Putin's Folly

"Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others."

- Niccolo Machiavelli


Republican hawks, including the inimitable John McCain, are dyspeptically belching bellicosity over the expected Russian annexation of the Crimea and possibly Eastern Ukraine. "Obama is weak," they all sing, cacophonously. "Obama has sapped the strength of the United States. The North Koreans and the Iranians sense it. And we will pay the price for his gutting our military." "We are in danger of losing all our geo-strategic power." They make no mention of our invasions Iraq and Afghanistan having increased American influence.


The fact is that the US has lost much of its global empire, just as did the British. But now we are gaining a new empire--energy independence.  Globalization does not function through territorial conquest or dominance and those who think so are residing in the last century, including the prominent senior senator from Arizona who, despite his heroism and captivity has never seen a war he does not like.


Global strength lies in homegrown economic success, but that is not to imply that the world should not speak out and sanction Russian thuggery, a naked power-grab by a latter-day Cossack.


The world, however, has changed since 1939, rendering the Munich--Chamberlain--Hitler appeasement analogies no longer the paradigm of international puissance.  Angela Merkel, speaking to the Bundestag, voiced Germany's concern about Russian aggression, not speaking only for Deutschland, but speaking for 27 members of the European Union.  Students of the alliances that led to the First World War (one hundred years ago) understand that alliances that led to that war and to World War II are no longer de rigueur. The United States, a reluctant entrant to that war as well as a semi-reluctant entrant to World War II twenty years later, should understand that nation-states no longer have the influence over their populace they once had. "Putin is engaging in 20th century politics," Merkel said angrily. She ought to know, her forebears were champion malefactors of the art.


The lessons of Iraq, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and other failed wars costing thousands of American lives, garnished by trillions of lost dollars, have soured Americans on the unexpected consequences of poorly chosen battles.  The empowerment of "everyman" through information technology enables people to clearly and more quickly see the misfeasance of their leaders.  Putin, despite his attempts at suppressing internal dissent, is seen by most of the world community as the thug that he is, his preening Olympic strut in Sochi having vanished with the melting snows. Even if he annexes the Crimea and the dubious referendum provides a pretext to do so, he is going to pay the price with the world community, despite Republicans in congress heaping blame on the President for American "weakness."


There will be sanctions, served up by the world community for Vladimir Putin. But let's take a deeper look at his worldview. Historically part of Russia, and always an obsession since the Czars, the Russians enjoy contractual rights to the Crimea's warm water ports because the rest of the Russian northern ports are locked in ice for most of the year. Without warm water ports, Russian influence and global shipping diminishes exponentially, obliging them to rely on land transport, and even worse, needing access through other countries for a route to the seas. But these ports were not in jeopardy. And now, the war waged by the European Union and the United States will be economic and not military.


What some are forgetting that it is the Ukrainians themselves who are to blame for much of the current crisis.  Their Slavic Polish brethren have managed to straighten out their economy as a prerequisite to having been admitted to the European Union, frightening Putin. Happy consolidating his power because of the Ukrainian government's incompetence, he can divert attention from the growing perception by his own people about manifold problems within Russia itself.  Obsessing about NATO and the EU moving toward the Russian borders, Putin promulgates a Western conspiracy to undermine Russian hegemony. He is partially right; the West does seek incorporation of most of Europe into the EU, both as a war preventative and, just as importantly, as a key to growing the European Union economic sphere.  This is not necessarily contrary to Russian interests, unless the leadership fears more transparency and integrity in government, the latter not a lesson taught in the KGB.


What Putin does not realize is that the same nationalist forces that caused the break up of the Soviet Union are still extant in Ukraine and even in the Crimea. Having not disappeared, those forces are simply exacerbated by a failing economy, the key to Western influence that Putin ignores in his imperial quest. The disparate forces in Ukraine, ethnic Russian speakers and ethnic Ukrainians are still going to clash, unless the basket case Ukrainian economy shows dramatic improvement, a process that will take years. The Russian economy, meanwhile, now dependent more than ever on energy and gas prices, will be obliged to sustain more impoverished geography without the wherewithal to do so, especially if energy prices tumble and sanctions bite. (This principle also applies to places like Venezuela, shoring up the sputtering Cuban economy with subsidies from oil revenues, whilst restless Venezuelans riot in the streets.) 


Putin may find himself in an economic dungeon, sanctions operating against him; more discontented Russians, and no way out.


Russian natural gas is propping up an essentially gangster regime--a regime that suppresses dissent, stifles free expression and needs an external diversion to coalesce the Russian public over foreign "enemies." A classically cynical maneuver, it was the policy of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Chavez, Arafat and even Assad and Saddam Hussein. Often this policy is successful in the short term but ultimately masks a deep, corrosive interior. It is said that Putin has become one of the world's wealthiest men with a fortune in excess of $100 billion. His efforts to rescue his comrade, Viktor Yanukovych, demonstrably a satiric clone of Putin himself, as depicted by the deposed Ukrainian President’s opulent palace, festooned with stuffed animals and ornate Sevres vases reminiscent of Versailles devolved into Las Vegas.  No one ever said that dictators are tasteful.


One can hardly imagine Mr. Putin living in less Nero-like splendor.

Share This Post

Recent Post

Why the West is allowing Ukrainians to Bleed and Die

November 21, 2025
During his “wilderness years,” Churchill understood Adolf Hitler’s ambitions, presciently shouting to a deaf world the dangers ahead. The Rhineland. Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia gobbled up while appeasers twiddled. England and France could have sent Hitler packing. Instead, they gave him three more years to arm. It was too late. Fifty million died. Stalin, double-crossed by his former Poland-dividing German friend, decided too late that he had to fight. Millions of Soviets soldiers and civilians died because of his dithering. FDR had to contend with America Firsters and could have entered the war sooner; he had third term political considerations in in 1940; but he knew he had to fight, too. Eventually. WE RELIVE THE MISTAKES OF HISTORY AT OUR OWN PERIL, LIKE WILEY CAYOTE CHASING THE ROAD RUNNER. PUTIN INVADED A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY. STOP HIM, GERMANS. STOP HIM, FRENCHMEN. STOP HIM, NATO. STOP HIM, AMERICA. UKRAINIAN CHILDREN ARE FREEZING AND STARVING. PEOPLE ARE LOSING THEIR LIVES TO A RUSSIAN BLOODTHIRSTY PYROMANIAC, A HANNIBAL LECTER. Here’s the rub: using time as his weapon, like Hitler, Putin is conscripting, propagandizing, and gradually conscripting massive manpower—constructing his war machine, gaslighting his people, building support, slowly, craftily, cunningly, odiously. Russians believe his lies about Ukraine as a Nazi haven, a virtual pizza parlor filled with basement dwelling pedophiles, or in this case, jackbooted storm troopers. Despite President Zelensky’s Churchillian appearance before congress, we must move swiftly, because time is on Putin’s side. A war of attrition is not on Ukraine’s side. Even with US Ordinance, rockets, drones, artillery. Western fear is Putin’s ally. Time is Putin’s ally. Wars start slowly but inevitably spiral out of control; aid the west provides the Ukrainians resembles aid the US gave to England in 1940, followed by exponential materiel increase from the great American “arsenal of democracy.” It was not enough. Not in 1940 and not enough in 2022; it will not be enough in 2023, 2024, 2025 as this war drags on. Too many Russians, too much manpower. Too much time. Victory requires a credible threat of NATO mobilization—an army ready to do battle. And an ultimatum. But that will not happen, I fear. Billions of dollars for weapons in a proxy war with Ukrainians fighting Russians has been impactful. Americans can watch Netflix war movies while Ukrainians bleed. They can watch Tom Hanks storm the beach at Normandy. Much less dangerous. Let’s just ship some more rockets to Ukraine instead. Yellowstone is on. Even so, it was heartening to see the bipartisan support for Ukraine in the Congress. Military planners in the Pentagon and in Western European capitals should be preparing for a wider war. It would be malfeasant for them not to do. We just don’t realize it yet. NATO is obliged to tell Putin to get out of Ukraine or face an allied army to evict him. Putin must be given an ultimatum to get out or face military force. Germans and French, British and American, Canadian and Australian. Putin understands naked power. The west must mobilize. He does not understand anything else. Lenin said, “push forward the bayonet. If you find soft flesh, push. If you find steel, retreat.” Putin learned Lenin in school; Lenin is in his DNA. He learned it in the KGB. He learned it in Mother Russia. He wants it all. He is Czar Nicholas, Comrade Stalin, Comrade Lenin all rolled into a painting in the Hermitage, his hometown museum, where he went as a schoolboy, where his parents took him, where he learned of the greatness of Russia. Where the Czar had palaces. Russians never had democratic traditions. Ask Nicholas II and his family, brutally executed by Bolsheviks. Ask the millions starved by Stalin in the Ukraine during his communized agriculture plan. Ask the people sent to the Gulag, or the Hungarians who dared to revolt against the Soviet hammer and sickle. Ask the subjugated Poles carved up by Stalin and Hitler. Ask all of the subjugated and terrorized people who suffered behind the iron curtain. Ask Alexi Navalny, a political prisoner, poisoned once, and now jailed in a Russian gulag. A delusional revanchist KGB agent in the Kremlin tries to raise the Soviet corpse by terrorizing a sovereign nation. A nation which had its own history before Lenin and his desciples created a dark Bolshevik empire. NATO, led by Germany and France and then the United States, face the eventual inevitability of mobilizing an army to kick Putin out of Ukraine and Crimea. The alternative is too grim to contemplate. Trench warfare. Stalemate. Ukrainians under siege. Massive Russian armies. Possibly being defeated. World economic disruption. Continued war crimes. A war of attrition, cold and misery. I hope I am wrong about this.  Western ambitions about this outrageous war ending through negotiation are delusional. If Putin sees that we are serious about the sovereignty of nations, he must face a serious military threat-- mobilization of NATO forces. Only then he will likely back down. Until then brave Ukrainians will bleed, freeze and die bearing the brunt of our fear.

Thank Goodness the Election is Over

November 21, 2025
This is my first blog entry, and a fine time it is for it, if I must say so myself. Florida has now elected an ethically challenged Republican governor, who essentially flooded the airwaves with negative ads about Alex Sink, the democratic candidate. People who have voted for him will not be surprised if he disappoints by trying to shut the door to the courthouse to "protect" businesses which despoil the environment, drill for oil in pristine seas off the coast, or manufacture harmful products. On the national scene, people are amazed that tea partiers have gained so many seats in the House of Representatives, by mouthing standard platitudes of how they are going to slash spending. But where? They do not say. Elected to the United States Senate is Marco Rubio, a 39 year old tea party conservative, who has railed against a woman's right to choose, waffled on global warming, and thinks that America is moving in the wrong direction. He expects to cure this problem by slashing the budget and making "hard choices," but has failed to specify which choices. Not social security because his 80 something mother is a beneficiary, but more likely because he fears the wrath of Florida's seniors. He is supposedly a rising star in the Republican party and since the other tea partiers are pretty crazy, he probably won't be around for his full term, unless he keeps his seat while running for higher office a la Joe Lieberman. The selling of candidates like bars of soap continues, and the insulting, demeaning ads are over, but the consequences of the electorate not having to think too much about the candidates or listen seriously to debates about complex issues should be troublesome to any thoughtful person. People in Florida should not be discouraged, however. Now that the GOP has some power, they will be held responsible by the punditry, including yours truly in the next election.

George Bush has His New Book Out.....

November 21, 2025
George Bush has his new book out. I have not yet read it, but I have heard him interviewed on TV and have read reviews of the book. This frat boy, this pious peddler of religious virtue, this hypocrite now wants to sell his writing (if he wrote it at all) as though he would be regarded kindly by history. He will not. He lacks no chutzpah. Ignorance surely is bliss. His absence of remorse for sending our young service men and women to fight and die or have a leg or an arm blown off, is an exemplar of hubris and rationalization with which history will be able to evaluate his Presidency for its true worthlessness. Claiming to "protect Americans," he invaded a country that did not present an existential threat to our national security, violating his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. Arguably he is a war criminal, having authorized torture and assuming responsibility for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of American youths, as well as around 100,000 innocent civilian Iraqis. Speaking of audacity, the current occupant of the White House could use some. His potential compromise of the Bush tax cuts, favoring the richest of Americans threatens to perpetuate a growing disparity between the super rich and the rest of us. Imposing taxes to implement social policy, despite Republican protestations, is not a new phenomenon. Seems that the American people have been fed and are voraciously consuming the malarkey of the conservatives who, despite evidence to the contrary, still believe that these rich folk are benefactors who create more jobs when they fail to pay their fair share of taxes. These are the same people who spent two trillion dollars on two wars and insist that we need a fleet of warplanes and billion dollar aircraft carriers to fight an amorphous band of illiterate religious fundamentalist terrorist thugs who have to smuggle explosive-laden printer cartridges onto airplanes or fill a truck with explosives to attack us. Now we need to get spending under control, they say. No present day politician, Republican, Democrat or Tea Partier seems to have the courage to tell us exactly what they will cut. Social Security? The defense budget? Veterans Benefits? Medicare? The truth be told, no one dares. It must be the fault of the lawyers