CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, September 2, 2024

Ukraine: Did Putin get the wrong brochure?

One still wonders why Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine. Was the invasion an attempt to reacquire Ukraine as a buffer state against NATO and the West? Surely, Russian intelligence could tell Putin that none of Russia’s neighbors had neither the Inte ion nor the Capability to invade Russia.

Or, was Putin simply punishing Ukraine for the riots in Kiev that drew world attention away from Putin’s great success with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Souci? Recall, Putin felt Souse was his big chance to show the world that his new Russian Federation belongs among the great nations. But even the Olympics can lose media space to violent events like those in downtown Kiev in 2014.

Regardless of Putin’s motivation, Putin finds himself in a war that defies definition. Is Putin waging a War of Attrition or a War of Annihilation? If Putin has the patience and the domestic political backing to wage a War of Attrition, Russia’s overwhelming manpower advantage will win that kind of war. But if Putin is waging a War of Annihilation, the outcome is in doubt because Ukraine’s’ NATO neighbors are not likely to let that happen.

Recall, Ukraine is surrounded on three sides by friendly neighbors willing to allow war supplies into Ukraine. Conversely, Russia is only befriended by faraway Red China, Iran, and North Korea.

Moreover, Red China and Russia are not in agreement about their territorial rights in eastern Siberia and the navigation rights in the rivers and seas between Russian Siberia and Japan. The Chicoms might bite Putin in the rear.

Former Chairman Mao’s one child per family policy caused untold numbers of girl babies to be murdered by their parents. .Thus, Red China is seriously short on women able to bear children.

Consequently, the Chicom Army is staffed with males who cannot find women to bear them children. Russian Siberia, however, is full of fecund females. Another reason for Putin to be wary of the Red Chinese.

Putin also has reason to worry about some of the 20 Russian Republics that have their own constitutions, languages, and flags, Some of them yearn to be free of Russia, potentially challenging Putin’s dream of a Czarist Russia reborn.

So, what are the chances that American soldiers will be on the ground in Ukraine fighting the Russian Army? During this election cycle the Democrats might want Kamala Harris to be perceived as a war-time president and, thereby, help secure her election. Conversely, a Trump/Vance Administration might content itself with providing sophisticated indirect-fire weapons and satellite intelligence to Ukraine. Meanwhile, telling NATO and Russia to duke it out without adding to the appalling number of Americans already buried in European cemeteries.

So, instead of a Russia reborn as one of the world’s great powers, Putin’s Russia is now a pariah nation under serious economic sanction from the West. Ergo: Putin might say to himself, "This wasn’t in the brochure."

Suggested reading: The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Vladimir Putin and Fake News, by Arkady Ostrovsky, and Not One INch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, by M. E. Sarotte. (2021).

©2024. William Hamilton

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com