Putin’s Aggression Against Ukraine Arose from the Same Impulse as His Destruction of Federalism at Home, Lea and Taskin Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 11 – Convinced that Russia cannot survive without a single powerful leader, Putin dismantled federalism within the country and then turned to attacking democracies along that country’s peripheries in the hope of surrounding Russia with “a belt of authoritarian states,” Aaron Lea and Boruch Taskin say.

            In fact, the two Israeli analysts of Russian origin argue, Putin’s war against Georgia and then against Ukraine “is not an anomaly but rather a continuation of the same policy in a different theater, one intended to extend what he had done at home to these countries as well (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=6A7B0050D9BBB).

            While the two do not make the point that the only way to ensure that a Russia in the future will not be engaged in aggressive action against its neighbors more or less forever is to ensure the creation and rooting of genuine federalism inside the borders of that state whatever they turn out to be.

            If that does not happen – and the two suggest that the personalist dictatorship Putin offers is congruent with what most Russians think and support – then the future of the world as long as a Russia without a federation in place will be bleak indeed, full of wars designed to transform other countries into something like Russia itself.

            The myth that Putin has promoted and that many Russians accept that autocracy is “a natural necessity” for Russia is currently costing the country its freedom, its blood and approximately 10,000 US dollars annually in income. Indeed, that figure is “the true price of the destruction of federalism and the deathonomics Putin has created.”

            Putin says Russia must be run by a single all-powerful leader or it will disintegrate, Lea and Taskin say; but that is nonsense, however widely it is believed by Russians themselves or even by others beyond the borders of that country implicitly or even explicitly.

            “Counties of comparable size and ethnic diversity – India, Brazil and the United States – exist as stable federations unthreatened by the prospect of disintegration,” the two write. And presumably Russia could exist as a federation however much Putin and his ideologues insist otherwise and however much people accept his words as gospel.

            But, Lea and Taskin says, the survival of Putin’s power vertical is very much in doubt because it is “vulnerable at the very point where any physical process breaks downs. The masses are not disillusioned by logical arguments. Indeed, sanctions, losses and isolation merely reenforce his ‘besieged fortress’ narrative.”

            “Yet that narrative could instantly dissolve in the face of economic paralysis, the disappearance of its arbiter or disillusionment with a war that yields no victory,” the two conclude.” Because that is so, what genuine Russian federalism could look like and how Putin’s approach could be reversed merit more attention than they are receiving.