Still Crazy After All These Years
I have been going through an extremely high variance travel experience, hence the light posting. And no, the crazy in the title does not refer to me and what United Airlines has done to me over the last 3 days.
Instead, I am referring to Putin, who has been on a major roll at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Where to begin? One statement is loonier than the next.
A lot of it is whining about how Russia doesn’t get any respect.
Note to Vova: respect has to be earned. Cleptocratic autocracies that annex the territory of other countries and foment rebellion in other countries often come up short in the respect department. Just sayin’.
Putin justified the annexation of Crimea by saying that if he hadn’t, Ukraine could have joined NATO and Sevastapol would have become a NATO base.
First of all, Ukraine was and is decades away from any possibility of being in NATO. Any belief that Ukraine’s ascension to NATO was or is imminent is the raving of a paranoid mind. Not to mention that never during Maidan or post-February 22 had breaking the Russian lease to Sevastapol been mooted.
Second, raising NATO as a bogeyman is also the raving of a paranoid mind. Other than the US, and maybe France and UK on good days, NATO couldn’t fight its way out of a piss soaked paper bag (as Patton used to phrase it). It is militarily shambolic, spending well under 2 pct of GDP on defense, and most of that is on waste and militarized welfare rather than weapons. But Schaeuble says no, no, no, NATO nations should raise defense spending in response to Ukraine or any of Vlad’s other adventures.
To illustrate how toothless NATO is, consider the fact that when the Russians sent the carrier Kustnetsov through the Channel (rather than around Ireland, per usual), the Dutch navy did not have a single ship to dispatch to follow it, and also has no maritime patrol aircraft to shadow any vessel sailing of its shores.
All this stuff about big, bad NATO is so much hot air. Militarily, NATO is the US, and as anyone following things knows, in the era of Obama and sequestration, US military capability is extremely stretched. And the prospects for Sevastapol becoming some sort of NATO outpost are somewhere between zero and as if.
Another of Vlad’s wacko statements was that the only reason the US wants to impose sanctions on Russia is to achieve competitive advantages over the EU. Or something:
“By insisting on sanctions against Russia, I suspect that our American friends, and they are shrewd guys, may wish to gain certain competitive advantages in their trade and economic relations with Europe,” Putin said at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum on Friday.
Exactly how that works is beyond me. The US is going to replace Russia as a supplier of gas to Europe and accelerate that process through sanctions? Really?
This is part of Putin’s plan-which has been all to successful-to sow discord between Europe and the US.
In the same conversation, Putin said this about Ukraine:
“A civil war is starting in Ukraine, but what do we have to do with that?” the Russian president asked.
Try “everything” for an answer.
Relatedly, Putin had the chutzpah to demand of Ukraine: “Where’s our money?” [for natural gas]. To which Ukraine should reply: “Where’s our Crimea?”
But as stiff as the competition was, this had to be Putin’s most outlandish uttering:
“Russia is not the type of country that gives up fighters for human rights,” Putin said during the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Actually, I sort of agree with that. When the fighters for human rights happen to be Russians, the country doesn’t give them up: it imprisons them, beats them, or kills them. Because Russia is not the beacon for human rights, as Putin outrageously suggests: but because it is the enemy of human rights.
Face it. The world is dealing with someone who either is believes the most insane things, or is willing to say the most insane things even when he knows they are crazy. Either way, this man is a menace. Not someone before whom it is necessary to cringe, or to extend a hand. Indeed, what Merkel says is as crazy, or crazier, than anything Putin has been saying. And that is saying something.
This is funny (written by somebody who reads SWP):
<emRussian President Vladimir Putin is to create a fund to invest in local production as he seeks to reduce his country’s reliance on Western imports.
Mr Putin said in a speech that Russia would cut its dependence on energy exports and pledged to boost major domestic banks and industries.
So Russia is going to cut its dependence on energy exports by signing a massive, 30-year deal to supply gas to China, and invest the money in “local production”.
Comment by Tim Newman — May 26, 2014 @ 3:08 pm
Did you hear the audience’s spontaneous applause when Vlad made the claims about Russia protecting human rights workers? Frightening.
Comment by Richard Whitney — May 26, 2014 @ 4:05 pm
Prof, any comments on the data manipulation charges in Piketty’s best seller? Any thoughts on India elections and the potential for pro market, small govt. policies ?
Comment by Surya — May 26, 2014 @ 4:38 pm
Not a fan of the little karelian, but “dogs bark, caravan moves on”.
Those GRU operatives are really thick on the ground, aren’t they?
Had maidan not been so eagerly aided and abetted by the West, yanukovitch would have been unceremoniously voted out a year later.
But of course Putin is responsible for everything including global warming.
Comment by So? — May 26, 2014 @ 7:05 pm
@Surya-I’ve avoided Piketty for the most part because the book seems to be way overhyped. The theory is simplistic, and there’s little rigorous empirically about the adverse economic consequences of inequality: he claims to document inequality is increasing, and asserts that it is bad but provides little rigorous to justify that assertion. His policy recommendations are particularly unpersuasive to me. There is a lot of good economics showing that capital taxes are a bad idea in terms of growth, and in particular in terms of the growth of wages and consumption (i.e., the taxes he proposes are actually harmful to those who are not superrich).
Insofar as the data controversy is concerned, it is a big deal as it strikes at the heart of his claims. I know it is a challenge working with data sets like this and judgments often have to be made. If it is determined that his judgments are (a) routinely biased in favor of finding growing inequality, and (b) not well-explained and motivated, then Piketty will go from hero (on the left anyways) to zero. And if he is just making up stuff, well, that is pretty much self-explanatory. I will say that his initial defense was beyond lame, and raises serious suspicions in my mind. He did not address any of the specific allegations in the FT investigation.
I know so little about the ins and outs of India. Sorry, but there are so many hours in the day 😛 My knowledge is limited to understanding that the dead hand of the state weighs heavily on the country, and has seriously retarded its development. The concept of the permit Raj made a big impact on me when I first learned about it in grad school. To the extent that Modi is able to ease that burden, it will be great. But I have no real insight on the prospects for that happening.
@So? You keep regurgitating the same tiresome propaganda. The West’s support of Maidan was so tepid and equivocal as to be a joke. Maidan was sui generic as difficult as it is for you and Kremlin trolls to grasp.
Insofar as waiting by patiently for elections to vote out Yanukovych, what spurred Maidan to action was the belief that he would have sold the country to Putin by that time. And do you seriously believe that any such election would have been sufficiently free from corruption and fraud to ensure a legitimate result? Please.
If So? loves Yanukovych so much, he can always travel to Muscovy and become his personal b*tch. Other than that, this whining about “voting out” a mass murderer is beyond idiotic. Won’t be surprised if So? thinks that Stalin could be voted out as well, it’s just that the people loved him so much.
Comment by Ivan — May 26, 2014 @ 11:25 pm
Insofar as waiting by patiently for elections to vote out Yanukovych, what spurred Maidan to action was the belief that he would have sold the country to Putin by that time.
Ukraine has nothing to sell. Putin was offering billions for nothing in return. Since the coup the EU has offered nothing. Poland offered nothing, but moral support. The US has offered nothing, but MREs. And the junta postponed the signing of economic part of the EU Association Agreement until after the election. Must be a real sweet deal.
And do you seriously believe that any such election would have been sufficiently free from corruption and fraud to ensure a legitimate result? Please.
It would have been a rerun of 2004. The same election held over and over again until the West got the result it wanted. Poroshenko’s election has been hardly spotless, but not a peep from the West. Ditto for the ‘Colorado BBQ’ in Odessa.
Comment by So? — May 27, 2014 @ 6:13 am
If So? loves Yanukovych so much, he can always travel to Muscovy and become his personal b*tch. Other than that, this whining about “voting out” a mass murderer is beyond idiotic. Won’t be surprised if So? thinks that Stalin could be voted out as well, it’s just that the people loved him so much.
Yanukovich a mass murderer? LOL, just LOL. He will be remembered as the pussy who flushed his country down the toilet because he refused to do what any Western leader would have done in his place: scatter the protesters the very minute the first Molotov cocktail was thrown (end of November).
These people were not throwing Molotov cocktails:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-world-from-berlin-germany-shocked-by-disproportionate-police-action-in-stuttgart-a-720735.html
P.S.
Kolomoisky’s National Guard are dressed suspiciously like the Kiev snipers.
Comment by So? — May 27, 2014 @ 6:21 am
Ukraine has nothing to sell. Putin was offering billions for nothing in return.
For a country that had nothing Putin, seemed awfully keen to grab part of it.
Comment by Tim Newman — May 27, 2014 @ 6:31 am
As all those written off loans to third world shitholes show, Russian generosity stupidity knows no bounds. Somehow the Ukrainians turned out to be even more stupid.
Comment by So? — May 27, 2014 @ 6:39 am
Relatedly, Putin had the chutzpah to demand of Ukraine: “Where’s our money?” [for natural gas]. To which Ukraine should reply: “Where’s our Crimea?”
As reported, Poroshenko already did that.
Comment by elmer — May 27, 2014 @ 10:37 am