 Dear Weekend Jolter, This game of Will He or Won't He? is nothing if not grim. Vladimir Putin's weeks-long buildup is estimated to have placed 127,000 troops along the Russia–Ukraine border, based on the latest assessments from Kyiv. Thousands of U.S. troops are on alert for possible deployment to the region. The State Department is urging Americans to leave Ukraine, which as Jim Geraghty notes comes with a frightening sense of déjà vu. One of the true things President Biden said at his press conference was that only Vladimir Putin will make the decision on whether to invade Ukraine. As Elliott Abrams wrote in these pages last weekend, Washington is in "slumber," waiting for Putin to make his move or not, and "likely on the verge of being awakened by a major world crisis." What to do about it? This has been a vigorous debate not only in the greater foreign-policy world but here at National Review. Michael Brendan Dougherty has been making the most robust case for keeping our distance: Our interest is to avoid a conflict with Russia over matters that it defines as in its core interest, a territory that its own people consider significant to their security interests, and which ours overwhelming do not. We should also hope to avoid further Russian military action against Ukraine at all. Even if Putin opts for Joe Biden's "small incursion" — the consequences can be quite serious. The imposition of sanctions, and the subsequent rise of energy prices, could immediately hurt Europe and put to a suddenly perilous test whether Paris and Berlin are as committed to NATO as we are. There is also the fog of war, which took down a Malaysian airliner in the first act of this conflict.
He follows up here: The worst-case scenario for Ukraine is that Russia and Western Europe enact all their mutual rivalries on Ukrainian territory, trying to help one side of the country utterly dominate and humiliate the other. . . . The only useful response from NATO and the Western powers would be to clearly signal precisely what they are willing to do and what they are not willing to do for Ukraine in the near term and medium term. Without this, Ukraine cannot sensibly conduct a diplomatic effort to avoid catastrophe.
Jim Geraghty appreciates the argument but maintains he's "not convinced that the U.S. shouldn't take a relatively hawkish stance on this potential conflict." Or as he puts it, in relatable terms: "Authoritarian powers tend to see territorial conquests the way most of us see potato chips: it's very hard to eat just one." Jim argues that there's considerable policy space between full-blown war and nonintervention, offering several courses of action for dealing with Putin (though he notes that the Afghanistan debacle is not helping America's ability to deter anyone). NR's editorial makes the case specifically for supplying more equipment, "including Javelin anti-tank missiles and air-defense systems," and pursuing tough sanctions now, not as a threatened response after the fact of an invasion: The GUARD Act proposal put forward by congressional Republicans is a good alternative. That bill would immediately boost funding for transferring lethal weaponry to Ukraine, increase annual U.S. funding of Ukraine's military forces, and impose sanctions to kill the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Lawmakers should also revive another sanctions proposal that the administration successfully blocked from the annual defense bill — legislation targeting 35 oligarchs named by Putin antagonist Alexei Navalny.
The Hudson Institute's Arthur Herman has an interesting take, which is to offer full NATO membership to Finland and Sweden. That still leaves the problem of NATO's weak link, which Rich Lowry talks about here. And so we wait. In the meantime, Supreme Court replacement speculation will keep us occupied. NAME. RANK. LINK. EDITORIALS The president's press-conference blunder on Ukraine revealed a fundamental issue with the administration's approach to Eastern Europe: Biden’s Ukraine Problem Let the fight over the Supreme Court begin: Replacing Justice Breyer ARTICLES Charles C. W. Cooke: Justice Kamala Harris Will Never Happen Charles C. W. Cooke: #DontBrowbeatMyPete 😡 Robert M. Berg: The Pentagon Has Turned into a Covid Panic Room Elyssa Koren: Freedom of Religion and Speech Is on Trial in Finland Ryan Mills: American Citizen’s Family Stuck in Immigration Limbo in UAE after Fleeing Afghanistan Rich Lowry: What Wyatt Earp Knew Michael Brendan Dougherty: What I Saw at the School-Board Meeting Dan McLaughlin: The DeSantis–Trump Tensions Will Lead to a Test of Strength Brad Raffensperger: America's Leaders Should Be Chosen by American Citizens Jimmy Quinn: Propaganda Victory? NBC and TikTok Team Up to Promote Beijing Olympics David Harsanyi: The ADL Has Chosen a Side. And It's Not the Jewish One Brittany Bernstein: Biden’s Poor Approval Ratings Could Drag Down State-Level Dems in Midterms, New Poll Shows Jay Nordlinger: Friends, and Enemies, of the People James Piereson & Naomi Schaefer Riley: Will Covid Collapse the College Cartel? Philip Klein: Mitt Romney Paved the Way for Obamacare — Be Wary of His Latest Welfare Scheme Jim Geraghty: Hooray for Those Who Resist the Insufferable Habit of ‘Flopping’ in Politics CAPITAL MATTERS Joseph Sullivan comes armed with a chart, to put the Covid risk for Washington residents in perspective: Without a Mask Mandate, D.C. Had More Murders than Deaths from Covid Hey, look. Dominic Pino has found another Covid precaution with an evident downside and no upside: Vaccine Mandates for Cross-Border Truckers Have No Upside LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW. Kyle Smith highlights some trenchant social commentary coming from unexpected places. Here: An Insider Mocks the Endless Progressive Guilt Trip, and here: Lena Dunham's Conservative Take on Sex and Porn Also from Kyle, an account of the Alexei Navalny documentary: The Man Who Stood Up to Putin Armond White finds in the French film Petite Maman a spark of childhood wonder: Is Céline Sciamma the New Spielberg? Need to get your fix of absolutely eye-watering auction bids? Brian Allen's got you covered: Americana and Folk Art Prompt Bidding Wars at Sotheby's and Christie's LET'S SCROLL ON OUTTA HERE Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring, giving President Biden his first chance to shape the Court. From NR's editorial on what comes next: The first choice will be Joe Biden's. With a 50–50 Senate and an impending fall election, he will have to choose carefully to ensure that his selection can be confirmed. Nothing in Biden's presidency so far suggests that he will bother to interpret correctly what pivotal members of his Senate caucus are thinking before he makes his choice. Biden has unwisely limited his options by preemptively declaring during the 2020 campaign that his first Supreme Court nominee would be a black woman. In a stroke, he disqualified dozens of liberal and progressive jurists for no reason other than their race and gender. This is not a great start in selecting someone sworn to provide equal justice under the law. Unlike Donald Trump, Biden did not run on a named list of potential candidates, so he will then have to sell his nominee to the public. That nominee is almost certain to be a progressive who treats the written Constitution with contempt. Even if Democrats remain united enough to provide the votes to confirm such a nominee, Republicans should extract a political cost in the midterm Senate races for doing so. The last three cycles of Senate elections have shown that fidelity to the Constitution is a winning political issue for Senate Republicans. With a difficult midterm looming and a Biden nominee needing to navigate a closely divided Senate, we hope we have heard the last for some time of talk about Court-packing. Biden's own commission punted on the issue, and while that was partly to keep the president's options open, progressives have been itching to use threats to the Court to influence its decisions on abortion and racial preferences. That would become a more politically dangerous game now. In terms of how they will rule on the bench, it may not matter much whom Biden nominates. Conventional, institutionalist liberals tend to be every bit as results-oriented and lockstep-loyal on the bench as hair-on-fire progressives.
Michael Brendan Dougherty's first-hand account of his experience trying to talk about masking policies before his local school board is one for the ages: First thing through the door, I realized that the mask policy wasn't even the topic of the meeting, as I had heard rumored through social media. Instead, my fellow anti-maskers in the audience stood and listened to a 40-minute presentation of possible renovations to the high school. When asked by a board member what the pedagogical value of all these transparent walls and "collaborative spaces" was, the superintendent gave a bunch of slogans. We were told public comment would be open to two- or three-minute comments from the public. Another father from the same dance school my daughter and her friend attend got up and began his soliloquy with the U.S. Constitution. He demanded full attention, presenting himself well as the very image of an indomitable man. He then proceeded to make an argument about the illegality of the actions of the board and school administrators. They had enforced "fictitious laws" and "illegal orders." He cited law codes. And told them that legal action would be taken, and damages sought — that these monetary damages would be so great that the liability insurers who give coverage to administrators and public servants would drop them. They'd be out of a job. "You've already woken up Mama Bear," he said, referring to his wife. "Now you have to deal with Papa Bear. It ends here." The board was silent. Basically every person from the public who had come to the meeting applauded and lustily stamped their feet. Then it was my turn. I croaked out roughly 30 percent of what I had planned to say. I caught a few eyes on the board, and I thought they had listened sympathetically. When I was finished, the crowd roared again. And soon I realized, this was a Tea Party movement in miniature. Others got up to speak, and made versions of the same argument the indomitable man had made. The board members were criminals awaiting the day of judgment and justice. They were violating the Bill of Rights. There were plentiful references to Nazi Germany, the perfidy of pharmaceutical companies, which had bought all the politicians. One of the speakers wasn't even from this town. This was not a discussion at all. It was a kind of confrontation. And it's impossible to ignore that it was a class confrontation. The board, phlegmatic in tone, or silent. The people, choleric, voluble. Professionals versus workers, on the whole. . . . What I saw at the school board was the compact drama of institutional impotence and populist chaos.
Ryan Mills highlights another case of an American citizen's family stuck in the UAE after fleeing Afghanistan (however, he also spotlights the case of a family rescued from the UAE refugee camp following an earlier NR report, so let’s hope this is the start of a trend): Bilal Ahmad already lost his job, and he's pretty sure he's lost his New York City apartment, too, after spending more than three months with his family in a United Arab Emirate refugee camp. Ahmad, 28, is an American citizen who traveled into Afghanistan in August to rescue his wife and five-year-old son from the chaos surrounding the Taliban takeover of the country and the Biden administration's bungled evacuation after nearly 20 years of war. He and his family eventually flew out of Afghanistan in early October. But they've been stuck in the International Humanitarian City refugee compound ever since, even though records indicate he started the immigration process for his wife and son back in 2017. "The only thing which we were waiting for was the visas to be issued. That's all," Ahmad said. National Review learned about Ahmad's case after publishing a story last week about another American citizen who also has been stuck in the Humanitarian City refugee compound since October after traveling into Afghanistan to rescue his wife. Ahmad's case was featured on Fox News last month, and he's also received support from members of Congress, including Democratic New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Grace Meng (D., Queens).
ICYMI, Robert M. Berg (a pen name) wrote extensively last weekend about why the Pentagon's strict Covid policies, and particularly its shift to remote work, are just illogical: As just one example, let's consider the effect of remote work on handling classified material. Most people have never worked in a "classified setting" or on "classified systems." It's worth clarifying that you cannot just casually access classified material at home. While some do have limited access to it in home settings, it is heavily restricted. And the majority of the workforce at the Pentagon do not have ready access at home anyway. While home work might suffice for Google or other tech-centered businesses, we're talking about the Pentagon here. Breaking my workload out, I spend about 20 percent of my time on a "Secret" level system, about 75 percent on a "Top Secret" level system, and maybe 5 percent of my time on an "unclassified" system. That is, only about 5 percent of my work can actually be done remotely. While my personal example is an anecdote, I am in a good position to tell you that a large portion of my peers are in similar circumstances. Our "telework" days are nothing more than sitting and staring at our unclassified emails, wondering and thinking about all the work we actually have to do when we get a chance to physically go into the office. I cannot even write those thoughts down to ensure I actually get to them all when I am in the office because I cannot store classified information at home or transport it to and from work. It is worth pointing out that even at the Pentagon, the vast majority of the military are 49 and younger. Also, as part of continued military service, we are routinely screened for risk factors that make Covid more potentially dangerous. Hence we in the military largely do not possess these factors. Even excluding the fact that military members lack additional risk factors, simply by age alone our risk of dying from or having a serious reaction to Covid is exceptionally low.
Shout-Outs Nicholas Wade, at CityJournal: A Covid Origin Conspiracy? Daniel Halperin, at the Wall Street Journal: Omicron Is Spreading. Resistance Is Futile Josh Kraushaar, at National Journal: Red wave alert for Senate Democrats Chloe Ezzo, at the College Fix: Dartmouth shut down my campus event featuring Andy Ngo — then blamed me for it Tevi Troy, at the Washington Examiner: Barking at the press CODA What with all the attention lately on California's rail robberies, let's close with some train tracks (get it?). "Downtown Train" has been covered ad nauseam — by Seger, by Stewart, and others — but nothing beats the original by Waits, off Rain Dogs. Enjoy. Got a tune? Want to share? Send a link to jberger@nationalreview.com. Thanks for reading. | 
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