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On Sunday the Canadian police finally cleared away anti-vaccine demonstrators who had been blocking the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, a key commercial route that normally carries more than $300 million a day in international trade. Other bridges are still closed, and part of Ottawa, the Canadian capital, is still occupied.

The diffidence of Canadian authorities in the face of these disruptions has been startling to American eyes. Also startling, although not actually surprising, has been the embrace of economic vandalism and intimidation by much of the U.S. right especially by people who ranted against demonstrations in favor of racial justice. What were getting here is an object lesson in what some people really mean when they talk about law and order.

Lets talk about what has been happening in Canada and why I call it vandalism.

The Freedom Convoy has been marketed as a backlash by truckers angry about Covid-19 vaccination mandates. In reality, there dont seem to have been many truckers among the protesters at the bridge (about 90 percent of Canadian truckers are vaccinated). Last week a Bloomberg reporter saw only three semis among the vehicles blocking the Ambassador Bridge, which were mainly pickup trucks and private cars; photos taken Saturday also show very few commercial trucks.

The Teamsters union, which represents many truckers on both sides of the border, has denounced the blockade.

So this isnt a grass-roots trucker uprising. Its more like a slow-motion Jan. 6, a disruption caused by a relatively small number of activists, many of them right-wing extremists. At their peak, the demonstrations in Ottawa reportedly involved only around 8,000 people, while numbers at other locations have been much smaller.

Despite their lack of numbers, however, the protesters have been inflicting a remarkable amount of economic damage. The U.S. and Canadian economies are very closely integrated. In particular, North American manufacturing, especially but not only in the auto industry, relies on a constant flow of parts between factories on both sides of the border. As a result, the disruption of that flow has hobbled industry, forcing production cuts and even factory shutdowns.

The closure of the Ambassador Bridge also imposed large indirect costs, as trucks were diverted to roundabout routes and forced to wait in long lines at alternative bridges.

Any attempt to put a number on the economic costs of the blockade is tricky and speculative. However, its not hard to come up with numbers like $300 million or more per day; combine that with the disruption of Ottawa, and the trucker protests may already have inflicted a couple of billion dollars in economic damage.

Thats an interesting number, because its roughly comparable to insurance industry estimates of total losses associated with the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the killing of George Floyd protests that seem to have involved more than 15 million people.

This comparison will no doubt surprise those who get their news from right-wing media, which portrayed B.L.M. as an orgy of arson and looting. I still receive mail from people who believe that much of New York City was reduced to smoking rubble. In fact, the demonstrations were remarkably nonviolent; vandalism happened in a few cases, but it was relatively rare, and the damage was small considering the huge size of the protests.

By contrast, causing economic damage was and is what the Canadian protests are all about because blocking essential flows of goods, threatening peoples livelihoods, is every bit as destructive as smashing a store window. And unlike, say, a strike aimed at a particular company, this damage fell indiscriminately on anyone who had the misfortune to rely on unobstructed trade.

And to what end? The B.L.M. demonstrations were a reaction to police killings of innocent people; whats going on in Canada is, on its face, about rejecting public health measures intended to save lives. Of course, even that is mainly an excuse: What its really about is an attempt to exploit pandemic weariness to boost the usual culture-war agenda.

As you might expect, the U.S. right is loving it. People who portrayed peaceful protests against police killings as an existential threat are delighted by the spectacle of right-wing activists breaking the law and destroying wealth. Fox News has devoted many hours to fawning coverage of the blockades and occupations. Senator Rand Paul, who called B.L.M. activists a crazed mob, called for Canada-style protests to clog up cities in the United States, specifically saying that he hoped to see truckers disrupt the Super Bowl (they didnt).

I assume that the reopening of the Ambassador Bridge is the beginning of a broader crackdown on destructive protests. But I hope we wont forget this moment and in particular that we remember it the next time a politician or media figure talks about law and order.

Recent events have confirmed what many suspected: The right is perfectly fine, indeed enthusiastic, about illegal actions and disorder as long as they serve right-wing ends.

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Opinion | When Freedom Means the Right to Destroy - The New York Times

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the worlds leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now.

In this episode, Andrew is joined by Jason Pack, the author of Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder.

Find more Keen On episodes and additional videos on Lit Hubs YouTube Channel!

________________________

Jason Pack is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Middle East Institute and the President of Libya-Analysis LLC. His publications and events at MEI have focused on presenting a systematic view of Libyas economic structures as well as the ongoing patterns of foreign interference in the country. In addition to academic and policy writing focused on Libya, he publishes on oil markets, U.S. politics, wine tasting, and travel. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, The Financial Times, The Petroleum Economist, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs.

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Jason Pack on the Conflict in Libya as an Example of Geopolitical Failure - Literary Hub

As their standoff over Ukraine continues, Moscow and Washington are playing an increasingly high-stakes, increasingly complex game of signaling to try to secure their aims without firing a shot.

Traditional diplomacy is just one component of this dance. Troop movements, sanctions warnings and legislation, embassy closures, leader summits, and intelligence leaks are all aimed, in part, at proving each countrys willingness to carry out certain threats or accept certain risks.

It is a form of high-stakes negotiation, conducted in actions as much as words, meant to settle the future of Europe just as conclusively as if decided by war, by telegraphing how a conflict would play out rather than waging it directly.

Russia, by shifting thousands of troops from its far east to Ukraines border, hopes to convince Washington and Kyiv that it is willing to endure a major war to secure its demands by force, so those countries are better off meeting Russian demands peacefully.

The Biden administration, by stating that a Russian invasion may be imminent, even closing its embassy in Kyiv, and vowing economic retaliation, signals that Moscow cannot expect desperate American concessions, making further escalation less worthwhile.

There have been a flurry of such gestures. Russia held Black Sea naval exercises, implying it could close off trade waters. President Biden issued joint statements with European leaders, conveying that they are not balking at American sanctions threats that would harm Europe, too.

But the more both sides try to make their threats credible, for example by relocating troops, the more they heighten the risk of a miscalculation that could careen out of control.

Each side also cultivates ambiguity about what it will or will not accept, and will or will not do, in hopes of forcing its adversary to prepare for all eventualities, spreading its energies thin.

The White House has said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could decide this week whether to invade, deflating Moscows careful murkiness, while also demonstrating, especially to cautious Europeans, that any invasion would be driven by Russia, rather than in response to some outside provocation.

On Tuesday, Moscow moved to recreate confusion, withdrawing a handful of forces even as it continued nearby war games and as Mr. Putin accused Ukraine of genocide against its native Russophone minority. By feinting simultaneously toward de-escalation and invasion on Tuesday, Moscow builds pressure on the West to prepare for both.

This dynamic is very volatile, said Keren Yarhi-Milo, a Columbia University political scientist who studies how countries signal and maneuver amid crises.

A range of factors particular to this crisis, she added differing political cultures, multiple audiences, rising uncertainty makes the signaling in this case very, very difficult.

The result is a diplomatic cacophony nearly as difficult to navigate as war itself, with stakes just as high.

With their positioning, Moscow and Washington are struggling to resolve two outstanding questions about a possible conflict, each to their benefit.

Would a Russian invasion bring Moscow more reward than downside?

And, would the West have less tolerance than Russia for the pain of Mr. Bidens proposed sanctions, and abandon them?

If Moscow can convince Washington that the answer to both is yes, then Mr. Biden and his allies would, in theory, be forced to conclude that they are better off delivering whatever concessions will keep Russia from launching a war.

But if Washington can persuade Moscow that both answers are no, then Mr. Putin will have every incentive to cut his losses and step back from the brink.

Mr. Putin has been ambiguous about what he would consider a successful invasion of Ukraine. And moves like his recent visit to China or his ambassadors bluster, shrugging off sanctions, signal that he is ready and able to bear the foreseeable costs.

Of course, if war were really so advantageous, it could have already begun, one of many hints that Mr. Putin may be partly bluffing, although by how much is impossible to say.

Feb. 15, 2022, 5:59 p.m. ET

Mr. Biden, for his part, has sent weapons to Ukraine, a message that he would make any conflict more painful for Russia, and has laid out retaliatory sanctions in detail. He has implied Western unity over sanctions that may be just as much a bluff as Mr. Putins war talk.

His administration has also publicized what it says are Russian plans to fake a justification for war, implying that any such ploy would be quickly unmasked, making it less attractive.

But threats and bluffs work best when they are backed up by action, increasing the risk of a war that neither side may truly want.

And these efforts are complicated by each sides need to persuade multiple audiences of contradictory things.

Mr. Biden must persuade Mr. Putin that Western sanctions would be automatic and severe, while also convincing Europeans, who would bear much of the cost, that sanctions would not hit them too hard or be carried out without their consent.

Similarly, Mr. Putin is seeking to position himself to Western leaders as ready for war, while convincing war-averse Russian citizens that he is being dragged into one, for example with false claims of American and Ukrainian aggression.

But Western leaders often struggle to differentiate which statements Mr. Putin intends them to take seriously and which he expects them to ignore as bluster for domestic consumption, Christopher Bort, a former U.S. intelligence official, warned in an essay for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Kremlins torrent of falsehoods over Ukraine, Mr. Bort added, risks persuading Western leaders that Moscows diplomatic entrees can be ignored as cover for an invasion it has already decided to launch potentially foreclosing an offramp from war.

Your system is much more open than ours, said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. That produces a lot of misunderstanding.

Because Kremlin decision-making is dominated by a handful of intelligence and military officials, Mr. Gabuev said, there is a tendency to assume that Washington operates the same way.

Offhand comments by American military officers are given special weight in Moscow, while lawmakers who drive much of Washingtons politics are ignored.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows growing military presence on the Ukrainian border was a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

Such cultural misunderstandings, Mr. Gabuev added, have become considerably worse in recent years, as Washington and Moscow have expelled one anothers diplomats and ended many unofficial exchanges, hampering their visibility into one anothers politics.

This is not always dangerous. Many in Moscow, assuming that Mr. Biden operates like Mr. Putin, believe that Washington has ginned up the appearance of conflict with the intention of declaring a false American victory when the more reasonable Mr. Putin rolls back the deployments he has insisted are defensive, Mr. Gabuev said.

That misunderstanding significantly eases Mr. Putins option to withdraw. And many in Russia view the West as the aggressor, and so would take an averted conflict as Mr. Putin triumphing, not surrendering.

Still, the less Washington and Moscow understand one another, the harder it will be for them to decipher each others signals and anticipate each others reactions.

The Russian presidents circle of trust has consolidated over time, insulating him from information that does not fit with his prior beliefs, the scholars Adam E. Casey and Seva Gunitsky wrote in Foreign Affairs.

As Mr. Putins inner circle has shrunk, they wrote, it has grown dominated by yes-men who tell him what they think he wants to hear and by security service leaders who tend to be hawkish and distrustful toward the West.

He would hardly be alone in this: research finds that strongmen leaders like him are, for just this reason, likelier to start wars and likelier to lose them.

So what Washington takes as Russian brinksmanship or bluffing, for example shrugging off sanctions threats or implying that some Ukrainians would welcome Russian liberators, may reflect sincere belief due to political dysfunction.

Information flows to Putin are choppy at best, and sanctions are a highly technical topic that arent even well understood in Washington, said Eddie Fishman, a top sanctions policy official in the Obama administration.

So far, both sides have avoided any obvious misreadings of each other. This may stem in part from the length of the crisis, which has allowed each capital to repeatedly telegraph its intentions and capabilities.

But that same factor time also creates more opportunities for a mistake as each side escalates.

Every day that were not resolving it, we are increasing the percentage chance that something will go wrong, said Dr. Yarhi-Milo, the international relations scholar.

Were testing the nerves of a lot of people at the same time, she added. It can take a really bad turn very quickly.

Continue reading here:
On Ukraine, U.S. and Russia Wage Signaling War to Avert Actual War - The New York Times

The future of NATO, the transatlantic security alliance, is at the centre of the standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine.

Moscow wants guarantees that its neighbour, a former Soviet state, will be permanently barred from joining the United States-led alliance. It has also called for NATO to cease all military activity in Eastern Europe, blaming it for undermining security in the region.

But Western leaders have rejected those demands. They have argued the Kremlin cannot be allowed an effective veto on Kyivs foreign policy decisions and defended NATOs open door policy, which grants any European nation the right to ask to join.

Amid the deadlock, here are five things you need to know about NATO:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949, in the aftermath of World War II.

The alliance was initially part of an effort by the US and its European allies to deter any expansion of the then-Soviet Union (USSR) and reduce the possibility of conflict on the continent by encouraging greater political integration between its powers.

In the decades since, it has steadily expanded its orbit, bringing a swathe of central and eastern European states into its ranks after the USSR collapsed.

This enlargement has troubled Moscow, which is wary of the alliance edging ever closer to its borders and hemming it in from the West.

NATO is comprised of 30 member states.

Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the US were its founding members.

The newest member state is North Macedonia, which joined in 2020.

Three so-called partner countries Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia have declared their aspirations to become part of the alliance, which says its purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

Ukraine has repeatedly stated its intention to become a NATO member state an objective that is written into the countrys constitution.

Joining the alliance would boost Ukraines defensive strength, because of NATOs principle of collective defence. That principle set out by Article 5 in NATOs founding treaty means an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all allies, committing them to protect one another.

In 2008, NATO leaders promised Ukraine it would one day be given the opportunity to join the alliance. But despite deepening cooperation in the years since, there is thought to be little chance of that happening any time soon.

Western powers are yet to be convinced Kyiv has done enough work to eradicate corruption and meet the other political, economic and military criteria required to enter the alliance, as set out in its 1995 Study on Enlargement.

NATOs members may also be wary of Ukraine joining their ranks while tensions with Moscow remain high, as such a move could draw the alliance into a direct conflict with Russia in the event it launches an attack, because of the collective defence principle.

On Monday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the issue was not on the agenda following talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, despite Ukraines president restating his countrys membership ambition.

All 30 NATO allies must unanimously approve a new country becoming part of the alliance.

Putin has said it is now time for NATOs waves of expansion to be reversed and for the alliance to guarantee that Ukraine never be allowed to become a member.

He argues that the West has betrayed Moscow by breaking alleged verbal commitments made at the end of the Cold War that NATO would not expand eastwards. The alliance denies that any such promises were made.

In a show of force, Russia has massed more than 100,000 troops around Ukraines borders and sent sweeping security demands to Washington and the Brussels-headquartered alliance.

In response, NATO, the US and its European allies have been scrambling to negotiate with Moscow and de-escalate the situation.

But the high-stakes diplomatic efforts have borne little success. Washington and NATO have rejected the Kremlins central demands that the alliance cease all military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine be barred from membership while Russia has refused to budge on its requests.

As tensions continue to simmer, Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, have made clear they will not send troops to defend Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion.

But several of Kyivs allies in NATO, with the exception of Germany, have supplied Kyiv with weapons as it ramps up preparations to repel a potential incursion. Meanwhile, NATO has moved to reinforce its eastern flank with additional troops and military hardware.

Link:
NATO and the Ukraine-Russia crisis: Five key things to know - Al Jazeera English

The outage hit the website for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, shown here during a ceremony last October. Ukrainian Defense Ministry/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images hide caption

The outage hit the website for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, shown here during a ceremony last October.

WASHINGTON Amid heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine, multiple Ukrainian government websites and banking systems were temporarily inaccessible to users Tuesday afternoon. But so far it remains unclear who was behind the disruption, and the overall intent.

The outage, which impacted the website of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the Armed Services as well as two large Ukrainian banks, Privatbank and Oschadbank, was the result of a digital denial of service attack, according to multiple Ukrainian government agencies.

The reports quickly generated concern, especially given ongoing U.S. government warnings that Russia might launch a massive cyberattack impacting critical infrastructure in Ukraine, such as communications or banking, prior to an invasion.

Digital attackers targeted the organizations' online services to prevent them from functioning properly, but the intrusion fell well short of any kind of massive cyberattack which would typically involve visible manipulation of content on the websites, penetration of servers, or apparent theft or destruction of data or devices.

The Defense Ministry shared in a tweet that it received an unusually high volume of requests to load the website, suggesting attackers were flooding the servers with illegitimate requests in an attempt to overload them and prevent citizens from accessing the site.

The State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine, which was leading a recent investigation into a website defacement and data destruction campaign linked to Russian hackers last month, published a statement claiming "there is a powerful DDoS attack on a number of information resources of Ukraine," though it also noted that as of Tuesday evening, banking services have already been restored.

There were also reports from the Ukrainian Cyber Police on Tuesday morning debunking a wave of fake SMS messages sent to Ukrainian citizens claiming ATM services were down.

Given that only a few organizations experienced disruptions and the outages were not long-lasting, the impact on Ukrainians' access to their banks and government websites seemed extremely limited. People in Ukraine posted tweets about still being able to access their bank accounts through ATMs, or by using their digital bank cards, and the government agencies were able to communicate with the world through social media during the outage.

But given the heightened tensions in the region and the looming threat of a Russian invasion, these kinds of attacks could have a bigger psychological impact.

Olena Prokopenko, a visiting fellow for the public policy think tank the German Marshall Fund and the co-founder of the Transatlantic Task Force on Ukraine, told NPR these kinds of digital attacks "have been our major concern" over the past few hours. "Hybrid warfare in action," she continued.

For the people of Ukraine, she said, there's some uncertainty because the government has not been communicating clearly about what to do in an emergency.

"People don't understand what to do in case of escalation, so they just choose to carry on, hoping that the military and the government will take care of things," Prokopenko said.

This attack, while rather unsophisticated and short-lived, could be one of the early salvos in a Russian invasion, though it hasn't yet been linked directly to Russia.

"Though we've anticipated disruptive Russian attacks against Ukraine, we've seen no evidence of responsibility at this time, and denial of service attacks are notoriously difficult to attribute," said John Hultquist, the vice president of intelligence analysis for the cybersecurity firm Mandiant.

Ukrainian citizens, however, have become used to regular digital attacks from Russia since at least 2014, often much more serious ones, including shutting off the power grid.

John Graham-Cumming, the Chief Technology Officer of Cloudflare, a company that specializes in defending against denial of service attacks, told NPR that his company has actually not seen a huge uptick in malicious traffic on Tuesday that has impacted its customers in Ukraine. The websites and banks impacted, however, are not Cloudflare customers, he said, and Graham-Cumming said it's possible attackers chose to avoid organizations protected by Cloudflare purposely.

Graham-Cumming noted a small uptick in broader attack traffic around lunchtime, but nothing "particularly noteworthy," as well as an increase in digital congestion across the Internet in Ukraine around midday, potentially suggesting an increase in internet searches.

Cybersecurity company Akamai also specializes in defending against denial of service attacks, though it had limited visibility into the attacks in Ukraine on Tuesday. Still, according to Akamai's Chief Security Officer, Boaz Gelbord, "In times of international conflict, DDoS is often the attack tool of choice of threat actors."

See more here:
Ukraine says government websites and banks were hit with denial of service attack - NPR