By now you’ve likely heard that some tiny set of consultants that work for the Defense Department did an analysis of Putin – from television footage, no less. Their assessment is that poor little Vlad suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. Of course, if you’re in the know, you are aware that it isn’t called that anymore. It’s just a place on the ‘autism spectrum’.

Now to my point – as I’ve said before, The Hunt for Red October is my second favorite film of all time. Terms of Endearment is my favorite, but again, I digress. Here’s the thing – there are some fantastic quotes from THFRO that I’ve used before in a video I made at the height of the hostilities in Iraq. But here’s another good one, and one that’s most appropriate for this post:

“The average Russki, son, don’t take a dump without a plan.”

Admiral Painter, talking to Jack Ryan

So if the average Russki has a plan for the simplest of functions, it implies that Putin has a plan. Angela Merkel, the gal he was counting on to help him out with his plans to re-establish the Soviet empire, indicated that Putin had lost touch with reality, and lives in ‘another world’. Well, that is likely true. He lives in a world of his own creation – one where he is the head of a large and powerful empire, feared and admired by all.

Yeah…no.

So which is worse – a power hungry, clever megalomaniac or a demented, lives in his own little autistic world hand-wringer? Neither option is good, and if I had to guess, I’d say autism was more likely the reality of his existence. Let me ‘splain.

Putin does live in the past, but the past wasn’t a great story for him. He has seen the world of the Soviet Union collapse (the worst day ever, according to him). And along with it, life collapsed for he and his family. So he worked his way up through a system that we frankly don’t really understand. And he succeeded – likely beyond his wildest dreams. But he’s still that little kid from Leningrad who had two older brothers who died twenty years before he was born, one during the siege of Leningrad in WW II. So his parents were in their forties when he was born, making the autism theory at least plausible. But if he is autistic, and if Asperger’s is the likely case, that syndrome is marked with fetish-like attention to detail, planning and routine. It’s also marked with a high degree of paranoia. And I maintain that’s what drives him.

So if you buy my description of him, then you can likely figure out what he intends to do. Carefully plan a way to retake the areas surrounding Russia, as a buffer to European incursion and a thumb in the eye of the west. Think about it from his point of view. The Nazis (Germans) killed his older brother and starved his mother. The west took their sweet time about coming to Russia’s rescue, preferring to invade Italy first and then retake France. The Soviets had to save themselves – and they did. Their first instinct was to take land and keep it, to protect themselves from further attack from the west. That succeeded for a long time, and only fell because of the collaboration of Europe and America. Right? Isn’t that what the cold war was? So from that perspective, he’s just putting things back the way they should be, and paying for it with fifteen years of oil revenue, carefully saved after paying off all Russia’s debts and building up its currency. Then what happened? Ukraine blew up, they started looking to collaborate with the west, and all Putin’s instincts likely told him to fight back. Start with Crimea, then take Ukraine. Then the border countries – anything to put land between the evil that is the Eurowest and Russia. That is what makes sense to me.

And what will the U.S. be doing while he’s trying to insulate himself from any possible incursion? We’ll likely be trying to work through the recalcitrant Europeans, rather than get our boots dirty in any skirmishes with the bear. We’re tired of war, and have no use for any kind of unilateral action. So what happens to NATO? It is shown to be the paper tiger it sort of always was. Better to find out sooner than later? Hard to say. But I’ll say this – NATO will be tested soon, and it will be found wanting. It’s gotten fat and lazy over these years with nothing really to do. And when it’s revealed to be useless, what will be there to stop Putin? Nothing. And nobody. So be prepared, Estonia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Putin is coming to a town near you, and it won’t be pretty. He’s got nearly a million men under arms, and I’m fairly confident he intends to use them. And in the not-too-distant future. Count on it. You heard it here first.