I wanted to bring this article at The Hill by Alexander J. Motyl to your attention:
Analysts of Russia differ about many things, but the most important difference concerns their interpretation of the roots of Russia’s ongoing aggression. One side argues that Russian history and political culture are to blame — or, to put it more simply, uniquely Russian characteristics are the cause of Russian aggression. The other side argues that the causes are not uniquely Russian, but typical of the behavior of certain kinds of states, regimes, societies and leaders.
Unsurprisingly, historians of Russia and Ukraine tend to fall into the first camp, while political scientists with a comparative bent tend to fall into the second camp. Equally unsurprisingly, the first camp sees no easy solutions to Russia’s current behavior, precisely because it’s just a continuation of an age-old pattern of Russian behavior inspired by the inalterable Russian soul.
Dr. Motyl goes on to explain how the first is the most likely explanation. As should be no surprise I agree with him.
The implication of this is that the emphasis on Putin is mistaken. When Putin ultimately leaves the scene his successor may be even worse. The alternatives for dealing with this are limited. The present strategy appears to be to divide Russia into warring enclaves. Another alternative, one that I would prefer, would be containment. However, unlike Dr. Motyl I think the borders of that containment would be the Polish border and the borders of the Baltic states. For that to happen those countries would need to spend a considerably larger proportion of their GDP on defense than is the case at present. I don’t see their relying on U. S. funding to support Russian containment as a winning strategy.
I’m in the first camp too – with some caveats.
For the caveats, I would point to the “behavior of certain kinds of states, regimes, societies and leaders,” in this case, modern autocratic leaders, which tend to – over time – engage in coup-proofing activities that leave them isolated, vulnerable to misinformation, and which makes the state apparatus strong but brittle.
So when/if it finally breaks and Putin dies, there is no obvious succession and the chance for some kind of civil war is not trivial. This is, IMO, fundamentally different from what has been the case historically under the USSR, which, as a Supreme Soviet, did the politics to pick a new leader, and the Romanovs, which worked on hereditary succession. Today it’s not so clear.
The question is what happens then? My claim would be that whatever succeeds Putin will not be a government more liberal or democratic than the present Russian state.
Agree with #1. The Russians were always going to try to reclaim Ukraine and the rest of the former empire, they just needed to fabricate an excuse. However, that doesnt make Putin an innocent who is just bending to the forces of Russian history. He is an authoritarian who condones and utilizes aggression and immoral acts for his own benefit. Just because Russia might not have anyone better to offer doesnt make him good.
Steve
Steve
Without Putin the Russians would put in a different authoritarian. That’s one of the things that vexed me in all the breastbeating in the West when Navalny died. Navalny’s support in Russia never topped 20%. Typically, it was in single digits.
“My claim would be that whatever succeeds Putin will not be a government more liberal or democratic than the present Russian state.”
Could be worse than that – chaos.
“Navalny’s support in Russia never topped 20%.”
Navalny was also never in favor of returning Crimea to Ukraine until last year, after he’d been in prison for a while.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/03/07/navalnys-policy-shift-on-crimea-may-be-too-little-too-late-a80396
Or the Russians could be reacting to the aggressions around the world of a paranoid and heavily armed United States surrounding them with military strike capability, and with a recent history of forced regime interventions in nations with cultures they do not understand .