#336: Russia & the Futility of Empire

Russia wanted to return to the greatness of Soviet or imperial days. It’s a lesson that we need to learn from what’s happening to Russia now.

I saw a video today where someone showed a scene from a Russian supermarket where single slices of bread were wrapped. This aligns with a lot of videos that are out recently where people show how insane the price increases for especially food and other things are. We are seeing Russian infrastructure failing because of lack of investments and corruption.

This is what happens if you sacrifice the substance of your country for the pursuit of some imagined greatness. This is what happens when instead of focusing on your people, listening to your people and actually doing right by them, you just focus on your absolute leader’s fixation on history.

Now when you look at what Vladimir Putin has done, he has been doing this very systematically ever since he took power. He made his name with the war against Chechnya. He continued with military expansion and with soft power, aggressive soft power expansion. There may have been a time when he could have been an ally of the West, but by now I would argue that this has all been a show.

Some people say he has changed. Well, I don’t know him personally, but if you see the pattern that he’s been operating on, he’s been operating on attacking Ukraine definitely and other states around the rim of what Russia currently is.

There has been a concerted campaign to blame Gorbachev for what happened to the Soviet Union even though Gorbachev only reacted to the internal contradictions and the failure of the socialist system. The Soviet Union couldn’t have been saved and two blows ended the Soviet Union: Chernobyl, which was caused by dilettantism and corruption within Soviet socialism, and the war in Afghanistan which was an example where the Soviet Union overextended itself and could not eventually succeed, partially also because the Americans helped that result.

But at a certain point, you can’t just blame the leadership. You have to acknowledge the responsibility of each and every person in the country, especially if they did enjoy for a while a more or less democratic system. I mean the Soviet Union did fall, Russia was born again and there was a brief phase of democracy.

Now you could argue how can a people that have never known democracy actually practice it successfully and that is kind of the kicker there. But other nations have pulled this off too. When you look at countries like Poland, a country that has suffered immensely throughout history at the hands of both Russia and Germany. When you look at a country like Ukraine now, which is suffering right now immensely at the hands of Russia, you see thriving democracies.

Ukraine is, just think about this, while it is under brutal attack by Russia, reforming its country, addressing corruption, and trying to strengthen its democracy. There’s a mistake we all make. When we are hearing in the news about corruption cases in Ukraine, when you hear about corruption cases it means that people are addressing corruption.

Hearing about corruption is a good thing because corruption is everywhere. Human beings are always in danger of being corrupt and their institutions are in danger of corruption. Which is why democratic countries have separation of powers and checks and balances.

Where you don’t hear about corruption in countries like Russia, you have to automatically assume it’s there because it’s just so unnatural. And we know it’s there. It is like a big pyramid scheme.

So during the brief time of democracy, Russia did not learn the lesson and Russian people let it happen. Let it happen that Putin grew in power, was reelected even though he shouldn’t have been anymore after the Medvedev pause. You know, you can’t really trust most of those polls, but you do hear that many ordinary Russians do support the government. They may not support the war, but they support the idea of extending Russia imperially at the cost of Ukraine.

Part of me understands that because I grew up under Soviet propaganda just as well. In socialist East Germany, that was what we were told. I had to mentally adjust to the idea that Ukraine is not somehow a variant of Russia. But you know, you have to learn and relearn all your life.

Russian propaganda has been very successful and so has Chinese propaganda and we’ve maybe become too used to that. One part of that propaganda is that Russia is a big country, a strong country and undefeatable.

No one wants to conquer Russia. Ukraine needs to defeat Russia and it will, because while Russia has a huge geographic size, its economy is the size of Italy or Texas. And that should tell you something.

Ukraine is much smaller, but Ukraine does have the support of the West. And here’s where we need to maybe distinguish between rhetoric and actions.

There are no peace negotiations happening right now. What you have is a Russian disinformation campaign that Russia pretends to negotiate. I’m almost thankful to Lavrov for exposing all of that with him saying, “No, no, no. We want all this territory there. Yeah, we can have peace, but only under Russian condition of complete surrender of Ukraine.”

Lavrov lies about whatever deal may have been made in Alaska. Well, I made a video about commenting on it. You saw Trump’s face after the at the end of the meeting. There was no deal. I mean, if there had been a deal, we all know Donald Trump. He would have gone out and said, “We have the biggest and greatest deal ever.” No.

There was a press conference. Trump looked as quiet as could possibly be, said only the bare minimum. Putin did his thing about history and all that nonsense and then left before the meal could be served. There was no deal. There were no agreements. Just as there was no agreement that NATO shouldn’t expand into potential victim countries, victim countries victim to Russian aggression. Russia keeps lying about NATO being the problem. NATO is not the problem if you don’t want to attack anybody.

NATO only becomes your problem if you want to attack its members. But it’s the Russian imperial mindset that all this territory belongs to Russia. This belongs, this pertains, by the way, also to East Germany. Everywhere where Russian or Soviet possessions lay, imperial Russian attitudes still claim that’s theirs.

Now, could it apply to the Oregon coastline? Anyhow, we are seeing right now that Russian propaganda is in a mode of overdrive and that always happens when they’re not winning.

What they’re focused on is destroying Ukraine’s capacity to rebuild, to live. What they’re not seeing is, as horrifying as that may all be towards Ukraine, Ukraine has allies. Ukraine has friends and Ukraine may even eventually come out stronger after the war because the same thing will happen to it that happens to other countries destroyed in wars. The rebuilding creates a much more modern infrastructure.

And there are some European countries like Hungary or rather the Hungarian government that are already afraid of Ukrainian entry to the EU. They know that Ukraine after the war will be stronger. They know that Ukraine will prosper.

But Russia is right now damaging its economy. Listen to economists, listen to finally the news coming out of how badly Russia is damaging itself.

And so again, if you focus your policy on just looking at your land mass, at your history, at your legacy, and measure the legacy by size rather than by substance, by the happiness of the people, by how your regions are doing, how your cities are doing, how you have actual capacity in case of a real attack. If you ignore all of these things, you’re failing. Russia is failing right now. They know it. The leadership knows it. Maybe Putin doesn’t know. Maybe he really doesn’t know. But, you know, this idea of, well, maybe he just doesn’t know. That’s not an excuse. He set that in motion. Many Russians agreed with it and they’re getting a version of what they wanted. They may say this is not what we wanted, but you have to think things through.

If you want imperial greatness, think that through. These days are over. It doesn’t work anymore. In a globally interconnected economy, greatness comes from allies, from friends, from connections, from people. You need to cultivate your people and not send them to die unnecessary deaths.

Ceterum censeo Ucrainam esse defendam. Слава Україні!