It’s making me sick to my stomach to watch American politicians and citizens alike swallow up Vladimir Putin’s charade in response to our policies and moves towards Syria. The overall stupidity of Obama and others’ insistence on meddling and intervention notwithstanding; what Putin thinks is completely irrelevant and there is absolutely no reason to ask him permission to do anything or take any threat from him seriously. How can I be so confident that there is no danger of a Second Cold War or other retaliation from the Russian government? Well, besides being a Soviet expatriate myself, I also have facts and logical deduction to back my stance – concepts President Obama desperately needs to discover. To put things bluntly, Putin’s regime is teetering on collapse, and the factors contributing to this are almost too numerous to list.

 

            Let’s begin with the economy. For almost a century, the Soviet government and its successor Russian Federation have put up a facade for the rest of the world to appear technologically up to par. They achieve the illusion of being right behind us by throwing all their resources toward a few objects - whether it's tourist attraction cities Moscow and St. Petersburg or very small arsenals of some extremely expensive new weapon system - and then making sure no foreigner gets a more balanced glimpse through tight media and access control. Travel outside those two museum cities and you will find poverty that Mexico would be ashamed of; epidemics of communicable diseases; infrastructure in such colossal neglect that you will be terrified you're near it; levels of corruption and crime that make Detroit feel like paradise; and alcoholism dominating the populace like a pseudo-religion. The same paradigm applies to Russia's military. Outside the very small proportion of special divisions essentially designed for demonstration - it is a mass of uneducated, untrained, malnourished draftees with weapons and technology that are outdated, do not work properly, and face shortages of fuel, ammunition, and maintenance. Under this same principle, Russia's humongous nuclear weapons stockpile presents a far greater threat of accidental detonations or leaks that damage the global ecosystem than as a tool of war. In this earthly Hell of underdevelopment and stratification, Russia’s only genuine economic strength is the export of its vast natural resources - oil, timber, diamonds – as raw materials for use in industrial hubs like China and India; and despite desperately fabricated government data, economic growth via these exports has taken a colossal hit in the global downturn as consumption markets for the final products have shrunk.

 

            Russia’s economic problems are further exacerbated by its decision to host the upcoming 2014 Winter Olympics. At first glance, there is no better place on Earth to hold the Winter Olympics than Russia. But enter the city of Sochi into Google Maps and you will realize this is the equivalent of the US hosting the Winter Olympics in Honolulu, HI. The last several Olympic Games have proven to be disastrously bad investments for the countries hosting them; with Greece’s economic catastrophe being largely attributable to the debts incurred. Brazil is currently struggling with political unrest opposing cuts to social safety nets and infrastructure spending in order to afford hosting the next Summer games. Putin’s decision to show off by hosting the Winter Games at a Black Sea resort is already beginning to backfire in an economic sense; and the recent addition of boycotts by various athletic organizations and vendors in response to his crackdown on homosexuals will compound the resulting loss and debt.

 

            Then there is Putin’s #1 political enemy – his own military. A divide between civilian secret service agencies and the military is not uncommon in various countries in the modern world; but this rivalry in Russia hardly has any parallels. It dates back to the formation of the KGB’s predecessor agency, the NKVD. in the 1930s under Stalin with the purpose of controlling a military that was leaning toward lynching him, and things have only gotten worse since then. The NKVD committed unspeakable atrocities against military commanders during WWII to prevent what many thought was an inevitable coup against Stalin’s incompetence. Following Stalin’s death, military-aligned politicians took control of the Soviet government and retaliated with kangaroo trials and executions of the NKVD’s top officials, culminating in breaking up the agency, with the KGB emerging as one of its successors. The military and the KGB have since found themselves on opposite sides of the coup that ousted Nikita Khrushchev and installed Leonid Brezhnev, the political conflict surrounding the fall of the USSR, and the games played in the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin until the KGB finally emerged victorious through Putin’s succession in 2000. To say the Russian military does not support Putin is an understatement. Recent polls have indicated in excess of 80% of officers not supporting the President, and for his entire 13 years in power – the military has operated as an independent branch of government in an uneasy truce with the civilian Kremlin. Putin’s placeholder President Dmitry Medvedev (2008-12) attempted to break this independence by appointing Russia’s first ever civilian Defense Secretary. The man was pitifully removed from office in November 2012, allegedly due to corruption complaints, and replaced with a general. Accusing Russian government officials of corruption is like handing out indecent exposure tickets in a strip club; this was invariably an excuse to remove a leader the military refused to tolerate, likely under threat of a coup. In light of these conditions, the prospect of any Russian military retaliation against the US is laughable. The moment Putin ordered his troops into such an unbalanced and unwinnable conflict, they would march into Moscow and hang him from the Kremlin Wall – to the fervent cheers of everyone else in Moscow.

 

            And that brings us to Putin’s relationship with his people in general. Much like the USSR, his country is appropriately called the “Russian Federation” because it is neither monolithic nor homogeneous; but a complex patchwork of regions, counties, and autonomies with their own ethnicities, languages, and even religions. To simplify this, I present the RF as having 4 parts. The first is the Eastern European part that houses Moscow and St. Petersburg – home to Russia’s oligarchy and 1/3 of its total population citing official figures that discount millions who lack the required government permission to live there. This densely populated area has brutal weather conditions and does not come anywhere close to having the natural resources to support its population. It survives via imports purchased by oligarchs using wealth obtained through holdings in other regions. Russia’s thin middle class that despises the oligarchy also resides in this region; and was largely responsible for the protests and unrest surrounding his fraudulent re-election to the Presidency in 2012. To calm the unrest, Putin backed off on many draconian measures of control he had established over Russia’s other regions and allowed a significant reduction in his party’s majority in Russia’s Parliament – contributing colossally to his current political problems. The second part of Russia is comprised of several regions in central and southern Russia. It is home to the Caucasus region with ethnic autonomies such as Chechnya that have been in rebellion against the Federation for decades, and historically crime-ruled cities like Rostov-on-the-Don. Without delving deep into details, this semi-industrialized region is a festering shithole of corruption, crime, underdevelopment, pollution, and miniature civil wars. The presence of Moscow’s viceroys there is at best tolerated – neither they nor the local criminals and warlords have firm political control. The 3rd part is Russia’s Far East Region that sits on its Pacific Coast with the capital of Vladivostok. Rich in natural resources and somewhat industrialized, this region was for years robbed and enslaved by Putin’s oligarchy that embezzled its output to live like kings on the other side of the continent. However, the recent forced move toward regional autonomy has allowed Vladivostok’s local powers to emerge as colossal threats to the oligarchy. Far closer geographically to economic powerhouses like China and Japan than to Moscow, this region is developing its own relationships with foreign partners and dreams of independence. Several months ago, one of Russia’s most prominent State-run newspapers published an ominous editorial suggesting the country’s capital be moved from Moscow to Vladivostok – a slap in Putin’s face that would have been met with horrendous repression only a few years ago. Finally, there is Siberia. While it remains largely undeveloped and sparsely populated, this region holds the bulk of Russia’s natural resources and several mid-sized cities that, after the easing of centralized control, have replaced their tributary relationship with Moscow with moves to monopolize these resources’ harvesting. Siberia is also where most of Russia’s nuclear weapon stockpile is located. As the economy continues to shrink, the various regional authorities have all the more reason to declare independence and expropriate Moscow’s holdings, and the previous paragraph illustrates clearly that Putin’s military is not available to counter-act such a development. For those shaking their heads at such a prophecy, I remind you that internal disintegration bloodlessly ended the USSR. In fact, many Russia experts I follow are shocked this has not happened already.

 

            Those able to think like political scientists have probably already deduced my conclusion based on this evidence. Putin is barking at the United States in desperate search of a political scapegoat to unite his populace and various political opponents under him. He knows full well that his military will not support him in an actual war, and that his end nears with his worsening economic and geopolitical situation; but he counts on the ignorance of both the masses and the politicians in the US to respond to his provocation in a way that restarts the Cold War and accomplishes his domestic goals.

 

            While Putin is unlikely to succeed in this endeavor in any case, it is important to remember that there are three avenues of response rather than two, and the two most Americans are aware of equally play into Putin’s hand. The first, of course, is Obama’s despicable bending over for Putin like he has done for every international and foreign entity he has come in contact with; manifesting in trying to convince Russia’s despot that Al-Assad is a criminal. This is the equivalent of trying to talk a dog out of eating meat. Putin is well aware of Al-Assad’s crimes; but for strategic reasons he chooses to ignore and downplay them, question Obama’s information, and spin the latter’s speeches as hostile and imperialistic toward Russia. Obama’s apparent ambivalence of this makes us look weak and stupid as a country, while Putin’s response is probably somewhat effective at increasing his popularity with the Russian masses. However, an equally erroneous response is that of hawkish, conservative Americans who oppose Obama and advocate a firmer, more militant stance that threatens Russia in return. While this Cold War nostalgia might be satisfying to some older Americans, it is highly counter-productive as it also gives credibility to Putin’s threats. Namely, it provides him source material to present the US as a threat and an enemy to Russians in hopes this will replace their collective desire to lynch him. The third, and only reasonable, response is to put Putin in his place by ignoring him the way a powerful father would a small child throwing a tantrum. Such a response would make Putin look like an idiot in front of his own people for provoking a country that refuses to turn hostile and take him seriously, empowering his domestic opponents to mire him in criticism or demand he follow through on his threats knowing that he lacks the capacity. Again, for those who think this path is irrational and risky, I remind you that similar foreign policy brought down the USSR. Ronald Reagan refused to make any sort of deal with Gorbachev, pressing hard on domestic defense and daring the USSR to keep up; in 6 years the latter collapsed under the incompetence of its economic system. We could have accomplished that feat 30 years sooner in the 1960s had Kennedy not engaged in Obama-style pandering with Khrushchev. As appealing as I find the image of Vladimir Putin swinging by his testicles from a flagpole in Red Square at the hands of his own military, the likely outcome of a shunning foreign policy toward Russia is a regional disintegration that demotes him from President to a guy looking for a place to store all his stolen money – all in a matter of days just like it happened to Gorbachev. Let that happen. Let Putin drown in the swamp he has created, and the world will be a better place.

 

By: Neurotoxin

 

 

 

About the Editor:

Neurotoxin holds a dual BA in Psychology and Political Science and an MSW with a specialization in Community Organizing. Politically, he is a “structural anarchist”; a school of thought that believes in treating all power structures as facts of nature that should be accounted for but not preserved. This school of thought dictates that policy ought to be driven solely by its empirically calculated outcomes.

Neurotoxin is the co-owner of Edge of Chaos – a political podcast and blog that can be found @ www.edgeofchaospodcast.com and http://www.facebook.com/theedgeofchaos.