There are some days when your mind wanders and you develop no large theme about which to write, but a number of small things accumulate in the recesses of one’s mind.
Here are a few that have solidified in the Big Red Car’s mind:
Putin is a pissant
Putin, a thug overseeing a middling economy on par with Italy’s, is a small man who has a thin, poorly worn veneer of civility holding back an Amazonish flow of despotic behavior. He is a bloody murderer.
Putin in his Siberian Pimp outfit with furry cuffs and hood.
He harbors embarrassing notions of grandeur when he is a man rooted in the thuggery of the last century wherein countries expanded their boundaries with armed warfare.
When he dies — please God, make this soon — there will be an extended line of men and women waiting to piss on his grave.
The Russian Army is grossly overrated
The Russian army is a conscript army composed of unwilling soldiers and a small core of professionals led by combat inexperienced leaders. It is vastly overrated.
The most recent Russian effort in Afghanistan is proof of this shortcoming.
At the battalion level, the Russian army is not skillful in the management of a combined arms — infantry, armor, artillery, air power — battlespace.
The Russians do on paper possess excellent gear and the are going up against a poorly armed Ukrainian army.
Do not count the Ukrainians out
There is no more powerful inspiration than fighting for your homeland. The men and woman of Ukraine will surprise us with the vigor and determination with which they fight.
The initial phases of the conflict may presage Russian success, but the Ukrainians will conduct guerrilla warfare thereafter.
The Russian proxies in the Donbas Region have been stopped by the Ukrainians.
The key may be whether the West makes up Ukrainian losses of lethal weapon systems and ammunition. I predict they will not.
The start of conflict will be different
The Russians will initiate conflict with a comprehensive cyber attack and the complete destruction of internal Ukrainian communication and command and control. Do not be surprised if the Russians knock out the Ukrainian power grid, television, water, and wastewater systems either through a cyber ambush or aerial bombing.
In the dark, the Russians will use a faux coup attempt to justify their attack as an “invitation to restore order.”
Putin wants to break NATO
While Ukraine is an extraordinary prize in and of itself, Putin really desires to hobble NATO, expose the cracks in the alliance — talking to you, Germany and Turkey — and to emasculate American perceived strength and leadership.
Putin intends to break President Joe Biden in public and at the level of basic, alpha male testosterone.
While America and NATO fume and threaten reprisal, Putin will rape Ukraine with impunity daring the world to do anything about it in much the same way that Hitler dealt with the Brits and French on the ever of World War II.
The world delivered this opportunity to Putin
The world stood up Russia as a serious threat in the past when they took Crimea and the world did nothing. Pro tip: If you let despots seize sovereign countries or parts of sovereign countries with no consequences, then the despots will continue that behavior.
The world — the Americans in particular — did this when they allowed the price of crude to skyrocket by 5X with bad policy whilst filling the coffers of Russia with “thug money.”
When the US controlled the global price of crude because we were a net exporter of crude and with this excess we placed an American thumb on the world’s scale, Putin could not afford this level of mischief.
Business and trade are traitors
It is always folly to trade with one’s enemies, but to trade and to deliver a huge strategic wartime lever is madness.
The US buys crude from Russia while Germany depends on Russian crude (30%) and natural gas (50%) to stay warm in the winter after abandoning nuclear power and decommissioning coal plants.
It never ends; Putin is insatiable
Hitler told us what he was doing by:
1. The termination of World War I reparations;
2. The wholesale rearming of Germany in violation of the Treaty of Versailles;
3. The remilitarization of the Rhineland;
4. The Anschluss — the seizure of Austria;
5. The seizure of the Sudetenland; and, ultimately,
6. The invasion of Poland was the first act followed by Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, France, North Africa, Britain, Soviet Union, and Italy.
Russia has given us fair warning with a similar pattern of adventurism in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Moldova, Crimea, Dombas Region of Ukraine, and now Ukraine itself.
Putin will keep moving westward until he is stopped.
Now is the time we need men like Churchill and Marshall. God bless us all.
