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The Repercussions of an Assassination Policy
Russia is on the cusp of breaking apart, with each region/nation/tribe going its own way. The country’s army has been exposed, and its finest assets dashed on the Ukrainian rocks, leaving a thin veneer of central government authority backed with no real threat of military power. It stands to reason that more independently-minded regions will cut ties with Moscow.
There is really only one thing keeping any would-be secessionist leader from breaking away: Putin’s track record of murdering any who oppose him. His policy of assassinating dissenters of all kinds has been extremely effective, because it is clear to any Russian national (in or out of Russia) that even voicing the wrong opinion can lead to polonium in your coffee or unhealthy deceleration after a brief encounter with unrestrained gravity.
On the one hand, I abhor murdering people for merely exercising their power of speech. But from a strategic and historic perspective, it is intriguing: murdering people really seems to be working for Vlad and his goals.
Sure, there are downsides in the long run for Russia: anyone who can get out, does. This has been broadly true since 1990, with a burst of 2022 acceleration in emigration and flight. The long-term drain on human resources will doom Mother Russia in the end. But is that end 2023, or 2030, or later?
So is assassination a legitimate/productive policy for a government? I have long advocated the US targeting leaders instead of foot soldiers: if we could, for example, take out Iran’s leadership in one strike it would seem to have all kinds of net benefits. I still think this is true — but only for very specific and evil foreign enemies.
Yet I fear an American government that is capable of targeting individuals overseas is also capable of following Putin’s lead and murdering our own citizens. We have plenty of targeting already going on (the IRS, FBI, etc., are all demonstratively capable of political witchhunts). We would not sleep better at night knowing that federal agencies might keep going down this path of illegal targeting of civilians.
What think you?
Published in General
Because they’re still alive. Dictators are extraordinarily sensitive to dissent.
“Strategic withdrawals” generally mean that you take your equipment with you, not abandon it by the side of the road on your way out.
Putin has only recently been firing commanders faster than the Ukrainians have been picking them off.
I’m unquestionably against Russia, but I don’t see any realistic separatist movements. If anything, the country has remained very united. There are cracks here and there but most voted against the war with their feet.
There is no organized opposition since the Putin regime has quashed it for the past 20 years. Several leaders and prominent figures have ended up dead mysteriously, but the legal purists here won’t say they were assassinations. Ho hum, it’s very quaint.
Also, I think if most Russian people were happy with their country and its leadership, they’d be having more children.
So you think people in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, who are having lots of children, are happy with their governments?
Your source lists about 8,700 vehicles destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured. Is that supposed to be a big deal? Russia’s a nation of about 140-150 million people, right. That’s not too many vehicles, a small fraction of Soviet losses in WWII. It seems about comparable with the Battle of Kursk, which was a big battle, but just one of many.
Very big rose colored glasses!
-the Russian tank loss of 1,600 is photo verified- ie the losses are almost certainly significantly higher especially including economic losses ( ie tanks worn/damage beyond repair). And one must keep in mind that these were the best tanks with the best trained crews. US tank losses in the Gulf War & Iraq war were about 1/50 of those losses and many of those were friendly fire incidents. [the Iraqi army had more tanks in service than the Ukrainian army had at the start of each war].
– the ~10,000 tanks in storage include many obsolescent models in unknown condition (the Russians aren’t renown for their care of military equipment).
the above also applies to the other 7,000 vehicles lost. Russian logistics has always been an Achilles heel & losing so many trucks greatly complicates their war effort. Russia is clearly losing equipment at a phenomenal & unsustainable rate. Russia only had ~350 modern, updated, fighter-bombers and has lost at least 10% of that force (again photo verified – so that is the floor estimate of losses)while only adding few (and recently announced they well send dozens of Su-35s to Iran as payment for drones- these are likely coming from their air force inventory as their production rate is low).
The outcome is uncertain but the war has been a catastrophe for the Russian army by any definition. The best they can hope for is a repeat of the Winter War- a gain of small amounts of land at enormous cost. Hopefully, the West continues & accelerates it support of Ukraine so they can drive the Russians out.
You’ll no doubt be happy to know that, according to the latest (i.e. 2022) data from the UN, Russia’s total fertility rate is 1.8, which is the same as the following countries: France, Denmark, Sweden, the U.S., Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia.
For comparison, Ukraine’s is 1.4, which is the same as Finland, Japan, Spain, and Luxembourg.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate#Country_ranking_by_most_recent_year
To the OP. I do not agree that assassination is a legitimate policy for my or any other government.
Think of the golden rule.
Has he?
Since the war began, 8 Russian generals (7 one-stars and 1 two-star) have been killed in action. 4 in March, 2 in April, 1 in May, and 1 in June. None since then.
How many generals has Putin fired recently?
It always comes home to roost. If you make your morality conditional when dealing with foreigners it’s inevitable that it trends conditional when dealing with your fellow citizens. Short sighted and unwise.
This seems unlikely, not least because many minority regions are ethnically heterogenous. Tatarstan, for eg, isn’t just inhabited by Tatars. And the people learned something from the aftermath of the Soviet Union breaking up. Why would they want another decimating decade like that?
General of the Army Sergey Surovikin, AKA “General Armeggedon” replaced Colonel General Gennady Zhidko in October. Zhidko had been in charge since June. Surovikin has been quoted as approving of hitting civilian infrastructure which is a war crime for those keeping store. Surovikin has just been replaced by Valery Gerasimov, who as Chief of the General Staff was responsible for planning this goat rodeo.
None of the 3 examples involve “firings”, of course. Not if one is even moderately careful with words.
An example of an actual “firing” of a general, just to pick a really famous case, would be what Abraham Lincoln did with George McClellan: relieved him of his command AND never gave him any other. Now THAT’s “fired”.
Another vivid demonstration of the truism, “It’s lonely at the top.”
Or “at the end.”
Do I mean figuratively, or literally?
Yes.
Yes. I recall reading of a couple of Putin’s opponents “falling” from high-rise windows recently. I’m not going to bother looking up the references.
500,000 dead Iraqis might beg to differ…if they weren’t dead. Knowing the counterfactual is impossible, but I think that the freedom achieved could have come at a lower price.
In their day to day lives women in Baghdad are less free today than they were under Saddam.
They were all relieved oh command. That is how one fires a general.
No. Reassignments/rearrangements of responsibility among generals, in response to changing conditions/developments in the course of a war are most definitely NOT the equivalent of firings thereof.
Importantly, …
What also bears mentioning is that, matters such as who’s in charge of what particular “front” or “operation” or some such at any particular time during a war is not generally the kind of information/intelligence that either side is particularly eager for the other side to ever have a really clear bead on. For obvious reasons.
IOW, I took news reports along the lines of “Putin puts Surovikin in overall charge of Ukraine War” with a very large grain of salt, especially when they’re accompanied by click-bait accompaniments like “General Armageddon”. Just as large a grain of salt as I now take subsequent news reports along the lines of “Putin sours on General Armageddon after only 3 months, picks Gerasimov instead”.
PS:
I’m old enough to remember the concept of “Kremlinology”, which the Wikipedia article thereof (in a pretty rare display of accuracy that ALSO elicits much amusement, at least in me) describes thusly (bracket insertion mine):
“During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the [Soviet Union] forced Western analysts to “read between the lines” and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square, the choice of capital or small initial letters in phrases such as “First Secretary”, the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper Pravda and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology#Techniques
Putin has gone through five commanders in eleven months.
QED
Why do you see that as necessarily a sign of weakness? The US has enormous stability of top command and keeps losing wars. There are no consequences for the US losing a war for the generals or the political leaders. Our wars are wars of choice. We start them and then bug out on them. Russia views Ukraine as existential. They are far more serious than we are because Ukraine just doesn’t matter that much.
The “special operation” was only supposed to last three to five days. They ran out of supplies. The reason the generals keep getting bounced is because the longer this goes on, the weaker the strongman looks. Weak strongmen get Ceaușescued.
Do you honestly believe this?
Ukraine is being slaughtered – literally – and Putin is weak. Do you see civilian life in Ukraine on videos? It’s miserable. It’s nothing like that in Russia. And Putin is weak?
You really must like kool aid.
OK. Name the 5, and state what part of the Ukraine War each was in command of before Putin decided that he was “through” with him. With your source(s) properly linked, of course.
Let’s see just how “QED” your claims are, shall we?
I’ve named three. Weren’t you here for that part?
I beg to differ. The genocidal killing of Iraqis and Kurds (not to mention half a million Iranians) has been stopped by the killing of Saddam Hussein and the restructuring of their country as a democracy. They have not reverted back to a dictatorship for about 20 years now and counting……….
That just sounds like sour grapes, seeing that you have supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine all along.
I don’t share your making U.S. leaders equivalent to Vladimir Putin. Your take is exactly the same line that comes from radical leftists.
Forgive me, because it is not my intention to insult or demean anybody on this site, but I am just metaphorically scratching my head to the max over this battlefield assessment… Was this the evaluation from “Russia Today” news?
I’m glad you brought this up. It is at the heart of the post. I want everybody to think back to all the wishful thinking that if somebody could have just killed Adolph Hitler at any point during his conquest, we could have saved the world from immeasurable misery. I don’t know if anybody ever thought that idea to be abhorrent. If you think the assassination of foreign leaders is unjust, then you would have to oppose the killing of Hitler. You would be saying that the people who did carry out assassination plots against him (unsuccessfully) were morally wrong. I know Hitler stands alone on the victory stand of world’s most evil person, but shouldn’t the same principle apply to lesser evil dictators as well?
I cannot ascertain your reason for bringing this up because you have not explained it, but try applying the
Golden Rule to the punishment of criminals, and you run into a dilemma. Should I jail them since I don’t want them to jail me?
If you are applying the Golden Rule to the assassinating foreign leaders situation, I would say millions of people would want you to kill the dictator who is oppressing them, as you would want them to kill the dictator who is oppressing you. Sound fair?
And if they don’t feel that way yet they would if they ‘knew’ what we ‘know’. So really….