Putin is always scheming…
Ex-KGB VIP and supreme ruler of Russia Vladimir Putin—let’s call him Volodya—is always scheming. He channels Machiavelli but only serves his sociopathic self as prince. He had managed to annex a large part of the Ukraine with negligible reaction from the West; he’s biding his time on the old “socialist republics” of the U.S.S.R. he believes to belong under Moscow rule too, but they have to be nervous after Ukraine; and he is doing Assad’s dirty work in order to maintain influence in the Arab world (will Syria and Egypt be Russia’s next marionettes?).
Under the good-old-boy guise of attacking ISIS, Volodya is attacking everyone trying to end Assad’s cruel regime, including Kurds (the Turks say thank you and are currently aligning with Russia against the U.S.) and Syrian freedom fighters, who don’t belong to ISIS. He is currently launching attacks from Iran, which means that the Russians have some sort of secret agreement with that Shi’ite government. That should worry the Saudi royalty who have always supported the Sunni side and are currently doing so in Yemen. This charismatic, narcissistic, and homophobic Russian leader has enshrined destabilization as the cornerstone of his foreign policy efforts. It’s hard to make sense of it all. And that’s his tactic!
From the time of the Czars, Russia has been a paranoid nation. Even back then they were also jealous of the West as they tried to be playmates with the imperial courts of Europe—“Russian royalty” even spoke French, making the language of Chekhov, Pushkin, and Tolstoy the idiom of the poor serfs (there was no middle class to speak of). The Bolsheviks changed all that, but the populace didn’t benefit, having exchanged one set of indifferent exploiters for another set of cruel, paranoid demagogues who envied the advances in the West but couldn’t ever compete economically. The paranoia and jealousy continued right into the Cold War and beyond until the U.S.S.R. collapsed. It was more like a Trump bankruptcy than anything Ronald Reagan or any Western politician did. Putin got his start in the chaos after that collapse, the Russian people turning to a strong individual, once again getting more than they bargained for.
Volodya orders his fighter pilots to play chicken with the ships of the Atlantic fleet; he launches cyberattacks on many governments and businesses, including those of the U.S., trying to gain economic leverage and affect elections; he tramples all dissent in Russia, even if it requires murdering old friends, other national leaders, scientists, and reporters (the most recent case reported on in Sunday’s NY Times); and he will organize massive doping efforts so Russian athletes can gain advantage in sporting events, ignoring fair play to gain national prestige. Who knows what future schemes he’s cooking in the Kremlin?
Maybe Volodya isn’t directly involved in any of this—world leaders like to have deniability for their shenanigans, after all, and will often make their underlings fall on their swords as scapegoats when their sins are revealed. But he definitely has created an atmosphere where henchman will go all out to please the supreme leader. Butt-kissing had a long tradition in Russia long before it became an art in Washington D.C. Needless to say, the Russian oligarchy hasn’t changed much. It’s run like like a drug cartel or NYC mob, with Volodya the drug lord or capo. They have more legitimacy because they ARE the government. The Russian population in general has no voice in the boardrooms of Russia Inc.
I can rail about the duplicity of Saudi Arabia and Turkey and the dark evil in control in North Korea. I know there are many despotic regimes in this world who do terrible things to their citizens. But Volodya and Russia stand alone at the pinnacle of despotism because the evil is hidden under the trappings of democracy. Volodya works in secret; we have no idea what he’ll do next. I can only guarantee the rest of the world won’t like it, only Putin’s cronies.
Donald Trump wants to be like Volodya, but Putin is out of his league. There is no world leader today who has such a bully pulpit and can cause so many problems, manipulate so many situations, and spring so many destabilizing surprises as Vladimir Putin. Mind you, none of this is positive in the moral sense because Voldya does it for greed and power without regard to its effect on his own people or the world’s peoples. There’s nothing noble about this man. We must never trust him and always watch him like a hawk. In that sense only, Trump is like him, which means that the Donald can’t protect us from the megalomaniac who rules Russia. Neither can Hillary, for that matter.
It will take a worldwide consortium to thwart Volodya’s self-serving schemes, leaders who will stand strong together to compensate for whichever flawed candidate becomes the next U.S. president. Right now we don’t have that consortium, so Volodya literally gets away with murder. He and his team is winning, and we’re at the seventh inning stretch. Can we win the ball game? Time will tell, but I’m thinking about brushing up on my Russian so I can tell Volodya to go to hell in this own language before he kills me with a plutonium-tipped umbrella, or whatever his latest preferred poison is.
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And so it goes….
