The sum of all fears
When a solipsistic psychopath rules a nation and enunciates his delusional paranoia as a matter of national policy, Vladimir Putin’s roadmap for Russia is the result. It’s the rationale of a pharaoh ordering that his entire household guard and servants be slaughtered upon his own death to better serve him in the afterlife. That is to say, it provides neither logic nor comfort to anyone who isn’t named Vladimir Putin. Somebody like Caligula would get it. The rest of us? Not so much.
So when Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s chief spokesman, refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons should Russia fail to achieve its goals in Ukraine, I doubt he was speaking for himself, unless of course, he, too, is a delusional psychopath. And what are the odds? No, Mr. Peskov says what he says because he knows Vladimir will have him murdered if he doesn’t, and find someone else to say it anyway.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, Peskov repeatedly refused to rule out that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons against what Moscow saw as an “existential threat.” When asked under what conditions Putin would use Russia’s nuclear capability, Peskov replied, “if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be.” And what is an existential threat? Russia failing to achieve its goals in Ukraine.
Well, thus far Russia has failed to achieve its goals in Ukraine, and the probability that it won’t grows more certain with each passing day. Russia is stalled on the road to Kyiv not unlike the way Germany was stalled on the road to Stalingrad, and I don’t think we have any doubts about what Hitler would have done had he had nukes. Like Hitler, Putin is not exactly known as a man of infinite patience.
If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it is. Americans in particular are used to having their lives and loved ones held hostage by a narcissistic asshole. In the beginning of the era of Covid, an era we are all still firmly in, when Trump refused to act and refused to acknowledge Covid as an actual threat, Americans died by the hundreds of thousands. And they still are, thanks to the out-of-control pandemic Trump allowed to get a toehold in the United States. Americans have come to accept death as the natural consequence of an easily-bruised ego. It’s practically a twenty-first century proverb.
Right now Vladimir Putin isn’t getting his way, and like the nauseating spoiled child he is, he’s threatening to throw the ultimate tantrum by killing us all. So here we go again, another bat-shit crazy psychopath in charge. And who is likelier than Congressional Republicans to be on his side?
It really is hard to believe how quickly the party of anti-communism has rebranded itself into Moscow’s new favorite propaganda toy. But there it is. I wonder what they would think if Putin decided that his not reaching his goals constitutes an existential threat, and his fantasy existential threat should therefore become the actual existential threat for the rest of us? Would Republicans finally regret carrying water for Vladimir Putin? I doubt it. Because, brothers and sisters, this is the way the world ends: not just with a bang, but a lie. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.