Political Quotes

“Madam President, lots of pundits are trying to get into President Putin's head and looking for some so-called off-ramp. Now, I am not a pundit, and I do not pretend to be able to read Putin's mind. However, I do listen carefully to those closest to Russia who have better insights than the American pundits, academics, and foreign policy theorists. I happen to be cochair of the Senate Baltic Freedom Caucus, so I interact regularly with Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians--three countries that in 1940 the Soviet Union absorbed into it, and then since about 1990, they have been independent of Russia. So you can see these countries are historically Western in every sense except geography, but they have had a long and often painful exposure to the Russian-Soviet-KGB way of thinking. Our Baltic friends can help others in the West who cannot seem to fathom what is going through Putin's mind. The fact that we cannot understand Putin's mindset is because he doesn't think like modern Western leaders. Now, this is important insight from my Baltic contacts. Putin is stuck in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now, you know I like history, so this is something that I can understand. Putin thinks like a czar expanding his empire. He regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union--not because of communist ideology but because it reconstituted the Russian empire. In foreign policy, it is easy to assume other countries are just like us. Experts don't know what to make of an 18th-century imperialist.…”