Why is Vladimir Putin doing what he is doing ? Back in the final days of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated an agreement. The Soviets would withdraw from Eastern Europe and dismantle the Warsaw Pact, and in return the Americans would stop the NATO expansion and the encirclement of the Soviet Union. Both sides were to ease the tensions and build up relations. However, what happened next was that the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe triggered a series of nationalist revolts throughout the USSR. The unintended consequence here was the break-up of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of this collapse, NATO quickly moved into the former Warsaw Pact member states and even expanded into the former Soviet states in the Baltics. From the perspective of the new NATO members, joining the alliance made sense, given their past experiences with the Soviet Union. But from Russian perspective this was an utter betrayal. Equally important are Russias internal dynamics, and the answer to this is connected with the historic decisions that transformed Russia into a centralized autocratic empire. As unpleasant that empire was, that is how Putins administration is governing the country today. Even though a decentralized Russia which endorses freedom and liberty can theoretically exist, the last and only time Russia attempted to form a democratic and free society was during the Boris Yeltsin era in the 1990s. That era is remembered for the great economic depression, massive urban migration and the nationalist religious secessionist movements in North Caucasus, which nearly broke Russia apart. For the Russians, this was evidence that Western values and principles could not work in Russia. So when Putin first came to power in the year 2000, he slowly changed the country back to a centralized bureaucracy. One of the first things he did was to return the Russian intelligence network to its prime position in the political system. He merged the Border Guard Service with Federal Security Service. He basically raised an army of a quarter of a million people for the intelligence apparatus. Then he further centralized the whole system by placing the FSB direct under the control of the president. Putin then moved to nationalize companies such as Gazprom, Rosneft and United Aircraft Corporation, and used these companies for geopolitical means. If this sounds familiar, that is because Russia is returning to its historic authoritarian method of governance.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 21:58:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015