Nukes Akimbo

Pop quiz:

The phrase,

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!

was in the news recently.

Who said it?

A: Joe Biden, about Vladimir Putin.

B: Hilary Clinton, about Bashar al Assad.

C: Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton), about Muammar Gadhafi.

D: George Bush (and Hilary Clinton) about Saddam Hussein.

Trick question - they all did.

Joe Biden’s came out like a deep tendon reflex. His wranglers called it a gaffe, but it popped out alongside escalating tensions with Russia not seen since the height of the Cold War, tensions that include overt threats of the use of nuclear weapons.

Several questions follow:

A: Would removing Putin from power be beneficial? Short answer: were any previous removals beneficial?

B: Is the leader of the free world articulating an actual policy goal, or is it merely Do-Something-Ism spitballing a notion against the geopolitical wall to see if it sticks?

C: If Putin no longer remained in power, would that be a good thing?

As to the last, likely, not.

It takes dictators years to solidify complete control. Killing the one guy holding things together rarely allows those things to re-solidify. Once men like Putin, the Kims, Saddam, Stalin, or Hitler builds their secure bases, dislodging them is rare, and catastrophically bloody. One of the few times you will hear this libertarian using the phrase “state control” as a positive is on the relationship between states and their nuclear arsenals. A post-Putin Russia could easily wind up a fractured feudal patchwork of statelets, with nuclear weapons scattered akimbo. It’s hard to imagine a situation more dangerous and volatile than Balkanized states with nukes. That would not help Ukraine in any way.

Almost all our policies in this crisis have been in the category of spitballing. Sanctions have never, ever, worked any time before (ever). Recall the economic hardships the German and Soviet people endured in WW2, with no evidence they tried to rise to tear down their leader(s).

The sanctions we innovated after Putin’s Ukraine invasion, precisely targeting his inner circle, seem designed to incentivize them to remove Putin. Which means we are pressuring other dangerous criminals to undertake an outcome we should not want. We should not want it also because that would then leave those murderous criminals in charge of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. And, since Putin is surrounded by pro war hardliners, it is not likely we would get an end to the Ukraine, either. Did any of the many wars in the Middle East bring about any heightened consciousness of compassion?

Another down side in all this throwing of stuff is that more than a few Russian military men have indicated we are headed towards nuclear escalation. And they are not alone. Americans are pretty sold on the path too, given the plurality that support a No Fly Zone, an indisputable act of war.

Follow-on pop quiz: who else called for a No Fly Zone against Russia? It was Hillary Clinton during her Presidential debates with Donald Trump! She wanted to fight Russia for the privilege of bombing ISIS (remember them?). Maybe when you get to a certain level of national security power, a string is implanted in your chest, and the phrase “regime change” comes out when pulled.

Threats like that (with our long and bloody history of actually carrying them out) likely affect Putin’s frame of mind. His murder is being speculating on by every media organization on the planet. All this cannot help the paranoia the man who sits at the end of the world’s stretchiest table.

Paranoiacs do not make good decisions in the throes of their delusions. There is no point in threatening Putin some more. He is aware he is playing a Game of Thrones, where failure means death.

The Washington press corp are not only speculating on escalation, they are [practically baying for it][6]. Ratings would rebound from the Post-Trump falloff!

The most compelling reason for not poking the bear is that Putin is losing the war. A decisive and clear solution is being applied. Putin cannot sustain these losses, and will likely declare some sort of victory and go off to lick his wounds sooner or later. This likely will mean the end of Russia even as, in President Obama’s  phrasing, “a regional power.” The bear no longer needs to be poked over NATO either, since NATO is off the table since Ukraine indicated she will not join. A big reason Ukraine will not join is because NATO is practically useless: a “defensive alliance” that sucked Ukraine into a war for her survival… while being impotent in helping her fight it… while incessantly poking Putin with Do-Something-Ism… while still buying his war fuel.

We want Putin to remain in power because his leaving is likely going to be a cure worse than his disease. Two aphorisms to remember:

In oncology, there is an accepted practice where a master tumor is left alone because smashing it scatters satellite tumors everywhere.

And

There is no such thing as a situation so bad that bad policy cannot make worse.