Why the West must take Putin’s 'threat to civilization seriously': columnist

28 June 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin gambled in February 2022 that he would easily conquer Ukraine and expand Russia's borders to meet the Eastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO's materiel support of Ukraine through the supply of defensive weapons to fend off Putin's invading forces has devastated Russia's conventional capabilities. Consequently, the private paramilitary military company Wagner Group — owned by Putin's former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin — has done much of the heavy lifting.

But deteriorating morale among Russian troops and Putin's allies have raised questions about Putin's ability to remain in power, despite the ongoing bluster emanating from the Kremlin and its propagandists that Russia could resort to using nuclear weapons.

On Monday, Assistant Comment Editor Sherelle Jacobs of The Daily Telegraph explained why the West must take those threats seriously.

"It is striking that the Wagner Group's abortive coup was greeted with neither trepidation nor a sober assessment of the potential fallout. Much of the West looked on with a kind of awe, as pundits confidently pronounced the end of Putin's reign," Jacobs wrote. "This speaks to a strange blind spot in the West. We have become hopelessly complacent about the existential threat posed by an enigmatic and dangerous country that is in many ways beyond our ability to comprehend."

Jacobs stressed that the West fails to grasp "the Russian elite's distinctive brand of apocalyptic messianism," which "since the medieval era, ambivalently imagined Mother Russia itself as the anti-Christ and bringer of End Times in philosophy, film, and literature."

Given the aforementioned factors, Jacobs cautioned that two eventualities could play out — and both of them are deeply unsettling:

The first worrying scenario is that Putin knows that his political status is terminal – and that this tempts him into escalating the Ukraine war in a manner that truly does risk triggering another world war. It has been asserted that what Putin fears more than anything else is coming to a grisly end akin to Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gadaffi. He is believed to have gone mad with fury at the death of the latter, watching footage of his violent death on a loop. With restive warlords threatening his authority, and the International Criminal Court having issued a warrant for his arrest, one can't help but wonder whether such an end has taken on a new vividness for Putin.

A second potentially devastating scenario involves Russia's warlords running amok. The Russian president has sought to run the country like a mafia corporation, keeping the capitalist barons who seized control of its resources and infrastructure in the Yeltsin era in check, by guaranteeing their protection against each other while threatening them with kompromat. But his permissive attitude to the privatization of security means he now risks being held hostage by rebel armies over which he has little control.

It is also possible that Putin "carries on leading Russia down the path of slow physical and psychological disintegration – only to delay a final point of explosive reckoning further down the line," Jacobs added, thusly concluding that "the West cannot afford to bury its head in the sand. Whatever happens as a result of the Wagner coup, there are few outcomes which would seem to be positive for peace or stability. It's time to take the threat to civilization seriously."

Jacob's analysis continues at this link (subscription required).

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