When I wrote of my fear that Putin, if hemmed in by economics and resisted successfully by Ukrainian forces for long enough, might lash out with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, a friend wrote back in agreement. And then said “We need to offer him something to save face.”
But is there an exit route, something that we can give him or he can take which will result in enough satisfaction that he will stop this horrendous invasion?
Granted, Putin has stepped past many lines. Last night, on “Firing Line,” NYTimes photojournalist Lynsey Addario said that the Russians are now indiscriminately lobbing ordinance into population centers, and deliberately targeting civilians—women, children, old people—who are evacuating. Addario, who has “covered every major conflict and humanitarian crises of her generation, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, South Sudan, Somalia, and Congo,” says that Ukraine is the worst. It took years for three million refugees to flee Syria—and less than a month for that number from Ukraine.
This puts Putin in the company of past bad dictators, including but not limited to Pinochet, Marcos, Khadafi, Saddam Hussein, Riza Shah, Idi Amin, and his own countryman, Josef Stalin. We needn’t get into discussions of who exiled more, who killed more, and who was more dangerous to neighboring countries. All of these men—yes, all men—are noted for their bad deeds. All gripped power and hung onto it by intrigue and corruption. All had cadres of supporters, sometimes idealists who thought, at the beginning, that they were following a man who would benefit their countries. Some fled—most famously Trotsky fleeing Stalin—but always a group stuck by the dictator and became complicit in everything he wanted and directed in his use of power and personal vision for the country.
In retrospect, wealth seems only an adjunct to the crucial commodities of vision and power—restoration of past greatness a common thread from the Shah’s identification with the ancient Persian Peacock Throne to Putin’s Greater Russia. Most pundits discount the direct influence of oligarchs, the toadies who serve Putin but don’t influence him. They are not part of the inner circle, which includes Putin’s old KGB colleagues and others who’ve risen through military and intelligence ranks.
Looking at that roster of mostly twentieth century autocrats, their demise almost always came from within, from the inner circle itself, or from a still-standing religious or ethnic power center close-by. Marcos was toppled by a military faction; Idi Amin by exiled Ugandans and his failed war against a neighbor; the Shah by rising forces of democracy and religion; and Stalin died in a pool of his own urine when his guards feared waking him.
All dictators come to their ends, and rarely is it a safe exit provided by outsiders. The outside can, as Ukraine and much of the world are doing now, stress the dictator’s rule, but the collapse comes from within. Look to the military and Kremlin intelligence—or his own health—for Putin’s end.
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