Putin is a naked emperor

(CNN) Has Vladimir Putin gone mad? Otherwise, how could someone who could be the president of Russia manage to bring the world to the brink of an unimaginable crisis in such a reckless manner? Seen from outside the Kremlin, the war in Ukraine is totally unjustifiable and unwinnable.

Yes. There is no chance of winning this war. Even if the Russian military takes the country at bayonet point against Ukraine's democratic government and replaces it with a Russian puppet government, the Kremlin faces bloody civil war and destruction. economic downturn.

Putin may not realize it yet, but his greatest fear is that he will be displaced by a grassroots movement, and that will come from something he himself started. there is a possibility. But as a long-time Russia watcher, I doubt that Mr Putin has lost his mind. Rather, it seems that the information is so inadequate that the espionage activities that form the basis of his own complex calculations can hardly reflect the reality.

As Gabriel García Márquez and many others have said, "It's easier to start a war than to finish it." Putin must have known what the warning meant.

Although he is a good student of history, his understanding of the past may be distorted. If Mr. Putin recognizes the humiliation of Russia and is driven by it to rewrite history, his strong motivation is actually more existential fear than his ego. It may come from He believes that if such threats are not contained, he will eventually perish.

Putin's intentions

If Russia were a bona fide democracy, Putin would be unable to stay in power and would be forced to relinquish his allegedly ill-gotten wealth. In 2008, when he temporarily surrendered the presidency, the presidency effectively fell to the interim and titular leader Dmitry Medvedev, but long before that, Russia's real leader was its own. I made my intentions clear.

In 2005, Putin declared in his annual State of the Union address to Congress that the collapse of the Soviet empire was "a once-in-a-century geopolitical catastrophe." It became an "epidemic," fueling separatist movements and "spreading through Russia itself," he said.

The December 2021 comment on the disappearance of “Historic Russia” was a natural complement to his March 2018 statement. In a statement to reporters, he said he wanted to avoid the collapse of the Soviet Union if possible.

Putin, a former Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, is a seasoned intelligence officer obsessed with controlling others. An intelligence officer strives to build power and control everyone and everything. Control, including what words you use to recognize them, so that you can control other movements that follow.

Many stages are prepared for this work. Putin's passionate speeches, the release of masculine photos, the absolute submissiveness of Russia's highest officials and the overwhelming use of military force to enhance the country's mystique. It is nothing but a reflection of that.

Mr. Putin's theatrical order to put Russia's nuclear forces on high alert was also with an audience in mind. The audience is both your own people and those in the West. There was an aim to elicit a retaliatory reaction with a ostentatious production and reinforce his own discourse.

Russia is a victim of attacks by invaders, he claims. Therefore, taking the initiative and inflicting the greatest damage is an act of self-defense that has been given priority. If it was really a countermeasure against a U.S. military threat, there was no need to publish the order.

Even if the Russian military had secretly gone on high alert, US intelligence would have picked up on the signs immediately. During the Fourth Middle East War in 1973, the U.S. military put its own nuclear forces on high alert in the wake of Russian military action, but the Nixon administration at the time made no public announcements. Yet the United States meticulously communicated orders to all armed forces, openly demonstrating that security arrangements were being made. Russian leaders quickly received the message.

Mr. Putin's philosophy as a pragmatist is to take the initiative without leaving everything to chance. And under his influence, he creates situations in which his enemies have no choice but to fall behind. But its success or failure depends entirely on the availability of high-quality information. If you draw a blueprint without any potential flaws or weaknesses in mind, the result is a house of cards.

The Unexpected Circumstances

It is too early to tell how the events in Ukraine will ultimately end, but Mr Putin's war is the one he expected. Or there's little room for argument that it's not going the way you would have hoped.

Although no one can read Mr. Putin's thoughts, what emerges from a very limited perspective is the figure of one leader who created the royal palace. No one dares to deliver news that Mr. Putin does not like to the gathering yes-men. He filled important government posts with influential politicians called shirobiki (security and defense ministry officials and former members). They have a background in the Russian intelligence service and most are ex-KGB.

But thieves have no honor. In this case, Mr Putin relies on these former spies because he is confident in his ability to manipulate and control them. They are intent on looting the country's resources. Purse-filling bounties are rewards for loyalty, not intrinsic trust.

The content of Putin's recent National Security Council meeting was probably engineered. It is highly probable that they recorded and recorded according to the script prepared in advance, and they probably also edited it, but there are some things that can be glimpsed from there. And the words and deeds of bureaucrats reflect the orders and examples set by their leaders. Putin's intelligence, security and defense agencies are also ultimately bureaucratic.

Mr. Putin, who is apparently morbidly concerned about his own security, is clearly surrounded by self-censorship due to his detached environment and erratic behavior. It raises the degree of information manipulation. The impact extends to everyone involved. Normally, they would be in a position to accurately explain the situation in the outside world for Mr. Putin.

In such an atmosphere, how transparent can Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov be to report on the combat capabilities and logistic functions of the army? Even if the Russian military losses were much smaller than the media reported, the numbers would still be several times what the US suffered in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria over the past 20 years.

The head of the Russian General Staff Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Kostukov has rarely been heard publicly. The notoriously hard-line figure ostensibly shares a perception with Putin. Kostukov's group, particularly unit 29155, has been involved in assassinations, sabotage and aiding insurgency in other countries. In the future, the number of his words may decrease further.

If Russia's strategy in the first few days of the war reflected the GRU's assessment, Mr. Kostukov's fortunes would be on the decline. The GRU believed that Russian forces would sweep across Ukraine and that the pro-Russian population would offer little resistance. He assumed that these inhabitants would be indifferent to the situation, if not sympathetic to the invasion.

Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and Aleksandr Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), crouched down together with Putin on TV. , they are unlikely to have warned Mr. Putin about the fighting spirit of Ukrainians. The same is true of the situation in which some of the world's most liberal democracies are coming up with measures that could have devastating effects on their economies.

Watching Putin

As the world watches with bated breath, Putin's actions are disrupting some assumptions that have long defined great power conflict. For example, the concept of "mutually assured destruction" may no longer be as reliable a protector as was previously thought.

A revised version of Russia's nuclear deterrence policy, openly endorsed by Mr. Putin, states that nuclear weapons will not be used when government and military installations of national importance are targeted, even in conventional attacks. It becomes possible to fight back. Belarus also recently announced that it had approved a constitutional amendment in a referendum, allowing it to deploy nuclear weapons. Perhaps this will prompt Putin to deploy mobile intermediate-range nuclear missiles even closer to the border with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

While I may be biased after 34 years at the CIA's Secret Headquarters and a long tracker of Russian targets, a deeper insight reveals Putin's desires. When looking at the intelligence that serves as the basis for intentions and decision-making, it is likely that in the future we will be able to rely more on real people than on our proud technological prowess.

Thanks to high-definition spy satellites, we can count Russian soldiers, check their formations, and verify their weapons. In addition to monitoring traffic at multiple information gathering facilities, they sometimes even partially grasp the contents of communications.

But even these technologies cannot answer the most important questions about Ukraine. What on earth is the person named Vladimir Putin thinking? "What is his intention?" "Where should I drop it?" And how can we help the public distinguish between fact and misinformation on the ground?

Some of the insight into the Kremlin's thinking that the US and its allies had in the past has been lost, according to reports. Five years ago, one of the CIA agents who had access to Putin was compromised by a breach of information. Former President Trump was the one to lose his reputation on the matter. On May 27, 2017, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Kislyak in the Oval Office to discuss classified information.

In order to deal with the gaps that were born in this way, CIA Director Burns declared that he would work on restructuring the organization. He said he had in mind everything from counter-terrorism to conventional intelligence gathering against strategic adversaries. In particular, he cited China, technology, Russia, and growing the organization's workforce.

The CIA has a tough job to do. It must overcome the past two decades of traditional underinvestment in foreign espionage. And in far harsher conditions than James Bond ever faced. Additionally, it takes time to get each agent to the right place. But regardless of Trump's personal feelings, I don't expect the CIA to actually stop working against Russia.

Russia was initially relatively restrained and wary of civilian casualties. The premise, no doubt, was Mr. Putin's desire to avoid complications in bringing Ukraine under his control. It was also necessary in order to suppress the rebellion after taking control of the capital and the change of government. But he is likely to become more and more desperate in the future, seeking to reestablish control and achieve military victory.

The natural concern about how the prolonged war and the resulting Russian casualties would affect homeland prompted Putin to adopt even more of the barbaric tactics he demonstrated in the Syrian war. I can't help it. In that case, the city center will be completely destroyed, and weapons such as fuel vapor bombs and cluster bombs will be used indiscriminately.

To compete with Putin and his siloviki, we must understand them through inside information. The emotional elements that suggest Putin's recklessness also require turning away.

The current situation is barbaric and irrational to us. Therefore, it is impossible to predict what will happen in the future. But US intelligence successfully predicted Putin's invasion of Ukraine. It's not that he's irrational, but rather the result of examining his complex calculations and determining that they're based on misinformation. His advisory cronies have so far proved unhelpful, but he relies on them to make decisions.

Putin will likely continue to escalate the war in Ukraine. What he fears most is the loss of control over Russia. Does he really understand that war itself puts him in danger? That is the very important question.

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Douglas London is the author of a book on US espionage. In addition to teaching informatics at Georgetown University, he is also a visiting researcher at the Middle East Institute (MEI), a US think tank. He has worked for the CIA's Secret Headquarters for 34 years. Work locations were mainly in the Middle East, Central and Southern Asia, and Africa. The content of the article is his personal opinion.