Толстый и тонкий

[porucnik vasic]

Tu si u pravu.  Za nas iz USA je postalo malo teze da razumemo to jednodimenzionalno glediste koju ima velika vecina ljudi iz inostranstva (i.e. van Amerike).  Vecina ljudi van Amerike gledaju americke predsednicke kandidate kroz prizmu "kakav ce on da bude za nas", "kako ce nama u ____ da bude ako dodje ____", etc.. Zato se ne treba cuditi da su van Amerike najomiljeniji kandidati cesto marginalci i/ili ekstremisti.

 

 

 

Zanimljivo pitanje.  Pravi conundrum za desnokrilne mamojebe od kojih mnogi podrzavaju Trumpa.  S jedne strane za njih su svi stranci (doduse neki vise, neki manje) divljaci, govna, niza bica, etc.. S druge strane, imponuje im takav lik kao sto je Putin (strong leader, never apologize, kick ass...)

Ма треба да их буде брига какви ће да буду за Америку.

[apostata]

Bas boli kad ti neko kaze nesto ruzno za Putina.

Jeste, jeste erazeru - ti si jedini na ovom forumu koji o Putku ne piše hvalospjeve.

Po toj tvojoj logici ja bi svakih 3,5 min. trebao pisati bijesne komentare.

 

Ono što tebe izdvaja su povremeni izlivi primitivizama krstaričinog tipa ... s tim da je on tamo naravno samo drugog predznaka.

[Prospero]

Gari Kasparov izbacio novu knjigu o Rusiji Putinu, izgleda da je 1 blast:
 
 

PUTIN. HITLER. DICTATOR. EVIL.


Former world chess champion and current Russian opposition politician Garry Kasparov has a new book out, entitled Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must be Stopped.  Russians aren’t its target audience. Rather, it is aimed at readers in the Western world who might be thinking that it would be better if their countries talked to Russia and tried to find common ground in order to solve mutual problems. Forget it, says Kasparov. Don’t be deluded. Talking is a sign of weakness, and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin will exploit any weakness to expand his ‘dictatorship’ and ‘invade’ even more neighbouring countries. The West, Kasparov argues, has to abandon its ‘cowardice’ and unite firmly against Russia and Putin before it is too late and ‘winter’ arrives.

 

Kasparov advances this thesis by means of a rapid history of Russian politics from the late Soviet era onwards, interspersed with personal anecdotes. But although the book is notionally about Russia, it is really about Putin, with whom Kasparov appears to be obsessed. In fact, Winter is Coming is little more than a prolonged expression of hatred against the Russian president. The title of this blog post tells you all you really need to know about it. Kasparov thinks that Putin is Hitler; he is a dictator; and he is evil. In fact, the word ‘Hitler’ appears 32 times in the book. Kasparov also regularly uses words such as ‘dictator’, ‘dictatorship’, ‘totalitarianism’, ‘autocrat’, and ‘despotism’, and pursuing another theme, likes to talk about ‘appeasement’, ‘appeasers’, and ‘Chamberlain’. Subtlety is not his forte.

 

Thus we learn from Kasparov that:

• The ‘mafia state with Putin as capo di tutti capi’ uses ‘blatantly fascist propaganda and tactics’ (p. xi) and the Kremlin uses ‘overtly fascist rhetoric. … Some of these speeches … closely resemble those of Nazi leaders’ (p. xxiii).
• ‘Putin respects only power’ (p. 8), and his ‘only goal is to stay in power. … He needs conflict and hatred now’ (p. 69).
• Putin ‘wants only to keep us all in perpetual darkness’, and aims ‘for the totalitarianism of one person: himself’ (p. 91).
• ‘Putin’s regime operated on an amoral scale’, and Putin has established ‘full-blown dictatorship’ (p. 159).
• Russia has returned to ‘the rule of an all-powerful single-party state’ (p. 168).
• Russia has returned ‘to outright despotism’ (p. 172).
• ‘Putin had become a dictator, full stop’ (p. 178).
• Russia is ‘a modern one-man dictatorship spreading fascist propaganda’ (p. 235).
• ‘I find it impossible to believe that a man like Putin … is not the richest of them all. … Putin is likely the richest man in the world’ (p. 185).

Putin, claims Kasparov, is little different from Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). All of them, he says, are united in ‘their rejection of modernity. … This is the common thread connecting Putin’s attack on Ukraine and the murderous Islam-derived ideology that drives Al-Qaeda and ISIS.’ (p. 254-5). Putin, therefore, poses a serious danger to the West, which needs to stand up to him while it still can.

 

Unfortunately, Kasparov says, the West has failed to show the required resolve. ‘Instead of standing on principles of good and evil, of right and wrong … we have engagement, resets, and moral equivalence.’ (p. xii) Engagement is the same as appeasement (p. 252). ‘Dictators only stop when they are stopped, and appeasing Putin with Ukraine will only stoke his appetite for more conquests,’ Kasparov writes. (p. xxiv) Complaining about the ‘vocabulary of cowardice’ (p. 244), he comments that Putin ‘and his repressive regime are supported directly and indirectly by the free world due to this one-way engagement policy’ (p. 248). This weakness, he says, has to end.

 

In its place, Kasparov calls for ‘the moral clarity and stubbornness of Ronald Reagan’ (p. 33) (a call which ignores the fact that Reagan engaged regularly in negotiations with the Soviets). Kasparov’s universe is one of black and white, of good and evil, without any nuance. ‘We cannot compromise’, he writes (p. 256). Any compromise is a sign of ‘cowardice’ which ‘dictators’ will use against us. This leads to strange readings of history. Most people, for instance, probably regard President J.F. Kennedy’s support for the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 as a huge mistake. Not so Kasparov, who thinks that Kennedy’s error was to not press on further. ‘In 1961, JFK recalled US airplanes from supporting anti-Castro forces, leaving them to be massacred by the Soviet-led Cuban army’ (p. 109), he complains. ‘Détente … [was] a euphemism for appeasement’, he writes later (p. 116), and ‘Russia’s invasion of Georgia was the direct result of nearly of decade of this combination of helplessness and self-delusion in the West. Being left unpunished over Georgia invited Putin into Ukraine six years later’ (p. 174).

 

‘The Cold War ended,’ Kasparov claims, ‘not because Western leaders merely defended their values but because they projected them aggressively.’ (p. 190) He believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union put the West in an unparalleled position of hegemony, which it should have exploited to destroy dictatorships wherever they were found. With the end of the Cold War, ‘UN-crafted compromises were no longer necessary, and often dangerous,’ he writes, ‘Democracy was ascendant, and it was time to formally recognize this and to press the advantage.’ (p. 66) ‘The free world had overwhelming momentum after the fall of the USSR’, he says elsewhere (p. 193). Unfortunately, although US President George W. Bush showed his willingness to use US power to spread democracy, his successor, Barack Obama, ‘stopped pressing the advantage’ (p. xxi) According to Kasparov, after invading Iraq, the United States should have kept on going. He writes:

Preemptive strikes and deposing dictators may or may not have been a good plan, but at least it was a plan. If you attack Iraq, the potential to go after Iran and Syria must also be on the table. Inconsistency is a strategic deficiency that is nearly impossible to overcome (p. 192).
 

Wow!

 

Kasparov ends his book by recommending that the West should ‘stand up to the Kremlin and promote regime change’ (p. 207), and ‘declare in the strongest terms that Russia will be treated like the criminal rogue regime that it is for as long as Putin is in power. Call off the sham negotiations. Sell weapons to Ukraine that will put an unbearable political price on Putin’s aggression. Tell every Russian oligarch that there is no place their money will be safe in the West as long as they serve Putin’ (p. 259). The United Nations is obsolete, he claims. In its place he calls for ‘the creation of a united Democratic nations’, which can use ‘military intervention to protect human lives and the greater good’ (p. 260). ‘The free world possesses wealth and power beyond imagining and it must be used,’ he concludes. (p. 261).

 

Kasparov’s book has one great value – it shows how unhinged his view of international politics truly is. He is, without doubt, an out-and-out true believing neoconservative, who sees the world in simple terms of good and evil, and who believes that the West has such overwhelming power that if it just had the will to use this power, it could bend the world to fit its desires. Indeed, Kasparov admits his neoconservative leanings, by showering praise on one of the idols of the neocon movement – the late Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson – as well as on Senator John McCain, the uber-hawk of contemporary America, whom Kasparov lauds for his ‘moral clarity’ (p. 196). ‘Can anyone … not believe that the world would be a safer, more democratic place today had John McCain been elected? ‘ writes Kasparov, adding that, ‘In the universe where McCain is president, Putin does not invade Ukraine’ (p. 197).

 

Kasparov’s view of Russia is extremely simplistic. It is all ‘Putin, Putin, Putin’. He denies that the Russian leader or his policies have any popular support, and ignores entirely the possibility that Putin is a product of his country’s system as much as he is the creator of it. It is certainly the case that Russian politics and government leave a lot to be desired, but they are hardly ‘totalitarianism of one person’, ‘a full-blown dictatorship’, ‘an all-powerful single-party state,’ or ‘outright despotism’. Political competition is limited, but it exists; state media channels dominate, but there are alternatives; the president’s power is substantial, but it is not unrestricted.  Russia is just not ‘a modern one-man dictatorship spreading fascist propaganda’.

 

Equally simplistic is Kasparov’s view of the wider world. Some governments are indeed more oppressive than others, but it isn’t a sharp contrast; between black and white there are many shades of grey. World politics aren’t simply a matter of democracy versus dictatorship. The West may have some legitimate grounds for complaint against Russia. But Russia also has some grounds for complaint against the West. If we are to live in peace together, we need to take each other’s perspectives into consideration. As its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, the West doesn’t have the unfettered power that Kasparov seems to think that it has. There are limits to its powers which no amount of will or ‘moral clarity’ can overcome. Consequently, we have no choice. We have to engage. We have to compromise. And it is simply not true that any compromise is a signal of weakness, which will encourage aggression. Deals can be struck. Engagement can make the world a better place.
 

Winter is Coming is a dangerous book. Were Western leaders to follow its advice, the result would be unnecessary, prolonged, and costly conflict between Russia and the West. We must hope that saner counsels prevail.

 

[bradilko]

rusija i ne moze biti demokratsko drustvo.nije to problem velikom delu zapadnih demokratija.da je tamo neki pijani jeljcin jebalo bi im se zivo za pussy riots i sl.malo bi to drzali u rezervi za kritiku i na tome bi ostalo.na zalost nece zapad rusiju kao ravnopravnog partnera.

pitanje je samo kad rusi vise pate?

[hausmaistor]

Kako ono kazu za CG, jedina stvar gora od vlasti je - opozicija.

 

U Rusiji isto to, samo jedno milijun puta tacnije.

 

 

He is, without doubt, an out-and-out true believing neoconservative, who sees the world in simple terms of good and evil, and who believes that the West has such overwhelming power that if it just had the will to use this power, it could bend the world to fit its desires. Indeed, Kasparov admits his neoconservative leanings, by showering praise on one of the idols of the neocon movement – the late Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson – as well as on Senator John McCain, the uber-hawk of contemporary America, whom Kasparov lauds for his ‘moral clarity’ (p. 196).

Bravo.

Edited December 20, 2015 by hausmaistor

[Eraserhead]

Kako ono kazu za CG, jedina stvar gora od vlasti je - opozicija.

 

U Rusiji isto to, samo jedno milijun puta tacnije.

 

Bravo.

U zemlji u kojoj je tea party u formi autokratije jednog coveka na vlasti neokonzervativizam deluje kao dobro resenje.

[bigvlada]

Gari Kasparov izbacio novu knjigu o Rusiji Putinu, izgleda da je 1 blast:

 

 

 

Zar ovo ne treba da ide na temu Hrvatska?  ^_^

[hazard]

Tu si u pravu.  Za nas iz USA je postalo malo teze da razumemo to jednodimenzionalno glediste koju ima velika vecina ljudi iz inostranstva (i.e. van Amerike).  Vecina ljudi van Amerike gledaju americke predsednicke kandidate kroz prizmu "kakav ce on da bude za nas", "kako ce nama u ____ da bude ako dodje ____", etc.. Zato se ne treba cuditi da su van Amerike najomiljeniji kandidati cesto marginalci i/ili ekstremisti.

 

Zasto je teze? Da Amerika nije the one and only 1 superpower u kojoj od raspolozenja POTUSa moze zavisiti sudbina miliona ljudi van Amerike, boleo bi ljude van Amerike generalno k ko pobedjuje na americkim izborima. Ja bi npr. najvise voleo da americki politicki cirkus nema nikakav uticaj na moj zivot, ali avaj

[hazard]

Putin trpa i ne vadi, a tesko je ne sloziti se sa vecinom sto je rekao:

 

https://www.rt.com/news/326666-putin-ukraine-soviet-union-turkey/

 

 

West fears recreation of Soviet Union, despite nobody planning one – Putin

 

The West’s actions in post-Soviet space can be explained by a fear of the recreation of the USSR, despite nobody in the region even considering this, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a documentary, premiered on the Rossiya 1 channel on Sunday.

 

“Even the hypothetical possibility of joining efforts” by former Soviet states within the modern integration processes“deprives [many in the West] of good and deep sleep,” Putin told Vladimir Soloviev, prominent Russian TV journalist and author of the ‘Miroporyadok’ (World Order) film.

 

“It’s no secret that everything was done in order to prevent the creation of a common economic space between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus – the Customs Union. Until recently, they didn’t want to talk to the Eurasian Economic Union (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia) as a full-fledged participant in international affairs,” he said.

 

However, the West has now begun to realize the “destructiveness” of this approach, the president stressed.

 

 

The meddling of the US and its allies in Ukraine can be explained by a fear of the USSR’s resurrection, rather than care for the Ukrainian people, as is being stated, he added.

 

For the West, “it was easy to take advantage” of the corruption, weak law enforcement, and bureaucratic “swagger” that arose in Ukraine after it became an independent state in 1991, Putin said.

 

However, according to the president, one can hardly say that the situation in Ukraine has improved since the Western-backed Maidan coup of 2013-2014.

 

“The power remains in the hands of the oligarchs. The country has been put under external administration, with all key managers brought from neighboring countries or overseas. The living standards are drastically falling. The country’s GDP has decreased by an order. The deindustrialization of Ukraine is in full swing,” he said.

 

According to Putin, “it’s a very bad sign” that the West refused to give financial guarantees for Kiev’s $3 billion debt to Moscow, as it means that the US and EU have no faith in the solvency and stability of the Ukrainian economy.

 

In return for their troubles, the Ukrainians may be getting visa-free travel to Europe, but “is this a worthy fate and future for this beautiful country and its wonderful people?” he wondered.

 

The president stressed that despite the fall of Soviet Union more than two decades ago, Western international policies are still dominated by a Cold War mentality.

 

“The bipolar system collapsed. And our partners should have thought about how to become moral leaders of the newly emerging global relations. But they continued to act and think in the old ways, using Cold War clichés,” he said.

 

‘Europe fails to implement independent foreign policy’

 

Europe has given up on independent foreign policy, handing a large part of its sovereignty over to the US-led NATO block, Putin said in the film.

 

“The problem of Europe is that it doesn’t carry out any independent foreign policy at all,” he stressed.

 

“In principle, it’s a usual practice when part of the sovereignty of the members of a military-political bloc is transferred to supranational bodies,” the president said.

 

However, he stressed that, in Europe’s case, the sovereignty has been transferred not to NATO as a whole, but to the block’s leader – the US.

 

“We don’t expect our partners in Europe to abandon their Euro-Atlantic orientation. But I think it would be right if our partners in Europe – without abandoning this orientation – would nonetheless take part in decision making, and not just nod in agreement every time instructions are given from somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic,” Putin said. :D

 

The head of state said that, in his opinion, the true interests of the European nations currently lie in uniting efforts in the economic and political spheres, and in fighting terrorism and solving ecological problems.

 

“Join up with Russia right now,” he urged Russia’s European partners. “We’re ready for cooperation; we’re open and we’re not going to pout over the sanctions.”

 

 

‘Russia doesn’t want to curb relations with Turkish people’

 

Putin also commented on the recent cooling in relations with Turkey following Ankara’s shooting down of a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian border on November 24.

 

“We consider the Turkish people a friendly people and don’t want our relations with the Turkish people curtailed,” he stressed.

 

As for the current Turkish government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “the morning sun never lasts a day,” Putin noted.   :D

Edited December 21, 2015 by hazard

[Eraserhead]

Putin trpa i ne vadi, a tesko je ne sloziti se sa vecinom sto je rekao:

 

https://www.rt.com/news/326666-putin-ukraine-soviet-union-turkey/

Iz edicije "trn u tudjem oku balvan u svom".

[Muwan]

“We consider the Turkish people a friendly people and don’t want our relations with the Turkish people curtailed”

 

Danas mi jedan advokat reče da u Moskvi imigraciona služba kupi turske expate po potpuno random principu, stavlja ih u ekstradikcioni pritvor i zatim proteruje iz zemlje. Na aerodromima drndaju i maltretiraju čak i one expate koji su oženjeni i imaju decu sa ruskim državljanima. Poslovne aktivnosti su skoro potpuno stale, čak i one koje nisu obuhvaćene paketom sanckija.

[Prospero]

Mislim da je ovo 1 must read, iako je poduže:
 

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF RUSSIA ANALYSIS
MICHAEL KOFMAN
 
DECEMBER 23, 2015
 
One analyst's reflection on the common analytical sins and questionable assumptions that bedevil the field of Russia analysis.
 
1. The Russian Government is Brittle. Or is it?
2. The United States has a Putin Problem, not a Russia Problem. Or Does it?
3. Moscow Cannot Keep This Up. Or Can it?
4. Russia Cannot Sustain Military Operations. Or Can it?
5. Russia is Still a Power in Decline. Or is it?
6. Demography Will Determine Russia’s Fate. Or Will it?
7. For Putin, It’s All About Regime Survival. Or is it?

 

 
 
 

As the clock counts down to the end of another tumultuous and difficult year of dealing with Russia, the natural instinct is to look back on the battles and surprises of 2015 with an eye to making predictions for the coming year. There is material aplenty: the battle of Debaltseve, Moscow’s operations in Syria, a [crisis with Turkey that still burns bright. A new year offers new opportunities for prognostication: Where will Russia strike next? What is Putin thinking? What are the likely flashpoints of 2016? Instead of this traditional exercise, Russia experts should reflect on a year of discussions, briefings, round tables, merciless PowerPoint decks about hybrid war, and occasional spats in the virtual pages of outlets like War on the Rocks. What are the nagging questions, questionable assumptions, and unknowns that beset the analytical and policymaking community?

Experts and policymakers who deal with Russia are living in a high-tempo environment, keeping pace with military interventions, crises, and the frequent twists in bilateral relations. However, in any such endeavor, it is possible to learn lessons that are not true. This is my own attempt at presenting a list of questionable bits of analysis and assumptions that exist within the community. In doing so, I hope to push people to critically examine how they look at Russia. Why do we say some of these things, and more importantly why do we think them?
 
 
1. The Russian Government is Brittle. Or is it?
 
Presenting Vladimir Putin’s regime as brittle is often analytical shorthand for arguing that his regime is dangerous in the near term, but equally likely to implode in short order, with Russia descending into turmoil and instability. Indeed, Moscow has accumulated so many domestic and foreign policy problems that it would make this a logical assessment were it not for the poor track record of such predictions. With each new outbreak in what has become an almost routine series of political, economic, or foreign policy crises, a segment of the Russia-watcher community invariably begins to make predictions of Putin’s imminent demise. Unfortunately, the science of predicting regime change seems to lag significantly behind astrology. We should remember that few predicted the Soviet Union’s rapid demise, the start of the Arab Spring, or anticipated the rapid fall of Victor Yanukovich in Ukraine following the start of the Maidan.

 

There are two ongoing case studies on the merit of such predictions. The first is Pakistan, a country that by the same theory should have collapsed long ago under the weight of its many problems. The second is North Korea, which soldiers on despite decades of predictions and estimates of the regime’s imminent implosion. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates remarked on our ability to predict the nature and location of the next conflict, “our record has been perfect” given that “we’ve never once gotten it right.” The same should be said of our ability to judge regime brittleness. The point is not that neo-Kremlinology or assessments of political stability are a waste of time, but that this is a single layer of analysis that should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Undoubtedly those who regularly predict Putin’s downfall will one day be vindicated, but for planning and analytical purposes, our expectations should be tempered. The next test of political brittleness comes in 2018 when we will see how ready and willing the Russian public is to accept Putin’s automatic re-election. Nobody knows what the state of the economy, currency valuation, foreign exchange reserves, oil prices, or international position of Russia will be that year.
 
 
2. The United States has a Putin Problem, not a Russia Problem. Or Does it?
 
The individuals in power matter, and another Russian leader may not have chosen to annex Crimea or invade Ukraine in response to the Maidan’s victory. That being said, the lingering debate on whether the United States has a Putin problem or a Russia problem is an unsettled one. If one assumes that the real problem is Putin’s regime, however long it might last, then the natural course of action is to avoid any bargains with Russia, cauterize the damage to the bilateral relationship and wait for another leader. My personal view is that whoever succeeds Vladimir Putin will not prove to be all that different, and will likely follow a similar policy path.

 

Russian history suggests that Putin is anything but an aberration in leadership, pursuing security dilemmas in the same manner of many previous occupants of the Kremlin. Seeing Russia’s security space as a zero-sum game and securing it by limiting the sovereignty of its neighbors is almost canon for Russian foreign policy (as it was for Soviet policy). We should ask if Putin’s foreign policy is fundamentally so different from that of Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratic leader, or if Russia was simply too weak during Yeltsin’s rule to challenge the post-Cold War security arrangements in Europe. In early 2014, Henry Kissinger warned Washington not to fixate on Putin when he wrote that “For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy, it is an alibi for the absence of one.”
 
Yeltsin too believed in the application of force to achieve desired political ends in Russia and on its periphery. Examples are found among Russian interventions in Transnistria and Tajikistan in 1992 and Abkhazia in 1993, the use of tanks to suppress a constitutional crisis in Moscow, the First Chechen War in 1994–96, and the Russian paratrooper deployment to seize Pristina International Airport in 1999 ahead of NATO’s deployment in Kosovo. In retrospect, that administration was not short on military gambits, complaints about NATO expansion, or gripes with U.S. military interventions. The character of Yeltsin’s government was quite different from Putin’s regime, but arguably it was under his leadership in the 1990s that Russia began and ended its brief flirtation with democracy. In truth, we have Yeltsin’s presidency to thank for Putin.
 
Putin’s view of the world may have evolved during his rule, but there is little evidence that we should expect his successor to travel a different path. Thus far, there is nothing to suggest that the next Russian leader, when faced with a similar international and regional environment will not attempt to engage the West, leave disappointed and revert to the ruthless pursuit of Russian national interest. Another question seldom raised is whether U.S. policy towards Russia would truly change if its troublesome leader were to disappear tomorrow.
 
 
3. Moscow Cannot Keep This Up. Or Can it?
 
Current discourse on Russia’s economic frailty folds into the broader discussion on whether or not Moscow can sustain the current state of confrontation. In other words, how long can Moscow keep this up? The underlying question is whether Russia will cease being a problem in the near- to mid-term by succumbing to its economic woes. The narrative that Russia will run out of money is prevalent in the West, even though Moscow’s foreign reserves have both stabilized and shown a modest rebound in recent months. The bigger question is why do we talk about Russia as though it was a bank or a company? Did Russia go out of business after the 1998 default?

 

What is the actual connection between Western security considerations vis-a-vis Russia, its foreign and national security policy, and the amount of money it has on hand? Putin pressed forward with ambitious military reforms in 2009, when the price of oil fell to $35 per barrel. Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014 even though the Russian economy was clearly entering a recession in late 2013. Looking further back, Russians persevered through the financial default and currency crisis of 1998, many going the better part of a year without salaries. Putin was anointed as Yeltsin’s successor following this economic carnage, and in the aftermath launched the Second Chechen War in 1999, a prolonged conventional and counterinsurgency campaign.
 
This discussion begs a more essential question as to whether or not the economy has ever been a foundation of Russian power in the international system. In a previous article for War on the Rocks, I argued that Russia has often appeared to be the sick man of Europe, technologically backwards, with a lackluster economy, and a political system that consistently lags behind the needs of its society. That being said, despite Western fears to the contrary, the Soviet Union was never a superpower by virtue of being a serious economic competitor to the United States, let alone the West, at best attaining 57 percent of America’s GNP in the late 1960s before falling behind.
 
Today, plenty of senior U.S. officials consider Russia to be a strategic threat and a serious opponent to NATO even though its GDP is barely a tenth of America’s. In a recent interview discussing Russia, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work applied Mearsheimer’s definition of a great power to Moscow, highlighting the return of great power politics in the international system. Granted, he said this was a narrow lens, but if the United States considers Russia to be a great power (or regional power with a big nuclear arsenal) when its economy represents a mere 3.3 percent of global GDP, then the connection between economic fundamentals of power and Russia’s position in the international system merits further discussion.
 
 
4. Russia Cannot Sustain Military Operations. Or Can it?
 
Following closely the discussion of economic weakness is a general sentiment that Russia is unable to sustain military operations due to financial or force constraints. Going back to early 2015, the notion that Russia’s armed forces are tied down or “stuck” in Ukraine seems to have dissipated. The merit of such estimates was cast into doubt when, in September of this year, Russia was simultaneously sustaining its deployment in Ukraine, conducting the expensive strategic exercise Center 2015, and deploying an expeditionary operation to Syria. I too was wrong in arguing that logistical and financial constraints would limit Moscow’s involvement in Syria given its lack of assets to sustain expeditionary operations.
 
Much to my own surprise, Russia surged sea lift by reflagging Turkish commercial ships to support its increasing troop presence and base expansions. For Moscow, necessity is the mother of invention, whereas for the United States it is usually the mother of procurement. Russia also found plenty of funding to test expensive land attack cruise missiles of almost every variety. In a recent press conference, Putin showed no signs that economic constraints would impact military operations. Instead, it seems Russia can sustain this and all other lines of effort for at least a few years. At 4.2 percent of GDP, or 3.3 trillion rubles, Russia’s defense budget is the highest it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
Too often we trade in our analytical expertise for an accountant’s glasses, as though we could count the Russian Ministry of Defense’s money or its available troops better than it can. On the issue of sustainment of military operations we need a dose of analytical humility.
 
 
5. Russia is Still a Power in Decline. Or is it?

I fundamentally believe that Russia is a power in structural decline, but increasingly I wonder about the relevance of that assessment. It seems with each year we can infer less and less from such a statement. Celeste Wallander and Eugene Rumer, two longtime Russia experts whom I hold in the highest regard, once wrote:
 

Despite several years of economic growth and a new dynamic leader, Russia remains a power in decline.

Neither its recent economic success nor its vigorous leadership is sufficient to make up for the long-term losses the country has suffered

or to compensate for the contemporary shortcomings that belie key elements of Russian power.

The only problem with this remarkable piece in The Washington Quarterly is that it was published in late 2003. Roughly a decade later, President Obama similarly opined that Russia is a “regional power” acting out of “weakness.”  Many of Russia’s underlying weaknesses were as true then as they are now, but if Russia is declining, it is doing so very slowly, and its leadership does not accept such a predestined fate. As improbable as it may be, absent a sudden Russian collapse, at some point we may be forced to admit that Russia is declining so slowly the country might just be muddling through.

 
 
6. Demography Will Determine Russia’s Fate. Or Will it?
 
Russia’s demographic problems are commonly referenced as one of the drivers of its supposedly assured structural decline. Analysts often mention demography to either blithely support the notion that Russia will simply cease to be a problem for the West in the long term, or worriedly speculate that the country will become dangerously unstable. But what might Russia’s demographics truly determine? Will Russia somehow be less of a strategic threat or a concern for the United States if it has a smaller population? It is almost certain that Russia will have enough manpower to maintain 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons, along with a conventional force to overmatch any of its neighbors, save China. Perhaps counterintuitively, in the short term, Russia’s armed forces have steadily increased in size from roughly 667,000–700,000 in 2012 to 900,000 today.
 
When considering long-term alternative futures it is worth noting that Russia’s economy and national budget is inexorably dependent on energy and resource extraction. These are industries that are not labor-intensive. At the same time, Russia is the beneficiary of a large labor influx from former Soviet Republics, often making it the third- or second-highest recipient of migrants in the world. Can Russia nationalize such labor at the cost of internal social cohesion? How much will its government budget truly suffer following a labor force contraction? Is it even fair to assume that warfare or similar state tasks will remain manpower-intensive 30 years from now? Are Russia’s demographic problems fundamentally different from those of other developed states, including many U.S. allies? It strikes me that Russia’s demographic decline is more of an open-ended question than a definitive statement on the future of the country.
 
 
7. For Putin, It’s All About Regime Survival. Or is it?
 
Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, invasion of Ukraine, and launch of operations in Syria are sometimes explained as the throes of a falling political system engaged in a “survival project.” The underlying theory unifying these actions is regime survival, brilliantly advocated by Lilia Shevtsova in a number of articles and op-eds. The problem with this approach is that regime survival circularly explains everything and absolutely nothing at the same time: There is no political regime on earth that is not interested in its survival. Regime survival is a constant motivation for many, if not all, political systems and politicians. It is so fungible an analytical approach that it lends itself useful to explaining any and all policy choices by Putin.
 
At its core, this argument arbitrarily takes the domestic political outcomes of Moscow’s actions, such as high approval ratings at home, or a resurgent sense of nationalism, and moves them back in time to become the primary objectives of foreign and national security policy. That could be true, but it seems impossible to prove or disprove. Regime survival may not be an incorrect explanation of Moscow’s motives, but it is certainly incomplete as an analysis of the real sources of Russian decision-making.
 
 
Russia Analysis in Perspective
 
In my own narrow lane of Russian military analysis, there is always room for a more balanced, informed, and nuanced understanding of Russia. Perhaps the greatest woe of discussions on Russian military, strategy, and decision-making (other than debates on hybrid warfare) is the constant seesaw between two extremes. Too often, we are engaged in an asinine debate as to whether Russia’s military is five feet tall or 12 feet tall. Assessments tend to track more closely with where one sits in the policymaking or national security establishment, versus where the Russian military actually is, and what it can do. Here I believe the starting point should always be Bismarck’s observation that “Russia is never as strong as she looks nor as weak as she looks.” When it comes to decision-making analysis, Putin is regularly cast in stark terms as either a brilliant strategist, outfoxing the West at every turn, or completely incompetent without any notion of what he will do next.
 
Perchance the broadest and most vexing question for U.S. decision-makers and experts today is this: How do we deter Russia? It is as vague as it is recurrent. The short answer is that the United States does deter Russia, which is why we’re all still here 70 years after nuclear weapons were first used. A more analytically interesting — and politically valuable — question would be how the United States should manage great-power competition in the international system and keep confrontation with Russia from escalating into war. If crises are inevitable among the major players, and it seems they are, then managing escalation dynamics is paramount. When faced with a problem, bureaucracies have a predilection for pursuing activity and confusing it for achievement, to paraphrase Fareed Zakaria. To better structure a policy or a strategy towards Russia we should confront our own underlying assumptions and the merits of prevailing narratives, and more rigorously seek to fill existing gaps in analysis.
 
Michael Kofman is an Analyst at the CNA Corporation and a Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute. Previously he served as Program Manager at National Defense University. The views expressed here are his own.

 

[Anduril]

Putin trpa i ne vadi, a tesko je ne sloziti se sa vecinom sto je rekao:

 

https://www.rt.com/news/326666-putin-ukraine-soviet-union-turkey/

 

Zavisi iz koje pozicije se gleda. U osnovi, retorika mu je na nivou Miloseviceve onomad kad je rec o evropskoj spoljnoj politici a kad prica o oligarsima to je vec smejurija. No, to na stranu, meni je mnogo zanimljivija siroka podrska koju uziva, kako u Rusiji tako i drugde bez obzira na fakticke rezultate i negativan impakt na zivote ljudi (ilustracija dole).

Iz toga se da izvesti zakljucak da ljudi u Rusiji (kao i u Srbiji, Grckoj, Venecueli ranije, itd) zapravo zele vecinom da budu siromasni, obezpravljeni, bolesni i nepismeni radi neke vise, imagirne svetske pravde koju retoricki razdeljuje vodja. To mozda i ne cudi kad se uzme u obzir da crkveno/pravoslavno nasledje apsolutnog morala nikad nije stavljeno ad acta sto se politike tice.  

 

Mislim da je ovo 1 must read, iako je poduže:

.....

 

Jeste, dobra je doza skepticizma i slozio bih se da nece biti lako predvideti razvoj.

Sto se Putinove moci i uticaja tice, cini mi se da ona naravno rezultira i prostom medijskom eksponiranoscu. Kao onomad Milosevic, predsednik male i fakticki slabasne zemlje, kod koga su neprestano dolazili svetski emisari i kojim su se bavili najmocniji ljudi toga vremena.

 

I to je bila neka moc ali, vise zbog ponasanja medija kojima vise odgovara da prodaju nekog lika kao iz filma. Kompleksan proces odlucivanja i diskusije tipican za demokratske zemlje nije lako prodati bulevaru i politicki autoritarnim, nezainteresovanim ili nepismenim gradjanima. 

Edited December 26, 2015 by Anduril

[hausmaistor]

Jasno, tradicija i naopako nasledje moralnog apsolutizma drzi Srbiju, Grcku, Rusiju i Venecuelu u kamenom dobu i gura ih u sukobe sa svetskim silama koji se zavrsavaju onim gorkim suzama posle.

 

Ja bih sto pre tu naopaku tradiciju zamenio sharia zakonom i uzivao u vrhunskim ekonomsko-politicko-naftnim odnosima sa najvecim demokratijama ovog sveta.

 

Pa ustvari, zato nam je Vucic i doveo sheikha.

I zato svaka cast Vucicu.

Edited December 26, 2015 by hausmaistor

[jovanovic]

hronologija propasti