I don’t have anything like a complete analysis of what’s happening with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But I do have one important fragment, which is a piece I haven’t seen elsewhere:
For the past decade, Russia under Putin has been pushing hard against the limits of what it can get away with in the realm of spycraft. There are a lot of different bad things Russia was doing, and if you look at any one of them, the situation looks similar: they inflicted some harm on a Western country, but it’s not quite possible to do anything about it. Some of the major categories are election interference, assassinations, and disinformation campaigns. These produced a lot of grudges in a lot of places, especially in the military and covert worlds.
Dealing with a powerful bad actor is a coordination problem. If one country presses hard on a scandal, or imposes sanctions, then Russia can undermine the response and retaliate. If a lot of countries act at once, then they’re all mostly safe from retaliation.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine provided a coordination point and a ready-made justification for everyone with a grudge to strike at Russia. I think we’re probably going to see conflict between Western powers and Russia open up on more fronts, some of which will be unexpected, and some of which will not be initiated by Russia.
I don’t have anything like a complete analysis of what’s happening with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But I do have one important fragment, which is a piece I haven’t seen elsewhere:
For the past decade, Russia under Putin has been pushing hard against the limits of what it can get away with in the realm of spycraft. There are a lot of different bad things Russia was doing, and if you look at any one of them, the situation looks similar: they inflicted some harm on a Western country, but it’s not quite possible to do anything about it. Some of the major categories are election interference, assassinations, and disinformation campaigns. These produced a lot of grudges in a lot of places, especially in the military and covert worlds.
Dealing with a powerful bad actor is a coordination problem. If one country presses hard on a scandal, or imposes sanctions, then Russia can undermine the response and retaliate. If a lot of countries act at once, then they’re all mostly safe from retaliation.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine provided a coordination point and a ready-made justification for everyone with a grudge to strike at Russia. I think we’re probably going to see conflict between Western powers and Russia open up on more fronts, some of which will be unexpected, and some of which will not be initiated by Russia.
(Crosspost with Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jimrandomh/posts/10107781589139785)