Forget Carthage: Putin must be destroyed

Russia’s calculated targeting of a children’s hospital in Kyiv is important for several reasons.

It is proof, if any is still needed, that the Kremlin is committing genocide in Ukraine. It’s a sign of the Putin regime’s barbarism and desperation. And it’s a mark of strategic stupidity.

It’s important to call things by their name and not hide behind evasive verbiage. The Putin regime has consistently targeted civilians, regardless of age or gender, since the beginning of the war. Remember the horrific scenes of the bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol? Recall the theater marked “CHILDREN” that the Russians bombed? That was about two years ago.

Putin’s goal has remained consistent and clear from the start: the annihilation in whole or in part of Ukrainians. That is genocide, which makes Putin a genocidaire and his apologists in the West morally complicit in Moscow’s crimes.

Can one speak to a barbarian? Can one negotiate with a savage who violates all moral codes and is committed to rampant destruction? Ukraine’s critics often accuse President Volodymyr Zelensky of intransigence. But just what is Zelensky supposed to talk about with a monstrous tyrant who has openly stated that he desires to exterminate Ukraine as a nation?

Calls for negotiation, even if motivated by a sincere desire to end the bloodshed, amount to little more than exhortations for Ukrainians to commit collective suicide.

But the bombing of the children’s hospital is also a sign of desperation. If you can’t defeat the adults on the battlefield — and Putin’s ragged armed forces clearly cannot, even at the cost of more than 1,000 casualties per day — go for the kids. Children can be slaughtered more easily and without the mobilization of poorly trained soldiers who may still have a residual sense of right and wrong. Why not assert one’s civilizational superiority by going for the children that are hospitalized? They are especially easy targets, and massacring them also has the added advantage of depleting Ukraine’s future demographic potential.

Yet as is often the case with Putin’s decisions, targeting a hospital with sick children also happens to be strategically idiotic. Naturally, Putin thinks he scored a big win by intimidating the West on the eve of the big NATO summit in Washington, D.C. But his bravado is delusional, regardless of whether he believes in what he is saying or not.

For he has, once again, outraged the world at precisely the time that calls for working out some kind of deal with the Kremlin were getting louder. Try calling for negotiations with a baby killer. Or try arguing now that Ukraine and its children should be left defenseless against the genocidal predations of the madman in the Kremlin.

Once again, Putin has achieved the exact opposite of what he intended. He thought that invading Ukraine would be a snap and that the countries of the West would fold. It wasn’t and they didn’t. He thought he could undermine NATO. Instead, he made it stronger and expanded it. He thought he’d make Russia great again. Instead, it’s become a colony of China and an equal partner of North Korea.

Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs recently caused a storm by posting on social media “Russia delenda est.” This is a variant of the Roman senator Cato the Elder’s famous mantra in the last years of his life, prior to the Third Punic War, that “Carthago delenda est,” — “Carthage must be destroyed.” In proudly asserting its barbarism, the Putin regime has effectively made Rinkēvičs’s proposal thinkable and perhaps even necessary.

After all, how can a savage regime be stopped? Russia’s defeat and diminution — to the borders of the pre-imperial Muscovite state — would be one possibility. Western policymakers who fear instability would shudder at this prospect, but it would put a stop to the Russian imperialism and war-making that have killed so many millions already. The good news is that such an outcome is in the cards — not because the West wants it, but because Putin’s stupidity is likely to bring it about.

Short of Russia’s diminution, simply putting an end to the current regime would do the trick. But there would be a big catch. Inasmuch as tyranny arguably suits the political preferences of many Russians, it is not clear how realistic such an option is. Once again, however, Putin’s own policies are undermining the regime and could end it sooner than Western policymakers think.

Both of these options depend on Putin’s ability to stick around. If he does, both the regime and state will continue to bleed, even as they also continue to kill Ukrainians and Russians. Decay and diminution would take place much more quickly, and to everyone’s benefit, if Putin were to leave the world of politics, or perhaps even the world.

“Putin delendus est?”

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”