She shared her assessment at a symposium on deterrence strategy organized by the Strategic Command of the US Armed Forces. The absence of fear explains why the traditional strategy of deterrence does not work on Putin, Pisano told around 700 Pentagon conference participants and Nikkei Asia.
Pizano is a lead psychologist at Cognovi Labs, a US laboratory that uses artificial intelligence and behavioral psychology to assess people’s emotions to understand the motivation behind their decisions. In the case of Putin, his speeches on February 21 and 24, 2022 and his speeches this year – on February 21 at the Federal Assembly and on September 4 at the press conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been analyzed.
The researchers assigned scores for the level of activity (emotional connection to behavior) and created a rating for readiness to act. Ten emotions are taken into account: six basic ones (joy, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, amazement) and four that have meaning in deterrence policy, national security and decision-making – amusement, contempt, hope and faith (trust).
In Putin’s two addresses to Russia on the eve of the war and the day after, the main emotions were anger, disgust and contempt. Pisano describes them as the basic emotions of a dictator.
On February 24, when the “special operation” was announced, there was more faith and hope. Although the planned blitzkrieg failed, Putin’s determination to continue the aggression has not diminished. The address to the Federal Assembly a year later was dominated by hope, but also by anger, disgust, contempt and faith.
What is particularly important is that there is absolutely no element of fear in all of Putin’s speeches. This means that the deterrence strategy does not work against him, that is, it is impossible to control him. Instead of remembering that several years ago, Putin promised the Russians paradise in the event of a nuclear war.
Putin was not deterred by the efforts of the US intelligence service, which since the end of 2021 has publicly communicated his readiness to launch an invasion by releasing data on troops on the Ukrainian border. It was supposed to show that Ukraine and NATO countries are aware and ready to confront.
Putin “at some point was simply blinded by megalomania, and he completely lost the ability to foresee the consequences of his actions,” former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with the BBC.
2023-09-17 05:13:45
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