DealOrBuyDinar
05-09-2008, 08:37 AM
Geopolitical Diary: Putin's Real Place in History
(http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary/geopolitical_diary_putins_real_place_history) May 8, 2008
http://www.stratfor.com/mmf/103028/two_column
Dmitri Medvedev was sworn in on Wednesday as the third president of Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He replaced Vladimir Putin in office, but it is not clear that he replaced him in power. Under a constitution as young as Russia’s, and in a country as unaccustomed to constitutions constraining power as Russia is, power does not reside in the office as much as in the man and his relationships. The conventional wisdom is that Putin will continue to hold ultimate power from his position as prime minister. We think the conventional wisdom is right, but we also think it is ultimately irrelevant. Russia’s course is set, and it has little to do with personalities.
The 1990s were a catastrophe for Russia. It went from being poor but a world power to being even poorer and a regional disaster. Boris Yeltsin’s government basically lost control of Russia, and the result was a mish-mash of domestic theft on a grand scale, coupled with Western advisers’ hare-brained schemes to turn Russia into a Western European nation. At the end of the day, Russia is Russia and has always been different socially, economically, politically and ethically. Russia is always a country that swings between enthusiasm for the West and deep nationalism that is averse to the West. The 1990s were a period of Westernization. What always follows such a period in Russia’s historical cycle is what is called the Slavophile phase — the phase in which Russia rejects the West and its values.
The swings are rooted in successive failures. As one Russian model fails, there is a broad assumption that it would be best to emulate the West. As that fails, there is an attempt to find a way to accommodate Western practices with Russian institutions. When that fails to live up to expectations, there is a shift to a singularly Russian approach to things. You wind up with an Ivan the Terrible or a Josef Stalin.
Putin and Medvedev together represent the middle step in the process. They are a reaction to the disasters of Yeltsin’s years, but instead of rejecting the West outright, they are looking for some magical mixture of the West and Russia. That looks like a capitalist model that is dominated by the state, but not controlled in its finest details by the state. It looks like the assertion of a sphere of influence without seeking direct domination in the form of empire or the Soviet Union. Putin and Medvedev are Russia in its moderate form. You have neither the terror of Ivan or Stalin, nor the chaos of Yeltsin.
It is not clear that it is a stable form. Right now Russia is enjoying the global surge in commodity prices. Not only energy, but grains have surged as well, and Russia exports both. That buys the Russian government a lot of leeway. Money serves as a superb political stabilizer. But in the end, dependence on commodity prices has always ended in the cycle shifting, be it in one or 20 years. Underlying the surge in energy prices, Russia remains undeveloped in many ways, and that underdevelopment is rooted in a host of structural and cultural problems Putin is not going to be able to solve easily, and not by throwing money at them. When times get tough, the regime that Putin and Medvedev are now creating will have to deal with it, and its inclination will be toward more extreme controls and more extreme nationalism.
After Yeltsin, if Putin had not come to the fore someone else very much like him would have. The intelligence community was the most sophisticated and capable organ of the Soviet Union — the place where the best and brightest went. During the Yeltsin years, they saw the disintegration and enriched themselves. But the disaster of Yeltsin’s period was going to reverse — or Russia was going to collapse. It was in a way inevitable that a man of the KGB would step forward to stop the collapse and reverse the process. And if Putin left the scene tomorrow, the reversal he presided over would endure.
The question for the world at the end of Putin’s presidency is how long this intermediate phase in Russian history will last. Commodity prices are one variable. The degree of geopolitical pressure from the United States is another. During the 1990s, the United States had a chance to force Russia to a collapse. Having foregone that opportunity, the United States now has few options except to contain Russia as it did the Soviet Union. The more aggressively the United States acts to contain Russia — the more “in play” countries like Ukraine or Georgia are — the more vigorously Russia will react. If the United States tries to prevent the restoration of a Russian sphere of influence, it will speed up the movement from the middle phase to the radical, Slavophile phase.0
It really has little to do with personality. If not Putin, then someone else would have done the job. Whether Putin is gone or stays, the process will continue. He is an interesting man, but in the end, he was made by history more than he made history.
(http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary/geopolitical_diary_putins_real_place_history) May 8, 2008
http://www.stratfor.com/mmf/103028/two_column
Dmitri Medvedev was sworn in on Wednesday as the third president of Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He replaced Vladimir Putin in office, but it is not clear that he replaced him in power. Under a constitution as young as Russia’s, and in a country as unaccustomed to constitutions constraining power as Russia is, power does not reside in the office as much as in the man and his relationships. The conventional wisdom is that Putin will continue to hold ultimate power from his position as prime minister. We think the conventional wisdom is right, but we also think it is ultimately irrelevant. Russia’s course is set, and it has little to do with personalities.
The 1990s were a catastrophe for Russia. It went from being poor but a world power to being even poorer and a regional disaster. Boris Yeltsin’s government basically lost control of Russia, and the result was a mish-mash of domestic theft on a grand scale, coupled with Western advisers’ hare-brained schemes to turn Russia into a Western European nation. At the end of the day, Russia is Russia and has always been different socially, economically, politically and ethically. Russia is always a country that swings between enthusiasm for the West and deep nationalism that is averse to the West. The 1990s were a period of Westernization. What always follows such a period in Russia’s historical cycle is what is called the Slavophile phase — the phase in which Russia rejects the West and its values.
The swings are rooted in successive failures. As one Russian model fails, there is a broad assumption that it would be best to emulate the West. As that fails, there is an attempt to find a way to accommodate Western practices with Russian institutions. When that fails to live up to expectations, there is a shift to a singularly Russian approach to things. You wind up with an Ivan the Terrible or a Josef Stalin.
Putin and Medvedev together represent the middle step in the process. They are a reaction to the disasters of Yeltsin’s years, but instead of rejecting the West outright, they are looking for some magical mixture of the West and Russia. That looks like a capitalist model that is dominated by the state, but not controlled in its finest details by the state. It looks like the assertion of a sphere of influence without seeking direct domination in the form of empire or the Soviet Union. Putin and Medvedev are Russia in its moderate form. You have neither the terror of Ivan or Stalin, nor the chaos of Yeltsin.
It is not clear that it is a stable form. Right now Russia is enjoying the global surge in commodity prices. Not only energy, but grains have surged as well, and Russia exports both. That buys the Russian government a lot of leeway. Money serves as a superb political stabilizer. But in the end, dependence on commodity prices has always ended in the cycle shifting, be it in one or 20 years. Underlying the surge in energy prices, Russia remains undeveloped in many ways, and that underdevelopment is rooted in a host of structural and cultural problems Putin is not going to be able to solve easily, and not by throwing money at them. When times get tough, the regime that Putin and Medvedev are now creating will have to deal with it, and its inclination will be toward more extreme controls and more extreme nationalism.
After Yeltsin, if Putin had not come to the fore someone else very much like him would have. The intelligence community was the most sophisticated and capable organ of the Soviet Union — the place where the best and brightest went. During the Yeltsin years, they saw the disintegration and enriched themselves. But the disaster of Yeltsin’s period was going to reverse — or Russia was going to collapse. It was in a way inevitable that a man of the KGB would step forward to stop the collapse and reverse the process. And if Putin left the scene tomorrow, the reversal he presided over would endure.
The question for the world at the end of Putin’s presidency is how long this intermediate phase in Russian history will last. Commodity prices are one variable. The degree of geopolitical pressure from the United States is another. During the 1990s, the United States had a chance to force Russia to a collapse. Having foregone that opportunity, the United States now has few options except to contain Russia as it did the Soviet Union. The more aggressively the United States acts to contain Russia — the more “in play” countries like Ukraine or Georgia are — the more vigorously Russia will react. If the United States tries to prevent the restoration of a Russian sphere of influence, it will speed up the movement from the middle phase to the radical, Slavophile phase.0
It really has little to do with personality. If not Putin, then someone else would have done the job. Whether Putin is gone or stays, the process will continue. He is an interesting man, but in the end, he was made by history more than he made history.