LAUGHING WOLF: The Puzzles In Play, And The Missing Pieces.

Aside from mores, one of the most common mistakes in analysis comes from thinking that the events taking place are a single jigsaw puzzle. That if we can just find all the pieces and get them in place, the picture will be complete and allow complete understanding of who, what, why, when, etc.

Real life, however, is never that neat. No matter how hard anyone, analyst or politician, tries to pound things flat into and into that ideal picture, the 3-D mess just keeps popping back up. For any given event, there are a large number of puzzles in play, and what makes life fun is trying to figure out not only what pieces you have (and don’t have), but to which puzzle they belong. Some actually belong to several puzzles at once. Fun!

In this case, the “main” jigsaw puzzle is the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Far too many are presenting it as a nice, simple, 2-d event. What’s worse, some of those so doing are setting policy, and 2-d policy rarely works in what truly is almost an ♾-1 environment. As for others, well, social media is full of them.

Within this puzzle reside quite a few others. In fact, the actual number of puzzles/dimensions is a bit staggering, so I’m going to try to simplify it without over-simplifying it.

Lots to chew on in this one.