Those are both valid questions that I don’t think anyone outside of the Russian government has any answers to, but the problem with a hypothetical successor to Putin completely recapitulating the Ukrainian invasion, much less giving up the hold on Crimea (that Russia does actually have historical claims to even if they did voluntarily give it up in 1991) is that doing so will look weak domestically, and that is a recipe for being ‘replaced’ themselves by someone with a more hawkish stance.
We’re used to thinking of leadership in terms of popularity and electability, but that isn’t really the case in Russia where the trappings of democracy are just the outer shell of a Matryoshka doll that is fundamentally autocratic in nature. Russians prefer a ‘strong’ leader over a ‘fair’ one (and so, it seems, do many Americans, but that is another discussion.) The concern of someone displacing Putin is that they may be even more radical and less amenable to reason or concern over the ultimate future of Russia.
The concern about giving Putin a way to “save face” has nothing to do with supplicating to his wounded pride and everything about assuring that he doesn’t feel so backed up to a wall that his only choice is to escalate in a way that may not be reversible. Putin has made barely veiled threats about using nuclear weapons and considering NATO an active threat in the same breath, and while this may just be brinksmanship by a master troll it may also be that Putin is looking in the mirror and seeing his mortality, particularly if he can’t somehow pull something that can be called a moral victory out of this morass. I’d like to see nothing more than Putin in the Hague facing a tribunal for war crimes (along with a short list of other luminaries to remain unnamed in this thread) but I want even more for Central Europe to not be a lifeless landscape of radioactive craters or worse.
Which is precisely why he needs to leave power. Given:
1: If he remains in power and finds himself unable to win, he’s likely to use nukes.
2: He is, in fact, unable to win, and it’s only a matter of time before he realizes it.
The only way out of this is to get him out of power.
I would point out that a big part of what brought about the collapse of the Warsaw pact was the fact that Afghanistan demonstrated the vulnerability of the Red Army. The satellite countries realized that the Russians might be able to invade Hungary or Czechoslovakia or Poland but that they could not invade Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland all at once. What could happen now that the vulnerability of the current Russian army has been demonstrated?
Well, that may have been a factor but it was really the failing Soviet economy combined with political and social pressure internal to the Soviet Union and the individual ‘clients’ of the Warsaw Pact to reform. It was the 1989 speech by USSR Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that recognized the ‘policy’ (later retroactively formalized and informally termed the “Sinatra Doctrine”) although this liberalization and resultant breakdown of the Iron Curtain was already occurring. It wasn’t as if the leadership of East Bloc nations was really looking to dissolve the Warsaw Pact, and given how quickly many of their governments fell after it was clear that the Soviets wouldn’t prop them up militarily, it’s pretty clear that their membership in the Pact was necessary to maintain control over their own nations.,
That the Soviet Army was thoroughly humiliated in Afghanistan undercut the conclusions of strategists who argued that the Red Army could be victorious in a European conflict by raw mass alone, although fighting insurgents in mountainous Afghanistan and trying to pacify a disjointed tribal society is very different than prosecuting a massive combined arms thrust through the Rhineland. Of course, the US Army, which is well trained in counterinsurgency and mountain warfare operations also ultimately failed to pacify Afghanistan…as has every other invading army since the European medieval period, so I don’t think failure in Afghanistan is much of a metric of anything except the foolishness of looking for conquest in Central Asia.
So, you folks who think Biden’s comment was deliberate - do you think the countries of NATO are playing good cop/bad cop on this? Maybe France saying to Putin talk to us, we’ll keep the crazy Americans under control and you can deal with us? Something like that?
Again - the only way Putin leaves power is in a box. That might be after living a long and evil life and dying one night in his sleep far more peacefully than he deserves. Or maybe not. But either way Putin only leaves in a box.
There are entirely too many Russia/Ukraine threads in too many forums for me to keep track of them all. If this conflict goes much longer we may need a whole forum just for Land War in Eastern Europe. While I appreciate everything that is being said in each thread – it is hard for me to determine where to post what. So here (Let the powers that be place the post correctly if it is too off topic)—
I just read this article and it reminds me of that scene in the movie Airplane! where Ted tells Elaine where they are bombing at what time of the day and from which direction and how many aircraft are involved – then says he can’t tell her when he will be home because it is classified. It seems to me that genuine reporting businesses are following citizen journalists into some pretty il-advised reporting.
Excerpt (otherwise known as: Attention Russia, look here to foil NATO plans):
The seized unit will be examined by Western spy agencies, The Telegraph reported, adding that it would likely be taken by road to the US Air Force’s Ramstein Air Base in Germany, before being flown to the US.
Examining the unit could reveal secrets of how it works, which could help Ukraine and Western allies render it useless on the battlefield.
I genuinely find it hard to believe you have to tell people in a war torn area it is a good idea to not advertise where high value targets are located and where they will be soon.
Dear Vladimir,
Whatever you do, don’t look on westbound roads to destroy your assets which may reveal very useful secrets in the next few days. Honestly, nothing to see here!
I certainly hope it makes it to its destination.
I don’t think it’s any secret that nearly everyone in the West wants to see the backside of Putin. But it’s rather indelicate to say so out loud. It was a minor mistake to mention it, but it could be much much worse. He could have said that Putin’s invasion was an act of love.
Making it clear to the oligarchs also makes it clear to Putin. The whole point of a “wink and nudge” is that it’s not supposed to be clear. It’s supposed to have plausible deniability. Having the leader say one thing and then everyone else walk it back is exactly how that game is played.
I don’t think his goal is to necessarily get them to do it. They already know that the US and NATO would be favorable towards them if they replace Putin with someone who would stop the war. I actually think the goal is likely the other direction: to play up Putin’s paranoia. For the larger powers, this isn’t just about Ukraine. This is about taking down a larger threat. The longer Russia stays committed to this, the closer they get to removing it from being a player on the world stage at all.
This does, however, indirectly incentivize the oligarch to cut him off, so that they can try and stop this, and be on the right side of the negotiating table. It’s making it seem like removing Putin is inevitable, so they might as well do it.
Do I have any proof? No. But Biden hasn’t actually been very gaffe-filled since being President. And the statement he gave is seems calculated, rather than what would really be on his mind. And he’s been listening to his foreign policy advisors a lot. And nobody really seems surprised by what he said.
What I’m sure of is that it’s not really going to do much damage, after what Graham said. In fact, my main argument is that it seems deliberately calculated not to do any damage.
I think I’d buy this more if Biden’s original statement had been strategically ambiguous, and the Administration refused to elaborate on it. But the initial statement and the Administration’s subsequent repeated repudiation of its clear meaning doesn’t seem like a calculated effort to send a subtle message, it just looks like disarray.
