Ukraine And Intelligence

Here's what I still don't understand about what we're being told in the Ukraine crisis. The claim from National Security Handler Sullivan is that US intelligence says Putin is going to invade tomorrow, maybe, sorta. My first question is that with all the intelligence resources available to him, satellites, drones, signals, bugs, spies on the ground, and everything else, that's the best he can do? Maybe tomorrow? A sub-question to my first question is that the Ukrainians and NATO have equivalent resources, but they don't seem on board with the Sullivan version, especially not the Ukrainians, who are not dullards.

The second question is this. The normal policy with intelligence on when and where an enemy will attack is to conceal that you know it. In 1942, the US broke the Japanese naval code and learned they planned an attack on Midway. They secretly moved a carrier force to intercept the Japanese fleet. They last thing they wanted to do was to reveal that they'd broken the code or that they knew when and where the Japanese would attack. That would have forfeited the whole advantage of surprise.

So why is the US now loudly telegraphing just that? It seems to me that if there were credible indications of an invasion, the US, NATO, and Ukraine would all be strictly concealing their actual knowledge of troop concentrations and anticipated lines of attack, just as was done in the example of Midway.

There's another puzzle. US presidents, or their handlers, only very rarely make global moves while revealing intelligence. The best recent example is President Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, where he announced that Cuban overflights showed the presence of Soviet missiles aimed at the US. In that case, he turned out to be correct. But the other example that comes to mind is Colin Powell's 2003 address to the UN as George W Bush's secretary of state, where he relied on flawed intelligence that claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion of Iraq. This is almost universally regarded as a blunder.

Frankly, if I were a US president, I would not be relying on the predictions of the deep-state organs absent a thorough purge and reorganization. The alternative is simply to come out of it like Powell and Dubya.

As of yesterday, there was a brief flurry in the headlines with a claim that Ukraine President Zelensky had come around on the likelihood of the Russian invasion tomorrow, but this quickly disappeared.

“We are told that February 16 will be the day of the attack,” Zelenskyy said in a video statement posted on Facebook.

However, after his comments were taken by many at face value, his spokesman, Sergii Nykyforov, said that the president, who is a former comedian, was only saying what has been reported elsewhere.

“The president referred to a date that was spread by the media,” the spokesman told NBC News.

Some observers said Zelenskyy appeared to Ukrainian speakers to have been sarcastic when discussing the possible date of an attack.

But an alternate story seems now to be gaining momentum. As of yesterday,

In a televised exchange on Russian TV, the Russian foreign minister told Vladimir Putin that diplomacy still has some potential and should continue to be pursued before the military option for Ukraine gets ordered[.]

Surely this was calculated. And as of this morning,

Russia said on Tuesday some of its troops were returning to base after exercises near Ukraine and it mocked repeated Western warnings about a looming invasion, but NATO said it had yet to see any evidence of de-escalation.

Russia did not say how many units were being withdrawn, and how far, after a build-up of some 130,000 Russian troops to the north, east and south of Ukraine that has triggered one of the worst crises in relations with the West since the Cold War.

But the interpretation in the National Interest story I linked yesterday is that the crisis emerged as the result of a US policy overreach at the start of the Biden administration, where the intent was to push Russia out of Donbas and Crimea. Putin ordered the "exercises" as a warning of what would happen if the US followed through.

The result, it seems to me so far, has been an elaborate face-saving charade on the part of Sullivan and Biden, trying to sell a story that the focused and resolute President Brandon, with his key handler Sullivan at this side, faced down the reckless adventurer Putin. So far, it hasn't worked, but lame duck Speaker Pelosi has nevertheless signed on:

It's about diplomacy deterrence. Diplomacy deterrence. And the President has made it very clear: there's a big price to pay for Russia to go there. So if Russia doesn't invade, it's not that he never intended to. It's just that the sanctions worked.

No, as far as I can see, Putin made a calcutated set of moves throughout 2021 to get the Brandon administration to back off its own adventurist gamble, which Brandon's handlers did in an elaborate and clumsily handled charade.