World

Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine is coming up on its eighth month, and the costs to the Kremlin’s military have been immense. Increasingly isolated on the world stage, Vladimir Putin has joined the world’s club of pariah states, the only group willing to give him support. Chief among his allies is the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state with similarly imperialistic designs and global isolation. This axis has been brewing for some time — the two nations worked together extensively in Syria, for example — but the relationship has reached new heights as the Russian armed forces buckle under the strain of war. Perhaps the most potent symbols of this relationship are the hundreds of Iranian drones flooding into Ukraine to fill a gap in Russia’s weapons inventory.

Since the onset of Venezuela’s economic and humanitarian crisis back in 2015, around 6.8 million people have fled the country in search of refuge. The most popular destinations include neighboring countries Colombia and Brazil, as well as a host of other Latin American countries. Many who can afford it have also found safe passage to Europe. Yet many of Venezuela’s poorest and most disaffected are setting their sights on another destination entirely: the United States. At the height of the country’s troubles between 2015 and 2018, the number of Venezuelans apprehended by US officials never exceeded 100 people a year. Fast forward to 2022, and more than 150,000 Venezuelans have arrived this year already.

What’s more alarming than President Trump trying to frighten Kim Jong-un with “fire and fury”? President Biden trying to frighten Americans with Putin. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” the president riffed at a New York fundraiser, while fretting to supporters about his need to find that elusive off-ramp for the Russians. Biden’s loose talk about Putin’s formidability contrasted with US handwringing fits a pattern. Pervasive throughout Putin’s war has been far too much focus on what the United States should do to help Putin find these mythical off-ramps, and on how to restrain Ukraine to prevent it from getting nuked.

Vladimir Putin is mad: not in the cognitive but in the emotional sense of the word. He is an odd mixture of the cold, the plotting, the calculating, and the bloodless; the emotional, the impulsive, the hotblooded, and the sentimental. He is mad, in other words, in precisely the way that Adolf Hitler was mad. And like Hitler, Putin is disconnected from the world of fact but not of logic. This is a fundamental truth about the man that I think the West had never experienced before February. His condition became apparent in the diatribe against the West that he gave on Friday, which corresponded almost exactly to Hitler’s customary rants.

At a swanky fundraiser in Manhattan, President Joe Biden alluded to the prospect of “Armageddon.” The biblical reference was not intended to woo the Christian evangelicals who form part of the base of the Republican Party, but to alert bien-pensant liberal opinion that something a trifle more threatening than global warming looms large in world politics. For the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of a] nuclear weapon if, in fact, things continue down the path they are going," Biden said. For anyone with lingering memories of the Cold War, his remarks about the prospect that Russian president Vladimir Putin might reach for the nuclear button was bound to stir alarm coupled with — dare I say it? — a smidgen of pleasure.

Here is one fact about the war in Ukraine you need to understand: the longer it goes on, the more advanced Western arms will flow to Kyiv. And that could mean that Russian president Vladimir Putin will feel he has no choice but to use tactical nuclear weapons to even the odds — no matter what happens as a result. You think that sounds crazy, right? Well, let me ask you this: did you ever imagine Putin would invade Ukraine? That action alone casts doubts on how rational an actor he really is. But let's take a step back for a moment. In order to understand why Putin may very well consider using tactical nukes, let's get a sense of where he thinks he stands in this war.

Four days have passed since the Nord Stream pipelines mysteriously ruptured in the Baltic Sea, just outside of NATO territory. Sabotage is suspected. Many in the West blame Vladimir Putin; others, such as Tucker Carlson, Radek Sikorski and, er, Vladimir Putin, blame America. But to truly solve this mystery, Cockburn thinks circumstances require us to cast the net a little wider. Here are some potential saboteurs deserving of further scrutiny. Greta Thunberg How dare we! The gray Swedish doom-gremlin has dedicated much of the last years to warning us of the looming Armageddon, traipsing from the UN to Davos to COP26. Is it farfetched to suggest that Thunberg might take dramatic steps to ensure her cause is the only option on the table?

As the world wonders what happened to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, many suspect that Russian President Vladimir Putin is behind the sabotage. At first glance, it appears strange that Russia would damage pipelines that its own companies run. But Putin has several possible reasons for carrying out the attack. One reason could be that Gazprom (the Russian state-owned gas giant) wants to avoid paying penalties for failing to fulfill its contractual obligations. Since August 31, Russia has halted gas exports via both Nord Stream pipelines, which follows a similar move in July where the Kremlin cited erroneous maintenance issues as the cause of the short shutdown that month.

British prime minister Liz Truss’s speech at the United Nations this week was spot-on. It was clear, concise and left no question that the UK would do everything in its power to lead in the defense of the West and its values. President Biden’s address, by contrast, left you feeling overwhelmed and unsatisfied. That's not to say he failed to speak about Ukraine — he spent a reasonable amount of time on it — but the substance just was not there. Truss made a clear commitment to continue to “sustain or increase... military support to Ukraine, for as long as it takes,” a concrete and actionable statement. Though Biden issued a ringing condemnation of Putin’s war, he only made a vague pledge to “stand in solidarity against Russia’s aggression.

If Vladimir Putin’s goal is to reestablish Russian influence, his ambitions are on track for another major setback. Far less high-profile than the war in Ukraine, a slow and quiet revolution has been brewing south of Russia’s borders in Central Asia and the Caucasus. These nations, members of the former Soviet Union, have traditionally been in Russia’s sphere of influence. That, however, is now changing. At the start of the year, it looked like Russia was ascendant. Putin had over 150,000 troops waiting to invade Ukraine, and was receiving a steady stream of Western visitors pleading with him to step back. When Kazakhstan was engulfed in popular protests, Putin stepped in and deployed about 2,500 Russian troops after an appeal by the Kazakh president to help quell the unrest.

Every year in late September, the east side of Manhattan morphs into a giant sea of immovable cars. The culprit: the annual United Nations General Assembly debate, where diplomats from around the world fly to New York to shake hands, give speeches, and participate in dozens of side meetings and events throughout the city. This week’s UN General Assembly debate, however, is unique. For the first time since the UN was established after World War II, the meeting is occurring amid a large, deadly, conventional conflict in Europe. The war in Ukraine, which will cross its eight-month mark this Saturday, will dominate the session from beginning to end.