Vladimir Putin has a few problems. Well, he has a few hundred million problems, but we’re only going to look at three, all of which derive from his biggest problem: himself. When you need to control or destroy other people to live your own life, the real problem is you.
Since we are something of an amateur military historian (our bestselling book to date is Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know; that's not my title or my editor’s, anybody can and should read it if they’re interested in the wars in Eastern and Central Europe against the Turks, as a number of reviewers noted), we will limit our selection from the vast field of Putin’s Problems to those of a military nature, and then select only what we think are the three top choices . . . given our mood today. We’ll probably have different choices tomorrow, depending on how we feel. So, what are our choices?
· Starting a War of Conquest,
· Continuing a War of Conquest, and
· Using Mercenaries and Not Paying Them (oops).
For today let's look at the mistake of starting a war of conquest. It may surprise many people, but enduring empires are not usually built by conquest. The Roman Empire lasted until 1918, at least in some form, and was built by treaty, trade, and intimidation — and because membership in the Empire offered benefits that non-membership did not.
The classical Roman Empire “fell” because of internal power struggles, and the problems caused by massive waves of barbarian immigration due to people who wanted in on a good thing. So many people wanted to enter the Empire the system couldn’t handle it and imploded (they didn’t have the Economic Democracy Act, something the people who complain about immigration to the United States might want to think about). It didn't help any when different power groups in the Empire engaged in suicidal power struggles.
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| Alexander the Greater than Putin Will Ever Be |
Alexander the Great conquered more territory than anyone in history, and his empire died almost as soon as he did. Alexander could conquer territory, but he couldn’t hold territory, despite the fact he cared for his soldiers and they and many citizens idolized (even deified) him. Putin — who is no Alexander! — spends the lives of his soldiers recklessly to gain a few square meters of territory. Citizens and soldiers are more likely to fear Putin than idolize him.
Putin also evidently forgets that if all your soldiers die to take the ground, there won’t be anyone left to hold the ground . . . and you can’t kill everybody in the conquered territories. As the English discovered during the Munster Plantation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Ireland when Irish people were evicted from their lands and replaced by or the land “planted” with English settlers, an evicted Irishman living soon meant an English planter dead.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the French conquered Spain, but were never able to occupy anything other than the cities and held even those very precariously. The Spanish army couldn’t stand up to Napoleon’s military genius (and Putin should realize by this time he is no Napoleon!), but Napoleon’s brilliance was no match for the ordinary Spanish citizens, who simply refused to admit defeat.
French troops or anyone else under the Tricolor were not safe outside the cities, and often not even there. Spanish peasants (small landowners, not a pejorative) and others organized themselves into informal armies — it’s where the term “guerilla” comes from — and killed anything and everything French they could lay their hands on. This was no small help to Wellington during the Peninsular War when the Spanish aided the English all they could and harried the French mercilessly.
Russian peasants and serfs did the same thing to the remnants of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow . . . which Putin should keep in mind. As Sir Robert Wilson pointed out, the Russian army couldn’t stand up to Napoleon — or (more accurately) wouldn’t. The French were defeated by the weather and ordinary Russians, the same sort Putin despises even as he uses them to enhance his wealth and glory. This allowed Napoleon to retain his reputation as an undefeated military commander, for which both the French under Napoleon and the Allies under the Iron Duke paid at Waterloo, ending the Hundred Days.
As for Hitler and the Third Reich, the “Thousand Year Reich” (a mystical belief Hitler at first manipulated and then, apparently, adopted wholeheartedly along with other theosophical and New Age concepts) didn’t last a quarter century and did not usher in the New Age of Teutonic Supermen. Hitler and Stalin were adept at slaughtering millions to rid the world of people inferior to them, but neither succeeded.
Interestingly, where Hitler both used and was used by “Ariosophy” (Aryan Theosophy) and employed a spurious mythic Teutonic history to justify and glorify the invented Aryan Master Race, Putin seems to be an adherent of “the New Chronology.” The New Chronology is a pseudohistorical theory proposed by Anatoly Fomenko to justify and glorify the Slavic Master Race and is at least as whacko as Ariosophy . . . and reportedly anywhere from a third to two-thirds of the people in Russia believe in it. History as we know it was invented by the Vatican and the Jesuits . . . Moscow is the real Rome and the source of all civilization . . . Jesus was crucified in Crimea in the twelfth century . . . it gets worse . . .
So, evidently conquest is not the best way to build an empire, even if you are a military genius, which Putin most certainly is not. Even if you decide to go that route, you’d better have some reasonable justification . . . which Putin most certainly does not. He himself tacitly admits the lack of justification when he claims Ukraine “provoked” him. Putin seems to have little understanding of the meaning of “provocation.”
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| Sun Tzu |
Asserting provocation does not justify anything; it is not a defense, but an attempt to ameliorate or escape punishment for an offense. Claiming you were provoked is an admission of guilt; you are arguing yes, you did something wrong, but only because the other party or parties you harmed did something first. What Putin claims provoked him seems a trifle vague at times, not to mention a little self-serving, even insane. His asserting provocation not only fails to justify his actions (which it couldn’t in any event) but demonstrates his profound arrogance and opinion of the intelligence of anyone who doesn’t worship him as a god.
So, one of Putin’s biggest problems is to think that war — and a war of conquest, at that — is a substitute for or extension of politics. In The Art of War, the legendary Sun Tzu disagreed, as he did with the next problem of Putin’s we will look at next week: continuing a war of conquest (or any other kind) long after it is evident it is suicidal.
#30#
