The international criminals who are Vladimir Putin and his acolytes destabilise the world as the nation with the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons threatens the destruction of the lives of 44 million people with its invasion of Ukraine, and disruption and fear globally.
BAD NOT MAD?
People wonder whether Putin is a genius, as Donald Trump would portray him, or stupid or mad, a psychopath. Is he not simply a man without any civilised values, a total egoist, the personification of evil, and the worst of humanity, like Hitler, Stalin and other murderous tyrants? Maybe too he is desperate. Consider a head of State whose ego leads him to steal from the people the country’s assets and distribute that stolen wealth not just to himself but to enrich his callow and immoral supporters; to thus condemn the masses who they subjugate to lives of relative poverty; to deny those people basic freedoms which democracies take for granted; to suppress all resistance, imprisoning, torturing, enslaving or murdering opponents or possible dissidents; to slaughter innocent people in foreign lands; to fabricate fiction and webs of lies as they decide best serves their purpose at the time to justify their crime; brainwashing the people, rewriting history; to sow misinformation and attack other nations, abusing cyberspace and inducing chaos and confusion; and this is only what is clearly known.
These behaviours of Vladimir Putin are hardly the work of a genius. They are more perhaps the work of a bully for whom the use of force and fear is a guiding principle, and for whom the normal decent values of civilised people are meaningless. To categorise such a person as mad is to let them off the hook: a moral world treats the mentally ill as just that, and rather than make them pay for their misdeeds for which they have an excuse, seeks to cure. Putin surely is calculating, cold and brutal in pursuit of his ends. Perhaps delusional and persuaded by his own propaganda, he is however responsible for his decisions and actions. As are those who facilitate his crimes.
BLINDNESS AND WEAKNESS OF DEMOCRACIES EMBOLDENS THE TYRANTS
Ours is a world where leaders, particularly democratically elected politicians, shy away often from problems where solutions carry great cost, and when opportunism and even greed cloud and obscure unpalatable possibilities, inducing unwise strategic judgement. Decisions, based in false optimism and ignoring lessons of history, whereby Western and other democracies have become unhealthily dependent for basic necessities as well as key minerals on unreliable and now threatening dictators, have come back to bite today’s leaders of the free world. Covid revealed that, and the invasion of Ukraine underscores the strategic blindness. Aside from an unthinkable war and even nuclear fallout, democracies have limited options of deterrence and punishment for the crime of invading an innocent country and depriving its people of the right to self-determination. The strongest of sanctions are proving hard to impose on a unified global basis as individual countries inevitably worry about the potential adverse effect on themselves. So, the strength in negotiation against evil persons prepared to murder thousands to pursue empire building is diminished, if not rendered toothless.
Weakness merely emboldens a tyrant who only understands the power of brute force to persuade. It is extraordinary that, in the face of a build-up of an army of 200,000 with the most lethal of devastating weaponry assembled for all to see, so many commentators and perhaps even leaders believed negotiation leading to withdrawal was possible without conceding to the outrageous demands manufactured by the gangsters. Credence was given to lies about not invading. Blackmail, not diplomacy, was and remains Putin’s game. It is to be hoped that never again will democratic leaders be sucked in by the likes of Putin who have no moral compass.
Did Western overt desperation to avoid war perhaps simply confirm to the tyrant that invasion and effective subjugation of Ukraine was doable with little pain? Did Western insistence that it would never put boots on the ground to defend Ukraine – designed of course to reassure domestic audiences and prevent the damage of worst-case speculation – condemn Ukraine to the certainty of invasion? However, it is nevertheless right that NATO is not to be used other than for its constitutional defensive purpose for the benefit of its members. That is not to say that individual members of NATO, in a separate capacity, could not have contemplated more active military support of Ukraine.
WHAT WILL BE THE RESULT?
Even as Kyiv is bombarded, some commentators wonder what the gangsters’ intentions are. Why? Putin has told the world invasion is not only justified but necessary for his enunciated but fantastical reasons: to protect Russia from NATO’s intentions to attack Russia; to defend Russia against Ukraine’s aggression; to rid Ukraine of its Nazis as he portrays its elected leaders to be; to liberate Ukraine; to bring it home to Russia, as it has no right to be independent as in Putin’s version of life it has always been part of Russia; to install a properly independent government. These fabrications are his truth, a pack of lies. It is clear that he does not want a demonstrably successful democratic country on his doorstep, giving ideas of freedom to his Russian subjects. Perhaps he wishes to restore the Russian empire and control countries previously in or run, in effect, by the old USSR. The big question is how far he dare go. It is possible, if the spoken determination of Ukrainians to remain free translates into a long-running guerrilla war of attrition, he will ultimately fail or his own people may turn against him.
Some commentators say it is impossible for him to control Ukraine as a majority of the people oppose that and want democracy. Is this more heads in sand? Perhaps he will settle for now for control of part of Ukraine including Kiev, avoiding the need to occupy the vastness of the whole country. But ruthlessness begets fear. It is reasonable to assume that normal evil behaviours will be adopted: all opponents and potential dissidents and influencers, free thinking journalists and academics and lawyers will be murdered, imprisoned, tortured or otherwise disappear or be somehow neutered; innocent families of those who do not bow will be threatened at least with or will suffer miserable fates to procure compliance; disinformation and propaganda will be the staple diet shoved down Ukrainians’ throats. Fear will be brutally weaponised. Look at Russia itself. Is it not likely that many ordinary Ukrainians will value life itself for them and their families and accept subjugation, albeit very reluctantly? Indeed, the Ukrainian Government is faced with a desperate choice – to fight to the end and possibly lose with vast loss of life or save life and capitulate. Their present resolve is the former course.
MUST DEMOCRACIES RESET AND FACE REALITY?
The man with his finger on the Russian nuclear button will not accept failure as that is humiliation and totally unacceptable to him. He threatens those who interfere with devastating consequences, but will his bluff be called? No doubt Western fears will be heightened by journalistic items on the possibilities of nuclear war. Could some of that even be inspired by the gangsters themselves? Major democracies, but not all, are talking a tough game, and if that translates into deeds will perhaps have to continue like that for years. Sanctions will do some damage but nothing much immediately. Is Putin really afraid of sanctions? They clearly are not a deterrent. Assuming he is not defeated in the short term, it is apparent that all previous assumptions about international security and order must be cast aside, and a new reality accepted.
Perhaps it is no longer possible to indulge the luxurious thinking which has deceived Western democracies for the last 40 years, that peaceful co-existence is so obviously a good thing that no major power will wantonly invade free nations’ spaces and subjugate people to a dictator’s will. The reality of all the rest of history is that any society, if it wants to maximise the chance of preserving its freedom, must above all else be able to fight fire with fire. That means military might, not just to punish terrorists, but to ward off imperial tendencies of rogue states, particularly those ruled by egoistic autocrats. Military might today will include massive technological weaponry such as in cyberspace. This will require considerably greater expenditure on such might particularly by European countries.
Germany seems now to smell the coffee of risk but has yet to make the big decision to arm itself properly and contribute proportionately to NATO. While the EU has an economic power many times that of Russia, it is militarily supine and that puts the whole free world at risk. It needs to change, not just to contribute more fairly to Western defence, but also to supplement materially the USA’s resources which are currently all that deter the ambitious autocrats from land grab. With numerous other priorities competing for limited financial resources, particularly with the pandemic not over, short termism and electoral considerations may hold leaders back from the bold long-term decisions. Is it not time for them to demonstrate real vision, courage and sheer bottle to overcome the evil that is threatening democratic life? Perhaps the extraordinary bravery being exhibited by the Ukrainian people will inspire both leaders and their critics.
The U.S., UK and EU, Canada, Australia and Japan and a few others are vocal in condemnation of the invasion. India, Middle Eastern countries and many others are fence sitting, and barely utter the word “invasion”. The UN struggles to find a truly appropriate statement of condemnation, Russia having a veto, many autocratic supporters, and China being ambivalent at best. Sanctions of course will be weakened if other countries sense opportunity to fill lucrative gaps created by those very sanctions. China notably is certainly not damning of Russia. If anything, it is cementing an even stronger relationship in an anti-democracy bond. Did Russia time the invasion to allow the Winter Olympics to finish? China seems to blame the U.S. and NATO for the invasion by Russia. China is possibly going to shelter Russia from some of the adverse effects of sanctions. Will China observe all weaknesses in the response of the USA and Europe to Russian imperialism and be emboldened in its venture to capture Taiwan? China is led by a president and his acolytes in the Chinese Communist Party with global ambition to weaken democratic power and dominate globally.
It may be worth reflecting on the behaviours which personify the dictator of Russia and whether other all-powerful dictators in other countries exhibit similar traits, to assess the likelihood of them seizing the chance to further destroy the world as we know it. The problem could become far bigger than merely containing a very bad man from Russia.
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