The end of Vladimir Putin
Putin is now asking China for military help, which was always going to be his final desperation ploy if it ever got bad enough for him. It’s like being so desperate for money you’re reduced to asking a loan shark for money, even though you know how awful the terms of the loan would be, all while knowing you’re going to get turned down anyway.
This is likely good news for the rest of us, not bad news. It means Putin is already completely out of viable options. He’s reduced to wishful thinking as a strategy – and he’s sabotaging himself as a result of that wishful thinking. Not only did Putin just tip off to China that he’s definitely going to lose, he should have known that the U.S. intel community would learn about it, thus tipping off the entire world that Putin is definitely going to lose.
We’re going to see a lot of arguments that, even once China presumably finishes laughing at Putin’s request, we’re now in more danger than ever. But I would argue the opposite. It’s intuitively clear that if Putin were winning in Ukraine, we’d be in more danger, because then he’d be more inclined to invade NATO nations and such. So by that same logic, the fact that Putin is losing means we’re in less danger.
This still doesn’t mean no danger. These are treacherous times. But our odds of surviving this are surely higher now than they were when Russia first invaded Ukraine, and we didn’t yet know if there was even a way to stymie Putin, let alone defeat him. Now Ukraine has depleted what was left of his military, the world has taken much of his money and economic leverage, his own people are in the streets protesting against him, and his oligarchs have to be wondering if it’s time to do to Putin what Putin has often done to others.
We’re going to hear people argue that because Putin is losing so badly, and because China is about to refuse his desperate ploy, we’re all doomed. Putin will figure out it’s over for him and then just nuke everybody, right? That’s the narrative that’ll get you the most retweets these days, for sure. But the thing about Putin is that his cognitive abilities are clearly compromised. If he’s delusional enough to have thought there was any hope China’s military was going to bail him out of this, then he’s probably delusional enough to convince himself that his next guaranteed to fail ploy is somehow going to save him.
As long as Putin keeps convincing himself that he has some chance of winning all of this, he’ll likely keep moving forward with his ongoing losses. As this process further weakens him and further pushes Russians to the brink, it’ll hopefully create an opening for him to be overthrown from within – which he may not see coming if he’s still convincing himself that he’s somehow winning.
Put another way: there will be some degree of continued danger as long as Vladimir Putin continues to exist on the world stage. But do you really think we’d be more safe if Putin were winning? Of course not. Don’t let fear cripple you to the point that you’re rooting for your own side to lose.
