Ukraine is making massive headway against Russia right now. Putin’s forces are crumbling all over the front line. So my question is this.
Should Ukraine keep hammering Russia even after they have regained all of their territory?
Because all Putin will do is lick his wounds and rebuild. (if his own people haven’t taken him out that is)
I’m not saying stepping onto Russian soil, but simply continue to destroy Russia’s military until they’re so broken they will never recover quickly. If at all.
What do you think?
What are you talking about? Entire regimes are held together through dictators for literally decades, and collapse almost instantaneously when the central figure is removed.
Not as often in the modern era as you might think. We’re seeing it play out right now. It’s entirely possible to construct a bureaucracy that has the ability to function without dear leader, and in fact for a country, economy, and military as large as Russia’s, and with the experience of the USSR, one of the largest bureaucracies ever, it doesn’t appear at all as though Russia is held together by a mad man.
According to who? You and the mouse in your pocket? If Putin keels over, this whole thing is over in a week. Russia retreats entirely. If Zelenskyy croaks, same mechanism, opposite outcome. If Russia had been able to just “get” Zelenskyy, like was clearly their strategy, the war is over. They’ve won.
Bet me if you disagree. I want to know that you’ll stand by what you’ve said here.
According to who? You and the mouse in your pocket? If Putin keels over the war will continue. If Zelenskyy croaks, same mechanism, same outcome.
War is not a game of killing the king anymore. The world doesn’t work like that and hasn’t for long time. The US showed everyone how that worked when they showed everyone how they build distributed cellular terrorist networks in the Middle East. We see it with US foreign policy all the time that no matter who is in office the wars, crimes against humanity, and grift just continues and gets worse. Iran is demonstrating it now. Hamas and the PLO have shown it. Venezuela didn’t end the Bolivarian revolution when Chavez died, and Rodriguez is continuing the Venezuelan state in the absence of Maduro.
Syria is an example where death didn’t happen and the regime changed. Why? Because what matters is the wholesale change of control of power. Putin is the captain of a team that all share his understanding of Russia’s position in the world.
The man is paranoid. He is clearly constantly protecting himself against the potential of assassination. That means he’s spent years building redundancy into the state in order for it function with out him.
And again, for a military that large, and a country that large, you absolutely need a mostly autonomous bureaucracy. Individual humans cannot manage things that large independently.
Great. Lets us and the mice in our pockets lay down a bet.
What a ridiculous sentiment in the fediverse. Pervert.
Here’s bet we can do. If Putin dies of natural causes, old age, in his bed, and the war is both still occuring and also doesn’t end after his death, you will create post in the Ukranian subs on lemmy.world, on piefed, on the .ml comms, and a few others that the Russian/Ukraine war is a proxy war, that great man theory is fundamentally flawed, and that you don’t really understand the war.
If instead Putin dies under those same circumstances and the war ends within a month of his death, I will create a post in all those same subs saying that the war was clearly a result of a single bad man with bad thoughts and that geopolitical analysis is inferior to psychological analysis of public figures and that I don’t really understand the war.
Deal?
Sounds like a bet. Thank you for engaging, fellow pervert.
I would, though, like to extend the bet to cover Zelenskyy as well. So same premise, but if either Zelenskyy or Putin die under premature circumstances, and the war does no end within the month, I was wrong. I think that technically is even more charitable towards you? As in, more in your favor?
In exchange, would you be willing to accept a parlay that there is a 2 month additional waiting period, after the initial month? Only because I think we both would agree it can take time for these things to happen and become clear. Things are messy and muddy, and look, I think even one month of battle field stats from Ukraine is insufficient to determine progress definitively. But I think by three months postmortem, it should be pretty clear and not debatable.
If this is agreeable, I confirm the bet.
Now, regarding “great man theory”, this isn’t at all where-so-ever I derive my analysis. The way I look at this is that its about coalitions, and every leader, be it Xi, Zelenskyy, Trump, Putin, Gaddafi, GWB, Obama, you name it, their power always derives from their ability to hold together a coalition. And, that power is only as transferable as the integrity of the institutions that maintain the structure of that country. In liberal western Democracies, that power is extremely transferable, to the point that it becomes the baseline assumption; you don’t even question it in those contexts. However, the less reliable, the more fragile the bureaucratic state is, the more dependent it becomes on a unifying figure to maintain its functional state. Gaddafi is on one extreme, with an incredibly fragile state, Xi would be on the other extreme, with an incredibly robust bureaucracy. The lest robust your bureaucracy, the more dependent on individual personalities a state becomes.
The US is also a great example of this. Imagine, for example, Bill Clinton had died in office. There would be no practical interruption in US policy if that were to have occurred. Where-as, US liberalism is in a state of extreme decay, and has been for 2.5 decades. The bureaucracy that holds it all together is severely weakened. If Trump were to keel over, Vance would not be able to continue like Trump has, because it is the force of Trumps personality which holds the coalition together. Likewise, Trump has also selected for weak people who can’t challenge him for control of the coalition to surround themselves with. If Trump dies, this whole operation in Iran is over in 48 hours. ICE is cooked. The entire Trumpian government collapses.
Ah, then we miscommunicated. My words “death alone” was meant to imply that power did not change substantially. If Zelenskyy dies, and power does not change substantially, the war will continue. If power changes substantially after he dies, which can happen for the coalition reasons you stated, but also other reasons, then that’s not death alone.
For Putin, I don’t think the coalition in Russia is held together solely by Putin. I could be wrong about that. I’m not willing to bet on that particular thing. I am fairly confident that significant portions of the coalition drove the war in the first place and that Putin is not the only person who created the case for the decision, and this if the power structure primarily holds after his death, the war will continue. But if the power structure doesn’t hold, then we have to do a faction analysis of the country. Certainly the oil sanctions create the conditions for a comprador faction to make a lot of money by becoming junior partners of the US, but that’s what I mean by death alone is not enough. It would also require a comprador faction to make a deal with the US and take power, which, given that the Russian military is not likely 100% aligned with the comprador oligarchs, would likely require some significant internal violence, and therefore again, death alone is not going to end the war.
Now you see why I would be willing to bet for a 3 month period - because if in those three months the power struggle played out and compradors changed course, that wouldn’t meet the meanings of my words “death alone”.
Maybe we’re a little closer in our opinion on this than we thought
If possible I’d like to maintain the bet? I stand by the assertion that, I think if either Zelenskyy or Putin die, the war ends in a month, and its will be clear that it ended within that time period by 3 months out. And I think I like your argument, that its about coalitions operating power through individuals, rather than individuals holding together those coalitions, even if I a don’t abide by or agree with that argument.