#Michael McFaul

[mylionheart2]

ACTIVE MEASURES 

[politicaldilfs]

Michael McFaul

[thecapitolradar]

Goodbye to my fearless friend, Alexei Navalny

Alexei was a friend to America, too. Read this piece, and get to know who and what we lost when Putin murdered him.

It takes a human to appreciate humanity, I guess; and Mike McFaul paints a picture of our friend, Navalny, that stands in sharp contrast to Putin's cruelty and depravity.

#freenavalny we tweeted when Putin imprisoned our friend. Our prayer has been answered in the saddest way possible.

#RIP Alexei Navalny.

[misseyres]

“If Michael McFaul had a vagina I’d be all over it” is the best thing I’ve ever heard in a work meeting

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andrew Roth at The Guardian:

Donald Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick has reignited fears in Europe that he would pursue a transactional “America first” foreign policy that could culminate in the US pushing for Ukraine to acquiesce to Vladimir Putin and sue for peace with Russia. “It’s bad for us but it’s terrible news for [Ukraine],” said one senior European diplomat in Washington. “[Vance] is not our ally.” Foreign diplomats and observers have frequently called Trump’s actual policies a “black box,” saying that was impossible to know for certain what the unpredictable leader would do when in power. Some have soothed themselves by suggesting that names tipped for top positions, such as former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, would maintain a foreign policy status quo while Trump focuses on domestic affairs.

But a prospective Trump administration now has a much more energetic surrogate who will fuel Trump’s skepticism towards Ukraine and Europe, while urging on the party’s aggressive trade and foreign policy elsewhere around the globe. “Senator Vance was one of the leading opponents of the new assistance package to Ukraine last spring and has expressed indifference to what happens in that war,” said Michael McFaul, director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a former ambassador to Russia. “By choosing Vance as his running mate, Trump has clarified a very clear choice for American voters in November on foreign policy.” “President Biden’s foreign policy strategy radically contrasts with Mr Trump’s approach,” he said. “Biden and Harris have promoted democracy and stood up to autocrats. Trump and Vance have paid no attention to advancing democracy abroad and instead have embraced autocrats. The contrast in foreign approaches embraced by these two presidential candidates has never been clearer in my lifetime.”

In public, Vance has criticized US aid packages to Ukraine and pushed for negotiations with Russia, although Ukraine has said it did not wish to hold talks. He has accused the Biden administration of “micromanaging” Israel’s war in Gaza, and said that America should “enable Israel to actually finish the job”. He has advocated containment of China, saying that America was “spread too thin” in Europe and pushing for aggressive trade restrictions and intellectual property protections against China. [...] Vance also said he believed the Ukraine war “will end in a negotiated peace”, a view that appeared to be backed up on Tuesday by the Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, who has been traveling on a rogue “peace mission” to Moscow and Mar-a-Lago, wrote that Trump after the elections will begin acting as a “peace broker immediately”, even before his inauguration.

Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán are happy at the news that Donald Trump tapped anti-Ukraine Senator J.D. Vance to be on the ticket.

If the Trump/Vance ticket wins, Ukraine is done for and Russia would terrorize the Baltics and some of the former Warsaw Pact nations.

A vote for Biden (or Harris) would keep Ukraine strong, so vote Biden/Harris!

[mariacallous]

The war in Ukraine has altered the course of global history. These authors explore how. When Vladimir Putin's forces sought to conquer Ukraine in February 2022, they did more than threaten the survival of a vulnerable democracy. The invasion unleashed a crisis that has changed the course of world affairs. This conflict has reshaped alliances, deepened global cleavages, and caused economic disruptions that continue to reverberate around the globe. It has initiated the first great-power nuclear crisis in decades and raised fundamental questions about the sources of national power and military might in the modern age. The outcome of the conflict will profoundly influence the international balance of power, the relationship between democracies and autocracies, and the rules that govern global affairs.

In War in Ukraine, Hal Brands brings together an all-star group of analysts to assess the conflict's origins, course, and implications and to offer their appraisals of one of the most geopolitically consequential crises of the early twenty-first century. Essays cover topics including the twists and turns of the war itself, the successes and failures of US strategy, the impact of sanctions, the future of Russia and its partnership with China, and more.

Contributors: Anne Applebaum, Joshua Baker, Alexander Bick, Hal Brands, Daniel Drezner, Peter Feaver, Lawrence Freedman, Francis Gavin, Brian Hart, William Inboden, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Michael Kimmage, Michael Kofman, Stephen Kotkin, Mark Leonard, Bonny Lin, Thomas Mahnken, Dara Massicot, Michael McFaul, Robert Person, Kori Schake, and Ashley Tellis.

[freetheshit-outofyou]

The list of US K.I.A.'s from Operation Just Cause December 20, 1989 – January 31, 1990.

Army

Name    Home of Record

SSG Larry Barnard            Hallstead, PA

PFC Roy D. Brown Jr.       Buena Park, CA

PVT Vance T. Coats           Great Falls, MT              

SPC Jerry S. Daves            North Carolina

SGT Michael A. Deblois   Dubach, LA

PFC Martin D. Denson     Abilene, TX

PFC William D. Gibbs       Marina, CA.

SPC Phillip S. Lear            Westminster, SC

SPC Alejandro Manriquelozano*               Lauderhill, FL

PFC James W. Markwell  Cincinnati, Ohio

CPL Ivan M. Perez            Pawtucket, R.I

PFC John M. Price            Conover, WI

PFC Scott L. Roth              Killeen, TX

PVT Kenneth D. Scott       Princeton, WV

1LT John R. Hunter           Victor, MT

CW2 Wilson B. Owens    Myrtle Beach, SC

CW2 Andrew P. Porter    Saint Clair, MI

PVT James A. Taber Jr.    Montrose, CO

Navy

LT(JG) John Connors         Arlington, MA

BM1 Chris Tilghman        Kailua, HA

ENC Donald McFaul         Deschutes, OR

TM2 Issac G. Rodriguez III           Missouri City, TX

Marine Corps

Name    Home of Record

Cpl. Garreth C. Isaak                      Greenville, SC     * denotes service member is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

[zenruption]

Is Vladimir Putin The Richest Man On Earth?

Among the very rich, it is an open secret that many believe Vladimir Putin is the richest person on the planet. Individuals like Elon Musk's net worth is largely calculable due to their public holdings in companies like Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX. When there is a change in value or earnings, there is a respective change in net worth.

With Putin, however, his wealth is related to Oligarchs and his stranglehold on opaque business practices. Even the modest estimates of Putin’s wealth make him a billionaire. How a KGB agent turned President amassed a billion dollars in wealth is not a story of innovation but exploitation.

Although the exact net worth of Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, is not publicly known, his personal wealth is shrouded in secrecy. However, many reports suggest that Putin's personal wealth could be in the billions of dollars.

In 2015, Russian businessman Sergei Polonsky claimed that Putin's personal net worth was $200 billion, making him the richest person in the world. However, this figure has not been independently verified and is widely regarded as an exaggeration.

Other estimates of Putin's net worth are more conservative, but still suggest that he is extremely wealthy. In 2018, for example, the former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, estimated Putin's net worth at $1.4 billion.

It's important to note that Putin's wealth is largely speculative and based on circumstantial evidence, given the lack of transparency surrounding his personal finances. Additionally, Putin has denied having any significant personal wealth, and the Russian government has dismissed claims of his vast personal fortune as baseless

The rankings of the world's richest people often fluctuate due to changes in the stock market, investments, and other factors. However, according to Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires list (as of March 31, 2023), the five richest people in the world are currently:

1. Elon Musk: The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has a net worth of $163.6 billion.

2. Bernard Arnault & family: The CEO of LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) has a net worth of $160.2 billion.

3. Jeff Bezos: The founder and former CEO of Amazon has a net worth of $115.8 billion.

4. Bill Gates: The co-founder of Microsoft has a net worth of $103.2 billion.

5. Mark Zuckerberg: The co-founder and CEO of Facebook has a net worth of $96.6 billion.

It's worth noting that these rankings are subject to change and may be different depending on the source and methodology used to calculate net worth.

[winterbirb]

Look, it's about—vibes. A lot of people can be annoying about Freedom and America but their vibes are what tell apart their intentions.

Unfortunately, the second Obama term is still pretty heavily redacted, so the vibes have to be inferred. Luckily, there's a method! It's called: What Do The Russians Think. It works very well. I'll demonstrate.

Samantha Power and Michael McFaul both have incurable exposure to annoying Ivy League ideology. Power, who generally seemed like she was about to start crying, got along with her Russian counterpart, even though Churkin slightly roasted her a few times. McFaul, who's obnoxious, spent his 2 years as Ambassador as a squeaky toy for the Russian government and media because he had a meeting with oppositionists that Bill Burns scheduled and (also) attended.

Bill Burns has not been told to fuck off by the Russian government, or anyone else for that matter, even once.

So if all three of them say something along the lines of "freedom america democracy uwu" it's easy enough to differentiate, based on reactions from the Russian side, between Burns' "I'm literally just a diplomat doing my job" vs Power's "This is an important moral framework of mine but I would also be incredibly sad if anything bad happened to you, also" versus McFaul's "[blatant hypocrisy]"

Same with Secretaries of State. Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Mike Pompeo could all feasibly make an argument based on America Freedom Democracy uwu. In fact, that's often the only feasible option. So, instead of labeling all of them as genocide apologists, let's take a look at how Russia has reacted to each person.

Powell: Generally ignored, except for (deserved) roasts about that UN speech

Rice: Russian delegation is openly irritated by her. Reasonable, considering her next job was "lobbyist for exxonmobil".

Clinton: 2016. Lmfao

Kerry: probably the one person in the US government who hasn't been sanctioned, so. Take that as you will ☺

Pompeo: HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA HA. HAHHA. HA. HA. HA

Iran even fucking specified that Death to America doesn't mean all Americans or even American officials, but, well,

So uhhh I don't think Russia's a fan

[cyberbenb]

‘Trump fundamentally doesn't care about Ukraine’ – Michael McFaul on US elections

On Nov. 5, U.S. voters will go to the polls in what could be the most consequential presidential election in living memory. Former U.S. President and Republican candidate Donald Trump , who regularly Source : kyivindependent.com/trump-fun…

[masterofd1saster]

CJ free speech - fantastic essay by Matt Taibbi

is one of the best essays I've ever seen on free speech.

Saying no is very American. From “Don’t Tread on Me!” to “Nuts” to “You Cannot Be Serious!,” defiance is in our DNA. Now disagreement is seen as a threat, and according to John Kerry, must be “hammered out of existence.” The former presidential candidate just complained at a World Economic Forum meeting that “it’s really hard to govern” and “our First Amendment stands as a major block” to the important work of hammering out unhealthy choices. In the open he said this! I was telling Tim Pool about this backstage, and he asked, “Was black ooze coming out of his mouth?” Kerry added that it’s “really hard to build consensus,” and told forum members they need to “win the right to govern” and “be free to implement change.” What do they need to be free of? The First Amendment, yes, but more importantly: us. Complainers. That’s our shared experience. We are obstacles to consensus.

***

Let me pause to say something about America’s current intellectual class, from which the “anti-disinformation” complex comes. By the way: There are no working-class censors, poor censors, hungry censors. The dirty secret of “content moderation” everywhere is that it’s a tiny sliver of the educated rich correcting everyone else. It’s telling people what fork to use, but you can get a degree in it. America has the most useless aristocrats in history. Even the French dandies marched to the razor by the Jacobins were towering specimens of humanity compared to the Michael Haydens, John Brennans, James Clappers, Mike McFauls, and Rick Stengels who make up America’s self-appointed behavior police. In prerevolutionary France, even the most drunken, depraved, debauched libertine had to be prepared to back up an insolent act with a sword duel to the death. Our aristocrats pee themselves at the sight of mean tweets. They have no honor, no belief, no poetry, art, or humor, no patriotism, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments. They’re simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off.

***

Thomas Paine’s central message was that the humblest farmer was a towering moral giant compared to the invertebrate scum who wore crowns and lived in British castles. Common Sense told us to stand up straight. Never bow, especially not to a politician, because as Paine explained—I want you to think of Kerry and Hayden and Cheney here—“Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey. . . are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.” Oscar Wilde noted ours was the only country in the world where being a kook was respectable. Every other country shunned the tinkerer or mad inventor and cheerfully donated them to us, turbocharging our American experiment. We welcomed crazy, and the world has light bulbs, the telephone, movies, airplanes, submarines, the internet, false teeth, the Colt .45, rock and roll, hip-hop, and monster dunks as a result. 

***

To all those snoops and nosy parkers sitting in their Homeland Security–funded “Centers of Excellence,” telling us day after day we must think as they say and vote as they say or else we’re traitorous Putin-loving fascists and enablers of “dangerous” disinformation: Motherfucker, I’m an American. That shit does not work on me. And how can you impugn my patriotism, when you’re sitting in Klaus Schwab’s lap, apologizing for the First Amendment to a crowd of Europeans? Look in the mirror.  I’m not the problem. We’re not the problem. You’re the problem.  You suck. Thank you.

Get on your feet and give Matt a standing ovation.

[chetyarbrough]

PUTIN & UKRAINE

Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog From Cold War to Hot Peace (An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia) By: Michael McFaul Narrated By: L. J. Ganser Michael McFaul (Author, American academic and diplomat, ambassador to Russia 2012-2014, former Professor of International Studies at Stanford.) Not since George Kennan’s brief time as Ambassador to Russia in 1952 has an American…

[gamboagarcia]

Gracias de antemano por sus comentarios Designar a Moscú como patrocinador del terrorismo no impedirá que EEUU hable con Rusia: Exembajador En entrevista exclusiva con la Voz de América, el ex embajador de EEUU en Moscú, Michael McFaul, habló sobre las propuestas de un proyecto radical de sanciones a Rusia tras la invasión de Ucrania. Estados Unidos (VOA) - Mientras las fuerzas ucranianas continúan luchando contra las tropas rusas en el este y el sur del país, Europa y Est... Sigue leyendo: https://www.adiario.mx/orbe/designar-a-moscu-como-patrocinador-del-terrorismo-no-impedira-que-eeuu-hable-con-rusia-exembajador/?feed_id=160991&_unique_id=6674f6388b9e8

[mariacallous]

Foreign Policy Situation Report: Munich Reacts to Navalny’s Death

On Friday, news broke that jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had died at the Polar Wolf penal colony in Russia, sending shockwaves through the security conference in Munich where many of Navalny’s friends and supporters, as well as his wife and top Biden administration officials, are convening.

“Upon hearing the horrible news, I didn’t know if I should have immediately flown to my family or speak out,” Yulia Navalnaya, his wife, said in a last-minute address to the MSC, right after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris exited the stage. “But then I thought, ‘What would Alexei do?��� and I’m sure he would be here,” she added.

Navalnaya’s remarks were greeted with a standing ovation from the somber crowd. “If this is true, I want Putin and everyone around him to know that they will be held accountable for everything they did to our country, to my family,” Navalnaya said.

Confusion and shock. At first, there was confusion at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof where the MSC is taking place, as news alerts about a cryptic post from Russia’s prison service saying that the dissident felt unwell after a walk, lost consciousness, and later died began circulating. In the hotel’s atrium, everyone’s necks craned down to look at their phones. Slowly, the grim realization of Navalny’s death set in.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, when a small gaggle of journalists informed him of the news. McFaul was a longtime friend of Navalny’s and had just come from visiting the family. “Navalny was my friend. Forgive me for not being able to answer journalists’ questions dispassionately right now,” he wrote later in a post on X.

Navalny, a former lawyer who highlighted Kremlin corruption on a popular blog before he entered opposition politics more than two decades ago, survived a previous assassination attempt when he was poisoned by Russian security services with the chemical agent Novichok in August 2020.

For more on the opposition leader’s life and his impact on Russia’s besieged democratic movement, read our colleague Amy Mackinnon’s obituary of Navalny.

“Russia is responsible.” Harris, the keynote speaker in Munich, said the Biden administration was still working to confirm whether Navalny had indeed died. “Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible,” Harris said.

The question now is what comes next. In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Putin that Russia would face “devastating” consequences if Navalny died in prison. Already, reporters here have asked U.S. officials about what Washington’s response will be.

Biden gave his initial answer later in the day at the White House, and it’s one that’s not likely to satisfy Navalny’s incensed friends and supporters.

“That was three years ago. In the meantime, they faced a hell of a lot of consequences,” Biden said in response to questions about his 2021 comments. He cited steep Russian casualty figures in Ukraine and “great sanctions across the board.”

When asked if he’d roll out new sanctions on Russia, Biden gave a vague answer: “We’re looking at a whole number of options. That’s all I’ll say right now.”

Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas told SitRep that the West should work on tightening existing sanctions on Russia and put more secondary sanctions in place so that countries such as India that are courting the West while still buying Russian oil can no longer buy crude from the Kremlin.

U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, meanwhile, echoed comments from Navalny’s wife, saying, “Putin should be accountable for what has happened. No one should doubt the dreadful nature of his regime.”

Beyond Navalny. After her comments about the Russian opposition leader’s death, Harris used her podium at Munich to make an election-year pitch for the Biden administration’s foreign policy, especially in the wake of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments over the weekend that he would let the Russians “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies who are slow to boost defense spending.

(NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said this week that 18 of 31 NATO member states will hit the alliance’s target of spending the equivalent of 2 percent of GDP on defense.)

Harris even had a campaign bumper sticker line ready-made for the moment. “Isolation is not insulation,” she said to the critics of the Biden administration’s globally minded foreign policy. “America cannot retreat. America must stand strong for democracy.”

In the eyes of most MSC conferencegoers, however, there’s a big, Congress-sized roadblock standing in the way of that.

The next tranche of $60 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine, as well as aid for Israel and Taiwan, is stalled in Congress as the House of Representatives goes on recess until the end of the month. Harris and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken thus face an uphill battle in trying to reassure allies about those U.S. commitments.

Both Harris and Blinken are set to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tomorrow. “We will work to secure critical weapons and resources that Ukraine badly needs,” Harris said. “The failure to do so would be a gift to Vladimir Putin.”

“If we stand by while an aggressor invades its neighbor with impunity, they will keep going,” Harris added. “And in the case of Putin, that means all of Europe will be threatened.”

Back at the White House, Biden was less diplomatic about the congressional impasse.

“It’s about time they step up now, don’t you think?” he said of Congress. “Instead of going on a two-week vacation? … Two weeks! What are they thinking? My God, this is bizarre, and it’s just reinforcing all the concern and almost—I won’t say panic—but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally.”