STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Putin and Merkel Pivot Away from the Minsk Agreement toward War? Peace? EU Disintegration?

Never have the psychological dynamics of each key player been more important to world peace in the 21st century.

On February 15, the world saw what two strong personalities from seemingly two disparate cultures will do with respect to the crucial world issues of peace, war, EU disintegration and other ancillary untoward consequences.

What do I mean?

It is very rare for me with my history to witness such a confluent of worldwide issues being concentrated in one truncated place and time. The recent Minsk Accords facilitated by Lukashenko [Belarus] was a last minute attempt to bring a moment of respite to an escalating situation of confrontation between the USA and Russia. Not since the Cold War have we seen such a mounting sense of tension. Some pundits in the USA want to compare the Russia-USA confrontation in the Ukraine to the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Kennedy era. I don’t think its similar at all because that past incident occurred between two different types of personalities. 

JFK was correctly assessed by the ruthless, murderous Khruschev as weak and indecisive. One must remember as I have written before in other blogs that JFK was a mental/physical cripple who was completely addicted to 19 different medications which were intended to maintain his level of acumen.  Despite such pharma regimens,  he had psychotic breaks when he was hospitalized at New York Hospital for Addison’s Disease [absence of Adrenal Glands]. On the other side of the negotiations table was a ruthless mujik who had  obtained his imprimatur as a ruthless Soviet Stalinist who had already killed over three million Kulaks [private Ukrainian farmers who had refused to be nationalized] in over nine months in 1933. So, we had the medical/psychological “wimp” and the killer, despite the nonsense propaganda pablum produced by Harvard’s Ted Sorenson about Camelot and it’s charismatic, determined leader, JFK.

Today, we have Putin, a tough ex-KGB operative who had been trained in East Germany under the auspices of Markus Wolf [Spy Who Came in From the Cold]. Similarly, Merkel as we have described before, was raised as the daughter of a West German Lutheran Minister who went to East Germany to counteract the effects of Communism which eventually led to the Berlin Wall being taken down. Merkel grew up to become a strong politician and intellectual, she received her PhD in Physics. So for the moment, I am positing the fact that we have two different personalities from the two aforementioned politicians of the 1960’s.

Now in the shadows of conflict lies an American President who most people think is quite weak and indecisive based on past actions; particularly the refusal to enforce the red lines in Syria and the botched Libya experiment. I agree that both manifestations are of ineptness and naivete. However, I am convinced that POTUS, a product of American Intelligence, has learned his lessons with the use of force and the willingness to be tough, irrespective of the consequences [witness the massive Drone Wars in the Middle East]. Therefore, what we have is an indeterminate respite of peace for as long as it will last.

Putin will continue to test the limits of his self-designated geographical prerogatives. That’s his personality. He can brook no limits imposed from the outside or even within his own coterie of Kremlin advisors.  As evidence, we see his transporting over fifty tanks into Eastern Ukraine hours before the cease fire.  Yet, Putin sat for 17 hours in what appeared to be a serious attempt to negotiate a treaty in Minsk.
However, if one looks carefully at the photos of the roundtable interactions, one will see that Putin has always kept one eye on Merkel as she, in turn, has kept her eyes on Putin. If Putin breaks the Minsk accord, the newly appointed David Cohen, Deputy Director of the CIA [first Jew to be in such a senior position in a very anti-Semitic intelligence organization] will increase the economic strangle-hold on the Russian economy, dropping the Ruble to the point that it will not be worth the paper it is printed on. In turn, Germany will increase their economic sanctions of Russia which may become more painful than what the US can do. Germany may start to rearm it’s forces and once again we will witness the rise of what was once a formidable fighting force.

At the same time, Merkel will have to deal with Greece’s economic woes that in my humble opinion are beyond repairing. She will try to keep Greece in the EU in order to make certain that Greece cannot write off the billions of dollars in debt that it owes to German, Austrian and Italian banks.  All types of EU committees, like one called ‘cohesian’ will desperately try to salvage Greece. Even the World Bank subsidiary the International Monetary Fund [IMF—a pathetic cover for American donations] will try to loan Greece money.

This is the week that will be and then eventually become the week that was. What will happen is not everyone’s guess. It will reside with one major factor which we Americans really do not teach nor prepare for –the psychological/political dynamics of two very powerful personalities--- Merkel and Putin. If we learn nothing more from what will transpire, I will lobby for a unit of the White House that President Eisenhower had once instituted –Unit For Psychological/Political Behavior. America must anticipate behavior of world leaders rather than simply react to it.  Its called strategy.