In a closed session of the EU leaders the following was revealed (and later leaked). Told by the head of the European Commission that, according to NATO and Kiev, he had thousands of combat troops in Ukraine, Putin replied: “The problem is not this, but that if I want I’ll take Kiev in two weeks.“
Putin’s problem is that nobody is stopping Putin. Putin himself says so. Somebody needs to help the man. Somebody needs to show him that civilization has taken a stance. Hitler’s leitmotiv used to be that the democracies were weak, corrupt, riddled with “plutocrats” (sic!). Putin has obviously the same opinion, and it’s a big part of the “problem“. The problem he has.
The New York Times says that Obama is hesitating about what to do In Ukraine. It’s the exact same mistake that was committed in Syria: timidity in the face of blatant evil. If a lot of vicious force had been used right at the outset against Assad, when the latter was faced with peaceful protest, the situation would not have degenerated as it did. Basically, when Assad crossed the line of eliminating civilians, on a massive scale, for his personal rule to persevere, he should have been informed that he would be eliminated, should he not get out of the way (of civilization).
(Don’t ask me, about further imaginable details, I do not run the CIA and the like. But I am sure some reasonable general(s) could have been found in the Syrian army to replace the Assad family exaggerated plutocratic dictatorship).
There is a model for all this.
The Spanish Civil War, 1936. A quartet of Spanish generals, in the name of crown and church, rebelled in Spanish Morocco, and the Canary Islands. The French government was headed by a Jew, Prime Minister Leon Blum. The French government announced loudly that it would help the Spanish Republic with weapons.
Predictably, there was a fascist outcry, from Hitler and Mussolini, joined by the USA (which had the secret agenda to do lots of business with Franco and his friends), and its British poodle.
What did the French do? They backed-off into confused timidity (arranging instead insufficient weapon procurement through obscure, deniable deals). What did the fascists do? Lying that France was doing it too, they provided massive support to the Spanish fascists. In the next three years of official war, and another four, unofficially, many millions of Spanish civilians would get massacred.
It worked, though: strong from American plutocratic support, Franco’s fascist regime survived some of his sponsors’ defeat of 1945, and the regime he established is still around, in democratized form.
Putin was encouraged by the timidity of the West in Syria. So were the Islamists. There is no contradiction: they feed off each other, just as the Nazi fascists fed off the Soviet fascists in the period 1916-1945 (although the labels changed, not so the personnel: Stalin and Lenin were launched by German fascists during World War One). It behooves Assad, Putin, and the Islamists to be allies of each other (not necessarily in plain sight): they all emanate from the same brutal fascist mentality.
When the good guys have no force for the good cause, the bad guys can promote the bad causes, and have no reason to stop.
The Islamists in Iraq post on the Internet their hatred. They boasted to be the “hell of Christians and Apostate Muslims”, namely those who are not using enough Al Furkaan, the discrimination between Salafism and bad Islam. (Notice that the USA craftily let them post the Salafist venom, all over the Internet, a necessary first step towards squashing them next. Brother Obama is getting smart. I don’t see why the summary executions cannot be freely seen on the Internet: showing Auschwitz would have stopped Auschwitz.)
Even the German Chancellor just realize that the situation in Iraq is no good, in terms that the French Prime Minister ought to have used in 1936 against Hitler.
Merkel is sending weapons to those who fight the Salafists. Good. At some point, talking is made best by sending weapons, for real, and for all to see. That’s the mistake the French government did in 1936.
If the French government had intervened directly in the Spanish Civil War, it could have soon observed that the Nazi Luftwaffe (Air Force) used superior tactics. And France would not have been surprised as she was in May 1940.
Even simpler: what was the point of the French Republic giving time for Hitler’s evil regime to grow in military strength?
Like all tyrants out of control, Putin won’t stop, because he can’t stop. He is filling up the vacuum left by the increasing destruction of the civic spirit in the West.
The latter effect is in turn caused by the increasing power of Western plutocrats throughout civilization, due, in part to a perverted and diverted banking system. Putin thinks he knows plutocrats, he knows what they want, and how to domesticate them, be they Russian, or their Western colleagues.
Meanwhile his reign is threatened by the very mode of operation which supports it: censorship, central control, corruption. That has led to an increasingly lousy economic performance, and social inequality. As all dictators in difficulty, Putin needs to make stronger the very factors that cause the difficulties he is in. (Such as the Russian mothers who asked what happened to their sons who serve(d) in Russian Airborne divisions (such as the 76th based next to Ukraine).
As all dictators in such a quandary, finding scapegoats, and directing anger and causation, towards foreign powers is the only way out Putin can see.
So Putin will not stop, anymore than Hitler could stop. Once he has made it to Kiev in two weeks, as he just boasted, to the head of the European Commission, he will keep on going, because the problem he now has with Russians, he will have even more with Ukrainians. Then he will remember that Catherine The Great‘s troops used to be 80 miles from Berlin, making Poland a land naturally in need of Russian liberation.
All this is compounded by Western Europe’s dependency on Putin’s fossil fuel energy: a lousy deal between an addict (Europe) and a perpetrator (Putin). That subjugation encourages Putin to become ever more abusive, if he does not get what he demands.
“Putin”, of course, is just a label. He is a marionette instructed at the KGB in the spirit of Ivan The Terrible, one of the fiercest autocrats of all times. Ivan himself followed the mood his ancestors had found could be the Tatars, whom they served until they were ready to stab them in the back.
Civilization needs policing; it won’t be nice, it has never been nice to defend it, when one waits too long.
Three days ago, a French building exploded because of gas, Russian gas: eight dead. (Or maybe it was Algerian gas, a detail; in any case, most of Europe lives off Putin’s gas.)
How many civilians directly killed by nuclear energy in France, ever since the French government launched a nuclear military program in January 1938? (Yes, 76 years ago, time flies!) Yes, zero.
Although U235 nuclear energy is a problem, it kills enormously less than fossil fuels. Or Putin (and yes, Hitler attacked Poland because of the oil therein.)
Since January 1938, fossil fuels have killed millions, from their fossil waste, a form of tar, in France alone (plus more than 3 million from tobacco, directly; once again, in France alone!).
However, a vast conspiracy insisted that it would be much more ecological to depend upon Putin than to build modern energy systems (including state of the art, non-militarized Thorium based energy). Now comes the bill. The bill has boots, and a problem: it cannot stop itself.
The sooner we pay it, the nicer. Just letting Putin lead the orchestra, as Hitler did until September 1, 1939, is no solution, but escalation. Read his quote above, again: the man is asking for help, he has a problem (For those who don’t know, on September First, 1939, France and Britain sent an ultimatum for Hitler to get out of Poland, Catherine The Great’s old possession. Aside from Novorossaya and Crimea.)
The French government announced finally that it will not deliver the aircraft carriers which Moscow had ordered, and already paid for. Good. But it’s high time to remember 1936, and send modern weapons to the legitimate government in Kiev. Weapons to stop Putin, that is.
Patrice Ayme
(Note: The immediate necessity is to gain time, before the Ukrainian military can become strong from all these sophisticated NATO weapons coming their way (I hope); deploying military muscle in Iraq/Syria is timely; lest some don’t know, Assad has supported his “enemies” the Islamists, by buying them oil, among other things; Belgium has announced it may have to conduct black-outs this winter. as it’s running out of nuclear energy.)
