Context: Seeing today that Russia might next invade Lithuania, some thoughts occur…
While Putin is surely not the only unrepentant misanthrope at work here, Ukraine and all possibilities beyond remain his invasion, his war(s), and his bumbling catastrophe that seek in such imperialist atavism some kind of narcissistic self-aggrandisement. The brutal psychology of tribal warlords is one which we should only ever have to endure in a world that has *not* moved on by thousands of years and several dozens of IQ points. What Putin fails to understand is that a governance and control model of belligerent chieftain and all-powerful despot is one which does not efficiently or sustainably scale to nations and to grand historical visions; the dramatic self-disassembly of the Soviet Union being a case in point. Subsequently, he seeks to generate precisely the only turbulent entropy he understands – invoking fear within and without his nation as a method of control, power and influence. So, it is quite possible that he and those like him might seek to expand this war but in so doing he not only risks the livelihood and continuity of his own nation, he further locks in his position as a monumental historical failure in and of both strategy and intellect. The world long ago moved on from simplistic tribal conflicts but the hollow dictators that haunt us all seem to have never got that memo; perhaps their sycophantic minions were too afraid to deliver it.
Daedelus Kite 