When I look back to 1997, it seems like so long ago. We had full confidence in democracy. We believed democracy was the pinnacle in the evolution of governments, of society. We saw the progression from impoverished third world dictatorships to “second world” communism to first world democracy as a natural evolutionary process, and democracy was as inevitable as a baby growing up to be an adult human. This mindset is reflected in the Wired article, the assumption, naive in hindsight, that the only conceivable end result of globalization was a world that looked like us, where our Western values handily prevailed —- because everyone wants to be like us……especially the Russian people.
We believed it and our goal was to sell it. We packaged it as opportunity and abundance, blue jeans and Big Macs. But the first version, the Democracy 1.0 that we sold to the Russian people, failed to work as advertised. It turned out that some people were way better at seizing opportunities and abundance than others, the substantial assets of the old USSR fell into the hands of gangsters, and kleptocracy took hold. Ordinary Russian citizens became disillusioned and power struggles abounded as the Russians tried to figure out how to salvage this idea of democracy, or if they even wanted to. Because, as it turned out, democracy isn’t perfect.
I found it hard to write that last sentence, and I think that speaks volumes about my civics education in the United States. Democracy wasn’t just another system of government, our belief in it bordered on religious fervor. But without a commitment to equality and the rule of law, democracy can start to look like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. In the 1990’s, the Russian people suffered under the rule of corrupted regional and local elected governments. The birth rate crashed and life expectancy fell drastically, crime skyrocketed.
This state of affairs set the stage for the political rise of one man, the person that would single-handedly shape the course of Russia in the twenty-first century.
That person was Vladimir Putin. As the young and sober handpicked successor to Yeltsin, he won the 2000 election handily, promising “a dictatorship of law”, promising to clean up corruption and restore order. And it turned out he had his own idea for Russian democracy, a Potemkin democracy with him sitting at the top, in charge of it all.
Putin made a show of “cleaning up corruption”, prosecuting a handful of oligarchs that were insufficiently loyal to him, and, after this show of power, consolidating the rest behind him. He worked to strengthen social institutions - churches, universities, media outlets - that supported him faithfully and marginalized those that didn’t. He managed to create a vast criminal enterprise that hid behind an illusion of a democratic government.
And, after a time, he didn’t even try very hard to hide it. Ask Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots. At a reception in ……, Vladimir Putin stole his Super Bowl ring. Seriously. Kraft was passing it around, showing it off, and Putin stuck it in his pocket and left the party, trailed by his security forces. Kraft not only never saw it again, but he was pressured by the US State Department into saying he gave it to Putin as a gift. Such is the power of a mafia with nukes.
Or perhaps a more robust example is the story of Bill Browder’s Hermitage Fund. Bill Browder was an American investor who purchased a portfolio of Russian business which he actively managed, making them successful. Then he was targeted by by Putin-aligned Russians in the government and law enforcement who filed false documents changing the ownership of his companies and committed financial crimes in his name. He left Russia, having lost everything but some of his local employees were persecuted and one, Serge Magnitsky, was murdered in prison. This story, and others like them, precluded Russia from becoming a full member of the global capitalist economy.
More of my thoughts on Putin’s oligarchy and the Trump/Russia scandals can be found here
The liberal democracies of the West were, initially, cautiously optimistic regarding Putin and his plans for Russia, although they had very little choice in the matter. Putin played a long game, making performative gestures that showed off the trappings of democracy even as he consolidated power and moved the country towards autocracy.
What we did not foresee was that Putin managed to weaponize the features of democracy, our robust right of free speech and tolerance for diverse opinions , in order to wage a Cold War on Western liberal democracy. And he did this by utilizing the reach and amplification of our new technologies to spread propaganda beyond his borders, propaganda designed to manipulate and erode confidence in our governmental processes and institutions and undermine our social narrative.
Some people feel that the Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election and their subsequent alignment with the American right wing was inconsequential, because the Russian propaganda was such a small percentage of social media traffic. I think it was consequential, because it only takes a small amount of poison to taint the entire well.
When I began writing this piece, Russia had yet to embark on its Spring 2022 invasion of Ukraine. If anyone still had any doubts, that action that made it clear that Putin had no intention of joining the global community of liberal democracy.
One silver lining in the dark cloud of Putin’s latest war was the spectacular failure of the Russian propaganda campaign to affect the popular opinion of Ukraine in the US. For years, Russia has tried to turn the American right wing against a westernized Ukraine, spreading conspiracy theories portraying Ukraine as a client state of the Democrats and demonizing George Soros and his efforts to bring democracy to Ukraine. I believe he thought his years long propaganda campaign would cause the Republican Party to support his invasion of Ukraine. That was the prime goal of the campaign, after all. The 2016 election interference, the Clinton/Biden corruption disinformation, the Soros hate, the Trump flattery……all of that was done in service of weakening the US support of Ukraine. While Putin succeeded in wreaking havoc on the US political landscape, he failed in his ultimate goal.
I don’t think there is any course that the Western world could’ve taken to bring democracy to Russia and prevent the rise of Vladimir Putin. I think the US fell victim to its own post WW2 hype, which reduced complex conflicts in foreign lands to the black and white conflict of Democracy vs Communism aka good vs evil, ignoring the complex internal rivalries and cultural factors that led to these wars, both hot and cold. This caused us to believe that the downfall of Communism would organically lead to the rise of worldwide Democracy. Because it was a belief rooted in hubris and the idea of American exceptionalism rather than reality, it didn’t happen.
Some further discussions from the SDMB can be found here.
A very long discussion on the current conflict in Ukraine
A alternative history discussion on what might’ve happened with Russia/Ukraine if Trump had won in 2020