He's right in specifically calling for a "status ante quo" settlement. (I'd add in holding an official referendum in the Donbas, but that's the only quibble. Update: Second quibble, but Hank may be assuming that, is he doesn't mention explicit security guarantees for Russia as well as Ukraine.)
Now, the high panjandrums of the US bipartisan foreign policy establishment, known here recently as nat-sec nutsacks, or maybe Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, will never listen to a Noam Chomsky saying this. Actually, on Reddit, I've gone even further with phraseology and am calling these people US/NATO tankies. It's earened.
It's almost as doubtful they'll so so with Hank the Knife. That said, he peed in the cornflakes not just in general, but in the middle of Davos.
His analysis seems otherwise right, mainly that we've got about two months to settle this before real trouble. Putin's troops may not be able to advance further, but they'll certainly entrench by that time. There's no way that Zelensky can drive them out after that time, butt-hurt as he may be about this.
The US forcing Russia into default, blogged about earlier this week, will only further strain the global economy. That's primarily on continued high oil prices, but also on high ag prices for wheat, corn, sunflower oil and other major staples. US farmers will love getting $8 a bushel for wheat. US consumers, in addition to facing gas prices staying where they are or climbing further, will NOT love paying $2 a loaf for bland generic white bread.
But, not only are the nat-sec nutsacks not likely to listen, their fellow travelers on #BlueAnon aren't either. After posting that link on Twitter, and discussing the link on Reddit, where I saw it posted, I got various versions of "Fuck Kissinger" etc. I pointed out the broken NATO promises, etc., and had the de rigueur caveat that I wasn't "justifying" the invasion. I suggested Chomsky to a Twitter friend. She next claimed both have dementia. I suggested neither does (I didn't suggest that maybe Biden does, which, TBH and also contra Team Blue, wouldn't surprise me), and pointed out a link within the peace. The NYT editorial board, doing so many from a "what's best for the American establishment" lens, ALSO calls for a negotiated peace. Here's a paywall-skirting version. The NYT talks about inflation, etc., but also notes Zelenskyy can't win without a massive upping of the American ante. The NYT gets disingenuous at times, though. It claims Biden hasn't made clear his endgame, when actually he has. It's smashing Putin, and mic-check public slip noted, he's made that clear.
I've already dealt with Chomsky touting Trump as the guy who would have settled that. That's a duopoly-voting leftist's way of trying to "own the libs" within the Democratic Party. Stupid? Absolutely. Demented? Absolutely not.
Kissinger? Going beyond the NYT editorial board, his two-month time frame and other aspects of his piece make clear he's not demented. Too bad 10 gallons of this sense can't be beamed back to Henry Kissinger 1969.
As for #BlueAnon lamenting gas prices? Well, a negotiated peace solves that. Second, the Saudis under MBS have an animus for Biden, rightly or wrongly or a big of both, that's independent of this war. The war just gives them more leverage.
As for gas prices in general? The OPEC+ deal between the Saudis and Russia just before the start of COVID was pushing prices up then. Without COVID, maybe we wouldn't have hit $110/bbl for WTI in 2020, but we would have hit $90, and I doubt Trump could have talked down MBS.
To this ecosocialist leftist, this is why many Democrats come off as warmongers, and to a lesser degree (or maybe greater) as not being THAT serious about the climate crisis. Joking aside, this IS a bit like a carbon tax, is it not?
But, like Goldilocks' three bears, if neither Hank nor Noam nor the NYT is "just right," you've got problems, as I see it.
(Update: Make that FOUR bears. Pope Francis his own self talks about NATO "barking" at Russia, more than #BlueAnon and the parent of Hunter Biden's laptop ever will admit. He didn't use the word "provoked," so shut up, warmongers, but DID say this "perhaps facilitated" the invasion. He's also called out the Western military industrial complex and the new ramp-up in arms spending. Both links via the warmongering NeverTrumpers and ConservaDems at the Bulwark, from a piece that basically lies about what Francis says in his "barking" and thus shall NOT be linked, at all.)
As for the Redditors, I think that their bottom line as US/NATO tankies is "Slava Amerika." And as for their bitching about Russia calling it a "special military operation" not a "war," how often has Amerika done just that?
As for Zelenskyy himself? Is he trying to have his cake and eat it too? He personally shot down Kissinger, while a government representative poo-poohed the NYT. But elsewhere, he's on record as favoring a negotiated peace. Maybe he wants a negotiated peace with terms set in advance? Or maybe he's afraid that, just as he was probably afraid on trying to actually implement the Minsk Agreements in advance, that anything less than the toughest of lines would have Azov Battalion fanbois trying to run him out of Kyiv on a rail?
Per that link above, here's where we'll soon be at without a true negotiated peace that not only addresses Putin's invasion but everything post-Maidan:
Now, despite tens of thousands of lives lost, all Putin has achieved is moving that front line a little further to the West, and the region seems set for the same kind of standoff it has seen for the past eight years, only on a larger scale.
That's the bottom line. And, with a Ukraine about as corrupt as Russia and even poorer, something it can afford even less than Russia.
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