46 - Putin's Big Day: and the War to Come
Today is supposed to be Putin’s big day, the celebration of Russia’s victory over Hitler’s Germany in 1945. Traditionally, Moscow and other cities see huge parades, with marching soldiers, threatening tanks, various sized missiles displayed in endless arrays, and serried phalanxes of aircraft overhead. For years, Putin has given proud speeches on every May 9 for more than twenty years. He would be expected today to announce another great victory over the global antagonists of mother Russia. But how can he?
In fact, his speech was somewhat restrained except for his bizarre assertions that he had attacked Ukraine preemptively because Ukraine had been readying an assault on Russia and Russians in the Donbas.
There is little to show for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine except the pulverization of Mariupol, the destruction of some smaller Ukrainian cities, and the almost daily bombings of Kharkiv and even of distant Lviv. Putin can claim that the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase, and that he has what he asserts are Nazified Ukrainians (and their American and NATO backers on the run). But even the propaganda barrage and the control over Russian media that Putin exercises might not be able to accept lightly such egregious dis- (not mis-) information.
Putin could have smartly declared that he has achieved everything he always wanted by invading Ukraine and simply have announced a total victory. That would have been smart, and have enabled Putin to slow sanctions against Russia. He would also have regained some respect, at least in Russia. But I fear that Putin is playing a much more dangerous vanity game that cannot allow him to exit a foolish war, even by unilaterally declaring victory.
Instead, he will now redouble his only current warring tactics – bombardments, intensified missile strikes, and the creating of as much violence against Ukrainians as possible. Worse yet, he could still shift from pretending to mount only a special military operation to declaring all-out war on the U. S. and the West. That would mean escalating his attempt to end Ukraine’s sovereignty into a nuclear conflict, and open World War III. Washington had better be preparing the Pentagon and the American public for that possibility. After all, no one of Putin’s mindset and narcissistic tendencies welcomes losing and humiliation. And remember, this is Putin’s war, not Russia’s. Some of his generals may have accepted Putin’s war aims, and those associates closest to him must have as well, but this is not yet a conflict that has aroused great floods of patriotism among Russia’s thinking classes and opinion makers. (Too many have fled the country already, but they may still have a voice that can influence the home front.)
Unfortunately, Washington may have made it harder for Putin to behave with any rational sense. Foolishly, last week, Pentagon insiders or Congresspersons have been crowing about how much we have been involved in helping Ukraine to target and kill Russian generals. Some witless insiders also boasted that American intelligence assisted Ukraine in annihilating the Moskva, Russia’s prized (if aged) missile cruiser. Whether what Washington did was to “assist” its Ukrainian ally or to give meaningful hints, even instructions, to brave Ukrainians in the field, Putin (a threatened ego item, as mentioned above) must feel humiliated. He will want to respond in ways to save face and to show President Biden and the leaders of Europe who is the truly macho one. That is what small, threatened, men do. (Italy took his $700 million yacht on Saturday, too, dealing another blow to Putin’s omnipotence. The European Union also placed sanctions on his reported mistress, who lives in France.)
Putin’s pathology is truly dangerous. That is why the growing confidence, even complacency, in the West about the progress of the war in Ukraine is worrisome. Russia has chemical weapons; the U.S. has destroyed the chemical weapons that it once possessed. Russia has nerve agents, too, as prisoner Alexei Navalny and many other “enemies of Russia” know too well. The U. S. has none. Russia used biological weapons in Syria, as President Assad of Syria did as well. Russia even employed such means when it wanted to empty a theatre held by dissidents in the center of Moscow. So the West must be as careful and as scrupulous as Ukraine is brave.
Putin went to war in part, he said, to keep NATO from encroaching on mother Russia. But the fact that the invasion of Ukraine has undeniably brought NATO countries closer together and unified much of Europe (bar Hungary) cannot give him a good feeling. The likely accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO is yet another blow to his dreams of hegemony in a world where he planned to place his flag alongside the banners of Xi Jinping and President Biden. Diminishing Putin is a problematical pursuit so long as he has an itchy finger on the nuclear button.
Nevertheless, absolutely nothing in this Newsletter’s edition suggests that we
should cease devoting every bit of intelligence and surveillance that we can muster in support of Ukraine. Nor does anything in this issue of the Newsletter imply that we should slow the transfer (the “lend-lease”) of billions of dollars worth of armaments -- anti-tank missiles, antiaircraft batteries, kamikaze drones, armored transport carriers – to Ukraine. Indeed, the faster Congress appropriates the $33 billion that President Biden has requested, the better.
But let’s boast a little less, or not at all, about our capabilities.
I promised a further discussion on crime in the Caribbean; it is coming Wednesday.