Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine has obviously critical implications for United States foreign policy.[1] Among other things, this expanding Russian “crime against peace”[2] has undermined once residual hopes for superpower reconciliation or “détente.” In essence, whatever the variable particulars, we are now embroiled in “Cold War II.”
Are there any discernible psychiatric elements to this “war?” As a key player in world politics, is the Russian president fundamentally rational or irrational? And how should a meaningful answer be determined?
There are some additional questions. Is it plausible that Mr. Putin might sometime pretend irrationality as a calculated step toward “escalation dominance?”[3] How could American analysts reliably distinguish between authentic enemy irrationality and pretended enemy irrationality? How credible are Putin’s periodic threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine? To be sure, assessing an adversarial head of state is not “normally” a psychiatric task.
Still such informed queries need not imply “abnormality.” Inter alia, such an implication could mean dispensing with variously tangible distinctions between “normal” and “abnormal.” This dispensation need not suggest that findings of “abnormality” would be insignificant, but only that Putin’s most injurious traits could present in obscure or unforeseeable ways.
In some cases, owing to the higher likelihood of decisional miscalculations during crises, these qualities could prove more portentous than “normalcy.” Here, though counter-intuitive, a perfectly rational Vladimir Putin could pose greater global perils than an irrational Putin. As to a Russian president who would become genuinely “mad,” prediction would become all but impossible. Then, using a poplar gaming metaphor, all bets would be off.[4]
What then?
Credo quia absurdum, warned the ancient philosophers. “I believe…