There Will Be No Two-State Solution

There Will Be No Two-State Solution

Apr 12

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The biggest problem with the two-state solution is that it sounds so nice. It seems to make so much intuitive sense. I mean what could be fairer and politically logical then to take two competing cultures, who are fighting over land and national rights, and give them both their own state committed to the proposition that the state will be committed to justice and the service of democratic values. The assumption is that the two states will be politically rational. What the general public fails to recognize is that the solution has been discussed ad nauseam in Israel and is mostly rejected by the political leadership. Here is why:

The Israelis do not want a couple of hundred thousand angry Arabs at their doorstep. It does not matter how committed they are to peace and cooperation the history of the conflict is too intense to go away peacefully. There has been too little consideration about what an actual “day after” would look like and all aspects of Israeli culture and politics would be challenged. This day after must be prepared in three ways which have always been part of Israel’s demands during peace discussions. And each of these three criteria must be satisfactory to Israelis who currently find fault in all of them.                                                     

The first is a political consideration which assumes that the West Bank and Gaza are manageable at all. What political entity is currently in place that could guarantee a smooth transition to a selected form of government as well as access to legitimately operating political functions in the West Bank and Gaza? At present, such institutions do not exist, except for perhaps the PLA (Palestinian Liberation Authority) which is challenged by a majority that want the PLA dissolved. Security is always the primary concern for Israelis and would probably be the first agenda item for Israelis in the post-October 7th era.

The Israelis care fundamentally about security. If you build, for example, a state that goes up to Israeli borders and extends current Palestinian territory then you are building a pathway that goes directly from the West Bank to the Arab states. Moreover, the slaughter of so many on October 7 certainly destabilized any sense of security Israelis might hold. They are currently still in her aftershock of October 7 and have much work to do to figure out new forms of security in the face of this new form of violent contact. Israelis are already building a buffer zone between their own borders and the space that extends beyond into the Gaza Strip as an early warning system for any future attacks the likes of October 7. And as you might easily see this buffer zone will require military protection or at a minimum long-term military management.

The economic issues are also overwhelming. The Palestinian political and economic structures should have been developing an indigenous economy. Instead, the West Bank and Gaza are rife with corruption and devoted too much time and attention to economic existence from the global economy and Palestinians living outside Palestine.

The two-state solution is an illusion

Another key issue is the balance of power in the area. Neither side is going to agree to an arrangement the disadvantages themselves yet almost no political or geographic arrangement results in the equality. Estimates are that about some new Palestine would only comprise about 20% of historic Palestine. This is bound to be a problem so intractable it may not be solvable. Israeli settlements have complicated the matter by increasing their size and presence in what is now Palestinian territory. Many settlements would have to be dissolved and removed. Violence and tension seems easy to imagine.

 So many factors enter into discussions about the two-state solution and the problems and difficulties posed seem to be insurmountable as the two sides confront moral conflicts– that is, conflicts that are particularly resistant to resolution because they are identified as vital and not easily negotiable or discussable. They confront the existential nature of the two sides in the conflict and carry with them considerable emotions and passions. Both parties to the conflict feel vulnerable and threatened by the two-state solution by its very definition. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has morphed into a classic intractable moral conflict which is responsible for the failure of the creation of two viable states. What was once a possible solution is now political fantasy. There will be no two states.

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Don’t Think for Yourself: Get Your Opinions from Some Reliable Source

The below just needs to be said every once in a while.

An alarming number of Americans believe some Trumped up version of reality that is so far from the truth – and so outrageous – that you have to wonder what is happening to the political communication process. Of course, examples are easy: Hillary Clinton kept children in a basement, or Obama was actually born in Kenya and is not a “real” American, or Covid vaccinations are a government plot, ad infinitum. At first blush you just figure that these people are playing with you, that they don’t “really” believe such things. But then you discover that they are serious, and their delusions are legion.

And the majority of these theories are right wing theories that seem to be most susceptible. A band of conservatives who dislike a political candidate for a parallel reason are available for the next delusion. A common refrain is to “think for yourself.” They are encouraged to find information, process the information, and come to a conclusion. Consequently, to “be your own man” is somehow associated with an individualism and is sufficiently justificatory such that simply convincing yourself that you “thought for yourself” is good enough. I have an opinion and by God I’m going to stick to that opinion simply because it is mine.

I do the opposite. I tell the holder of these inaccurate beliefs to get their opinions from someone else. Don’t think for yourself because that will just lead you down a crooked path besieged on both sides by bad information, inaccurate facts, warped conclusions, and a general bias that reflects pre-existing attitudes that work like barriers to more defensible reasoning. This is no trivial matter because the people in the news who are delusional are not only the likes of QAnon, The Proud Boys, or evangelicals selling redemption for votes. Rather, they are prominent politicians, media figures, corporate leaders and their foundations, and yes US senators and congress men and women.

It is true enough that the left has some share of exaggerations about say political conspiracies, corporate plots, or climate change. But it is safe to say, and I believe this can be defended with empirical precision, that leftist and more liberal groups are not making wildly fringe arguments based on “the big lie” or Jigged-up fear about government plots in control of your body. Democrats are simply more likely to rely on science and trust the authority of experts along with an increased willingness to deliberate and subject ideas to the best forms of analysis and criticism.

Finally, we should not ignore the role of education with respect to reasoning and decision-making as well as recognizing false argument and various biases. Citizens in a democracy must learn how to make the best decisions possible and utilize the tools of reason and science as well as the humanities. Improving one’s ability to strengthen opinions takes time and experience. The education process is the best way to spend that time and gain that experience.

I would recommend the following book as an excellent place to grapple with these issues.

Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro (2021). “When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People.” Princeton University press.

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Nov 12

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Finding New Ways to Communicate

I will admit that my first reaction to the attack on Israel by Hamas was to “unleash hell” in retaliation. Revenge is a difficult emotion to control. At times like this I get that sense of psychological surety as if I could somehow sweep Hamas away by flicking them off me like so many annoyances that can be easily disposed of. Military action lends itself well to this sort of thinking as it is usually associated with gaining ground or killing soldiers from the other side.

But, alas, this is not how foreign policy works. And there are clear operational and procedural steps that must be confronted if we want to truly solve the problem. Responding too aggressively will put the hostages in jeopardy, escalate the intensity of the potential outcomes, and increase the polarization that already exists between the two sides.

But trying to “solve the problem” is now just the problem. It has become apparent to me that the typical attempts at conflict management and resolution, whatever you want to call it, have failed.

The political arena is filled with seminars, discussion groups, training, and various forms of control mechanisms designed to discourage aggressiveness or change attitudes about the other group. And I have been a part of plenty of them. These groups typically draw on social science theory in an effort to change the reality of the conflicting groups. For example, members of conflicting groups (e.g. Israelis-Palestinians, Blacks-Whites, Muslims-Jews) might meet on a regular basis and engage in some joint project. This, according to theory, stimulates collaboration and teaches the participants to learn the habits of cooperation.

Israelis have been lectured to and chided more than a recalcitrant child and even so they woke up one morning and saw the genocidal monster called Hamas in the backyard. Things are not going well here. Still, how do you deal with a stubborn monster. The monster is not rational to the extent that there is not some justifiable relationship between the monsters’ behavior and a desirable outcome. In Hamas’s. Statement of Principles the destruction of the state of Israel and reclaiming the land are foundational goals that guide Hamas’s behavior. Hamas believes that the entire Zionist project is illegitimate including the historical documents that established the state of Israel. The land is indivisible and sacred. This leaves no room for the State of Israel. It means that nothing is negotiable, nothing can be shared, and neither side can tolerate the other’s presence.

It is clear that Israelis were caught flat-footed, and the charge that Netanyahu took his eye off the ball as he spent his time trying to save his political life, is defensible. Netanyahu speaks to the matter of leadership during a time of crisis and its role in setting the conditions of the conflict to the best of his ability. But Netanyahu will not be ousted so easily. He has the respect of many Israelis and they believe he can protect them during a time of war. As Einstein observed, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We must find new ways to communicate. But what kind of communication understands killing babies and children? How do we learn new ways to communicate when mass killing is the norm? How do we learn new ways to communicate when both   are labeled morally unacceptable by the other? Recently, an Israeli Defense Forces specialist observed that Israel will have to take steps that are wider and typically considered unacceptable by the United States. If so, we will have circled around to the beginning where, once again, we will have done the same thing with the same results, and we will have to find new we ways to communicate.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

 

 

Posted in Communication and Conflict Resolution, Peace and Conflict Politics, Political Conflict

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Polarization: Or, How We Came to Distort Reality So Thoroughly

Aug 16

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Polarization: or How We Came to Distort Reality so Thoroughly

I like to talk politics.  And I’m really not so concerned about “winning an argument” or crushing someone’s position just to satisfy myself. No, I’m more interested in how they think. Sometimes, dare I say much of the time, listening to some argue politics is just appalling. Their command of data and facts, along with reasoning processes that accompany such facts are just debilitating.

So how is it that your cranky old uncle at Thanksgiving can ruin the day with his cockamamie opinions; how is it that the nice kid you socialize with can actually believe that Hillary Clinton has secrets in her home basement; or, can you really prove to me that the government is trying to vaccinate people so I can control them.

How people configure a set of ideas that are bound together by some mechanism or functional interdependence is the real question.  Examining someone’s beliefs or ideological system always unearths a specified attitude or belief that goes with a collection of others.  We assume that a person, for example, who holds a conservative position in one capacity will hold additional beliefs and attitudes in the same conservative capacity.

For example, if a person strongly believes in lower taxes they are probably conservative and believe in fewer government programs supported by those taxes. Such a conservative probably believes in strong protections for the American values system and is thereby supportive of the military and military interventions. Our hypothetical political character opposes federal aid to education, a state-controlled economy, and union organization.

The person who supports this reasonably coherent political position has been labeled an “ideologue.” But the question that is difficult pertains to how these ideas are packaged together and considered to represent an orderly and defensible ideological system. Such a system, as briefly described above, is a fairly consistent conservative position that is recognizable and defensible. But what happens when that collection of ideas gets contaminated by nonlogical, or empirically indefensible, or deeply personal and subjective ideas that are seeking to find a different order, one organized more by personal emotions or feelings rather than issue-based analysis.

One of the problems of contemporary debate over controversial issues is the attachment of emotions to the various planks in the system described above. So, one person might hold and represent the conservative position above but “hate” the other person and feel that they are personally morally degenerate or intellectually dishonest.  They then turn any engagement about the issues into a personal and emotional clash that has little to do with the issue and much to do with the polarization that results.

The result is increased attention to other groups that individuals identify with. These are ethnic, religious, or political groups and they are typically associated with intense emotions and strong feelings of defensiveness. The participants in the conflict move away from issue-based matters and are more drawn to emotional bonds which are characterized by deep psychological reactions to threat and the various meaning distortions that accompany group identity.

This results in a downward spiraling of emotions that feeds the divisions between groups. We can see the consequences of this in the current state of American politics – polarization.

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Peace and Conflict Information Silos

Communication with other information management systems, to be blunt as well as simplistic and obvious, is  an important part of any endeavor to analyze our effective institutions and figure out what they are doing and how effective they might be. An information silo is an information management system that is unable to freely communicate with other communication systems because of certain types of structural barriers that result in incommensurability. And while incommensurability can be established in many ways including ethnic, educational, political, and stylistic differences, they construct silos nonetheless and these silos are responsible for the polarization that characterizes the two sides of an issue.

The business world is full of information silos and groups that differ thoroughly, but they continue to struggle with how to make contact (that is, communicate) with those in other groups. Questions about the quality of information, the nature of disinformation, partisan silos, and polarization are important questions to ask because we have always struggled with information silos and issues pertaining to the quality of information in general. So, these questions about information positions are persistent in their determination to influence perceptions and unearthing the infrastructure of, say, political campaign messages and other ideas essential to a democracy.

There is such a thing as the “silo mentality” which describes people in some sort of organization preferring to work by themselves and not collaborate with others.  They live in a bounded world of information and cannot see the value of cooperation. It is true enough that people working in silos often do so as a matter of power.  If an individual has access to information others don’t than that gives them a certain amount of power.

The silo mentality appears in the corporate world and is commonly understood as a source of tension and a barrier to progress.  Highly familiar organizations are associated with the silo mentality.  But this silo syndrome can characterize people in all sorts of networks of contact.  The individual who holds a political position and will not budge from it is also living in an information silo.  They are surrounded by a set of beliefs, either accurate or not, that they are comfortable with and those beliefs guide their behavior.

That person you argue with and they just don’t listen or consider seriously any position other than the one they already hold is living in a narrow information world Surely, there is a difference between the corporate automaton and someone who desperately hangs onto a political opinion.  The individual in an organization is part of the system that doesn’t change – at least not very easily – and lacks vision for people to rally around.  The individual who lives in an information silo usually chooses to avoid information that will be upsetting or counter productive to his or her goal of maintaining a political position.

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Don’t Think for Yourself: Get Your Opinions from Some Reliable Source

The below just needs to be said every once in a while.

An alarming number of Americans believe some Trumped up version of reality that is so far from the truth – and so outrageous – that you have to wonder what is happening to the political communication process. Of course, examples are easy: Hillary Clinton kept children in a basement, or Obama was actually born in Kenya and is not a “real” American, or Covid vaccinations are a government plot, ad infinitum. At first blush you just figure that these people are playing with you, that they don’t “really” believe such things. But then you discover that they are serious, and their delusions are legion.

And the majority of these theories are right wing theories that seem to be most susceptible. A band of conservatives who dislike a political candidate for a parallel reason are available for the next delusion. A common refrain is to “think for yourself.” They are encouraged to find information, process the information, and come to a conclusion. Consequently, to “be your own man” is somehow associated with an individualism and is sufficiently justificatory such that simply convincing yourself that you “thought for yourself” is good enough. I have an opinion and by God I’m going to stick to that opinion simply because it is mine.

I do the opposite. I tell the holder of these inaccurate beliefs to get their opinions from someone else. Don’t think for yourself because that will just lead you down a crooked path besieged on both sides by bad information, inaccurate facts, warped conclusions, and a general bias that reflects pre-existing attitudes that work like barriers to more defensible reasoning. This is no trivial matter because the people in the news who are delusional are not only the likes of QAnon, The Proud Boys, or evangelicals selling redemption for votes. Rather, they are prominent politicians, media figures, corporate leaders and their foundations, and yes US senators and congress men and women.

It is true enough that the left has some share of exaggerations about say political conspiracies, corporate plots, or climate change. But it is safe to say, and I believe this can be defended with empirical precision, that leftist and more liberal groups are not making wildly fringe arguments based on “the big lie” or Jigged-up fear about government plots in control of your body. Democrats are simply more likely to rely on science and trust the authority of experts along with an increased willingness to deliberate and subject ideas to the best forms of analysis and criticism.

Finally, we should not ignore the role of education with respect to reasoning and decision-making as well as recognizing false argument and various biases. Citizens in a democracy must learn how to make the best decisions possible and utilize the tools of reason and science as well as the humanities. Improving one’s ability to strengthen opinions takes time and experience. The education process is the best way to spend that time and gain that experience.

I would recommend the following book as an excellent place to grapple with these issues.

Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro (2021). “When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People.” Princeton University press.

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Is Trump a Madman?

Sep 8

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Most world leaders, at one time or another, inch toward the “madman” approach to international relations. They seek to get their enemy to believe that the leader is a madman and capable of anything. Nixon tried to convince the North Vietnamese that he would bomb them back to the prehistoric era.

But nobody surpasses Donald Trump in displaying a disturbing set of behaviors designed to scare others into believing that he is capable of anything. And he just might be capable anything. Who could have imagined that he would bring home more than a dozen boxes of classified documents. What did he want with these things?

Trump probably enjoyed the thought of he and a few close friends sitting around one night sharing the documents and having a good laugh. Still, Trump is motivated by something more insidious; that is, Trump is desperate. He will say and do anything to hold on to power or to find a coping mechanism for his failures. I have only had sympathy for Trump in one area, and that’s the blooming buzzing chaos of his life. I personally could not imagine the daily barrage of legal and political attacks on my character, my businesses, my taxes, my political obligations, my family, and anything else my enemies can think of.

But Trump has the personality for all this. He is delusional on a grand scale and in addition to everything else he must maintain the details of the lies he tells about such things as stolen elections. Trump is a classic narcissist whose greatest fear is being disrespected or publicly humiliated. As a true narcissist Trump thinks of himself only and first. When it came time to leave the White House he did not leave with any grace or dignity but thought of himself first, that is, claiming he was cheated and the election was a fraud was more important to him than the orderly transition of power.

Trump is desperate and dangerous because he can’t cope with the thousand cuts that life has for him. That is why he can’t muster the grace or humility to look into the eyes of history and actually care that others are booing him.

Trump is a con man and his first con is himself. He continues to convince himself that blaming others, repeating lies, and refusing to believe anything other than his own reality is a legitimate discourse. And those deluded enough to follow him rigidly stand by their beliefs because in this age of post-truth “beliefs” are more important than evidence and a search for truth.

I don’t know: narcissism, distorted reality, persistent lying, delusions, and moral behavior. Sounds like a madman to me.

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Trump and the Post-Truth Mentality

Jul 4

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In Times of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth Will Be a Revolutionary Act

GeorgeOrwell

Should I happen to fall into a conversation about Trump I now tell my conversational partner, who is supportive of Trump, that he should be “ashamed of themselves”. I can only ask the Trump supporter “What can you be thinking?” But the American people did the right thing in 2020; I presume they will do it again.

How do you describe the basic Trump supporter? What sort of cognitive shorthand could explain an attraction to Trump? Does he believe that Trump is a “tough guy” who will defend the country? Or, is he looking for economic changes that he believes are solvable by Trump?

Interestingly, Trump and the conflicts he arouses fit into our national story. Trump has something to tell us about the white working class and how race and identity have become the sore point for grievance and cultural anxieties. On the one hand, Trump talks like his constituency; that is, he can’t make the distinction between exposition and repetition and contradiction.

Researchers appear at small-town diners and barbershops looking to understand the white working-class mind that Trump nurtures. There are usually three issues: (a) racial prejudice, (b) status and economic loss, and (c) the populist tribalism that describes this group of angry white nationalists.

Trump is the personification of a post-truth consciousness. That is, making a statement is sufficient for that statement to warrant defense. And the statement takes on a truth value that must be defended. Before the election was over Trump noted that if he didn’t win it would be because the election was rigged. He established a self-sealing logic that had him winning the election regardless of what happened. It was a foregone conclusion, according to Trump, that he would win and if he didn’t it was because of cheating.

In a world (a post-truth world) where there are no facts, no need for evidentiary support, it becomes possible to say anything and expect that statement to be accepted and worthy of a place in discursive consideration. It’s a post-truth world when alternative facts replace actual facts, and feelings are more important than evidence.

There’s a quip that goes, “every lie has an audience,” the meaning of which is obvious enough. Even a blatant falsehood, or clearly substandard information, is believed by somebody. The trick is to understand why people think the way they do and how they can be moved from superficial to substantial judgments and conclusions. When they accept the tenets of a post-truth consciousness, they are already on a path littered with confusion, contradiction, and chaos.

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Blah, Blah, Blah, and Claims of Media Bias

May 25

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BBC Biased Bullshit Corporation

A couple of nights ago I went to a Jewish Community Center to listen to a talk by a respected scholar of Middle Eastern politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was an enjoyable evening with pleasant enough talk. Actually, it was more like a prayer meeting than a community political lecture. The audience was composed of Israel supporters and there were prayers and the singing of Hatikvah.

But what struck me was the casual and confident ease with which people claim media bias. One presenter proudly and enthusiastically declared that she was going to cancel her subscription to the New York Times, as if that would do anything other than make her less informed. I know the media are an easy target and as an active specialist in these areas myself I encounter the charge of media bias regularly. Still, it is frustrating how little effect I have on people when I explain the multitude of perceptual distortions that go into their conclusions about bias, followed by an explanation of the difference between “bias” and “perspective”.

We can’t seem to explain to the public that people watch the news for a multitude of reasons, many of which have little or nothing to do with the acquisition of accurate information. We watch news for mood management, social rehearsals, and all sorts of cognitive needs. The more one watches the more they are bound to encounter bias or develop distrust.

You know that individual psychology and cognitive distortions are implicated when both sides of an issue claim bias. There are a dozen studies that show the same footage or text to two different groups, only to have that message interpreted completely differently by the two different groups depending on their entering perspective. No news story is completely free of values, and no story includes all potentially relevant information.

In one study available here the authors found that presentation variables such as agency in headlines and focal point of photographs all contributed to different (perhaps just “different” and not distorted) interpretations. And just as one would predict, according to the hostile media affect, the roomful of Israel supporters saw bias against Israel everywhere, noting the New York Times, when in fact the research cited above indicates that the New York Times is mostly pro-Israel. The hostile media affect is the tendency for highly involved individuals to see media coverage of their issue as biased against their own position. Their own ego involvement and engagement with the issues makes it impossible for them to process a new story objectively. In fact, coverage of the Israel Palestine conflict has traditionally been so supportive of Israel that the American public is uninformed about the Palestinian narrative and political position. Zelizer and colleagues in the reference cited above found that the New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune had remarkably similar coverage of the intifada with the Times being more supportive of Israel.

But the difficulty people have with the distinction between “perspective” and “bias” is particularly disappointing. Not a single person at the lecture interpreted news stories as a perspective; they only saw bias everywhere they looked. A perspective is a defensible and explainable viewpoint from which one member of the group sees an issue; it is a point of view. The perspective can be impartial and defensible. To say it is defensible means that the holder of the perspective is fair-minded and has come to his or her opinion on the basis of acceptable reasons and evidence. This does not mean that other evidence is not available or different interpretations are not possible, just that the holder of the perspective has thoughtfully considered alternatives and sincerely tried to weigh competing evidence. Being a “liberal Democrat” or a “Zionist” is defensible and can be explained on the basis of acceptable reasons. But the same is true for being a “conservative Republican” or an “anti-Zionist.” It is the clash of these perspectives that results in reasonable disagreement. There is disagreement because the two perspectives support different positions and hold different values, but both perspectives are defensible from evidentiary, rational, and cultural standpoints.

A bias is holding an unfair and indefensible attitude or opinion. The holder of the bias is typically close minded and unwilling to consider additional evidence and alternatives because he or she pre-judges new information and alternative perspectives and refuses to engage in proper and sufficient information processing that might result in opinion change. Certainly, putting aside beliefs and working to form new conclusions is difficult. But it remains a communicative behavior that is central to problem-solving and part of the general communicative process that forms the foundation of democratic conflict resolution and the management of conflicting groups.

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Russia Invades Ukraine: My Take

Mar 4

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Here’s my take on what I think will happen in Ukraine and what the Russians will do.

But first a little humble pie for a group of distinguished scholars and their earlier predictions. Go here for a report on predictions about what will happen in Ukraine and Putin’s military options. The authors are all distinguished scholars associated with high status institutes and academic programs. Take a look at a few of their conclusions. I quote exactly from the document the report was published in with some elliptical material for the sake of space.

… A close look at what the invasion would entail presented in the report and the risks and costs Putin would have to accept in ordering it leads to a forecast that he is very unlikely to launch an invasion of unoccupied Ukraine…

… Putin is more likely to send Russian troops into Belarus.

… One of the least likely things to happen is for Putin to launch a mechanized drive to see each the strategic city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine…

The following scenario and assumptions seem to cohere into a foreign policy that reflects facts on the ground as well as aspirations and hopes. You can proceed logically as follows:

First, the early glory days of Ukrainians picking up arms to defend their country – a David and Goliath image if there ever was one – will not last too much longer. The Russians are well enough trained and there is more than 100,000 of them in the streets. Ukrainian Armed Forces are small and will not hold out for much longer. And if you think arming citizens is the answer, think again. It will just get them killed.

And Putin will not give up or accept some anemic peace treaty. This is his military operation and he is thoroughly committed and motivated to carry it out. He would lose face and never be taken seriously again.

Ukrainians could slip into a terrorist mode and began assassinations, ambushes, and other forms of resistance all of which worked for the Afghanis during the Afghan war with Russia. But the Afghanis are more prepared for such asymmetrical warfare, which I don’t believe is in the Ukrainian DNA.

Ukrainians are more patriotic and nationalistic in the western part of the country and that’s why Putin will not overlook them by focusing attention on the eastern part of the state where most Russians in Ukraine live. This is exactly the reason he will invade the Western part of Ukraine because he doesn’t believe in Ukrainian separate identity in the first place.

After Putin has captured enough territory including government buildings and media he will set up a puppet government. There are generally three reasons conquering militaries set up puppet governments.

A Puppet Government

 A puppet government is a government with no sovereign authority over its territory, whose actions and policies are controlled by a foreign power. Putin might leave some Ukrainian officials in place for the appearance of sovereignty. Many puppet governments convey an image of sovereignty, but in reality, they cannot do anything without the consent of whichever foreign power controls them. That would be Russia. For the most part, they are set up following conquest, after a foreign power conquers the area in which they set up a puppet government. Read more about puppet governments here. 

The second reason foreign powers establish puppet governments, and this applies to Putin in particular, is to try and fool both the citizens under its control and the international community into believing that the territory runs its own affairs. Although I don’t suppose we will be seeing much of the Ukrainian flag after Putin overwhelms them. In many cases, however, both the people that are the subjects of the puppet government and the international community do not recognize the puppet government’s legitimacy.

The third reason that conquering powers set up puppet governments is so that they can advance their own agendas. Puppet governments help facilitate the agenda of the controlling foreign power by using the territory and resources of the puppet state.

I don’t see Ukraine regaining its independence in the near future. We have yet to see a brutal Putin will be when he finally pulls the puppet strings to control Ukraine. Is he Hitler? Probably not but that doesn’t mean certain people won’t disappear, and we will never know it. I’m not expecting Putin to have public executions, but I am expecting a massive information manipulation and the sort of disinformation that the Russians have shown themselves to be adept.

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