REPOST
The Weak Strongman
Impotence and Unfreedom, Together
TIMOTHY SNYDER
FEB 13
Americans have a certain idea of freedom. We are fine just the way we are and the only problem are the barriers in the outside world. In this mental world, Musk’s hollowing out of the government can seem justified. Trump’s betrayal of friends and destruction of alliances can seem convenient. We will be great again by being all alone, with no one to trouble us.
This fantasy leads right to tragedy. It sets the stage for the weak strongman.
Trump is a strongman in the sense that he makes others weak. He is strong in a relative sense; as Musk destroys institutions, what remains is Trump’s presence. But other sorts of power meaning vanish, as Musk takes apart the departments of the American government that deal with money, weapons, and intelligence. And then the United States has no actual tools to deal with the rest of the world.
The strongman is weak because no one beyond the United States has anything to want (or fear) from the self-immolation. And weak because Trump submits to foreign aggression, putting waning American power behind Russia.
The weak strongman undermines the rules, but cannot replace them with anything else. He creates the image of power by his rhetorical imperialism: America will control Greenland, Panama, Mexico, Canada, Gaza, etc. From there, it is hard to say that others are wrong when they invade other countries. The weak strongman is left endorsing other people’s invasions, as with Russia and Ukraine. He lacks the power to resist them. And he lacks the power to coerce them. And, ironically, he lacks the power to carry out wars himself. He lacks the patience, and he lacks the instruments.
Many Americans fear Trump, and so imagine that others must. No one beyond America fears Trump as such. He can generate fear only in his capacity as neighborhood arsonist, as someone who destroys what others have created. America’s friends are afraid not of him but of what we all have to lose. America’s enemies are not frightened when Trump kicks over the lantern and sets things on fire. Quite the contrary: he is doing exactly what they want.
Trump plays a strongman on television, and he is a talented performer. But the strength consists solely of the submissiveness of his audience. His performance arouses a dream of passivity: Trump will fix it, Trump will get rid of our problems, and then we will be free. And of course that kind of Nosferatu charisma is a kind of strength, but not one that can be brought to bear to solve any problems, and not one that matters in the world at large. Or rather: it matters only negatively. As soon as Trump meets someone with a better dictator act, like Putin, he submits. But he can only enable Putin. He can’t really even imitate him.
Trump’s supporters might think that we don’t need friendships because the United States can, if necessary, intimidate its enemies without help. This has already been proven wrong. Trump can make things worse for Canada and Mexico, in the sense that a sobbing boy taking his ball home makes things worse. But he cannot make them back down. Trump has not intimidated Russia. He has been intimidated by Russia.
The cruelty that makes Trump a strongman at home arose from the destruction of norms of civil behavior and democratic practice. Unlike any other American politician before him, Trump has scorned the law and used hate speech to deter political opponents here. For years he has used his tweets to inspire stochastic violence. This intimidates some Americans. It has, for example, led to a kind of self-purge of the Republican Party, opening the way for Trump, or in fact for Musk, to rule with the help of tamed and therefore predictable cadres. The effect of this is that people who have submitted to Trump see him as a strongman. But what they are experiencing is in fact their own weakness. And their own weakness cannot magically become strength in the wider world. Quite the contrary.
Stochastic violence cannot be applied to foreign leaders. Trump has said that he can stop the war in Ukraine. He wrote a tweet directed at Vladimir Putin; but the capital letters and exclamation points did not change the emotional state of the Russian leader, let alone Russian policy. And no one in Irkutsk is going to threaten or hurt Putin because Donald Trump wrote something on the internet. Something that works in the United States is not relevant abroad. In fact, the tweet was a sign of weakness, since it was not followed by any policy. Putin quite rightly saw it as such. Trump and his cabinet now repeat Putin’s talking points about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
One could generously interpret Trump’s tweet to Putin threatening sanctions and such as an act of policy. I saw conservatives do that, and I would have been delighted had they been right. But I fear that this was just the characteristic American mistake of imagining that, because Americans react submissively to Trump’s words, others must as well. For words to matter, there has to be policy, or at least the possibility that one might be formulated. And for there to be policy, there have to be institutions staffed with competent people. And Trump’s main action so far, or really Musk’s action so far, has been to fire exactly the people who would be competent to design and implement policy. Many of the people who knew anything about Ukraine and Russia are gone from the federal government.
And now Trump is trying to make concessions to Russia regarding issues directly related to Ukrainian sovereignty on his own, without Ukraine, and indeed without any allies. He is showing weakness on a level unprecedented in modern US history. His position is so weak that it is unlikely to convince anyone. Trump is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. The wolves can tell the difference. Russians will naturally think that they can get still more.
Ukrainians, for that matter, have little incentive to give up their country. Trump can threaten them with cutting US arms, because stopping things is the only power he has. But Ukrainians must now expect that he would do that anyway, given his general subservience to Putin. If the US does stop support for Ukraine, it no longer has influence in how Ukraine conducts the war. I have the feeling that no one in the Trump administration has thought of that.
It is quite clear how American power could be used to bring the war to an end: make Russia weaker, and Ukraine stronger. Putin will end the war when it seems that the future is threatening rather than welcoming. And Ukraine has no choice but to fight so long as Russia invades. This is all incredibly simple. But it looks like Trump is acting precisely as is necessary to prolong the war and make it worse.
Thus far he and Hegseth have simply gone public with their agreement with elements of Russia’s position. Since this is their opening gambit, Russia has every incentive to keep fighting and to see if they can get more. The way things are going, Trump will be responsible for the continuing and escalation of the bloodshed, quite possibly into a European or open global conflict. He won’t get any prizes for creating the conditions for a third world war.
It’s an obvious point, but it has to be made clearly: no one in Moscow thinks that Trump is strong. He is doing exactly what Russia would want: he is repeating Russian talking points, he is acting essentially as a Russian diplomat, and he is destroying the instruments of American power, from institutions through reputation. No American president can shift an international power position without policy instruments. And these depend on functioning institutions and competent civil servants. In theory, the United States could indeed change the power position by decisively helping Ukraine and decisively weakening Russia. But that theory only becomes practice through policy. And it is not hard to see that Musk-Trump cannot make policy.
Even should he wish to, Trump can not credibly threaten Russia and other rivals while Musk disassembles the federal government. Intimidation in foreign affairs depends upon the realistic prospect of a policy, and policy depends, precisely, on a functioning state.
Let us take one policy instrument that Trump mentioned in his tweet about Putin: sanctions. Under Biden, we had too few people in the Department of the Treasury working on sanctions. That is one reason they have not worked as well against Russia as one might have hoped. To make sanctions work, we would need more people on the job, not fewer. And of course we would also need foreign powers to believe that Treasury was not just an American billionaire’s plaything. And that will be hard, because their intelligence agencies read the newspapers.
The United States cannot deal with adversaries without qualified civil servants in the departments of government that deal with money, weapons, and intelligence. All of these are being gutted and/or run by people who lack anything vaguely resembling competence.
Americans can choose to ignore this, or to interpret it only in our own domestic political terms. But it is obvious to anyone with any distance on the situation that the destruction of the institutions of power means weakness. And it creates a very simple incentive structure. The Russians were hoping that Trump would return to power precisely because they believe that he weakens the United States. Now, as they watch him (or Musk) disassemble the CIA and FBI, and appoint Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel, they can only think that time is on their side.
The Russians might or might not, as it pleases them, entertain Trump’s idea of ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. Even if they accept the ceasefire it will be to prepare for the next invasion, in the full confidence that a United States neutered by Musk-Trump will not be able to react, that the Europeans will be distracted, and that the Ukrainians will find it harder to mobilize a second time.
Trump is not only destroying things, he is being used as an instrument to destroy things: in this case, used by Russia to destroy a successful wartime coalition that contained the Russian invasion and prevented a larger war.
What is true for Russia also holds for China. The weak strongman helps Beijing. Time was not really on China’s side, not before Trump. There was no reason to think that China would surpass the United States economically, and therefore politically and militarily. That had been the great fear for decades, but by the time of the Biden administration the trend lines were no longer so clear, or indeed had reversed. But now that Trump (or rather Musk) has set a course for the self-destruction of American state power, Beijing can simply take what it would once have had to struggle to gain, or would have had to resign from taking.
A weak strongman brings only losses without gains. And so the descent begins. Destroying norms and institutions at home only makes Trump (or rather Musk) strong in the sense of making everyone else weak. In our growing weakness, we might be all tempted by the idea that our strong man at least makes us a titan among nations.
But the opposite is true. The world cannot be dismissed by the weak strongman. As a strongman, he destroys the norms, laws, and alliances that held back war. As a weakling, he invites it.
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© 2025 Timothy Snyder
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Jahangir visiting the ascetic Jadrup,attributed to painter Govardhan ca. 1616-20, Musee Guimet, Paris.
REPOST
Decapitation Strike (December)
Preserving America from Trump's Appointments (updated)
TIMOTHY SNYDER
DEC 1
(Note to readers: I wrote this two weeks ago, on 15 November. This update accounts for things I have learned since, and for Trump’s further appointments, who confirm the thesis.)
Each of Trump's proposed appointments is a surprise. It is comforting to think that he is simply a vengeful old man, lashing out this way and that. This is unlikely. He and Musk and Putin have been talking for years. And the whole idea of his campaign was that this time he had a plan.
We should be wary of shock, which excuses inaction. Who could have known? What could I have done? If there is a plan, shock is part of the plan. We have to get through the surprise and the shock to see the design and the risk. We don't have much time. Nor is outrage the point. Of course we are outraged. But our own reactions can distract is from the larger pattern.
The newspapers address the surprise and the shock by investigating each proposed appointment individually. And we need this. With detail comes leverage and power. But clarity must also come, and quickly. Each appointment is part of a larger picture. Taken together, Trump’s candidates constitute an attempt to wreck the American government.
In historical context we can see this. There is a history of the modern democratic state. There is also a history of engineered regime change and deliberate state destruction. In both histories, five key zones are health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. These people, with power over these areas of life, can make America impossible to sustain.
The foundation of modern democratic state is a healthy, long-lived population. We lived longer in the twentieth century because of hygiene and vaccinations, pioneered by scientists and physicians and then institutionalized by governments. We treat one another better when we know we have longer lives to lose. Health is not only the central human good; it enables the peaceful interactions we associate with the rule of law and democracy. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the proposed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, would undo all of this. On his watch, were his ideas implemented, millions of us would die. Knowing that our lives will be shorter, we become nasty and brutish.
A modern democratic state depends upon the rule of law. Before anything else is possible, we have to endorse the principle that we are all governed by law, and that our institutions are grounded in law. This enables a functional government of a specific sort, in which leaders can be regularly replaced by elections. It allows us to live as free individuals, within a set of rules that we can alter together. The rule of law depends on people who believe in the spirit of law. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first proposed attorney general, is the opposite of such a person. It is not just that he flouts law himself, spectacularly and disgustingly. It is that he embodies lawlessness, and can be counted upon to abuse law to pursue Trump's political opponents. The end of the rule of law is an essential component of a regime change. He has been replaced by Pam Bondi, who will evade the sex-crime allegations that seem to have brought Gaetz down. But Bondi is someone who dropped an investigation against Trump when he made an illegal donation to one of her foundations. She also led “lock her up” chants against Hillary Clinton, who had committed no crime. And she participated in a central injustice of contemporary American history, Donald Trump’s Big Lie that he won the election of 2020. She can be expected to lead prosecutions based upon alternative reality.
In a class by himself is Kash Patel, whom Trump would like to see as director of the FBI. This, of course, requires Trump to fire Christopher Wray, whom he himself appointed, and who has three years left to serve. Firing Wray for no reason would be unprecedented and would itself have been an outrage in a more sane time. Giving Patel authority over the national police force is nothing less than a promise of authoritarian rule.
Patel is a narcissitic zealot with zero qualification for such a post, as even hard-right Trump insiders such as Bill Barr have said (“over my dead body” were his words when Trump proposed Patel for a lesser position of authority in 2020). Patel got Trump’s attention for his efforts to denounce the entirely correct proposition that Trump was supported by Russian in 2016. Patel was then one of the most active and outspoken participants in Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-2021. Patel has since become a pitchman for a clothing line as well as pills that, he claims, will detox your body from the harmful effects of vaccinations. Patel said both that he would shut down the FBI and that he would use it to prosecute journalists and people who deny the untrue conspiracy theories in which he believes, and to prosecute people who say true things, such as that Russia supports Donald Trump when he runs for office. Russian trolls have been, understandably, very excited in their support of Patel.
A pattern is emerging: the federal government is to be used only as an instrument of revenge, which means that the law will be subverted as such. Laws that were passed to improve the laws of citizens, meanwhile, will simply not be implemented.
The United States of America exists not only because laws are passed, but because we can expect that these laws will be implemented by civil servants. We might find bureaucracy annoying; its absence, though, is deadly. We cannot take the pollution out of the air ourselves, or build the highways ourselves, our write our Social Security checks ourselves. Without a civil service, the law becomes mere paper, and all that works is the personal connection to the government, which the oligarchs will have, and which the rest of us will not. This is the engineered helplessness promised by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are to head a black hole named after a cryptocurrency. There are already oversight instruments in government. DOGE is something entirely different: an agency of destruction, run by people who believe that government should exist for the wealthy or not at all.
The understandable jokes are that DOGE just adds unelected bureaucrats when it is supposed to replace them, and that DOGE is itself a model of inefficiency, since it has two incompetent directors. But the humor distracts from the basic truth: DOGE is there to make the government fail, and then to divide the profitable bits among regime-proximate oligarchs.
DOGE = Den of Oligarchs Gets Everything.
In a modern democratic state, the armed forces are meant to preserve a healthy, long-lived people from external threats. This principal has been much abused in American practice. But never before Donald Trump have we had a president who has presented the purpose of the armed forces as the oppression of Americans. Trump says that Russia and China are less of a threat than "internal enemies." In American tradition, members of the armed forces swear an oath to the Constitution. Trump has indicated that we would prefer "Hitler's generals," which means a personal oath to himself. Pete Hegseth, Trump's proposed secretary of defense, defends war criminals and displays tattoos associated with white nationalism and Christian nationalism. He is a fundraiser and television personality, with a complicated sexual past and zero experience running an organization. Like Trump, he has no coherent account of how foreign powers might threaten America; if anything, he praises them for sharing his misogyny. His own obsessions with gender lead him to believe that American high officers should be politically purged — a proposition that America’s actual enemies would of course welcome. Hegseth makes perfect sense as the person who would direct American armed forces against American citizens.
In a world of hostile powers, an intelligence service is indispensable. Intelligence can be abused, and certainly has been abused. Yet it is necessary to consider military threats: consider the Biden administration's correct call the Russia was about to invade Ukraine. It is also necessary to counter the attempts by foreign intelligence agencies, which are constant, to harm American society. This often involves disinformation. Tulsi Gabbard, insofar as she is known at all, is known as a spreader of Syrian and Russian disinformation. She visited Syria, where here remarks could only be understood as an endorsement of the atrocities of Assad. She suggested to burn victims that they had not suffered because of Assad and his ally Russia, which was in fact the case. Gabbard has no relevant experience. Were she to become director of national intelligence, as Trump proposes, we would lose the trust of our allies, and lose contact with much of what is happening in the world -- just for starters. We would be vulnerable to all of those who wish to cause us harm. Unsurprisingly, Gabbard is regarded in Russia as “girlfriend,” “superwoman” and a “Putin’s agent.”
In the Soviet theory of regime change, one crucial aspect was control of the power ministries: those associated with defense, the police, and intelligence. Patel, Gabbard, and Hegseth are such shocking suggestions as custodians of American power and law that it is easy to overlook Kristi Noem as Trump’s proposed director of Homeland Security. Noem is regarded positively in Trump’s circles because of a publicity stunt in which she, as governor of South Dakota, effectively privatized her states’s National Guard by accepting a big private donation to send a few of its members to the border with Mexico. The border is, of course, a serious matter, Noem’s combination of spectacle, privatization, and incompetence is more than concerning.
Imagine that you are a foreign leader who wishes to destroy the United States. How could you do so? The easiest way would be to get Americans to do the work themselves, to somehow induce Americans to undo their own health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. From this perspective, Trump's proposed appointments -- Kennedy, Jr.; Bondi; Musk; Ramaswamy; Hegseth; Gabbard; Noem -- are perfect instruments. They combine narcissism, incompetence, corruption, sexual incontinence, personal vulnerability, dangerous convictions, and foreign influence as no group before them has done. These proposed appointments look like a decapitation strike: destroying the American government from the top, leaving the body politic to rot, and the rest of us to suffer.
I do not defend the status quo. I have no doubt whatsoever that the Department of Defense and the Food and Drug Administration require reform. But such a reform, of these or other agencies, would have to be guided by people with knowledge and experience, who cared about their country, and who had a vision of improvement. That is simply not what is happening here. We are confronted instead with a group of people who, were they to hold the positions they have been assigned, could bring an end to the United States of America.
It is a mistake to think of these people as flawed. It is not they will do a bad job in their assigned posts. It is that they will do a good job using those assigned posts to destroy our country.
However and by whomever this was organized, the intention of these appointments is clear: to create American horror. Elected officials should see this for what it is. Senators, regardless of party, should understand that the United States Senate will not outlast the United States, insist on voting, and vote accordingly. The Supreme Court of the United States will likely be called upon. Although it is a faint hope, one must venture it anyway: that its justices will understand that the Constitution was not in fact written as the cover story for state destruction. The Supreme Court will also not outlast the United States.
And citizens, regardless of how they voted, need now to check their attitudes. This is no longer a post-electoral moment. It is a pre-catastrophic moment. Trump voters are caught in the notion that Trump must be doing the right thing if Harris voters are upset. But Harris voters are upset now because they love their country. And Harris voters will have to get past the idea that Trump voters should reap what they have sown. Yes, some of them did vote to burn it all down. But if it all burns down, we burn too. It is not easy to speak right now; but if some Republicans wish to, please listen.
Both inside and outside Congress, there will have to be simple defiance, joined with a rhetoric of a better America. And, at moments at least, there will also have to be alliances among Americans who, though they differ on other matters, would like to see their country endure.
(Please share this post with people who might benefit from reading it.)
© 2024 Timothy Snyder
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
REPOST
The Strongman Fantasy (updated 11/24)
And dictatorship in real life
TIMOTHY SNYDER
NOV 26
(Note to readers: this is a text I wrote in March, looking ahead. Given where we are now in the US, I thought it deserved an update. Please share it.)
Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule. And now we have an president-elect who vows to persecute the enemy within, and who has proposed a cabinet that seems designed to overturn a republic.
What’s wrong with that, ask many? Why not a dictator who will get things done?
I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh. I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule. I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.
So I think that there is an answer to this question.
Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.
Another pleasant illusion is that the strongman will unite the nation. But an aspiring dictator will always claim that some belong and others don't. He will define one group after another as the enemy. This might feel good, so long as you feel that you are on the right side of the line. But now fear is the essence of life. The politics of us-and-them, once begun, never ends.
We dream that a strongman will let us focus on America. But dictatorship opens our country to the worst the world has to offer. It will always turn out that the people who talk about “America First” are actually copying dictatorships abroad.
An American strongman will measure himself by the wealth and power of other dictators. He will befriend them and compete with them. From them he will learn new ways to oppress and to exploit his own people.
At least, the fantasy goes, the strongman will get things done. But dictatorial power today is not about achieving anything positive. It is about preventing anyone else from achieving anything. The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else weaker.
Unaccountable to the law and to voters, the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests. In the twenty-first century, those are simple: dying in bed as a billionaire. To enrich himself and to stay out of prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists.
The new bureaucrats will have no sense of accountability. Basic government functions will break down. Citizens who want access will learn to pay bribes. Bureaucrats in office thanks to patronage will be corrupt, and citizens will be desperate. Quickly the corruption becomes normal, even unquestioned.
As the fantasy of strongman rule fades into everyday dictatorship, people realize that they need things like water or schools or Social Security checks. Insofar as such goods are available under a dictatorship, they come with a moral as well as a financial price. When you go to a government office, you will be expected to declare your personal loyalty to the strongman.
If you have a complaint about these practices, too bad. Americans are litigious people, and many of us assume that we can go to the police or sue. But when you vote a strong man in, you vote out the rule of law. In court, only loyalism and wealth will matter. Americans who do not fear the police will learn to do so. Those who wear the uniform must either resign or become the enforcers of the whims of one man.
Everybody (except the dictator and his family and friends) gets poorer. The market system depends upon competition. Under a strongman, there will be no such thing. The strongman's clan will be favored by government. Our wealth inequality, bad enough already, will get worse. Anyone hoping for prosperity will have to seek the patronage of the official oligarchs. Running a small business will become impossible. As soon as you achieve any sort of success, someone who wants your business denounces you.
In the fantasy of the strongman, politics vanishes and all is clear and bright. In fact, a dreary politics penetrates everything. You can't run a business without the threat of denunciation. You can't get basic services without humiliation. You feel bad about yourself. You think about what you say, since it can be used against you later. What you do on the internet is recorded forever, and can land you in prison.
Public space closes down around you. You cannot escape to the bar or the bowling alley, since everything you say is monitored. The person on the next stool or in the next lane might not turn you in, but you have to assume they will. If you have a t-shirt or a bumper sticker with a message, someone will report you. Even if you just repeat the dictator's words, someone can lie about you and denounce you. And then, if you voted for the strongman, you will be confused. But you should not be. This is what you voted for.
Denunciation becomes normal behavior. Without law and voting, denouncing others helps people to feel safe. Under strongman rule, you cannot trust your colleagues or your friends or even your family. Political fear not only takes away all public space; it also corrupts all private relationships. And soon it consumes your thoughts. If you cannot say what you think, you lose track of what you believe. You cease to be yourself.
If you have a heart attack and go to the hospital, you have to worry that your name is on a list. Care of elderly parents is suddenly in jeopardy. That hospital bed or place in a retirement home is no longer assured. If you draw attention to yourself, aged relatives will be dumped in the street. This is not how America works now, but it is how authoritarian regimes always work.
In the strongman fantasy, no one thinks about children. But fear around children is the essence of dictatorial power. Even courageous people restrain themselves to protect their children. Parents know that children can be singled out and beaten up. If parents step out of line, children lose any chance of going to university, or lose their jobs.
Schools collapse anyway, since a dictator only wants myths that justify his power. Children learn in school to denounce one another. Each coming generation must be more tame and ignorant than the prior one. Time with young children stresses parents. Either your children repeat propaganda and tell you things you know are wrong, or you worry that they will find out what is right and get in trouble.
In a dictatorship, parents no longer say what they think to their children, because they fear that their children will repeat it in public. And once parents no longer speak their minds at home, they can no longer create a trusting family. Even parents who give up on honesty have to fear that their children will one day learn the truth, take action, and get imprisoned.
Most likely you won’t be killed or be required to kill. But amid the dreariness of life under dictatorship is dark responsibility for others’ death. By the time the killing starts, you will know that it is not about unity, or the nation, or getting things done. The best Americans, betrayed by you when you cast your vote, will be murdered at the whim and for the wealth of a dictator. Your tragedy will be living long enough to understand this.
Once this process begins, it is hard to stop. At the present stage of the strongman fantasy, people imagine an exciting experiment. If they don't like strongman rule, they think, they can just elect someone else the next time. This misses the point. If you help a strongman come to power, you are taking part in the elimination of democracy.
Hard to stop: but not impossible. There are lessons to be learned from the past, as I have shared in other posts, and in a little book. We will also have to speak to one another. People voted as they did for various reasons. The outcome of the vote makes strongman rule possible. We will have to get past arguing about the vote, and have conversations about what authoritarianism is really like. This post was meant to help those conversations.
The writing in this forum, my Substack "Thinking about..." is free. You are welcome to pass it along to others. In this particular case, I would urge you to share it with anyone in your life whom it might help. Thank you.
Thinking about... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
TS 16 March 2024, updated 23 November 2024. For specific historical examples of strongman rule, make sure to read Ruth Ben-Ghiat. For the phenomenon of contemporary fascism, see Jason Stanley. On electoral authoritarianism, see Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way.
© 2024 Timothy Snyder
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Autocracy and Poverty
Trump and Vance bring them together
TIMOTHY SNYDER - REPOST
OCT 6
When I am on media, television hosts ask how democracy is relevant to people who are voting on kitchen-table issues. That’s easy.
When Trump destroys our democracy, he will also destroy our economy.
Autocracy will bring poverty.
sun light between mountain
Think about the politicians Trump idolizes, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The first undid a democracy through fake emergencies, the second through persistent constitutional abuse. It is not hard to see why Trump likes them.
Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs. Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time. And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.
And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.
Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.
Trump is running as a candidate who has attempted a coup against constitutional rule. Vance has already said, multiple times, that law does not govern who leads the country, and that he would have supported Trump’s coup attempt.
The rule of law begins from the principle that we are all equally subject to to it. Trump promises to weaponize the law to immunize himself and his supporters and to pursue his political opponents. Those who worked with him in the White House believe him.
Laws are executed by trained civil servants. Trump and Vance back a plan to fire the forty thousand federal employees who now execute the law and replace them with forty thousand loyalist hacks. That is Project 2025.
Upgrade to paid
It doesn't take much imagination to see where this leads. Here are five quick examples.
1. The very rich will not be taxed, but you will be taxed more. The hardest thing the IRS does is to tax the wealthy. In an atmosphere of lawlessness and favoritism, this will become impossible. Insofar as the federal government runs at all, it will be by taxing the middle class.
2. The banks can collapse. As we saw in 2008, our financial system is held together by a very thin tissue of regulation. Unless laws are enforced, as they won't be under a Trump-Vance administration, the over adventurous will very likely draw us all into another financial disaster. The bailout will be paid for by the average taxpayer because the rich won’t be taxed (see number 1).
3. Americans will be at risk of losing their benefits. Social Security and all the rest depend upon a functioning federal bureaucracy, which is exactly what Project 2025 guarantees that we will not have. Americans take for granted federal institutions, from VA Hospitals to the insurance of bank accounts (see number 2).
4. The stock market can crash. It depends upon the laws that prevent insider trading and other abuses. If these laws are applied selectively, and if the people who used to enforce them have been fired, then corrupt investors will win while others lose out. After a time, the stock market loses its prestige, investors go elsewhere, and everyone loses. (And those who were treating their investments as cushioning to their retirement benefits are now poor: see number 3).
5. Businesses will get stuck. Doing business depends upon all sorts of interactions with the federal government. When the federal government loses its civil servants, much of this will stop happening. Or, worse, companies with personal connections will be able to continue functioning without following any rules, while others will grind to a halt. This means millions of people losing their jobs. (And it is now hard for businesses to raise money: see number 4).
For solutions, see On Freedom
This list could go on. The collapse of the economy is not a bug of autocracy, but a feature.
There is an autocratic logic to economic failure. When nothing works, when law does not matter, when elections are irrelevant, the only way Americans will be able to get anything done is by appealing to those who have power. We will have to give bribes to the corrupt and hope for favors from the top.
Once we behave like this, we get used to the idea that only the leader can fix things, which is of course what Trump likes to say. And so the circle closes and the new regime is installed.
The new autocracy is confirmed by our new poverty. That is, in any event, the Trump-Vance plan.
They are talented politicians, and they have an alternative to democracy and prosperity, which is autocracy and poverty. Whether they bring America this new regime is up to us.
© 2024 Timothy Snyder
Very true. They are unique because the best of them really are pure Shinto. First thing that comes to my mind every time I walk into Shimagamo in Kyoto is Miyazaki .
REPOSTING / TIMOTHY SNYDER
How to Stop Fascism
Five Lessons of the Nazi Takeover
TIMOTHY SNYDER
JUL 5
As the United States hovers at the edge of fascism, the history of Germany can help.
To be sure, Americans have other histories to ponder, including their own. Some American states, right now, are laboratories of authoritarian rule (and resistance). The American 1860s and American 1930s reveal tactics authoritarians use, as well as the weaknesses of the American system, such as slavery and its legacy. At those times, though, Americans were lucky in their leadership. Lincoln and Roosevelt were in office at the critical moments. And so we lack the experience of the collapse of the republic.
We can certainly learn from contemporary authoritarian success, as in Russia and in Hungary, which I have written about elsewhere. Yet the classic example of a major economic and cultural power collapsing into fascism remains Germany in 1933. The failure of the democratic experiment in Germany led to a world war as well as the Holocaust and other atrocities.
Yet today a taboo hovers around anything concerning Hitler. As soon as the collapse of the German republic in 1933 is evoked, American voices commence a fake lament — America is uniquely good so nothing about Nazis can ever apply, and/or Hitler was uniquely evil and so nothing concerning him is relevant.
To be sure, every person and every event is in some sense unique. But history is precisely the interaction of individuals and situations which, seen in isolation, will appear unique. The taboo on fascist history shoves people back to a turbulent present, leaving them feeling more helpless. It is an element of the fascist takeover.
The lessons from Germany that I present below are not at all new. We have been trained by digital media to believe that only what happens right now matters. But the people who intend to destroy the American constitutional republic have learned from the past. One of the basic elements of Project 2025, for example, is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung: transforming the civil service into a fascist nest.
Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past. A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933.
1. Voting matters. Hitler came to power after an election which enabled his appointment as head of government. It is much easier for fascists to begin from within than to begin from without. Hitler’s earlier coup attempt failed. But once he had legitimate power, inside the system as chancellor (prime minister), he could manipulate it from within. In the American system, “voting” means not just going to the polls yourself, but making donations, phone-banking, and knocking on doors. We are still, happily, at the stage when unglamorous actions can make the difference.
2. Coalitions are necessary. In 1932, in the crucial German election, the far left and the center left were separated. The reasons for this were very specific: Stalin ordered the German communists to oppose the German social democrats, thereby helping Hitler to power. To be sure, the American political spectrum is very different, as are the times. Yet the general lesson does suggest itself: the left has to hold together with the the center-left, and their energies have to be directed at the goal rather than at each other.
3. Conservatives should be conservative. Which way the center-right turns can be decisive. In Germany in 1932, conservatives enabled the counter-revolution. They did not see Hitler and his Nazis as something different from themselves. They imagined, somehow, that Hitler would preserve the system rather revolutionize it. They were wrong, and some of them paid for the mistake with their lives. As in American today, the German “old right” was less numerous than the “new right,” the fascists. But how the traditionalist center-right acts can very well make the difference.
4. Big business should support democracy. In the Germany of the 1930s, business leaders were not necessarily enthusiastic about Hitler as a person. But they associated democracy with labor unions and wanted to break them. Seeing Hitler as an instrument of their own profit, business leaders enabled the Nazi regime. This was, in the end, very bad for business. Although the circumstances today are different, the general lesson is the same: whether they like it or not, business leaders bear responsibility for whether a republic endures or is destroyed.
5. Citizens should not obey in advance. Much of fascism is a bluff — look at our loyal cult, listen to our outrageous language, heed our threats of violence, we are inevitable! Hitler was good at that sort of propaganda. Yet to gain power he needed luck and the errors of others. American fascism, likewise, is far from inevitable. It too is largely bluff, most of it digital. The internet is much more fascist than real life, which is discouraging. But we vote in the real world. The crucial thing is the individual decision to act, along with others, for four months, a little something each day, regardless of the atmospherics and the polls and the media and the moods.
It’s simple: recalling history, we act in the present, for a future that can and will be much better.
c1725 CE painting of Lord Krishna Riding to Battle along with Rao Ram Singh I of Kota Rajasthan
Maharana Fateh Singh Shooting Leopard at Kamlod ka Magra
Artist: Shivalal
India (Udaipur, Mewar, Rajasthan)
Opaque watercolor on paper
Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation, The City Palace Complex, Udaipur
REPOSTING
Loblaws' long game to take over healthcare
How Galen Weston pulled it off right under our noses
JORDAN ROBERTS
JAN 30
READ IN SUBSTACK
Dear subscribers, we’ve got a fresh article coming later this week, but with news that Loblaws and Manulife are teaming up to monopolize access to prescription medicines, we wanted share this again - we only had 200 subscribers when it was originally published. In the months since, Weston has made great gains, and it’s even more important to understand how one rich man has been allowed monopolize the market on food, medicine and healthcare. Please email to friends and family, share it on Facebook and all your social networks. Thank you, as always, for your support.
Sincerely, Jordan, Morgan & Friends
Corruptario by Jordan Roberts & Friends is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Canadians love, love, love their PC Optimum Points.
When announcing the expansion of the program into Esso stations in 2022, Loblaws claimed there were 18 million PC Optimum members in Canada. In a country with just over 31 million people over 18, calling the program “dominant” doesn’t really go far enough.
When Loblaws purchased Shoppers Drug Mart in 2013, it was the largest Canadian retailer acquisition in history, and it transformed the Canadian landscape for retail (food, medicine, personal items) and real estate. Lexpert, Canada’s trade magazine for lawyers, wrote: “The acquisition brings Loblaw and Shoppers within close reach of more Canadians, with more than 2,300 stores (corporate, franchised and associate-owned) and nearly 1,800 pharmacies totalling 65 million square feet of selling space.”
Given the incredible scope, influence and position of Loblaws and Shoppers together in Canada, the deal was covered rather uncritically as a “win” in Canadian media. Many columnists positioned the acquisition as “protecting” Shoppers from other buyers and “fending off” foreign retailers such as Walmart and Target. A review of coverage indicates the acquisition was covered pretty much as the company positioned the move itself in their own media materials:
“The acquisition brings together two iconic Canadian brands and harnesses the complementary strengths of the nation's number-one grocery retailer and number-one pharmacy and beauty retailer. It strengthens both companies' competitiveness in an evolving retail landscape, creating new growth opportunities for shareholders.”
There was little coverage or debate, at the time, about how the acquisition would impact Canadian consumers, in terms of competition and data protection. In fact, articles on that topic seem to have been subsequently removed from the internet, such as this dead link to 2013 story, promoted in a CBC article about the acquisition.
When Loblaws merged its own PC Points program with the Shoppers Optimum program a few years later, it created a data marketing behemoth. According to Bond, a loyalty program consultancy, Shoppers Optimum already had an incredibly rich data set on 11 million members, making it the largest marketable female database in the country. It was one of many reasons Shoppers Drug Mart was viewed as such a lucrative acquisition for Loblaws.
Richard Schenker of Bond wrote (emphasis mine):
“Loblaw will now be in the enviable position of realizing even greater benefits with this program evolution and new name. Here are some of the key benefits they can expect to reap:
A full 360-degree view of all transactional and non-transactional data for all Shoppers and Loblaw loyalty members which will enable them to retain and grow the transactional and emotional relationship with these customers and help defend against other grocery/pharma and e-commerce competitors.”
Given the dominance in the Canadian market of Loblaws and Shoppers collectively, the amount and variety of data held about customers via the loyalty program is staggering. For example, it includes locations of all grocery purchases, what was purchased, how often, which personal items and prescriptions are purchased, and even gas purchases. Loblaws has the ability to paint a very detailed picture of its customers within many aspects of their daily lives, giving it an incredible advantage in terms of marketing.
During these same years, Loblaws was also becoming a behemoth in real estate. At the end of December 2012, Loblaws spun most of its real estate properties into a new publicly traded real estate investment trust, Choice Properties REIT. Today it’s the largest real estate investment trust in Canada, valued at $16B, mainly owning Loblaws properties and listed on the TSX.
At around the same time, given the Weston’s long term plans, new grocery and pharmacy locations began including clinic spaces into all new builds, and older locations were retrofitted to create spaces for medical services.
Once the Shoppers acquisition had settled in, Loblaws began to speak more openly about its healthcare ambitions. The Loblaws 2016 Annual Report made reference to its new strategic framework - “Live Life Well. (Emphasis is mine.)
“Achieving “best in health and beauty” is driven by putting our pharmacy customers first, our desire to provide high quality health and wellness products and services, a diverse and differentiated beauty offering and convenient locations and hours of operation to meet individuals’ wellness needs.”
In public, Loblaws was being even more open about its ambitions in healthcare. In 2016, the company acquired medical records company, QHR, and it began explicitly talking about patients. About the deal, Loblaws exec Jeff Leger said “The future of healthcare is digital and this strategic investment will make us a better partner to patients and providers.”
QHR supported about 7,700 healthcare providers at the time, representing about 20% of the electronic medical record technology in use in the country. A Cantor Fitzgerald analyst, at the time of the deal, pegged QHR as third in market share in Ontario, behind Telus Health and OSCAR, an open-source software originally developed at McMaster University. QHR’s services include electronic medical records, related security, virtual care tools (such as secure video and messaging), and tools to help clinics with scheduling, billing and patient management.
The timing of the pandemic couldn’t have been a bigger gift for Galen’s healthcare and profit ambitions, in many ways. He had already managed to get Doug Ford to drop the planned increase to the Ontario minimum wage, via a secret meeting right after Doug was elected, ensuring sky high profits when Loblaws was one of the only locations open for “essentials.”
By 2020, a few quarters into the pandemic, Loblaws invested $75 million in virtual health provider Maple Corporation, for whom the pandemic had already been a windfall. But Maple and Loblaws were already connected, as Shoppers Drug Mart was already invested in the company.
Maple is a company with many faces. For a fee, you can pay for an online visit with one of its doctors, or you can pay a membership which covers a set number of visits a year. They offer online prescriptions and refills (for a fee), sick notes (for a fee), and lab work (for a fee).
However, Maple is also offering services to your boss, and to hospitals, clinics and long-term care homes. In their own words, “Our state-of-the-art virtual care solutions for employers, organizations, and insurers deliver a strong return on investment.
Maple CEO and co-founder Dr. Brett Belchetz boasts of his management consulting background at McKinsey, as well as being a Fellow of the Fraser Institute, which has been pushing hard to support a case for introducing more for-profit medicine in Canada.
The Weston family is deeply involved personally in the Fraser Institute as well. Galen’s cousin, Claudia Hepburn (currently on the board of the foundation at SickKids) established the institute’s “school choice” initiative, a push to undermine public education.
Dr. Belchetz and Maple also benefit greatly from his platform as a “medical expert” at CTV, despite the fact that Dr. Belchetz was “cautioned in person” by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for inappropriate work-ups on elderly patients in the ER.
Given Maple’s focus on employees and health insurance, the ownership of CTV is significant as it relates to creating a positive profile for Dr. Belchetz and Maple. CTV is a subsidiary of BCE Inc., of which over 20% is controlled by Canada’s banks, including over 5% owned by RBC Global Asset Management alone. Canada’s banks and insurance have been keenly investing in for-profit health ventures in Canada, and would likely stand to profit handsomely from for-profit medicine, including private health insurance.
With the collapse of primary medicine in Ontario, a situation ensured by provincial governments for decades, Loblaws has managed to become the only game in town for one of the 2.2 million Ontarians without a family doctor. While the Ford government has ensured Shoppers can profit from pharmacists “treating” minor ailments, if you need a family doctor and don’t have a walk-in nearby, you get Maple.
Last spring, Galen and company delivered the coup de grace, in terms of making sure they are unavoidable in primary care, with the purchase of Lifemark Health Group. By paying Audax Private Equity $845 million, Galen acquired Canada’s leading provider of physio, massage therapy, chiropractic, mental health and rehab services. Interestingly, given the significance of the purchase for Canadians, as patients, media coverage of the acquisition was muted.
From The Financial Post:
“We want the PC Health app to be the first place Canadians turn when they have questions about their health or are in search of a healthcare professional,” Leger said in November, when the company announced the initial partnership between PC Health and Lifemark.
Loblaw considers healthcare one of its four “priority areas” for strategic growth, and has been steadily building a stable of clinics and healthcare technology throughout the pandemic. Shoppers opened its first wholly owned and operated family health clinic in August 2020, and now runs six clinics in Ontario.
Also that year, Shoppers spent $75 million on a minority stake in Maple, a “virtual appointment platform.” And last year, Shoppers became a key player in the Canadian rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which helped drive 172-per-cent revenue growth in Loblaw’s pharmacy services business in 2021, the company said in an earnings update on Feb. 24.”
The clinics will continue under the Lifemark brand, providing rehab services that are typically covered by private insurance, he said. Those services were private long before Shoppers made a move into the space, so the expansion shouldn’t be seen as an encroachment on Canada’s public health care system, Leger said.
“We’re not disrupting the system at all,” he said, adding that Lifemark was a private company before the Loblaw acquisition. “We’re actually just working within the system that already exists.”
On that final point, analysts seemed to agree. National Bank of Canada Financial Services raised its price target on Loblaw to $119.00 per share from $111.00 after the deal was announced, telling its clients Lifemark would boost Loblaw’s annual earnings per share by around two per cent.
Corruptario by Jordan Roberts & Friends is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
© 2024 Jordan Roberts
3080 Danforth Ave, Toronto, ON M4C 1J9
Safe Skies for Ukraine
Repost - Timothy Snyder
It's a frustrating time for Americans who support Ukraine. Congressional Republicans said that they support Ukraine, but want to connect it to the border. Then, when given the chance to address the border, they decline.
During these gaslit shenanigans, good people who are fighting a defensive war of tremendous historic significance are being killed when they might have lived.
It is sad to recite all the ways that Ukrainian resistance serves US interests. Sad because not enough people in Congress care about US interests. And sad because one shouldn't even have to refer to them.
It is rare to have a chance to halt a war of aggression and prevent a genocidal occupation at zero risk and with the loss of zero soldiers. That level of moral clarity, available once in any political lifetime, ought to be reason enough to act.
Even if they do not care for others, Americans ought to at least care for themselves.
They should care that they do well from an international order in which it is not normal for countries to invade one another. Ukrainians defend that. Americans should care that the risk of nuclear war has been reduced. Ukrainians achieve that by resisting Putin's nuclear blackmail. Americans should care that the chance of war in Europe has been drastically reduced. Ukraine is fulfilling by itself the entire NATO mission, absorbing and blunting a Russian attack. Americans should care that China is being deterred. So long as Ukraine resists, it is much less likely that Taiwan will be threatened and America will be drawn into a war in the Pacific.
The money in question has not been significant. It is a nickel on the defense department dollar. Much of that nickel remains in the United States. The weapons we send have been used extraordinarily efficiently. The Ukrainians, with symbolic numbers of American weapons, have used them withe extraordinary skill and to great effect.
We can hope that these arguments will matter at some point! And perhaps they will.
In the meantime, we can at least act as civil society. Please help me finish my Safe Skies project. It funds a passive drone detection system, one that is already protecting four Ukrainian regions and is now being extended to another four. It allows Ukrainians to find Iranian-made or -modelled drones and shoot them down before they cause harm. It also works on cruise missiles. I have seen the system’s components when I was in Ukraine, and I know how it works. Like so much that the Ukrainians do, the system is very cost effective. $1.8 million was the total amount to be raised, and we are about 90% there.
Amidst all the ill will, it would be good to have something to celebrate. Thanks to all of you who have contributed. Most drone attacks are now halted, and in this way critical infrastructure is protected and people are kept alive.
America as a country can do much more, and should. But as Americans this is one thing we can achieve now. We are almost there.
PS: In saying all this, I don't at all want to leave out all of you from beyond the United States, and it is a very significant number, who have contributed to this campaign! Thank you. This is just a particular moment when Americans might want to take the matter in hand.
Thank you for reading Thinking about.... This post is public so feel free to share it. Please share especially with others who wish to help save life in Ukraine
“Bodhisattva, Dalverzin Tepe, ca 2nd-3rd century CE (photo: ALFGRN Flickr CC BY SA 2.0)”
“Archaeological Treasures of Uzbekistan: From Alexander the Great to the Kushan Empire” at James Simon Gallery, Berlin
Repost
Safe Skies over Ukraine
TIMOTHY SNYDER
DEC 20
It's hard to keep track of all of Russia's crimes in this war -- though good people are trying. The only way to stop all of them is to help Ukraine win the war.
But there's one war crime that you personally can actually help to stop. Right now.
This winter, like last winter, Russia is trying to destroy Ukrainian critical infrastructure so that Ukrainian civilians will lack electricity and water. Russia launches cruise missiles and Iranian-made (or Iranian-style) Shahed drones at these civilian targets day after day. Russia also uses drones and cruise missiles to target Ukrainian grain meant for export to Africa and the Middle East.
Last winter, as an ambassador of United24, the Ukrainian presidential fundraising platform, I ran a campaign to help establish a passive drone detection system, which helped to protect Kyiv and some other areas. Thanks to you, it succeeded. This fall Russia has moved to attack cities in other regions.
Our response this fall was Safe Skies: a fundraiser to expand the drone detection system to four entire Ukrainian regions. I can announce that we reached the goal of $950,000, and that the drone detection system is being extended now to Sumy, Odesa, Mikolaïv, and Kherson regions. This happened fast -- in six weeks. Thank you!
I think we can do this again. I think we should do this again. Another $950,000 would mean protecting four more regions -- Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Poltava, and Cherkasy -- from drones and cruise missiles. These are places where I have been, where I have colleagues and friends.
About six million people live in these four regions. We can help keep them safe. (This visual shows the regions now protected, in green, and the regions to be protected in this next stage of our campaign, in white.)
So please join me to extend Safe Skies. Donation link is here :
https://billtoole.net/yourls/6nn
Let's double down on sheltering people from terror.
The system works. I have seen it. It detects every single target, allowing Ukrainians to shoot most of them down. What you are supporting is purely defensive: it simply locates flying weapons in Ukrainian airspace. This saves lives. And it prevents suffering.
I am frustrated, as I am sure many of you are, the the U.S. Congress is failing to act on Ukraine. Safe Skies is something that you and I can do right now (I will be donating again, right after I post this).
We can be part of a civil society that supports ingenuity in the service of humanity.
And is a season for generosity. It feels good to do good.
So please help me to bring Safe Skies to four more regions of Ukraine. Please share this post with others who might want to help.
PS If your first credit card doesn't work, please try another! Banks can have various policies. Your donations do go through and they do make a difference !
At the border between Kherson and Mykolaïv regions, having traveled from Odesa. Those three regions have just been covered by Safe Skies, thanks to people like you.
© 2023 Timothy Snyder
"Modern manoeuvre warfare, just like we taught the Ukrainians, starts with battlefield air superiority. Have we given Ukraine what they need to establish battlefield air superiority? No. No, we have not. And so you can be critical all you want, you just sort of demonstrate your lack of understanding of what manoeuvre warfare is and how it begins, and so let me just add one other big example. Manoeuvre warfare, and I would tell you especially American commanders, counts on long-range precise fire. We fight to hold the the enemy at risk before [stresses], before he brings his force to bear on us. We use long range precision strikes to strike them and then if they still persist in attacking, to strike them in depth. In depth and to strike them all along their lines of communication and supply lines before they can actually meet us, even after they begin an attack. And then we use long range precise strike to hold all the transhipment points, airfields and everything else, at risk when the fight is going on. Have we given Ukraine the ability to do that? The answer is no, we have not, and worse yet we in the West have forbidden Ukraine from using any of the kit that we give them to strike deeply and to hit the enemy before the enemy can bring his forces to bear on Ukraine. We have built sanctuary all the way around Ukraine. On the map, from Belarus in the Northwest all the way around through the East into Russia, all the way into the South, into the Black Sea, we have forbidden Ukraine from using our kit to strike into Russia and so [it] amazes me that people expect them to do manoeuvre warfare under that. So here's my answer that was all to set the stage for my answer: we should give Ukraine what we would take to the battlefield.
General Philip Breedlove USAF—former SACEUR
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/104769/general-philip-m-breedlove/