After all the reading of policy wonks and Russia pros I have read this week, my conclusion is, no, Putin has not deteriorated. He is the same guy with the same aims. The only thing that changed is he finally did something that could not be hand-waved away. After 20 some years of being the same guy doing the same things.
He clearly imagined a few things that are not proving to be true – that his military was invincible, that the west was incapable of presenting a unified front, and that Ukraine was a weak, fat country ripe for the plucking. But as my brother in law (a Vietnam vet) recently pointed out, the most certain thing about starting a war is that it won’t go according to plan.
Prairie Home Companion used to have an occasional segment “Worst case scenario”. They did a live TV show at some point, started up the segment on something like “we’re doing a radio sketch show on live TV, what’s the worse case scenario?”, looked at each and just went on with the show.
I don’t know if it’s wishful thinking on the part of some, but there’s been rumblings that Putin has Parkinson’s disease and cancer is supposedly having surgery in the near future.
it may be wishful thinking but I wonder if he’d even dare allow himself to be made quite that vulnerable, even for a short time.
Imagine, you are the medical team operating, Putin is under, you know that things go wrong on the operating table from time to time.
You look around the theatre into the eyes of your colleagues and…?
Fantasy I know but stranger things have been known and in terms of seizing political power timing and opportunity is everything.
Recall the last shot of “The Death of Stalin” Brezhnev casting a careful eye towards Nikita Khrushchev? Even Khrushchev himself, emerging as a serious contender for leadership when no-one expected it of him.
You can guarantee that there are Brezhnev’s and Khrushchev’s right now biding their time and looking for opportunities.
No, but a hypothetical successor in this situation will be extremely busy securing his position and consolidating his power, and will have significantly less bandwidth for adventuring across the border.
Also a hypothetical successor can get a somewhat clear slate by blaming everything that went wrong on his predecessor. I am pretty sure that Putin would love to turn back the clock to October 2021 and not invade Ukraine like he did. But now that he’s done it he can’t pull back now or else he will look weak and be blamed for killing thousands of Russian sons to no purpose. So he has to keep going.
A new leader can say its all Putin’s fault, lets pretend it never happened and you can lift the sanctions now, since there have been zero polonium poisonings in the 18 hours that the new leader’s been in power.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy And the big fool says to push on. Waist deep in the Big Muddy And the big fool says to push on. Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a Tall man’ll be over his head, we’re Waist deep in the Big Muddy! And the big fool says to push on!
–Pete Seeger
Putin has always felt strongly about this subject. I disagree with his earlier views and I disagree with his current war crimes. His army has been exposed as unready and unprofessional. A way should be found for him to save as much face as possible, however. It is unclear to me that this must be mental deterioration versus a gamble that yet again a preoccupied world would not care. It is to their credit that they, beyond all expectations, do.
In a certain lens, I think Putin’s war is rational. If the man is 70 and has cancer and isn’t likely to live long no matter what, then there’s much less reason not to gamble. Either he invades Ukraine and wins - yay, Soviet glory nostalgia - or he loses but he had little life left anyway, so nothing to lose.
Because you, and I, are weak approval-craving prosaic Western cosmopolites corrupted by utilitarian humanism and a compromised christianity, to the point we are blind to the obvious truth that yes, glory is worth thousands of lives.