But with Putin being the de facto dictator, who in the country would be doing the declaring of the war? Anyone who steps up to take enough power to do that will most likely just take control of the government themselves, and be grateful that the ICC did the hard part of getting Putin out of the way for them.
Dictatorships tend not to have robust, well-understood succession plans, because the dictator doesn’t want anyone to really know their own strengths. If you knew you were first in line for the leadership, you might be tempted to tip the scales a bit and take over the dictator’s job. When Putin is finally out of the picture, however that happens, it won’t be the smooth transition of power you seen in places like the US or UK. It’s going to be a scramble.
And those doing the scrambling won’t take even one second to worry about Putin sitting in a jail cell somewhere outside Russia. Once things get sorted out, maybe they’ll use him in propaganda, but they’ll never do anything that might actually get Putin released, out of fear that if he comes back, there will be another fight for power. They’ll be quite happy just letting him rot.
Geez, if you think you have a new idea, forget about it. Someone, somewhere has already done it.
Short video, but I see he still has the rolling-type walk he’s shown the last couple years. Age or something more, I don’t know, but I hope it’s causing him a lot of daily pain. Seems only fair.
A certain ex-president wouldn’t undergo anesthetic for his colonoscopy so as not to cede power for a couple of hours to his VP. Said ex-president also gummed up the “smooth transition of power.” That’s our reality, not some hypothetical situation.
We seem to be venturing off topic though I enjoyed the macabre tales from history (except the last one I mentioned - no enjoyment).
They just wanted to assure Charles II that they thought very highly of his Daddy, and it was a little late, but they were punishing those nasty people who, er, well, killed him.
What if Vlad flew to Stockholm and the airport denied him clearance to land? Or informed him upon landing that he was not allowed to set foot on their soil?
Except he wouldn’t be able to act grateful. In fact, he’d have to avenge the grave insult to his country’s honor, or else nobody in the government, military or police would respect him enough to follow his orders. It’s a paradox, I know, but that’s how dictators and their followers think. Not declaring war on whoever arrested Putin would make his successor look like a “weak leader”, which means he wouldn’t be a leader at all.
As the United States has found out on several occasions, countries really don’t like it when foreigners depose their leaders. It doesn’t matters who replaces the leader, it doesn’t even matter if they liked the leaders or not. It’s the principle of the thing.
Came across a long, but informative retrospective article on the run-up to the war; it’s quotations of key actors remembering what was happening, arranged thematically, with no commentary. I found it well worth the read:
helped me re-live this moment in history and also is reassuring on how much thought went into the west’s reaction - and how little had to be improvised.
I’m surprised there isn’t more word on public opposition to Putin at this point. I realize it’s actively suppressed but I expected more grassroots efforts to show show support for the opposition.
There isn’t more word on public opposition to Putin because in fact there is very little public opposition to Putin. Russian domestic propaganda is extremely effective, and the Russian masses largely accept the narrative that Russia is beset on all sides by the West and must defend itself, that the Ukrainian government is full of Nazis persecuting ethnic Russians in Ukraine, that the Maidan Revolution was a CIA-funded operation, etc, etc.
It also seems that a belief in Russian imperialism is at least as deeply held by Russians as American Exceptionalism is by Americans. The average Russian believes in the righteousness of the aims of the Special Military Operation, and that Russia has a right to rule over or at least wield decisive influence over all areas within the sphere of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union.
Russian opposition to the war at this point is mostly just unhappiness at how the war is being conducted. Unhappiness at the extent of casualties, and at how poorly equipped and trained the troops are. Hoping that anti-war sentiment will put pressure on Putin to end the war is futile.
What an article. One of my main takeaways was in the final section.
Gen. Mark Milley: In the Russian system, it’s very top down — centralized command and control. The Ukrainians were brought up under the Soviet system, so they had the same system — top down — but in 2014, we go in there and start training them after the invasion of Crimea. The western method — what America calls mission command — essentially says that you authorize and delegate authority to conduct military activity or operations to the lowest level at which it can be successfully executed. You empower junior officers and junior noncommissioned officers to execute tactical operations. A battlefield is a very dynamic thing, and they’re going to respond to the exigencies of a battlefield at the time. You need to empower them to make the right decisions. It makes for a very decentralized method of command that is very effective in combat because warfare is a very dynamic environment filled with chaos, confusion and fear.
Wow, a very in-depth article. Kudos to the writers for putting together that massive line-up of interviews. I’d forgotten that Liz Truss was Foreign Sec at that time.
I think (but I am by no way a specialist in this matter) - that this type of thinking/initiative are not a very strongly developed trait in russian culture …
having others take the most relevant decision for you for 4 or 5 generations (e.g. 5 year plans that don’t work out but wont be changed, etc…) does that to a society, where fitting in and knowing your place in society are virtues of higher value than “taking things into your own hand and changing them”
so - the “enough already gene” is not very strong it seems
I am sure there ARE people of that trait, but they are few and far in between and will have a harder time finding each other and cooperate (if a 1% of people have the initiative gene, vs. 10% in western society ((numbers made up))
)