Posted by rsp777 on 3/22/2022 9:26:00 PM (view original):
Someone needs to pay a borschthead 10,600 rubles and get this over with. :)
I don't think Putin's death is currently in the best interests of the US or the West in general.
Another lesson that becomes abundantly clear when reading history is that when autocrats die without a clearly-defined succession plan, it tends to get messy. As of right now, Putin does not seem to have a succession plan in place. Presumably, if he dies, there will be an election. If that had happened 20 years ago the results of the election would probably have held. Maybe they would have elected another autocrat who also would have undermined the nascent democracy, maybe they would have elected a true Democrat, who knows? It didn't happen. But at this point everyone knows the election process is basically meaningless. The election will happen, but you can't expect everyone to respect it. Other people who have a lot of money, or control armies, or just have big popular voices will still go ahead and say "look, everybody knows Russian elections can't be trusted. I'm going to take power and hold a new, fair election." And then you have a civil war.
Remember back in the 90s when everybody was scared about what happened to the Soviet nuclear arsenal? Putin is not a nice guy. Both personally and politically he seems like an aggressive, unpleasant, amoral at best individual. But he's strong. He has kept the country under control, and the same obsession with Russia controlling everything the Soviets once did that won't let him leave an independent Ukraine alone has also led to tight controls over the nuclear arsenal. In a civil war, whose to say nobody would use one? Or, recognizing that maybe nuking the people you're trying to rule isn't setting you up for success, whose to say somebody doesn't sell one or two to the highest bidding terrorist organization or organized rebellion to finance their conventional war for power? A divided and anarchic Russia leaves a lot of very dangerous weapons poorly controlled and guarded. That's not good for us.