Section: The American Interest (USA)
Busted Anti-Corruption Official Cashed Out $120 Million
Another week, another major arrest among the siloviki in Russia: on Sunday, the FSB detained deputy chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Committee for Economic Security and Combating Corruption, Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko. The special forces officers found $120 million of cash, in dollars bills, during searches conducted in the...
Will Russia Overextend Itself?
This article is the second of three essays on the possible collapse of Putin’s Russia. The first is here.Assessments of the likelihood of a systemic Russian crisis often exaggerate or mischaracterize several factors. For instance, thanks to the scrupulous research and analysis of Mark Adomanis, there is no longer any informed basis for the...
The Crisis of Liberal Order
The liberal world order, a system based on open borders and open societies, is increasingly under attack. In the past, it was mainly left-wing anti-capitalists and right-wing nationalists who fulminated against globalization, while the mainstream consensus was solidly behind it. Not anymore.xIn the United States, the Republican presidential...
Russia Re-Emerges as a Great Power in the Middle East
For the leader of an ex-global power whose economy is in disarray, Vladimir Putin is having a pretty good 2016. His ships sail the South China Sea, supporting China’s defiance of international law. The Japanese Prime Minister brushes Washington’s protests aside to meet with him. Putin’s Russia digs itself more thoroughly into...
War In Peace
What if warfare—the kind we see in World War II movies—never occurs again? The two great wars of Europe were total, unambiguous, and definitive. There was a beginning (a declaration), a prosecution of conflict, and a clear and declared end, including a postwar occupation and recovery. Histories of such conflict have made great books, and no...
Russian Pensioners Have Never Lived So Large Before
The Russian Government is taking good care of its retirees. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was brutally honest with pensioners in Crimea last May: “There is no money, but cheer up!” he said to an angry elderly woman asking that her pension be indexed to inflation (as the authorities had vowed to do after annexation). Clearly unable to make good...
Countdown to the Winter Universiade Games—Oh Boy!
Like me, I bet you can’t wait for the Winter Universiade Games in 2019 in Krasnoyarsk. What? You’ve never heard of these games? In truth, neither have I. But the Russian government announced last week that it was planning to spend $492 million to host these games, and the local government in Krasnoyarsk said it would spend another...
The Battle Lines are Being Drawn
With tensions between Russia and Ukraine flaring around Crimea this month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel set down a marker: European sanctions on Russia would stay in place come January, she said, as she had seen little evidence that Russia has made any efforts at the implementation of the Minsk ceasefire. Of course, the extension of sanctions...
Europeans Give Putin Just What He Asked For
The Russian press is claiming that President Vladimir Putin will be holding a meeting with leaders on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China next month to discuss Ukraine after all. Ukraine’s leadership, however, does not appear to be included in the plans.Reuters relays the crux of their conversation: Russian’s Vladimir Putin held...
Is Putin’s Russia Headed for a Systemic Collapse?
The durability of the Russian political and economic system molded by Vladimir Putin has been the subject of much analysis and speculation, both Russian and foreign, generating a veritable cottage industry of opinion pieces and forecasts. Some observers have long argued that structural economic problems (e.g., endemic corruption, a poor business...
