Putin and Russia’s
Illusion of Power
PUTIN AND RUSSIA’S ILLUSION OF POWER
Putin and Russia’s Illusion of Power
Since the start of the 21st century, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian
politics. So much so that global media often refers
to him as a czar and dictator and even implied
he was the devil (an October 2016 issue of the
Economist featured Putin with a blackened face
and glowing eyes). Bestowing these labels on
Putin, and Putinism, doesn’t simply mean that he
is evil, but also invokes the power associated with
him. Like the devil, Putin is powerful enough to
face God and compete for souls. It also means
that Russia, the country at the heart of the collapsed Soviet Union, has returned and is resuming
its place as a global nightmare. From Aleppo to
Ukraine to cyberspace, the Russians are stalking
the earth, terrifying their neighbors and slapping
around a feckless United States. If this sounds like
1980, it should. But then, remember that the demon that loomed over the world in 1980 collapsed
a decade later.
But sometimes all that perception puts off is the
inevitable, and in our view that is the case with
Russia.
Russia’s fundamental problem is economic.
Energy sales underwrite a significant part of the
Russian national budget and the price of energy
has fallen since 2014. In a society still shaped
from the center, a budget crisis at the federal level
poses a severe challenge. Russia has been in a
deep recession for almost two years. According
to the Russian finance minister, the government’s
primary reserve fund, which was $91.7 billion in
September 2014, will be exhausted by the end of
2017.
During the Soviet decline in the 1980s, and
throughout the 1990s, the evidence of economic
destabilization was subtler in Moscow and St.
Petersburg than in the smaller cities and towns
and the countryside that constitute the heart of
Russia. It was there that life became disastrous.
This was the region that saw Putin as the solution to its problems. And Putin was, for about a
decade, the solution. He did two things. First, he
used oil revenues to create the foundations of a
bearable, if not affluent, standard of living. Second, he restored the perception that Russia is a
big player on the world stage. This was a region of
deep patriotism. The poverty that came with Boris
Yeltsin generated both a cynicism and a lack of
faith in the system. Putin made life bearable and
made it clear that Russia was back.
Russia is an enormously weak
country that Putin is working
desperately to make appear far
more powerful than it is.
He is doing extremely well at creating that illusion.
There is a saying that perception is reality. That
saying is rubbish. If it were true, reality would never have caught up with the perceptions surrounding the subprime crisis. Germany would have won
the Battle of Britain, and – for that matter – the
Soviet Union would still exist. Perception can buy
time and time can, sometimes, change reality.
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There is a belief that poverty in Russia poses
less of a threat to the regime than it does in other
countries. This is true, but with a strong caveat. If
the Russians believe that their suffering is in the
name of a state that stands with and for them,
they will endure. This is why Josef Stalin could
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call on Russians to fight, starve and die. Russians
believed he was with and for them. It was why the
Soviet Union collapsed and Yeltsin nearly plunged
the country over the edge. No one believed that
Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin
Chernenko and least of all Mikhail Gorbachev
cared about them. And certainly no one believed
Yeltsin did. But Putin made them believe that he
cared about them, and he made them feel that he
would not only feed them, but that he would make
all the suffering worthwhile. He convinced them
that he was a winner.
oil prices, Russia finds itself caught between a
rock and a hard place. Cutting production means
cutting income, but once production resumes to
make up lost income, prices will quickly decline.
Furthermore, the more the price rises, the more investments will target developing sources of crude
oil in newer oil producing nations, thus threatening
Russia’s market share of investments.
The situation in the regions grew harsher, and
Putin was forced to focus on building patriotism
to show that the privation was worth it, for it had
made Russia great again. But Putin could not
simply assert this, he had to show it. He had to
demonstrate his power in the only way possible,
by confronting the United States.
The problem was an economic failure so fundamental that it is frequently ignored. When Putin
took power, wealth was in the hands of a dozen or
so oligarchs, and the economy and Russian power
depended on energy, which was the source of revenue and leverage over nations reliant on Russian
supplies. In many ways, Russia was like Saudi
Arabia in the 1970s.
This became even more important after the
pro-Russian government in Ukraine was deposed.
Putin pointed to the seizure of something his
forces effectively held – Crimea – and the rising in
eastern Ukraine as evidence of his power. He gave
Russians a sense of being under siege but, given
that the rising only reached a stalemate at best,
he did not give them a sense of ultimate victory.
He therefore dueled with the United States rhetorically, using the apparent clumsiness of President
Barack Obama to demonstrate his skill. But in
the end, the Russian economy was in a tailspin
and Ukraine was lost. The appearance of besting
the United States was colliding with the reality of
Russian weakness.
Putin’s task was to build a
modern economy in Russia
using the revenue from energy
as investment capital. It was a
daunting task and he failed at it.
The Russian move into Syria was the response.
The Russians have no strategic interests in Syria.
Some have attempted to figure out why Russia
intervened and what its end game is. Its intervention is limited and it is bogged down, just as the
Americans are. Yet they are there.
This strategy made Russia dependent on something it didn’t control – energy prices. And since
energy prices have historically fluctuated, Putin’s
primary strategy was to hope that prices would
stay high – but that hope ran out in 2014.
Energy prices fell because of worldwide economic
stagnation and oversupply. There is a mild hope
that OPEC and sympathetic non-OPEC members
have the means to cut production and force up
the price of oil. I say mild because no international
enforcement mechanism exists that can control
global oil. However, even in a scenario of rising
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One theory is that Putin intervened in Syria because he believed Russia’s control over gas
supplies to Europe was under threat. Perhaps,
but any potential pipeline going through Iraq and
war-torn Syria was unrealistic in the first place.
Plus, a military operation to secure a pipeline (or
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to block one, whatever the case may be) makes
little sense.
Don’t get me wrong. I warned of the re-emergence
of Russia before 2008. I was confident we were
moving into a mini-cold war with Russia. But I
was also warning at the time that Russia did not
have the ability to win or even survive such a
mild confrontation. The Soviet Union fell when it
was forced into an arms race it couldn’t afford by
Ronald Reagan and when oil prices declined in the
1980s. That has happened again, and Russia is
much weaker than the Soviets were. A confrontation on its western front was in the cards and has
occurred. And as is the Russian wont, they played
a weak hand brilliantly. But now, as I said, the winter comes.
Another theory is that Russia wants a naval base
in Syria. That is possible, but it makes little military
sense. Naval bases and operations depend on extensive logistical support for food, munitions and
so on. These supplies are far too extensive to be
flown in. And anything that would come to Syria
from Russia by sea would come through the Bosporus. That is controlled by Turkey, and the U.S.
Sixth Fleet could easily block exits. A naval base in
Syria is more a liability than a war fighting asset.
The Russians were not in Syria to save Bashar
al-Assad, control pipelines, build naval facilities or
intimidate the United States. They were there so
Putin could appear to be more powerful than he
was, and that was primarily for the benefit of his
public. As the economy weakened and privations
increased, he had to give it all a meaning, and
Syria made him appear to be restoring Russia’s
greatness. Convincing Western public opinion of
his power was of secondary value.
A range of impressive but ultimately meaningless actions accompanied all this. For example,
constant and intense military maneuvers along
Russia’s borders alarmed those who wished to
be alarmed, but did not cause massive buildups
or concern that Putin could use domestically as
proof of his power. Russia also took advantage
of more short-lived opportunities, such as the
2016 U.S. presidential elections, to demonstrate
power. Russia allegedly hacked into the emails
of high-profile U.S. politicians and Putin praised
then-candidate Trump, though these actions had
no impact on the elections.
We are now at the point where reality diverges
from perception. Russia is moving into a hard
winter. The opportunity to appear to be a great
power by influencing American elections was only
temporary by nature. Russians’ participation in the
Syrian war is moving into a phase well known to
the United States: wondering what they are doing
there.
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