Dear President Trump,

Don’t fall for it. Despite the fact that Vladimir Putin wears finely tailored business suits, there are no shared values. He is not a Western man in disguise; he is a traditional Russian potentate, the last Tsar. Points of difference:

• Putin does not value human life.
• He does not honor agreements, commitments, or promises, which he makes with intent to violate, as a fourth force additive to coercion, subversion, and military force/threat.
• Putin’s immutable goal is restoration of the Russian Empire, with a follow-on of turning the whole of Western Europe into a weak vassal state.
• With the loss of Western Europe we would lose the greatest concentration of brainpower the world has ever seen, the only counter to the rising intellectual dominance of China. The modern world was invented in Europe; the U.S. technological contribution is not historically proportionate. The manufacture of the most advanced computer chips depends worldwide upon equipment supplied by a single Dutch company.

Was Putin always this way? There is a spread of opinion. My own is that there was an evolution, partly a result of errors of  Western policy after the breakup of the Soviet Union, which does not diminish the current danger. These errors cannot be corrected by conciliation now.

The Russian Apartment Bombings of 1999 are thought by some as affecting him deeply.

Others may point to the gradual deterioration of his relationships with politicians, finalizing in the criminalization of dissent.

The ease with which Russia seized Crimea in 2014, with tepid reaction in the West, may have convinced him of loss in the West of “manly values” of  combat, leaving Russia as the only power capable of waging war. Perhaps he read H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, in which the degenerate Eloi are farmed and eaten by the subterranean Morlocks.

From the very start Putin’s  rule relied on co-opting corrupt elements, oligarchs blending into mafia. His reliance on skilled balancing of these forces made personal rule indispensable, and unlikely to survive without him. When Putin began to suffer from diseases that will eventually end his life,  he sought a replacement power structure, turning to Russian nationalism. This was marked by the (Aljazeera) firing of the entire “Russian government.” Some assert he actually became “religious”, seeing himself as “preserver of the realm”, the last Tsar. Or perhaps the religious element is a simple scheme to meld nationalism with the state religion.

This explains Putin’s indifference to loss of human life. He is God’s Russian messenger. It also explains why you can’t bargain with Putin. You can’t bargain with the Divine.