A guerra é a continuação da política do Czar Vlad por outros meios

«'War’, in Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s most famous dictum, ‘is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.’ A generation of Democrats — the American variety, but also European Christian and Social Democrats — have sought to ignore that truth. Appalled by the violence of war, they have vainly searched for alternatives to waging it. When Vladimir Putin ordered the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Barack Obama responded with economic sanctions. When Putin intervened in the Syrian civil war, they tried indignant speeches.

When it became clear that Putin intended a further and larger military incursion into Ukraine, Joe Biden and his national security team opted for sanctions once again. If Putin invaded Ukraine, they said, Russia would face ‘crippling’ or ‘devastating’ economic and financial penalties. When these threats did not deter Putin, they tried a new tactic, publishing intelligence on the likely timing and nature of the Russian assault. Cheerleaders for the administration thought this brilliant and original. It was, in reality, a species of magical thinking, as if stating publicly when Putin was going to invade would make him less likely to do so. (...)

If war is the continuation of politics — ‘policy’ is, in fact, a better translation — then what exactly is Putin trying to achieve? This question has elicited many wrong answers over the years. A common assertion is that he is hellbent on resurrecting the Soviet Union. It is true that in 2005 Putin called the collapse of the Soviet empire ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century’. But in fact it is the tsarist Russian Empire Putin is attempting to bring back from the dead. Peter the Great is his hero, much more than Stalin. (...)

Is Putin merely a fantasist when he imagines himself the heir of Peter I? Not necessarily. True, Russia’s economy may be smaller than South Korea’s, and just a fifth of America’s. But using the same method to estimate defence spending — allowing for the fact that Russian soldiers and hardware are significantly cheaper than their western equivalents — reveals that Russia is, in the words of a 2019 study, ‘The world’s fourth largest military spender, behind the United States, China, and India… The Russian General Staff gets a lot more capability out of its military expenditure than many other higher-cost militaries’ — including those of Britain and France.

Russia under Putin has become a great power once again. That is precisely why he has been able to fight and win wars in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. That is why he is in a position for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine today. (...)

Knowing Ukraine, I imagine a significant number of the oligarchs who still control the country’s economy will prefer to kiss the Muscovite ring than to forfeit their vast wealth, even if much of it is safely stashed in London and Zurich.

On 21 February, Putin went out of his way to correct a member of his national security council who used the word ‘annexation’. He may contemplate partitioning Ukraine but I don't foresee full Anschluss. His goal seems to be to kill off once and for all Ukraine’s aspirations to become like Poland: not merely a member of Nato and the EU, but also a prosperous democracy oriented towards the West. He can achieve that by turning Ukraine into ‘Belarus South’ — a country where, rather like Russia, things changed after 1991 only in order to remain fundamentally the same. (...)»

Vlad the Invader: Putin is looking to rebuild Russia’s empire, Niall Ferguson