{"id":21578,"date":"2022-02-27T19:57:33","date_gmt":"2022-02-28T03:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=21578"},"modified":"2022-02-27T19:57:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T03:57:35","slug":"putin-to-ukraine-marry-me-or-ill-kill-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/02\/27\/putin-to-ukraine-marry-me-or-ill-kill-you\/","title":{"rendered":"PUTIN TO UKRAINE: \u2018MARRY ME OR I\u2019LL KILL YOU\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan. 18, 2022 (NYTimes.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Credit\u2026Alexander Zemlianichenko\/Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Thomas<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Thomas L. Friedman<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opinion Columnist \u9605\u8bfb\u7b80\u4f53\u4e2d\u6587\u7248<\/a>\u95b1\u8b80\u7e41\u9ad4\u4e2d\u6587\u7248<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is Vladimir Putin threatening to take another bite out of Ukraine, after devouring Crimea in 2014? That is not an easy question to answer because Putin is a one-man psychodrama, with a giant inferiority complex toward America that leaves him always stalking the world with a chip on his shoulder so big it\u2019s amazing he can fit through any door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s see: Putin is a modern-day Peter the Great out to restore the glory of Mother Russia. He\u2019s a retired K.G.B. agent who simply refuses to come in from the cold and still sees the C.I.A. under every rock and behind every opponent. He\u2019s America\u2019s ex-boyfriend-from-hell, who refuses to let us ignore him and date other countries, like China \u2014 because he always measures his status in the world in relation to us. And he\u2019s a politician trying to make sure he wins (or rigs) Russia\u2019s 2024 election \u2014 and becomes president for life \u2014 because when you\u2019ve siphoned off as many rubles as Putin has, you can never be sure that your successor won\u2019t lock you up and take them all. For him, it\u2019s rule or die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere in the balance of all of those identities and neuroses is the answer to what Putin intends to do with Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I were a cynic, I\u2019d just tell him to go ahead and take Kyiv because it would become his Kabul, his Afghanistan \u2014 but the human costs would be intolerable. Short of that, I\u2019d be very clear: If he wants to come down from the tree in which he\u2019s lodged himself, he\u2019s going to have to jump or build his own ladder. He has completely contrived this crisis, so there should be no give on our part. China is watching \u2014 and Taiwan is sweating \u2014 everything we do in reaction to Vlad right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us back to the central question: Vlad, why are you in that tree?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For starters, don\u2019t look for the answer in Ukraine. If Putin decides indeed to take another bite out of Ukraine, it will be first and foremost because Putin thinks it will strengthen his chance of staying in power in Russia<\/em>, which for him is always paramount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand how invading Ukraine again could serve that end, one has to go back to the shift Putin made in the last decade: He went from selling himself to the Russian people as the leader who would enable them to overcome their poverty of wealth in the post-Cold War era to the leader who would enable them to overcome their poverty of dignity in the post-Cold War era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned this from Leon Aron, a Russia expert at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of \u201cYeltsin: A Revolutionary Life,\u201d<\/a> who is now writing a book about the future of Putin\u2019s Russia. The way Aron put it, when Putin came to power at the end of 1999, he was able to benefit from the restructuring of the Russian economy by Boris Yeltsin; from significant foreign investment; from rising oil, gas and mineral prices; and from improved political stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russians associated Putin\u2019s first two terms \u2014 2000 to 2008 \u2014 \u201cwith unprecedented wealth accumulation in modern Russian history,\u201d said Aron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But beginning in 2011 and stretching all the way to 2019, Russia\u2019s economy stagnated because of lower energy prices and, most of all, institutional impediments to growth: Putin\u2019s preference to tap Russia\u2019s natural resources, not its human resources. No Silicon Valleys for him \u2014 except cyberhackers. That would require real rule of law, secure property rights and the unleashing of talented people, who ask too many questions like, \u201cVlad, where did your<\/em> money come from?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPutin\u2019s response to this economic stagnation and the political peril it represented was to shift the basis of his regime\u2019s legitimacy from economic progress, which made Putin so popular in his first two terms in office, to Putin as the defender of a motherland besieged by the West,\u201d Aron told me. \u201cPutin concluded that if he was going to be a president for life, he had to be a wartime president<\/em> for life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing in The Hill, Aron quoted<\/a> Russian opposition columnist Sergei Medvedev as recently observing: \u201cPutin has forged a nation of war that has battened the hatches and looks at the world through a lookout slit of a tank. \u2026 The degree of military-patriotic hysteria [in] Russia today brings to mind the U.S.S.R. of the 1930s, the era of athletes\u2019 parades, tank mock-ups and dirigibles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is classic wag-the-dog politics. Putin is a thug, but he\u2019s a thug with an authentic Russian cultural soul that resonates with his people. His obsession with the Soviet Union and his nostalgia for the power, glory and dignity it gave him and his generation of Russians run deep. He was not exaggerating when he declared in 2005 that the breakup of the Soviet Union was \u201cthe <\/a>greatest<\/em><\/a> geopolitical catastrophe\u201d<\/a> of the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And because Ukraine, and its capital, Kyiv, played a central role long ago in Russian history, and because Ukraine was a bulwark and breadbasket of the Soviet Union in its heyday, and because perhaps eight million ethnic Russians still live in Ukraine (out of 43 million), Putin claims that it is his \u201cduty<\/a>\u201d to reunite Russia and Ukraine. He blithely ignores the fact that Ukraine has its own language, history and post-Soviet generation that believes its duty is to be independent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Putin, losing Ukraine \u201cis like an amputation,\u201d remarked political scientist Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. \u201cPutin looks at Ukraine and Belarus as part of Russia\u2019s civilizational and cultural space. He thinks the Ukrainian state is totally artificial and that Ukrainian nationalism is not authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason Putin has accelerated his Ukraine threat \u2014 which I would call \u201cmarry me or I will kill you\u201d \u2014 is that he knows that under Ukraine\u2019s current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the process of Ukrainization has accelerated and the Russian language is being pushed out of schools and Russian television out of the media space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Said Krastev: \u201cPutin knows that in 10 years the young generation in Ukraine will not be speaking Russian at all, and it will have no identification with Russian culture.\u201d Maybe best to act now, thinks Putin, before the Ukrainian Army gets bigger, better trained and better armed \u2014 and while Europe and America are in disarray over Covid and in no mood for war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there are just the raw geopolitical motives. In creating the crisis around Ukraine, said Krastev, \u201cPutin is inviting the West to a funeral for the post-Cold War order.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Putin, the post-Cold War order was something imposed on Russia and Boris Yeltsin when Russia was weak. It involved not only pushing NATO into Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet NATO \u2014 the Warsaw Pact \u2014 but also pushing NATO and European Union influence into the former Soviet empire itself, in places like Ukraine and Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin\u2019s troop buildup says to the West: Either we negotiate a new post-Cold War order or I will start a post-post-Cold War confrontation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As longtime readers of this column know, I was a vigorous opponent<\/a> of NATO expansion after the Cold War. It is one of the stupidest things we ever did \u2014 focusing on \u201cNATOizing\u201d Poland and Hungary rather than building on an amazing, largely nonviolent, democratic revolution in Russia and locking it into the West. Nurturing that Russian revolution to fruition would not have been simple, but by pressing ahead with NATO expansion we made it easy for an autocratic nationalist like Putin to lock himself in power by telling the Russian people that only he could keep NATO and the West from destroying Russia \u2014 militarily, culturally and religiously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, I don\u2019t weep for Putin. He is the human embodiment of one of the oldest Russian fables: A Russian peasant pleads to God for aid after he sees that his better-off neighbor has just obtained a cow. When God asks the peasant how he can help, the peasant says, \u201cKill my neighbor\u2019s cow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last thing that Putin wants is a thriving Ukraine that joins the European Union and develops its people and economy beyond Putin\u2019s underperforming, autocratic Russia. He wants Ukraine to fail, the E.U. to fracture and America to have Donald Trump as president for life so we\u2019ll be in permanent chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin would rather see our cow die than do what it takes to raise a healthy cow of his own. He\u2019s always looking for dignity in all the wrong places. He\u2019s rather pathetic \u2014 but alsoarmed and dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times is committed to publishing <\/em>a diversity of letters<\/em><\/a> to the editor. We\u2019d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some <\/em>tips<\/em><\/a>. And here\u2019s our email: <\/em>letters@nytimes.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Twitter (@NYTopinion)<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Instagram<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n