There's something about the impeachment hearings I want to raise.

For all not in the tiny cone of foreign policy narrowly relating to Russia/its neighbors: it's impossible to express how weird it is that people from our professional lane are the primary impeachment witnesses. /1

These are people who have worked professionally to advance the interests of the United States by helping to advance the aspirations of places like Georgia and Ukraine to fully integrate into western alliances. They have worked to expose what Russia does in these places ... /2

...& what Putin aims to achieve in his near abroad + beyond. When understanding Russian ambitions was backburner to other things, they still did the work, built the relationships, advocated for the importance of letting more than the Baltic States be post-Sov success stories./3

Much very hollow hay has been made by Republican congressmen about, particularly in retrospect, how really paralyzed and not great the Obama admin policy on Russia was (true).

Many of the witnesses were the people navigating under that turbulence -- then, and under Trump. /4

When the Kremlin was not at all sad about the "reset" & the relative silence re Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008--as raised by Hill in hearing--people like the witnesses were the ones raising alarms, writing memos, building trust. Pushing back the de facto Kremlin advance./5

So it feels really not great to me that we're somehow in a mess where these people are the ones who must step forward.

Where defense of POTUS seems to now require the denunciation of them and their character, and the smearing of everyone like them working in USG. /6

It is one more lane of action and narrative that disarms us of the perspective and expertise we need to stay focused on a revanchist adversary.

It makes me uneasy. And it feels very on purpose. /7

As the con men who Rudy made allies now offer information to stoke the chaos and the crisis further, stir the churn with new accusation -- it all just feels like bait and provocation.

This is not a commentary on the veracity of information: only on its purpose. /8

I never like the feeling of our strings being pulled. That we're all playing our part in the play and can't see the stage or the audience past the lights. That we are comedy and tragedy, both, but an awful lot of people are watching from beyond the lights. /9

And I just think we all need to be more aware of the objectives the enemy is aiming toward, and that we don't always accept what they will do to achieve them, or what "chaos" means. That they don't pick sides. /10

That the use and exploit whoever and whatever they need to to remove us and our values and the role we used to play in the world.

We are further from clarity on that than ever. /11

Even as impeachment goes on -- few standing against POTUS have any vision to offer on a more engaged America in the world as a positive force. And we know that the voices from POTUS's aside are pretty far down a destructive, blind, ally-less rabbithole.

So I dunno. /11

I feel very uneasy about what we are looking at, and how we have been dragged into this, and how we have a president and a cabinet utterly uninterested in protecting us from these kinds of intervention and disturbance... /12

...That the process to remove him has become a de facto referendum on the policies the Kremlin hates the most.

We need clarity of leadership more than ever. /13

Would that anyone, anywhere, was providing it. /14