Let’s face it, we now have a madman with nuclear weapons.
In October of 2018, in Sochi, Putin
said: “The aggressor
will have to understand that retaliation is inevitable, that he will be
destroyed and that we, as victims of aggression, as martyrs, will go to heaven.
They will simply croak because they won't even have time to repent.”
Putin’s bizarre invocation of martyrs sounded as if it came from Iranian ayatollahs. The MAD doctrine was beginning to crack. Now it would not work not only against Iran, but with Putin as well.
Then came February 21,2022 and Putin’s meeting with his Security Council during which every member was asked to publicly “vote” whether to recognize the independence of the two separatist regions. It was a most bizarre procedure, chilling because it was clear that Putin was setting up the Security Council to collectively face a war crimes tribunal for the war he was about to unleash.
There have been demonstrations in Russia against the invasion of Ukraine, which in an authoritarian society is an act of courage. The thinking people of Russia are ashamed to have let it happen. But so should be those in the West who for years had permitted the laundering of oligarchs’ dirty money. Three days into the invasion and Europe still did not block Russia from SWIFT.
In 1997 George F. Kennan warned against the expansion of NATO. He understood that Russia had always been paranoid about having NATO at its borders. Russia's fear was irrational. Kennan probably meant that when you have a nuclear armed paranoid you better be careful
