Reality Check #12 — Russia, the West, and the rest: The hard choices the US must make to reinforce its global leadership

Key points

The Biden administration is confronting Russia’s naked aggression against Ukraine without direct military engagement, but a triple threat of inflation, starvation, and a coalition that is not sufficiently global promises trouble ahead for the United States and its position in a global order that is suddenly on an accelerated path to change.

NATO Forward Forces Tracker

In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and particularly since the outbreak of hostilities, the United States and NATO allies have taken numerous steps to bolster allied force posture in Eastern Europe, enhancing deterrence against further Russian aggression and demonstrating the Alliance’s ability to defend its eastern flank. The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Transatlantic Security Initiative has been tracking it all, as visualized in the animation, graphs, and table below.

Iran Trying to Force the US to Meet All Its Demands

Iraqi writer Farouk Yousef pointed out that after the US gave Iran $90 billion following the signing of the nuclear agreement with the Obama administration in 2015… the bulk of the money… was spent on terrorist groups run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as terrorist groups run covertly in other Arab countries.

The Russian Military’s People Problem

It’s Hard for Moscow to Win While Mistreating Its Soldiers

Six days before the invasion of Ukraine, a small group of Russian soldiers huddled together in their tents in Belarus. One of them had covertly acquired a smartphone—barred by the military—and together, the group logged on to Western news sites. There, they read a story that shocked them: according to Western intelligence reports, Russia was about to invade its neighbor.