The Silverback Gorillas are powerful and nurturing animals. The chest beating is a way to show how big and powerful they are against other males who might want interfere with their harem of females.
Quite a while back I did a blog post on Homo sapiens wise man or just another naked ape.
I’m sure like me you’ve been wondering or even concerned about Russia insurgency into the Crimea and the Ukraine. Recently the build up of forces on the Ukraine’s border. Sabre rattling as we Brits use to call it!
Since the demise of the USSR and the loss of the old Russians colonies or lands Putin has not been happy with hegemony by western military alliances. Specifically NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Basically has a remit of “all for one one for all”
Ukraine has always been the bread basket to Russia it’s extremely large country. 600,000 sq kilometres and a large population of 44 million.
Why did I use the ape analogy for what’s going on with the Ukraine? Gorillas and chimpanzees are very territorial animals. Similar in lots of ways to us Homo sapiens. With our breast beating antics such as shouting and fingers pointing and pushing and shoving sometimes it breaks down into violence. But that tends to be more alcohol fuelled violence when we humans throw away our inhibitions.
Russia has lost lots of influence in the world with the diminishing of the old eastern block counties who moved away to a more democratic western model of governance.
However some have reverted back to the more Russian model of oligarchy than the so called western democracy. Oligarchy; Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control.
When the USSR collapsed their was a power grab and Putin a Leningrad KGB colonel understand the power structure of Soviet society and was ideally placed to grab real power as an upstart politician.
Many of his Leningrad associates and cronies were able to sequestrate the natural resources of the state owned Soviet republic. That made him and his cronies extremely wealthy.
What natural resources are in the Russian federation?
Putin thinks strategically where’s the wealth in Russia that wealth has to be protected. Remember all the western bordering counties to the old Soviet state are not actually controlled anymore by Russia as such? . Look at the map
Let’s go down the list from North to south
Finland
Estonia
Lithuanian
Belarus
Ukraine
All these countries are aligned more with the west than with Russia other then Belarus and eastern Ukraine who have many Russian speakers. The old Russian sympathetic President was Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych.
Who Was ousted in 2010 from the Ukraine because he aligned himself too much with Russia and was probably highly corrupt. Paul Manafort the US political lobbyist was behind his rise to power.
Putin has felt that the west with the US hegemony has slowly muscled its way onto its borders. The Crimean was invaded and annexed because it was the old Soviet naval base into the Black Sea naval base of Sevastopol was critically important to the Russian navy allowing it access to the Mediterranean Sea.
NATO have been encroaching on Russia especially with the Ukraine hence the reason Russia having war games it’s to try destabilise the Ukraine with its border insurgencies.
Designed to cause a split with NATO alliance’s with likes of Germany, France and Britain making it more difficult for the US. The US after the Afghanistan debacle showed weakness it reminded Putin of why and how the Soviet Union fell after its same debacle in Afghanistan in 1989.
It was green men without insignias invaded the Crimea using special forces. They knew the area and terrain and went in quickly with out warning to capture the peninsular from Lightly armed Ukrainian forces.
March 2014, the Finnish magazine Suomen Sotilas (Soldier of Finland) published an analysis of the weapons and equipment seen on photos of “little green men”.
The article points to a number of weapons and pieces of equipment that it asserts are issued only to armed forces in the Russian Federation:
- New EMR camouflage combat uniforms
- New 6Sh112 or 6Sh117 tactical vest
- New 6B27 [ru], 6B7-1M composite helmet
- New 7.62 mm PKP machine guns
- 6B26 composite helmets (used only by airborne troops of the Russian Federation)
- 6Sh92-5 tactical vest (used only by airborne troops of the Russian Federation)
- Gorka-3 combat uniform (used only by Russian special forces and mountain troops)
- Smersh AK/VOG tactical vest (used only by Russian special forces)
The article goes on to conclude that with a very high probability “these troops are the 45th Guards Separate Reconnaissance Regiment of the VDV” based in Kubinka, Moscow.
What’s happening now is different this I believe is chest beating by Putin. If you want to invade properly you replicate the German military machine in ww2.
Blitzkrieg German: from Blitz ‘lightning’ + Krieg ‘war’) is a military doctrine in which a surprise attack using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armoured and motorised or mechanised infantry formations, together with close air support, has the intent to break through the opponent’s lines of defense, then dislocate the defenders, unbalance the enemy by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive Movement and firepower.
Lightening War
What Putin is doing is not a military strategy it’s veiled threat to cause the west to react and test it’s resolve. Russia has used cyber tactics with such great effect. The US had become a polarised political nation after Trump reign as President it was infiltrated by Russian cyber warfare tactics and Brexit was infiltrated by Russia cyber techniques as well. Brexit has weaken the U.K. economically and significantly reduced its political standing in the world. We have Prime Minister who is a clown. Hasn’t got a clue about realpolitik’s.
The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov walked out of the joint statement with our foreign minister Liz Truss. This made her look weak and ineffectual which in reality she was. He’s Lavrov is very experienced operator. Truss was way out of her depth with him. It was all gesture politics. Chest beating making a statement to the world press. U.K. is not a force to reckon with this is what he was projecting to the world!
Russian military has one million active forces two million in reserve. They spend $61 billion on their military . U.K. has 200,000 manpower in total. How many are frontline troops I wonder? Maybe 80,000 at the most I doubt that we do spend £39 billion on military expenditure. But I’m sure that’s to do with nuclear weapons not on man power.
Obviously the US military is huge as compared to Russia. But don’t underestimate the Russians in the last war the Soviets took all the heaviest casualties and proved their fighting abilities against the Germans. Beating the ”Battle harden” German army after Stalingrad and routing them fighting them all the way back to Germany.
Remember the the north Vietnam army beat a much more technologically superior US military. Why? Because the American conscripted military didn’t understand why they were fighting a war 1000’s miles away from home in completely alien culture and land.
All that said I believe Putin is playing a strategic game with the west he’s testing are resolve he doesn’t want to invade the Ukraine but he certainly wants to destabilise the country with his constant threats with war games on their borders and incursion into the Ukraine by his green man.
What’s the answer to this delicate situation. I think the west has to play a more skilful game of chess or cat and mouse and back off and cool down the rhetoric.
Act more like intelligent humans as opposed to chimpanzee or apes chest beating like some love to do?
Humans like apes and chimpanzees are territorial that’s what flag waving is all about and borders. We humans have to learn to be different than our cousins the chimps. News papers and politicians and certain leaders like to up the anti and we play along with all this crap!
We humans have to learn to use are intelligence as opposed to our reactive instinctive chest beating selfs. Until we learn to do that we just keep repeating the same old stupid mistakes of our chimpanzee cousins! Prove we aren’t “silly small greedy barbaric people”.
Finally with all the manoeuvrings of the Russians and the western allies have we really progressed from the jungles?
Just Think if one of those dominate males came charging at you it would certainly concentrate the mind!
I thought I’d add this final conclusion on this blog post. The group of relatively peaceful chimpanzees who suddenly changed when a new Alpa male became their leader and their destructive behaviour afterwards which really disturbed Jane Goodall. That got me thinking about destructive charismatic leaders who have traits of megalomaniacs. A person who has an obsessive desire for power and who suffers delusions of their own power or importance.
What’s so dangerous about these people in roles of leadership is their destructive behaviour to everyone around them. Eventually to themselves. Basically they’re small minded, stupid,greedy and selfish people.
They create division and hatred within their group and against outsiders. Who had those traits? Julia Caesar, he was assassinated by his own senators. Adolf Hitler who created division and hatred of a whole nation eventually destroyed it.
Now we have the modern day celebrity rulers Trump and Johnson what do they do create division and chaos where ever they go! Dangerous people like that tribe of chimpanzees who had a narcissistic leader.
Look at the number of cult leaders who destroyed their followers; David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret, Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara, Pol Pot and not forgetting Charles Manson.
Was Napoleon and Alexander the Great both destructive megalomaniacs? Great leaders and generals but again they were on rampage of warfare and destruction. Back to Vladimir Putin I don’t think he’s on self destruct mode like Hitler or Mussolini. He’s a leader that feels threaten wants others to back off. Like the Silver Back Gorilla’s they are fine as long as you don’t threaten them?
How wrong was I about Putin ambitions !