I encourage you to read this piece from The Moscow Times by Boris Bondarev. Here’s a snippet:

As Kyiv’s counteroffensive stalls and a decisive Ukrainian victory looks increasingly unlikely, suggestions by some American experts that the United States should initiate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may seem tempting. However these arguments are nothing but counterproductive in terms of ensuring a lasting peace in Europe and the world beyond.

The very statement that the U.S. should launch negotiations indicates that the author seeks to present the war as a purely regional conflict rooted in a land dispute between neighboring states. Such a reading is undoubtedly intended to reduce anxiety about the prospect of further escalations. Unfortunately, that understanding is far from the truth.

No matter how much Washington assures itself with the incantation that the U.S. is not a party in this conflict, Moscow assumes the opposite. For President Vladimir Putin, this war is the culmination of an epic and eternal confrontation between an independent Russia and its eternal enemy, the West led by the United States. In this context, Ukraine is not a sovereign actor, and Kyiv’s unilateral surrender is the only outcome Moscow will accept.

The Moscow Times is a dissident news web site in both Russian and English. Originally, its headquarters was in Moscow. Since the crackdown on coverage of the war in Ukraine, it has been in Amsterdam. Here’s the kernel of the post:

It is time for the U.S. to make a clear decision about whether it supports Ukraine and, by extension, Western democracy and rules-based order from violent revision. Or, on the other hand, whether it has made a mistake by agreeing to help Ukraine, in which case it should urgently make peace with Putin (neglecting the fact that the billions of dollars of the U.S. taxpayers spent on helping Kyiv have been actually wasted).

The goal of the war for Ukraine, and the West as a whole, should not just be a military victory in Ukraine. Rather, they need a global defeat of Putin’s regime and to banish it from the world stage.

To this end, the following steps would be required. The U.S. must abandon its half-hearted arms supply policy and provide Ukraine with all the necessary weapons as soon as possible. It must lift the ban on hitting military targets deep inside Russian territory and untie the hands of the Ukrainian military, given that the Russians do not restrict themselves in the same way. Finally, the U.S. has to clearly state that it is Putin himself who is the enemy of Ukraine and the West and to offer a vision of future relations without Putin – a vision potentially acceptable for both Putin’s own elite and Russian pro-democratic forces. Engaging with the Russian opposition movement could be instrumental in fleshing out such a vision.

I agree with Mr. Bondarev’s assertion that we should clearly identify our strategic objectives and pursue them. I don’t believe we agree on what those strategic objectives should be. I think he may be conflating his own objectives with the U. S. strategic objectives. Where I think we disagree most is that I think he’s wrong in attributing U. S. posture to “hesitancy” or half-heartedness. We don’t have the ability to supply Ukraine with arms at the rate they’re requesting. We abandoned that ability decades ago. We haven’t really begun rebuilding what we’ve been tearing down and it will take us a considerable amount of time to accomplish that. If we want to accomplish it which I do not believe is completely clear. I think we should want to rebuild our industrial capacity. What does the Biden Administration think?

In their zeal to return DC and by extension other big city workers back to the office, the editors of the Washington Post have produced a list of “carrots” to extend to lure workers back to their offices and reinvigorate downtowns:

1. Give out $10 lunch coupons in September.
2. Waive food truck fees through the end of the year.
3. Hire private security.
4. Offer free or reduced-price parking downtown on weekends.
5. Lower fees to open a small business through year-end.
6. Heavily promote events and eateries.
7. Get the second gentleman and other celebs out downtown.

Maybe some of those might have some incremental benefit but I suspect the editors will be frustrated by how little effect they will have.

IMO if they want to reinvigorate downtowns there are two sine qua non measures:

• Reduce crime in the downtown shopping areas
• Make public transport clean, safe, and efficient

As to office workers, I think there’s a question they need to ask themselves. If most of the people with whom you interact in the course of a day are not in the office, why should you be? That’s even more true when the people with whom you interact aren’t even in the same hemisphere as you are.

There’s another factor I think they should consider. Different age cohorts find different things motivating. When dealing with Baby Boomers telling them to come into the office might be enough but that is unlikely to be the case with Generation X, Millennials, or Generation Z.

Generation X invented the notion of “work-life balance”. They and subsequent cohorts find that motivating to various degrees. How do you achieve work-life balance while spending a couple of hours commuting and eight (or more) hours in the office? That’s a question. I don’t know the answer. I don’t even know if it’s possible.

Considering federal government workers only, most are either Baby Boomers or Generation X. With the right legislation they could be compelled to return to the office. I suspect an amazingly large percentage would choose to retire rather than return.

Here’s a round-up on motivating different age cohorts. In my own experience it’s like herding cats.

I encourage you to read this New Yorker interview of Samuel Charap by Keith Gessen. Sample passage:

Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown who served on the National Security Council staff in the Clinton and Obama Administrations, goes further. “Fighting for every last inch of Ukrainian territory,” he told me, is “morally justified. It’s legally justified. But I’m not sure that it makes a lot of strategic sense from Ukraine’s perspective, or from our perspective, or from the perspective of the people in the Global South who are suffering food and energy shortages.” He said that the U.S. Administration needs to let the Ukrainian counter-offensive play out. But at the end of this year, or maybe early in 2024, it will have to talk with Zelensky about negotiations. “I wouldn’t say, ‘You do this or we’re going to turn off the spigot.’ But you sit down and you have a searching conversation about where the war is going and what’s in the best interest of Ukraine, and you see what comes out of that discussion.”

At the Wall Street Journal Joseph Epstein makes what to my eye is the suggestion of the day: Trumpless Thursday:

During the rationing days of World War II, there was the weekly event called Meatless Tuesday. To save meat for the troops, civilians were asked to cut it from their diets one day each week. I don’t remember anyone complaining about it. It was considered an act of patriotism. Everyone, as far as I knew, went along with it.

With Meatless Tuesday in mind, I wonder if the country wouldn’t do well to declare Trumpless Thursday. This would entail an agreement on the part of all media—television, radio and print—not to run any items about Donald Trump, show his face on screen or in photographs on Thursday of every week. The country would be given a weekly 24-hour rest from Trump talk.

I think we could use the rest.

The editors of the Washington Post make a good point about Elon Musk’s StarLink satellites and service. They provide a lot of power for one individual to hold. Shouldn’t the federal government act?

What’s to be done? While a president theoretically has the legal option of nationalizing Starlink in a worst-case scenario, as Woodrow Wilson did with the country’s railroads during World War I, that would be neither politically popular nor prudent. A better solution might be for the United States to try to build satellites of its own. The $1.5 billion contract the Pentagon awarded last week to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to create a low-orbit satellite constellation is the start of such a strategy.

At least in theory the Outer Space Treaty allows the United States to regulate private use of space by its citizens but it is not self-enforcing. I think I would argue that U. S. contracts with SpaceX are de facto authorization of its actions. I’m not sure what the WaPo’s proposal would accomplish.

Furthermore, I question the relevance and legality of their other proposal—nationalizing StarLink. To the best of my knowledge Wilson’s nationalizing the railroads was never tested in court. Would nationalizing the railroads be constitutional? I can think of a number of grounds on which to challenge it. And there’s a big difference between railroads and StarLink: U. S. railroads ran entirely within U. S. territory.

The real problem is Mr. Musk’s ability to affect foreign policy. Every CEO of every large company does that every day. It’s a bit late to start worrying about it now.

Today is Mamie’s sixth birthday. With Kara gone she’s the dowager of the pack!

Like all Aussies Mamie likes things to be very orderly, just so. She tolerates our disorderliness, sometimes not with particularly good grace.

Scott Sumner reminds us that economic fundamentals still apply in a piece at Econlib:

1. Price controls are bad (whether on wages, prices rents or interest rates.)
2. Large budget deficits are bad, even if interest rates are low at the time.
3. Persistent inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
4. Free market economies do better than statist economies. Emulate Denmark, not Argentina.

I don’t think he means that last sentence. At least I hope so or that he means it only in part. Denmark is 86% ethnic Danish (down from 96% 50 years ago). The United States has never been 86% anything including American.

In the piece he provides some good examples of how those thing are true along with this observation:

But what about global warming? Didn’t something need to be done? Here it’s worth noting that the approach most favored by economists (a carbon tax) would have actually reduced our budget deficit. That would have been the logical approach. Instead we went with a set of open ended subsidies that boosted the budget deficit. Even worse, we favored local producers over imports, even if imported goods could address global warming more effectively. We were told that global warming was such a big problem that we could no longer rely on a free market economy, but then implemented mercantilist policies that prioritized subsidizing domestic special interest groups over addressing global warming.

Apparently global warming was merely a pretext for industrial policies that were being implemented for other reasons.

That’s my problem with today’s politics generally. A tremendous number of things are being advocated for reasons other than their own merits and possibly for personal gain. Some deviate so far from their own merits one can hardly escape concluding they’re being espoused for gain.

It is becoming nearly impossible to question any policy of the present administration. When you do so, there is an all-purpose response: what about Trump?

IMO major factors in Trump’s rise to power have been disgust with the political establishment and civil bureaucracy. Why are people surprised that Trump’s legal woes have not discouraged his supporters much? Why should they? His legal woes are his 2024 campaign.

Today I have read articles claiming that Ukraine is on the verge of triumph in the war against Russian aggression and that it’s on the brink of defeat. I don’t see how both can be true simultaneously. Just too simple-minded, I guess.

I have also read claims that Putin is wily genius and that he’s a blundering fool. Again, I have no idea how these opposite views are maintained simultaneously.

For my part I have no idea what is going on in Ukraine and I do not understand the thinking of the Kremlin’s inner circle.