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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   25597 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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If they could kill him without repercussions, they would have already done so, which means they either can't, or doing so would come with costs they're not willing to pay. This might change if he uses nukes, but it's far from clear to me how it would pan out.

Why would they have killed him? It’s not like he’d be replaced by a liberal, there are plenty of (more) competent people in the security state. Generally assassinating foreign heads of state is an extremely poor move. The CIA was only obsessed with it in Castro’s case out of desperation; generally it’s pretty rare.

there are plenty of (more) competent people in the security state

This would require a very improbable configuration:

  • on one hand, Putin has to be competent enough to surround himself with competent people
  • on the other hand, he has to be simultaneously incompetent enough to disregard their advice
  • and all these competent people have to be incredibly patient or accepting to tolerate this configuration

You can point at literally Hitler, but he had several centuries of military tradition to rely on. There was an effective floor on the competence of German army generals. At the same time, all other branches of his security state weren't exactly stellar.

If it was an effective of preventing him from using nukes, they would have done so to prevent or stop the war by now. That killing of leaders doesn't tend to pan out this way is my entire point.

That's the thing, if anything a successful assassination would make it more likely for the next russian leader to use a nuke, and a failed assassination would make it more likely for Putin to use a nuke. On the other hand reserving these tactics for extreme situations makes them less likely.

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