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Playing Chicken
Jun. 3rd, 2022 10:02 amhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/russia-putin-economy-attrition-war/
This article quotes an anonymous Russian billionaire, saying that Putin thinks that in a war of attrition, the West will lose interest, because we are vulnerable to election cycles. Not anonymous government officials are also quoted, asserting that the sanctions are harder on the US than they are on Russia.
I find this .. odd? The Soviets were in Afghanistan for 10 years. We lasted for 20. They didn’t even ever do anything to us. Basically, a lunatic from Saudi Arabia sponsored an attack on US soil, while he was living in Pakistan. We made a deal with Pakistan — which was helping to hide the responsible party — to go in and attack Afghanistan and it took us 20 years to get ourselves back out of that piece of nonsense and even then elements of our military (albeit the nuttier ones) wanted us to stay longer.
For reference purposes, that 20 years in Afghanistan spanned these elections:
2004 — won by the idiot who decided attacking Afghanistan to get the Saudi lunatic who lived in Pakistan. Both candidates supported continuing the war (and another, even less justified war)
2008 — won by the opposite party because term limits and unrelated global economic collapse
2012 — incumbent won, after having the Saudi lunatic found in Pakistan and executed
2016 — opposite party won because term limits, sexism, electoral college and Putin’s sponsorship
2020 — incumbent lost, because Putin’s involvement became apparent, also, global pandemic, also, winner was VP under term limited predecessor
Putin’s perspective on our elections is colored by the high degree of influence he has had over several of them.
The article goes on:
“The Kremlin’s aggressive stance seems to reflect the thinking of Nikolai Patrushev, the hawkish head of Russia’s Security Council, who served with Putin in the Leningrad KGB and is increasingly seen as a hard-line ideologue driving Russia’s war in Ukraine.” His theory is: everyone will starve, they will blame the West for that starvation, the starvation will cause migration of people to Europe, and that migration to Europe will, well, let’s let that guy say it:
“I’m not sure Europe will survive the crisis,” Patrushev told Russian state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta in one of the interviews.”
I do understand that Putin, Patrushev, etc. strongly feel like they cannot stop their nonsense. I have been noting that since slightly _before_ the invasion actually occurred. Once you mass troops on the border and everyone is talking about it, it’s hard to turn around and go home. The United States has found it extremely hard to turn around and go home. Viet Nam. Afghanistan. Iraq. It’s hard.
I guess we’ll be doing this for a while, so if you have not already started thinking about how you can reduce your exposure to rising energy costs, now would be a good time. I’ve been driving an electric car (not a Tesla) for 7 years now, and really quite like it and have ordered a second. You don’t, however, have to drive an electric car to reduce your exposure to rising energy costs. If you live in a state like mine, there are often organizations which will help you reduce your heating and cooling costs by identifying places to insulate and so forth. When you replace home heating and cooling systems, you can consider electricity powered options likefuel heat (thanks for the correction, H.!) pumps. If you are commuting, you can try to work out car pool options or look into public transit, biking, walking, or some combination thereof.
The earliest years of my life involved threats to our country and our way of life by people who sought to raise the cost of energy in hopes we would do their bidding. This isn’t a new thing. It’s a good idea to make it hard for people to do this.
ETA:
Also, upon further consideration, to the degree we can make it very clear to people like Patrushev that actually Europe will _thrive_ despite this nonsense, it may change their thinking and choices. To the extent that people in power in Russia are thinking their asses might be saved by the collapse of Europe, the clearer we can make it that Europe _is not_ going to collapse, the more likely they are to take their nonsense back where it came from. I’m not optimistic — it is _very_ hard to stop nonsense of this sort — but it is worth doing anyway.
ETAYA:
Draghi doesn’t show up in the news as much as he did in his previous job, but he pops up in this piece later on.
“Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi first floated the idea of creating a cartel of oil consumers at a meeting with President Biden, while the European Commission is now examining Draghi’s proposal for a potential gas price cap.”
This is a _wild_ idea. I kinda love it?
This article quotes an anonymous Russian billionaire, saying that Putin thinks that in a war of attrition, the West will lose interest, because we are vulnerable to election cycles. Not anonymous government officials are also quoted, asserting that the sanctions are harder on the US than they are on Russia.
I find this .. odd? The Soviets were in Afghanistan for 10 years. We lasted for 20. They didn’t even ever do anything to us. Basically, a lunatic from Saudi Arabia sponsored an attack on US soil, while he was living in Pakistan. We made a deal with Pakistan — which was helping to hide the responsible party — to go in and attack Afghanistan and it took us 20 years to get ourselves back out of that piece of nonsense and even then elements of our military (albeit the nuttier ones) wanted us to stay longer.
For reference purposes, that 20 years in Afghanistan spanned these elections:
2004 — won by the idiot who decided attacking Afghanistan to get the Saudi lunatic who lived in Pakistan. Both candidates supported continuing the war (and another, even less justified war)
2008 — won by the opposite party because term limits and unrelated global economic collapse
2012 — incumbent won, after having the Saudi lunatic found in Pakistan and executed
2016 — opposite party won because term limits, sexism, electoral college and Putin’s sponsorship
2020 — incumbent lost, because Putin’s involvement became apparent, also, global pandemic, also, winner was VP under term limited predecessor
Putin’s perspective on our elections is colored by the high degree of influence he has had over several of them.
The article goes on:
“The Kremlin’s aggressive stance seems to reflect the thinking of Nikolai Patrushev, the hawkish head of Russia’s Security Council, who served with Putin in the Leningrad KGB and is increasingly seen as a hard-line ideologue driving Russia’s war in Ukraine.” His theory is: everyone will starve, they will blame the West for that starvation, the starvation will cause migration of people to Europe, and that migration to Europe will, well, let’s let that guy say it:
“I’m not sure Europe will survive the crisis,” Patrushev told Russian state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta in one of the interviews.”
I do understand that Putin, Patrushev, etc. strongly feel like they cannot stop their nonsense. I have been noting that since slightly _before_ the invasion actually occurred. Once you mass troops on the border and everyone is talking about it, it’s hard to turn around and go home. The United States has found it extremely hard to turn around and go home. Viet Nam. Afghanistan. Iraq. It’s hard.
I guess we’ll be doing this for a while, so if you have not already started thinking about how you can reduce your exposure to rising energy costs, now would be a good time. I’ve been driving an electric car (not a Tesla) for 7 years now, and really quite like it and have ordered a second. You don’t, however, have to drive an electric car to reduce your exposure to rising energy costs. If you live in a state like mine, there are often organizations which will help you reduce your heating and cooling costs by identifying places to insulate and so forth. When you replace home heating and cooling systems, you can consider electricity powered options like
The earliest years of my life involved threats to our country and our way of life by people who sought to raise the cost of energy in hopes we would do their bidding. This isn’t a new thing. It’s a good idea to make it hard for people to do this.
ETA:
Also, upon further consideration, to the degree we can make it very clear to people like Patrushev that actually Europe will _thrive_ despite this nonsense, it may change their thinking and choices. To the extent that people in power in Russia are thinking their asses might be saved by the collapse of Europe, the clearer we can make it that Europe _is not_ going to collapse, the more likely they are to take their nonsense back where it came from. I’m not optimistic — it is _very_ hard to stop nonsense of this sort — but it is worth doing anyway.
ETAYA:
Draghi doesn’t show up in the news as much as he did in his previous job, but he pops up in this piece later on.
“Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi first floated the idea of creating a cartel of oil consumers at a meeting with President Biden, while the European Commission is now examining Draghi’s proposal for a potential gas price cap.”
This is a _wild_ idea. I kinda love it?