Daily review 07/04/2022

Written By: notices and features - Date published: - 6 comments
Categories: Daily review

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

6 comments on “Daily review 07/04/2022”

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  1. 1

    Fascinating take on Poot's strategy.

    To be sure, Putin is guilty of a massive geostrategic misperception. This is ironic considering that the fall of the Soviet Union was, in fact, a historic opportunity for Russia.

    Nichols: Can you clarify that?

    Gustafson: The Russian and Soviet empires were increasingly difficult to govern as multiethnic states, especially as one moved south and west to Central Asia, Ukraine, and the Baltic republics. But after 1991, for the first time in its history, Russia overnight had gained the basis for a coherent nation-state, in that more than 80 percent of its population was now ethnic Russian. Suddenly, for the first time in its history, Russia was free of the burden of empire.

    As a result, Russia’s logical future pointed east, not west. Before the 21st century, the czars and the Soviet commissars had never been able to govern Russia east of the Urals as anything but a prison camp and a resource appendage. But the advent of the internet, and the improvements it brought in communications and global trade, changed everything. Russia can now potentially be governed efficiently as a single national entity from Murmansk to Vladivostok. And it needs to be governed that way, because just over the horizon is the challenge of China.

    Nichols: You’d think Putin would have understood that.

    Gustafson: Putin continued to do what his imperial and Soviet predecessors had always done. Instead of looking to the East and absorbing the implications of this new reality, he focused on the West and neglected the East. Marx might have said that Putin suffers from “false consciousness.” From the long-term perspective, both the prizes and the threats lie in the East. Yet Putin—together with the hydrocarbon-based oligarchy that surrounds him—continued to focus on Europe. In rhetoric, he talked about a “pivot to the East,” but in practice Europe remained his chief market.

    An irony here is that the Russians had already begun diversifying away from gas transit through Ukraine before the war. Nord Stream 2 is actually the last of five new bypass pipelines to Europe; another decade and the gas divorce would have been final.

    But Europe is declining and China is rising. Putin is focused in the wrong direction.

    https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/peacefield/623e58039d9e380022c4989a/russian-gas-dependence-benefits-china/

  2. 2

    Putin and Xi Frame a New China-Russia Partnership

    https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/putin-and-xi-frame-a-new-china-russia-partnership/

    Putin hails $117.5 bln of China deals as Russia squares off with West

    https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-tells-xi-new-deal-that-could-sell-more-russian-gas-china-2022-02-04/

    Finally, and most significantly, there is the economic war which may accelerate the destruction of the US-led power structure that has dominated the world since the end of World War II.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1510064917524758532.html

    1. 2.1

      George interviews Maxim Suchkov policy expert Russian international affairs

      more stuff on sanctions / ramifications



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