Who's Afraid of Vladimir Putin?
In a long interview I did last night for Bob Brinker's show Money Talk, a man asked me whether I think that Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man on Earth. I replied that I could think of five men more dangerous.But the exchange raises a question: How has Putin -- a glad-hander of rogues to be sure, a petro-nationalist definitely, an intolerant autocrat at home as well -- managed to earn the impression of a menacing figure abroad? He hasn't started any wars; as far as I know, he hasn't sold nuclear weapons or fissible materials to anyone he shouldn't have.
A more sensible view of the 55-year-old Putin -- whose party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections yesterday, and appears likely to be the country's leader for some years to come -- is that he's a politician who one underestimates at one's peril. He is indisputably dangerous to his domestic enemies, both directly and in the atmosphere of impunity toward murder that he has created at home.
Human Rights Watch should harangue him about his human rights policy. The British should continue to demand the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi in last year's Alexander Litvinenko assassination. And Washington and the European Union should move to prevent Gazprom from gaining a bigger foothold in the European natural gas market.
But Putin is not likely to provoke a war. I also don't think he believes he's contributing to Iran's nuclear weapons capability -- he lives in the neighborhood, and could be among those to suffer most directly in a nuclear exchange.
Photo: azrainman
Rights: Creative Commons
Labels: Caspian, central asia, Gazprom, human rights watch, litvinenko, lugovoi, Putin, Russia, wars
2 Comments:
Steve - A belated comment on this, arising from some prolonged contemplation. I think you're dangerously wrong.
I think Vladimir Putin is very dangerous indeed, and not just to his own people. He is sitting on a time bomb. If he makes the wrong move, it will go off. The repercussions will be global.
It's not even necessary to regard or depict him personally as evil. For whatever reasons, he bought his advisors' arguments to dismantle all institutions of political restraint in his country, tainted as they had been by Yeltsin's oligarchy. As a consequence, he now is accountable for everything – pot holes to bread prices. The very definition of authoritarianism. Power and property are distributed through patronage alone. There is no succession formula. The future – even the near future, like next March – is utterly unknown. Putin cannot possibly contemplate conceding power. He knows with certainty that within months his own assets would be confiscated and he would be jailed or dead.
This is a doomed system. It is called feudalism.
And it controls the world's second largest stockpile of nukes. Never mind natural gas to Germany or the noxious whiff of Russian bribery in Africa and the Mid-East. All we need to know is the fact that there is a highly unstable nation with ICBMs.
And that's not dangerous?
what about starting the second war in Chechnya????
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