PUTIN GOES FULL FASCIST

Amazingly - or not so, unfortunately - what follows is not headline news at either the New York Times or the Washington Post:

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin gave a public speech that Russia specialists saw as the launch of a fascist dictatorship. Continuing to defend his invasion of Ukraine, he claimed it was an existential war forRussia’s survival. He warned the West was counting on “the so-called fifth column, on national traitors,” to destroy Russia and identified those people as a culturally weak global elite who did not identify “with our people, not with Russia.” He went on to say they believe they are better than Russians and would do anything to keep their lifestyle.

According to Putin, the “West” is trying to split Russians using that “fifth column” to achieve its goal of destroying Russia. He then called on Russians to distinguish true patriots from “scum and traitors”, his political opponents and dissidents, and to get rid of them like a fly that flew into their mouth. He concluded, “I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to respond to any challenges.”

Russia specialist Anne Applebaum tweeted: “Putin’s call for a ‘self-purification’ of Russian society can have only one intention: To remind Russians of Stalin and his ‘purges.’ He wants them to be haunted by dark, ancestral memories, to remember their grandparents' stories and to be petrified with fear.”

Russian authorities promptly launched a crackdown against anyone who showed any sympathy for western culture, beginning with a popular lifestyle blogger who had expressed opposition to the war on Instagram.

Putin’s show of force internally reflects his external weakness. The Pentagon now conservatively estimates the Russian Army has lost a staggering 7000 soldiers in less than 21 days in the invasion of Ukraine - this is more than the combined U.S. loses over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s estimated they have 14,000 to 21,000 injured, out of a deployed fighting force of 150,000. Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration, said, “Losses like this affect morale and unit cohesion, especially since these soldiers don’t understand why they’re fighting.”

Whether or not Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ends any time soon, what is certain to continue is the Russian president’s abiding hatred and mistrust of the United States and other Western powers, which he believes left him no choice but to launch an unprovoked war.

Reuters reported yesterday reported that Russia was “on the brink of its first default on international debt since the Bolshevik revolution.” A Russian political scientist tweeted: “I have collected some thoughts on the immediate impact of sanctions on the Russian economy.” The short version: “30 years of economic development thrown into the bin.” “All in all, no other economy in the world has experienced anything like this—extreme de-globalization in a matter of days.”

Today, it appears that Putin has temporarily dodged that bullet, though the economic forecast of what damage has happened is unchanged. The news is that JPMorgan processed interest payments from the Russian government. Acting as Russia’s correspondent bank, JP Morgan will pass the $117 million in coupon payments to Citigroup, who as the payment agent will distribute the money to investors. The US Treasury signed off on the payment as not violating sanctions. On the news, the price of a Russian dollar bond maturing in 2043 surged to 47 cents on the dollar, versus 20 cents a week ago.

Adam Tooze points out that there is something truly pernicious at play here. The prospectus for Russian debt issued since Crimea are an itemized list of Putin’s conflicts with the West. Some of the bonds seem structured so as to have clauses in them that anticipates Russia misbehaving and sanctions being increased. It’s as if the investors are giving Putin insurance for bad stuff.

The Financial Times speculated that some investors may actually want to quickly vote to demand immediate repayment and get court judgments from US and UK judges that allow them to try to seize overseas Russian assets, to ratchet up pressure on Moscow.

Tooze points out, “Imagine a situation in which Western interests who have invested in Putin’s regime have priority in claims against Russian assets relative to other potential claimants, for instance Ukrainian victims of Putin’s aggression. Why? Because the Western interests were actual investors and thus had legal claims! It would be a staggeringly perverse situation. Ukrainians would have to survive Putin’s onslaught, fight him to a standstill, and then go through the arduous process of peace negotiations and a reparations settlement, a hugely unlikely contingency. Russia’s own citizens would have to brave political repression to hold anyone to account for the losses they are suffering. But those who have invested directly in Putin’s regime, the foreign bond holders, may, by way of Western courts, have recourse against Russian public assets.”

As of today, all but about 40 American companies have pulled out of Russia. Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned business in America, is staying put - not surprising considering the initial source of their wealth came from their father Fred building oil refineries for Stalin in the first Five Year Plan. Political groups financed by CEO Charles Koch oppose broad sanctions and have suggested the U.S. should remain neutral in the crisis.

Proving Lenin right that “there are decades when nothing happens, then days when decades happen, Putin has managed over 21 day/decades to revitalize NATO, unify a splintered West, turn Ukraine’s little-known president into a global hero, wreck Russia’s economy, and solidify his legacy as a murderous war criminal.

How did he miscalculate so badly? Brian Klaas , global-politics professor at University College London and author of “Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us,” wrote about this in the Atlantic.

“To answer that question, you have to understand the power and information ecosystems around dictators. I’ve studied and interviewed despots across the globe for more than a decade. In my research, I’ve persistently encountered a stubborn myth—of the savvy strongman, the rational, calculating despot who can play the long game because he (and it’s typically a he) doesn’t have to worry about pesky polls or angry voters. Our elected leaders, this view suggests, are no match for the tyrant who gazes into the next decade rather than fretting about next year’s election.”

The problem is that autocrats eventually fall victim to what may be called the “dictator trap,” because their strategies to stay in power trigger their eventual downfall. Autocrats are not long- term planners; they think in the short-term because they have to constantly deliver for their supporters or risk a loss that doesn’t include a happy retirement to writing their memoirs, giving well-paid speeches and sitting on well-compensated corporate boards; their errors are the kinds that would be avoided in democratic systems. Because no one wants to risk their anger, they hear only from increasingly-sycophantic supporters, and get bad advice. Since very few in the general population will reveal their true feelings about events, the autocrat misunderstands his people and doesn’t see threats coming until too late. The fact that most dictators who miscalculate leave office in a casket, the possibility makes them even more likely to double down on their bad decisions.

For those living in liberal democracies, criticizing the boss is risky, but no one is shipped off to a gulag or forced to watch their family tortured. In authoritarian regimes, is it ever worthwhile for advisers to speak truth to power? Thus, the dictator never hears that his stupid ideas are stupid, or that his ill-conceived war is likely to be catastrophic. Over time, the advisers who stick around are usually yes-men who nod along when the autocrat outlines some crackpot scheme.

The dictator faces the dilemma of how can he trust the loyalty of an entourage that has every reason to lie and conceal its true thoughts? Xenophon wrote: “It is never possible for the tyrant to trust that he is loved … and plots against tyrants spring from none more than from those who pretend to love them most.”

To solve this problem, loyalty tests are created to separate true believers from pretenders. To be trusted, advisers must lie on behalf of the regime. Those who repeat absurd claims without blinking are deemed loyal. Anyone who hesitates is considered suspect.

Plenty of those around Putin understood that, which is why they parrot Putin’s outlandish claim that the Jewish president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is presiding over a “neo-Nazi” state. (It happens here too: consider how many Republicans have fallen over one another to endorse Trump’s lies about the 2020 election to prove their MAGA bona fides.)

To stay in power, despots have to win over, intimidate, or coerce their population too. In Russia, the state presents fake presidential candidates who pretend to oppose Putin in rigged elections. The whole system is a Potemkin village.

But the mechanism of control comes with a cost. Citizens brainwashed by state propaganda will support a war sure to backfire while others privately oppose it but say nothing. Reliable polling doesn’t exist in autocracies. Thus Putin is unable to accurately understand the attitudes of his own people.

Rock’n’rollers have learned to their dismay that, if you live in a world of no “no”long enough, it starts to feel real and leads to terrible behavior. Dictators begin to believe their own lies, repeated back at them by state-controlled media run by sycophants. That explains why Putin’s recent speeches have been unhinged rants. The longer someone is in power, the more they begin to fall victim to the mistaken belief they can control outcomes much more than they actually can.

When dictator makes a mistake, he needs to watch his back. To crush prospective enemies, they must demand loyalty and crack down on criticism. But this leads to receiving a lower the quality of information, and the less they can trust the people who purport to serve them. This, when officials learn about plots to overthrow the autocrat, they may not share that knowledge. Thus, the authoritarian may learn of coup attempts and putsches only when it’s too late. The question for Putin is, if his fellow siloviki eventually made a move against him, would anyone warn him?

Putin, like many despots, isn’t behaving fully rationally. He inhabits a fantasy world, surrounded by people who are afraid to challenge him, with a mind that has been poisoned by more than two decades as a tyrant. He’s made a catastrophic mistake in Ukraine—one that may yet prove his downfall.

Democracy may be messy and shortsighted and dysfunctional. But at least leaders face real constraints, real pushback for their miscalculations, and real criticism from their population. The system contains within it the tools to save it.

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