Like Japan in WWII, Could a Cornered Putin View Sanctions as Acts of War and Strike NATO Countries?
Better to die from Putin’s bombs than live under his oppressive boot
In a peace-shattering week of shocking images, two moments stand out as particularly haunting. It wasn’t the bloodied corpses or burned-out vehicles in Ukraine. Nor was it the bombed-out apartment buildings or lines of desperate refugees. What spooked me the most was Putin’s snarling, sneering sociopathic speech justifying his brutal attack. He sat solo in an empty conference room, as if he were on a Hollywood casting call for a rapacious villain fixated on world domination. No doubt, he would have gotten the part.
The second alarming incident was the eerie meeting with his cowed security council. The Guardian describes the scene: “Sitting alone in a desk in a grand, columned Kremlin room, Vladimir Putin looked across an expanse of parquet floor at his security council and asked if anyone wished to express an alternative opinion. He was met with silence.” The power drunk dictator then berated one of his spy chiefs, Sergei Naryshkin, for seeming to hedge, and demanded that he “speak directly.”
In these legacy-defining episodes, Putin morphed into the aggrieved, “small and pale” man that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once described as “so cold as to be almost reptilian.” His murderous mask was ripped off and his expansionist attitude and ambitions were laid bare.
The question is why now? One hypothesis is that Putin became too isolated during his COVID quarantine. Watching this week’s spectacles, one wonders if Putin’s time in the bunker has led to extreme detachment or even derangement? This is a pertinent question, considering the Russian leader put his nuclear forces on special alert.
"To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside - if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history," the strongman threatened. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, chief editor of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper told the BBC, “He's said many times: if there is no Russia, why do we need the planet? No one paid any attention. But this is a threat that if Russia isn't treated as he wants, then everything will be destroyed."
Perhaps Putin watched too much state TV during his COVID seclusion and believes his own propaganda? I mean, he’s trying to actually peddle the idea that Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president, is overrun by Nazis and attacking Russian speakers in the Donbas region. Someone inside the Kremlin must inform the megalomaniac that NATO has nuclear weapons too. If a Russian atomic bomb hits NATO shores, Moscow will turn to smoldering ash and St. Petersburg to radioactive dust. Putin won’t be known in history as Peter the Great 2.0. He will be remembered as The Last Czar who ended Russian civilization. (If anyone is still alive on earth to write about it)
Unfortunately, Putin has jailed or murdered his rivals and consolidated power. His primary pest, Aleksei Navalny, who exposed Putin’s billion-dollar secret palace said, “The war with Ukraine has been unleashed to cover up the robbery of Russian citizens and divert their attention away from the country’s internal problems, from the degradation of the economy.” Great statement, but Navalny delivered it from a penal colony in the desolate Russian woods.
If Putin’s creepy security council meeting is any indication, there are few credible leaders left in Russia to mediate or properly medicate the renegade madman. Not only could “New Stalin” press the nuclear button, but he could also unleash havoc with cyber-warfare or even use advanced submarines to sever undersea Internet cables. Additionally, if it turns out that Russia is behind suspected direct energy microwave attacks that are possibly causing Havana Syndrome among some U.S. diplomats, Putin could further employ such barbaric tactics to create fear and panic.
Former national security adviser John Bolton told CBS’s 60 Minutes that Havana Syndrome attacks are a threat to the highest levels of government. He cited two national security officials who say they were hit on West Executive Avenue by the West Wing inside the White House gates.
“If we were at war and an adversary could disable the president and his top advisors, or commanders in the field. It could render us extraordinarily vulnerable,” Bolton said.
One of the problems with autocrats like Putin is that they are megalomaniacs who see themselves as synonymous with the state. While I strongly agree with harsh sanctions against Russia, we can’t rule out that the economic effects won’t cause Putin to feel vulnerable to the point where he views these financial penalties as acts of war worthy of military retaliation. The Russian stock market is reeling, there are ATM lines in Moscow, the oligarchs are losing their golden passports and the Russian ruble is flatlining.
Putin had wisely stocked up on foreign currency reserves to blunt the impact of sanctions, but now this avenue is partially cut off. With most of the world uniting against Russia -- with the notable exceptions of communist China and the Trump wing of the Republican Party -- Putin is a cornered rat. From those of us who have lived in New York and DC, we know that can be very dangerous.
In The Atlantic, Derek Thompson discussed the current crisis by providing a worrying, yet realistic, historic scenario on sanctions that arguably helped lead to World War II:
“There is a useful analogy with Pearl Harbor. In the late 1930s, Japan had invaded Manchuria and was engaged in a war with China. And the U.S., which was supporting China at the time, imposed an oil embargo on Japan. We squeezed the Japanese government until they realized they only had about a year and a half of resources left. They were desperate to stop the oil embargo. So, they took the gamble of Pearl Harbor and paid for it with a costly war in the Pacific. I think we have to consider a question: If we apply similar economic pressure to Russia, could Putin make a similar decision to what Japan did in 1941?”
Adding to the plausibility of such a chilling scenario, Russia’s former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev warned today that in history, economic wars “quite often turned into real ones.”
No matter Ukraine’s fate (or the world’s), Russia has already lost control of the narrative. Once portrayed as a cool operator by some misguided western admirers, the dictator has transformed overnight from brooding mastermind to bloodthirsty monster. The West, previously blinded by Russian bribes, now sees Putin clearly as a menacing tyrant that threatens the future of freedom and democracy.
Putin banked that the world would be too scared to act against his considerable might. But he played the role of villain a little too convincingly, with his murder of activists, poisoning of dissidents and most recently dropping lethal cluster bombs on civilians in Ukrainian cities. His actions have convinced people across the globe that the only way to stop this bully is to fight. Better to die from Putin’s bombs than live under his oppressive boot.
Perhaps, the largest remaining threat to unity against Russia’s aggression is the NATO-disparaging, Putin-worshipping Donald Trump who called Putin “savvy” and a “genius” after he launched his attack on Ukraine. On Twitter, his MAGA cult is claiming that if Trump were president, Putin would not have invaded. Of course, that is because Trump would have handed Putin all of Ukraine on a silver platter for the price of a hotel branding deal in Moscow. Hell, he’d probably do it for a motel deal in Vladivostok.
When war broke out, FOX fascist Tucker Carlson slavishly praised Putin and used Kremlin talking points. Vanity Fair lists a few examples of his epic bootlicking:
It’s “not un-American” to support Putin;
Democrats will find you guilty of treason if you don’t hate Putin;
The whole thing is simply a “border dispute”;
Ukraine is a “puppet” of the West; and
Our personal favorite, that unless Vladimir Putin has personally had you or one of your family members murdered, you really don’t have any right to criticize the guy
The problem that Trump and his right wing MAGA sycophants are having, is that Putin was supposed to be the great white savior and uphold “traditional values.” But his savage attacks, broadcast 24/7 on television and social media, are leveled against white people with blond hair and blue eyes. Putin’s holy roller act is also complicated by his tanks rolling over the 10 Commandments, particularly the parts forbidding murder, stealing, coveting a neighbor’s goods and bearing false witness. (Not that many of today’s Republicans even pretend to care about such virtues.)
Hopefully, the tide against our homegrown seditionists might be turning with Tucker Carlson quickly backpedaling in shame and infamy. On CNN’s State of the Union, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called support for Putin from some of his colleagues “nearly treasonous.” Cheerleading for Putin won’t be helpful to the GOP in an election year, where the Party is intrinsically welded to the careening Trump Train, and still trying to explain away its role in the Jan. 6 attack on our democracy. Pairing Jan. 6 with love for Putin, Democrat’s message should simply be, “Can we trust an unrestrained GOP with power? The risks are simply too great.”
Despite the gloomy news, there are optimistic signs. We have the example of brave Ukrainians fighting to save their country, most notably their president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. There are thousands of courageous Russians, including 1,300 who were arrested for protesting the invasion while waving placards that read, “No to War”.
Importantly, a December academic survey found that only 8 percent of Russians supported a military conflict against Ukraine, and only 9 percent thought that Russia should arm Ukrainian separatists. So, this war is Putin’s personal peccadillo, not the will of the Russian people. Maria Popova, a McGill University political scientist who studies Russian and Ukrainian politics, offers another reason for hope. “Two-thirds of authoritarian leaders are removed by their own allies. If he tightens the screws too much, if he tries to really increase his power at the expense of the ruling authoritarian coalition, then he is threatening his own position.”
We don’t know how this chapter in history will end. But, at least, there is no doubt who the villain is.