(Interesting Analysis) Syria, America and Putin's Bluff

September 10, 2013 By George Friedman

In recent weeks I've written about U.S. President Barack Obama's bluff on Syria and the tightrope he is now walking on military intervention. There is another bluff going on that has to be understood, this one from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin is bluffing that Russia has emerged as a major world power. In reality, Russia is merely a regional power, but mainly because its periphery is in shambles.

He has tried to project a strength that he doesn't have, and he has done it well. For him, Syria poses a problem because the United States is about to call his bluff, and he is not holding strong cards. To understand his game we need to start with the recent G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia. Putin and Obama held a 20-minute meeting there that appeared to be cold and inconclusive. The United States seems to be committed to some undefined military action in Syria, and the Russians are vehemently opposed. The tensions showcased at the G-20 between Washington and Moscow rekindled memories of the Cold War, a time when Russia was a global power. And that is precisely the mood Putin wanted to create. That's where Putin's bluff begins.

A Humbled Global Power ......To Read More.....

My Take - There is some interesting historical analysis in this article regarding Russian actions over the last 29 years that I missed along the way...however...there are some points in this article that I think aren’t highlighted enough.  

First, “Its economy is heavily focused on energy exports and depends on high prices it cannot control.”  Fracking is going to destroy the only economic force in the country and the reason why is because Putin and his thugs deliberated thwarted those efforts by civil rights and pro-market groups to help Russia become a true peaceful economic competitor on the world’s stage.  That left energy exports!  An absolutely necessary commodity which Putin used to intimidate Europe with threats of shutting down his pipeline.  Same old Russian thug and now he’s upset at others. 

Secondly, “Outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, life remains hard and life expectancy short”.  The Russian people are in deep economic trouble and this is the information age.  Russia is the number two country to hit this blog.  The people of Russia know what’s going in the rest of the world.  They are also not having babies.  Russia is losing .5% of it’s population every year.  How many cities is that over a ten year period?  There is deep discontent within the Russian citizenry, and it might not take a lot to set them off. 

 Third, “Militarily, it cannot possibly match the United States.”  The Russian army is full of Vodka laden drunks and their Navy is a rusty hulk, all of which they can’t afford to fix for the reasons stated above.  

Fourth, “technically Russia is not left wing, and if it is, it is a weird leftism given its numerous oligarchs who still prosper”.  The reality of Russian economic policy is based on corruption.  It is so bad in Russia that there are those who believe it may actually destabilize the government. 

All this is about one thing and one thing only. Russian thugs were out of jobs when the Soviet Union collapsed, so they became the real Russian mob; highly educated and well trained with contacts all over the world. Putin and his cohorts are the old KGB wolves in sheep’s clothing taking as much as they can get their hands on, but they must maintain their control over the Russian population in order to continue. Acting like a big player and humiliating an incompetent President is part of the act being played out on the world’s stage….and Putin is now the director of that play. That won’t last….As is much of the rest of thw world......Russia is broke.....the difference between Russia and the U.S. is they have no real economic dynamic to fall back on when the price of natural gas starts to collapse.

All that needs to be done in the U.S. is to dump regulatory socialist policies that have been strangling American industry and that will unleash a force of nature called the American Style Economics – AKA -capitalism. Russia has no cultural paradigm that will help them make such a forceful transition and one of the most important reasons why is they have no cultural sense of property rights.  The last I heard the Russian govenment still owns all the land.  That is what is foundational to capitalism and to a strong economic society based on the individual efforts of hundreds of millions of independent people.