Hint: Wandel durch Handel- a fiction that was constructed to make everyone feel better about buying hydrocarbons from an autocratic kleptocracy.
Introduction: The Dope Dealer and the Long Game
The Dealer Never Left
The Peace Dividend was an illusion. While the West celebrated the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the efforts to rebuild the Soviet Empire never truly ceased. Unlike the dramatic reckonings that swept through Eastern Europe—where East German leaders faced trial, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu met his end before a firing squad on Christmas Day 1989—Russia experienced no such catharsis.
Those who controlled the levers of power before 1991 simply reconstituted their authority afterward. The old guard remained, their critics silenced in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Without accountability, they were free to continue business as usual, including wielding their weapon of choice: fossil fuel blackmail.
The Early Warning Signs: A Weapon Forged in the Cold War
The Soviet Union’s use of energy as a political weapon wasn’t born with Putin—it was a strategy refined and distilled over decades. The USSR cut off oil supplies to Yugoslavia in 1948 for defying Stalin, to Israel in 1956 during the Suez Crisis, and to China in the mid-1960s during the Sino-Soviet split. The pattern was established early: energy was never just a commodity but an instrument of coercion.
By 1981, even the CIA recognised what was coming. A recently declassified report from that year predicted that the gas pipeline projects would become a “financial bonanza” for the Soviets, generating $19-24 billion annually in hard currency—money that would fund purchases of Western arctic-design equipment essential for Siberian gas development. The report presciently warned that this would give the USSR leverage over Western Europe, particularly regarding NATO military modernisation and economic sanctions.
The Soviets weren’t subtle about their intentions. When the West considered sanctions over the 1979 Afghanistan invasion, a 1980 TASS commentary explicitly threatened that Western Europe and Japan would “risk losing fuel supplies” if they joined the boycott. The message was clear: oppose us politically, freeze in the dark.
The Pipeline of Dependence: Building the Infrastructure of Control
The relationship between Russian energy and German industry began innocuously in 1955, when Chancellor Konrad Adenauer traveled to Moscow to establish diplomatic relations. But the true turning point came in 1970 with Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. Germany struck its Faustian bargain: German steel pipes for Soviet natural gas.
By 1973, Russian gas was flowing into both East and West Germany, arriving just as the oil crisis made alternatives to Middle Eastern petroleum desperately attractive. What began as 1.1 billion cubic meters in 1973 exploded to 25.7 billion cubic meters by 1993. The numbers tell a story of deepening addiction: by 1989, the Soviet Union supplied one-third of West Germany’s gas demand. By 2020, Germany had become Russia’s prize customer, consuming 20% of all Russian gas exports and depending on Russia for half its total natural gas needs.
The pipeline network expanded relentlessly, each new artery deepening dependence:
The Yamal Pipeline (2006): Threading through Belarus and Poland
Nord Stream 1 (2012): The Baltic Sea route, bypassing troublesome transit countries
Nord Stream 2 (2021): Completed but never operational—the IV never delivered its dope
The Perfect Storm: How Europe Walked Into the Trap
Multiple factors conspired to deepen Europe’s vulnerability. By 2008, the EU was importing 50% of its energy requirements, with projections showing this would rise to 70% within decades. European oil and gas reserves were depleting rapidly—only Norway (1.4% of world gas reserves) and the Netherlands (1%) provided any meaningful domestic supply.
Coal remained abundant—Poland, Serbia, Germany, and the Czech Republic held 47 billion tons of recoverable reserves—but the Kyoto Protocol’s emissions targets made coal politically toxic. Natural gas became the “clean” alternative, despite creating dangerous dependencies.
Nuclear power could have provided energy independence for Germany, but social resistance was fierce. Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear (which was a fixture in German policy before Fukushima Daiichi) by 2023 stands in stark contrast to France’s post-1973 nuclear strategy. The comparison is stark: France’s energy mix includes about 70% nuclear, does at times use substantial LNG imports, due to reactor maintenance and other shutdowns prior to the year 2022. Germany’s mix was 29.9% nuclear and 61.8% fossil fuel during the same period. France imported 40 billion cubic meters of gas; Germany imported 85 billion. Essentially, Germany spent 1% of its GDP annually just on natural gas imports from Russia.
Renewable energy remained prohibitively expensive at the time—wind power cost 8 euro cents per kWh compared to 3.2 cents for gas or nuclear. Economic logic drove Europe deeper into Russian dependence.
The Mutual Dependence Myth
European politicians repeatedly claimed that “the EU and Russia are mutually dependent.” This comforting fiction ignored brutal realities. Energy demand in developed economies is price inelastic—people will pay almost any price rather than freeze in darkness. Meanwhile, Russia accumulated hydrocarbon revenues in its oil stabilisation fund, money it didn’t need for immediate spending. Russia could endure revenue interruptions far longer than Europe could tolerate energy disruptions.
By 2030, projections showed 80% of EU natural gas would be imported, with Russia providing up to 60%—one-fifth of the EU’s total energy mix. Combined with oil imports, Russia would control one-third of EU energy. Seven former Warsaw Pact states relied on Russia for over 99% of their natural gas. The dealer had achieved total market dominance.
2022: The Mask Comes Off
When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, Putin finally played the card he’d been holding for decades. Using his decree forcing payments in rubles as a pretext, Russia systematically cut off “unfriendly” nations:
April 2022: Poland and Bulgaria became the first victims, cut off for refusing ruble payments. Poland’s coal reserves and LNG terminals cushioned the blow, but Bulgaria, 90% dependent on Russian gas, scrambled for alternatives.
May 2022: Finland lost all gas flows after refusing ruble payments—conveniently timed with its NATO application. Denmark and the Netherlands followed, with Gazprom citing payment disputes.
June 2022: The big three—Germany, Italy, and France—saw dramatic reductions. Nord Stream 1 flows to Germany dropped 40%, then further. Italy’s Eni saw 15% cuts despite opening ruble accounts. France experienced erratic, unpredictable flows. Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic all reported significant reductions.
Each cut came with transparent lies about “maintenance” and “technical issues.” Italian Prime Minister Draghi called it what it was: “A political use of gas exists just as there is a political use of wheat.”
The Reckoning
As Europe scrambled to reach 80% gas storage by November 2022—with most countries far below target—the full cost of the Peace Dividend delusion became clear. For fifty years, Europe had traded its energy security for cheap gas and social programmes. The mercantile classes convinced themselves that economic integration would democratise Russia, that buying gas somehow conveyed Western values eastward.
Instead, Europe had funded its own subjugation. Every euro spent on Russian gas had strengthened an authoritarian regime that never abandoned its imperial ambitions. The infrastructure of dependence—those gleaming pipelines under the Baltic—had become chains.
The abandoned Nord Stream 2 pipeline stands as a monument to Western naïveté—billions invested in deepening dependence on a hostile power. Europe now faces the painful withdrawal from its five-decade addiction: rebuilding military defences while simultaneously rewiring its entire energy infrastructure, all while Russian missiles rain down on Ukrainian cities.
The Lesson
The Peace Dividend was a figment of the imagination- conjured up by hopeful but blind politicians. But now the dealer’s true nature stands revealed. When dealing with authoritarian regimes, economic entanglement isn’t a path to peace but a road to coercion. The price of Russian gas was never paid just in euros—it was paid in sovereignty, security, and ultimately, in Ukrainian blood. Will we ever learn? The mercantilist hand is self-serving and blind by design. This hand, which will seek out the cheapest energy and labour EVERY TIME, does not pay the other costs associated with the collateral damage done to the security of Europe and the rest of the West. (We will see how this plays out with the USA and China. As we know, the Chinese have been able to exploit a vast market- the American consumer base, through willing middlemen like Walmart and Amazon, who have become mind bogglingly wealthy as a result of their positions.)
As Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala told the European Parliament amid the crisis: “We may find ourselves in a situation where solidarity between member states is needed more than ever.” That solidarity, so long subordinated to cheap energy, must now be rebuilt from scratch—in a world where the dealer has shown his hand, and the addicts must finally get clean.
Ukraine: One Leg of a Three-Legged Stool
The situation as of 2023
I am writing these lines on 24 February 2023, which is a year to the day since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. An article in the Financial Times dated 23 February 2023, entitled “How Putin blundered into Ukraine—then doubled down,” outlined the decision to invade Ukraine, which was not revealed until the order was given by Putin at 1 AM on February 24 2022. Putin had a habit of consulting only a small handful of close confidants when making major policy decisions, and this modus operandi was not broken by his decision to pull the trigger and roll Russian troops across Ukraine’s border. This surprised just about everyone at the Kremlin, who immediately recognised the invasion would set off western sanctions and put many financial empires at risk. When one of the oligarchs pressed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for an explanation of why Putin had decided to invade after consulting only a small handful of advisers, according to the oligarch, Lavrov replied: “He has three advisers, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.”
Of course, though we cannot know exactly what the intelligent design of the present voyage is, it does appear that Mr. Putin is using some outdated “maps”, dating back to the sixteenth century or thereabouts, and is, at the very least, engaging in some monument building. By now, I hope, you understand that when I say “maps”, I mean information about the environment as it relates to the intelligent design being accomplished. Consulting these personal monuments from the Russian past may indeed lead a person such as Putin down a very outdated road. From the outside it appears that he is working on his legacy to join the three rulers of Russia, mentioned by Lavrov, that have gained monument status. It also appears that Putin has determined what the supporting monuments shall be, including a reconstruction of the core Russian state, i.e., the “East-Slavic Triangle “of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. As I have shown in this book, those who engage in monument building may overlook certain aspects of the immediate environment to accomplish their goals or even sacrifice a group of people for a “good cause.” It is reasonably well-known that there were many Russians, including Putin himself, who viewed the separation of the East Slavic triangle after the breakup of the USSR as a national tragedy. Further, this sequence of events reveals that Putin very likely has made assumptions about the political situation in Ukraine and the predicted response of western nations including NATO allies which may have been based on priors—including the response to his annexation of Crimea.
Fertile Ground for Takeover, by Design.
According to Chatham House, a UK think tank, Crimea was at the dawn of its history a Greek land. Through the course of history, several powers sought to dominate Crimea, including Russia. It was a multicultural protectorate of the Ottoman Empire for over 300 years. Russia invaded Crimea in 1783 and over the following centuries the Crimean demographics changed sharply, with forced outward migrations of the Crimean Tatars and an influx of ethnic Russians. Imperial Russia’s policy of expelling native populations and annexing their lands ultimately resulted in a 2001 census showing 60% consisting of ethnic Russians, 24% Ukrainians, and just 10% Crimean Tatars.
In 2003, Putin gave the order to begin construction of a dam in the Kerch Strait extending to Tuzla Island. The official purpose of the dam was to stave off erosion in the area, but Ukraine accused Russia of attempting to annex the island. Tuzla had been Ukrainian territory since the Soviet era, and Kyiv had owned the rights to the fees from shipping traffic that crosses through the navigable part of the Kerch Strait.
Ukrainian officials have long feared that Crimea could become a target of Russian ambitions. In 2008, according to an article in The Guardian from September of that year, it was suspected that Moscow was distributing Russian passports to ethnic Russians in Crimea, who at that time made up at least 60% of the population of 2 million inhabitants. Disagreements about the basis of Ukrainian identity have been present for some years even in Crimea’s parliament. Pro-Russian politicians internalise the narrative that Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same, whilst Ukrainians seem to have been historically more separatist overall. Russian speakers in Crimea commonly point out that Crimea was given to Ukraine by mistake when Nikita Krushchev transferred the peninsula to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954.
In March 2020, the Moscow Times reported that “Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law prohibiting foreigners from owning land in most parts of Crimea—including the popular coastal areas of Sevastopol, Kerch, Yalta and Yevpatoriya—giving them a year to sell or register their property with a Russian citizen. It came into force on March 20.” The article also relayed the views of Maksim Timochko, a lawyer with the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, who says he believes the law will predominantly affect Ukrainians. “It is meant to physically erase any traces that are left of Ukraine on the peninsula”, he said. Putin’s Decree No. 201 (March 2021) added Crimea and Sevastopol to “the list of Russia’s border territories where foreign citizens, stateless persons, and foreign legal entities cannot own land.” According to the Eurasia Daily Monitor, “since 2014, Russia has been employing traditional Soviet resettlement practices and forcibly changing the demographic composition of the population in Crimea.” This is of course the final stage of a long-term plan to retake Crimea.
The Intersection of Energy Needs and the Black Sea
It has been well established that Russia had been using energy as a lever for many years in Europe, dating back to before warnings by the Reagan administration, but it had not been as well known that Russia used its vast energy resources as an economic and political tool in Ukraine. As outlined by Al-Jazeera, Moscow received weapons and all of Kyiv’s Tu-160s (White Swans), the world’s heaviest and fastest supersonic bomber, as payment for Kyiv’s natural gas debts. As explained by Mansur Mirovalev, “after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Kyiv inherited a colossal arsenal, including nuclear weapons and 19 White Swans, which were based at the Priluky Air Base in northern Ukraine.” These were handed over to Moscow, along with a large number of weapons, under western pressure, “mostly in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, as payment for Kyiv’s multimillion-dollar debt for natural gas.”
Ukraine sought guarantees that the US would intervene in the event of a breach of sovereignty known as the Budapest Memorandum, in exchange for turning over the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal to Russia, and the latter promising to “respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and existing borders and not to use, or threaten to use, force against Ukraine”. [Brookings] Further, one could argue that Russia enlisted the help of Germany to punish Ukraine in the location of the Nord Stream Pipelines, both of which run under the Baltic Sea, and were designed to deny Ukraine transit fees by avoiding a land-based pathway through Ukraine. Now that the Nord Stream pipelines are non-operational due to sabotage, Ukraine has dealt a blow to Russia’s symbiotic energy relationship with Germany, but Russia continues to pummel Ukraine with the very weapons and bombers the west pressured them to hand over.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russia was given a long-term lease on the port of Sevastopol, home to the Black Sea Fleet since the eighteenth century, which included assets such as an airport, police and military facilities, and bay areas. Russia’s lease on the port of Sevastopol was originally scheduled to come to an end in 2017. That such was not the case was the cause of great controversy, and an important factor leading to where we are today with the ongoing conflict.
The Orange Revolution and its Aftermath
We will start this story in 2004. In Ukraine, presidential elections were held to replace the outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, who had already been president for 2 terms and could not, according to the constitution, run again. However, he had no direct successor. There were two contenders for this position: Viktor Yushchenko and Victor Yanukovych. After a controversial initial round of elections in which Yanukovych, who was favoured by Russia, was declared the winner, protests broke out due to the large differences between exit polls and the official results. Ultimately, Ukraine’s Supreme Court broke the deadlock and called for new elections which were held on 26 December 2004. Both candidates ran in the second round of elections.
Vladimir Putin openly supported Viktor Yanukovych and sent large financial resources to support his election campaign. Traditionally, Russia enjoys solid support from the entire eastern part of Ukraine, which is mainly Russian-speaking. Viktor Yushchenko, on the other hand, was a completely western-leaning Ukrainian-speaking politician eager for Ukraine’s accession to the EU. In January 2005, Victor Yushchenko was declared the winner of the election and inaugurated, concluding the 2004 Orange Revolution. By 2010, Victor Yushchenko, plagued by low ratings, was not a contender for that year’s election. This election was between Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko, where Yanukovych won the popular vote. This election was seen as fair and was not followed by protests, and Yanukovych was inaugurated in February 2010. Later in 2010, Yanukovych extended the port lease to the Russian Black Sea Fleet until 2042 at least, in exchange for a 30% discount on natural gas prices under the guise of providing help to the struggling Ukrainian economy. The hurried nature of the deal led to fighting in the Ukrainian parliament.
Viktor Yushchenko, Yanukovych’s pro-western predecessor, said of the agreements, “if society today turns a blind eye to the Kharkiv agreement, it is possible that it will be the biggest loss to our sovereignty and independence.” In 2022 Mykhailo Yezhel, who was the head of the Ministry of Defence in April 2010, was charged with treason for his approval of the deal, after an investigation revealed that he knew the deal threatened Ukraine’s sovereignty. But the dope dealer had finally roped in his addict. Ukraine needs energy and the nearest dealer got the business. The deal was considered the final nail in the coffin of the 2004 Orange Revolution protests, as a chief result of which power was shifted from the presidency to the parliament through a change in the Ukrainian Constitution.
On 1 October 2010, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine overturned this change, naming it unconstitutional. When Yanukovych, long considered a Russian puppet, was ousted after the Maidan Revolution in February 2014, he eventually (and perhaps inevitably) turned up in Russia. Almost immediately thereafter, armed undercover Russian soldiers and pro-Kremlin protesters occupied key checkpoints and administrative facilities in Crimea, and by March of that year it had been illegally annexed by Russia. It was thought that Ukraine would never be able to muster a challenge to regain Crimea. The western response to this annexation was feeble at best. The EU limited its response to restrictions to economic relations with Crimea, including an import ban on goods from Crimea, an export ban for certain items and technologies, and restrictions on trade, tourism, and investment. This was, in effect, a green light to Putin’s designs in Ukraine. Test the concept in Crimea, then go for it. The west was not really paying attention, or so he thought.
As the locals say, whoever controls Sevastopol controls Crimea, and whoever controls Crimea controls the whole Black Sea Basin. Without this military asset and the loss of Ukraine to NATO in general, Russia would lose a key strategic location of access to the Black Sea region, and a key node in the network of the spread of Russia’s influence in the Black Sea Region, which has also provided support to Russian aims in Syria.
Putin’s Personal Monuments?
We can now make the assumption that Crimea has been a personal monument of Putin’s, going back to at least the time shortly after he took office as President of the Russian Federation. This has been borne out by the long-term efforts to take Crimea, ultimately resulting in the illegal annexation in 2014. Putin has continued to push the narrative that the Russians and Ukrainians are one people. His ambitions were stated in his article, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” (2021). Putin maintains that only the borders as they were at the time of the 1922 Union Treaty are legitimate: “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? … In other words, you take what you brought with you.” On the binding effect of a common language within the “motherland:” in his essay Putin claimed that “Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe… the tribes across the vast territory—from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov—were bound together by one language.” Putin went on to describe likewise the binding effect of a common religion:
“The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines our affinity today.”
The throne of Kiev held a dominant position in Ancient Rus. This had been the custom since the late 9th century. The Tale of Bygone Years captured for posterity the words of Oleg the Prophet about Kiev, “Let it be the mother of all Russian cities”. Redefining the borders of the three States, Putin wrote:
Of course, inside the USSR, borders between republics were never seen as state borders; they were nominal within a single country… But in 1991, all those territories, and, which is more important, people, found themselves abroad overnight, taken away, this time indeed, from their historical motherland.
Finally, Putin concludes his statement with a veiled threat that in his view, Ukraine must stay within Russia’s orbit: “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”
The Maidan Revolution, despite meddling from both western powers and the Kremlin, showed at the minimum that the marketplace of ideas was taking shape in Ukraine, and that the people were becoming more oriented towards a future in the democratic west vs. the hardships they endured while under the thumb of the authoritarian east. While the west showed marginal interest in admitting Ukraine into NATO after Yanukovych’s ousting up until the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022, a clear path to NATO membership was outlined in the dialogue and cooperation between NATO and Ukraine in that period of time, but neither membership of the EU nor NATO was being offered at the time of the invasion. It appears that the genuine regret at play here was that of seller’s remorse. A significant number of Ukrainians have been orienting themselves towards democracy and the EU for some time now. It is a cultural beauty contest. The sleek and shiny European–American West vs. the rough, corrupt, and brutal Kremlin with the baggage of the embedded cultural memory of the oppressive Soviet Union and the Holodomor. Sergei Oznobishchev, director of the Strategic Assessment Institute, stated in 2004 that the NATO expansion in the Baltic States and Romania was a diplomatic failure for Russia and driven by a “virtually genetic fear of the Soviet Union and now Russia.” The Ukrainians, keenly aware of their past under the Russian thumb, could easily see their future in Belarus if they allowed Yanukovych and the like to sell them out to Moscow. The main exception to this trend historically was Crimea, the region most likely to flip in response to the Kremlin’s extended campaign to undermine Ukraine’s statehood, with the Donbas region, with its heavily pro-Russian bent, a close second.
Probable additional assumptions made by the Kremlin before and during the invasion: The United States had just pulled out of Afghanistan after a 20-year effort. America was judged to be simply unable or unwilling to achieve its objectives in Afghanistan, and Putin could be led to believe the American citizenry had little to no appetite for conflict with Russia over Ukraine, and coming to the aid of Ukraine would be a hard sell for any American President. Putin’s Assumption: while maintaining that the annexation of Crimea was illegal, the west does not care enough about Ukraine to effectively punish Russia for the annexation.
Language: A third of Ukraine’s population speaks Russian at home. Putin may have assumed that the spread of Russian propaganda has reached the Ukrainian population and has exerted its intended effect due to the work of Viktor Medvedchuk, described as Putin’s right-hand man in Ukraine. Medvedchuk managed Viktor Yanukovych’s campaign for the 2004 election but was accused of vote-rigging and his political fortunes declined. However, he eventually owned three television networks and a number of publications that displayed a consistent pro-Russian bias. Putin’s Assumption: the pro-Russian bias built in to the three Medvedchuk television networks softened anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine and would facilitate acceptance of a Russian puppet government in Ukraine after the invasion.
Religion: Ukrainians were divided by religion, where about 25% were members of the Russian Orthodox Church and fall under the influence of Russian religio-cultural DNA. Approximately 60% were Roman Catholic Ukrainian speakers and were more influenced by western culture. Putin’s Assumption: fully 25% of the population could be regarded as culturally Russian and would not oppose a Russian takeover.
Leadership: The Ukrainian President Zelensky was elected in 2019 more as a protest vote against embedded corruption in the governing class. Zelensky, a comedian and actor, once played a teacher thrust to the presidency after a video of him criticising government corruption went viral. He launched an actual campaign on the success of the sitcom and won with 73% of the actual vote. As president, however, he was seen as weak, politically inexperienced, and not well connected to the established ruling class. Further, his approval rating was typically no more than around 31%. It was doubtful that Zelensky would even remain in Kyiv during an invasion. Putin’s Assumption: abandoned by his government and military when Russian tanks roll across the border, President Zelensky would run to safety when confronted with a Russian invasion.
Military: Much of the Ukrainian military was composed of short-term conscripts and volunteers and had a limited arsenal of outdated Soviet-era weaponry and virtually no functioning Air Force or Navy. Since the Naval base at Sevastopol was leased to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, much of the Ukrainian coastline and coastal cities and ports would be vulnerable to Russian attack. Putin’s Assumption: a Russian attack on Ukraine would quickly result in the total collapse of the Ukrainian military and ultimately Moscow’s victory in Ukraine.
A politically entrenched, ruling hierarchy has always been about sheltering the upper echelons of that hierarchy from the harsh realities of the environment, including any troubling news. Bringing conscripts from the powerless inhabitants of Russian prisons or the outer reaches of the Russian Federation such as Chechnya, Tatarstan, Dagestan, Mordovia, and Kazakhstan, especially those who had obtained Russian citizenship, is a predictable and effective way for an authoritarian regime to shield the most politically important Russians, those living in Moscow and St. Petersburg, from the realities of Putin’s empire building. This is borne out by the numbers of those killed fighting for Russia. While the Russian military does not collect and release to the public any information pertaining to neither the ethnic composition of the casualties nor that of the Army itself, this information has been gathered empirically and it has been found that:
Buryatia and Tuva, two ethnic republics in Eastern Siberia, are at the top of the list with the mortality rates of about 120 per 100,000 men of the working age. More generally, out of 10 regions with the highest mortality rates, seven are either in Siberia or the Russian Far East. One region (North Ossetia) is in the Caucasus, and two (Kostroma and Pskov) are in Central Russia, with large airborne troops bases located in these regions. The lowest mortality rates are in Moscow and St Petersburg metropolitan areas, as well as in Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansi, two oil and gas rich regions in Western Siberia. A man in Buryatia is about 100 times more likely to die in Ukraine compared to a man from Moscow.
The numbers of those fighters from remote provinces indicate that Putin has calculated how long he can continue to lure or steal young men from the huddled masses and throw them into the meat grinder. As Abraham Lincoln so aptly put it: “You can fool all people some of the time and some people all the time. But you can never fool all people all the time”. The Russian state propaganda machine works to maximise the numbers of those who can be fooled, but in time the holes in the narrative and the realities of war will catch up to those who were duped, if they have not already done so. Of course, a free information marketplace adds another level of complexity to the equation. Bill Clinton famously quipped that controlling the internet is like nailing jello to the wall. However, North Korea, which has always tightly controlled the information marketplace, has never allowed free information access to its citizenry. China seems to have a highly censored system, while Russia has had an open system for many years, but has now started to try to control access to the world wide web.
Fox News has demonstrated for all to see that it is possible to use populist techniques to gain a considerable following for authoritarianism in an open information environment. Humans are always subject to confirmation bias, and this will leave the door open to authoritarianism even in the United States. Embedded Dark-Sky Monuments can always be trotted out and used against the identified outgroup. Consider how Putin claimed there were Nazis infiltrating Ukraine. While it would take valuable time to construct a new Dark Sky Monument to justify his invasion, Putin recognised the embeddedness of the concept of “Nazis“ since Russians have historical memory of dealing with Nazis. Just about everyone can agree that Nazis are bad. Since the concept of the “Russkiy Mir” was not new, Putin’s goals required an urgent matter—something in the order of the Reichstag Fire Decree and the resulting act, “For the Protection of the People and State”. Russia now must consider that while the older or more remote population rely less on the internet and more on official state television for information, the younger and more city-dwelling populations, i.e., those living in big Russian cities, are more heavily skewed toward the internet, and may be a bit more difficult to convince that the Nazi threat in Ukraine is real and urgent, especially given that the Ukrainian President is Jewish. Thus the conundrum—whether to block YouTube or not. Blocking YouTube will cut off this same population from Russian state propaganda.
When an authoritarian power controls the information environment totally and for long periods, it is a foregone conclusion that the majority of the population will parrot what they heard on Official State Television. We saw this to a large degree in the USSR, but even then, the VOA was able to penetrate at least to a degree. This was also a factor in the Fukushima disaster and in the Titanic disaster to some degree, due to the echo chamber effect of syndication. When that information environment is an open marketplace, there will be dissension, and the dissidents can gain followers, as we saw with Horatio Bottomley’s efforts to force the Olympic and Titanic to add more lifeboats, but Bottomley had his own newspaper (see Catastrophe by Design) Just how much dissension can be generated will be difficult to demonstrate in the current Russian information environment. In an unfree country, broad knowledge of the public opinion, an ever-present component of the information environment, on any level of detail, is probably impossible. Protests themselves, as well as “voting with the feet” are manifestations of the marketplace of ideas, however, as I pointed out before. Quashing protests and allowing the masses of young men and others who do not agree with a war or an authoritarian takeover to leave the country are ways an authoritarian regime can rid itself of unwanted groups, critics, and potential revolutionary threats. This strategy was used in Syria and is also currently operating in Venezuela. The information marketplace essentially moves outside of the borders of an authoritarian regime.
According to Russia expert Ekaterina Schulmann, “unfree societies are generally silent”. In a system with essentially one-way communication, as we saw with Nokia’s thin data from handset sales, useful and timely information from the environment is difficult to obtain. In a hierarchy such as that which exists at the Kremlin, the beta group may have limited influence on the alpha, but the betas can gather their resources together to bring down the alpha and install a replacement.
Unlike a real threat, a newly minted or previously embedded Dark-Sky Monument type of “threat”, similar to a paper tiger, is first and foremost used for propaganda purposes. The power-centres of the hierarchy understand the true form and function of the constructed Dark Sky Monument, which is foisted upon the subject population as a true threat, a cause or a justification to do just about anything. Therefore, the vast resources necessary for countering these perceived threats are free for the taking by corrupt individuals within and surrounding the power hierarchy which primatologists call the beta group. Vast resources can be directed towards the Russian military “machine,” but the proportion of those resources that actually contribute to readiness could be quite minuscule by the time the entitled betas or oligarchs have taken their share. An economically successful, militarily capable western hegemon such as the United States is the gift that keeps on giving for the power structures controlling unfree societies all over the world. It is best to understand this dynamic and not to panic that a dictator on the Korean peninsula is hellbent on world destruction. No, the “fat little rocket man” just wants money and a game piece on the international chessboard for demonstration purposes. He needs to demonstrate for everyone under his command the urgency of the threat. The threat is key, and dictators, by design, identify and exploit it. Demonstrating the urgency of that threat is essential for the dictator to maintain total control over the population, especially over the marketplace of ideas. The real danger may lie in his ability to get rocket propulsion technology and nuclear secrets from Russia or another corrupt power and then sell “package deals” to other, like-minded, would-be terrorists from the hardscrabble underbelly of some unpleasant place. This is why I think the real threat is more likely from accidental nuclear exchange than from intentional nuclear exchange, and the risk of accidental contamination from a nuclear power plant or some other dirty bomb within a conflict zone has gone up.
Russkiy Mir—Russian World
Russian political elites were looking for a new Russian ideology to fill the vacuum which was left after the USSR had collapsed. The death throes of the Soviet system took many years to wither, and the echoes of that system persisted in many aspects of the post-Soviet era placing a significant risk of regeneration at the feet of the former Soviets.
We have already discussed the idea that the antebellum South’s societal constructs that kept the slaves in chains were not quickly disassembled after the emancipation proclamation on 1 January 1863. The new order of things dashed the fiefdoms of slaveholders and the hopes of the poor whites at the bottom of the hierarchy as well as those who were planning to get rich by moving west and establishing new plantations. There were undoubtedly many disappointed southerners who were not happy with the new arrangement of things in the Reconstruction era and felt a sense of shame and humiliation at the loss of their system. One could argue that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the separation of Mother Russia from Belarus and Ukraine left many who were hopeful of taking advantage of the established hierarchy to gain power and influence utterly disappointed, ashamed, and humiliated. According to Ukraine expert Wilfried Jilge of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Russkiy Mir is a concept
devised by intellectuals, academics, and journalists close to the Kremlin around 1995–2000 and publicly introduced into political discourse by Putin in 2001. In the years that followed, pro-Kremlin policy makers systematically connected the concept to their efforts to legitimise domestic and foreign policy. They applied it to a range of dimensions: ideological, political, identity-based, and geopolitical. With the establishment of the Russkiy Mir Foundation, the term was securely entrenched in Russia’s public discourse.
According to Stanislav Kucher, a journalist, filmmaker, and former Russian TV presenter, Russkiy Mir is a concept that predates Putin, but Putin has “aggressively embraced it and made it his own. Among other things, it means that when Putin says ‘Russia’, he does not mean a state called the Russian Federation within its current boundaries. He means any place where Russians live, where the Russian language is spoken—even by a small minority, any place where the influence of Russia or Russians has been felt”. Kucher went on to explain that according to leading Russian World ideologist, “the grey cardinal “Vladislav Surkov, the Russian World is
everywhere where people speak and think in Russian… Where our Putin is respected. And he is respected in many places by those who do not speak Russian and who have a rather vague idea about Russia. Where people are afraid of Russian weapons, this is also the Russian world. This is our [sphere of] influence. Where our scientists, our writers, our art are respected. This is all the Russian world.
Kucher added that this expansionist ideology “offers a clear justification for sending soldiers into Ukraine—where some Russians live, where Russian is spoken, where Russian culture is present. All the ingredients, in other words, for a Russian World.”
According to the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University,
The speeches of President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill (Gundiaev) of Moscow (Moscow Patriarchate) have repeatedly invoked and developed Russian World ideology over the last 20 years. In 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea and initiated a proxy war in the Donbas area of Ukraine, right up until the beginning of the full-fledged war against Ukraine and afterwards, Putin and Patriarch Kirill have used Russian world ideology as a principal justification for the invasion. The teaching states that there is a transnational Russian sphere or civilization, called Holy Russia or ‘Holy Rus’, which includes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (and sometimes Moldova and Kazakhstan), as well as ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people throughout the world. It holds that this ‘Russian World’ has a common political centre (Moscow), a common spiritual centre (Kyiv as the ‘mother of all Rus’), a common language (Russian), a common church (the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate), and a common patriarch (the Patriarch of Moscow), who works in ‘symphony’ with a common president/national leader (Putin) to govern this Russian world, as well as upholding a common distinctive spirituality, morality, and culture.
Patriarch Kirill, a former KGB agent [ref.], stated in 2014 that,
the religious dimension of the ‘Russian World’ is the source for the peace-loving attitude of our people. It is not easy nowadays to preserve these values. But one has to understand that without these values there will be no Russian, no Ukrainian, no Belorussian people, but all will be merged in a kind of melting pot of civilisations. The preservation of civilisations, among them also the one of the Russian World, is our common task. Not in order to build political constructions, to establish new empires, to create military blocs, not at all. But rather in order to preserve the great heritage we received from our ancestors.
The rhetoric changed after the initiation of the war in Ukraine, however. When asked to intervene with Russia’s leadership and end the war in Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill came to Russia’s defence, saying in essence that the west conspired to deprive Russia from asserting itself as a regional power: “It is my firm belief that its initiators are not the peoples of Russia and Ukraine,” and that in the 1990s, Russia was promised by the west that “its security and dignity would be respected.” The Patriarch echoed Moscow’s narrative, saying that, “however, as time went by, the forces overtly considering Russia to be their enemy came close to its borders. Year after year, month after month, the NATO member states have been building up their military presence, disregarding Russia’s concerns that these weapons may one day be used against it”.
According to John Mearsheimer, Geopolitics 101 teaches that “great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory”. Let us ask now what the real threat NATO poses to Russia really is. To do this we can ask what has been said about it recently by NATO members. Senior Trump administration officials told the New York Times back in 2018 that the President wanted to pull the US out of NATO, effectively destroying the organisation. The President of France Emmanuel Macron told The Economist that “what we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO”, after the US pulled out of northern Syria without consulting other members. In its history, NATO has been primarily a defensive organisation to provide security against the Soviet Union. NATO adopted the doctrine of “Massive Retaliation” as a response to any Soviet attack with nuclear weapons, which “allowed Alliance members to focus their energies on economic growth rather than on maintaining large conventional armies”. NATO had been largely quiescent, almost senescent prior to the 2014 Crimea annexation. The fact that Putin invaded Ukraine reveals that he had no real fear of NATO or the West.
The West did what it always does in response to the war in Ukraine: sanctions. In an authoritative state such as Russia where a free press and marketplace of ideas are non-existent, facts do not matter anyway. Putin’s view of NATO is his own, but that is not necessarily the same version broadcast on Russian state TV. NATO, fangs or no fangs, provides Putin with a valuable tool. He probably understands now that his Russian “subjects” are much better informed than the Soviets were, due to the fact that present Russians are not completely immersed in a tightly contained information bubble as in the past. But, he can say NATO is a threat, and there is no Russian citizen who can openly question this proclamation. Moreover, the Russian Orthodox Church must perform the function of the rider in Johnathan Haidt’s elephant and rider metaphor. Putin’s monument building is the elephant. Putin will build his monuments and the Patriarchate will be entrusted with providing a post hoc rationale for what Putin (the elephant) is doing. It’s nothing new, as I showed in a prior chapter, Southern clergy was presented with a scenario in which slavery was part of the environment. Tasked with the justification of slavery, they cleverly found examples in the Holy Bible which could provide a chain of authenticity lifeline to the slaveholders. Likewise, the Patriarchate will be requested to provide agreement for Putin’s chosen Dark-Sky Monument building, NATO or otherwise. The embeddedness of the monument is the key to its effectiveness.
Of course, using NATO as a Dark Sky Monument is a predictable outcome of the Cold War and its aftermath. In the west, however, NATO, in the face of the so-called “peace dividend” has been called an obsolete waste of taxpayer funds now that the Soviet threat was gone. Yet, as we have seen, Dark-Sky Monument building is extremely flexible and adaptable. What non-NATO “threats” have already been used as propaganda upon the Russian people? Plenty. If you could summarise what Putin has been saying about Ukraine into a short letter to his people, it might sound something like this:
Dear proud Russian speakers,
Against your dear monument ‘Russkiy Mir’, the west has presented the following threats: oppressive Western capitalism, militant secularism, liberalism, Christianophobia, homosexual rights, and of course they have even been infiltrated by Nazis who plot to sway our wayward Ukrainian brethren towards Western influences. They even want to outlaw the Russian language! Now we are embarking on a ‘special military operation ‘to remove all these threats and protect our sacred ‘Russkiy Mir ‘and our precious culture we inherited from our ancestors.
Yours Truly,
Vladimir Putin
What is the difference between this and populism? Really, the only difference is the control of the information marketplace aka the marketplace of ideas. Putin maintains control and obedience with priests, police, prison, poison, and plunges, with an added dollop of almost mafioso-style corruption, but the monument manipulation is the same thing populists do to gain power, and it is extremely effective. It motivates mobs as well as armies, inspires contributions, crystallises allegiances, maintains loyalties, canonises dogma, and manufactures consent. Where consent is not freely given, it is forced with impunity.
Predictably, the Russian language as a cultural monument will be protected by law in the future. Russian officials are now banned from using foreign words in official documents and correspondence. The law, signed by President Putin on 28 February 2023, states that: “When using Russian as the state language of the Russian Federation, it is not allowed to use words and expressions that do not correspond to the norms of modern literary Russian language”, and the only exceptions are made regarding “foreign words which do not have widely used corresponding equivalents in Russian.” A list of acceptable words is now in the works (as of 2023) and will be published by a separate commission. One can assume that Putin will enforce this new law with more than finger-wagging. Something at least on order with the government of Quebec and the enforcement surrounding their very endangered version of the French language should be expected, although I would not say there is any danger of the disuse of the Russian language. My intuition tells me this is simple populism in practice by an authoritarian leader, perhaps one one the endangered species list himself. As for a motivation to enact the legislation, Putin announced that he wanted to protect against using a foreign lexicon within the Russian language, and this is now the aim of the Russian State cultural policy. I do want to remind you that the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco also forbade the use of any language other than Castillian Spanish, and actively suppressed the languages of the Catalan and Basque minorities of Spain.
The Dark Sky Monument building is also a continuously ongoing process as I have previously outlined. While considering NATO a white elephant is completely within reason, to assert that it should be abandoned so as not to “poke the bear” is completely ridiculous. Vladimir Putin would never allow the absence of a NATO alliance to interrupt his “Russkiy Mir Blue-Sky” Monument Building process. Further, we should all understand that within the Russian language propaganda bubble, there is no real difference between NATO past and NATO present, or NATO dead and NATO alive. To assume otherwise is the ultimate naïveté.
This chapter begs the question: how could the Ukraine war have been prevented? The first question to ask is: could the Ukraine war have been predicted? I think the answer to this question is an unequivocal yes. If you consider the monument building Putin has been engaged in during his entire presidency, you can understand Putin’s motivations, to a degree. As an alpha male, he has served the betas (the oligarchs) who put him in power quite well, as all have become astonishingly rich. As a kleptocrat who has amassed billions of dollars in material wealth, Putin is no longer primarily interested in additional wealth. He is interested in sustainable power for himself, and he is interested in his legacy, and he is obviously building a monument, and that long-term project is ostensibly Russkiy Mir. Action to prevent war would not likely have been possible inside Russia. As an example, we saw what happened to USAID in Russia, despite the positive impact it had in helping ordinary Russians learn to operate small businesses. It was not operating very long before it caught the attention of the regime, which labelled it a foreign agent.
Fiduciary care of ordinary Russians is absolutely neglected by the Russian state, and of course will not be tolerated if attempted by a foreign power like the United States. This, of course, would risk the removal of fear of the West, which, as we now understand, is a Dark-Sky monument tool used by Russian state populism against both the West and the Russian citizenry, albeit with less effectiveness than during the Cold War. For the United States and the West to provide Ukraine with such assistance directly threatens Putin’s authenticity, his hold on power, and the stranglehold the oligarchy has on the Russian economy. Nevertheless, influence within Ukraine to thwart a Russian attack would have been much more achievable. Taking definitive action to fortify Ukraine would have been politically very difficult in the democratic West due to the absence of a demonstrable unifying external threat. But once the Russian tanks were lined up at the border, it was all too late. We were totally unprepared, looking at Russia through western eyes. NATO’s first job should have been to secure all of the nuclear power plants in Ukraine with heavy defences as soon as the conflict arose in eastern Ukraine. The violence may have stayed largely in Ukraine, but radioactive contamination would not. The threat, that of nuclear contamination- a looming repeat of Chernobyl, would have provided the West cover, but the opportunity was lost once Russian tanks lined up at the border. This was a grave mistake.
Recall the point I made about the golden handcuffs tying the hands of the Nokia C-Suite (Catastrophe by Design). They saw no reason to change their very successful business model until it was too late. Ongoing success fosters a deep attachment to the existing operating practices: those who were commanding the Nokia ship from the wheelhouse were caught off-guard by the sudden appearance of the iPhone. So, too was the thinking of the west; the USSR was put in the grave and buried, or so the world thought. America was enjoying its “Peace Dividend”. But Vladimir Putin was born in 1952, and joined the KGB in 1975. He has been in power since 31 December 1999. Putin had grown up, and had a full KGB career, almost entirely in the old system. The old ways die hard. Government is made up of people, laws, institutions, algorithms, and, yes, monuments. May I remind you that looming over Red Square in Moscow is Lenin’s mausoleum. The present structure was built with a tribune situated directly above Lenin’s name located just above the portal. For decades the leaders of the communist party stood directly over Lenin’s name inscribed on the face of the monument as they watched their military parades below. Like an IV-line, their authenticity was directly plugged in to Lenin. Putin’s billions in material wealth should have fooled no one, but we closed our eyes and bought oil from them just like Liverpool bought cotton grown and harvested by slaves. Just take a moment and compare Putin to George Washington. Yes, he had slaves and was a flawed person. But after his fiduciary duty to the country, after he served his two terms in the White House, he walked away and left the post for the next civil servant to fill. As for Putin, it is well established that by now, after more than twenty years in office, Putin feels he “owns” the power and must use it to protect himself from the criminal network he created and surrounds himself with. Gorbachev was a public servant, Putin is serving himself and his entourage of betas.
The money paid by Europe to Russia for energy did not “trickle down” to the Russian proletariat. It’s like thinking that buying the products of Southern slave plantations could help slaves win their freedom. The hand of commerce and the hand of foreign policy are not controlled by the same brain. Ronald Reagan’s administration warned Europe against buying cheap energy from Russia. It is the ultimate argument problem: capitalism vs. the interest of the people. American companies fell over each other to go to China to exploit the cheap labour. In both cases, we fed both the bear and the dragon, giving them technology and hard currency. We helped build their monuments and fill out their hierarchies and strengthen their dictators. We shared technology with them, we invested in their workers and their institutions and educated many of their graduate students. We helped to build them up to their present strength and gave them the resources to turn around and use that strength against us. We helped build power that we have no vote or control over. We deluded ourselves into thinking we can foster democracy by trading with them, thus teaching them our democratic ways, but instead we helped construct authoritarian regimes that derive their authenticity from nothing more than the fact that they seized power and entrenched themselves. We helped create murderous billionaires who answer to no one.
If we had an eye to the future and could see what would happen, it may not help us avoid catastrophe; the Second Amendment catastrophe has taught us that much. Perhaps the only thing it would spur is to act as a unifying threat, but as we know humans are capable of using anything at their disposal to dig in and entrench themselves to take advantage of a rival or subjugate a population. We actually had information to help us understand what is in the realm of possibility, such as prior world wars, overpopulation, climate change, sea-level rise, or the looming threat of a worldwide pandemic. But humans simply will not assemble themselves around such a cause before the threat is a demonstrable reality or the catastrophe has already taken its toll. Populism is a much more powerful force and much more potent for a politician to assemble vast power beyond his own two hands. Another force that can assemble power beyond one’s own two hands: capitalism. Both require an open marketplace of ideas to have a full effect. In the past this was possible by religion, but as we know from past and present events, state-sponsored anything requires an army, a navy and a bureaucracy to enforce the accepted versions, and apostates are not tolerated. That pesky alignment problem again.
Why do we almost always require a Titanic or a Fukushima or a civil war to make needed changes? Or, worse, as we know the Titanic disaster was followed decades later by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, demonstrating that we didn’t even understand the full lesson of what the Titanic actually meant for humanity.
The best we can do now is to understand this phenomenon and know that we cannot act as one mind controlling both the fiduciary hand and the capitalistic hand. At the minimum, we need to be capable of determining the difference between the two, and understand that someone who is primarily self-interested may not become a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln, and there is nothing wrong with that, but it is most likely prudent to avoid placing such persons in the seat of power. This is the job of democracy; to place individuals who would otherwise be nowhere near the seat of power- into the seat of power to act in the interest of the common good; a complete reversal of the “natural” order of things. Does the American system do a good job of accomplishing this? Donald Trump’s presidency shows us there are breaches in the hull, and we should seriously examine the gears that put him in power. This is precisely why I do not necessarily fear the AI itself, but that a bad actor will use it to worm its way through those hull breaches. It is therefore of great importance that we insist that the military and policing hand remain free from the capitalistic hand and under the sole control of the fiduciary hand and the intelligence that controls it.
By comparing extremes we can obtain a glimpse of the future: for example Gorbachev vs Putin or Lincoln vs Trump. The biggest mistake Americans made with Trump is they deluded themselves into thinking that what their government and country really needed was a self-interested businessman to shake things up. They had also deluded themselves into thinking that their Constitution, which was an instrument designed to obtain the support of slaveholders, i.e. the Electoral College and the Second Amendment, is already perfect and does not need any modifications to fit their current needs, since it is always difficult to make a needed change when the built-in machinery provides any group an advantage. What did Americans get instead? A designed system throwing off noise right and left. The constant deaths from gun violence, the Trump indictments, wars that looked like the right thing to do at the beginning, but lacked any long-term merit as we observe them in hindsight. Trump 1.0 did not get the majority vote, but a mechanical, algorithm-produced vote, the algorithm being designed in the distant past, to appease a self-interested, slaveholding lot. Militias have long since disappeared, but gun violence has reached levels unseen in any other western democracy. Either we believe in the collective wisdom or we do not. We cannot have both versions and safely guide the ship to avoid icebergs. American Democracy is guided by a map that is nearly 250 years old. Many new icebergs have entered the waters in that amount of time, and old maps make new ice fields much harder to avoid. As members of any Democracy, we can do our best to identify the icebergs which our Founding Fathers were trying to avoid but couldn’t and which ones they were just skirting by, but this “originalist” practice is more art than science since those ancient icebergs have long since melted away, and the sea captains of old we have since idolised did not record the basis for each adjustment in speed and direction. Those who are living and those who are yet to be born will be much better served by a revised social contract, updated by actually learning, in earnest, the lessons our past has in store for us, and incorporating that additional knowledge into our cultural DNA, rather than sweeping our history under the rug and calling it “woke”.
Russia is a country that is in desperate need of new Blue-Sky Monuments. Vladimir Putin sits at the helm of a society which has few living heroes that are not in prison. Russian entrepreneurship is stunted, its seed round having moved out of the country; Russian scientific research has been dismantled and Sputnik is a distant vodka-soaked memory. Could it be that Vladimir Putin’s real aim is to be the sole living hero of Russia, building his own monument and legacy? It must be difficult, though, for Putin to concoct a reasonable narrative for his own operating system, inside his own head that he himself can believe in, especially in light of a very rich and stable West by comparison. Cultural beauty contests are not won by force at the barrel of a gun, nor by robber barons who remove billions in assets from Russia to Europe. Is Putin doomed to die knowing he and his betas stole Russia’s working capital- not even providing so much as a miserly trickle down for the majority of the populace? The Russian people are not stupid, they know they will be sacrificed on Putin’s personal altar if it becomes expedient for him. Does he even bother with making himself the hero of his own story more than twenty years into his Presidency?
It seems to me that it’s a pity for a country to need heroes for its present problems. When a President goes rogue, democracies need the designed system to respond and remove the threat to democracy: fiduciary power conducting the people’s business. Trump wants to turn the tables and make himself the sacrificial lamb to the “deep state,” but he is no hero, just a populist confidence man. Putin, on the other hand, wants to exude the confidence and power of a superman, but heroes do not manufacture the circumstances which make themselves so indispensable. Like lifeboats, heroes are mostly necessary in a true emergency that you hope you never actually find yourself in. After 70 years of top-down monument enforcement, Russia’s standard heroes are now integrated into Russian cultural DNA. Putin has tried to distance himself from them, but note that he has not called for the complete removal of Lenin’s mausoleum, nor has he placed it behind the curtain or under a figurative rug. Perhaps he fears that doing so will unplug him from the chain of authenticity that dates back to the October Revolution, yet in any capacity Putin is beholden to the succession of strong men that he himself is now one of. I believe he is desperately trying to set himself apart from those who lost the USSR and gave away Ukraine so that he can “restore” the Russkiy Mir as it never actually existed.
Monument Building Clues
Many of the diplomatic assessments I have seen on the matter assume that Putin means what he is telling us and that he is acting in the interests of Russia and the Russian people and is telling the truth to boot. I cannot help but be extremely cynical about this. Should we give Putin the benefit of the doubt, when we hold our own politicians’ feet to the fire? Has Putin ever, for one moment, acted in the interest of the Russian people? Perhaps, at the very beginning of his long stay in the Kremlin, when he talked a good game about democracy. More than twenty years later, does he still talk a good game about democracy? Does he even need to talk about democracy anymore? Once the shackles go on, the only thing left to do: add additional shackles when expedient. Of course we should be sceptical of what Putin says his motivations are. Why should we believe what he tells us when he feeds his own citizenry constant propaganda? Do not make the mistake of taking Putin for his word; look instead to the monument building he is doing by asking a better question: could the West have curbed Putin’s monument building activities? Perhaps, but it would have looked a lot like a NATO buildup on Ukraine’s eastern borders. I have heard way too many assumptions that western diplomacy could have stopped the war. This, again, is making assumptions that the West had and has any influence on Putin’s goals and activities. Putin’s own betas have little access and influence over his decisions. Putin, as I have shown, has had his eyes on the Ukrainian ball for years. Putin heeds only power, not diplomacy, and he has learned that money does not equal power. He has made a promise to himself and those who will inherit his cultural DNA- a solemn vow to restore Russkiy Mir and will stop at nothing to achieve it. He knows the monuments of empire survive the deaths of their defenders. Russia’s dissenters have voted with their feet, now it’s just the west and the corruption of his system that are in his way.
Kim Jong Un is a dictator who has also placed himself as the sole living hero of his country, but seems content with his little plot on the northern half of the Korean peninsula. Does he have a choice? He is boxed in by two superpowers: China and of course South Korea which is bolstered by the United States. Putin’s ambitions are not hemmed in by such hegemons. Ukraine, on the western border and the poor cousin of the EU countries, racked with corruption, dependent on the choker-chain of both Russian fossil fuels and at the same time a major trading partner with Russia, sharing a common carotid artery serving both heads: the Kerch Strait. We should have predicted that the possibility to take back Ukraine can increase the probability that Putin would dream of a new Russkiy mir. The audacity of hope- the hope to cement his place amongst Russia’s standard heroes. Well, hope and Alexander Dugin, also known as “Putin’s Brain”. There were clues, but even if Putin had told us directly he was going to invade Ukraine in Feb 2022, what would we have done? Effective deterrence would have had to begin many years before, and we needed a Cassandra- a Horatio Bottomley- to point it out and get our real attention. Boris Nemtsov could have played this part, and he looked very promising, right up until he was assassinated on a bridge, almost in the shadow of the Kremlin, in Februrary, 2015. I’m afraid this Titanic would have left the port anyway, despite our best efforts, and with berths full of old comrades. Oh, the fallen empires.
Aleksandr Dugin has been on the Russian observer’s radar since his manifesto was published in 1997, “The Foundations of Geopolitics”. It’s been written that his book has accumulated influence and was used as a military academy textbook, but has been disputed that it had a substantial impact on Putin. Let’s not make the assumption that Putin did not carry these monuments over from his days in the “new” Russian empire (the USSR of course) the same way Dugin himself has. It seems that Putin has shared at least some of Dugin’s ideology; regarding Ukraine’s right to exist as a state Dugin wrote: “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness” and called for the “armed capture” of Ukraine by Russian troops. Further, Putin’s article ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“ was practically a shot across the bow that he intended to do something in Ukraine and there were some of Dugin’s ideas present in this piece. Dugin has written plenty about his philosophy over the years, asserting that Russia has a right to be a powerful empire and should establish a multipolar world order, where each pole will have an equal say in how the world will work. Each pole will have domain over its sphere of influence, instead of the US alone or US-China dipolar hegemony. Dugin’s philosophy on this multipolarity has become official Russian policy. Further, Dugin claims that Russia should have taken eastern Ukraine back in 2014, not just Crimea, via a bloodless coup. He claimed that the percentage of Ethnic Russians and cultural Russians in eastern Ukraine was sufficient to support such a transition.
Dugin says Russian identity is linked with the Russian Orthodox Church, but the Church was removed by the Bolsheviks to make way for the total control of the Soviet Union by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The people who ‘usurped’ power in 1917 were completely alien to Russian culture and tradition, they were globalists, they hated Russian identity and were intent on destroying the foundations of Russian identity. He says now Russians are trying to restore their prior identity and are finished with their old Soviet identity and believes that atheistic communist dictatorships were ultimately against the true Russian identity, which by default must include the Russian Orthodox Church.
Dugin also claims that the West is now Marxist-Leninist, which was the past already for the new Russian identity, who have overcome the disease of communism, materialism and atheism. The ‘new’ threats the world now faces are globalism, individualism and capitalism. But there is more than one way to turn heads. Cultural monuments can either be won by persuasion, viz. a cultural beauty contest, or they can be forced down the collective throats of a population at the business end of a gun. Putin, Dugin and their cultural DNA clones can’t have it both ways. We learned that the forced cultural monuments, with all their supporting monuments, narratives and algorithms eventually lose the cultural beauty contest. Those monuments eventually lose enough defenders to morph into a lost cause, whose defenders just put down their flags and go home.
The Follies
As I have outlined before, the follies are about cognition, intelligent design and the universe. It is of course impossible to get inside someone’s head to find out what the intelligent design actually is, but we can deduce agency and will from what we know about actions, assumptions and monuments and the ability of an action to account for its environment. These approximations may be way off, but they also give us a frame to evaluate an intelligent design, in this case an invasion of a neighbouring country.
The scenario: Putin has hijacked the Russian military for his monument building activities, which, for the past decades, have been quite clear. Putin and his likeminded comrades are interested in creating a Russian world that, up to today, only exists in dreams and science fiction. Putin has engineered Russian dominance over key neighbours in the past: Georgia and Belarus for example, and has enjoyed success with little to no retribution from the west. Encouraged by past success and lack of punishment from the west, Putin ordered Russian troops to amass on Ukraine’s border. The troops celebrated “Defender of the Fatherland Day” on Feb 23rd, 2022, and the next day, attacked and invaded Ukraine.
Putin’s intelligent design for the invasion which I have predicted and outlined below is based on limited but open-access information; the success or failure of the intelligent design based on Putin’s assumptions will be judged on the design’s ability to account for its environment:
Assumption #1: While maintaining that the annexation of Crimea was illegal, the west does not care enough about Ukraine to effectively punish Russia for the annexation, and will do nothing to stop it, as it had experienced in the past.
Human Folly #2 applies to Putin for assuming the absence of intelligent design where it is present. Putin interpreted this as a lack of will or resolve to punish Russia effectively for the invasion of Ukraine, based on his experience from the five day war in Georgia, and the takeover of Crimea in 2014. Accounting for the environment: Putin vastly underestimated the willingness of the west to form a coalition to come to Ukraine’s aid. His original invasion plans, based on limited resistance, could not account for the resistance the Russian forces encountered.
Assumption #2: The pro-Russian bias built in to the three Medvedchuk television networks softened anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine, and would facilitate acceptance of a Russian puppet government in Ukraine after the invasion.
The Propaganda Folly (#2) would apply to those Ukrainians who assumed honest coverage of events as they happened, but were given a manipulated version instead.
The Trojan Horse Folly (#3) would apply to Putin himself, who sent funds to facilitate his propaganda campaign, but since there is so much corruption embedded in the process itself, much of the money sent by Putin was siphoned off, reducing the effectiveness of the campaign. Accounting for the environment: Putin’s intelligent design consisting of payments for propaganda probably received a low return on investment and a low ability to account for such a corrupt environment.
Assumption #3: One-quarter of Ukrainians are members of the Russian Orthodox Church and fall under the influence of Russian religio-cultural DNA, therefore 25% of the population could be regarded as culturally Russian and would not oppose a Russian takeover.
The Trojan Horse Folly (#3) would apply to Putin if he made this assumption, since allegiances (a type of cognition) can change as soon as the tanks start rolling across Ukraine’s border, signifying a unifying external threat. Accounting for the environment: Poor. Putin did not expect Ukrainians to fight so fiercely for their homeland, despite their common religious affiliation.
Assumption #4: Zelensky, a weak president with no strong control over his military, would be abandoned by his government and military when Russian tanks roll across the border. President Zelensky would run to safety when confronted with a Russian invasion.
The Propaganda Folly (#2) would apply to Putin for making the assumption that Zelensky possessed no will to fight for his country. Clearly this was not the case. Accounting for the environment: Poor. Putin did not expect Zelensky to put up such resistance. Putin probably confused Zelensky’s basis for political service: Zelensky has proven to be a fiduciary servant rather than a self-interested, would-be oligarch whose public service is a platform for personal gain. One would expect that Putin has more experience with politicians of the latter description, and has adopted the appropriate bias.
Assumption #5: A Russian attack on Ukraine would quickly result in the total collapse of the Ukrainian military and ultimately Moscow’s victory in Ukraine.
The Trojan Horse Folly (#3) would apply to Putin if he made this assumption, since he did not understand the true condition of the Ukrainian military. Further, it appears that Putin overestimated the state of readiness present in his own Russian military, and is also subject to the Trojan Horse Folly for this additional bias. It also has become evident that Putin hid his intentions to actually invade Ukraine until the last moments, placing the Trojan Horse Folly upon his own military. Accounting for the environment in which the intelligent design was to take place: Poor. The Trojan Horse Folly, by its definition, implies that the person to which the folly applies possesses an ignorance of a designed component of the environment. That is to say- they know of the designed component; but they do not understand it completely. Therefore if they do not understand the true nature of the designed component, they are unable to fully account for that component of the environment. Putin did not fully understand the true condition of either army, and few to none of the members of the Russian army understood his true intentions and motivations. Thus, at the beginning of the war, the Russian army had minimal understanding of their own capabilities, the capabilities of the Ukrainian army, as well as Putin’s true intentions.
It is quite possible the I, as the author, writing this in year two of this conflict have committed a number of follies due to confirmation bias, but had I been tasked with predicting the progress of Putin’s intelligent design operation in Ukraine, this is how I would have gone about it. Intelligence and cognition are not a uniquely human quality as we now understand, but we humans possess a capability of pooling our accumulated knowledge and building monuments to store and transmit meaning to our future progeny, as a part of the social contract. These components of human nature allow us to predict the assumptions made by another human being.
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Links:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/climate/europe-russia-gas-reagan.html?searchResultPosition=1
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000500594.pdf
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependence-imported-fossil-fuels
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