The thing is, the only difference between a crazy ideology and one that works is whether it works.

The Ukrainians have been independent long enough that "crazy" seems to be a reasonable adjective to apply, for the following reason: Putin seems to think that Ukraine will join Russia, rather than launch a years-long insurgency in the best case (let alone win the war in the worst case, apparently).

Ideology only works if you can pull it off. Otherwise, is the world really mistaken for attaching labels like "unhinged"? Almost every fanatic believes they're acting for good reasons. They pretty much have to believe it by definition.

> Putin is not “crazy”, he’s just following through a system and a doctrine that had been put in place years before

Consistency doesn’t absolve delusion. People have believed in transgender space alien conspiracies for decades. That doesn’t make them sane.

> whose mind was negatively affected by the pandemic (as the Western press is sometimes alluding)

Nobody serious claims this.

Putin is doing what every despot does. Consolidation among cronies leads to inefficiency, inefficiency to slower growth. Falling quality of life leads to a doubling down on consolidation, weakening the country, but only in ways that will manifest later (requiring bolder grabs). It’s a classic death spiral totally independent of the pandemic.

We’ve had slow growth in Western Europe since the 1980s, basically, that is if you ignore the financial-industry-led growth of the UK (London, mostly) and the Chinese-supported industrial revival of Germany starting with the mid-2000s. Japan has been a stagnant economy for 30 years now. All these political entities are free of despots (thankfully so). All I’m trying to say is that tying economic performance with the nature of the political regime might be very dangerous for the political regime, because what happens if a democracy cannot provide for sustained economic growth?

Going back to Putin, I was trying to say that there is not only one person that is behind the recent events, a “despot”, apparently there’s an entire Russian administration apparatus that thinks the same (hence why I linked to that Wikipedia page).

> We’ve had slow growth in Western Europe since the 1980s

False comparison. Russia’s real GDP per capita has fallen 30% in the last decade [1]. This is true in no EU member.

> what happens if a democracy cannot provide for sustained economic growth?

It typically fails. Particularly if every one of its neighbors is meanwhile delivering quality of life gains.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-d...

You're starting at a local max as a baseline and then comparing after what happened from the sanctions of 2014 (after Crimea) paired with very low oil prices followed by the coronapocalypse when their economy was starting to kick back into gear.

This [1] page shows the yearly drops more clearly. But I think most importantly is that as the US (and increasingly everywhere in the world) emphasizes, GDP/capita often is a poor measurement of how the people themselves are doing. Here [2] is a graph of the change in real wages [2]. That is better than most places in the EU and is continuing upward in spite of ever more sanctions.

The big question is what impact the current wave of sanctions will have. And how that will jive with what may be persistently very high oil prices.

[1] - https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp

[2] - https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/wages

I think there is some connection between the Serbian and Russian academic strategists because the Milosevic regime used a similar playbook during the Yugoslav wars in the 90s. Step 1: spend decades encouraging your ethnic group to migrate outward, Step 2: once there is a decently sized minority (or even majority) announce it now belongs to the main country and use your group to stand up a resistance.

The sinister thing is that Step 1. is done very slowly over a long period of time, and can be sold as various pleasant sounding ideas such as "brotherhood and unity," becoming a modern melting pot nation like the USA where everyone is equal, etc.

I don't think Serbia ever encouraged their ethnic group to move outward. The opposite. They became the minority in their own territory (Kosovo) because Albanians had a higher birth rate. The problem was that they were mixed with other ethnic groups, but wanted to keep their own in the same country.

I suggest you take a look in the historical demographics of Kosovo [0], before making statements that paint Albanians as the minority in the region.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Kosov...

I've seen former Yugoslavia described as social dynamite and it took me a while to get it but the analogy is pretty apt.

Let's hope Putin ends the same way that Milosevic did.

You might want to also check those two pages:

- the book "Foundations of Geopolitics ": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

- its author and "philosopher" Aleksandr Dugin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin

I mean, Hitler didn't invent the "stab in the back" myth either - I don't necessarily find it reassuring that it slots into an existing ideology