Russia’s propaganda machine spent the past few days hinting darkly at the coming nuclear holocaust. Of course it was the usual mixture of lies and buffoonery that has become Putin’s state-controlled television and thuggish posturing that passes for his diplomacy. In the West no one took the prospect of a Russia-inspired end of the world especially seriously: global financial markets shrugged it off, people went about their business and the mood was in no way reminiscent of the dark days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It seems that we were right not to worry too much about the Kremlin’s threats. However, before sounding the all clear it may be useful to look into reasons why Vladimir Putin is steadily, deliberately raising the ante in his self-created confrontation with the West.
Putin’s main interests are not difficult to discern. First of all, he sets the store by material wealth and, based on numerous sources, has salted away a substantial fortune. Much of it has been moved out of Russia and is held for him by various trusted lieutenants and oligarchs.
Putin is also a hedonist. He is vain: he has gone through a variety of cosmetic procedures so that his face is now unrecognizable. He spends a substantial portion of his day swimming, working out and playing ice hockey, in addition to his long-time interest in judo. Until his age had started to make him flabby, he used to love to display his naked torso.
He could have gone on pursuing his interests for as long as he lives. World leaders found it regrettable that Putin’s Russia had opted to become a repressive kleptocracy instead of embracing liberal democracy and genuine economic reforms – as it had intended to do in the 1990s – but no one would have ever actively interfered with Putin’s pleasant lifestyle. Sure, he might employ nasty methods in suppressing opposition and his elections might be less than honest, but if the Russian people insisted on electing him and were content to live under his rule, it would have been good enough for the outside world.
And yet Putin has been hell-bent on picking up a fight with the West – and, especially, with the United States. Why?
The answer may be surprising: because Putin is a coward.
Just watch him during his infrequent public appearances and interactions with his subjects. His Presidential Security Service (SBP) detail are known as “Men in Black”: it is a hand-picked, highly loyal detachment of bodyguards who wear black sunglasses and black suits. Whenever Putin is outside, they sweep streets and squares clear of all signs of life, order everyone indoors and away from windows and place snipers on rooftops. The whole process is reminiscent of a major military operation.
Whenever Putin travels around Moscow, traffic is snarled for hours and doors and driveways along his entire route are blocked by a special detachment of traffic cops.
His recent trip to Kemerovo, a city that suffered a tragic fire at a shopping center, was fairly typical. He never came out to speak to the parents of victims and when he lay flowers at a memorial the entire square had been cleared of people.
Several times when Putin was shown on Russian television in the company of “ordinary Russians”, they were recognized as members of his security detail impersonating those “ordinary Russians”.
Like all paranoid leaders he constantly adds new layers of protection – because old ones no longer seem sufficient. In 2016 he formed the National Guard of Russia, a kind of private army headed by his longtime personal bodyguard Viktor Zolotov. The police force at all levels is being constantly beefed up and rewarded with pay raises and other perks – including a licence to run protection rackets. Laws, although already draconian, are being tightened to crack down on any opposition.
His cowardice may be the reason why he has made it a point of playing nice with Russian Jews. Many prominent and successful Russian Jews, even those who are not his supporters, admit that for the first time since Stalin’s campaign against rootless cosmopolitanism there is no state anti-Semitism in Russia. On the contrary, Putin seems deliberately to surround himself with Jews. There may be a tough of a supernatural medieval fear there: after all, going back to the time of Antiquity, leaders who persecuted the Jews have tended to end badly.
But that’s in Russia. The outside world is a different matter.
Despite spending a portion of his KGB career in the old German Democratic Republic, Putin doesn’t know the Western world and, like many Russians, he tends to exaggerate its powers. Or rather, he feels that the West – and the United States in particular – is insidious and sneaky and can stab you in the back if they feel that you’re weak.
That was why for some time now Putin has wanted to put the West on notice that Russia is a global superpower on par with the United States. He has tried to leverage Russia’s nuclear prowess, coupled with its role as a leading exporter of oil and natural gas, to get not only a seat at the table with the Big Boys – in the Group of Eight leading industrial nations – but of the Group of Two nuclear superpowers. He has been striving to get an American President to sit down with him and divvy up the world.
Annexing Crimea – and doing it by military force – was a step in this direction. He put the world on notice that Russia will do whatever it likes, disregarding international rules, laws and treaties, and demand that everyone else accept it. That in his estimation was the way a real Big Boy is supposed to act.
It didn’t work out that way, sanctions were imposed, and so Putin raised the ante. He invaded Eastern Ukraine expecting Washington to come to the table to negotiate with Putin a solution that would include the recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea. Alas, it didn’t happen. Nor did “food sanctions” on Russia’s own people, as Putin banned the importation of food products from the EU, trigger a rebellion by European farmers. Another escalation – a move into Syria – was another miss. It seems that the leading powers in the world are not interested in taking Putin seriously.
Even his great – and utterly unexpected – coup of helping Donald Trump get elected US President -seems to have led to nothing and even to have backfired, even though Putin obviously has some kind of kompromat to blackmail Trump.
Thus, rather than accepting him as a member of what he considers their “gang”, the West systematically shows him that he’s an outsider. All of a sudden, he’s looking more and more like Saddam Hussein and Mummer Gaddafi.
Putin considers this state of affairs extremely dangerous. Backing down now would mean admitting weakness – and Putin will be afraid to do that because he doesn’t want to share Saddam’s and Gaddafi’s fate. He believes that he has no choice but to escalate his conflict with the West – now hoping that putting the world on the brink of annihilation will bring America to the negotiating table. It is doubtful that Putin really wants an all-out conflict, but at this stage the situation can get out of control unexpectedly.
Cowardice is among the most despicable of human trait. The nastiest crimes are often committed not by those who are genuinely nasty but by those who are afraid.
