Theme: Coercion

Putin would be the most popular politician in the world if he had offered (he still could) to pay Ukraine for the territories (under threat that he could take them otherwise) and he could have kept ukraine in his orbit. Instead, he impoverished ukraine further, and drove her forever to europe, broke the postwar consensus on borders that was the principle necessary to prevent another world war, demonstrated that the only guarantee of sovereignty is ownership of nuclear weapons, generating new demand for proliferation, pivoted the USA and NATO back to Russia, created justification to expand american military spending, and dramatically harmed his people and their economy. He panicked and he flinched and he confirmed eastern europe’s fears: that he is an irresponsible threat to civilized peoples. Worse he has restarted the propaganda war, and saturates his people with fabricated news on purpose. Not of utopian fantasy like american politicians but out of nihilism.

It would be terribly easy to fix this problem and he lacks the will to do it. Fix ukraine with discounted gas, stop lying and propagandizing, and just assert that he’s right in his opposition to the USA’s intrusions, the fallacy of democracy, and western hedonistic (barbaric) western culture – and keep suppressing home dissidents. It’s not like most of the world doesn’t agree with him outside of left leaning western pseudo-intellectuals.