Harlan Ullman is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council, an American think tank in the field of international affairs. I read his article a few days ago and wanted to comment on it then, but I also wanted to make sure the war started first; I’d rather have egg on his face than mine. Needless to say, he authored an article and gave it an absurd title. Not to mention, the date of the article is only eight days ago when almost everyone’s analysis of the situation was yielding the likelihood of not invading as something approaching zero, yet we had the brilliant Ullman writing, “Russia will no doubt continue political and psychological pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make concessions, either to accept the Minsk 2 agreement (despite its grant of semi-autonomy to the Donbas) or to suspend any request for NATO membership. And Russian ‘active measures,’ such as disinformation campaigns, will continue to target Ukraine with the aim of eroding Zelenskyy’s standing and NATO solidarity by claiming ‘hysteria’ over an invasion that never occurred. This scenario suits Putin’s interests far better than an uncertain military adventure, which is why he will choose it—and not because of anything uttered from a White House podium, no matter how much credit the administration will take for deterring a war [emphasis added].”
Even though he had a rather cogent analysis in the preceding parts of the article, he seems to get to the final two paragraphs quoted above and draws the wrong conclusions at a time when it was becoming more and more obvious to everyone that Putin did not want peace. He seems to completely ignore the nearly 200 thousand troops parked on three sides of Ukraine as if they are purely window dressing and, therefore, Putin’s amusement. That man should be fired for being so colossally and obviously wrong.