A couple years back I worked the front desk at a sleazy motel. Think fluorescent lights, old cigarette musk, and cheap coffee in a styrofoam cup.
One of the first things I learned laboring for minimum wage in a transient waystation is that nobody is unique. Every decision we make, every thought we have—all of ‘em, we share with those who came before.
But often these coping mechanisms perpetuate the very problem we deploy them to resolve. Alcoholics, as an example, use booze to relieve the anxiety they feel towards their growing alcoholism. The more they drink, the less they fear, but the more they need to drink. It’s the same across every substance. An addict is an addict is an addict. The particulars vary, of course, and all can pull themselves out, but the hole is the same because *we* are the same. We are human. When presented with identical stimuli our responses become uniform.
I bring this up because I want to introduce everyone to Sara.
Sara was a long-term resident at the motel, holding down a full-time job as a waitress at a local diner. Every evening she’d work, and every morning she’d pay her rent. Was it more expensive this way? Absolutely, but Sara could pay the motel fees on a day-by-day basis, rather than saving up for a deposit plus two month’s rent. Also it meant that she didn’t have to worry about her or her husband’s miserable credit score. Living in the motel was an ad hoc coping mechanism to a temporary challenge made permanent by dint of repetition.
Sara and her husband lived like this for years. They were the perfect tenants, always paid their rent on time and never made a noise.
Until one morning Sara showed up in my office in tears with the left of her face mottled a dark purple.
I didn’t know what to do. I was a kid from the suburbs, no way in hell prepared to handle domestic violence. My response was a firm, “There. There. Would you like me to call the police?”
Unfortunately my proposal didn’t have the effect I’d hoped, and Sara spent the next hour (for which I was paid $8.00), tearfully explaining the many, many reasons why she couldn’t press charges against her husband. Her excuses ranged from “I can’t afford rent on my own,” to “He’s a nice guy. We’re just under a lot of stress.” Eventually she went back to him and the cycle repeated. And repeated. And repeated.
Sara couldn’t change her situation because her decisions were predicated upon survival and an incorrect assessment of her husband’s character. She was trapped by her own perception of reality.
>The Russian strategy that matters most is not Moscow’s warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as it wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world.
>The Kremlin is not arguing with us. It is trying to enforce assertions about Russia’s manufactured portrayal of reality as the basis for our own discussions, and then allow us to reason to conclusions pre-determined by the Kremlin. Accepting Russia’s premises and reasoning from them may proceed in a formally logical way but is certainly not rational, since it is divorced from actual reality and from our interests. Soviet mathematician Vladimir Lefebvre defined this process as “reflexive control”– a way of transmitting bases for decision making to an opponent so that they freely come to a pre-determined decision.
Human behavior is like a river. Individually we are different, but as a collective we tend to follow the path of least resistance. Dig a canal and you define the course of the river.
Putin knows he can’t beat the West on the field of battle. He knows Russia cannot compete with NATO’s collective economic potential. And he knows his army is a pitiful, hollow shell, and that he is losing this war. He knows all of these things and they terrify him.
The essence of abuse is fear, just as the essence of tyranny is control: control over the self through control over others. Tyrannize so that it is impossible to be tyrannized. This flow of logic is the shaping force which guides the current his thoughts take. Putin is simultaneously the reincarnation of Peter the Great, yet a downtrodden martyr of the West’s neocolonialism. He thinks himself justified to victimize because he believes himself the victim.
>Russia has been a self-declared adversary of the US and NATO, but neither the US nor NATO took meaningful steps to defend against Russia, let alone attack it, until after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.[27] The West nevertheless periodically views its actions regarding Russia as by default escalatory, conceding the Kremlin’s reasoning. This includes Western actions to defend itself or its partners against unprovoked Russian aggression or measures to limit Russia’s access to Western technologies and markets – neither of which Russia is entitled to and certainly not when it uses both to sustain its unjust war.
Russia attacked Ukraine. They did so unprovoked and of their own volition. This is a fact. We are defending ourselves. Ukraine is defending itself. These are also facts. Yet we hesitate.
I don’t think the West believes it’s at war—I don’t think we *want* to believe it, because we know what war means. It means deprivation, it means suffering, it means struggle and strife and fear. I don’t wish for war, do you? The prospect frightens me to my core. The West bends so far to maintain the status quo because it’s easier than admitting the truth.
But we need to admit it. We need to understand that the only way to solve this problem is to recognize it, to choose the path of most resistance and do what must be done.
>[Stopping the fighting does not stop the killing when it comes to Russia. The killing continues in Russian torture chambers on territory that Russia occupies – a process that is less visible to Western audiences and in a place where victims are stripped of the means to defend themselves.
>Peace=Surrender]
What do we do? How do we stop a tyrant from filling our lives with fear? The answer is simple for it is that which provokes his ire. [Defiance.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUOPvtVZwo8)
Putin wins if we allow him to frame our perception of Truth. His manipulations are simple, innocuous even, but with them he subtlety poisons our perspective until the Kremlin’s lies pour from our own lips.
2 comments
Welcome to the [Peanut Gallery](https://www.nuttyspectacle.com/)! Today we’re covering [ISW’s special edition: Denying Russia’s Only Strategy for Success.](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/denying-russia%E2%80%99s-only-strategy-success)
Please remember that I know nothing.
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A couple years back I worked the front desk at a sleazy motel. Think fluorescent lights, old cigarette musk, and cheap coffee in a styrofoam cup.
One of the first things I learned laboring for minimum wage in a transient waystation is that nobody is unique. Every decision we make, every thought we have—all of ‘em, we share with those who came before.
Poverty is an excellent example of this in action. When you’re broke, everything is more difficult, from getting out of bed to showing up to work. Minor inconveniences become existential threats. We develop behavioral patterns to cope these deprivations—[a rush to spend one’s entire paycheck before the system can steal it, for instance.](https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/93/3/961/57969/The-Ticket-to-Easy-Street-The-Financial?redirectedFrom=fulltext#.VpLMM1J327Q)
But often these coping mechanisms perpetuate the very problem we deploy them to resolve. Alcoholics, as an example, use booze to relieve the anxiety they feel towards their growing alcoholism. The more they drink, the less they fear, but the more they need to drink. It’s the same across every substance. An addict is an addict is an addict. The particulars vary, of course, and all can pull themselves out, but the hole is the same because *we* are the same. We are human. When presented with identical stimuli our responses become uniform.
I bring this up because I want to introduce everyone to Sara.
Sara was a long-term resident at the motel, holding down a full-time job as a waitress at a local diner. Every evening she’d work, and every morning she’d pay her rent. Was it more expensive this way? Absolutely, but Sara could pay the motel fees on a day-by-day basis, rather than saving up for a deposit plus two month’s rent. Also it meant that she didn’t have to worry about her or her husband’s miserable credit score. Living in the motel was an ad hoc coping mechanism to a temporary challenge made permanent by dint of repetition.
Sara and her husband lived like this for years. They were the perfect tenants, always paid their rent on time and never made a noise.
Until one morning Sara showed up in my office in tears with the left of her face mottled a dark purple.
I didn’t know what to do. I was a kid from the suburbs, no way in hell prepared to handle domestic violence. My response was a firm, “There. There. Would you like me to call the police?”
Unfortunately my proposal didn’t have the effect I’d hoped, and Sara spent the next hour (for which I was paid $8.00), tearfully explaining the many, many reasons why she couldn’t press charges against her husband. Her excuses ranged from “I can’t afford rent on my own,” to “He’s a nice guy. We’re just under a lot of stress.” Eventually she went back to him and the cycle repeated. And repeated. And repeated.
Sara couldn’t change her situation because her decisions were predicated upon survival and an incorrect assessment of her husband’s character. She was trapped by her own perception of reality.
>The Russian strategy that matters most is not Moscow’s warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as it wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world.
>The Kremlin is not arguing with us. It is trying to enforce assertions about Russia’s manufactured portrayal of reality as the basis for our own discussions, and then allow us to reason to conclusions pre-determined by the Kremlin. Accepting Russia’s premises and reasoning from them may proceed in a formally logical way but is certainly not rational, since it is divorced from actual reality and from our interests. Soviet mathematician Vladimir Lefebvre defined this process as “reflexive control”– a way of transmitting bases for decision making to an opponent so that they freely come to a pre-determined decision.
Human behavior is like a river. Individually we are different, but as a collective we tend to follow the path of least resistance. Dig a canal and you define the course of the river.
Putin knows he can’t beat the West on the field of battle. He knows Russia cannot compete with NATO’s collective economic potential. And he knows his army is a pitiful, hollow shell, and that he is losing this war. He knows all of these things and they terrify him.
The essence of abuse is fear, just as the essence of tyranny is control: control over the self through control over others. Tyrannize so that it is impossible to be tyrannized. This flow of logic is the shaping force which guides the current his thoughts take. Putin is simultaneously the reincarnation of Peter the Great, yet a downtrodden martyr of the West’s neocolonialism. He thinks himself justified to victimize because he believes himself the victim.
>Russia has been a self-declared adversary of the US and NATO, but neither the US nor NATO took meaningful steps to defend against Russia, let alone attack it, until after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.[27] The West nevertheless periodically views its actions regarding Russia as by default escalatory, conceding the Kremlin’s reasoning. This includes Western actions to defend itself or its partners against unprovoked Russian aggression or measures to limit Russia’s access to Western technologies and markets – neither of which Russia is entitled to and certainly not when it uses both to sustain its unjust war.
Russia attacked Ukraine. They did so unprovoked and of their own volition. This is a fact. We are defending ourselves. Ukraine is defending itself. These are also facts. Yet we hesitate.
I don’t think the West believes it’s at war—I don’t think we *want* to believe it, because we know what war means. It means deprivation, it means suffering, it means struggle and strife and fear. I don’t wish for war, do you? The prospect frightens me to my core. The West bends so far to maintain the status quo because it’s easier than admitting the truth.
But we need to admit it. We need to understand that the only way to solve this problem is to recognize it, to choose the path of most resistance and do what must be done.
>[Stopping the fighting does not stop the killing when it comes to Russia. The killing continues in Russian torture chambers on territory that Russia occupies – a process that is less visible to Western audiences and in a place where victims are stripped of the means to defend themselves.
>Peace=Surrender]
What do we do? How do we stop a tyrant from filling our lives with fear? The answer is simple for it is that which provokes his ire. [Defiance.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUOPvtVZwo8)
Putin wins if we allow him to frame our perception of Truth. His manipulations are simple, innocuous even, but with them he subtlety poisons our perspective until the Kremlin’s lies pour from our own lips.
Nice work