What Moscow Could Learn from History

After college, a friend of mine, who had studied the Russian language, traveled to Moscow. When she visited again fifty years later, she raved about the changes and couldn't wait to show me photos of modern life there. What seems to be happening in Russia today is a grim throwback to yesteryear from which students who wonder why they should study history, as well as world leaders, can learn.

     Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and his oligarchs, who have accumulated great wealth, are a new monarchy that thrives on corruption. Rather than recognize how corruption undermines public support for a government, as China has by prosecuting officials who use their positions for private gain, Moscow has revived a climate of fear and terror to keep its population in check. Dare to confront government lies, as Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov did, and you are assassinated. Run Open Russia, an online video operation that informs scattered dissidents of opposition protests, and you suddenly collapse in your office, possibly from poisoning. Blog criticism of the regime and your younger brother, Oleg Navalny, is sentenced to three and a half years in a Russian penal colony. Return from doing Putin's dirty work fighting in Ukraine, and your weapons are confiscated at the border. How long can Moscow keep a lid on a public upheaval? Nicholas II thought, forever.

     By just looking at a map, a young student would expect the vast expanse of Russia to be an economic power house compared to the islands of Japan. Instead, falling oil prices have exposed Russia's less diversified economy which contracted 3.7% in 2015. Oil prices that were expected to improve after an OPEC meeting failed to materialize and remain below $50 a barrel in 2017. When countries, such as Russia and North Korea, focus exclusively on the military, space, and cyber technology, the rest of the economy suffers. Destroy their military and what would they have left to make them a great power? Once Japan and Germany were defeated in World War II, these countries did not make this mistake.

    With nationalism pinned to advanced military weaponry, Moscow has flexed its non-economic strength and expansionary vision in Georgia, Ukraine and now Syria. TIME magazine in October, 2016 recalled the 2013 manifesto of the chief of the Russian general staff, Valery Gerasimov, who wrote, "A perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict through political, economic, informational, humanitarian and other nonmilitary measures applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population." Apparently Putin assumes such attacks can be directed only from Russia rather than toward Russia as well. In any case, military demonstrations of power and cyber attacks do nothing to correct Moscow's biggest problem, a failing economy. Sanctions imposed on Russia after its Crimea takeover and low oil prices continue.

     Migrants have fled Syria the way Russians abandoned ground when Napoleon's army marched on Moscow in 1812. To the victor will belong a shell of Syria or the realization that two hundred years later a country's power rests, not only on military strength, but on a strong diversified economy and an ability to negotiate a just and lasting peace in the world.

      To this latter end,  U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Putin agreed to meet at the UN on September 28, 2015. Putin expressed a willingness to discuss a joint effort to remove the threat of ISIS in Syria but then sent fighter planes to prop up Syria's regime by bombing rebels attacking a government that has killed, rather than listened to, protesters. However, once Putin determined ISIS had brought down Russian Flight 9268 over the Sinai peninsula in October, 2015, he pivoted to join the US and France to launch a major attack on terrorist forces. However, Moscow again returned to military support for the Syrian government. In August, 2016, Tehran showed its displeasure, when Moscow bragged about using bases in Iran to bomb Syria, by canceling an agreement permitting such raids. After Russia destroyed a convoy carrying supplies to Syrians during a failed ceasefire, the US broke off talks with Moscow regarding Syria.

   

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