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Ukraine Russia War Analysis and Commentary

On Jan 25 2023

Selected links to my writing and commentary on the Ukrainian Russian War

Peer Reviewed Journal, Orbis

Abstract

As Russia amassed thousands of troops and tanks on Ukraine’s border at the end of 2021 and the threat of nuclear war loomed large, Ukraine’s leadership ramped up a distinctly non-physical counter-offensive. President Volodymyr Zelensky and his tech savvy team focused on building a communications machine harnessing social media messaging, marketing savvy and celebrity to fight Russia digitally as well as directly on the battlefield. Never has a sitting president relied so heavily on various social apps to communicate both at home and abroad, and to build Ukraine’s brand. Whether or not this strategy is sustainable amidst a protracted war and short internet attention spans is yet to be seen, but Zelensky has made a case for marketing war that other leaders are sure to follow.

The Doorstep Podcast – Links to discussions with experts as the war has evolved

How Cryptocurrencies & NFTs May Change the Global World Order, with David Yermack

Is the U.S. Already at War? with Politico’s Nahal Toosi

Can Putin Be Stopped? with Atlantic Council’s Melinda Haring

Reporting in Al Jazeera

Is seizing the yachts & mansions of Russian oligarchs enough. No.

Will escalating sanctions shift Fortress Russia? It’s not a given

Commentary in Ink Stick Media

Russian Disinformation and the Erasure of History

Launching The Doorstep and Bringing Global News To You

By admin

On Oct 09 2020

In Analysis

I am so excited to share, The Doorstep, a new international news podcast that aims to reach across the borderless internet and talk about the ways global affairs touch Main Street U.S.A. With my co-host, Nicholas Gvosdev, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for International Affairs and professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, and the support of the Carnegie Council, I plan to explore underreported stories that have a big impact on our everyday lives and highlight the news you may have missed in our whirlwind, whiplash news cycle. Every two weeks, Nick and I, along with roundtable guests, will finds news you need to know and discuss the U.S.’s position in the world with a different regional focus each time.

In our first podcast, out on September 25, Nick and I reviewed the jaw dropping financial scandal that few noticed. In the FinCen Files, Buzzfeed reporters detailed how big banks laundered trillions of dollars on behalf of terrorists and drug cartels – and got away with it. As Nick noted, “major financial institutions are really in the business not of securing the financial networks for the public good, but they’re looking at how they can make money, and they’re not going to ask too many questions about where the money is coming from.” This then adversely affects the American consumer.

We also spoke about the second wave of the novel coronavirus spread in Europe, and the beginnings of a second wave in the United States. We discussed Europe as harbinger of things to come in the U.S. and took a look at Belarus’ contested presidential election. Nick aptly stated, “When people look at a place like Belarus, before it would be to say, ‘Well that’ just one of those quirky East European countries we don’t know too much about. That’s just something that happens in that part of the world.’ But no, this is in a way a canary in the coal mine.” We discussed how the protests in Belarus are part of a larger phenomenon of global frustration, one that is further intensified by the pandemic.

As we looked ahead to the Trump-Biden debate, we discussed if foreign policy might make it into the sparring. Looking at Susan Rice’s New York Times op-ed, and Aly Wyne’s discussion in a webinar at Carnegie Council on great-power competition, it becomes evident that in order for the U.S. to project power on the world stage, its internal domestic health has to be strengthened. How is this possible in the face of multiple threats: a major health crisis, rising unemployment, food insecurity, natural disasters, and more?

Specifically looking at China, if we don’t fix internal issues, how do we position ourselves to win in a trade war or other perhaps more dire confrontation? We discussed the dissonance between the U.S. and China and how it is being felt not just in our wallets with rising prices, but also in our social media use, specifically with the the Tik Tok ban/not a ban. This story was one of the most watched by a younger audience, many of whom were not aware the platform was owned by a Chinese company but who were quick to react to a medium of their self-expression potentially disappearing.

Some of these issues discussed in our first podcast, fed into our second podcast out today, especially with foreign policy being addressed in the Pence-Harris vice presidential debate. The two candidates offered a stark contrast in their view of American in the world, one as a strongman, the other as a friend.

We spoke with special guest, Politico foreign correspondent, Nahal Toosi, about these diverging views of the U.S. in the world and what it means for us in our day-to-day lives. Nahal’s most recent Politico piece, Joe Biden’s First Diplomatic Fight Will Be At Home, looks at how “progressive activists are regularly talking with Biden’s campaign in a bid to shape the Democrat’s foreign and national security policy agendas,” and what that may mean if Biden takes office in January 2021. We also discussed what a Trump Season 2 foreign policy might look like, and actual similarities between Biden and Trump on certain issues like a strong China policy. I predict we will be speaking much more about Nahal’s idea of ‘omnipolicy’ (she her latest Global Translations newsletter)and how a foreign policy platform like Biden’s can include things like raising the minimum wage and reforming the criminal justice system.

All of this ofcourse can be upended by the health of the two candidates, both well into their 70s, and President Trump currently recovering from COVID. We discussed the spy games around the President’s health, and what they world is saying post the first presidential debate.

Some headlines I was fascinated to read, and we think it important to share with our idea of the borderless internet (credit BBC).

As The Times in the UK wrote, “The clearest loser from the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was America.”

“Chaotic, childish, gruelling” – that’s how French newspaper Libération described Tuesday’s debate.

Der Spiegel’s analysis of the debate is headlined “A TV duel like a car accident”.

The key takeaway is that Europe is watching us much more closely than we are watching Europe at the moment. But two particular issues should be resonating a bit more. The first is the resurgence in aggression and violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the tiny territory (about the size of Delaware) of Nagorno-Karabakh. It seems the U.S. will be sitting at the table to find a resolution to a conflict some say might lead to an all out regional war with players like Turkey, Russia and Iran in the mix. How this will play out over the next couple of weeks will be very important to assessing our diplomatic role in the world.

Similarly, Europe’s refugee crisis is a yet another harbinger of our own immigration crisis. Although the foreign born population of the U.S. is only about 13%, the idea that immigrants are taking American jobs and consequent threats to security hovers large in the current collective imagination. What must change in our understanding if we are to create new and more just policies? Tune in to hear our discussion!

We look forward to continuing the conversation with you. Please reach out @tatianaserafin or @DoorstepPodcast!

Congrats You Are A Billionaire, What Are You Doing to Change the World?

By admin

On May 20 2020

In Leadership

Republished with permission from twotwoone.nyc where it originally appeared.

In the deluge of pandemic news, I saw that Kanye West was in a shouting match with Forbes magazine over his net worth. He was upset that he did not have a higher net worth, even after he had instructed his staff to give Forbes proof of how much money he had. As a former Forbes billionaires’ editor and writer, I thought I would read that story for a distraction and see what my Forbes colleagues said to such hubris. I used to encounter it daily. You become immune and are instead amused by how desperate rich people are to appear richer.

But isn’t chasing a super-yacht or your 1,000th pair of Manolos or another Riviera villa so last century?

Wealth creation and celebration were hallmarks of the 20th century, enshrined by debuting on annual Forbes lists. But two decades into this new one, we are still searching for how to define ourselves. Over the past five years, I have heard my college students say two things that I think are playing out today. First, it is more important to them what people are doing to be change-makers. Their appetite for wealth lists is low, as is their tolerance for hearing about another wealthy man getting ahead. They might get a kick out of the fact that Kyle Jenner made the billionaire’s list, not because she is a young woman with a great deal of the money, because it is Kyle Jenner the influencer. She had her following before she was on a billionaires’ list and she will have her following if her net worth dips below a billion. Rich, to my students, is rich. The actual dollar figure is irrelevant. What kind of life are these rich people living is what my students follow.

I propose a new index inspired by Girl Scouts. I am a lifetime member of Girl Scouts and a current leader of Cadettes. As part of their promise, they recite,“On my honor, I will try…to help people at all times.” How do Girls Scouts do it? There is a specific set of guidelines that include, “use resources wisely and make the world a better place.”

These are thankfully, in this deeply divided country, nonpartisan. Michele Obama and Laura Bush were Girl Scouts. Every field from business to the space program has a Girl Scout alum. We are out in force now making masks for front line workers, writing letters to nursing home residents, and delivering cookies to say thank you to hospital workers. These are small steps to be sure, but everything is local. We build ourselves, and our future, from the ground up.

So how do we create a list that reflects community action and shaping a better future?

Any list creation is more art than science. It involves a series of judgments about what is important. Is it how many press mentions, how your publicly traded stock is fairing that day or how your art collection has appreciated? Or something more intangible? Every list I have every worked on has both subjective elements and hard numbers. We can start working on the methodology. But we have to start now.

My students are tired of seeing the quarantine in a mansion pictures, or how hard it is to get food to my huge yacht stories. They talk instead about how inspired they are by people like environmentalist, Greta Thunberg. Her message is clear and sprouted a global movement via social media. Many of my students went to the Climate March in New York city last fall and heard Thunberg speak. They are still talking about how Thunberg inspired them and how it was one of the best things that have done in their life.

(For more listen to my Carnegie Council podcast on Genz, Climate Change Activism, & Foreign Policy.)

So Kanye – we don’t care about the size of your package. What exactly are you doing to make sure we give generations after us a better world? What kind of ancestor will you be?

Let’s Not Become The Borg: Thoughts on Distance Learning For Fall 2020

By admin

On May 19 2020

In Analysis

Many colleges now are talking distance learning for Fall 2020. The Chronicle of Higher Education is keeping tabs.

My own college, Marymount Manhattan College, is planning an on campus, in person return with social distancing and all the necessary precautions. I think that is the way to go. But I did not always.

In fact, when Marymount Manhattan faculty began discussing moving instruction online in early March, I thought my journalism courses would be the easiest to transition. Many newsrooms are almost all virtual using Slack to communicate and CMS platforms to edit and post. I thought I’d convert my class to this style of newsroom and we’d be up and running without a hitch. After seven weeks together, we could manage the rest of the semester interacting online. (never mind the health and safety benefits)

However, in survey after survey I am reading at the end of this semester, students prefer to be in the classroom. And not just because of the money they are paying for the college experience.

As we think about hybrid classes or distance learning again in the fall, we have to address the following issues.

1: Access to technology.

We have heard this time and again. Not everyone has great wifi. Not everyone has the hardware to support Zooming and Slacking and emailing at the same time. Not everyone can be virtually trained to use new techno tools at the drop of a hat. And the most important, not everyone has the money to pay for all of these things.

In the classroom, we have connected computers that place everyone on an level playing field. Only with this equality can you move forward with learning.

2: Desire for connection beyond the Internet wall.

As great as Zoom, or any of the platforms we are using, is at letting us “see” each other, it is not a shared experience. We are sitting alone in our own space watching disembodied torsos shift and sway. We are in different time zones, some just waking up to coffee, other eating lunch. We can see each other blink back a yawn or write something down, but we cannot feel each other’s energy. The Internet wall is thick.

College – for those who are able to and chose to attend – is a collective experience. It is a sharing of space that creates closeness. It is personal. We sit in the same classroom that is too cold some days, too hot on others. The fan never works quite right. We smell each others egg sandwiches and flavored coffees. We feel the energy of a communal laugh. We sit around the table in an edit meeting where we can all look at each other and respond.

What is the alternative to Zoom? The classroom. Of course all I do will look different in the fall. I won’t be able to bring in Greenpoint’s famous Peter Pan donuts or my Girl Scout cookies to share. I will be wearing a mask as will students. Classes with be smaller. They will be in larger spaces. But at least we will be living the college experience.

3: Prevent the Borg from taking over. Although before the pandemic, we were on our devices all the time, and in the classroom, I had to remind students to stop checking their Insta, now I cannot wait to get OFF my device. I have a feeling at least some students feel the same. The idea of working online, all the time is like being connected to the Borg, a massive techno brain for those of you who are not Trekkies, and losing individuality and thought process.

After two months of Zoom Univeristy – get link, paste password, log in, look into camera, end meeting, repeat – I saw the Borg taking over. I tried to stop it. I chose to make my usual in person three hour classes an hour and a half and assign more reading and writing. Other professors went the full three hours of lecture. Some of my students had nine hours of back to back of online learning.

Some are predicting the wave of the future is online learning with a tech giants like a Google allying with schools like MIT or Stanford to make this so.

I disagree. I believe the future of college education remains in the classroom. Online is a tool but it is not a replacement.

Am I anxious for Fall 2020? Sure. But I can’t want to see my students in Nugent Hall 556.

It’s Not Fake News, It’s Information Disorder and Here is What To Do Fix It

By admin

On May 18 2020

In Analysis, Information Disorder

I recently sat down with Nick Gvosdev,Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute as well as Carnegie Council for International Affairs, to talk about Why, How and By Whom Information is Manipulated.

We focused on disinformation about #COVID19, the broader problem of information disorder and the role of state actors like Russia.

Here is a link to our talk which will help you understand what you can do to stop the spread of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. (remember no more using the term fake news)

Protecting First Amendment Freedoms

By admin

On Oct 04 2017

In Uncategorized

We are one week out from the launch of First Amendment Watch, a website dedicated to tracking threats to freedom of press, speech, assembly, and petition. I am excited to have been part of this project from the beginning, building a site that will engage a wide audience in an imperative topic of the day. More news soon!

Journey to Carnivale in Venice

By admin

On Mar 04 2017

In Uncategorized

Many years ago my Georgetown friend, Kathy McCabe, was inspired to start a travel newsletter, Dream of Italy, which she has built into a successful business, including most recently a PBS series. In February, I wrote my first travel piece for her about checking off my bucket list experience, A Family Adventure at Carnevale in Venice. It was my first travel piece and I am lucky to have gone and to have written about it and encourage readers to put Carnavele on your bucket list. Check out my piece – Venice Carnevale is actually way more family friendly than you may have imagined!

I, Journalist

By admin

On Nov 11 2016

In Analysis

Originally this essay, “I, Journalist” appeared in the online literary magazine, The Seventh Wave, in October 2016. I am republishing it here as a call out for journalists in a time when the craft and practice of journalism is increasingly under fire.

***

“If you’re tired of biased, mainstream media reporting (otherwise known as Crooked Hillary’s super PAC), tune into my Facebook Live broadcast. Starts at 8:30 EST/5:30 PST — you won’t want to miss it. Enjoy!”

To Those Who Use the Term “Mainstream Media”:

I am a journalist, editor, factchecker, professor and storyteller.

In these capacities, I have worked at Forbes, Barron’s, Inc., USA Today, Reuters, MSNBC, The National Interest, and other outlets. I have collaborated with hundreds of senior and assistant editors, reporters, photographers, copyeditors, and factcheckers on investigative pieces uncovering the billionaire money trail in Kazakhstan (Emerging Market Gold), on book reviews on Carly Fiorina pre-presidential run (2 Books, 2 Views on Carly Fiorina), and even on branded content (2014 BNP Paribas Individual Philanthropy Index — Philanthropic Journeys: The Importance of Timing). None of these outlets, none of my colleagues, and none of my work is “mainstream.” Why? Because today, “mainstream” could not exist in a country full of diversity and in a media industry that is in the midst of upheaval and change.

What is “mainstream” anyway? Can we believe that there is one “prevailing current” when our nation was raised on the notion of debate and dissent (thank you Hamilton v. Jefferson), when today over 800 languages are spoken in New York by some measure, and when the vastly differing eco-regions of the United States shape character (surfer versus cowboy anyone)? I am reminded of a scene in Monthy Python’s, “The Life of Brian,” where Brian is telling the crowd of people who have been following him to stop. He says they don’t need him, urges them to think for themselves, adding, “You’re all individuals…you’re all different.” One tiny voice is heard in the distance, “I’m not…”

Using the word “mainstream” is that person saying they are not ready to think for themselves.

The best antonym for mainstream is “curious.” We are a country of curiosity-seekers that has upended everything from how and what we watch, to what we read and consume. Just look at AT&T’s proposed $85 billion purchase of Time Warner announced this week : an old school telephone company and broadcast network coming together because the 21st century demands new forms of individualized content delivered to each of us based on our own curious minds. If we sit down on the couch with our partners or families, it is not to experience the same story — we each sit exploring our own interests on separate devices. This curiosity by extension has changed media including news media.

According to a Pew Center report, “State of the News Media 2016,” we seek information from increasingly divergent sources. This is not the Mad Men area of the big three networks and controlled news. Our growing and increasingly diverse population needs news from different sources. Indeed as the report states, “Eight years after the Great Recession sent the U.S. newspaper industry into a tailspin, the pressures facing America’s newsrooms have intensified to nothing less than a reorganization of the industry itself, one that impacts the experiences of even those news consumers unaware of the tectonic shifts taking place.” I have seen the changes firsthand: the cutbacks, layoffs, and the stories left untold because of a lack of resources. We live in an era where media outlets try new strategies to gain audience, where it is easier to launch new digital-only media properties to target specific readers (think: Breitbart or The Outline), and where citizen journalists take up the mantle to share the stories that aren’t being covered or funded because of layoffs (think: trend in crowdfunding investigative pieces). You might not be aware of the upheaval, but it is happening, and there is a lot at stake.

For one, 62% of US adults overall now get news on social media sites (Pew Report). Whether you are a newspaper, magazine, or digital outlet, you have to struggle with not only getting your story distributed on the best social media site (Do you ally with Facebook or Google? Do you Tweet or Snap?), you are dealing with mounds of competition to get your story seen in the “Internet of noise.” But this overwhelming democratization of information has fanned the flames of our curiosity: the consumer becomes in control and the burden is on media to court us.

Indeed, nothing about this industry upheaval leads to “mainstream” thinking. Instead, the tributaries of thought are stronger than any one stream. New ideas are opening up new opportunities to a vast array of people. Each day when I walk into my classroom, I share this enthusiasm with my students. In the short years I have been teaching, I have seen how my students have shifted their consumption of news from Facebook to Snapchat. We need these young eyes to participate in these changes and continue to move media forward with fresh ideas on how to engage readers and tell stories that have meaning and impact.

We should not scare budding journalists into silence, which was what one student expressed feeling this week.

And yet, we are. A recent article on Politico enumerated how Buzzfeed, Newsweek and a cybersecurity blog were attacked by hackers unhappy with coverage. No one yet knows what the recent attack on the Dyn server that took down broad swaths of the internet but it surely too was meant to silence. The situation is far worse on the ground where political journalists have seen and felt fear and intimidation covering press events. How can we forget part of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights? “Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.”

I do not let my students forget. I plow forward. Every week, my students and I look at fairness and balance in headlines at 35 news outlets. We read everything from Slate to Fox to BBC and Al Jazeera America. A strong free press here and around the world could never be “mainstream” but always have diverse voices interacting. It is our obligation as journalists to read widely to understand these voices.

A key element to the work of a journalist is newsworthiness. We debate, discuss, and honor the idea that every person has a story and as public servants we focus on reporting news that must be read. We ask the traditional questions to determine merit — is the news new? Are many people affected by the story? Is it close to home? Public figures get more coverage, but we can still debate the merits of Gawker’s piece on Hulk Hogan or if Kim Kardashian’s robbery was newsworthy? How deeply we delve into stories reflects the resources of any given organization and the audience that the outlet is trying to reach. And if there is one indisputable trend, it’s that resources have been stretched thin at many organizations, which impacts our attention and expectation of news we think we want.

Diversity has always been the trademark of news, even when we didn’t have such wide opportunities in the digital realm. Back when the US media industry was just getting going, scholar Gorham D. Abbott counted over 1500 news publications in print. For a population of about 13 million (1830 census = 12.86 million), that’s quite a lot. It is impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison with the world wide web, where anyone can publish on the web today and where page views are the main currency of trade: Fox gets 713 million monthly page views, Buzzfeed 468 million and Mashable 80 million according to SimilarWeb. That is a lot more eyeballs from a lot more people, but what’s clear is that from our beginnings, we have celebrated diversity. Let’s not begin lumping them together falsely now into some vaguely convenient term that allows us to be lazy readers like that one fellow saying “I’m not an individual.”

If there is one thing we overlook today, it is a respect for facts. I have a deep and abiding honor of facts because I spent my first year at Forbes doing just that: factchecking. Far more than the latest political buzzword, factchecking is the assurance that each feature of an article is scrutinized to avoid both error and bias. Each story I was assigned to, I would meet with the reporter and editor to understand how the story came together, what sources were contacted, and what resources cited. My role was to be the impartial arbiter: I underlined every single line of every single story and argued with writers and editors when I thought a turn of phrase erroneous implicated the profile subject or a fact needed to be highlighted to always have both sides of the story. Not every publication can afford to have full-time factcheckers, so today, every journalist must learn the art of factchecking.

First rule: do it. Second: back up every sentence you write. Third: have at least three sources to corroborate a controversial fact. In this digital age, when Facebook is having a problem disseminating fake news stories and clickbait clogs the internet, it is even more imperative that news outlets factcheck, factcheck, and then factcheck.

Only when we do all this can we write a story with flow and finesse. That is probably the most difficult thing to do for any journalist, new or seasoned. We are better writers when we are stronger readers, and so I encourage my students to continue to read widely, to think holistically and to work on gathering information for stories that will matter.

I am a journalist, editor, factchecker, professor and storyteller. I am not mainstream.

In truth,

Tatiana Serafin

Crowdsourcing Memory

By admin

On Dec 04 2015

In Reflections

Cookie cutter glass condos in Williamsburg and Greenpoint are decimating a way of life and putting in place rootlessness. I try to find the old place, my old memories. I grew up here – learned to ride a bike in the rickety (then) McCarren Park, rode the graffiti subway (which seems better than the L train now), played on the sidewalks, shopped on the avenue, went to Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic School (which is no more), compared kielbasa between Pete’s in Williamsburg and Steve’s in Greenpoint. I know there are many memories like these. So for my MFA program at the New School, I founded Williamsburg Memories and Greenpoint Memories as websites with stories open to all. The start is slow but memories just need to be tapped into to stay forever.

I shared some of these memories with my piece, “Doorways in Time,” for The Seventh Wave. More to come.

Inspiration from Ukrainian Poet Lesya Ukrainka

By admin

On Jun 01 2015

In Reflections

Ukraine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Holding Ukraine’s colorful banknotes is a history lesson in the country’s struggle for independence. A dear friend had brought me the new notes on her return from Ukraine’s most recent fight to keep its border intact from its aggressive northern neighbor, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. They were beautiful, fragile and striking. I was drawn to Ukrainian poet and dramatist, Lesya Ukrainka, who appears on Ukraine’s 200-hryvnia note over a century after she inspired millions with her patriotic writing. The new currency was created in 1992 after Ukraine declared its independence from the former Soviet Union. For the first time in over eight decades, Ukraine could announce its separate identity to the world and chose to do so honoring its freedom fighters and literary giants. Lesya Ukrainka is the sole woman. That is impressive considering a country as democractic as the United States still has to acknowledge one of the many women who built her history. When New York Times conducted a poll on what women to put on the U.S. $20 bill, feminist author Gloria Steinem suggested Sojourner Truth, who fought against racism and sexism, and writer Gish Jen offered up Harriet Beecher Stowe, another abolitionist and feminist. Social media chimed in with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt garnering a high number of votes, and even Kim Kardashian getting in the mix (to my horror).

And so my journey began with Lesya, reading about her life and her work, and beginning to translate her writings for a new era. My goal now is to spread her words widely on this side of the ocean, her words which are beautiful and uplifting in times of turmoil. Check back on my translation progress!

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