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I’m often wondering if Putin is, in fact, the most powerful person in the world by a very large margin. He might not have a billion people or a space force, but

I’m often wondering if Putin is, in fact, the most powerful person in the world by a very large margin. He might not have a billion people or a space force, but he plays everyone like a fiddle.

zirkonit 6y ago
Interestingly enough, Putin's space force predates Trump's by years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Aerospace_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Aerospace_Forces (Air-Space Force, in Russian).
gear54rus 6y ago
He might be the most powerful in current soviet union that is CIS. However I fail to see how he can be the most powerful in the world given that USA surpasses russia in both military and economic might (which are pretty much the same thing if you think about it). Russia has no answer to sanctions and those counter-sanctions are just a delusion. USA can make many other countries respect the sanctions due to dollar being universal currency. There's also China which is simply too populous to challenge for anyone.
- namdnay 6y ago
  The difference being that we suspect Putin has pretty much total control over his empire, whereas a US president for example operates with checks and balances
- berdario 6y ago
  I think that GP point might be about being able to direct the military and economic might. The US is surely ahead in terms of numbers... but even if they wanted to stop any military involvement in the middle east tomorrow, and pull back from NATO, there'd be a lot of push-back and it would heavily disappoint its allies. Compare with Russia: they have some involvement in Syria (and other places, I'm sure), but if they'd pull back from Syria, I'm not sure who else besides Assad would complain. From this point of view, their hands might not be as tied as the US' I agree that Russia counter-sanctions can be just a delusion, but I think that another interesting point is that sanctions aren't biting as hard as they could've in Russia, due to their massive reduction in public debt: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public-debt-falls-to-zero-a67238 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public... They had slow (or absent) growth, otoh.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Putin is dangerous because he realised that in the Internet age, you can do incredible damage to a country with social media messaging, hacking, and bribery. The US has been using the media like this for decades, but it's always been considered a side game. Russia has made it a primary mode of attack - partly because it's vastly cheaper and more effective than spending extreme sums of money on super-weapons. So we know that Putin has been financing the subversion of social democracy and the promotion of far-right nationalist narratives in the US and the EU through a combination of direct funding, social media troll farming, and straightforward financially advantageous diplomacy - and possibly also direct election hacking, although so far that's been harder to prove. The UK has been almost destroyed by this. It's a shell of the country it was when the century started, and the poison of Brexit hasn't even worked its way fully through the system yet. I expect I'll get the usual downvotes for posting this out, but the downvoters might want to address the points made here before they waste their time on that: https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-backed-coup https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-b... There's much more detail about this in a book which is being released soon.
  - lovelyviking 6y ago
    I do not understand why people downvote you if they are sincere to the truth. You points are correct and what West doesn't realise is that Putin is at war with West civilisation. He acts like it's a war and he thinks in terms of war. People do not realise, because it seems crazy to create war when there is no need for it, but this is exactly why they loose, because Putin uses it for his advantage. I just hope people would wake up and understand how serious threat is.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm no politician or economist, but while I do believe the US has military superiority still, they won't be able to wage a large scale war at the moment; they simply cannot afford it. They would have to take out even more loans, and right now the US' money lenders are the UAE and China; given that they are both close to Russia, they may opt to not lend money to fund the US' wars. And even without the threat, they may opt to not lend the money because the US will never be able to pay it back. I suspect WW3 is kept at bay not because of MAD anymore, but because of financial interests. If a country decides "fuck it, we'll forfeit this debt", we'll likely see more armed conflicts. I don't see Russia opting for a conflict though, they too cannot afford it. Not unless they're backed by a well-to-do country like China. I don't believe China would become a direct aggressor either, if they would, then their economy would quickly grind to a halt due to sanctions and import stops from the US and Europe. They'd probably a proxy like North Korea.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - frockington1 6y ago
    70% of US debt is owned by American citizens. I do agree with the premise of nobody going to war because they can't afford it. The only caveat I would add would that America tends to do pretty well when armed conflicts happen as they supply the world with weapons Souce: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-2121-trillion-of-us-debt-2018-08-21 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-21...
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  Russia's economy is the sum of 3 countries in Europe ( I think France, Belgium and Netherlands would do) and they redirect an insane amount of their GDP % to military. But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_military_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_militar...
  - konart 6y ago
    >But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union. >Post link to aircrafts stats only While it is true that Russia is behind the other major players on modernisation - russian military does get new toys quite often these days on a stable basis. Same goes for upgrading old T-72 tanks for example. What's the point of building armada of Armata if modernised T-72 has basically the same capabilities as T-90 which is more than enough in most scenarios? T-72 Where used in Ukraine and Russia was able to get enough data from operations to do some improvements to the machines and even to upgrade the majority of them even before the 'hot' part of the conflict was over for them. Also how did you count the size of the economy exactly?
    - NicoJuicy 6y ago
      You can use wolfram alpha to get their GDP and re-calculate my statement. And considering Russia is marketing their Jets heavily to everyone, i think the aircraft stats are enough to make it obvious how ancient their army actually is ( majority is ~ 50 years old).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
senectus1 6y ago
shut down the oil and gas out of russia and you shut down putin.
- creato 6y ago
  You also shut down Europe. Who has the power in this situation?
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    The US is trying to grab it; they're actively threatening with sanctions to dozens companies that are building a new gas pipeline at the moment (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnos.nl%2Fartikel%2F2338823-strijd-om-gas-tussen-vs-en-rusland-treft-nederlandse-bedrijven.html https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3...), and they're successful in that some companies have backed out. The pipeline is already mostly finished though. But basically the US is trying to stop it because it'll reduce the dependency of Europe on American resources. More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
    - Mirioron 6y ago
      Or you could think of it as the US helping (some of) its NATO allies in Europe. Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been vocally against Nord Stream 2. Just because Western Europe is for it doesn't mean all the other countries in Europe are as well. Even the previous president of the European Council came out against it.
082349872349872 6y ago
I beg to differ. Putin's law school thesis was "The Most Favored Nation Trading Principle in International Law." Granted, that may be slightly better than "Tentative Study of Agricultural Marketization", but both are only theses, not a full book: "The Art of the Deal." The difference is also clear in their propaganda: Putin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29k_T_o9To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29k_T_o9To (any reccos for Xi? I ought to frequent youku.com more often) Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXTA36HO65g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXTA36HO65g Edit: removed snark
op03 6y ago
He does not play everyone like a fiddle because he is just one man and there are a million things requiring Control in the world. By the time he makes a move a million new things have happened. Ofcourse he has a network but that network suffers from the same flaw. So its all illusion of control. Easier to achieve among some parts of the population when anyone who points it out gets killed. But don't mistake it for control. He has lot of buttons he can push but what Outcomes he produces is all bullshit. The world is too complex and even Putin has a 7 inch head which can't fit in all of it.
NicoJuicy 6y ago
That's utter bullshit and i'll tell you why: Russia has been severly weakened by democratic Europe. They have lost an insane amount of area since the fall of USSR and Europe has never been "closer" to Moscow, their capital. They are now getting punished for actions of last resort. Eg. Invading Ukraine, because otherwise their entire naval fleed would be rendered useless, since it couln't even go out. Russia is weak, although Putin tries to portray it like it isn't. The conflicts they create (eg. with their jets) is just for the show, they can't even afford it to build those jet en masse for themselves, lol.
- namdnay 6y ago
  I don't think he's saying that Russia is the most powerful country in the world, I think he's saying that as an individual person, Putin is more powerful than any other individual person. I guess the main question would be "is Putin with total control of a less powerful country more powerful than the US president with carefully defined control of a more powerful country?"
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    I'm implying on the : "he plays everyone like a fiddle". The sanctions against Russia are still in place and it seems to be working. It will only get worse when Trump will ( probably) lose. Their ally is China and they are the weak partner on that end and China knows it. Additionally, Russia is probably getting an extra "big reward" in the coming year for their meldding in the western world.
    - namdnay 6y ago
      He's managed to keep sole control of Russia for 20 years, and probably made himself one of the wealthiest people in the world, so he's definitely playing fiddle for a lot of people
      - brutt 6y ago
        Putin had plan to make himself and his friends richest people in the world. According to this plan, Gazprom must be valuated at $1T at the end of 2016[0]. [0]: https://politua.org/ekonomika/30270-gazprom-ostanavlivaemyj/ https://politua.org/ekonomika/30270-gazprom-ostanavlivaemyj/
patrec 6y ago
What makes you think of him as more powerful than Xi Jinping?

I’m often wondering if Putin is, in fact, the most powerful person in the world by a very large margin. He might not have a billion people or a space force, but he plays everyone like a fiddle.

zirkonit 6y ago

Interestingly enough, Putin's space force predates Trump's by years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Aerospace_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Aerospace_Forces (Air-Space Force, in Russian).

gear54rus 6y ago

He might be the most powerful in current soviet union that is CIS. However I fail to see how he can be the most powerful in the world given that USA surpasses russia in both military and economic might (which are pretty much the same thing if you think about it). Russia has no answer to sanctions and those counter-sanctions are just a delusion. USA can make many other countries respect the sanctions due to dollar being universal currency. There's also China which is simply too populous to challenge for anyone.

namdnay 6y ago
The difference being that we suspect Putin has pretty much total control over his empire, whereas a US president for example operates with checks and balances
berdario 6y ago
I think that GP point might be about being able to direct the military and economic might. The US is surely ahead in terms of numbers... but even if they wanted to stop any military involvement in the middle east tomorrow, and pull back from NATO, there'd be a lot of push-back and it would heavily disappoint its allies. Compare with Russia: they have some involvement in Syria (and other places, I'm sure), but if they'd pull back from Syria, I'm not sure who else besides Assad would complain. From this point of view, their hands might not be as tied as the US' I agree that Russia counter-sanctions can be just a delusion, but I think that another interesting point is that sanctions aren't biting as hard as they could've in Russia, due to their massive reduction in public debt: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public-debt-falls-to-zero-a67238 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public... They had slow (or absent) growth, otoh.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Putin is dangerous because he realised that in the Internet age, you can do incredible damage to a country with social media messaging, hacking, and bribery. The US has been using the media like this for decades, but it's always been considered a side game. Russia has made it a primary mode of attack - partly because it's vastly cheaper and more effective than spending extreme sums of money on super-weapons. So we know that Putin has been financing the subversion of social democracy and the promotion of far-right nationalist narratives in the US and the EU through a combination of direct funding, social media troll farming, and straightforward financially advantageous diplomacy - and possibly also direct election hacking, although so far that's been harder to prove. The UK has been almost destroyed by this. It's a shell of the country it was when the century started, and the poison of Brexit hasn't even worked its way fully through the system yet. I expect I'll get the usual downvotes for posting this out, but the downvoters might want to address the points made here before they waste their time on that: https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-backed-coup https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-b... There's much more detail about this in a book which is being released soon.
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  I do not understand why people downvote you if they are sincere to the truth. You points are correct and what West doesn't realise is that Putin is at war with West civilisation. He acts like it's a war and he thinks in terms of war. People do not realise, because it seems crazy to create war when there is no need for it, but this is exactly why they loose, because Putin uses it for his advantage. I just hope people would wake up and understand how serious threat is.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Disclaimer: I'm no politician or economist, but while I do believe the US has military superiority still, they won't be able to wage a large scale war at the moment; they simply cannot afford it. They would have to take out even more loans, and right now the US' money lenders are the UAE and China; given that they are both close to Russia, they may opt to not lend money to fund the US' wars. And even without the threat, they may opt to not lend the money because the US will never be able to pay it back. I suspect WW3 is kept at bay not because of MAD anymore, but because of financial interests. If a country decides "fuck it, we'll forfeit this debt", we'll likely see more armed conflicts. I don't see Russia opting for a conflict though, they too cannot afford it. Not unless they're backed by a well-to-do country like China. I don't believe China would become a direct aggressor either, if they would, then their economy would quickly grind to a halt due to sanctions and import stops from the US and Europe. They'd probably a proxy like North Korea.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- frockington1 6y ago
  70% of US debt is owned by American citizens. I do agree with the premise of nobody going to war because they can't afford it. The only caveat I would add would that America tends to do pretty well when armed conflicts happen as they supply the world with weapons Souce: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-2121-trillion-of-us-debt-2018-08-21 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-21...
NicoJuicy 6y ago
Russia's economy is the sum of 3 countries in Europe ( I think France, Belgium and Netherlands would do) and they redirect an insane amount of their GDP % to military. But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_military_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_militar...
- konart 6y ago
  >But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union. >Post link to aircrafts stats only While it is true that Russia is behind the other major players on modernisation - russian military does get new toys quite often these days on a stable basis. Same goes for upgrading old T-72 tanks for example. What's the point of building armada of Armata if modernised T-72 has basically the same capabilities as T-90 which is more than enough in most scenarios? T-72 Where used in Ukraine and Russia was able to get enough data from operations to do some improvements to the machines and even to upgrade the majority of them even before the 'hot' part of the conflict was over for them. Also how did you count the size of the economy exactly?
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    You can use wolfram alpha to get their GDP and re-calculate my statement. And considering Russia is marketing their Jets heavily to everyone, i think the aircraft stats are enough to make it obvious how ancient their army actually is ( majority is ~ 50 years old).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

senectus1 6y ago

shut down the oil and gas out of russia and you shut down putin.

creato 6y ago
You also shut down Europe. Who has the power in this situation?
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  The US is trying to grab it; they're actively threatening with sanctions to dozens companies that are building a new gas pipeline at the moment (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnos.nl%2Fartikel%2F2338823-strijd-om-gas-tussen-vs-en-rusland-treft-nederlandse-bedrijven.html https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3...), and they're successful in that some companies have backed out. The pipeline is already mostly finished though. But basically the US is trying to stop it because it'll reduce the dependency of Europe on American resources. More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
  - Mirioron 6y ago
    Or you could think of it as the US helping (some of) its NATO allies in Europe. Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been vocally against Nord Stream 2. Just because Western Europe is for it doesn't mean all the other countries in Europe are as well. Even the previous president of the European Council came out against it.

082349872349872 6y ago

I beg to differ. Putin's law school thesis was "The Most Favored Nation Trading Principle in International Law." Granted, that may be slightly better than "Tentative Study of Agricultural Marketization", but both are only theses, not a full book: "The Art of the Deal." The difference is also clear in their propaganda: Putin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29k_T_o9To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29k_T_o9To (any reccos for Xi? I ought to frequent youku.com more often) Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXTA36HO65g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXTA36HO65g Edit: removed snark

op03 6y ago

He does not play everyone like a fiddle because he is just one man and there are a million things requiring Control in the world. By the time he makes a move a million new things have happened. Ofcourse he has a network but that network suffers from the same flaw. So its all illusion of control. Easier to achieve among some parts of the population when anyone who points it out gets killed. But don't mistake it for control. He has lot of buttons he can push but what Outcomes he produces is all bullshit. The world is too complex and even Putin has a 7 inch head which can't fit in all of it.

NicoJuicy 6y ago

That's utter bullshit and i'll tell you why: Russia has been severly weakened by democratic Europe. They have lost an insane amount of area since the fall of USSR and Europe has never been "closer" to Moscow, their capital. They are now getting punished for actions of last resort. Eg. Invading Ukraine, because otherwise their entire naval fleed would be rendered useless, since it couln't even go out. Russia is weak, although Putin tries to portray it like it isn't. The conflicts they create (eg. with their jets) is just for the show, they can't even afford it to build those jet en masse for themselves, lol.

namdnay 6y ago
I don't think he's saying that Russia is the most powerful country in the world, I think he's saying that as an individual person, Putin is more powerful than any other individual person. I guess the main question would be "is Putin with total control of a less powerful country more powerful than the US president with carefully defined control of a more powerful country?"
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  I'm implying on the : "he plays everyone like a fiddle". The sanctions against Russia are still in place and it seems to be working. It will only get worse when Trump will ( probably) lose. Their ally is China and they are the weak partner on that end and China knows it. Additionally, Russia is probably getting an extra "big reward" in the coming year for their meldding in the western world.
  - namdnay 6y ago
    He's managed to keep sole control of Russia for 20 years, and probably made himself one of the wealthiest people in the world, so he's definitely playing fiddle for a lot of people
    - brutt 6y ago
      Putin had plan to make himself and his friends richest people in the world. According to this plan, Gazprom must be valuated at $1T at the end of 2016[0]. [0]: https://politua.org/ekonomika/30270-gazprom-ostanavlivaemyj/ https://politua.org/ekonomika/30270-gazprom-ostanavlivaemyj/

patrec 6y ago

What makes you think of him as more powerful than Xi Jinping?