Putin, playing Napoleon…but not the way you think

Source: Kremlin.ru [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

So, a quick note on Putin and his war in Ukraine…

It struck me the other day that you can play the Napoleon game with him. Not in the sense of thinking of him as Napoleon, or a would-be Napoleon, but in the sense of how Napoleon once famously speculated on the ill-timing of his own death. If only, he suggested, he’d been hit by a stray cannon ball on his way into Moscow, he would have gone down in history as the greatest man who ever lived. As it was…

So, too, Putin’s death is ill-timed. Let’s say he had a heart attack, or encountered an assassin, in, say, 2018. If so, then he would gone down in history as a controversial but effective and forceful leader, with the clear vision and energy required to take his broken country and restore it to greatness. Because of him, and his actions, Russia was again feared, and, because he had turned on the taps of Russian gas to European markets, he might have made Russians comfortable and even rich.

Instead, he lived…bungled his country’s response to Covid…and then launched a war that made him, and his country, look bloody-minded, cruel, and, worst of all, ridiculous in the eyes of the world.

Alas, once again history has not been kind. It provided no helpful cannon ball to assist in the exit to glory.

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Until next time…

Onward and Upward.

~mjt

Copyright©2022 Michael Jay Tucker