National Security is Everyone's Business

April 25th, 2024 | 12:14 PM ET

Putin the Bully

Posted: December 31st, 2015

By John Sipher

John Sipher worked for the CIA’s clandestine service for 28 years. He is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment. John served multiple overseas tours as Chief of Station and Deputy Chief of Station in Europe, Asia, and in high-threat environments. He is the recipient of CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal.

As a father of three boys, one of my favorite shows is “Malcolm in the Middle,” a 2000-2006 sitcom about a dysfunctional family of six.  The middle son, Reese, is a delinquent bully who spends all of his time devising fiendish plans to sow mayhem and violence.  When he finally falls for a girl in school, the only way that he knows how to show affection is by torturing her.

I’m convinced that the best way to assess Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent foray into Syria is less to search for his overarching geopolitical or strategic rationale than to see him as a simple schoolyard bully.  Like Reese, his actions in Syria and elsewhere can be read as much as a boorish attempt to get attention as anything more high-minded. 

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+

Categorized as:Uncategorized

Related Articles

Search

Close