The Australians have bought imaginary submarines 
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Macron is hopping like a sausage in a frying pan
The frogs are livid, they’ll bring down NATO yet
He thinks he’s Napoleon IV.
Boris giving Macron a backhander and telling him to settle down
Putin’s all angles attack on the western order continues apace.
He clearly orchestrated the refugee crisis at the Poland-Belarus border in an attempt to undermine the EU.
His fingerprints are all over the crisis in Bosnia in which the Bosnian Serbs are sabre rattling.
Germany has held up the Nordstream 2 pipeline for the moment. If it relents it will hand Putin massive extra leverage over both western Europe and Ukraine.
He is sabre rattling in a big way as regards Ukraine.
This is a long article but maps out the possibilities of what he might do.
The question of Kiev looms large. It seems clear Putin wants it as part of Russia due to the sort of batshit blood and soil ideology that megalomaniacal dictators always believe.
My view is Ukraine should be admitted to NATO quicksmart.
Putin used the 2014 Winter Olympics as effective cover to invade Crimea.
This February China holds the Winter Olympics. Nationalism ahoy.
The pandemic is raging. These are the times that dictators decide to do bad things.
Putin and Xi are best buds. What are the chances of co-ordinated invasions, Russia invading Ukraine and China invading Taiwan? Plausible enough, you’d think.
The stance of the American right in all this is both hilarious and depressing. They are very performative about their stance on China being a mortal enemy (they’re not necessarily wrong on that).
But they are like schoolgirls at a Take That concert when Putin’s name comes up. Because what Putin has in Russia is what they want for America.
The various cognitive dissonance and shameless dishonesty is both astounding and totally predictable. And it means that should Putin decide to invade Ukraine, the west has a massive fifth columnist inside it.
The west still doesn’t understand what it is dealing with in Putin. He is the greatest threat to Europe since Hitler and by far the greatest threat the post World War II western order has faced.
And he’s winning.
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Are there any non-pharmaceutical interventions worth exploring I wonder?
I’m joking of course. I just don’t see the Kremlin/Putin being the biggest problem facing us at the moment.
Putin does love his pharmaceutical interventions. Another Russian poisoned in Britain over the last few days.
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I had liked this post, being too drunk now too read it properly, but just had to withdraw my like when I saw this comment at the end… Khrushchev… STALIN???
Sid will have to knuckle down now. “Putin is worse than Khrushchev because… Putin is more dangerous than Stalin because…”
Putin has run a long term project to rehabilitate Stalin. Fairly says everything about him, I would have thought.
But his ideology shares similarities with Hitler - his invasions of Ukraine and Georgia were based on the same pretext that Hitler invaded Sudetenland on. The denial of the existence of Ukraine or a Ukrainian people. Plus the anti-Semitic element. Ukraine is portrayed as a foreign Jewish conspiracy to destroy Russia and “Russian values”. While at the same time a democratic sovereign country which had the temerity to leave the Soviet Union is being portrayed as fascist and Nazi. Projection on Putin’s part.
And the paraphernalia around his attempted “Novorossiya” mini-coups around Ukraine in 2014 was based on the American Confederacy.
The January 6th attempted coup in Washington as well as the occupation of the state Capitol building in Michigan bore more than a passing resemblance to those mini-coups in regional parliament buildings in Ukraine in 2014.
The difference between Putin and the communist leaders was that there was never a realistic prospect of them splitting the western order or fomenting a genuine fifth column within it. Putin is actively and successfully doing this.
Putin is sound
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There’s credible reason to believe China is heading for economic collapse. I agree China and Russia is a scary proposition if the global economy goes tits up. Remember though that only the US stands in the way of totalitarianism, Europe has no backbone.
Why is it scary exactly?
The world needs to be rejigged a little surely
Scary is when the whole economic system is under Chinese control. Which is not that far off if they played their cards right. It’s unlikely they will which is our best hope.
Good luck to them, the West made a fuck of it time for a change at the wheel
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You could argue we’re already mirroring them via Covid certs, masks, lockdowns and a savage reduction in cash use.
The digital currency should be a piece of cake for them.
You live in one of the wealthiest countries at a time that has the highest standard of living in the western world and the lowest level of poverty in human history. Be careful what you ask for, these regimes are evil personified, especially the CCP they would love to dominate us. Long term project for them, but we have people who would like to accelerate it. Some of them on TFK.
There are a decade ahead of us (US) in terms of surveillance. They have it down to a tee.
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The Chinese and Russians are highly motivated the Oirish are delighted with their 3 day a week WFH. Only one winner here