Predatory Putin Has Sniffed Out Fear in the West

I n the animal kingdom, predators can smell the fear of their victims. Horses also sense the fearful and disobey their orders. Putin is an extraordinary horseman — you can Google the photos — and he is fearless. At the same time, he is a predator. And he has long since sniffed out the weaknesses of his adversaries.

The EU is not a union in any practical sense. And America has enough on its plate just surviving Joe Biden, ever dithering, the only president in the world who has to emit an erratum every time he opens his mouth in front of a journalist. Thus, the Kremlin is using tactics we see in National Geographic documentaries: pick off the seemingly frail member of the pack (Ukraine), while keeping the bigger wildebeests scattered and confused (the EU and NATO).

A frank analysis of the situation in Europe is in order. The Germans gave up principles a long time ago, and bet everything on the economy. Angela Merkel consolidated that model. And in turn, the EU has long since decided to bet everything on becoming a huge Germany. At the end of the day, the Germans pay the bill and call the shots.

What happened with the Spanish prime minister this week gives you a good idea of what Europe is like. The guy took some pictures of himself talking on the phone and writing in his office, then he uploaded them to Twitter saying he was deeply concerned and following the Ukraine issue very closely. The trolling didn’t take long to start, because Pedro Sánchez (who is right-handed yet posed with the pen in his left hand) decided to squint and pout like an influencer. Spain also sent a frigate named “Blas de Lezo” to protect Ukraine. The day after the Spanish PM’s photo-op, Biden held a teleconference with his European counterparts to address the issue, without Sánchez. No wonder there is now speculation that no one was on the other end of Sánchez’s phone and that he was simply posing, because some adviser convinced him that a war is sexy business. Instagram has done a lot of damage in politics too.

The European Union believes that everything important can be solved in an office. But what is important for the European Union is to eradicate plastic straws, to have 40 percent of boards of directors made up of women, to make abortion a Fundamental Right (Emmanuel Macron’s proposal), to bring down the Polish government, and to maintain the generous stipends of the MEPs.

In this climate of extreme weakness, Putin sent NATO and the United States in December a security draft with some, shall we say, inane proposals — among others, that the alliance withdraw all military infrastructure stationed in Eastern Europe as of 1997. In addition, in this sort of Letter to Santa Claus, he demanded that the United States commit to not deploying missiles anywhere close enough to hypothetically hit Russian soil, that it renounce military alliances with countries of the former Soviet Union, and that it move warships away from the Black Sea.

Russia has never ceased to be, for Putin, what it could have been and (thank God) was not: the eternal Soviet Union. He is like a parent who wants his grown children out of sight but still under his thumb. Perhaps the biggest difference between the Russian leader and Biden, Ursula von der Leyen, Macron, and the like is that he looks like he drinks a steaming hot cup of napalm for breakfast. He knows very well that the West is no longer prepared for war, especially after Afghanistan. I recently heard a radio talk-show host define to a tee this state of mind: “A war? Good God, how old-fashioned!”

Russia is in a unique and troubling place for the rest of us. Post-Soviet existence seems to confirm that it is possible to get out of communism, but not out of its misery. This has turned the Russians into people who never have anything and therefore have nothing to lose. Everything of value in Russia is in the hands of the elites in power, and the elites in power try to keep the people distracted from this fact.

Putin’s Russia is not a democracy and has no intention of being one. He is closer to being the tsar than to being a democrat, and any dissenting voices are swiftly dispatched to the cemetery or prison. And, as a good friend of mine who is also a geostrategic analyst says, “The major factor in forming the Russian character is that it’s cold as hell, and that changes everything.” At those temperatures, you are always more or less predisposed to die.

As Rich Lowry has pointed out in National Review, Germany is America’s worst ally in this conflict. For historical reasons, if there is one thing the Germans are terribly afraid of, it is freezing to death. And Putin has reminded them of Stalingrad, with a smile, flirtatiously waving the keys to the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline: “Raise an eyebrow and I’ll cut off your gas, my friend.” (And yes, it’s cold in Berlin, too.)

As if that were not enough, with unprecedented clumsiness, Biden has revealed to Putin that he will do nothing if the incursion into Ukraine is trifling enough — among other reasons (and this is the second part of the secret revealed by the president), because the allies would not decide how to act. The European Union has been threatening Russia with “severe sanctions” for a month now, and you can hear them laughing in the Kremlin perfectly well in Madrid.

Only firmness can stop Putin. And today, no leader, neither in Europe nor in the United States, is in a position to show his strength. Joe Biden’s weakness will cost a decaying EU dearly. Let us pray that, when the moment comes, at least Boris Johnson will not be out partying this time.