Weekly Overview
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Chinese sanctions on Trump’s cabinet - lukewarm response is a mistake
Biden’s National Security Council responded [rather inadequately] to the aforementioned sanctions.
This is what the NSC spokeswoman, Emily Horne said:
‘‘ Imposing these sanctions on Inauguration Day is seemingly an attempt to play to partisan divides….Americans on both parties should criticize this unproductive and cynical move. President Biden looks forward to working with leaders in both parties to position America to out-compete China.”
It is of course true that part of the Chinese intent was to stoke up pre-existing divisions.
Nonetheless, labeling these sanctions as merely unproductive and cynical is insufficient.
Although I am sure that none of the team Trump officials lose much sleep over an inability to travel to China… sanctions clearly go beyond that.
Here, sanctions also restrict companies associated with these officials from doing business in China.
It is unclear how [and if] these more serious provisions will be enforced, but we need to assume the worst and look at some implications.
Consequences are not insignificant.
No US government official dealing with China should ever face a significant monetary disincentive from pursuing and advising aggressive strategy/policy [if appropriate].
National security is a serious area where we cannot merely rely on the idealism of the relevant gov officials.
If an American official knows that he may lose his comfortable post-government consulting gig if he displeases China, where is the guarantee that his day to day policymaking functions will not be affected by that?
Further to this, what message does this send to the government officials of allied countries - if China can do this to an American official, what more could it do to officials of a comparatively less powerful country?
Even if these sanctions don’t deter Americans, it could deter gov officials of allied countries with more proximity to China.
So these sanctions are not just unproductive - they are corrosive, and may have some second-order [undesirable] consequences.
Putin’s palace and mass protests across Russia
Navalny’s team released a well-delivered and thoroughly researched bombshell - watch it if you have not yet. English subs available.
The investigation uncovers an elaborate corruption scheme to build a $1.4 bn palace for Putin.
It is a useful reminder of just how rotten to the core, Russia’s ruling regime really is.
Bunch of crooks lead one of the superpowers of the world. A mafia with access to nuclear warheads.
Few things to note:
1) Putin is remarkably adept at establishing long-term friendships based on mutual favors. His closest corruption inner circle is tight.
and loyal too.
One of the front men is Putin’s friend from his kindergarten years.
It is remarkable how bonds of loyalty did not break over so many decades of joint criminal activity.
One could certainly also argue that these bonds have never been seriously tested by an independent judiciary/law enforcement.
2) Unlike the FSB, Russia’s military/senior army leaders was not playing any visible role in these corruption schemes.
There are several plausible explanations to this:
a) Putin does not trust the ‘‘siloviki’’ wing and its leader, Minister of Defense Sergei Shoygu - at least not enough to allow them/him in proximity of his wealth.
b) Navalny simply did not uncover such links.
c) Navalny is deliberately withholding such links, in order to keep a potential ally in his back pocket - if down the line, protests grow beyond police/national guard[separate from the army] control, and Putin has to resort to the military [just like Mubarak was forced to do so in Egypt].
Option b is unlikely. Investigation was extremely thorough and uncovered some interesting [yet minor in grand scheme of things] details. It is rather implausible that something as significant as Army’s role would have been missed.
Option c is possible - it is not implausible [even if not very likely]. After all, Navalny has proven to be a masterful political operative. The timing of this bombshell, and his record to date, and overall ability to play his limited cards in an incredibly precarious context is quite remarkable. Why would he not play this card? Knowing that Shoygu is a strong [yet silent] rival to Putin, with remarkable power and ambitions. Divide and conquer..
Option a is the most likely scenario - Putin is wary of the ‘‘Siloviki’’ faction. Why would he get them close to his wealth and personal circle?
Some long-term implications of these revelations:
a) Putin received the strongest blow to his reputation in his 20 year rule. Never before was his character impugned so 1) viciously 2) thoroughly and 3) at such an unprecedented public reach - at the time of writing, the documentary has 84.5 million views and 3.9 million likes.
For a very long time now, Putin’s propaganda officers were advancing the following line: ‘‘yes there is corruption in Russia, but our servant leader is clean and always investigates and punishes the perpetrators’’.
Well that angle is now dead.
Russian public finally gets an overwhelmingly persuasive proof of how Putin himself is rotten with corruption.
This might reduce [already dwindling] enthusiasm for Putin and his ‘‘United Russia’’ political party - elections will need to be rigged more brazenly and conspicuously, leading to a higher probability of dangerous [to the regime] public outrage.
b) Putin’s soft power and prestige on the international stage is now significantly diminished. It was already hard to pull countries into Russian orbit. Now it will become almost impossible. Expect more insecure and defensive reliance on hard power.
c) Russia’s regional political leaders will become more brazen in their own corruption. A lot of regional governors and mayors [especially in the Caucasus region] were already conspicuously corrupt. Kremlin now has even less authority to demand modesty. After all, if no 1 can be so obnoxiously corrupt, why can’t the regional apparatchiks?
Initial observations of the Saturday’s rally:
Approximately 100k came out to participate in the protest demonstrations across more than 100 cities all over Russia.
To date, these are by far the largest protest demonstrations under Putin’s rule.
March 2017 [also organized by Navalny] and 2011 Bolotnaya demonstrations were not much smaller, but:
1) intensity of these demonstrations was notable. A lot of protesters engaged in physical altercations with the riot police. Dozens of videos show protestors fighting back.
2) geographical reach of these demonstrations was unprecedented. Even some small remote towns like Nijhniy Tagil, had thousands of protestors in the streets.
Russian expat community was active too - protests all over the world. Surprisingly large crowd [approx 2k] in Tel-aviv. Even after Kremlin's Mukhin/ Solovyev propaganda duo positioned Navalny as an anti-semite, and for these purposes even had a promotional article published in the highly reputable Jerusalem post [which the newspaper later retracted].
3) Navalny himself was in custody - the organizer in chief could not himself have an input in day to day planning. Yet his organization has proven itself as extremely capable.
4) Demonstrations took place in extremely cold weather. Protesters braved arctic cold in dozens of cities all across Russia.
5) Scale of police brutality was unprecedented. More than 3k were detained. Riot police was brutal. There are videos of some older pensioners being dragged and beaten.
6) Authorities engaged in preventative tactics: arrest of organizers, threats of blocking tik-tok, reducing access to internet in downtown Moscow and St Petersburg.
7) Unlike in 2017, the general context and political/economic mood is now different. Freedoms are more restricted, police is more brutal, and yet protestors were more 1) numerous and 2) aggressive.
If under these tougher [and extremely colder] conditions 100k people were in the streets, then there are millions more angry Russians just a step away from getting aggressive/fearless enough to join these protests. Now, that would be an actual threat to Putin.
8) Administrative capacity of Russian police was tested to the max. Navalny’s team claims that hundreds were promptly released due to insufficient custodial space in police stations. What happens if protests become 5-6x bigger?
Having said all of that, the protests were not [yet] large enough to cause a crisis situation in the Putin regime.
For comparison, both in Belarus 2020, and Ukraine 2013-2014 crowds were significantly larger.
That is also when Ukraine and Belarus have significantly smaller populations. Russia’s population is respectively 3.5x and 14.5x bigger.
A lot of analysts will no doubt attribute this disparity to Putin’s personal popularity.
I will disagree - the main issue here is in public belief in the viability of success.
In both Ukraine and Belarus external factors convinced protestors that success was possible.
In Kiev’s Euromaidan protests, both EU and America stood strongly in defense of the participants.
US State Department official, Victoria Nuland personally visited the protestors - handing out food to those camped at the Independence Square.
EU sanctions on Lukashenko and the simultaneous support for the protestors [coupled with Putin’s initially lukewarm support for the ruling regime] was also a significant external factor.
It is true that both US and EU have been very active in the past 1.5 weeks.
Nonetheless, Russians by and large do not believe that Putin’s regime is as vulnerable to these pressures.
Ergo, in Russia, a higher threshold for public outrage/aggression/fearlessness will need to be reached before the requisite amount of people come out to the streets believing in the viability of success.
Yet another example of amateurish diplomacy from the EU
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell welcomed Biden administration, and urged it to promptly rejoin the JCPOA.
But the way he did this was extremely amateurish.
Here is the statement:
‘‘Only with two things, the U.S. coming back to the climate agreement and rejoining the nuclear deal with Iran, the world will much better and more secure.”
Really? equating climate agreement with JCPOA?
What else? is he going to say that the Iran deal is the greatest thing in the world since sliced bread?
It is of course laughable to so unreasonable praise the Iran deal by raising its status and [implicitly] comparing its significance to near universally affirmed climate agreement.
But let us assume for a moment that Mr Borrell is sincere in his belief.
Why would you praise the deal so excessively? so openly? where is your leverage now?
If Iran sees EU considering Iran deal as good to humanity as climate accords.. then what possible incentives does it have not to negotiate hard? not to refuse on concessions on ballistic missiles? Proxy activity? If the deal itself is already considered as fantastic?!
Especially in the current context, where Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran's parliament, admitted that Iran’s latest hardball tactic of enriching the Uranium to 20% was done with an intention "to produce strength in the area of diplomacy."
Can you blame them for exploiting EU’s chronic appeasement?
Why would you not press home your advantage [imposing your own terms] when your opponent is so openly overeager to come to an agreement?