US security depends on Ukraine battlefield success
Russia has been waging hybrid war against the Western democracies for at least 23 years.
US security depends on Ukraine battlefield success.
Russia has been waging hybrid war against the Western democracies for at least 23 years. It is known that Russia has funded far-right parties across the West: Vox in Spain, the AfD in Germany, the Swedish Democrats, and obviously Orban in Hungary. There are also recurring rumors of Russia influencing specific PiS officials in Poland. In France, Russia has probably contributed money to Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party. That Marine Le Pen is close to Putin is well known.
And then there is Donald Trump. We know that Russian oligarchs have bought real estate from Trump at inflated prices. And in 2006, after Trump had declared bankruptcy for 5th time, and no bank was willing to lend to him, suddenly Deutsche Bank stepped forward and lent $2 billion to Trump. It is universally understood that Russia encouraged this loan.
Some of the details of how Russian money gets into USA Republican politics are still murky. Some of this is slowly coming to light. Jesse Benton was just sentenced to prison for his role in one such transaction. See "GOP operative gets 1.5 years in prison for facilitating illegal Russian donation to Trump 2016 campaign". We can reasonably presume there will be more such cases.
On January 6th of 2021, these Russian funded movements came close to ending democracy in the USA.
Western democracy will remain under attack from Russia until there is regime change in Russia and the war in Ukraine is currently our best hope of achieving that change.
And if any of the above somehow leaves you unmoved, then consider traditional realpolitik arguments regarding the world situation:
If Russia can take Ukraine because we are scared of Russian nuclear weapons, then Russia can take Latvia because we are scared of Russian nuclear weapons.
If Russia can take Latvia because we are scared of Russian nuclear weapons, then Russia can take Poland because we are scared of Russian nuclear weapons.
If Russia can take Poland because we are scared of Russian nuclear weapons, then Russia can take Germany because we are scared of Russian nuclear weapons.
If Russia can take Germany because we are scared of Russian nuclear weapons, then Russia can take Britain because we are scared of Russian nuclear weapons.
The lesson: we cannot ever back down to bullies. They must be confronted.
Thankfully, the last 19 months have shown the limits of Putin and his flippant "Navernoye, seno vkusno pakhlo" attitude. Putin has been at war in Ukraine for 9 years now. He's never used nuclear weapons, because he knows that nuclear weapons will bring a response from the West. He will never use nuclear weapons.
In their well-regarded book "Mr Putin" (2016 edition) the writers Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy emphasize that Putin has cultivated an image as a wild man who is capable of anything. He wants to be seen as taking wild risks. This reputation allows him to play a game of chicken with the whole world. And yet, he is the primary source for the stories that underlie this rumor, and history shows how hollow this reputation actually is. In reality, he is a frightened man, forever trying to bluff as if he is brave.
I here post a long excerpt from the book:
Page 12-13
One idea that gained currency during the crisis in Ukraine is that Putin is a reckless gambler who takes dangerous risks. This argument is based on the alleged fact that Putin’s KGB trainers deemed that he suffered from a “diminished sense of danger” (ponizhennoye chuvstvo opasnosti). Although presented in a couple of recent books about Putin as if it were a new revelation, this is a story familiar to anyone who has read Putin’s 2000 book, Ot pervogo litsa. There, Putin describes how, when he was studying at the KGB academy, one characteristic ascribed to him as a “negative trait” was a “diminished” or “lowered sense of danger” - a deficiency that was considered very serious, he noted.
In fact, the Putin book turns out to be the only source for this story, something that ought to have set off alarm bells. Ot pervogo litsa was intended to be a campaign biography, or “semi-autobiography.” The publication of the book was orchestrated by Putin’s staff in the spring of 2000 based on a series of one-on-one interviews with a carefully selected troika of Russian journalists. Putin’s team’s task was to stage-manage the initial presentation, to all of Russia, of this relatively unknown person who was now standing for election as president of the country. It was crafted as a set of conversations with Putin himself, his wife, and other people close to him in his childhood and early life.Every vignette, every new fact presented in the book was chosen for a specific political purpose. The journalists who interviewed Putin also used some of the material for articles in their own newspapers and other publications.
What, then, could Putin’s purpose have been in revealing such a character flaw? The answer becomes evident when one reflects on the curious ending of the book. Ot pervogo litsa ends with the interviewers noting that Putin seems, after all the episodes in his life that they have gone through, to be a predictable and rather boring person. Had he never done anything on a whim perhaps? Putin responded by recounting an incident when he risked his own life and that of his passenger, his martial arts coach, while driving on a road outside Leningrad (in fact when he was at university). He tried to grab a piece of hay through his open car window from a passing truck and very nearly lost control of the car. At the end of the harrowing ride, his white-faced (and presumably furious) coach turned to Putin and said, “You take risks.” Why did Putin do that? “I guess I thought the hay smelled good” (Navernoye, seno vkusno pakhlo), said Putin. This is the last line in the book. The reader clearly is meant to identify with Putin’s coach and ask: “Wait! What was that all about? Just who is this guy?”
This story offers a classic case of Putin and his team imparting and spinning information in a confusing manner so that it can be interpreted in multiple ways. Putin tells contradictory versions of the story in the same passages of his book. Immediately after starting that the characteristic was ascribed to him during his KGB studies, Putin then suggests that his “lowered sense of danger” was well-known to him and all his friends already in his university days (that is, before he was ever in the KGB). Putin wants people to see him in certain ways, and yet be confused. He promotes the idea of himself both as a risk-taker and as someone who takes calculated risks and always has a fallback option. Which version is the real one? Both have a certain power and useful effect. The end result of Putin’s misinformation and contradictory information is to create the image that he is unknowable and unpredictable and therefore even dangerous. It is part of his play in the domestic and international political game - to keep everyone guessing about, and in some cases fearing, how he might react.
They emphasize how reactive Putin's foreign policy has been. We can see this even with recent events. Even his invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was simply a reaction to the USA withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 — Putin interpreted the withdrawal to mean that the Biden Administration would be isolationist, and would avoid foreign conflicts. Putin assumed this meant he would have a free hand in Ukraine. The lesson here is that any signal of weakness encourages Putin to increase his attacks. Therefore, we must never appear weak.
Putin must be destroyed, or he will eventually succeed in destroying democracy in the West.