War is paralyzing, even for those unconnected with it.
You can’t make plans. You have no energy. You have no idea what’s going to happen next.
I go back and forth. One day I think Ukraine can win this thing, or at least hang on until Putin is deposed. The next day I think they’re doomed, and the world with it.
Regardless of the result it’s already clear that Ukraine and Russia must be rebuilt. Ukraine, physically. Russia, politically.
It’s Russia that’s the biggest problem. It can’t sustain a Ukraine occupation. We couldn’t sustain one in Iraq, or even Afghanistan. Yet Putin thinks he can, and so-called “analysts” in the West agree. They don’t think the Russian people can do anything, nor do they think the Ukranians can once occupied.
This is naïve.
Autocrats are like porcelain. They are unbreakable until they suddenly break. We have seen this countless times in my lifetime. Why shouldn’t it happen to Putin? He has no successor, no system of governance. He has no support, no economic base. He has a Potemkin military and, thus, a hollow police state. He’s Tito, he’s Qaddafi, he’s the Shah of Iran.
That he’ll fall is certain. When he’ll fall is uncertain. How much more death will occur before then? That’s what is paralyzing.
But there are some certainties emerging. One that our media still can’t get its head around is that the Republican Party is doomed. The Trump wing is too closely associated with Putin, which is political death. It’s going to be very easy to associate state parties’ social policies with those of Putin as well. That’s also political death.
Despite this, we are paralyzed in the here and now. We don’t know what to do. But I think we will figure it out. Once the result is clear, whatever it is, a generation of Americans will overcome all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I still believe that’s going to be the legacy of this war, a turning point in global history, out of the 20th century battle for resources among nation states, toward a global technology civilization.
But it’s always possible I’m just a cockeyed optimist.
