Putin, his cook and extended suicide
In the neighboring town, an elderly man has just committed an extended suicide and dragged three acquaintances into the abyss with him. The most well-known extended suicide are the Goebbels, who dragged their children into the abyss in the Führer bunker in the final battle with the Red Army for Berlin, because they could not imagine a world and a life without a leader, Greater German Reich and National Socialism. Hitler would have burnt all of Germany to the ground zero in a kind of national extended suicide when he ordered all infrastructure and vital businesses to be destroyed and only scorched earth to be left behind even in Germany, which was already in ruins, especially since he was of the opinion that if one had such an inferior people and race, it was not worth living and surviving, if Albert Speer and other parts of the German siloviki and old elite had not refused the order. So he saw that nobody was obeying his orders anymore and then killed himself with cyanide. Eva Braun did this with him voluntarily, since she had married him shortly before they committed suicide.
The current question is whether Putin would also commit some kind of extended, perhaps nuclear, suicide. The psychologists and experts are also divided into 2 factions: Some think that he iPutin wants to stay alive and is rational and these faction refers to the fact that Putin was afraid of dying from Corona, i.e. had a will to survive. Others refer to the biographically often quoted anecdote and the allegedly traumatic and formative experience of Putin with a cornered rat that aggressively attacked. Mad and crazy actions and affects, on the other hand, are ruled out by other experts who believe that Putin is a cool, calculating head who is not guided by emotions but remains in control of his feelings even in extreme situations.
In addition, some people point out that Putin cannot simply press the often-cited red button, since there is a chain of command in which a Russian Speer, Siloviki or General Milley would then be found refusing it. The US Chief of Staff Milley had boasted that when Trump was about to leave office he had valled his Chinese counterparts and assured them that if Trump gave the order for a Sino-American war at the last moment, he would not carry out these orders . But all speculative in terms of Russian siloviki and chain of command.
Ben Hoghes, ex-General Naumann and Domroese jr. like others, neither do believe in the nuclear threats of the Russian side nor in a global nuclear war, but it is quite legitimate to voice the opposite position, such as General Vad, „Big Ben Hodges“ now thinks that Crimea and then and with it Putin will fall,
“US general predicts: Russia will lose Crimea, Putin the Kremlin
Russia has gone on the defensive in the Ukraine war. Retired US general Ben Hodges now even predicts when Crimea could fall – and when Putin could lose power.“
Former military adviser to Merkel General Vad warns of escalation and advises negotiations. Maybe US generals tend to think of German generals as wimps and softies. Naumann also said that Vad thinks a little „Merkelian“. In any case, „Big Ben“ doesn’t believe in the Big Bang, but it’s also easy to talk about it that way when n the event of a nuclear strike on Ukraine, he’ll be sitting on the other side of the Hreat pond. Vad should be credited with an honest conviction, even if one disagrees with his Cuban Missile Crisis comparisons as on the other side Vad sometimes is a bit more of an ethicist oof ovictio which he critisie´zes the Greens as being ethic warmongers due to a ethic of conviction (Gesinnungsethik) and as he might have a German guilt complex and the own family experience of WW 2 who criticizes others of having a morale attitude. Vad assesses „Big Ben“ Hodges as follows:
„Ben Hodges is a typical, good and daring general – similarly apolitical and war-related as the German generals before 45, who also firmly believed that there was a solid military solution for everything….I appreciate these guys very much and got along with them better than with the German representatives of this species… But I have to involve politics and ask about goals, purposes, about power – and interest politics etc. and think- as Merkel was looking for – about the end and the consequences and then come to different conclusions than Ben Hodges, who I still respect very much.”
Yes, some military officer often forget that war is the continuation of politics by other means, but politics does not end there and see it purely military. They are also often a little autistic when it comes to geoeconomic issues and ignoring everything that transcends the direct logistics and immediate supplies of the troops. A bit of Sun Tse would do quite well there. But whether Merkel thought everything from the end when she made her decisions or was not rather ideologically and neoliberal by means of „change through trade“ and thinking in terms of ethics and was the logically thinking natural scientist of politics, one can doubt when one sees how dependent she mede Germany on Russia and China, including cuts of budget for the German armed forces and the nuclear phase-out without proper entry into the energy transition. But it wasn’t just Merkel alone. However, ex-General Vad is quite pessimistic about the development:
“I feel more like we run the risk of committing suicide under green guidance – politically, economically and socially. I don’t mean that polemically, but seriously: the totalitarian green ethic has the great potential to lead us into the abyss, not only in Ukraine. ….“
That may be true in some areas, although not in this totality. But it is also a counter-movement that the dangers of climate change were ignored for so long, quite naive Ostpolitik was pursued and often too much so-called realpolitik, which turned out not to be so realistic whem viewded from the current results. In addition, this minority-oriented wokeness and genderism, which also has an impact on so-called feminist foreign policy. Conversely, this also has its limits when Habeck makes it clear to FFF that „supply security comes before climate protection“ or Baerbock rejects NATO fighter jets in the Ukraine, just like NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg. But what Vad in a Weberian sense, or also in the style of Carl Schmitt, calls ethics of conviction is concentrated in the Greens, but not only there. Consider parts of the BILD Union axis. With BILD boss Döpfner, who called for the use of NATO aircraft in the Ukraine, we would have long since found ourselves in a world war with Russia, but not (yet) with Baerbock.
BILD and some Russia experts now see the acute danger that Putin could be overthrown by Putin´s own Wagner “cook”. If Kadyrov tries to do that, he is likely to fail, since Russian siloviki would probably see it as a Russian shame if a Chechen ruled Russia – it’s not like the Soviet Union, where the Georgian Stalin ruled the SU, even if they call themselves the Russian Federation . But things could be different for the Russian Wagner cook, especially since he might still have Kadyrov as his auxiliaries and support from some hard-line Russian siloviki. But without the latter, a cookh/Kadyrow coup might end like the Hitler/Ludendorf putsch attempt in 1923 or the Kapp coup in 1920, although they are better armed and might even plunge the country into civil war or self-employment. Perhaps a siloviki or Dimitri Petrashuv or the Moscow mayor or another person with the consent of the siloviki will take over Putin’s position as a fig leaf, or there will be a veritable popular uprising and Navalny or Pomorayev will take over. The question also remains whether these rumors of a coup are not also being deliberately spread by Putin, in the hope that he will be seen as the lesser evil compared to hardliners who continue to exist, also with regard to Russia’s cohesion and stability and fear of a state collapse with possible fight for control of nuclear weapons. Especially with possible negotiations such as those advocated by General Vad in the book „Perspectives after the Ukraine War“, which he published together with Weidenfels (CAP), Vollmer and Nida-Rümelin this week. Especially since General Milley also advocates negotiations, as do the Trump Republicans, although the authors are likely to have different perspectives on a new European peace order and European security architecture, including the question of whether with Russia or without Russia, especially which Russia and under what conditions and constellations , especially since most Eastern Europeans are more in favor of a European peace order without Russia, some even without a Navalny Russia or any kind of Russia, whereby a disintegration of the Russian Federation is also possible, with an Islamist caliphate in the Caucasus or an independent republic of Chechnya and a core Russia, which would then become a real national state without an idea of an empire, a Russian world concept or a Novorussian idea. Hopefully Putin will not end like in Peter Greenaway´s film “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover”.