Biden Needs to Find Putin an Off-Ramp
PLUS: A review of "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" starring Jessica Chastain
A month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems safe to say things have not gone Vladimir Putin’s way. The Russian army’s advance has basically stalled. In the north of the country, Ukraine has retaken small swaths of territory, and while Kyiv is still in danger, it does not appear Russia has the capability at the moment to capture or cut-off the city. In the south, Russia’s gains over the past couple weeks have been minimal. They have yet to move on Odessa. Unable to subjugate Mariupol, Putin has instead decided to level the city with missiles, which has probably resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians. In this way, Mariupol has not only become a symbol of Putin’s barbarity but his incompetence.
There are other signs, however, that Putin’s “special military operation” is faltering. NATO estimates between 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the conflict. The Pentagon is only willing to go on record with a number somewhere between 2,000-4,000. (BTW, according to military analysts, you can estimate the number of wounded soldiers by multiplying KIA by 3.) Put these numbers in perspective, though: The United States lost just under 7,000 service members in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. And if that high-end number is correct, though, that would indicate Russia has lost as many soldiers in one-month of war in Ukraine as the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan during its nine-year-long war there in the 1980s. That war is often referred to as the Soviet Union’s Vietnam.
Of course, NATO and Ukraine have an incentive to overstate those figures, and it does seem rather convenient that their numbers happen to correspond with the numbers from those other wars. It also isn’t clear how well Ukraine is faring. While some have claimed Russia’s army has lost 10-20% of its manpower (which military analysts would say leaves it operationally incapacitated) some also estimate Ukraine has suffered similar losses in terms of both personnel and equipment and may be running low on anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Ukraine, however, also has a reserve of war-hardened veterans ready to take-up arms to defend their homeland, while Russia—with 75% of its combat-ready forces committed to the conflict—is said to be rushing reservists with little combat training into the war zone.
Ukraine’s willingness to stay in the fight is definitely an advantage. Morale apparently is very low in the Russian ranks. By all accounts, Russia’s logistical operations are abysmal, while Ukraine has made it a point to target their supply lines. Russian soldiers are running out of food (or eating twenty-year-old MREs) while their vehicles are short on gas and maintenance. Sent into war without the proper clothing, some are suffering from frostbite. On Friday, reports surfaced that a Russian tank from a unit that had lost 50% of its personnel ran over its commander in a potential act of mutiny.
To date, six seven Russian generals have been killed in action. This high death rate is considered a sign of how poorly coordinated Russia’s war effort is, as Russia’s highest-ranking officers are increasingly found leading from the front lines rather than away from the field of combat. Meanwhile, there are signs coming from the Kremlin that Putin is unhappy with his senior leadership. His defense minister has barely been glimpsed over the past few weeks. A purge of Putin’s inner circle of advisers and Russia’s spy agencies also appears to be underway.
From inflation to its bond ratings, the economic situation in Russia is dire. While the West remains off the field of battle in Ukraine, it has dropped what some describe as an economic nuclear bomb on Russia in the form of sanctions. Economic analysts calculate Russia’s economy could be set back 15 years, while others believe Russian consumers will face shortages similar to what the U.S.S.R. dealt with. Russia’s economy remains buoyed by its oil and gas sales, though. That’s a tenuous base to build its economic strength on since Europe is looking for other suppliers. Russia could hurt Europe by cutting off the continent’s supply of fossil fuel, but it also desperately needs the $1 billion it earns daily from those exports. Meanwhile, reports out of Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia indicate an influx of Russian expatriates, accelerating a brain drain from the country that has risen substantially over the past ten years.
Again, this war has only been underway for a month. It’s not unimaginable Russia will recalibrate its forces and resume its offensive against Ukraine with added firepower. There is no guarantee Ukraine can keep up this level of resistance. At the same time, the results on the ground so far do not speak highly of the Russian fighting force nor the Kremlin’s ability to accurately assess political, economic, and military conditions relevant to this war. Russia’s failure to achieve its objectives and the setbacks it has dealt with to date may portend a quagmire or even a defeat.
Yet absent a complete collapse of the Russian military effort coupled with a swift breakdown of Putin’s autocratic regime in Moscow, it’s still hard to envision a way this war concludes favorably for Ukraine and, by extension, the West. That’s true even if Ukraine were to gain the upper hand in the war. For this reason, President Biden needs to use this moment when the outcome remains uncertain to find Putin a way out of this conflict.
Some may wonder why Biden would want to help Putin escape a war he’s losing. In the first place, a reversal of fortune on the battlefield that allows Putin to gain the upper hand remains a real possibility. It could take weeks or months, but it’s possible Putin finds the commanders he needs to turn his military operation around. Russia may be losing this war because its military is fundamentally flawed; it also may be Russia is losing on account of logistical and tactical issues that can be fixed. So long as Putin remains unsure as to whether he has what it takes to win this war, we should be looking to find ways to help him end it. Let’s not give him time to solve his battlefield problems.
Secondly, we should try to avoid a prolonged stalemate. Again, the longer this conflict goes on, the more opportunity Putin has to find a path to victory. A prolonged war, however, would also put Ukraine and its military under severe stress as well as test the West’s resolve, as it is struggling already with economic disruption and the flood of Ukrainian refugees. Putin may be fine with a long-term occupation of Ukraine if it essentially renders the country dysfunctional, but he also has to be aware of the costs an endless war will impose on Russia and its people. Let’s convince him to fast-forward through all the pain and suffering both sides will likely experience if this war drags on for years and just get to the conclusion.
Finally, it’s not clear how Putin would react to the prospect of a humiliating loss. Unable to achieve victory with conventional ground forces, Putin has resorted to firing missiles at Ukrainian targets. How would he respond if his armies were crippled or forced to retreat? If Putin concluded he was about to lose—a prospect he may not be willing to accept—some analysts speculate he might use battlefield nuclear weapons to essentially freeze the conflict or force Ukraine to capitulate. Russia has over 2,000 of these bombs at their disposal with a blast radius of roughly 100 yards. It’s not just that Putin’s use of such weapons could devastate Ukraine; it’s that the use of the first nuclear weapons in war since 1945 would lift the taboo regarding their development and deployment. We would suddenly be living in a much more dangerous world. If we can avoid that development, we should.
What would such an off-ramp look like? I’m not sure. The obvious problem is that Putin is going to need something that allows him to save face, but no one will want to give him something that could be seen as a prize derived from his use of military force. Not only does he not deserve it, but no one will want to encourage him to attempt a stunt like this again for the sake of territorial expansion. I’m guessing any solution would include an end to western sanctions and Russia’s return to the system of global finance. There would probably be some reassurances offered by Ukraine about “denazification,” but it seems preposterous now that Ukraine would agree to a position of neutrality (since they can’t trust Russia to treat them as neutral) and demilitarization (for the obvious reason that Russia just invaded them.) It’s likely Ukraine would cede Crimea to Russia. The status of the Donbas region and its pro-Russian citizens would need to be resolved. The most contentious issue would be what would happen to the beleaguered city of Mariupol, which Russia seems intent on demolishing by missile with no regard for human life so they can create a land bridge between the Donbas and Crimea. After the horrors the citizens of that city have experienced, though, I suspect Ukraine would balk at surrendering it to the man who turned it into a charnel house.
Reports on Friday indicate Russia has shifted the focus of its military efforts to the Donbas and away from Kyiv, where Russian troops have reportedly dug into defensive positions rather than continue preparations for a siege or an assault. In the meantime, Ukrainian diplomats have said Russian negotiating positions have become more appropriate given the situation on the ground. This suggests Putin has possibly scaled back his military ambitions and may be ready to cut a deal to end this war without toppling the Ukrainian government. There’s still a lot of negotiating that needs to take place and Ukraine will have a lot of demands that will need to be met, but if we can help Putin back down, we should.
Signals and Noise
How much of the world actually supports the West’s confrontation with Russia? Maybe less than we think, according to Walter Russell Mead of the Wall Street Journal: “In a development that suggests trouble ahead, China’s basic approach—not endorsing Moscow’s aggression but resisting Western efforts to punish Russia—has garnered global support. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa blamed the war on NATO. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, refused to condemn Russia. India and Vietnam, essential partners for any American strategy in the Indo-Pacific, are closer to China than the U.S. in their approach to the war. Western arm-twisting and the powerful effect of bank sanctions ensure a certain degree of sanctions compliance and support for symbolic U.N. resolutions condemning Russian aggression. But the lack of non-Western enthusiasm for America’s approach to Mr. Putin’s war is a phenomenon that U.S. policy makers ignore at their peril.”
From Dana Brownlee’s must-read article “Why Ketanji Brown Jackson Can’t Dare Display a ‘Brett Kavanaugh Temperament’” (Forbes): “Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee is daunting for any Supreme Court nominee, but this week Ketanji Brown Jackson does so with an additional pressure that no other nominee has had in the Supreme Court’s 233 year history—navigating potential tone-policing as a Black woman in a White-dominant space. While judicial temperament is widely viewed as an important criterion for confirmation, her performance to date suggests what many Black women professionals already know—Black women are often held to a higher standard, given far less grace and easily labeled ‘angry, difficult or unprofessional.’ Indeed, with every response, Jackson must thread the needle ever so carefully remaining likeable, yet authoritative, deferential, yet expert…and always non-threatening irrespective of what is thrown her way.”
Sticking to the Supreme Court: Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported in the Washington Post this week that Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent 29 text messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 presidential election to encourage him to press forward with efforts to overturn the election. (We also learned this month that Virginia Thomas attended the 1/6 Stop the Steal rally at the White House.) The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in January of this year that Trump could not block the National Archives from releasing White House records pertinent to the 1/6 Capitol riot—including Meadows’ text messages—to the House committee investigating the riot. The lone dissenter in the case was—you guessed it—Clarence Thomas. He did not recuse himself from the case nor offered an explanation for his dissent. It’s not surprising Virginia Thomas holds these views about the 2020 election or would act on them. It’s also not surprising Clarence Thomas would side with Trump. But it does make one wonder if Thomas is trying to use his position to protect his wife from legal scrutiny. What’s also distressing is that if the Trump White House and it’s enablers in the Justice Department and various state governments had successfully followed Virginia Thomas’s game plan, they would have likely found themselves in front of the Supreme Court, which, we may fairly wonder, may have been part of Virginia Thomas’s game plan as well. As Amanda Carpenter wrote in The Bulwark, it’s just another reason to question the institutional integrity of the Supreme Court. (Further reading: “Ginni and Clarence Thomas Have Done Enough Damage” by Jesse Wegman, the New York Times)
One more Supreme Court item to note: In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled Friday the Navy could take into account a Navy SEAL’s COVID vaccine status when making deployment decisions. Not sure why getting a vaccine is so controversial in the military since servicemembers are already required to get vaccines for adenovirus, hepatitis A and B, influenza, measles/mumps/rubella, meningococcal, polio, tetanus-diphtheria, and varicella/chicken pox, as well as (depending on risk and occupation) anthrax, cholera, haemophilus influenzae type B, Japanese encephalitis, plague, rabies, small pox, typhoid, and yellow fever. Service members are allowed to opt out of mandatory vaccinations for health, administrative, or religious reasons. Amazingly, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented in this case.
OK, I promise, one last thing about the Supreme Court. In an unsigned opinion on the shadow docket, the Court’s conservative majority just tossed out Wisconsin’s state assembly maps after mapmakers added one (1) more majority-minority district than the current maps had allocated, which would have raised the total of majority-minority districts from six (6) to seven (7). Wisconsin’s mapmakers believed this brought their map into compliance with the Voting Rights Act, which the State Supreme Court believed was plausible. (And remember, Wisconsin’s maps are already highly gerrymandered to favor Republicans, who have a 63-36 majority in the State Assembly despite the state’s rough 50-50 split.) This all happened without a hearing. As Rick Hasen wrote, “So, to sum up: the Court used a case in an emergency procedural posture to reach out and decide an issue that could have waited for full briefing and argument either in a lower court in a challenge to the maps or if the Supreme Court had set the case for argument. It decided these issues in ways hostile to minority voting rights without giving a full opportunity for airing out the issues and pointing out how this will further hurt voters of color. It continues to chip away at the Voting Rights Act without acknowledging that it is killing off the last major protection for minority voters from discriminatory districting plans.”
Tarrant County, Texas, the home of Ft. Worth, rejected 815 ballots in the March 1 primaries on account of Texas’ new voter ID requirements for absentee voters. How many of those 815 ballots do you think were Republican ballots? Lower…lower…lower… Help us out, Count:
The newest craze among those who believe the 2020 election was stolen: Prohibiting the use of ballot tabulating machines. That’s right, they want to count every ballot by hand. If these idiots were really worried about the accuracy of the vote count, they’d never want to introduce a method that practically guarantees routine human error to the process. Once upon a time, this sort of rage-fueled knee-jerk reaction wouldn’t have been taken seriously, but these days there’s a robust market for crazy.
This could get interesting. Rep. Mo Brooks—who not only spoke at the 1/6 Stop the Steal rally but wore body armor that day for some reason—is running for Senate in Alabama. Trump endorsed him last year, and he had a 41% to 18% polling lead over his nearest rival in the Republican primary. Since then, Brooks has kind of made it known he doesn’t think the results of the 2020 election can be overturned and has run a lackluster campaign. His poll numbers flipped, leaving him in third place in the primary. Trump, angry at the congressman for going soft on the Big Lie and worried about backing a loser, unendorsed Brooks on Wednesday. Brooks, deciding two can play at that game, came back and said Trump has pushed him since 1/6 to “rescind” the election and put the ex-president back in the White House, which, of course, would be a major violation of federal law and everything this country stands for. Sounds like Brooks is out for some revenge. Might he have a few receipts? Yeah, I know, the guy’s a creep and how far can you trust a creep but have you ever also noticed how Trump associates with a lot of creeps?
The next time someone tells you scientists don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to climate change, agree with them and provide them with this example: An ice shelf the size of New York City that has existed for thousands of years broke off Antarctica this week in an area scientists had believed was stable and not experiencing significant change due to global warming. Temperatures in Antarctica have been 70 degrees warmer than normal this week. Help us out, Count:
Yeah, that’s a big number, Count. While West Antarctica has seen ice shelf collapse, this is the first time scientists have observed this happening in East Antarctica.
Vincent’s Picks: “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”
By the end of the day, I bet Jessica Chastain will be holding an Oscar for her portrayal of Christian televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker in Michael Showalter’s biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye, currently streaming on HBO Max. The only thing that might keep Chastain—who completely immerses herself in the role—from taking home the trophy is the slight quality of the film itself.
Tammy Faye and her husband Jim (Andrew Garfield) rose to national prominence in the 1970s after leaving Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (where Jim was the first host of The 700 Club) to found the PTL network. PTL became very popular among America’s evangelical Christian community, which was about to become a major political and social force in the United States, and soon enough Jim and Tammy Faye were two of the nation’s most well-known religious figures. At first glance, they made for a rather odd couple. Jim, played by Garfield as a kind of fundamentalist Mr. Rogers, came across as a dork. Tammy Faye was a middle-American diva who became famous for her liberal application of eye shadow and mascara. Yet both had a naive, childish quality that endeared them to their TV audience (which numbered 20 million on a daily basis.)
Jim and Tammy Faye preached a prosperity gospel which held God would reward faithful Christians with material wealth. That’s a highly dubious theological proposition but one that fit the self-indulgent ethos of the 1980s quite well. Tammy Faye, with her glamorous yet tacky style and garish make-up, embodied the idea that anyone could get rich if they accepted Jesus as their savior, while the Bakker’s personal wealth seemed to legitimize their beliefs.
The Bakker’s preached on their TV network that viewers could earn God's favor and subsequent reward by phoning-in donations to PTL so their ministry could fund mission work and build houses for the poor. Those same donations, however, were also used to fraudulently fund the Bakker’s lavish lifestyle and cover up an affair Jim had with a woman who also accused him of sexual assault. (A male acquaintance also claimed Jim had an affair with him.) The resulting scandal became a major news event in the mid-1980s. The Bakker’s fell from grace, PTL declared bankruptcy, their Christian-themed amusement park Heritage USA (at one time the third most-visited amusement park in the U.S. behind Disneyland and Disneyworld) had to close, Jim went to prison, and Tammy Faye ended up living in an apartment in southern California having been reduced to tabloid fodder and an easy late-night TV punchline.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye asks viewers to reconsider the life of Ms. Bakker, who the film shows was much more tolerant and accepting of difference than virtually any other figure in the conservative Christian movement of the late 20th century. The film attributes this to Tammy Faye’s experience being ostracized as a child by her church in International Falls, Minnesota, on account of her mother’s status as a divorcee. Her church preached damnation but Tammy Faye latched on to Christ’s message of forgiveness and acceptance, which allowed her in turn to accept herself for who she was. That ends up cutting both ways for her. On the one hand, she seems incapable of asking herself if her Christian faith calls her to pursue a program of self-improvement; if, for example, the fur coats and opulent waterfront mansion are a bit much even if she enjoys them. Yet as an exuberant and decidedly non-straight-laced evangelical, she opened-up a space in the church for those who may not traditionally have fit into it. For example, she once devoted a segment on PTL in the 1980s to an interview with an HIV-positive gay man and affirmed that God accepted him for who he was.
Unfortunately, the film doesn’t explore these ideas as much as it should. Part of the reason for that is that Tammy Faye herself was not a very introspective person. There is certainly something admirable about someone whose basic Christian principle is to simply love people effusively and unconditionally. Such a person can do a lot of good in their life. But that’s also a personality trait Tammy Faye comes by naturally. The belief never really challenges her spiritually or leads her (at least within the running time of this movie) to question the tenets of conservative evangelical Christianity. It’s all surface, and the screenplay struggles to go deeper.
The other reason the film doesn’t dig into these ideas as much as it could is that it’s basically a documentary. It’s more interested in what happened than in character development or thematic insight. If you’re unfamiliar with the Bakker’s story or the 2000 documentary of the same name this film is based on, you’ll probably find the film engaging. For those who already know this tale, you’ll likely find the film well-made and well-acted yet wishing it had something extra or more provocative to say about its subject.