Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "Jessica Berlin - Policy of Escalation Management has Hurt Ukraine and is Not a Strategy for Victory." video.

Russian global strategy includes increasing its control of global commodities and their prices. An example would be Venezuela recently. Russia, in part through its own lack of capabilities, essentially has reduced Venezuelan oil output from 3 million barrels a day to less than one million, just enough to prop up its client regime. African regimes appear to be accepting the model, seeing as it will work for themselves. Their people in general will be like Russians in general, with little recourse and a poor standard of living compared to what they could have. We should really hold up Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua as poster children for these African populations.
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No. I think the US national security establishment understands psychopaths. Not that long ago they went up against the world's fourth strongest military, Iraq, out of concern for that bully leader's trends, and changed that regime. But he did not have nukes. I think Western behavior has more to do with the prevailing American (and perhaps other) interests deciding that Ukraine is not worth the risk of nuclear escalation and has made that known to the White House. See Lloyd Austin's press conference early in the war after 2/24/22. He gets uncharacteristically animated about avoiding nuclear conflict. "It shall not happen" seems to have come down from multiple places on high. Ms. Berlin seems to think the President has the last say on these matters. He is definitely a player because he is the manager, but not the owner, of the federal government. He is not the only player in such decisions. I think that more logically explains the very calibrated delivery of military aid and calibrated tests of what the Russian regime will do in reaction to a specific act of war or set of circumstances. We now know it may be less risky to take out the Kerch Bridge in an isolated, surgical operation, but do that in coordination with broad combined arms assaults across the line and especially the land bridge and Russia might decide it can take the steam out of that with dozens of tactical nuclear detonations in Ukraine. A Russian nuclear spasm in Ukraine is possible. The bully paradigm really does not apply. The psychopathic paradigm must be considered. Putin cannot look weak to the rest of his regime. He has also proven he is willing demolish Ukrainian cities. And what catastrophic consequence were we going to mete out after taking down the Kerch bridge? Take out the relatively unused port of Sevastopol? Become Ukraine's air force? How does Ukraine move on from that point? Russia has to be left thinking it can adjust and persevere in the long run without resorting to supplementing its bombardment capabilities with tactical nuclear weapons. It might be willing to make a withdrawal from the Kherson Oblast in pieces without resorting to nuclear weapons, but only if it believes it will recover Kherson and reestablish the fresh water supply to Crimea. Russia is now on a war footing for the long run, and Ukraine will need to be in NATO and under its nuclear umbrella to retain what it has and what it might recover. The real test of Western resolve will be the strength of the NATO fortification of the remnant of Ukraine, which Russia will vehemently oppose. I don't see how Putin saves face if he just lets Russian forces in Ukraine collapse. He will do what he can do. This ends like Korea, a very tense armistice. Stopped in Ukraine and by NATO on the west, Putin will probably head for the Stans. Now there's a country that will be very difficult to help without starting immediately to provide them military aid. Like the Soviets, Putin's psychopathic paradigm will run the Russian economy into another collapse. Western oligarchs take note that our system seems more sustainable for wealth.
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I tend toward a paradigm of the empathic-neurotypical-psychopathic. Christopher Hitchens described the Kremlin as a psychopathic dictatorship. There, if you are not a psychopath, you very much need to learn to think and act like one. Victory and wealth are the values. That is a repeatedly human situation, and it's rather remarkable that in spite of those situations democratic republics exist. They may have varying degrees of corruption, yet strongly empathic people and neurotypicals have a share of power. These republics obtain advantages in productivity and morale that help them repel the more state of nature regimes like Russia.
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