ABSTRACT
When judging world leaders, it is important to assess what we actually know about them. This judgment is important because some leaders have a strong wish for people to know about their lives while others shun the limelight. In the first category, leaders want the world to know whatever they are able to convey in all types of ways; through the media, on television, in holograms, in interviews, in podcasts, through their social media accounts, and in any other way they can put forth information about themselves to the public. Occasionally, there are leaders who reveal little about their inner thoughts or how they navigate the world. Information about their personal lives is rarely revealed. Such is the case with Vladimir Putin. People know what he wants them to know or what can be gleaned from history. While it appears that he employs splitting and projective identification—unconscious mechanisms of defense—as well as blame-shifting, which is a more conscious process—it is difficult, if not impossible, to make these assertions about him. It is also problematic to do this if one isn’t intimately familiar with Russian history and culture and in his case, Putin's traumatic childhood. While we can observe his behavior from afar, understanding what it actually means is quite different. It is also complicated to assess why he invaded Ukraine. While many Westerners think the war was unprovoked, other various scholars, world-renowned economists, investigative reporters, and experts in Eastern European geopolitics believe Putin was forced to invade Ukraine because of promises the West made to Russian leaders that were not kept. Specifically these were commitments the George H.W. Bush administration made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, which included the promise that NATO would “not [move] one inch eastward.” Several of the experts who believe these commitments were very significant include John Mearsheimer, a highly respected political science professor from the University of Chicago and an expert in foreign policy; Jeffery Sachs, a preeminent scholar, world-renown economist, professor, and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University; Vuk Jeremić, the current president for the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD); and Marlene Laruelle, Director and Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), Elliott School of International Affairs, at the George Washington University in Washington DC. While some people disregard these Western promises and say they were never a part of an official agreement, letters of reassurance that NATO would not expand have been kept and are available for review at the National Security Archive at the George Washington University in Washington DC.
Additional issues that make it difficult to know Vladimir Putin with any degree of certainty include aspects of Sigmund Freud's theory about repetition compulsions, a propensity to repeat the past if problems are not worked through. This process is sometimes referred to as traumatic reenactments which could be a result of intergenerational trauma he most likely experienced as a result of the Siege of Leningrad, which his parents endured. As much as this theory seems plausible, it is still a hypothesis. It could provide an explanation for Putin's behavior but is not a fact.
As Philip Short indicates in his book Putin, his purpose was not to demonize Putin. Short believes the Russian president is more than capable of doing that for himself. Instead, the author's goal was to present the facts, truths, and lies about Vladimir Putin's life gathered over a seven-year period so that readers can judge him for themselves. This is also my goal, adding a reminder that forming opinions is one way we all navigate in the world based on what we imagine, think, or believe people do or think on a regular basis. However, unless we have evidence, we cannot say for sure that we know what motivates anyone.
There are also the documents located at the National Security Archive, which is located at the George Washington University in Washington DC, which I believe serious investigators should review, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu. They clearly indicate that the West gave Gorbachev many reassurances that NATO was not moving closer to Russia, “not one inch.” That commitment obviously didn’t happen since approximately 15 countries joined NATO after the commitments were made.
