Perhaps Putin does have an ace up his sleeve which he will
produce on Monday in New York – at the United Nations General Assembly or in a
meeting with Obama he has so eagerly sought and has been finally granted.
But the conventional explanation of what Putin is trying to do
and what motivates him seems the most plausible. The Russian economy is in
shambles and the rest of the world has been watching with complete indifference
as it continues to collapse. Putin’s cronies are clearly unhappy and fearful of
what happens once things get really bad. And so in recent weeks Putin froze
military action in Eastern Ukraine and toned down the anti-American rhetoric in
the Russian media. He then moved a contingent of Russian troops to Syria. Now
he’s likely to propose to the US Administration some form of cooperation
between Russia and NATO against ISIS. Since non-Islamist opposition to Bashar
al-Assad is extremely weak, he will argue that removing Syria’s strongman would
lead to an ISIS takeover. Let’s take care of the dangerous terrorists first and
defeat ISIS, he would say to Obama, and then we’ll work together to form a government
of national unity.
At first glance, it’s not such a stupid calculation. Obama is
entering the last year of his two-term presidency and leaving ISIS in control
of large chunks of the Levant to his successor is probably not his idea of
great legacy. Putin wants to offer him a way to solve this problem – which will
also alleviate the refugee crisis in Western Europe.
Meanwhile, Russia will be seen as playing a positive,
constructive role in the conflict – and probably doing the bulk of fighting on
the ground. This could allow Putin to come in from the cold. After this first
opening, he will keep Eastern Ukraine quiescent and may even allow Kyiv to mop
up the remaining terrorists in Donbass. His hope is that little by little, as
Russia gets back into the good graces of the West, his annexation of Crimea
will gain de facto acceptance by the
international community and sanctions against Russia will be allowed to lapse.
This is clearly what the Ukrainians fear, too, and this fear
has determined the timing of the trade blockade of Crimea by the Crimean
Tatars, the indigenous people of the peninsula, and the decision to ban flights
by Russian airlines.
Putin has been in international isolation for a year and a half
– since the Sochi Olympics in February 2014, to be exact, which now seems like
it happened a lifetime ago. In the meantime, the world he will face from the UN
podium has changed dramatically and – perhaps irrevocably.
The outward manifestation of this change can be seen in the oil
market. It’s not the fact that oil prices collapsed over the past fifteen
months – they have been volatile before – but the reason for their decline. Oil
markets have been disrupted by the development of green energy as well as by
new energy-saving and energy-producing technologies. Since the 1970s, the US
economy has doubled in size and so has its population and the number of cars on
the road; yet, its oil consumption has gone down and its energy production
rocketed – most of this due to new technologies.
In other words, oil prices will stay down for a long time to
come and are likely to go down further in coming years.
This will have far-reaching implications for Putin’s strategy
at the UN. He is making Russia a player in the Middle East at a time when
everyone else is withdrawing. For decades, it has been a key strategic region
for the world economy. All too frequent troubles there kept the rest of the
world on edge. Now, all of a sudden, it has become a turbulent and violent
backwaters – a kind of larger Somalia that can cause only minor problems. Obama
has been steadily disentangling the United States from regional commitments it
had acquired during the post-World War II era and, especially, from direct
involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan under George W. Bush. He is deliberately
leaving the Middle East to be sorted out by regional players – the Saudis, the
Turks, the Israelis, the Egyptians and the Iranians. As long as a nuclear
weapons can be kept out, the West would prefer for the locals to cooperate in
maintaining order – if they can. In fact, they are already starting to do so,
however reluctantly.
Putin’s proposals on Syria, which he is likely to unveil on
Monday, entail drawing the United States and its allies back into the region. I
think Obama will thank him politely and leave him holding the bag. Even before
the meeting, the White House has indicated that it’s more interested in
discussing Ukraine than Syria.
In many other ways, too, the world has moved away from the
two-bit kleptocrat with a chip on his shoulder. The high tech revolution, which
started in the 1990s, is bearing fruit now. The oil market – and Middle East
politics – is not the only area that technology is disrupting. The entire
manufacturing sector is starting to reel, which has been evidenced by
difficulties the Chinese economic model has encountered. The emergence of
technology as a dominant force in the world economy – at the expense of
politics, labor and capital – is presenting new challenges that demand new
responses which are way beyond Putin’s area of competence. Over the past year
and a half, has Russia has moved from a major supplier of energy to world
markets to a nonentity.
Nothing underscores the contrast between where the world is
heading and where Putin stands better than the papal visit to the United
States. The two men will have shared the stage in New York, but they could not
have been more different. Putin symbolizes the rise of plutocracy of the past
two decades – an international class of super rich comprised of hi-tech entrepreneurs
as well as greedy corporate executives, financial tricksters, drug lords,
oilmen – and, of course, Russia’s contribution, super-corrupt government
officials.
Pope Francis instead stands for a global shift toward humility
and compassion – the same way John Paul II once marked a shift to freedom and
the end of post-World War II division of Europe. Signs of this shift are
appearing everywhere: from the response by many ordinary Europeans to the
refugee crisis, as they reach over the heads of their reluctant governments
with a helping hand, to the electoral success of old-time leftists Jeremy
Corbin in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the United States.
Against this backdrop, Putin, with his transparent
Machiavellian games, looks like a leftover from another era.
