Tales of Empire-The Wolf in Bear’s Clothing.

The 2020’s are turning out to be a the most extraordinary decade in my lifetime, and it’s still only early 2022. A global pandemic, BLM, women with penises, and then, just as we’re out of Covid, along comes another crisis, complete with the looming horror of nuclear weapons being used for the first time since 1945. And the nukes available nowadays can bring down a level of hell that none of us can realistically imagine. It’s time to get paranoid. Ukraine is under siege, Putin seems to be having his mad Peter the Great moment, and the world hangs on every snippet of news coming from Kyiv. Emotional footage of Ukrainians asking for help from the West, queues at the border, pictures of MP’s with AK 47’s. Dire times indeed. There’s no doubt whatsoever that a deranged dictator is invading a sovereign country, and the people at the sharp end of it are suffering the consequences. That much is on TV. But strangely, what’s on TV, and the internet, and the papers, is just snippets. A blown up tank here, a row of burning trucks there, but oddly no bodies visible. Have the trigger-warning police in the edit room cleared them up? Some strange explosions near a block of flats that look like low-budget stuff I saw on a movie set once. Footage of an RPG being fired at a target too small to see in the wide-angle lens of the camera. Still no bodies. And why have the Russians completely failed to achieve any of their objectives after a weeks fighting, when everyone thought it would be all over in a few days? The lack of progress can of course be partly blamed on fierce resistance, but not to the extent we are seeing. It looks much more likely to be staggering incompetence by the Russian military, or by design. 

This the also the first war involving a democratic country since the Vietnam war not to be broadcast to the world in graphic and horrible detail. Not that I want to see war in close-up, but it is the norm, and it sells ads better than anything else when it’s exciting. Does no journalist have the balls, ambition or just plain lunacy to chase the action any more? And how has a massive Russian force, identified two days ago with enough accuracy that I could find exactly where it currently is on Google Maps on my phone, made it’s slow way along a major road towards Kyiv without being blown to bits? I’m no military expert, but it seems to me that a column forty kilometres long, following a major road over flat ground, would be in dire straits if the forward and rear elements were taken out. It would be a turkey shoot. Why is this column still slowly and inexorably making it’s way towards Kyiv? Has Ukraine not got any aircraft left? Drones, helicopters? Perhaps its’ a rebel column about to change sides and help lift the siege of Kiev? If so, we’ll know tomorrow. The satellite pictures of the convoy showed it earlier today just about to cross the Peterkiv River, on a bridge that evidently no-one thought to blow up to stop the advance, in spite of having 24 hours warning. As of today, 01/03/22, the convoy has to pass through forests, ripe ground for an ambush. We’ll see if there is one. I don’t think so.

Where am I going with this, you may ask? Until yesterday, I felt like most everyone else, with a few exceptions (one exceptional exception in particular, who saw it all long before anyone else). Zelensky is a perfect hero and the world is going to stand up to Putin. Democracy, freedom, liberty and the future are all at stake. It’s got all the makings of legend, but somehow I’m not comfortable with it. Let me just jump straight to what I think what is going on, and why.

The only plausible theory that I can come up with as to why there’s no bodies on TV, very little carnage, and a massive column of military equipment still heading unhindered towards Kyev in plain sight is that this whole war has been set up. The invasion of Ukraine is definitely about regime change, but not in the Ukraine. Crazy? If so, I’ll be proved wrong fairly soon, so why not stay along for the ride? You can tell me I’m a lunatic later.

So imagine a group of oligarchs with contacts in the Russian military realising that Putin is becoming a serious liability. He was pretty useful for getting rich, but he’s 69 years old, is getting a bit weird, and it’s time to think about what’s next. Not forgetting that if you fall out with him, you’ve got to be careful about where you drink tea. A few top generals are already thinking along the same lines; they’ve discussed it quietly it over vodka at a few very small private gatherings. They went along with Crimea, Donetsk, Donbas; the people are basically Russians in those areas, but Ukraine as a whole, that’s a completely different proposition. The people don’t really want us running things there again, the generals think. Not after the Holodomor, Stalin’s manufactured famine in 1932-33. Besides which, they have some good friends in the Ukrainian military. Several of the oligarchs have friends, businesses and contacts  in Ukraine. They also have contacts in the World Economic Forum; it’s not like they are on the other side or anything.  Schwab, aka Blofeld, at the WEF quickly becomes a fan. Putin has made no secret of the fact that he’s not interested in joining their club, in spite of accepting their invite to address them via video link last year, using the occasion to warn that global war was a distinct possibility due to radical ideas both on the right and the left.  . 

Back home, the Russian generals are soon sold on the idea that it’s a lot easier to control a country with a feeble woke youth. Covid and new legislation and social justice laws in the West have just proved that. You can easily get the plebs to demonstrate against history or the state of the planet to keep them from worrying about politics. The generals have a chat with their mates in the Ukrainian military about it and their concerns about Putin. An alliance is in order, and the beauty of it is, very few people need to know about it. Better a small war than a major conflict. Of course, soldiers will die, but a bit of careful stage-management can hopefully keep the deaths down as much as possible.  A few generals and maybe a colonel or two who can be disposed of later if necessary, an actor who’s played the part before and is about to give the performance of his life, a couple of Putin’s pet lunatics on TV, and the stage is set.

The generals get to work on Putin. ‘Let’s show those stupid Ukrainians’, they say. ‘We’ll crush them. They insult our great Russian heritage with their Nazi pronouns!’ Putin, sitting 20 metres from his generals at the other end of his Covid table, likes the sound of this. He’s 69 and hasn’t been out in a while. He has to do something soon to avoid his reign being remembered as mostly treading water. The Russian Empire was born in Kyiv after all, the generals remind him. It is time to fulfill the legacy of Tsar Peter. Invasion is ordered, heroes are made, and the ominous column proceeds towards Kyiv to commence a medieval siege, but no-one tries to stop it. A few explosions, some burnt-out tanks, some genuine captured troops who don’t really want to be there, the population of Ukraine (and the world) are told that freedom is being invaded,  an actor becomes a legend, and here we are today.

History will tell if I’m delusional, because the rest is pure speculation. Let’s wait and see.

In a week or so from now, just before Putin pushes the red button to destroy the planet, the generals intervene. They remove Putin from office; rumours are that they have sent him for psychiatric assessment under armed guard. Russia’s nuclear arsenal is stood down, amid assurances they never intended to let Vlad actually press the button. The reason for their uncharacteristically lacklustre performance in Ukraine was that no-ones’s heart was ever really in it, the generals explain. Ukraine are our brothers. The generals assure the world that they only want to defuse the situation. General Whoeverjivich, a previously mostly unknown great Russian general, takes command of the Kremlin. Putin’s circle are quietly invited to retire, some permanently. The troops are withdrawn from Ukraine, Belarus are complimented on their restraint. The generals promise elections within one year. They recognise Ukraine’s right to dictate it’s own future, and the West enters a period of cautious optimism, although still maintaining a state of alert. A few more laws find their way into the statutes to protect us from the baddies, and the Russian oligarchs slowly start to make their way back into the international fold, donating generously to charitable causes.

A year later or so later, to much fanfare, elections are held in Russia, and a new party sweeps the polls. A vibrant new leader who believes in freedom, justice, pronouns, a cashless society and equity is elected to office on the back of a promised reform program. He’s soon good mates with several well-known billionaires in the West, and under their urging commits to a new nuclear treaty with the West and China, though no-one is ever really sure if China are keeping their side of the bargain. This really is the best of all possible worlds; morality has overcome tyranny. The world cheers, China winks, the billionaires tell us now we need to save the planet. Cash is proclaimed the root of all evil; better to let the government look after it, to avoid further war. Anyone saying anything nasty must expect censure, in the interests of Freedom. Those who know best continue building our better world, and soon we’re back where it never started, in a brave new world with a brave new history.