Brief Comments on the Trump Fraud Case

 

So, what do I think about the New York civil action for fraud, which has just ordered the shutdown of Trumps (New York) business empire?

To be honest, it is hard for me to care. Yes, this is more serious than payoffs to mistresses, though less serious that rape or theft of classified documents, to say nothing of election subversion.  And frankly, it is long overdue, but too late to matter.

Trump's business empire has been a giant fraud from day one.  If someone (Rudy Giuliani, maybe, or Elliott Spitzer, both of whom prided themselves in being the scourge of white collar crime) had moved against the Trump Organization before he got a job with The Apprentice, Donald Trump would long (and deservedly) forgotten.

If someone had moved against Trump when he was a reality TV show host, no doubt there would be anger and outcry, but it would have kept him from launching a political career.

If someone had launched an action, or a thorough-going expose of Trump's business practices in 2016 -- well, it is hard to say.  It could be a little hard to dismiss as political persecution, given that Hillary Clinton was also under FBI investigation.

I don't think being exposed as a fraud would have hurt Trump with his hardcore supporters.  I think that a lot of his hardcore supporters liked that he was a fraud.  He appealed to the sort of people who see the system as hopelessly corrupt and rigged and believed that only someone low down and dirty would be able to fight back.  He actually made his crookedness a selling point for that very reason.  He also appealed to people why saw everyone as crooked and Trump at least as our crook

It might have made a difference to people who genuinely believed that Hillary Clinton was the more crooked of the two candidates.

But what I think might actually have made a difference is 2016 was not so much showing Trump up as a crook, as showing him up as an incompetent businessman.  Because I do believe that a lot of Trump's appeal outside the really hardcore was the sort of mystique a lot of people have about businessmen -- the believe that they are competent while government is incompetent and that businessmen will get everything done and especially run the economy much better than politicians.  And Trump, being very rich, was seen as especially successful and therefore especially competent.  I think it might have mattered to his less hardcore supporters to know that he wasn't.  That is, after all, a standard page from Karl Rove's playbook -- hit your opponents where they are strongest.  Trump's greatest strength was supposed to be his supreme competence and business acumen.  It might have made a difference to show that up as false.

But of course, it is too late now.  His supporters will simply see this as persecution. And they will have a point.  The fact that he got away with it up till now really does show that no one would have made any attempt to hold Trump accountable if he hadn't decided to run for President.  And even to me, it seems a bit like piling on.

Why People Are Shrugging at Trump's Latest Posts

 

It's very simple, really.  People are ignoring the horrible things Donald Trump is threatening on Twitter Truth Social because they see them as so much hot air -- empty threats that he has no intention of acting on.

A lot of people opposed Trump in 2016 out of fear, seeing him as a dangerous loose cannon and wondering if he would be a Joe Arpaio, or imprison his opponents, or start a nuclear war, or default on the national debt or something equally crazy.  He didn't do any of those things.

People on our side say the reason he didn't do those things is that the grownups in the room stopped him, and he won't have the grownups this time.

I think there is some truth to that.  I also think he will not be able to go as far as some people fear.  He won't be able to lock up his political opponents because we still have an independent judiciary and trial by jury.  He won't be able to shut down hostile media outlets because he lacks the mechanism to do so. And plenty of his other nuttier pronouncements will also fail.  And there are numerous state and local governments and independent institutions to resist.

But he shows all intentions of evading the requirement for Senate confirmation of appointments by appointing "acting" officials and never submitting them for confirmation, and he can doubtless get a lot of cabinet picks who would never get past the Senate.  And it seems clear that Trump (or any Republican these days, frankly) has a serious plan in place to fire career professionals and replace them with political hacks.  This will leave considerable scope for harassment of political opponents, even if it stops short of criminal conviction.  It can also cause considerable damage to the efficiency of the federal government that will prove unpopular, but will also be much easier to cause than to cure.

I should also say that many people who support Trump today because they contrast the good times under his presidency with all the problems we have now have highly selective memories of the Trump presidency.  He had the longest government shut down so far, for instance.  Natural disasters, mass shootings, fentanyl, and countless other problems continued unabated.  And of course, there was 2020.  Yes, one can certainly argue that the disasters of 2020 were mere misfortunes and not Trump's fault.  But even so, they should be more than proof that Trump was not, by himself, any magical charm against bad things happening.  We have not recovered from 2020 as fast as one might wish.  But if 2020 could happen on Trump's watch, why should one think recovery on his watch would be any faster than it has been now?

Volume V, Parts 6 and 7: 40 Pages of Saying There is Nothing There

 

We are now reaching the un-juiciest part of the Volume V (it perks up in the end).  This part tracks down rumors of improper conduct that did not pan out.

First is Carter Page.  Carter Page formerly lived in Moscow, working for Merrill-Lynch in its dealings with Russian oil companies.  Page had dealings with both US and Russian intelligence and apparently gave proprietary information to the Russians and came under counter-intelligence investigation.  He also did work on behalf of the CIA, so it was not always clear who was spying on whom.  Much of this stage of his career is (understandably) redacted.  

Carter Page

Page's role with the Trump campaign was minimal.  He was considered the only foreign policy advisor who was an expert on Russia, but never met either Trump or Manafort.  He made one attempt to set a meeting with Putin that went nowhere, but was never as persistent as Papadopoulos.  His role appears to have been limited to writing a few pro-Russia papers and speeches.

Page did, famously, travel to Moscow in July, 2016 and give a speech to the graduating class condemning US calls for greater democracy and meddling. The Steele Dossier says that it was at this time that Page met with Russian officials to talk about compromat and a possible bribe.  Volume V assesses Page as too low-ranking and without sufficient connections to be of any value to the Russians, although the Russians did not necessarily know that.  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov decided not to meet with Page because he was not important enough to bother with.  Page reported to the campaign that Russians from the corridors of power to the man on the street were all eager for improve relations. The Committee was unable to determine exactly what Page did in Moscow, but found no evidence of anything improper.

Nonetheless, Page's speech attracted unwelcome publicity. People with access to the Steele Dossier hinted at something sinister.  Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid dropped such hints in August, and Michael Isikoff of Yahoo ran a story accusing Page of meeting with sanctioned individuals while in Moscow.  The negative publicity was enough to persuade the Trump campaign to fire Page.  Approval for a FISA wiretap occurred nearly a month after Page was fired.

In short, if this were a spy movie or mystery novel, Page would be a classic red herring -- someone who looks sinister, but proves to be completely harmless.

Sergei Kislyak, not Jabba

Part 7 deals with a foreign policy speech Trump gave at the Mayflower Hotel.  The event was organized by a non-partisan think tank.  The speech included a few pro-Russian paragraphs and some disparagement of allies, but was completely standard fare for Trump.  It attracted attention only because Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak (not to be confused with Jabba the Hutt) was present and some people wondered if there were improper communications or influence.  Jeff Sessions was one of the people present and recused himself from investigation because of it.  The Mueller investigation already determined that the meeting was completely innocent.  Volume V agrees, saying that, at most, Team Trump had a general meet-and-greet that included Kislyak, and that none of them even knew who he was until later.

In short, these two sections take about 40 pages to say, "Nothing to see there.  Move along."

The Same, Continued

 Look, I know I should drop the subject, but Jeff Gerth's series about how unfairly the media hounded Trump over Russia has really annoyed me. I think there is a good case that the media got too carried away and were unduly gullible after the Steele Dossier came out.  (I certainly was).  But Gerth applies that criticism even to coverage before the election, making clear that the subject of any Trump ties to Russia was wholly inappropriate.  

See the graph above?  See the small bar at the very right end showing media coverage over Trump and Russia?  Gerth -- and as I understand it, the right wing in general -- sees that as outrageous persecution.

Hillary Clinton's ties to Russia, on the other hand, are entirely fair game.

So let's take out the names and just call them Candidate A and Candidate B and see if it makes any sense.

We will start at the simplest possible.  Both candidates have, at different times in their careers, favored improved relations with Russia.  Both have questionable ties to Russia.  Does it make sense that one candidate's ties are fair game and the other's are not?

Now let's get just a little more specific.  Candidate A is a former Secretary of State who attempted to improve relations with Russia, but was not successful and is now running as a hawk.  Candidate B is running on a platform of improving relations.  It would seem to me that Candidate B's ties to Russia are more important than Candidate A's, since he is currently seeking to improve relations.  Of course, if you believe that Candidate A is corrupt, she might change her mind later, so her Russia ties remain relevant.

And let's get more specific again.  Candidate A operates a charitable foundation that accepts donations from sometimes dubious sources.  At the time she was trying to improve relations with Russia, she accepted some Russian donations to her foundation, and her spouse accepted a $500,000 speaking engagement in Russia.

Candidate B is a real estate developer with far-ranging international ties, including to Russia, who has made frequent, though rarely successful, overtures to invest in Russia. He also hired a campaign manager whose last job was as a consultant to the pro-Russia party in Ukraine.

Does it seem reasonable to say that Candidate A's ties to Russia are an appropriate subject for investigation, while Candidate B's ties to Russia should be completely off the table?

Now suppose that Candidate A's failed attempt to improve relations with Russia took place within the framework of maintaining our traditional alliances.  Candidate B, by contrast, wants to ditch our traditional alliances, seems opposed to the whole idea of having allies, and does not seem interested in friendly relations with any country except Israel -- and Russia.

But still, apparently, according to the right wing in general and Gerth in particular, Candidate A's Russia ties are an appropriate subject for investigation, while Candidate B's Russia ties must not even be mentioned.

What justification can you possibly come up with for that?  Well, Gerth seems to offer that the information about Candidate A's Russia ties come from a book written by a partisan Republican opposition researcher, whereas the information on Candidate B's ties come from a freelance, hired gun opposition researcher and are therefore illegitimate.  How strange!

The other reason right wingers (including Gerth) offer is that Russian intelligence said that Candidate A was trying to stir up a scandal about Candidate B's ties to Russia, which clearly proves that he was completely innocent and had no sinister ties to Russia whatever.

Well, first of all, the media in 2016 didn't know about this memo and therefore could hardly be expected to take it into account.  And second, candidates routinely stir up scandals against their political rivals. The mere act of stirring up a scandal is no proof, one way or the other, whether the scandal has any legitimate underpinnings.  Only further investigation can determine that.

Apparently Gerth and other right wingers believe that the bar graph above shows an unconscionable persecution of Donald Trump, and that a more legitimate balance of reporting would look like this:

They appear to see that as a spectacular difference.

On the other hand, there may be an element of projection here.  Right wingers have ample experience in stirring up scandals that are wholly without substance.  Network Propaganda details three such attempts.  More on that later.

"Network Propaganda": But What About Trump-Russia?

 

I can guess what right wingers will say in response to Network Propaganda. They will raise the issue of Trump-Russia.  After all, they will say, the mainstream media spent the first two years of the Trump term chasing after an imaginary conspiracy between Trump and Russia, arguing that he was in on hacking his opponent's e-mails and leaking them to the public.  They will ask what the authors have to say about the mainstream media chasing after conspiracy theories and getting caught up finding an imaginary channel of communications between the Trump Campaign and the Russian intelligence community.

The most obvious retort is that this means the mainstream media were behaving exactly like the rightwing media, so take the beam out of your own eye before you criticize the mote in ours.  My response is two-fold. First, yes, the mainstream media succumbed to paranoia and sensationalism in covering Trump-Russia.  Although the individual events they covered were true, the tendency to see a great conspiracy there, rather than wrong but disparate events, was a serious mistake.  Nonetheless, this is what the rightwing media does all the time.  The mainstream media is still more reliable, despite this lapse.  But it does not excuse the lapse.

The book focuses on the election and does not say much about reporting on Trump-Russia, and rightly so.  There was very little such reporting during the election.  This bar graph lays out the total reporting. Of all stories, Clinton e-mails tops out at over 65,000 mentions.  The second most common mention of of Hillary are various scandal stories about the Clinton Foundation at over 20,000. No policy story about Clinton even breaks 20,000.

For Trump, on the other hand, the number one story is immigration (40,000 mentions), followed by jobs (20,000).  Five scandals each fail to break 10,000, with Russia being the smallest.  The issue simply did not get enough play to have any effect whatever on the election.  In fact, it seems fair to assume that one reason the press focused so much on Trump-Russia was by way of making up for its singular focus on Hillary's e-mails, which did much to throw the election to Trump.

The book also offers a good refutation to anyone who says that being so hounded by false accusations explains, though it does not excuse, Trump's claim that the 2020 election was rigged.  Trump made exactly the same claim in 2016 when he expected to lose.

Finally, the book offers several cases after the election of the mainstream media making mistakes that were unfair to Trump and correcting them.  Some dealt with Russia; some did not (pp. 214-221).  In one such story, ABC falsely reported that Michael Flynn was going to testify that Trump instructed him to contact Russian officials during the campaign.  This was corrected within hours and the reporter suspended for four weeks (p. 216).  In another, CNN mistook the date that Wikileaks sent Donald, Jr. a decryption key to its e-mails, falsely indicating that he received the key before the e-mails were made public.  The Washington Post spotted the error, and CNN issued a correction by the end of the day.  A Time reporter mistakenly reported on inauguration day that a bust of Martin Luther King had been taken down.  He promptly apologized and issued a correction. The same happened when a Washington Post reporter prematurely reported that half the seats at a Trump rally were empty.  (They later filled up).  CNN falsely issued, and corrected, a report that James Comey would say that Trump was a target of investigation.  Another incorrect story, by CNN, created the impression that a conversation with a sanctioned Russian investor was under investigation.  Three reporters lost their jobs over the story.  The only story the authors found that was not retracted dealt with a claim that the Trump Administration suppressed a report on climate change.

So, this is seven stories, four addressed to Russia and three not. The authors make the point that among the mainstream media, it is prestigious to spot an error in a rival publication's story and point it out, and shameful to make a mistake.  In the rightwing media, what matters is whether a story serves the ideological narrative, and retractions are made only under threat of suit.

"Network Propaganda": A Small Thing that Bothered me

I admit it is a small thing, but one particular thing in Network Propaganda eats away at me -- the three dimensional graph above.  News coverage of immigration apparently deviated from the usual rule that the center-left, center, and left media formed one cluster and the rightwing media formed another, with almost not center-right.  In this case, there were enough differences that one axis was not enough -- the authors felt the need for three.  Unfortunately, they neglected to label the axes, so I am not sure what they mean.

The authors did note that the difference between rightwing and mainstream media on immigration was not just how friendly or hostile they were.  Rather, rightwing media tended to equate all immigration with Islam and terrorism, while mainstream media (accurately) portrayed most immigration as coming from Latin America. Leftwing media also focused on the war in Syria and refugees, actually giving more emphasis to Muslims that center and center-left, but seeing Muslims as victims, rather than terrorists. Presumably that is the X-axis -- the degree to which outlets discussed Muslims.

White nationalist and neo-Nazi websites were more openly racist than any mainstream sites, including mainstream rightwing sites, and rife with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories not seen anywhere else.  The biggest words in their word clouds were "Jew" and Jewish," words not seen in any other word clouds.  Presumably the y-axis is antisemitism, a subject seen in white nationalist and neo-Nazi articles but not anywhere else.

The authors also make clear that the center-right has a different pattern, not seen anywhere else, as evidenced by the National Review, Reason, and Red State, which are all positioned apart along the z-axis.  Unfortunately, the book never says what made the center-right different, or what the z-axis is.  It is frustrating.

"Network Propaganda": What is the Remedy

 

So, granting (as I think we must) the conclusions in Network Propaganda, what are we to do about it?

On this, the authors are not optimistic.  A wide array of proposed measures for regulating the internet fail because they don't address the underlying problem of asymmetric polarization.  

The ideal solution, the authors say, is the rise of a facts-based center right media that gives accurate information with a conservative slant.  However, there is no evidence of any desire for such an outlet.*  The thrill of ever-escalating outrage and radicalization is simply too hard to break.

Their only other alternative is not to let the rightwing noise machine bleed over into the mainstream media.  Only about 30% of the population are chronic outrage addicts.  Our best bet is to contain them and reach out to the remaining group who lean Republican, but can be swayed by reality, or are low information.

Because rightwing narratives invariably bleed over into the mainstream. The mainstream media are also sensitive to accusations of liberal bias and determined to counteract them.  Right wingers know of this sensitivity and use it to work the refs.  The authors lament the traditional media view that objectivity means giving equal time to both sides and never favoring one over the other.  That is not objective journalism when one side is lying an the other is telling the truth, albeit with some errors.  In the case of the 2016 election, new media were well aware of how utterly unqualified Trump was to govern. They remained consistently hostile throughout the election.  But in order to maintain balance, they had to treat Hillary as just as bad. Hence the e-mails.  Furthermore, any story, no matter how false, that gets enough circulation makes its way into the mainstream press simply to prove that the mainstream media is not liberally biased.

The authors' advice is to stop doing that and instead to base reporting on what is factually accurate, regardless of what politicians and rightwing outlets say.  I am certainly in favor of that.  In fact, the Trump presidency witnesses a certain resurgence in serious investigative journalism, and major outlets realized they could not rely on anything Trump said and would have to do their own investigation instead.

Unfortunately, we are now back to business as usual, treating a man who attempted to overturn an election as just another candidate an treating his 91 felony counts and Joe Biden's age as equivalent.

The Great Rightwing Noise Machine, Described in "Network Propaganda"

Network Propaganda: Manipulation Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics takes 387 pages -- large pages with small writing -- to say what was obvious even without it -- the rightwing media is different.  The centrist, center-left, and even leftwing media share a common basis in facts and commitment to factual accuracy.  The rightwing media is indifferent to such things and only wants to serve an ideological agenda. Center right media has almost disappeared.  Though 387 pages (not counting end notes), Network Propaganda is made more readable by large numbers of graphs and tables, all illustrating the obvious.  It goes on, chapter after chapter, making this blindingly obvious point and illustrating it by more graphs and tables.  

But frustrating as it is to be constantly hit over the head with the obvious, chapter after chapter, it raises a disturbing question. A strong democratic conservative party is key to the health and survival of democracy.  By that standard, the US is in big trouble. Is access to accurate, reality-based journalism essential to the existence of a democratic conservative party?  Because if it is, the US is in even bigger trouble.

The book also has some interesting designations. It classifies most major news outlets -- the Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, CNN, and network news except for ABC -- as center-left.  In the center it places ABC news, the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Reuters and the Associated Press. Some people might see the Wall Street Journal and The Hill as center-right, but Network Propaganda classifies media by their consumers and identifies these publications as centrist because they attract about equal numbers of center-right and center-left viewers/readers.  All these publications tend to clump together and have similar reporting.  There are intemperate far-left publications every bit as stridently partisan and untethered to facts and publications on the right.  But they do not have a significant following and feel the pull either to join the fact-based community or lose followers.*  

What Network Propaganda sees as "mainstream" rightwing news is disturbing -- Fox News, of course, and talk radio. Also Bretibart, which became a major publication during the 2016 election.  Even Zero Hedge, a notorious conspiracy site, is discussed as a mainstream rightwing publication. The center right has no significant following.  There are no middle brow general news sources on the center right,** only a few boutique publications like the National Review and Reason, with no large popular following.

Of course, at this point right wingers might concede all these points and dismiss them as proof of pervasive liberal bias in our news media, which leaves conservative audiences no choice but to seek out alternative outlets.  The authors proceed in painstaking detail to outline why this is not true, to show that mainstream publications make a sincere attempt to ground their reporting in facts, to reject stories that fit a narrative but are not accurate, and to acknowledge error when made.  Rightwing publications freely trim the facts to fit their narratives and never admit error, no matter how egregiously false a story.  As an example, the book cites a quote from one of Tony Podesta's hacked e-mails:

CHAI would like to request that President Clinton call Sheik Mohammed to thank him for offering his plane to the conference in Ethiopia and expressing regrets that President Clinton’s schedule does not permit him to attend the conference. 

 The Daily Caller ran this quote, omitting the section declining the offer, and expressing outrage that Clinton never reported this flight as an in-kind donation to the the Clinton Foundation.***  There are other examples I will cite in another post.

So, granting the current state of our media, how did this situation come about?  Network Propaganda dismisses as unimportant much cited factors such as internet technology spreading rumors, fringe sources entering the mainstream, monetized fake news, Russian hack and leak, or search algorithms manipulating users.  Asymmetrical polarization of the news predates the internet.  Fringe and fake stories to not gain significant following unless promoted by a major node of communication.  Russian propaganda was only convincing to people who wanted to believe it.  Algorithms -- thus far -- have minimal impact.  The authors did acknowledge that algorithms may have to be addressed in the future, but considered them of minimal effectiveness at the time.

So what is driving asymmetrical polarization of news?  The authors see historical roots.  In the 19th century, objective journalism was not even a concept.  The entire press was unabashedly political.  Some healthy democracies continue in this model today.  In the 20th century, the idea arose that journalists should be objective and report facts, rather than promote and agenda.  This model reached its culmination following WWII.  Most of the population got its national and international news from the three networks, NBC, ABC, and CBS.****  Each city had a newspaper that addressed mostly local news.  Radio stations were also highly localized and were dedicated mostly to local news and music. And even in this environment, the right wing regularly complained about pervasive liberal bias in the news and complained that they were shut out and confined to small publications, well out of the mainstream.  

The authors point out that there was leftwing criticism as well. They attribute the rise of the rightwing media to changes in technology and regulatory framework that removed barrier to their entry.  Cable allowed television stations to escape regulatory constraints, including the Fairness Doctrine. CNN was the first cable network to offer an all news format.  Satellite broadcasting extended the range of radio stations.  FM radio offered better quality music, so AM responded with talk radio.  With the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh was able to begin his show, which proved an immense hit and paved the way for countless imitators.  It sounds as if the authors believe that when historians write the story of how US democracy failed, blame will fall, first and foremost, not on Rupert Murdoch, but on Rush Limbaugh.

But that raises an awkward question that the authors shy away from.  They hold themselves out as bold truth tellers, saying that polarization of this country is not equal, that the right wing is to blame, and that the rightwing media is not equivalent to the mainstream or leftwing media. But they do not confront to next and most obvious question.  Is the real, underlying problem the audience?  It the real reason that the right wing media has gone off in such a different direction from the rest of the media because some 30% of the population can't handle complexity and don't want to be bothered with unwelcome fact -- they just want a simple narrative telling them that they are the forces of good fighting the forces of evil?

The authors dismiss that concept as "not necessary" to their theory of asymmetric polarization.  Instead, they postulate that, as a matter of pure historical accident, the right wing broke away from the mainstream media before the left did, and that as a result, the left rallied around the mainstream media and came to trust it.  They propose that if things had played out slightly differently, it might have gone the other way.

Color me unconvinced.  The authors do present one piece of empirical evidence to support their claim that media has radicalized its listeners, rather than vice versa.  The present polls showing that in 1998, Republicans were only slightly less likely to trust mainstream media than Democrats -- 52% versus 59%.  (Independents clocked in at 53%).  In 2000, all parties' trust in media had fallen and was now 47-53-53, still with only a slight divergence.  Over the ensuing years, Republican trust in mainstream media fell to 31% and stayed stable -- until the Trump candidacy, at which point it fell to 14%.  (P. 325).  So that is something.

On the other hand, the authors also grudgingly acknowledge that the Republican coalition is more cohesive than the Democratic coalition, and that this greater cohesion may lead members to cohere around a relatives small but disciplined set of outlets all telling the same story, rather than a broad, undisciplined array of sources that can be fact checked against each other.

Given long term rightwing hostility to mainstream media, dating back to at least the 1940's, I am inclined to believe the underlying problem is the audience, which media messaging has both enlarged and radicalized.

____________________________________

*Nor does Network Propaganda address the distinction between what might be called low-brow, middle-brow and high-brow outlets, or between general news and specialty news.  In general, I would classify low-brow as tabloid-level news, middle brow as most mainstream programs and publications, and high brow as news "journals."  And, generally speaking, general news is a middle-brow phenomenon, with low brow publications focusing mostly on sports and gossip, and high brow publications writing in-depth articles about fairly narrow topics.

**At least by the authors' definition of the Wall Street Journal and The Hill as centrist.

***Just for the record, the e-mail does seem to imply that Clinton had accepted rides on private airplanes, including of non-citizens in the past and was only declining this one because of a scheduling conference.  I do not know the law and ethics here, other that the obvious point that there is no legal or ethical obligation to make a tax disclosure of a plan flight one did not take.

****Time and Newsweek were also national news magazines.

Volume V, Part 5, George Papadopoulos

 

Part 5 of Volume V, pages 464-526 (62 pages) concerns George Papadopoulos, the minor advisor whose unguarded comments about his contacts with the Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud started the FBI investigation in the first place.  George Papadopoulos was a young up-and-comer (29 at the age of the campaign) who appears to have had some ties in Europe, particularly Greece (as his name suggests, Papadopoulos is Greek-American and appears to have active ties to his ancestral country).  He ended up marrying one of his contacts -- an Italian attorney who (for what it is worth) also knew Mifsud (p 470).  

He also appears to have been young and inexperienced, but highly ambitious, and eager to have a larger role and greater influence than he had the experience to handle. This made him vulnerable to getting in over his head and being manipulated by more experienced operators.  The Committee certainly did not find that Papadopoulos every wittingly served Russians interests, but they regarded him as a useful idiot for the Russians (p. 467).  He appears to have wanted to be the campaign conduit for various high-ranking foreign contacts, conveying information between his contacts and the campaign, but never putting the parties into direct contact, lest he undermine his own importance.  The Committee did not have to opportunity to interview Papadopoulos or many of his foreign contacts directly, but they did have access to his e-mails and also interviewed his contacts with the campaign.

George Papadopoulos

Papadopoulos reported to Sam Clovis, Team Trump's senior policy advisor.  He got the job largely because Team Trump had a dearth of policy advisors and could not afford to be too demanding.  In March, 2016, about the time he joined Team Trump, Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a British-Maltese professor believed to have significant ties to the Russian government and Russian intelligence services.  Mifsud seemed initially uninterested in Papadopoulos until he learned that the later was a member of the Trump campaign, at which point he became interested.  Mifsud introduce Papadopoulos to Olga Polonskaya, a Russian national whose exact role the Committee was unable to determine.  Mifsud, however, appears to have greatly exaggerated Polonskaya's role and led Papadopoulos to believe that she was Putin's niece.  She appears to have served as an intermediary between the two men.  In April, Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to another intermediary -- Ivan Timofeev, Director of Programs at the Russian International Affairs Council (whatever that is, p. 481).  Mifsud also sought to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin, which Papadopoulos eagerly pitched to the Trump Campaign, but was regularly rebuffed.

On April 26, 2016, after returning from a conference in Moscow, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, in the form of "thousands" of e-mails. When Papadopoulos asked Mifsud how he knew, Mifsud answered, "They told me."

What are we to make of that?  First, this was just two weeks after Fancy Bear's first breach of the DNC server.  This would have been quite recent news at the time.*  At this time neither Papadopoulos nor any other member of the Trump campaign (with the possible exception of Manafort) knew about the DNC or Podesta hacks.  They did know about the deleted e-mails from Hillary's server. Since Mifsud did not specify which e-mails, it seems most likely that Papadopoulos assumed that he was referring to the deleted e-mails and not the suspected hack. Indeed, it is not even clear that Mifsud knew the source of the e-mails.  It seems mind-boggling to think that the Russians would have let a foreigner in on such sensitive information.  

Second, this looks very much like an attempt to set up the kind of back channel of communications that so many people suspected. A foreign national with ties to Russian intelligence is reaching out to a low-level campaign staffer operating outside the US with highly sensitive information.  Indeed, Mifsud even offered to be the campaign's liaison to Europe and/or Russia (p. 495).  While it is far from clear what is going on here, it certainly looks like an attempt to set up a back channel of clandestine communication that would be too obscure to attract attention.  Third, it that was what was being attempted, it failed.  And fourth, if this was an attempt that failed, it seems odd that no further attempt was made to set up a back channel.  Yet there is no evidence of any further such attempt.**

Sam Clovis

Interestingly, if this was a failed attempt to set up a back channel of communications, it appears to have failed for two reasons.  One is that Papadopoulos does not appear ever to have informed the campaign of the lead he received.  The other is that the campaign in general, and Paul Manafort in particular, rebuffed all attempts to set up a meeting with Putin.

Famously, Papadopoulos did tell the Australian Ambassador to Britain about this communication.  (Meeting described in tedious detail, with about three paragraphs redacted).  It was this conversation that ultimately led to the investigation.  Papadopoulos also continued to attempt, unsuccessfully, to set up a meeting between Russian leadership and the Trump campaign. He also mentioned the emails to the Greek Foreign Minister who (according to Papadopoulos) seemed strangely unsurprised, as if he already knew (pp. 497-498).  The Committee found no evidence that Papadopoulos ever passed on this information to the campaign (p. 498).

This seems very strange.  It fairly boggles the mind that Papadopoulos would tell two foreign diplomats about the extraordinary tip, yet never pass the news on to his superiors in the campaign.  Yet no such evidence was ever found.  No e-mails or texts ever conveyed this information to the campaign.  Granted, Papadopoulos may have recognized that such sensitive materials should not be committed to writing.  (And yet he blurted them out to two foreign diplomats?).  But no one with the campaign appears to remember such a conversation either.  And yes, granted, campaign members had motives to lie.  But remember the danger of the conspiratorial mindset.  If there is evidence of such communications, that is proof that they took place.  If there is not evidence, that shows how well it was hidden.  That way lies madness.  The fact that nothing -- for better or worse -- ever came of such an imagined communication, is strong reason to believe they never took place.***

Manafort in particular seems to have opposed any meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government.  This appears to be a pattern.  It was Manafort who warned the Trump campaign not to contact Wikileaks directly, but to go through Roger Stone.  It was Manafort who warned Junior and Jared not to expect too much to come of the meeting with Russians.  And now Manafort is working to quash any effort by Papadopoulos to set up a meeting with the Russians.  Given that even as he was doing these things, Manafort was also secretly sending campaign date to a Russian spy, it seems safe to assume that he did not have any legal or moral objections to any of these things.  What is going on here?

I can see two possible explanations.  One is that Manafort was loyal to the campaign, even if he was not loyal to his country, and believed that Russian contacts were best left to a professional, like himself, and that involving amateurs was dangerous.  The other was that he was pursuing his own, self-serving agenda and feared being found out if the campaign opened any other Russia contacts.  I have no idea which is more plausible.

Nothing else in the report seems significant.  After Manafort departed, the campaign seems to have seen Papadopoulos as a dangerous loose cannon and told him not to make public statements without clearing them first.  Pages 509-511 are mostly redacted, but are a rare case in which it is easy to tell what is under the redaction. This section appears to be about the conversation with an FBI informant that was detailed in the Inspector General's Report.  Finally, the section on Papadopoulos (pp. 524-526) addresses counter-intelligence concerns about his activities.  The Committee clearly has such concerns.  However, those concerns are redacted, except for one paragraph addressing Papadopoulos' lies to the FBI and one that Mifsud departed the US on February 11, 2017 and has not returned.

NEXT:  Carter Page

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*Recall also that Russia's civilian intelligence service, a/k/a Cozy Bear, had broken into the DNC server months earlier, but never used the information to sway the campaign.

**Except, of course, for Paul Manafort secretly channeling polling data and perhaps other information to a Russian spy, and the campaign encouraging Roger Stone to pass on information about Wikileaks.

***At one point Papadopoulos apparently told the FBI that he told Clovis about the e-mails and Clovis was "upset."   However, he also said he was not sure the memory was accurate.  (P. 486, footnote 3159.  Main text giving context to the footnote is redacted).

Some Final Thoughts on Opposition to Aiding Ukraine and the Federal Budget

So, as the House gears up for a budget fight and government shutdown, this seems like a good time to raise the issue of budget wars in general an opposition to aid to Ukraine in particular.  The House Freedom Caucus has put out a statement of extremely vague demands, most of which have nothing in particular to do with the budget.  The Freedom Caucus wants:

1. Tougher border measures;
2. An end to "weaponization" of the Justice Department;
3. An end to "woke" military policies;
4. No "blank check" in military aid to Ukrain
5. Funding in separate bills, rather than one omnibus bill..

Look, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, none of these are, in any meaningful way, budget cuts.  Tougher border measures means spending more, not less.  Defunding investigations of Donald Trump and whatever the Freedom Caucus deems "woke" in the military are sums so miniscule that they scarcely even count as cuts.  Ending aid to Ukraine (which the statement hints at but does not actually call for) would be a cut spending, but not a significant one.  And separate bills might give more opportunities for cuts, but so far the Freedom Caucus does not appear to have offered specifics that would make any difference.  COVID funding is also a favorite, but so far the best Republicans can offer in terms of real cuts is general, across the board spending cuts, with the exception of a few favored programs.

In other words, the government shutdown is not, in fact, about the budget.  Government shutdown is a convenient hostage for the Freedom Caucus to use in order to demand and end to a few select programs that it has ideological objections to, in the guise of budgetary concerns.

And just to be clear, there is nothing wrong or hypocritical with having ideological objections to any particular government program.  I strongly disagree with the Freedom Caucus in their ideological objections, but I do not see a problem with ideological objections per se.  What is hypocritical is to phrase objections to a very narrow and specific sub-section of government spending in terms of budget cutting.  The fact is that cutting out everything anyone sees ad ideologically objectionable is not going to make even a dent in the total deficit.  Any serious attempt to reduce spending is going to mean cutting programs that people like.  

I can only assume that the Republican Party has had a libertarian branch opposed to all government spending in blanket terms for so long that many Republicans only know how to express their opposition to a government program in terms of blanket opposition to spending, rather than expressing their particular ideological concerns to a particular item.

All of which lead to the question of military aid to Ukraine.  Again, I get that Republicans tend to express their opposition in terms of a blanket opposition to spending, but once again, we are not going to make even minimal impact on the budget deficit by ending military aid to Ukraine.  That is a sign that the real objection is ideological and not budgetary.

So what is the ideological objection?  I will assume that some really do fear WWIII and some really do want Russia to win.  But my guess is that this is not the primary issue for most, and certainly not for the base, which also broadly opposes such aid.

My guess is that the primary reason so many Republicans oppose aid to Ukraine is a longstanding opposition to any foreign aid of any kind whatever.  Any underlying that appears to be a belief that spending US taxpayer money on people who are not US taxpayer is a kind of theft.  Keep in mind here that spending money in ways that harm non-citizens, i.e., wars, such as absurd proposals to invade Mexico, is not seen as theft, on the assumption that any harm to non-citizens is done in order to advance the interests of US citizens.  But the thought that anything could benefit both non-citizens and US citizens (or at least interests) is unthinkable.

And, I will add, that this outlook closely matches Trump's general approach to foreign policy, which assumes that the US should not have allies because having allies means taking actions for the benefit of other countries, and not solely for the US. And that it is this outlook, rather than a general opposition to war in general, that underlies the long-term rightwing tradition of isolationism.

The Other Reason Republicans Have it out for Hunter Biden

 It's simple, really.  It is a warning to any Democrat who dares to seek the presidency that that if you go after an office that Republicans regard as theirs by right, they won't just bring the full weight of the Great Right Wing Noise Machine down on you.

They're coming after your children, too.

Volume V, Part 4, Trump Tower, Moscow

 

Remember the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on contacts between the Trump Campaign and Russia?  Part 4 deals with attempts to build a Trump Towner in Moscow and takes up 55 pages, from 407 to 462. As always, reality is never as juicy as your imagination, but some things in the report are suggestive.

Michael Cohen had no role in the campaign, but was responsible for negotiating the building of a Trump Tower in Moscow.  (The Mueller team indicted him for lying to them about it, but not for any action in connection with the negotiations).  

The Trump Organization had been attempting to build a Trump Tower in Moscow for decades and never gotten anywhere.  In September, 2015, about three months after Trump announced his run for President, and shortly after Cohen attempted to set up a Trump-Putin meeting at the United Nations, Cohen received two offers, with another materializing soon after.  The first was from Felix Sater, a decidedly sleazy character who nonetheless could not be prosecuted because he was an FBI informant and was able to give information on all manner of sinister activities, including cyber crime, al-Qaeda, Russian organized crime, and the GRU, i.e., the Russian Military Intelligence, which was behind the hack and leak operation.  (Two pages redacted).  Sater also had a business partner suspect of human trafficking (one page redacted).  He was also a longtime business associate of Donald Trump.

The second offer came from Georgi Rtskhiladze (I have no idea how to pronounce that!), a Georgian businessman and longtime Trump associate.  A third offer came in November, 2015 from Dmitry Klokov, a Russian weight lifter with no real business ties, who nonetheless attempted to broker a meeting between Trump and Putin.  Nothing came of the attempt.  There is not proof that these offers were related to Trump's announcement, or Cohen's attempt to arrange a meeting, but Cohen acknowledged that he had never before received two offers for the same building in the same location at (about) the same time (p. 422).

Cohen decided to go with Sater.  As always, Volume V goes over their negotiations in excruciating detail. The agreement was to require the Russian developer to finance and build the tower, while the Trump Organization would receive fees and payments for the Trump brand.  Many people have commented that that smacks of a sweetheart deal, giving Trump all the advantages and none of the risks.  The tower required approval from the Moscow city government, and probably from the Kremlin. The parties signed a Letter of Intent in October, 2015. Cohen reported that Sater told him that Putin was "interested" in the project, and that the prospective deal may have influenced Trump's glowing talk about better relations with Russia (pp. 430-431).  Trump also called his campaign "the greatest infomercial in the history of politics," suggesting that he saw his run for President primarily as publicity for his business ventures.  Sater, by contrast, said that he thought Trump could win and that Putin could sway the election for him with an endorsement (p. 432).  

Dmitry Peskov

By the beginning of 2016, Cohen started becoming frustrated with the slow pace of the project.  Difficulty in getting approval from the Kremlin appeared to be a holdup, so Cohen attempted to reach out to the Kremlin.  Further delay and confusion followed because the Kremlin is, of course, an immense, bureaucratic organization that Cohen had no experience in navigating.  Nonetheless, Cohen was eventually directed to the office of Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary, and spoke to Peskov's chief of staff, Elena Poliakova. Cohen found Poliakova to be highly professional, competent, and extremely well informed.  She clearly knew about the deal and discussed the project in detail, including area, size, and square footage.  (p. 444).  Cohen commented that she had done her homework, and he wished that some Trump Organization assistants were as well-prepared.  Sater continued to attempt to set up a meeting between Cohen and Putin.

Efforts continued through June, but after the Republican Convention in July, 2016, it became that the project created too much appearance of conflict for a presidential candidate.  Negotiations ceased.

So, what are we to make of that?  Well, after Trump Tower Moscow had languished for years, if not decades, within three months after Trump announcing his run for President and even less time after Cohen attempted to set a meeting with Putin, two essentially risk-free offers came in, a most unusual circumstance.  Nothing is proven here, but it is suggestive.  Trump's eager praise of Putin came at a time he planning a Trump Tower in Moscow and appears to have seen his presidential campaign as little more than a public relations campaign for the tower.  There were initial holdups in approval by the Kremlin, suggesting that the Kremlin may not have been aware of the project, or the knowledge may not have worked its way up the hierarchy.  However, when Cohen finally got an inside line to a Kremlin bigwig's chief of staff, he found her to be extremely well-informed, suggesting that the Kremlin knew a whole lot more than it was letting on, and that knowledge of the project had made its way up to the highest levels.*

It all feels a bit unsettling, but without access to the Russian side of events, there is no way to know.  

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*This is not to suggest that Peskov or other bigwigs were familiar with the same level of detail.  One of the jobs of chiefs of staff is to know details so the boss can focus on the big picture.

All Right, I'll Address the Age Issue

 So, is Joe Biden too old to be President?  Should he step aside and let somebody younger take over?

It's a tough call. I do think the concern is legitimate.  I also think there are things he can do to reassure people that he is still all there, like get out more. He should not give formal speeches, which can be dismissed as just reading off the teleprompter, but should do more informal, give-and-take events that clearly demonstrate thinking on his feet.  He should not focus on a single dramatic event to change that narrative.  That doesn't work.  What does work is the slow drip, drip, drip of being regularly seen in public and showing he can think on his feet.

This is not without risk.  Biden walks like an old man, and that creates an impression.  And it is really not possible to avoid doing something -- anything -- that can be shown out of context.  But above all else, even if Biden convinces people he is able to handle being President now, there is no guarantee that he will still be up to the job through the end of 2028.  The government can run itself reasonably well without leadership at the top -- the Reagan and Trump Administrations both demonstrate that -- but leadership at the top really is useful, especially in a crisis.

But here is the real deciding factor for me.  I might favor running a new candidate if I thought it would matter. But it won't.  I 100% guarantee, it does not matter who the candidate is, any Democratic candidate will immediately walk straight into the crosshairs of the Right Wing Noise Machine and become the worst person who ever lived, and definitely the worst possible candidate.  Don't forget that Democrats picked Biden in 2020 because he was the Won't Freak Out MAGA candidate.  It took a while, but MAGA started freaking out soon enough.  

Democrats need to learn that and learn it now.  Stop focusing on the candidate and start figuring out how to deal with the Great Right Wing Noise Machine.  Because until you learn a strategy for that, you are operating at a hopeless disadvantage, regardless of candidate.

Can Invading Neighbors Be a Neutral Principle?

Politics makes for some strange bedfellows, and right now they are never so strange as in foreign policy.  What does it mean when people like me find ourselves on the same side a deranged warmonger like John Bolton warning about Trump's general lawlessness?  Or agreeing with the ultra-MAGA Madison Cawthorn when he posts the anti-war tweet on the side.  

And what happens when right wingers start echoing our distrust of the FBI, the criminal justice system, the intelligence agencies and surveillance?  Are we just being hypocrites in defending these things?  Is it just a matter of whose ox is being gored?  And I suppose my answer is two-fold.  First of all, if you ever want to advance to cause of civil liberties, violate the rights of a right-winger.  Suddenly you will see a mass outpouring of civil libertarian sentiment.  The other is that we are going to have to hold to contradictory notions in our heads.  First of all, our intelligence/ surveillance/law enforcement establishment should not be trusted and should be kept on a tight leash to protect everyone's liberties, right wingers included.  And second, our institutions, flawed as they are, are still much preferable to giving unrestricted power to one man.  Especially if that man is named Donald Trump.

All of which leads me into the matter of foreign policy, and especially of the war in Ukraine. In the case of Ukraine, our side finds itself with the choice of siding with neocons like Bolton who support military aid, or MAGA types who oppose it.  

So let me state my position clearly.  I support military aid to Ukraine.  And I do not see this in any way as inconsistent with opposing our invasion of Iraq (which I did).  It means that I oppose countries invading other countries, and that I oppose invasions as a neutral principle. There may be an exception in cases of humanitarian intervention -- invasion to stop civil war or genocide, although these are extremely difficulty to pull off successfully, and highly labor intensive.*  But complaints about corruption in Ukraine, as if this somehow justified invasion, are absurd. A country does not require a good government certification to earn the right to resist an invasion.  We backed the Soviet Union under Stalin when the Nazis invaded.  Backing a flawed and somewhat corrupt democracy is a no-brainer by comparison.

So what about people who oppose military aid to Ukraine.  They fit into several categories.

Some fear escalation and nuclear war.  I feared that myself at the outset.  But given what the Russians have taken without going nuclear, such fears appear to be overblown.  And more than that.  The danger of nuclear war has to be weighed against the danger of yielding to nuclear blackmail.  Refuse to aid Ukraine for fear of nuclear war, and you encourage aggression by other nuclear powers, secure in their arsenals.  And you encourage nuclear proliferation as countries across the world rush to obtain nuclear weapons as their only possible defense.

Some far left opponents like Noam Chomsky or Glenn Greenwald, argue that the real danger is from the US.  The US is the only power seeking global hegemony.  Any attempt to "protect" other countries from regional hegemons is simply an attempt to bring more countries under US domination.  Sure, it would be best if there were no hegemons and every country had complete autonomy.  But barring such a utopia, in order to thwart US global hegemony, it is sometimes necessary to back the lesser hegemon as the lesser evil.  As to arguments that countries seeking to escape Russian domination don't seem to mind US domination, or point to the Russians' cruelty and brutality, Chomsky or Greenwald would presumably point to example of US cruelty and brutality and domination of unwilling countries,and tell us to take the beam out of our own eye before we criticize the mote in someone else's.  Or they dismiss the whole thing as unimportant since, as Lenin said, when you cut down a tree the chips will fly.  (That's Russian for saying you can't make omelets without breaking eggs).**

Others says that sure, one country invading another is a bad thing, but this one is a long way away and no concern of ours. I must admit that I once held this view myself.  I argued that the Russians were prepared to start WWIII over Ukraine and we were not, so the best the Ukrainians could hope for was to follow the Finnish example of domestic freedom in exchange for submission in foreign affairs.  Well, even Finland has decided that is no longer viable and has joined NATO.

But the one that interests me most is the viewpoint (increasingly common among the MAGA crowd) that we should not defend Ukraine from invasion, which Russia had every right to do, but should use our military strength to invade Mexico instead. In other words, some people appear to favor countries invading their neighbors as a neutral principle.  This is a spheres of influence viewpoint.  Certain regional hegemons should impose their will on their weaker neighbors and invade if their neighbors step out of line.  This view would condemn our invasion of Iraq, not because there is anything inherently wrong with invading other countries, but only because Iraq is outside our sphere of influence.  Instead, we should observe the Monroe Doctrine and limit ourselves to invading countries in the Western Hemisphere, all of which are fair game if they step out of line.  This viewpoint would also mean withdrawing from NATO and the Middle East.  Taken to its logical conclusion, it would also mean severing alliances with Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan, all of which are presumably in the Chinese sphere of influence, although somehow the MAGA crowd is actually strongly anti-China.  And, in all fairness to the MAGA crowd, this is a fair assessment of our pre-WWII foreign policy.  Though often derided as "isolationist," our isolationism was only from Europe.  The US quite regularly sent the Marines into Central American and Caribbean countries.  

But enough is enough.  There is a world of difference between invading another country and helping another country to resist invaders.  How hard is that to understand?

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*Russians and their apologists sometimes offer this justification to excuse the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.  They argue that the Russians were not invading, but intervening in an incipient civil war and head off a disastrous defeat for the pro-Russian faction.  The situation in 2014 really was chaotic, but to the extent that the Russians were seeking to quash an incipient civil war, they were highly successful.  No civil war occurred, and by 2022, Ukraine was not only at civil peace, but strongly united in opposition to any further Russian aggression.
**In some ways, by the way, the Russian metaphor is more honest than ours.  Ours is a creative metaphor -- to build an omelet (the new order) it is necessary to destroy some eggs (the old order).  Russians use a purely destructive metaphor.  When you cut down a tree (the old order), it is inevitable that flying chips will cause some collateral damage.

The Specter of Lenin

 

As I understand it, that last point -- that seeing a war as a mistake and wanting to lose are entirely different things -- informs our policy.  

The war that becomes unpopular is invariably a war that one is losing.  Victory is never unpopular.  When a war is not going too well and does not show any immediate prospects of getting better, the population often becomes war-weary and wants out.  But very rarely are they willing to take that all the way to its logical conclusion and actually lose.  

Our own experience in Afghanistan is instructive. The war had become unpopular, mostly because there seemed to be no end in sight and no prospect of victory.  The American public wanted out.  We just didn't want to lose. So the war dragged on, year after year, as Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump were unable to win but unwilling to lose.  When Biden decided it was time to bite the bullet and lose, his decision proved highly unpopular, and his popularity never recovered.  Granted, the loss was messy.  One likes to think we could have gotten out more cleanly.  But in the end, losing does tend to be messy.  That is why it is so unpopular.

Reports are coming out of the White House (not going to find them) that the Biden Administration is holding back to some degree and is trying to avoid too overwhelming a win for fear of the consequences.  Their fear is not of nuclear war, but of all-out social breakdown in a defeated Russia with unforeseeable but dire consequences.  

They are thinking about the breakup of the Soviet Union following 1991, which is a reasonable concern. Any attempt to understand Vladimir Putin and his appear has to begin with an understanding of just how painful the breakup of the Soviet Union was for the country's inhabitants. It wasn't just that all the different republics declared their independence.  The economy suffered a deeper decline that the US during the Great Depression.  Government largely broke down, and a Mafia-like oligarchy became a law unto itself, rising to obscene levels of wealth while the rest of the country fell into ruin.  Life expectancy fell by as much as six years, as perhaps 70% of the male population responded to unbearable conditions by falling into alcoholism. In short, conditions were really bad.

This also raises the same question.  The Soviets were trapped in the Cold War and ultimately could not win.  But considering that this was what losing looked like, continuing seemed like a better choice by comparison.

One can argue how much credit Putin deserved for turning things around, but the improvement did start about when he came to power. Underlying the fear of a repeat of 1991 is a realization that, bad as Putin has been, a whole lot worse things could have emerged.

And I must admit that ever since Yevgeny Prigozhin launched his failed putsch, I have been thinking about something considerably worse, something that no one today is old enough to remember.  I have been thinking about Lenin and the civil war that he set off and wondering if anything short of that can end the war.

And just to be clear, I am not a scholar of Lenin and his revolution and civil war.  I no more than a Wikipedia level familiarity with the subject, but some of its horrors come through.  Revolution broke out in Russia in 1917.  The revolution was not so much against the Czar as against a ruinous war -- WWI -- that Russia had no hope of winning but could not get out of.  Conditions seemed unbearable.  The army was in retreat, suffering devastating rates of death and desertion.  Petrograd suffered severe inflation and food shortages.  The people revolted, and the Czarist government quickly fell -- and no good came of it.  The war continued, food shortages in no way abated, and the Provisional Government remained paralyzed, incapable of taking action. Lenin certainly spoke for the aspirations of most Russians when he proclaimed, "Peace!  Bread!  Land!"  There was just one problem -- he had no idea how to achieve any of these things.

Armistice line vs. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Peace proved elusive for the usual reason.  Russia was trapped in a desperately unpopular war that it had no chance of winning.  The only way out was to lose.  And if one thing was even less popular than continuing the war, it was losing. Lenin, in exile at the time the war began, had actually advocated Russia's defeat as a way of bringing about revolution.  Well, now revolution had occurred, and Lenin found himself in charge of the Russian state and in the position of somehow having to achieve peace.  He began, promisingly enough, with an armistice, achieved in about a month and a half.  That put an end to the killing for a time, but was established in place with German and Austrian forces occupying large portions of the Soviet Union, and no permanent peace.  Negotiations stalled, as the Germans sought to annex the lands they were already occupying and the Bolsheviks held out, hoping that revolution would break out in Germany any day and render the matter moot.  

In the end, the Bolsheviks took the worst possible option -- they declared the end of the war an demobilized without a peace treaty.  The Germans, predictably, went on the offensive, effortless capturing territory from the demobilized Bolsheviks, and demanding even greater annexations with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.  Lenin recognized that he had no choice and capitulated. This led to the rupture with the Bolsheviks' last coalition partners, the beginning of the Bolsheviks' one-party state, and all-out civil war.

To be clear, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was not the sole cause of Russia's civil war.  With the collapse of the Czarist government, some sort of civil war among people with very different notions about what should follow it was probably inevitable. Certainly Lenin saw such a war as inevitable.  Along with his slogan "Pease! Bread! Land!" was a much darker slogan, "Turn the imperialist war into a civil war!"  

But Lenin's hardline policies did much to worsen the situation.  He sought to deliver "bread" to urban areas by forced seizure of grain from the rural population.  Instead, this led to food shortages so severe that half or more of the urban population fled to the countryside.  The territories captured by Germany and Austria had populations that were happy to throw off the yoke of Russian domination, but by no means willing to submit to German control.  Widespread guerrilla warfare broke out against both.  At the end of the war, numerous new countries were carved out of the ruins of the Russian, German, and Austrian empires.  The Civil War was devastating.  By the end of the war, the "unbearable" conditions that led to revolution seemed mild by comparison.  Russia saw more people killed in the Civil War than its WWI losses that started the revolution.  The urban food shortages that led to the revolt became so bad that half or more of the urban population fled to the countryside.  Industrial production fell to 20% of its pre-war levels.  In short, it made the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union look very mild by comparison.

Russia, present-day borders

And I have to think that most Russians are well aware of this history.  And that, while they may dread a return to pre-Putin days, the thought of their WWI defeat and the horrors that followed must be in the back of their minds, and haunt their fears of what might happen if they lose.  Many people might answer with an obvious rejoinder.  The Russo-Ukrainian war is nothing like WWI.  Far from being an attempt by Western powers (as Russians would see the Germans) to alter borders by force, this time the Western powers are simply seeking to prevent any forcible change in border.  The Ukrainians have no desire to take even one step across the border and no designs on any Russian territory whatever.  They simply want to return to the pre-2014 borders.

To this Russians might have a few rejoinders. One is that they have annexed Crimea and consider it sovereign Russian territory.  But, more chillingly, they might point out that Russia's present-day borders are not so far from the borders set by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk -- borders that everyone at the time saw as unduly harsh and unreasonable.