Putin’s Mistake

May 19, 2022 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

Putin’s Mistake

Paul Craig Roberts

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, is the most demonized person in the western world since Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler.  Hillary Clinton says Putin is “the new Hitler.” US President Biden says Putin is too evil to be permitted to stay in office.  

Despite these hard characterizations of the Russian leader, the Kremlin has only recently given up on negotiating peace with the West and with the West’s Ukrainian puppet.  Indeed, it is unclear that the Kremlin has yet seen the writing on the wall.  The Atlanticist Integrationists are still operating in Russia and they still are willing to give up Russian sovereignty for inclusion in the West.  Putin seems unable or unwilling to get rid of those Russians who constrain Russian foreign and economic policy in the West’s interests.

Putin’s mistake is that he is a 1950 American university liberal, a believer in international law, in mutual respect and cooperation, in resolving conflicts with diplomacy.  Putin and Russia are in trouble because Putin continues to believe in moral behavior when the West has made it clear that the only value is US hegemony.

If Putin really were the New Hitler, there would not be a Ukraine, nor an Europe, and probably not a US.

Putin’s history of accepting Western provocations has prevented Armageddon while leading us to it. The extraordinary slowness of the Kremlin to recognize a threat and to take any action to do anything about the threat has taught Washington and its puppets that Russia has no red lines.  

Consequently, many have been crossed.  Russia complains, but does little or nothing. The result is that the West dismisses Russia’s warnings of nuclear war as mere bluster.  

The West no longer takes Russia seriously.  Even tiny, militarily impotent states do not hesitate to insult and provoke Russia.

The limited, go-slow Russian intervention in Eastern Ukraine has allowed the entirety of the West to get involved in the war by sending weapons to Ukraine, by providing Ukraine with intelligence information for attacking Russian forces, by cooperating with Washington’s sanctions, and by controlling the war narrative in Ukraine’s interests. There can be no doubt but that the US and NATO are combatants in the war against Russia.

Despite warnings Russia continues to ignore militarily this fact.  How long can this go on?

We are at the risk of nuclear war, not because of Russian aggression, but because of limited and weak Russian responses to extreme provocations.  The West has concluded from Putin’s old-fashioned liberalism that Russia is weak and can be pushed over. 

It is this conclusion that will result in nuclear war, unless the Russians surrender to the West and become another puppet like Germany, France, and UK.