Because war is uncertain and reliable information is sparse, no one knows how the war in Ukraine will play out. Nor can any of us be completely certain what the optimal course of action is. We all have our own theories, hunches, beliefs, and hopes, but nobody’s crystal ball is 100 percent reliable in the middle of a war.
The Perpetually Irrational Ukraine Debate
Tag: Dialogue
Inside the Trilateral Commission: Power elites grapple with China’s rise
Inside the Trilateral Commission: Power elites grapple with China’s rise (original)
Each new candidate for Commission membership is carefully scrutinized before being allowed entry. As a rule, members who take up positions in their national governments — which is uncannily common — give up their Trilateral Commission membership while in public service. Those include U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
This revolving door between the commission and senior government ranks has always been fodder for conspiracy theorists. Its first director in 1973, Zbigniew Brzezinski, later became U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. The very existence of the commission, meanwhile, seems predicated on the question of whether governing should be left to the people. It is a question the commission itself has tackled head-on since 1975: Is democracy functioning? Or does someone need to guide it?
That year, three scholars — Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington and Joji Watanuki — wrote a report for The Trilateral Commission titled “The Crisis of Democracy.” In it, Huntington wrote that some of the problems of governance in the U.S. stem from an “excess of democracy.”
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Colombia’s First Leftist President Charts a New Path on Venezuela + Government of Venezuela and Opposition Resume Mexico Talks
Colombia’s First Leftist President Charts a New Path on Venezuela
While critics derided the meeting as just another propaganda spectacle for Maduro, Petro has sent a signal to opposition parties in Colombia and the international community, particularly the United States, to rethink its approach if they hope to improve relations and achieve a successful political transition in Venezuela.
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Guaidó’s possible change of status occurs just as the opposition coalition establishes the rules to select the unitary candidate who will compete in the next presidential elections in 2024.
So Biden can support a new interim president for Venezuela.
Government of Venezuela and Opposition Resume Mexico Talks: What Is on the Table? (+Alex Saab)
Still skeptical of Gustavo Petro.
Report: US Tells Ukraine Talks Don’t Need to Happen After Milley’s Comments
Milley said this winter will provide an opportunity for diplomacy, but other senior US officials don’t agree
Report: US Tells Ukraine Talks Don’t Need to Happen After Milley’s Comments
Russia’s Kherson withdrawal is tactical
General Mark Milley, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States assessed that it would take several weeks for Moscow to complete the evacuation of some 30,000 Russian troops deployed in Kherson city in southern Ukraine. But Russians have announced that the evacuation was successfully completed in 2 days — both soldiers and over 5000 pieces of heavy equipment.
Russia’s Kherson withdrawal is tactical
Tim Robbins and the Lost Art of Finding Common Ground
Video via TK News
Transcript: Tim Robbins and the Lost Art of Finding Common Ground
Just saw The Shawshank Redemption, for the billionth time, yesterday.
Ukraine Peace Talks: Pathetic U-Turn by 30 Dems & Curious Case of Jeffrey Sachs
House Progressives Swiftly Walk Back Letter Asking Biden to Pursue Russia Diplomacy
ON MONDAY MORNING, 30 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to the White House that attempted to gingerly open a conversation about a potential diplomatic end to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The door was slammed shut by the evening, met with enough fury to elicit a “clarification” in the form of a statement from caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal.
House Progressives Swiftly Walk Back Letter Asking Biden to Pursue Russia Diplomacy
They need to grow a backbone!
Protester Disrupts Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand’s Event
How JFK Sacrificed Adlai Stevenson and the Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis
How JFK Sacrificed Adlai Stevenson and the Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis
In those interim years, the fictional story of how the missile crisis was resolved became foreign-policy folklore. None of the early memoirs by top Kennedy aides, such as Schlesinger and Sorensen, contained the real history. These incomplete accounts became the basis of the foreign-policy models and paradigms in political scientist Graham Allison’s highly influential book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. A full generation of scholars, analysts, foreign-policy makers, and even presidents learned the wrong lessons from the most significant superpower conflict in modern history.
Sixty years later, however, the Biden administration at least has a more complete record of history to draw on as U.S. policymakers and the world confront another time of crisis in the nuclear age. How applicable the lessons of the missile crisis will prove to be in preventing an escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war remains unknown. But the mantra of reason that Stevenson shared with Kennedy in October 1962 seems more relevant than ever: “Blackmail and intimidation never, negotiation and sanity always.”
Related:
The Cuban Missile Crisis @ 60 How John F. Kennedy Sacrificed His Most Consequential Crisis Advisor
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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