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Russia’s elite begins to ponder a Putinless future

72 points by karaokeyoga 4y ago

karaokeyoga 4y ago
https://archive.ph/zuTDi https://archive.ph/zuTDi
roenxi 4y ago
> The only way to stop the endless cycle of imperial nationalism, Mr Navalny argued, is for Russia to decentralise power and turn itself into a parliamentary republic. I love a decentralised parliamentary republic as much as the next person, but to say that reduces the risk of imperial nationalism is madness. The reason to use decentralised parliamentary systems is because they are much more effective at picking, fighting and sustaining wars with a strong economy. A very significant reason the world transitioned from British Empire to American Totally Not An Empire All These Military Bases Are Normal is because they are the most successful decentralised parliamentary systems. Dictators win wars against smaller dictators, and sometimes manage to take out a rotten democracy that has overcentralised. But democracies are military beasts and totally compatible with imperial ambitions.
- meany 4y ago
  These are pretty confident, extremely sweeping claims. I don’t think societal level forces can be so easily reduced.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    Let's look at the last 3 superpowers in history and compare the USSR to the US, or China to the US. Which of the 3 would be best described as an imperial nationalist? - USSR voluntarily disbanded. Moskow currently can't even assert military dominance over the Ukraine. Sole claim to global relevancy for Moscow is the soviet era nuclear arsenal. - China might practically be able to invade a small island off their coastline, but it isn't obvious that they could tolerate the backlash. The quality of their army is largely unknown because they haven't used it seriously in decades. - US has flattened multiple Middle Eastern countries in the last few decades, the world meets in New York to conduct diplomacy regardless and barely makes an issue of this. Has had a comparable number of soldiers stationed in Germany to the German army (at least it did recently, I think that changed under either Trump or Biden). The US dollar is used for international trade and the people who move off it get invaded for unrelated reasons. Technically they did voluntarily shrink their empire too though, because of that business with the Phillipines, but they are still the undisputed military hegemon and set the pace of global affairs. By far the most invasive worldwide spy network. Now this may well be a good state of affairs but the parliamentary democracy is not the timid and delicate flower in this picture. It is the most imperialist of the 3, by far. I can speak in sweeping generalisations because this is a big, obvious and hard to miss state of affairs. Democracies are just more effective than dictators at building and maintaining an empire.
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      > because of that business with the Phillipines At the time, the Philippines had the same status as Hawaii. Hawaii was a non-state during WW2 that became a full state 14 years later, and the Phillippines became independent instead. I wonder who has it better now? Who would like to switch places with the other one?
      - propagandist 4y ago
        Let's ask the opposite question. Why was Hawaii absorbed but not the Philippines? Who's in Hawaii today that's happy with the status quo, and whose sacred lands are being turned into a road? Did the native population choose to join as a state or was that imposed on them?
        credit_guy 4y ago
        > or was that imposed on them How exactly imposed? A candidate state needs to hold a referendum in order to ask for statehood status. If the people of the territory don't want to join, nobody will force them to join. It's the other thing that happens: people of a territory want to join and Congress does not grant them statehood. Just ask Puerto Rico.
        zoolily 4y ago
        Remember that "them" above refers to the native population in Hawaii in the post it's taken from. The reason the referendum succeeded was a big decline in the native population combined with large amounts of immigration from the U.S. Today only 6% of the population are native Hawaiians or 21% if we include part-Hawaiians. That population has doubled since Hawaii became a state.
        credit_guy 4y ago
        > The reason the referendum succeeded was a big decline in the native population combined with large amounts of immigration from the U.S. Is that a fact, or just your conjecture? All I could find was that in 1940 about 46 thousand people voted in favor of becoming a state, and 22 thousand against. Are you saying there's evidence the native population voted preponderantly against? In any case, it took 19 years from that referendum until the Congress approved the statehood. There was a final vote in Hawaii to approve the statehood. There were 132 thousand yeses vs 8 thousand nos. Was that a fake vote, like the Russians just did in the occupied territories in Ukraine? [1] https://guides.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/c.php?g=105252&p=687125 https://guides.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/c.php?g=105252&p=687...
- jemmyw 4y ago
  However, democracies tend to only fuel popular wars, and wars of aggression lose popularity when information is freely available.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    Check out Jeffrey Sach's recent take on that. You can skip right to 4:50. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP_SpW-DyQg&t=318 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP_SpW-DyQg&t=318 He was instrumental in the neo liberal conversion of the Soviet union.
    - hackandthink 4y ago
      This is great: "Jeffrey stop, I'm your moderator, it's enough" ("democratically at home and ruthlessly imperialist abroad")
  - pauljurczak 4y ago
    Democracies have powerful propaganda machines to make wars of aggression popular...
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > However, democracies tend to only fuel popular wars, and wars of aggression lose popularity when information is freely available. What's your basis for saying that so generally? It's probably true for a war of aggression that you're losing, but I'm not sure if it would hold for one you're winning. Also, I suspect you're also probably making an assumption that a democracy will invariably settle on an ideological outlook similar to elites in present-day western democracies, but I don't think that's very solid.
    - jemmyw 4y ago
      I did actually write a second sentence about when you're losing, but removed it because I needed to think about it. I think there's some contextual stuff to consider - I was thinking about this specific situation. It's not going very well for Russia, especially for their soldiers. If people are dying in an unnecessary war then they'd vote to stop it, and one party is likely to capitalise on that in a democracy. Second is maintaining the propaganda about Ukraine in the face of free information. It's not like the Vietnam war where culture and language was very different and other, especially at that time when people were not so globally connected. It's more like America invading Canada. Similar language, shared culture and history, large numbers of people of each country in each country etc. I think if the war could be talked about in Russia there would be a pressing question: why the f are we there, what will we even gain? The gain is for Putin to maintain power, a democracy wouldn't see any benefit. Maybe there would be another reason, but that's not what we're discussing.
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  Democracies are totally capable of starting wars, but there is a stable way out when they have made a big mistake; the next election. George W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson both lost popularity, and then their faction lost power, because they had picked a bad war to fight in. It doesn't mean the next faction is any smarter or wiser, but it does at least provide them the opportunity to pretend that they would never have gotten us into such a mess, and exit (although in this respect, Obama was far wiser than Nixon). It's largely forgotten now, but the first President Bush had gotten the U.S. into a war in Somalia, but the incoming President Clinton knew a quagmire when he saw one, and was able to cut and run quickly, because he was not (as Putin is now) forced to pretend that it had been a good idea in the first place. If there were a parliamentary way for Putin to exit stage left, Russia could just admit that they've lost and get out. Because they do not and cannot, they must try to find some way to pretend that it can still be won.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > It's largely forgotten now, but the first President Bush had gotten the U.S. into a war in Somalia, but the incoming President Clinton knew a quagmire when he saw one, and was able to cut and run quickly, because he was not (as Putin is now) forced to pretend that it had been a good idea in the first place. This is an extremely extremely extremely misleading characterization of a United Nations humanitarian action that started after Clinton was elected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Task_Force "American troops had first entered Somalia during the Bush administration in response to a humanitarian crisis and civil war. Though initially involved to assist humanitarian efforts, the Clinton administration shifted the objectives set out in the mission and began pursuing a policy of attempting to neutralize Somali warlords." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton#Somalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton#Somalia It's essentially the complete opposite of what you said.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  If this war had begun under a parliamentary democracy (that in itself is not certain but let’s assume it’s the case for the sake of argument), the government would almost certainly have been forced to find ways to pull out of it before the “partial mobilization”. There’s no way a parliamentary democracy would have survived that.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    There is a lot of truth to that. But I do want to raise the obvious point that the War in Afghanistan [0] was almost seen buying alcohol legally. Democracies are great at sustaining long aggressive wars despite it being a really stupid thing to do (the US destroyed a lot of its own wealth & the opportunity costs were jaw dropping). There was never really a question of the US army being unable to achieve military objectives. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001-2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001-2021)
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      I agree with most of your points in this thread, but with regard to Afghanistan the objectives of the US Army were frankly really nebulous and ill-defined to the point of total confusion. We'd waver back and forth between "destroy the enemy with no mercy" and "be nice, don't shoot unless shot at, make sure to talk about schools and democracy to the Taliban". In the same general parameters of your critique on this post, if the US had actually treated Afghanistan like an Imperial Colony I actually think the outcome would've been much more palatable to all involved. Treat the country like a colony, and make them pay taxes for administering their security, forcibly educate (meaning: re-educate) the populous, hand off administration of the government in pieces over about 50 years as the civil infrastructure and information coordination systems mature. Alas, this would've been maybe 10x more expensive than what we already paid, and for reasons that should be obvious the model we used in Japan and Germany really doesn't quite fit in that place.
    - watwut 4y ago
      The war in Afghanistan has very few American deaths. Like, less then 2500 soldiers dead total over 20 years. All of them professionals, literally none of them mobilized. The impact on USA was minor to non existent. Impact of this war on Russia is massive.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  > A very significant reason the world transitioned from British Empire to American Totally Not An Empire All These Military Bases Are Normal is because they are the most successful decentralised parliamentary systems. The US has a presidential system, not a parliamentary system. The US implemented parliamentary systems in Germany and Japan, likely at least in part to preempt further imperialism from these countries. Of course the parliamentary system has advantages other then that.
stevenalowe 4y ago
Hurry up and make it happen then.
- smegsicle 4y ago
  can't wait to see what's next! solve et coagula
dilyevsky 4y ago
And i begin to ponder a life of billionaire philanthropist. If they coulda they woulda
pauljurczak 4y ago
Russia’s elite begins to ponder the future after Democratic defeat in midterm elections...
my_city 4y ago
Yay, propaganda! I sure love my cup of coffee and my slice of propaganda in a saturday morning.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Isn't it grand? I come to HN just to read this kind of crap, too!
cyber_kinetist 4y ago
I mean, isn't Putin really just a puppet for those oligarchs? For them, the sole reason to replace Putin is to blame him for the war when it fails. Things will be probably the same with/without Putin (like when nothing really changed after Yeltsin got replaced by him).
- sidibe 4y ago
  Oligarch is the wrong word because they have no power. In the 90's there were real oligarchs like Khodorovsky, but they've all been replaced as business and government leaders by childhood friends/ex-KGB/St. Petersburg mayor's office colleagues of Putin.
hackandthink 4y ago
This article is really bad and self defeating: "This does not mean that Mr Putin is about to bow out, be overthrown or fire a nuclear weapon." I don't like Putin as well, but there's no analysis in this article.
foverzar 4y ago
> But the mixture of his initial, if limited, military advances, the absence of an economic collapse in Russia, and early attempts at peace negotiations calmed nerves. (Heavy drinking may also have helped; it became so acute that Mr Putin started to complain in public about alcoholism.) Aaaand that's the part where I can't take it seriously anymore. Reasoning with these kinds of stereotypes is just unprofessional.
simonblack 4y ago
Putin is probably more pro-West than any of the likely alternatives. He spent a lot of his time in Germany before the Soviet Union collapsed. The next guy is very likely to be more hard-line than Putin. Be careful what you wish for.
- Nasreddin_Hodja 4y ago
  > The next guy is very likely to be more hard-line than Putin. Yes, there is big chance that it will be this guy https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmTofb6peQmSFekcFAnufAsyQEm7mbbdqRTCiQ76dKdPLn/putin-vs-ramzan.webp https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmTofb6peQmSFekcFAnufAsyQEm...

72 points by karaokeyoga 4y ago

https://archive.ph/zuTDi https://archive.ph/zuTDi

> The only way to stop the endless cycle of imperial nationalism, Mr Navalny argued, is for Russia to decentralise power and turn itself into a parliamentary republic. I love a decentralised parliamentary republic as much as the next person, but to say that reduces the risk of imperial nationalism is madness. The reason to use decentralised parliamentary systems is because they are much more effective at picking, fighting and sustaining wars with a strong economy. A very significant reason the world transitioned from British Empire to American Totally Not An Empire All These Military Bases Are Normal is because they are the most successful decentralised parliamentary systems. Dictators win wars against smaller dictators, and sometimes manage to take out a rotten democracy that has overcentralised. But democracies are military beasts and totally compatible with imperial ambitions.

meany 4y ago
These are pretty confident, extremely sweeping claims. I don’t think societal level forces can be so easily reduced.
- roenxi 4y ago
  Let's look at the last 3 superpowers in history and compare the USSR to the US, or China to the US. Which of the 3 would be best described as an imperial nationalist? - USSR voluntarily disbanded. Moskow currently can't even assert military dominance over the Ukraine. Sole claim to global relevancy for Moscow is the soviet era nuclear arsenal. - China might practically be able to invade a small island off their coastline, but it isn't obvious that they could tolerate the backlash. The quality of their army is largely unknown because they haven't used it seriously in decades. - US has flattened multiple Middle Eastern countries in the last few decades, the world meets in New York to conduct diplomacy regardless and barely makes an issue of this. Has had a comparable number of soldiers stationed in Germany to the German army (at least it did recently, I think that changed under either Trump or Biden). The US dollar is used for international trade and the people who move off it get invaded for unrelated reasons. Technically they did voluntarily shrink their empire too though, because of that business with the Phillipines, but they are still the undisputed military hegemon and set the pace of global affairs. By far the most invasive worldwide spy network. Now this may well be a good state of affairs but the parliamentary democracy is not the timid and delicate flower in this picture. It is the most imperialist of the 3, by far. I can speak in sweeping generalisations because this is a big, obvious and hard to miss state of affairs. Democracies are just more effective than dictators at building and maintaining an empire.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    > because of that business with the Phillipines At the time, the Philippines had the same status as Hawaii. Hawaii was a non-state during WW2 that became a full state 14 years later, and the Phillippines became independent instead. I wonder who has it better now? Who would like to switch places with the other one?
    - propagandist 4y ago
      Let's ask the opposite question. Why was Hawaii absorbed but not the Philippines? Who's in Hawaii today that's happy with the status quo, and whose sacred lands are being turned into a road? Did the native population choose to join as a state or was that imposed on them?
      - credit_guy 4y ago
        > or was that imposed on them How exactly imposed? A candidate state needs to hold a referendum in order to ask for statehood status. If the people of the territory don't want to join, nobody will force them to join. It's the other thing that happens: people of a territory want to join and Congress does not grant them statehood. Just ask Puerto Rico.
        zoolily 4y ago
        Remember that "them" above refers to the native population in Hawaii in the post it's taken from. The reason the referendum succeeded was a big decline in the native population combined with large amounts of immigration from the U.S. Today only 6% of the population are native Hawaiians or 21% if we include part-Hawaiians. That population has doubled since Hawaii became a state.
        credit_guy 4y ago
        > The reason the referendum succeeded was a big decline in the native population combined with large amounts of immigration from the U.S. Is that a fact, or just your conjecture? All I could find was that in 1940 about 46 thousand people voted in favor of becoming a state, and 22 thousand against. Are you saying there's evidence the native population voted preponderantly against? In any case, it took 19 years from that referendum until the Congress approved the statehood. There was a final vote in Hawaii to approve the statehood. There were 132 thousand yeses vs 8 thousand nos. Was that a fake vote, like the Russians just did in the occupied territories in Ukraine? [1] https://guides.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/c.php?g=105252&p=687125 https://guides.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/c.php?g=105252&p=687...
jemmyw 4y ago
However, democracies tend to only fuel popular wars, and wars of aggression lose popularity when information is freely available.
- kornhole 4y ago
  Check out Jeffrey Sach's recent take on that. You can skip right to 4:50. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP_SpW-DyQg&t=318 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP_SpW-DyQg&t=318 He was instrumental in the neo liberal conversion of the Soviet union.
  - hackandthink 4y ago
    This is great: "Jeffrey stop, I'm your moderator, it's enough" ("democratically at home and ruthlessly imperialist abroad")
- pauljurczak 4y ago
  Democracies have powerful propaganda machines to make wars of aggression popular...
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > However, democracies tend to only fuel popular wars, and wars of aggression lose popularity when information is freely available. What's your basis for saying that so generally? It's probably true for a war of aggression that you're losing, but I'm not sure if it would hold for one you're winning. Also, I suspect you're also probably making an assumption that a democracy will invariably settle on an ideological outlook similar to elites in present-day western democracies, but I don't think that's very solid.
  - jemmyw 4y ago
    I did actually write a second sentence about when you're losing, but removed it because I needed to think about it. I think there's some contextual stuff to consider - I was thinking about this specific situation. It's not going very well for Russia, especially for their soldiers. If people are dying in an unnecessary war then they'd vote to stop it, and one party is likely to capitalise on that in a democracy. Second is maintaining the propaganda about Ukraine in the face of free information. It's not like the Vietnam war where culture and language was very different and other, especially at that time when people were not so globally connected. It's more like America invading Canada. Similar language, shared culture and history, large numbers of people of each country in each country etc. I think if the war could be talked about in Russia there would be a pressing question: why the f are we there, what will we even gain? The gain is for Putin to maintain power, a democracy wouldn't see any benefit. Maybe there would be another reason, but that's not what we're discussing.
rossdavidh 4y ago
Democracies are totally capable of starting wars, but there is a stable way out when they have made a big mistake; the next election. George W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson both lost popularity, and then their faction lost power, because they had picked a bad war to fight in. It doesn't mean the next faction is any smarter or wiser, but it does at least provide them the opportunity to pretend that they would never have gotten us into such a mess, and exit (although in this respect, Obama was far wiser than Nixon). It's largely forgotten now, but the first President Bush had gotten the U.S. into a war in Somalia, but the incoming President Clinton knew a quagmire when he saw one, and was able to cut and run quickly, because he was not (as Putin is now) forced to pretend that it had been a good idea in the first place. If there were a parliamentary way for Putin to exit stage left, Russia could just admit that they've lost and get out. Because they do not and cannot, they must try to find some way to pretend that it can still be won.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > It's largely forgotten now, but the first President Bush had gotten the U.S. into a war in Somalia, but the incoming President Clinton knew a quagmire when he saw one, and was able to cut and run quickly, because he was not (as Putin is now) forced to pretend that it had been a good idea in the first place. This is an extremely extremely extremely misleading characterization of a United Nations humanitarian action that started after Clinton was elected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Task_Force "American troops had first entered Somalia during the Bush administration in response to a humanitarian crisis and civil war. Though initially involved to assist humanitarian efforts, the Clinton administration shifted the objectives set out in the mission and began pursuing a policy of attempting to neutralize Somali warlords." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton#Somalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton#Somalia It's essentially the complete opposite of what you said.
rhaway84773 4y ago
If this war had begun under a parliamentary democracy (that in itself is not certain but let’s assume it’s the case for the sake of argument), the government would almost certainly have been forced to find ways to pull out of it before the “partial mobilization”. There’s no way a parliamentary democracy would have survived that.
- roenxi 4y ago
  There is a lot of truth to that. But I do want to raise the obvious point that the War in Afghanistan [0] was almost seen buying alcohol legally. Democracies are great at sustaining long aggressive wars despite it being a really stupid thing to do (the US destroyed a lot of its own wealth & the opportunity costs were jaw dropping). There was never really a question of the US army being unable to achieve military objectives. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001-2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001-2021)
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    I agree with most of your points in this thread, but with regard to Afghanistan the objectives of the US Army were frankly really nebulous and ill-defined to the point of total confusion. We'd waver back and forth between "destroy the enemy with no mercy" and "be nice, don't shoot unless shot at, make sure to talk about schools and democracy to the Taliban". In the same general parameters of your critique on this post, if the US had actually treated Afghanistan like an Imperial Colony I actually think the outcome would've been much more palatable to all involved. Treat the country like a colony, and make them pay taxes for administering their security, forcibly educate (meaning: re-educate) the populous, hand off administration of the government in pieces over about 50 years as the civil infrastructure and information coordination systems mature. Alas, this would've been maybe 10x more expensive than what we already paid, and for reasons that should be obvious the model we used in Japan and Germany really doesn't quite fit in that place.
  - watwut 4y ago
    The war in Afghanistan has very few American deaths. Like, less then 2500 soldiers dead total over 20 years. All of them professionals, literally none of them mobilized. The impact on USA was minor to non existent. Impact of this war on Russia is massive.
amadeuspagel 4y ago
> A very significant reason the world transitioned from British Empire to American Totally Not An Empire All These Military Bases Are Normal is because they are the most successful decentralised parliamentary systems. The US has a presidential system, not a parliamentary system. The US implemented parliamentary systems in Germany and Japan, likely at least in part to preempt further imperialism from these countries. Of course the parliamentary system has advantages other then that.

stevenalowe 4y ago

Hurry up and make it happen then.

smegsicle 4y ago
can't wait to see what's next! solve et coagula

dilyevsky 4y ago

And i begin to ponder a life of billionaire philanthropist. If they coulda they woulda

pauljurczak 4y ago

Russia’s elite begins to ponder the future after Democratic defeat in midterm elections...

my_city 4y ago

Yay, propaganda! I sure love my cup of coffee and my slice of propaganda in a saturday morning.

nathanaldensr 4y ago
Isn't it grand? I come to HN just to read this kind of crap, too!

cyber_kinetist 4y ago

I mean, isn't Putin really just a puppet for those oligarchs? For them, the sole reason to replace Putin is to blame him for the war when it fails. Things will be probably the same with/without Putin (like when nothing really changed after Yeltsin got replaced by him).

sidibe 4y ago
Oligarch is the wrong word because they have no power. In the 90's there were real oligarchs like Khodorovsky, but they've all been replaced as business and government leaders by childhood friends/ex-KGB/St. Petersburg mayor's office colleagues of Putin.

hackandthink 4y ago

This article is really bad and self defeating: "This does not mean that Mr Putin is about to bow out, be overthrown or fire a nuclear weapon." I don't like Putin as well, but there's no analysis in this article.

foverzar 4y ago

> But the mixture of his initial, if limited, military advances, the absence of an economic collapse in Russia, and early attempts at peace negotiations calmed nerves. (Heavy drinking may also have helped; it became so acute that Mr Putin started to complain in public about alcoholism.) Aaaand that's the part where I can't take it seriously anymore. Reasoning with these kinds of stereotypes is just unprofessional.

simonblack 4y ago

Putin is probably more pro-West than any of the likely alternatives. He spent a lot of his time in Germany before the Soviet Union collapsed. The next guy is very likely to be more hard-line than Putin. Be careful what you wish for.

Nasreddin_Hodja 4y ago
> The next guy is very likely to be more hard-line than Putin. Yes, there is big chance that it will be this guy https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmTofb6peQmSFekcFAnufAsyQEm7mbbdqRTCiQ76dKdPLn/putin-vs-ramzan.webp https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmTofb6peQmSFekcFAnufAsyQEm...