[I am publishing this because I was wrong. I want to acknowledge it, because that’s the only way we learn to be better and more astute in judging these issues. I really thought Putin would not go this far, but it is clear he is a madman–madder than we thought–who is dangerous to all of Europe.] Gwynne Dyer courageously acknowledging that he was wrong about Russia’s intentions on the Ukraine. The odd thing is, he was actually right. He thought Russia would not invade Ukraine because Ukraine had a far more formidable army than most commentators thought. He was right about that– most commentators also thought Russia would overwhelm Ukraine within a matter of weeks.
Still leaning towards the idea that all this blather about Ukraine is just so much self-perpetuating frenzy: everyone is reporting it so it must be true. And who is supplying all the networks with the lustrous video of tanks and missiles and armored personnel carriers racing around? The Russians of course.
Gwynne Dyer thinks Putin has no intention of invading and he’s right more often than most pundits. Every TV newscast starts out with “INCREASING tension today… ” but tension can’t increase every day without reaching 100% at which point it’s either the same or it decreases. North Korea had it’s time; then Iran. Now it’s Putin.
Strikingly, nobody ever mentions the size of the Ukrainian army, which is actually the largest in Europe at 250,000.
If you hypothesize that this is all just theatre and watch the news in that context, nothing seems jarringly out of place. The White House wants to look tough and determined; Putin wants to look like he’s big and powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with Biden (he’s not: Russia is really not that big or powerful), the media thrives on a perpetual state of crisis.
It’s like Republicans and the crime the rate: it’s always going up. It’s now at 26,000 percent.