Vladmir Putin was on 60 Minutes this weeend and he showed us that no matter what else he is, he is a leader. He understands what it is for a country to survive and he makes no excuses for what he is or what his goals are.
He states frankly that his goal in going into Syria is to preserve Assad and the existing legitimate government. He understands more than anything else that a country needs a strong government to exist and make a livable place for its people to exist. This is something that we in the west, have not learned; this despite the fact that we have already destroyed two countries in the Middle East and North Africa and have laid waste to Afghanistan for over a decade.
Sure Assad is a monster but he’s Syria’s monster and without him that country faces the fate of Iraq and Libya, neither of which are now habitable.
When asked about Assad, Putin points out that he feels the Syrian people are the ones who should decide who governs them but that the forces currently opposing Assad are primarily not Syrian but a conglomerate of ISIS and other terrorist organizations, all looking for a position of power. What he does not say but intimates is that if Assad is defeated Syria will come to look very much like Iraq and Libya, destroyed wastelands where the people are neither safe nor able to survive and so the international community will have to deal with many more millions of refugees.
To his credit, Putin, when questioned about the Ukraine, didn’t, until Charlie Rose brought it up, mention that all the trouble there started because the U.S. helped overthrow the existing legitimate government of that country. All he said is that Ukraine has always been Russia’s closest neighbor and that Russia has an interest in what happens in that country. But when Rose broached the subject he unequivocally stated that he knows everything about the American planned, manned and led coup of Yanokovich in that country.
Putin also has some very strong statements about America’s presence in Europe, the presence of nuclear armed bases in various European countries and the fact that although Russia has mobilized troops along various borders, they are all on Russian soil while all the American weaponry is on European soil.
This writer sees an interesting parallel between our intervention in Ukraine and the Soviet interest in Cuba during the Kennedy administration. We made Khrushchev back off in that confrontation. It is still to be seen what Russia will do about our interference in a nation in their zone of interest.
One listens to Putin and what he says, as opposed to many of our own politicians, actually makes logical sense. There is no consideration that he is not a strong, smart, dedicated leader who is willing to do whatever it takes to keep his country where he thinks it belongs on the world stage. Does this make him a monster? Maybe, but then it makes almost every other world leader a monster too. He understands his job and is willing to make moves that we or others like us do not agree with, but so do many of our own leaders. Is his current movement along the Ukraine borders any more offensive than Bush’s invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan? Is his saber rattling in Syria any worse than what Obama did in Libya?
Russia and before them the Soviet Union has done some horrible things over the years but so have we, and all our allies. This country has not made an altruistic move on the international stage since we invaded Germany during WWII. Even our fight against Japan was not altruistic. It was revenge for their attack in Pearl Harbor. Every battle we have been in since then, has been, at least partially, encouraged by something that we would gain by the fight. No war in which we have participated in the last 70n years has been conducted just to help the world in general. We have always had something material to gain. How the hell do we throw stones at Russia or anyone else with a history like this?