Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Russia declared Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas a "wanted" person on Tuesday.

The website of Russia's interior ministry included Kallas in a database as being "wanted under the criminal code."

Estonia's State Secretary Taimar Peterkop and Lithuania's Culture Minister Simonas Kairys were also named on the wanted list.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov later said that Kallas and the other Baltic lawmakers had been put on the wanted list for hostile actions against Russia and the "desecration of historical memory."

"These are people who take hostile actions against historical memory and our country," Peskov told reporters.

A Russian security source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Russia's state-run TASS news agency that the three were being prosecuted for "destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers" in World War II.

Kallas has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
(AFP, Reuters, EFE)

Today’s big story continues to be Trump’s statement that he “would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if those countries are, in his words, “delinquent.” Both Democrats and Republicans have stood firm behind NATO since Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for president in 1952 to put down the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, and won.

National security specialist Tom Nichols of The Atlantic expressed starkly just what this means: “The leader of one of America’s two major political parties has just signaled to the Kremlin that if elected, he would not only refuse to defend Europe, but he would gladly support Vladimir Putin during World War III and even encourage him to do as he pleases to America’s allies.” Former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark called Trump’s comments “treasonous.”

To be clear, Trump’s beef with NATO has nothing to do with money. Trump has always misrepresented NATO as a sort of protection racket, but as Nick Paton Walsh of CNN put it today: “NATO is not an alliance based on dues: it is the largest military bloc in history, formed to face down the Soviet threat, based on the collective defense that an attack on one is an attack on all—a principle enshrined in Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty.”

On April 4, 1949, the United States and eleven other nations in North America and Europe came together to sign the original NATO declaration. It established a military alliance that guaranteed collective security because all of the member states agreed to defend each other against an attack by a third party. At the time, their main concern was resisting Soviet aggression, but with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin, NATO resisted Russian aggression instead.

Article 5 of the treaty requires every nation to come to the aid of any one of them if it is attacked militarily. That article has been invoked only once: after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, after which NATO-led troops went to Afghanistan.

In 2006, NATO members agreed to commit at least 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP, a measure of national production) to their own defense spending in order to make sure that NATO remained ready for combat. The economic crash of 2007–2008 meant a number of governments did not meet this commitment, and in 2014, allies pledged to do so. Although most still do not invest 2% of their GDP in their militaries, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014 motivated countries to speed up that investment.

On the day NATO went into effect, President Harry S. Truman said, “If there is anything inevitable in the future, it is the will of the people of the world for freedom and for peace.” In the years since 1949, his observation seems to have proven correct. NATO now has 31 member nations.

Crucially, NATO acts not only as a response to attack, but also as a deterrent, and its strength has always been backstopped by the military strength of the U.S., including its nuclear weapons. Trump has repeatedly attacked NATO and said he would take the U.S. out of it in a second term, alarming Congress enough that last year it put into the National Defense Authorization Act a measure prohibiting any president from leaving NATO without the approval of two thirds of the Senate or a congressional law.

But as Russia specialist Anne Applebaum noted in The Atlantic last month, even though Trump might have trouble actually tossing out a long-standing treaty that has safeguarded national security for 75 years, the realization that the U.S. is abandoning its commitment to collective defense would make the treaty itself worthless. Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholtz called the attack on NATO’s mutual defense guarantee “irresponsible and dangerous,” and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines our security.”

Applebaum noted on social media that “Trump's rant…will persuade Russia to keep fighting in Ukraine and, in time, to attack a NATO country too.” She urged people not to “let [Florida senator Marco] Rubio, [South Carolina senator Lindsey] Graham or anyone try to downplay or alter the meaning of what Trump did: He invited Russia to invade NATO. It was not a joke and it will certainly not be understood that way in Moscow.”

She wrote last month that the loss of the U.S. as an ally would force European countries to “cozy up to Russia,” with its authoritarian system, while Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) suggested that many Asian countries would turn to China as a matter of self-preservation. Countries already attacking democracy “would have a compelling new argument in favor of autocratic methods and tactics.” Trade agreements would wither, and the U.S. economy would falter and shrink.

Former governor of South Carolina and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, whose husband is in the military and is currently deployed overseas, noted: “He just put every military member at risk and every one of our allies at risk just by saying something at a rally.” Conservative political commentator and former Bulwark editor in chief Charlie Sykes noted that Trump is “signaling weakness,… appeasement,… surrender…. One of the consistent things about Donald Trump has been his willingness to bow his knee to Vladimir Putin. To ask for favors from Vladimir Putin…. This comes amid his campaign to basically kneecap the aid to Ukraine right now. People ought to take this very, very seriously because it feels as if we are sleepwalking into a global catastrophe…. ”

President Joe Biden asked Congress to pass a supplemental national security bill back in October of last year to provide additional funding for Ukraine and Israel, as well as for the Indo-Pacific. MAGA Republicans insisted they would not pass such a measure unless it contained border security protections, but when Senate negotiators actually produced such protections earlier this month, Trump opposed the measure and Republicans promptly killed it.

There remains a bipartisan majority in favor of aid to Ukraine, and the Senate appears on the verge of passing a $95 billion funding package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. In part, this appears to be an attempt by Republican senators to demonstrate their independence from Trump, who has made his opposition to the measure clear and, according to Katherine Tulluy-McManus and Ursula Perano of Politico, spent the weekend telling senators not to pass it. South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, previously a Ukraine supporter, tonight released a statement saying he will vote no on the measure.

Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News recorded how Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) weighed in on the issue during debate today: “This is not a stalemate. This guy [Putin] is on life support… He will not survive if NATO gets stronger.” If the bill does not pass, Tillis said, “You will see the alliance that is supporting Ukraine crumble.” For his part, Tillis wanted no part of that future: “I am not going to be on that page in history.”

If the Senate passes the bill, it will go to the House, where MAGA Republicans who oppose Ukraine funding have so far managed to keep the measure from being taken up. Although it appears likely there is a majority in favor of the bill, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tonight preemptively rejected the measure, saying that it is nonstarter because it does not address border security.

Tonight, Trump signaled his complete takeover of the Republican Party. He released a statement confirming that, having pressured Ronna McDaniel to resign as head of the Republican National Committee, he is backing as co-chairs fervent loyalists Michael Whatley, who loudly supported Trump’s claims of fraud after the 2020 presidential election, and his own daughter-in-law Lara Trump, wife of Trump’s second son, Eric. Lara has never held a leadership position in the party. Trump also wants senior advisor to the Trump campaign Chris LaCivita to become the chief operating officer of the Republican National Committee.

This evening, Trump’s lawyers took the question of whether he is immune from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election to the Supreme Court. Trump has asked the court to stay last week’s ruling of the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals that he is not immune. A stay would delay the case even further than the two months it already has been delayed by his litigation of the immunity issue. Trump’s approach has always been to stall the cases against him for as long as possible. If the justices deny his request, the case will go back to the trial court and Trump could stand trial.

“An elderly man with a poor memory.” That’s what the report by Special Counsel Robert Her said about Joe Biden. It’s been endless fodder, instantaneously, for everything from the absurd to the predictable to the asinine. Cue op-eds in the New York Times breathlessly demanding Joe Biden step down. Presto, articles about invoking the 25th Amendment to force Biden out of office, on grounds of mental incompetence.

Let’s take a deep breath, and understand what’s really going on here, which is sad, pathetic, and ugly.

There are many, many reasons not to like Joe Biden. Especially right now. Just 15% of young people approve of his handling of what’s happening in Gaza. Minorities are shaking their heads and walking away, baffled, while the Democrats suddenly tack hard to the right, shattering their fragile progressive-center coalition. Don’t like him? Fair enough, I’m not here to persuade you to.

But. We need to be clear about our grounds. There’s a difference between a substantive grounds for breaking a coalition, fair enough. And a flimsy one, that only plays into the hands of the hard right.

There’s a big difference between age and ageism, in this case.

America’s a brutal, indifferent society. And one of the ways in which it’s so is that it’s profoundly ageist. You don’t notice this, entirely, until you live elsewhere. And then suddenly you realize that in America, elderly people are effectively disappeared. You barely see them in everyday life, if at all, whereas in most of the rest of the world, from Asia to Europe, there they are, going about their business, because, after all, they exist too.

When I was really young, growing up between continents, this struck me so intensely that I’d follow old people around in America when I saw them—curious, perplexed. Where did they go? Why didn’t I see them nearly as often as everywhere else?

Ageism is a norm, and it’s one that’s to be expected from a hypercapitalist society. As your “utility” and “productivity” diminish—or, worse, are thought to diminish—so too your place in society disappears. You no longer have the right to exist, socially, morally, culturally. And in America, we can see this norm in operation everywhere. In the corporate world, 40 is now considered “old.” Looking for a job after 50 is considered to be a dicey affair, that’ll provoke looks of pity, crossed with scorn. You leave your age off your CV after you cross your 30s, nervously hoping that recruiters and “human resource” managers won’t piece the puzzle together. You pretend to be young.

Young and perfect. And this norm has accelerated, sped up, turbo-charged, in recent years. Who do we pretend to be on social media? Not old and wise. YouTube face is a sardonic expression of youthful naïveté. Wow, Mom, I’m amazed! I’m gawping in awe! On Instagram, beauty standards for women have crossed the point of caricaturing youth, and become grotesque, provoking a backlash even amongst the young.

Who does America lionize? Americans are told to revere figures like boy geniuses—Zuck. Middle-aged billionaires—the creepy guy who bought Twitter. And so on. Ageism and patriarchy go hand in hand. Go gray, and your career’s in peril, whether artist, singer, tycoon. If you’re a woman, the price is exponentially higher. Stay young at all costs is the message, and it’s received loud and clear, in the form of plastic surgery, fillers, enhancements, endless workouts, the appearance of youth—not just superficially, but in its deeper values of energy, enthusiasm, and positivity—everywhere, all the time.

Ageism is bad for us. It’s bad for all of us. There is absolutely no link—none whatsoever—between youth and, in this case, good political leadership. Take a hard look at Europe’s rising far right. It’s led by relatively young people, for politics—in their 40s, often. Shall we say that just because someone is younger, it makes for a better leader, then? Surely only a fool would conclude that.

Ageism is a form of bias, in this sense. But what form of bias, in particular, in this context?

The reason that the far right is rising is because people are seeking safety, security, and strength, in an age of chaos, ruin, and fracture. So they’re turning to strongmen, as the turn of phrase goes. Strongmen. Strong-men. Strong…men.

What image does that conjure up in your head? Muscles. Manes of hair, maybe. Virility. A bellowing tone of voice, perhaps. It doesn’t matter—we all know what the cliche of male power is. It’s exemplified, of course, by one Donald Trump. Just a few years younger than Biden—and yet his image management, as crude as it is, works wonders, to a media as feckless and gullible as America’s. He shouts and roars and jeers and taunts and whines. He dyes his hair and combs it over his bald spot. He wears oversized suits to hide the decades of ill-health.

Miraculously, or whatever the opposite of miraculous is…all this crude manipulation of an image works.

Works…in his favor. Because there’s an ageist, patriarchal bias. And so by portraying this incredibly crude image of male power, Trump becomes the strongman. Even though he’s also an elderly man, in far poorer health, most likely than Biden, and if mental acuity is really the test here, well, whose finger would you prefer to hold the nuclear trigger? Are you kidding? Comparing the mental acuity of a figure like Joe Biden—as problematic as he is—to someone like Trump, who just said out loud that Russia should happily attack NATO countries…is beyond absurd. Past ridiculous. It’s grotesque and obscene. Trump’s out there giving Putin license to start World War III…and Biden’s the one with mental issues?

This is how ageism warps us. Our judgments. Biases make us stupid. In this case, rather than seeing Trump for who he is, he’s able to portray the image of a strongman, using, like I said, the incredibly crude tools of hair dye, oversize suits, jeering-whining-shouting, and belligerence plus aggression. That’s what male “strength” is, or at least the caricature of it, to a patriarchal system, and in that system, too, age is a burden and a liability, so even the king must appear to always be virile, manly, and not just “powerful”, but more precisely, all-powerful.

Ageism makes us stupid in that way. We’re unable to see Trump as the pathetic moral weakling that he is, at least enough of us, dazzled by this dollar store Hitler he’s portraying. Trump’s two decade older than Hitler, though, if you see my point, which is that the manipulation works, because the bias is there to fool us into believing a lie.

Age and ageism. What is it that makes us so…mean…to old people? In a sense, the answer’s obvious. We hate them. For reminding us that this terrible malady is coming for us, too. And there’s not a thing we can do about it. We must all endure this curse together. We must all endure this curse alone. We will age. Our bodies will wear out. Our minds will slow. The ache in us will grow. We will burn out like candles. No part of us is permanent. Every single day, we live in denial of this fact, bought with stuff, purchased with status, given to us by our children. And yet the inescapable truth remains. Time turns us all to dust. Hooded fate watches us, holding his scythe, preparing for the threshing.

We hate old people for reminding us. Not just of our mortality. But of what’s even deeper than that. Our powerlessness over it. The ways in which we will become weak, and the despair and loneliness of it. The certainty of it, and the finality of it. We hate them with a bitter, cruel vengefulness, and their existence itself warns us what awaits us, which is why we disappear them.

But there are gifts, too, that come with age, and only with age. Wisdom. Grace. Truth. As we age, so, if we live well, our capacities to love, to hold, to see, to know—all these ripen, and suddenly unfurl, exploding into the fullness of what human possibility really is. Is a man or woman weak because they can barely walk anymore—or are they incredibly strong, because they can teach us how to love and what to cherish and what matters in every moment? Is a person weak, because they can’t recall what they had for breakfast yesterday morning—or are they wise, because they can trace the patterns of history, and reveal the meaning of grace?

Every human heart is broken. Only as we age do we really understand this fully, well, truly, and appreciate the beauty in it. We take the time to contemplate all our regrets. The failed relationships, the broken marriages, the lost loved ones. The ways in which our lives didn’t work out. Through this process, and only through this process, do we understand the universality of human suffering. The inescapability of it. The follies of the lesser sins of egotism, narcissism, selfishness. The destructive power of the greater ones, of vanity, greed, and hatred. And through our broken hearts shines the light of creation itself, in this way, embracing all, in the spirit of love and truth and goodness.

Age doesn’t equal maturity. Trump is old, but he’s a man-child, who never matured. Biden? He remains the problematic figure that perhaps he was destined to be. Count that against him if you must. But what’s certain is that a lapse in memory here or there is no mark against maturity. The human heart, like the mind, comes to be full, as it ages. Full of so much. Regret, remorse, mistakes, misjudgments, could-have-beens. Maturity transforms that lead into gold. Through this pain the ego surrenders itself to the universal, and in that precise instant, love is born. The highest kind. Not just that of the mother for the newborn. But that of the first mother and father, for all the children who ever were.

I’m the Prime Minister of Estonia. Putin Can’t Think He’s Won This War.

March 24, 2022 By Kaja Kallas

TALLINN, Estonia — To anyone who lived under Soviet occupation, reports from Ukraine replay scenes we thought we would never see again. The bombing of civilians and the wanton destruction of buildings recall the carnage unleashed on the European continent by Hitler and Stalin. In Mariupol, a port city subjected to a brutal, horrifying siege, residents are reportedly being deported to faraway places in Russia where an uncertain fate awaits them.

My family knows what that’s like. My mother was only a 6-month-old baby when, in 1949, the Soviets deported her, together with her mother and grandmother, to Siberia. My grandfather was sent to a Siberian prison camp. They were lucky to survive and return to Estonia, but many didn’t. Today the Kremlin is reviving techniques of sheer barbarity. Those who have escaped Mariupol describe it as hell on earth.

To put an end to these horrors, the most optimistic observers have put their hope in a peace deal. But peace is not going to break out tomorrow. We must face up to the fact that the Kremlin’s idea of European and global security is completely at odds with that of the free world. And Vladimir Putin is willing to kill and repress en masse for the sake of it.

At NATO, our focus should be simple: Mr. Putin cannot win this war. He cannot even think he has won, or his appetite will grow. We need to demonstrate the will and commit resources to defend NATO territory. To check Russia’s aggression, we need to put in place a long-term policy of smart containment.

First, we must help Ukraine in every possible way. The people of Ukraine have not tired, and neither can we. True, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has galvanized us into action. Allies and partners have made decisions with remarkable determination and unity. But now is the time to go the extra mile.

Ukrainian soldiers are able fighters, but they need weapons and matériel, including longer-range air defense assets and anti-tank missiles to better protect their skies. Defensive military aid must be our top priority, and we must commit ourselves to it for the long haul.

In Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people, we have provided Ukraine with close to $250 million worth of assistance so far. Much of that is military, but it extends to ambulances, blankets and baby food. The free world should redouble its efforts to support the people of Ukraine however possible — through the delivery of arms, food and daily essentials.

Second, we must show the aggressor that we are ready to defend ourselves and, if need be, to fight. Sometimes the best way to achieve peace is to be willing to use military strength.

To do so, we need to strengthen our collective defense, especially on the alliance’s eastern flank that borders Russia. That’s why in Estonia we are increasing the amount we spend on defense. This year, we’ll spend 2.3 percent of G.D.P.; in the coming years, that will rise to 2.5 percent. All NATO countries, irrespective of their location, should do the same: Two percent of G.D.P. must become an absolute minimum requirement. By increasing our spending individually, we can ensure we are all collectively safer.

We at NATO have a solid basis to work from. Members are committed to the defense of the whole of NATO territory, and in recent years the alliance has taken some bold, necessary steps. Among them was the establishment in 2016 of an enhanced forward presence of allied troops — multinational, combat-ready battle groups — in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. On Wednesday the alliance announced that it will likely double the number of battle groups on its eastern flank.

But we need to go further. The forward presence needs to become forward defense, of land, air and sea. That would mean more combat-ready allied troops stationed permanently in the Baltic States, supported by long-range artillery, air defense and other enabling capabilities. It would mean more NATO fighters in our skies ready to switch from peacetime air policing to wartime air defense. And it would mean more NATO ships patrolling the Baltic Sea.

Third, we must paralyze the Kremlin’s war machine. We must do so not only to end the bloodshed and occupation in Ukraine but also to disarm Russia economically, to prevent Mr. Putin from further expanding the war.

At the heart of the machine is oil and gas. Last year exports from hydrocarbons amounted to roughly 40 percent of the Russian state budget, and this year they’re likely to turn into the biggest source. Our focus must be on drying up these revenues. The European Union has already announced plans to cut Russian gas imports by two-thirds by the end of this year. But it can and should go further. We should also put some of the payments for Moscow’s oil and gas in a special third-party account so that the revenue does not go toward financing the war. And we should direct a significant share of these funds to a future reconstruction plan for Ukraine.

None of this will be easy or cost-free. And the time will surely come when we hear calls for the easing of sanctions. But we — NATO, the European Union and individual countries — must be patient and remain firm. There will be no business as usual with Mr. Putin’s Russia. In fact, there can be no business at all.

Fourth, we must help Ukrainians fleeing the war.

Moscow may think that forcing millions of Ukrainians to leave and seek shelter across Europe will destabilize our societies. This is also part of Mr. Putin’s war aims, and one of the tools of his hybrid warfare. We must show him he’s wrong.

Neighboring countries have already been extraordinarily welcoming in such a short period of time, and the European Union immediately gave Ukrainians the right to live and work in the bloc. In Estonia, we have welcomed many Ukrainian refugees, who now make up around 1.6 percent of our population. All countries should do as much as they can to provide a safe haven for Ukrainian refugees until they can return home.

Taken together, it’s a tall order. Stopping the Kremlin’s aggression will require time and a lot of effort. But as NATO members, Europeans and human beings, we cannot flinch from that task.

Go G E O R G E.

Trump will be carefully noting this – unless he gave Putin the idea himself!

Trump will be carefully noting this – unless he gave Putin the idea himself!