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Have We Reached Peak Putin?
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
The capture of a few pawns has cleared the chessboard, but the strategic choices already made have greatly reduced Putin's room to maneuver.
No tree grows to the sky. Once extremes are reached, trends reverse, often with symmetry: the decline often matches the ascent.
Which leads to an interesting question: have we reached Peak Putin?
Let's start our inquiry by noting that pundits from across the political spectrum are all busily chainsawing events up to fit into their little boxes of existing narratives: Cold War Redux, World War 3, neo-Nazis, etc.
One key driver of this stale parade of pre-packaged opinion is the instinctive urge to cheer for whatever team is on the field opposite the U.S. and President Obama. This natural urge leads to indefensible hypocrisy along the lines of "Brand X Imperialism bad, brand Y Imperialism good." If you oppose Imperialism and Great State meddling, then you can't oppose one brand of Great State meddling and support another brand.
Let's stipulate a few things to get them out of the way, so we can we proceed beyond the chainsaws and little ideological boxes.
1. All nations act in their own self-interest, and all states do so while claiming noble purposes that are patently absurd. To support one nation's actions in its self-interest while decrying another state's actions in its self-interest undermines one's claim to objectivity, to say the least. By all means, be a partisan, but lay open claim to being a partisan; anything less displays the same hypocrisy as that of self-serving states.
2. Crimea: done. the West had no leverage, and the U.S. hypocrisy was blatant: we favor democracy and self-rule only so long as the elections go our way. Uh, right.
3. Just because Ukrainians speak Russian doesn't mean they want to be annexed into Russia. Most Ukrainians speak both Ukrainian and Russian. By the logic of those claiming Russian speakers are naturally part of Russia, the U.S. could annex all of Canada (with perhaps the exception of French-speaking Quebec) on the grounds that Canadians speak English.
4. Desiring cordial economic and cultural ties with Russia is not the same as supporting annexation of Eastern Ukraine to Russia. The memory of those liquidated by Russians or given "tenners" in Siberian work/death camps has not yet been extinguished. All those convinced that Ukrainians want the warm and fuzzy embrace of Russia would do well to read the three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956
The Gulag Archipelago 2
Gulag Archipelago 3
5. There is room for a non-neo-Nazi nationalism, but only if every nationalist isn't painted with a Neo-Nazi brush. There are reasonable nationalists in Ukraine but their voices aren't registering in the hyper-coverage of neo-Nazis, Western plans for World War 3, etc.
6. Being rabidly anti-American doesn't necessarily mean you have to automatically be rabidly pro-Putin. If you oppose Imperialism and Great State meddling, then be consistent if you want to retain any credibility.
If we set aside the Cold War Redux narrative, we are clear to see some interesting things that are neither pro nor con, they simply are.
1. Russia used its energy leverage over Europe with such great gusto that the blowback will reduce that leverage. Europe is scrambling to develop other sources of natural gas, and doing anything less would not be acting in Europe's self-interest.
2. Massing conscript troops and an army with limited ability to maintain its supply chain once inside Ukraine is another example of sparking blowback that will last for years and perhaps decades. Pressing your energy boot on Europe's neck was bound to create a strategic response, and massing troops on Ukraine's border has the same consequence.
3. While Putin's popularity is sky-high, domestic support for invading Ukraine is low. Should the poorly paid conscripts start coming home in body bags, Putin's domestic support will be revealed as an inch deep and a mile wide.
4. Russia's energy pacts with China and India are positive developments for Asian peace and development. China and India need more energy, Russia has surplus to sell--it's win-win not just for these nations but for the world. The peaceful trade of energy is a major plus for everyone.
5. But selling energy to Europe and selling energy to China and India are not equal: China and India have seen the way Russia has exploited its energy leverage in Europe, and Russia will find it has precious little political leverage over China and India, who will be sure to develop alternative sources of natural gas. The loss of political leverage over Europe will not be offset by an equivalent gain of leverage over China and India.
6. Russia has ruthlessly exploited its monopoly over natural gas by charging politically influenced prices: Poland, for example, pays a lot more for Russian natural gas than Germany, even though the gas flows through the same pipeline.
7. Once Russia loses pricing power in Europe, it will not gain pricing power over China or India. Those nations have other sources and cannot be held hostage in the same way Poland et al. are currently held hostage.
This means Russia will be earning considerably less per therm of energy once it ships natural gas to China and India.
Slowly but surely, the global natural gas market is becoming more integrated. Those currently charging cartel/monopoly prices will see their energy earnings decline.
8. In terms of national income, Russia is as dependent on energy earnings as any other "resource curse" oil exporter. The loss of pricing power in Europe and a decline in energy income will become headwinds for the Russian state.
9. Putin's domestic popularity flows from nationalist pride in the Olympics and in reclaiming Crimea. But now that those high points are past, Putin's options are not so lopsided in his favor.
Threatening (or invading) Ukraine reminds everyone in Europe why they fear Russia, and why Russia is not truly European. Domestic support in Russia for annexing part of Ukraine is low, for good reason: who wants to be responsible for the costs, financial and political?
10. Reclaiming Crimea makes for good theater and is a geopolitical plus, but it does nothing to reverse Russia's real problems, which include corruption, wealth inequality, low birth rates, etc.
11. Russia's military looks good on paper and in photos, but it's not as prepared to mount a sustained campaign within Ukraine as advertised. Asymmetric warfare doesn't respect lines on a map.
12. If Putin had set out to reinvigorate NATO, he would do exactly what he has done to date. Anyone thinking the U.S. Deep State is in despair about Putin's moves has it backwards: everything Putin is doing is fueling blowback and resistance in nations that were potentially friendly to Russia. Nothing tells you who your friends are quite like troops massing on your neighbor's border.
As a refresher, here's a map of pipelines connecting African natural gas fields to Europe.
Given the context laid out above, it seems increasingly likely that we've reached Peak Putin. The capture of a few pawns has cleared the chessboard, but the strategic choices already made have greatly reduced Putin's room to maneuver.
Ukraine: A Deep State Analysis (February 27, 2014)
Ukraine: Follow the Energy (March 4, 2014)
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Obama deserves another Nobel Prize for this incredible feat of magic
Russia has the largest crude oil reserves along with massive amounts of other natural resources.
Russia has a very low debt-to-gdp ratio relative to the West.
Russia has very large FX and gold reserves.
Russia is in the process of modernizing it's military to make it competivive with the US.
Russia will rejoin with several former Soviet satellites beginning in 2015 to form the "Eurasian Union."
So, given these facts, have we witnessed "peak Putin?"
I'd say the answer is not only no, but a resounding no.
Quite clearly, Tsar Putin is just getting started.
Peak Putin? Not likely. Moldova theater anyone?
The Trans-Saharan pipeline on the map does not exist. It will never be built. Nigeria is not a traditional nation in the Western sense. It is a huge area with dozens of very different peoples speaking different languages - Eastern Europe squared.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_gas_pipeline
BTW, the gas and oil being exported from Algeria has dropped by 25% in the past 5 years. Even that police state is unable to stop people blowing up gas plants
"The final hostages to die in the terror attack on the BP joint-operated gas plant in Algeria were strapped to machinery as a huge bomb was detonated, managers at the plant said yesterday."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/algeria/9...
Charles, I normally enjoy your POV on topics financial, but surely today's post was meant for The Onion, not ZH?
Far as I can see, Putin is in the driver's seat right now and Obama put him there.
Nyet to Peak Putin
0 proved he had more flexibility after the election
http://bit.ly/1joPVGR
With NatGas going up it won't just be Ukee's dumpster diving to get wood for the ol' wood stove.Lots of North Americans have switched back in order to save money.I take the Ford pickup out once a week and there's tons of scrap wood at home construction sites.Very wasteful society.Wood stoves including the one down the basement save on bills.Besides,there's so much of it,you don't have to get into the dumpster like pop-bottle pete,just stand on the tail gate.See,we're all becoming like Ukees.
It may be "Peak Putin', but I don't think that little thug thinks he's peaked. Miscalculations by him can cause some big problems in the near future.
I don't know if we have reached Peak Putin yet, but I am sure we have reached PEAK OBAMA!
We reached peak Obama a long fucking time ago. Peak Putin? Not if Foodstamp can help it.
A little history on the Russian lands named Ukrain by the German high command in 1918,
http://themindrenewed.com/interviews/2014/451-int-47
http://tarpley.net/ (May 29, 2014)
You are not Russian because you speak Russian, rather you speak Russian because you are Russian.
Unlike Ukrain in regard to Russia, Canada was never part of the American Republic and is just as old.
Listen Tarpley archive of last Friday program. Tarpley.net also on Rense.com program achives
Then "Ukraine A History" Orest Subtelny
Ukraine (borderland) is lands...but never really a nation it own until lately attempt which cannot be considered success.
While at same time Russian Federation has risen....
Will the Russians give Königsberg back since we're redrawing territorial lines?
As a European lefty it pains me to say this but its starting to look like Cheney was right, Odummy did gift Putin an ace when he backed down on the Polish GMD installation.
WRONG:
"If Putin had set out to reinvigorate NATO, he would do exactly what he has done to date. Anyone thinking the U.S. Deep State is in despair about Putin's moves has it backwards: everything Putin is doing is fueling blowback and resistance in nations that were potentially friendly to Russia. Nothing tells you who your friends are quite like troops massing on your neighbor's border."
The energy is moving east!
Eastern Ukraine will federate legally after the USUK team hit and run while Ukraine crumbles.
Your choices of countries / neighbor's are old and tired!
NATO is a UN Bitch created by United Nations aka Rockefeller/Ford Foundations back in the late 1940's by BIG OIL, the same time they made Israel their Middle-East Proxy.
Today they have names like Bush, Clinton, but ownership is still in tribal hands. Never for a fucking moment did NATO have ever have shit to do with EUROPE, it was a clever way for US-MIL to control EUROPE with European blood.
The push-back is only because Europeans aren't stupid like hair-lips in the USA. Push-Back is the USA using Europe blood to fight its oil war's outside of Europe. Clever that the Rockefeller/Ford legacy could make it appear that WWII II never ended.
Try to tell Germans that presence of US Troops in GERMANY is an NOT OCCUPATION.
Germany LOST WWII, the NAZIS WON.
Generally, I find the articles on Zero Hedge that tend to write about "diplomacy" and "geopolitical affairs" that PRESUME there is some "national interest" which operates without being dominated by internationalized ruling classes, to be some of the stupidest articles that get published here. This was one of those kinds of silly articles.
ALL THE NATO COUNTRIES, INCLUDING THE USA, HAVE BECOME RULED BY POLITICAL PUPPETS WHOSE STRINGS ARE PULLED BY THE INTERNATIONAL BANKSTERS, WHILE THE MASSES OF MUPPETS IN THOSE COUNTRIES HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED TO BELIEVE THE MASS MEDIA BULLSHIT ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING. IT IS CRUCIAL TO BELIEVE THE BANKSTERS' BULLSHIT WORLD VIEW TO NOT BE ABLE TO PERCEIVE THAT THEY CONTROL THE EXPRESSION OF THE "NATIONAL INTERESTS" TO ACTUALLY BECOME THE BANKSTERS' INTERESTS.
Russians had the shit kicked out of them during the 20th Century by the international banksters. However, Russia has apparently recovered a little from that horror, which now makes them be on the bad side of the NATO countries that the international banksters dominate. Peak Putin would require that the global opposition to the international banksters globalized systems has peaked. Putin is merely a symbol of the rising resistance to the international banksters. However, the deeper driving force is the fundamental contradictions inherent in the paradoxical nature of the banksters' successes all being based on the foundation of enforcing frauds ...
That paradox is the final failure from too much success at controlling civilization with huge lies, backed by lots of violence. That paradox is that the success of systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, through the banksters being able to apply the methods of organized crime to dominate the political processes, and pretty well all other social institutions, such as the schools and mass media, means that the whole civilization more and more is based on bigger and bigger lies, which can never be made to become true by the violence that backs that runaway triumph of frauds up. Thus the paradoxical longer term consequences of the banksters triumphant frauds dominating the political processes drives the whole thing more and more stark raving mad!
Even if Putin was somehow assassinated by the international banksters, that would only make the basic problem behind all of these phenomena get worse, faster. The international banksters have succeeded in creating a global empire of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. However, that system necessarily becomes madly self-destructive, in direct proportion to how much more successfully dominate it becomes. The more successfully the banksters are able to control their puppet politicians, and the masses of muppets, through various governments, that are alleged to serve "national interests," but obviously do not, the worse the basic problem behind all of these events become, which is that human civilization based on the triumphs of huge lies must necessarily operate more and more through attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance, with cognitive dissonance being driven into overdrive towards psychotic breakdowns.
"National interests" in all NATO countries have become like hosts which have been taken over by parasites that are killing their hosts, since those nations are actually serving the interests of the bankster parasites that have taken over control of the powers of government, through too much successfully accomplished application of the methods of organized crime, through the funding of politics in all of the various ways that that could be done.
What is way worse, the overall success of controlling human civilization by triumphant systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, is killing the natural world as a whole. A society dominated by huge lies, because those were effectively backed up by violence, is a society which more and more operates through attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance. Inside of those trends, the runaway social polarization, regarding the ways that different groups of people are treating each other, in ways determined by the established and increasing successes of systems of lies, backed by violence, is relatively trivial compared to the overall ways that the human species as a whole is treating the natural world as a whole with the same attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance towards the life of the natural world as a whole.
The international banksters have been selected to become the most criminally insane people, who were able to control a criminally insane civilization. Almost nobody is acting in any sane human interests, nor collective national interests, because especially the topmost of the top ruling classes have become too criminally insane to be acting in their own interests. The paradox is that each increment of social success based on backing up frauds with force, through corrupting government to legalize lies, and back those legalized lies up with violence, drives that society as whole to become overall more insane.
Russia does not have a central bank dominated by the international banksters. The international banksters are following through on their agenda to try to destroy Russia, in ways which will enable the international banksters to consolidate their globalized control over the whole world's monetary system. That is why we have the insanities of the international banksters manipulating NATO countries, and the mass media in those countries, to promote confrontations with Russia, in ways which recklessly risk collective global suicide for the whole of globalized civilization.
The problem with that globalized agenda is that it is the attempt to completely consolidate a globalized system of backing up frauds with force, which means that the fundamentally fraudulent basis, and therefore collective social insanities of triumphantly being able achieve that goal, are all based upon being able to continue to direct everything that gets done through even bigger lies, backed up by even more violence, which all depends upon there generally being even more evil deliberate ignorance regarding everything that is actually happening due to civilization being controlled by lies.
IN THAT CONTEXT, IT IS RIDICULOUS TO BELIEVE THAT NATIONS ACT IN THEIR OWN INTEREST, BECAUSE ALL NATIONS ARE ACTUALLY BEHAVING IN WAYS WHICH ARE MADLY SELF-DESTRUCTIVE, BECAUSE THEY ARE BEING CONTROLLED BY GLOBALIZED RULING CLASSES WHICH HAVE BECOME CRIMINALLY INSANE, BECAUSE THOSE RULING CLASSES WERE NEVER GOOD AT ANYTHING BUT BEING THE BEST AT LYING, AND BACKING UP THEIR LIES WITH VIOLENCE.
The problem RM with the ALT postings on ZH, is that they are 100% ZIO-ALT.
Show me some Noam Chomsky, or anybody of that ilk, and I will show you real fucking ALT.
Charles Smith, the 'diplomat', Kunstler, is all soft-ALT for hard right Likudists who need to be fed a balanced diet of shit.
*
Like Charles Smith here he can dance around forever, with the elephant in the living room, and he will talk&talk about the leg, and trunk, and ear's, but he'll never mention the elephant by name, nor will he tell you how to get the elephant out of the living room.
In this case the 'elephant' is the BIS/IMF/ZIO-NEO-CON, and the trillionaires who control these groups.
When Charles Smith, or ZH start posting REAL FUCKING 'ALT' on ZH that talks about how we can fix what ails AmeriKKKa, UNTIL then its all circle-jerk masturbating monkeys on ZH 24/7.
Choke on those google click nickels bitchzes.
This article is way off the mark.
There really is no need to hypothesize about what is at stake here and why. All one need do is listen to Sergey Lavrov. He's very clear and concise about what Russia's aims are here, not to mention that he sounds about 1,000% more informed than Ketchup boy.
Russia has schooled the West here, and geopolitically has gained some new found respect.
Our current leadeship is clearly inept.....................and practically handed Crimea to Putin with this absurd encroachment in Ukraine. Had no business sticking our self righteous dogma into this hornets nest in Kiev.
Got exactly what we deserved.
How about if in Canaga would forbidden english schools, colleges, universities, TV, radio, and the ONLY official language would be French?
This author is totally clueless. Thanks for revealing your incompetence Charles, there is no point reading your articles.
one of the worst "analysis" i have ever read - speaking of, I have read by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's books and there is actually little to no relevance at this stage. what you are dealing with is not a "Soviet" or "Communists" but a very fucking tuned in man who has eclipsed these old ideologies and is now embarking an entirely new venture of his own design. Quite fucking amazing when you look at it given the IMF had pretty much gutted the country when he took it over:
During Putin's first premiership and presidency (1999–2008), real incomes increased by a factor of 2.5, real wages more than tripled; unemployment and poverty more than halved, and the Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction rose significantly.[8] Putin's first presidency was marked by high economic growth: the Russian economy grew for eight straight years, seeing GDP increase by 72% in PPP (sixfold in nominal).[8][9][10][11][12] As Russia's president, Putin and the Federal Assembly passed into law a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes.[13][14] As Prime Minister, Putin oversaw large scale military and police reform. His energy policy has affirmed Russia's position as an energy superpower.[15] Putin supported high-tech industries such as the nuclear and defence industries. A rise in foreign investment[16] contributed to a boom in such sectors as the automotive industry. Putin has cultivated a "he-man" and "super hero" image and is a pop cultural icon in Russia with many commercial products named after him. He is currently ranked as the world's most powerful person according to Forbes.[17]
Putin has limited readily available resources for the land grab game... However if not confronted now he will be able to build them up in a few years to where it will be a real problem. Dont we know his big picture game plan. Everyone knew his purpose in russia was to rebuild the empire... come on what the fuck do the state dept and intel agencies do all day... look at porn? I gues the NSA didnt listen to his phonecalls. Obama did everything possible to encourage him... no missle shield for easteern europe (hint putin hint).. unilateral reduction in nuclear weapons( hint putin jint)... unilateral cutback in military ( hint putin hint)... no move against seizure of two georgia provences and "ill be more flex in the second term.... who knows what the fuck the empty suit says in telcons... do we still give millions in foreign aid to russia.. Obama wanted to give russia control of the IMF... and the internet to who? BENEDICT ARNOLD OBAMA