I’ve been thinking about the root cause of American systematic misunderstanding of Putin and Russia.

One layer is that they are treating it as that fake wrestling of theirs, where stereotypically scripted characters face off in a ring, and they see every single foreign-policy issue as a WWE match, personalized to the point of caricature, without ability to truly understand nuance and subtlety of the situation. Also, because they see it as a WWE fight, they think they need a “strong leader” in the White House, the Alpha Male like Trump who will “deter” Putin the evil KGB dictator or whatever the current WWE script for him is. Because they think in caricatures, they never actually bother to listen to Putin’s elaborate talks – they never actually bother to turn on their brains, or they would understand that they are not dealing with some KGB mastermind who’s playing 4D chess, they are dealing with the father of his nation, a supreme political philosopher with total mastery of the geostrategic picture through history, a master of pragmatism and compromise who is really willing to find a workable solution to problems, and a Christian who really cares about people and truly sees violence as something that is to be used only in the Augustinian context, where not using it will create a worse situation with greater evils.

The second problem the Americans are having is that they are so used to their own politicians, who never say a true word in their lives, that they implicitly assume that this is the case with everyone else, so they don’t really listen to the words Putin is saying, they are trying to figure out “the truth between the lines”, and then they find Putin unpredictable and difficult to understand. How about listening to what he’s actually saying? Try that, as I have, and you will find him to be extremely predictable and easy to understand. He’s supremely straightforward and eloquent in his expression, and I can easily predict his actions based on his words and thoughts years ahead. If he has a problem with something you’re doing, he will tell you, and not just once, and he will tell you again and again, many times, and you really need to be stupid to miss it. Americans dismiss his arguments, and then try to punish him for his actions that they don’t like, thinking he will be deterred by their silly sanctions.

Half of his family died in the siege of Leningrad during the second world war. He dedicated his life to the service to his country, only to see it crumble and be humiliated, deceived and trampled. He then worked for decades on rebuilding it from ashes and he is now in a position of Russia’s George Washington, a father of his nation. He’s not “tough” in the American sense of someone who is confident because he was never beaten. He’s tough the way an anvil is tough. He lived through terrible things, and helped solve terrible problems, and when he sees you as a terrible problem to be solved, the best you could do is be honest with him, be very respectful of his position, and deal with him from the premise that he is a very powerful good person with great knowledge and experience, who loves his country and tries to find a workable solution. Trying to portray such a great man as a caricature will not only annoy him, it will greatly offend the nation that stands behind him and loves him, and then you will have a really bad problem on your hands, of the kind you seem to be having just about now.