Putin Planned This

Today, a day after Putin invaded Ukraine, I see a lot of political pundits and politicians bloviating about how wrong it is and this and that. They have announced sanctions, denounced the aggression and done the types of worthless things politicians and political pundits always do when the geopolitical waters get hot.

Here's my thought: Putin is perhaps evil, but he is not stupid. If he is doing this thing now, he didn't wake up a couple of weeks ago and decide to invade Ukraine. He has been preparing for it for a long time. To that end, I looked at what kind of world-scale moves he has made over the past decade. For starters, he invaded and annexed Crimea about 8 years ago. This is not a particularly consequential country, but it is an important piece of land to control if you want to eventually invade Ukraine. Second, Putin (and the Russian state) sold a bunch of their U.S. debt about 4 years ago. At their peak, they owned $105.7B in U.S. Treasuries; as recent as November 2021, they held about $2.5B in U.S. Treasuries. As a nation, following the sanctions that were imposed on them as a result of their annexation of Crimea in 2014, they went through a period of fiscal austerity - which has them very well set up to 'go it alone'. You hear all of these countries doing rah-rah speeches about 'imposing sanctions on Russia'...its not going to make much of a difference. Another indication of their solid position? Gold Reserves. As of January 2021, Russia held more gold than the U.S., with $583B in reserves.

Putin has been planning this for a long time and that means he has planned for the likely and typical responses of other governments. He does not need money and threats from other nations to 'levy sanctions' at Russia will be largely theatrical/symbolic maneuvers. If World powers want to stop Putin, they will have to put boots on the ground, and he knows as well as anybody, that no one is prepared to do that. No one wants World War III and to go to war with Russia would almost certainly precipitate a large-scale conflict that would have unknown consequences on economies around the World. He has done this now, because he knows he can.