Cartoon Tyrant

One problem with spending decades cultivating fear among friends, foes and everyone in-between, is that success means you rarely get the truth.

Sometimes, when the stars align and happenstance smiles on you, the truth is consistent with what everyone thinks you’d like to hear. In such cases, you’re happy and those around you relieved. More often than not, though, people who’ve succeeded in becoming universally feared exist in an echo chamber of their own making. They can’t escape confirmation bias, because everyone around them worries that being the bearer of bad news is a death sentence.

To be sure, that conjuncture exists to varying degrees in all organizations and hierarchies, from small businesses to large corporations to colleges and universities to organized crime to governments, democratic and otherwise. No one wants to disappoint the boss.

In all but the most extreme cases, there’s usually someone who, for whatever reason, is generally immune from persecution and thus free (encouraged, even) to “speak truth to power,” as it were. In the Italian mob it’s the consigliere or, perhaps more commonly in modernity, someone in the caporegime who’s related to the boss. In large corporations it might be a long-running CFO who’s been in the position since the current CEO’s father was in charge, for example. Even autocrats typically have at least a few trusted advisors tasked with delivering a reality-based assessment of current events, sugarcoated though it might be.

When soft autocracies complete the transition to one-man rule, autocrats tend to drift further and further away from reality as the perceived peril of delivering bad news grows. Once “don’t shoot the messenger” becomes a plea for clemency rather than a figure of speech, autocrats become tyrants.

Vladimir Putin’s transformation to tyrant is now mostly complete, and while you’re certainly justified in harboring skepticism towards Western media stories which purport to describe what’s going on inside the Kremlin, headlines suggesting Putin is “misinformed” about the conflict in Ukraine and also about the prospects for the Russian economy are consistent with historical examples of late-stage dictatorships.

Citing US intelligence sources and multiple government officials, media outlets including The New York Times and the AP described Putin as hopelessly out of touch, not because his mental acuity has deteriorated, but rather because no one’s willing to incur the risks that go along with delivering bad news to a tyrant. “Advisors are scared to tell him the truth,” the AP said, citing declassified intel. White House communications director Kate Bedingfield suggested Putin is also being misled about the Russian economy.

Somewhat ironically, the US is attempting to wake Putin up to the reality of his own predicament. As the AP put it, “the [Biden] administration is hopeful that divulging the findings could help prod Putin to reconsider his options in Ukraine.” Antony Blinken publicly stated that Putin’s capacity to strategize is likely being hampered by the absence of “people [who] have the ability to speak truth to power.”

As the Times wrote, editorializing around the same intelligence, “Putin seemed genuinely unaware that the Russian military had been using conscripts in Ukraine, and that drafted soldiers were among those killed in action.” One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described “a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information to the Russian president,” something Putin is belatedly coming to terms with. Now, there’s “persistent tension” between Putin and the Defense Ministry.

If there is, in fact, distrust between Putin and Sergei Shoigu, it means the circle is complete. Putin’s closest confidants were too terrified to tell him the truth and then, once he discovered he was being misled, that created paranoia, putting officials and advisors in an even more precarious position than they’d have been in had they just told him the truth from the outset.

At this point, Russians are scared of Putin to an extent rivaled only by the fear-induced paralysis that exists in Pyongyang. Putin isn’t likely to execute a dozen Russian lawmakers and military leaders with an antiaircraft gun for being insufficiently attentive during a long speech, but not because he’s somehow less ruthless than Kim Jong-Un. Rather, the international community castigates flagrant acts of Tarantino-esque brutality as backward and not befitting of a major power.

Major powers do their dirt behind closed doors (e.g., China in Xinjiang), under the pretense of law and order (e.g., police brutality in the US) or on the excuse political opposition is tantamount to treason (e.g., Russia and Alexei Navalny). When it comes to military misadventures, major powers are generally expected to confine any neo-imperialism to countries that “don’t count.” You can invade Iraq and depose its government, for example, just like you can send your air force to Syria to prop up a dictator. You can’t, however, start a war in Europe. That’s not a gentlemanly thing to do. You can strip Hong Kong of its democracy and subsume it within an autocratic system from which it was nominally independent, but you can’t seize Taiwan with your military. Again, that’s not a gentlemanly thing to do.

Outrageous, public brutality doesn’t necessarily preclude good relations with nominally civilized nations. Mass, public executions certainly haven’t hindered the Saudis from maintaining diplomatic ties with Washington, for example. But it does relegate you to the equivalent of second-class citizenship geopolitically, in much the same way as disrupting the peace in Europe (or seizing Taiwan) risks the revocation of your membership to the club of nations allowed to treat the world like a giant Risk board.

China insists Beijing is committed to an unwavering strategic partnership with Moscow. But Beijing also has a strategic partnership with Tehran and Xi keeps North Korea in his pocket as a kind of nuclear vassal state. Maintaining good relations with pariah regimes is something China does as a matter of course. Too many commentators seem to believe the Moscow-Beijing nexus is an alliance of equals — a partnership destined to define the multipolar world of the future, as Sergei Lavrov suggested this week. It’s doubtful Xi sees it that way. Putin has relegated Russia to second-class citizen status on the world stage. Xi sees that as an opportunity on multiple fronts. Publicly, he’ll call it a “partnership.” In reality, it’s opportunistic exploitation.

Putin’s reign has reached a dead end. He’s now completed the metamorphosis from KGB operative-turned autocrat to stereotypical tyrant.

For years, Putin was in on the joke. In fact, he reveled in it, staging photoshoots he knew would become Western memes, laughing nefariously during face-to-face interviews with mainstream US media outlets and generally perpetuating his own legend. We were laughing at Putin, and he wasn’t just laughing with us, he was laughing louder.

Over the past two years, though, he’s increasingly the subject of a joke he doesn’t seem to be in on, or if he is, he doesn’t find very funny. From the comically long meeting tables to absurd harangues about drug-addicted Nazis in Kyiv to, most recently, an ill-fated attempt to equate himself with Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Putin is a laughingstock. And so, unfortunately, is Russia.

The risk now is that, having been summarily banned from gentleman’s Risk, he embraces the deranged tyrant role on the assumption he has nothing left to lose.


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7 thoughts on “Cartoon Tyrant

  1. It would certainly be an ironic twist of fate if the failure of Putin’s apoplectic demands for buffer regions is what ultimately transforms Russia itself into yet another Chinese buffer region.

    I don’t know that China even has an off-ramp, here. They can’t really break with Putin as they don’t want the risk of political instability in Russia (not to mention the energy deals), but even taking an approach of feigned neutrality as with NK risks sanctions which would torpedo the economic growth that the ruling class’s power is predicated on. How long can China launder the economies of ostracized regimes before it reaches a tipping point for western democracies? How long will China be able to present itself as a neutral arbiter, even as its military buildup speeds ahead and the nationalism it’s fostered at home intensifies?

    Ya know, this reminds me so much of the late-Roman period. As Rome faced a multitude of external threats and internal corruption, its borders shrunk, and the center of power moved east, to Constantinople. For a while, Constantinople was the center of the most powerful trading nation in the known world. Yet its ideology — orthodox christianity — was a pariah. It lost every ally it couldn’t hold through force or bribe, and faced constant pressure from the militant masses of competing, less hierarchical ideologies at its borders.

    I wonder if this is another of history’s rhymes. Soviet ideology moved east, altered a bit, fused with the local ideology — “socialism with chinese characteristics,” you might say — resurgent for a time, yet ultimately susceptible to the same fatal weaknesses as its forebear: a byzantine theocracy.

    1. How long can China…. ? As long as they offer up their natural resources and slave labor to our corporations, the Chinese atrocities will remain an internal matter. Xi and Saddam – no difference.

      1. Yeah, but it involves balancing on a razor’s edge. The nationalism and economic growth that mollifies China’s billion places divergent demands upon its foreign policy. On one hand, it must act like a gentleman (as H points out) in order to continue its trade relationships with the West, on the other, it must push a degree of xenophobia and nationalist revanchism in order to keep the eyes of that billion looking outwards for its problems instead of inwards.

        Putin had the same constraints, and he balanced it well until a month ago.

        1. “…it must push a degree of xenophobia and nationalist revanchism in order to keep the eyes of that billion looking outwards for its problems instead of inwards.” Yes sir, and we have razor dancers too. When will we realize that Chinese, Russians, Arabs, Jews and most people of all the world’s cultures just want to live a moderate life in peace and reject all the hate monger bs that feeds the greedy war machine. Probably never, best we can do is disempower our local razor dancers.

  2. Lots of ironies here. Recently, Trump was quoted as saying that he was a bit jealous of Putin because he could kill anyone he didn’t like any time he felt like it. Trump could only fire his detractors and other “losers.” The irony, of course, is that Trump was probably right about Putin and the fear of such easy retribution from the boss makes sure he won’t get bad news. Imagine the death toll if Trump had had that kind of power.

  3. I think China can buy oil and other commodities from Russia without much Western backlash. The West actually needs China to do so, as otherwise Russia’s supply would effectively be removed from the market, sending prices higher than Western countries want.

    China doing so by funneling USD/EUR to Russia at large scale would invite backlash, but both China and Russia have reasons to want to trade in yen.

    Russia may not like becoming China’s quasi-captive supplier, but it will want to eventually replace much of the West’s technology, industrial goods, and consumer goods with Chinese substitutes. Military hardware uses lagging-edge semiconductors which China can supply, IT systems can use Huawei instead of Cisco, Linux instead of Windows, etc.

    If you’re Xi, recalibrating your plans to take over Taiwan, securing a captive commodities supply that is being the reach of Western sanctions is probably valuable enough to justify the PR hit.

  4. H-Man, the “nothing to lose” card Putin currently holds is the scary card. Right now he needs a win and to get that win, he holds all of those cards. Reduce Ukrainian cities to ruble which has been done but we are talking about obliteration via shelling and starvation; or throw some Syrian gas on a couple of cities; or finally drop a tactical nuke on some village. If he goes with Syrian gas or a nuke, he has bigger problems and no hole cards with a questionable win. Obliterate Ukrainian cities seems to be the hole card that will generate the “win” and “freedom” for eastern Ukraine. His approval rating in Russia is higher than at any other time during his rule.

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