CLOSED SYSTEMS PRODUCE BAD OUTCOMES:

Putin has fallen into the autocrats' trap. Isolated, he is no longer able to weigh up reality as it is, but sees his fears instead. He is obsessed with what he perceives as the threat from Ukraine's westward drift, and with turning back the clock to reset the post-Cold World order. His speech  Thursday -- ranging from Russia's weakness at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, to Iraq, Yugoslavia and a chilling warning against Western intervention -- was hardly the product of a cool, rational mind. It could not have contrasted more sharply with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's earlier moving appeals for peace, made directly to ordinary Russians. U.S. President Joe Biden called Russia's actions a "premeditated war."

Hubris, paranoia, military adventurism -- a heady combination, and one that has been fatal for dictators and their regimes. And Putin is starting a war Russians do not want, for which they will pay the cost.

Political scientist Daniel Treisman, in his study of autocrats' last acts, found that most regimes come to an end through mistakes, whether because they ignored change or, like Argentina's General Leopoldo Galtieri, embarked on an ill-advised war. He invaded the Falklands in 1982, assuming Britain would not fight and that his population would unite behind him. He was misguided, and the blunder was terminal.

Tweet   @brothersjudd