Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty bemoans the world spanning power of Vladimir Putin:
No Matter Who’s President, Putin Always Seems to Get Away With It
This stuff just makes me shake my head. I mean, what Putin wants is to put the USSR back together again. So far he's managed to reacquire Crimea—which was probably inevitable given its immense strategic value to Russia—and . . .
That's about it. Oh, Putin also has effective control over South Ossetia these days, which has gotten him nothing much except increased fear from all his neighbors, who are even more dedicated to European integration than before.
What else has this mastermind accomplished? There's Syria, but what has that done for him? Nothing. It was just a stupid attempt to poke America in the eye, and it didn't even work at doing that.
And of course, there's Ukraine. But we all remember more about Ukraine than just the past few months, don't we? Putin has been meddling in Ukraine for the past two decades, and he keeps botching it. He put his guy in power and poisoned the opposition leader, which led to the Orange Revolution and closer ties to the West. He did it again and got the Maidan protests—which led to closer ties to the West. Since then, the government of Ukraine has been steadfastly dedicated to pushing away Russia and joining trade agreements with Europe. So now, having failed at literally every attempt to bring Ukraine into his orbit, Putin is left with no options except a military attack.
So what will Putin do? Media reports say he has about 100,000 troops massed on the border of Ukraine, and it's likely that this is about as many as he can put there. About half of them are raw conscripts and the other half are contractors. This might well be enough to occupy Eastern Ukraine, which is generally sympathetic to Russia, but that's about it.
And then what? Keep 100,000 troops there forever? Spend decades fighting a low-intensity conflict with Ukraine? And for what? It's a military rat hole, like Afghanistan or Vietnam.
In a nutshell, over the past couple of decades this supposed geopolitical mastermind has managed to provoke virtually all his neighbors while his ham-handed meddling in elections has annoyed everyone else. Even Sweden and Finland (!) are rethinking their neutrality. What's more, all this has come at the cost of flatlining his economy:
Add to this inflation that's bounced all over the place over the past decade, averaging about 10% per year, and you have an economy that's not likely to make your citizens very happy.
And did I mention Russia's shrinking population? Consider it mentioned.
Look: Putin has had some successes to go along with his failures. He's certainly something of a PR genius. And the truth is that he's working from a weak hand, running a ramshackle country that's way too dependent on resource extraction. You could make an argument that given the degree of difficulty involved, Putin hasn't done badly.
But the geopolitical genius stuff needs to die a well-deserved death. Putin just ain't it.
I agree with Kevin's analysis here. One would think there are elements of Russia's power structure who are likewise aware of Putin's myriad mistakes. Hopefully one of these days they'll force him out.
PS—I should add: a lot of the same observations could be made about Xi Jinping, too. They're just not quite so obvious (yet).
You must be back in the US.
I think the jury is still out on Xi's competence. The parallels with Putin are striking, starting with the use of an anti-corruption campaign to eliminate competitors and install himself durably in the presidency.
But I don't think Xi has made a Putinesque error so far. Though he probably will--he most likely suffers from a massive overconfidence in his own abilities--and only in his own abilities. This problem has brought down many leaders over the centuries and quite a few CEOs more recently. In the mean time Xi is positioned do more damage than Putin can, proportional to the bigger might of China compared to Russia.
Unlikely. Putin's performance has been mediocre to bad on many metrics, but there's only one metric that an authoritarian leader really cares about: Holding onto power. And on that one, Putin is doing a bang-up job.
Which window in the Kremlin will he fall out of?
XP.
The only thing I disagree with some is his statement about them being too dependent on energy extraction. While there is truth in that I think the bigger problem by far is the way Putin and his oligarch pals have extracted the extraction money for themselves. That money could have done much to enrich the country if it had been used for sound investments.
Any such analysis of Putin must include some mention of his cheap, prevalent, and successful cyberattacks on American democracy. Would we have had Trump without him?
Or Brexit.
I think Rachel Maddow got it right in her book on the oil industry "Blowout." Putin realizes that he can never bring Russia up to Western standards of economic prosperity and good governance, so his only alternative is to bring everyone else down to his level. His enabling of Trump's rise was a big step toward executing that strategy vis-a-vis the U.S.
Yes we would have. The mainstream “liberal” media that obsessed over the right wing’s ginned up email scandal did more damage to Hillary than did Russian interference. The NY FBI’s intimidation of Comey also hurt her a lot.
+1
If Putin indeed put Trump over the top and made him the President I’d say you are underestimating his success.
And it ain’t over yet by a long shot.
I get that everyone feels helpless about not being able to stop what appears to be inevitable, but you gain nothing from triggering the Russian troll army. Just saying, even if Putin's actions are counterproductive to his goals, you (a) don't really know the outcome and (b) calling him an idiot is not very impressive but it will get some Russians angry.
Russians, or Russian trolls, care about Kevin Drum and his readership of a tiny fraction of one percent of Americans?
Too funny.
I feel like Orange County Rockefeller Republican Kevin Drum is trying to quell the unease of his MotherJones-era fans by picking a fight with Glemm Greenwald. "See", he can say, "I'm not just an Anticancellation Bitchboi like Conor Friedersdork. I still oppose the GQP/Russia axis".
They did at mojo sometimes
Why else that surge in sign ups in December?-)
Hey, Russians love their cats, too.
Given the number of Russian-sympathetic people asserted to be in Eastern Ukraine, I rather doubt Kevin's assessment of it becoming a rathole. Particularly if "the West" does not provide significant (military) material support to that part of Ukraine which remains.
And Kevin, you left out one very important economy in your GDP slide - that of Ukraine. Seems important given they would be the folks bearing the brunt of Russian aggression...
The Russian aggression has spiked anti Russian opinions in Ukraine . Before the invasion of Crimea was just 28% of Ukrainians positive to join NATO today is that number 58%.
In those days was the Ukrainian armed forces practically nonexistent, they aren’t today and Ukraine is today spending 4% of the GDP to finance its army
Compare economy in Russia and EU… do you believe Ukrainians want to turn east or west?
Good points. I have slightly different numbers but the trend is as you state.
He may be an idiot, but he's a royal pain in the ass.
A pithy, and IMO accurate, short summary.
Like Yeltsin, if Boris has joined the 12 Step Club.
I think that's right--Russia is sorta like a big North Korea, or a demonstration of the adage that even the weakest man can still break things.
I'm routinely shocked by how poor Russians are. Credit Suisse puts per capita median wealth at only $5,431. This is just below Ecuador. China is at over $24,000 now.
Military adventurism is all he has. It's not like people can look at their pocketbooks and be happy with Putin.
Exactly. He’s ex-KGB, he knows shit about growing an economy; all he knows is control through fear. I don’t think it’s his foreign adventurism that has stagnated the Russian economy, it’s his incompetence, and that of the bureaucracy, with all too few exceptions.
That's rings true. Also highlights the parallels and affinities between Putin and Republicans.
Russia at this point is basically a mob network with nukes. Ukraine didn't pay it's protection money, and accidents do happen...
A President, even in Russia, does not control the economy (although everyone thinks he does). Since Russia's economy is still shaky, Putin needs to do other things to stay in power. Stirring up trouble and invading other (small) countries is a time-tested way to do this. See Bush, Sr. and Jr. Putin can claim to be protecting the Russian populations in what are now other countries, which is also a time-tested way for leaders to retain popularity in their own country - he doesn't care about his popularity in other countries.
Putin is hardly a "president." He's an autocrat, or a gangster-king, and so it's definitely fair to attribute Russia's economic woes to him more than one would to some elected leader in a different country whose power is more limited and whose time in office is measured in years rather than decades.
+1
Whatever powers Putin has, he can't create prosperity at will, especially under current conditions. He apparently got a lot of credit for rescuing Russia from the post-breakup economic chaos, but the memory of that is fading.
"Whatever powers Putin has, he can't create prosperity at will . . ."
There's a fair argument that the ability to export massive amounts of oil and gas does amount to creating prosperity at will, but setting that aside, the issue isn't that Putin has failed to make Russia rich, but that his mafia-style looting of what little economic output Russia has on behalf of oligarchs, robber barons, and other assorted plutarchs has kept Russia poor.
Russia's woes are absolutely not because of ineffable whims of the tides of history--it's catastrophically mismanaged by an elderly paranoiac who dreams of emulating _Stalin_ of all people.
+1
When Deng Xiaopeng became the leader of China, its economy was even more backward than Russia’s, thanks to Mao Zedong stupidly imposing ideologically-based, and wildly mistaken, constraints on it. China has since far surpassed Russia. An economy that has long stagnated is actually easy to turn around; proven, advanced production technology is readily available in the world market, and the prior history of low productivity will have held wages low. Picture giving chainsaws to lumberjacks who have been using axes, to say nothing of tree harvesters - productivity goes up dramatically. And government can play a key role in enabling and managing foreign investment, negotiating trade relations, adopting industrial-policy initiatives, decentralizing decision-making, and measuring and rewarding improvement.
By contrast, in advanced economies, in which the most successful companies are already employing world-class methods (and those that lag badly are mostly allowed to fail), government has less opportunity in the short term to spur growth.
Putin certainly had the opportunity to create conditions for rapid economic growth in Russia; he could have learned from the examples of China and the ‘Asian tigers’.
I should have said, China’s economy has grown far faster than Russia’s. Obviously it is larger in absolute terms, but China’s huge population leaves it still behind Russia in GDP per capita.
Putin got a lot of respect for picking and choosing the winners from the 93-99 economic collapse, it created a 10+ year recovery, but all parties end. The Oligarchs and their Putin are feeling pressure. The coming Trump 2022-23 money trafficking, financial crimes and money laundering trial should be interesting as well. The Organization may be dissolved soon without any Russian support(and if Trump Organization tries to turn state evidence on Russia........would anybody care???? Not exactly new information). Makes "January 6th" look stupider in retrospect.
Social conservatives universally swoon at the thought of him, --because he's massively abusive, and he gets away with being massively abusive, his cachet among them is priceless, and they think anyone opposing him is on the wrong side of history.
If he moved to the US they would try to change the Constitution so he could be president.
Weren’t there polls a while back indicating Republicans prefer Putin to Biden? I wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted to change the Constitution to allow Putin to be President while living in Russia.
It's often hard to tease out when someone is a halfwit carrying on with an extremist statement because he thinks it makes him sound tough and when he's actually a loon who believes it, but with social conservatives and public issues --they'll take whatever they can get away with, whatever it might be.
See also Orban, Viktor.
Added to this mess is the shifting boarders when under Soviet rule, the famine that hit Ukraine particularly hard, the movement of peoples around the old Soviet Union to make places more "Russian", WWII, etc.
Crimea was ceded to Russia by the Ottoman's and it was it's own SSR until 1954 when it became part of the Ukrainian SSR. When the USSR collapsed, it was more or less autonomous within Ukraine. That doesn't justify the Russian takeover--but may account for the muted response.
I understand that the USSR spent quite a bit on Crimea from a military perspective. The "break-up" put quite a few people on the street, people anxious to return to the "good ole days".
Kevin's mention of the basket case status of the Russian economy is a good reminder that Russia can't afford to cut off natural gas to the west in response to sanctions that could be imposed in response to an invasion.
Wouldn't Putin have been smarter to do this when Trump was still president? It sure seems like he missed his chance and he's playing catch up.
I think there’s truth in that. It may be his position is shakier than we know.
That, or we're overestimating Putin's ability to read situations correctly/strategically. In the abstract, I'm not sure why one would ever think that somebody isolated and surrounded by supplicants and sycophants (yet likely always aware that they are one cup of polonium tea away from being deposed) like Putin is would even have the architecture in place to deliver him good information.
He thought he had Trump's reelection in the bag.
Can a country easily be controlled by another that's 3.5 times its population? (Same ratio as Afghanistan)
Russia
Area 6.6 m sq-mi
Population 146 m
GDP (nom) 1.7 t, per capita $12 k
GDP (PPP) 4.3 t, per capita $30 k
Ukraine
Area 0.2 m sq-mi
Population 41 m (ex Crimea & Sevastopol)
GDP (nom) 0.2 t, per capita $5 k
GDP (PPP) 0.6 t, per capita $15 k
Putin&Co isn’t afraid of NATO tanks crossing the borders of Russia he knows that won’t happen but they are afraid of being encircled by democracies .. it might spill over
No country is having any interest whatsoever to engage in a catastrophic war on Russian territory !
Soviet imploded due to widespread corruption and mismanagement and the same thing is repeating itself presently.
After years of rapid expansion during President Vladimir Putin’s first stint as president, Russia's middle class has dwindled in the years since his return to office in 2012. Confrontation with the west after the annexation of Crimea, the resulting sanctions and the Kremlin’s focus on macroeconomic stability at the expense of prosperity have entrenched a stagnation which has hit middle-earners hard.
By one count Russian middle class shrunk 20 percent during the economic crisis that followed.
Putin isn’t worried as long as only political activists are out on the streets protesting . He just needs to send out his thugs and he can trust his serfs manning the courts but all despots are in trouble if the middle class starts to join in … as they have done, occasionally , lately in Russia
Oleg and Olga are basically being robbed blind by the oligarchs.
Putin is trying to arm Russia as if still being a superpower without having the resources to pay for it . Economy is totally dependent on fossil fuels and demand of it will go down.
Setting of a crisis is the common way for dictators in trouble to unite the population and that’s what Putin is trying to do
He is inventing enemies all over , foreign agents trying to infiltrate Russia and he is trying to invoke nationalistic ideas , Russia being an exceptional nation with a mission to dominate Europe
Most Russians , even the ones who don’t support Putin, are still convinced that Russia is a superpower with the right to bully its neighbors
Pretty much. American politicians have historically deflected attention from their own failures by blaming immigrants or minorities (see Lyndon Johnson's famous "give a [white] man someone to look down on" remark); Putin uses Europe and the West in a similar way. Of course it's not that Russians aren't aware he's a completely corrupt autocrat with dreams of becoming another Stalin -- it's that they feel he's the only one who will "stand up" for them. Exactly what a lot of Republican voters saw in Trump. No wonder they were two peas in a pod.
Your first sentence is exactly the whole point.
On February 10, new war games begin in Belarus. I doubt he will move into Ukraine before that.
All Putin needs to do is destabilize Ukraine to the point where some pro-Russian autocrat can seize power under the pretext of "restoring order" and reestablish the kind of pro-Moscow regime they had under Yuvachenko. The Ukrainian majority of course won't stand for it and the US and NATO will have to decide whether or not to support the Ukrainian nationalist resistance that is bound to rise up against it. In the meantime, Putin has his hand on the spigot of Europe's energy supply.
It will be interesting to see how Trump, or some equally craven Putinist cock holster running in his stead, proposes to deal with this as the 24 election cycle gets underway.
Considering Germany just vetoed estonia sending Ukraine weapons my guess is Europe will decide "no."
Joe Comes Through....Gaffs be Damned, Stinger Missiles to Ukraine:
"WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has cleared Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to send U.S.-made missiles and other weapons to Ukraine, three sources familiar with the decision said, as President Joe Biden predicted Russia would move on Ukraine.
Under export control regulations, countries must obtain approval from the State Department before transferring any weapons they received from the United States to third parties.
The third-party transfer agreements will allow Estonia to transfer Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, while Lithuania will be permitted to send Stinger missiles, said one of the sources.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed that the U.S. government had approved third-party transfers allowing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Britain to provide U.S.-made equipment from their inventories to Ukraine, but gave no details on which weapons would be sent."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
People can bitch about Mr. Biden....but unlike Republicans....he is trying to do things, to fix bridges, to be an honest friend over seas...to my dismay, he is not a good speaker or very inspiring....but he actually does things.
Re Stingers:
The reason we hear so much about the Stinger in these contexts is because the Stinger missile is an extremely effective weapon for shooting down aircraft. The missile uses an infrared seeker to lock on to the heat in the engine's exhaust, and will hit nearly anything flying below 11,000 feet.
Traveller (Oh well, now posted to the correct thread)
Yes - but I wouldn't characterize Biden as not being a good speaker or very inspiring - it gives credence to all of the people who claim that he's suffering from dementia, supposedly unlike trump, who can hardly speak two sentences in coherent English - & doesn't even try to be honest.
And there are enough of those impatient people whining about his supposed underperformance in fighting COVID-19, when he has tried harder & done more than trump, & the continuing surges aren't stoppable without the cooperation of the trump supporters who enable variants by not getting vaccinated or using masks.
I won't be dishonest about Biden, but am not about to slam his performance when his efforts are unndemined by those who are fully aware of how the red-state governors & SCOTUS block every right move he makes.
And I'm glad to hear about his reaching out to allies in this way. Hadn't been following the details, so appreciate your posting them.
+1
And if I recall correctly, the transferring country has a total of eight launchers and fifty-six missiles. Better than bupkis but still tiny.
Now, if a C-17 fill of them were to fly in to Kiev from Dover, that would be something.
Thanks for the Stinger news!
Unlike apparently everybody in the US, I like Joe Biden's manner of speaking. His voice is calm, gentle, a little husky. He uses "normal people" words. He can do compllete sentences and paragraphs.It's a really nice change from that former guy who spoke like the drunk at the end of the bar just before closing time, in the dulcet tones of a professional wrestling announcer, with the vocabulary of a second grader. A voice that went through my head like a nail.
It's dispiriting how many Americans want exactly that.
It's got the old folks quaver.
Putin is soon to be 70. He is not going to live forever. With no successor in line. When he dies, Russia will be even more of a economic basket case as various factions fight for control with zero support from the population.
Soon to be 70 is relevant only if the individual is on the wrong side of the aging curve. I am soon to be 80, and I feel no noticeable reduction in my stamina or my general capabilities (not counting running fast or lifting heavy weights).
Putin is six years younger than Donald Trump. And Putin doesn't have to go galivanting around his country holding rallies to hold together his coalition of oligarchs and true believers. He could be around for quite a while.
The Russian military also effectively controls Transnistria (which puts it on more than half of the Moldova-Ukraine border) and Abkhazia - South Ossetia wasn't the first chunk of Georgia it gobbled up. Putin has been turning up the volume lately on reuniting Russia and Belarus. Russia also has military bases in 3 of the 5 Central Asian republics and most of them are real friendly with Russia, as evidenced by this month's little adventure in Kazakhstan.
Putin isn't a geopolitical wizard and he's not going to reassemble all the SSRs again, but Russia is a big enough country that it can at least credibly intimidate the smaller ones into doing its bidding on stuff it considers important.
That's an interesting point about Transnistria. Russia also included Moldova as a no-expansion country. Not that it would happen, but Moldova should approach Romania about becoming a part of Romania again. That would automatically bring Moldova into NATO and put NATO on the border of a Russian supported criminal state..
This was said before but all of his moves are about maintaining his power. External conflict and being a player (albeit a bad one) justifies his regime's excesses in the eyes of many Russians. As long as he is in power and without significant adversaries, then he is winning. See Chavez-Maduro for close to home example.
I don’t know if Putin is brilliant or an idiot, but he is super rich and so are lots of his buddies. By that measure he is quite successful. I’m not sure anything else matters to him except wealth and survival.
Sure, his own country is going to hell, but Putin has been very successful at getting nearly the entire GOP under his influence. Certainly Fox News is hardly distinguishable from Russia Today. He also played a non-minor role in Brexit. I call that significantly punching above his weight, and it would be a mistake to underestimate his willingness and ability for shenanigans.
Putin probably thought Biden would cave after misreading the Afghan pullout and thought he had Europe over a barrel (or pipeline in this case). Could be a major miscalculation on his part.
US and Europe almost certainly won't send in troops to keep Ukraine but they're already making sure that the Ukrainians IF THEY WANT TO can bloody the Russians up pretty badly.
Russia made Ukraine one of the worst horror stories of the 20th Century. I'd love to see them remain free.
Russia has the second largest army on the planet. It also supplies a significant amount of energy to Europe …100,000 troops amassed on the border with Oekraine is not a comforting thought. Americans need to remember how close European countries are to one another. ( think 100,000 troops amassed on the border between New Hampshire and Massachusetts for example. It’s true that that section of the country hates the EU and loves Russia…so it might be fine to just let Putin have it…Finland needs to join NATO…I don’t think Putin would try and reconstitute the USSR by invading other countries…but it is nerve wracking
I guess you are just another American who are happily acting as Putin’s useful idiot.
Putin has already occupied parts of Ukraine and is already killing Ukrainians in a proxy war claiming he is protecting “ethnic Russians” who was terrorized by Ukrainians. He is now claiming he has a right to continue to grab more parts of Ukraine in protection of more “ethnic Russians” who is terrorized and needs to be liberated by one of the worst regimes on this planet… and you are saying:
“Putin says he has a legal right to gobble up parts of Ukraine , Putin says they want us to liberate them and Putin is never wrong “
… that’s exactly what he wants citizens in western countries to agree on and you are happily doing as he wants.
The principle of self-determination is prominently embodied in Article I of the Charter of the United Nations.
“... All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”
Not even an tin pot dictator like Vladimir Putin can change that article no matter how sexy he looks without his shirt
Follow the same logic has Finland a right to let it tanks cross the border to Karelia that has been occupied by Russia since 1940 and my Sweden has the right to liberate the Finnish provinces of Åland and Österbotten that is having “ethnic Swedes” as citizens
A small reminder from a Swede
Actually I’m a European that understands the anxiety of living in close proximity to Putin….and how nerve wracking the situation is….
In my opinion is it easier to state nationality when posting in US media, especially if it’s one that is as “local” as this one… but that’s my opinion
It’s not okay to start handing out the territory of another sovereign nation .. and that’s an important principle in international relations
I think your just a little miffed that you mislabeled me…
No my friend, the “it’s ethnic Russians and we must protect them against vile Ukrainians” “ Ethnic Russians wants to be liberated by us “ is the two most common arguments used by Russian trolls . One can find them using all kind of fake names all over the Internet and the purpose is of course to make it into a truth and thus make an invasion acceptable to us over here.
Parroting it is de facto turning into a useful idiot
… your nationality is of no interest whatsoever
Russia does not have the same resources to defend itself from the global warfare being waged by the US. Russia could not threaten the US with the same retaliatory tactics now being discussed by the president when the US invaded Iraq but still has to respond to the encirclement of Nato forces on all its Western borders after the promises of the HW Bush administration were broken. Through the efforts of American propaganda, coordinated between the security orgs and corporate mass media, subjects of America have been led to believe Russia wants to restore the Union of Soviets, when Russia had past invasions from the West to inform its defenses. For Russians, allowing the Warsaw Pact to dissolve through a remarkable acknowledgement of nationalist desire of defensive colonized territories to be free from from military domination, something the US would never do, must appear misguided now. That exhibition of goodwill has become a knife in the back. Russia had to defend itself from Nazi invasion. A geopolitical analysis would conclude Russia has to prepare for defense from Nato invasion.
Back in the bad old days did everyone stage war on everyone else in Europe
If one should make a list of all aggressive wars European nations has fought against each other would it probably encircle the planet and no country is innocent. All countries are having a list of massacres and abominations dating from the bad old days
…. but something happened after the last devastating all out European war some 80 years ago .
We realized we wouldn’t survive another one and we started to cooperate instead, one nation after the other. Countries that had been mortal enemies since the beginning of time joined in an organization promoting trade and friendship.
Balkan didn’t catch the idea at once and they had a final outburst of senseless killing but even they seems to have gotten it at last .
…. but there is one exception
Russia!
Still regarding everyone as a potential enemy, still expecting all neighbors to bow to their demands, still planning to overrun any neighboring nation that is to weak to defend itself, still claiming borders from ancient times is valid if those borders are to Russias advantage
What Putin is demanding is to once again gain total control of all countries that used to be in the “Warsaw Pact” and he also demands to be in control of foreign and security politics in my Sweden and Finland since we also apparently are in the Russian “Sphere of interest”.
… by the way, roughly 70,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Europe,
6,000 U.S. forces are deployed in Eastern Europe on a mostly rotating basis, including about 4,000 in Poland.
Other NATO countries also have a couple of thousands of troops on rotating deployments in the region to bolster the alliance's eastern flank.
…. to me it doesn’t seem as if NATO is preparing for an invasion of Russia
After WW2 the allies engaged in massive ethnic cleansing in central Europe so "protecting X speakers" couldn't be used again.
But anyhow I agree. The idea that the western European members of NATO want to pick a fight with Russia is ludicrous and there is no chance at all America is going to do that alone.
True, the military preparations of NATO have always been defensive, and was just adequate to make a Warsaw-Pact attack costly, not even sufficient to entirely repel an invasion into the then-Bundesrepublik. This has not changed since the dissolution of the USSR and the reunification of Germany. As part of the reunification, Germany peacefully gave up all claims to lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, including Pomerania, the homeland of my German forebears, once occupied by - yes, Sweden! - following the Thirty Years’ War. Peaceful, negotiated settlements of territorial claims and minority rights, with the concurrence of greater Europe, must be the pattern to which all agree - it is the only way to security and prosperity for all Europeans.
Thank you for your comment.
And one more important fact !
No one promised not to expand NATO , that’s just another lie Putin has turned into a truth
Like the original Dolchstoßlegende, a rewriting of history, and equally false.
Democratic liberals are the backstabbers of Ukrainian dreams of freedom.
I’m in full agreement with Kevin here. I would add that Putin has almost no ability to affect America without the support of so many Americans. If the GOP hadn’t been so gung-ho to sell out the country, Putin would just be a typical third world dictator who causes trouble here and there, especially in neighboring countries, but can be countered.
A long time ago, I thought to myself in my naive way, "why don't they demilitarize the whole of eastern Europe?" The HW Bush administration was apparently thinking somewhat in that direction. I mean, if Russia's interests are primarily defensive vis Europe -- and I think the history would at least suggest this -- then why not accommodate the recently demoted former empire by taking its legitimate interests seriously? Placate its wounded pride, and create an entirely new geostrategic reality at the same time: Russia and NATO watching each other warily across a considerable expanse of neutral territory. Would serve everyone's interests, no? Russia might leave the newly independent counties alone as long as the West left Russia alone.
But I guess Clinton and others thought differently and pushed NATO right eastward as if to deliberately enflame Russian paranoia. As much as I despise Putin, I just can't make myself ignore the legitimate anxieties of a once-powerful, now struggling, nation. Rarely does the world get the kind of reset opportunity that Soviet dissolution proffered. Seems like inertia and lack of imagination kept us on the conflict highway. We missed the de-escalation offramp.
Or is this what they call wishful thinking?
Blame it on Peter the Great. Russia has always aimed to dominate the coasts of the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. The Tsars achieved it, and the Soviets achieved it. Putin, born in the Soviet era, and a student of history, would regard it as a right and a national geopolitical imperative. Greater Russia.
Eastern European countries recognise this as well, hence the rush to get undet the NATO umbrella.
Even in 1992, the general prediction among observers was the "the Ukraine-Russian border is the major new international faultline".. That was before the expansion of NATO and it has been proven right.
I would question whether Crimea has the strategic importance it once did. Although Russia had a long-term lease for the naval base at Sevastopol, it also spent a decade constructing and expanding facilities at the port of Novorossiysk as a base for the Black Sea fleet. IIRC, they have not attempted to replace the hastily-constructed bridge across the Kerch Strait with something better able to withstand the storms and ice that have wrecked previous bridges. That would seem important for a strategically important asset.
You have Syria backward. That was the US poking Russia in the eye. Russia had to go in to save their own guy. The US spent relatively little to drag the whole thing along as much as possible.
"Add to this inflation that's bounced all over the place over the past decade, averaging about 10% per year, "
And there you have the real point. It has nothing at all to do with reassembling the Soviet Union, though I've no doubt he'd like to do that.
It has everything to do with appealing to Russian ethnic chauvinism so that people will ignore their blighted lives and keep him in power and money flowing to him and the oligarchs.
It's really pretty simple.