NP: I'll call your Kennan and raise you a Mearshiemer

[David Morris]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin
The Weakness of the Despot
An expert on Stalin discusses Putin, Russia, and the West.
By David Remnick <https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/david-remnick>
March 11, 2022
Stephen Kotkin is one of our most profound and prodigious scholars of
Russian history. His masterwork is a biography of Josef Stalin. So far he
has published two volumes––“Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928
<https://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Paradoxes-1878-1928-Stephen-Kotkin/dp/0143127861/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ots=1&tag=thneyo0f-20&linkCode=w50&_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=>,”
which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “Waiting for Hitler,
1929-1941
<https://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Waiting-1929-1941-Stephen-Kotkin/dp/1594203806/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?ots=1&tag=thneyo0f-20&linkCode=w50&_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=>.”
A third volume will take the story through the Second World War; Stalin’s
death, in 1953; and the totalitarian legacy that shaped the remainder of
the Soviet experience. Taking advantage of long-forbidden archives in
Moscow and beyond, Kotkin has written a biography of Stalin that surpasses
those by Isaac Deutscher, Robert Conquest, Robert C. Tucker, and countless
others.

Kotkin has a distinguished reputation in academic circles. He is a
professor of history at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution, at Stanford University. He has myriad sources in
various realms of contemporary Russia: government, business, culture. Both
principled and pragmatic, he is also more plugged in than any reporter or
analyst I know. Ever since we met in Moscow, many years ago––Kotkin was
doing research on the Stalinist industrial city of Magnitogorsk––I’ve found
his guidance on everything from the structure of the Putin regime to its
roots in Russian history to be invaluable.
-—————————————————————
*Kotkin*:  What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s
not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern.  Way before NATO existed
—the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: *it had an autocrat. It
had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the
West.* This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived
yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions
of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where
we are today.

On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 11:09 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Without the NATO decisions, Europe would now be as good as over....
>
> I FORCEFULLY REJECT, as most do, the use of the word
> PROVOCATIONS....ANOTHER VILE bow to
> Putin, lying criminal Putin; justifying his evil, international law crimes
> by HIS desires is what this word does ......
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 10:58 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thomas Eckhardt via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>>
>> "Vladimir Putin's decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine is
>>
>>
>> 1.  *A monstrous act of aggression* that has plunged the world into a
>>> perilous
>>> situation.
>>
>>
>> 2. *By any ***reasonable standard*** his move was an
>>> over-the-top response to ANY Ukrainian or NATO provocations.*
>>
>>
>> HOWEVER, It wasn’t really
>> *THAT* *UNREASONABLE*:
>> (*She MADE me HIT her*)
>>
>> However, that conclusion is different from saying that there were no
>>> provocations, as far too many policymakers and pundits in the West are
>>> doing now.
>>>
>>> It has become especially fashionable in such circles to insist
>>> that NATO's expansion to Russia's border was in no way responsible for
>>> the current Ukraine crisis. Many dismiss all arguments to the contrary
>>> as "echoing Putin's talking points," "siding with Putin,” or
>>> circulating Russian propaganda and "disinformation." Leaving aside the ugly
>>> miasma of McCarthyism enveloping such allegations, the underlying argument
>>> is factually wrong
>>
>>
>> But hasn’t Putin said he did it because the *NAZIS FORCED HIM TO*?
>>
>> So was it *NATO* or the *NAZIS*?
>> Oh!  I know!!!   I know!!!
>> The NAZIS we’re working for NATO!!!
>> (Or maybe NATO is run by NAZIS?)
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>>