[Mr. K]

Also Carter and Iranian Hostages.

Personally planned almost every issue

Failed miserably

As a president you should make sure forces are equipped and trained. Then you just say “DO THIS” and let them figure out how to do it. That’s their job

[marcusmaximus]

Also Carter and Iranian Hostages.

Yep.

[ought-six]

“Also Carter and Iranian Hostages.”

Carter was notorious for trying to micromanage everything. And I must emphasize EVERYTHING. He insisted on approving who played on the White House tennis court and at what time!

[Zhang Fei]

Ukraine ping

Mr K: [As a president you should make sure forces are equipped and trained. Then you just say “DO THIS” and let them figure out how to do it. That’s their job]

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Putin isn’t a president - he’s a king - a Roman-style Emperor in all but name. All dictators have one overriding objective - staying in power. All dictators have internal rivals who are content to lie low until their moment arrives - a point of maximum odds of success and minimum risk of death. Leonid Kravchuk and Eduard Shevardnadze occupied the highest ranks of the nomenklatura. When their chance materialized, they opted out of the Russian empire.

That’s the kind of thing Putin is guarding against - the possibility of a coup. It’s what hobbled one kingdom after another. For instance, Valentinian III killed Aetius, the man who defeated Attila the Hun, because he feared Aetius might do as other Roman generals had - put himself (using his son as a proxy) on the throne.

Putin’s personal involvement is aimed at strangling in the cradle any intrigues against him. Unfortunately for the Russian military rank and file, this is a very inefficient way of fighting a war. This inefficiency translates into higher costs in men and equipment and fewer battlefield successes than could otherwise be achieved.

The biblical quote applies - “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” - just substitute throne for soul. The conqueror who unified Japan, Oda Nobunaga, trusted his subordinates a little too much. Akechi Mitsuhide, one of those men, killed Nobunaga and his son in an unguarded moment. Similarly, Stalin’s closest confederate, fellow Georgian Beria, had Stalin poisoned.

The war is just a sideshow. Putin wants to stay in power *and* win the war. If the war gets in the way of his continued rule, he will throttle it down and keep it low level the way he had done in the Donbass since 2014, until he erroneously got the idea that Ukraine was just an Anschluss away from reincorporation into the empire.