The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Could be Existentially Destabilizing

If you haven’t taken the time to watch the video below, please do so, because this is some serious shit. Some of it is, if I can borrow a phrase from the brilliant Craig Mazin, is “statecraft”, but the perspective of Russian sentiments about the Americans overplaying their hand after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the feelings that that inspired, should not be ignored. Putin came into power on the sentiment of someone who could and would push back against the perception of Western pushiness. I used to think, “Well at least they didn’t elect Zhirinovsky!”, but could that perspective have been naive?

The Ukrainian invasion is complicated and has many motivations. To address the elephant in the room, it is useful to acknowledge the historical psychological impact on the Russian people of two devastating invasions in just over two hundred years. In the case of Bonaparte, with the exception of a couple of early battles, Russian forces were basically on a full-on sprint eastward delaying conflict with Napoleon’s Grande Armée. Napoleon probably envisioned having a “quick little victory” where he won a couple of battles, puffed his chest out, coerced Alexander I of Russia (a Francophile) into stopping trade with Britain (and ceasing allowing British ships in Russian ports), at which point they would have met like Gentleman once Bonaparte got his way.

But the benefit of history being hindsight (the question of who’s hindsight I’ll leave for another day), the Russians were not…