The Biden Team have done well to champion aid to Ukraine, but the efforts to wield the issue as a weapon against Donald Trump and his supporters at home have contributed to declining public support for aid.

Putin's nuclear threats should be taken for what they are. Expressions of frustration, not an indicator of immanent action.

(Originally published on AMAC https://amac.us/how-bidens-sanctions-on-russian-energy-are-playing-right-into-putins-hands/)

(Originally published by AMAC https://amac.us/the-only-solution-to-the-war-in-ukraine-is-on-the-battlefield/)

For all the panic about a prospective Russian invasion of Ukraine, little time has been invested in trying to determine what Putin might hope to achieve.

With the benefit of three decades, the greatest failure of US foreign policy was not failing to nation build in Afghanistan or Iraq, but the refusal to invest even minimal capital in making Russia's transition a success

The attempt to turn the leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee into a debate over whether Trump is "soft" on Russia or Putin is exactly the sort of inflexible thinking that has ruined US policy in Syria.

Whatever policy is the right one to adopt regarding the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the assumption that arming the Ukrainian military is either a simple task, or an alternative to direct interevention is absurd.

Putin's strategic objectives likely have less to do with territorial ambitions in regions that are economically worthless, and more to do with endeavoring to discredit NATO as a viable protector of neghboring states.

The dynamics of the European response to Russian actions in the Ukraine are being driven by economic factors which leave EU leaders vulnerable domestically in the event of any policies which impose ecnomic costs

Authoritarian states struggle to manage successions. Absent the ability to submit them to the electorate, they are fought informally at all levels of the state, and even the most loyal heir given time will become a theat

In the eyes of Vladimir Putin, Russia has spent two decades on a policy of appeasement towards the United States, only to be met with duplicity and betrayal. Combined with a personal aversion to Obama it explains much.