Putin’s Singular Miscalculation
I will make this mercifully if not shamefully brief because it is more hypothesis than thesis.
It occurred to me during one of my walks where I do my best, and oftentimes most outlandish, thinking. I will let you be the judge of which it is.
Many will say that Putin’s miscalculation in the current conflict was in the resolve the Ukrainian people and of their leader President Volodymyr Zelinsky and an inflated sense of the resolve/capability of the Russian military to do battle.
That is no doubt true, but I offer for your consideration an additional hypothesis.
Former President Trump has said on several occasions that if he were President this conflict never would have happened, possibly overestimating his positive influence with his friend, Putin, mixed with his saber rattling that Putin never would have dared such a thing given the threat of how Trump and America would respond.
Quite the contrary, is it possible that this conflict occurred precisely because Trump had been President and was so successful in dividing America and the rest of the allied world that Putin believed, “A house divided would not stand (because of too much domestic turmoil) and a globally divisive President would also create a ‘free world’ sufficiently in confusion, if not chaos, that it could be the most opportune time to start a conflict with a sovereign nation next door.”
Putin would not have been alone in thinking that, because the coming together by so much of the world in defense of Ukraine and against Russia has been so stunning that few people may have believed that it could happen is such a divided self-absorbed, populist globe.
What do you think?
Or should I maybe just keep walking and stop talking.
