Did Putin really just make a huge miscalculation?
When I google "Did Putin make a huge miscalculation", all I get is articles about "Why Putin's war with Ukraine is a miscalculation" (a newspaper I do not know but assume is Jewish, called Haaretz), "Putin's historic miscalculation" ( The New Yorker), "Putin's big miscalculation" (CNN), etc.
When I search for "Why Ukraine is not a miscalculation" I still only get articles about 'miscalculation'.
Is the West naive here? Do we really think that Putin has suddenly become old and sloppy, making an enormous, reckless mistake, after an entire career of patiently and carefully moving the pieces forward step by step?
One does not commit such an act without having weighed the consequences *extremely* carefully, and for a long, long time. He has been preparing for this for decades. Putin, with his deep skepticism of the West, knowns precisely what he was doing. He knows what's coming. He's making a Napoleon move, or a Caesarian – or a Hitler, whatever you want to call it. An 'operation Barbarossa in reverse'. A completely undisguised war of aggression in Europe. (He knows very well that the rest of the world does not share his view of Ukraine as being Russian – not even Ukraine. He knows very well that he can not go in there in the same way that Hitler went into Austria and the Sudetenland (or he himself in Belarus). Hence the bombs. This is his Poland.
Russia and China has been building up their military for a long time. It is probably larger than has been reported, I would think. However, what calms me a little is that Russia and China are quite surrounded, geographically. However, so was/is Germany... Russia has a similar position: China is their Soviet (but more allied), and the Arctic Ocean is their Italy + North Africa. |
