I mean, the big picture here isn't "Putin wants to get concessions from the US." The big picture is "absolutists want to discredit democracy."
Why would they want to do that when democracy (or, at least, a dysfunctional mockery of democracy that has devolved into a quasi-theocratic plutocracy) has crippled America so usefully?
Because it's not about the US! Putin didn't really declare war against the post-cold war order until Ukraine and the sanctions that followed. Challenged it occasionally, sure. Crossed it, definitely. But after the sanctions it became a matter of survival.
The entire foreign policy apparatus of the United States, working in unison on the sole task of overthrowing Putin's Russia, would take at
best years to overthrow or even meaningfully weaken Putin. Most likely anything they could do wouldn't be done by the time Putin's successor takes power. It is not even within the
theoretical power of the United States to destroy Russia. But political protests could end that within a year. Or a month, or a week, depending on how strong or big they are. Not that they are about to, but they
could, which is more than the US can do without military action.
What would Putin get if Trump conceded the US position on foreign policy issue where the US and Russia have butted heads? Gets a stabler ally in Syria, gets some oil in the Arctic? Useless prestige projects at best.
No there are two things Putin actually needs: removal of sanctions and the weakening of Europe. Europe is the existential threat to Russia: economically and ideologically. Sanctions are an attack on the regime itself. And Trump is in a good position to give him those two things (not a
great position: he can't remove sanctions on his own. But nice to have.).
It's worth pointing out that there are very few countries in the world today that don't make pretensions of being democratic, and painting Putin as wanting to discredit democracy is about as ridiculous as saying that the various international terrorist organizations target America because they hate freedom.
I could not disagree more, and moreover it's very difficult to explain Putin's recent actions from the perspective of a non-ideological geopolitical realist perspective. Possible probably, but very difficult.
Pretensions of democracy only matter to countries where you accept the pretensions or else. North Korean democracy is not nor has ever been for the sake of North Koreans, it has and always will be for the sake of the international sphere. Pretensions of democracy exist
precisely because of the power of democracy as an idea: it is a sign that even the most authoritarian states must bend the knee, even in the most trivial of ways, to "people power".
Democracy, liberalism, anti-corruption: these are the existential threats to the Putin Regime. Consider North Korean Democracy for a minute. If Kim declared democracy over tomorrow, what would happen? Internally: Nothing. Externally: Condemnation. So why doesn't he do it? He doesn't need to. North Korea has a big, autocratic neighbor to look up to, idolize, and corrupt democracies to demoize; democracies which (and this is an
essential point to remember) are on the other side of a heavily armed DMZ to the south, and the ocean to the east. All is well. What if, purely hypothetically, China was a democracy in the style of South Korea or Japan (hell, even one in the style of Vietnam)? Than what? Now it's alone in the world. Now suddenly, an ideological noose is tightening. If he does something which outrages democracies in general, economic sanctions could quite literally starve his regime out of existance. Possibly within the course of a year, North Korea would be no more. Even if he doesn't do something like that, his options are suddenly much more limited. Possible courses of action are disappearing. And ideological pressure is increasing. In living memory a global bloc of power was overthrown by its citizens, in even more recent memory an entire region was consumed by revolution, reaction, and civil war over democracy. Even North Korea, the famous "Hermit Kingdom", relies heavily on its one major foreign friend for everything from trade to tourism. Can a country like that, stripped of its friend, survive? Perhaps. But not forever.
With that example, consider Russia. Russia is big, but it is demographically (and culturally) centered on its West. Unlike North Korea, it is not a hermit kingdom, and attempting to become one would likely kill the regime; the sanctions, as flighty and limited and targeted as they were and are, were serious enough to weaken Russia. And if your borders are open, ideas come in. And ideas are dangerous. If Putin declared tomorrow that all elections were cancelled indefinitely, there'd be protests. Protests that probably wouldn't overthrow the government, but protests nonetheless, and any protest has the potential to be something much bigger if it taps into something. Ideas are often that something.
Do you think that it is any accident that Russia has autocracies, authoritarian regimes, and things of that nature almost everywhere on its borders? Central Asia almost all have the same leaders since independence, the Chinese border is friendly enough and empty besides, the Caucuses learned the price of disobedience in 2006 with the invasion of Georgia and are too weak to pose any sort of threat anyway, etc. But Europe is the weakness. And what a weakness it is! Huge, economically successful, committed (until recently, perhaps) to a single vision of democracy, anti-corruption, etc. etc. all that stuff. Even if it was all entirely bullshit lies, they are still powerful. Why did Putin invade Ukraine? It wasn't because Putin looked at an up-to-date map for the first time in the Cold War and remembered that Crimea exists. It was because of Ukraine's revolution. Ukraine had a revolution and was breaking away from the Russian bloc. So why does invading Crimea solve that? It doesn't. Instead, it rendered Ukraine embroiled in a long civil war and unable to realize any of the aspirations of the revolution. And why does
that matter?
Revolution. Revolution only happens when people have a sense that things
could be different. Revolution in the modern sense only happened once without that ideal present, and every revolution since then has had had either earlier revolutions or nearby ones. If I had to guess, I'd say it's the only thing that Putin worries about (that, and his immortality machine breaking down). Putin was in the KGB when all of Eastern Europe fell. Much has been made in the foreign policy papers and academics about how Putin worried that Russia was being "choked off" and "cut back" by things like the EU and NATO. Why? Because to him, he's seen a tide of revolution sweep slowly closer to Russia, taking out more and more of the map along with it, and Putin is determined to stop it by any means necessary. That means more Le Pens and Trumps.
And has been pointed out, "democracy" as structured in the US is looking daily like an increasingly lurid trainwreck, and maintains only marginally more responsiveness to public opinion than that of many authoritarian regimes. The critical difference for the US is that the government doesn't engage in nearly as much active suppression, it has a more passive population with access to more convincing outlets for political theater, and there are fewer glaring social and economic problems that spur unrest.
Here's the thing: My guess is that Putin doesn't actually give a shit how things are in the US, or whether US democracy is in a great position or a mediocre one. He doesn't live here, he doesn't live near here, the US could be an Islamic Caliphate for all the direct effect it has on Russia. My problem with your argument is that it's ultimately Amero-centric: most people in the world probably don't care all that much how democratic the US is unless it directly affects them, and even when they do (and perhaps more importantly,) they have limited and imperfect information about the US. They hear stories on the news, from friends, on social media, pictures, etc. So it's ultimately not about the direct quality of American democracy, it's about the
perception of it. Their perception of democracy as a whole is what matters, since its democracy as a whole mixed with local grievances which cause revolutions. What Putin has done has not been some glorious coup which elected Trump (unless Mueller comes out with something like that, and he hasn't yet). Most reports even say that it's not clear whether Russia actually tipped the election or not. What Putin has done has undermined the image of America at home and abroad, and weakened US leadership.
It's way too easy in this thread, I think, to be
too cynical about things like this. Too much forgetting about how ideals and grievances have overthrown so many, many governments across the planet. Too close to messy realities and not the idealism that makes people do things in the first place. And quite recently, too. Arab Spring may have been a failure, but just because it failed doesn't mean it wasn't a thing. All of Eastern Europe (and sometimes multiple times in the same country, for christ's sake!), the middle east... is that not surely the reason why China has recently put so much effort behind the establishing of "Xi Jinping Thought" as a thing? Why it has thrown so much effort recently in making propaganda courses mandatory for its students? China seeks to maintain an ideal which would could guard it against liberalism. Putin, by contrast, is defending himself not by pushing an ideal, but by weakening the other.
But that's just a theory. A
Game Theory!ThankyouforReading
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