http://www.mauldineconomics.com/this-week-in-geopolitics
"The Crises That Could Bring Down Putin"
Interesting, but (to me) ultimately unpersuasive.
Writing about a Russian dictator’s potentially “losing his
grip on power” is a mug’s game: in the first place substantially underestimates
that grip.
Yeltsin, the example provided, was *not* a cutthroat climber
in the sense of Russian leaders historically; no, he was the (Bill)
Clintonesque sacrificial lamb shoved to the front of the group of annoyed
Politburians in the late 80s as a domestic-protest-move. I believe they probably expected he was – in
the long-established tradition of Soviet politics – going to disappear.
That he didn’t either signaled that Gorbachev was either strikingly
different (still not sure that’s true) or astonishingly weak by that time. In other words, the Politburo handed Yeltsin
the reins when it looked like the stagecoach was about to crash, and he was
stupid enough to hold them. After they
got through the bumpy bits, those same elites took the reins back away from
him. So he’s of nearly no use as an
example.
In the second place, it discounts (as usual) the characteristically
unique level of paranoia in the Russian psyche.
I’m not saying that this makes them impossible to predict, that would be
silly. But it’s typical of western
analysts to begin their examination from a position of empathy: “how would I
feel if I were a Russian, and what would be the consequences?” Russians are NOT Westerners. The term ‘inscrutable’ used to be applied to
Oriental states whose motives & goals themselves were hard to
understand. Whenever a faraway country
would do something completely baffling for reasons we couldn’t even rationalize
after the fact, it was shrugged away with “well they’re just inscrutable”. It’s declined in usage because of the
quasi-racist overtones it eventually assumed, but I would posit that given our
radically different cultures, history, and outlook: to Americans, Russians
remain inscrutable.
No, the average Russian believes as a given fact every day
that:
1) Russia is
in danger from its enemies, and
2) As
Russians, saving Mother Russia will require their personal sacrifice –
certainly in comfort/quality of life, but up to and including their lives.
(This isn’t to say that they are blindly patriotic and will sacrifice
themselves for Putin personally; not at all.
But for Russia as a nation distinct from its government? Pretty much so.)
The only thing Russian leaders can do is highlight the
immediacy of that danger to spur the Russian people to ‘hunker down’ through
tough times as needed, and to prove that they (the leader) is the particular
strongman that can shepherd Russia through (today’s) crisis. The art, for a Russian leader (Stalin was a
master, enabled by the existential crisis of the war) is to get “out of the
direct path” of the threat to Matya Rossiya.
“The roof just started leaking, I just happened to be the guy standing
here with a hammer and shingles”. “Well
of course we had to secure our bases in Crimea, the west had overthrown the
democratically-elected leader of Ukraine and was trying to strangle the Russian
Navy out of the Black Sea”. Notice,
Putin’s action isn’t the narrative – he’s just fixing another “goddamned
problem”.
The replacement of governors with people from his coterie of
hangers-on isn’t going to be seen as much of a signal; they all serve more or
less at his pleasure anyway, and if any make a stink (they won’t, it’s
…unhealthy) I’d imagine there are already ample volumes of leakable evidence of
their corruption or selfishness. Again,
he’s just trying to fix the roof and Russians will recognize he needs a crew up
there that he can trust.
More substantially meaningful here to American interests is
the historical (apparent) rapprochement between Russia and Turkey. They’ve been enemies with
directly-conflicting interests since, well, forever. I’ll say that again: these two nations have
been in direct competition for at least FOUR CENTURIES and the US (as the
standard-bearer for Western diplomacy) has managed to let them discover
interests that may bring them into alignment.
That is a diplomatic failure (for us) of colossal proportions. If he can
pull it off, Putin could turn the Black Sea into a Russian lake and win
essentially unfettered control of Istanbul and the Bosperus. That would be triumphal in the history of
Russia, probably comparable (in US manifest-destiny terms) to Canada just
dissolving and joining the US.
Here’s my $0.02 guess: the editor's mystification over ‘what
was traded here’ between Russia and Turkey will become apparent perhaps as soon
as the next 3-6 months. Russians are
chess-players; They certainly don’t have the ridiculously short attention span
of American observers. They don’t have
2-year congressional election cycles to satisfy, or 4-year re-elections to
run. They can seriously plan for 10-year
results or even longer.
What I expect is that Putin is trading his participation in
Syria for breaking Turkey out of the west’s orbit, obligingly along the fissure
created by the Turkish putsch. Hell, I
wouldn’t be surprised if that ‘revolt’ was stage-managed by Russian agents
(bonus points for them if they could convince Turkey/the world that they were
Americans) directly for that purpose.
My guess is that could have been the point of the
seemingly-pointless Russian military effort to prop up Assad from the
start. (That may be crediting Putin with
too much prescience; more likely he was pushing a knight or rook out into the
board as bait for what would opportunistically develop, but always in the
knowledge that it really wasn’t there for function, but as a very-tradable
sacrifice.)
I don’t even think which way the Russians and Turks jump
matters all that much – whether Russia joins the fight against ISIS and
abandons Assad, or whether Turkey pulls out of the fight against ISIS and (by
negative act) ends up supporting Assad* - what matters to Putin and in the long
game would be that Russia and Turkey would be working in parallel.
*I think the latter is less likely, given the personal
enmity between Erdogan and Assad. The
former seems much more multi-valuable in terms of disarming criticism and
undermining suspicion in the west.
The first hint will be the closure of US operations in
Incirlik (the big US base in Turkey). If
that happens, I’d take that my prediction is likely happening. (I just googled Incirlik to make sure I
spelled it right and look what came up: http://sputniknews.com/military/20160816/1044330202/turkey-russia-incirlik.html “Turkey could provide its Incirlik airbase for the Russian Aerospace Forces
jets in the anti-terrorist campaign in Syria, member of Russia’s upper house of
parliament Igor Morozov said Tuesday”).
Well.
