Putin: WTH does he want anyway?

[Dill]

(05-06-2017, 03:20 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Putin. What the heck does this dude want anyway? Why is he screwing around with elections? What is this all leading to?

I've been doing a little reading about this dude and modern Russia. I'll throw out some of the things that I've found.

Like all politicians, Putin craves power. His vehicle for achieving that (his power base) is his country Russia. Like all leaders, there are people in his country who like him and those who dislike him. And like all dynamic leaders those who support him really love him while those who dislike him really hate him. But his power base is pretty secure. Western governments generally estimate his approval rating within Russia at over 60%.

Good work, again, B-zona. We can all take a break from domestic bickering and discuss geopolitics.

I am still soaking up all these points. Here is one I am not so sure about, though.  Is it possible that Putin's power base is not all that secure, since Russia is turning into a kind of mafia state which inhibits economic development, certainly any broad sharing of the wealth?

Putin is pretty hard on journalists, killing and imprisoning them. But I don't think he can stifle the points they make about the short and long term costs of his policies. The sanctions, for example, do hurt the county. Executive Order 13865 kills, among other things, the big EXXON deal with Gazprom. Energy is the biggest sector of their economy. Their energy sector would grow faster, enabling the rest of the economy to grow faster as well, if they had access to Western technology and Western companies could drill in the Black Sea and Arctic. Bu they can't.  People have to know this.

You think maybe national pride offsets this? Once again Russia appears a "playuh" on the world stage, fencing with the US on rhetorically equal terms, at least.  (Americans can be diverted from domestic problems by nationalist rhetoric and symbolic actions. Surely Russians can too.) Maybe the social and economic development are still so far behind the West that authoritarianism can thrive there in a way it could not in France or Great Britain or California?