Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2020 22:19:05 GMT
For all the legitimate focus on rising U.S.-Chinese tensions, this summer’s sleeper surprise for the West is more likely to emerge from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
That’s because the built-in contradictions between Russia’s international ambition and domestic rot that have always characterized Putin’s rule, now into its 21st year, are coming to head in a manner that provides him both greater opportunity and peril.
The brutal effectiveness of his thugocracy state is increasing, with a military modernization that includes a newly detected test of anti-satellite space weapons, highly publicized advances in hypersonic technologies, and worldwide intelligence operations that effectively employ advanced technology and a lower-tech army of mercenaries.
At the same time, the weakness of his demographically aging, economically ossifying Covid-hit country continues to grow in the wake of lower oil prices. The World Bank projects a 6% decline in Russian GDP in 2020 in a country that already had 12.3% of its population, or 18 million people, below the poverty line.
Greater opportunity for Putin presents itself in a United States that’s distracted by the coronavirus spread, its own economic downturn, racial upheavals, polarizing November elections and divisions with and within Europe. With the chance that his friend President Donald Trump might lose the November election, Putin could calculate that now could be the time to seize new opportunities.
The peril is symbolized by surprisingly large and enduring protests in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk, which continued this weekend. New Levada polling shows that 45% of Russians say they approve of the recent wave of anti-Kremlin protests, and Putin opponents are looking to convert this energy into something more.
What’s difficult to predict is whether an August surprise — or one at any time ahead of U.S. elections in November — would grow more from Russia’s strength, its weakness, or more likely some combination of the two. It has been times like these in the past when matters had seemed sour for Moscow that Putin has turned to adventures abroad to solidify his domestic control.
So should one be watching for a surprise of the sort of the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008, the seizure and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war from 2015 to the present, or more electoral and disinformation activity in Europe and particularly around U.S. elections this November?
On that front, the first indicator could be Russian response to the Belarus election a week from Sunday on Aug. 9. Janusz Bugajksi of the Center for European Policy Analysis reckons that Putin could use “the pretext of growing unrest in Belarus and the disputed presidential elections” as a chance to act as national liberator with the “looming prospect” of the absorption of Belarus into Russia.
Most of all, Putin will resist any further erosion of Kremlin power in its own region that would be prompted by a tilt either by Lukashenko or his opposition toward Western institutions or allegiances, akin to Georgia and Ukraine.
Some analysts say Putin’s appetite for such an adventure has run its course. That’s unlikely, however, until he experiences more painful pushback than he has thus far from the United States, Europe or others.
In an interview with “Axios on HBO” this week, Trump said he hasn’t confronted Putin with intelligence that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump spoke to Putin this Tuesday, one of at least eight times he’s done so since the intelligence landed in the President’s Daily Brief in late February
If past performance is any indicator of future outcomes, don’t join the wishful Western thinkers who believe that Russia’s economic pain and domestic opposition has advanced so far that Putin is in greater danger than are his adversaries.
If anything, he has been encouraged by his string of international advances in the face of little pushback and, like the schoolyard bully who hasn’t yet felt a serious blow, he will continue his life’s work of undoing the wrong of Soviet collapse in any way available to him.
That’s because the built-in contradictions between Russia’s international ambition and domestic rot that have always characterized Putin’s rule, now into its 21st year, are coming to head in a manner that provides him both greater opportunity and peril.
The brutal effectiveness of his thugocracy state is increasing, with a military modernization that includes a newly detected test of anti-satellite space weapons, highly publicized advances in hypersonic technologies, and worldwide intelligence operations that effectively employ advanced technology and a lower-tech army of mercenaries.
At the same time, the weakness of his demographically aging, economically ossifying Covid-hit country continues to grow in the wake of lower oil prices. The World Bank projects a 6% decline in Russian GDP in 2020 in a country that already had 12.3% of its population, or 18 million people, below the poverty line.
Greater opportunity for Putin presents itself in a United States that’s distracted by the coronavirus spread, its own economic downturn, racial upheavals, polarizing November elections and divisions with and within Europe. With the chance that his friend President Donald Trump might lose the November election, Putin could calculate that now could be the time to seize new opportunities.
The peril is symbolized by surprisingly large and enduring protests in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk, which continued this weekend. New Levada polling shows that 45% of Russians say they approve of the recent wave of anti-Kremlin protests, and Putin opponents are looking to convert this energy into something more.
What’s difficult to predict is whether an August surprise — or one at any time ahead of U.S. elections in November — would grow more from Russia’s strength, its weakness, or more likely some combination of the two. It has been times like these in the past when matters had seemed sour for Moscow that Putin has turned to adventures abroad to solidify his domestic control.
So should one be watching for a surprise of the sort of the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008, the seizure and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war from 2015 to the present, or more electoral and disinformation activity in Europe and particularly around U.S. elections this November?
On that front, the first indicator could be Russian response to the Belarus election a week from Sunday on Aug. 9. Janusz Bugajksi of the Center for European Policy Analysis reckons that Putin could use “the pretext of growing unrest in Belarus and the disputed presidential elections” as a chance to act as national liberator with the “looming prospect” of the absorption of Belarus into Russia.
Most of all, Putin will resist any further erosion of Kremlin power in its own region that would be prompted by a tilt either by Lukashenko or his opposition toward Western institutions or allegiances, akin to Georgia and Ukraine.
Some analysts say Putin’s appetite for such an adventure has run its course. That’s unlikely, however, until he experiences more painful pushback than he has thus far from the United States, Europe or others.
In an interview with “Axios on HBO” this week, Trump said he hasn’t confronted Putin with intelligence that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump spoke to Putin this Tuesday, one of at least eight times he’s done so since the intelligence landed in the President’s Daily Brief in late February
If past performance is any indicator of future outcomes, don’t join the wishful Western thinkers who believe that Russia’s economic pain and domestic opposition has advanced so far that Putin is in greater danger than are his adversaries.
If anything, he has been encouraged by his string of international advances in the face of little pushback and, like the schoolyard bully who hasn’t yet felt a serious blow, he will continue his life’s work of undoing the wrong of Soviet collapse in any way available to him.