Some Distressingly Realistic Predictions
Mar. 12th, 2022 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitI've mentioned Sharon Astyk on here a few times before-- and I'm definitely paying attention to her feed far more for her essays than the links she shares. And today she's written this horrifying essay on the subject of what Putin's actual endgame is.
It is terrifyingly plausible. And, well, just flat-out terrifying: essentially, that Putin is playing the really, really long game and banking on the Russia having "we endure horrible things" baked into their national mythos so much that if he can damage the global economy enough-- and sanctions on Russia are damaging the rest of the global economy, and as long as China will still trade with Russia, Russia can actually survive that-- Russia will pull through the chaos on that austere-tradition-and-endurance thing while the rest of the globe falls into energy-crisis-and-famine chaos and eventually come out on top in the end.
Really, click through and read it.
It is terrifyingly plausible. And, well, just flat-out terrifying: essentially, that Putin is playing the really, really long game and banking on the Russia having "we endure horrible things" baked into their national mythos so much that if he can damage the global economy enough-- and sanctions on Russia are damaging the rest of the global economy, and as long as China will still trade with Russia, Russia can actually survive that-- Russia will pull through the chaos on that austere-tradition-and-endurance thing while the rest of the globe falls into energy-crisis-and-famine chaos and eventually come out on top in the end.
Really, click through and read it.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-16 06:01 pm (UTC)I have an enormous "give me an effing break" reaction to that post. It's not only paranoid, it plays into Putin's hands in unproductive ways.
Putin wants to be thought of as some sort of master manipulator, but IMO the situation has vividly demonstrated that he's not. Or more precisely, it's shown that he is isolated, having built an organization around himself where nobody but yes-men have access to him, leading to phenomenal miscalculations. Basically, he started believing his own PR -- a failure that most megalomaniacs wind up succumbing to.
But the Occam's Razor claim in this article is nonsense. The real Occam's Razor is that the global system has been getting increasingly fragile for a number of years, and what stability it has has been underpinned by certain assumptions -- one of which has been You Don't Invade First-World Countries. For heaven's sake, the entire reason the EU exists was to cement that assumption. Without that, all sorts of delicately-balanced blocks fall over, and you get the mess that is currently unfolding.
And no, I don't think this is playing into Putin's hands at all. If anything, it has weakened his hold on power in a way that I wouldn't have credited even remotely possible six weeks ago. He's set up a situation where the interests of the populace of Russia actually align with those of the oligarchs in precisely one way: that Putin needs to go. All it needs is for a few of the right people to bribe the right security officers.
It's worth noting the polling that the Navalny organization has been doing -- even inside Russia, despite their best attempts to create a news blackout, a growing fraction of the people think that this disaster is his fault. Russians are accustomed to suffering, yes -- but they also have some form in overthrowing bad rulers. Setting himself up so clearly as the czar -- making that suffering personal, rather than just the result of a bad system you can't fight -- may well prove unwise.
The next three months are probably going to tell the tale. My guess is that if he makes it that long (which I'd give about even odds), then the ghastly new normal will have set in and he's probably okay. But even odds of assassination or coup are shorter than I would ever have expected...