I usually let a good portion of my betters writing stand untainted by my unlearned commentary at the top of excerpts. I usually interject after they have gotten on their roll or at the end. Here, with Bret Stephens' column, I taint from above. There is the whiff of Roger Cohen paranoia in Stephens' writing. Cohen was traumatized by his grandfather having to sleep under his bed in Lithuania from fear of Russia. Stephens had some evil epiphany reading a colleague's account of the Chechen wars. Putin is smarter the dumber he appears because we are yet dumber; more avaricious the less he appears to be. The glass is more full the more empty it appears. Stephens concludes, "This...analysis...could be wrong" but "it’s always wiser to treat your adversary as a canny fox, not a crazy fool." Caution is a useful byword, yes. I think the Americans have been cautious about this latest withdrawal b.s. But wiser still than caution is being right in assessments and judgment and American intelligence has been uncannily right about Russia all along. 

The second sentence below, "What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again?," is wrong. However crafty, Putin does not have the West "playing into his hands." But let's interrogate that question further. Playing into another's hands means that the other wanted the response from the person played that he got, that the player lured the played in. So Putin's hidden hand strategy would have been to unite NATO, unite the whole West to impose crushing sanctions, and unite virtually the entire world against him. "If" the West is "playing into Putin's hands" by arming Ukraine, by unprecedented unity and devastating sanctions, what would the Western response have been that did not play into Putin's hands?

As a good Times journalist Stephens taps an xpert, a Canadian, on energy, in support of his "alternative" thesis. The whole Putin-premeditated Russia as OPEC-on-the-Don extravagance is wildly implausible. The war is merely cover for an energy "heist"? Europe, owing to its insouciance, is so dependent on Russian energy as is that seizing Ukraine's stores increases that dependency, what, (I really don't know.) from 50% in Germany to 75%? So Putin's real aim is to cut off the gas to Europe? Well, he ain't gonna succeed. 

They don't want Kyiv? Sure fooled us (to which Stephens would respond with a contemptuous, knowing nod). If Putin has changed ambitions it was not part of an elaborate feint. It is because the Russian army has proved a Potemkin force and, for now, Kyiv has been fortified into an urban Russian meat processing and grinding factory. 

"Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes." Do tell! It was part of Putin's political calculus all along that ordinary Russians would queue up at banks in desperation to withdraw their money, that young elites would flee the country en masse? That the ruble would be ground into rubble? That the economy as a whole would enter a time machine and land back in 1998? That the crushing sanctions are "playing into Putin's hands"? "Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions." Note the weasel words "could" and "eventually". Longgg game that crafty Russian fox is playing lol.

There are some parts of Stephens' alternative reality show that are almost certainly correct, this in particular: "When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean."  One can never go wrong attributing the worst to a Russian. I haven't the foggiest idea why Putin has not yet used biochem wmd on the cities, as he did in Syria. But even that must come with a caveat.Stephens paints with too broad a brush in using the phrase "Western military analysts." Certainly American officials have warned of the the threat of biochem wmd repeatedly. The West's response to biochem was in fact the reason for the extraordinary, no-cell-phones-allowed meeting between Biden and Western leaders on his European trip. The gravamen of Stephens' point however survives. Russia absolutely can win this war, almost certainly will win this war, if Putin is willing to let it all hang out, and, as Stephens asks rhetorically, "Since when has Putin ever played clean?"

I think there is also too much truth in this:  "the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons." At least the first part. I have never thought it a good idea for Volo to negotiate. Initially, I feared a personal trap. They would kidnap and disappear him. That is also a concern of Ukraine's negotiating team who have instructions not to drink or eat anything on these trips (presumably they will bring box lunches) (I hope)). But I have always had a more general concern, that the Ukrainian negotiators are callow and no match for Sergei Lavrov. The statement released yesterday by the Ukraine Foreign Ministry that its negotiators had put forward a proposal that, inter alia, guaranteed Ukraine's future security by the U.S. and others, was reckless and irresponsible. We must be clear to Volo: We have not Munich'd you, we are not going to Munich you. You negotiate with your own interests foremost and exclusively. However do not involve the U.S. or more broadly NATO or the West in your negotiation proposals! Ukraine is not a member of the EU and has no business roping EU countries into security guarantees; Ukraine is not a member of NATO and Macron and Biden have been resolute that you will not be. Ukraine is not protected by Article 5 of the NATO charter and those nations which are will be goddamned if you are going to drag us into World War III with Russia. So cut the shit, Volo.

Taken as a whole Stephens' "alternative analysis of Putin’s performance [is clearly and convincingly] wrong." Go ahead, Bret:

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again?

The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence from The Times’s Carlotta Gall of her experience covering Russia’s siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade, stunning Moscow. The Russians regrouped and wiped out Grozny from afar, using artillery and air power.

Russia’s operating from the same playbook today. When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean. Since when has Putin ever played clean?

“There is a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens,” Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any further dissent with arrests and filtration camps and by turning and empowering local protégés and collaborators.”

Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s).

Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.

“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors.

If this analysis is right, then Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be.

It also makes sense of his strategy of targeting civilians. More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons.

Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes. Many in the professional middle class — the people most sympathetic to dissidents like Aleksei Navalny — have gone into self-imposed exile. The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good. To the extent that Russia’s military has embarrassed itself, it is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below. Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions.

This alternative analysis of Putin’s performance could be wrong. Then again, in war, politics and life, it’s always wiser to treat your adversary as a canny fox, not a crazy fool.