Dispatches From Exile: Weekly Mind Dump, 6/18-6/24, 2023
Russia as Banana Republic.
In March 2022, I made the following observations and predictions about Russia and the viability of Vladimir Putin’s power:
The 1917 revolution was attributable, in large part, to “gross mismanagement of the [WWI] war effort, continuing military defeats, domestic economic dislocation.” The Russian economy, blocked from Europe’s markets by the war, came under great strain.
The rot at Russia’s core bled out into the undersupplied and poorly led armed forces, deeply demoralized by major defeats on the battlefield. Mutinies broke out, starting with the Petrograd garrison. Officers, many incompetent, risked losing their lives to their own disgruntled troops as much as to the enemy.
Nicholas had lost the support of the elites as well as the Russian people, setting the stage for his overthrow.
Revise the dates, change out the characters, make a few other tweaks, and the above scenario broadly lays out Vladimir Putin’s own inevitable demise. The main variable is not if, but when.
Putin will most likely be ousted in a palace coup. For contemporary revolutions to succeed, elites generally need to participate. In the Russian context, these are the mega-rich oligarchs and, more importantly, the all-powerful siloviki — the spies, security toughs, military men. And not only because they have the guns. They may decide to act.
When your people (including the elites) get pissed off enough, your carefully confected mass of protection turns into a mountain of butter, melting under your ass. This can go as much for mighty Putin as for some tin-pot dictator.
The key catalyst leading to Putin’s end would emanate, as with Nicholas, from the military, whose casualties in World War I were astronomical.
A proliferation of mutinies and desertions would spell grave trouble for Moscow and Putin’s fate. Such actions would cascade up the line, as in 1917, and goad the elites to finally act to remove Putin from power.
“It is never possible for the tyrant to trust that he is loved. . . Plots against tyrants spring from none more than from those who pretend to love them most.”
Working on European affairs at the State Department just when communism was collapsing, I followed events in the Soviet Union closely — intelligence reports, diplomatic reporting, news media reports. We knew the rusting behemoth that was the USSR was under great strain. Moscow’s catastrophic decade-long military intervention in Afghanistan was a contributing factor to the regime’s sudden collapse, which caught us by surprise.
That’s the thing about coups d’état. They are usually as unpredictable as spring thunderstorms.
And so we observe with incredulity the astonishing events unfolding in Russia. While the parallels with the World War I period and the demise of the tsar are striking, Russia, to this observer, resembles today nothing if not a banana republic.
A potty-mouthed ex-con, ex-catering chef-turned billionaire mercenary chief sics his private army on the Kremlin, threatening to storm Moscow in a “March for Justice” to throw the bums out. He seizes two cities of more than a million each in under 12 hours. One of them, Rostov, hosts Russia’s Southern District military headquarters — which spearheads operations against Ukraine — which he also seized. While there were reports of brief armed clashes at a couple of locations and several Russian choppers having been shot down, the march for justice was pulled off remarkably with little bloodshed. Russian troops and security personnel were largely bystanders.
Then, equally without warning, a “resolution” is arrived at whereby Wagner boss Prigozhin agrees to reverse his assault, go into exile in neighboring Belarus; his malefactor “Dirty Dozen” mercenaries — estimated at up to 25,000 — are to be incorporated into the Russian armed forces.
What’s wrong with this head-spinning scenario? Everything.
This is as if an armed U.S. defense contractor turned on U.S. leadership and proceeded to march on D.C. after seizing Atlanta and Richmond. Prigozhin’s bold gambit starkly exposes the fallibilities of the once mighty Russian military. And then it all abruptly ends with no punishment meted out. Oh! And the Wagner mutineers will be welcomed with open arms by the regular military. Finally, Belarusian strongman and Putin marionette Lukashenko will fully protect the man who just threatened to overthrow the Russian government. Huh?
A reserve officer in the Ukrainian armed forces posits the following:
The relatively swift movement of Wagner forces from Ukraine to Moscow within a span of less than a day, coupled with the chaotic attempts to destroy bridges and hastily dig ditches near Moscow, have laid bare the unpreparedness of the system to face a genuine threat.
It has been intriguing to witness the involvement of various groups, including the Club of Angered Patriots led by [Igor] Strelkov, the Rusich neo-Nazi military unit, and the Kadyrovites, aligning themselves with different factions within the conflict. This development reveals a landscape that hints at the potential for a future civil war.
While the immediate repercussions of the current events will become apparent in the coming weeks, it is crucial to recognize that we are merely at the inception of something far more significant. The unfolding situation carries profound implications that extend beyond the present moment.
I believe we’re witnessing a mere interregnum in an unfinished, developing struggle between factions in the Russian power structure. Nobody trusts the others. Machiavellian maneuvering is occurring behind the scenes. A shootout at the OK Corral is coming. And chances are good we haven’t seen the last of the resilient Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Putin faces tremendous pressures from three fronts: Ukraine, domestic insurrectionists and indigenous saboteurs throughout the country. Add the internal political machinations and the dam eventually will break. Russia, led by a severely weakened Putin, is proving itself to be a highly volatile and unstable country, whose very geographical viability is in question. Vernon Walters liked to describe Russia as “Upper Volta with missiles.”
There are two other dimensions of these events you should keep in mind:
On the international level, China and India have been playing a coy game of great power balancing vis-à-vis the United States with Russia as the fulcrum. China, angry over U.S. backpedaling on Taiwan and what Xi Jinping views as American power overreach, courts Putin, going just short of providing lethal aid to Moscow. Modi continues with a long diplomatic tradition of cozying up to Moscow as leverage with Washington and Beijing.
But this four-way minuet’s days are numbered. The Chinese and Indians are essentially courting the doomed captain of the Titanic in Mr. Putin. The latter will go down soon along with his delusions of a reconstituted Russian Empire. And it’s a risky bet to count on all 22 republics and 46 oblasts remaining in Russia once it is soundly defeated in Ukraine. Who will Beijing and New Delhi dance the minuet with then?
In U.S. domestic politics, I count offhandedly a dozen national politicians, overwhelmingly Republicans, who have sided with Putin, echoing the Kremlin line on Ukraine, political interference, social issues, NATO, etc. Add to this a number of arch-conservative media personalities, most notably the now exiled Tucker Carlson, who have inexplicably shilled for Moscow. I, for one, look forward to the day soon when these folks are collectively exposed as the irresponsible fools that they are. There won’t be enough egg to cover their silly faces.
Rest assured that the U.S. government is following events in Russia very closely. Our intelligence agencies, the State Department and the Pentagon devote tremendous assets in getting as full a picture as possible on political maneuvering and military actions, on which they regularly brief the president and other senior policymakers. But Russia has always been a hard nut to crack, as Winston Churchill pointed out when he described it as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.
Good insights. But I see the siloviki class, not oligarchs or the military, as vital to Putin and I I don't believe their vast, lucrative machinery of grant and corruption is suffering under international sanctions or war, ie, under Putin. But perhaps it is, and if so, Putin is toast.