Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Moscow-based commentator Mark Teeter on V. V. Putin (via Facebook)

WORLD ORDER, SHMORLD ORDER. Political scientists are clearly the Big Thinkers of the day, and more power to 'em, I guess. This R. Kagan piece fits into the popular Potentially Looming Apocalypse mode well enough; but like others, it doesn't address (& isn't intended to) what seems to me a more interesting question: why VVP is so determined to make everybody play this Spheres of Interest board game at all -- when it is manifestly not in his "team's" interests to do so.
What doesn't he *get?* Alas, we may never know why VVP insists on playing Game of States, in which his uniquely self-beleaguered Weak State struggles to gain meaningless territory, imagined respect and a re-mythologized past -- instead of marshaling its enormous resources to make itself a Strong State, one that could either (a) change the whole game board to its advantage or, even better (b) grow up, forget about the stupid game and simply be a successful Modern Adult State -- you know, educate, house, employ, etc., as long as such are necessary (as they are now), but basically work towards de-burdening Russia's ever-burdened Center: giving your citizens tools, opportunity and sth like a level playing field and getting out of their way as they gradually create an economy that isn't based on fossil fuels and surface-level strip-mining. Not to do so is to admit that Russians are not capable of supporting a market economy or of self-government or both.
Put otherwise, while it’s easy enough to accept that VVP & Co. don’t lose any sleep over their spheres of influence/anti-civilizational tactics, it’s not so easy to accept that they do all this stuff b/c their only end is to Be the Best 21st c. Visigoths They Can Be. At some pt. the land raping & budget pillaging is not only state-self-defeating but obviously so. And even the raping-est, pillaging-est Russian World goons want a functional state: one that doesn’t harbor 20 million impoverished citizens and a million untreated AID/HIV cases; that doesn’t pursue expensive wars no one understands and for no apparent reason, ideological, moral or otherwise; one that takes pride in its unique and remarkable past instead of trying repeatedly and increasingly pathetically to fake a new one; and certainly not least, one where the Russian Worlders and everybody else can actually keep their money (and isn’t called Londongrad).
I don’t believe that the flaw in this reasoning is that VVP is stupid; he’s not. But he is limited, clearly -- just as DT is limited, though in different areas and capabilities. Anyway, I'm no psychiatrist, but what else can one posit except this: p'haps VVP is doomed to hold grudges and/or act irrationally by an abiding self-perception as the proverbial passed-over Colonel – and one who had a difficult adolescence (as he keeps reminding everybody) to boot. OK, that’s it for today from Dr. Freud.
In any event, Aggressive Tactics/Play Dirty/No Strategy is neither very original nor sufficiently nuanced; but if we have to have an epithet for the VVP Spheres O’ Interest Game approach, I can’t think of a more apt one at this point. The question then becomes: how do we help VVP et al., assuming we believe they are still somehow accessible through the basics of logic, to perceive where they're [their] own interests actually lie?


Robert Kagan discusses the challenge the Trump administration will face in determining whether it wishes to continue with the liberal world order that has…
BROOKINGS.EDU

No comments: