“Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich.”
― Adolf Hitler ―
- He who controls the definitions of the situation controls the situation.
- He who controls the situation makes the rules of the game.
- He who makes the rules of the game has the power and wins the game.
* * *
STRIKE ONE
Even street punks get the 1, 2, 3 picture.
Forget education: Harvard, Oxford, the Sorbonne. Forget training. All that is needed is intuition.
What NATO and Washington lack.
Time and again, Putin puts on display for all to see an obsession with controlling the definitions of the situation, especially in Ukraine. His position on Finland and Sweden joining NATO is the latest episode:
"In response to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's statement that Russia now has ´more NATO´ on its border, Putin stated that Finland and Sweden's membership is significantly different from Ukraine's.
´These are completely different things. They understand this perfectly, and they just throw this thesis into public opinion to show that Russia did not achieve the desired outcomes,´ he said.
Unlike Finland and Sweden, Ukraine was becoming ´anti-Russian,´ with those ´who feel themselves a part of the Russian world´ being persecuted, he added."
Crackpot wack-o nonsense, to be sure. However, let´s move forward and think back...
Over a year ago, Putin started amassing troops and material on the Ukraine border and denying he was going to invade.
President Biden proclaimed and defamed to the stars above. Liar, liar, pants on fire!
Ah no... Joe. Your response was a textbook case of a culture-bound reflex.
In 1995, I lived in Moscow with a Russian family. I was studying Russian at the Maurice Thorez University (today the Moscow State Linguistic University). The administration was packed to the gills with former KGB officers. I frequently dealt with them. I had no choice but to learn how to read hitherto unseen tealeaves.
What Putin was actually doing:
In the military buildup on the border, he was taking a halfstep. He wanted to see if and how NATO would respond.
Worms?
NATO of course did nothing. That inaction abetted the full speed ahead invasion of Ukraine.
Sidebar. Unlike NATO and Washington, Moscow does not view whining as doing something.
Untold wanton destruction; thousands of lives lost; even more thousands of people wounded - none would have happened had NATO acted appropriately. Here, like intuition, a second element is called for which NATO lacks: creativity.
What could NATO have done?
One possibility: during the Russian buildup it could have filled the Ukrainian sky with bombers and fighter jets, accompanied with an open secret:
"Just practicing."
Putin would have understood that maneuver perfectly. It would have been, in his words, a response in a "mirror manner."
Another possible action NATO could have taken:
I wrote back in March 2022, about how Russians, unlike Americans, have an acute sense of paradox, During the Russian buildup NATO could have green-lighted Ukraine´s pending application for membership. The following explanation by President Biden would have been delivered with an unseen smile:
Looking at a map and world history, you would think that NATO membership for Ukraine would not be in the best security interests of Russia. Yet President Putin moved heaven and earth to accomplish that very outcome. And now, having achieved against all odds a large part of his goal, he sits around all day and grumbles.
Well, I guess that´s the dialectic for you, and those are the contradictions. In my youth I studied Hegel.
I know, Washington, you are tone-deaf to that sardonic message; it makes no sense to you. or that reason it would not have been directed at you, but rather at the Russian public and leadership.
You would have seen over hundred million unseen smiles.
As with the friendly skies filled with wave after wave of aircraft, the instant admission to NATO candidacy for Ukraine was as easy as 1, 2, 3. So why didn´t it happen?
Worms?
The continuing mystification of Putin - what on earth (or elsewhere) is he thinking? - is as pointless as it is needless. In true street punk style, he is never more revealing about himself than when he is talking about other people. He tells you exactly who he is, what he wants, what he will do. Once more, though, another element is needed which Washington and NATO lack: listening. Really listening, that is - not in a bureau-pathic, culture-bound way.
During the military buildup on the Ukrainian border, President Biden doubled-down on NATO´s inaction by repeatedly announcing that no American troops would be sent to defend Ukraine.
Ah no...Joe. When dealing with a street punk, you never tell what you will or will not do. Biden´s clumsy and naive declaration of noninvolvement was undoubtably greeted with disbelief in Moscow. I am sure that even now, four months later, they are still shaking their heads, laughing amid toasts all around of Crystal Vodka served in the fancy bottles engraved with wildlife.
Unlike Joe and NATO chiefs, I have been to the factory.
* * *
STRIKE TWO
- He who controls the definitions of the situation controls the situation.
- He who controls the situation makes the rules of the game.
- He who makes the rules of the game has the power and wins the game.
We come to the US-NATO error cum laude. It concerns the rules of the game.
Putin started controlling the rules when he introduced the nuclear option:
"The Kremlin has given the war in Ukraine an explicit nuclear dimension through various actions and statements. First, Russia conducted a manoeuvre with its nuclear forces in mid-February, shortly before the invasion. While it had been known for a few months that the exercise would take place in early 2022, the choice of timing seemed linked to the Ukraine crisis. After all, this annual exercise of Russia’s nuclear forces normally takes place in the fall, and Russian news coverage deliberately drew attention to the event. On February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin then warned in a speech that there would be unprecedented consequences should third states attempt to ´obstruct´ Russia. Such wording is traditionally considered to imply a threat to use nuclear weapons. The Russian president went further on February 27, announcing that Russia’s deterrent forces, which include nuclear weapons, would be placed on a ´special regime of alert´.
This was the first time since the 1960s that Moscow had made such a public announcement regarding its nuclear alertness, even if its exact meaning was at first unclear. Indeed, some of the country’s strategic nuclear weapons are always on high alert and, hence, always ready to be used. Moreover, there are several levels of alert, ranging from purely administrative to very substantial, such as loading nuclear weapons onto heavy bombers. A statement by Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu the next day indicated, however, that Putin’s announcement merely referred to an increase in personnel at some command centres and thus a comparatively minor measure. Nevertheless, shortly thereafter Russia conducted military exercises involving nuclear submarines in the Barents Sea and mobile intercontinental ballistic missile launchers in Siberia. Also, in early March, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted somewhat vaguely that a third world war would certainly ´be nuclear´. Nonetheless, during the following weeks, a number of Russian officials attempted to qualify or even roll back Putin and Lavrov’s remarks.
The West strongly criticised Moscow’s nuclear threats, accusing the Kremlin of fabricating artificial threats to Russia in order to justify further aggressive action. Washington warned Moscow against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but refrained from making similar public threats to Russia or raising its own level of nuclear alert. In addition, the United States postponed a planned missile test in order to avoid further rhetorical escalation."
He who makes the rules of the game has the power and wins the game. The following excerpt from a CNN article notes clearly how and why NATO-US just don´t get it.
"Reflecting on the Cuban missile crisis, President John Kennedy once warned that nuclear powers ´must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.´
The showdown with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine does not yet mirror the one-minute-to-midnight brinkmanship that brought the Soviet Union and the West to the cusp of Armageddon in October 1962.
But Kennedy's superpower logic is resounding poignantly as Putin gets backed into a corner by the strategic disaster of his war, Ukraine's heroic resistance and an extraordinary multibillion-dollar allied conveyor of arms and ammunition.
US mulls what Putin's end game might look like as war in Ukraine grinds on.
President Joe Biden, who has always stated his twin aims are to help Ukraine defend itself and to avoid a direct escalation with Putin that could risk nuclear war, seems to have been mulling JFK's warning.
At a fundraiser in Potomac, Maryland, on Monday night, Biden confided that he was concerned Putin had yet to devise an exit from the war, despite the former KGB officer's ´calculating´ nature.
Senior national security officials, meanwhile, admit they do not yet know what kind of incremental Russian success in eastern and southern Ukraine would allow Putin to declare a victory of sorts and de-escalate the war,,,"
JFK´s Dilemma was another culture-bound reflex. Exactly as Biden and NATO today, he assumed his agenda was everybody else´s.
That agenda turns out to be Putin´s agenda. Mulling what Putin´s end game might look like...
The answer to the Dilemma was played out at the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Let´s call that answer what it is: The Beria Option. It does not exist in the American experience, at least so far; hence, it never occurs to Washington. However, it most certainly does exist in Russia. It has been invoked at least twice. (i) The execution of Stalin´s heir apparent and secret police chief, Laventri Beria*, and (ii) putting out to pasture the man who executed that execution and flunked the Cuban Missile Crisis test: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
What was needed in the Ukraine crisis is unthinkable for NATO and Biden: direct escalation. Humiliation. When Putin introduced the nuclear option, the U.S. should have responded measure for measure and put its military on nuclear alert. Not to worry: Russian generals would have winked, nodded, invoked The Beria Option. Caveat: They will perform the quick midnight trip to the basement only when faced with the horrific, credible prospect of nuclear war - of a flat and black Moscow that glows in the dark and is uninhabitable for 2,000 years.
Had NATO raised the nuclear ante, Putin would no longer be in power.
1, 2, 3 .
* * *
STRIKE THREE
- He who controls the definitions of the situation controls the situation.
- He who controls the situation makes the rules of the game.
- He who makes the rules of the game has the power and wins the game.
NATO and the US.
I used to go to bullfights, I stopped when, one afternoon, I looked around and realized something.
The vast majority of bullfight spectators are there to see somebody get killed. I say that because when it actually happens, they feel horribly guilty.
Overcompensation is the telltale heart of the matter.
Do NATO and the US regret having in part caused the Ukraine war? Of having Ukrainians fighting and dying for them?
Worms?
Does overcompensation appear in the endless river of billions of dollars the West is pouring into arming Ukraine? If so, NATO and the US, all the money in the world will not buy you a single day - much less, make your remorse go away. Entirely unconscious, it is the secret you keep - even from yourselves.
I could pass over this painful and tragic subject were it not for its concrete consequences. When psychological issues parade as political ones, disaster is inevitable. An objective analysis of the situation and how to control it is impossible. Indeed, in such cases whenever the unconscious runs the show, self-sabotage seizes the day; the situation controls you instead of vice-versa. Over 90% of the time, resulting policy is inappropriate, doomed - born in a coffin.
The heroic Ukrainians espied the deadly telltale heart of the matter in various forms and places, notably in the West´s too-late delivery of crucial weapons.
NATO and the US, by trying to fool others you hope to fool yourselves.
Instead of simply acknowledging the truth, you are forced to live it.
1, 2, 3.**
______________________
*Wikipedia: "Beria, as first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and an influential Politburo member, saw himself as Stalin's successor, while wider Politburo members had contrasting thoughts on future leadership. On 26 June 1953, Beria was arrested and held in an undisclosed location near Moscow. Accounts of his downfall vary considerably. The historical consensus is that Khrushchev prepared an elaborate ambush, convening a meeting of the Presidium on 26 June, where he suddenly launched a scathing attack on Beria, accusing him of being a traitor and spy in the pay of British intelligence. Beria was taken completely by surprise. He asked, ´What's going on, Nikita Sergeyevich? Why are you picking fleas in my trousers?´
When Beria finally realized what was happening and plaintively appealed to Malenkov (an old friend) to speak for him, Malenkov silently hung his head and pressed a button on his desk. This was an arranged signal to Marshal Georgy Zhukov and a group of armed officers in a nearby room, who burst in and arrested Beria.
As Beria's men were guarding the Kremlin at the time, he was held there in a special cell until nightfall and then smuggled out in the trunk of a car...Many of Beria's subordinates, proteges and associates were also arrested,,,
Beria and the others were tried by a ´special session´ of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on 23 December 1953 with no defense counsel and no right of appeal...
Beria..allegedly pleaded on his knees before collapsing to the floor wailing. He was shot through the forehead by General Pavel Batitsky."
**Contrary to everything you are seeing, hearing and reading, the war in Ukraine did not begin on February 24, 2022. Rather, it started in 2014, when under Obama´s watch Russia invaded and annexed Crimea.
Worms?
We did not discuss the Crimea affair here because the attached image covers it.