Boy.

I was one of the many sensible, rational people who pooh-pooh'd the CIA for their assertions that Russia was going to invade Ukraine because there was no possible way the invasion could be anything but a diplomatic disaster. I did this because there was a preponderance of sensible, rational arguments as to why they wouldn't. When Alexander Vindman took to Foreign Affairs to describe the invasion a month early I assumed that HE was the one without perspective!

There's a great book called Legacy of Ashes about the CIA from before it was the CIA until 2001. Tim Weiner makes the argument that September 11 was a massive misstep by the CIA that hollowed out the agency and left it impotent. Instead they quietly amassed the world's 4th largest air force, completely changing mission and approach in a way utterly invisible from budget requisitions, and proceeded to practice merciless kinetic shenanigans by remote control. And hey - for fifty years, everyone assumed that Little Green Men crashed at Roswell and there was a morgue full of them deep in the desert somewhere. Fuckers kept their listening system secret for fifty years.

Here's what I think, based on what I've read:

- Putin has become increasingly isolated from his own command structure

- Good news travels, bad news is punished

- Russia walked into Ukraine with 180,000 conscripts (technically volunteers, who got in trucks, then were given forms to sign acknowledging that they were engaging in kinetic war in a foreign country under penalty of arrest) while Ukraine has cycled 400,000 combat veterans through Donbass and Lunetsk since 2014

- If we haven't been secretly training Ukrainians as to how to kill Russians since fuckin' 1992 we've missed a beat, and this is not a beat we've ever missed historically

- If this base isn't swarming with Deltas and CIA I will eat my shirt

The general consensus from people who do this stuff for a living seems to be that the Russians are doing worse than anyone expected (for a number of reasons), the Ukrainians are doing better than anyone expected (for a number of reasons) but that Russia could still shell Ukraine down to bedrock.

The general consensus is that India, China and the UAE have been ambivalent about condemning the Russians, but the only full-throated support Russia has is Belarus. Russia has announced they're bringing in Syrian death squads, but nobody in the West professes to understand why, as their effectiveness is dubious.

The Western fiction appears to be "we won't overtly attack from other countries and you will pretend our forces aren't tangling with your forces" which seems to be a difficult fiction for the Kremlin to counter. They have long maintained that Ukraine is a Western puppet but if you look at it now, of course they are, the moral high ground has been squandered on that particular point.

The doctrine the wonks are getting bushy-tailed about is called "escalate to de-escalate." In this scenario, Russia hits Kiev or Mariupol or, say, that nasty base full of Deltas with a battlefield nuke - indiscriminately kills tens of thousands of people, spreads fallout to the west, freaks everyone out about the notion that maybe Putin really will end the world. We'd likely back away, then, and give Russia another Afghanistan. There are two problems with this:

1) China would be bound by treaty to nuke Russia. They wouldn't? But they certainly see how quickly the Western economies can kick you out of the clubhouse. Which would effectively cut Russia off from everything.

2) It would, in my opinion, make Russia such a pariah state that nothing less than a full unconditional surrender and regime change would get them so much as diplomatic status with any other nation that wished to trade on the global stage. North Korea still has diplomatic relations with lotsa countries; they've never nuked anyone.

Right now? Western banks and investment firms are writing their Russian investments down to zero. Russia is threatening to nationalize foreign interests in Russia, which as the White House has pointed out, will effectively eliminate any future foreign investment in Russia this side of regime change. Roughly 25% of Russian calories come from trade; depending on what China, India and Kazakhstan do, the average Russian could give up as much as a big mac and fries every day just through diminished trade. Russia theoretically has massive gold reserves but nobody wants to buy gold from them. The "shame premium" on trading with Russia seems to be around 20-25% which means whatever resources they thought they were going into this with, they only have four fifths of the hard stuff.

The 'winger geopoliticists have long predicted the demise of Russia. There's a baby bust among ethnic Russians, their economy has become increasingly westernized, there's no real support for their military budget, etc. Zeihan (who is an idiot) went as far as arguing that if Putin didn't invade Ukraine, Poland and Finland by 2022, China would invade Russia. And I mean, Putin cut his teeth as a scumbag Stasi intermediary in East Berlin; "police state" is his comfort zone. He's also described as "a gambler" by everyone who profiles him. He may not even know how bad it is - but he knows the West knows and has launched an epic mole hunt.

I think that Putin mulled over Kim Jong-un's place in the world and decided "eh, could be worse." The real question, then, is what are the avenues to returning Russia to the Russian people? I would be pessimistic about that except that Western intelligence has demonstrated themselves to be on point and Western society does not seem to abide by a rule-breaker.

Zelensky has survived between one and a dozen assassination attempts in the past couple weeks. I've read that at least three Chechen death squads have come for him, and that at least three Chechen death squads have been wiped out. Now - it's entirely possible that Zelensky is entirely 100% protected by locals who happen to kick ass. But it's more possible that Ukraine's own ass-kicking security forces have American intelligence, American training and probably more than a few Americans with funny papers.

Which is why I think this ends with regime change. I'm cynical enough to think that the CIA COULD have whispered in the right ears at the right times to make Putin think he could go for it. I'm even jaded enough to think that "Hunter Biden's laptop" could very well have been used to communicate between Ukraine and the CIA out of the watchful eye of known-compromised individual Donald Trump. Put on your tinfoil hat with me: You work for an agency that exists entirely to oppose Russia, and your country has just elected a Russian stooge as your president. What do you do? 'cuz let's be honest - if your counterparty has revised the bounds, and if there has long been grumbling about the lack of symmetry in US/Russian clandestine operations, and if you are truly renegade, do you not swing for the fences?

I'm not willing to say that the CIA drew Russia into a Ukrainian invasion in order to break Russia forever and solidify the "Western" international order in Europe and South Asia. But I am willing to say that they definitely wargamed it out years ago, and that every time we count out the CIA they make us eat crow.

Now what does that look like? It looks like shit for Ukraine. It looks like shit for Ukrainians, it looks like shit for Russians, it looks like war, deprivation, murder, atrocities, PTSD and a whole bunch of horrible shit. For how long? I don't know. I do know that it's tough to keep your job after a failed invasion. Galtieri lasted days, in no small part because we were arming the shit out of the British against our own puppet. Hussein? Hussein lasted a dozen years, which tells you a little something about American involvement in Iraq, I think.

Whether by accident or on purpose, I get the sense that the clandestine service of the United States is principally interested in the indigenous overthrow of Putin, and that "this" does not end until his Dacha has a gift shop. I know it's going to take too long, that too many people who don't deserve it are going to die, that it's going to reshape the world order, and that I'm getting fucking sick of living through history.

Does that answer your question?