Geopolitics Strikes Back Posted by Heather Hurlburt

So Putin is Time's Man of the Year.

What does he symbolize?

1.  The ability to buck both the American vision of aggressive democratization, and the EU vision of corporatist democratization -- indeed, not just to buck but to threaten both in the way they operate at home and as exportable visions.

2.  The promise that autocracy, or "command democracy," is not just tenable but effective in the 21st century.

3.  The extent to which petro-products still matter.

4.  The extent to which the US does not master the universe (see point 1-3 above), however much the only superpower we may be.

5.  The colossal failure of US public diplomacy, and disastrous devaluing of the idea of America, if this guy is the foil the world raises up -- and it works for him.

All worth considering over your eggnog.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

OK, I've had it. Every time I try to post a serious comment here it is flagged as spam. Yet these are perfectly normal non-spammy posts. What's going on?

[Dan Kervick]

(I'll see if I can post my comment in shorter chunks. Part I below.)

Well, 2, 3 and 4 seem reasonably accurate, as well as these:

6. The way Russians prefer to live might not be quite the same as the way Americans prefer to live.

7. General prosperity and a well-ordered economy under an enforced rule of law - where only the state has the unrestricted power to rub out its enemies - are far preferable, to Russians at least, to a mafia state where a small number of competing individuals have the "freedom" to plunder, murder, profiteer and reduce others to penury.

8. Not everyone in the world has yet grasped the sublimely enlightened American revelation that if private individual commanders of capital have the freedom to exploit us, dominate us, and determine the shapes of our lives, then that means we ourselves are "free".

[Dan Kervick]

(Part 2)

9. Some people may be willing to endure some restrictions on their freedom imposed by a strong central government, if that government is seen as defending the common good, and using its power to combat the everyday, distributed restrictions on freedom imposed by local robber barons and warlords.

10. Competent management generally trumps incompetent management.

11. Having money is better than not having money.

12. When the biggest kid on the block acts like an out-of-control bullying jackass, people aren't terribly opposed when another big kid on the block starts to stand in his way.

[Dan Kervick]

(Part 3)

I''m not sure what to make of your 1 and 5. I don't see how anything Russia has done has threatened the way the US operates "at home". Would that it were true. I'm also not sure how accurate it is to call the US-inspired shock treatment imposed on Russia in the 90's "democratization". But US "public diplomacy" no doubt has been a failure where Russia is concerned, since the US was seen as encouraging a group of parasites to buy up parts of the Russian state, dismantle much of the rest and sell it for parts, and then ship the proceeds around the world where they benefited everyone but Russians. Turning a whole country into an "everything must go" fire sale might not be the best approach to take in the future. The US and the UK are now seen as helping those parasites escape justice.

[Don Bacon]

Part One:
Whew. It's Vladimir The Great, "a Tsar is born". I was afraid it would be Petraeus.

Putin: "Sometimes we get the impression that America does not need friends" but only "auxiliary subjects to command."

He must have read the Bush National Security Strategy: "There was a time when two oceans seemed to provide protection from problems in other lands, leaving America to lead by example alone. That time has long since passed. America cannot know peace, security, and prosperity by retreating from the world. America must lead by deed as well as by example".

[Don Bacon]

I GIVE UP. THE SPAM FILTER WINS. PLEASE POST A MESSAGE ON THE FRONT PAGE WHEN IT'S FIXED.

[Peace]

The truth is that we helped the nationalism that Putin symbolizes to flourish through our scrapping of the ABM treaty, expanding NATO, and placing anti-missile batteries in Poland, and Czechsolvakia.