30 May — Memories of Prigozhin, MoD Purge, the Narva River Buoy Incident, Israel, Mad Max, and Dune
It’s looking like this is going to be a bimonthly, only because life, other interests and, most importantly (or not) work make it difficult for me to churn out geopolitical observations. But distance in time is also valuable.
We’re coming up on a year since Prigozhin had his brief rebellion. That was an interesting day. If you recall those events as I do, Prigozhin, after months of venting on social media about the longstanding beef with the Russian Federation MoD, finally got tired of seeing his Wagner mercenaries stacked up for cemetery redistribution and sailed on in to Rostov-on-Don. Then, at least according to some reports, some “Wagnerites” — as they are called — drove north toward Moscow, and there were some clashes with Russian regular army, including the downing of a helicopter and a transport plane.
People in Rostov, by the way, seemed to love Prigozhin.
Fast forward a year. We all know what happened. Lukashenka, supposedly, brokered a little truce with the head of the “Wagnerites.” He was lulled into a false sense of security. Then, as predicted, his plane crashed a few months later. In the world of Russian Federation politics: ancient history. Putin, as you might have forgotten, just was “reelected” for a … actually, I am not sure how many times it’s been so far. Another time. Most certainly. And now it seems a purge of MoD is underway, with even Shoigu removed. At one point, remember, Sergei Shoigu was seen as a potential successor to Mr Putin.
As previously discussed, an economist was put in his place, supposedly to turn the Russian MoD into a lean, mean Ukrainian-civilian-killing machine. The Russian Federation’s armed forces don’t want to waste any more rubles on corruption, as they try to remake Ukraine into what Putin thinks it should be, so that it corresponds with his interpretation of history. Or something. I am no longer sure what the war is even about, but at this point it looks like, “Steal as much land as we can steal at the moment.”
But things are ominous. The Russians unilaterally removed some border buoys on the Narva River. They are continuously doing shady, annoying things in the Baltic, and have done so to the Finns as well, with their fake refugee crisis. One wonders what their end goal is, because it was their own behavior that drove the Finns to join NATO in 2023, and, actually, if you think about it, drove the Estonians to accede to NATO as quickly as possible. The Russian Federation is a new entity, established in 1991 on the territory of the former Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, that is trying to behave as if it was the tsarist empire of the Romanovs or the USSR. As such it has to continuously keep its little cronies in place in myriad geographies.
Not having much to offer, other than natural resources and the cash derived from them, it does this mostly through corruption and threats. Perhaps their long-term plan is to bully the Finns and Estonians into submission, while cultivating mini-Orbans who will hollow out European and transatlantic organizations, making them weak and meaningless. So one wonders what the purpose of being a bunch of dicks on the Narva River with some buoys is. The activities were denounced. One wonders what might happen in a real border incident where maybe a guard is shot while trying to steal a river buoy. A NATO war with the Russian Federation would make St. Petersburg, its second largest city, a theatre of such a catastrophic war. One wonders what Putin’s cult is willing to endure to live out his apocalyptic visions.
Having a lot of top brass in the military side-lined or arrested might come back to haunt Mr Putin. His spiritual predecessor, Comrade Stalin, used to say, “No man, no problem.” But for those under investigation for corruption, which will lead basically everywhere, one might start to think, “No Putin, no problem.” Everybody is competing for cash in the FSB and the MoD and even among the “Wagnerites.” The troops don’t fight for free either. It’s one big money racket. And deprived of their money, some may seek revenge.
The other current hell storm in global politics is in Israel. The news that Israel has been working to influence and undermine the International Criminal Court lest it, say, indict its current prime minister and defense minister for war crimes, making it hard for them to visit Philadelphia, only adds to the idea that the current Israel government is leading a rogue state. Old Man Biden, god bless him, is stuck between a rock, a hard place, and many lobbies in an election year. How to appease those who call for justice after October 7, and appease those who want Netanyahu to stop dropping missiles on kids, and appease basically everyone. Israel is a strange ally. Israel wants the weapons, but it doesn’t want to hear what you should do with them. That’s Israel’s business. Just give us the guns and the money, Blinken. We’ll take care of the rest.
I think in the case of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, and Israel and Gaza, we really see how a distorted, triumphalist view of the Second World War has led a generation of leaders to make rash, really idiotic decisions. Putin thinks his country is invincible. He’s too young to actually recall the sacrifices of what Russians call “the Great Patriotic War,” but he’s seen them, or actually the multinational Red Army, win the war in old movies. The Israelis justify their means of attack by citing the American bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. If the Americans could do that to civilians during a military campaign catalyzed by Pearl Harbor, then why can’t Israel do it?
These are good questions, and the world seems to be slipping towards a kind of anarchy that resembles the Mad Max franchise crossed with Dune. In this weird apocalypse, naturally those goat-herding settlers in the West Bank will triumph, and the Russians will too, riding their tanks to Paris. Then everything will be better. What could be better than societal collapse?
ONE MORE THING. I was struck by the recent admission of Olaf Scholz that Putin tried to pass off his “Ukraine is not a real country” schtick on him in the lead up to the war. He supposedly did the same with George W. Bush, and of course with Trump. Trump might believe him. Of course, at the starting line, way back in 1991, it probably looked that way. The Ukrainian SSR and Russian SFSR had been joined in political union since 1922. That’s 70 years of socialist baggage and bondage. But it has been 33 years since. The countries have had wildly different experiences and paths since then.
This unfortunately feeds into the “mad king” theory. A man in a world of his own. The Western media continues to wring its hands for doomsday. They like to portray Putin as shrewd, calculating, always a step ahead. But pay attention to Scholz and Emmanuel Macron. They did everything, really everything, to hear Putin out and give him the benefit of the doubt. There were those notorious photos of Macron seated at Putin’s long, long desk. These guys were not neocons trying to sell the world a war against Russia. They know Putin. Even Angela Merkel said he had gone mad years ago. Mad king. What do you do when the leader of a nuclear power is led by a mad king? And how do the maddening reigns of such mad kings end?
