How Should the West Respond to the Potential (likely) Collapse of Russia?

[SLD]

Russia's Kherson Defeat: The End of Putin's Regime?

Russia is now retreating our of Kherson in what is a major blow to President Putin and his effort to try and conquer Ukraine.

www.19fortyfive.com

I think there’s a real concern that Russia could existentially collapse in the coming months. The loss of Kherson could be a huge deal, and things might unravel very quickly. Will Russia break up even more than in 1991? The war may end, but then what? We may find ourselves having to deal with Russia as a completely failed state, millions potentially starving, extreme internal unrest, possible future civil wars, etc. And unsafe nuclear weapons to boot.

I don’t think anyone is planning for this, but it could really happen. And it may not be a good thing at all.

 

[marc]

I wouldn't say collapse. Putin is likely to be forced out, either behind the scenes or overtly. With the weakness of their military exposed, anyone dreaming of breaking away into a separate country will see this as the best opportunity to do so. Heck, they might become a russian lifeline, as they could make deals with other countries for materials forbidden by sanctions, then sell them to russia as a nice markup. Or the new russian leadership will have to make deals that reduce it as a threat in return for easing sanctions. (maybe hand over copies of all their Trump Kompromat) My main worry is the new leadership, either of russia itself or the break away states, is the threat of loose nukes.

 

[steve_bank]

I watched a show lat night on the history of East Germany pot war to its collapse.

Putin was an intelligence agent who dealt with opposition. Putin is doing exactly what was done by the Soviets in East Germany and Berlin but on a larger scale.

They tried to starve our West Berlin. No hesitaion to kill opposition demonstrators. Shooting people who tried to cross to West Germany. The same ugliness and brutality we see in Ukraine.

The E Germny leader in a press condence hd panned to annouce an easing of restictions on travel to W Germny, but mistakedly said tere wourd be no restrictions.

As soon as people heard on the radio E Germans massed at border crossings. Both East and Wset Germns started taking dwn the wall.

It snowballed.and caught the E German military and Gorbachv off guard. Gorbchev 's intial resonse wastoi reifotce E Germnny, them decided to say publcaly opening the border was the right thing to do.

Gorbachev pulled out military support. Putin is said to have been gong around asking for help from the military and was ignored. He had an E German wife.


The failure of E Germany was a point on the road to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

If Russia/Russian Federation as it is collapses it will be deja vu all over again. An autocrat backed by nationalists and oligarchs will take power. Putin was selected to succeed Yeltsin because he would play ball and not prosecute anyone in power. He protected money and assets. He came out of nowhere.

There will be another.

The response is permanent isolation politically and economically.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And note that Russia is getting a lot of it's more brutal troops killed in Ukraine. If things do fall apart they won't have nearly the ability to put down unrest that they used to. Remember Tianamen Square--the local troops would not put down the demonstrations, they had to brainwash some troops from a remote location to get them to actually kill fellow Chinese. Russia could implode very rapidly.

If it comes apart we should step in with big offers for all of their nuclear weapons.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The Russian federation only exists because of Russian terror, presently anyway. It could become an economic powerhouse if it ever escapes the shackles of its tsarist legacy. Russia itself disintegrating into separate republics won't happen.

 

[steve_bank]

China and India developed economies from a standing start. Albeit with western investment and technology. Africa, Mid East, Russian Federation not so much.

Russian economics appears to be mafia like.

I think it comes down to culture. Stalin and the commuism that followed killed off the freethinking brain power it would have taken, followed by a mind numbing conformity that stifled initiative.

In the 80s the Russians had a bizarre program. they had school kids listening to western pop music thinking it might stimulate creativity.

Thereare ethnic Russians throughout the Federation that see themselves as Russian, as in Ukraine.

I don'tsee the Russian Federation collapsing. The oligarchs and the military will not let it happen.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

China and India developed economies from a standing start. Albeit with western investment and technology. Africa, Mid East, Russian Federation not so much.

Russian economics appears to be mafia like.

Appears? The mob took control of the major industries after the fall of communism. The nation was never allowed to economically develop organically, which is why, if it weren't for oil and gas, the nation would be a fatter and colder Mongolia.

I don't see the Russian Federation collapsing. The oligarchs and the military will not let it happen.

I have no idea what is going to happen in Russia. The trouble is that it is currently relying on China and India to make this worthless Ukraine operation happen. Even if Russia wins all of Ukraine, the price paid... it won't be remotely worth it. But China is getting cheap energy and India is getting cheap energy, so they benefit greatly from this. So, they'll continue to support, and the oligarchs continue to have money. When that money dries up, so does support of Putin.

 

[bilby]

China and India developed economies from a standing start. Albeit with western investment and technology.

China and India had vastly superior economies, technologies and civilisations to anything in the west, before Europeans decided that they needed to go and plunder the rest of the globe.

The vast majority of the technologies that dragged Europe out of the Dark Ages and towards the scientific enlightenment, were invented in China or India, and brought to Europe along the Silk Road.

It would be less unimaginably ignorant of history to assert that western nations developed economies from a standing start, albeit with Chinese and Indian materials and technologies.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I think that is very overstated. The middle ages saw the West innovate. Iron plows, horse collars and crop rotation transformed Western agrigulture. Optics. Invention of eyeglasses that lead to telescopes and microscopes. The invention of modern empirical science. Mechanical clocks. These did not impress the Chinese. That lead to chronometers that allowed the West to navigate accuratly anywhere on the globe. Steam engines. Also drove advances in industrial scale metallurgy. Invention of chemistry.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

China and India developed economies from a standing start. Albeit with western investment and technology. Africa, Mid East, Russian Federation not so much.

Russian economics appears to be mafia like.

I think it comes down to culture. Stalin and the commuism that followed killed off the freethinking brain power it would have taken, followed by a mind numbing conformity that stifled initiative.

In the 80s the Russians had a bizarre program. they had school kids listening to western pop music thinking it might stimulate creativity.

Thereare ethnic Russians throughout the Federation that see themselves as Russian, as in Ukraine.

I don'tsee the Russian Federation collapsing. The oligarchs and the military will not let it happen.

The problem is, if the collapse comes, oligarchs and incompetent generals may not be able to stop that. There was a point in the 1917 revolution, homes and businesses of the well to do were looted by 'revolutionaries'. Maybe tomorrow's revolutionaries will loot the corrupt oligarchs. That thought makes me laugh.

 

[steve_bank]

Putin replaced Yeltsin, somebody will replace Putin.

Russia post revolution has never been stable and productive.

When the Soviets collapsed all the state assets were essentially handed over to communist political and military elite.

From reporting and polls there is significant support for Putin. Analogous to the Trump base.

Reporting says the Russian economy has stabilized and is not collapsing.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Putin replaced Yeltsin, somebody will replace Putin.

Russia post revolution has never been stable and productive.

When the Soviets collapsed all the state assets were essentially handed over to communist political and military elite.

From reporting and polls there is significant support for Putin. Analogous to the Trump base.

Reporting says the Russian economy has stabilized and is not collapsing.

The economy is doing better, but only because India and China are getting cheaper energy. If they stepped out, Russia would presumably collapse.

But now that I live in Bizarro Earth, maybe that wouldn't happen.

 

[Bronzeage]

China and India developed economies from a standing start. Albeit with western investment and technology. Africa, Mid East, Russian Federation not so much.

Russian economics appears to be mafia like.

I think it comes down to culture. Stalin and the commuism that followed killed off the freethinking brain power it would have taken, followed by a mind numbing conformity that stifled initiative.

In the 80s the Russians had a bizarre program. they had school kids listening to western pop music thinking it might stimulate creativity.

Thereare ethnic Russians throughout the Federation that see themselves as Russian, as in Ukraine.

I don'tsee the Russian Federation collapsing. The oligarchs and the military will not let it happen.

The Russian Federation will collapse. The question is whether this result in a break up of the Federation.

The cold hard fact is, there is no oil or gas in Russia. For convenience, we call it all "Russia", but the oil reserves are in sparsely populated areas far from Moscow. The only reason the Federation can maintain control over their Arctic oil fields is because there is not a native population who could seize the resources for themselves and declare independence. The revenue from the oil fields is controlled by Moscow. It's probably the worst conditions of any place in the world, and it's very expensive to maintain production. How long Russia can maintain production is anyone's guess, but when a pump or a compressor breaks down, they will not be able to replace it.

There are a lot of Oblasts(call them what you will) stretching from Muscovia all the way to the Pacific that are kept in line by the flow of cash from Moscow. Whether Moscow can maintain control when oil revenues slow to a trickle is the real question.

 

[bilby]

I think that is very overstated.

Intentionally so.

The middle ages saw the West innovate. Iron plows, horse collars and crop rotation transformed Western agrigulture.

These all pre-date the Middle Ages, and the world's earliest iron ploughshares are found in northern Hunan (China) and date from the Warring States period (475-221 BCE).

Optics. Invention of eyeglasses that lead to telescopes and microscopes. The invention of modern empirical science. Mechanical clocks. These did not impress the Chinese. That lead to chronometers that allowed the West to navigate accuratly anywhere on the globe. Steam engines. Also drove advances in industrial scale metallurgy. Invention of chemistry.

All of these post-date the Middle Ages, and are Early Modern or later.

 

[steve_bank]

Putin replaced Yeltsin, somebody will replace Putin.

Russia post revolution has never been stable and productive.

When the Soviets collapsed all the state assets were essentially handed over to communist political and military elite.

From reporting and polls there is significant support for Putin. Analogous to the Trump base.

Reporting says the Russian economy has stabilized and is not collapsing.

The economy is doing better, but only because India and China are getting cheaper energy. If they stepped out, Russia would presumably collapse.

But now that I live in Bizarro Earth, maybe that wouldn't happen.

National survival trumps politics.

For a breakdown look at Sri Lanka and Lebanon. A lot of unrest is tied to unafordable or unobtainable energy.

Over the past 50 years when a nation that subsidizes gasoline raises prices to save money people riot.

India has a population of about 1.3 billion.

 

[TV and credit cards]

 

[steve_bank]

On BBC American radio last night.

Khrushchev's grand daughter teaches in NYC and was reporting from Moscow.

She says people buy Putin's narative of the war being an exstential fight against NATO. His popularity has not dropped much.

 

[Swammerdami]

China and India developed economies from a standing start. Albeit with western investment and technology.

China and India had vastly superior economies, technologies and civilisations to anything in the west, before Europeans decided that they needed to go and plunder the rest of the globe.

The vast majority of the technologies that dragged Europe out of the Dark Ages and towards the scientific enlightenment, were invented in China or India, and brought to Europe along the Silk Road.

It would be less unimaginably ignorant of history to assert that western nations developed economies from a standing start, albeit with Chinese and Indian materials and technologies.

This overstates the influence of China and, especially India. Bhaskara II (d. 1185) was the last great medieval Indian astronomer (the Sangamagrama school of Madhava was secretive so not influential); Indian influence would be small except for its pursuit by Arabs and Persians beginning with Baghdad's House of Wisdom. And much of the Islamic contributions derived from ancient Greeks (and Babylonians).

China did provide some key inventions to the West but Chinese influence waned in the 16th century as European ships came to dominate the world's oceans. In 1400 China was poised to perhaps conquer the world and still had the wherewithal to dominate the oceans in the time of Magellan but instead became very isolationist. (Is this a mystery of history worth its own thread?) It was Europe, stimulated by Gutenberg, Columbus, Cardano, Galileo etc. that became dominant, militarily and technologically. Europeans had their own science, supplemented primarily by Islamic science, not Indian or Chinese. And as Charlie points out ...

I think that is very overstated. The middle ages saw the West innovate. Iron plows, horse collars and crop rotation transformed Western agrigulture. Optics. Invention of eyeglasses that lead to telescopes and microscopes. The invention of modern empirical science. Mechanical clocks. These did not impress the Chinese. That lead to chronometers that allowed the West to navigate accuratly anywhere on the globe. Steam engines. Also drove advances in industrial scale metallurgy. Invention of chemistry.

 

[steve_bank]

The path to modern math, science, and technology is multi threaded.

All major civilizations added in turn.

Europe very much built on the math and science passed from Persia and the Arabs to Europe as the region declined. Algebra and optics. Newton's laws had been conceptualized.

Newton made use of Persian astronomical data. Persia had an observatory that in its day was the place to be for astronomy.

Science always followed the money throughout history. Excess welth meant time to spend thinking.

 

[Bronzeage]

On BBC American radio last night.

Khrushchev's grand daughter teaches in NYC and was reporting from Moscow.

She says people buy Putin's narative of the war being an exstential fight against NATO. His popularity has not dropped much.

Russia has more people above the age of 50, than teenagers. The average life expectancy for a Russian man is 59. The demographics speak for themselves. We all saw Putin's support evaporate when he called for mobilization and almost every draft age man with the resources fled the country. In five years, Russia will not be able to field an army half the size it now has. Russia will be a nation of old women and very old men.

In addition to this bleak projection, the educational system collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union. There is not a generation of 30-something engineers and scientists. The bulk of Russia's technical workers are in their 50s. See the above life expectancy statistic. Russia will not have a next generation fighter jet or tank. There is no one to design and build it. The money which could have rebuilt the Russian technical schools went to build super yachts and villas in France.

The arithmetic is pretty simple. It really doesn't matter that Putin appears to be popular. Every Russian casualty, which is quickly approaching 100,000, was someone's son, brother, or father. This does not count the wounded and permanently disabled. There will be a price to pay for that.

The number of people who support Putin will diminish year by year, either from the hard learned political reality, or natural mortality.