Putin is wearing his Cold-Warrior hat, and the threat of a NATO+MIC coupling forced him to don it.

- #NATO is a plausible deterrent, but still a Cold War machine.

- The MIC is a natural outcome of capitalism and war business.

- A NATO+MIC coupling - or the appearances thereof - is inherently dangerous, and not a deterrent but a multilateral risk.

There is a lot of sensationalism in commentary lately that is dangerous (a Professor should do better):

In addition to proving that women academics can be warmongers, the Professor has apparently completely failed to recognise a Cold War style M.A.D move from a Cold War warrior. It is fair to say that the Ukraine operation is not going as fast as the Kremlin wanted - and because #NATO is presenting a Cold War style threat the Kremlin are responding as Cold-War strategists. Putin is as unlikely to use nukes as he is to order the killing of Ukranian civilians (clearly his orders were the opposite).

He's using every psychological warfare tool in the Cold Warfighter's arsenal - and that means M.A.D.

No matter how the West does things, the should avoid:

1. Isolating #Russia further

2. Involving #NATO

To do both would suggest the West wants multilateral war.

The geoeconomic 'model' of 'war benefit', and the NATO+MIC coupling in the West - or even the appearances thereof - must be very real factors in both #China and the #Kremlin's decision making and geostrategy. Western commentators assume far too much innocuity and inertness in these mechanisms.

The NATO-MIC coupling is a-priori, intrinsically dangerous. I do not mean it is an adequately dangerous deterrent. I mean that it is instability-generating. There are too many old narratives anchoring the West's geostrategic repertoire in the past, and in the information age this could be very dangerous indeed.

Too many commentators assume that the West is somehow pure in all of its motives. This presumption of a 'mantle of pure motivation' is irresponsible. Capitalists are renowned for putting profits first. I am a political absurdist and not aligned - but it is abundantly clear that actual Western psychopaths can, and do, love a good arms business. It's a driving factor in a larger geoeconomic feedback system. China and the Kremlin may just have noticed (and I am sure they're happy to do the same.)

How is it that we don't let global scientific and cultural collaboration lead civilisation forward? Could it be that with the dead weight of war-profiteers dragging us down it is a slow road to profits (the main benefit of war that suits a few - if we are honest) which warfighting currently gets access to fast?

We should also stop assuming that everyone in the East is some kind of geopolitical simpleton:

Kremlin motives are likely far more complex than most existing analyses allow for. For example, Putin may, or may not, be just using the 2013-2014 atrocities by Ukranian extremists as a device to further 'imperial' ends, but that is not what is suggested by his displays of emotion about the matter (e.g. when launching the current campaign).

Another very important matter on the mind of the #Kremlin is, as I have already mentioned, what WW2 US President Dwight Eisenhauer called the military industrial complex.

That series of events in 2014, plus the disdain with which the West regarded them, combined with the ongoing impositions of NATO and the West in terms of the kind of 'surround and contain' mentality that we constantly display to the 'axis' we helped force into existence, further combined with an MIC+NATO coupling: all of this is likely on the minds of the Kremlin.

What about the fact that NATO is not really a passive tool at all? Germany likely vetoed recent efforts to exclude Russia from the UN precisely because they are all too familiar with the kind of out-group stereotyping and homogenisation that underpins extreme sanctions and isolation. Cultural consciousness and memory are powerful things.

There are too many :

1. Economists, politicians, theorists, and geoeconomists that tout the economic and technological 'benefits' of war - as if these benefits could not be achieved otherwise (presumably because - quick bucks!) 2. Wealthy Western Missile Shops!!

The China-Russia axis was - in very large part - made by us. #China was trading on the free market and wanted to engage in the free market. The West was too stubborn and inflexible about the terms of China's engagement - arrogantly expecting expecting them to comprehensively copy Western culture - and blind to their own duopolistic, undemocratic culture. We forced them into the Sino-Russian axis.

We had better not keep forcing Vladmir Putin and the Kremlin to resort to M.A.D-ness, because MIC war business is a business that - in that setting - will get badly out of hand very fast.

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