What Biden’s Done Right with Ukraine

[I_M4_AU 7,853]

17 minutes ago, homersapien said:

How about getting a little more specific about what Biden should be doing that he isn't. 

All you are doing is repeating "Biden bad".  That's pretty "weak".

If you have read some of the stuff I have been saying you would know what I think he should do.  His sanctions are placating to other country’s needs such as allowing all of them to still buy Russian oil, even the US. He has direct control over US buying oil.

He should also deploy NATO and US troop to bases on NATO countries equalling the Russian Troops at the border of Ukraine.  Biden said his sanctions would be *swift, severe and certain*.  He missed on all three.

[DKW 86 7,426]

Just now, TexasTiger said:

“Yeah, the second term,” Trump had said. “We’ll do it in the second term.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-nato-south-korea-book-b1883457.html?amp

Tex, do you believe ANYTHING the biggest liar in the Western Hemisphere ever says? Really?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/a-very-stable-genius-a-conversation-with-carol-leonnig-and-philip-rucker/

To begin with, they call trump "A GENIUS" back in early 2020. trump is a moron....

 

 

[DKW 86 7,426]

7 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

If you have read some of the stuff I have been saying you would know what I think he should do.  His sanctions are placating to other country’s needs such as allowing all of them to still buy Russian oil, even the US. He has direct control over US buying oil.

He should also deploy NATO and US troop to bases on NATO countries equalling the Russian Troops at the border of Ukraine.  Biden said his sanctions would be *swift, severe and certain*.  He missed on all three.

Bad Idea, MHO...

[homersapien 11,385]

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

If you have read some of the stuff I have been saying you would know what I think he should do.  His sanctions are placating to other country’s needs such as allowing all of them to still buy Russian oil, even the US. He has direct control over US buying oil.

He should also deploy NATO and US troop to bases on NATO countries equalling the Russian Troops at the border of Ukraine.  Biden said his sanctions would be *swift, severe and certain*.  He missed on all three.

Biden cannot force another country to stop buying Russian oil.  But thankfully, they seem to be recognizing the problem on their own.

Again, be specific.  Who exactly is buying Russian oil that Biden could presumably stop?

Biden is trying to prepare the US for higher gas prices which recognizes the fungiblity of oil on the global market and the fact there will be far less Russian oil purchased.

I am sure Biden will pursue policies with domestic oil companies to avoid helping Russia.  Are you suggesting Biden nationalize oil companies?

Biden is deploying U.S. troops to threatened NATO countries. 

Not all of the possible sanctions are in place yet.  Biden knows that executing these sanctions alone is not going to be effective.  Be patient,  this thing is far from over.

Meanwhile the U.S. alliance with NATO and other democratic partners is becoming stronger by the day.  TFG was - and is - an isolationist. It's doubtful he could or would have accomplished that.  (After all, it would be an admission of error on his part and we know he's incapable of that.)

 

 

Edited February 27, 2022 by homersapien

[I_M4_AU 7,853]

Just now, DKW 86 said:

Bad Idea, MHO...

If you're dealing with a crazy person, you have to appear to be just as crazy and willing to go through with it.  I know it wouldn’t be popular, but as these Ukrainians know there are things worse than death.

EUROPE 

A Russian warship tells Ukrainian soldiers to surrender. They profanely refuse

"This is a Russian warship," someone says in a verified recording of the standoff. "I ask you to lay down your arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary deaths. Otherwise, you will be bombed."

The response from Ukraine was simple: "Russian warship. Go f*** yourself."

We spent the last two years in America afraid of death so much so we showed the world we would take freedoms away from its own citizens.  We need to show the world be are bad a$$ again, even it is just a show.  MHO.  Yeah, I know it won’t happen, but it is a dream I have that America is bad a$$ for real.

[TexasTiger 12,947]

8 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

If you're dealing with a crazy person, you have to appear to be just as crazy and willing to go through with it.  I know it wouldn’t be popular, but as these Ukrainians know there are things worse than death.

EUROPE 

A Russian warship tells Ukrainian soldiers to surrender. They profanely refuse

"This is a Russian warship," someone says in a verified recording of the standoff. "I ask you to lay down your arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary deaths. Otherwise, you will be bombed."

The response from Ukraine was simple: "Russian warship. Go f*** yourself."

We spent the last two years in America afraid of death so much so we showed the world we would take freedoms away from its own citizens.  We need to show the world be are bad a$$ again, even it is just a show.  MHO.  Yeah, I know it won’t happen, but it is a dream I have that America is bad a$$ for real.

At least you understand  you’re advocating that we act and actually be crazy.

[I_M4_AU 7,853]

3 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

At least you understand  you’re advocating that we act and actually be crazy.

Yeah,

Today from the AP:

 

 

[homersapien 11,385]

17 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

At least you understand  you’re advocating that we act and actually be crazy.

I am beginning to understand the fascination and support of Trump.

Nihilism

[autigeremt 6,642]

So far his administration isn’t letting a crisis go to waste. Good on them. 

[homersapien 11,385]

5 minutes ago, autigeremt said:

So far his administration isn’t letting a crisis go to waste. Good on them. 

What does that mean? 

[autigeremt 6,642]

1 minute ago, homersapien said:

What does that mean? 

😳

[TexasTiger 12,947]

18 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

The oversimplified critique is that Putin invaded Ukraine on Biden’s watch so he must be to blame or it wouldn’t have happened had Trump been if office. Of course, there’s no evidence it wouldn’t happen if Trump had been in office. There’s ample evidence that had Trump been in office the coordinated NATO response on arms support and financial sanctions would have been far less. Trump thumped NATO at every turn— he wanted out off NATO. Told Esper that would happen in his second term.

It’s too soon to know how this all plays out. But critics aside, the degree of unity amongst NATO at this stage is stronger than we’ve had much reason to anticipate for years. This is not a USA v Russia matter. It’s Putin v the Free World and that’s what makes it so costly for him whether he topples Kyiv in the short term or not. Biden gets this and has worked it about as well as we could expect any President to do.

Guess they won’t invite her back much.

[homersapien 11,385]

Can Putin Recover From This?

The Fed and the European Central Bank move hard, fast, and together.

David Frum

The EU Commission announced this afternoon that the European Central Bank will deploy its most powerful financial weapon against Russian aggression. Several hours later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Federal Reserve will impose sanctions of its own upon the Russian central bank.

Central-bank sanctions are a weapon so devastating, in fact, that the only question is whether they might do more damage than Western governments might wish. They could potentially bankrupt the entire Russian banking system and push the ruble into worthlessness.

Russia is also being hit by a partial cut-off from the SWIFT system. SWIFT is a messaging technology based in Belgium that allows banks to talk to one another in secure ways, enabling the safe and sure electronic transmission of funds. SWIFT is not a bank, nor is it exactly a payments system. It is instead a way to guarantee that money moves where it is supposed to go. Countries cut off from SWIFT, as Iran was in 2012, are effectively cast back into the precomputer era—forced to rely on primitive barter transactions, or Breaking Bad–style pallets of physical cash, to fund their governments and their economies.

Details are still pending about the Western central-bank sanctions. To better understand the possibilities, I spoke with Michael Bernstam, an economist and Soviet-born analyst at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Bernstam has studied the potentially decisive impact of such sanctions since the prior Russian invasion of Ukraine, in 2014.

Bear with me as I walk you through some banking and currency technicalities. I promise the destination will be worth the trouble.

Suppose you are a Russian company that buys things from the outside world and sells them to Russians. You earn your income in rubles. You spend in euros, U.S. dollars, British pounds, Japanese yen, South Korean won, or possibly Chinese renminbi. How does that work, exactly?

Well, a Russian business or individual might convert the rubles earned inside Russia into foreign currency at a Russian bank. Or—because the ruble has a strong tendency to lose value against foreign currency—that Russian business or individual might set up an account at a Russian bank denominated in euros or dollars. Both of those are legal to do in postcommunist Russia.

Most of these conversions from rubles into foreign currency take the form of computer clicks that credit or debit the electronic ledgers of financial institutions. The deposit of rubles into a bank is a click. The sale of rubles for euros or dollars is another click. The arrival of the foreign currency into the Russian customer’s account is only one click more. Very seldom does any actual paper money change hands. There’s only about $12 billion of cash dollars and euros inside Russia, according to Bernstam’s research. Against that, the Russian private sector has foreign-currency claims on Russian banks equal to $65 billion, Bernstam told me. Russia’s state-owned companies have accumulated even larger claims on Russia’s foreign reserves.

Despite the relative scarcity of physical foreign currency inside Russia, all of these clicks can happen because Russians generally have confidence that their banks could pay foreign cash if they had to. If every Russian depositor—individual, corporate, state-owned—showed up at the same time to claim their dollars and euros, you’d have a classic bank run. But Russians don’t run on their banks, because they believe that in a real crunch, the Russian central bank would provide the needed cash. After all, the Russian central bank holds enormous quantities of reserves: $630 billion at the last tally before the start of the current war on Ukraine. In an emergency, the central bank would draw upon its reserves, provide cash to the commercial banks, and every depositor could be paid in full in the currency promised. With $630 billion in reserves, there is no way Russia would ever run out of foreign currency. You’ve probably read that assertion many times in the past few days. I actually wrote such an assertion myself in an article published last week.

Not so fast, argues Bernstam. What does it mean that Russia “has” X or Y in foreign reserves? Where do these reserves exist? The dollars, euros, and pounds owned by the Russian central bank—Russia may own them, but Russia does not control them. Almost all those hundreds of billions of Russian-owned assets are controlled by foreign central banks. Russia’s reserves exist as notations in the records of central banks in the West, especially the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve. Most of Russia’s reserves are literally IOUs to the Russian central bank from Western governments.

Remember the saying “If you owe the bank $10,000, you have a problem—but if you owe the bank $10 billion, the bank has a problem”? We, the people of the Western world collectively owe the Russian state hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s not our problem. That’s Russia’s problem, an enormous one. Because one thing any debtor can do is … not pay when asked.

To finance its war on Ukraine, Russia might have hoped to draw down its foreign-currency reserves with Western central banks. The Russian central bank would tell the Fed or the ECB to credit X billion dollars or euros from the Russian central bank to this or that private Russian bank. That bank would then credit the accounts of Russian businesses or individuals. Those businesses or individuals would then pay Western companies to whom they owe money.

All of this requires the cooperation of the Fed or ECB in the first place. The Fed or ECB could say: “Nope. Sorry. The Russian central bank’s money is frozen. No transfers of dollars or euros from the Russian central bank to commercial banks. No transfers from commercial banks to businesses or individuals. For all practical purposes, you’re broke.” It would be a startling action, but not unprecedented. The United States did it to Iran after the revolutionary regime seized U.S. diplomats as hostages in 1979.

Iran did not feel that freeze, however, because it was earning massive amounts of new foreign currency from oil sales. But if Russia’s foreign income slows at the same time as it is waging a hugely costly war against Ukraine, it will need its reserves badly. And suddenly, it will be as if the money disappeared. Every Russian person, individual, or state entity with any kind of obligation denominated in foreign currency would be shoved toward default.

Of course, long before any of that happened, everybody involved in the transactions would have panicked. Depositors would race to cash out their dollar and euro holdings from Russian banks, the Russian banks would bang on the doors of the Russian central bank, the Russian central bank would freeze its depositors’ foreign-currency accounts. The ruble would cease to be a convertible currency. It would revert to being the pseudo-currency of Soviet times: something used for record-keeping purposes inside Russia, but without the ability to buy goods or services on international markets. The Russian economy would close upon itself, collapsing into as much self-sufficiency as possible for a country that produces only basic commodities.

Russia imports almost everything its citizens eat, wear, and use. And in the modern digitized world, that money cannot be used without the agreement of somebody’s central bank. You could call it Bernstam’s law: “Do not fight with countries whose currencies you use as a reserve currency to maintain your own.”

There is one exception to the rule about reserves as notations: About $132 billion of Russia’s reserves takes the form of physical gold in vaults inside Russia. Russia could pledge that gold or sell it. But to whom? Most potential customers for Russian gold can be threatened with sanctions. Those who might defy the threat couldn’t afford to take very much: The entire GDP of Venezuela, for example, is only about $480 billion.

Only one customer is rich enough to take significant gold from a sanctioned nation like Russia: China.

Would China agree to take it? And if China did agree, would it not demand a big and painful discount for helping out a distressed seller like a sanctioned Russia? How exactly would the transaction occur? Would China be content merely to take legal ownership of the gold and leave the metal inside in a Russian vault? Doubtful. One ton of gold is worth about $61 million, so $139 billion would weigh about 2,290 metric tons. It’s certainly conceivable for a locomotive to pull a train of that weight from Moscow to Beijing. But it would constitute a considerable logistical and security undertaking to load, move, unload, and secure the gold for a train trip across Siberia.

What would be accomplished by such a move? Russia already has $84 billion of assets denominated in Chinese renminbi. If Chinese-denominated assets were of any real use to Russia, Russia would not need to sell the gold to China in the first place. Russia’s renminbi reserves can certainly be used to buy things from China. But that does not solve the real problem, which is not to buy specific items from specific places, but to sustain the ruble as a currency that commands confidence from Russia’s own people. China cannot do that for Russians. Only the Western central banks can.

And here we bump into the limits of central-bank sanctions as a financial weapon: A weapon that altogether crushes an adversary’s banking system may be just a little too powerful. The West wants to administer penalties that cause Russia to alter its aggressive behavior, not to crush the Russian economy. The central-bank weapon is so strong that it might indeed provoke Putin into fiercer aggression as a desperate last gamble. So the next question is: Is there any way to use the central-bank-sanctions weapon more incrementally?

Perhaps there is. Western banks do not need to freeze the Russian central bank’s accounts altogether. They could put the Russian central bank on an allowance, so many billions a month. That would keep Russia limping along, but under severe restraint—asphyxiation rather than sudden strangulation. The West could not prevent Putin from spending foreign currency on his war or favoring cronies in the distribution of foreign currency. But the restraint would rapidly make the terrible cost of Putin’s decisions much more rapidly visible to every power sector in Russian society. It’s not the full blow, but it might hurt enough—and of course, the full blow could be applied later.

The central-bank-sanctions tool will also deliver a humbling but indispensable lesson to Putin. Putin launched his war against Ukraine in part to assert Russia’s great-power status—a war to make Russia great again. Putin seemingly did not understand that violence is only one form of power, and not ultimately the most decisive. Even energy production takes a country only so far. The power Putin is about to feel is the power of producers against gangsters, of governments that inspire trust against governments that rule by fear. Russia depends on the dollar, the euro, the pound, and other currencies in ways that few around Putin could comprehend. The liberal democracies that created those trusted currencies are about to make Putin’s cronies feel what they never troubled to learn. Squeeze them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/how-russian-sanctions-work/622940/

 

 

 

Maybe we're about to see just how much of a "genius" Putin is.

 

(emphasis mine)

Edited February 27, 2022 by homersapien

[I_M4_AU 7,853]

Another view from the Republicans. 

 

also;

 

 

[homersapien 11,385]

Yeah yeah, we get it.

Biden bad! 

[TexasTiger 12,947]

17 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

Another view from the Republicans. 

 

also;

 

 

What’d that hack say about this?

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Blotter/trumps-disclosure-endangered-spy-inside-isis-israel-officials/story?id=47449304

[I_M4_AU 7,853]

51 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

What’d that hack say about this?

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Blotter/trumps-disclosure-endangered-spy-inside-isis-israel-officials/story?id=47449304

He’s a hack, he didn’t say anything about that.

[Grumps 3,704]

3 hours ago, homersapien said:

Biden cannot force another country to stop buying Russian oil.  But thankfully, they seem to be recognizing the problem on their own.

Again, be specific.  Who exactly is buying Russian oil that Biden could presumably stop?

Biden is trying to prepare the US for higher gas prices which recognizes the fungiblity of oil on the global market and the fact there will be far less Russian oil purchased.

I am sure Biden will pursue policies with domestic oil companies to avoid helping Russia.  Are you suggesting Biden nationalize oil companies?

Biden is deploying U.S. troops to threatened NATO countries. 

Not all of the possible sanctions are in place yet.  Biden knows that executing these sanctions alone is not going to be effective.  Be patient,  this thing is far from over.

Meanwhile the U.S. alliance with NATO and other democratic partners is becoming stronger by the day.  TFG was - and is - an isolationist. It's doubtful he could or would have accomplished that.  (After all, it would be an admission of error on his part and we know he's incapable of that.)

 

 

Has Biden stopped the U.S. from importing oil from Russia?

[homersapien 11,385]

18 minutes ago, Grumps said:

Has Biden stopped the U.S. from importing oil from Russia?

Were we importing oil from Russia?

[Grumps 3,704]

18 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Were we importing oil from Russia?

From what I understand, yes.

https://www.afpm.org/newsroom/blog/oil-and-petroleum-imports-russia-explained

Oil and Petroleum Imports from Russia Explained

February 25, 2022AFPM Communications

 

In 2021, the U.S. imported an average of 209,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and 500,000 bpd of other petroleum products from Russia. Although Russian crude accounts for only three percent of U.S. crude oil imports and about one percent of total crude oil processed by U.S. refineries—Russian crude oil imports are important to refineries on the West Coast and Gulf Coast. Read more on this topic from AFPM’s industry analysts in their recent assessment: “U.S. Imports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products from Russia.”

Why do we import from Russia?

U.S. West Coast (USWC) refineries rely on imports of light sweet crude oil from other countries, including Russia, because access to U.S. produced light sweet crude oil is challenged by geography, transportation and logistics.

Our refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC) import heavier crude and unfinished oils from Russia that our complex refineries can transform into other products including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Gasoline and diesel represent only a small part of Russian imports to the United States, largely going to the East Coast. The U.S. East Coast is reliant on foreign sources of refined product due to lack of local refining capacity and infrastructure to economically move products from refining centers along the USGC to markets along the eastern seaboard.

Why have Russian imports increased?

In 2021, increased Russian imports to refineries in California and Washington state have helped offset lower volumes of light sweet crude imports into California from other countries—notably Nigeria—and lower volumes of U.S.-produced crude oil shipped by rail to Washington.

Increased imports of crude oil to the USGC region in 2021 were largely driven by disruptions to U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil production caused by Hurricane Ida and have since declined.

And, since 2019, U.S. refineries have increased imports of unfinished heavy oils from Russia to help replace heavy sour crude from Venezuela that U.S. refineries can no longer import.

If Russian imports are restricted, what other options do U.S. refineries have?

Although not as cost effective as current imports from Russia, particularly heavy fuel oil, additional heavy crude supplies from Canada and countries within Latin America could replace imported Russian crude. Restrictions on the availability of Russian crude to other countries could also have significant impact on crude oil supply patterns and costs.

What can policymakers do to blunt the impact?

While there is no near-term, silver-bullet policy to blunt the impact of geopolitical disruptions of the market, pursuing policies that allow domestic production to return to pre-pandemic levels will help to provide market stability and insulate not only the U.S. but the world from major disruptions. Policymakers can also provide relief from policies that increase the cost of producing refined product and policies that make it uneconomic to transport crude oil and petroleum products domestically.

[GoAU 1,600]

3 hours ago, homersapien said:

Biden is trying to prepare the US for higher gas prices which recognizes the fungiblity of oil on the global market and the fact there will be far less Russian oil purchased.

 

Trying to prepare us for higher prices is significantly worse than  actually truing to do something to affect it.   He has been trying to drive up oil prices since he got into office.  Now he tries to use this as a crutch or way out.  Will this situation affect oil prices sure, but he's been trying to do that on his own anyway.

7 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Were we importing oil from Russia?

Hopefully you're kidding, right?

 

 

Like any other political conversation, it didn't take more than a minute for this to turn into Trump or Biden bashing.  

Pro's for both:

Trump = pointing out that NATO hasn't been carrying it share.  Whether you like the method of delivery or not, the point is valid.  Today Germany said it would devote 2% of its GDP to defense.  They should have been doing this all along.   Subtlety has never been a Trump strength, but the point was valid.  Also, Germany buying as much oil as it could from Russia bought a lot of the hardware in Ukraine today.  Buying as much as they did from Russia is silly.  (We are doing similar things with the amount of stuff we buy from China).  

OP was right about saying what Russia "would have done" if Trump was still in office is irrelevant.  However we can say what DID happen.  Russia seized Crimea under Obama / Biden.  Russia invaded no one under Trump, Russia invaded Ukraine under Biden. These are facts.

 

Biden = Pointing out the evolving situation and being transparent with Russias intent.  He called what they were going to do, and was right.

 

Criticism for Biden:

1) Waited too long to send additional arms to Ukraine.  Although I'm glad he is sending more now, it is almost impossible to get them into the cities that are circled by Russia

2) The "unity" in NATO is not because of Biden's leadership, it just isn't.   It's the presence of a common enemy.

3) Sanctions can be part of a wholistic plan to introduce pressure on Putin, but for some reason, we're doing this in incremental steps.   As soon as Russia stepped across the border the gloves should have come off.   SWIFT and sanctions agains all energy sales should have been Day 1.

[TexasTiger 12,947]

1 hour ago, GoAU said:

2) The "unity" in NATO is not because of Biden's leadership, it just isn't.   It's the presence of a common enemy.

 

There's no doubt that actions of Putin are the biggest factor in motivating the NATO allies to consider stronger collaboration than has often been the case in recent years. But motivation and facilitation are two different things. Countries can share a motivating factor, bur still not work in a unified manner. Unified action between several countries never magically happens. Facilitating this level of unified response has been masterful. Condi Rice appreciates just how difficult this which is why she's amazed Biden was able to pull it off. There's some good background below on the behind the scenes.

 

"And when it became clear this year that Mr. Putin was continuing to build up forces at Ukraine’s border, the president approved sending Ukraine more weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, and deploying more troops to other countries in Eastern Europe as a show of solidarity with Ukraine and to reassure nervous allies on NATO’s eastern flank.

On Sunday morning, nearly four months after those meetings, Mr. Biden once again gathered his national security team.

They had been right about Mr. Putin’s intentions. And they had managed to secure unity among allies and even Republicans behind sanctions. But all along, the decision about whether to go to war was Mr. Putin’s alone. Despite all of the efforts, it looked like war was inevitable.

At the meeting on Sunday, the discussion shifted to new questions: whether to send more troops to NATO countries; how to support a Ukrainian resistance when Russia invades; how to deal with a flood of refugees; and how to manage the economic consequences of sanctions in Europe and the United States.

“The risk for the United States is that the allies don’t stay together,” said Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the C.I.A. and the Defense Department under President Barack Obama. “This crisis and this mode of a standoff with Russia is going to be around for months and years, not days and weeks.”

Wooing Allies

Meetings with the leaders of America’s closest allies began days after the secret October briefings, during Mr. Biden’s trip to Rome for a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20 nations. There, he convened the biggest NATO members known as “the quint”: the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

The president and his counterparts began to sketch out the response to Russia’s aggression that day in Rome. But soon, Mr. Biden’s plan to widen the circle of trust on Ukraine was put in place, officials said.

In a series of secure video meetings from the White House, the president and his national security team started sharing highly classified information with a larger group, including Poland, Romania, and the presidents of the European Union and Canada, as well as the top officials at NATO.

Not everyone was convinced.

On Nov. 17, Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, traveled to NATO headquarters for a key presentation. Although the United States has sometimes balked at sharing its best intelligence with the entire NATO alliance, worried about Russian moles in various governments, in this case the United States had already delivered a broad warning to Russia about what it knew. The briefing marked a significant shift in the allied view, officials said.

European and American intelligence officials said that Mr. Putin initially believed Europe and the United States would remain divided and unwilling to impose strong sanctions, particularly in the defense of Ukraine. He thought that he could build up a significant force and then either attack Ukraine or extract concessions from Kyiv, without much unified opposition from Europe, the officials said.

 

 

 

 

Image

 

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in St. Petersburg last month.Credit...Alexander Demianchuk/TASS, via Getty Images

“According to our assessment, at the end of summer, Putin likely gave instructions to prepare for military options against Ukraine,” said Mikk Marran, the director general of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service. “And in autumn 2021, we detected the attitude of President Putin: He felt the West was weak and the issue of Ukraine needed to be fixed.”

In fact, the alliance had its shaky moments. Four years of President Donald J. Trump’s raging against NATO had taken its toll. And Mr. Biden had angered some key European allies by what they described as a failure to consult with them about the details of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. A spat with France over a nuclear submarine deal did not help.

But Mr. Putin’s assessment ended up being a miscalculation, according to American and European officials. As the United States shared more intelligence both with NATO and individual allies, the positions hardened against Russia. The Eastern European intelligence official said that Mr. Putin’s timetable for an attack might well have been pushed back in the face of the unexpected cohesion among the allies.

“I have been in constant contact with our allies in Europe, with Ukrainians,” Mr. Biden told reporters in early December.

He said that he was putting together what he believed would be “the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do.

“But that’s in play right now,” he added.

Going Public

By late November, Mr. Biden knew it was time to talk with Mr. Putin again. The Russian force was still growing and the threat of war loomed.

 

As he prepared for the call with Mr. Putin, Mr. Biden approved the public release of an unclassified intelligence document showing the positioning of what officials said at the time could eventually grow to be a huge force along the border, including heavy armor, artillery and other equipment.

“Our theory has been that putting true information into the public domain, which was bearing out in real time because everybody can see what they’re actually doing, was the best way to prevent the Russians and what they always do, which is to try to control the narrative with disinformation,” a senior administration official recalled recently.

The idea was a risky one. Weaponizing information about Russian plans could make the administration look like it was stoking war rather than trying to prevent one.

In the past, intelligence agencies had blocked American proposals to release information, which some policymakers thought of as an overly cautious blanket rejection. But in this case, Mr. Burns, a career diplomat, supported a targeted strategy to declassify and release information, if the sources and methods could be protected. Ms. Haines also backed the strategy.

 

In some ways, Mr. Biden was distinctly prepared for the moment. Having visited Ukraine a half-dozen times over the last decade, he knows the country better than any other American president. His foreign policy team is made up of what are often called “Atlanticists,” who have spent their lives thinking about European security. (Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, grew up in Paris.)

Aides also said Mr. Biden’s long history with Mr. Putin made him less susceptible to the Russian president’s tactics. In conversations about Ukraine, officials said that Mr. Putin often liked to expound for long periods of time on minute details of the Minsk agreement, a complicated years-old effort at diplomacy with Ukraine, hoping to confuse the situation.

Mobilizing Troops

On Christmas Day last year, the Russian military publicly announced the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Ukraine’s border, calling it proof that Mr. Putin had no intentions of invading his neighbor any time soon.

Inside the White House, the president and his team were not buying it.

Intelligence officials had seen repeated instances in which the Russians would move a battalion tactical group close to the border, set up the infrastructure necessary for a rapid invasion, and then move the troops back out, leaving a shell that could be used by other battalions, the Russian National Guard or other military forces loyal to Mr. Putin.

 

 

 

The movement of troops back and forth was not evidence of a retreat, officials said. It was evidence of the opposite: preparations for an invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/us/politics/biden-putin.html?searchResultPosition=1

[homersapien 11,385]

3 hours ago, GoAU said:

Hopefully you're kidding, right?

 

No.  Why should I be?

It doesn't surprise me to hear it though.  After all, the market for oil is global and we are a country of free enterprise.

But since you know about this stuff, I have some questions. 

What companies are buying it, or is it a consortium of U.S. companies? 

Is there a (legal) way for the POTUS to simply halt it by executive action or would such a thing require legislation?

 

 

Edited February 28, 2022 by homersapien

[TexasTiger 12,947]

A conservative publication:

”Biden did not draw lines in the sand. He did not personalize the conflict. He did not turn himself into the star of the show. He did not allow anyone, anywhere, to believe that this was about America.”

“Since the invasion, Biden has been a full partner with our European allies. He has not pushed them into decisions. He recognized that having a united front was more important than any particular aspect of the response. And after only four days Europe came to the conclusion—on its own—that it would do everything the American foreign policy establishment had wanted. Biden understood that these countries needed to come to the decision to fight back on their own, and not be publicly cajoled into it.”

“Biden also understood that the EU and NATO are actually very powerful allies and that when they work in concert with the United States, we represent a significant geopolitical force.”

https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/the-west-is-winning-russia-is-losing?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMTM1MDIsInBvc3RfaWQiOjQ5NDY0Njg2LCJfIjoiRW8rcUciLCJpYXQiOjE2NDYwNzU2MDAsImV4cCI6MTY0NjA3OTIwMCwiaXNzIjoicHViLTg3Mjc0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.PN9jjCqEdFaoEhKioGkLnsnmt14vlshU6rCWTY1LuzU&utm_source=url

[CoffeeTiger 5,113]

I think Biden is doing what he needs to do by working directly with our European allies and making sure all these sanctions are being implemented by everyone across the board. 

Foreign policy under trump as all about America first..which usually ended up meaning America Alone. Do what America wanted to do, whenever it wanted without regard to allies or cooperation with anyone else. 

Trumps diplomacy was disjointed, messy, and impulsive. 

I think America's interests are being much better served and protected under Biden's leadership even if he's not being as bold or fast acting as some Republicans on here criticize him for.