As with any saturated hot topic, it is unexpected that rather central questions about events in Ukraine continue to be overlooked. Don’t be surprised, of course. The Western media went through a shocking phase of ignorance between the end of the Cold War and the years after September 11. I’m old enough not to forget that fashion writers were called in to cover the U. S. invasion of Afghanistan. , as the news industry had become intellectually impoverished in the intervening years. Gossip and entertainment dominated our attention. I don’t forget to end the late 1990s looking for publishers to take an interest in the rise of radical Islamism in the world, but to no avail. through the locals. But many foreign hounds are quite young and do not possess the popularity of Cold War models.
In any case, history and geography abroad have been the weak links in American education. And publishers tend to see themselves as channelers of popular attention span, filtering out anything that’s too unexpected. Too much complexity or awareness of old models (such as the Kremlin’s behavior for centuries or decades) that they vaguely understand as something akin to conspiratorial style thinking. Therefore, there was not much appetite to believe that the Russians were really going to invade. Therefore, it is not unexpected that vital threads of wisdom are overlooked even in a media environment like Ukraine. Here are 3 of those problems:
Alcoholism among Russian troops. I saw Russian infantrymen in various theaters of combat and they were drunk. I even interviewed (for the Wall Street Journal) a tank commander on Georgian soil during the 2008 invasion and he was red, drooling and slow to speak. I witnessed a morning call from the tank crews: the officer in charge and the rest of his men were hesitant. We can continue to detail, but it is useless. Everyone knows that this is true or very likely. But it is almost never recognized. Here is a rare mention of a case in which infantrymen looted a hospital depot and stole all the medicinal alcohol.
We all know the scourge of alcoholism in Russian life, especially in the provinces. And no doubt for poorly trained young recruits from remote and deficient regions who are suddenly faced with worry and hatred, hostile natives and sadistic superiors, who are forced to decide between committing atrocities and being shot for refusing to take orders, vodka will have to be a sine qua non condition. Given the capable amounts combined with constant daily intake, the inability to care for complex machines, and the exaggerated stupidity (as in Chernobyl complex), the implications. There is no doubt that top officials know and even inspire the phenomenon. Otherwise, how can they get men to make their reptilian offer?The resulting war crimes do not deserve to come as a surprise.
We haven’t seen such brutal military realities in the West since the 19th century, in fact since the Napoleonic Wars. It is reminiscent of British Navy press gangs and massive rum rations on board ships to prevent sailors from mutiny. And before that, the famous words of Frederick the Great to his troops: “Dogs, would you live forever? In much of the world, specifically in the Western alliance, there has been a massive advance in fear for the lives and living conditions of combat personnel, especially in the form of pay and sufficient food in war zones. Russian recruits come from places where such modernization has never taken place, not even in civilian life. Here is a glowing description of his life in the house from The Moscow Times: “Collecting scrap steel was an honorable choice for petty theft, even if the steel had to be stolen anyway. Chances are you know someone who has killed someone. You probably knew someone who was handed over to death (maybe it was your father).
Germany’s great futility continues to baffle everyone. We have all heard explanations for their reluctance to help Ukraine more: realpolitik, corruption and war guilt. Respectively, they are divided into 3 categories:
A) Dependence on Russian fossil fuels and trade.
B) The long-standing phenomenon of high-level politicians like Gerhard Schroder taking Russian money.
C) Wartime guilt for the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Certainly, all of this is true. It is possible that it simply carries a variant of the ancient “Ostpolitik”, that is, the theory that engaging with the Kremlin in the end has a tendency to civilization and its bad behavior. But for some time now, none of those reasons have been enough to justify (or explain) Germany’s refusal to equip Ukraine with heavy weapons or its continued enrichment of Moscow’s coffers with the equivalent in petrodollars. So what else are you preparing?
It is worth hunting Saudi style. For nearly a century, the West has established a modus operandi for relations with friendly petrostates. We buy their oil, they buy our goods and invest in our economies, either side gets rich. Let us not meddle too much in their internal affairs or in their regional strength. In many ways, the more unitary and authoritarian, the better, because it means that we only want to deal with a central force in each country to exploit its herbal resources effectively. This demands a strong stomach, not to say excessive hypocrisy. George W. Bush necessarily sealed the current Chavista regime by agreeing to the messes of the Iraq war: You give us an uninterrupted flow of oil, we leave you alone. Another example is nigeria, where the central government has disadvantaged local tribes for their oil, giving very little in return. Sometimes they rebel and horrors occur as in Biafra in the 1960s, but nothing changes. We allowed Russia to exploit this style to the fullest.
But there is another dimension, never mentioned. The Russian Federation, like the Soviet Union, remains a wobbly geographical construct. If I had the chance, I would also collapse. The Caucasus, Chechnya and others would secede. Just like Tatarstan and even Siberia, among others. No one in the West needs the infinite puzzle of containing the countless conflicts that would ensue, as happened when the Soviets collapsed. Civil wars, population exchanges or the nightmare of concluding new industry deals, especially in oil, with a new small and fragile state. Think about it. Build new pipelines?The nuclear tissues that would filter?Thus, since the time of Bill Clinton, the Western alliance has followed a muscocentric technique throughout the geographical space. Here is a Twitter feed by Casey Michel, a leading American expert and author, that says what I mean.
Let us remember that for centuries, especially during the years of the Great Game, this has been the operative precept of Moscow’s foreign policy: strategic depth. You create endless outer buffer zones to prevent the inner core from fragmenting. Influential, let’s say, he will take the Caucasus with him and Astrakhan will follow, then Tatarstan and Bashkortostan and so on. Poor Tbilisi, as a pro-Western democracy, thinks it would receive more help from the 2008 Russian invasion. That didn’t happen. In fact, the West had adhered to Moscow’s classical geostrategy. Inexorably, Putin’s invasion of Crimea, Donbass and all of Ukraine followed. So that’s the big secret behind Germany’s and even the West’s sleepy reaction to Putin’s serial aggression. , finally, to deal with the broader factor of letting Russia dissolve into solid herbal proportions.
Acts of sabotage proliferate daily inside Russia. No one takes responsibility, most observers credit Ukrainian guerrillas operating behind the lines. it is actually Russia that opposes NATO. But no, vanity will not examine it. As early as April 1, the Ukrainians marked targets in Belgorod allegedly from a helicopter. However, we have noticed a recent increase in the rate of mysterious fires and explosions. half here, an army academy there. There is no doubt that the SAS and others provided assistance, explosives training, stealth approach, immediate extraction, etc.
However, in a sustained campaign, the dangers temporarily outweigh the benefits if the goals do not provide primary strategic gains. The explosion of combustible materials in the nearby city of Bryansk makes tactical sense and the floor war continues to spread towards Kiev. no arbitrator to whistle and end hostilities at any time; it can last for years like in Syria. Unfortunately, the situation of long-term attrition favors Moscow, as incessant missiles move from afar, even randomly directed throughout the country in Kharkiv, Lviv, recently reconquered spaces like Kherson, are ready to wreak havoc. Putin will simply prevent Ukraine from resuming general life for the foreseeable future.
This is where the internal Russian sabotage crusade can change the balance. It may be the only thing that can. The likely scattered targeting makes sense if all the implications are taken into account. Bring the war home in a palpable way: Moscow can not be difficult to understand the incidents forever. Psychologically, other people will begin to feel the anguish of helplessness, wondering what will happen next and where. They will inexorably question the competence of their leaders and lose religion in the media propaganda. Russia is a big place, difficult to monitor across multiple time zones. Cracks will appear within the elite, as before. Defense Prime Minister Sergei Shoigu was whisked away (some reports said he was arrested) and then appeared to brief Putin as the latter gripped the table like a maniac. Several intelligence chiefs continue to receive the treatment. And now it seems that the leaders of the Russian army are furious at being pressured, because they are not allowed to mobilize the entire country for a full-scale war. They blame their rivals among the elite, namely the intelligence services, for pushing a more targeted crusade that takes advantage of the army’s weaknesses.
In short, Putin’s regime presents the whims of any despotic regime to excess: mutual distrust, paranoia, indecision of a sick boss, fierce fights. Putin himself will actually resist a technique of total war, as it would put the generals in a position of central force capable of challenging his own. You may simply be expelled. This is then the merit of a broader and deeper sabotage strategy in Russia, where force teams begin to doubt each other, where the media questions regional loyalty, and where the internal enemy becomes the center of interest. It may not be long before ethnic teams begin to restrain themselves under pressure. In the end, the monster will eat its tail, as they do.