Shifting Power

On March 11, 2022, President Joe Biden announced that Russia, due to its war against Ukraine, would no longer have a most favored nation trade status with the US and that he would ban Russian seafood, diamond, and alcohol imports. This action has added to the long and dramatic list of American and allied sanctions on Russia: like America’s ban on Russian oil and gas. What is notable here is who has not gone along with the United States in levying sanctions against Russia and what this could signify for the future of international relations. Charles Krauthammer’s famous 1990 article cited the Soviet transfer of Eastern Germany to the West as the beginning of what he saw as a brief unipolar moment. This unipolar moment was marked by world power being now so firmly concentrated in the West that the Cold War division of power between the United States and the Soviet Union was no longer the predominant force in international politics. Krauthammer noted that other states had rushed to the West in general and America in particular as “the sole allocator of geopolitical goods”. Assuming that this unipolar moment had lasted, the limited reaction by the international community, and the emerging great powers in particular, to America’s demand for sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine have in essence signaled the end of American unipolarity.

Before I explore the broader implications of the reaction to the Russo-Ukrainian war, it is important to provide background on the war itself. Ukraine is historically seen as an important state by the Russians. Various experts like George Kennan, the famed architect of the American policy of Soviet containment, and Robert M. Gates, former Secretary of Defense under Bush and Obama, had warned that expansion eastward by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would engender adverse Russian reaction. Gates in his memoir lamented the policy of trying to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia into NATO when the Russians had vital interests in those countries. Likewise, William J. Burns, now Biden’s CIA director, warned in 1995 that NATO expansion would not be welcomed by the Russians. He further wrote in a memo to the State Department in 2008 that Ukrainian entry into NATO would be seen as a bright red line by not just Putin but by the entire Russian elite. Such warnings as well as any understandings with the Russians about NATO expansion were ignored.

The ousting of a democratically elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine in the 2014 Maiden Revolution with American backing raised the hopes of many Ukrainians who were desirous of NATO membership. This revolution resulted in controversially conducted but (at least on paper) popularly supported secessions from Ukraine in the Russian speaking Donbass region and the annexation of Russian majority Crimea from Ukraine to Russia. Nevertheless, Ukraine persisted in its appeals to join NATO, which at times were met with Western encouragement. As late as the 2022 Munich Security Conference, which was hosted days before the outbreak of the war, President Zelensky of Ukraine was again raising the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO while accusing those in the West blocking this as appeasers of Russia. Zelensky also expressed underlying concerns in the same speech that since Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s it has had no real security. American Vice President Kamala Harris remarked that while the United States would not send its troops to defend Ukraine, Washington D.C. recognized that the peace and security of Europe was under direct threat by Russia.

On February 24th , 2022, President Vladimir Putin, partly citing fears of NATO expansion, announced that Russian forces were going to carry out a “special military operation” to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.” This announcement came on the heels of a previous decision made by Putin on February 21, 2022, to recognize the independence of the Russian separatist republics in the Donbass area amid an uptick in violence between the Donbass separatists and the Ukrainian army. Since the invasion, Moscow has publicly released their initial terms to the Ukrainians. These demands are that the Ukrainians enshrine the principle of neutrality in their constitution (i.e. that they cannot join NATO), recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and recognize the separatist Donbass republics as independent states. These acts spelled the death of the 2014-2015 Minsk Accords, which was an attempt to establish an effective ceasefire between the Ukrainian government, the Donbass separatists, and Russia. Even before the invasion, the effectiveness of the accords was already in question. In the days prior to the Russian invasion, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) recorded some 1,710 ceasefire violations between the Ukrainian government and the Donbass republics. Violations of Minsk were not a new development. Despite promises by both sides that they would withdraw heavy weapons from the Donbass region, such promises were not upheld. Similarly, one OSCE report also noted that civilian casualties in the separatist Donbass republics between 2018-2021 comprised over 80 percent of total civilian losses from active hostilities (like shelling).

The United States and its allies reacted to the invasion of Ukraine by issuing a whole litany of sanctions on Russia. The declared goal by the Biden administration is that these sanctions make it impossible for Putin “to ignore public sentiment and continue his increasingly brutal invasion. Their main guiding principle is to provide Russian citizens with facts and context that they cannot find on Kremlin-controlled outlets, whether online or through other media.” As of the writing of this article, these goals have failed to be met. In fact, popular sentiment in Russia is moving counter to those goals with Putin’s approval ratings, which have been consistently high, soaring into the 70s. Additionally, most Russians approve of Putin’s action to invade Ukraine. Indeed, this policy by the Biden administration has not been thought through well given that Russia’s response to the sanctions was to restrict or outright ban their citizenry from accessing Western social media outlets. This makes getting out the Western narrative over Ukraine to the Russians harder. Even if Russians had unfettered access to these outlets, they would be exposed to the change in policy by these outlets to now allow for the praising of neo-fascist groups in Ukraine and calling for the death of their fellow Russian soldiers. Additionally, they might notice that living and dead Russians have also suffered from public pressure campaigns due to the Western reaction to the war. Hence, exposure to Western media may not necessarily lead toward Russians accepting the Western narrative.

In terms of the sanctions themselves, contrary to some reports, Russia anticipated serious sanctions to be levied against it and worked to lessen the burden of these sanctions even prior to its invasion of Ukraine. For one thing, Russia is in better economic shape than it was when Putin first took office. In 2020 their debt to GDP ratio was 17.8 percent which is a very marked improvement of when in 1999 their debt to GDP was 92.1 percent. For another, Putin has for years worked with China (the second largest economy in the world and set to become the largest economy [by nominal GDP] in the world as early as 2026), on creating an alternative to the dollar for their bilateral trade. More recently, Putin signed a series of economic deals with China on February 4th totaling $117.5 billion. Russia also deepened its ties with Argentina, Cuba, Iran, India, Venezuela, and others. Russia has only strengthened its economic ties with China in the aftermath of its invasion and has accelerated plans to construct an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency. Indeed, Russian-Chinese ties have become so close that the United States has expressed its concerns about the relationship. India, the sixth largest economy in the world, has also explored options to set up a non-dollar trading account with Russia. India has also considered buying discounted Russian goods after the West issued sanctions against the Russians. Isolating Russia may have costly consequences for those levying the sanctions. Russia has already become pretty much self-sufficient in domestic food production and has even overtaken the US in becoming the top exporter of wheat. European markets being isolated from Russia thus stand to be in serious jeopardy from the loss of Russian gas and fertilizer. This is not to argue that there won't be serious pain inflicted on the Russian economy through these sanctions or that Russia will necessarily ultimately emerge victorious from this bout of economic warfare. Rather, the economic consequences of the fallout with Russia are a two-way street and that Russia is in a better position now regarding meeting its basic food needs than the rest of Europe seems to be. If Russia does manage to survive this fallout and if a viable alternative to the dollar as an international reserve currency emerges from this experience, then America’s global standing has been seriously undermined.

A prospective global balancing coalition against the United States may be starting to emerge. Many point to the overwhelming passage of the United Nations’ General Assembly resolution denouncing Russian aggression in the Ukraine as a sign that the world stands firmly united against Russia and with the West. There are flaws with this analysis. For one thing, General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding. The only part of the United Nations that is invested with binding legal power is the Security Council, which failed to pass a resolution on the war due to Russia’s veto. What is a more important clue of the willingness of states to act on an anti-Russian policy, is not primarily through them giving lofty speeches and passing non-binding majority resolutions, but whether they joined in the sanctions regime against Russia. As of the writing of this article, the vast majority of states, including states in America’s backyard in Latin America, have not joined in.

International relations between states can be compared to a game of chess where not all pieces are equal. Emerging great powers and great powers in our example constitute the more important pieces of international relations. All the BRICS (stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping of countries, those who are widely seen as potential great powers, have not joined the United States here. Neither has important regional powers like Indonesia and Turkey, the latter being a member of NATO. What is important to note is that countries in the BRICS grouping collectively constitute a major and growing share of the world market. This is in comparison to the major blocs like the European Union (EU) that joined the call to sanction Russia, whose share of the world GDP is still considerable but in decline.

Frustrated by those desisting in sanctioning Russia, the Biden administration is considering levying sanctions on some countries who do not sufficiently exhibit an anti-Russian policy. To that end, the Biden administration has mused sanctioning India for its close defense ties to Russia. India has not taken these threats laying down. Despite American pressure for the Indians to denounce Russia, they have adamantly refused to do so. An Indian government official let it be known that they are improving relations with Pakistan, a longtime rival of India’s and an ally of China. India has additionally taken steps to improve its relationship with China, another geopolitical rival of India. All of this points to the possibility of a balancing coalition being formed against America consisting of three great powers. This is an alarming development. Such a combination of Russia, China, and India would be extremely difficult if not impossible for the United States to handle. It would effectively mean that the United States could not reasonably contain its main geopolitical rival of China.

It is not only great powers that are aligning against the United States. Now, foreign energy producers like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who have long been close to Washington D.C., are no longer taking the US’s calls. The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who has complained of poor treatment by Biden, warned that his country was considering reducing its investments in the United States while seeking deeper economic and security ties to China. One of the items on the table between Saudi Arabia and China is to peg China’s currency to oil. Should the Saudis back the yuan with oil, this would create a real challenger to the US dollar given that the US dollar is currently backed by oil. In effect, such a move may well spell the end of the power the dollar has as a reserve currency. The United States, being no longer energy independent due to Biden’s policies concerning gas and oil drilling, is forced to compensate for the already rising fuel prices and the loss of access to Russian oil by begging unsavory regimes that are close to Moscow like Venezuela and Iran for their oil and gas. Talks with Venezuela over an oil deal appear to have for the moment broken down. Dealing with Iran means that the United States does not have the upper hand in negotiating the terms of a nuclear deal and it also means Russia, the object of US sanctions, could also hold the talks hostage until the US gives Moscow some additional concessions as well. All of this points to a poorly thought-out policy by the Biden administration that is alienating much needed allies and strengthening the hand of those whom we wish to contain. Whether Russia emerges victorious from its war in Ukraine or not, the biggest winner of this war is China who now has openings to create a stronger balance of power coalition against the United States.

There are those who insist that Putin’s plans have backfired in Europe at least, and America has had gains there. They note that erstwhile neutral countries like Switzerland are joining in sanctioning Russia, that there are debates now about Finland and Sweden joining NATO, that many countries are now sending arms to Ukraine , and that Europe in general (as well as Germany in particular) has committed to rearmament. Do these developments offset these growing problems I have highlighted? These developments have admittedly created a European bandwagoning/balancing coalition against Russia that may in future (assuming this coalition in Europe is European rather than American led) allow the United States to focus more on providing security to its Asian allies rather than its European allies.

This balancing coalition against Russia is however much inferior to the alternative balancing coalition of states like India against China. Using our aforementioned chess analogy, not all exchanges of pieces in the game are equal. In itself the loss of a pawn in exchange for a knight or queen is eminently acceptable. Here we stand to lose India, Russia, and other powers to China in exchange for possibly gaining Sweden and Finland. This is not a wise exchange. As previously noted, Europe represents a diminishing share of the world economy. In the realist line of thought, economic power is the foundation of military power. Declining economic strength ultimately means one is unable to spend as much on defense as a growing and economically dominant rival power. In other words, in the long run, should trends continue, our prospective gains in Europe will accrue less and less value.

There are other outstanding issues here as well. Europe, like the United States, is energy dependent on gas, coal, and oil. Until this crisis, they happily got a lot of their energy needs from Russia. So far, while there has been much talk of ending Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, our European allies have failed to set an exact date when they plan to end this dependence. Rearmament requires more energy be spent and put in reserve for building and maintenance of these armed forces. As NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg once noted, “our armed forces still rely only on fossil fuels.” Assuming Europe is serious about rearmament and about cutting their dependency on Russia, all this leads to two questions: (1) where NATO is going to go to get the fuel for its armed force and (2) whether Russia received any indirect or direct benefit from these options. Some of this burden may be relieved by revisiting Biden’s decision to scrap alternative oil and gas pipelines to Europe like the EastMed pipeline. Should the United States become energy independent again and export the needed oil and gas to Europe this too could create an alternative to Russia. However, Biden seems more focused on enacting a green agenda (which underemphasizes the potential of nuclear power) than looking to oil/gas sources to offset an economy overheated with historic rates of inflation, rising fuel prices, and with a severe supply chain problem. As for present green technology being a viable alternative for NATO forces to build themselves on, this prospect is highly debatable on multiple grounds.

We are now witnessing the end of American unipolarity with countries looking to the East rather than to the West. This crisis has demonstrated that the West and America in particular no longer has the sway it used to. Many of the rising countries are resisting American demands and expectations. Trust in the US dollar as the reserve currency is waning and alternatives to the US dollar are being seriously considered. American foreign policy is not well thought out with our declared goals not being realistic. It is by no means certain that Russia will ultimately succumb to economic pressure by either ending the war on unfavorable terms or by regime change. Even if the Russian economy is rendered wholly dysfunctional or if Putin falls (and it is by no means certain that his replacement would not carry out a similar if not more aggressive policy than him) or a favorable settlement by Russia of Ukraine proves to be illusive, we have pushed Russia into cementing its balancing coalition with China through not settling the NATO question and the Ukrainian crisis diplomatically. One of the potential virtues of a diplomatic settlement of Ukraine (and of the issue of NATO expansion) would be that if it were brokered by Russia, this would make it easier to approach global powers like India to balance with us rather than against us. This is so as it would rob the Russians of their argument over NATO expansionism driving Russia to act. If on the other hand a diplomatic settlement with Russia had succeeded, then the Indians, who are close with Russia, would have fewer outstanding reasons to not get closer to the United States. While promises by our European partners in NATO to rearm is a welcome development, this still does not remove the fact that we are becoming more isolated on the world stage as many growing powers are looking to Beijing rather than Washington. An isolated America or an America in an inferior international coalition is not at this time inevitable but if we do not tread more carefully it may very well be our future.

Possibly due to crowded journalistic headlines on the ongoing war in the Ukraine, acts of “communal violence”, India’s coined term for religious clashes mostly between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority, in India have been given only sporadic coverage as they escalated since last year and continue into 2022.

An April 20, 2022 article in the Washington Post chronicles a very recent and typical event. A Twitter video posted by India today showed a group of Hindus, marching for hours in a religious procession called "Hanuman" that is part of a Hindu holiday celebrating the birthday of the god Ram. This procession of Hindus, wearing the saffron scarves that signal Hindus nationalism, went in front of a mosque where people were holding evening prayers for Ramadan and waved swords and pistols, shouting pro Hindus slogans and provoking Muslims.

The video posted on Twitter by IndiaToday is narrated with critical commentary by their journalists who decry that so many shotguns are being “brandished in broad daylight” at a holy procession. The narrator asks: “Who gave them permission to carry these?” This video of the incident was taken during the Delhi march but there were similar marches in six other states in India as well. The latest disturbances stayed peaceful in the beginning, but then devolved into rock throwing which required a large force of riot police to disband. Notably absent from the conversation about these events is Narendra Modi, who has been Prime Minister of India since 2014. Modi is the leader of the largest party in the Indian Parliament, the Bharatiya Janata Party, popularly known as the BJP.

Modi also has a Twitter account to which he posts very frequently. With a following of 78.2 million followers, Modi has posted over 32 thousand tweets since 2009. On a typical day he posts about operas and other performances he attends with family and political allies. He also shares his speeches about COVID vaccinations, political rallies and various peaceful religious ceremonies. However, he has so far failed to meaningfully comment on the latest wave of communal violence that has broken out in multiple areas of India.

To better understand why Modi has been so uncharacteristically silent on the topic one can look back in history a couple of decades. He was born and raised in the province of Gujarat on the west coast of India. In 2002 there was a series of riots there that not only caused a possible 2000 deaths in the initial incident but then led to a full year of riotous attacks in the region. At the time Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. He was investigated and cleared in 2012 of culpability of the widespread violence in which mostly Muslim-owned properties were attacked.

In 2013 the Indian Parliament was close to passing a bill for the Prevention of Communal Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill. Modi sent a strongly worded letter in opposition to the bill. The crux of his argument was that it violated a “state’s rights” concept that would prevent local governments from handling communal violence as they saw fit, based on local conditions. The bill failed to gather the requisite votes and was not passed into law.

As the years have rolled on, Modi has had an increasingly higher political profile as he has led the BJP to victory again and again in the top levels of Indian politics. The BJP is positioned as a pro-Hindu political party. The concept of “Hindutva” which is a shorthand for Hindu nationalism, is strong within the BJP. This core ideology, which emphasizes Hindu identity, pride and cultural continuity, has been part of Indian politics since the founding of the state. However, earlier on, there was a widespread ideological tendency to modernize the caste system as well as religious communities in the name of fairness and equality.

In 2014, the year Modi originally became Prime Minister, the BJP held 336 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha which is the lower house of the Parliament of India. This is the main legislative body in the Republic of India. When Modi was re-elected in 2019 with an even stronger mandate from the electorate, the BJP held 356 seats out of 543. During his first five years in power, there have been recurrent and a rising general trend of physical attacks by religious communities against another.

India was technically organized in its constitution as a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic” so, although the vast majority of Indians are Hindu, there is no official national religion. India has a population of 1.4 billion people, (2022) or ⅕ths of the world population. Every second a new Indian baby is born. 80% of Indians claim Hinduism as their religion. 13% are Muslim. The remaining 7% of the population is composed of all other religions. With such a large and dynamic population it is inevitable that there is friction and that these differences of opinion haven’t yet been solved.

There have been historical tensions within India on the basis of religion. There is still a strong cultural bias that favors the Hindu majority. This is true despite a 72 year old Constitution which explicitly states that members of minority religions have rights, including rights to gather together to worship, to practice one’s choice of religion and to pay taxes for promotion of whichever religion you choose. Absent from the Constitution are specific remedies for mob violence against others for what, in some other countries, would be called “hate crimes.”

Hate speech, even by prominent civic leaders and religious leaders continues to fan the flames of partisan beliefs. In a 2018 article in the ILI Law Review by Anandita Yadav, Ph.D specializing in hate speech laws published an article on the pros and cons of further criminalization in India of hate speech laws as well as suggesting several other methods of counter messaging via social media and alternative dispute resolution. It is well known that the court system in India is heavily overwhelmed and any use of a more lightweight and timely system to adjudicate lesser grievances could serve as a safety valve against more pernicious trends of violence and dissent.

Although there is an elected President in India, this role is largely ceremonial and the real executive power is the Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister leading them. As in any country there are variations on how involved the citizens would like to be. Here are some of the options outside of Twitter and other social media platforms.

A newly organized (September, 2021) live television channel, Sansad TV is readily available. By law this live channel, which is a Parliamentary channel based in both Houses of Parliament, Lok Sabha (House of the People) and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) is a must-carry channel that has to be provided via cable, direct-to-home and IPTV networks. Sansad has quite a number of shows however searches of their website for “Muslim” brought up only a few offerings. “Agriculture” as a topic netted 3 pages of news reports to watch. “Economy” brought up a deluge of 9 pages of shows and interviews. The entire Indian population with access to TV or who can watch on the internet will have to decide if they are getting all the news they want or need.

“All Indians Matter” is a website in India started by Ashraf Engineer to bring the conversations that a modern India needs to have to the people. After a 17 year career as a journalist Ashraf decided that traditional news media was not able to stand up to the government pressure and noted the increased costs of actually doing journalism. He therefore decided to provide a platform for this conversation. A typical posting is about the humiliating effect of a ban on hijab wearing in Karnataka. For one thing it is serving to exclude hijab wearing Muslim women from educational opportunities there.

Other political forces in India are also strategizing publically to take back seats from the BJP. If Tejashwi Yadav, young leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), an Indian socialist political party which has most of its strength in the central east part of India has his way, the opposition parties will focus on wrestling over 200 seats in Parliament away from the BJP in 2024. This coalition consists of all the forces that Modi’s right wing Hindutvaist government is basically ignoring right now. It may appear that Modi, the BJP, and its strongly Hindutva platform might be here to stay and the general population of India is on their side. It is possible that as secure as Modi and his BJP look and feel right now, the tide will turn if enough people in the opposition gather strength to gain more seats in the Parliament in 2024.

Since the onset of his invasion, Vladimir Putin’s forces have lost a staggering 595 tanks, 2,323 vehicles, 301 artillery and AA systems, 64 planes and helicopters, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, 15,000 dead, and, as of last month's figures, upwards of 45,000 casualties. With losses on par with the entire 10-year Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and perhaps a quarter of their pre-war combat strength, the Russian army has been forced to retreat from Kyiv and their anticipated war goal of decapitating the Ukrainian government by creating a puppet government in some whole or dissected form.

Yet the Russian president is ever more determined to claw back the initiative in this conflict and find a way to declare victory. Beyond the natural instinct to make such a tremendous sacrifice seem worth the cost, the man in the Kremlin has a variety of anxieties and ambitions that make it nearly impossible for him to walk away from this very personal conflict without being able to claim some form of victory. As Chancellor Karl Nehammer of Austria put it after meeting directly with Putin on April 10, “He is now in his own war logic… In his point of view he has to defend the Russian Federation, [and] the Russians living in eastern Ukraine." He characterized Putin as more determined than ever to counter the West and to reestablish Russia’s sphere of influence in the former Soviet bloc.

Brian Klaas, Stathis N. Kalyvas, and CIA Director William Burns all reiterate the same chilling assessment that Putin sees the restoration of the “Russian empire” as his destiny, and is unwaveringly determined to cement that as his legacy. Analysts, such as Fiona Hill, are worried that Putin has been ever more isolated since the Covid pandemic began, spending hours poring over old maps of the past Russian “imperium.” In speeches, Putin seems lost in the twentieth century. He is obsessed with the Germanophile Ukrainian nationalism of the 1940s - hence his frequent references to Ukrainian Nazis and his stated goal of “denazifying” Ukraine.

Unfortunately for him, the Russian army is a shadow of its Soviet past. During the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union had a standing military force in excess of 3.5 million. The entire pre-invasion Russian military comprised some 900,000 personnel, only 280,000 of which were in the army. However, part of Putin’s bullishness about the prospects of his forces may have come from unreliable intelligence provided by his personal advisors.

One of the classic pitfalls of an authoritarian regime is that the leader requires trusted confidants and elites to help them run the ship. These people are placed in an incredibly powerful, but precarious position. Unlike in democratic systems where disagreement or criticism of your leadership may cost you your job, in autocratic and repressive regimes, those same kinds of dissension might cost your assets, freedom, or your life. In such a stressful work environment, those who merely nod their heads and give positive assessments of the leader’s plans are most likely to keep their positions of power. Yet, an authoritarian leader often feels the need for proof of loyalty, and will conduct public charades, such as the browbeating he gave to the chief of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin, at a Feb 21st security council meeting. These anxieties stem from the dangers that the political elite pose to the leader in an authoritarian regime - as they are the most capable of removing the leader should he lose their support.

However, when the political elite is strongly pressured to tell the leader, advice they think he wants to hear, their can be a massive disconnect between that advice and reality. There is mounting evidence of a disconnect between the military capabilities that Putin thought he had at his disposal versus the reality of the Russian army's state of affairs. The logistical nightmare that plagued the first wave of assaults against Kyiv and other deeper targets was obvious to any observer of the conflict. Supply lines were stretched by over 100 miles from the nearest points of resupply in Belarus and Crimea, Russian soldiers looted stores because they had insufficient and expired rations, and conscripts contracted for defensive operations were deployed to the front lines of a war they were never told they would be fighting. According to Michael Kofman (director of Russia studies at CNA, a think tank in Virginia), the Russians, ended up provoking a serious fight in what is the largest country in Europe outside of Russia.” This harkens back to the previous assessment that Putin was both misinformed about the tenacity of the Ukrainian’s will to defend their national identity and overestimated the ability of his military to deliver a swift and decisive victory.

This is evident in his delusional delusional appeals to Ukrainian Soldiers to lay down their arms by slandering the administration: “Once again I speak to the Ukrainian soldiers,” he said, addressing his adversaries. “Do not allow neo-Nazis and Banderites to use your children, your wives and the elderly as a human shield. Take power into your own hands. It seems that it will be easier for us to come to an agreement than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.” It is almost laughable that Putin believes his overtures would be remotely effective considering that Volodimir Zelenskyy has emerged as a global and national hero with his pitch perfect strumming of Ukrainian Nationalism. However, what makes it humorless is the fact that this reflects his genuine view of Ukraine. Based on his choice to invade Ukraine and a Russian irredentist world view, it is reasonable to infer that Putin believes Ukraine is a fictitious country “[that] was wholly and fully created by Russia”, Ukrainians are in fact Russians in denial, and as such they lack the agency to be a sovereign state - at least one independent from the Russian sphere of influence. It is these misplaced beliefs that led Putin to misjudge the dangers of his gamble, and it is likely these same beliefs that will keep him in the conflict far longer than he should persist in his attempts to subdue Ukraine.

At this point, Putin has found himself between a rock and a hard place. One of his primary goals is to maintain Russia’s current great power status and to regain influence over the lands of the former Russian “Imperium”. However, great powers cannot persist without economic growth (the lifeblood of national development and military power projection), yet inflation in just the last month reached 17.3% and international investment in Russia has come to a grinding halt. Likewise, great powers cannot retain their status after taking repeated black eyes and losing quartiles of their military force capacity for only marginal gains. Ukraine on the other hand only has to survive - they can withstand far greater relative losses without relenting - and would likely continue to sap resources and men from the Russian army through partisan action even after a formal capitulation. All of which points to a need for negotiations and a political settlement. Yet, unless Putin believes he can come out of that process with something to call a victory he is very unlikely to participate at all.

Myself and other analysts believe that from his perspective, even meeting with President Zelenskyy is a sign of weakness and a symbol of spurned Russian authority (similar in application to US administrations which refuse to provide legitimacy to certain governments by meeting their President). After all, Zelenskyy is presiding over a rebellious province of the “Ruskky Mir,” and his existence is a stubborn challenge to the very foundation of the Kremlin’s narrative. Moreover, authoritarian leaders have a risky track record after losing foreign and expansionist wars. Unlike Western politicians who leave office to a wealthy retirement, autocratic leaders often lose their power through ill advised wars (just ask Tzar Nicholas II about the 1905 revolution after his defeat against the Japanese).

For his part, Zelensky said that he wanted the talks to go on, but firmly noted that negotiations would not resume if the Azov Battalion and other defenders in Mariupol are killed or if Russian authorities in the occupied region of Kherson stage a separatist referendum. While casualties have been high and Putin’s ambitions have narrowed in Ukraine, intelligence assessments have concluded that the Russian president believes the West’s efforts to punish him and contain Russia will crack over time. With the assistance of China, India and other nations in Asia, he seems to believe he can circumvent total isolation, just as he did after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

As Moscow regrouped in mid-April for its new offensive in Eastern Ukraine, a number of questions arose about whether the Russian army would be able to change their logistics and operations to counteract the success of the Ukrainian defenses and counter offensives. And a number of changes have manifested in the last two weeks: a new Russian general, Alexander Dvornikov (known for his disregard for civilian casualties and widespread destruction) has been tapped to take over the faltering invasion of Ukraine; long range Russian bombers made their first appearance in the conflict over Mariupol, signalling their probable use in the second phase of the conflict; Putin signed a decree ordering the conscription of 134,500 additional soldiers (even though he said they will not participate in the conflict, he also made the same claim before sending tens of thousands of other conscripts into the opening hours of his invasion); on April 20th, the Russian Ministry of Defense chose to classify information regarding the relatives of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine - limiting the publication of this data will allow the Kremlin to obscure the extent of their losses from the Russian people; and according to Retired British Rear Admiral Chris Parry, "It seems to me that the Russian agenda now is not to capture these really difficult places where the Ukrainians can hold out in the urban centers, but to try and capture territory and also to encircle the Ukrainian forces and declare a huge victory.”

Despite these alterations, Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine continues to follow the pattern of their operations throughout the war, “using small units to conduct dispersed attacks along multiple axes rather than taking the pauses necessary to prepare for decisive operations” according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the Ukrainians are bracing for a much larger offensive, one that “will remind you of [the] Second World War, with… thousands of tanks” and artillery, as per the Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba’s, speech at NATO headquarters this month. Although the Russian forces are weakened, they still have superiority in numbers and long range ordinance. Thus, these next battles could follow a historical pattern, wherein desperate Russian forces have resorted to obliterating anyone or any means of resistance within range. This penchant has been seen from the end of WWII right through recent history: such as in Afghanistan during the 1980s, in both of the Chechen wars, and Syria most recently. Now the Russian army puts millions more Ukrainians at risk of suffering the war crimes already visible across fronts of the war. Thus far, a staggering 5 million Ukrainians have fled the country as refugees, and more mass graves are being discovered in occupied (or recently liberated) territory.

As of the writing of this article, the counter offensives have escalated in intensity on both sides. Russian massed artillery is being used to make minor gains through overwhelming firepower near Izyum, their forces continued to bombard the remaining Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol’s Azovstal Steel Plant, and may be preparing for renewed but costly assaults on the sprawling facility. As for the Ukrainian measures, a number of potentially provocative, but eye-opening strikes have been conducted against Russian oil depots and munitions warehouses in the Russian oblasts of Belgorod and Voronezh on April 27th, and oil facilities in Bryansk two days before. Likewise, a continuous cycle of limited Russian advances and overnight Ukrainian counterattacks has stymied much of their progress since the Donbas offensive began.

Notably, Maj. Gen. Rustam Minnekayev said the goal of Russian advances was to create a land bridge from mainland Russia to the annexed peninsula of Crimea and an access point to the tiny pro-Moscow breakaway republic of Transnistria in Moldova. Although it remains unclear whether the comments are based on official Kremlin policy, it would represent a significant gain by acquisition of land and industrial infrastructure, sequestering Ukraine from the Black Sea (while vastly increasing Russian coastal access), and achieving the possible destruction of the Azov Battalion (which is trapped in besieged Mariupol and holds a special place of infamy in the Russian “deNazification” narrative). A number of analysts have suggested that Putin may be seeking a victory before May 9th, “Victory Day”, which commemorates the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945 and holds a special significance in the Russian historical psyche and modern culture. If Russian forces can achieve these objectives by May 9th, and that’s a big IF, it may be a sufficient success for Putin to declare “mission accomplished”, and pull back from a disastrous war that is stretching the Russian economy and army to a breaking point.

Despite the Kremlin's claims to the contrary, even Moscow’s own central bank chief, Elvira Nabiullina has acknowledged that, “at the moment, perhaps this problem is not yet so strongly felt, because there are still reserves in the economy… But we see that sanctions are being tightened almost every day,” adding that “the period during which the economy can live on reserves is finite.” This is only exacerbated by the fact that US and Western sanctions have frozen $350 billion out of Russia’s $604 billion foreign reserve “war chest”, much of which was incomprehensibly held in accounts at banks in Western states.

After the West cut off much of Russian access to its foreign reserves, limited imports of key technology, and other various sanctions, the Kremlin took drastic measures to insulate the economy. Interest rates rose to heights of 20%, the central bank instituted capital controls and measures that forced Russian businesses to convert their profits into rubles. As a result, the value of the ruble has recovered. However, Russia is undergoing its worst bout of inflation in 20 years - the state’s economic statistic agency, Rosstat, said inflation hit 17.3% last month, the highest level since 2002. Moreover, the inability of Russia to pay its debts in dollars has moved them precipitously closer to its first default on foreign debt in over a century, after a watchdog ruled that the country’s attempt to settle a $649 million dollar-denominated interest payment in rubles isn't going to fly.

Beyond just sanctioning Russia, the United States has provided over $3.7 billion in military hardware and munitions to Kyiv since the onset of the conflict more than 60 days ago. These supplies have become steadily more powerful, high precision, and long range as Washington's expectations have continued to rise for the Ukrainian’s probability of success. And other NATO allies arms shipments have been so effective, such as the impressive efficacy of the United Kingdom’s NLAW rocket launcher, that Russia’s defense ministry has warned of an immediate “proportional response” if Britain continues its “direct provocation”. Although the U.K. dismisses these threats as “bravado”, it indicates just how frustrating their arms shipments are to the Russian offensive.

As these expectations have risen, the United States has also changed its goals: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said while standing alongside Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Poland after their return from a high stakes trip to Kyiv on April 25th. The trip was the highest ranking U.S. delegation to visit Ukraine since the beginning of the war, and the pair also announced that American diplomats will return to Ukraine starting next week, and will look into the feasibility of reopening the embassy in Kyiv in the coming weeks. Moreover, Biden plans to formally nominate Bridget Brink, currently the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, to be its next ambassador to Ukraine. Blinken later stated, “we don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.” However, these statements are likely to fuel President Putin’s long-standing concern that NATO expansion, and their efforts to supply Ukraine in this war, are part of a broader effort to encircle Russia and foment the downfall of his regime.

Currently Ukraine is optimistic that it can push the line of contact back further after halting Russia’s initial plan to decapitate the central government and capture Kyiv, but officials are increasingly worried that Moscow could resort to tactical nuclear weapons if it suffers further setbacks. These concerns come on the heels of a successful test of the new Russian Sarmat nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile, after which, Putin declared that the launch would “provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country.” Although the deployment of Sarmat missiles would only add marginally to Russia’s already gargantuan nuclear capabilities, the test was about timing and symbolism: It came amid the recent public warnings, including by Mr. Burns, that the U.S “cannot take lightly” the chance that Putin might turn to chemical weapons, or even a demonstration nuclear detonation in his desperation for victory.

Some analysts suspect that Putin remains unlikely to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine during this phase of the war, as the Kremlin likely understands that the use of a nuclear weapon would cause greater NATO involvement in the war, making the Russian use of a nuclear weapon a net loss for Russia. This assessment is based, in part, on the statements of Foreign Minister Sergai Lavrov that outright ruled out the potential Russian use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and the subsequent promotions of those statements across Russian state-media outlets. These were followed by threats from the police to jail anyone who spreads “disinformation” about Russia considering the use of nuclear weapons. Yet now it seems that based on the logic of this dictum even Lavrov himself may be eligible for arrest for disinformation, as he claimed in a state TV interview broadcast on Monday April 25th that “The danger [of nuclear war with NATO] is serious, real. It can’t be underestimated.” Neither the United States nor Russia uphold a no first use policy for their nuclear arsenals, and peddling the idea of a nuclear exchange between Russia and NATO is an eye turning escalation of rhetoric. This trend echoes a growing concern within the Biden administration: that Russia is now so isolated from the rest of the world that Putin sees little downside to provocative actions.

According to senior intelligence officials interviewed by the New York Times, “We have been so successful in disconnecting Putin from the global system that he has even more incentive to disrupt it beyond Ukraine… And if he grows increasingly desperate, he may try things that don’t seem rational.” When Fiona Hill, who has studied Putin for decades, and served as a former member of the National Security Council on Russian Affairs, was asked whether Putin could resort to nuclear weapons to secure his goals she responded bluntly: "Of course [Putin] would. And the thing is, he's already rhetorically done it, right?” Should Putin make that decision, there is nothing in the Russian system that could stop him.

After 2 very long years of COVID-19, society has begun to open up and many pre-COVID activities, such as sports, air travel and enjoying large gatherings and events, have resumed. Although society has been exhibiting encouraging signs to “go back to normal”, by reducing restrictions on public recreation, there are still certain COVID policies which are pointless and out of touch at this point, but remain public policy for many governments and corporations.

One such pointless restriction is the requirement to wear masks during public travel and in certain indoor places. Thankfully, a US judge recently ruled that the Biden Administrations mask mandate was unconstitutional and the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) was forced to drop its requirement for mask wearing during air travel. This is the correct move for a number of reasons.

To begin with, the majority of public masks do not even provide effective protection, because they don't seal well enough to prevent the virus from contacting the air. Essentially meaning that if society wanted mask wearing to be effective, people would have to start wearing the more effective masks, mask types called KN95 or N95. Yet even if theoretically everyone began wearing these kinds of masks, it would still be practically impossible to halt the spread of COVID using masks because of the following reasons.

Almost every person that I have seen since the beginning of COVID does not wear a mask properly in the manner that would be best effective in stopping the virus according to the accepted science. Given the fact that COVID is an airborne virus, your mask would need to be shut at all times, over your nose, mouth (and even over your eyes!), to be effective. If the seal would be lifted for a second, the virus would be able to enter the air. COVID has been shown to be capable of surviving on inanimate objects for weeks, or hovering in the air, so even if the mask was lowered only when there isn’t anyone around, droplets from the virus could still contaminate nearby surfaces or hover in the air, infecting people that passed through the area after.

Furthermore, even if mask wearing was strictly adhered to in public places (such as sports arenas, event halls, restaurants, planes), it would be practically impossible to prevent every potential vector of transmission. Therefore, everyone would still need to wear their masks at home or the virus could spread rapidly that way. Unsurprisingly, I have never come across someone that is advocating for a policy of enforcing mask wearing in homes and rightfully so. However, the simple fact is that the virus’s ability to spread isn't just confined to public places, and therefore it is almost inevitable that the virus would have room to spread.

To consider forcing society to buy the more effective KN95 or N95 and then enforce a strict requirement for mask wearing in either public or private places is completely out of touch with the reality on the ground. Don’t take my word for it, consider your own experiences during the last 2 years. How many people have you seen lowering their masks at least once, or twice, while traveling on buses, trains or planes? I'm willing to venture that for most people their answer is that 'the vast majority of the people they have seen in public, do remove or improperly wear their mask at least a few times an hour’. This is aside from the fact that in many cases lowering a mask is unavoidable, such as when eating at a public restaurant or drinking water.

Another impediment in the effort to stem the spread of COVID has been the variation in people’s experiences with infection. Some people that are infected with COVID are asymptomatic and as a result have little reason to suspect that they are capable of spreading the virus to others. Others may have symptoms but never get tested for varying reasons that are relative to an individual's situation and some may even take a home test, receive a positive result, but refuse to quarantine. Although quarantine may not inhibit the ability for certain individuals to work because they are able to work remotely, other professions that require a physical presence (for example a housekeeper or waiter) do not have the economic/professional luxury of skipping 2 weeks of work and losing pay for those weeks. Unless there is legislation that guarantees job security for COVID related work absences and compensation for the time missed, this trend of unreported COVID cases will continue. As a result, attempting to test and then quarantining individuals is quite ineffective at halting or gaining a comprehensive picture of the spread of COVID.

Although mask wearing and testing in its current form is essentially useless in stemming the flow of the virus, there is some good news. Given the fact that COVID-19 is a virus, it is constantly mutating/changing from the original version that began its spread. Despite the fact that COVID and its subsequent variants (including Delta and Omicron) have become vastly more contagious, they have also become significantly less deadly. An important factor that has likely helped lower the mortality rate for the Delta and Omicron cases, have been the large number of people that have gotten COVID already, because cases of re-infection have been shown to be 90% less likely to result in hospitalization or death, than first cases on infection. Another likely cause for variants of reduced mortality rates, has been the large scale vaccination efforts and improved treatment plans around the world.

Some may ask what alternatives we have to prevent the spread of COVID if we do away with mask mandates, testing and mandatory quarantine. The answer is simple, vaccines and herd immunity. The necessary rates of infection or vaccination vary depending on the degree of transmissibility of the virus in question. Since COVID has become increasingly transmissible, herd immunity has required increasingly larger proportions of the population to become infected or vaccinated. Of course, governments around the world should continue to encourage their respective citizens to get vaccinated and highlight the statistical differences in hospitalization and mortality rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Certainly there will be those who continue refusing to get vaccinated, but regardless the threshold for herd immunity will be reached, because eventually a sufficient number of the unvaccinated will be infected.

After 2 frustrating years living with COVID we need to accept the fact that stepping aside to allow the spread of COVID is the only realistic way to move past COVID. One argument that has been made against allowing the natural spread of COVID has been that a massive surge in new cases will overwhelm hospitals. Given this valid concern, contingencies should be made with governments making the necessary arrangements (building more hospitals, more oxygen machines, etc), if this strategy is to be adopted. COVID has now become endemic and it is time for all of us to adjust accordingly.