The West Is Ignoring Some Unpleasant Truths About Putin

[Blue_Tires]

At the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to have told U.S. President Barack Obama that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "in another world." After months of near-constant shuttle diplomacy, a mere 48 hours after Minsk II was concluded, the West had to watch a humiliating Ukrainian rout at Debaltseve.

While on a recent visit to Hungary, Putin gloated, "Obviously it's bad to lose, but life is life and it still goes on." It seems more and more clear that if anyone is living in another world, it is Western leaders.

Minsk and the subsequent Debaltseve collapse revealed the reality of the West's own situation — it negotiated with Putin on his terms and in his world. It is clear that the West has an interlocutor in Putin whose objectives are not transparent, promises are not trustworthy, and who is making decisions that have heightened conflict in the region.

Last December, an international consortium of investigative journalists, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) named Putin their "person of the year" for 2014, "for his work in turning Russia into a major money laundering center for enabling organized crime in Crimea and in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine; for his unblemished record of failing to prosecute criminal activity; and for advancing a government policy of working with and using crime groups."

A runner-up was Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who is on record as wanting to establish an "illiberal democracy" in Hungary.

Most analysts concede the depth of Kremlin thievery and U.S. sanctions specifically target "team Putin." The question however is whether kleptocratic tendencies are central or peripheral to the conduct of Russian policy. Those, like myself, who say they are central agree with opposition activists like Boris Nemtsov that Putin's building and renovation of 20 palaces, his receipt of $700,000 in watches and his unlimited access to yachts, planes, and a Kremlin property management department with a staff of more than 60,000, and an annual presidential office budget of $2.41 billion is costly in terms more than treasure.

It also reveals that at the system's heart is total bespredel — limitlessness. Unconstrained by laws, rules, or any sense of decency, Putin stands astride the world's largest gap between rich and poor.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/west-ignoring-unpleasant-truths-about-putin/516598.html

[uhnope]

1. K&R

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

2. Boris Nemtsov was killed on a Kremlin street yesterday.

Four shots to the back in a drive by.

[Igel]

3. The West is ignoring some unpleasant truths about itself.

"Rout in Debaltsevo."

vs

"There is no military solution."

Slavyansk? Novoazovsk? Izvaryne?

Strikes me that to the problem in Debaltsevo Putin/Zaxarchenko found a military solution, the very existence of which is denied on theoretical ground by the Western leaders.

Same for the other 3 places--they all had military solutions. Theory =/= prediction? For most people that understood middle-school science, that means "theory wrong." Perhaps one bit of counterevidence can be chalked up to a data-collection error, or something so rare as to not fit the theory properly. But not that many.

Now, I can see a political "science" major getting this wrong; poli-sci isn't noted for a rigorous system of data collection with experiments to falsify theories and account for all the data--it's more noted for finding data to support one's point of view while trying to find merely plausible reasons to ignore inconvenient data. But Merkel? Quantum chemistry, last I heard, really did try to include some experimentation.

They've even stopped thinking that some negotations result from stalemates. We have folk that seem to think that a good, strong diplomatic position is built on a string of military failures. Meaning, of course, that the real victory early in WWII was secured by France in 1941, since it must have had the strongest political and diplomatic position to negotiate with Germany. Surprised Hitler didn't negotiate the surrender of the USSR, the US, and Britain in 1945, after a diplomatic power play known as "retreating to Berlin" that gave him unparalleled leverage. Perhaps he failed to utter the magic words, "There is no military solution."