Putin wanted Trump to decapitate the Iranian regime?

Let's be serious, that has nothing to do with the Canadian situation, which has more than enough going on without needing to imagine things.

Edit to add: the extent to which many of you will apparently blame anything and everything on Putin is extraordinary. Just because the sun shines on Putin as well does not mean he made it do so.

Biden gets Russia and Ukraine stuck in a quagmire in Ukraine, so Putin retaliates by getting the U.S. and Iran stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East. Wars are won by the countries that stay out of them. The Russia-Afghanistan war played a very significant role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.

The irony is that China is the big winner from all of this, simply by staying above the fray and making trade deals with all the countries that more bellicose superpowers start fighting. When your adversary is making a mistake, let him.

Putin got stuck in Ukraine, not sure what Biden did

His strategy was to give Ukraine just enough weapons to prevent annihilation without giving them so many weapons that would allow them to win. Hence, quagmire. The weapon sales also came with conditions like not allowing them to strike deep within Russia itself, all of which prolongs the war without leading to a clear victor.

But Russia and Putin can end the war at their earliest convenience. Your perspective discounts the agency of the aggressor, places all agency in weaponry (as opposed to the will of the defenders) and doesn't acknowledge that the Biden approach offered a continuous off-ramp that should have been taken. I'm not sure how allowing Russia to not suffer defeat means that they must continue their barbaric war against Ukraine.

They can't, really. Putin's domestic power base will not let him suffer a defeat. His power is predicated on seeming all-powerful; once he doesn't, then other internal threats within Russia which have been kept at bay by fear will be emboldened, and the Russian state collapses. This is a worse security outcome for the U.S. than having a hostile dictator in charge of Russia; with the status quo, at least the enemy is visible, we know who has the nuclear launch codes, and his future actions can be reasoned about, while if a nuclear-armed state descends into anarchy we have no idea who the threat is and they have no incentive not to launch.

The mistake here is in seeing this as a clash of two nation-states that are each unified actors. Humans have agency; states are social constructs. It is quite possible for a state to disintegrate if the ideas holding it together are proven false. The Soviet Union did just that 35 years ago, and it could easily happen again this generation.

> Putin's domestic power base will not let him suffer a defeat.

Too bad though, don't start wars man. No one is going to throw you a bone if you start a war that no one else wants happening. If you star a war, you need to be able to finish it. It's like that Seinfeld line about the car reservation, except wars. You don't get points for being scary, you get points for winning.

> This is a worse security outcome for the U.S. than having a hostile dictator in charge of Russia;

I disagree... bigger picture we don't want this kind of thing festering, it never works out well. It's not managable, despite people acting like these things can be managed. They can't, and that's why we're seeing this situation. Similar to Hamas in Gaza. It was left to fester, thought it had more clout and power than it did, and look what happened. Nothing good.

> The Soviet Union did just that 35 years ago, and it could easily happen again this generation.

Russia is going to fall apart, we're going to be left with Muscovy, God willing.

But it has turned out positive for Russia. Not enough patriot rockets for Ukraine, sanctions against Russia lifted and higher oil prices.

Clearly Putin is playing 4D chess /s. Having all the main export infrastructure blown up by Ukraine is also part of the plan.

Please read the discussion before you comment. Infrastructure damage is because of Ukraine's actions, not because of trump. We were discussing trump's actions benefiting Russia. Not saying it's on purpose, probably incompetence.

The discussion is if Trump is Putins puppet or not. Seems like you agree with fidotron that is is just incompetence, so you should not have argued against him.

sure, but ukraine is not able to stop its own export infrastructure from being blown up, or defend itself from north korean missiles anymore.

europe and east asia whove been helping to fund and arm ukraine are also taking the real pressure from iran and the US halting energy exports from the gulf.

the oil price for high enough to where russia gets paid the same amount despite having most of its infrastructure blown up, vs having its infrastructure blown up and also the oil proce being low.

Yes, it has that effect. It is just IMO unlikely that this was planned and steered by Putin. If he was that smart he either would not have started the war with Ukraine or would have won the war with Ukraine.

The war with Ukraine is currently doing huge damage to Russia. Maybe Putin wants to be more securely in charge of a diminished Russia. IMO again, I doubt that.

> Putin wanted Trump to decapitate the Iranian regime?

This is impractical. There is a hierarchy of thousands of Mullahs that ascend when you kill off one. There is no "head". It's a distributed hierarchy or hydra, rather than an effective dictatorship. ofc, Trump wanted to appease Bibi and Trump fired most of the advisors who object to his bad ideas, so it was a perfect storm for a global quagmire.

The Iran war is good for Russia. Regime "decapitation" does not harm Russia, oil going up is good for then. America being weakened and stuck there is good for then too.

We have fewer weapons to sell to Ukraine since we have expended a huge amount and are pulling a carrier out of Asia due to the debacle. I'm pretty sure Putin/Xi are happy to see us enter yet another Middle East quagmire.

Putin wanted the US military presence in the middle east to be severely crippled, which it is now.

He would also want the munitions stockpile to be depleted, which it is now.

Though I do agree, not literally every move Trump does is on a string from Putin and the Iran war isn't one; it sure still is mighty convenient all the same to make the US military look weak and incompetent.

I don't think you need to be so specific about it. It's more about the overall goal: weakening the United States as much as possible. And if that means embroiling them in a pointless war and wearing down their stockpiles... Well, you can see how that would be advantageous.

Yes? The US is currently running out of oil. The strategic reserve has been drawn so low it is in danger of failing. The US economy is being propped up by an AI bubble, and the folks currently in charge of Iran are even more tied to Russia than the previous regime. And oh, by the way, when the US can’t draw down from the reserve any longer they’ll be forced to ease sanctions on Russian oil.

the US is also daring canada to shut off the taps on the oil the US actually uses for its own gas

I'm confused. Is he a Putin's puppet or Netanyahu's? He can't be both: these two don't align.

With each other maybe? In practice they are very aligned.

They are only aligned in that certain parts of the western elites hate both of them.

They represent two completely opposite poles, geopolitically. Not horseshoe theory compatible: they are mutually exclusionary.

> He can't be both: these two don't align.

They could be both pulling at the strings, often in different directions with varying success. It could even be tracked by the people going in and out of favor with the admin: MTG, Carlson, Gubbard riding high? Russia's pull is stronger. Them becoming pariahs reduced to criticizing the Iran war from the peanut gallery? Israel has taken over.

My actual argument is that the theory that he's a puppet being pulled is not a serious one. Much like a chocolate for hunger, it's just an intellectually lazy explanation for people who look for intellectually lazy explanations.

That's a valid theory.

Would Putin want Germany to cancel the shut down of its nuclear power plants as Trump urged it to. [1]

The Green Movement in Europe, which Trump opposes, was best thing to happen to Putin.

As far as I can see, where Trump goes wrong is the same place the social democrats go wrong: believing in economic fallacies. In Trump's case that would be the belief that tariffs are beneficial.

He also on rare occasion aligns with very socialist leaning politicians like Elizabeth Warren, like when he sought to prevent private equity from buying up housing — which totally misdiagnoses the cause of the housing shortage. But it's these economic fallacies that makes Trump popular for the same reason social democrats are popular. The vast majority of people don't understand economics.

[1] https://youtu.be/eKEycjREgPE

The most ironic thing is that Chernobyl basically solidified that Europe would be dependent on Russia for the next 30 years.