{"id":1829,"date":"2024-07-25T07:18:09","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T11:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/?p=1829"},"modified":"2024-07-25T07:18:09","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T11:18:09","slug":"where-things-are-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/2024\/07\/25\/where-things-are-at\/","title":{"rendered":"Where things are at"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Military historian Phillips Payson O\u2019Brien<\/a> provides a good summary here<\/a> of where things are at, strategically, with the Russia-Ukraine war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSo in a nutshell, Russian strategy is take whatever you can now, no matter how small an area and no matter how much it costs, on the assumption Trump wins, and you get to keep it. You then have four years to basically recover and come again when you are ready. The strategy is based around the longer term degradation of Ukraine as a power, the friendship of Trump, and the weakness of Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, \u201cUkrainian strategy at present has settled into a pattern of trying to maximize Russian losses, to lead to a steady degradation of Russian fighting capabilities for 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longer term, so much depends on whether the Trump-Orban-Putin (and techbro<\/a>?) axis wins the U.S. election. O\u2019Brien\u2019s quote of a long rambling passage from Trump\u2019s acceptance speech provides the justification for how and why that intersection of interests (of at least the first three) can rightfully be called an axis<\/a><\/em> \u2013 a case also made by Byline Supplement<\/a>, co-authored by the team at the investigative media site Byline Times<\/a><\/em>. Anne Applebaum correctly notes<\/a> that \u201caxis\u201d is too strong a word; she prefers \u201cnetwork of convenience.\u201d I agree with her caution and will share my own thoughts on her new book<\/a> soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would go further than O\u2019Brien does in his piece, however, and would say that every significant national election today, especially in a country like the U.S., is an international election involving external players \u2013 in this case Russia, China, and other countries and transnational groups (corporate-industrial lobbies, among others) exercising influence via media and other channels (just as U.S. interests play a role in foreign elections when those interests are at stake). When Americans vote for authoritarians like Trump, they are also voting for authoritarians like Putin — and for a carve-up of international power among neo-empires still largely driven by old-energy plus new-tech interests. The opening up of the Arctic<\/a>, for instance, is also opening up geopolitical competition over the Arctic and its resources<\/a>, which are particularly attractive to old-energy (fossil fuel) interests, as they may keep them afloat for a significant time longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And voting is just the tip of the iceberg of political action \u2013 still an essential step, in countries like the U.S., but also just a cog in a much larger set of wheels. That said, the very likely emergence of Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ presidential nominee has certainly invigorated U.S. politics, with the differences between the two candidates — in style now (as she differs little from Biden<\/a> in policy) — being exactly the kind of thing the Democrats needed to whip up some enthusiasm. We’ll soon see how ugly things get as the racism of Trump’s far-right supporters<\/a> (and their international backers — tech, fossil fuel, and media moguls — and autocrat\/info-war facilitators) goes into high gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further reading<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillips Payson O\u2019Brien, \u201cStrategic Update for Ukraine and Russia,\u201d Phillips\u2019s Newsletter,<\/em> July 21, 2024, https:\/\/phillipspobrien.substack.com\/p\/weekend-update-90-strategic-update<\/a>\u00a0 O\u2019Brien\u2019s Substack newsletter is worth subscribing to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Byline Supplement<\/em>, \u201cFascism Redux: A New Axis Takes Shape,\u201d July 20, 2024, https:\/\/www.bylinesupplement.com\/p\/fascism-redux-a-new-axis-takes-shape<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonya Mosley, “Expert on dictators warns — Don’t lose hope, that’s what they want” (interview with Anne Applebaum), Fresh Air<\/em>, July 23, 2024. https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2024\/07\/23\/nx-s1-5049021\/expert-on-dictators-warns-dont-lose-hope-thats-what-they-want<\/a> I;’ll have more to say about Applebaum’s new book, Autocracy, Inc.<\/em>, soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Military historian Phillips Payson O\u2019Brien provides a good summary here of where things are at, strategically, with the Russia-Ukraine war. \u201cSo in a nutshell, Russian strategy is take whatever you can now, no matter how small an area and no matter how much it costs, on the assumption Trump wins, and you get to keep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdPO21-tv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1829"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1833,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions\/1833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}