by Dukasaur on Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:50 pm
It's more complicated than that. We have a responsibility to shoot rabid dogs, even if it's our own fault that they became rabid. Especially if it's our own fault.
Putin's pathology has been described as being the same as Hitler's. Just as the big scar on Hitler's psyche was the collapse of the German Army in 1918 and the Armistice that followed, the big psychological scar that drives Putin was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and soon afterwards of the Soviet Union itself. Just as Hitler's defining drive was to restore the glory of the German Empire, Putin's defining drive is to restore the glory of the Russian Empire.
Now, if our people weren't perfidious bastards, Hitler might have ended up a statistic, dying lonely and ignored in some homeless shelter or old veterans' club in Vienna or Munich. Putin might have disappeared into the shadows and eventually died, sitting on the front porch of some cheap hovel, drinking and amusing himself by throwing empty vodka bottles at stray cats, maybe torturing some on his lucid days.
But our leaders weren't satisfied with destroying the Soviet Union in 1991, just as they weren't satisfied with crushing Germany in 1918. They had to turn a profit on the deal. There had to be Something In It For Them.
With communism collapsing, Russia could have smoothly been transformed into a social democracy. The factories and mines and other enterprises that the state was divesting itself of could have been shared among their workers with joint-stock arrangements or worker-administered trusts. There could have been a new Golden Age in Russia, but it was not to be. Enter the Western banks, and their backroom deals to distribute all of Russia's wealth to a new generation of corrupt oligarchs. Instead of a new prosperity to cement the transition from communism to socially-responsible capitalism, Russia got a new poverty. Most suffered worse under the rule of the oligarchs than they had suffered under the communists.
Just as the pillage of Germany by the victorious allies created fertile ground for the rise of Hitler, the rape of Russia by the western banks created a new sense of hopelessness and paved the way for the rise of Putin.
It was criminal pillage by our western banks that brought Putin to power, legalized pillage for which no criminal prosecution will ever take place or even be attempted. If there was justice in the world, it would be western bankers being rolled over by Russian tanks and not young Ukrainian men, but there is no justice in the world. The assignation of blame is purely an academic exercise. The survivors don't care who started it, only who was left standing. Nobody cares that Alexander's invasion of Persia was illegal and immoral, or Rome's attacks on Carthage, or Britain's invasion of India, or any of 1000 other empire-building wars. All that matters now is how they ended up.
There's no point crying over spilt milk. It's done, it's an injustice that will never be punished, and all that matters is what we do about it now.
As Churchill documented extensively, WWII did not need to have happened. If the Allies had reacted immediately when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, they could have had a cakewalk into Germany. If the Allies had reacted immediately when Hitler took Austria, they would have had Mussolini's assistance instead of letting him embrace Hitler. If the Allies had not forced the Munich Agreement on the Czechs, they would have had the bulk of the German Army tied up on the Czech frontier for months while the Allies mobilized and drove in from the west. Over and over, there were opportunities to stop Hitler which were missed, and by the time the Allies discovered their spine and stood up to him, it was almost too late.
Putin's murder of Alexander Litvinenko and other opponents on British soil was the equivalent of Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland. It was a test of western resolve, and when the West did nothing but gnash its teeth after Litvinenko's murder, Putin realized our resolve was weak. That was our First Test, in 2006, and like the Allies in 1936, we failed.
Putin's seizure of Crimea in 2014 was like Hitler's seizure of Austria in 1938. Again, we did nothing except make nasty noises, and were proven weak. That was the Second Test, and again, like the Allies in 1938, we failed.
After that, there was a deviation from the script. After having met no real obstacles in Crimea or Donbass, Putin expected another cakewalk invading the main body of Ukraine in 2022. If anything, I suspect that he might have expected a new Munich Accord -- that Ukraine's allies would try to avoid the risk of war, and would force Ukraine into negotiating a humiliating peace with Russia just to keep the sleeping dogs quiet. Luckily, I think there are enough people in the west who have studied Hitler's war and saw the parallels in time to stop this. If we hadn't sprung into action and tried to hold the line in Kiev, we would now be seeing Russian tanks rolling back into Poznan, Prague, Budapest, Ploesti, and all the rest.
The Allies in 1939 waited until the Fourth Test to start to find a spine. Luckily, the NATO of today has woken up during the Third Test. That might make all the difference in the world. We might still break Putin without a World War.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire
ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)... 
