You may have heard that if you’re four hands into a high stakes poker game with a card shark and you haven’t figured out who the mark is, it’s probably you. Our guy Brandon is still sitting at the poker table. It’s not at all clear that he realizes that the game is over. Vladimir won.
President Putin picked up his chips, completely cleaning our President out. Vladimir got everything he really wanted. He went all in. Consider what he has accomplished. Putin had already absorbed Georgia and Crimea back into Mother Russia. Soon he will complete the annexation of those Russian-leaning eastern provinces and maybe the whole of Ukraine. On top of that, he has nearly doubled the price of crude oil. That alone is worth many billions of rubles to the cash-starved Russian economy. He has tested the metal of the band of munchkins who now lead the Western Alliance, proving just how malleable that metal is. Finally, he has accomplished his major objective. Ukraine will never be welcomed into NATO.
Putin fully understands that there will be a price for this naked aggression. It may be much greater than he assumed.
Whatever we may think of Vladimir, you have to admire his poker face and skills as a player. Some must have thought he was bluffing. He knew he had been dealt a strong hand after the last elections. President Brandon was weak and his party (as well as most of Europe) was headed off the cliff with their green agenda. The Left could ignore the consequences of their folly. Vladimir Putin did not. He recognized how much we need hydrocarbon fuels. Europe’s economy would collapse without them. In truth, we need hydrocarbons even to power our electric vehicles.
Putin has never made a secret that Ukraine was a critical piece in his plan to reunite the greater Russian empire and keep them out of NATO. Brandon’s war on domestic energy was the whole card he was looking for to make his next play. He saw the Germans refusing to ante up their share for defense. He also could see that Germany needed his gas and oil. With the Left’s foolhardy energy policies, the U.S. was quickly becoming a net importer again. Certainly not a dependable supplier. Germany determined that they couldn’t count on us for their needs so they made a deal with the Russian bear.
Putin had his ace in the hole. He now had a full house.
As the deal played out the Germans grumbled but quickly folded. Brandon with a pair of deuces, tried to bluff. He never had a poker face anyway. Worse, he showed his cards with his now famous “Well, it depends” remarks. The game was over right then and there. Putin had the cards and knew it. He had only to play out the hand.
Vladimir has been right in his calculations so far. Going forward he believes Germany will cluck and protest like an angry hen. They will delay the final approval of the Nord Stream Pipeline. But their need for energy will overcome their apprehensions and sooner or later things will go back to a degree of normalcy permitting gas and euros will flow freely again. The brutality in Ukraine will be largely forgotten. Russia will once again be feared. NATO will be weaker. The pressure will build on everyday Ukrainians to return to the Russian orbit.
Putin’s poker play may yet prove to have been a huge, expensive miscalculation.
The greater danger to stability and world peace lies in the potential for future miscalculations. Will the weakness in the West be seen as opportunities for future adventurism by other ambitious despots? Might they misinterpret our ugly withdrawal from Afghanistan and our capitulation over Ukraine? Will we truly back up our commitments to Taiwan, Korea, or even Japan? Or have we totally abandoned the mantra of peace through strength for the new Leftist belief in peace through appeasement?
Vladimir Putin isn’t the only great poker player in the world. Others are waiting for their turn at the table. They have been watching. And right now they like their odds.
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