Putin isn’t a mad man. Nor is he like Hitler. He is acting more like a 16th century Czar. He is a product of the Russian mindset. People in the west mostly the American foreign policy apparatus think every nation thinks the same. This is why we failed in the Mideast and other foreign policy issues. Different nations have different cultural mindsets that developed from past history.
The Russian mindset is a mindset forged from repeat invasions from the Mongols, Swedish, Germans, Polish, French etc. In short Russia is an empire that kept expanding to geographical barriers to prevent invasion. Now they committed horrific crimes along the way. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw territories that were part of the Russian empire for a 1,000 years gone almost overnight. Russia was at its most vulnerable state in its entire history. In short they lost a lot strategic depth in the process. And what makes it worse is that the US promised not to expand NATO in 1997 but broke it anyway. For the Russians they have a mindset of not trusting western powers and putting their national security on the line based on flimsy promises from the US that can get broken over and over again. So in short they see NATO expansion as a threat to Russia as it will mean hostile enemy forces close to Moscow.
The next question I see asked here is why is Putin acting now. Simply because Ukraine’s military is getting stronger. Ukraine is a large nation with a large population. Western modern equipment is flowing to Ukraine’s military. Their military has plans to modernize which if Russia waits to long will make any future war with Ukraine very costly. This was always in the cards. There is a reason they have the 3rd largest foreign currency reserves and inking multi billion dollar deals with China. They know sanctions is coming so they prepared for it. And made the calculus for right now.
Many in America don’t understand because we have a peaceful history and haven’t had to worry about invaders. Last war fought on this soil was the civil war but that was hundreds of years ago. Face millions of Americans dying to fight off foreign invaders multiple times in history. In short we live in a bubble that makes us have foreign policy failures.
What Putin is doing isn’t right but you have to look at the mindset of these countries and figure out why they think that way. We just use lazy terms like Putin is a madman. Xi of China is a power hungry autocrat. The Iranians are a menace to peace. We seem to think democracy is the best form of government and try to spread it without thinking of the consequences. Hell we don’t have democracy in our own country with one party actively trying to undermine future elections with voter suppression. We think elections solve everything for these countries I mentioned without looking at the mindset and history of these nations. Different countries are wired differently and Washington still hasn’t accepted nor understand this.
