Herbert Meyer, who worked in the Reagan administration as special assistant director of the CIA and then deputy chairman of the National Intelligence Council of the CIA, now through a magazine "The American Thinker" gives advice to Barack Obama and his armchair strategists.
Referring to the Malaysian liner, shot down on July 17, this tseerushny adviser categorically declares that "obviously long ago: Russian President Vladimir Putin represents a serious threat to world peace."
Then, the former president approves the coordinated actions of the US President and “his European colleagues”, who began to enact “with considerable precision and skill” a whole range of “financial sanctions against Russian energy companies and banks” and even sanctions “against some individual Russian billionaires known as oligarchs. "
This collective economic strategy Herbert Meyer calls succinctly "correct."
But what about sanctions?
From the statements of the American president, officials of his administration and European leaders, including David Cameron and Angela Merkel, it is known that the purpose of the imposed sanctions is "to punish Putin and make him realize the fallacy of his behavior." And more precisely. the analyst writes further, then these people would like Putin to "be content with the seizure of the Crimea by Russia and not devour the rest of Ukraine." Western leaders also want Putin to “not go beyond Ukraine’s framework — he would not threaten the independence of all other European countries, for example, Latvia or Estonia.”
However, according to the ex-expert expert, “gangsters like Putin” cannot be stopped in this way. “Bandits” are not very susceptible to suffering, the analyst is sure, and they are “not able to change their behavior.” They continue to walk, the author believes, until they run into a knockout.
Who will send Putin to the knockout?
Meyer knows who.
No, no, do not think anything wrong. Drop Putin is not the Americans. Not the British. Not Germans. Russians will do it!
The goal of the sanctions strategy, says Meyer, is to “get” those Russians who could deal a knockout blow to the Russian president. The key to success is to get these Russians to act. They will want to act because “the gap that already exists between their financial interests and Putin’s political ambitions” will widen.
The leaders of Russian corporations, the author notes, are really not interested in Ukraine, and even more so in Putin’s “insane dreams” in which he “recreates the old Romanov empire.” The Russian small group of billionaires-nouveau riche is interested only in “their yachts, private jets”, and also “sex bombs-mistresses” immersed in “shopaholism”. They are worried about cozy apartments at a price of several million dollars in London, New York and the Riviera, the lights of restaurants and other luxuries. And these people are hardly ready to give up all this for the sake of going to Donetsk. Or to Riga or Tallinn, the author notes.
“That is why the sanctions will work if the president and his European colleagues insist on tightening the screws,” the analyst writes further. Commerce for big Russian businessmen should encounter obstacles in its path - for example, in the form of blocked access to financial markets. A signal to them should be, say, the cancellation of operations on their credit cards and the denial to their private planes of the right to land on airfields. And "all this" will end with the fact that "Vladimir Putin will leave the Kremlin forever."
Meyer also believes that Western democracy will not come to Russia without Putin - at least “for some time”, but “without Putin at the helm Russia will not pose a threat to world peace.”
The author does not think that Putin’s successor will be one of Russia's “democratically-minded superstars” like Garry Kasparov. However, he admits that the new president will rather focus on “keeping the Russian economy afloat” rather than engaging in “re-creating the old Romanov empire”.
Summarizing, Meyer assures the White House and the whole West in general: "... we must make clear to Russian businessmen and oligarchs who came under Western sanctions that Putin is their problem, not ours."
And on someone's yacht at the Cote d'Azur, these people will decide "which future will suit Russia better."
How will Russia part with Putin? Meyer offers three options.
Method one. To talk with Vladimir, to convince him, so that he left the Kremlin in good faith - with military honors and a salute of guns.
Method two. If Putin becomes obstinate and does not wish to admit that “his career is over,” the author writes that the only way to remove him from the Kremlin is to carry him out “with his feet, with a bullet hole in the back of his head ...”
In conclusion, the American offers and the third way - both "poetic" and "fair." For example, Putin flies to Moscow, visiting “his good friends in Cuba or in Venezuela or Iran”, but his plane suddenly “explodes in the sky” for “unknown reasons” - perhaps because some armed group “got in their hands are ground-to-air missiles. ”
Observed and translated by Oleg Chuvakin
- especially for topwar.ru
- especially for topwar.ru