YOU WANT PEACE? MAKE WAR COSTLY
The French and German leaders are meeting again with Putin to make him recover reason: it reminds me of Munich, 1938, when the French and British leaders were trying to make Hitler reasonable.
France and Germany together have a slightly larger population than Russia, but three and a half time the GDP. (By the way, what happened to Britain? Well London is full of Russian plutocrats and banking institutions keen to make Assad and Putin possible; hence the British discretion.)
An Ukrainian in the street interviewed by German TV said it was out of the question to give territory to Putin: if one gives him a finger, he will take the entire arm.
In the West, cowardly pacifists say: do not provoke Putin, do as he says, he has nukes and will attack, if lethal defensive weapons are sent to Ukraine. That makes them collaborators of evil.
This is rather curious that pacifists use a fundamentally bellicose argument: don’t try to stop the mad man, he may get offended, and kill everybody.
Indeed, a mad man’s madness with criminal insanity overtones, makes the case for the greatest severity. So the essence of the pacifist whining call for the greatest severity to be applied on Putin, right away.
Because what are pacifists saying? Putin is the most dangerous Leader, ever. So let’s be nice to him.
It is now known that, had the USA and Britain be as firm as France against Hitler in the 1930s, Hitler’s own generals would have made a coup against him.
But, instead, Britain and the USA made concession after concession to Hitler. So Hitler flew from success to success, undermining any mood critical of him. How can one criticize a winner? Clearly, it was unpatriotic. It made the top German generals and marshals who thought that the dictator was completely crazy, and a danger to Germany look like traitors.
Something similar is developing with Putin. As he occupied and annexed territory in Georgia, Moldavia, and now Ukraine, and the West proved incapable to stop him, he looks ever more like a winner. Putin’s avowed goal is to bring back what he calls the “New Russia” (half of Ukraine) and the “Big Country” (the USSR). Pacifists say that the fundamental strategic interest of Russia is at play, so Putin flies from success to success.
So where does Putin stop? This is what pacifists have to know, if they do not want to be simple collaborators of evil.
But of course, they don’t know.
Should we then keep our fingers cross, and hope for the best?
Why?
Because Putin killed only 100,000 in Chechnya? Because Catherine the Great stopped 80 kilometers from Berlin? Not a safe bet: Catherine did not have nukes.
Behaving now as nothing will stop Putin, but for the application of overwhelming force is not safe, but it is the safest strategy. If Putin is completely crazy, overwhelming force won’t stop him. But nothing will anyway, especially after he has fully armed himself, as he is presently doing, Hitler-like.
If Putin is not completely crazy, the threat of overwhelming force will stop him.
Not trying to stop him, if he is not completely crazy, will certainly make Putin completely crazy. Be it completely crazy with greed.
As I tried to explain, Putin, like Hitler before him, and Napoleon, and many (not all) conquerors before him, has discovered that war unites the People behind him, and make all the People think as one, and the name of that one, is Putin. This is what I call the fascist instinct. It is crucial to enable a (relatively) weak primate, far from any tree, to conquer the Savannah and Steppe, heretofore ruled by formidable predators.
Putin’s rule has been a disaster. Thus he needs to activate the fascist instinct in the Russian People. Thus he needs war.
Thus, if pacifists give him Ukraine, Putin will be deeply unhappy: he did not want Ukraine. He wanted war. War gives him fascism, thus the ability to rule. In this light, the reign of Louis XIV of France can be better understood.
After millions of Protestants had left France, and France has lost considerable territory in continuous wars, Louis XIV of France, the self-described “Sun-King” (“Roi-Soleil”) feebly bleated that his advisers had poorly advised him about Protestants: it had not been a good idea to have harassed, despoiled, and submit them to “Dragonades” (occupation of Protestant households by elite troops called “Dragons”).
However, Louis XIV, a dedicated fascist, hater of the “Republic”, lied (as fascists are wont to). Louis XIV had continual wars, and particularly against innocent civilians, because he needed continual wars, because that justified his fascist, personal rule.
Louis XIV was not afraid of war, he was afraid of peace, because peace meant the Parliament may want to re-establish the Republic again (which is what the “Fronde” was all about).
Napoleon faithfully executed the same scheme (because De Sade, one of the Revolution’s principals, had criticized the aggressive, expansionist war making, Napoleon put him in a mental asylum).
The same exact mechanism caused the First World War, with the Kaiser playing the role of Louis XIV. The Jews played the role of the Protestants under Louis XIV.
Soon Stalin would institute continual internal war, to justify the dictatorship of the Politburo which he headed. Hitler repeated the method.
So are we condemned to repeat history? Not so, if we learn how it works.
Putin got his 85% approval rating, from his activation of the fascist instinct.
However, the very latest polls show that the Russian People is getting wary of Putin’s protest of innocence about the war: 70 percent stated that Russia was assisting the breakaway rebels of Donetsk and Luhansk. Good. However, the same polling show that now most Russians think that establishing “Novorossia” (“New Russia”) is a good idea.
In other words, Russians are turning t the Dark Side: they know their dictator is making war in a foreign nation, but they are starting to approve the invasion of that nation, and its annexation.
Why?
Same story as what happened in the German collective psyche after Hitler annexed the Republic of Austria. Then the Germans became favorable to other annexations (Czechoslovakia, some Baltic states, much of Poland, etc.) Because Hitler had proven to be a winner.
As far as the Russians are concerned, Putin is a winner, so he has got to be right. Not right on the facts, but morally right: Ukraine, like Georgia or Moldova, is Russian property.
Want to turn Putin into a loser? Do it on the battlefield. And do like him: play dirty, send efficient weapons stealthily first.
Patrice Ayme
