Putin isn't going away soon

Predictions that Russian President Vladimir Putin is about to fall from power have been appearing for months. In March, an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal argued that “Putin Has Ensured His Own Downfall.” In June, an “exiled Russian oligarch” predicted Putin’s imminent demise. In September, reports surfaces — and were later denied — that Putin had survived an assassination attempt. A few days ago, unnamed “experts” speculated that unnamed “Kremlin insiders” were “jostling to replace Putin,” and the Washington Post speculated about potential successors.

Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking, a common fallacy that causes amateur gamblers and other inveterate optimists to think that just because they want something to happen, it is going to happen. …

But the reasons that Putin is not going away any time soon go even deeper than constitutional structure. They lie in the czarist history of Russia, which has resulted in a collective inferiority complex of the Russian people as well as a concomitant willingness to engage in brutality against innocent civilians that is horrifying to most of us in the West.