Os efeitos políticos da guerra nos países do Ocidente - Anthony Faiola (WP)

Nosso colega e amigo Guilherme Casarões está citado nesta matéria do grande jornalista Anthony Faiola. 

By Anthony Faiola  with Sammy Westfall   Email  The Washington Post, March 16, 2022

Developments from Ukraine • There has never been a speech to Congress by a foreign leader quite like the one Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered. Short in length, powerful in words, graphic in imagery, the address was a pointed challenge to President Biden to do more. Zelensky closed his speech by switching to English for emphasis: “You are the leader of your great nation. I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.” • With bombs falling on Mariupol, civilians sought shelter in the city’s stately theater. But on Wednesday, a Russian airstrike hit and largely destroyed the building while hundreds were taking refuge inside, according to the city council.  • Officials from both Russia and Ukraine expressed cautious optimism that peace talks were making progress. Zelensky said in a video address that negotiations with Moscow were heading in a “more realistic” direction, and Russia's foreign minister said there is “hope for reaching a compromise.” • Biden said he will send $800 million more in security assistance to Ukraine, and he called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” for the first time publicly. The Pentagon will expand the size and scope of weaponry being rushed to Ukraine, including for the first time armed drones capable of inflicting significant damage to Russian ground units.

Putin’s praisers in the West have suffered less than you might think French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen speaks in Montrouge, south of Paris, on March 15. (Thibault Camus/AP) When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, some observers reasoned that the unmasking of Russian President Vladimir Putin would sour support for his Western appeasers. Voters from Peoria to Paris would witness the human suffering caused by Moscow’s invasion and come to their senses, waking as if from a daze to the moral flaws in politicians who had flattered or courted the Kremlin. Polls on both sides of the Atlantic suggest strong public outrage against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as well as massive support for Western sanctions. But a smattering of emerging evidence also suggests that the war’s initial impact on core support for figures who have offered praise for Putin — from former president Donald Trump to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — is more of a mixed bag than the champions of liberal democracy might have hoped. Positive positions on Putin do seem to have come back to haunt some candidates. And in France, the war has changed the narrative of April’s presidential election. But for some of the highest profile figures seen as generous to Putin, initial polls show virtually unchanged or even slightly strengthened approval ratings since the Feb. 24 start of the Russian invasion. Other factors beyond the war are almost certainly driving those trends. In Brazil, for instance, observers link Bolsonaro’s recent positive bounce in the polls to domestic affairs. But there’s little evidence to suggest that his cozying up to Putin — including a visit to Moscow a week before the invasion — has damaged Bolsonaro at home. “I think the war is too far away for Brazilians to perceive it as something of immediate concern, and I’m not sure the average Bolsonaro supporter really understands his position anyway,” Guilherme Casarões, a political expert at Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, told me. “What’s helping him at home is optimism; the perception that the pandemic is finally coming to an end, new benefits [for the poor] and that after two years, Brazilians could finally celebrate Carnival again.” Ambiguity might be one moderating factor. Trump has called Putin “savvy” and a “genius,” and held back from denouncing the Russian leader. But he has criticized the Ukraine war, even describing it as a “holocaust.” On Feb. 24, FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages showed favorable views of Trump at 42.9 percent — a figure that by March 15 had shifted slightly, to 41.8 percent. A Wall Street Journal poll showed Trump’s support in early March at 41 percent, unchanged from last November. The Journal poll did show a disconnect between a growing edge for Republicans in U.S. midterm elections, and Trump’s flatlined numbers. But there is little indication that Trump has bled core support since the war began, or that his views have necessarily hurt his party. Observers cite the extent of political polarization in Western democracies: Voters will not change hard-held views overnight, particularly as some politicians contort to recast or sidestep favorable stances toward Putin. But the minimal shift also speaks to how some voters exist in the echo chambers of their own beliefs — including in far-right news and social media outlets still rife with Kremlin talking points. Putin has also used language designed to appeal to the hard-right in the West — following a script that has flipped in recent years, as segments of the right that once embraced Cold War militarism turned toward Russia, and progressives became harsher critics. He has cast his war as one against those who would undermine “traditional values” while insisting his enemies are trying to “cancel” Russia. “It goes to show you that in terms of public opinion, people remain in their silos,” Vera Zakem, an expert on the intersection between information and foreign policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me. “They’re going to believe whatever truth or disinformation fits their views.” Nowhere has the impact of the war on a Western election been greater than in France. Ahead of the April 10 presidential vote, incumbent Emmanuel Macron has surged in the polls since the invasion. After a failed attempt at peacemaking in Moscow, he moved to punish Putin with sanctions and position himself as Europe’s wartime leader. His history of maintaining a pro-Europe line has stood in stark contrast to the records of two of his far-right challengers — Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour — as well as the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, all of whom have now had to defend Kremlin-friendly pasts. But while Macron is surging, Le Pen, his closest rival, is not necessarily doing worse. In Politico’s poll of polls, the far-right, nationalist dynast whose party borrowed funds from a Russian bank in 2017 — and released a pamphlet just last month with a photo in which Le Pen is seen shaking hands with Putin — has actually edged up from 17 percent to 18 percent since the war began. In a second-round runoff, the poll predicts, she would score 42 percent — significantly better than her dismal 2017 showing of 33.9 percent. That may be partly because Zemmour — a right wing commentator and provocateur — has borne more of the brunt of the post-invasion backlash. In recent days, videos suggesting the extent of his leanings have emerged in France, including one where he describes Putin as the “last resistance fighter against the storm of political correctness.” Since the day of the invasion, Zemmour’s support has sunk by 3 percentage points to 12 percent. Meanwhile, Le Pen has been at least moderately successful at a new balancing act — denouncing the war, while also portraying sanctions against Russia as wrong for France on economic grounds. “I do think the war has really put these candidates who defended Putin on the defensive … but it’s hurt Zemmour more,” Benjamin Haddad, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, told me. “Le Pen is maybe more resilient because she spoke less about Putin than Zemmour, and everything he’s said is being aired now. Until right before, he’d been saying that Putin would never invade Ukraine. Now he’s trying to say he was wrong, and praising [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky]. But he’s lost momentum.” Still, it’s hard to grasp the true influence of the war, and past support for Putin, on political popularity. Other factors — including new accusations of sexual assault against Zemmour — could be playing a role. It was never just the far-right in France, or other parts of Europe, who embraced Putin. Many on the far-left clung to the communist nostalgia of the Soviet Kremlin, seeing its latter-day version as an antidote to American hegemony, or in some cases, adopting a knee-jerk unwillingness to criticize aggressors on the world stage other than the United States. Even some European centrists approached Putin with friendly pragmatism. But Macron’s rise — since the invasion, he’s leaped from 25 percent to 30 percent in Politico’s poll — appears linked to his success at transforming the war into his primary talking point, making criticism of his domestic policies hard to stick now. “Obviously, our role in an international crisis is not to undermine the role of the French president in negotiations and diplomacy,” Laurent Jacobelli, Le Pen’s campaign spokesperson, told the Guardian.

Ucrânia: a diplomacia do megafone de Joe Biden - Anthony Faiola (WP)

 O presidente Joe Biden parece um locutor de partida de futebol: todos os dias ele irradia os segredos mais sensíveis capturados pela Inteligência americana sobre os movimentos da tropas russas, de forma a que o Putin fique sabendo que todos os seus passos estão sendo cientificamente observados.

Não haverá nenhuma surpresa, assim, se a invasão se efetivar: tudo terá sido observado, previsto e ANUNCIADO pelo grande locutor de jogos de guerra Joe Biden. Talvez seja uma tática interessante...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Why the Biden administration is being so public about the Russian threat in Ukraine

President Biden at the White House on Feb. 7. (Al Drago/The New York Times/Bloomberg News/Bloomberg)

The Biden administration’s warnings of a Russian invasion of Ukraine have taken on the feeling of the Weather Channel tracking a hurricane. Since U.S. officials first bannered the gathering strength of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces at the border more than three months ago, they’ve repeated the threat with escalating alarm. Last week, new U.S. assessments emerged that Russian combat firepower had reached 70 percent of the gale force needed for a full-scale Category 5 assault. The Russian storm, the United States concluded, could overwhelm Kyiv, Ukraine, within two days, leaving as many as 50,000 civilians dead or wounded.

Few things in geopolitical crises are more sensitive than intelligence. And yet, from the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, the Biden administration has been extraordinarily vocal about U.S. knowledge of Russian movements, tactics and planning. One analyst dubs it “Biden’s megaphone strategy.” Others say you need to go back years to find a similar crisis where a U.S. administration has shared this much information with this level of specificity this quickly.

“This is unprecedented, even going back to before my professional life,” said John E. Herbst, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine between 2003 and 2006, told me. “Maybe you could compare it to the [1962] Cuban missile crisis … [or] the build up to war in Iraq.”

There can be strategic reasons for being tight-lipped. Too much detail can compromise intelligence assets and risk future access to information. But there’s another big reason for discretion. Intelligence gathering and processing is more art than science, a tapestry of secrets held together by analytical assumptions. Intelligence can be — and often is — spun, and can be — and often is — wrong. The textbook example: U.S. warnings of Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, which were both spun by the Bush administration, as well as wrong.

That doesn’t mean U.S. assessments are off now — or that the Russian bear won’t claw its way into Ukraine. In fact, so far, the sense of Herbst and others is that the administration has gotten this right.

The administration has also been increasingly clear about what it doesn’t know: Whether Putin has made the critical decision to actually invade. That finer point came into focus after an exasperated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decried Washington’s breathless warnings for causing “panic.” Last week, the White House backtracked on using the word “imminent” to describe the prospect of a Russian attack.

Some argue the administration is erring on the side of caution because it is sensitive to its foreign policy failures over the past year, particularly the sense that the U.S. government defense apparatus completely miscalculated the speed of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, which led to a messy withdrawal and broad recriminations.

That doesn’t mean its warnings are being taken at face value. As it borders on oversharing — President Biden even said a “minor” Russian incursion would be tolerated in a gaffe that had the ring of candor — the administration is in a jam over the credibility of U.S. intelligence and the reliability of its disclosures.

That distrust went on full display last week, when the administration outlined a deep fake operation allegedly being weighed by the Russians as a pretext for invasion, and for which the Ukrainians would be falsely blamed. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters about the production of a Russian video with “graphic scenes of false explosions — depicting corpses, crisis actors pretending to be mourners and images of destroyed locations or military equipment — entirely fabricated by Russian intelligence.”

Tough questions from reporters ensued.

“Where is the declassified information?” Matthew Lee of the Associated Press asked.

“I just delivered it,” Price said.

“No, you made a series of allegations,” Lee responded.

“The exchanges were … a sign of increased skepticism of the Biden administration when it comes to intelligence and military matters, particularly after officials failed to anticipate how swiftly the Afghan government would fall to the Taliban last year and initially defended a U.S. missile attack in Kabul as a ‘righteous strike’ before the Pentagon confirmed the action had killed several civilians but no terrorists,” ruled Chris Megerian of the Associated Press.

But many observers say the administration is tactically smart to get out in front of any Russian operation in precisely the way it’s doing.

Overwhelming disclosure has enabled Washington to present a highly public case for a real and present danger, narrowing the daylight between the U.S. and European allies on decisions for high sanctions for Putin that could ultimately serve as a successful deterrent to invasion. Differences between allies on a coordinated response no doubt still exist — but even the reluctant Germans are beginning to talk tougher.

And if Putin had hoped for a stealth attack, he now has the eyes of the world watching.

“The Biden administration has waged a campaign of deterrence in what the Russians sometimes call the 'information space,’ ” wrote The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. “To mobilize allies, U.S. officials have shared sensitive intelligence about Russia’s moves; when they’ve detected Russian plots, they’ve disclosed them. These aggressive tactics have checked Russia’s usual advantages of surprise and stealth.”

“Radical transparency” may be the best way to deal with Putin’s dark tactics.

“Russia’s hybrid war is based on sowing confusion and disinformation,” Richard Gowan, an International Crisis Group analyst, told Spanish newspaper El Pais. “By adopting radical transparency, the U.S. is complicating Russia’s task of disseminating disinformation about its actions. The Russians have tried to ignore or dismiss the accusations, but they have also had to go on the defensive in public. And this extreme transparency also makes things easier for Washington when it comes to keeping NATO’s allies more or less united.”

Still, the decision to play this one anything but close to the vest harbors risks. For one, if it is a bluff, then calling Putin on it might trigger action he never intended. “This megaphone diplomacy could make it complicated for Putin to do nothing,” Gowan added. “Now it will be harder for him to back off without a certain sense of humiliation.”

Another risk: That Russian troop movements are simply a ruse to capture the West’s attention, ice Ukraine’s hopes of ever joining NATO, test the will of the United States and Europe, and force a dialogue over its claimed security concerns.

“What if this diplomatic show was exactly what Putin wanted out of his move?” wrote Foreign Policy columnist Caroline de Gruyter. “What if the West played into his hands by trying to deter him? What if the West actually fell into his carefully laid trap?”

If there is no invasion, the United States and Europe could still be dragged into a long, diplomatic morass over Ukraine’s future that will suck time and energy from other important global affairs.

But that’s still better than war, which the administration could claim to have headed off by calling Putin out — or at least say it tried if he does invade.

“The downside is not so high. If it doesn’t happen, everyone will be saying ‘Thank God it didn’t happen,’ ” Herbst said. “I actually believe it’s highly unlikely the Russians will do a major operation, and less than 50 percent of something minor. But I believe that is because the Biden administration has been solid on this.”

Sanções contra a Rússia, contra Putin? Not so easy, como indica Anthony Faiola (WP)

 Eu recomendaria que os interessados lessem "Putin's Kleptocracy" de Karen Dawisha. Um livro impressionante...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Why it’s not so easy to slap sanctions on Vladimir Putin

Businessman Yevgeniy Prigozhin serves food to Vladimir Putin during dinner at Prigozhin's restaurant outside Moscow in November 2011. (Misha Japaridze/AP)

In the amped-up war of words between Washington and Moscow, President Biden has leveled what appears to be a next-level threat: If Russian troops defy the West and surge into Ukraine, the United States could slap personal sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

An increasingly common U.S. tactic, individual sanctions can ban travel and freeze assets in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans and U.S. companies from transactions with designees, targeting everything from New York bank accounts to family trips to Disney World. They can also have global reach through foreign banks and companies that fear running afoul of U.S. law.

Pushing back against Biden’s threat, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said direct action against Putin would be “politically destructive” to U.S.-Russian ties — but not “painful” for his boss.

He might be right.

Broader U.S. sanctions against Russia could indeed sting. The New York Times reported that U.S. officials are prepared to take a “sledgehammer” to Russia’s financial system by targeting state banks and cutting off foreign lending, sales of sovereign bonds and technologies for critical industries, among other steps. Sanctions on that scale aimed at a country the size of Russia are novel and risk disruptions to the global financial system as well as Russian retaliation. European allies, dependent on Russian energy to light Berlin, Paris and Rome, may also be reluctant to join in. But if fully imposed, such sanctions could serve as serious punishment for Russian transgression.

Sanctions targeting Putin himself might be more difficult to make count. For one, to even consider freezing his assets, you’d have to know where they are. And Putin has buried his wealth better than any James Bond villain.

“Putin doesn’t have an account at JPMorgan Chase,” Eugene Rumer, a Russian expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. “There’s a lot of talk about him being the richest man in the world with a fortune in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But I’ve never seen any credible proof of that fortune, or where he keeps it. And I don’t think Putin was planning on buying a condo for retirement in Sunny Isles, Florida.”

Forbes recently described Putin’s alleged fortune as “probably the most elusive riddle in wealth hunting — harder than the heirs, other heads of state and even drug lords that we’ve financially smoked out over the years.” Theories run the gambit: That he’s built an empire by demanding cuts from Russian oligarchs, or illicit financial deals or contract kickbacks.

But they’re all just theories. Meanwhile, his stated assets are relatively meager. Bloomberg News reported that a Kremlin declaration of Putin’s earnings claims his income to be roughly $131,000 a year. His declared assets? “A 77-square-meter apartment, an 18-square-meter garage, two vintage Volga GAZ M21 cars, a Lada Niva SUV and a trailer” — all of them in Russia and out of U.S. reach.

“The reality is that there are probably few people other than Putin who know how much loot he has and where he keeps it,” wrote Bloomberg News’s Timothy L. O’Brien. “That will make it difficult to figure out which financial switch to flip to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, or to penalize Putin personally if it does.”

One of the more outlandish possibilities: That Putin actually isn’t as rich as one might think because his awesome powers at home don’t require a fortune to rule.

“In the end, Putin may not need money, so long as he has the appearance of having it and the power that it would otherwise confer,” Forbes Wealth Team mused.

Few believe governments — even U.S. allies — that do business with Russia would agree to steps that turn Putin into a global pariah barred from summits or business events.

“The Europeans are not going to stop him from coming, and the Chinese will welcome him with open arms, so I’m not sure how a travel ban could work,” Rumer said. “Putin is not the kind of leader who goes to Disneyland. If he wanted to, he’d just have one built in Moscow.”

It’s relatively rare for the United States to impose sanctions on a sitting head of state, but it’s happened before — including 1,300 miles off the coast of Florida where Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro goes to bed at night as the sitting global leader perhaps most targeted by Washington’s wrath.

In 2017, the U.S. government added Maduro to a list of high-ranking Venezuelan officials who faced asset freezes and bans on U.S. citizens doing business with them. Since then, federal authorities in Florida have seized from Venezuelan officials and government-linked business executives more than $450 million in assets — including Miami condos, superyachts and show horses. “But they didn’t seem to find any of Maduro personal assets,” Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, told me.

A further step not seen as an imminent possibility with Putin hurt Maduro more: His indictment in 2020 by the U.S. Justice Department on narcoterrorism charges, including a $15 million bounty for information leading to his capture. Since then, Maduro’s rare official foreign trips have been confined to friendly nations including Cuba and Mexico.

The White House on Monday signaled what could be a more likely — and damaging — play than going directly after Putin: Targeting figures “in or near the inner circle of the Kremlin.”That could include barring children of certain Russian elites from attending prestigious universities in the United States and Europe, the New York Times reported. The targeted Russians could be closer to Putin than those slapped with U.S. sanctions in the past, and reportedly could include Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast alleged to have been romantically involved with the Russian leader.

The United States and Europe have already placed sanctions on more than 800 Russian individuals over Russian aggression, including the annexation of Crimea, attempted assassinations of dissidents and disruptions of U.S. elections. A Post report in October illustrated how those sanctions triggered losses that spread across their interconnected financial networks.

The theory: To get to Putin, you make the rich people close to him uncomfortable — striking personal blows to their business affairs and lavish lifestyles.

There is little question such sanctions hurt. But when it comes to compelling those leaders to change course, or, in the most extreme cases, provoking regime change, individual sanctions sometimes have limited purpose.

For instance, the targeting of Maduro’s inner circle has not worked.

Sure, they’re unhappy: I have sat in Caracas with U.S.-sanctioned individuals close to and within the Maduro government. They bitterly complained about their shrinking worlds, and the personal price they’ve paid because of U.S. sanctions.

But in recent years, only one senior Venezuelan official close to Maduro and sanctioned by the United States has actually defected, and Maduro’s grip on power is tighter now than ever. And Putin commands far more formidable powers of persuasion than the Venezuelan leader.

In fact, some argue that cutting key figures in authoritarian regimes off from the West can make them even more reliant on the authoritarians they serve.

“I think for those on the individual sanctions list, it’s an annoyance,” Ramsey said. “But it can also create incentives that can be counterproductive.

How far would the United States go to back Ukraine? - Anthony Faiola (WP)

 

By Anthony Faiola  with Sammy Westfall  Email The Washington Post, January 20, 2022

How far would the United States go to back Ukraine?

Ukrainian soldiers launch a U.S.-supplied Javelin missile during military exercises in Ukraine's Donetsk region on Dec. 23, 2021. (AP)

The risk of war in Europe is rising. A blitz of diplomacy has failed to defuse fears of a Russian invasion in Ukraine, whose pro-Western government is sounding the alarm that Moscow has “almost completed” a menacing troop buildup on the country’s eastern frontier. A strike would force Washington and European allies to move from deterrence to action.

But how far is the West willing to go to defend Ukraine?

U.S. officials have warned of a possible Russian invasion for weeks. Espousing a vision of Russia and Ukraine as “one nation,” Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding a promise that its neighbor will never join NATO. Defending the right to self-determination, the Biden administration has refused such a pledge. Russia continues to deny a pending assault. But on Wednesday, President Biden predicted Putin would “move in” on Ukraine because, after all of his saber-rattling, “he has to do something.”

Biden on Wednesday suggested the Western response would depend on the level of Russian intervention, before clarifying Thursday that the United States would not accept even a “minor incursion.” What a “war” could look like runs the gambit: Cyberattacks on Kyiv (which have already begun, though by actors as yet undetermined). Missile strikes. A limited occupation of the Donbas region — a part of Ukraine in the grips of Russian-backed separatists for years. The worst case scenario: A full-on march on Kyiv.

Biden has ruled out American troops going head to head with the Russians, a response that risks escalation between nuclear powers. Threats of reprisals have instead centered on sanctions. Yet, with Europe dependent on Russian gas, doubts linger about how far key partners, particularly Germany, would be willing to go. And even if Moscow were slapped with biting sanctions, they tend to inflict sustainable wounds. Just ask Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, whose regime has withstood some of the harshest possible U.S. sanctions and came out stronger by tapping a rogues gallery of alternative financial partners in Moscow, Tehran, Ankara and Beijing.

But talk is growing of a combined response in the event of an invasion that could mix economic pain with a higher cost for Putin on the battlefield in the form of a U.S.-backed, pro-Western Ukrainian insurgency. The roughly $2.5 billion in U.S. aid committed to Ukraine since 2014 has focused on defensive weaponry, including Javelin antitank missiles, retired Coast Guard cutters, armored Humvees, radios and communications equipment. The United States has also helped to train Ukrainian special forces.

But Washington is signaling that an invasion could be a game changer, potentially bringing a host of new assistance, resources and weaponry for guerilla-style warfare in parts of Ukraine the Russians seize, and turning Putin’s incursion there into an Afghanistan-like quagmire.

The Post’s David Ignatius wrote last month that the Biden administration was weighing “ways to provide weapons and other support to the Ukrainian military to resist invading Russian forces — and similar logistical support to insurgent groups if Russia topples the Ukrainian government and a guerrilla war begins.”

Last week, Helene Cooper of the New York Times reported that help could involve training in NATO eastern flank countries including Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Beyond logistical support and weapons, Cooper wrote, the United States and NATO allies could also supply medical equipment, services and even sanctuary during Russian offensives.

“In discussions with allies, senior Biden officials have also made clear that the CIA (covertly) and the Pentagon (overtly) would both seek to help any Ukrainian insurgency,” Cooper wrote.

As the specter of war grows, military aid to Ukraine is already ramping up. The Biden administration on Wednesday announced an additional $200 million in defensive military aid. That came after Britain this week said it had begun shipping antitank weapons to Ukraine to help it boost defenses. “They are not strategic weapons and pose no threat to Russia,” British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Parliament. “They are to use in self-defense.”

But a Russian invasion appears set to compel the West to send more, and broader, firepower: “I think that we’re talking about trying to take the edge or deter a Russian mostly conventional ground offensive,” Peter Zwack, former U.S. Army brigadier general and former defense attache to the Russian Federation, told NPR this week. “And for that, the Ukrainians would need more Javelin antitank missiles.”

They would need surface-to-air missiles such as Stingers, he said: “They need to be able to knock down, threaten Russian air support.”

Going further requires a certain calculus.

Several European countries are unlikely to back an insurgency, stoking divisions among allies.

Moscow has also signaled an aggressive response, threatening military deployments to Cuba and Venezuela. U.S.-backed insurgencies also have no great track record — think Nicaragua, Syria and many more.

Yet the goal might not be victory but, rather, punishment: To ratchet up the cost to Putin of a Ukrainian adventure. Seth Jones, director of International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues that punishment could be a prolonged insurgency that grinds away at the Russian military. To make that happen, he calls for a “Twenty-First Century Lend-Lease Act” led by the United States to provide Ukraine with war materiel at no cost. Priority items, he writes, would be the needs of a military involved in sustained combat, including air defense, antitank, and anti-ship systems; electronic warfare and cyber defense systems; small arms and artillery ammunition; spare vehicle parts; petroleum; rations and medical support.

James Nixey, director of the Russia-Eurasia program at London-based Chatham House, told me that the Ukrainians — better trained and equipped than when Russia’s “little green men” moved into Donbas nearly a decade ago — are likely to put up far more of a fight than the Russians encountered during their crushing blow to Georgia in 2008.

Western assistance in a guerilla-style war could amp up the pressure. Ukrainians would pay the highest price.

But Putin “will also not be able to hide all of those body bags,” Nixey said.

Erdogan, o sultão está nu, dizem seus opositores - Anthony Faiola (The Washington Post)

Um antigo correspondente na América Latina se ataca a um típico ditador latino-americano, com a peculiaridade dele ser turco...

Presented by Goldman Sachs

By Anthony Faiola  with Claire Parker  Email  In Turkey, critics say the sultan has no clothes. Erdogan’s advisers won’t tell him.  Residents line up for subsidized bread in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul on Dec. 7. (Umit Bektas/Reuters) In Turkey, the lira is falling, and so is the sky. Prices at supermarkets are changing almost daily. Lines for subsidized bread are growing. Turks are unable to make ends meet as the costs of potatoes, flour and chicken soar. Almost universally, pundits blame one man: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The autocratic Erdogan — who ascended to power during George W. Bush’s first term as U.S. president — has effectively declared war on financial orthodoxy, throwing fuel on the fire of a currency crisis by lowering interest rates when economists argue he should be doing exactly the opposite: jacking them up to defend the lira. But Erdogan, who claims to have studied economics, says he knows best. Asking Turks to be “patient,” he insists a weaker currency and lower interest rates will boost Turkish exports, create jobs, spur growth and beat back inflation. What he neglects to mention, economists say, is that such a policy, especially in the throes of crisis, will also cause the price of essential imports to soar, frighten away foreign investors, drain Turkish banks and impoverish the population by propelling inflation rather than taming it. On Thursday, a fresh rate cut — the fourth in four months — sent the lira plunging to a record low. Having accumulated power over the years, while purging those who questioned him from the government’s ranks, Erdogan, critics say, is now surrounded by yes-men. He has fired free thinkers in Turkey’s Central Bank, leaving experts fretting there may be no one left with the president’s ear to say the sultan has no clothes. As the lira continues to plummet — it has lost half its value against the dollar this year — poor and middle-class Turks are paying the highest price, as the cost of staple goods double and fuel costs surge by 40 percent. “I think the end of the world is coming,” one Ankara street vendor told the New York Times. Analysts are beginning to question whether Erdogan’s financial follies may do what years of power consolidation and repressive tactics haven’t: Cost him his job. “He really seems to believe he is right, whereas the rest of the world believes the contrary to be true,” Sinan Ulgen, a Turkish expert at Carnegie Europe, told me. “If this policy fails, he will continue to lose popularity. Already, other presidential contenders are gaining in the polls.” Betting against Erdogan often fails. Over the past two decades, he has repeatedly managed to turn adversity into triumph, successfully navigating geopolitical crises, a murky coup attempt and a Turkish Spring, almost always coming out stronger while maintaining the backing of the Islamic conservatives at the heart of his Justice and Development Party (AKP). Unless, as the opposition has urged, early elections are held — a possibility Erdogan has rejected — the next presidential poll won’t take place until 2023. Still, economic crises can be treacherous for politicians. Just ask the Argentines, who, amid a devastating currency collapse and debt crisis in late 2001, went through five presidents in two weeks. Turkey is not there yet, and, for a number a reasons, including its more manageable foreign debt, will probably avoid an Argentine-style meltdown. Yet authoritarian leaders like Erdogan have repeatedly fallen amid economic chaos. In 2019, Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was deposed in a military coup after demonstrations that started in response to soaring costs of food and fuel. Some experts cite high food prices as one factor in the Arab Spring. To stay in power, autocrats tend to become more autocratic. In Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro — a close Erdogan ally — survived despite hyperinflation, and the horrific humanitarian crisis it caused, by dragging the country closer toward full dictatorship. Though now seen as an autocrat, Erdogan didn’t start that way. “I do not subscribe to the view that Islamic culture and democracy cannot be reconciled,” he said in 2003. Erdogan’s early years in office saw him tame an activist military establishment, including scores of acting and retired soldiers and officers. His pro-investment policies initially produced an economic boom that lowered poverty rates and brought gleaming new infrastructure to Turkish cities. Some date his point of no return as an autocrat to 2013, when he backed a violent response to the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul that started in opposition to urban development but morphed into a broader public outcry against waning freedoms. In 2018, Erdogan pushed for and won a switch from a parliamentary system to one with a strong president, the job he now has and in which he has more freedom to sidestep parliament. But even before that, as prime minister, he had moved to silence dissent by controlling the press. He purged the military following the 2016 coup. Since 2018, however, Turkey has also been staving off a painful economic reckoning. The lira slipped as Erdogan sought economic growth at any cost, and saw lower interest rates as the way to achieve it. Problems accelerated in March, when Erdogan, bent on lowering interest rates further, fired his third Central Bank chief in less than two years, replacing him with Sahap Kavcioglu. “The main qualification the new Central Bank governor brings to his office is his relationship with the president’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak, whose tenure as minister of finance and treasury was disastrous,” Steven A. Cook wrote in Foreign Policy. Erdogan has defended his stance, citing Islamic proscriptions against high interest, while also pointing to China as an example of how low interest rates and a weaker currency can create a thriving middle class. But that took time — something Turkey might lack given the precipitous plunge in the lira, which has also driven up manufacturing costs at home. Turkey imports parts for much of its finished exports — like cars — which, given the weak lira, are now more expensive to buy. In the meantime, currency woes are deepening discontent and inciting anti-government protests. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported, MAK — a pro-government political consulting firm — said that AKP support had sunk below 30 percent in polling for the first time ever. The Journal’s dispatch from the president’s hometown of Rize captured the souring sentiment, which should give Erdogan reason for concern. “We are at the bottom of the well. We have no purchasing power left,” Mehmet Alibaris, a tea farmer near Rize devastated by inflation, told the Journal. “I’ll vote for anyone who will get rid of this government.”