The sentence was taken out of context and largely misunderstood
both by those who thought it was a huge compliment to Putin and those who
considered it a put down. However, as is often the case with Obama, his
characterization of Putin came down smack on the middle of a remarkably
wide-ranging spectrum of opinion on the mental abilities of the his Russian
counterpart.
(On the other hand, there is a fairly broadly based agreement
on Putin’s repugnant moral qualities, confirmed most recently by his treatment
of Ukrainian prisoner of war Nadia Savchenko.)
There are those who see Putin as a Machiavellian figure, a
tactical and strategic genius who outsmarts impotent Western leaders at every
turn. This opinion, of course, is prevalent in Russia; Russians are known to
worship any nonentity in the Kremlin as the greatest world-historical titan –
as long as he is cruel enough and willing to treat them like dirt. But many in
the West express their admiration for Putin as well. Senator Ted Cruz,
currently running second to Donald Trump in the contest for the Republican
presidential nomination, once said that Putin is playing chess while Obama is
playing checkers. Putin’s surprise intervention in Syria has been called
“brilliant” and members of the US intelligence community have described him as
reticent, patient and extremely hard to read.
But then there is the opposite view, which points to Putin’s
failures in Ukraine and in the domestic economy, the squandering and pilfering
of trillions of petrodollars earned over the past decade and a half, the loss
of foreign markets for Russian oil and natural gas and complete international
isolation which makes him a pathetic figure at every world summit he’s still
invited to. (There aren’t many of those – certainly not the Group of Seven
leading industrial nations from which Russia was ignominiously kicked out after
its annexation of Crimea.)
Actually, the truth lies somewhere in the middle – and Obama
has put his finger on it. Putin is a fairly typical strongman of the kind that
have been popping up regularly atop various nations – both Third World and
major European ones – since the post-monarchical republican age was inaugurated
by World War I. There have been dozens of them by now, starting with Benito
Mussolini who became Italian prime minister in 1922.
In one way or another, Putin has something in common with most
of them. They’re typically clever and sleek and have demagogic skills which
endear them to the masses. They’re poorly educated, narcissistic and
vainglorious; they’re straightforward and not given to soul-searching,
introspection and self-doubt; they’re unscrupulous and ruthless; finally,
they’re not smart but they “certainly aren’t stupid,” either.
Obama’s reference actually placed Putin squarely in that rogue
gallery. Rather patronizingly, Obama stated that with him at least, Putin had
always been scrupulously polite, frank and punctual, never making him wait for
two hours at a stretch as he habitually does with other world leaders. In other
words, Obama described Putin as a two-bit bully who disrespects the weak but is
scared to antagonize the strong. In effect, he dared notoriously touchy Putin
to be late to his next meeting with him. It would be a measure of Putin’s
intelligence to see whether he picks up this gauntlet – because if he does,
Obama will be ready for him.
Two things make Putin different from any other two-bit
dictator. One is Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the other, much broader and more
dangerous, is his country’s deeply ingrained determination to destroy the
existing world order.
Communism arose from the exaggerated post-Enlightenment trust
in human reason. Karl Marx saw human society as chaotic – like everything else
in nature – and believed that a more orderly organization based on a set of
rational principles would be infinitely more efficient.
A recent exhibition of early Soviet photography at the Jewish
Museum in New York illustrated an obsession with uniform patterns – which those
photographers saw in agricultural plantings, industrial machinery and groups of
human beings.
Before they could build this new order, the old order had to be
excoriated – something the Bolsheviks set out to do with great enthusiasm.
While the new order proved elusive, the destruction of the old one was rather
successful. Worse, under Stalin it became the main purpose of his regime – both
at home and on the international arena.
Everything the Soviet Union touched wilted and died. It killed
off the aristocracy, religion, professional and educated classes and the
peasantry within one generation. It razed to the ground countless architectural
treasures and murdered leading artists and scientists – unerringly focusing on
genetics and computer science, the drivers of today’s economy.
It destroyed the fabric of the Russian nation, undermined the
structure of the family both physically and morally and left in its wake the
lowest life expectancy and the worst quality of life outside Sub-Saharan
Africa.
The aim of the international activities of the Soviet state was
to undermine the existing world order. Countries that were occupied by Soviet
troops or allied themselves with the USSR were always a calamity: North Korea,
Cuba, Cambodia and Afghanistan are only the most striking examples.
Eastern Europe and the Baltics began recovering only after the
fall of the Berlin Wall. East Germany was dirt poor compared to West Germany
and the plight of East Prussia and Karelia is too sad to discuss.
The fall of the Soviet Union raised hope that the communist
destructiveness had finally come to an end and Russia might start to build
something positive at home and cooperate constructively with other nations
abroad.
Instead, Russia came to be ruled by the KGB – the vanguard of
the systemic Soviet vandalism. Putin created a kleptocracy that bled Russia of
its resources. He turned the nation into an immoral cesspool willing to cheer
dishonesty, corruption and murder – not to mention outright war crimes. He
annihilated social and political institutions, both new, democratic ones and
those Russia had inherited from the Soviet era.
Since 2014, Russia’s pathological penchant for destruction has
been felt by the inhabitants of occupied Crimea and Donbas.
Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, Moscow’s Calamity Jane, is now
systematically throttling the life out of the Russian capital, as well.
Since the annexation of Crimea, Putin has turned his attention
to destroying the world order, as well. For the first time since World War II
Russia changed national borders in Europe by force and engaged in blatant
aggression against a neighboring country. Putin’s support for right-wing
extremists across Europe and for Brexit in the UK aims to bring a substantial
weakening – and, hopefully, the collapse – of the EU. In Syria, he’s stirring
the notorious Middle Eastern cauldron and pushing more refugees into Europe.
Unfortunately, there are sign that Putin is succeeding – or at
least getting results that far exceed his mental powers and ability to think
strategically.
That’s because his work fits in with other players’ pernicious
efforts to undermine the global system. Putin didn’t create neo-Nazi parties in
Europe and didn’t initiate their growth. Britain’s politicians, not Putin, were
the ones who started the Brexit movement. Even in the United States, the nation
that was instrumental in setting up the international political system and that
benefits from it most, we are seeing an unprecedented disruptive impulse both
on the right and on the left.
It has happened before. In fact, the current system arose from
the ruins of the old one, which had been torn asunder in the first half of the
20th century by two world wars. For reasons that are not easy to fathom, so
many of us are unhappy with existing social, political and economic structures
that we may end up breaking them down. In alliance with these forces, Putin can suddenly be formidable – and very dangerous. And it won’t matter in
the least whether he’s really smart or just “not completely stupid.”
