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Notes -
Gaddafi, Milosevic, and Saddam didn't just lose wars on symbolic home ground - they lost wars against people who were explicitly after them. Gaddafi lost a civil war, Milosevic and Saddam lost to foreign interventions that had their removal as a goal.
Putin's loss scenario in Ukraine is humiliating, but the Ukrainians aren't coming to get him.
Lots of Ukraine’s allies want Putin gone even if the Ukrainians have not made that an explicit war goal of theirs. Biden said in his Poland speech “This man cannot remain in power,” and his team had to walk it back, but I think it clearly reflects prevailing sentiment among Western elites.
None of them are going to physically invade Russia to apprehend or kill Putin. Merely being disliked by Western elites is eminently survivable. He might have to settle for vacationing in Sochi instead of the Mediterranean, but that ship sailed months ago anyway.
Maybe if you’re Fidel Castro. Otherwise, seems like a decidedly mixed bag to say the least. And not having to do things yourself is exactly what proxies (like Ukraine) are for.
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