Posted on 04/30/2022 5:17:58 AM PDT by Cronos
Putin’s machismo leads him to underestimate his adversaries and show off for domestic and international consumption. Unsurprisingly, his favorite tactic is unprovoked aggression—in other words, the bluff. He got away with it in Georgia in 2008, Syria from 2012 onward, in annexing Crimea in 2014
...Yet last month, he was caught completely off guard when the West finally called his biggest raise ever. As boxer Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
The West’s reactive jab of sanctions and aggressive arming of the Ukrainians appear to have completely stalled—and now reversed—Russia’s advance on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Bruised and bloodied, his forces in retreat, Putin is cobbling together an ad hoc response. By publicly claiming to refocus his campaign on the Donbass, and implicitly the land corridor connecting it to Crimea and Moldova, he may be further bluffing when it comes to his real objectives and future tactics.
The weaker his underlying hand, the more that Putin must continue to rely on bluffs and misdirection. Hence, even though Russia is losing, it is unlikely that Putin will ever voluntarily de-escalate.
...Russian National Guard members are refusing to fight in Ukraine. Every day, new evidence appears of Russian soldiers sabotaging their own vehicles. A miscalculation or sign of weakness from Putin could engender a palace coup or mass desertion among the armed forces
During the height of the pandemic, Putin had people wear hazmat suits in order to meet him. Nowadays, he sits 20 feet away at meetings even with his own inner circle. He wants to live. He is only playing the role of being macho. He respects force and aggression
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
Is there anything professional affirmative-action college perfessers who have never earned an honest dollar in their lives don’t know?
The West needs to let Putin punch himself out in Ukraine and then roll back Russian occupations in Georgia, and Transnistria while Russia is weak. Moldova should cede the East bank of the Nister to Ukraine, and it then might rejoin Romania, and thus gain entry into NATO and the EU. Ukraine would also be free to attack the Russian troops in Transnistria. The longer Putin fights a losing war, the more likely he is to be toppled, and Russia itself could fracture politically.
I doubt his subordinates and military generals would allow that to happen.
They don't want to get wiped off the face of the earth, they want to live just as much as anyone else....
Wonder no more:
Build a border wall - in Israel
USA - lie back and enjoy it
Beat Putin in poker without Trump?
I don’t think so.
No one wants war, although the western war cheerleaders are pushing it. How about what Trump recently stated , something like this “ war, war, where are the calls for peace and negotiations?”
There are no “ good” sides, Zelensky, the western powers, and Vlad are all evil, corrupted.
Put your emotions aside, stop supporting war and let the powers in office change their evil ways and broker negotiations and peace, just as Trump has stated.
With each passing day, The Ukies are losing: more men, equipment, their cities turning into rubble….I guess the west is hell bent on fighting Vlad down to the last Ukrainian….and Zelensky will keep begging for more and more money, US taxpayers money, minus 10 percent to Joe….when the war does end ( they all do), wait for the hundreds of $ billions he wants to rebuild his broken country.
Author probably never attended an inner city school or visited a third world country (similar experiences) or he would know that messing around with violent sociopathic persons is not the same as making a strong declarative statement in Debate Club at an Ivy League school.
If you can drop them in the dirt without warning you have a good chance of success. Otherwise, forget it.
Putin was not bluffing. He was delusional. He actually thought the Russian army was still the juggernaut that it was from 1943-1945.
Old, stale politicians often become delusional regardless of their ideology or nationality.
“I doubt his subordinates and military generals would allow that to happen.”
Someone gets it that there is not a hard wired red button on a Putin’s desk directly to the firing mechanism on each nuke. I bet one of them would just put a bullet into Putin’s head and end the mad dog’s life and also the incredible damage he’s doing to Russia.
You people have lost all touch with reality. Nobody wants a nuclear war over Ukraine except you nut cases.
The article says that Biden is “centrist.” Huh?
Professor John Mearsheimer takes a contrarian position to this article, citing NATO’s continued expansion towards Russia as the reason for the war in Ukraine. Also, European Russia is geographically difficult to defend, because it is very flat, being a part of the Great European Plain. There are no natural barriers to an enemy, although the frigid winter weather can do the job.
In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO, moving NATO 400 miles towards Russia. In 2004, Bulgaia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia became members. In 2008, the Bucharest Summit invited Albania and Croatia to join NATO. Decisions on Georgia and Ukraine were deferred until December. Both countries border on Russia. Russia finds it intolerable to have NATO members right on its border.
Dr. Measheimer thinks that this war will drag on.
Nobody is forcing the Ukrainians to fight like maddened hornets, but they are. They have taken “assymetric warfare” to new heights, with a bunch of innovative tactics that the Russians have not been able to adapt to.
I don’t think this bright boy knows what a bluff really is. Or what he is asking for.
No help now but if we had Trump in the WH Putin wouldn’t dare pull this crap. Biden is a gift to Putin.
Don’t kid yourself. Reports on the ground in Eastern Ukraine show Uks giving up by hundreds....daily.
dr mearsheimer may well have considered it and deferred from saying so publicly, but none of his otherwise excellent work explored the possibility that we would try to provoke russia into an attack in ukraine by making the alternative intolerable. US response suggests that the US has intended to escalate this into a war against russia from the moment it started.
His great powers model for how nations interact seems like such common sense. It much more accurately reflects how the real world seems to work when compared to the ‘all nations are equal and have equal rights’ notions one sees, including here.
According to the Soros, Zelensky propaganda machine these Ukrainians are making a lot of progress. But, what is actually happening is the Russia is bleeding the US and the EU while the unfriendlies run out of Ukraine and become the responsibility of others. And, of course, he is losing some connon fodder in the form of his soldiers. Sort of like what the US did in Vietnam when tens of thousands of US soldiers were sacrificed so the US did not have to own the country.
Yes, and they are ready to enact the great reset. Putin is a threat because he would want to be part of the new order and his apparatus would infiltrate it and take it over from within. Remember, he is KGB.
So if the globalists want to ensure they retain control without resistance, Putin and his cronies must be removed from the playing board. Russian oligarchs will enjoy being part of the Gates-Soros-Bezos global ruling cabal rather than just being part of the Russian ruling cabal.
Ahh...the Bobby Knight defense.
Ukraine?
Not Russia?
What kool-aid have you been drinking?
Don’t like the UK as a source? Egypt was watching too. Here’s a Russian political party leader, widely thought of as part of the Kremlin’s spin machine, issuing a Putin-approved rant on why Paris, Berlin and the whole of the UK now need to be completely wiped out with a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
He doesn’t even seem to care that NATO might retaliate - which is so insane even the presenter (not known for being a massive moderate) seems perturbed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv0FJiBxzzY
So much for “nobody wants a nuclear war” - some Russian politicans are jonesing for one.
Besides... UKRAINE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE NUKES! How can they want a war with a weapon they don’t even have any control over?!
They gave all the nukes in their territory back to Russia in the 1990s in return for cast iron assurances that Russia would never attack Ukraine.
Google the Budapest Memorandum - it is literally the most idiot-proof, loophole-free, plain English treaty ever signed by Russia and the USA. The treaty specifically requires Russia and other signatories (a) not to interfere in Ukraine’s internal politics, effect regime change, or invade it; and (b) to respond to Ukraine’s defense if someone else DOES those things.
Budapest was so encompassing that Putin’s funding of Viktor Yanukovych’s election followed by his bribing of Viktor Yanukovych to bin the EU Free Trade Agreement (after 8 months of effort on it) in favor of a pro-Russia debt management plan ITSELF violated the Accord so America and the UK actually should’ve got off their arses in December 2013.
We failed to do that, so Putin now thinks we really don’t have the bottle to ever challenge him directly on any front.
So he is toying with the idea of using Nukes. The reason USA isn’t on his target map is because he’s counting on the USA doing the “not our problem” thing if Europe does get wiped out.
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