The Psychology of Vladimir Putin

The Psychology of Vladimir Putin

Sunday, August 17, 2008

One of the lesser-known aspects of intelligence analysis is the study and profiling of foreign leaders that are key players on the world stage, especially foreign leaders that are key architects of military invasions of their democratic neighbors using tactics of total war. The leftist media still has not come to the realization of what Russia has become since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and while the west hoped that Russia would make a permanent transition into a form of western-styled democracy, I will explain what happened—what went wrong—with Russia and why it has become a dangerous war-mongering aggressor nation-state. Geopolitically, the new Russia is now mirroring the Russia of old, the former Soviet Russia. This transition back in time really has nothing to do with the Russian people themselves, but everything to do with one man—Vladimir Putin.

The psychological transition of Vladimir Putin from a man who appears to have pursued lawful and just democratic ideals for Russia after replacing Boris Yeltzin as President of the Russian Federation on December 29, 1999, into a suspicious man leaning towards totalitarian ideals that more closely resembles the leadership cells of the former Soviet Union, has only taken a brief nine years to manifest itself. That psychological manifestation is now in full bloom as witnessed by the international community. The evidence—a strict rationalization of the facts, is required.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, its institutions were swept away because those institutions were no longer sustainable by the radicalized socialist collective. Non-producers vastly outnumbered producers, and Russian military involvement in every Soviet client state as well as the ongoing war in Afghanistan pressured the Soviet economy itself into collapse. The citizens that comprised the Soviet Union were starving, infrastructure was deteriorating and the proletariat was finding it quite difficult to maintain control over its empire of Communist nation-states. Western development of the Star Wars anti-ballistic missile system was of chief concern to the Soviets because it could give the United States primacy in nuclear warfare. The Soviet Union in the Cold War was only able to project its nefarious influence unhindered because of the Russian nuclear umbrella. If the United States and NATO were able to fracture that capability, the Soviet Union would no longer have its primary instrument of coercion and intimidation that it used against other nation-states as it saw fit to.

Vladimir Putin was a KGB Officer as this transition was taking place. The career track that we shall concern ourselves about for the purpose of this essay is that Putin worked for the Fifth Directorate of the KGB, a domestic intelligence unit that had specific responsibility to combat political dissent not only from within Communist structures inside the Soviet Union, but amongst the people themselves. Putin’s task then was to detect and eliminate enemies of the communist “state” hierarchy, and given the KGB’s methods, certainly included assassinations and imprisonment of Soviet government personnel and civilians. The mere whisper by any citizen in the former Soviet Union of disagreement with the ruling Communist Party about any policy or directive could quickly and decisively bring KGB involvement.

The key to this theory is the suspicion that Vladimir Putin is no longer capable of internalizing criticism. In healthy democracies, criticism is an abundant behavior. The public servant—the career politician—must not only accept the truth that criticism goes with the profession, but approaching such activity in an unbalanced way usually leads to the replacement of the politician by voters. Western societies are always quick to criticize political opponents dependent upon the party affiliation of the voter—or more aptly, the “citizen”. If western media disagrees with policy, media shapes reporting to ensure the politician is aware that media special interest groups are concerned about policy and desire to see change in policy. If the politician ignores these signals, media steps up pressure on that politician. These are vibrant and healthy methods in a democracy because the tactics used ensure that the “people” are informed about what their government is doing.

However, a politician that no longer has the internal psyche to address or dismiss criticism may become dangerous not only to the indigenous population in which he exercises political power, but increasingly to the international community of peaceful democracies whose institutions rely on criticism to find out where they are going wrong, and to bring urgent matters to the attention of the people when required. In fact, a politician trained in the mechanics of eliminating dissent could do so not only in the host country that elected him, but outside that nation-state’s borders. This is precisely what Vladimir Putin has done to the nation-state of Georgia.

Russian total war operations against the defenseless country of Georgia are military operations put in play specifically to crush dissent. President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia is Putin’s ideological polar opposite. Men such as President Mikheil Saakashvili were energetically hunted in the former Soviet Union by the Fifth Directorate of the KGB, and that is what Putin was specialized to do. When you add to that Putin’s special powers as Prime Minister of Russia, Putin has taken his training and personal suspicions to another level by designing the invasion of another democracy in Georgia. Putin has not considered that hating your enemies does and will affect your judgment as a leader in the international community.

Evidence suggests that the attack upon Georgia was a psychological derivative of Vladimir Putin’s own deteriorating inner workings—the apex of Putin’s tolerance of criticism was reached. President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, an avid critic of Putin and Russia itself for many years, is the reason why Putin was blinded to the implementation of total war by the Russian military against the Georgian people. Only the suspicious man, the man with fading resilience, allows for the extermination of other human beings who are not party to competition between nation-states. Purer forms of this psychological trait are best remembered in history through the examination of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism as an institution.

Even now, as we speak, Chechen mercenaries and Cossacks are killing Georgian civilians, looting their homes and businesses, raping Georgian women, and rounding up Georgian young men to be exterminated for unmarked graves. That is not the activity of a professional military force. The leadership cell in command of such a military force either isn’t concerned about the undisciplined nature of what that military is doing, or is blind to it because of other more pressing concerns that involve personal rage towards criticism. The attack upon the Georgian people is designed to punish Mikheil Saakashvili, to kill the voters, the citizens of the Georgian president, since assassinating Saakashvili directly would be very reckless. The idea is to dismantle the critic, and absent Russian capability to kill Saakashvili or detain the man in the gulag archipelago, the indiscriminate killing and total war against Georgian civilian populations will suffice for Putin. The war against Georgian civilians will cause scholars to examine the words of President Mikheil Saakashvili for their abundant accuracies.

Vladimir Putin began to demonstrate his personal deterioration years ago using evidence of other similar examples. The assassination and disappearances of Russian journalists, the assassination of non-journalist critics both in Russia and other countries like Great Britain, and the personal destruction of business leaders that the Kremlin perceived as enemies of the state, brings vast scientific evidence when examining Putin’s sociopathology. In a past article I wrote about the fate of Alexander Litvinenko where Putin would not have the moral deficiency to create nor order such an act—poisoning Litvinenko with a radioactive substance—but I must follow the scientific evidence. That evidence, the study of Russian business leaders that were either imprisoned after show trials in Russia, business leaders that were banished from Russia, Russian companies seized by the Kremlin for “national security” concerns in direct actions to nationalize those corporations, and now, the direct invasion of one and threats against other neighboring democracies, is scientific proof of the sinister nature of Putin’s leadership style and personality. It defies logic that a head of state would order the assassination of Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, but future examples have provided us with conclusive evidence that it is so.

The overall political trends that are appearing in Russia today due to Putin’s leadership should be cause for grave concern. A man that orders warfare against civilian populations just to weaken another political leader critical of Russia is recklessness. It is the act of the godless man, the man who doubts his own capabilities—a man filled with many resentments and hostilities. Putin cannot grasp the simple truth that in western democracies the intelligent leader is criticized for sport, marginalized and smacked down at every opportunity. Truly gifted leaders recognize the truth that the endless waves of progeny that work against the plans of the intelligencia are relentless in their pursuit and nagging of gifted and intelligent people and use various methods to bring them down to the ungifted level of the uncontrolled progeny. This behavior is institutionalized in western universities, the media, and even government. No one likes it when a very intelligent man speaks truth to power. That said, in democracies, we do not exterminate people who criticize us. We do not kill their children, rape their women, rob them and deprive them of private property, and allow our military forces to conduct war operations against them in an undisciplined way.

While Georgia had its military forces deployed alongside the United States in Iraq to protect the Iraqi people from Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, Russia took advantage of that military deployment to invade Georgia. Prior to Russia’s military invasion of Georgia, Vladimir Putin’s campaign to issue South Ossetians Russian passports to expand Russian territory in a defacto way is also reckless behavior. Internationally defined borders of nation-states do not change because one country issues passports to the citizens of another country. Diplomacy is not conducted under the threat of nuclear attack against countries that do not possess nuclear weapons, like Poland. The Russian Black Sea Fleet is not anchored in the Ukraine only for the Ukrainians to ignore their complete existence, even if the ships are used in hostile invasions of a neighboring democracy. Absolutely ludicrous.

What we are dealing with now is a reckless Russian leadership problem caused by Putin’s inability to navigate criticism from media to leaders of foreign countries, and this problem seems to be conflagrating into a regional concern not only for Russia, but the west in total. As long as Putin remains in power in Russia, the Kremlin can’t be trusted by the west.

Christopher Farmer

MS, National Security

Is Vladimir Putin cracking under criticism? Is that why Putin ordered the invasion of Georgia?

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