On the menu today: The Biden administration brought economic sanctions to a gunfight; Vladimir Putin makes it clear that his biggest beef isn’t NATO expansion or territorial disputes but with the way the Cold War ended; also, fresh from a jaunt to Austin, I preview next week’s Texas primaries — and note that even allies of Beto O’Rourke think he can’t just pretend he never made his pledge to seize lawfully purchased guns.
Some Men Can’t Be Deterred by Economic Sanctions
One of the problems with using economic sanctions as your primary tool of deterrence in foreign policy is that eventually you’ll run into a hostile foe or force that does not care about trading with the U.S. or even money at all. In fact, it is fair to wonder how much money motivates any of America’s current foes.
The Taliban certainly don’t particularly care about money; they think they’re on a mission from Allah. Iran has been hit with just about every sanction in the book, and no doubt it’s had an impact on the Iranian economy, but the mullahs don’t seem to care much. Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime have been sanctioned many, many times, and they just keep getting better and better at evading them. The U.S. and China are too economically intertwined to easily enact sanctions that are serious enough to alter the decision-making in Beijing.
And then there’s Vladimir Putin’s Russia — a government that foresaw the types of moves the West was likely to make, and prepared accordingly:
Russia has drastically reduced its use of dollars, and therefore Washington’s leverage. It has stockpiled enormous currency reserves, and trimmed its budgets, to keep its economy and government services going even under isolation. It has reoriented trade and sought to replace Western imports.
But even more than that, for a greedy kleptocrat, Putin doesn’t seem primarily motivated by money or his country’s economic prospects. Putin’s address yesterday was a long stream of grievances, and it is clear that what really enrages him is that Russia is not as powerful as it was when he was a younger man and the Soviet Union existed:
It is now that radicals and nationalists, including and primarily those in Ukraine, are taking credit for having gained independence. As we can see, this is absolutely wrong. The disintegration of our united country was brought about by the historic, strategic mistakes on the part of the Bolshevik leaders and the CPSU leadership, mistakes committed at different times in state-building and in economic and ethnic policies. The collapse of the historical Russia known as the USSR is on their conscience.
He characterized the post-Cold War era as a time of “injustices, lies and outright pillage of Russia” and absurdly claimed that, “Russia always worked with Ukraine in an open and honest manner and, as I have already said, with respect for its interests.”
Joe Biden’s foreign policy, in a nutshell, is an attempt to save, resuscitate, and restore the “rules-based international order” and sought “a stable, predictable relationship” with Russia. But Putin never liked the existing “rules-based international order” and was never interested in “a stable, predictable relationship.” Putin wants to see the rules-based international order fail and replaced with an international order where he makes the rules, at least for his neighboring states.
The cover of this week’s Economist depicts Putin painting himself into a corner, and argues that no matter the outcome of the Ukraine conflict, Putin has already harmed his country. The editors point out that Russia exports a lot more gas to Europe than China, and contend that, “Mr. Putin can either live with this interdependency or turn further towards China. Yet that would condemn Russia to being the junior partner of an unsentimental regime which sees it as a diplomatic sidekick and a backward source of cheap commodities. That is a yoke Mr. Putin would chafe under.”
I wish that were the case, but I’m not so sure. From Moscow, China looks like the confident, rapidly rising power, and the U.S. and Europe look like the internally divided, declining powers. By partnering with China, Russia can rewrite the rules of the international order in its favor and rub the West’s noses in it.
Yesterday, Putin spoke to his people and the world and painted Ukraine as a dysfunctional, corrupt terrorist state on territory that everyone has always known was part of Russia. He spoke of Ukraine as a matter of Russian honor, something too big to put a price tag on:
Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space. These are our comrades, those dearest to us — not only colleagues, friends and people who once served together, but also relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties.
In Putin’s vision, he and the modern Russian army are the forces of stability, order, and the restoration of domestic tranquility to territories that he is utterly 100 percent convinced are Russian. He sees Ukraine the way Abraham Lincoln saw the Confederate States of America. In his own way, Putin thinks he, too, is on a mission from God — or perhaps fate or destiny.
This weekend at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “These are some of the greatest sanctions, if not the strongest, that we’ve ever issued. As I articulated yesterday, it is directed at institutions — in particular, financial institutions — and individuals, and it will exact absolute harm for the Russian economy and their government.”
In light of everything we’ve seen over the past quarter-century, does Vladimir Putin seem like a man who can be deterred by economic sanctions?
And if he does not, shouldn’t our focus be on other forms of deterrence — such as arming the Ukrainians to the teeth and communicating clearly that any invading Russian forces will face every form of resistance imaginable, every step of the way?
Memories . . .
Last June, Chris Cillizza declared that during the Biden–Putin summit — the first time Biden had talked to Putin in person as president — Biden communicated to Putin that “the adults are back in charge.”
I was underwhelmed:
“Authoritarians are malign” is a pretty good way of summarizing the entire 20th century in three words. I’m not sure we needed a Biden-Putin grip-and-grin to communicate that, and Biden choosing to call Putin “bright,” “tough,” and a “worthy adversary” doesn’t really clarify the moral distinction all that well.
When a new administration spends its first half-year in office crowing that the adults are back in charge, people expect better results.
The Rare Section of the Newsletter That Gets Its Own Dateline
Austin, Texas — The Lone Star State holds its primaries March 1, and early voting has already started — which means my family-weekend getaway to gorge myself on tacos and bourbon and see old friends in the state capital featured plenty of campaign ads over breakfast.
If the polling is accurate, Texas governor Greg Abbott is likely to win renomination relatively easily against former Florida congressman and former Texas state party chairman Allen West, state senator Don Huffines, and — much to my amusement — a candidate named Rick Perry who is not that Rick Perry. (It’s a bit like that Eddie Murphy movie, The Distinguished Gentleman — “Jeff Johnson: The name you know!”)
There’s a much more competitive race for state attorney general, where incumbent Ken Paxton could well end up in a runoff against current state land commissioner George P. Bush, the son of Jeb Bush. Former state Supreme Court justice Eva Guzman and Representative Louie Gohmert are also running for the post, and a candidate must reach 50 percent to avoid a runoff.
Among Democrats, there’s a little bit of drama in progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros’s bid against nine-term incumbent representative Henry Cuellar in Texas’s 28th Congressional District. (Cuellar is the Texas House Democrat who is frequently critical of the Biden administration on border issues, meaning he’s the one you’ve probably seen featured on Fox News.) Progressives would love to knock him off, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez headlined a rally for Cisneros. (An FBI raid on a congressman’s home is never good news for an incumbent; Cuellar denies any wrongdoing and has yet to be charged with any crime.)
If Cisneros wins, the progressives will crow that they can still knock off centrist incumbents, even in competitive districts. If Cuellar wins again, as David Catanese observes, people will fairly start asking whether any Democratic incumbent should be afraid of AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders anymore.
Meanwhile, Beto O’Rourke is expected to win the Texas Democratic gubernatorial primary easily.
Earlier this month, Charlie Cooke observed that, “O’Rourke became famous for his repeated promise to confiscate the most commonly owned rifles in the United States. Now that he is running for Governor of Texas, he is trying assiduously to pretend that this didn’t happen.”
And even O’Rourke’s fans are clearing their throats and trying to hint to the campaign that the candidate can’t just Jedi-Mind-Trick his way out of this. Here’s the Austin American Statesman editorial board, in their endorsement of Beto O’Rourke in the Democratic primary:
Then there’s the gun issue. After a madman massacred 23 people and injured 23 others in El Paso in 2019, a distraught O’Rourke pleaded for more restrictive gun laws, and declared: “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
Plenty of Texans appreciated the pledge. But others, including independents whose support O’Rourke needs, heard it as a threat to their Second Amendment rights.
A firearm owner himself, O’Rourke has since tried to soften his rhetoric, insisting that he doesn’t support banning guns, but would try to restrict access to people with a record of violence or mental illness. Still, O’Rourke owes all Texans a more detailed outline of his plan to restrict AR-15s and AK-47s.
Also, in an interview with Austin Monthly, O’Rourke says he’s spent his time since his presidential campaign “registering people to vote and fighting for the right to vote in what is the most voter-suppressed state in the country.” Oddly, “the most voter-suppressed state in the country” had the highest turnout in three decades in 2020.
Oh, and one other development that might surprise those outside the state:
Airwaves are not swamped with campaign ads focused on abortion access. Candidates spend more time talking about COVID-19, immigration and the reliability of the power grid. Some rallies and events come and go without even a mention of Texas having the most restrictive abortion law in the country on the books for months now.
ADDENDUM: I am always grateful when Alexandra DeSanctis fills in for me writing this newsletter. Unfortunately, her name was left off some of the emails of Monday’s edition! And I am somewhat less grateful when someone writes in to say Monday’s edition was the best in a long time.