What’s behind Russia’s history of atrocities, CNN.com

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His forthcoming paperback is “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)The pictures emerging of atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine, are shocking, but are they really surprising?

Consider the Russian way of war during the past decades, from Afghanistan to Chechnya to Syria. All these wars were characterized by mass casualty attacks against civilians by the Russians, as well as credible allegations of the summary executions of civilians by Russian forces.

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union waged a nine-year war in Afghanistan during which time Human Rights Watch reported, “Over one million Afghan civilians are believed to have been killed … most in aerial bombardments. Tens of thousands have disappeared — many of them the victims of summary executions. …”

The atrocities continued in the following decade, this time closer to home. During Russia’s first war in Chechnya in 1994, according to Russian human rights experts, around 25,000 civilians died during just two months of fighting in the capital, Grozny.

During the second Russian war in Chechnya, Russian soldiers summarily executed at least 38 civilians in Grozny between late December 1999 and mid-January 2000, according to Human Rights Watch. And on February 5, 2000, Russian soldiers summarily executed “at least sixty civilians,” the group added.

The International Federation for Human Rights found the Russians in Chechnya in 2000 had engaged in “summary executions and murders, physical abuse and torture; intentionally causing grave harm to people not directly involved in hostilities; deliberate attacks on the civilian population. …”

During their two wars in Chechnya, the Russians flattened Grozny, once a city of more than 400,000 people. Indeed, the United Nations once declared Grozny the “most destroyed city on Earth.”

More recently during the Syrian civil war — a war that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was in danger of losing before Russia intervened in 2015 — 8,683 civilians were killed by Russian bombardments, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Atrocities are not only committed by Russia’s conventional forces. Last year the European Union imposed sanctions on the Russian mercenary organization the Wagner Group, which operates as a proxy for the Russian government and military. The sanctions related to “serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions,” the EU said, citing the Wagner Group’s actions in Libya, Syria and the Central African Republic. The Wagner Group has reportedly deployed 1,000 of its men to Ukraine.

What we are seeing in Bucha now is the Russian way of war at work, which seems designed to bludgeon civilian populations into submission, so as to expunge any possible resistance. Unfortunately, we can expect to see more Buchas in coming weeks.

Retired Army major general: The Russian military invasion has peaked, CNN.com

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His forthcoming paperback is “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)Vladimir Putin’s five-week long invasion of Ukraine has peaked, with Russian forces no longer possessing enough combat power to continue to advance, according to one close observer of the military situation.

In interviews Thursday and Friday, the former commander of the US Special Operations Command in Europe, retired US Army Major General Mike Repass, gave his well-informed view of the war in Ukraine. For the past six years, he has advised the Ukrainian military on a US government contract.

While the Russians may be bogged down, Repass says, the Ukrainian side is also under great stress. He said that the Ukrainian counterattacks in recent days may be less effective than the media coverage has suggested. And he says it’s also not clear how many casualties the Ukrainians have incurred, which makes any kind of accurate analysis of how they are faring difficult to do.

Repass also contends that the Ukrainians need more S-300 missiles capable of bringing down mid-to-high-altitude jets and ballistic missiles, which would fall below the threshold of instituting a formal no-fly zone requested by the Ukrainians, which the US has rejected. And Repass says that he believes that Putin’s “must-haves” in the conflict are securing a land bridge connecting Russia to Crimea on the Black Sea and pushing out the boundaries around the two Russian-proclaimed “republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Disclosure: Repass is on the advisory council of the Global Special Operations Foundation, where I am the chairman of the board. Our conversation was edited for clarity and length.

Mike Repass: The Russians culminated about 5 days ago. In the military vernacular, “culmination” means you no longer have sufficient combat power to continue to advance in the offense. I believe that the Ukrainians sensed that and started conducting local counterattacks, particularly to the north and west of Kyiv. They also started counterattacks in the east recently. The Ukrainians went on the counteroffensive, but in a limited way. They took the town of Irpin to the west of Kyiv and some other towns, but the news coverage of the counterattacks has, I think, surpassed the actual effects of those operations on the ground.

I’m concerned that it’s not a large because perhaps the Ukrainians don’t have enough forces to launch one. So, if they can’t muster a larger counterattack around Kyiv, they may have a hard time gathering enough forces to push the Russians back in the east near Donbas.

We really don’t know what’s going on, on the ground, in granular detail, so it’s hard to judge the Ukrainian tactics and capabilities, and — this is more important — we have no idea what the Ukrainian losses have been so far. If this devolves into a battle of attrition between both sides and we don’t know what the costs to the Ukrainians have been, our analysis about what is going on will be somewhat shallow, quite frankly.

BERGEN: What do you make of the peace talks?
REPASS: I think it’s a Russian delaying tactic because they have not established satisfactory facts on the ground. They’re not ready to stop fighting because they don’t have what they need or want. Unfortunately, I think there will be much more suffering and destruction in Ukraine before there is a ceasefire or peace agreement.
BERGEN: There appears to have been an attack on a fuel depot in Russia on Friday, which the Kremlin has blamed on the Ukrainians. What do make of this?
REPASS: The Belgorod strike is extraordinary in my view. Assuming that it was conducted by the Ukrainians, the operation put Russia on notice that their previous sanctuary in the homeland is now potentially at risk. (Ukraine’s Security Council Secretary denied responsibility for the attack hours after the Ukrainian defense ministry spokesperson said he would neither confirm nor deny Ukraine’s role.) They will no longer have freedom of unrestricted movement in what was previously considered safe rear areas. Russia will have to divert military assets that are currently employed in Ukraine to secure their critical assets and capabilities on Russian soil. Further, the attack destroyed critically needed fuel and other resources needed for the Russians’ faltering fight in Ukraine, which will certainly amplify their logistics challenges. Psychologically, it is another blow to Russia’s sense of invincibility.
BERGEN: Is there anything that surprised you in the last month?
Opinion: Sasha's story brought the Ukraine war home to me in a shattering way
Opinion: Sasha’s story brought the Ukraine war home to me in a shattering way
REPASS: Unfortunately, the biggest surprise is the willingness of Russia to destroy everything. Russia is using unrestricted warfare, short of nuclear war, and we haven’t seen this in Europe during the modern era. The only other places that we’ve seen it is Russia’s war in Grozny and then the Russians repeated it in Homs and Aleppo in Syria. Both of those cities are ancient and have archeological significance, and the Russians destroyed both. And Putin did it without penalty or repercussions for his unrestricted use of force to destroy entire cities, including landmarks of cultural and historical significance. Now, he’s destroying Mariupol. He’s after Kharkiv, and he’ll do the same there and with the other cities that he’s encircled, if he’s given a chance.
So the unrestricted brutality that Russia is willing to use in Ukraine has surprised me, given the prewar Russian rhetoric of “We’re brothers,” “We’re cousins,” “We’re one people.” But it’s clear to me that what Putin’s going for — the annihilation of the indigenous population — is because he doesn’t want any potential resistance movements in those cities. Mariupol in particular could be a base for resistance in the midst of his attempt to secure a land bridge from Donbas down to Crimea.
BERGEN: As the former commander of US Special Operations in Europe, how would you rate the Ukrainian Special Forces?
REPASS: They have five regiments of Ukrainian Special Operations Forces, and they were in varying degrees of readiness and capability prior to the war. There are some that were NATO-interoperable and some that were not up to those standards. There are other Special Operations Forces units as well, such as the SBU-Alpha troops from the Security Service of Ukraine, that are pretty darn good. They also have special forces in the State Border Guards.
The Ukrainian law on territorial defense, which went into effect in January, directed the Special Operations Forces to be in charge of the national resistance effort. I know that the resistance forces and territorials have been very active in the Russian rear areas. They don’t have the numbers or the combat capability to go head-to-head with a Russian battalion tactical group, so they tend to engage the rear echelons of support troops and forces.
BERGEN: There are reports of seven Russian generals killed in Ukraine: What does that say to you, and how unusual is it?
REPASS: It’s exceedingly unusual in the modern era. What it tells me is that their command and control processes are very poor. It is also a function of technology and organization. On the organization side, the Russians created battalion tactical groups as their primary war-fighting formations with vastly different armaments and degrees of vehicle mobility. To employ their capabilities properly, they have to string them out across the battlefield in depth, but they don’t have the technology and procedures for arranging these forces in the way they need to. This problem is compounded by the poor infrastructure, which forces the armored and heavy vehicles to remain on the limited and narrow roads. As a result, tactical engagements cause traffic jams, which are exacerbated by bad radio communication systems. In combination, the situation requires the senior leaders to go forward to unscrew things, which makes them vulnerable to artillery and sniper fire.
Why Russia's elite are the key to Putin's downfall
Why Russia’s elite are the key to Putin’s downfall
BERGEN: Are you surprised that the Russians are sometimes communicating in the clear on radios or cell phones?
REPASS: Yes, it does surprise me, but it’s just evidence that their command-and-control capabilities are insufficient for the way they’re organized.
BERGEN: The body bags will start going back to Russia and the funerals will start happening. Does Putin care?
REPASS: I think the consensus among Russia watchers is he either doesn’t know or doesn’t give a damn. He’s impervious to domestic opinion because he’s so thoroughly insulated from what’s going on domestically. He has a circle of trusted advisers and people around him that he pays attention to, and then he has his very tight circle of security that ensures that he’s well protected. Adding to his isolation, Putin has said himself that he barely uses the internet.
He’s informed by his own state media, which has only state-approved messages to report. He’s living in an echo chamber, and they’re not going to report the bad news.
When we see this recent reporting through US, British and Australian channels that he didn’t understand that he was using conscripts, doesn’t understand how badly the Russian military is performing, those reports seem to be confirmatory evidence that he’s insulated from the facts on the ground at home and in Ukraine.
BERGEN: You were a part of a group of retired senior US military and senior Eastern European military leaders that released an open letter on March 9 urging that the Ukrainians be armed with S-300 missiles. Your reason for advocating for the S-300s is they would be below the threshold of setting up a formal no-fly zone, yet would still intercept mid-to-high-altitude jets and ballistic missiles?
REPASS: Right. If you were able to achieve a no-fly zone through your own air defense capabilities, then perhaps there wouldn’t be such a political demand from the Ukrainians — “Give us MiG fighters. Give us a no-fly zone.” So, it was somewhat supportive of the administration’s position on not instituting a formal no-fly zone, while also supporting the actual requirements on the ground in Ukraine.
BERGEN: And the Ukrainians know how to use the S-300s?
Opinion: Even Russia's ruthless war in Ukraine can't get Trump to give up his Putin fixation
Opinion: Even Russia’s ruthless war in Ukraine can’t get Trump to give up his Putin fixation
REPASS: Absolutely. They’re using the ones that they do have to good effect already.
BERGEN: On NATO, how would you rate its response?
REPASS: The answer to that depends on where you sit. If you’re in Kyiv, you would be very frustrated. They are genuinely and very appreciative of the support they’ve received from all the donor nations. But they expected more support from NATO. There are two different things at play here. The organization, NATO, is not engaged in activities to directly support Ukrainian operations. They are rhetorically and politically supporting what individual nations are doing to support Ukraine, but those nations are coordinating among each other as opposed to coordinating support activities through the NATO alliance structure.
The Ukrainians have several lists of things that they need, but they’ve got to go through a rather bureaucratic process to acquire them. In some cases, the donor nations are moving at the speed of process rather than at the speed of war.
I’ll give you an example: Level IV body armor is capable of withstanding one or two shots from a Soviet-type round. That technology is controlled by the State Department for US export. The Ukrainians will tell you, “Hey, we have the money to pay for this stuff. We’re not asking you to give it to us. We’re asking you to sell it to us expeditiously.” However, the provision of Level IV body armor is subject to a lengthy process to get US approval for delivery to Ukraine. It is late-to-need as a result.
BERGEN: Do you have other concerns?
REPASS: What about the pending humanitarian disaster that’s going to happen in Russia with food shortages and other issues that are coming up? Probably by June, there’s going to be a substantial humanitarian challenge in Russia, and the West would be well served to start talking about this now.

They have stopped exporting commodities out of Russia. They have already started rationing some food items like sugar. If the domestic situation gets seriously destabilized due to shortages of food and essential commodities, then perhaps the ruling elites will become unpredictable and desperate to maintain their hold on power. That could lead to substantially increased violence in Ukraine to force a more rapid military outcome.
BERGEN: What’s the Russian game plan now?
REPASS: Their initial theory of victory was to decapitate the Ukrainian government, secure a land bridge to Crimea and then seize as much land as possible. He also said he was going to secure the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts (regions). The additional land seizure was going to be things that they were willing to bargain away. They have no intention of bargaining away the land bridge to Crimea.
The Russian expedition to Kyiv from the north was well anticipated and superbly defended against by the Ukrainians, and the Russians realized after substantial casualties that they didn’t need that. The seizure of Kyiv was (and is) not essential to Russia’s success, and was a want-to-have as opposed to a must-have. The land bridge to Crimea is a Russian must-have.
In 2014, when the Russians invaded, they took over Crimea, but they also invaded in the east and created this mythology that there was an indigenous revolution in areas of the Donbas, the two “republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk, which Russia recognized as independent republics in the runup to the war that they’re currently in.
That area was heavily industrialized and it has mineral wealth. A lot of the industry was destroyed during the war in 2014, but the coal remains, which Russia is interested in controlling. Extending the political boundaries around the states of Luhansk and Donetsk and securing the land bridge to Crimea would give Putin sufficient political cover to claim some form of victory. It would allow him to then seek a ceasefire or peace agreement. However, I don’t see the Ukrainians agreeing to any of this.

The Taliban should release its other detainees, CNN.com

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His forthcoming paperback is “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN. ”

(CNN)On Friday, 27-year-old Safi Rauf, an Afghan-American who had been held captive by the Taliban since mid-December, was released. Rauf, a US Navy reservist, was providing humanitarian aid through Human First Coalition, an organization he founded to help evacuate Americans and at-risk Afghans from Afghanistan.

Also released by the Taliban was Rauf’s brother, Anees Khalil, a US green card holder and a British citizen who also works with the Human First Coalition.

While their release is to be celebrated, at least five British citizens and an American are still detained by the Taliban.

On Friday, the same day that the Rauf brothers were released, a “proof of life” video surfaced of Mark Frerichs, an American who was kidnapped more than two years ago and believed to be held by the Taliban and its affiliates before they took over the entire country last August. Frerichs, a Navy veteran and civil engineer, was working on development projects in Afghanistan.

The video was obtained by the New Yorker, and Frerichs’ sister confirmed his identity.

Along with Frerichs, the Taliban has also detained British citizen Peter Jouvenal, a businessman and former television journalist who filmed the first television interview with Osama bin Laden for CNN in 1997. Jouvenal and I have been friends since we first worked for CNN together in Afghanistan nearly three decades ago.

He was taken into custody by the Taliban in mid-December, around the same time that four other British citizens were also detained.

Jouvenal’s family and friends, who worried his detention could have been an error, released a statement in February, saying, “He is a Muslim, knows Afghanistan better than most foreigners, is married to an Afghan (they have three daughters), and speaks both main languages. He is being held without charge … Before his arrest, he was working openly and had frequent meetings with senior Taliban officials.”

If the Taliban sincerely want to be treated as the responsible de facto government of Afghanistan, they should release the British and American citizens that they continue to hold.
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The Islamic holy season of Ramadan is beginning around the world, which is traditionally a time for charity and reconciliation. The Taliban should use this occasion to release the six detainees that they are holding.
And if they aren’t willing to do so, the British and American governments should also leverage the considerable aid that they are continuing to give to humanitarian organizations in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to secure the release of their detainees.

Biden’s double standard on refugees, CNN.com

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His forthcoming paperback is “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)Over the weekend President Joe Biden met in Poland with a group of Ukrainian refugees whom he lauded as “an amazing group of people.” But where was Biden when it came to the Afghan refugees fleeing the rule of the Taliban this past summer?

It was, of course, Biden who created that refugee crisis with his ill-considered and poorly executed decision to pull out of Afghanistan unilaterally in August, leaving the country to the tender mercies of the Taliban.

Biden has never visited any of the Afghan refugees that his decision-making helped to create.

Yet the Biden administration has far more responsibility to help Afghan refugees than Ukrainians since for the past two decades more than 250,000 Afghans are estimated to have worked directly with the US military or American officials based in Afghanistan. All of them and their families are at risk for reprisals by the Taliban.

Of course, the United States should do as much as possible for the Ukrainians fleeing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s scorched-earth war, but there is a strange double standard when it comes to the Biden administration’s approach to America’s Afghan allies.

Consider that on Thursday the Biden administration announced 100,000 visas for Ukrainian refugees. Yet the Association of Wartime Allies, an advocacy group for Afghans who worked for the US, estimated that of 81,000 Special Immigrant Visa applicants in Afghanistan when the Taliban seized Kabul, 78,000 were left behind. Meanwhile, the administration has admitted around 75,000 Afghan refugees since the Taliban’s takeover who can stay at least 18 months.

Following the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport as the US withdrew last summer, in an interview with ABC News, Biden seemed dismissive of the situation in Afghanistan, saying, “The idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing — I don’t know how that happens.”

Four months after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the Biden administration convened the Summit for Democracy of the world’s democracies, a club that Afghanistan had once been part of. No more.

The Biden administration also constantly trumpets its support for women’s rights. Yet last week the Taliban again denied girls older than 12 entry to Afghan schools. Seven months after the Taliban seized power, they continue to ban girls above the sixth grade from attending school. The Taliban’s Education Ministry said it’s because they haven’t designed a Sharia-compliant uniform for the girls as yet. To use a Bidenism: “That’s a bunch of malarkey.”

The Biden administration talks a good game about upholding democracy and women’s rights, yet it enabled the Taliban to take over Afghanistan. And now the Taliban have ended almost every element of a liberal democracy that once existed there and have also severely curtailed women’s rights.

The population of Afghanistan and Ukraine is roughly the same, around 40 million people. Why abandon 40 million in one country and try and save 40 million in the other?

Of course, it’s great the United States is doing what it can to save Ukraine, but the Biden administration’s abandonment of Afghanistan — a country that now gets scant media coverage — remains quite striking.

The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about al-Qaeda, New America online

The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about al-Qaeda

DATE: April 26, 2022

TIME: 12:00 – 1:00 PM

Bin Laden’s greatest fear was not capture or death but the revelation of al-Qaeda’s secrets. Yet when he was killed in May 2011, SEAL Team 6 brought back thousands of pages of al-Qaeda’s most secret correspondence. In her ground-breaking book, The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about al-Qaeda, Its Leader and His Family, New America Senior Fellow Nelly Lahoud distills the lessons of nearly 6,000 pages of Arabic language private communications. For the first time, al-Qaeda’s closely guarded secrets are laid bare, shattering misconceptions and revealing how and what Bin Laden communicated with his associates, his plans for future attacks, and al-Qaeda’s hostility toward countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan.

To discuss her book, New America welcomes Nelly Lahoud, author of The Bin Laden Papers and a senior fellow with New America’s International Security program. Lahoud is the author of three other books, including The Jihadis’ Path to Self Destruction. She was also lead author of Letters From Abbottabad: Bin Ladin Sidelined?, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point’s analysis of the first tranche of the documents to be released. The event will be moderated by Peter Bergen, New America Vice President for Global Studies and Fellows, professor of practice at Arizona State University, and author of The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden.

Join the conversation online using #BinLadenPapers and following @NewAmericaISP.

PARTICIPANTS

Nelly Lahoud

Senior Fellow, New America International Security program

Author, The Bin Laden Papers

MODERATOR

Peter Bergen, @PeterBergenCNN

Vice President for Global Studies and Fellows, New America

Professor of Practice, ASU

Author, The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden

The number that puts Vladimir Putin at risk, CNN.com

Opinion by Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 5:04 PM EDT, Sun March 27, 2022

Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His forthcoming paperback is The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

The Russians are not winning the war in Ukraine and they may even be losing.

Neither option is good for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, which he surely knows well, both as a veteran of the Cold War and as a student of Russian history.

The last time the Russians lost a war was in Afghanistan during the 1980s. After a quick victory when they invaded the nation in 1979, the Soviets faced a countrywide insurgency that wasn’t particularly effective at first because the Russians completely controlled the airspace.

In an echo of some of the dilemmas that President Joe Biden faces today, the Reagan administration feared a possible nuclear confrontation with the Soviets and was initially reluctant to arm the Afghan rebels with anti-aircraft weapons.

By 1986, reluctance among President Reagan’s officials to arm the Afghan resistance with weapons that might actually help them to win the war had evaporated. The CIA armed the Afghans with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that ended the Soviets’ air superiority and greatly increased the Afghans’ capacity to inflict significant losses on Soviet forces on the battlefield.

Realizing they were losing the war, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989 and installed a puppet Afghan communist government that collapsed three years later, after the Soviet Union had itself expired.

The official Soviet death toll during the Afghan War, which lasted more than nine years, was around 15,000 soldiers. It is therefore quite telling that the Russians may have already lost as many 15,000 soldiers in just one month in Ukraine, according to estimates given to CNN by senior NATO officials.

When the Soviet military departed Afghanistan in 1989, the countries and populations of Eastern Europe – then under varying degrees of the Soviet yoke – took note. If the feared Soviet army couldn’t win a war on its own borders against Afghan guerrilla forces, what did it say about its ability to control the fates of East Germany, Hungary and Poland?

Putin’s leverage shows the danger of relying on fossil fuels

The failure of the Soviet war in Afghanistan hammered a giant nail into the coffin of the Soviet empire. It’s not an accident the Berlin Wall fell just months later, opening up East Germany to the West.

This was arguably the hinge event in Putin’s adult life. He was then a KGB officer stationed in East Germany. When Putin sought instructions about what he should do from a Soviet military unit, he was told, “Moscow is silent.” Since then, Putin has been trying to reverse Moscow’s silence with the goal of restoring as many elements of Russia’s former glory as he can.

Just as the Soviets were undone by their loss of the Afghan War, so too was the Romanov monarchy undone by its military defeats in the early 20th century, which ended the Romanovs three-century reign over Russia.

Under the feckless leadership of Tsar Nicholas II, Russia’s disastrous performance in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 was the first time in the modern era that an Asian power had defeated a European one. The loss of the Russo-Japanese war was soon compounded by Russia’s defeats during World War I. Those losses, along with other factors, led to the overthrow of Nicholas II in 1917 and the subsequent rise of the Soviets.

By contrast, Joseph Stalin emerged victorious from World War II – albeit at a tremendous cost of an estimated more than 25 million Russian dead. Known in Russia as “the Great Patriotic War,” this victory helped allow Stalin to continue being, well, Stalin – a murderous dictator.

An edition of The Economist earlier this month declared “The Stalinization of Russia,” which is surely Putin’s goal. But it’s hard to be neo-Stalinist if you are a loser – and losing Ukraine isn’t out of the question for Putin.

This, of course, raises the possibility that US officials keep warning of, which is that backed into a corner, Putin might use chemical or biological weapons.

The use of nuclear weapons by Russia was also not ruled out by Putin’s chief spokesman, Dimitry Peskov, when he spoke to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.

Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine could lead him to a point where he uses weapons of mass destruction. And even then, he may still lose the war.

This was surely not how Putin dreamed of restoring Russia’s glory, a dream that is fast turning into ashes – just as Putin has reduced the Ukrainian city of Mariupol to ashes.

Retired US and European military leaders advocate for advanced air defenses for Ukraine, CNN.com

10:42 a.m. ET, March 9, 2022
Retired US and European military leaders advocate for advanced air defenses for Ukraine

From CNN’s Kylie Atwood and Peter Bergen

A group of senior retired US military officers and former chiefs of defense of three Eastern European countries are advocating for supplying the Ukrainian military with air defense capabilities to defend against attacks by the Russian air force, according to an open letter obtained by CNN.

Supplying the Ukrainians with such weaponry would be effective in allowing them to shoot down aircraft or missiles in their airspace, and it is something that Ukrainians have specially asked the US and western countries to provide.

“The purpose of this letter is to urge, in the strongest possible sense, immediate action to provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces with a viable mid- and high-altitude air defense capability. They need immediate reconstitution of their capability to defend themselves against air attacks from the Russian Air Force,” the retired military officials write. “We cannot stand idly by and wish them well as Russia prosecutes an unrestricted campaign of destruction on the Ukrainian government, its infrastructure, and its people.”

This move should would stop short of creating a no-fly zone, which the US and NATO have so far resisted supporting due to concerns that this could embroil the alliance in a war with a nuclear-armed power.

Earlier this week 27 foreign policy experts published an open letter calling on the Biden administration and the international community to establish a limited no-fly zone in Ukraine surrounding the humanitarian corridors.

The retired military leaders say that NATO’s decision to reject a no-fly zone was “devastating to the Ukrainian government and people’s morale.” They go on to assert that supplying the mid- and high-altitude air defense capability would prevent the Russians from dominating Ukrainian “airspace while delivering devastation of Ukraine’s cities.”

They note that, “Some nations have air defense systems similar to those which were previously destroyed in the opening days of the Russian campaign. Those nations could transfer existing stocks of Soviet-era and Russian-produced weapon systems to include radars. Other nations can purchase them on the international market and expedite their delivery to Ukraine.”

This proposal may have a better chance of success than implementing a no-fly zone because supplying the Ukrainian military with advanced air defense capabilities,

The Ukrainians already have some S300 missile systems — which are a type of air defense — which means they are trained in operating these. The Croatians and few either other NATO nations have S300s in their inventory.

Turkey could use this an opportunity to offload the S400s they bought from Russia, which was a purchase that created deep tensions within the NATO alliance.

The letter’s signatories: They include General Phillip M. Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and General Sir Richard Shirreff, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

The former chiefs of defense of three Eastern European countries also signed on to the letter Lieutenant General Raimonds of Latvia; Lieutenant General Vytautas Jonas Žukas of Lithuania, and General Riho Terras of Estonia.

A number of key former leaders of US Special Operations Forces also signed the letter including Lieutenant General John F. Mulholland, former Deputy Commander, Special Operations Command, Vice Admiral Sean Pybus, former Deputy Commander, Special Operations Command; Lieutenant General Francis M. Beaudette, former Commanding General, Army Special Operations Command, and Major General Michael S. Repass, former Commander, Special Operations Command Europe.

CNN military analyst, Lieutenant General, Mark P. Hertling, was also a signatory to the letter.

More background: Their letter comes just a day after the Chair of Ukraine’s Parliament requested surface-to-air defense systems, no-fly zones over critical areas and fighter jets for Ukraine in a letter to US lawmakers on Tuesday, according to the letter reviewed by CNN.

The chair, Ruslan Stefanchuk, said that there is a need for “military assistance suitable for countering Russian attacks and military advances,” citing the Iron Dome as one example of the military equipment that Ukraine needs.

When asked about providing this type of additional military assistance to Ukraine State Department Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, told lawmakers that some of it could be possible but cited challenges with certain highly advanced equipment.

“I would only say with regard to Iron Dome, you can’t just, you know, snap your fingers and you have an Iron Dome. It takes training, it takes the ability to emplace it and all of those kinds of things. But there are other things on your list, on their list, which we think that we can do,” Nuland said. She added that she could get into more detail in a classified setting.

Russian forces ‘clearly have very poor standards,’ Gen. Petraeus says, CNN.com

Russian forces ‘clearly have very poor standards,’ Gen. Petraeus says
Peter Bergen

Opinion by Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 6:56 PM ET, Sat March 19, 2022
s

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His forthcoming paperback is The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN. ”

(CNN)Retired Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded US forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, says the Russians are facing a Ukraine military that is exceptionally determined, surprisingly capable and innovative, and one that is fighting on its home territory for its very survival.

In contrast, the Russian invaders have displayed a host of weaknesses: flawed planning; overly optimistic intelligence projections about how the conflict would play out; underestimation of the Ukrainian forces and people; inadequate maintenance and logistics; unimpressive equipment; a reliance on conscripts and an inability to mount effective cyberwarfare.

In interviews on Sunday and Monday, Petraeus, who formerly headed the CIA, assessed the war in Ukraine as it has played out in its first three weeks. He is skeptical that the Russians have enough forces to take, much less to control, the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and some of the other major cities, saying that continued urban warfare generally will favor the Ukrainians.

Nonetheless, he also notes that the Russians have enormous capacity for — and history of — destroying cities, civilian facilities and critical infrastructure, and they will “rubble” urban areas in an effort to take control.

Petraeus praised the actions of the Biden administration and its allies in recent weeks and noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin, instead of making Russia great again, has made NATO great again. He predicts the most likely near-term outcome of the war in Ukraine will be the continuation of a bloody quagmire for Russia that is largely indecisive, even as it inflicts greater and greater loss of life, infrastructure and basic services on the Ukrainian people. There is, however, also the possibility of a negotiated resolution, as both Moscow and Kyiv recognize the damage and destruction being done to their countries.
Our conversation was edited for clarity.

PETER BERGEN: Is the Russian military’s performance in Ukraine surprising to you?

DAVID PETRAEUS: Somewhat surprising, but not entirely. And there are many reasons for the Russians’ abysmal
performance. First of all, they’re fighting against a very determined, quite capable Ukrainian force that is composed of special ops, conventional forces, territorial forces and even private citizens, all of whom are determined not to allow Russia to achieve its objectives. They are fighting for their national survival, their homeland and their way of life, and they have the home-field advantage, knowing the terrain and communities.

But beyond that, the Russians are just surprisingly unprofessional. They clearly have very poor standards when it comes to performing basic tactical tasks such as achieving combined arms operations, involving armor, infantry, engineers, artillery and mortars. They are very poor at maintaining their vehicles and weapon systems and have abandoned many of them. They are also poor at resupply and logistical tasks.

We have known for decades that the Soviet system, now the Russian system, has always lacked one of the key strengths of US and Western militaries, which is a strong, professional noncommissioned officer corps.

And part of the problem is that the Russian military has a fairly substantial percentage of conscripts. It’s very hard to determine how many of them are in Ukraine. We know in the Russian military overall, probably in the range of 20 to 25% are conscripts. And there are particularly large numbers of conscripts in a critical area, which is logistics — including drivers of trucks and fuel tankers and soldiers in maintenance units.

The Russians also have found it difficult to go off-road. Their wheeled vehicles get mired in mud very quickly. The ground is not frozen the way they had hoped it would be. Even tracked vehicles seem to be getting mired in mud. And the Russians are just not performing sufficient preventive maintenance on their equipment.

I’ve served in mechanized units, with a mix of tanks and armored personnel carriers. And every single time you stop, the driver and the crew members are outside checking road wheels and final drives, pumping grease, topping off fluid levels. If you don’t do preventive maintenance, then you will end up with such vehicles breaking down.

Beyond that, the Russians just have relatively unimpressive equipment, given the investment supposedly made over the past decade or so. They certainly don’t have equipment comparable to what the United States has.

Their precision munitions aren’t very precise: This was underlined by the fact that they didn’t crater the runways in Ukraine in the first hour of combat the way we did in Iraq in 2003 to completely deny the Iraqi Air Force any opportunities to take off. In fact, the Ukrainian Air Force is still flying. As modest as it is and as many losses as it has sustained, it’s still up in flight.

So Russian precision munitions are lacking. We can also see this with the sheer frequency of the Russians hitting civilian infrastructure, like the hospital in Mariupol, other medical facilities and the government center in Kharkiv — unless they truly meant to hit those targets, which obviously would be nothing short of horrific.

They also have problems in very basic tasks such as staying dispersed. A column never closes up on a major highway where it can be spotted by a drone and hit by artillery, as was seen recently. The 40-mile traffic jam we saw outside of Kyiv — this is just incompetent movement control for which normally there is doctrine and organizational structures and procedures. And then it took them days just to disperse that 40-mile column into the tree cover as opposed to being out in the open.

They’ve also been incapable of combining what should have been a huge advantage for them, which is integrating air and ground operations together. They’re not really doing true close air support, just ahead of their ground formations. Rather, they’re just doing air attacks.

Russian cyberwarfare has also been unimpressive, perhaps because they overused it in the past and the Ukrainians, possibly with some help, learned how to deal with it. The Russians have been unable to take down the Ukrainian command and control system and unable to take down President Volodymyr Zelensky’s access to social media and the internet. So, their cyberwarfare capabilities that seemed impressive in earlier campaigns, when the Russians took Crimea in 2014 for instance, are a whole lot less impressive this time.

And then on top of all of that, you just have an unimpressive campaign design by the Russians that clearly was based on very flawed assumptions about how quickly they could take Kyiv and particularly how quickly they could topple the government and replace it with a pro-Russian government.

So, in every single area of evaluation, the Russians, starting with their intelligence assessments and understanding of the battlefield and their adversary, and then every aspect of the campaign, all the way down to small unit operations, have proved woefully inadequate. And they’re facing an enemy that is absolutely determined, surprisingly capable, very innovative and resourceful, and fighting on their home field.

Much of the population also hate the Russians, and that hatred is being deepened with every strike on civilian infrastructure. Not only are the Russians not winning hearts and minds, they are alienating hearts and minds.
BERGEN: Is time and mass on the side of the Russians?

PETRAEUS: I don’t think so, but quantity does have a quality of its own over time and the sheer destructive capability of Russian bombs, missiles, rockets, artillery and mortars obviously has to be a huge concern.
Clearly, they do not have enough forces to take, much less to control, Kyiv and some of the other major cities, but they do have missiles, rockets, artillery, and bombs and an apparent willingness to use them in a very indiscriminate fashion.

And so, they continue the approach they used in Chechnya, particularly with Grozny, and in Syria, particularly with Aleppo, where they depopulated the cities by indiscriminate use of bombs. And it is going to be an endurance contest between the Russians’ willingness to destroy cities and the Ukrainians’ ability to survive such destruction.
BERGEN: Will urban warfare favor the Ukrainians?

PETRAEUS: Very much so. Usually, the rule of thumb for urban warfare is that it requires at least five attackers to every defender. In this case, I’d argue it may be more than that because the Ukrainians are so resourceful. They will work together to prevent the Russians from taking urban areas the way that infantry and combined arms normally would do, such as the way the United States military cleared and then held cities during the Iraq War in, e.g., Ramadi and Fallujah as well as parts of Baghdad and other cities.

Such big-city battles require you to take every building and clear every room, and then you have to leave forces behind in each building or else the enemy will come back behind you and reoccupy them. So, it’s incredibly soldier-intensive. The Russians have nowhere near enough soldiers to do that even for Kyiv, much less all of the other cities.

To be sure, the Russians will have some success in some cities, and certainly, the battle for Mariupol is a race between the starvation of the Ukrainians who remain there, which include forces that are still fighting very hard, and the Russians’ willingness to continue to heap destruction and innocent civilian casualties on a city that’s resisting but is surrounded.

BERGEN: If Putin decides to try and take all of Ukraine, what size army would he need?
PETRAEUS: I’m not sure. I don’t think even his entire military could do this, and keep in mind, there’s a huge limiting factor, and that is the apparent inability of Putin to replace the forces that are presently fighting. How and when does he replace his forces? It’s not apparent to me.

In fact, the Russian conscripts are only on 1-year rotations, so it’s no wonder that they demonstrate very poor standards of everything, given that they barely made it through basic and advanced training and then unit integration and now they are in combat (and their tours were supposed to have ended in April, until Putin extended them).
BERGEN: US officials say that Russia is asking China for military and other forms of aid. What do you make of this?
PETRAEUS: The report by US officials is interesting in several respects. First, if accurate, it indicates that Russia is running out of certain weapons systems and munitions — another reflection of how Russia seriously miscalculated so many aspects of the war they launched.

Second, this presents a very difficult issue for China. It was one thing for China to abstain from the UN General Assembly vote in which 141 countries condemned Russia for its unprovoked aggression. It would be a very different matter if China was to accede to Russia’s request and thus actively side with a country that is truly becoming the evil empire, the target of unprecedented sanctions and experiencing a decoupling from the global economy. It also might result in some sanctions on China.

Third, beyond those issues, President Xi Jinping clearly has to be irritated with Russia’s invasion, as Ukraine’s largest trading partner was China.

Finally, Xi, having gotten through the Olympics had likely hoped for no drama in the months leading up to the Communist Party gathering in the fall during which he undoubtedly will be reelected for an unprecedented third term as President, while retaining his leadership of the Party and the Military Council. Putin could thus put Xi in a very awkward position.

So, it has not been a complete surprise that both Russia and China have stated that no such Russian request for aid was issued.

BERGEN: What do you think the Ukrainians need most?

PETRAEUS: Clearly, the US anti-tank Javelin system. And it’s not just the Javelin. It’s also other countries’ anti-tank systems — and man-portable air defense systems, as well. The UK AT system is very good. 17,000 of these anti-tank weapons have flowed into Ukraine in just one week. That’s a huge number of man-portable anti-tank systems.
BERGEN: Should the US have begun arming Ukraine after Putin seized Crimea in 2014?

PETRAEUS: Congress authorized the transfer of Javelin weapons to the Ukrainians, and then it was delayed in the Obama administration. In the early period of the Trump administration, the Javelins were finally delivered, but then you had the whole issue with Ukraine subsequent to that when President Donald Trump reportedly withheld equipment for a period.

The effort by the Biden administration to arm the Ukrainians and the actions of our Western partners has been really quite dramatic, especially in the immediate run-up to the invasion and then following it. You see that Germany, which would only send helmets prior to the invasion, agreed to give lethal weapons. Even the EU agreed to send 500 million euros worth of military and other aid to Ukraine. So, there were revolutionary policy changes just days after the invasion began.

BERGEN: Are you surprised by that?

PETRAEUS: I think you must give credit to the US and to NATO and to the EU. I think that the Biden administration has performed impressively, and I say this as someone who publicly criticized the administration for the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and the conduct of the withdrawal in August 2021.

BERGEN: Getting inside Putin’s mind, of course, is not easy, but to what extent do you think that US withdrawal from Afghanistan may have figured in his calculations?

PETRAEUS: It is impossible to say, obviously, but what one can say with confidence is that some potential American adversaries seized on that withdrawal to say: “See? We told you the US is not a dependable partner and ally, and we told you that the US is a great power in decline.”

Hearteningly, I think that US actions and those of our allies around the world on Ukraine have shown that the US is a dependable partner and is not a great power in decline. If anything, instead of Making Russia Great Again, what Putin has done is to Make NATO Great Again.

BERGEN: There have been warnings by the Biden White House about the possible use of chemical weapons by Putin. Is that plausible? Because it seems like kind of a Rubicon to cross.

PETRAEUS: It would be a Rubicon to cross, although the Russians have crossed that Rubicon before. They used the nerve agent Novichok against opponents of the regime such as Sergei Skripal and Alexei Navalny. They clearly have nerve agents. It’s unknown whether they have them in large amounts and whether they’re deliverable, but that clearly has to be a serious concern.

Certainly, the Biden administration has sought to dissuade Putin from using chemical weapons by exposing that possibility. In fact, another way in which this administration has been very impressive is taking what clearly are finished intelligence products and turning them into publicly releasable announcements without exposing sources and methods, which is really quite unique.

In fact, I think it has been quite effective because it has established the Biden administration’s credibility on Ukraine. You can’t dismiss what the administration is saying is possible, given that so much of what they said about Putin’s plans for and goals in Ukraine, which was either initially dismissed or seen as unlikely, has now come to pass.

BERGEN: The Russians, clearly, they’re taking significant losses, according to US officials.

PETRAEUS: Yes. It appears that they have taken more fatalities in the first two weeks of the war than the US took in 20 years in Iraq; somewhere around 5,000 or so by most accounts, which is just stunning.

BERGEN: Is it politically sustainable for Putin, or is it not clear?

PETRAEUS: Only time will tell. He seems to still have a very strong grip on power. But when do the mothers of the fallen soldiers start to really make their voices heard? What happens when the economic collapse really comes home to roost? When does the collapse of the ruble, the collapse of the economy, the inability to reopen the Russian stock market, the departure from Russia of major corporations who spent decades building up there such as McDonald’s or Starbucks begin to hit home?

In fact, 380 companies, according to the count of a professor at Yale, have ceased operations in Russia. No one can predict what the results of the sanctions, frozen assets, corporate decoupling and other actions will be on Russia and the Russian people.

BERGEN: What do you make of the Russian attack on the Ukrainian base near the Polish border: What does this portend for a possibly widening conflict?

PETRAEUS: The Russian attack on the sprawling Ukrainian training base near Lviv, which I visited while in uniform, was undoubtedly launched to try to interdict the flow of weapons and supplies into Ukraine from Poland, some 12 miles to the west, and also, perhaps, to disrupt the location at which the foreign volunteers may be receiving orientation training before joining Ukrainian forces.

Given the proximity to the border, it clearly raises concerns about strikes falling in a NATO country — which would require a NATO response given NATO’s Article 5 commitment. Given the understandable efforts by NATO leaders to avoid a widening of the war, the attack on the training base outside Lviv obviously raises red flags, and I am confident that NATO leaders have consulted on possible responses should the conflict widen further.

BERGEN: After the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 you asked a reporter, “tell me how this ends?” How does the Ukraine War end?

PETRAEUS: Well, I think there are several possibilities, and I’m not sure which is the most likely. Right now, though, it appears that it doesn’t end, and that you have a bloody quagmire for Russia that is worse than the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

This quagmire would cause a terrible loss of life, destruction, displacement, depopulation of urban areas, a massive humanitarian catastrophe, as well as terrible losses for Russia, without a conclusive outcome for Russia. We’re talking about this in the somewhat near term; in other words, in the next year or so.

There could also be a negotiated settlement as both Putin and Zelensky realize that neither of them can fully achieve what it is that they want, and that both sides are suffering enormous destruction. This could be advanced by, say, the president of Finland or the prime minister of Israel or the president of France or former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, or the president of China, to name a few possible interlocutors.

There’s another possibility, of course, which is that Putin could depart power in some fashion. A new leader could recognize the folly of what Putin has done and pull out of Ukraine, perhaps try to get some agreement that saves a bit of face, but nonetheless allows Russia to extricate itself from what is going to be just an endless, costly, and indecisive involvement.

To be sure, the leader who follows Putin could also be just as ruthless, unfeeling and kleptocratic as Putin has been, so we should always temper our optimism when it comes to Russia.

There’s a fourth possibility that can’t be ruled out, and that is that Ukraine, in a sense, wins. It actually defeats the Russians on the battlefield, and gradually, that battlefield reality sets in, in Moscow. And maybe Ukraine even retakes the Donbas — or, in a sense, dictates terms to Russia.

There are at least those four possibilities. Unfortunately, the one most likely in the near term appears to be the continuation of a bloody quagmire for Russia that is largely indecisive, with some Russian successes and some costly failures — and greater and greater economic privation, inflation, unemployment and deprivation on the Russian people.

“Domestic Extremism,” First United Methodist Church, 104 S Pineapple Ave, Sarasota, FL

Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 10:30 AM

First United Methodist Church, 104 S Pineapple Ave, Sarasota, FL, 34236
More info: https://sillsarasota.org

The riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a reminder that right-wing extremism is a serious problem. Since 9/11 right-wing militants and jihadist terrorists have both killed around the same number of Americans. Peter Bergen examines domestic political violence in the U.S and what can be done to fix it.

Peter Bergen is a journalist, documentary producer, Vice President for Global Studies and Fellows at New America, and CNN national security analyst. He is professor of practice at Arizona State University where he co-directs the Center on the Future of War, and the author or editor of nine books, which have been translated into 21 languages. Documentaries based on his books have been nominated for two Emmys and also won the Emmy for best documentary.

Mr. Bergen writes a weekly column for CNN.com and is a member of the Homeland Security Experts Group and a fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security. He is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field, and has testified on Capitol Hill eighteen times about national security issues.

Mr. Bergen holds a degree in modern history from New College, Oxford, and has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Tickets are $10 at the door.

Mike Pence is no profile in courage, CNN.com

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His forthcoming paperback is The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN. ”

(CNN)Gearing up for what appears to be a run for president in 2024, former Vice President Mike Pence is seeking to put some daylight between him and his former boss. In a speech to Republican donors on Friday, Pence declared, “There is no room in this party for apologists for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom.”
Former President Donald Trump, of course, has been an Olympic-level Putin apologist for years. Just two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump praised Putin’s actions in Ukraine as “savvy” and “genius.”

Trump’s long bromance with Putin provides Pence with a handy political opening to distinguish himself, especially since polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans back increased economic sanctions against Russia, according to a CNN poll.

But if Pence thinks this will give him a significant leg up over Trump, he has misjudged both the former president and his supporters. A man who could pay an adult-film star hush money and publicly attack a Gold Star family during his first presidential campaign is hardly going to get tripped up because of his longstanding embrace of Putin.

Is Pence really just seeing the light on the Putin issue now that Russia has invaded Ukraine? Where was he when Trump was genuflecting before Putin in Helsinki in 2018 and siding with the Russian leader over his own intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election?

Let’s not forget that throughout Trump’s presidency, Pence treated his boss with the groveling obeisance of a North Korean butler waiting on the Dear Leader. Pence doesn’t have much credibility now that he’s trying to take the high road.

Remember the painful Covid-19 task force briefings, where Pence would often unctuously praise Trump’s “leadership”? What leadership? This was a president who admitted to downplaying the threat of coronavirus and failed to take steps that could have prevented tens of thousands of deaths, according to the coronavirus coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx’s testimony before the House Select Subcommittee which investigated the crisis.

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And remember also the televised cabinet meeting in December 2017 when Pence praised the President 14 times in less than three minutes?

Now Pence is trying to change his tune — by doing the bare minimum. Last month, when he said, “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election,” commentators praised him for “growing a spine.” What Pence said was a basic acknowledgement of the truth, and yet his comments were treated in some quarters as a mark of steely, Churchillian resolve.

Of course, Pence made no public mention of the fact that his former boss stirred up the mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” Nor did Pence call out the tsunami of other lies that Trump and his closest allies have made about the 2020 presidential election.

Pence is no profile in courage. Trump’s in-your-face lying and hucksterism is almost preferable to the sanctimonious sycophancy of Pence. And yet, he seems to be laboring under the delusion that the election-denying Republican Party that he enabled his former boss to transform is somehow clamoring for his wisdom and guidance.

Polling suggests that this is a serious delusion; a CNN poll released in February found that among Republican voters considering candidates for the 2024 race, 54% supported Trump getting the party’s nomination. And among the Republican-aligned voters who want a nominee other than Trump, it was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who polled at 21%, while other possible candidates polled at around 1%.

If there’s one thing Americans seem to dislike more than a habitual liar like Trump, it’s a patent phony like Pence.