The key point:
Putin lies as a display of power. Only powerful people can lie and get away with it. The more blatant the lie, the greater the show of power when your listener cannot or dare not contradict you.
Authoritarians have a standard operating procedure. This is one of the key points. Those who enable this enable the other elements of an authoritarian state, including its use of police power.
The US media, and especially the print media, are playing as foil and enabling this by not daring to report what is factual and true as counterpoint but leaving everything as a matter of opinion.
A very curious statement about a head of state:
Putin is a persuasive speaker because his arguments are internally coherent once you accept his premise that Russia always means well.
And what US Presidents had that Trump completely misses.
Oliver Stone seems to have treated Putin the way the US media treat Trump.
Except for scenes like this:
That said, nobody could properly prepare to quiz Putin about his work, because nobody outside the inner circle of the Russian government has much idea of what Putin does all day, nor how his power is exercised. How does a small man with highly polished shoes persuade a nation of 144 million people to live in awe of him? When Putin invites Stone into the Kremlin situation room to observe what he says are his daily video-linked conversations with regional and Defense Ministry officials, it is impossible to tell whether the banalities they exchange–“Right now there are no traffic jams in the Ural Federal District”–have been scripted for the occasion, or whether that is what the governance of Russia is like most of the time.
The hope post-Yeltsin had to do with safety:
There is a touching moment when Putin thinks back to his appointment as acting prime minister in 1999. His main concern, he says, was “Where to hide my children.” Russia in those days–to some extent even now–was The Sopranos writ large. A respectable adversary was one who might kill you but not your family.
In 2001 I sat by chance behind Putin’s two daughters at a recital given by the violinist Vadim Repin in the Moscow Conservatory. Even with bodyguards on either side of them, their presence in public was an act of daring. In those days it was possible to invest at least some hope in a president who allowed his daughters out to enjoy Beethoven.
The fact that most in the US don’t know about Putin’s family speaks of politics in Russia, but it also speaks of how the leader is framed for US audiences. The stereotype of the Russian bear is a geopolitical statement and theory that sometimes gets in the way in the same way as some other nations framing of the US as the home of the ugly Yanqui. Too bad that Trump is trying his best to live up to the stereotype. Putin, like Krushchev, is doing the opposite. That worked well for Krushchev in 1962 at the height of the blowback from his biggest strategic miscalculation.
It is hard to say when authoritarianism ends and exactly how it comes to pass. For Spain it was the restoration of the monarchy that brought a democratic constitutional monarchy like many other in Europe.
Who knows what these trends portend or really what Putin’s reaction to them will be. Some authoritarians under the right kind of pressure have given way to more democratic forms in practice. Given the experience in the Duma under Yeltsin and the general economic collapse of Russia in the mid-1990s, not to mention the conversion of the major managers to oligarchs effectively through the theft of former state property, Putin is likely to hold the reins tight. Too tight, and there is change:
It is, of course, not only on the American side that things change. If Stone had gone to the Kremlin this past week he would have had to maneuver his way past some of the biggest anti-Putin demonstrations in years, led by the anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, as Masha Gessen reported on June 14. For Stone, Putin is still the miracle worker who got Russia back into working order after it had collapsed under Yeltsin. But for most of the past decade the Russia economy has been undermined by low oil prices and the cumulative effects of corruption and cronyism. Navalny’s rise strongly suggests that fatigue with Putin is growing to the point at which a serious political challenge is becoming possible–or, at least, a challenge might be possible if Putin did not control the political process, and if intransigent critics of Putin did not have an awkward habit of ending up dead.
In all this, it is good to remember that Russia has parity (by intention and agreement) with the US in nuclear weapons. The trend so far has been toward further reductions. When conditions permit the next round are uncertain, given the need for an enemy as the Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan wars grind on without a definite conclusion. An enemy that can rally the American people to transcend their political and cultural differences. That is a dangerous combination.
At the moment Putin is the only Russian head of state available to bargain with.
