Skip to main content

Rewriting History

There is an interesting article by Michael Weiss in Foreign Affairs pointing out the ongoing contest between Russia and Estonia. What is interesting is not so much the Estonian response to Russian spying, but just how intense the competition has become. At the same time comes reports of possible confrontations in space and hostile interceptions by Russian air force planes in the Black Sea and the Sea of Japan.

The Cold War is back with a vengeance.

Russia, having crushed the free media at home has also orchestrated an information war where seemingly large numbers of cybertrolls are unleashed on any commentary that challenges the Russian media narrative. A good example are the comments on Simon Heffer's brimstone filled condemnation of Putin being present at the D-Day commemoration in France. This is organised and orchestrated astroturfing. It is a brutal and deeply unpleasant corruption of free speech.

As I have often written, the hostility of Vladimir Putin's Russia towards the West is uncompromising and implacable. Yet still there are those who, for their own short sighted reasons, do not register the extreme danger emanating from the Kremlin. Whether it is the French who are still willing to sell offensive weapons to Russia, or the property and financial specialists in London who are still eager to prostitute themselves to the highest bidder, irrespective of morality and sometimes even law.

Nevertheless, the reality in Russia is now extremely bleak. Having captured the levers of the Russian state, the mafia regime is simply unable to address catastrophic problems that beset Russian society. The creaking infrastructure and low levels of investment are seeing whole swathes of Russia facing an economic breakdown on a truly stunning scale. Now the threats of nationalization and confiscation of foreign assets have placed a premium on Russian risk that makes all but the most committed or most foolhardy blench. The result is a drastic acceleration of capital flight which is reversing years of careful husbanding and undermining the Kremlin attempts to use their war chest of reserves as a financial weapon. Putin has drastically accelerated expenditure on the armed forces, but even that can not begin to match the capabilities of the United States.

Yet Putin is a Judoka. He seriously intends to try to challenge the West by catching them off guard. He knows that a smaller player can still beat a bigger opponent, if he can use their weight against them. He thinks that he can create an alliance with China that will give him the power to move freely in Europe.

Yet his first attempts at a real agreement with the Chinese have cost him very dear. Although the Russian info-warriors hailed the Russo-Chinese gas deal as a Putinist triumph, a more detailed reading of the runes suggests something quite close to a Russian disaster. So desperate was Vladimir Putin to reach agreement in Shanghai, that his negotiating position was totally exposed and in short the Chinese drove a very hard bargain indeed. From a strategic point of view even a colossal discount to the price they sell gas to the Europeans was worth it. From a financial point of view it is insanity and this reckless politicking severely undermines the long term future of Gazprom.

Putin's contempt for the West does not make the West weaker, his hatred does not alter Russian weakness, and indeed it is now possible to see the trouble that Putin has stored up for the future could severely backfire on Moscow. As demonstrations in Abhazia challenge the Russian dominated order and the economic woes of Crimea grow more serious, the idea that the solution to Russia's problems involves taking over still more of other countries' territory grows patently absurd. The continuing support of the Donbas rebels has cut off all hope of any Russian rehabilitation in the international community, and the economic and financial position of Russia is eroding even more rapidly than was first forecast.

As the confrontation opens up more fronts from cyberspace to outer space, the sleazy and brutal regime in Moscow may find that, against determined opposition, even the most skilled Judoka can face a comprehensive and irrevocable defeat.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch