Damon Linker asks some good questions at The Week:

How would NATO countries respond if, for example, Russian forces took the city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine, which combined with the separatist Donbas region to the east would give Russia a land bridge to Crimea (which Moscow annexed in 2014)? Would Western powers be willing to accept that Russian territorial gain in return for the full withdrawal of Putin’s troops from the rest of the country? Or would the U.S. and EU consider that unacceptable on the grounds that it would be a straightforward reward for Putin’s aggression?

And if that kind of face-saving concession is unacceptable, would any lesser concession be satisfactory? Or is Putin’s outright humiliation the goal? Or would even that be insufficient? Must Putin (and his country) suffer punishment? And what would satisfy that demand? The country pushed into economic depression? Staggered by hyperinflation? Putin himself deposed in a coup and hauled before a tribunal in the Hague or left hanging from a lamp post?

It’s hard to say for sure because the West is still in reaction mode. Putin acts and we react. That’s gotten us as surprisingly far — much further than I thought likely. But now that we’ve proclaimed the principle (“this cannot stand”) and acted upon it in the form of crippling sanctions, we desperately need to begin thinking more than one move ahead.

Where’s Putin’s off-ramp? How can we point him in that direction and get him moving toward it? What would make us willing to grant sanctions relief? How can we keep an incredibly tense situation from entering an escalatory spiral that brings the whole world to brink of disaster?

I don’t have any answers—that’s beyond my pay grade. But they are very good questions.

It’s been a long time since I’ve cited Bill Roggio—since the very earliest days of this blog, I think. He has a piece in the Daily Mail that’s worth reading. Here’s a snippet:

Wishful thinking has the upper hand in the battle to shape Western perceptions of the war in Ukraine.

Sympathy for the outnumbered and outgunned defenders of Kyiv has led to the exaggeration of Russian setbacks, misunderstanding of Russian strategy, and even baseless claims from amateur psychoanalysts that Putin has lost his mind.

A more sober analysis shows that Russia may have sought a knockout blow, but always had well-laid plans for follow-on assaults if its initial moves proved insufficient.

The world has underestimated Putin before and those mistakes have led, in part, to this tragedy in Ukraine.

We must be clear-eyed now that the war is underway.

Yet even the professionals at the Pentagon are letting sympathy cloud their judgement.

Just two days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Department of Defense briefers were quick to claim that failing to take Kyiv in the opening days of the war amounted to a serious setback.

DoD briefers implied that Russia’s offensive was well behind schedule or had even failed because the capital had not fallen.

But U.S. leaders should have learned to restrain their hopes after their catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Once again, U.S. and Western officials are falling into the trap of failing to understand the enemy and his objectives.

Read the whole thing. This tallies pretty closely with my laments about being deluged with propaganda. Maybe I missed it in his piece but open source intelligence strongly suggests that the Russians are about to encircle the Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine. They are likely to become unavailable for the duration.

The TL;DR version is that the Russian invasion is not failing.

He concludes:

Believing Russia’s assault is going poorly may make us feel better but is at odds with the facts.

We cannot help Ukraine if we cannot be honest about its predicament.

To quote Sun Tzu “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” My greatest concern is that self-delusion will lead to hasty, ill-considered reactions.

In today’s New York Times column Thomas Friedman outlines three scenarios he envisions for how the Russia-Ukraine war might end: the “full-blown disaster”, the “dirty compromise”, and “salvation”.

The “full-blown disaster” is that Putin succeeds in destroying Ukraine as a “free independent state” and installs a government more to his liking in the country. Not only is it “well underway” as Mr. Friedman puts it, it is by far the most likely scenario.

The “dirt compromise” is that Ukrainian resistance is sufficiently stiff to delay Russia sufficiently for the various economic sanctions to bite sufficiently that both sides are willing to compromise:

Its rough contours would be that in return for a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops, Ukraine’s eastern enclaves now under de facto Russian control would be formally ceded to Russia, while Ukraine would explicitly vow never to join NATO. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies would agree to lift all recently imposed economic sanctions on Russia.

Here’s Mr. Friedman’s dream scenario:

Finally, the least likely scenario but the one that could have the best outcome is that the Russian people demonstrate as much bravery and commitment to their own freedom as the Ukrainian people have shown to theirs, and deliver salvation by ousting Putin from office.

I agree with Mr. Friedman that would be the best case scenario if not for some pesky issues. It may indiscreet of me to mention this but are the western Ukrainians actually the freedom-loving liberal democrats they are being portrayed as in our media? I think the evidence suggests they are ethnic Ukrainian nationalists. If not why was one of the first actions of the new Ukrainian government following the “Revolution of Dignity” to end the regional of not just Russian but also the Hungarian and Romanian languages? Protecting the rights of minorities would seem to me to be a key indicator of a liberal democratic order.

It seems to me that there are several more scenarios that should be considered for how this tragic invasion might unfold. The first is that having taken Ukraine’s major cities, President Putin might settle for a demilitarized and non-NATO joining ethnic Ukrainian western Ukraine and an ethnic Russian eastern Ukraine which might or might not federate with Russia. I don’t think it’s likely but it should be considered possible.

The second is that Ukrainian resistance continues over a protracted period and, despite the economic sanctions imposed by the West, Putin remains adamant and continues the conflict. Sadly, I think this may be the most likely scenario.

Third is that Putin becomes desperate enough to use nuclear weapons in his assaults on Ukrainian cities. Then what?

Update

Today seems to be the day for scenarios. At the blog of the Atlantic Council Barry Pavel, Peter Engelke, and Jeffrey Cimino count up four scenarios for how they see the war in Ukraine unfolding. They are:

1. Ukraine’s military and civilian resistance overcome the odds and grind Moscow’s advance to a halt, preventing Russian President Vladimir Putin from toppling Kyiv’s democratic government and establishing a puppet regime.
2. Russia manages to topple Ukraine’s government and install a puppet regime but neither Ukraine’s armed forces nor its population are ready to surrender.
3. Russian forces manage to take control of the country through the use of increasingly heavy-handed weapons and tactics. Resistance against a Putin-installed puppet government is simmering and omnipresent, but it is put down with brutal force and does not prove strong enough to pose a significant challenge to the substantial Russian forces that remain in Ukraine.
4. A NATO-Russia war

Three seems the most likely, especially if the NATO countries are unwilling to do without Russian oil.

I listened to President Biden’s entire State of the Union message last night from beginning to end. I didn’t listen either to the Republican response or that of the progressive caucus. It was already past my bedtime.

The highest points were at the beginning, largely an encomiumm of the Ukrainians which received approval from both Democrats and Republicans, and the end in which I thought he struck just about the right, positive tone. Between the beginning and the end was mostly the usual wish list we’ve come to expect from SOTU messages. This year’s wish list differed from that of prior years in primarily consisting of things that had already been proposed as legislation that had not passed and appointments that had already been made but not confirmed.

The point that heartened me the most was President Biden’s talk of making things end-to-end in the United States. He dwelt at some length on a facility that Intel was planning to build. Sadly, that has some glaring issues. For one thing we have experience with plants that are announced but never built. For another how are we going to manufacture chips end-to-end without producing more rare earth metals domestically than we do presently? That will require regulatory reforms and/or subsidies. Those are both action items for the federal government. Will either of them happen? Who knows?

It was also heartening that the speech contained relatively few digs at the other party. The only one I identified was an a reference to the tax cuts enacted during the Trump presidency. President Biden never mentioned his predecessor by name which I found refreshingly off-message.

What amused me most about the speech was the frequency with which Sen. Susan Collins’s eyes rolled as the price tags for the items recited during the wish list portion of the speech and the way that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s eyes lit up when the president touched on things that were components of the Green New Deal.

Please add your own reactions to the SOTU message in the comments. I may expand this post with if I encounter anything I think noteworthy.

Update

The editors of the Washington Post definitely saw the fly in President Biden’s ointment from last night:

Now, Mr. Putin’s effort to redraw Europe’s map by force has exploded not only Mr. Biden’s plans for a foreign policy pivot to China but also the entire global balance of power. Dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequences seems likely to consume a large part of this administration’s attention for the next three years.

In short, events have thrust historic challenges upon Mr. Biden, but also opportunities. Tuesday night, Mr. Biden rightfully claimed that he had helped maintain, and indeed increase, the unity of Western allies in the face of Russian aggression and that his administration made innovative and subtle public use of its intelligence. Strong and swift U.S.-led sanctions, widely supported around the world, have indeed isolated the Putin regime and ensured it pays a heavy price. This has aided unity between the two parties; members of both rose to applaud Ukraine and its ambassador, who was present. The Republicans among them were differentiating themselves from the shameful praise for the dictator voiced by their party’s presumed 2024 presidential front-runner, Mr. Trump.

Yet Mr. Biden celebrated damage to Russia’s economy without fully saluting the courageous Russians who have protested the war. He did not ask Congress for the greater defense spending it may take to restore world order. He did not offer a vision of how NATO could counter the Russian threat in the longer term. Instead, he pivoted to a long list of familiar domestic proposals. Disappointingly, his remarks on inflation basically rehashed spending initiatives and offered the questionable logic that shifting supply chains back to America necessarily cuts costs.

I would add that I saw no evidence that President Biden believes that expanding the money supply by borrowing in the trillions without increasing aggregate product or, said more simply, too many dollars chasing too few goods, has anything to do with inflation.

Update 2

One more notable thing from the SOTU that I neglected to mention. What do you believe will happen if President Biden actually follows through with the price controls on pharmaceuticals he talked about last night? I know what I think will happen: shortages. I’m completely in favor of allowing Medicare to negotiate prices, however.

Michael Tracey covers some territory I have covered here, a bit more harshly than I have, opening by asking why did the U. S. refuse to negotiate with Russia back in December?

For the chorus of people who will fulminate for the rest of their lives that any consideration of US culpability in this fiasco is somehow an “apology” for Putin, or a denial of his agency, or any other assorted nonsense: feel free to live in your black-and-white moral universe where tales of Good versus Evil always result in the princess being rescued by the knight, or whichever other comforting myths you need to tell yourself. The US deliberately chose — across administrations of both parties — to subsidize and “train” Ukraine’s military, flood the country with weapons, and otherwise assume the role of primary foreign sponsor. That’s the indisputable reality. Last week, Putin called Ukraine a “colony” or “puppet” of the US. Why do you think everyone from Hunter Biden to Rudy Giuliani correctly ascertained that they could secure huge sums of money from shady Ukrainian financial interests for doing next to nothing, other than having prominent political connections in the US?

So of course it was to the US that Russia’s demands for written “security guarantees” were officially submitted last December — not to China, or the EU, or Botswana, or anyone else. They were submitted to the US. Hence the clear-as-day centrality of the US in the progression of this conflict — a fact which now gets bizarrely denied on the regular by political-blackmailers who scream that there is absolutely no acceptable response to this invasion other than to condemn Putin about 15 billion times (even if you’ve already done so, emphatically).

going on to assert that there’s a new ideological conflict in progress, no longer between capitalism and communism but between “liberal democracies and right-wing authoritarians”:

You can see the contours of this new ideological conflict all over the place. Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, tied the trucker “siege” earlier this month to the broader phenomenon of “liberal democracies being confronted with serious and repeated threats” by nefarious right-wing agitators — whose Grand Poobah we’ve long been told is none other than, you guessed it, Putin. So there was very little compunction about imposing some of the most extreme due process-shredding Emergency measures in Canada’s history to squash these “insurrectionists.” Doing so even swelled everyone with a sense of tingling patriotic pride, as the “siege” was said to be just another front in a seismic global struggle. “Canada and our allies will defend democracy,” declared Justin Trudeau as he froze bank accounts without judicial review and empowered police to seize private property. “We are taking these actions today to stand against authoritarianism.”

Of course, it’s important to note that — as per usual — this grandiose ideological vision of Russia’s designs mostly exists in the addled imaginations of think tankers. While it’s apparent that Russia has grown more authoritarian in recent years, the US “intelligence community” actually just studied the question of whether Putin was really backing all these horribly de-stabilizing right-wing insurrectionists all across the world. The strongest conclusion that their subsequent Report could muster is that the Russian Government “probably tolerates” support by “private Russian entities” for some dangerously motivated international extremists — but as the authors sorrowfully concede, “we lack indications of Russian Government direct support.”

While I think there are many in the United States who would like, indeed long for, such an ideological conflict I believe that what actually exists on both sides, i.e. both in the United States and Russia, is a lot fuzzier than that with idealistic, ideological, and hardnosed self-interest all competing for primacy (sometimes with the same individuals). As we progress along the familiar path of self-delusion that occurs during wartime from “we don’t want war” to “anyone who doesn’t want war is a traitor”, I suspect we will only recognize that in hindsight.

I’ve been sitting on this for a while. At Project Syndicate Nouriel Roubini cautions us not to underestimate the economic impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine:

The coming sanctions against Russia – however large or limited they turn out to be, and however necessary they are for future deterrence – inevitably will hurt not only Russia but also the US, the West, and emerging markets. As US President Joe Biden has repeatedly made clear in his public statements to the American people, “defending freedom will have costs for us as well, here at home. We need to be honest about that.”

Moreover, one cannot rule out the possibility that Russia will respond to new Western sanctions with its own countermeasure: namely, sharply reducing oil production in order to drive up global oil prices even more. Such a move would yield a net benefit for Russia so long as the additional increase in oil prices is larger than the loss of oil exports. Putin knows that he can inflict asymmetrical damage on Western economies and markets, because he has spent the better part of the last decade building up a war chest and creating a financial shield against additional economic sanctions.

A deep stagflationary shock is also a nightmare scenario for central banks, which will be damned if they react, and damned if they don’t. On one hand, if they care primarily about growth, they should delay interest-rate hikes or implement them more slowly. But in today’s environment – where inflation is rising and central banks are already behind the curve – slower policy tightening could accelerate the de-anchoring of inflation expectations, further exacerbating stagflation.1

On the other hand, if central banks bite the bullet and remain hawkish (or become more hawkish), the looming recession will become more severe. Inflation will be fought with higher nominal and real policy rates, increasing the price of money, and thereby dampening the overall economy. We have seen this movie twice before, with the oil-price shocks of 1973 and 1979. Today’s re-run will be almost as ugly.

Although central banks should confront the return of inflation aggressively, they most likely will try to fudge it, as they did in the 1970s. They will argue that the problem is temporary, and that monetary policy cannot affect or undo an exogenous negative supply shock. When the moment of truth comes, they will probably blink, opting for a slower pace of monetary tightening to avoid triggering an even more severe recession. But this will de-anchor further inflation expectations.

I suspect that Dr. Roubini’s prediction of the reaction of central banks is likely correct—they’ll “fudge it” which will result in a need for more strenuous actions as well as a more severe recession down the road.

Some are predicting a global famine as an indirect consequence of the war. I certainly hope that won’t happen but, given the U. S.’s poor wheat harvest this year (the poorest in 50 years), prices for all sorts of things will undoubtedly rise. Those price hikes are likely really to begin to bit this fall.

I’ve already expressed my opinion: graduated but decisive action on the part of the Federal Reserve and prudent fiscal measures on the part of the Administration, directly addressing our vulnerabilities. Do I believe that will happen? What do you think?

Today the editors of the Wall Street Journal have produced a scorecard of various countries’ responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the “honor roll”:

• Switzerland
• Cyprus
• Japan

I was surprised to hear that Switzerland was supporting the European Union’s economic sanctions on Russia. That is quite a departure for Switzerland. It’s hard to emphasize how big a development this is for the country. Cyprus, too, is supporting the sanctions. Japan is blocking the Russian central bank from trading in the yen. Since the dollar, the euro, and the yen are the world’s “safe haven” currencies, that will make things difficult for the Russians.

On the fence:

• Turkey
• Israel

Will Turkey close the Turkish straits to Russian ships? It hasn’t done that since World War II. Israel for its part is trying to position itself as a neutral interlocutor, maintaining relations both with Russia and Ukraine.

In the doghouse:

• China
• UAE
• India

China, India, and the UAE all abstained from the Security Council resolution condemning Russia for the invasion. Concerning China the editors write:

The country shares Russia’s desire to dismantle the U.S.-led international order, and after the invasion Beijing’s foreign ministry called Washington “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.” But China also trades with and invests in Ukraine and doesn’t want to alienate its trading partners in Western Europe.

The Chinese Communist Party is the ultimate transactional actor in foreign affairs. Other global leaders, especially in the developing world, should take note that their sovereignty is of interest to China’s leaders only so long as it advances narrow Chinese interests.

Ben Lefebvre and Josh Siegel’s piece at Politico is a pretty fair examination of the options for energy policy:

U.S. oil production is rebounding fast from the cuts during the first year of the pandemic, adding an average of 630,000 barrels per day last year, and it is expected to grow at least by that amount again this year, according to Reuters energy analyst John Kemp and others. DWS Group, an asset management firm, sees U.S. production growing by 800,000 barrels a day by the end of this year, enough to send the price the of international benchmark Brent crude down significantly.

“American producers have demonstrated they will respond to an international crisis and the price environment,” Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, told POLITICO.

But the United States would need to raise its production rate of 12 million barrels a day by nearly 50 percent to replace what’s coming out of Russia, a massive jump. Even if it was possible, it would take years, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana concedes.

The TL;DR version of it is that it’s a long-term thing as increasing solar/wind would be.

What’s the conclusion to be drawn from that? I would think it tells us that any moves to decrease our energy production increase our vulnerability to disruptions, no?

I’m seeing an increasing number of articles making the same points as Judy Shelton does in her recent Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Begin with the Federal Reserve’s most pressing challenge: inflation. Gasoline prices, which account for 4% of the overall consumer-price index, had already increased in the 12 months to December 2021 more than any other good or service in the CPI basket—some 51% for regular unleaded gas at the pump. The war in Ukraine, and the West’s response to it, will drive dramatic further increases in energy prices and push the CPI even higher.

Prolonged financial-market uncertainty caused by “geopolitical risk” could be as damaging to the American economy as rising inflation. Uncertainty increases rapid trading moves and rattles stock, bond and commodity markets. In combination with already-frayed nerves over pending interest-rate hikes and continuing supply-chain issues, the opportunity to sow market instability grants Vladimir Putin a degree of leverage over American economic prospects.

A 2018 discussion paper prepared for the Fed Board of Governors defined geopolitical risk as “risk associated with wars, terrorist acts, and tensions between states that affect the normal and peaceful course of international relations.” The study concludes that “exogenous changes in geopolitical risks depress economic activity and stock returns in advanced economies, most notably in the United States.” Importantly, the analysis points out that “these adverse effects are sparked by heightened threats of adverse geopolitical events, rather than their realization.”

and

Two options for reducing inflation through higher interest rates are available to the Fed: raising its administered rates or selling some of its balance-sheet holdings. The former approach would benefit commercial banks by paying them a higher rate of interest on the reserve balances they hold in depository accounts at the Fed. Money-market funds would also earn more interest on overnight reverse-repurchase agreement balances. The funds used by the Fed to pay interest on these balances come out of its own portfolio earnings, which are otherwise remitted back to the Treasury as revenue to the federal budget. American taxpayers might wonder why commercial banks, including the foreign-owned, should collect higher interest on money sitting idle at the Fed.

It would be better if the Fed engaged in more traditional open market operations, reducing its trove of Treasury securities ($5.7 trillion) and mortgage-backed securities ($2.7 trillion)—not only to increase their supply to the market but also to reduce the Fed’s own footprint in financial markets. The Fed’s massive purchases of government-backed securities, more than $4.5 trillion since March 2020, have obscured price signals and distorted investment returns; its holdings should be downsized.

As the graph at the top of this page indicates, increasing oil prices are, at the very least, contributing factors to recession and some have even suggested they are causative. While I recognize that Dr. Powell must be sorely tempted to postpone taking steps to curb inflation while the Biden Administration for its part must be tempted to take steps to ease the pain that inflation is causing, I think that what is needed both economically and politically is coordination between the Federal Reserve and the Administration of a sort that hasn’t been seen in, well, ever. The Fed should take steps to curb inflation; the Administration should take what steps it can to increase domestic oil production and above all not aggravate the situation.

Simultaneous recession and inflation would be no fun at all. I doubt there is anything that will help the Administration more in the coming midterm elections than reducing inflation and stabilizing the price of oil would reduce the likelihood of recession while weakening President Putin’s hand.