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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1304 thread views

Transnational Thursday for August 15, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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If the story is true, why is U.S. intelligence leaking the details now?

I think it does increase the likelyhood that the Ukraine did it rather than the United States, but I am taking the story's allocations of personal responsibility with a shakerful of salt.

If the story is true, why is U.S. intelligence leaking the details now?

Ukraine is losing, so they need to look like they deserve it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

a limited hangout is "spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further."[1][2] While used by the CIA and other intelligence organizations, the tactic has become popularized in the corporate and political spheres.

If the story is true, why is U.S. intelligence leaking the details now?

Probably because the Germans earlier this week released a warrant for one of the Ukrainians allegedly involved, and with it opening up the story to be a potential international media event.

The US govt. rational for the WSJ article would be to shape the public discussion following the German warrant announcement, both to head off information drift / theorizing and to cast their version of events in a way to mitigate fallout. I'd fully encourage you to take the story's allocation of personal responsibility with a shaker of salt, but some elements claimed (such as pre-warning the Germans / assisting them afterwards) are the sort of specific claims that are either are decisively rejected if false, or undermine the capacity of someone to reject the broader position. (In other words, the German political establishment cannot simultaneously admit to prior knowledge, and then be super-shocked / react heavily to publicly learn it was the Ukrainians. From a policy shaping perspective, this helps mitigate the risk of a German political backlash / cut-off of aid to Ukraine, as it emphasizes that the German government has known and yet gone through every major aid-escalation all along.)

Now, there is a separate question from this short-answer, which is why the Germans released the warrant now?

Part of this may be that prosuction angle of this is beyond the German government's ability / willingness to stop (as a government cover up of the Nord Stream pipeline would be too politically costly to engage), but not beyond their ability to shape the timing of... and it was released this week, because this was a very convenient Ukrainian good-news week to drop it.

Not to put a fine point on it, but supporting the Ukraine War is generally popular in Germany, and more popular with the Ukrainians are visibly succeeding. If the arrest warrant was going to have to come out eventually anyways, dropping it in the midst of a surge of Ukrainian support minimizes the public/political cost of it, as by the time the contextual pro-Ukraine surge fades, so will most of the interest of the media cycle, and thus the political pressure to act / react.

Which, to go back to your question-

The US intelligence is leading the details now (possibly) because the Germans released the warrant this week (possibly) because support to Ukraine is in a popularity surge earlier this week because Ukraine launched a surprisingly-effective offensive against Russia last week.

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