MUSINGS ON THE END OF THE RUSSIAN WAR ON UKRAINE

We have learned a great deal about this war yet there remains far more that we do not know. The biggest question of all is how it will end. This presumes that it will end. Of course, it will end at some point but God only knows when and how this will occur.

The first major point that we still do not know is motive, or strategy. What was President Putin's aim in his invasion of Ukraine? We do not know. His stated goal of de-nazification was ridiculous. Apparently, his first choice was to capture the capital city, Kyiv and so a forty-mile-long convoy of Russian military vehicles lined up only to bog down and eventually withdraw. It appears as if Putin has abandoned, at least for the moment, his aim of capturing Kyiv. The Russian forces are now concentrating on the eastern and southern edges of Ukraine. However, experts have no idea of the present aims of the Russian deployments.

As for tactics, we now know, e.g. Bucha and Mariupol, that the Russians will use any appalling barbarism to terrorize and kill the people of Ukraine. They have shown no bounds.

In this no-holds-barred atmosphere we must remember that Putin has two catastrophic tools at his disposal, chemical and biological weapons and nuclear weapons. There is no good reason to assume he will not use them. It seems to me Putin may possess the characteristics of a psychopath or a sociopath. Find a discussion of the differences here . Either way, he apparently has no regard for others and no ethical or moral principles. We are looking at a ruthless and unpredictable dictator who has the power to destroy the world.

Another thing we have learned is that, in all likelihood, there will be no diplomatic settlement in the foreseeable future. The two sides have been meeting for talks all along and nothing significant (other than prisoner exchanges) has resulted. It is most improbable that Putin will end this war by negotiation. He will not display such weakness. This means we could be looking into a very long war. The Syrian civil war has been going on for ten years and is no where near a settlement. The Russian role in that war on Assad's side has been to show no regard for human life or property.

This is very much Putin's war. He planned it. He started it. He is directing it. He is keeping it going. He is in the driver's seat and there is little to nothing the rest of the world can do to stop this war. Besides, the rest of the world does not want World War III.

Putin has been in power for twenty years. He has a well established track record of ruthless military action, as Chechnya and Syria. Moreover, we must bear in mind the war in Ukraine started in 2014 when Russian forces illegally seized Crimea, a part of Ukraine, and promoted insurrections in eastern Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has actually been going on for eight years.

Since there does not seem to be any viable way of ending the Russian war on Ukraine in the foreseeable future, some people are discussing "regime change," that is, overthrowing Putin, as the most likely way to end the war. 

Putin is a dictator. So, what does history tell us about getting rid of dictators? How plausible is it that Putin will be overthrown from power? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. Sometimes dictators are overthrown and sometimes they are not.

The two most notorious dictators of the Twentieth Century were not overthrown. Adolf Hitler died by suicide in 1945. Joseph Stalin died of natural causes (stroke) in 1953. Both of these had built a very powerful party apparatus around them and ruled by carrot and stick. Any move against them, and there were many, was quickly snuffed out in extremely ruthless fashion. They both kept iron grips to the very end.

On the other hand, history is littered with strongmen who did not have such iron grips and met bloody ends. In 1989, Nicolae Ceausecu, dictator of Romania, was overthrown and executed by people around him. How about Benito Mussolini, who was overthrown by his own people and brutally killed by Italian partisans in 1945? How about Muammar Gaddafi, who was overthrown in Lybia and killed in 2011?

Strongmen typically rule by fear and will use this fear to control the people around them. Sometimes, however, this tactic can boomerang if enough of the people around believe their lives are at stake. For instance, Maximilian Robespierre, while not exactly a dictator, was the strongman leader of the radical phase of the French Revolution. At the height of his power, after many leaders had been guillotined, he declared that more of his political critics must be liquidated (killed). When he refused to name names, his terrified critics ganged up and sent him to the guillotine. In their eyes, it was either themselves or Robespierre. In this case, fear backfired.

So, what about Putin? We know he does not have a strong ideological party backing him up. Apparently, he is an individualistic dictator who is surrounded by a rather small group of oligarchs, aka kleptocrats. It is widely believed Putin and his oligarch friends have grown fabulously rich from the public treasury. The dynamics between Putin and the oligarchs remain mysterious. Little known too are the relationships between Putin and the institutional power holders. There is so much secrecy around Putin that it is hard to say how strong his power is. So, it is impossible to predict whether the people around him will overthrow him. We can assume this would happen only if the conspirators are certain they would prevail. At the moment there is not a shred of overt evidence of a coup. Quite the contrary, Putin and his government have silenced all independent public voices. Some western observers say that Putin's dictatorship will not survive the war in Ukraine. Maybe not, but at this point we simply do not know enough to make predictions.

Then, what are we to do if the war drags on, there is no negotiated peace, and Putin remains in power? I see no good choice but to keep on doing what we in the western world are doing and to do it more forcefully: 1-claiming the moral high ground, and 2-sending weapons and supplies to the people of Ukraine. There are signs that both of these are happening. Pope Francis is leading the religious figures of the world to condemn the Russian war on Ukraine. NATO and the European Union are stepping up shipments to Ukraine. 

No one in the west wants this war to widen. However, the more Russian atrocities against civilians we see, the harder it will be to limit this war. If the Russians use poison gas on civilians or detonate a nuclear weapon, it will be all but impossible to keep NATO out. The most chilling thought is that this is exactly what Putin wants, a new war against the west so Russia could ride high in triumph again,  as it did over Napoleon in the Nineteenth Century and Hitler in the Twentieth. If so, what would happen would be the reverse of history and the outcome would be the opposite. It is aggressor Russia that would lie in ruins.

Bottom line on the question of how the war will end---there is no way to know at this moment. It could turn in many different directions. Meanwhile, civilization is having to continually reassess the greater moral good. If we are to have a civilized world, good must overcome evil. Morality must prevail over immorality. How we achieve these is the daunting challenge of the day. The worse we can do is to do nothing. As Edmund Burke said, the only way for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.