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For Those Who Continue To Wonder Why We Should Worry About Vladimir Putin . . .
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Authoritarianism | Dictatorship | Foreign Affairs | Tyranny | Vladimir Putin — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
This link is dedicated to you.
No, Putin is not a military threat. Yes, he is working feverishly to create a dictatorship centered around him in his own country. Yes, such a dictatorship will serve to make Russian decision-making more opaque. Yes, the increased opaqueness of Russian decision-making will serve to cause countries like the United States to miscalculate when it comes to crafting Russo-American foreign policy. And yes, we should be concerned about such miscalculations and their dramatically deleterious consequences.
Granted. The Russian are bastards. The question we need to ask is, are they dumb bastards or smart bastards?
Dumb bastards would think with the chip on their shoulder from losing the cold war. A dumb bastard would do everything in his power to get back at the West, and all that oil and gas in Siberia adds up to a lot of power.
A smart bastard would look at the map, notice that Russia has growing and hungry neighbors in China and Islam. He'd also consider the fact that Russia is currently in demographic freefall, and might well become turkey dinner for the neighbors in the close future. So a smart bastard would defer the pleasures of spite and revenge and look for a powerful friend with a lot of muscle.
That powerful friend, by the way, would be smart to reciprocate to Russia. Looking at the matter practically, selfish national interess put Russia and the USA on the same path, though neither seems to realize it.
But the EU, for all their prissy talk, are already headed there. As for NATO, Russia can literally stop it cold by turning a tap in Siberia. So if we're to quarrel with Russia we're basically on our own.
Not much liking those odds, I think we'd do better to shut up learn which kind of bastard we're dealing with.