Immorality & Creativity

Depravity in the service of empire, then & now

(Trump and ‘Putin’ in Alaska on August 15th)

Many people ask why Russia is prosecuting a brutal war of aggression against Ukraine. The short answer is simple: under Putin, Moscow’s goal has been to claw back, by stealth and military force, as much of its former empire as possible.

In doing this, Putin’s Kremlin regime, which has already lasted 25 years, is not unlike Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship, which lasted only twelve. Both Putin and Hitler were eyewitnesses to empires that came apart: each made it his life’s work to reconquer that territory and, in Hitler’s case, much more.

Such dreams of restored imperial greatness were common denominators for Mao, Napoleon, Stalin and plenty of other autocrats, who often believed themselves to be to rectifying perceived historic slights. Mao was obsessed with a ‘century of humiliation’; Napoleon sought to reverse France’s revolutionary decline; Stalin wanted to undo post-1918 independence for the Baltic states, Finland and Poland.