The Grandstanding Mr. Putin.
Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China, March 8th, 2014
Salaroche


At 5’ 6” (1.68 m.) Napoleon was a short guy; at 5’ 5” (1.65 m.) Putin is shorter still. Could the contracted physical stature of both those guys have anything to do with their humongous desire to dominate the world around them? Maybe. Hitler and Stalin were both a bit taller (5’ 8”, or 1.73 m.), but their slightly higher physical stature didn’t keep them from becoming two of the most murderous guys in history.

My point being, could Putin’s short height be an important part of the reason he’s acting lately like the deranged King Kong of the East? Otherwise, what’s going on in that guy’s mind? Why did he suddenly decide it was high time to start restoring the long-time-gone paper glory of the Soviet Union?

The Ruble is tumbling vis a vis de Euro and the dollar, the Russian stock market is fluctuating between 12 and 6 points below its level just about a week ago, French, American, German, and British businesses and banks are edgy about the situation, and Russian economists are raising red flags, not as a pro-communist gesture, but as signs of warning that things may not be going so well for Russia following Putin’s land-grab ventures.

Putin keeps stoking nationalist sentiments in Russia and in the Russian-speaking areas of the Ukraine and the respective populations are responding as expected with accentuated nationalist fervor. As a result, Putin’s reputation as a strong man keeps growing thereby making Putin’s ego the only real beneficiary in this whole affair. Is this geopolitical move, then, just a personal PR stunt from the part of Putin? May well be.

But we have to hand it to him. In the short run he’s proven once again how cunning he can be and how well he can play his cards at the geopolitics table. He cites Scotland and Catalonia as examples of secessionist movements comparable to the one he has instigated in Crimea and he rightly contradicts Obama’s claim that the government in Kiev is a democratic one (it isn’t). A total fool, therefore, he really isn’t either.

Along those lines, he knows quite well how intertwined Russian and Western economies have grown since the demise of the Soviet Union, so he’s perfectly aware that the West will go to great lengths of tolerance to his abuses before deciding to impose serious trade bans on Russia. More than half of Gazprom’s shareholders, for example, Russia’s largest company by market capitalization, are Americans. How eager would you think those Americans would be to start a trade war with Russia knowing it would bring Gazprom’s stocks tumbling to the ground? Not really.

No doubt the whole world would suffer in the event of a US/EU-Russia trade war, but the Russian economy would probably suffer the most. Russia’s economy is heavily dependent on trade with the West, particularly with the EU. Nearly half of Russia’s exports, most of which consisting of gas and oil, end up serving European consumers. This means that a big chunk of Russia’s revenue would be lost or heavily decreased in the event of a trade war. And what about those oligarchs that have billions of dollars’ worth of assets in the West and billions of dollars in cash stashed in Western Banks? They wouldn’t be very happy to risk losing all of that.

But autocratic leaders a la Putin aren’t usually concerned about those little things. Their main concern is usually to stay in power at any price. Putin, on the other hand, seems to be a special case. Regardless of the lunacy of his present international shenanigans, his dislocated thought processes still include a good level of rational irrationality. In a recent interview with a Russian TV station he stated Russian troops weren’t going anywhere into Ukraine beyond Crimean borders. That softening of his position is probably resulting from the economic repercussions that are beginning to be felt on the Russian economy, although he certainly didn't go as far as heeding Obama’s advice to order Russian troops back to their bases.

So, with all of the above in mind, who has really benefitted from this whole affair? Nothing seems to have been gained by anybody anywhere in the world as a result of Putin’s imperialist ambitions in Ukraine. Some people might say that Crimea’s ethnic Russians will end up benefiting from annexation by Russia, but how good would that really be in the long run now that the whole world knows that Putin and the present Russian political elites aren’t really willing to join the international community of nations?

Trying to restore the false, pseudo-glory of the Soviet Union is not going to get anybody anywhere forward. As Angela Merkel allegedly said, Putin seems to be living in a reality quite separate from that of its neighbors to the West. The same could be said of the leaders of that other post-communist behemoth to the East, China, but Russia has historically had much more cultural affinity with Europe than China will probably ever have. Why, then, is Putin displaying such resentment to Western ways? Where does his need to flaunt the international community, particularly the Western one, come from?

There’s really no ideology behind Putin’s moves in Ukraine and there aren’t really any economic gains for Russia or anybody else in it either. So, why do this at this point in time? Well, in the eyes of this observer, sheer egotistical, demagogic, pseudo-nationalistic desire to stay in power seems to be the motor behind Putin’s actions, which makes some of us come back to the question of his physical stature.

From that perspective, I’m hereby making it clear to Mr. Putin that none of this is going to make him a single inch taller, on the contrary, the older he gets the more his body is going to shrink. And, certainly, the more he continues down this ominous expansionist road the more his political stature as a responsibe world leader will diminish in the eyes of the world and in those of history as well.

Unfortunately, inferiority complexes such as the one he seems to suffer from tend to blur the vision of their hosts, thereby eroding the depth of their historical perspective and making them do regrettable, often dangerous deeds such as the one he’s carrying out in the Ukraine.

All of Russia’s Western trade partners are unanimously but with slightly different degrees of intensity telling Putin that his actions in the Ukraine are unacceptable, yet he insists in flaunting them all, thereby daringly trying to impress the world with the power of his autocracy. From this perspetive, it seems quite suitable to quote the saying stating that "showing off is only a fool’s idea of glory".

Salaroche