by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
On paper, it seems as though Putin missed a golden opportunity to achieve his geopolitical goals by not attacking Ukraine while Donald “golden showers” Trump was still in office.
And, yet, if you look at Trump’s recent statements about Ukraine, one gets the sense that Putin had a very specific reason for not attacking Ukraine (or anywhere else) while Trump was in office. If he had, the jig would have been up as to how absolutely weak Trump was with Putin.
Trump was so beholden to Putin — for whatever fucking reason — that had Putin taken advantage of it while Trump was still in power then it would have been difficult for Trump to successfully stay popular enough to become the autocrat that Putin wants him to become.
Or, put another way, one could make the argument that Trump is too weak domestically for Putin to have walked all over the United States while Trump was president the first go round. If Trump had won a second term, then, probably at some point after he got his Constitutional Convention and secured his place as American’s first autocrat, THEN Putin might have attacked Ukraine knowing it would all be a domestic political lulz.
But now that Trump is out of power, Putin can attack Ukraine and pretty much it will be Biden’s problem and there’s nothing he can do in real terms without risking WW3.
At least, that’s all I got. It just makes a lot more sense to me for Putin to be thinking this than anything else.
