“Russians Going Home In Body Bags”: Is Syria The Beginning Of The End Of Putinism?
“They all laughed when President Obama warned Russia about getting into a Syrian quagmire.
“They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round.
“They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
“They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly.
“Well check out Russian President Vladimir Putin in Syria:
“For oh, ho, ho, who’s got the last laugh now.” (Apologies to George and Ira Gershwin.)
Of course what’s happening to nuclear-armed Moscow is no laughing matter.
Mired in an economic crisis at home, Russia is enmeshed in propping up a weak but vicious Middle East ally, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. And the Kremlin is straining to keep Assad in power and at considerable and unexpected costs. Russians are going home in body bags.
To wit:
— A Russian airliner with 224 on board was brought down in Egypt by a bomb planted by the Islamic State in retaliation for Putin’s military action in Syria;
— A Russian fighter jet was shot down after it veered into Turkish airspace, in the first shoot-down by a NATO member of a Russian plane in 60 years.
— A Russian helicopter dispatched on a search-and-rescue mission for the surviving jet pilot was shot down by Syrian rebels.
Coffins highlight the costs of Putin’s unilateral and reckless military intervention in the Middle East where tensions are now at their highest.
Meanwhile, the Russian news agency Tass reported that unlike previous economic crises, for the first time since the early 2000s, Russia is seeing a decline in real incomes. “Government measures to support the economy of the population are not enough” Alexei Kudrin, former finance minister and chairman of the Committee of Civil Initiatives told the third All-Russian Civic Forum in Moscow.
While Putin’s eyes are on Syria, inflation is rising in Russia, the economy is shrinking, poverty is rising, growth has flat-lined and the ruble is taking a fall. Western sanctions are squeezing the Kremlin, and Russia’s mother’s milk — oil revenue — is taking a hit because of weak prices.
As David W. Lesch wrote in Foreign Policy:
“Perhaps Putin’s intervention in Syria will result in something akin to Egypt’s Pyrrhic victory in 1957 or to the Soviet Union’s sudden expansion of influence in the late 1950s that was accompanied by an exponential increase in foreign-policy headaches. Fifty years from now, historians may identify Russia’s 2015 push in Syria as the beginning of the end of Putinism, just as the 1957 landing was the beginning of the end of Nasserism.”
That is no cause for cheering, not as long as Putin has pipe dreams of being a super-power. The Russian bear has been wounded. But his thirst for adventurism is not yet slaked by the Islamic State’s setbacks and military blunders. Fortunately the means to becoming a superpower equal to the United States are way beyond Russia’s reach.
If national success is measured by economic strength, Russia is way back in the pack. It trails the United States in economic and population growth, in troops under arms and in most weaponry. And the Russian government, wasting precious resources on Putin’s world-power aspirations, is in no position to meet its social obligations to its people.
Obama is correct to not give in to Putin’s desire to be regarded as more important than he is. Or to give credence to Russia’s imagined influence on the world stage. And Obama is also right to keep a cool head and to continue building an international coalition of heavy hitters to launch attacks on global terrorism.
As for desk-bound defense hawks such as GOP presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, who is calling for the deployment of 20,000 U.S. ground troops, the response is quite simple: Get Republicans who control Capitol Hill to pass a joint resolution of Congress demanding that the president place tens of thousands of Americans on foot in Syria and Iraq.
Every good wish, Mr. Graham.
Granted, Putin’s capacity to trouble the waters is huge. But Russia’s ability to rival the United States as a world power and dominate events in the Middle East is not — though some Obama critics appear to wish it were so, if for no other reason than to disable this president.
And that, too, is no laughing matter.
By: Colbert I. King, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 27, 2015
“The Right’s Rekindled Affection For Russia’s Putin”: Back To Drawing Hearts On Their Pictures Of Putin
It was early last year when Republicans decided Russian President Vladimir Putin was an autocrat worthy of their gushing affections. In March 2014, Rudy Giuliani (R) said of Putin, “That’s what you call a leader.” The same month, Mike Rogers, at the time the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, expressed his own admiration: “Putin is playing chess and I think we are playing marbles, and I don’t think it’s even close. They’ve been running circles around us.”
At one point last summer, a Fox News personality went so far as to say she wanted to see Putin serve as “head of the United States,” at least for a little while.
By late last year, however, Republicans were no longer drawing hearts on their pictures of Putin. Russia’s economy was deteriorating quickly; Putin was isolated on the international stage; Russia’s standing and credibility around the world was in tatters; and the sanctions President Obama helped impose on Russia were making a real difference.
Suddenly, the U.S. conservatives who’d enrolled in the Putin fan-club fell quiet, realizing that their contempt for the American president led them to praise the wrong foreign leader.
As of this week, however, many Republicans have apparently come full circle.
One day after President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin made little headway in their standoff over Syria at their first formal meeting in more than two years, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is agreeing with Putin on his backing of Syrian President Bashar Assad. […]
“I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, [Putin’s] getting an ‘A’ and our president is not doing so well,” he said.
Jennifer Rubin, a conservative voice at the Washington Post, added this morning, “In taking this action just days after meeting with President Obama, Putin is delivering one more finger in the eye of a president whom he continues to out-wit and out-muscle.”
Yes, we’ve apparently reached the point again at which Republicans once more see Putin as some kind of strategic mastermind.
As the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman explained yesterday, [T]oday’s reigning cliche is that the wily fox, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has once again outmaneuvered the flat-footed Americans, by deploying some troops, planes and tanks to Syria to buttress the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to fight the Islamic State forces threatening him. If only we had a president who was so daring, so tough, so smart…. Putin stupidly went into Syria looking for a cheap sugar high to show his people that Russia is still a world power.”
For Republicans, the response seems to be, “At least Putin is going after targets in Syria.” What the White House’s GOP critics have refused to acknowledge for the last 14 months is that President Obama has launched thousands of airstrikes against ISIS targets.
There are two main differences between Putin’s engagement in Syria and Obama’s. The first is that the size of Obama’s military commitment is vastly larger. The second is that Russian lawmakers actually authorized Putin’s mission, while the Republican-run Congress in the United States has done literally nothing since the American military offensive began in August 2014, preferring to watch developments unfold on TV while Obama’s mission continues.
Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum added this morning, “Do you know how many military bases the US has in the Middle East? Nearly two dozen. Plus the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf. Plus a whole bunch of close allies. And we’re supposed to be quaking in our boots because Putin hastily upgraded a single aging base in Latakia under pressure from his sole remaining ally? You’re kidding, right?”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 1, 2015
“Against Putin, Obama Gets The Last Laugh”: Where Did All The Republicans Go Who Heralded Putin As A Strategic Mastermind?
In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama didn’t name names, but he reminded some of his critics in the Republican Party that their praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin was sadly mistaken.
“Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, as we were reinforcing our presence with frontline states, Mr. Putin’s aggression it was suggested was ‘a masterful display’ of ‘strategy and strength.’ That’s what I heard from some folks,” Obama said. “Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters. That’s how America leads – not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve.”
Obama had reason to feel good – and take a not-so-subtle dig at Putin’s GOP fans. Not only is the American recovery gaining strength, but as Matt O’Brien explained yesterday, Russia’s credit rating was downgraded this week to “junk” status.
[I]f Russia is rated junk, then its companies will be too – which will increase the borrowing costs on their existing debt. It could also trigger earlier bond repayments, which, together with the higher interest rates, could, according to one official, cost them as much as $20 to $30 billion.
And that’s $20 to $30 billion it really can’t afford. Russia, as I’ve said before, doesn’t have an economy so much as an oil-exporting business that subsidizes everything else. But it can’t subsidize much when prices are only $50-a-barrel.
The confluence of economic events unfolding in Russia is amazing: cheap gas, banks in need of a bailout, crashing currency, high interest rates, and an inability to repay debts, all against the backdrop of additional sanctions.
There’s no reason conditions are going to improve in Russia anytime soon and Putin doesn’t know what to do next.
With these developments in mind, I’m curious: where did all the Republicans go who heralded Putin as a strategic mastermind? Where are the Fox News personalities who liked the idea of Putin leading the United States?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 28, 2015
They seem to have fallen quietly lately. Maybe someone should ask them whether they stand by their previous gushing over the Russian autocrat.
“Conquest Is for Losers”: Putin, Neocons And The Great Illusion
More than a century has passed since Norman Angell, a British journalist and politician, published “The Great Illusion,” a treatise arguing that the age of conquest was or at least should be over. He didn’t predict an end to warfare, but he did argue that aggressive wars no longer made sense — that modern warfare impoverishes the victors as well as the vanquished.
He was right, but it’s apparently a hard lesson to absorb. Certainly Vladimir Putin never got the memo. And neither did our own neocons, whose acute case of Putin envy shows that they learned nothing from the Iraq debacle.
Angell’s case was simple: Plunder isn’t what it used to be. You can’t treat a modern society the way ancient Rome treated a conquered province without destroying the very wealth you’re trying to seize. And meanwhile, war or the threat of war, by disrupting trade and financial connections, inflicts large costs over and above the direct expense of maintaining and deploying armies. War makes you poorer and weaker, even if you win.
The exceptions to this dictum actually prove the rule. There are still thugs who wage war for fun and profit, but they invariably do so in places where exploitable raw materials are the only real source of wealth. The gangs tearing the Central African Republic apart are in pursuit of diamonds and poached ivory; the Islamic State may claim that it’s bringing the new caliphate, but so far it has mostly been grabbing oil fields.
The point is that what works for a fourth-world warlord is just self-destructive for a nation at America’s level — or even Russia’s. Look at what passes for a Putin success, the seizure of Crimea: Russia may have annexed the peninsula with almost no opposition, but what it got from its triumph was an imploding economy that is in no position to pay tribute, and in fact requires costly aid. Meanwhile, foreign investment in and lending to Russia proper more or less collapsed even before the oil price plunge turned the situation into a full-blown financial crisis.
Which brings us to two big questions. First, why did Mr. Putin do something so stupid? Second, why were so many influential people in the United States impressed by and envious of his stupidity?
The answer to the first question is obvious if you think about Mr. Putin’s background. Remember, he’s an ex-K.G.B. man — which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug. Violence and threats of violence, supplemented with bribery and corruption, are what he knows. And for years he had no incentive to learn anything else: High oil prices made Russia rich, and like everyone who presides over a bubble, he surely convinced himself that he was responsible for his own success. At a guess, he didn’t realize until a few days ago that he has no idea how to function in the 21st century.
The answer to the second question is a bit more complicated, but let’s not forget how we ended up invading Iraq. It wasn’t a response to 9/11, or to evidence of a heightened threat. It was, instead, a war of choice to demonstrate U.S. power and serve as a proof of concept for a whole series of wars neocons were eager to fight. Remember “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran”?
The point is that there is a still-powerful political faction in America committed to the view that conquest pays, and that in general the way to be strong is to act tough and make other people afraid. One suspects, by the way, that this false notion of power was why the architects of war made torture routine — it wasn’t so much about results as about demonstrating a willingness to do whatever it takes.
Neocon dreams took a beating when the occupation of Iraq turned into a bloody fiasco, but they didn’t learn from experience. (Who does, these days?) And so they viewed Russian adventurism with admiration and envy. They may have claimed to be alarmed by Russian advances, to believe that Mr. Putin, “what you call a leader,” was playing chess to President Obama’s marbles. But what really bothered them was that Mr. Putin was living the life they’d always imagined for themselves.
The truth, however, is that war really, really doesn’t pay. The Iraq venture clearly ended up weakening the U.S. position in the world, while costing more than $800 billion in direct spending and much more in indirect ways. America is a true superpower, so we can handle such losses — although one shudders to think of what might have happened if the “real men” had been given a chance to move on to other targets. But a financially fragile petroeconomy like Russia doesn’t have the same ability to roll with its mistakes.
I have no idea what will become of the Putin regime. But Mr. Putin has offered all of us a valuable lesson. Never mind shock and awe: In the modern world, conquest is for losers.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, December 21, 2014
“Vladimir Putin’s New Axis of Evil”: Liberal Russians, Ukrainian ‘Fascists’, And America
After being the “Man Responsible for Russia’s Victory at the Olympics,” President Vladimir Putin became the “Man Responsible for Protecting Russians Everywhere.”
In a country where insecurity and crushed ambitions are the foundation of national identity, the idea resonates well with a lot of people. The fine print, however, they should’ve read by now: Putin is the defender of Russians anywhere, as long as they’re not in Russia.
A growing number of right-leaning Russians, known for their resentment of Putin due to his lax stance on Central Asian immigrants and his support of the Muslim republics of Northern Caucasus, are praising the invasion. To many of them, this regime’s shortcomings can now be overlooked, overshadowed as they are by the image of a “Great Russia” finally reunited with its prodigal sibling, Ukraine. No one really cares what happens in Russia, as long as this country still has the balls to send a military force outside of its borders to protect ethnic Russians. The fact that Russia often can’t provide security for its citizens—mostly ethnic Russians—within its own borders, often losing in its never-ending war on homegrown terror, fades away at the prospect of a territorial gain and a victorious war.
With Ukraine, the Kremlin is creating its own axis of evil: America, the “fascists” who seized power in Kiev, and their liberal Russian supporters.
Russia’s vehement anti-American rhetoric is nothing new. However, combined with assaulting a far less powerful country in a moment of crisis, it’s akin to talking shit to the captain of the football team, while giving a beatdown to a member of the chess club who is having an asthma attack. (This isn’t to say that Georgia or Ukraine, or the next country Russia decides to invade, can’t put up a fight. They can. They just won’t win.)
Still, Russia is best at fighting enemies within. Already there are numerous calls to identify those Russians who oppose the invasion—“the fifth column,” as pro-Kremlin bloggers label anti-war protestors. Their photos are passed around on Twitter, information on these people is exchanged—names, phones, sometimes addresses; threats are made. These are cyber threats for now, but there’s no telling when they could become actions, and those who make their sentiments public get the trademark Kremlin treatment of beatings and mock trials for crimes they didn’t commit. A country as great as Russia can’t afford to have people who oppose its “reclaiming” of another state’s territory. Numerous Kremlin mouthpieces ask those who oppose the invasion to leave the country or face consequences of being a traitor. In their minds, only a crazy proxy of American Imperialism can say that it doesn’t benefit Russia to invade Ukraine.
In reality, there is little benefit for Russia in invading a sovereign state. Moral and legal issues aside—and they’ve never really been “issues” here, anyway—even if there isn’t going to be a war, the invasion is going to put a huge strain on Russia’s weak economy. But beyond warp-speed capital flight, the plunging rate of local currency, and probable economic sanctions that are going to follow, there are more costs to invading Ukraine.
Putin has to show his new subjects that he’s a benevolent king. So Crimea and whatever part of cash-stripped Ukraine he’s going to chop off are going to get a huge influx of Russian taxpayer money to help secure popular support, and get local elites hooked on Kremlin cash.
After Putin all but annexed Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, Moscow desperately needed for these two breakaway republics to be recognized as sovereign states. It offered generous aid packages to the island nation of Nauru and Nicaragua in exchange for their recognition of the newly “liberated” republics, and was ready to pay anyone who would buy into the story a solid chunk of cash. There’s no telling who is going to side with Russia on its Ukraine gambit, but it sure as hell isn’t going to be free.
When the dust settles, the lack of any long-term strategy on Kremlin’s part will become unmistakable. The newly acquired republics become nothing but a financial liability for Moscow, and possible hotbeds for future conflicts. Just like it happened with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Putin is left with corrupt local governments, refugees, and brain-dead economies on permanent life support from Moscow. But as long as Russia got to parade its tanks, threaten everyone around them, and search enemies within their ranks, to them, it was absolutely worth it.
By: Andrew Ryvkin, The New Republic, March 2, 2014
Share This Blog
mykeystrokes.com- “The Unrelenting Hostility Of Washington’s Courtier Press”: The Media’s Crusade Of Scandals Against Hillary Clinton July 28, 2016
- “Endorsing This Philistine”: The Christian Right Has Surrendered To Trump July 24, 2016
- “Cop Killers Serve No Cause”: It’s Getting To The Point Where No Lives Matter July 24, 2016
mykeystrokes.com 