What do you do with a drunken sailor? What do you do with a drunken Putin? Or any other drunken behaving national leader. Putin a putative avowed Socialist, who spends like a drunken sailor. He also lives like a billionaire. His dacha (summer cottage) on the Black Sea, looks like a Club Med or Ivy League University Campus in the tropics. His photo ops compete with Tom Cruise movies. By the way his iconic horse is quite small to conceal his own small stature. He travels by private jet or a convoy of limousines. Properties he controls may be worth $200 billion. He feels threatened by Ukraine! Ukraine the country Stalin starved into submission, and traded with Hitler. The USSR after using it as a primary battle ground in World War II, recklessly gave Ukraine the Chernobyl disaster. Ukraine is the largest country, by area, entirely within Europe, it has but 46 million people. Russia is the largest country on Earth, 11 time zones wide, with 146 million people, nuclear weapons and the third largest air force. The second largest is the U.S. Navy. Ukraine’s ordnance is mostly left over from the Cold War, but NATO and EU countries are supplying Ukraine with what they might need. Even Ukrainian babushkas, grandmothers, are taking military training. They remember how Russia, aka the USSR treated them from 1938 to 1991.
What do you do with a drunken sailor? What do you do with a drunken Putin? Or any other drunken behaving national leader. Putin a putative avowed Socialist, who spends like a drunken sailor. He also lives like a billionaire. His dacha (summer cottage) on the Black Sea, looks like a Club Med or Ivy League University Campus in the tropics. His photo ops compete with Tom Cruise movies. By the way his iconic horse is quite small to conceal his own small stature. He travels by private jet or a convoy of limousines. Properties he controls may be worth $200 billion. He feels threatened by Ukraine! Ukraine the country Stalin starved into submission, and traded with Hitler. The USSR after using it as a primary battle ground in World War II, recklessly gave Ukraine the Chernobyl disaster. Ukraine is the largest country, by area, entirely within Europe, it has but 46 million people. Russia is the largest country on Earth, 11 time zones wide, with 146 million people, nuclear weapons and the third largest air force. The second largest is the U.S. Navy. Ukraine’s ordnance is mostly left over from the Cold War, but NATO and EU countries are supplying Ukraine with what they might need. Even Ukrainian babushkas, grandmothers, are taking military training. They remember how Russia, aka the USSR treated them from 1938 to 1991.
Putin says he feels threatened Ukraine might attack. To try to take back what he appropriated, pre-Biden. Maybe that is just routine Russian paranoia? They have been invaded dozens of times and conquered six. Invading one another is a European tradition though. Ukraine attack Russia? That would be like as absurd as a terrier attacking a bear, or South Carolina attacking the United States of America. No, that already happened and it did not work out for the little one. Anything about Russia is confusing. Russia is as Churchill said “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” then run by a sly gangster. Typical Russian or Soviet strategy is to steal a little at a time, not enough to go to war over until there is so little left nobody notices. Like slowly taking water from the Aral Sea, until only the Aral Desert remains. Absorbing small countries like Georgia, one province at a time. He could fake an attack too.
More mysteries. Maybe Putin’s another a madman like Hitler who failed to realize he had lost his war, and bankrupted his country to exterminate minorities. On the other-hand Ukraine might be a political brinksmanship ploy by Biden, replay the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy’s popularity shot up. Jerry Ford did it with the Mayaguez rescue. George W. Bush’s popularity soared after a clumsy response to 9/11. How about Macron? Is he a Kissinger who skillfully negotiates an end the crisis hostility or is he a Neville Chamberlain who trusts an empty promise? Or Scholz what’s he up to, will he turn off Russian gas?
What if NATO calls Putin’s bluff and admits Ukraine? What’s Putin going to do about it? Russia can’t afford a war; their GDP ranks 11th, less than South Korea, or California. I suspect he cannot afford to keep up this expensive bluff, either. Tanks and bombers need fuel, soldiers need food and shelter. Ukraine would be more stable in the European Union, that too would be a defeat Putin.
Does Putin think if it goes badly China’s Xi will bail him out? A Chairman for life, drunk for power, manipulating Putin so they can conquer the world together. Next to China though, Russia is a pipsqueak extraction economy, smaller than Australia’s. Russia’s land and resources would be a prize for China though. Maybe Xi realizes there are a lot of technological skills they can’t create in house, or copy without help from those who already have it. Don’t these two madmen, like their idol Hitler, realize that their partner in international crime will never settle for half. Hold onto you popcorn.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com
