Or plain US decline?
Former Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria’s famous Rise Of The Rest thesis – emerging economies spearheaded by China eating away at US hegemony – was playing itself out nice and slow, but a number of international incidents seem to have aggravated the phenomenon. And at the heart of the most spirited US rebuttals has been Moscow, no longer a broken down, pathetic remnant of the old Soviet empire. Indeed, under Vladimir Putin’s numerous stints as president and prime minister, Russia seems to have reclaimed quite a bit of its lost pride, financial might, and now even diplomatic muscle enough to frustrate some of the most crucial designs of Washington and its closest allies.
Putin’s anti-US rhetoric has been carefully scaled up since 2008, when at a summit in Munich, Germany he accused the US administration – then wreaking havoc in the terror wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threatening Iran – of being a hyper power unable to control itself. Over time he has had problems with central and peripheral Europe as well, and more than once cut off German gas supplies at the height of the unforgiving European winter, and each time came out pressing his points for all to see.
But when the US-Saudi alliance hijacked the so called Arab Spring, and NATO-al Qaeda partnership was on display for the first time in Libya, Putin put his foot down to prevent a rerun being planned for Syria. It was Moscow that kept the US from repeating its no-fly zone nonsense, and it was Russian intelligence that convinced Washington that the chemical gas attack drama near Damascus was in fact carried out by Saudi proxies, using shells that had been exported to Libya in the early ‘60s.
But it is his position with regard to Ukraine and Crimea that has consumed the entire western world. And despite his flagship companies owing approximately $115 billion in debt over the next 12 months, he is not blinking in face of heavy economic sanctions, and with good reason. This provocative, and well thought out, policy was first tested in the Georgian crisis some years ago. Then, just after ordering his forces into Georgia, he sent his most affluent oligarchs to Europe and the US, to the City and the Big Apple, to Europe and America’s biggest hedge funds and investment banks, where they have parked their many, many billions. Then, just as now, the threat was to move these monies elsewhere, perhaps in Middle Eastern banks with higher returns, if the westerners had some concerns about doing business with the Russians. But since the Great Recession was at its peak then, and hasn’t really cleared out even now, there was little the west could do but accommodate the Russian Bear, no matter how belligerent. And word is that he has again mobilised the same oligarchs, and they have received similar red carpet treatment in capitals across the west, meaning no matter how much anybody fumes, this incursion of Putin’s will go ahead as he has planned as well.
It is ironic that the socialist-capitalist model clash, which the latter of course won, and was based on the primacy of financial strength, is now losing out on the same principle. Putin has played the west military and financial compulsions well, to the point that he has elevated his motherland to heights it has not seen in quite some time.
