing war, oppression, poverty, and violence in these countries can quickly gain legal entry into the United States and the right to live and work here for up to two years, if they have a private sponsor in the US who commits to supporting them.
Twenty GOP‐controlled states filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the program for the four Latin American nations (though not Uniting for Ukraine). They claim the program lacks proper congressional authorization. Ironically, the flaws in the lawsuit are highlighted by the plaintiff state governors' own statements about the evils of socialism and the urgent need to address the crisis at the southern border….
The CNVH program is authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act which states that "[t]he Attorney General may, except as provided in subparagraph (B) or in section 1184(f) of this title, in his discretion parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case‐by‐case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States." 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A).
Part I of the brief demonstrated that migrants from the CNVH countries indeed have "urgent humanitarian reasons" to seek refuge in the United States. They are fleeing a combination of rampant violence, brutal oppression by authoritarian socialist regimes, and severe economic crises. So great is the humanitarian need here, that even the leaders of some of the plaintiff states have recognized and denounced the horrific conditions in these countries.
In Part II, we show that paroling CNVH migrants also creates a major "public benefit." That benefit is reducing pressure and disorder on America's southern border. Here, too, some of the Plaintiff states have themselves recognized the importance of this benefit, and indeed have loudly called for measures to achieve it. The CNVH program has already massively reduced cross‐border undocumented migration by citizens of the four nations it covers.
Part III explains why the parole program is consistent with the statutory requirement that parole be conducted on a "case by case basis." 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A). The Plaintiffs' position on this point is inconsistent with statutory text, Supreme Court precedent, and basic principles of statutory interpretation. It would also lead to absurd results.
Finally, Part IV shows that, while the Plaintiffs have limited their lawsuit to challenging the CNVH program, if the court accepts their position it would also imperil Uniting for Ukraine. The latter relies on the same legal authority as the former.
In sum, this ill‐conceived lawsuit deserves to fail for reasons well‐articulated by leaders of some of the very same states that filed it.
The CNVH program has already helped many thousands of migrants fleeing violence and socialist oppression, and has also had a big impact alleviating pressure on the southern border. A court decision shutting it down would be both legally unjustifiable, and likely to cause great harm.
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Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.Jordan Cohenhttps://reason.com/people/jordan-cohen/Jonathan Ellis Allenhttps://reason.com/people/jonathan-ellis-allen/https://reason.com/?p=82438112023-07-31T17:49:14Z2023-07-31T17:50:47Z
Fears of loose weapons in Ukraine have become reality: Once American weapons arrive, Ukrainian criminals steal them. If U.S. arms transfer policies are not changed, Washington will inevitably accidentally arm groups that actively want to harm the United States.
In June, two separate Department of Defense inspector general reports revealed poor monitoring when U.S. weapons are transferred to Ukraine. Challenges in Ukraine's war zone have made it nearly impossible to track the weapons.
The first report found that the personnel responsible for ensuring accountability were given no "training or guidance." It concluded that the Pentagon does "not have accountability controls sufficient enough to provide reasonable assurance that its inventory of defense items transferred to [Ukraine] via the air hub in Jasionka was accurate or complete."
The second report discovered that the Office of Defense Cooperation–Kyiv was unable to monitor how American military equipment was put to use. Indeed, monitors could not "visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored."
Such problems are not unique to Ukraine, but the Biden administration has been open to accepting the possibility of weapons dispersion when it comes to Ukraine's war. Yet discounting these perils comes with four long-term security risks.
First, larger weapons systems have a high value on the black arms market. In Afghanistan, for example, the Taliban has been able to continue funding itself through its already existing smuggling networks by selling U.S. weapons left behind in the withdrawal. These weapons are now used in attacks in Pakistan, Kashmir, and the Gaza Strip.
Even before the war, Ukraine had one of the largest illegally trafficked arms markets in Europe, according to the 2021 Global Organized Crime Index. This has only intensified since the Russian invasion. For example, in August 2022 a criminal organization in Ukraine stole and intended to sell 60 rifles and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
Second, weapons can empower groups that intend to harm Americans. This has already happened in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates lost and sold U.S. weapons to al-Qaeda–linked groups. CNN has reported that in Ukraine this year, Russia sent captured NATO weapons to Iran.
Furthermore, Washington has indiscriminately provided arms to groups fighting for Ukraine. Among the groups who have received U.S. weapons is the Azov Brigade—a militia with neo-Nazi roots that is currently fighting against Russia but has previously attacked civilians in Ukraine. The Brigade was identified as a human rights violator in the State Department's 2016 and 2017 Report on Human Rights Practices and serves as a key cog in the global far-right network.
Third, loose weapons create risks of hostile actors attaining confidential, high-value U.S. technology. In October 2022 the State Department created a plan to train Ukrainian soldiers in tracking highly portable, lethal, and advanced proprietary U.S. weapons. Nonetheless, as the plan notes, this training will take years before the plan has any substantial impact.
Fourth, weapons dispersion can escalate American entanglement in a war with another nuclear power. While loose weapons have not yet been used against Russia, Ukrainian military units have previously ignored U.S. suggestions to not attack the Nord Stream pipeline and used U.S. armored vehicles in attacks over the Russian border.
If U.S. weapons are used against Russian citizens inside Russia's borders, it all but guarantees escalation and increases the risk of a nuclear exchange. While the chances of the latter may be low, the Biden administration should be trying to eliminate the risk entirely.
The reality is that any time such a large number of weapons is transferred—especially to an active conflict zone—dispersion will occur. But the consequences of this dispersion are still up in the air. If the Biden administration is open to accepting these risks, Congress should speak up for Americans who aren't.
Ukraine has waited for an invitation to NATO for years. Long before 2022's Russian invasion, and even before Moscow claimed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Kyiv has sought to join the West's premier military alliance. And NATO, for its part, has sought to welcome Ukraine into its ranks—eventually.
In 2008, at a gathering in Bucharest, the alliance promised Ukraine could someday become a NATO member. "NATO welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO," said a statement from NATO leaders. "We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO," and "we make clear that we support these countries' applications" for the membership process.
This week, as alliance leaders assemble once more, Ukrainian accession to NATO has yet to be realized. And after a year and a half of war on Ukrainian soil, the question of bringing Kyiv into the NATO fold is more pressing than ever: Should NATO make good on its promise? Should Ukraine become a formal NATO ally instead of a unique recipient of members' largesse?
For any who deplore Moscow's aggression and cruelty toward Ukraine, it may seem self-evident that our answer should be "yes." After all, many NATO allies—the United States chief among them—are already sending substantial military and financial support to Kyiv to bolster its defense. Indeed, American involvement is significant enough that we're already risking conflict with Russia. Why not make it official?
Moreover, Ukraine's performance in battle has been remarkable. Where Russian forces were widely expected to sweep through the country and rapidly replace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a pro-Moscow puppet, Ukrainian troops have put up a staunch fight, stopping and even, in some places, reversing Russian gains.
So perhaps, as former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote in Newsweek this week, "it is more than obvious that Ukraine's accession to NATO is necessary" for Ukraine and the allies alike. "A strong and battle-hardened Ukraine, with armed forces that fully meet the requirements of NATO membership, will be a powerful asset to the alliance and offer a guarantee of effective defense against any future Russian aggression."
That's an attractive narrative—Ukraine as an avatar of both might and right whose NATO membership would be beneficial for all involved. But the reality, unfortunately, is more complicated. Admitting Ukraine to NATO risks not just the security of extant alliance members but the prolongation of this very war.
Indeed, the position in which NATO's 2008 promise has put Ukraine these last 15 years is arguably the worst-case scenario, bestowing all the danger that comes from stoking Russian fears of NATO expansion and none of the advantages of the alliance. It's a promise that should never have been made and which, if now fulfilled, is unlikely to work in Ukrainians' favor—or ours.
The risk to Ukraine is easily summarized: An alliance membership hoped to shorten the current war will instead lengthen it by exacerbating Russian fears—whether justified or not—of Western attack.
"Major powers never calmly accept the close approach to their borders of unfriendly powers or alliances," as MIT political scientist Stephen Van Evera wrote in an explainer for Defense Priorities (a think tank where I am a fellow) shortly before the 2022 invasion. In this, "Russia is no exception," he continued. "It will not accept a settlement that leaves open the possibility of Ukraine in NATO or NATO in Ukraine."
As Van Evera went on to detail, neutrality agreements have worked in the past to forestall and settle conflicts like the one in Ukraine today. States react "with special belligerence to threats that appear near their borders," he wrote. "Perhaps such behavior is outdated: In the missile and cyber ages states can inflict great harm from great distance, so strategic depth matters much less." But, rational or not, this is still how states behave.
It's why NATO welcoming Ukraine would likely motivate Russian President Vladimir Putin to redouble his war effort rather than end it. The NATO-Russia border has already lengthened by more than 800 miles this year thanks to Finland's accession. Putin will not simply accept the addition of another 1,400 miles to that span. The notion that Ukrainian accession to NATO could cow Moscow into retreat is, sadly, a fantasy.
Then there's the risk for the U.S. and other NATO allies. Their reluctance to move forward in the membership process is "deep and understandable," as erstwhile neocon Max Boot wrote in The Washington Post, because of the basic fact that Ukraine "is at war with Russia and will be for the foreseeable future. This isn't a stable stalemate like the division of East and West Germany or North and South Korea. This is a dynamic, ongoing conflict that, if NATO were to take in Ukraine, could draw other members into a shooting war with a nuclear-armed Russia."
Such warnings of superpower conflict, and maybe even nuclear war, have become commonplace in the last 18 months. That familiarity should not dull us to their wisdom. The chance of open U.S.-Russia conflict really would increase if Ukraine were admitted to NATO, and the prospect of such a war really is horrible to behold.
Troublingly, the NATO leaders now gathering in Lithuania seem unwilling to revoke the 2008 pledge—nor to rip off the Band-Aid and bring Ukraine into NATO now, ending at least the uncertainty of the current situation. Instead, their draft statement on the subject, as reported byFinancial Times, simply renews the 2008 document's delayed welcome: Ukraine can join—eventually.
The decision naturally angered Zelenskyy, who wants NATO admission as soon as possible. And that's a frustration those on the other side of the issue can share. NATO never should have promised membership to Ukraine. Repeating the promise is repeating the mistake.
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Christian Britschgihttps://reason.com/people/christian-britschgi/christian.britschgi@reason.comhttps://reason.com/?p=82418602023-07-10T21:04:36Z2023-07-10T21:30:03Z
President Joe Biden's decision to include cluster bombs in his latest shipment of arms to Ukraine is creating rare public fissures in the otherwise rock-solid liberal consensus in favor of continued military aid to the embattled country.
Critics' argument against providing these munitions on the grounds that they will cause death and injury long after the war is over could easily be applied to most forms of military aid the U.S. is sending over there.
Defense officials announced the transfer of cluster bombs—which spread smaller bomblets when dropped—on Friday. Those bomblets often don't explode immediately, seeding areas with deadly explosives that continue to injure and kill people for years after a conflict ends.
The delayed damage from these bombs is why most countries (although not Ukraine, Russia, or the U.S.) have signed onto a treaty banning their use. U.S. law generally forbids their transfer, although the president can waive those restrictions. In a CNN interview, Biden said he made a "very difficult decision."
The president's reticence, and Ukrainian assurances that they'll use the munitions in a responsible manner, haven't mollified progressives nor America's European allies.
At Responsible Statecraft, Daniel Larison documents statements from a number of Democratic lawmakers unequivocally criticizing the transfer. Some 19 representatives signed a letter saying the move will "further endanger Ukrainian civilians" and undermines America's moral leadership.
"Experts warn that the likelihood of leaving behind dangerous unexploded material is dependent on several factors and potentially much higher than the Pentagon has estimated. The reality is that there is no such thing as a safe cluster bomb," they wrote. Reps. Sara Jacobs (D–Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) have also introduced an amendment to this year's defense authorization bill to stop the transfer.
This level of public criticism is unusual given that even anti-war, progressive Democrats have generally been in lockstep behind the Biden administration's Ukraine policy. Contrast progressives' reaction to cluster bomb transfers to the debacle last year when the House Progressive Caucus issued a letter urging direct negotiations between the U.S. and Russian governments about ending the war in Ukraine only to retract it a day later.
It's a peculiarity of American foreign policy that so discourse and policy itself revolves around the types of weapons being used in a given conflict.
In both the Obama and Trump administrations, the U.S.' standard for attacking the Syrian government was whether it used chemical weapons—an odd "red line" that never made much sense given its liberal use of conventional weapons to kill and maim people.
The flashpoint over cluster bombs makes a little more sense at first brush—given the long, deadly second-life these weapons can have. But these aren't the only type of military hardware that can continue to claim life and limb after the official war ends.
Recall all the videos that circulated on the internet during the final chaotic hours of the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan showing Taliban fighters driving around in American-made vehicles and toting American-made weapons.
All that hardware might not explode and kill people on its own like cluster bombs. Its capture is still a huge windfall for the new Taliban government, which can now use it in its plans for domestic score-settling and oppression.
Similar risks abound in Ukraine. The sheer number of weapons and war materials we've sent to the country heightens the risk that a significant portion of that aid will be diverted to unsavory paramilitary groups and criminal organizations.
A government watchdog report from last month found that U.S. military personnel were failing to adequately account for thousands of pieces of equipment, including small arms shipments, passing through Poland and into Ukraine, reportedTask & Purpose.
U.S. diplomatic personnel in Ukraine also said last year that it's often "impractical or impossible" to exercise standard oversight of weapons shipments, given the intensity of the conflict.
Earlier this year, Pentagon officials told Congress they've seen "no evidence" that weapons sent to Ukraine are ending up in unintended hands.
Perhaps that's true. As the war rages on, the Ukrainian government has a huge incentive to get weapons into the hands of frontline soldiers.
It doesn't answer the question of what happens once the war in Ukraine ends, or at least winds down to something resembling the low-intensity conflict that persisted in the country's East prior to the Russian invasion.
A government with long-running corruption issues sitting on a lot of U.S.-supplied weapons it doesn't need as much anymore is a recipe for many of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.
And there are a lot of wrong hands in Ukraine.
To fight that earlier conflict in its East, the Ukrainian government leaned heavily on paramilitary groups, including far-right and neo-Nazi groups.
Early in the war, there was some evidence those same groups were getting Western-supplied weapons. Defense Department officials have dismissed more recent reports of that happening.
Even so, should the current war devolve into a frozen conflict, the odds that all the weapons we've sent over there (and that we currently can't account for) stay in responsible hands and aimed at their intended targets will diminish greatly.
U.S.-supplied cluster bombs will have deadly impacts in Ukraine long after formal hostilities cease between Russia and Ukraine. The same can easily be said of almost all weapons sent to the country.
The same reasons to oppose sending cluster bombs to Ukraine are the same reasons to oppose sending weapons to the country generally.
After a meeting of defense ministers last month, NATO leaders will convene again next week in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. There they're expected to approve a significant update to the alliance's military posture on its eastern flank, where several members––Finland, Estonia, and Latvia––share a border with Russia, and several more––Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania––border Ukraine.
Right now, NATO has about "40,000 troops on standby from Estonia in the north down to Romania on the Black Sea," reports the Associated Press. With the new plan, the alliance "aims to have up to 300,000 troops ready to move to its eastern flank within 30 days."
The motivation is obvious: Russia invaded Ukraine last year, and last month's failed Wagner rebellion highlighted a dangerous vulnerability in Moscow, a nuclear power. NATO's easternmost members are eager for military reinforcement, with Lithuania long requesting a permanent foreign military presence in its territory (preferably American, though German may have to suffice).
"Russia is the most significant and direct threat to allies' security, and we must be prepared for it to remain so," said a June statement from the Bucharest Nine, a group of eastern NATO members, which urged defensive military buildup to "deny any opportunity for [Russian] aggression."
What should be equally obvious, however, is the very real risk of this plan given its likely reception in Moscow. NATO members' goal is to deter Russia, but the unfortunate reality is that one man's defense is another man's offense. What the allies see as commonsense protection, Russian President Vladimir Putin will—justifiably or not—interpret as saber rattling. With the best of intentions, NATO could end up with less security and more security dilemma.
Putin's probable read on NATO's new strategy is most intelligible if you know a bit about NATO history. From Moscow's perspective, the alliance has repeatedly broken its word regarding eastern expansion in the post–Cold War era while dismissing Russian worries about Western military strategies, including troops moving ever closer to Russian land.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, "we were assured that NATO did not plan to move eastward," Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov wrote in Foreign Policy in 2021. "When such a movement inevitably started in 1999, our counterparts claimed that these assurances were just nice friendly conversations between then–U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and [then–leader of the Soviet Union] Mikhail Gorbachev without any assumed legal obligations," he continued, referring to a 1990 meeting in which Baker said three times that NATO would expand "not one inch eastward."
Since then, NATO has had six waves of expansion, counting Finland's accession this year, all moving the edge of the alliance farther east. And, as Antonov recounted it, whenever Moscow "express[es] concern, we are told, in effect: 'Just trust us.'"
Now, maybe that's exactly what Russia should do. Maybe Putin's government should believe the U.S. and our allies when we say that this expansion is strictly defensive in nature and that we do not seek regime change in Moscow.
But—without granting a whit of moral legitimacy to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which is cruelly unjust in its initiation and execution alike—we should also be able to see why such trust would be difficult for Russian leadership. The fact is NATO has expanded east after high-ranking alliance members' officials promised it wouldn't, and the United States has been doing a lot of regime change in the last 22 years, including with NATO support.
Putin was certainly wrong to attack Ukraine and claim that NATO made him do it. He might well be wrong to think NATO is threatening him at all. But it's not a wildly irrational conclusion in this historical context.
That's why there's a risk of stumbling unintentionally into a security dilemma here. A security dilemma, as Harvard's Stephen M. Walt explained in Foreign Policy, "is a tightening spiral of hostility that leaves neither side better off than before." It starts when "the actions that one state takes to make itself more secure—building armaments, putting military forces on alert, forming new alliances—tend to make other states less secure and lead them to respond in kind."
Crucially, the actions of the first party (in this case, NATO) needn't be actually meant as a threat for the other party (Russia, and perhaps allies like Belarus) to feel less secure and respond with hostility. The perception of threat is enough—and, especially fresh off the Wagner crisis, it's not hard to imagine a weakened Putin perceiving threats everywhere. A new NATO posture of 300,000 troops ready to fight at a month's notice will be impossible for him to ignore.
C-SPAN has posted the video of yesterday's Cato Institute event on "Private Sponsorship: Revolution in Immigration Policy." The speakers were Prof. Adam Cox (NYU) (coauthor of the important book The President and Immigration Law), Kit Taintor (VP of Policy and Practice at Welcome.US, the leading organization connecting potential American sponsors with Ukrainian and other migrants eligible for sponsorship), David Bier (Cato Institute), and myself.
The video is available here. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to embed it on this site.
Here's Cato's description of the event:
The Biden administration recently launched ambitious private sponsorship programs for Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans, which could be the largest expansion of legal migration in decades. These initiatives create new legal opportunities for Americans to sponsor foreigners from these troubled countries for legal entry and residence in the United States. The new entry categories have already facilitated hundreds of thousands of legal entries and are helping reduce unlawful migration across the U.S.-Mexico border. What is the sponsorship experience like? How can the government improve upon these policies? What can be done to expand the program to immigrants from other countries? Explore these issues and others with Cato's panel of experts.
I have previously written about Uniting for Ukraine and other private sponsorship programs here, here, here, and here. While these initiatives have important limitations (most notably, the lack of a provision for permanent residency and work permits in most of them), they are on their way to becoming the largest expansion of legal immigration in a long time.
If you're trying to make sense of events in Russia, it might be best to frame it in medieval terms. Think of the mutiny by Prigozhin and the Wagner Group less as an attempted coup by mercenaries and more as a violent effort to extract a better deal by a warlord who was betrayed by his liege. That the feudal squabbling takes place not amidst a Game of Thrones setting of horses and swords, but with the control of nuclear weapons at stake, means that the resulting destabilization could have global repercussions.
The revolt was certainly a shock to Russian authorities, with convict-turned-caterer-turned-warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group troops reportedly making it to within 200 kilometers of Moscow before halting. They shot down aircraft from the armed forces on the way and seem to have picked up a few defecting military units. The precipitating factor was that, after months of feuding between Prigozhin and the Defense Ministry, Russia's President Vladimir Putin decided to end Wagner's independence.
A Betrayal with Big Repercussions
"A key trigger for Prigozhin, officials said, was a June 10 Russian Defense Ministry order that all volunteer detachments would have to sign contracts with the government," The Washington Postreported. "Though the order did not mention Wagner Group by name, the implication was clear: a takeover of Prigozhin's mercenary troops, who have proved essential to Russia's military campaign in Ukraine and have helped secure some of its most notable tactical victories."
Prigozhin more or less confirmed this take in a statement after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko negotiated an end to the march on Moscow.
"The aim of the march was to avoid the destruction of Wagner," Prigozhin claimed on Telegram after accusing regular military units of opening fire on Wagner formations in the days before the revolt.
But aside from leading mutineers shockingly close to the Russian capital, what was Prigozhin doing? Wagner was obviously up to the job of punching through defenses and threatening the seat of government. But taking and holding the entire country seemed desperate and unlikely. But that's not necessarily what he intended.
Severance-Package Negotiations Through Mutiny
"The coup, if it wasn't going to be serious, which turns out it wasn't, was always about Prigozhin honestly just getting the best retirement package that he could," suggests geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan. That is, if the warlord was going to be kicked to the curb by Putin, he'd march his elite troops on Moscow and demand to be paid off before going away. Zeihan has doubts that Prigozhin will enjoy a long and peaceful retirement, but he expects that Putin and company have plenty of worries of their own.
"We now have the bulk of Wagner who have joined Prigozhin on an attempted coup. Even if Prigozhin never expected it to succeed, the soldiers followed him, and at least one unit of the air defense system within the Russian military joined him," adds Zeihan. "That means if you are Putin, not only is the most effective fighting force you have of questionable loyalty, there's a lot of folks in the rank and file that you don't know if you can trust anymore."
Russia's reliance on Wagner is clear from Putin's offer to the mutineers "to continue your service to Russia by signing a contract with the Defence Ministry or other law enforcement or security agency or return home. Those who want to are free to go to Belarus" with Prigozhin. That's not a generous offer from a victor, but a desperate one from a man with a shaky grip on the throne.
A Weakened Grip on the Throne
"Strong leaders are not usually the targets of coup attempts," notes Edward Lucas, writing for the Center for European Policy Analysis. "It was also telling that so few heavyweights rallied to Putin's side. Many regime insiders and other bigwigs seem to have thought that the coup had a chance of succeeding, and waited to see what would happen…. The outlook for Russia is now grim. Prigozhin's march on Moscow may have failed, but the conditions that fostered it remain. Others will be mulling their chances."
"Things remain together, just, but only so long as everyone fears Putin most," agrees Francisco Toro, at Persuasion. "And that's why last weekend's bizarre mini-crisis in Russia has destabilized the Putin system as consequentially as it has. For one fleeting moment, just one mad-cap afternoon, Vladimir Putin was not the man Russians feared most."
The result is that Yevgeny Prigozhin has an uncertain refuge in Belarus under the "protection," such as it is, of Lukashenko. Putin has an equally uncertain grip on power in Moscow. The result is almost certain to be instability in Russia as the previously unchallengeable ruler looks unexpectedly vulnerable a year and a half after setting out to expand his empire with the invasion of Ukraine.
"Russia's next civil war has already started," claims Lucas. "As it deepens, Russia's civil war is unlikely to be a territorial conflict, as in the fighting that followed the Bolshevik revolution…. This one is between gangsters: feuding clans eager to hold on to their own wealth and perhaps gain assets from their rivals."
"For Vladimir Putin to survive in power he will need to patch up the holes in his now badly tattered aura of menace," writes Toro. "I can't tell you exactly how he'll do that. But I can tell you this: it's going to be ugly."
Big Stakes for the World
This increased uncertainty has enormous implications beyond Russia, given that the country has the world's largest nuclear forces and a diminished, but still substantial, international presence. The country is the world's largest exporter of wheat and a major source of petroleum and other resources. That means chaos in Russia is likely to contribute even more pain to a world already disrupted by the invasion of Ukraine and the economic sanctions imposed by the West in response. Worse than a medieval power struggle in the age of swords and castles, a similar conflict now implicates control over vast wealth and destructive power.
There is one party that likely finds comfort in Prigozhin's power play and the resulting turmoil: Ukrainians. While Ukraine has punched above its weight in resisting invasion, the country suffers terribly from the war. The withdrawal of Wagner troops from the fighting and the mutineers' seizure of the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don have boosted Ukraine's military operations.
"Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations and advanced on at least two sectors of the front as of June 26," according to the Institute for the Study of War. "The UK [Ministry of Defense] indicated on June 26 that Russian forces likely lack operational-level reserves that could reinforce against simultaneous Ukrainian threats on multiple areas of the front hundreds of kilometers from each other, chiefly Bakhmut and southern Ukraine."
In chaos there is opportunity. That opportunity is clear for besieged defenders in Ukraine. But it's also an opportunity for the return of a more uncertain and overtly brutal world in which old-style warlords gamble with very high stakes.
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Peter Sudermanhttps://reason.com/people/peter-suderman/peter.suderman@reason.comKatherine Mangu-Wardhttps://reason.com/people/katherine-mangu-ward/kmw@reason.comLiz Wolfehttps://reason.com/people/liz-wolfe/liz.wolfe@reason.comKennedyhttps://reason.com/people/kennedy/https://reason.com/?post_type=podcast&p=82400342023-06-27T18:05:24Z2023-06-26T19:17:17Z
In this week's TheReason Roundtable, editors Peter Suderman and Katherine Mangu-Ward host not one but two special guests! Reason's own Liz Wolfe and the one and only Kennedy. Buckle up and enjoy as they cover new reporting that lends legitimacy to the lab leak theory of COVID-19's origins, the candidacy of RFK Jr., and the Wagner Group's recent revolt in Russia. Huzzah!
2:20—New reporting supplies legitimacy to lab leak theory of COVID-19's origins
In a recent Washington Post article, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul advocates a US "diplomatic surge" that includes outreach to the Russian diaspora and encouraging emigration from that country:
Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken should appoint a de facto ambassador to the Russian diaspora. Our current efforts in assisting Russians who emigrated to avoid supporting Putin's war are inadequate. We have a national security interest in giving these refugees reasons not to return home. Young men who leave Russia today are soldiers who will not be on the battlefield in Ukraine tomorrow. To that end, we should also be working to encourage more emigration.
But McFaul omits the most effective way to encourage emigration: Letting more Russians come to the West! Currently, Western nations are largely closed to Russian immigration, to the point where even political dissidents sometimes face cruel immigration detention if they try to enter the US.
If we want to improve outreach to the Russian diaspora, opening our doors to Russian migrants is likely to be far more effective than any special ambassador. Actions speak louder than words. Since February 2022, some 1 million Russians have fled the country despite the fact that most have been able to go only to such unappealing destinations as Turkey and Kazakhstan. Many more might leave if they had the opportunity to move to Western nations that can offer far greater freedom and opportunity.
The resolution of Yevgeny Prigozhin's coup against Putin ensures the latter will stay in power for some time to come. Even if Prigozhin had overthrown Putin, it's far from clear that Russia would have ended the war and ceased to be a menace to the West. So long as Russia remains a hostile, illiberal power, the kind of outreach McFaul advocates makes excellent strategic, as well as moral, sense.
I have made the case for dropping barriers to Russian migration in greater detail in previous writings, compiled here. In those pieces, I also addressed various counterarguments, such as claims that Russians should be kept out because they bear collective responsibility for Putin's war.