Today, everyone is rightly riveted by the drama at Ramstein; or rather, the lack of it — no breakthrough announcement: Thanks, but no tanks. However, at the NATO airbase summit in Germany there were positive developments — significant heavy weaponry and air defense are in the pipeline, along with Leopard tank training and possible Dutch F-16s for Ukraine. That wouldn’t be out there if it wasn’t actionable. Our allies are giving us cover.
Before everyone and their mother go and cancel Olaf Scholz: He is a team player above all, and so is Germany, it’s a historical necessity no matter who’s the Chancellor [except a Chancellor Hitler, never again — thanks Germany for being alert recently]. This is Kabuki. We allies all desperately want Ukraine to win, but we can’t give the bloodthirsty sociopath in the Kremlin the slightest excuse to use Russia’s genocidal ‘escalate to de-escalate’ doctrine. (Wouldn’t work anyway; Russia would be crushed, utterly destroyed, and permanently removed from the historical stage if they challenged us with nukes. See below.) And it seems to be working: Recently Putin said pipelining Western tanks won’t make much difference (translation, he knows he can’t prevent it). And Russian propaganda is saying the US and Ukraine are jointly going to do massive Normandy-style amphibious invasions, plus multi-pronged land assaults on Crimea, what colossal BS (translation, they know they can’t prevent it being lost when Ukraine cuts off its water at Nova Kharkova, right across the Dnieper from Kherson — a simple operation a company of Krakens could do). They’re just prepping the mujiks for losing Crimea. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. Their system sucks Cartman Burgers but they’re not idiots.
They’re tacitly admitting strategic defeat; settling for minor tactical victories like Soledar by comparing it to the epic Battle of Kursk in The Great Patriotic War, “50,000 Ukrainians killed” and other such nonsense. Easy to do that, their State TV makes our Faux Noose look like a vehicle of unvarnished truth. Putin could tell his rubes (derevensh) that puke is food and they’d eat it up, like they do every day trumping ‘tremendous victories’ after they’ve accrued over 100,000 verified casualties by latest Pentagon estimates. Or threatening they could ‘sink England’ with their Poseidon nuclear torpedo. Total crap, the Poseidon is a cobalt bomb similar to our neutron bombs. It’s an anti-personnel weapon and it doesn’t change the strategic balance.
Speaking of which, the huge numbers of Russian nukes everyone rightly fears are probably not all that functional. It takes frequent maintenance to keep the warheads viable, Tritium gas has to be cycled and the isotopes lining the sloika (layered implosion charges) have to be checked for B-decay. Russia has good physicists and engineers, but one wonders if there’s enough of them — many have left for better pay and freedom. Smart and educated people tend to leave Russia, first as tourists and then semi-permanently (even Putin’s kids); they vote with their feet (Russia actually pays people to stay and have children, but the population as a whole is in steep decline, especially the intelligentsia — even more so now, after Putin called them gnats you spit out on a summer’s eve; talk about the Kafkaesque psychology of dehumanization). Also, it’s quite costly to do annual nuclear maintenance, tens of billions per year, and one wonders how much of that went to apparachik yachts or villas. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be deathly afraid of these things, but it does mean in a head-to-head most of ours would work and much of theirs probably wouldn’t, and they know it. The unthinkable is even more unthinkable for Russia.
What does all this mean? That we should be preparing for 1) the downfall of the Putin regime and 2) the possible disintegration of the Russian Federation. If that seems too good to be true, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Kissinger and other Neocons argue that it is, but their premises are based on Cold War Psychohistory and are out of touch with the times. Consider:
If Putin goes he gets replaced with either a more liberal figure like Navalny, or a more militaristic one like Girkin or Prighozin. Either way it’s the Moscow establishment, but that isn’t bad per se, we could at least negotiate a peace with them that might be fair to Ukraine. They’re all smarter than Putin, who was chosen purely for his allegiance to Yeltsin and not for any real strategic ability, ipso facto. 20 years of Putinism have turned the former superpower into a hollow basketcase. The problem with a military dictator is they might actually reform the Russian military, but therein lies our urgent opportunity. How so?
The Russian intelligentsia themselves are telling us it’s gonna happen, it’s all but inevitable. Both inside and outside the country, their best and their brightest are declaring an end to Putinism and that we should develop short & long term strategies. There are hundreds of thousands of them here and in Europe, and you bet your boots they are advising our Foreign Policy folks and the EU FP community. They’re saying now is a golden opportunity to give the Putin regime a final push by not failing to fully back Ukraine. While they’re in turmoil we should:
1) In the short term, firmly secure Ukraine from further attack. If the Girkins/Strelkovs take over, it will take them some time to truly reform Russia’s military and in the meantime we should do a bilateral defense treaty with Ukraine. We should also not wait for Turkey to quit obstructing Sweden (and while we’re at it, do one with Sweden since Finland has one with them, then everyone’s covered — no need for them all to officially join NATO right away). We should place AWACs sentries (‘close the skies’), advanced aircraft and US missile defense in Ukraine, permanently; nothing the next Russian regime could do about it even if they fix their nukes eventually. They’ll have their hands full for awhile just cleaning up Putin’s shambles. 2) In the long term, start to secure our alliance for the possible unravelling of the Russian Federation. Risks but opportunities indeed.
And it’s not just their dissidents, recently Kyrylo Budanov, Director of Intelligence for the MoD, was seen celebrating his birthday by slicing a cake shaped like Russia. Coincidence, a signal to the Moscow elites their days are numbered, who knows. But the reality is here. Check out Kamil Galeev’s many writings and threads on the subject (here’s one):
We should also listen to the Ukrainians. They’re on the ground fighting the modern Hitler. They’re a Slavic people whose civilization well predates the Russian one (Russia got their Cyrillic alphabet and Orthodox religion, in other words their civilization, from the ancient Ukrainian region, mostly allies or vassals of Byzantium aka. the Eastern Roman Empire — in fact early Russia was called the Kievan Rus and was ruled from Kiev, truly bizarre and stupid Putin tried to ‘inferiorize’ Ukraine, the actual mother country. Ukraine is to Russia as England is to the US. His grasp of history is really warped, more below). And they’re tough as nails and smart as a slap to the head. Here’s a Ukrainian-American analyst, Alex Motyl, writing on the subject:
foreignpolicy.com/…
“The bottom line is that it’s inconsequential whether you’re an optimist or pessimist—we can only observe the unfolding drama of Russia’s likely collapse. Neither Western policies nor Putin himself can do much to stem it. That’s because Russia is already beset by deeply rooted institutional crises, much exacerbated by the man who made Russia brittle and unstable and generated the likely spark to produce its demise: Putin.”
And for insight from a fellow Slav, here’s a piece by Estonian Political scientist (Kristi Raik) from the EU Council on Foreign Relations: foreignpolicy.com/…
Some of you may remember a Free Russian resistor who blogged here under a fictional name. He is back in the region and says it’s very likely Putin and the laughably incompetent Shoigu will end up dead, sooner rather than later, and be replaced by either a reformist or revanchist regime. We should all be getting ready for that day. And some of you may remember a Russian ex-oligarch named Khodorkovsky, who was arrested by Putin years ago for promoting democracy. Once he was the richest man in Russia, but Vlad the Inhaler of Illusions closed down his company and expelled him from the country. Unlike Putin, he’s a man of demonstrated ability, who reformed Yukos on his own merits, but wanted to share the riches and actually help improve democratic institutions with the Open Russia movement. Putin jailed him and he’s lucky to be alive. A German diplomat helped get him out; again, thank you Germany. He and Garry Kasparov, national treasure and chess champion, have recently published a Foreign Affairs article explaining how we can best seize this opportunity. Basically they’re saying don’t be afraid of the coming breakup, ride the wave and help Russians, yes the long-suffering, themselves victims of genocide under Stalin, finally achieve the democracy they want and deserve as human beings. In spite of some of them being hoodwinked by the Inhaler of BS. By the way that huge article Putin wrote about Russia’s destiny is the most condescending piece of BS we have ever read, and we’re serious students of history.
First of all, what he calls ‘the greatest catastrophe of the 20th Century’, the breakup of the Soviet Union, had nothing whatsoever to do with the West or the US. Quite the contrary, Kissinger advised against it because of the danger of loose nukes. It was an internal implosion caused by geopolitical rebound. The many Republics of the Union, so long suppressed, wanted their own independence and seats in the UN. Same thing happened to the British empire when it ended, voluntarily, in the London Declaration of 1949. When Gorbachev was detained by a revanchist military junta, Yeltsin the popular Mayor of Moscow came to the rescue, but the price was the end of the Soviet Union, which Gorbachev had been trying to save through his reforms. Yeltsin became the new President of the Russian Federation. His first major act as President was to sign a dissolution agreement with Kravchuk and Shushkevich, the Presidents of Ukraine and Belarus at the time, and there went Putin’s “Triune Nation”. The other Republics followed suit and the Union was dissolved. His old boss did it and it was his handpicked siloviki, or men of power, who benefited by taking the reins from Yeltsin in his 2nd term. It was the price for Putin and his stooges taking power. The Budapest Agreement was signed by Yeltsin and Clinton whereby Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan relinquished their nukes in return for independence. We see how that turned out.
Putin’s screed languishes for pages of condescending triumphalism, but totally fails to mention Russia was badly defeated every time it invaded other countries unprovoked (French Revolution, 2nd battle of Zurich 1799; Imperial period Austerlitz & Friedland 1805-06; Crimea 1854; WWI 1916 Battle of Tannenberg, a catastrophe that led to the Russian Revolution). Putin completely ignores these events as if they didn’t happen. Doesn’t even gloss over them or mention the periods — those years are missing from his diatribe. They don’t exist. So is any mention of the Kievan Rus, Medieval Russia, being centered in and ruled from what is now Ukraine.
Here’s the link but we’re reprinting the whole article below. Not normal practice, but this is of such urgent relevance to national security and human survival everyone needs to read it in full. It’s short and concise:
www.foreignaffairs.com/…
Don’t Fear Putin’s Demise
Victory for Ukraine, Democracy For Russia
By Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky
January 20, 2023
The regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin is living on borrowed time. The tide of history is turning, and everything from Ukraine’s advances on the battlefield to the West’s enduring unity and resolve in the face of Putin’s aggression points to 2023 being a decisive year. If the West holds firm, Putin’s regime will likely collapse in the near future.
Yet some of Ukraine’s key partners continue to resist supplying Kyiv with the weapons it needs to deliver the knockout punch. The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden in particular seems afraid of the chaos that could accompany a decisive Kremlin defeat. It has declined to send the tanks, long-range missile systems, and drones that would allow Ukrainian forces to take the fight to their attackers, reclaim their territory, and end the war. The end of Putin’s tyrannical rule will indeed radically change Russia (and the rest of the world)—but not in the way the White House thinks. Rather than destabilizing Russia and its neighbors, a Ukrainian victory would eliminate a powerful revanchist force and boost the cause of democracy worldwide.
Pro-democracy Russians who reject the totalitarian Putin regime—a group to which the authors belong—are doing what they can to help Ukraine liberate all occupied territories and restore its territorial integrity in accordance with the internationally recognized borders of 1991. We are also planning for the day after Putin. The Russian Action Committee, a coalition of opposition groups in exile that we co-founded in May 2022, aims to ensure that Ukraine is justly compensated for the damage caused by Putin’s aggression, that all war criminals are held accountable, and that Russia is transformed from a rogue dictatorship into a parliamentary federal republic. The looming end of Putin’s reign need not be feared, in other words; it should be welcomed with open arms.
Putin’s effort to restore Russia’s lost empire is destined to fail. The moment is therefore ripe for a transition to democracy and a devolution of power to the regional levels. But for such a political transformation to take place, Putin must be defeated militarily in Ukraine. A decisive loss on the battlefield would pierce Putin’s aura of invincibility and expose him as the architect of a failing state, making his regime vulnerable to challenge from within.
The West, and above all the United States, is capable of providing the military and financial support to hasten the inevitable and propel Ukraine to a speedy victory. But the Biden administration still hasn’t coalesced around a clear endgame for the war, and some U.S. officials have suggested that Kyiv should consider giving up part of its territory in pursuit of peace—suggestions that are not reassuring. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made it clear that the Ukrainian people will never accept such a deal. Any territorial concessions made to Putin will inevitably lead to another war down the road.
At the root of Washington’s unwillingness to supply the necessary weapons lies a fear of the potential consequences of decisively defeating Russia in Ukraine. Many in the Biden administration believe that Putin’s downfall could trigger the collapse of Russia, plunging the nuclear-armed state into chaos and potentially strengthening China.
Putin’s aggression has exposed the inherent instability of his model of government.
But such fears are overstated. The risk of a Russian collapse is, of course, real. But it is greater with Putin in office—pushing the country in an ever more centralized and militarized direction—than it would be under a democratic, federal regime. The longer the current regime remains in power, the greater the risk of an unpredictable rupture. Putin’s aggression has exposed the inherent instability of his model of government, which is built on the need to confront foreign enemies. The Kremlin Mafia, having turned Russia into a staging ground for its military plans, has already threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It is not the collapse of Putin’s regime that Washington should fear, therefore, but its continued survival.
For nearly two decades, some Western pundits have claimed that the Russian people will never accept democracy and that Russia is doomed to revanchism. Indeed, Putin’s propaganda has managed to instill in a sizable segment of Russian society the view that Western values are entirely alien to Russia. But economic integration with the West has enabled other countries to overcome a fascist heritage. And deeper integration with Europe, coupled with the conditional easing of Western sanctions, could help Russia do the same.
In the aftermath of Putin’s military defeat, Russia would have to choose: either become a vassal of China or begin reintegrating with Europe (having first justly compensated Ukraine for the damage inflicted during the war and punished those guilty of war crimes). For the majority of Russians, the choice in favor of peace, freedom, and flourishing would be obvious—and made even more so by the rapid reconstruction of Ukraine.
HOPE OVER FEAR
Putin’s military defeat would help catalyze a political transformation in Russia, making it possible for those seeking a brighter future to dismantle the old regime and forge a new political reality. The Russian Action Committee has laid out a blueprint for this transformation, aiming to reestablish the Russian state “on the principles of the rule of law, federalism, parliamentarism, a clear separation of powers and prioritizing human rights and freedoms over abstract ‘state interests.’ ” Our vision is for Russia to become a parliamentary republic and a federal state with only limited centralized powers (those necessary to conduct foreign and defense policy and protect citizens’ rights) and much stronger regional governments.
Getting there will take time. Within two years of the dissolution of Putin’s regime, Russians would elect a constituent assembly to adopt a new constitution and determine a new system of regional bodies. But in the short term, before that assembly could be seated, a transitional state council with legislative powers would be needed to oversee a temporary technocratic government. Its nucleus would be composed of Russians committed to the rule of law, those who have publicly disavowed Putin’s war and his illegitimate regime. Most have been forced into exile, where we have been free to organize and create a virtual civil society in absentia. Such preparations will enable us to act swiftly and work with the Western powers whose cooperation the new Russian government will need to stabilize the economy.
Immediately after assuming power, the state council would conclude a peace agreement with Ukraine, recognizing the country’s 1991 borders and justly compensating it for the damage caused by Putin’s war. The state council would also formally reject the imperial policies of the Putin regime, both within Russia and abroad, including by ceasing all formal and informal support for pro-Russian entities in the countries of the former Soviet Union. And it would end Russia’s long-running confrontation with the West, transitioning instead to a foreign policy based on peace, partnership, and integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions.
The United States cannot let its fears stand in the way of Ukraine’s hopes.
On the home front, the state council would begin to demilitarize Russia, reducing the size of the armed forces and by extension the cost of their maintenance. It would also dissolve the organs of Putin’s police state, including the repressive Federal Security Service and Center for Combating Extremism, and repeal all repressive laws adopted during Putin’s rule. All political prisoners would be released and fully rehabilitated, and a broader amnesty program would be adopted to reduce the overall number of prisoners in Russia.
At the federal level, the state council would pursue lustration, conducting open and thorough investigations of former officials to disqualify those responsible for the prior regime’s abuses. In addition, it would liquidate all political parties and public organizations that supported the invasion of Ukraine, so that they cannot interfere with the construction of a new Russia. At the same time, the council would liberalize electoral laws, simplify the process for registering political parties, and scrap Putin-era restrictions on rallies, strikes, and demonstrations.
The state council would also begin the process of decentralizing the country, transferring broad powers to the regions, including in the budgetary sphere. Such reforms would weaken Russia’s all-powerful imperial center: if the federal government does not have total control over state finances, then it won’t have the means to wage military adventures.
Finally, the council would ensure that war criminals and senior officials from Putin’s regime were held accountable. Those responsible for the worst war crimes would be tried in an international tribunal, and Russia itself would try the rest. To do so, it would need to draw a clear line between war criminals and former regime operatives—offering various forms of compromise with the latter to better assure a peaceful transition.
This is a make-or-break moment for Ukraine. Biden can turn the tide in Kyiv’s favor by backing up his declarations of support with the delivery of tanks and long-range weaponry. He can also hasten the demise of Putin’s regime, opening up the possibility of a democratic future for Russia and demonstrating to the world the folly of military aggression. The United States cannot let its fears stand in the way of Ukraine’s hopes.