Why Putin will invade: War is the place where logic and

reason go to die
By Lucian K. Truscott IV, Salon - Commentary
Published February 19, 2022

Vladimir Putin (Shutterstock)

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The big news on Thursday morning was that President Biden had sent a letter to
President Putin and was awaiting his reply. Then the big news changed: They had
i d P ti ' l d iti hil it " l d " All f thi f ll d
received Putin's reply and were waiting while it was "analyzed." All of this followed
the big news from Wednesday, shooting down the Russian claim that they had moved
forces back from the border with Ukraine when, according to Western sources, they
had moved 7,000 more troops into position to attack.

This article first appeared in Salon.

It's never a good sign — in fact, I'll coin an acronym for it: INAGS — when national
leaders stop talking to each other face-to-face or on the phone and start
communicating by letter. It's never a good sign when a country's spokesman or its
national leader starts telling lies that can be easily disproved. In fact, it's never a
good sign when anyone, especially the leader of a nuclear power, decides to go with
that old chestnut, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? because it
means that logic and reason and facts have once again disappeared into the black
hole all authoritarians dig for themselves in the end: the war against reality itself.

Vladimir Putin is conducting what amounts to an object lesson for authoritarians

everywhere. Over a period of months, he has moved 60 percent of all Russian combat
land forces into threatening positions around Ukraine, and then announced he has
"no intention" of attacking. The Russian "reason" for deploying such a massive
display of military might around the entire border of Ukraine, including its southern
coast is so blatant a lie, it leaves you breathless.

RELATED: What's going to happen in Ukraine? Total war, nothing at all or

somewhere in between?

The mistake I made from the beginning of this crisis was to assume there is a logic to
what Putin is doing. There is no logic. It makes no sense at all for him to move
150,000 soldiers (perhaps now 190,000) hundreds of miles across Russia and park
them in the boonies around Ukraine for no reason, especially when they are
equipped with tanks and combat helicopters and cannons and rocket launchers and
backed up by support units like field hospitals and food and ammunition supplies. It
only makes sense if he intends to use all those forces — but using them doesn't make
sense, either.

See what I mean? War is a black hole that kills logic and reason just as surely as it
kills human beings. Diplomacy makes sense. Nobody dies when countries talk to
each other. Talking saves lives because it is not war, which costs lives the minute the
shooting starts.
shooting starts.

But you cannot think this way with Vladimir Putin, because it's all personal to him.
His claim that the breakup of the Soviet Union "was the greatest geopolitical tragedy
of the 20th century" wasn't about the end of the Soviet empire. It was about him. It
was a tragedy for him, not for Russia. The country of Russia is better off today than it
was before 1990 or 1991. The shelves of its stores are full of food and clothing and
even luxury items. Its people in the cities and far-flung rural areas are not starving.
Russians can make money and save it. They can travel to other countries. They are
not walled in from the rest of the world.

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But it's not about Russia, and it's not about the Russian people. It's about him.

Everything with Putin is about how he looks. Does he look "strong" and "powerful," or
does he look "weak?" You know you're dealing with an authoritarian personality
when you hear those words again and again. Anything weak is bad. Anything strong
is good. If that reminds you of someone else who used the same words to describe
himself, you are correct. If the enormity of Putin's lies about Ukraine remind you of
someone else's numerous and gigantic lies, bingo again! It's like a certain political
party denying that a violent assault was a violent assault and calling it "legitimate
political discourse." Putin is aiming a gun at Ukraine and saying, "Gun? What gun? I
don't see a gun."

Putin's rationale, if it can be called that, for massing his forces around Ukraine is that
he is protecting Russia from threats by NATO forces. There is no threat by NATO to
Russia of course, and it was pathetic on Thursday to watch Secretary of State Antony
Blinken when he addressed the UN Security Council and felt the need to reassure
everyone that he was "not here to start a war but to prevent one." It was an obvious
reference to the last time a nation had amassed huge combat forces on the border of
another country and its secretary of state addressed the same Security Council. That
time, which was less than 20 years ago, it was Colin Powell, and he wasn't trying to
prevent a war, he was providing "evidence" intended to start one. We were the
Russians in 2003, and Iraq was Ukraine, and that fact hung above Blinken's head on
Thursday like a dark cloud. When he listed all the justifications U.S. intelligence
agencies believe Putin might use to attack Ukraine, even though he was probably
using facts on the ground and real intelligence, not half-baked guesses and wishful
using facts on the ground and real intelligence, not half baked guesses and wishful
thinking dreamed up by a gaggle of rep-tie sportin' neocons with itchy trigger
fingers, every word he said was suspect.

Despite indications that the U.S. isn't having any problem rallying allies around the
use of sanctions against Putin and Russia if they attack, the plain fact is that
sanctions won't work — even sanctions designed to hurt Putin and his close allies
and Russian oligarchs personally. He doesn't care if sanctions against Russian banks
will mean that Moscow dwellers won't be able to withdraw cash from their local ATM
as long as he looks tough, as long as he looks strong, as long as he looks like he's
getting his way. Putin's power in Russia doesn't depend on votes. It depends on his
ability to invent enemies and intimidate them. He exists at the top of Russia's
political system and government as a faded memory of a Russia that he's trying to
bring back to life with images of tanks and missiles and warships and bombers and
attack helicopters. He's trying to force an inconvenient fact down the memory hole:
that the last time Russia deployed its military might it got its ass spanked by a ragtag
bunch of AK-47 wielding guerillas wearing tattered shalwar kameez and flip-flops.
He wasn't in charge when Russia was defeated in Afghanistan, but that doesn't
matter to him, nor does the recent defeat of his imagined enemy, the U.S., by the
same country. He's not a "loser," and Russia didn't lose that war, and when the Soviet
Union collapsed, it wasn't his fault because the empire was stolen from him. In fact,
his entire adventure with Ukraine can be seen as his own personal "stop the steal"
moment. Russia won't be humiliated any longer and neither will he. He's going to
overturn Russia's loss of the Cold War.

Joe Biden and Antony Blinken are doing their best to give diplomacy every chance.
On Thursday, Blinken offered to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
next week in Europe. But the problem with diplomacy is that it's not tough. Nobody
dies. You don't get to take a country's capital, the way we took Baghdad, with
diplomacy. You take a capital with guns and tanks and cannons and attack
helicopters and jet bombers and missiles. You take what isn't yours by going to war.

The decision on Friday by Russia's puppet rebel "leader" in the Donbas region to
begin evacuating civilians from the breakaway eastern edge of Ukraine into Russia
indicates that is where Putin will go to reclaim Russia's honor. It's pretty clear he
intends to "take" the ethnically Russian slice of eastern Ukraine, but it remains to be
seen what other parts of that nation he will attack and how much of its territory he
will attempt to dominate. His problem is the same one we had in Iraq, even if we
 didn't know it at the time. The forces he has arrayed on Ukraine's border are almost
exactly the same size and are of the same make-up we used in 2003. We had enough
troops to "take" Baghdad, but then what? We learned over the next seven or eight
years just how huge were our delusions about our own power, and now we're dealing
with the same lesson in Afghanistan.

President Biden announced on Friday evening that U.S. intelligence believes Putin
has made the decision to invade Ukraine. When his forces cross the border with
Ukraine, he will start the first land war on the European continent in more than 80
years. He's doing it to look tough and strong. He's doing it to Make Russia Great
Again.

We dodged a bullet enduring the four-year rule of our own unhinged egomaniacal
lunatic. But this time, another grievously damaged man will try to fill the hole in his
soul with thousands of dead, the rubble of cities and the broken dreams and bodies
of children. It won't work. His war won't fill holes, it will make them

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