Don’t make war in Ukraine about Putin’s mental health

There was a time when supposedly serious commentators on world affairs used to at least feign historical knowledge. They might quote Bismarck or Castlereagh. Now, international relations punditry, like almost everything else, has succumbed to the language of pop psychology.

Vladimir Putin is ‘gaslighting’ the Russian people, we are told, motivated by his ‘hypermasculinity’. His invasion of Ukraine is, according to one commentator on Radio 4 this morning, ‘unforgivable abuse’. I thought abuse meant kicking a dog or being cruel to a partner. Now it means starting a war. It’s almost as though we’re unable to think of Putin as anything other than a nasty contestant on reality TV.

Take Vanity Fair’s explanation of ‘the psychology behind Putin’s war’. The Russian leader is, apparently, ‘a small man of five-six saying he’s five-seven’. Ah, of course. He’s just like your BFF’s horrible boyfriend. Grand strategy, Nato expansionism, a vision of a greater Russia – these are as nothing compared to the insight that he might not have been loved as a child.