By Intervention
Whether he invades Ukraine or pulls back the armada, Putin is an interesting subject of intellectual scrutiny and speculation. No other leader combines in himself all the key themes in international politics in the 21st century, be it in leadership and statecraft; strategic theory; intelligence and power; force and foreign policy amongst others! But from whence comes he?
President Vladimir Putin and his successor as well as predecessor, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in a January 2020 picture
Mr. Vladislav Surkov, author of the much talked about Feb 2019 piece, ‘Putin’s Lasting State’
His ascendancy in power and consolidation of same is a product of competing narratives, a lot depending on which books or stuff one reads about him. One popular narrative is that his appointer, Boris Yeltsin, took note of his PhD thesis on how to use Russian share of oil for national greatness. Such a thesis might exist but it is not available to everyone. Another storyline is that when Yeltsin observed his role in containing the revolt in Chechnya, he was convinced that was the successor, a position he had already sacked two previous potentials.
It remained surprising that someone of Putin’s status at that time could be handed over the power to govern Russia. He had neither been a technocrat nor a politician. As a KGB operative, he knew what the concept of the state means but he was merely a Colonel equivalent, not that high up in rank as to have been that exposed him to the politics of power. Above all, he had been mainly in Berlin rather than in the hub of power in Moscow. So, long after his ascendancy, anxiety remained. Who is this guy who is handed over power to govern a nuclear armed Russian State, people outside asked? But it was a done deal. He had a clear marching order from Yelstin even if we consider just that paragraph in Yeltsin’s August 9th, 1999 speech swearing him in: “I have decided to now name the person who is, in my opinion, able to consolidate society and, drawing support from the broadest political forces, to ensure the continuation of reforms in Russia. He will be able to unite around himself those who are to renew Great Russia in the new 21st century”. Putin’s marching order from Yeltsin was thus categorical. To make things worse for skeptics, his leadership rating either kept rising or stabilized at a very high percentage, always above 70%.
He didnt seem to flow with Obama
This is the picture The Atlantic magazine labeled as Putin bullying Obama
By the time he stepped back from power and handed over to Dimitry Medvedev after running out the term limit in 2008, it had become clear that he had put all forces and interests under his control, including even the oligarchs. The fear was that the oligarchs in particular would be a problem for whoever succeeded Boris Yeltsin whose reform agenda had, in many ways, privileged that group or enabled them a lot of room for maneuvers. It is either Putin crushed them or negotiated accommodation with them.
The swiftness in such moves that he makes, both at home and in foreign policy, have added to the mystery around and about him. He makes few mistakes and he is substantially in control. The more he is labeled as the signifier of authoritarianism, the more his popularity and grip soars. There is no knowing how much of the popularity ratings are manipulated but some of those who wrote journal articles on Putinism – the theory and practice of Putin – are not obsequious fellows but serious academics.
Other than that, no leader is ever so powerful as to be able to do everything the way s/he wishes. That Putin is able to do whatever he has been doing such as annexing Crimea in 2014 suggests that there is a core there that agrees with that agenda. After all, he is rated even by his critics to have some of the most sophisticated commanders in the world.
In other words, there is something called agency which we cannot deny the Putins of this world of but agency does not unfold in and of itself. Agency is itself a product of a combination of processes which act to determine what an individual can do or cannot do at any one point in time. In any society, there is a limit to what anybody at all can say or do without risking punishment, irrespective of whether one is president or plebian.
Did he flow with Trump? That’s the more popular narrative of the relations between the two as long as Trump was in power
They seemed to have their own protocols
Putin and Putinism in the unfolding Ukraine crisis must, therefore, be seen within the plausible larger contexts at play. One of it and perhaps the most obvious would be the decentering of the ‘liberal world order’ which has prevailed since the end of the WW2 in 1945. What most observers of the global order agree is the beginning of the end of that order in the way that the Aljazeera journalist, Marwan Bishara, put it in a 2014 edition of the programme, Empire: “an end to global power measured in dollars and enforced by the American military” or “the end of the era when any single nation will hold the reign of power in its own hands”, (www.aljazeera.net/empire/28-04-2010/accessed). Such moments are usually very tense moments in global affairs if care is not taken.
Secondly, it is accompanied by a peculiar ascendancy of nationalism in a manner that corresponds with the contentious claim by Michael Billig in his Banal Nationalism. It is that nationalism, more than liberalism and Marxism, has been the most successful ideology in human history because, according to him, nationhood itself has known no boundaries in its historical triumph in contrast to liberalism and Marxism which, like Christendom or Islam in the Middle Ages, have had to utilize the sovereignty of the nation-state.
The newest friends in global power politics?
Iranian leaders too!
These two powerful currents provide a better collective framework for understanding a Putin than the autonomy granted his agency in the demonizing labels thrown at him. The problem with labeling practice is how the adjectives thrown at those being labeled tend to speak more about those labeling than those they are labeling. If labeling is, therefore, a very unhelpful practice, then it is worth asking the global powers involved in the current Ukraine crisis to negotiate accommodation or ensure that it doesn’t turn out to be the lot of the people in Africa, for instance, to bear the brunt of their elephantine romance or test of strength. For example, while more powerful countries have dealt with terrorism as a threat to the homeland and moved on, we in Africa are still locked in costly counter-terrorism operations with no end in sight. Yet, the spate of Jihadist insurgencies involved has been triggered by what became known as Global War on Terror, (GWOT).
No ‘reasonable’ person will endorse war or violence and nothing in the foregoing may be understood as an endorsement of Putin or anybody involved in war mongering. However, it may not be that the world is dealing with a lonely, ill-advised global actor. President Putin may not be parading a wife but he is not unmarried. The evidence suggests he is married to a woman called Russian nationalism with a bombshell sex appeal that he seems comfortable without what you and I call a wife. In that case, it is not about whether Putin is a good or bad guy but the constitutive force of this thing called nationalism. Putinism thus reminds us of Billig’s claim about nationalism as an ideology more powerful than two of the most powerful alternatives in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries – liberalism and Marxism. It compels all of us to think more about nationalism, with particular reference to power, difference, resistance and international security. The challenge of further reflection on nationalism is as academic as it is political and it is for all those concerned about global peace! Today, it is Russia versus NATO. Tomorrow, it will be some other actors or variables.
