Putin is right

The Russian chieftain has abandoned pretence. What’s going on in the Ukraine, he explained (through one of his mouthpieces), should no longer be called a ‘military operation’.

It’s actually a war. And not any old war either. It’s the beginning of the Third World War.

For once, Putin didn’t lie. That’s exactly what is going on. I’ve been saying this for almost two months, and I have to compliment Vlad for finally owning up to the obvious truth.

It is indeed the Third World War, and Putin plans to win it. His chances of doing so will greatly improve unless the West joins the conflict. The first step would be to realise what’s unfolding before our eyes and stop wallowing in self-denial.

Fascist dictators ought to be believed because, unlike democratic politicians, they can make their objectives plain. After all, they aren’t accountable to public opinion, and they don’t have to suffer a free press screaming bloody murder whenever they do something monstrous.

The Kremlin gang is no longer happy with their palaces, yachts, jets and harems. All those good things in life have intoxicated them so deeply that they now want to conquer the world.

Whenever some friend or foe of the regime points out this objective, the world bursts out laughing. Just look at the state of the Russian economy, says the world once it has caught its breath after the paroxysms of merriment. What is it, two per cent of global GDP?

The Russian army has proved incapable of occupying even the Ukraine. And now they want to occupy all five continents? How ridiculous can you get?

The world has had plenty of experience practising guffawing incredulity. The most obvious example was the global response to Hitler’s plans to cleanse Europe of Jews, laid down in quite some detail in Mein Kampf.

Considering that the book was written in 1925, when Hitler was in prison after his unsuccessful putsch, those plans sounded risible. First, the Nazis would have to take over Germany, which was clearly impossible.

But even assuming in a wild dream that they could do that, Germany would then have to conquer the places where most European Jews lived, which was to say most of Europe.

Just look at the state of the German economy, sneered the naysayers. It’s a basket case after the combined effects of the war and Versailles. Germany will never again be strong enough to fight even a local war. She isn’t even allowed to have an army worthy of the name.

Global conquest? The naysayers were convulsed with derisory laughter. Yet just 14 years later no one was laughing any longer.

It’s true that so far Russia has been unable to occupy the Ukraine, and God knows she tried. One doesn’t have to be a military strategist to know that Russia will never be able to occupy even Eastern Europe, never mind your Germanys, Frances and Britains.

Yet people who are comforted by that realisation are like the generals who, according to Churchill, always fight the last war. And fair enough, in the Second World War both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union set for themselves the objective of physically occupying much of the world, starting with Europe.

And both evil regimes largely, though not entirely, succeeded in achieving those objectives. In that pre-nuclear, pre-electronic, pre-globalised age it was still possible for a determined aggressor to put its garrison into most European capitals. Not for ever perhaps, but for a few years or decades.

The world is no longer like that. Neither Hitler nor Stalin could make a credible threat to wipe out the world at the push of a button. Neither Hitler nor Stalin could paralyse an enemy’s economy with a few strokes of computer keys. Neither Hitler nor Stalin could impose his terms on global financial markets.

Putin can do all those things, as he has been threatening to do for 20 years. It’s not for nothing that his General Staff has developed the concept of hybrid war.

The hybrid is an ogre that doesn’t just eat humans. It controls them by a threat of cannibalism. To that strategic end it deploys many tactics, some involving violence, some more subtle.

All of them are underpinned with the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Putin is saying in plain Russian that he isn’t afraid of using doomsday weapons, and neither does he subscribe to the MAD doctrine.

He knows that any use of nuclear weapons, even low-yield ones, could escalate to a strategic shootout. However, he is certain that the West would do anything – anything – to avoid such a possibility.

Friends, Westerners, countrymen, lend Putin your ears, as Shakespeare would say. Listen to what he is saying. Believe what he says.

From the very start, he has been stating in the clearest of terms that “de-Nazifying and de-militarising” the Ukraine is only an intermediate objective, a step along the way. His real aim is to rid the world of the American hegemony, to reshape the post-1945 world order of which America has been the principal guarantor.

In other words, Putin has set out to replace American hegemony with his own. And if the world resists, he’s ready to push that button, see if he cares.

Putin doesn’t want to occupy Europe. He wants to finlandise it, a term much in use until 1991. Finland was technically neutral at the time, but in practice she had to adjust her foreign policy to the Soviets’ orders. The Soviets even had veto power over ministerial appointments. That wasn’t occupation. But it was control.

That’s exactly what Putin is after. He wants to dictate terms, certainly to Europe, possibly to the whole world, this side of China. If allowed to do so, Russian nazified bandits would gain freedom of the continent, using it as their own bailiwick kept up as a source of finance, technology, entertainment, medical care and picturesque mooring facilities for 500-foot yachts.

That bailiwick would have to adjust its policies to Russia’s whims. Failure to do so would be cause for chastisement with the odd bombing raid or a quick raping and looting foray into the offender’s cities. And the cudgel of the ultimate punishment with thermonuclear weapons would always be in plain view.

Commentators mocking the performance of the Russian army in the Ukraine or gloating over the sinking of the Moskva should contain themselves. Instead they’d be well-advised to consider their country’s response should Putin hit, say, Kharkov with a tactical nuke.

Messrs Biden and Johnson are uttering belligerent warnings of a stern response. But how stern? Would they respond in kind, knowing that this could escalate to Armageddon?

I’m not saying they wouldn’t, and I’m not saying they would. But the wrong answer to that question may well initiate the dystopic scenario I outlined above.

If Russia is allowed to subjugate the Ukraine by using nuclear or chemical weapons (there seems to be no other way) with impunity, the West will suffer the fate of a wimpish boy who submits to the courtyard bully once, only then to become his bitch in perpetuity.

When you are riding a tiger, say Asian sages, the most dangerous thing is to stop. Putin is riding the tiger of an escalating global conflict, and he won’t stop unless forced to do so.

He won’t accept defeat because that would be suicidal not only for him personally but for the whole project of a kleptofascist Russia lording it over the West. Let’s ponder this, before our thoughts turn to the Resurrection of Our Lord.