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Why This Idolisation of Putin?
I chose that word carefully: idolisation. We in the West are enthusiastically and appropriately critical of our own leaders. That is fair enough, given the amount of ammunition with which they provide us. But we seem to view the enemies of the West as super-beings, chess masters in a real world board game.
Based on much of the media coverage, you’d think that Vladimir Putin has manipulated things ever so cleverly, whereas the reality is that he has messed up big time.
Yes, he now has Crimea, but that is a consolation prize for what he lost: the rest of Ukraine. Go back a couple of years, what did he have then?
He had a puppet government in Ukraine, or, at the least, a very malleable one. He could turn the stopcocks on the gas pipelines whenever they seemed a touch uppity. What Putin wanted, Putin got.
But he overreached. He forced the Ukrainian President to go back on a planned agreement with the EU and, instead of bending the country to his will, his puppet was overthrown and he lost the whole country. He has seized some of it back — Crimea — but this was a crude attempt to salvage something from a plan gone badly awry.
He seems to be hesitating, now, on the subversion in eastern Ukraine. Europe is planning to provide energy support to Ukraine. Capital flight from Russia is estimated as approaching a quarter of a trillion dollars. That comes to more than 10 percent of the annual GDP of the nation.
Our democratic leaders certainly have plenty of flaws, but so do authoritarian ones. It’s just that they are not so readily pointed out.
Published in General
You have to consider what is the driver of “instability” or “uncertainty” in Russia. Besides the sanctions, which are not likely to go away in 6 month time, but rather intensify, the main source of instability is the fact that capital which remains in Russia is subject to the whims of a crazy dictator who has a long-term agenda of instigating the West. A crazy dictator who relies primarily on oil and gas revenues, and given the current climate of increased discoveries and decreasing prices in those commodities, as well as his main markets trying their best to shift away from Russia, is likely to try and find other sources of “revenue” to keep his delusions afloat.
The money leaving Russia is the money of the oligarchs who know what it will mean for them to keep the money in Russia: dependence on Putin.
The long-term prospects for Russia are more isolation from the civilized world, not more “stability”.
PS: Of course, the flight of the “productive class” from Russia is also part of their normal history. Happened in 1917, happened in the 90s, happened in the mid 2000s, and happening now again.
You stated I am not up on Russia’s navy or its mercantile trade. Yet you seem to be doubt my assertion of your veracity. Now I am confused.
Seawriter