#callias

((I'm sorry I took forever to answer this, I got distracted aaaa)

"I quite enjoy cooking. I've been taught from a young age how to prepare gourmet meals, and I really leaned into it as my preferred method of escapism. It's so easy to get lost in the artistry of it all, from prep to plating. The smells, the colors, the feel of the knife against the produce..." Cal clears his throat, stopping himself before beginning a tangent on the intricacies of refined taste. "I'm also fond of chess."

μετὰ μαινομένων φάσιν χρῆναι μαίνεσθαι πάντας ὁμοίως**

- Callias

**When among madmen, you should act completely mad.

Putin the Rational or Vlad the Mad? Whose running the show? I’ve been getting a ton of questions about Vladimir Putin around this vexing question. I wish I had a definitinte answer, instead all I can do is speculate.

Most western policymakers have always believed in Putin the Rational. They argued that, after more than 20 years in power, the Russian leader is a known quantity. He is ruthless and amoral. But he is also shrewd and calculating. He takes risks, but he is not crazy. But there are other analysts who now fear the Russian leader is turning into Vlad the Mad. They think that Putin has been in power for too long and is growing increasingly out of touch and paranoid. His isolation during the pandemic has made matters worse. Vlad is listening to a dangerously small circle of nationalist advisers.

As evidence that Putin the Rational has morphed into Vlad the Mad some point to the Russian leader’s recent penchant for publishing long, nationalist essays on history and culture. There was his 5,000-word blast on the “Historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” published in July - which portrayed the independence of Ukraine as a historical aberration.

The previous year Putin published a long essay on the origins of the second world war, arguing that Britain and France had deliberately encouraged Nazi Germany to attack the Soviet Union. These passionate musings suggest that the Russian leader may increasingly be driven by emotion and eccentric theories.

Western diplomacy on Ukraine is still largely designed to deal with Putin the Rational. Emmanuel Macron, France’s leader, went to Moscow shortly before the invasion in an attempt to reason with Putin and strike a bargain. Both the US and the Europeans were pursuing a policy that could be described as “deterrence plus off-ramps”.

The goal was to show Putin that the price of attacking Ukraine would have been too high. The Russian military would suffer heavy casualties, the Russian economy would be hit with devastating sanctions and the Russian nation would be increasingly isolated. Set against this unappealing prospect, the west was trying to give Putin “off-ramps” - diplomatic options, which would have afforded him the prestige of great power status and the opportunity to start wide-ranging talks on security in Europe.

Hopes that Putin might have made a rational calculation to turn away from conflict had been raised by some of his comments at the time. His suggestion that the US is deliberately trying to goad Russia into a war was seen by Kreminologists as preparing the ground for a climbdown. After all, why go to war - if that is what your enemy wants you to do?

But the prevailing American assumption was still that war was more likely than not. This view was based not on what Putin is saying - but on what he was doing. Events have now proved that with his invasion of Ukraine.

Military analysts had thought that Russian forces could probably surround or even occupy Kyiv quite quickly. But believers in Putin the Rational still argued that the Russian leader knew that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be folly. Some still thought that Putin was more likely to take limited military action - perhaps confined to eastern Ukraine, where there is already a low-level conflict between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian forces. A limited offensive, designed to give the Ukrainians a “bloody nose”, might divide rather than unite the west as allies squabbled about the response. The Ukrainian government could be destabilised and might fall. And Russia would preserve the option of recognising parts of eastern Ukraine as separate republics.

All of these moves could be classed as risky, but rational.

But given the full on invasion of Kyiv and other major cities and the intensity of the urban carnage many now wonder if Vlad the Mad is now running the show. What if Putin believed his own propaganda? A passionate belief in the “unity of Russians and Ukrainians” - combined with a paranoid belief that America is manipulating events in Ukraine - may very well have lead the Russian leader to dangerously underestimate the reality of Ukrainian nationalism. As a result, Putin may not fully comprehended the extent of opposition that Russian forces have encountered as they attempt to invade and occupy the whole of Ukraine.

A final twist is that Putin the Rational may be pretending to be Vlad the Mad. It was Richard Nixon who outlined the “madman theory”, when the US president told aides that it could be helpful if America’s enemies thought he was crazy enough to use nuclear weapons. NATO and other military commentators know that nuclear warfare is a scary part of Soviet Doctrine for military engagement. But to do so would still be a move straight from the “madman” playbook.

A Glass Elf named Callias