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Fans of American football remember well the rise and fall of Adam “Pacman” Jones, but not many expected to see him bounce back. Zak Keefer delivers my favorite kind of redemption feature in this profile of Jones, who’s now mentoring the sons of his late friend and teammate Chris Henry. The story starts with Jones’ tears; it might end with yours.
“Y’all need to uproot and move up here with us,” he urged Loleini Tonga, the boys’ mother. “We’ll help you out.”
So that’s what they did. Pacman Jones, once the NFL’s cautionary tale for reckless behavior, made Chris Henry’s family part of his own. They moved in with him in Cincinnati, where he drives the boys to school and picks them up after practice, where he trains them in the offseason, where he pushes Slim’s two sons the same way he once pushed their father, passing on the lessons learned from the opportunity they both almost threw away.
“I’ll tell you this,” Jones says, getting a bit heated. “I’ll be damned if these kids make the same mistakes I did.”
A discussion featuring Yakov Feygin, Daniela Gabor, Ho-fung Hung, Thea Riofrancos, and Quinn Slobodian.
Relying on the private sector to decarbonize is a recipe for abandoning workers.
Guest post by Costantino Pischedda and Andrew Cheon
Drone strikes targeted Moscow last week. Though much remains unknown about it, the episode appears to be part of a series of unclaimed coercive attacks that US officials attributed to Ukrainian government personnel, including the killing of the daughter of a Russian nationalist, the sabotage of the North Stream pipelines, and drone attacks on the Kremlin.
With unclaimed coercion, perpetrators impose costs on adversaries to signal their resolve to prevail in disputes while denying involvement or simply not making any claim about responsibility. Unclaimed coercion is not unique to the war in Ukraine. Russia launched cyber attacks in 2007 to extract concessions from Estonia, though Moscow denied responsibility, and in 2010 Seoul claimed North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship, Pyongyang’s denial notwithstanding.
Unclaimed coercion may have strategic benefits. Without unmistakable evidence about the identity of the perpetrator, the absence of a claim of responsibility creates plausible deniability, which, some argue, allows coercers to send intelligible, credible messages to targets while containing escalation risks. It may also reduce the costs of being seen as a norm violator. For instance, Austin Carson observed that, though both Saudi Arabia and the United States viewed the 2019 attacks on Saudi oil facilities as part of an Iranian coercive campaign, the absence both of conclusive evidence and a claim of responsibility prevented Riyadh and Washington from carrying out a tough military response, which would have looked “illegitimate while jeopardizing allies’ support.”
But there may also be drawbacks. Some research suggests that unclaimed acts muddle communication, leaving targets unsure about what is being demanded, making compliance less likely. Even if the coercive message is clear to targets, it may not be credible. If plausible deniability is seen as a way for perpetrators to shield themselves from the costs of appearing as norm violators by third parties and to contain escalation risks, targets may perceive unclaimed acts as cheap. A cheap action may signal unwillingness to engage in costlier and riskier overt acts to prevail in the dispute—that is, low resolve—which could embolden targets to resist.
Furthermore, the absence of a claim of responsibility could reduce the credibility of perpetrators’ reassurances implied in a coercive act (“if you do as I say, I will stop hurting you”). Targets may interpret perpetrators’ unwillingness to acknowledge responsibility as an indication of their deceitful nature, suggesting that promises to end hostile acts in exchange for concessions would likely be violated, in turn reducing incentives to comply.
Besides offering limited coercive leverage, unclaimed acts may fail to contain the risk of escalation. Targets, angry at being attacked, may confidently attribute attacks to the perpetrators despite a lack of evidence—and decide to retaliate. Incidents can engage targets’ reputation and honor, and thus be provocative, even when culpability is uncertain. For example, after the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine in Cuba, “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!” became the popular rallying cry for war, even though it was unclear whether Spain was behind it.
Despite the growing interest in plausible deniability, there has been little empirical analysis of the effects of unclaimed coercion. Our research helps fill this gap, leveraging a vignette experiment, fielded in May 2022 on a sample of 854 US residents, recruited using sampling quotas to match Census statistics for gender, age, and education. The experiment exposed respondents to a fictional scenario depicting a major explosion at a NATO base in Poland used to funnel weapons to Ukraine during the ongoing war. All respondents were told that President Putin had previously warned of “unpredictable consequences” if NATO continued providing weapons to Ukraine and that both intelligence agencies and independent analysts identified Russia as the likely culprit without, however, ruling out the possibility of an accidental detonation. By randomizing whether Russia claimed or denied responsibility for the explosion, we were able to assess the effects of plausible deniability on targets’ views about complying with Putin’s demands and taking escalatory actions in response.
We found that when the attack is unclaimed, respondents are less likely to favor complying with Russia’s demands for interrupting the flow of weapons to Ukraine. Moreover, the absence of a claim of responsibility does not seem to affect respondents’ preferences for escalation. In our analysis of two possible escalatory responses by the United States to the explosion—an air strike against a Russian military base on Ukrainian soil and going to war against Russian forces in Ukraine—we found no statistically significant difference between the two groups of respondents. Thus, plausible deniability appears to reduce coercive leverage without the benefit of containing escalation.
Unclaimed attacks are among the possible tools at the disposal of governments, whose effects may vary depending on the circumstances. Policymakers considering resorting to unclaimed coercion—or fretting about its use by adversaries—should be aware that the payoffs are likely to be limited. For Ukraine, denying responsibility for attacks on Russian soil might offer the advantage of limiting reputational damage in the West, which would not be captured in our analysis. However, the evidence indicates that unclaimed attacks are unwieldy tools of coercion and are unlikely to reduce the risks of Russia’s escalatory responses.
Costantino Pischedda is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Miami. Andrew Cheon is Assistant Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins SAIS.
Guest post by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Molly Wallace, and Ned Dobos
Ukraine has received tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid since the Russian invasion began one year ago. The international consensus seems to be that supporting Ukraine means financing its war effort. But a few dissenting voices have emerged of late, more ambivalent about the prudence—and ethics—of the current policy. Colonel Douglas MacGregor, a former advisor to the US Secretary of Defence, has warned that the choice of cure could turn out to be worse than the disease.
At least 7,000 Ukrainian civilians have already perished in the war. Thousands more have been injured, and millions have been displaced. MacGregor’s primary concern is that the bleeding will continue for as long as the fighting does. Russian forces advance, Ukrainian forces resist with violence, Russia responds with counter-violence, and the bodies continue to pile up. The Ukrainian state retains its sovereignty, but eventually we get to a point where, to quote MacGregor, “There are no longer any Ukrainians left!” This is hyperbole, of course, but that should not distract from the valid point MacGregor is making. States exist for the sake of their citizens, not the other way around. Therefore, if a given method of defending the state is causing its citizens to be killed or to flee en masse, that is a compelling reason to explore alternatives.
What is often overlooked about armed resistance is that, when it “works,” it does so by producing a mental rather than physical effect. Wars are won by breaking the enemy’s will to fight, not necessarily its ability to fight. Victory usually comes, if it comes, long before there are no enemy soldiers left; it comes when those soldiers who remain and/or their leaders are no longer motivated to fight, or in more extreme cases, when the soldiers are so demoralized that the leaders can no longer mount enough coercive pressure to make them continue fighting. Everything hinges on how the remaining members of the opponent group react to the destruction of their compatriots’ lives and their military or civilian infrastructure, not on the destruction itself.
Once we realize that the condition of surrender is not physical but psychological, it is only natural to wonder: Is there no way to change minds except through violence against bodies?
Nonviolent resistance is an alternative strategy for breaking the will of the aggressor. Protests and fraternization can engage the moral sentiments of the aggressor’s functionaries and citizenry, leading to a loss of popular support. Boycotts and blockades can alter the material cost-benefit equation of the aggression, so that it is no longer worth it. And nonviolent sabotage can directly diminish the aggressor’s capabilities by physically disabling military, transportation, or communications infrastructure.
Ukrainians have been engaged in various forms of such nonviolent resistance since the Russian invasion began. It took more visible forms at first—ordinary civilians demonstrating in Ukrainian colors or standing between Russian tanks and their towns—and has since shifted to less visible, more dispersed methods in response to Russian occupation and repression—graffiti, non-cooperation with Russian authorities, alternative communication, and governance institutions. There were even overtures to the Russian public and soldiers, eliciting responses from significant scientists, clerics, and journalists.
Unlike the militarized resistance, however, the nonviolent resistance has received no significant material support from the international community. Consider for example the Ukrainian government’s early offer of money and amnesty to Russian deserters, which circulated via SMS messages containing instructions on how and where to surrender and collect payment. According to The Times (UK), there was some initial uptake—a Russian soldier was photographed surrendering himself and his tank to Ukrainian forces in March, in exchange for cash and an offer of permanent resettlement in Ukraine. But consider what might have been.
Suppose the international community were to double the Ukrainian government’s offer of $50k per deserting soldier, as economist Bryan Caplan suggested. Desertion is a risky proposition, but for twice the payoff perhaps many more Russian soldiers might have considered the risk worth taking. Additionally, countries besides Ukraine could have offered Russian deserters amnesty and even citizenship within their own borders. This way deserters would need not worry about Russia eventually winning the war, occupying Ukraine, ousting its government, and taking its vengeance against them. The recent involvement of Wagner Group mercenaries on the Russian side only underscores the utility of economic incentives to alter the motivation of soldiers.
Of course, we cannot say for certain that a nonviolent approach will work. But we cannot say for certain that violence will work, either. So far it hasn’t.
If there are nonviolent ways to break Russia’s will to fight, why the reluctance to exploit them?
One possible reason is the widespread belief that nonviolence, although it can be effective, is not nearly as effective as military force. But this belief is more an a priori assumption than a rational conclusion based on an impartial appraisal of the evidence. Scientific research suggests that, during 1900–2006, nonviolent resistance outperformed violent resistance by a ratio of almost 2:1.
Maybe our desire to see wrongdoers not simply thwarted but punished explains the preference for violence here. Perhaps our sense of justice recoils at the thought of paying Russian combatants to desert, instead of making them suffer for what they have done—though this stance ignores the coercion and manipulation that Putin’s government has used against its own armed forces.
In any case, surely what matters most in all this is the welfare of the Ukrainian people. The reality is that massively financing the war effort has produced a state of attrition with no end in sight. Persisting with the current policy regardless, expecting things to change while the casualties mount, is a combination of delusion and depravity. We should now turn the spotlight onto those Ukrainians who—despite the loud calls for military weaponry—have been steadily engaged in various forms of nonviolent resistance and defense since the invasion. Their actions deserve more support—both moral and material—than the international community has so far provided.
Alexandre Christoyannopoulos is a reader (associate professor) in politics and international relations at Loughborough University, and his publications are listed on his website. Ned Dobos is a senior lecturer in international and political studies at UNSW Canberra, and author of Ethics, Security, and the War Machine: The True Cost of the Military. Molly Wallace is adjunct assistant professor in conflict resolution at Portland State University, senior contributing editor at the Peace Science Digest, and author of Security without Weapons: Rethinking Violence, Nonviolent Action, and Civilian Protection. The three of them are the editors of the new Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence.
Among the layoffs at Meta, the company formerly known as and dependent upon Facebook: the staff whose job it was to manage and support influencers. If one is tempted not to care–it suggests that these influencers' fame and their participation in it were marketing campaigns that have now ended–there are broader consequences: scammers, imposters and harassers are running riot in the comments and once they're done with these uncelebrities everyone else is next. — Read the rest
For the last two years, climate tech was on a tear. To be fair, so were a lot of other sectors. But when a slowdown hit tech investing in the middle of last year, climate tech startups bucked the trend and kept racking up the deals.
Now the party might be over, if preliminary data from a new report holds up.
Climate tech deal-making in the first quarter registered $5.7 billion across 279 deals, according to a new PitchBook report. The amount raised was down 36% year over year with 35% fewer deals. That’s certainly suggestive of a correction.
Investors have been keeping a closer eye on their pocketbooks as fears of a recession continue to rumble through the markets. And yet key economic indicators show a striking resilience in the U.S. economy, with strong hiring keeping unemployment low while consumer sentiment remains high. That hasn’t stopped economists and big names on Wall Street from continuing to predict a recession in the coming months. (Certainly not the first time they’ve done that.)
Still, all that noise tends to give investors the jitters. Since no one wants to be left holding the bag, investor sentiment has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re a startup squeezed for cash, you’ve undoubtedly heard from your investors, and it may feel like a recession is already here.
Yet climate tech’s resilience has led some to call it the ultimate “recession proof” investment. Is that still true?
Maybe.
Let’s break it down. For one, these are preliminary figures looking at data through March 31. It’s hard to say how many deals closed in the last few days of the quarter that weren’t picked up by this report. It might be billions!
Climate tech tapped the brakes in Q1. Will the slowdown continue? by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Guest post by Jacqueline R. McAllister and Daniel Krcmaric
The International Criminal Court (ICC) shocked the world on March 17 by issuing arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. The ICC indicated it has reasonable grounds to believe that each bears criminal responsibility for unlawfully deporting and transferring children from occupied Ukraine to Russia—considered war crimes under international law. Rather than starting its ongoing investigation in Ukraine with arrest warrants for “small fry” war criminals, the ICC rolled the dice by going after its most prominent target ever: Vladimir Putin. Often considered the “most powerful man in the world,” Putin is the first leader with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council—and the first leader with an arsenal of nuclear weapons—to face an ICC arrest warrant.
What does all of this mean going forward? And how will the ICC arrest warrants influence the war in Ukraine?
It is important to start by managing expectations: Neither Putin nor Lvova-Belova is likely to land in the ICC’s dock anytime soon. Since the ICC does not have a police force, it relies on state cooperation for enforcement. Russia refuses to recognize the ICC, and it is inconceivable that Putin and Lvova-Belova will voluntarily turn themselves into the court. The road ahead for securing justice will be bumpy.
Nonetheless, the ICC’s arrest warrants may have several implications for the war, some negative, some positive.
In terms of negative implications, the ICC arrest warrants are unlikely to deter Russian forces from continuing to commit atrocities in Ukraine. In fact, they may perversely convince Russians to double down on their atrocity crimes. This may already be happening in Ukraine. During his surprise visit to Russian-occupied Mariupol after the warrants were announced, Putin thumbed his nose at the ICC by visiting a children’s center. Other Russian authorities have responded to the ICC arrest warrants by signaling that “more deportations are on the way.” Ukrainian civilians—the very people who have already borne the brunt of the war—may continue to suffer as their children are abducted and put on display in Red Square photo-ops and at concerts celebrating the war.
The ICC arrest warrants are also likely to make it harder for Ukraine and its Western allies to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia. The logistics of negotiating peace are more complex now that Putin is in the ICC’s sights. Will leaders in Western democracies be willing to negotiate directly with an accused war criminal? Might they insist that Putin be removed—as they did for other brutal leaders—as a precondition for meaningful negotiations? Will Putin be willing to travel abroad for a prospective peace conference? The ICC’s 123 member states now have a legal obligation to arrest him if he ever sets foot on their territory, making them undesirable sites for a peace conference. It is possible that China, fresh off its role in brokering a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, could play host. But China’s actions thus far have convinced Western officials that it would not be a neutral broker in Ukraine.
There are some positive implications, however. The arrest warrants could facilitate efforts to hold Putin and other top leaders criminally accountable. For example, following Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević’s indictment at the Yugoslav Tribunal, several of his key associates began sharing a wealth of much-needed evidence. As Yugoslav Tribunal Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt explained in an interview with one of the authors, “Milošević opened up other areas of interest. Once he was indicted for Kosovo, we could then bring indictments for Bosnia and Croatia, because people talked to us. Some people were trying to do the right thing, and some people wanted to do deals.” In conjunction with military intelligence from Western governments, such testimony and documents linking top leaders to crimes proved crucial for prosecuting those who were previously beyond the Yugoslav Tribunal’s reach. It is possible that some in Putin’s inner circle could end up doing the same for the ICC.
If history is any indication, the ICC’s arrest warrants may also shore up support for Ukraine’s war effort, particularly from NATO. During the Kosovo War, the Yugoslav Tribunal’s indictment of Milošević helped to solidify support for NATO’s Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. Specifically, as NATO’s air campaign ground on with seemingly no end in sight, pressure mounted in Western capitals to bring hostilities to a close. In the face of such pressure, keeping the Alliance together posed a real challenge. The Milošević indictment, according to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, was “a huge win. Nothing was more likely to stiffen the Allies’ resolve and push us forward into a winning situation than this indictment.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over a year ago, questions have persisted about whether NATO, the US, and European Union will sustain their crucial support for Ukraine’s war effort over the long haul. Indeed, Putin seems to be gambling that Ukraine’s supporters will eventually falter in their commitment to its cause. If NATO’s experience in Kosovo is any indication, the ICC’s arrest warrants might help Ukraine’s backers to keep calling Putin’s bluff.
Jacqueline R. McAllister is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College and will join the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice in 2023 as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow. Her research appears in leading scholarly and foreign affairs magazines. Daniel Krcmaric is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and the author of The Justice Dilemma: Leaders and Exile in an Era of Accountability. He is currently writing a book about the turbulent relationship between the United States and the International Criminal Court.
UPDATE: Tesla tweaks Model 3 page of U.S. website encouraging buyers to take delivery now in anticipation of reduced tax incentives by March 31.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s guidance on battery sourcing requirements for the electric vehicle tax credits will result in fewer vehicles being eligible for full or partial credits, reports Reuters, citing an unnamed U.S. official.
The proposed EV credit guidance as included in the Inflation Reduction Act says that in order for vehicles to qualify for $3,750, which is half of the total credit, 50% of the value of battery components must be produced or assembled in North America. To get the remainder of the credit, 40% of critical minerals must be sourced from the U.S. or a country with which it has a free trade agreement.
The guidance on battery sourcing was meant to kick in on January 1, 2023, but in December the Treasury Dept. decided to hold off until March to give some EV-makers a grace period to meet the requirements.
The Treasury Dept. is expected to share its guidance Friday, and while the Reuters report doesn’t state exactly what it will be, we can guess that the full guidance will kick in, meaning many EVs will lose tax credits or see them cut. The Treasury Dept. is also expected to define key terms like processing, extraction, recycling and free trade deals.
The battery sourcing rules are aimed at helping the U.S. decrease its reliance on China for batteries. While most automakers have been reorganizing supply chains and bringing more processes onshore since COVID, not all will have had the chance to completely upgrade their battery sourcing in time to meet both the Treasury Dept.’s requirements and the increased demand for EVs.
China currently makes 81% of the world’s cathodes, 91% of the world’s anodes and 79% of the world’s lithium-ion battery production capacity, according to data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a market research firm. For comparison, the U.S. has just 0.16%, 0.27% and 5.5% market share, respectively.
Despite the U.S., and most of its free trade agreement partners, being woefully behind China, the Biden administration has said it thinks over time, the tax credit will result in more EVs sold as automakers reorganize supply chains to meet the IRA rules, the source told Reuters.
In February, the Treasury Dept. updated the vehicle classification standard to redefine what makes a vehicle a sedan, an SUV, a crossover or a wagon. The change made more Tesla, Ford, General Motors and Volkswagen EVs eligible for up to $7,500 tax credits. Those vehicles stand to lose some or all of the tax credits once the battery sourcing guidance is out. In fact, Tesla on Wednesday evening updated the Model 3 page on its U.S. website to reflect this, saying the tax credit is expected to be reduced for the vehicle by March 31 and encouraging buyers to “take delivery now.”
Battery sourcing guidance might slash EV tax credits by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch
Pity Donald Trump. He spent four years in office tearing up trade agreements and ranting about rewriting old ones, all to little avail. Now, a key U.S. climate law is doing more to change the dynamics of international trade than any blustering and bullying ever did.
The Inflation Reduction Act has been hailed as a win for domestic producers of minerals that are critical to electric vehicles and other hallmarks of the decarbonized economy. The most impactful so far have been the provisions that require a minimum amount of domestic sourcing and processing to be eligible for the $7,500 EV tax credit. That language alone has spurred tens of billions of dollars of investment in the U.S. battery supply chain.
But there’s no way the U.S. can produce all that’s needed — the country simply doesn’t have enough reserves, while China has a lock on many parts of the market. So the law also includes a handy loophole qualifying minerals from countries with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement. The law already qualified “North American” suppliers, and the free trade language opens the door further.
Late on Monday, the door opened a little wider as the U.S. and Japan announced a trade deal encompassing cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese and nickel, all minerals that are key components of EV batteries. The agreement opens up both markets to new supplies of the minerals, allowing battery manufacturers and automakers to benefit from the IRA’s minerals requirement.
For now, Japan is the only country to successfully negotiate a new agreement in the wake of the IRA, but it probably won’t be the only one. The EU, which has made no secret about its displeasure with the new law, is also in talks with the U.S.
In the seven months or so since the IRA was passed, the global landscape for critical minerals and battery manufacturing has changed rapidly, and a potentially steady stream of new free trade agreements promises to keep things fluid. For founders and investors alike, that injects a fresh dose of uncertainty.
Why startups should care about geopolitical repercussions of US climate law by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Food inflation in the UK has been on a steady rise, and the situation is only getting worse. According to the Office for National Statistics, food inflation reached a staggering 18.2% in February. This dramatic increase is primarily attributed to poor crops resulting from bad weather in southern Europe and Africa, leading to the rationing of fruits and vegetables in UK supermarkets. — Read the rest
Guest post by Mark Nieman and Doug Gibler
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off a security spiral in Europe. Despite US President Biden’s pledge to “defend every inch of NATO territory,” Poland increased its military budget by a whopping 60 percent and asked to have US nuclear weapons based on its territory. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia also announced sizable defense increases, with Latvia re-instating compulsory military training.
Why didn’t Biden’s pledge reassure these NATO members? Is the alliance’s famed Article 5 promise—that an attack on one member is an attack on all—a less than ironclad guarantee?
NATO is an unprecedented and unique organization of formidable military might. It is also an alliance made up of democracies, which are generally considered more reliable alliance partners: they form more lasting alliance commitments, and honor them at higher rates than autocracies. So why then are the NATO members most vulnerable to Russian aggression also the most skeptical about NATO’s commitment to defend them?
Democracies are often put on a pedestal. It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged among scholars of international relations that democratic countries are qualitatively different from authoritarian regimes—nicer, better, and more cooperative—especially when they interact with one another. Democracies do not fight wars against other democracies, though they are just as likely to fight autocracies as autocracies fight one another. Democracies are more likely to win the wars they do fight. And democracies are more likely to trade with other democracies.
But our research suggests that what drives the effectiveness of alliance isn’t democracy or shared values. Our recent article in The Journal of Politics shows that alliance reliability is driven by strategic geopolitical context and opportunities to renege, rather than domestic institutions.
What exactly would make democratic countries any more reliable allies than autocracies? Standard arguments focus on the nature of democratic norms and institutions, often pointing to their legalistic culture, foreign policy stability, or concern for international reputation. All of these explanations are valid, and many have been backed with sound empirical analysis. But they miss a key difference between democracies and autocracies: geography. A quick glance at a map reveals heavy geographical concentration among democratic countries. What distinguishes these areas of concentration—Western Europe, in particular—is a long history of violent conflict, which, once resolved, has been followed by a long history of peace. The geographical areas of concentration of authoritarian countries, in contrast, are characterized by periods of relative peace, followed by continuous or intermittent violence. This violence often centers around a small set of unresolved contentious issues, with those related to conflicting territorial claims being the most violent.
This geopolitical context matters for tests of alliance reliability: alliances are most likely to be called upon and violated when their geopolitical environment is hostile. In contrast, alliances in peaceful environments are less likely to be called upon, so they are less likely to be broken. So while democracies might appear to be better alliance partners, this is only because their commitments are rarely tested. Indeed, peaceful environments may themselves produce democratic counties. Without the threat of attack by a neighbor, states can devote fewer resources to the military, concentration of power devolves, and focus more on economic development and diversification. Threatening environments, in contrast, encourage greater militarization and power concentration, increasing the prospects of a garrison state and authoritarian regimes. To paraphrase Charles Tilly, war makes the state, but it is much more likely to make an authoritarian state than a democratic one.
In short, once the geopolitical environment is accounted for, democracies have the same reliability as other types of regimes. Instead, it is the strategic environment that seems to best predict whether alliances are honored: the riskier the environment, the more likely allies are to abrogate their commitments.
So are Finland and Sweden right to rush their NATO accession in response to the threat of Russian aggression? Will a formal membership make them safer than a mere promise? Yes, but this answer has nothing to do with the virtues of democracies. Alliances deter aggression, but they do so through the aggregation of capabilities rather than any enhanced commitments stemming from the domestic institutions of its members. Shared democratic institutions did not prevent France from abandoning Czechoslovakia in 1938. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given rise to similar fears of abandonment among NATO’s eastward members. These countries rightfully question whether Germany and France would come to their defense should they become the next target of Russian aggression.
Unable to trust their democratic allies, Eastern European countries are openly calling for assurance from NATO’s long-standing bedrock, the US. When push comes to shove, NATO’s junior partners are smart to not put their faith in a piece of paper and demand more tangible acts of support, such as troop deployments, training, and arms transfers. A promise, even by a democratic state, must be backed by action.
Mark Nieman is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Trinity College at the University of Toronto, and an affiliate of the Data Sciences Institute. Doug Gibler is a Professor of Political Science in the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Alabama.
Think your grocery bill is high now? Just wait.
A massive corporate merger could send skyrocketing food prices through the stratosphere, unless the government sees the deal for what it is — a rotten egg.
Supermarket giant Kroger is in the process of finalizing a nearly $25 billion deal to acquire its jumbo-sized competitor Albertsons, combining their 5,000 supermarkets into one mega company.
Corporate concentration in the grocery market is already a huge problem, with estimates showing that just five companies control over 60 percent of American grocery sales
This means less consumer choice, and more opportunity for grocery stores to jack up prices — which they’ve already been doing lately under the cover of inflation. Let’s be clear: Big corporations are using the excuse of inflation to pass price increases through to you.
Now you may think this merger won’t affect you because you don’t have a Kroger or Albertsons where you live, but here’s the kicker: Both stores already control dozens of other grocery brands across the country. So you may not even know you’re actually shopping at Kroger or Albertsons.
All told, this deal could affect grocery stores relied on by 85 million households.
What’s to stop this new goliath from continually raising prices if customers have nowhere else to shop? With grocery bills already going through the roof, Kroger buying Albertsons gets rid of the roof altogether.
A Kroger-owned mega company can also get away with paying workers even less than it already does — because fewer competitors means grocery workers have fewer choices of whom to work for.
According to one survey, 75% of Kroger workers were food insecure and 14% have experienced homelessness. One out of every five Kroger workers has relied on government aid to survive.This is no secret to Kroger execs either. Recently leaked internal documents reveal that the company has known about the plight of its workers for years.
This is the story of monopolization, folks. Corporate consolidation is bad news for everyone except the super-rich. It’s awful for consumers, workers, and the economy as a whole — and it’s driving the most extreme wealth imbalance in over a century.
But the good news is that this Kroger-Albertsons deal is far from being fully baked. The Federal Trade Commission has the power to intervene and stop it. Several labor unions, produce growers, antitrust experts, and state Attorneys General are already urging the FTC to block it.
We can’t afford to let another supermarket giant gobble up an even bigger piece of the American pie.
For all the focus on carbon pollution produced by shipping and aviation, some of the most challenging to abate will probably be residential buildings. In the U.S., housing units stand an average of 130 years before they’re torn down, according to a recent study.
Homes and apartment buildings built 100 years ago, or even 30 years ago, are woefully underprepared for the energy transition. More often than not, their major mechanical systems rely on fossil fuels, their electrical systems are undersized, and their walls and windows are leaky and poorly insulated.
All that can make for housing that’s less comfortable and less efficient than it needs to be.
Nearly a decade ago, Donnel Baird realized that in many cases, paying for retrofits like this can be cost-prohibitive, requiring a lump sum payment upfront. Even though the benefits might accrue over the years, it was a hurdle many owners couldn’t or didn’t want to cross.
So he founded BlocPower, which has been chipping away at the problem for nearly a decade, developing a roster of projects to prove its retrofit-as-a-service business model that’s focused on low-income communities. This week, it announced that it had raised nearly $25 million in equity and $130 million in debt financing.
The Series B round was led by VoLo Earth Ventures and joined by Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Credit Suisse, Builders Vision, New York State Ventures, Unreasonable Collective, Kimbal and Christiana Musk, Gaingels, Van Jones, Kapor Capital, My Climate Journey, Tale Venture Partners and NBA star Russell Westbrook. Debt financing was led by Goldman Sachs.
BlocPower hits its stride, landing $25M Series B to expand its residential energy retrofit platform by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
By Timothy Sisk
The row between International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over potential Russian and Belarussian athlete participation at Paris 2024 exposes the Achilles’ Heel of the Olympic Games: the peace-promising celebrations are inescapably ensnared in nation-state power politics.
The IOC announced on January 25 a proposal to facilitate participation in the 2024 Olympic Games for individual athletes from Russia (and close ally Belarus) individually and neutrally in the Paris games. The statement reversed an IOC Executive Board decision from February 28, 2022, to impose more sweeping participation sanctions on Russia following the Ukraine invasion.
The International Paralympic Committee announced on January 23 that it would “follow” the IOC decision for the paralympic events, with President Andrew Parsons noting that “We wish to reiterate that we hope and pray that the conflict comes to an end, that no more lives are taken, and that we can run sports and politics separately.” Parsons gave a rousing denunciation of the Ukraine invasion from the podium in his opening-ceremonies speech as the Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv, demanding “dialogue and diplomacy, not war and hate.”
The potential of Russian athletes participating at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris while the horrors and war crimes unleashed by Russia in Ukraine and documented by a United Nations independent commission continue to unfold would constitute, Zelensky said, “a manifestation of violence.” Addressing a February 10 meeting of 35 foreign ministers convened to consider a boycott if Russians were to appear in the Olympic arena, he said, “If the Olympic sports were killings and missile strikes, then you know which national team would occupy the first place.” Reversing her earlier stance, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she supports Zelensky’s call and journeyed to Kyiv on February 9 in solidarity.
Olympic powerhouses including the US, UK, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand together with Nordic and Baltic states are drawing a line in the beach-volleyball sand against Russian and Belarussian participation at Paris. Some want to allow for a “dissident team” from these countries to be formed.
In a slope-side appearance at the World Alpine Skiing Championships in Courchevel on February 12, Bach defended the IOC’s position: “No, history will show who is doing more for peace.”
The IOC’s approach to addressing the thorny question of Russian participation in the 2024 Games is similar to the sporting world’s response to the sprawling Russian state-sponsored doping scandal and cover-up when it hosted the 2014 winter games in Sochi. In December 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency slapped a set of four-year sanctions on Russia, including banning Russian teams from Olympic-related events, barring use of its flag and anthem, and imposing diplomatic and other sanctions. Athletes could participate but could not represent Russia as such, but rather the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC).
No worries for Russia, however, as the ROC and individual athletes easily evaded the athlete-representation sanctions. The uniforms of the Russian athletes at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games were fashion-forward, black splashed with the colors of the Russian flag. Nancy Armour writes in USA Today Sports that in Tokyo 2020 (which happened in 2021, delayed by the pandemic), 45 of the Russians’ 71 medals were won by members of the Russian Army’s Central Sports Club, according to the Ukrainian foreign ministry. Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak was slapped by the International Gymnastics Union with a year-long ban for “shocking behavior” for sporting on his chest the invasion-related “Z” symbol on the podium standing next to a Ukrainian athlete (Kuliak won bronze; the Ukrainian, Illia Kovtun, won gold).
Despite rules against political speech, athletes are increasingly turning to tattoos, nail polish, hairstyles, and other clever non-verbal ways to communicate patriotism while staying just inside the non-political appearance rules of the IOC and the sport federations. Symbols are amorphous and consistently changing, so the IOC wages a Sisyphean struggle to contain political speech within the Olympic arena. In the run-up to Tokyo 2020, following the recommendations of the IOC’s Athletes Commission, the Executive Board reformulated its Rule 50.2 code on athlete political speech to allow more personal political speech outside its venues, ostensibly to prevent future “Black Power”-type salutes from the podium as courageously seen in the 1968 Mexico City games.
The IOC appears to see national de-identification as a way to cope with its Achilles’ Heel vulnerability to power politics. It touts the idea of a modern-day Olympic Truce similar to that found in the ancient Greek Olympics, on which the modern spectacle is at best loosely based; the truce allowed athletes to travel to the festivals unimpeded.
The IOC and sport federation bodies need the Russia participation question to be resolved soon, as qualifying events for Paris 2024 are in motion around the world. But the row continues. The Olympic Council of Asia has apparently invited Russian and Belarussian gymnastics and wrestling athletes to qualify through its auspices, while two United Nations special rapporteurs have backed the IOC approach on the basis of athlete human rights.
Russia’s February 2022 invasion rendered any Olympic truce a scrap of paper. The Kremlin unleashed the deadly operation on Kyiv just days before the Opening Ceremonies of the 2022 Beijing Paralympic Winter Games. In the year since, a reported 228 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed.
In waging war while the Olympic flame burns, Russia is a serial offender: its military invaded Georgia in the period between the 2008 Olympic and paralympic events, and then seized the Crimean peninsula in 2014, in a similar window between these events.
The close association of the Olympic Games with the power politics of nation-states may well explain why the IOC, its president, nor any global sports body or figure have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in its 121-year history roughly commensurate with the Olympics. (The Prize was won by an Olympic medalist in 1959—UK diplomat Philip Noel-Baker—but not for his Olympic achievement; the Norwegian Nobel Committee cited his disarmament efforts).
The power-politics Achilles’ Heel of the Olympics disables its potential for furthering international peace. For how sport might contribute to peace, one must look elsewhere in youth-based development and peacebuilding programs, in the public good work of celebrity and everyday athletes, coaches, and humanitarian organizations, or in the Olympic Refugee Team which debuted in Rio 2016 that allows athletes displaced abroad to participate.
Beyond the Olympic Refugee Team, it is time for any athlete as an individual to have a path to qualifying for the Olympic Games with no broader representation of national identity beyond legal citizenship. Such a step might begin to free the Olympics from its disabling ensnarement in the power politics of nation-states and begin to give meaning to the right of individuals to participate in global sport outside of truce-destroying nation-states.
In this collection, PVG contributors reflect on the war and its consequences, including what justice might look like and how the war might end.
Justice could mean any number of things. Perhaps it is Ukraine winning the war—a war that no one gave Ukraine a chance of winning at the outset. Maybe it is not only Ukraine winning but also recovering Crimea. Maybe it is Russia continuing to suffer sanctions and being forced to contribute to reparations and the rebuilding of Ukraine. Maybe it includes a significant number of costs, including lots of dead Russian soldiers or massive flight and a brain drain of high-earning and high-status individuals. Maybe it means ICC [International Criminal Court] indictments of Putin, Russian military officials, and soldiers on charges of war crimes. Maybe it means outcomes that were the very opposite of what Putin intended, such as fast-tracking Ukraine for European Union and NATO membership. Maybe it means seizing the assets of Putin and his cronies, and using them as reparations. Maybe it means that Putin meets a Mussolini-type ending. Justice, in these ways, means just desserts—that Russia somehow suffers the appropriate punishment for its invasion and subsequent crimes.
Whether Ukraine is able to score a knock-out victory will depend on the West continuing to supply Ukraine’s financial, intelligence, and military needs. It is not something that Ukraine can do on its own. The same can be said about reparations; it will require international cooperation of the highest order and among the rich countries and the global economic elite. This might be harder to pull off than a military victory.
And even harder will be punishing those who committed war crimes. There is a likelihood that any negotiated settlement will have to include some kind of amnesty for those who are accused of war crimes. At least that will be the Russian position, a position vehemently opposed by the Ukrainians. But it is one thing for a negotiated settlement to declare amnesty, quite another for the ICC to follow suit.
One way to help the case that war crimes should be punished is by making sure that the extent of the crimes is never lost. I am speaking about more than holding to account those who are responsible for the mass graves and the summary executions. War crimes include the Ukrainians who were disappeared into Russia. They include gender-based violence. But the war crimes are not simply a minor part of Russian war strategy—they are Russian strategy. The continuous barrages of cities, civilians, and infrastructure are often characterized as if they are just another phase of the war campaign. These missile attacks directed at civilians are war crimes. They should be repeatedly described as such. It will drum home the very brutality and inhumanity that have defined the Russian campaign, the current Russian way of war.
Finding some kind of justice will be important not only to “teach Russia a lesson” but also to warn those in the future who might be tempted to make war crimes part of their military strategy that there will be a price for their inhumanity and rampant and wanton violations of international humanitarian law. The outrage is not only that Russia launched a war of aggression but also that it waged war in the most brutal manner imaginable. Russia is not the only offender; there are others. And these offenses will not stop with Ukraine. Many states are simply shrugging off international humanitarian law. A major reason is because there have been no enforcement mechanisms or punishment. This must end.
During the initial phase of Russia’s invasion, many observers expected more decisive outcomes than actually occurred. Here are three, by now well-known, but initially unexpected developments:
What are the political implications of a conflict more protracted than expected? The durability of the Ukrainian government and the autocratic survival strategies of Putin’s regime will both be tested, as will the domestic coalitions in the developed democracies giving aid to Ukraine. Yet, as late 2022 public opinion research from Gallup indicated, a supermajority of the Ukrainian public supported fighting the war until all territory lost to Russia was recaptured. Around the same time, Russian support for the war, while high, showed cracks. A (flawed) democracy with powerful patrons may yet retain an advantage even against a numerically superior autocratic adversary.
On human rights and justice, and related to my previous PVGlance post on the topic, the consequences of civilians’ and other non-state actors’ contributions to violence will only deepen with a protracted conflict. As territory changes hands, sometimes repeatedly, enmities and violent recriminations among pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian civilians will escalate. Greater civilian involvement in violence complicates post-conflict truth, justice, and reconciliation as these intergroup hostilities solidify.
One of the most important dimensions of the Ukraine-Russia war is how limited it has been. While there has been much concern about escalation, the war has been almost entirely contained to Ukrainian and Russian territory. One errant missile hit Poland in November 2022, and very recently, missiles fired by Russian warships flew over Moldovan airspace. While the discussion continues of whether and how new weapons deliveries to Ukraine might lead to escalation, thus far, the war itself has remained limited. While there are many factors involved, one element is clear: NATO works. Russia is deterred from attacking NATO members with conventional weapons (cyberwar and disinformation are something else entirely).
NATO members, by publicly shipping weapons to Ukraine, have made themselves targets, yet they have not been targeted. Two different fears are likely restraining Vladimir Putin and the Russian forces. First, while Putin has rattled his nuclear sabre, he does understand that a larger war with NATO could lead to catastrophe for all. Second, and perhaps more directly right now, NATO has stayed out of the war, but that restraint would be dramatically reduced if Russia hit NATO territory. As much as NATO has been deterred from attacking Russian forces in Ukraine by the fear of escalation, once some escalation occurs, NATO might unleash its forces to devastating effect. There was some discussion of how to respond if Russia used a single nuclear weapon in Ukraine, and one possible response would have been for NATO to respond conventionally—to take out Russia’s Black Sea fleet. That option is still on the board if Russia expands the war into NATO countries.
While one could argue that NATO’s restraint has provided Russia a free hand in Ukraine, the deterrent effect NATO has had on Russia beyond NATO has mattered greatly, freeing many members of the alliance to provide far more arms, ammunition, and other support than one might have imagined last February.
By Timothy Sisk
Following the theory of ripeness so well-developed by I. William Zartman, two conditions are ostensibly necessary for the termination of the Ukraine war, absent the unlikely non-consensual intervention of outside forces (e.g., a United Nations or other multilateral “peace enforcement” operation, unlikely given that aggressor Russia retains its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council).
The first is a “mutually hurting stalemate” in which no side can definitively escalate its way out of the bloody imbroglio. Importantly, such a condition requires not just an ululating stalemate, as the first year of the conflict has seemingly produced, but a “long shadow of the future” in which further escalation is self-defeating and deemed so by both protagonists. With claims that Russia will attempt again to take Kviv in year two, for Russia such a condition appears not to exist under the current leadership; for Ukraine, the 2022 offensive that rolled back the Russian invasion also limits the perception that the conflict is unwinnable—it wants, and needs, Crimea back. Thus, a stalemate may persist without settlement, leading to intractable conflict and what the late eminent scholar of war termination studies, Roy Licklider, describes as a “long war.”
The second condition is a “way out.” That is, there must be a political solution, in principle as in a framework agreement, or any cease-fire will be at best ephemeral. The “way out” concept means that the essential elements of any peace agreement-outcome must be clear, especially the ultimate political dispensation of the disputed territories. This condition also appears unlikely to be met, as the only outcome of the conflict than can be plausibly acceptable to Kviv is the restoration of full sovereignty of all disputed territories.
Unless both these Zartmanesque ripeness conditions are met, ripeness theory suggests the conflict is likely to continue as a costly military stalemate, ad infinitum. At best a war-termination outcome is one of an informal “frozen conflict,” much like others in the region or in the world’s most long-running conflict: over Kashmir, which initially escalated into violence in 1948.
We are fast approaching the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s a sobering time to reflect both on the political implications of the war, and the awful suffering endured by the Ukrainian people. Before the war, I spent quite a bit of time in Ukraine conducting research for my forthcoming book on Nasty Politics. One of the things that struck me from a pure power politics perspective, is how strategically costly and terrible Putin’s strategy towards Ukraine has been stretching back to the Euromaidan revolution in 2013-2014. Before the Euromaidan, pro-Russian parties were regularly some of the largest parties in the Rada (Ukraine Parliament), and also controlled Ukraine’s presidency (under Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych). Yet, one of the ironies of Putin’s strategy in Ukraine since 2014—backing separatists, annexing Crimea, and fomenting the War in Donbas—is that it has reduced Russia’s tools to influence Ukraine’s domestic politics. The 2022 invasion and war has only accelerated these trends, with several leaders of the pro-Russian parties charged with treason and banned from politics, and more moderate remnants of the pro-Russian parties drifting closer to Kyiv’s orbit than Moscow. Putin’s decision to invade was the continuation of his failed strategy to control Ukraine through coercion. The irony is that he has only forged a stronger Ukrainian identity.
I am curious to see what happens when domestic politics eventually return to Kyiv, and Zelensky’s rule will be challenged. Just months before the invasion former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was charged with treason for allegedly selling coal to Russian-backed separatists in Donbas during his presidency. The war put the treason charges on hold. But Zelensky has recently resumed his crackdown on corruption and signaled his willingness to resume his battle against Ukraine’s oligarchs. It will be interesting to see how the war reshapes Ukraine’s domestic politics and partisanship. Before the war, Ukrainian political parties were ephemeral, built around individual identities, and partisanship was weak. Yet again the irony is that despite Putin’s rhetoric that Ukraine’s statehood is a “fiction,” Russia’s war has strengthened Ukraine’s identity, the very thing he sought to destroy. This new Ukrainian identity will likely reshape Ukraine’s politics in wars to come.
Finally, it’s important to note that Ukrainians have been living with war for nearly eight years stretching back to 2014 and the War in Donbas. The 2022 Russian invasion is the most intense iteration of this. Nearly one in five Ukrainians is currently a refugee, and estimates of the military casualties stretch to more than 200,000. Those Ukrainians that have remained in Ukraine have experienced air sirens, bombings, brutal military assaults, and war crimes. I have several close friends who have endured lengthy power outages, regularly had to run to shelters, suffered anxiety over when the next air strike will happen, and are coping with the uncertainty of the future of war. This trauma will have long-term social, political, and economic consequences both for both individuals and Ukraine at large. Ukrainians want and deserve what everyone wants: freedom, prosperity, safety, and sovereignty.
By Lars-Erik Cederman and Yannick Pengl
On February 24, 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shocked many observers in the West. A year later, Putin exhibits no sign of wanting to dampen his nationalist fervor. Trying to make sense of his actions, Cederman, Schvitz and Rüegger referred to previous research, which shows that ethnic nations’ territorial fragmentation, especially in the case of increases such as that following the collapse of the USSR, increases the risk of civil conflicts along irredentist lines.
Extending these findings further back in European history, our most recent research explores the link between historical grievances and conflict, not only within, but also between states. In a working paper, co-authored with Carl Müller-Crepon and Luc Girardin, we show that incongruent borders are more likely to be contested by violent means where nationalist rulers can contrast current division and alien rule with supposedly more unified and independent “golden ages” in the past. Our analyses reveal that European states have been significantly more likely to make territorial claims or fight against neighbors hosting powerless ethnic kin when past state borders incorporated larger parts of territory currently inhabited by the ethnic nation than the contemporary rump state.
Putin has repeatedly lamented Russia’s lost unity resulting from the breakup of the Soviet Union and his essays and speeches reveal a motivation to restore Tsarist imperial glory. He and many other nationalist leaders go back centuries to unearth medieval kingdoms, early modern territorial states, or empires that allegedly satisfied the nationalist ideals of ethnic unity and home rule. Projecting modern notions of national consciousness onto pre-modern populations and constructing lines of continuity across centuries, “restorative nationalism” thus blends historical facts and fiction into self-serving narratives aimed at contemporary audiences.
Interstate conflict has become an extremely rare phenomenon in post-1945 Europe. In this sense, Russia’s territorial revisionism in Ukraine does, in fact, throw us back to the 19th and early 20th centuries. Against this backdrop, the outcome of the war in Ukraine is crucial for the future world order. Should Russia be seen as a winner there is a risk that revisionist nationalists elsewhere will take notice. Most ominously, China’s irredentist desire to “reunify” Taiwan increases the risk of major war. Within Europe, Serbia and Hungary are expressing acute grievances around ethnic division and lost unity. For these reasons, continued political and military support for Ukraine is critical.
By Noel Foster
Vladimir Putin’s speech before the Federal Assembly—both houses of Russia’s parliament, the Duma—on February 21 bookmarked a year of information and misinformation since the February 24, 2022 invasion. A year after the speech setting the stage for his invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s repetitive and often redundant, with no attempt at outlining a new strategy for victory in the war to the Russian public, Putin’s remarks underscored his stalemate.
If anything, the lack of change in Putin’s talking points underscores Moscow’s difficulty in finding strategic narratives that resonate with foreign audiences and mobilize them in opposing support for Ukraine. In contrast with its COVID diplomacy and rapidly adapting messaging following the outbreak of the pandemic, the Kremlin’s information campaign on Ukraine has stalled. After all, in the course of a year, Moscow has cycled through arguments of the threat of Ukrainian NATO membership, Ukrainian attacks on civilians, fascism and neo-Nazism among Ukraine’s elected officials, and even curious claims of Ukrainian biological or radiological capabilities.
In part, these Russian narratives have failed because they lack the hallmarks of previous Russian strategic narratives, which were usually grounded in facts, not fake news, could reasonably explain current events, and could appear to a wide ideological and international spectrum of audiences. Thus, even in countries where populations largely opposed Russian policy, Russian strategic narratives proved effective on swathes of the population.
It might thus appear easy to dismiss Putin’s remarks, as the aging autocrat promised considerable support to veterans and assured civilians that Russia’s economy would outperform that of the West, or as he resorted to tropes of Ukrainian “Nazis” threatening Russia with “biolabs.” Even his announcement that Russia would suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms control agreement appeared calculated to play into a year-long campaign of nuclear rhetoric aimed at unnerving his opponents.
Yet while most readers may be skeptical towards Moscow’s messaging and attuned to anti-Kremlin sentiment that pervades most of the West, this in itself is an artifact of the informational bubble that has arisen in the past year. Throughout much of the world, sentiment towards the war has been at best ambivalent, and in some regions, such as West Africa, public opinion trends favor the Kremlin. Separate from perceptions of Russia’s brutality and failure in its invasion, Moscow is edging out French influence in swathes of the Sahel and in Central Africa, for instance. In general, non-Western audiences express the strongest desire for the war to end quickly, even at the expense of Ukrainian losses in territory, and are more likely to view Russia as an ally or a necessary partner. If the Kremlin is not winning its global informational campaign, it is not losing it either. Though the divergence in public opinion between BRICS countries and the West appears a marginal gain for the Kremlin, it demonstrates how split global public opinion has become as economic stressors and tensions over strategic competition between the US and China have shaped opinion in other regions, not always in Washington’s favor. However fraught in its execution, the West has converged on a view of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and political course of action. As BRICS states and regional leaders seek to redefine their path outside of the West’s bandwagoning, Russia’s messaging on Ukraine shows how differently the West and the rest perceive the same events and form attitudes and preferences.
By Thomas Maher and Jennifer Earl
Everything is different, but nothing has changed. Last year we wrote about how the Russian state used censorship (e.g., laws restricting how citizens could talk about the war) and information influence techniques (e.g., pushing the Z meme and other pro-Putin messages) to shape its own “reality” about Ukraine. A year later, much has changed and much more has remained the same as tens of thousands of Russians continue to oppose the war in Ukraine and millions more see it as a necessary “defense” against Western aggression.
In the change category, the war has lasted longer than the Russians expected, weakening Putin’s control over Russia’s reality. Putin eventually acknowledged the war and its likely protracted nature; a civilian draft led to public backlash, protests, and emigration efforts. This strained Putin’s ability to “control the perception of reality,” but has not broken it.
In the continuity category, the distraction and disinformation machines that champion small changes and victories in Ukraine, demonize domestic protest, and amplify voices (and particularly Western voices like Tucker Carlson) that portray the war as a war of western aggression have continued. Russia continues to repress dissent with laws prohibiting “spreading disinformation” and by arresting protesters for attending rallies.
What does this teach us? We draw two insights from this year-to-year comparison. First, in a reality versus digital repression face-off, Russian domestic support for the war has declined from its initial highs but still polls around 70 percent approval, showing the relative, but not total, effectiveness of Russian digital repression. That Russian support can stay so high despite big shifts in the reality of the war speaks to the robustness of the intersection between different types of digital repression as well as our need to understand the relationship between disparate forms of digital repression. Leaders like Putin don’t so much stop repressing as they change their portfolio of repression when reality leans in. Second, the intelligence community and policymakers must begin to understand that larger portfolio, the dynamics of different types of digital repression, and the interrelationships between them in Russia (and globally). We recently introduced a typology of digital repression that is designed to help academics, the intelligence community, and policy-makers understand these shifts and, hopefully, counteract them. The US will be ill-equipped to respond to digital repression until leaders better parse the tools in Putin’s repressive arsenal, and understand how different combinations work (or don’t, or backfire).
By Stephen Shulman and Stephen Bloom
The start of the Russian-Ukrainian war signified the abject failure of two strategies of coercive diplomacy: Russia’s attempt to compel the West to reverse the extension of its military power into Ukraine, and the West’s attempt to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine while refusing substantial concessions. As both sides now seek to compel their opponent to give up the fight and accede to their political demands, the West must have no illusions of the challenges it faces.
All four factors we earlier identified as promoting strong Russian incentives to use force absent NATO concessions now create even more powerful incentives for Russia to accept high risks and pay high costs to prosecute the war and achieve at least some of its original political aims. First, the war has greatly intensified, rather than curtailed, military cooperation between NATO and Ukraine. Future levels will likely be high as well, especially following any great Russian military defeat in the war. This, combined with the likely inclusion of Sweden and Finland into NATO and Western commitments to increased military spending in the future, sharply exacerbate the perceived security threat to Russia by NATO.
Second, the threats to Russian national identity are far worse now than before the war. Russian national status and prestige have suffered a crushing blow due to a series of surprising battlefield setbacks and brutal treatment of Ukrainian civilians. Demands for reparations and war crime trials from the West/Ukraine in the event of Russia’s defeat also threaten national humiliation. Prior trends in linguistic and cultural Ukrainization in Ukraine will henceforth accelerate rapidly, undermining Russia’s claim to be the protector of Russians and Russian culture in the near abroad.
Additionally, Russian military defeat raises dramatically the probability that post-war Ukraine will become deeply integrated economically and politically with the West and subject to its externally imposed reforms during reconstruction. The demonstration effect of a democratic and prosperous Ukraine would constitute an unprecedented threat to the legitimacy of Russian authoritarianism.
Finally, the war has greatly raised the stakes for Putin’s reputation, historical legacy, freedom, and possibly life. Almost certainly he realizes that unless he can reasonably claim some kind of military victory in this war, he will be held personally accountable by large swaths of Russia’s population for the great costs in blood and treasure expended for naught.
Western strategy thus confronts a state, nation, regime, and autocrat strongly incentivized to avoid military defeat. It is not just Vladimir Putin who is likely prepared, if necessary, to mobilize much more of Russia’s heretofore untapped economic and military potential to prosecute the war.
Stephen Shulman is an associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University. Stephen Bloom is an associate professor of political science and director of graduate studies at Southern Illinois University.
Professional misogynist Andrew Tate, imprisoned in Romania as part of a rape and sex trafficking investigation, has issued a legal threat to one of the woman accusing him. The cease-and-decist letter was sent by a U.S. lawyer on behalf of Tate and his brother, Tristan Tate, and threatens to sue her and her family for $300m if she does not retract her claim. — Read the rest
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