You can put this one into the category of the guy with a hammer seeing every problem as a nail. I have always wondered why Russia didn’t focus on becoming a globally integrated economic power - leaving the militaristic posturing and the warmongering far in the past. If Putin wants to “make Russia great again” he could be leveraging enormous economic potential rather than invading neighbouring countries.
I don’t claim to have any insight here, really. Reading about late 19th Century and early-mid 20th Century Russia and environs has been a bit of a hobby. I have 35 books in my physical collection and another two dozen or so audio books on the subject. Reading 30,000 pages from Chernychevsky’s What is do be Done? to Lenin’s What is do be Done? to Robert Service and Anne Applebaum chronicling what has been done gives me just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
I groaned when former President Obama remarked that Russia was a declining power or something similar and was not surprised when Putin, nearly a decade later, referred in a speech to the U.S. as a declining power - he used almost the exact wording as Obama.
Russia wants to be a globally influential power. It’s politicians and many (if not most) of its people. What’s wrong with that? The problem is the method.
Russia has enormous natural resources. I believe it has massive tourism potential. It has cranked out impressive IT talent for decades. Imagine if that talent was put to positive use? It has strong universities and research capabilities. Large swathes of Russia are ideal for farming. It is one of the most oil and gas/mineral rich countries in the world.
And it sits strategically between east and west.
Russia could be one of the most impressive economies in the world attracting talent from the far corners - just like Canada does - instead giving mothers a million rubles if they have 10 or more children.
I hope the post-Putin Russia figures this out. They went through a Kleptocratic phase - so did the Yanks with the Robber Barons. Now is it time to build highly credible institutions that offset each other and ensure accountability. When the media, military, courts, political systems and billionaire tycoons are all aligned - no good can come of it.
A competitive and dynamic market economy that limits graft coupled with a grand vision for a free and open Russia that sees itself as a world leader in addressing global challenges without brute force - would be better for its people and the planet.
And I truly think it is possible. There are those who think Russia is nothing without its Nukes. That it is a declining power with a miserable population that would all leave if given the chance.
I see Russia as similar to Canada geographically - with even more resources - and even better positioned geographically for this century and beyond.
The trouble is that, unlike troublesome journalists, cultural ‘baggage’ is hard to purge. This view that Russia needs a ‘strongman’ to be successful goes back hundreds of years. The view that Russia’s true power comes from military might (we will never let Europe boss us around again) - is hard to dislodge.
But if the goal is a wildly successful Russia - where 92% of the population has a high level of life satisfaction (like in Canada), where median incomes are comparative with rest of Europe and where people are flocking to move to rather than leaving in droves - I suggest they boot Putin, bring in Navalny and focus on becoming a great economic power.
Giving mothers a medal and a million rubles for having 10 children could then be removed as a major policy for Russian greatness.
The Russian people, as with most people, are living in the perceived glory of their past. Despite American and British propoganda to the contrary, Russia won the Second World War militarily and diplomatically. Stalin bested Churchill and Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference when they agreed to his 'Blood for Land' proposal, handing the Russians 150 million people, from Ukraine, Belarussia and the Baltic states, to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and two-thirds of Germany—more land than Hitler ever dreamed of. The United States got the right to keep soldiers in Germany and Britain got nothing. This is the past the Russians lament and long recreate. Russia is a shadow of what it was in 1945 onward, and can never be as great again.
Putin is nothing without oil, and he is paradoxically accelerating the pace that the world is cutting their umbilical cord to it. I know it is not kosher to say such a thing, but nuclear, and hydrogen in the further future, will replace oil sooner than later. OPEC has been a reliable partner with the west, mainly because Canada and the United States can and do compete on equal footing, but their leverage is waning and eventually they must drop prices, undercutting more expensive Russian oil. Putin's Russia is headed for disaster and he knows it. The nuclear arsenal he has is as useless as all nuclear weapons, and an economically squeezed Russia cannot afford them.
Russia can have a stable economy and a bright future over the long term, but only if, as you so elequently explain, they first deal themselves out of the war game and concentrate their vast energy on relationships with NATO and the United Nations. They are not financially burdened with debt, but they have no credit either. They have vast resources, but they are like the local grocer that everyone hates. No one wants to buy what they are selling, and it will get worse every day that Putin rules. The days of the bully are going fast.
When I saw Robert Service, I thought "The Cremation of Sam McGee." Google set me straight.
Nice library. I have something regarding China, though more history than current events.