Inspector General's Report -- Opening the Investigation

So, what is actually in the Inspector General's Report?  First of all, it is tediously long (over 400 pages) and redundant.  It also really needs a glossary to allow the reader to keep track of the alphabet soup of acronyms.  There is also a large cast of characters, whose exact role in the FBI and the investigation can sometimes be confusing.  The purpose of the report is to determine whether the FBI followed accepted policies and procedures, and also to make recommendations for improvements.  

Finally, and frustratingly, the report is not in strict chronological order, or even in order of escalation. It begins, reasonably enough, with the opening of the investigation and its decision to investigate four members of the Trump campaign.  It then goes on to discuss the FBI's meeting Christopher Steele, its interviews with some of his sources, and its application for a FISA warrant against Carter Page.  The report has many serious criticisms of the application for a FISA warrant and three renewals.  Only after nearly 200 pages discussing warrant and serious defects in the process does the report discuss the FBI sending confidential informants to talk to members of the campaign, even though the confidential informants happened first and were a lower step of escalation.  (I do not understand the reason for this sequence).

 The decision to begin with the opening of the investigation is certainly reasonable, but , interestingly, it is not the first chronological event discussed in the report.  Trump defenders frequently accuse the FBI with beginning the investigation (known as "Operation Crossfire Hurricane") with the Steele Dossier, which is at best a collection of third and fourth hand rumors and at worst an outright fraud.  Trump critics say the investigation began when the Australian ambassador to the United Kingdom reported that George Papadopoulos had said he had spoken to Maltese professor and presumed Russian asset Joseph Mifsud, who said that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, in to form of "thousands of e-mails."  Trump defenders have also argued that Mifsud was an FBI informant who made that comment to Papadopoulos, trusting that he would pass it on and give the FBI an excuse to investigate.

The report begins (p. 49) with some background.  Papadopoulos made his careless remarks to the Australian ambassador in May, 2016.  The ambassador does not appear to have considered them significant at the time. The Russian hacks of the DNC server became known in June, 2016. Wikileaks started publishing DNC e-mails on July 22, 2016.  On July 28, 2016, the ambassador began to think these remarks were more important that he had realized and reported them to the FBI.  The FBI opened its investigation on July 31, 2016 (p. 50).  The Inspector General interviews of witnesses and reviews of FBI documents confirmed this sequence of events and did not turn up evidence that anything else started the investigation (pp. 56, 346).  A thorough search of FBI files also failed to turn up any evidence that Mifsud was ever an FBI informant (pp. 312-313).  

No contact between Crossfire Hurricane and Steele had taken place at this time.  However, that was not for any lack of effort on Steele's part.  Steele appears to have reached out the the FBI in early July and provided an agent with one of his reports on July 5, 2016 (p. 95).  He appears to have been well aware that he was hired by associates of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign (p. 96).  Steele provided another report on July 19, which his handler passed up the chain of command to the New York Field Office (NYFO) (p. 98).  The NYFO appears to have informed Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who passed the tip on to Crossfire Hurricane in August 25, 2016 (p. 99).  Crossfire Hurricane first received Steele's reports on September 19, 2016 (p. 100) and began investigating (p. 101). Crossfire Hurricane personnel made inquiries about Steele on September 23 and held a telephone conference about setting up a meeting on September 27 (p. 103).  The first in-person meeting took place in early October (p. 18).  In short, Steele appears to have been reaching out to the FBI before the investigation began, but his research only became part of the investigation about a month after it opened, and Crossfire Hurricane agents did not meet with Steele until over two months after beginning the investigation.  Significantly, then Steele contacted the FBI after the DNC hack became public, but before Wikileaks published DNC e-mails. The first contacts between also took place after the July 23, 2016 Yahoo News publication sourced to a Steele leak (more on that later).

So if Operation Crossfire Hurricane did not begin with an investigation of the Steele Dossier, how did it begin?  Upon receiving a tip from the Australian ambassador, the FBI decided to open an investigation, and not to notify the Trump campaign, lest it change its presumed contact with Russian intelligence (p. 55).  The standard to launch such an investigation is low -- no more than an "articulable factual basis" to believe that there is a threat to national security (pp. 56-57). A Sensitive Investigative Matter (as this obviously was) requires special consideration about the seriousness of the danger and special care to use the least intrusive method.  In addition, the FBI Office of General Counsel must review the investigation, the Section Chief must approve it, and the National Security Division must be notified (pp. 21-22).  

The FBI's first action was to undertake an open source and FBI database search on members of the Trump campaign to see which were mostly likely to be points of contact with Russian intelligence (p. 59).  They found four likely suspects to make targets of investigation.  Carter Page (a fairly low level foreign policy advisor) had extensive business ties to Russia, had traveled to Russia in July, and was the subject of an ongoing counterintelligence investigation by the FBI in New York.  Paul Manafort, the campaign manager, had been an advisor to and lobbyist for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine.  Papadopoulos was flagged for the communications that started the investigation.  Michael Flynn was flagged for his ties to Russian entities and for appearing on Russia Today (p.60). The individual investigations were apparently opened on August 10, 2016 (p. 78)  The next step was to draw up profiles based in materials in FBI records, and to ask other government agencies for materials to contribute to the profiles (p. 78).   

Page was considered the most likely point of contact because of his pre-existing contacts with Russian intelligence and because he was already under investigation for them (pp. 61-62).  However, the FBI received information from "another U.S. government agency" that Page had worked for it from 2008 to 2013 (p. 79).  In other words, Page worked for the CIA, and his contacts with Russian intelligence agents may have been in order to spy on them.  For some reason, the report is extremely cagey about naming the agency involved.  This fact should have been taken into account in further investigations, but was not.  

The Inspector General concluded that the decision to open an investigation, to conduct open source and internal files investigation, and choose these four particular targets met the low standard of opening an investigation -- an "articulable factual basis." (pp. 347-354, 410), that the investigation was opened for an "authorized purpose" (p. 347), and that the use of open sources and FBI internal materials was appropriate as as  "less intrusive technique" (p. 355).  It found no evidence of improper political motivation.  Although texts exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page showed improper political bias.  However, it found that Page had no role in he decision to open the investigation and that, while Strzok did have such a role, others were also involved in the decision, and that he did not act unilaterally (pp. 348-349).  They found no evidence of improper political motivation among any of the other participants in the decision to open the investigation (pp. 349-350).

I will add that in my own opinion, the standard for an open source investigation probably does not need to be very high. Open source investigation, after all, is just investigative journalism, and anyone can do it.  And internal FBI records, though not publicly accessible, are freely accessible to the FBI. At the same time, there has to be some sort of threshold.  Investigative journalism is a labor intensive process, and FBI time and effort is a limited resource.  Besides, so much information is public now that a thorough-going investigation, even one limited to open sources, can be quite intrusive.

The report found that all necessary requirement for such a sensitive investigation were met (p. 353). At the same time, the report expressed concern that the FBI had unilateral authority to make such decisions in matters as sensitive as a Presidential campaign.  It proposed that high level Justice Department approval should be required (pp.353-354, 411).  I am not convinced.  It would not reassure me to know that the Jeff Sessions or William Barr Justice Department approved an investigation into a Democratic candidate for President, and I doubt that Republicans would be reassured that an investigation was approved by the Eric Holder or Merrick Garland Justice Department.  At the same time, it would over burden federal courts to require a warrant for matters of low intrusiveness.  Maybe there should be a quasi-judicial section of the Justice Department with authority to grant internal authorization for politically sensitive investigations, perhaps with a "devil's advocate" lawyer to make arguments against the authorization.

Next up:  Between opening and FISA.

The Crossfire Hurricane Inspector General's Report Comes Across Like a Spy Movie

Wow!  It has been over a year since I promised a report on the Inspector General's Report on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.  Granted, so much has happened since then it seems like something impossibly long ago that no one cares about anymore.  But I still want to post about the report for a most implausible reason.

Dense and difficult as the reading was, I always had the feeling that I had stepped into a spy movie or a mystery novel.  I kept wondering how your could make this into a spy movie or mystery novel.

It had all the elements -- false leads, red herrings, a surprise twist in the outcome, even a love story.  

And yes, I know that real life is not a mystery novel or spy movie.  The most suspicious person usually really is guilty.  The harmless looking person in the background usually is harmless and only tangentially involved.  But on the other hand, real life investigators really do pursue false leads and stumble into blind alleys sometimes.  

Operation Crossfire Hurricane, as the investigation was known, is an example of how such things play out in real life.  The FBI suspected a regular channel of communications between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence, after learning that a presumed Russian agent had approached George Papadopoulus. The FBI identified four suspects who might be conduits -- Papadopoulus, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn.  While it investigated all four, the FBI quickly singled out Page as the most likely contact.  It was a reasonable supposition.  Page had had frequent contacts with Russian intelligence operatives, had been interviewed by the FBI for his contacts with Russian intelligence agents in 2013, and was under an unrelated counterintelligence investigation at the time Operation Crossfire Hurricane opened.*  In fact, he was secretly working for the CIA as a sort of double agent trying to gain intelligence on these Russian agents.  (In the murky world of espionage, it is not always clear who is spying on who).  

In a spy movie or mystery novel, this fact would have been dramatically revealed just as the FBI thought it was closing in for the kill and cut off this promising line of investigation.  In fact, the lower level agents appear to have found out and not bothered to pass this information on when applying for a warrant to wiretap Page.  Their numerous failings in applying for the wiretap form the bulk of the report.  The FBI failed to turn up anything damaging on Page, despite the warrant and three renewals.  

In the end, of course, the FBI ended up dropping the investigation and the thread was taken up Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee.  These further investigations would make clear that there was no regular channel of communications between the Trump campaign and Russian Intelligence -- except that there was.  The Trump campaign was not receiving reports from the Russians or coordinating strategies with them.**  However campaign manager Paul Manafort was running an apparently rogue operation in which he regularly passed polling data to presumed Russian intelligence operative.  What use the operative made of the polling data is unknown.  

Obviously, if this had been a spy movie/mystery novel the investigation would not have changed hands.  The FBI agents who started the investigation would finish it.  What about discovering that what was going on was much less involved and sinister than it appeared at first sight?  This is a permissible gambit, going back at least to Jorge Luis Borges' 1942 short story Death and the Compass, in which a seeming pattern of murders pointing to some bizarre occult practice turns out to have been a ruse to lure in the detective for the kill.  Umberto Ecco copies the technique in his novel Name of the Rose, in which a series of murders at a monastery appear to follow the signs from the Book of Revelations, but it turns out that the monks were merely reading from a poisoned book and the pattern was superimposed by the viewers.***  And Dan Brown is infamous for the technique.

Of course, in your classic spy or mystery story, an even more classic ploy would be to have the whole Russian hack turn out to be a red herring and the DNC e-mails were really stolen by Seth Rich. Except that is not what happened.  The Russians really did hack the DNC.   So a classic spy/mystery story would have to take some liberties with events to make Seth Rich a credible red herring.  What actually happened (for anyone who has forgotten) is that the DNC realized they had been hacked and called a private security firm to investigate.  The firm traced the hack to Russian Intelligence.  The DNC notified the FBI and publicized the hack. The e-mails first appeared in Wikileaks over a month later.

In a mystery/spy story, no one would have been aware of the hack until the e-mails appeared in Wikileaks.  The FBI would then begin an investigation that initially centered on Seth Rich and became especially intense when he was murdered.  But further investigation would clear him and reveal that the true hacker was Russian Intelligence -- true in the finding, false in the sequence.  After realizing they were dealing with the Russians, the FBI would then receive a tip suggesting that the Russians had approached the Trump campaign with this information (true) and begin the investigation.  

The Steele Dossier would also figure in as another red herring.  I am not sure how the mystery/spy story would handle the Peter Strozk/Lisa Page romance (both were married to someone else; the romance ultimately never went anywhere), but what would a novel be without a love story?

Next up:  What the Inspector General's report actually said.

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*It should go without saying, but it was not normal for a presidential candidate to employ such a person as a foreign advisor.
**Although Roger Stone, close to the campaign but not a member, was receiving information from Wikileaks and passing it on to the campaign.

***Ecco paid tribute to Borges and his short story by naming the villain Jorge of Burgos.

Ukraine Again

 When the crisis in Ukraine started ramping up, I would begin every morning by checking News Today to see if Russia had invaded Ukraine while I was sleeping.  After a while it became increasingly hard to sustain that level of alarm and the project lost some urgency.

Well, I guess it is time to become anxious again. Russia has started large scale war games in neighboring Belarus.  The map makes clear why this is so alarming.  It greatly expands Ukraine's vulnerable border.  

The Russian government says the war games will continue for ten days (until February 20) and that the Russian troops with withdraw from Belarus at the end of that time.  Are such promises worth the paper they are printed on?  (Or the pixels the broadcast?)  Probably worth that much, but not much more.  If Putin decides to invade Ukraine, the wargames will make it trivially easy for him to manufacture a pretext and then say he had intended to withdraw but events forced his hand.  On the other hand, if he ends up deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, he can withdraw as promised without loss of face and even laugh at us for being so alarmist.

And if the Russians do withdraw from Belarus after February 20, the next question will be how much a reduction of tensions that is.

I Know This Isn't Another Impeachment, But . . . .

 

The Select Committee is promising hearings some time this spring, to be shown on prime time TV.  And I think of family lore about my grandfather's second wife during the Watergate hearings.  She dropped out of society and spend all her time watching the hearings and shouting "Get him!  Get him!"  I am starting to understand the feeling.

I am old enough to dimly remember the time.  It had been so long since the last impeachment that news broadcasters had to explain how the process worked. The House was solely responsible for the investigation.  If the House found grounds for impeachment, then they would try it with the Senate serving as the court.

Look, I know this is not a third impeachment inquiry.  But somehow I can't help noticing that the inquiry is being handled entirely by the House.  Is that significant?

I can only see this turning into a third impeachment if members of the House very discreetly sound out Senate Republicans and find the votes to convict.  It seems most unlikely.

During the second impeachment, the obvious question was whether you can impeach an official who is no longer in office.  Obviously removal from office will be a moot point.  The important point is barring him from ever holding office again.  Jamie Raskin, the impeachment manager, made the argument that a rule barring the impeachment of ex-officials creates a January exception.  A President can do absolutely anything during his last month in office with complete impunity, at least with regard to holding future office.

By contrast, Trump's lawyer, Michael Van der Veen, denied any such exception and made four arguments, two of which, I remarked, were not only mutually incompatible, but served to create considerably more than a January exception.  Van der Veen's arguments were:

1. Impeachment is only possible for officials who are still in office.  The House unduly delayed and should have presented the trial to the Senate by January 20.
2. The impeachment violated Senate rules by not having separate counts.
3. Donald Trump was denied due process.  The House acted with undue haste by failing to make an adequate investigation before acting.
4. Trump's speech to the crowd was constitutionally protected free speech and did not meet the legal definition of criminal incitement.

I think we can safely ignore the second defense as something that no normal person could possibly care about.  But the other three are significant.  In fact, defenses (1) and (3) are directly opposed to each other.  On the one hand, the House had to do a full investigation into the facts of what happened.  Van der Veen's co-counsel, David Schoen, even said:

Speaker Pelosi herself on February 2nd, called for a 9/11 style commission to investigate the events of January 6th. Speaker Pelosi says that the commission is needed to determine the causes of the events. She says it herself. If an inquiry of that magnitude is needed to determine the causes of the riot, and it may very well be, then how can these same Democrats have the certainty needed to bring articles of impeachment and blame the riots on President Trump? They don’t.

Can we point out the obvious here?  There is no way to form a 9-11 style commission to thoroughly investigate the events of January 6 and have the results ready for trial before January 20.  To require the House to do both things in order to impeach a President would create window considerably longer than one month in which it was not possible to do both.  In other words, not just a January exception, but a December, November, and quite possibly October exception -- and maybe more than that.

At that same time, what has come out of the select committee so far has shown considerable merit to defenses numbers three and four.  The first impeachment, focused entirely on the January 6 violence, tended to assume that Trump incited it with rather thin proof.  Subsequent events make clear that neither Trump nor any of the rally organizers anticipated or intended a violent riot, although they may have intended the threat of violence to put pressure on Congress. In other words, Trump's speech on January 6 probably really was constitutionally protected speech and not criminal incitement.  

But that does not end the inquiry by a long shot.  The standard Republican line these days is to condemn the January 6 riot as of course a crime, but merely the work of a small number of rowdies and completely unrelated to anything else.  Mainstream Republicans definitely want to gloss over the possibility that there might have been anything illegal in all the other attempts to overturn the election -- say, by pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to change the vote total, or by presenting false slates of electors, or considering having Homeland Security seize voting machines.  Republicans want to focus on the most dramatic and visible, but also most deniable attempt to overturn the election and pretend that the rest did not happen, or if it did that it was "legitimate political discourse."  

That is why Republicans like Ronna McDaniel are so angry at Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger.  Because they are not willing to treat the insurrection as an isolated incident by a violent mob, but as part of a much larger attempt to overturn an election involving many prominent and respectable Republicans.

And that is another reason impeachment would be the most appropriate remedy here, politically impossible though it may be.  

Attempting to overturn an election is a very serious political offense, as serious a political offense as there can be.  Indeed, it strikes at the core of our whole system of elective government -- that the loser of an election must accept the outcome.  But much of it is not necessarily a criminal offense, and for an obvious reason.  What is forbidden has been done. The truly unthinkable is never a crime because no one ever thought to forbid it.  Much of Trump's attempt to overturn the election, such as pressuring state legislatures to send alternate slates of electors, or pressuring Republicans in Congress to accept the alternate slates of electors, does not appear to have broken any laws.  And any action that was not a crime when done cannot be prosecuted US Constitution, Article I, Section 9, clause 3.*  

But it is more than ample proof that the offender is an intolerable threat to our political system and has no business holding office.  Which is to say, the hitherto unthinkable, and therefore not illegal, can be legitimate grounds for impeachment.  Especially when it places our entire political system in jeopardy.

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*Indeed, one can make a fair argument that pressuring a legislative body to take even illegal action is mere inappropriate lobbying and not a crime.  

There Should Be a Law, But is There?

The January 6 investigation committee and investigative journalists are revealing more and more of the full extent of the plot to overturn the election, from forged electoral certificates to calling on the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines, to say nothing of spinning theories to allow Congress or the Vice President to ignore the outcome of the election.

The obvious question to all of this is, is it illegal?  You see, when something is illegal, it means that people have done it in the past.  The truly unthinkable is never illegal because no one ever thought to outlaw it.  Thus it probably never occurred to anyone to forbid private citizens from declaring themselves to be electors, or Congress from accepting them as electors, or the Vice President from overriding Congress and throwing out the vote in states where private citizens claimed to be electors, or for people to cajole or plan to do any of these things.  Thus there may very well not be laws against doing any of those things.

There are laws against falsifying election results -- against throwing out legitimate ballots or against voting if one is not registered or voting more than once and so forth.  These are very thinkable crimes that have been committed many times.  And there are probably laws, both federal and state, against using the machinery of the government to tamper with election results.  

But are there laws against state legislatures overruling the voters and choosing a different slate of electors?  Are there laws against private citizens declaring themselves to be the elector?  Are there laws against Congress accepting as electors people not chosen in ways established by state law?  Or against the Vice President of rejecting electors if Congress won't?  Or against Congress or the Vice President sending the vote back to the states if they don't like the results?  All of these fit into the category of things so unthinkable that no one thought to forbid them.  

So let's start with some basics.  

The U.S. Constitution Article II, Section i, paragraph 2 provides that, "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . . "  This is the section that leads to controversy over whether every change, no matter how minute, in election procedure requires an act of the state legislature.  Clearly, though, if a legislature decides that the people cannot reliably counted on to vote Republican while the legislature can always be safely gerrymandered, the legislature is free to have presidential electors chosen by the state legislature and not by the people directly.  In fact, that was how electors were normally chosen at the beginning.  In New Jersey, electors were originally chosen by the governor and council.  I suppose it would even be constitutional for a state legislature to make a law that presidential electors will be chosen by the central committee of the state Republican Party.  But having the electors chosen by the legislature is one thing. Having the legislature decide that the people will choose and then attempt to change the rules after the election if the legislature does not respect the outcome is quite another.  To be clear, such an action would not be a crime.  No legislation, no matter how outrageous, is a crime.  But it can be invalidated.  The Electoral Count Act (3 USC 5) provides that:

If any State shall have provided, by laws enacted prior to the day fixed for the appointment of the electors, for its final determination of any controversy or contest concerning the appointment of all or any of the electors of such State, by judicial or other methods or procedures, and such determination shall have been made at least six days before the time fixed for the meeting of the electors, such determination made pursuant to such law so existing on said day, and made at least six days prior to said time of meeting of the electors, shall be conclusive, and shall govern in the counting of the electoral votes as provided in the Constitution, and as hereinafter regulated, so far as the ascertainment of the electors appointed by such State is concerned.

 (Emphasis added).  Yes, the legalese is a bit dense, but basically this means that once a state holds an election under a pre-determined process, both Congress and the state are bound by the results.  Furthermore 3 USC 15 of the same act provides that:

If more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State shall have been received by the President of the Senate, those votes, and those only, shall be counted which shall have been regularly given by the electors who are shown by the determination mentioned in section 5 of this title to have been appointed.

This does not criminalize putting up an irregular slate of electors, but it does declare the irregular slate to be invalid.  No wonder John Eastman wanted to find this statute unconstitutional!  And I suppose it does raise interesting questions about whether one Congress can pass a statute limiting the procedural actions of a future Congress.  But the constitutional principle in the Electoral Count Act is sound.  Once a lawful vote is made, neither Congress nor the state may modify it.  If you are concerned about whether one Congress can constrain its successors in their general conduct -- well, the statute can be changed.  The change merely has to be passed by both houses and signed by the President. 

As for criminal law, Title 18 of the U.S. Code has a whole panoply of federal crimes.  Chapter 29 deals with elections.  For instance 18 USC 593, barring military inference in elections provides:

Whoever, being such officer or member [of the armed forces], interferes in any manner with an election officer’s discharge of his duties— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both; and disqualified from holding any office of honor, profit or trust under the United States.

 This may be why Rudy Giuliani wanted the Department of Homeland Security, not the armed forces to seize voting machines.  This does not mean that such interference would have been legal if done by Homeland Security either.  Under 18 USC 595:

Whoever, being a person employed in any administrative position by the United States, or by any department or agency thereof  . . . uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

That would appear bar the Department of Homeland Security from seizing voting machines as well as the armed forces, although doing so would carry a sentence of one year instead of five.  In short, there are clear federal laws against using federal executive machinery to sway the outcome of  an election.  There is some dispute as to whether the false electoral certificates are criminal forgeries. 

But so far as I can tell, there are no laws against elected officials trying to persuade state legislatures to overturn a popular election and appoint its own slate of electors, even though the Electoral Count Act that such an action will not be valid.  And it does not appear to be illegal to attempt to persuade the Vice President or a member of Congress to violate the Electoral Count Act, at least so long as no bribe or threat is involved.   

The unthinkable has now been done.  We need laws to keep it from happening again.

A Brief Comment on the RNC Resolution

 

I am actually inclined to give Ronna Romney McDaniel the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe her resolution to censure Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney for "persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse" really was not meant to include the January 6 insurrection, but only to “ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”*  But let there be no mistake.  If that is what McDaniel meant, then she was saying that disputing whether to accept the outcome of an election is "legitimate political discourse," and that any attempt to overcome the outcome that stops short of violence is ordinary partisan politics.

To that only one answer can be acceptable.  The question of whether to accept the result of an election is not "legitimate political discourse" or ordinary partisan politics, but foundational to our very system of elective government.  If the loser of elections does not accept the outcome and resorts to every means short of violence to overturn the outcome, then the downfall of our system may not be as dramatic as a violent revolt, but it is no less certain.

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*On the other hand, one can also argue that if that was what the censure meant, it should have said so. 

Some Unoriginal Comments on Ukraine

 The whole Ukrainian crisis has a certain air of madness to it. On the one hand, there are actually broad areas of agreement.  I think Americans all pretty much agree both that (1) a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be intolerable, and (2) we are nonetheless not willing to actually go to war to stop it.  Yes, I know, Tucker Carlson and some of his ilk are siding with Russia in this dispute, but I think we can safely assume that if Russia invaded on a large scale even Tucker Carlson would be hard-pressed to defend it.

So what is going on here?  Well, the Russians are insisting that Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO.  And, in fact, everyone more or less agrees that Ukraine is not going to join NATO any time soon.  In fact, under NATO rules Ukraine is not even allowed to join right now, since it has a disputed border with Russia.  But the overwhelming consensus is that we mustn't come right out and say so because to come out and say so would be to deny Ukraine's sovereign right to join any alliance it wants.  Um, don't allies also have the right to refuse any entrant the want also?

And, in fairness to our hawks, the Russians are also demanding that we kick former Warsaw Pact countries out of NATO much against their wishes, which is clearly a non-starter.

But the hawkish viewpoint is nonetheless that even though we are not prepared to risk war with Russia over Ukraine, we still have to stand up for Ukraine's right to do something that isn't actually going to happen because to do otherwise would be to concede Russia a sphere of influence in its near abroad, i.e., in the old Soviet Union.  And they tut-tut that supposed anti-imperialists seem to be willing to accede to Russian imperialism within its sphere of influence.  Of course, these fierce opponents of spheres of influence are really just saying that we should have a sphere of influence over the entire world, and that no one can ever reasonably oppose our uniform global hegemony.  

But more to the point, there are certain parts of the world that Russia sees as so critical to its interests that it is willing to risk WWIII to maintain domination. During the Cold War, those areas were known as the Warsaw Pact.  We conceded the Soviet Union a sphere of influence in the Warsaw Pact, not because we saw it as morally legitimate, but because we saw it as preferable to nuclear war.  Well, the areas Russia is willing to start WWIII over have retreated eastward by several hundred miles, but they haven't ceased to exist.  And ultimately, we are not willing to risk WWIII to prevent Russian domination over its near-abroad.  That means that Russia has a sphere of influence over these areas whether we like it or not.  

To suggest that we should not take this painful reality into account in our foreign policy is absurd.

Follow up:  None of this is to deny that we should do our best to deter an invasion.  But if there is any way to defuse this standoff without a resort to war, it will probably involve allowing Russia some sort of symbolic concession to allow them to back down without losing face.  And who can doubt that if we do reach such a resolution, the usual suspects will cry appeasement, which is their name for anything short of unconditional surrender.