Even With a Translator, The West Still Just Doesn’t Get Putin

Uncle Volodya says, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

I recoil in horror from the foulness of thee
From the squalor and the filth and the misery
How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me
That’s why I love mankind…

Randy Newman, from “God’s Song”

To nobody’s real surprise, I suppose, Vladimir Putin easily won the Russian presidential election a few days ago, and is the Russian Federation’s president for another six years. And while it couldn’t have been a real surprise to the west – we’ve just established it wasn’t really a surprise, and while the western media tried to drag out the usual round-eyed horror about ballot-box stuffing and carousel voting, you could tell its heart just wasn’t in it – the west is having a hard time concealing its disappointment. Some western leaders have made it pretty clear they would rather dry-swallow a pine cone than congratulate him on his victory, while others have sounded more like they’re announcing someone’s funeral, but there is a pretty common theme of profound unhappiness.

Why is that, do you think? I mean, there can be little doubt that his tenure as leader of the country has been good for it. The year he took over the reins, 1999, Russia recorded a record low GDP of $196 Billion. In 2016, the latest year for which accurate figures are available, it was $1.28 Trillion. That’s a…let’s see…tap, tap, tap…a sixfold increase. Russians’ per-capita GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity doubled. Did your income double since 1999? I thought not. While western columnists and reporters love to howl about the death of free speech in Russia under Putin, his critics appear to be able to say just about anything they want – he showed up at Lyudmilla Alexeeva’s home to congratulate her on her 90th birthday last summer, and she proclaimed herself to be ‘very. very grateful’ for the visit and the gifts. “To have the president congratulate me…a lot has changed. I could never imagine that”, she said emotionally. Naturally, Human Rights Watch pissed all over it, complaining that if he really cared about Alexeeeva, he would honour her by repealing the laws Russia has put in place to safeguard itself from western-funded NGO’s stirring up insurrection and astroturfing opposition movements. Of course he wasn’t sincere, snarled Deputy Director, Europe and Central Asia Division Rachel Denber. She just knows. Considering Human Rights Watch is funded by George Soros’ Open Society, and George Soros never stops hopefully forecasting bankruptcy and political collapse for Russia so long as it is led by Putin, it’s not hard to connect the dots there.

It sure would be fun to go on snickering at the discomfiture of western leaders, pundits and what passes in the west for journalists. But given the ample evidence that his arrival on the political scene was a Godsend for Russians, it’s hard to draw any other conclusion than that the west just doesn’t want Russia to succeed.

Why doesn’t the west get Putin? I mean, seriously – he has greatly enhanced the quality of life for his people. Simpletons like Stanislav Belkovsky and Gleb Pavlovsky have joined with the caterwauling west to accuse him of plundering Russia of billions upon billions for his personal use, but there has never been any sign that he lives more luxuriously than western political leaders, and no trace of the supposed stolen billions has ever been found. Embarrassingly, the most concentrated attempt to do so – the Mossack-Fonseca ‘Panama Papers’ – ended up catching far more westerners (including cosseted western pet Petro Poroshenko) than Russians, with no scent of Putin at all. In fact, the revelations made westerners so furious that the Brookings Institution speculated the Russians had actually been behind the release. That’s after people who worked on them took to Twitter the night before they were released, openly gloating that the information revealed would bring down Putin. Instead he seems to live modestly, work tirelessly for the betterment of Russians, avoid the limelight (except for a little relatively harmless no-shirt posing and the occasional spin in a racecar) and earn the approbation he receives from the electorate. Overall, the west’s attitude seems kind of selfish, given all it does is blat about how terrible Putin’s leadership has been for the west.

So, still it’s plain the west doesn’t. Get Putin, I mean. That’s pretty evident in “Putin’s Pyrrhic Victory”, from the Swedish speed-bump, Carl Bildt. For some reason I can’t fathom, the western political establishment regards Carl Bildt as some sort of foreign-policy Rainman, although he hasn’t really done anything significant since the mid-90’s and is to diplomacy what the oral sex light is to passion and spontaneity. He hated the Soviet Union when he was younger, and he hates Russia today, although I am sure he would tell you differently: he doesn’t hate Russia, he just hates its autocratic leader, who is holding the Russian people back from democratic bliss and ponies for everyone. The west liked Russia just fine when it was poor and desperate, like it was – coincidentally – just before Putin took over, back when Boris Yeltsin was stumbling toward capitalist ecstasy.

Well, enough about Bildt. By his words shall he be judged.

Yes, we hear, Putin’s victory was a foregone conclusion – although, as I suggested, the west’s obvious disappointment implies it still hoped for a miracle. Even though there was already no doubt who would win, the Kremlin nonetheless busied itself stuffing ballot-boxes and employing administrative measures to crush the opposition, because winning is no fun if you didn’t cheat. In fact, western political pundits and leaders have their ballot-box-stuffing narrative already written before the election, because they just know it will happen. That’s why Russia is not a real democracy, and Britain is, and its coziness with data-mining companies like SCO and Cambridge Analytica just means it wants to get to know its voters better. Trawling through their personal information to see how they might be influenced should not be seen as invasive – it’s caring. Also, there’s nothing wrong with letting the government investigate itself; in real democracies, government is trusted.

Anyway, enough of that. What else you got, Carl? Well, although the Russian economy shows signs of improvement, its growth is far from what it was during the boom years when Putin first took over. This, presumably, is a sign that his black mojo is weakening. What it is more likely a sign of is that the Russian economy was about to go under when Putin took over, and there was nowhere to go but up. What it is more likely a sign of is that the west is determinedly trying to strangle the Russian economy through sanctions. If Russia produced, say, marshmallows or sunflower seeds or something the west could just as easily get somewhere else, rather than energy as it does, the west would have cut it off completely until its starving people threw Putin out like the west wants them to do – but it can’t figure out how to ruin the Russian economy without hurting itself. Instead, western meddling has driven Russia and China into an alliance that ought to give thinking people pause; China is certainly not ever going to allow the west to gain control over China’s energy supply. Western voters might trust western governments, but their trust polls pretty low in Beijing.

Also, it’s kind of an illusion that the western states exert little to no control over the business community, although some would say it is the other way round, particularly in the USA. According to The Moscow Times – a source generally not very sympathetic to the Russian government – senior US administration officials personally telephoned American business leaders in 2014 and urged them not to attend that year’s St Petersburg Economic Forum in Russia. Additionally, the piece strongly suggests that an effort to cut Russia out of SWIFT was made in the form of an EU resolution, but that it was rejected by SWIFT as unacceptable political interference. That’s not the story we were told, which was that the west decided it was just too serious a step to take, counterproductive, bla bla bla.

Anyway, Mr. Bildt tells us that although Putin has assembled competing teams of economists to bounce ideas off one another, the Russian economy’s long-term prospects are dim unless Putin starts privatizing everything and ‘relaxes the security state’s hold on Russian businesses and society”.

For one thing, Russia’s GDP trend looks pretty uppish to me.

It took a bit of a dive around 2014, when the combined economic might of the western powers aligned against it in economic sanctions, because Ukraine was upset when Russia took Crimea back, although it had been Russian for 170 years before that. But it seems to have bottomed out, and returned to growth. It doesn’t look like much, but you have to bear in mind that the west is still trying its level best to make it negative.

Graphics are from Trading Economics. Growth looks a bit anemic, but we’re only seeing up to the first quarter of 2017; these figures typically lag almost a year. More importantly, Russia’s economy is growing slowly through market replacement of western goods and services, and those markets will be slow to return to western benefit, perhaps never. The net loser in that event will be Europe, although the prime mover behind the campaign to force Russia to accept western directives is Washington. I wonder how popular Washington is among European businessmen who are watching the taillights of their Russian market share, perhaps never to return.

Another thing: if you were to ask Carl Bildt for some examples of state-controlled businesses, I’ll  bet he could name maybe two, and one of them would be Gazprom. Gazprom isn’t actually ‘state-owned’ – it’s an OAO, or joint stock company, and is majority-owned by the state at 50.23%. Similarly, the Russian state owns 51.17% of Aeroflot, and 51% of Sberbank, owned by the Central Bank. But actual ‘state-owned’ companies, those in which the state controls 100% interest, are comparatively few; Almaz-Antey, Rosatom, Rusnano, Transneft and a few others. Also, significantly, national income from all enterprises which had some degree of state ownership fell, between 1990 and 2007, from 80% to 39% of GDP. I daresay it is considerably lower than that now. I need hardly point out who was running Russia during most of this dramatic decline. The great majority of state income is now realized from private enterprises. Additionally, Russia posted its biggest trade surplus in 3.5 years in January 2018, widening by 43.9% to $17 Billion USD. The country’s external debt was reduced to $529 Billion USD in the fourth quarter of 2017, down from an all-time high of $733 Billion in the second quarter of 2014. Most indicators suggest a country firmly under control, and steadily improving in a manner which is eminently sustainable compared to its dependence on the west only a few years back, with many valuable lessons learned which should greatly reduce its vulnerability to future economic warfare.

The western alliance would reckon any western leader who pulled off that kind of performance, in the face of concerted opposition, as a remarkable example of a statesman. But since it was Putin, of course he realized all the nation’s gains by thuggish tricks and crushing the serfs into submission.

“Putin apparently believed that the West’s reaction to his aggression in Ukraine would be short-lived, as it was after Russia’s military intervention in Georgia in 2008. When that turned out not to be the case, and Western sanctions became increasingly painful, the Kremlin began seeking investment and trade opportunities with China”, warbles Bildt. How does he know what Putin believed? Absent his ever saying, anywhere, “I believed the west’s reaction to my aggression in Ukraine would be short-lived”, Mr. Bildt has no substantiation for such conjecture unless he is a mind-reader. But this happens all the time – journalists, politicians, whatever; they just blurt out what Putin is thinking, as if they know without asking. In reality, Bildt and other luminaries of the Western Freedom And Democracy Roadshow dream that western sanctions are becoming increasingly painful. They might be – but not for Russia. Do you see any signs of imminent economic collapse? I don’t. Of course it could be doing better if there were no sanctions, but its trading partners would be doing better, too. It’s a trade-off, and Russia seems to have shrugged it off pretty well.

Ha, ha, ha….God damn. I just read the next paragraph, and Mr. Bildt has comedic depth I never imagined from his habitual prissy, lemon-sucking expression. According to his expert economic assessment, Putin’s hopes of a strong partnership with China were ‘dashed’ because….are you ready? Because Xi Jinping invited Donald Trump to a state dinner in Beijing’s Forbidden City!!! Whoo…HOO!! The Donald gets a free meal, Vladimir Putin has to be content with a lousy 30% increase year-on-year in bilateral trade. You poor deluded bastard, Putin. According to Dezan Shira & Associates’ assessment, China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) plans depend entirely on Russia – without Russia, it can’t happen. And what’s the number one reason cited for the burgeoning economic relationship between the two countries? The European sanctions against Russia. Nice own goal, Brussels. Carl, go out to the woodshed, and cut me a hickory switch. I’ll see you in a few minutes.

“The Kremlin also failed to predict events in Ukraine. Despite Russian incursions into Eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian government did not collapse. Rather, it pursued reforms and concluded an association agreement with the European Union.” Yes, Carl, more failure by Russia. Once again, Putin never said – anywhere – that his aim was to make the Ukrainian government collapse, so the ‘failure’ to achieve what was never a Russian objective is all in Bildt’s head. But there’s plenty of room in there. Likewise, Ukrainian reform is also mostly in Mr. Bildt’s head, and it is in fact the failure on Ukraine’s part to achieve any significant reforms which is making Europe regret it ever concluded anything so binding as an Association Agreement with a country that probably wouldn’t be able to get a library card if it were a private citizen. And always the assumption that it was Putin’s failed plan to stop Ukraine from having anything to do with the European union, even after it is a matter of public record that he said previously that Russia had no objections if that was what the Ukrainian people really wanted.

“But Füle had assumed Russia wouldn’t have any objections to the treaty. “Russia had never had a problem with the EU,” said sources in Brussels familiar with the negotiations. After all, hadn’t Putin offered his backing for closer ties back in 2004? During a visit to Spain at the time, the Russian president said, “If Ukraine wants to join the EU and if the EU accepts Ukraine as a member, Russia, I think, would welcome this.”

Syria is another failed project, says Bildt; although Putin has been able to ‘shore up the regime of Bashar al-Assad’, peace and stability are still nowhere in sight. You ever wonder why that is, Carl? Do you suppose it might be the admitted presence in Syria of regular forces of several western nations, fighting to defend the right of Islamic fundamentalist militias to overthrow the democratically-elected government? That might make things a little difficult for Russia, don’t you think? Quite a bit like it would have been a little harder for the west to organize a rebel bayonet party for Muammar Gaddafi if the Russian Air Force had been fighting on his side, and funneling money and weapons to his forces, you know, providing them with vehicles and satellite radios that could be used to call in Russian airstrikes, that sort of thing.

Bildt just gets progressively wilder from there on, reporting that Russian security agencies have a license to kill defectors with nerve agents, but ever-watchful England detected it. That whole paragraph is just nutty – Skripal was not a defector, he was exchanged in a spy swap, and to the best of our knowledge he is not dead. England does not have the first clue what agent was employed because its boffins at Porton Down will still be a couple of weeks analyzing it, and everyone thinks it is ‘Novichok’ because Theresa May said it was. There is absolutely no reason to be certain it was made in Russia or came from Russia, because (a) its purported designer, the defector Vil Mirzayanov, engineered it to be made at bench level by anyone with access to common compounds such as fertilizer, and (b) if Porton Down has a sample to compare with, then Porton Down obviously can make it, too. They’re only about 8 miles from Salisbury.

Furthermore, the British do not have the first clue where and how the Skripals were poisoned. First it was at a restaurant, where something must have been slipped into their food or drink, and they then collapsed on a bench nearby. Photos of the crime scene showed British firemen dressed in full chemical-protection suits, being helped into or out of them by other firemen slightly less well-protected, while right behind them stood firefighters dressed only in turnout gear and helmets, with no breathing apparatus whatever.

Is that any way to behave around a nerve agent ten times more deadly than VX?

Then the Skripals were poisoned at their home. But that wouldn’t fly, because their house pets were taken away – apparently completely unharmed – by a local veterinarian. Anything that breathes is affected by nerve agents, and it is often tested on animals such as rats, goats and birds.

Then they must have been poisoned by nerve gas inserted into the air-conditioning system in their car. Yes, I’m sure – one of the first symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning is blindness as the eyes tear uncontrollably, and they could not have driven a car. And not likely would have staggered, drooling, into a restaurant afterward to have a meal and then collapse on a bench outside.

It is plain now that the British are just thrashing about, waiting to be told what is wrong with their stories so they can come up with new ones. That most of the rest of the western powers back them up with expulsions of Russian diplomats – uniformly characterized as ‘Russian spies’ – speaks volumes about the collapse of integrity in the west, as hardly anyone asked for substantiation despite the official scenario being like an episode of Fawlty Towers.

Good thing they have someone as firmly grounded in reality as Carl Bildt is, in their corner.