• HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
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    6 months ago

    I support Putin, because there is no practical alternative in the near future.

    It’s not like Russia has a well-oiled transition machine where if he were to leave office, everything would smoothly shift to a new regime that brought unicorns and love to all.

    We’d be rolling the dice on a rogue’s gallery:

    Maybe we’d get someone Yeltsin-ish, who is buddy-buddy with the West by allowing the widescale plundering of Russia’s assets, and further driving their quality-of-life metrics into the dirt, starting the cycle that leads to another strongman.

    Maybe we’d get someone even more militant than Putin, especially if the war leaves them spiritually depantsed. Launches nukes or directly engages a NATO member. Putin may have a taste for blood, but he’s not on a suicide mission.

    Or maybe we’d just get someone incapable of holding the federation together, creating a new Balkan-style slow-motion crisis. Whee! Squabbling new nuclear states with the GNP of a Carl’s Jr. franchise and unknown leadership… that’s not going to cause proliferation issues.

    I still believe there are options to wind down the war, but the West will refuse anything that smacks of a concession for as long as possible. Conversely, I suspect what Putin wanted from day 1 was some form of formal concession-- the fact he got foreign powers to give up something is more important than the specifics delivered, for the sake of displaying his power at home.